Minnesota Chris

Christianity and Ron Paul - The Just War Theory

2012-01-17T12:37:00.002-06:00

All Christians who oppose Ron Paul's non-interventionist foreign policy should read this terrific blog post by the The Conservative Cowboy on that very subject:

Being a Christian man, I am amazed at the number of other Christians and Christian leaders that refuse to support Ron Paul's campaign. Countless times I have heard men and women say that Ron Paul has good ideas but his foreign policy is crazy, or insane, or isolationist. I believe the failure to recognize the merits of his foreign policy is dangerous and that blindly going into war is completely incompatible with Christian doctrine. It is becoming apparent to me that fewer and fewer Christians actually understand the lessons that Jesus taught while on this earth.

The idea of pre-emptive war is not, in any way, compatible with what I believe to be the heart of the message of Christ. To deny this is folly and will only sink us deeper into the mess we are in economically, and further diminish the respect that we once maintained around the world.

Read the rest

Great Ron Paul Interview on Fox News Sunday

2011-08-28T15:11:00.001-05:00

Give some decent time to Dr. Paul to defend his views and he really shines, as he did on Fox News Sunday:

Ron Paul Super Bomb Announced for 9/19

2011-08-09T12:35:00.002-05:00

The Revolution PAC, a "Super PAC" dedicated to spreading the word about Ron Paul, has announced a Super Money Bomb for September 19, the anniversary of the Battle of Saratoga during the Revolutionary War. Here is the press release:

September Superbomb Announced by Ron Paul Super PAC

Revolution PAC calls on businesses, organizations, and individuals to act on one day Ron Paul fundraiser.

Northbrook, IL – August 9, 2011 – Revolution PAC, the Super PAC formed in July to support the presidential ambitions of Congressman Ron Paul, has announced a money bomb fundraiser – a “Super PAC Superbomb” – for September 19.

“September 19 marked the first of the battles of Saratoga, which taken together amounted to a significant turning point in the War for Independence,” said Revolution PAC President Gary Franchi. “We hope this Superbomb, and the resources it brings in, will propel us toward a victory no less dramatic for Ron Paul.”

In advance of the Superbomb, the Super PAC is emphasizing its grassroots nature, its low overhead, and its effective use of funds.

“We are regular Americans, each of whom has a track record of support for Dr. Paul and what he stands for,” said Thomas Woods, Revolution PAC Advisory Board Chairman. “We aren’t paying the six-figure salaries and five- and six-figure expense reimbursements we often encounter in the political world. We are simply dedicated to the cause, and we have employed every penny donated to us wisely and conscientiously.”

The Super PAC form of organization, made possible by two court rulings in 2010, has gathered steam quickly during this election cycle. Unlike a presidential campaign, it can accept unlimited donations from individuals, businesses, and other groups.

During an event outside the Chicago Federal Reserve over the weekend Franchi remarked: “We’re changing the game. Anybody can donate to us, but in particular those who have reached the $2500 legal limit in donations to a presidential campaign can now continue to help Ron Paul by supporting the Revolution Super PAC.

“We will devote whatever we raise to carrying out the most efficient and effective political marketing campaign Americans will see this cycle. Ron Paul and his message will be everywhere. The Ron Paul grassroots will have been underestimated for the last time.”

The Revolution PAC is asking foreign supporters of Ron Paul to patronize US businesses who support the Super PAC.

Ron Paul supporters are being asked to pledge to contribute to the September 19th Superbomb at http://RevolutionPAC.com

Contact:
Mary Putnam
mary@revolutionpac.com
3149 Dundee Rd. #176
Northbrook, IL 60062
Ph: 866-202-9367

###

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the U.S. Terror State (Anthony Gregory)

2011-08-03T11:25:00.002-05:00

A terrific article by Anthony Gregory on the nuclear attacks on Japan and other terrorist acts by the US government:

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the U.S. Terror State
by Anthony Gregory

Being a U.S. war criminal means never having to say sorry. Paul Tibbets, the man who flew the Enola Gay and destroyed Hiroshima, lived to the impressive age of 92 without publicly expressing guilt for what he had done. He had even reenacted his infamous mission at a 1976 Texas air show, complete with a mushroom cloud, and later said he never meant this to be offensive. In contrast, he called it a "damn big insult" when the Smithsonian planned an exhibit in 1995 showing some of the damage the bombing caused.

We might understand a man not coming to terms with his most important contribution to human history being such a destructive act. But what about the rest of the country?

It’s sickening that Americans even debate the atomic bombings, as they do every year in early August. Polls in recent years reveal overwhelming majorities of the American public accepting the acts as necessary.

Conservatives are much worse on this topic, although liberals surely don’t give it the weight it deserves. Trent Lott was taken to the woodshed for his comments in late 2002 about how Strom Thurmond would have been a better president than Truman. Lott and Thurmond both represent ugly strains in American politics, but no one dared question the assumption that Thurmond was obviously a less defensible candidate than Truman. Zora Neale Hurston, heroic author of the Harlem Renaissance, might have had a different take, as she astutely called Truman "a monster" and "the butcher of Asia." Governmental segregation is terrible, but why is murdering hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians with as much thought as one would give to eradicating silverfish treated as simply a controversial policy decision in comparison?

Perhaps it is the appeal to necessity. We hear that the United States would have otherwise had to invade the Japanese mainland and so the bombings saved American lives. But saving U.S. soldiers wouldn’t justify killing Japanese children any more than saving Taliban soldiers would justify dropping bombs on American children. Targeting civilians to manipulate their government is the very definition of terrorism. Everyone was properly horrified by Anders Behring Breivik’s murder spree in Norway last month – killing innocents to alter diplomacy. Truman murdered a thousand times as many innocents on August 6, 1945, then again on August 9.

It doesn’t matter if Japan "started it," either. Only individuals have rights, not nations. Unless you can prove that every single Japanese snuffed out at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was involved in the Pearl Harbor attack, the murderousness of the bombings is indisputable. Even the official history should doom Truman to a status of permanent condemnation. Besides being atrocious in themselves, the U.S. creation and deployment of the first nuclear weapons ushered in the seemingly endless era of global fear over nuclear war.

However, as it so happens, the official history is a lie. The U.S. provoked the Japanese to fire the first shot, as more and more historians have acknowledged. Although the attack on Pearl Harbor, a military base, was wrong, it was far less indefensible than the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki's civilian populations.

As for the utilitarian calculus of "saving American lies," historian Ralph Raico explains:

[T]he rationale for the atomic bombings has come to rest on a single colossal fabrication, which has gained surprising currency: that they were necessary in order to save a half-million or more American lives. These, supposedly, are the lives that would have been lost in the planned invasion of Kyushu in December, then in the all-out invasion of Honshu the next year, if that was needed. But the worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost.

The propaganda that the atomic bombings saved lives was nothing but a public relations pitch contrived in retrospect. These were just gratuitous acts of mass terrorism. By August 1945, the Japanese were completely defeated, blockaded, starving. They were desperate to surrender. All they wanted was to keep their emperor, which was ultimately allowed anyway. The U.S. was insisting upon unconditional surrender, a purely despotic demand. Given what the Allies had done to the Central Powers, especially Germany, after the conditional surrender of World War I, it’s understandable that the Japanese resisted the totalitarian demand for unconditional surrender.

A 1946 U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey determined the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nukings were not decisive in ending the war. Most of the political and military brass agreed. "The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing," said Dwight Eisenhower in a 1963 interview with Newsweek.

Another excuse we hear is the specter of Hitler getting the bomb first. This is a non sequitur. By the time the U.S. dropped the bombs, Germany was defeated and its nuclear program was revealed to be nothing in comparison to America’s. The U.S. had 180,000 people working for several years on the Manhattan Project. The Germans had a small group led by a few elite scientists, most of whom were flabbergasted on August 6, as they had doubted such bombs were even possible. Even if the Nazis had gotten the bomb – which they were very far from getting – it wouldn’t in any way justify killing innocent Japanese.

For more evidence suggesting that the Truman administration was out to draw Japanese blood for its own sake, or as a show of force for reasons of Realpolitik, consider the United States’s one-thousand-plane bombing of Tokyo on August 14, the largest bombing raid of the Pacific war, after Hirohito agreed to surrender and the Japanese state made it clear it wanted peace. The bombing of Nagasaki should be enough to know it was not all about genuinely stopping the war as painlessly as possible – why not wait more than three days for the surrender to come? But to strategically bomb Japan five days after the destruction Nagasaki, as Japan was in the process of waving the white flag? It’s hard to imagine a greater atrocity, or clearer evidence that the U.S. government was not out to secure peace, but instead to slaughter as many Japanese as it could before consolidating its power for the next global conflict.

The U.S. had, by the time of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroyed 67 Japanese cities by firebombing, in addition to helping the British destroy over a hundred cities in Germany. In this dramatic footage from The Fog of War, Robert McNamara describes the horror he helped unleash alongside General Curtis LeMay, with images of the destroyed Japanese cities and an indication of what it would have meant for comparably sized cities in the United States:

"Killing fifty to ninety percent of the people in 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional – in the minds of some people – to the objectives we were trying to achieve," McNamara casually says. Indeed, this was clearly murderous, and Americans are probably the most resistant of all peoples to the truths of their government’s historical atrocities. It doesn’t hurt that the U.S. government has suppressed for years evidence such as film footage shot after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet even based on what has long been uncontroversial historical fact, we should all be disgusted and horrified by what the U.S. government did.

How would it have been if all those Germans and Japanese, instead of being burned to death from the sky, were corralled into camps and shot or gassed? Materially, it would have been the same. But Americans refuse to think of bombings as even in the same ballpark as other technologically expedient ways of exterminating people by the tens and hundreds of thousands. Why? Because the U.S. government has essentially monopolized terror bombing for nearly a century. No one wants to confront the reality of America’s crimes against humanity.

It would be one thing if Americans were in wide agreement that their government, like that of the Axis governments of World War II, had acted in a completely indefensible manner. But they’re not. The Allies were the white hats. Ignore the fact that the biggest belligerent on America’s side was Stalin’s Russia, whom the FDR and Truman administrations helped round up a million or two refugees to enslave and murder in the notorious undertaking known as Operation Keelhaul. We’re not supposed to think about that. World War II began with Pearl Harbor and it ended with D-Day and American sailors returning home to kiss their sweethearts who had kept America strong by working on assembly lines.

In the Korean war, another Truman project, the U.S. policy of shameful mass murder continued. According to historian Bruce Cumings, professor at the University of Chicago, millions of North Korean civilians were slaughtered by U.S. fire-bombings, chemical weapons and newly developed ordnance, some of which weighed in at 12,000 pounds. Eighteen out of 22 major cities were at least half destroyed. For a period in 1950, the US dropped about 800 tons of bombs on North Korea every day. Developed at the end of World War II, napalm got its real start in Korea. The US government also targeted civilian dams, causing massive flooding.

In Indochina, the U.S. slaughtered millions in a similar fashion. Millions of tons of explosives were dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. These ghastly weapons are literally still killing people – tens of thousands have died since the war ended, and three farmers were killed just last week. Among the horrible effects of the bombing was the rise of Pol Pot’s regime, probably the worst in history on a per capita basis.

The U.S. has committed mass terrorism since, although not on quite the scale as in past generations. Back in the day the U.S. would drop tons of explosives, knowing that thousands would die in an instant. In today’s wars, it drops explosives and then pretends it didn’t mean to kill the many civilians who predictably die in such acts of violence. Only fifteen hundred bombs were used to attack Baghdad in March 2003. That’s what passes as progress. The naked murderousness of U.S. foreign policy, however, is still apparent. The bombings of water treatment facilities and sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s deliberately targeted the vulnerable Iraqi people. Once the type of atrocities the U.S. committed in World War II have been accepted as at the worst debatable tactics in diplomacy, anything goes.

American politicians would have us worry about Iran, a nation that hasn’t attacked another country in centuries, one day getting the bomb. There is no evidence that the Iranians are even seeking nuclear weapons. But even if they were, the U.S. has a much worse record in both warmongering and nuclear terror than Iran or any other country in modern times. It is more than hypocritical for the U.S. to pose as the leader of global peace and nuclear disarmament.

The hypocrisy and moral degeneracy in the mouths of America’s celebrated leaders should frighten us more than anything coming out of Iran or North Korea, especially given America’s capacity to kill and willingness to do it. Upon dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, President Truman called the bomb the "greatest achievement of organized science in history" and wondered aloud how "atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence toward the maintenance of world peace." Nothing inverts good and evil, progress and regress, as much as the imperial state. In describing the perversion of morality in the history of U.S. wars, Orwell’s "war is peace" doesn’t cut it. "Exterminating civilians by the millions is the highest of all virtues" is perhaps a better tagline for the U.S. terror state.
August 3, 2011

Anthony Gregory [send him mail] is research editor at the Independent Institute. He lives in Oakland, California. See his webpage for more articles and personal information.

Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Ron Paul's First Official Campaign Ad

2011-07-13T23:53:00.002-05:00

This impressive ad is far better than anything the campaign put together for Dr. Paul's 2008 run:

Tricked on the Fourth of July (Gary North)

2011-07-05T11:46:00.003-05:00

Happy Independence Day? Don't say that to Gary North, who wrote this brief but intriguing argument that it was one big mistake:

I do not celebrate the fourth of July. This goes back to a term paper I wrote in graduate school. It was on colonial taxation in the British North American colonies in 1775. Not counting local taxation, I discovered that the total burden of British imperial taxation was about 1% of national income. It may have been as high as 2.5% in the southern colonies.

In 2008, Alvin Rabushka's book of almost 1,000 pages appeared: Taxation in Colonial America (Princeton University Press). In a review published in the Business History Review, the reviewer summarizes the book's findings.

Rabushka's most original and impressive contribution is his measurement of tax rates and tax burdens. However, his estimate of comparative trans-Atlantic tax burdens may be a bit of moving target. At one point, he concludes that, in the period from 1764 to 1775, "the nearly two million white colonists in America paid on the order of about 1 percent of the annual taxes levied on the roughly 8.5 million residents of Britain, or one twenty-fifth, in per capita terms, not taking into account the higher average income and consumption in the colonies" (p. 729). Later, he writes that, on the eve of the Revolution, "British tax burdens were ten or more times heavier than those in the colonies" (p. 867). Other scholars may want to refine his estimates, based on other archival sources, different treatment of technical issues such as the adjustment of intercolonial and trans-Atlantic comparisons for exchange rates, or new estimates of comparative income and wealth. Nonetheless, no one is likely to challenge his most important finding: the huge tax gap between the American periphery and the core of the British Empire.

The colonists had a sweet deal in 1775. Great Britain was the second freest nation on earth. Switzerland was probably the most free nation, but I would be hard-pressed to identify any other nation in 1775 that was ahead of Great Britain. And in Great Britain's Empire, the colonists were by far the freest.

I will say it, loud and clear: the freest society on earth in 1775 was British North America, with the exception of the slave system. Anyone who was not a slave had incomparable freedom.

Jefferson wrote these words in the Declaration of Independence:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

I can think of no more misleading political assessment uttered by any leader in the history of the United States. No words having such great impact historically in this nation were less true. No political bogeymen invoked by any political sect as "the liar of the century" ever said anything as verifiably false as these words.

Read the rest, and also see this great article by Anthony Gregory on July 4th propaganda.

Audit the Gold! Hearing on Thursday 6/23

2011-06-21T13:32:00.003-05:00

Back in April, Ron Paul introduced H.R. 1495, a bill to audit all the gold owned by the United States, and this coming Thursday, he's holding a Domestic Monetary Policy subcommittee hearing on that bill. The hearing should be live streamed here, and witnesses are scheduled to include the Inspector General of the Treasury Department and a high level bureaucrat at the General Accounting Office. Here's the text of H.R. 1495:

To provide for an audit of all gold owned by the United States.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2011'.

SEC. 2. ASSAY, INVENTORY, AND AUDIT OF GOLD RESERVES.

(a) The Secretary of the Treasury is directed to conduct and complete, not later than six months after the date of enactment of this Act, a full assay, inventory, and audit of gold reserves of the United States at the place or places where such reserves are kept, together with an analysis of the sufficiency of the measures taken for the security of such reserves.

(b)(1) The Government Accountability Office shall review the results of such assay, inventory, audit, and analysis and, not later than nine months after the date of enactment of this Act, shall prepare and transmit to the Congress a report of its findings, together with the results of the assay, inventory, audit, and analysis conducted by the Secretary of the Treasury.

(2) For purposes of such assay, inventory, audit, and analysis, the Government Accountability Office shall have access to any depository or other facility where such reserves are kept.

(c) The Secretary of the Treasury shall make available, in order to facilitate the review of the Government Accountability Office under this Act, all books, accounts, records, reports, files, correspondence, memoranda, papers, or any other document, tape, or written, audio, or digital record pertaining to the assay, inventory, audit, and analysis required by this Act, as determined by the Government Accountability Office.

UPDATE: Watch the hearing here or below:

Government “Waste” Is the Least of Our Problems (Anthony Gregory)

2011-06-13T14:16:00.002-05:00

Anthony Gregory points out that if government simply "wasted" the money they steal from us, we'd be far better off than we are now:

Sometimes I swear we are living in a dystopian novel whose author is courteous enough to provide us mere extras in his story with plenty of comedic relief to make the days tolerable. The USA Today headline reads: “Obama, Biden again target government waste.” Yes. That’s in fact what it says. The administration that has given us a $3.7 trillion budget is so concerned about wasting money, you see, that its Vice President is heading up a “Campaign to Cut Waste.” The White House brags of having trimmed $33 billion of waste in the last year. That amounts to less than 1% of the budget—a budget that is, in nominal dollar terms, approximately double what it was a decade ago. Back in 2001 I remember thinking about how small our government was, and how if only we doubled its size, and were careful to cut back about a percent of that sum that happens to be “waste,” we’d be in great shape. Oh wait a second. That’s not what I thought at all.

Yet all this talk of waste misses the point. Perhaps there are better uses of our tax dollars than “waste,” but I must say, I prefer so-called waste to most of what the government spends money on. Government is destructive. Most of what it does is harmful. Being an agency of violence and the threat of violence, the institution of government runs counter to economic progress as a general principle. Even worse, its coercive grip strangles the freedom out of people as a matter of course, and, far more often than Americans seem accustomed to recognizing, it kills people.

If only the regulatory state’s budget were a matter of “waste.”

Read the rest

The Next American Revolution Won't Be Like the First (Wendy McElroy)

2011-06-09T12:27:00.002-05:00

Wendy McElroy lays out an interesting and persuasive case that the next American Revolution will far more closely resemble 1789 France than 1776 America:

One of my friends believes that a second American revolution is imminent and will be sparked by the economic instability now rocking the continent. Frankly, I doubt it. Insurrections may occur, but I expect the US government to lumber along, dragging the world deeper into poverty and conflict for many years to come.

Upon hearing my friend out, however, my first thought was, "if a revolution erupts, it will resemble the French one of 1789 more closely than the American one of 1776." Then I sat back and tried to figure out why I had arrived at that sudden conclusion, and whether or not it had merit.

One of the reasons for thinking that America might be "going French" is that current American society resembles descriptions I've read of pre-Revolution France more closely than America now resembles its young self.

Read the rest

Ron Paul on Libya: "Since we went in abruptly and illegally, we need to abruptly leave."

2011-06-06T20:21:00.003-05:00

Dr. Ron Paul was able to speak on the House floor on Friday 6/3/11 to support a resolution (H. Con. Res. 51) introduced by Dennis Kucinich to direct Obama to withdraw troops from Libya:

If the C-SPAN link above does not work, try the YouTube at http://youtu.be/cptBMhhXsDI

Mr. KUCINICH. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul).

Mr. PAUL. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise in strong support for H. Con. Res. 51. We need to pass this resolution to send a very strong message.

We have been told by those who oppose this message that we should not have an abrupt withdrawal from the region, but I would strongly suggest that what we should be talking about is the abrupt and illegal entry into war. That's what we have to stop. Since we went in abruptly and illegally, we need to abruptly leave.

It has also been said by those who oppose this resolution that they concede that Congress should assume its prerogatives over the war powers but to do it gradually. I would strongly suggest that when we took our oath of office we assumed that radically and suddenly. We took an oath of office to obey the Constitution, not to defer to the United Nations, and that we already have assumed that responsibility.

I would also suggest, if we do nothing, if we do not pass this resolution, it is the sin of omission that we commit.

Ron Paul Strongly Opposes Extending the PATRIOT Act

2011-06-06T20:15:00.003-05:00

SPEECH OF
HON. RON PAUL
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2011

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this extension of the three provisions of the misnamed PATRIOT Act. It is a travesty that the House and Senate leadership bring this measure to the floor at the 11th hour--just as the provisions are on the verge of sunsetting--hide it as an amendment to an unrelated Senate bill, and issue all manner of alarmist warnings that if we do not pass it without delay a terrorist attack is imminent. No amendments were allowed, nor were substantive opportunities to engage in a broader debate on the three measures being extended.

Let us be clear about one thing: the PATRIOT Act is unconstitutional. The three measures that were extended today were the most controversial sections of the original bill, which is why the sunset provisions for these were built into in the original bill in the first place. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is clear on these issues:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Section 206 and Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which the House is renewing today, remove that particularity requirement, allowing massive surveillance of American citizens' most private and personal effects.

These sections, along with the never used "Lone Wolf" provision are unnecessary, they do not protect us against terrorism, and they should be allowed to sunset. There is little evidence the PATRIOT Act has directly led to the conviction of anyone on serious terrorism charges, but there is plenty of evidence that federal agencies have repeatedly used its provisions to unnecessarily spy on American citizens.

I remain most strongly opposed to the PATRIOT Act and any such attack on the civil liberties of American citizens. Such measures may be well-intentioned and put in place under the belief that the sacrifice of liberty is required for our safety, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Ron Paul Introduces Health Freedom Legislation

2011-05-31T16:37:00.002-05:00

SPEECH OF
HON. RON PAUL
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2011

Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce two pieces of legislation restoring the First Amendment rights of consumers to receive truthful information regarding the benefits of foods and dietary supplements. The first bill, the Health Freedom Restoration Act, codifies the First Amendment by ending the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s efforts to censor truthful health claims. The second bill, the Freedom of Health Speech Act, codifies the First and Fifth Amendment by requiring the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to prove that health claims are false before it takes action to stop manufacturers and marketers from making the claims.

The American people have made it clear they do not want the federal government to interfere with their access to dietary supplements, yet the FDA and the FTC continue to engage in heavy-handed attempts to restrict such access. The FDA continues to frustrate consumers' efforts to learn how they can improve their health even after Congress, responding to a record number of constituents' comments, passed the Dietary Supplement and Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). FDA bureaucrats are so determined to frustrate consumers' access to truthful information that they are even evading their duty to comply with four federal court decisions vindicating consumers' First Amendment rights to discover the health benefits of foods and dietary supplements.

FDA bureaucrats have even refused to abide by the DSHEA section allowing the public to have access to scientific articles and publications regarding the role of nutrients in treating diseases by claiming that every article concerning this topic is evidence of intent to sell an unapproved and unlawful drug.

Because of the FDA's censorship of truthful health claims, millions of Americans may suffer with diseases and other health care problems they may have avoided by using dietary supplements. For example, the FDA prohibited consumers from learning how folic acid reduces the risk of neural tube defects for four years after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended every woman of childbearing age take folic acid supplements to reduce neural tube defects. This FDA action contributed to an estimated 10,000 cases of preventable neural tube defects.

The FDA also continues to prohibit consumers from learning about the scientific evidence that glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate are effective in the treatment of osteoarthritis; that omega-3 fatty acids may reduce the risk of sudden death heart attack; that calcium may reduce the risk of bone fractures; and that vitamin D may reduce the risk of osteoporosis, hypertension, and cancer.

The Health Freedom Restoration Act will force the FDA to at last comply with the commands of Congress, the First Amendment, numerous federal courts, and the American people by codifying the First Amendment prohibition on prior restraint. Specifically, the Health Freedom Restoration Act stops the FDA from censoring truthful claims about the curative, mitigative, or preventative effects of dietary supplements. The Health Freedom Restoration Act also stops the FDA from prohibiting the distribution of scientific articles and publications regarding the role of nutrients in protecting against disease. The FDA has proven that it cannot be trusted to protect consumers' rights to make informed choices. It is time for Congress to stop the FDA from censoring truthful health information.

The Freedom of Health Speech Act addresses the FTC's violations of the First Amendment. Under traditional constitutional standards, the federal government bears the burden of proving an advertising statement false before censoring that statement. However, the FTC shifted the burden of proof to industry. The FTC presumes health advertizing is false and compels private parties to prove the ads (and everything the regulators say the ads imply) to be true to a near conclusive degree. This violation of the First and Fifth Amendments is harming consumers by blocking innovation in the health foods and dietary supplement marketplace.

The Freedom of Health Speech Act requires the government actually prove that speech is false before the FTC acts against the speaker. This is how it should be in a free society where information flows freely in order to foster the continuous improvement that benefits us all. The bill also requires that the FTC warn parties that their advertising is false and give them a chance to correct their mistakes before the FTC censors the claim and imposes other punishments.

Mr. Speaker, if we are serious about putting people in charge of their health care, then shouldn't we stop federal bureaucrats from preventing Americans from learning about simple ways to improve their health. I therefore call on my colleagues to stand up for good health and the Constitution by cosponsoring the Health Freedom Restoration Act and the Freedom of Health Speech Act.

Remember What Memorial Day is Really About (Roger Young)

2011-05-30T13:37:00.002-05:00

A terrific, yet sobering video by Roger Young about Memorial Day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IRZ2scu40c

You can read Roger's original article here.

Killing a Man Does Not Testify to National Greatness (Robert Higgs)

2011-05-02T17:34:00.005-05:00

In the aftermath of the alleged assassination of Osama bin Laden (remember Rockwell's Law: "Always believe the opposite of what state officials tell you"), perhaps Robert Higgs sums it up best:

Among the many objectionable aspects of President Obama’s announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed, one in particular sticks in my craw. He said that “today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people.”

First, I dislike the whole idea of “the greatness of our country.” Countries cannot be great. They are abstractions and, as such, they are incapable of acting for good or for evil. Individual residents of a country may be great, and many Americans are great, because, to borrow Forrest Gump’s construction, “greatness is as greatness does.”

The caretakers who comfort the sick and dying are often great. The priests and friends who revive the will to live in those who have lost hope are great. The entrepreneurs who establish successful businesses that better satisfy consumer demands for faster communication, safer travel, fresher food, and countless other goods and services are great. The scientists and inventors who peer deeper into the nature of the universe and devise technologies to accomplish humane, heretofore impossible feats are great. The artists who elevate the souls of those who hear their music and view their paintings are great.

But mere killing is never great, and those who carry out the killings are not great, either. No matter how much one may believe that people must sometimes commit homicide in defense of themselves and the defenseless, the killing itself is always to be deeply regretted. To take delight in killings, as so many Americans seem to have done in the past day or so, marks a person as a savage at heart. Human beings have the capacity to be better than savages. Oh that more of them would employ that capacity.

Second, anyone can see that the U.S. government will use this particular killing as evidence of its dedication to and capacity for carrying out the noble service of protecting–and, failing that, avenging the deaths of–the American people. (Never mind that trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of deaths, untold destruction of property, vast human misery, and sacrifices of essential liberties in this country went into gaining the proudly proclaimed achievement of killing a single man.) The process has already begun, with former presidents and the mainstream media adding their voices to amplify the government’s official line. Glory to the USA, glory to its hired killers, glory above all to its heroic Great Leader. The whole spectacle is profoundly disgusting. Yet we can see that many Americans have enthusiastically fallen for this trick, dancing in the streets in celebration of a man’s death in faraway Pakistan. Such unseemly behavior is not the stuff of which true greatness is made.

UPDATE: Also see this terrific article by Glenn Greenwald on the killing and the reaction to it.

The Regime’s 150th Birthday (Anthony Gregory)

2011-04-13T12:49:00.002-05:00

On April 12, 1861, after deliberate provocation by Abraham Lincoln, Confederate soldiers fired on Fort Sumter, and thus began the Civil War. Anthony Gregory writes this nice summary of its ramifications:

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. This event, more than the Declaration of Independence, Constitution or the American Revolution, signifies the true birth of the modern American nation-state. It was on this day that the federal government first repudiated the Founding Fathers’ republican form of government—a coalition of several states that combined under the Constitution to form a central state of enumerated and sharply limited powers—and asserted a plenary sovereignty over the people. Rejecting the right of states to secede, the federal government under Lincoln abolished the very system that was supposed to come out of the revolution against the British crown, a system where smaller political units could exercise their legal and human right to overthrow or at least leave the central government that ruled them without their consent.

During the U.S. Civil War, leviathan as we know it was born. The war ushered in federal conscription, income taxes, new departments and agencies, and the final victory of the Hamiltonians over the Jeffersonians. For years, the nationalists—first the Federalists, then the Whigs, and then the Republicans under Lincoln—had advocated a system that subordinated the states to the central government and buried agrarianism and free enterprise under the heavy burden of corporarist neo-mercantilism. Henry Clay called this economic program “The American System” and boasted of its proposed “internal improvements.” A more modern label would simply be “corporate welfare” as these nationalists were championing high tariffs to discourage free trade and to raise revenue that could be shoveled toward big businesses that would build railways, canals and roads, the circulatory system of a new corporate state with Washington directing the economy through grants of privilege and monopoly.

Civil liberties took a hit virtually unparalleled in U.S. history, with the possible exception of World War I. During the Civil War, thousands of dissidents were arrested, hundreds of newspapers were shut down, martial law was declared, habeas corpus was suspended, and political enemies were targeted for arrest and persecution. When violent draft riots broke out in New York City, Lincoln sent in the army, which slaughtered hundreds of civilians. During the fog of war Lincoln conducted the largest mass-execution of U.S. history—American Indians stripped of any semblance of proper due process.

Then, of course, there was the mass bloodshed. How appropriate that the U.S. government, so-called protector of peace and liberty for the world, was the western state that ended slavery through a centrally administered and completely hellish war.

Read the rest

Adam vs. The Man Now on Russia Today!

2011-04-11T21:34:00.002-05:00

The great Adam Kokesh has been doing a great show called Adam vs. The Man for the last few months, and now he's getting his breakthrough by having his show aired on Russia Today! It aired for the first time tonight (April 11) at 7:00pm on RT America, and his inaugural episode is here:

Read more on the new Adam vs. The Man website!

Rand Paul Tells It Like It Is

2011-03-10T21:25:00.002-06:00

Senator Rand Paul is asserting himself as a spokesman for liberty in the Senate! In this first video, he tears into a bureaucrat at the Department of Energy on their stupid rules and regulations for seemingly everything in our lives:

Great stuff!

In the next video, this time on the Senate floor, Dr. Paul shows why neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seem to have a grasp on the enormity of the budget woes:

"Democracy" in Action

2011-03-10T21:19:00.003-06:00

Justin Amash continues to set the standard for transparency by posting all his votes on his Facebook page, and today he included this gem:

In case you missed it . . . Today, the United States House of Representatives voted on a modified amendment that was scribbled onto a piece of paper just moments before the vote, which I discovered only through considerable effort, which only a few other Reps read via the photo on my iPhone, and the amendment still passed 278-147. Here's the roll call: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll169.xml

Here is the "amendment":

Why Is Social Security Going Broke? (Glen Allport)

2011-03-09T16:42:00.002-06:00

Glen Allport wrote this outstanding article on the enormous Ponzi scheme known as Social Security:

- 1 -

In plain language, there is no good reason for the unfolding Social Security nightmare. Yes, the Baby Boomers are retiring, but so what? It's a big group, but this same big group has been paying into Social Security their whole adult lives. It's not like the money hasn't been set aside or anything.

Right?

- 2 -

Of course, you know better: the money that should have been set aside wasn't. That is the entire Social Security problem in a nutshell.

How did this happen? Government happened (as in, "Be careful not to step in the government"). Ringo's Law happened: "Everything government touches turns to crap."

Any demographer could have told you fifty years ago -- or before the start of Social Security during the Roosevelt administration, for that matter -- that a "pay tax as you go" system like Social Security has inherent problems, because (among other things) the generation following any "Baby Boom" group will almost certainly be smaller -- a non-Boom generation, if you will -- and will thus be strained to support the Boomers in their old age.

When other government revenues (taxes) are high enough and overall government spending is low enough, surplus tax revenue can paper over shortfalls in such situations -- but this only works if there is a tax surplus.

How often does the federal government run a surplus? In recent times (say, the last half-century), the answer is "never."

Read the rest

March 9, 1945: The Night Tokyo Burned

2011-03-09T12:15:00.002-06:00

In a war crime that rivals the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US Air Force stripped hundreds of B-29 bombers of their defensive weapons, equipped them with incendiary bombs, and sent them to Tokyo on March 9, 1945. War criminal General Curis LeMay noted that the city was packed with wooden buildings, and napalm and other incendiary devices would cause widespread destruction. The resulting firebombing resulted in at least 100,000 deaths, with many more wounded. According to researcher Mark Selden:

No previous or subsequent conventional bombing raid ever came close to generating the toll in death and destruction of the great Tokyo raid of March 9-10. The airborne assault on Tokyo and other Japanese cities ground on relentlessly. According to Japanese police statistics, the 65 raids on Tokyo between December 6, 1944 and August 13, 1945 resulted in 137,582 casualties, 787,145 homes and buildings destroyed, and 2,625,279 people displaced. Following the Tokyo raid of March 9-10, the firebombing was extended nationwide. In the ten-day period beginning on March 9, 9,373 tons of bombs destroyed 31 square miles of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe. Overall, bombing strikes destroyed 40 percent of the 66 Japanese cities targeted, with total tonnage dropped on Japan increasing from 13,800 tons in March to 42,700 tons in July. If the bombing of Dresden produced a ripple of public debate in Europe, no discernible wave of revulsion, not to speak of protest, took place in the US or Europe in the wake of the far greater destruction of Japanese cities and the slaughter of civilian populations on a scale that had no parallel in the history of bombing.

In July, US planes blanketed the few remaining Japanese cities that had been spared firebombing with an “Appeal to the People.” “As you know,” it read, “America which stands for humanity, does not wish to injure the innocent people, so you had better evacuate these cities.” Half the leafleted cities were firebombed within days of the warning. US planes ruled the skies. Overall, by one calculation, the US firebombing campaign destroyed 180 square miles of 67 cities, killed more than 300,000 people and injured an additional 400,000, figures that exclude the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Between January and July 1945, the US firebombed and destroyed all but five Japanese cities, deliberately sparing Kyoto, the ancient imperial capital, and four others. The extent of the destruction was impressive ranging from 50 to 60% of the urban area destroyed in cities including Kobe, Yokohama and Tokyo, to 60 to 88% in seventeen cities, to 98.6% in the case of Toyama. In the end, the Atomic Bomb Selection Committee chose Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki as the pristine targets to display the awesome power of the atomic bomb to Japan and the world in the event that would both bring to a spectacular end the costliest war in human history and send a powerful message to the Soviet Union.

Lew Rockwell blogged a couple years ago:

Writes Eli Cryderman:

Knowing my hobby for history, a relative gave me a “This Day in History” desk calendar from the History channel. The historical accounts of the events recognized are dubious at best and offer a unique perspective on the State’s propaganda machine, though the basic facts of each day are somewhat accurate; today’s entry doesn’t disappoint.

March 9, 1945: Firebombing of Tokyo

The United States instigated the worst firestorm on record against Tokyo on this day in 1945. The attack, which involved over two thousand tons of incendiary bombs and raged for two days, killed as many as 130,000 Japanese civilians. The United States Air Force, which had convened earlier that day to plot the attack, lightened the war planes and increased storage space for the incendiary bombs by unloading virtually all of the guns onboard. Thanks to this strategy, the planes not only were able to carry more bombs, but the lighter vessels could maneuver more quickly and precisely. A total of 243 Americans died during the firestorm.” [emphasis mine]

Incendiary bombs do not kill like traditional bombs that destroy with massive concussions; they burn buildings and people. Let me rephrase that: THEY BURN PEOPLE TO DEATH! It wasn’t until August that we decided those dirty Japs didn’t burn fast enough with white phosphorous and came up with the brilliant plan of vaporizing them in a matter of seconds with a couple of well placed new-ku-ler bombs over known civilian cities with little to do with Japan’s pitiful end-of-war-time production industry.

March Madness indeed: Go, State, Go! Go, State, Go!

UPDATE from Carl Schmahl

Defensive armaments (and camouflage paint) could be removed from those B-29s because they encountered no significant resistance from the Japanese air force, which had been effectively destroyed by then. In other words, American flyers dropped incendiaries at will over a population center full of, mostly, old men, women and children, who had no way to resist.

By this period of the war, the area bombing of civilian population centers had sufficiently hardened the strategic planners to the death and mayhem that they caused that dropping the atomic bomb was only the next logical step – more bang for the buck so to speak: instead of a thousand plane raid, one plane would suffice.

My hope is that as the “Greatest Generation” and its rationalizations fade away, people will begin to understand the horrors which we perpetrated in WW2. But I wouldn’t take any bets on that.

What Does History 'Prove'? (Butler Shaffer)

2011-03-08T11:19:00.003-06:00

An outstanding article by Professor Butler Shaffer at LewRockwell.com:

What Does History 'Prove'?
by Butler Shaffer

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
~ Albert Einstein

We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror.
~ Marshall McLuhan

As popular respect for political systems continues to erode, you may have noticed the statists frantically trying to deflate emerging inquiries and debates on the topic of secession. Their principal argument has been the non sequitur "the American Civil War answered that question." Such a response presumes that history expresses immutable principles that transcend time, a proposition that would at once be seen for its inherent absurdity were it applied to scientific understanding. Who was Copernicus to suggest that we live in a heliocentric universe after Ptolemy informed us of the geocentric nature of our world? Furthermore, the American Revolutionary War was premised on the right of people to secede from existing political systems; and yet the statists are not to be heard using that period as precedent for condemning Lincoln’s suppression of that principle.

If history is to be the standard for propriety in our world, would we not have to defend the principle of slavery, given that the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court case of Dred Scott v. Sandford upheld the legality of the practice? And wouldn’t the fate of Joan of Arc have "answered the question" that political dissenters could be burned at the stake? Or are we, like lawyers, entitled to pick and choose the precedents that serve our particular cause, while carefully "distinguishing" other instances that don’t serve our purposes?

The intellectually dishonest nature of this highly selective use of history is revealed in the corollary practice – often engaged in by the same people – of projecting into history modern biases and attitudes, and judging our ancestors accordingly. A number of years ago – while visiting the restored Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts – I watched two college-aged women ask a guide in Puritan dress questions such as: "with all the smoke produced by their fireplaces, weren’t these people concerned about the environment?" The Puritan actress replied that they were principally concerned with staying alive in a harsh New England winter. "Ohhh," the young moderns responded. "Did Puritan women have the same rights as men?," was next asked. "Yes they did; they had to work from sunup to dark – just like the men – just to stay alive," they were told. "Ohhh," came another innocent gurgle.

It is difficult to use history to "prove" the consequences – be they good or bad – from following a given course of action. Any complex system – of which few are more complicated than mankind’s record – contains far too many variables to allow for either prediction or past explanations. Heisenberg reminded us that the observer is inseparable from what is being observed, meaning that our capacities for interpretation are difficult to separate from our prior experiences. It was this limitation that framed the questions of these college students at Plymouth, and makes the study of "chaos" both so enlightening and liberating.

We can learn much from history, particularly when we see the same patterns recurring over and over from one culture or time period to another. When free-market societies consistently outperform politically-planned systems, we are well-advised to take note of that fact. At the same time, the high correlation between large states and the war system should make us distrustful of size. But we must remain aware that the questions we ask of our ancestors reflect the backward projection of our present concerns and interests. As despicable as the practice of slavery is, we cannot grasp how ancients could regard the practice as a more humane way of treating a defeated enemy than the earlier tradition of slaughtering them. Likewise, our modern sensibilities make it difficult for us to understand how our grandparents and great-grandparents welcomed the automobile for the improvement it provided over horse-drawn carriages in the smells of urban streets.

Einstein, Heisenberg, and chaos theory, remind us that what we can know about the world often has a transitory quality to it; with doubt and uncertainty waiting offstage with previously undiscovered facts or, more profoundly, with a major improvement in the sophistication of the questions we ask of it. How we learn reminds me of driving in a blizzard, peering through a frosted windshield, watching for any signs that assure me I am still on the road. I know that I dare not stop – lest someone crash into me from behind – but must keep going forward into uncertainty.

As difficult as it is to get history to disgorge its empirical truths with mathematical certitude, such inquiries become even more pronounced when we ask about the validity of normative values and other philosophic principles. It borders on the delusional to believe that the study of history can either prove or disprove our value judgments. Using the best of historiographic methods, we can get some sense of the consequences of having followed a given course of action, but whether such effects were moral or otherwise virtuous – indeed, whether it is appropriate to even ask such questions – can only be determined by the subjective judgments of individuals.

Whether the state has any legitimacy that can rightfully bind men and women to its coercive authority, is a question that can never be foreclosed to humans by prior examples of its affirmation. No more so can the writings of Plato, or Hobbes, or Locke, or Marx, or Jefferson, or the Constitution, set the boundaries of the inquiries or expectations that free minds may consider and act upon. That Lincoln was able to mobilize the violent and destructive energies of the state to suppress the efforts of those who sought to secede, carries no more of an unalterable principle to which succeeding generations are bound, than did earlier tyrants who pillaged, decreed, and slaughtered in pursuit of their ambitions over the lives of others.

Such inquiries are not meant for our entertainment, but go to the core of what it means to be human, and what conditions are essential to our survival. When, as modern statists insist, it becomes inappropriate for the individual to question the arrangements under which society is to be conducted, mankind will have positioned itself to join the untold numbers of other species to have failed the life force’s wondrous experiment on this planet.

March 8, 2011

Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the newly-released In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938 and of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival. His latest book is Boundaries of Order.

Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Happy Articles of Confederation Day!

2011-03-01T10:59:00.002-06:00

Today is the 230th anniversary of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation! Here's a brief description of the Articles from the Mises Wiki:

The Articles of Confederation was the first constitution of the United States of America, describing the purpose and function of the federal government. The Articles were drafted by a committee appointed by the Second Continental Congress in June 1776, and the final draft was approved November 15, 1777 and sent to the states for ratification, a process that completed in March 1781. During this time, however, the Articles were the de facto system of government in use. Once ratified by all thirteen states, on March 1, 1781, Congress became the Congress of the Confederation.

The Articles established rules for the operation of the federal government, giving it the power to make war, engage in diplomacy, and handle issues in the western territories. Under the Articles, the states retained all powers not granted to the national government.

The representatives in the Second Continental Congress felt a need for a confederacy that would secure the independence of the United States while in the midst of the American War of Independence. However, Nationalists argued that the Articles were inadequate because they did not grant the federal government a taxing power, nor did they create executive or judicial powers. The Nationalists prevailed in the writing of the United States Constitution in 1787, and succeeded in gaining its ratification by 1788.

I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read the Articles and admire their simplicity. For more on why the Articles were so much better than the Constitution that (illegally) replaced them, see Scott Trask and Murray Rothbard (PDF, scroll to Chapter 45, page 253).

Under the Articles, the "President" was nothing more than a presiding officer. Just imagine: a government with no executive!

"Senseless," or did the perpetrator of the Tuscon massacre have a reason? (Thomas Szasz)

2011-01-21T12:19:00.004-06:00

The great Dr. Thomas Szasz takes to task those who blame Jared Loughner's act of mass murder on his supposed "mental illness":

Do people really want to know why, on January 8, 2011, in Tucson, Arizona, a young man named Jared Lee Loughner engaged in mass murder? I submit they do not. Politicians, psychiatrists, pundits, and the press univocally assert that Loughner’s deed is the “senseless” product of mental illness. This belief in a non-existing mental disease causing mass murder is on a par with young children’s belief in Santa Claus. It is false but satisfies the believers. The great French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) sagely observed: “Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.”

Before his shooting spree Loughner had produced a video he called “My Final Thoughts,” stating: “All humans are in need of sleep. Jared Loughner is a human. Hence, Jared Loughner is in need of sleep.” On the morning of his massacre he posted a message on his MySpace account acknowledging his sense that he was at the end of his rope and his decision to let go: “Goodbye. Dear friends . . . Please don’t be mad at me.”

“War is a continuation of politics by other means,” said Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831). I suggest that, similarly, mass murder in plain sight, such as Loughner committed, is a continuation of suicide by other means. Sometimes it is called “suicide by proxy” or “suicide by cop.”

Loughner, to use his metaphor, has gone to sleep. And so have we if we prefer to believe that his self-destructive and destructive act is the senseless product of his “mental illness” rather than the result of his planned, “sensible” decision. The latter view is unpopular and unacceptable because it acknowledges Loughner’s humanity and free will, precisely the qualities that psychiatrists – aided and abetted by the criminal justice system – are intent on removing from persons they label “mad.” This medicalized view of certain offenses – usually crimes that particularly upset people – has, for reasons I have presented elsewhere, become widely accepted in our society, embraced equally by the right and the left.

Read the rest, and for more information on Dr. Szasz and his groundbreaking work on what he calls the "myth of mental illness," check out his website.

Happy Birthday Lysander Spooner!

2011-01-19T12:54:00.002-06:00

I would like to take the opportunity on this, the 202nd anniversary of the birth of Lysander Spooner, to recommend reading one of the most important articles I've ever read on political philosophy: "The Constitution of No Authority," where he makes the stunning conclusion that the Constitution is not binding to us in the least:

The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. [This essay was written in 1869.] And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but "the people" THEN existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves.

Read the rest, and while you're at it, also check out Spooner's terrific work "Vices are Not Crimes." (these two articles had a tremendous influence in my journey to radical libertarianism)

Don’t Accuse Me of Blaming America When I Blame the Government (Bob Higgs)

2011-01-04T13:49:00.002-06:00

The great Robert Higgs takes on those who like to bring out the "Blame America" nonsense when people criticize government actions:

In discourse about public affairs, words matter much more than most people appreciate. We live immersed in language so twisted and abused, in part by the design of interested parties and in part by the sloth of inattentive speakers and listeners, that we often fail to notice or object to linguistic miscarriages that pass for intelligent expression. The examples are legion, but here I have in mind a particular turn of phrase that American conservatives, especially neocons, have employed in recent years as a counterstrike against critics of U.S. foreign and defense policy: They describe such critics as “blaming America” or sometimes as “blaming America first” for attacks against this country or its citizens abroad.

Thus, for example, those who fault U.S. Middle East policies for creating the conditions that caused Muslim fanatics to attack Americans, both at home and overseas, are said to be blaming America for what the policy’s defenders’ take to be the unprovoked acts of terrorists bent on imposing Sharia on the United States, destroying this country’s freedoms, or attaining another such farfetched objective.

Read the rest

Glenn Greenwald vs. Wired.com on Bradley Manning

2010-12-29T14:31:00.002-06:00

Glenn Greenwald has been one of the only voices from the Left in the mainstream media to actually make some effort to report the truth. He has been a strong advocate for WikiLeaks, as well as the alleged "leaker" Bradley Manning.

Wired first broke the story back in June on Manning's arrest and published some details of what happened. However, as Greenwald pointed out, Wired was witholding critical information and left a lot of questions unanswered.

Recently, Greenwald published a couple of reports (here and here) on the inhumane treatment of the incarcerated Bradley Manning, and these reports have resulted in some much needed publicity for his plight. And this past Monday, Greenwald published a scathing attack on Wired.com and its editors for witholding vital information supposedly contained within the chat logs of Manning's online conversations with Adrian Lamo (the ex-hacker who ratted Manning out to the Feds). Wired responds here, and Greenwald follows up these terrific responses: here and here.

I say three cheers for Glenn Greenwald, a hero from the Left!

Chairman Ron Paul: Audit the Fed in 2011

2010-12-13T12:06:00.002-06:00

Here is the latest Texas Straight Talk from Dr. Paul, who was newly appointed to chair the Domestic Monetary Policy subcommittee, which among other things is tasked to oversee the Fed (let the fun begin!):

Since the announcement last week that I will chair the congressional subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve, the media response has been overwhelming. The groundswell of opposition to Fed actions among ordinary citizens is reflected not only in the rhetoric coming out of Capitol Hill, but also in the tremendous interest shown by the financial press. The demand for transparency is growing, whether the political and financial establishment likes it or not. The Fed is losing its vaunted status as an institution that somehow is above politics and public scrutiny. Fed transparency will be the cornerstone of my efforts as subcommittee chairman.

Thanks to public pressure earlier this year, Congress did pass legislation that requires the Fed to disclose some information about its bailout of select industries and companies following the 2008 financial crisis. So two weeks ago the Fed released data concerning more than $3 trillion of assistance it offered to banks through its bailout facilities. After reviewing this data, however, we are left with many more questions about the Fed's “lending”.

In the “Term Securities Lending Facility”, the Fed was supposed to have loaned against AAA-rated securities-- yet over half of the collateral put up by banks to obtain loans had no listed credit rating. Should we assume that the Fed accepted absolute junk rated securities as collateral for loans? Presumably these securities were so bad that they wouldn’t even publicize their credit rating. So why should our central bank, backed up by your taxes, accept such collateral?

On another note, of the $1.25 trillion purchased under the Fed’s “Mortgage-Backed Securities Purchase Program,” only $877 billion in purchases have been publicized. What happened to the remaining $400 billion?

These kinds of limited disclosures by the Fed only underscore the need for a full and complete audit of the Fed’s financial books. This audit should be done by an independent third party, in the same manner that public companies are audited. The Fed should make public its balance sheet, income statement, and perhaps most importantly its cash flow statement. It also should publicize the notes explaining those financial statements.

We seem to forget sometimes that Congress created the Fed-- it is a government-created banking monopoly, and its top decision-makers are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. If the Fed does not perform satisfactorily in the eyes of these politicians and their constituents, the Chairman and Governors may not be re-nominated.

In theory, Congress could even repeal the Federal Reserve Act altogether since it has the authority to do so. Obviously Congress is within its authority to audit an organization it created by statute, and it is time to assume that responsibility.

With 320 Members of Congress cosponsoring my legislation to fully audit the Fed in the 111th Congress, my hope is that we can build on our broad bipartisan coalition in 2011 and continue the push for greater Fed transparency going forward.

Ron Paul to Congress: Don't Raise the Debt Ceiling!

2010-11-29T14:03:00.002-06:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

As of November 7th, the total U.S. public debt outstanding reached an astonishing $13.7 trillion. This means that although Congress just raised the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion back in February, the new Congress will face another debt ceiling vote almost immediately next year. Otherwise, the Treasury will not be able to continue issuing debt to fund government operations.

The upcoming vote will provide an interesting litmus test for the new Republican congressional majority, especially those new members closely identified with Tea Party voters. The debt ceiling law, passed in 1917, enables Congress to place a statutory cap on the total amount of government debt rather than having to approve each individual Treasury bond offering. It also, however, forces Congress into an open and presumably somewhat shameful vote to approve more borrowing.

If the new Congress gives in to establishment pressure and media alarmism about "shutting down the government" by voting to increase the debt ceiling once again, you will know that the status quo has prevailed. You will know that Congress, despite the rhetoric of the midterm elections, is doing business as usual. You will know that the simple notion of balancing the budget, by limiting federal spending to federal revenue, remains a shallow and laughable campaign platitude.

Of course congressional leaders-- now Republicans-- will tell America that they plan on balancing the budget soon, but they just need some time. After all, we have to keep the government open, right? We can't have an "emergency" shutdown of vital government services. But somehow Congress always finds money for emergency spending, in the form of supplemental appropriations bills for TARP bailouts, troop surges, and the like. Why is there never an emergency that justifies less spending???

Surely we are facing an emergency debt spiral, as evidenced by the Federal Reserve's recent commitment to buy another round of Treasury debt. It's now quite obvious that the U.S. government plans to inflate its way out of debt, and the world is fleeing our dollar in response. Just 7 years ago Congress raised the debt ceiling to $6.4 trillion, which means the federal government had doubled its indebtedness in less than a decade. Annual deficits for 2011 and beyond are projected to be at least $1 trillion. By contrast, the entire federal debt amassed from the founding of our nation until President Reagan took office in 1981-- a period of roughly 200 years-- was $1 trillion. So it's no exaggeration to state that federal debt is growing exponentially.

I have two simple proposals when the new Congress convenes in January. First, refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Find a way, month by month, for Congress to spend only what the Treasury raises in revenue. Second, start over from scratch with the 13 appropriations bills that fund the federal government. Reject any talk of baseline budgets or discretionary spending. It is all discretionary, and members of both parties should vote against any 2012 appropriation bill that is not at least 10% smaller-- in nominal dollars-- than its 2011 counterpart.

A motivated Congress could begin to slow the tide of debt by taking the simple step of cutting federal spending by 10% across the board for the next few years. Let's hope it does not take the complete collapse of the U.S. dollar to provide this motivation.

Ron Paul: Are Air Travelers Criminal Suspects?

2010-11-22T11:51:00.002-06:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk on the TSA:

The growing revolt against invasive TSA practices is encouraging to Americans who are fed up with federal government encroachment in their lives. In the case of air travelers, this encroachment is quite literally physical. But a deep-seated libertarian impulse still exists within the American people, and opposition to the new TSA full body scanner and groping searches is gathering momentum.

The growing revolt against invasive TSA practices is encouraging to Americans who are fed up with federal government encroachment in their lives. In the case of air travelers, this encroachment is quite literally physical. But a deep-seated libertarian impulse still exists within the American people, and opposition to the new TSA full body scanner and groping searches is gathering momentum.

I introduced legislation last week that is based on a very simple principle: federal agents should be subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. If you would face criminal prosecution or a lawsuit for groping someone, exposing them to unwelcome radiation, causing them emotional distress, or violating indecency laws, then TSA agents should similarly face sanctions for their actions.

This principle goes beyond TSA agents, however. As commentator Lew Rockwell recently noted, the bill “enshrines the key lesson of the freedom philosophy: the government is not above the moral law. If it is wrong for you and me, it is wrong for people in government suits… That is true of TSA crimes too.” The revolt against TSA also serves as a refreshing reminder that we should not give in to government alarmism or be afraid to question government policies.

Certainly, those who choose to refuse the humiliating and potentially harmful new full body scanner machines may suffer delays, inconveniences, or worse. But I still believe peaceful resistance is the most effective tool against federal encroachment on our constitutional rights, which leads me to be supportive of any kind of “opt-out” or similar popular movements.

After all, what price can we place on our dignity, personal privacy, and physical integrity? We have a right not to be treated like criminals and searched by federal agents without some reasonable evidence of criminal activity. Are we now to accept that merely wishing to travel and board an aircraft give rise to reasonable suspicion of criminality?

Also, let’s not forget that TSA was created in the aftermath of 9/11, when far too many Americans were clamoring for government protection from the specter of terrorism. Indeed it was congressional Republicans, the majority party in 2001, who must bear much of the blame for creating the Department of Homeland Security and TSA in the first place. Congressional Republicans also overwhelmingly supported the Patriot Act, which added to the atmosphere of hostility toward civil liberties in the name of state-provided “security.”

But as we’ve seen with TSA, federal “security” has more to do with humiliation and control than making us safe. It has more to do with instilling a mindset of subservience, which is why laughable policies such as removing one’s shoes continue to be enforced. What else could explain the shabby, degrading spectacle of a long line of normally upbeat Americans shuffling obediently through airport security in their stocking feet?

TSA may be merely symbolic of much bigger problems with the federal government, but it is an important symbol and we have a real chance to do something about it. We must seize this opportunity, before TSA offers some cosmetic compromise or the media spotlight fades. If you don’t live in my congressional district, please consider contacting your member of Congress and asking him or her to cosponsor HR 6416, the American Traveler Dignity Act of 2010. With enough help, we can push the bill to a vote early next year. Unless grassroots Americans take action, federal agencies like TSA will continue to bully us and ignore our basic constitutional freedoms.

Ron Paul on the TSA: Enough is Enough!

2010-11-18T11:39:00.002-06:00

Dr. Ron Paul took to the House floor last night to lambast the actions of the TSA and to announce his introduction of H.R.6416, the American Traveler Dignity Act. The text of the bill states very simply:

No law of the United States shall be construed to confer any immunity for a Federal employee or agency or any individual or entity that receives Federal funds, who subjects an individual to any physical contact (including contact with any clothing the individual is wearing), x-rays, or millimeter waves, or aids in the creation of or views a representation of any part of a individual's body covered by clothing as a condition for such individual to be in an airport or to fly in an aircraft. The preceding sentence shall apply even if the individual or the individual's parent, guardian, or any other individual gives consent.

Sounds good to me! Here's his speech:

And here's his statement:

Mr. Speaker, today I introduce legislation to protect Americans from physical and emotional abuse by federal Transportation Security Administration employees conducting screenings at the nation’s airports. We have seen the videos of terrified children being grabbed and probed by airport screeners. We have read the stories of Americans being subjected to humiliating body imaging machines and/or forced to have the most intimate parts of their bodies poked and fondled. We do not know the potentially harmful effects of the radiation emitted by the new millimeter wave machines.

In one recent well-publicized case, a TSA official is recorded during an attempted body search saying, “By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights.” I strongly disagree and am sure I am not alone in believing that we Americans should never give up our rights in order to travel. As our Declaration of Independence states, our rights are inalienable. This TSA version of our rights looks more like the “rights” granted in the old Soviet Constitutions, where freedoms were granted to Soviet citizens -- right up to the moment the state decided to remove those freedoms.

The incident of the so-called “underwear bomber” last Christmas is given as justification for the billions of dollars the federal government is spending on the new full-body imaging machines, but a Government Accountability Office study earlier this year concluded that had these scanners been in use they may not have detected the explosive material that was allegedly brought onto the airplane. Additionally, there have been recent press reports calling into question the accuracy and adequacy of these potentially dangerous machines.

My legislation is simple. It establishes that airport security screeners are not immune from any US law regarding physical contact with another person, making images of another person, or causing physical harm through the use of radiation-emitting machinery on another person. It means they are subject to the same laws as the rest of us.

Imagine if the political elites in our country were forced to endure the same conditions at the airport as business travelers, families, senior citizens, and the rest of us. Perhaps this problem could be quickly resolved if every cabinet secretary, every member of Congress, and every department head in the Obama administration were forced to submit to the same degrading screening process as the people who pay their salaries.

I warned at the time of the creation of the TSA that an unaccountable government entity in control of airport security would provide neither security nor defend our basic freedom to travel. Yet the vast majority of both Republicans and Democrats then in Congress willingly voted to create another unaccountable, bullying agency-- in a simple-minded and unprincipled attempt to appease public passion in the wake of 9-11. Sadly, as we see with the steady TSA encroachment on our freedom and dignity, my fears in 2001 were justified.

The solution to the need for security at US airports is not a government bureaucracy. The solution is to allow the private sector, preferably the airlines themselves, to provide for the security of their property. As a recent article in Forbes magazine eloquently stated, “The airlines have enormous sums of money riding on passenger safety, and the notion that a government bureaucracy has better incentives to provide safe travels than airlines with billions of dollars worth of capital and goodwill on the line strains credibility.” In the meantime, I hope we can pass this legislation and protect Americans from harm and humiliation when they choose to travel.

Ron Paul: The World Shorts the Dollar

2010-11-15T19:33:00.000-06:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

A remarkable confluence of recent events has brought unprecedented but very welcome attention to both U.S. monetary policy and the global political economy in general.

First, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke recently announced that the Fed would embark upon another round of monetary easing by purchasing $600 billion worth of U.S. Treasury debt. This amounts to an admission that markets have run out of patience with our profligacy, and therefore our own central bank literally must serve as the buyer of last resort for Treasury debt.

Second, World Bank president Robert Zoellick openly suggested that gold could play a helpful role in the global monetary system by serving as reference against more volatile fiat currencies. This is almost heresy coming from a neoconservative globalist like Mr. Zoellick. It hints at an obvious but unspoken truth that is anathema to politicians and central bankers alike: namely, that gold could be viewed as…. money!

Finally, Mr. Obama attended the G20 summit in South Korea last week and found a very chilly reception for his vision of American economic policy. Mr. Obama argued for continued worldwide stimulus, via continued debasing of the U.S. dollar, to bolster American exports. Several powerful European and Asian finance ministers, however, rejected this approach out of hand as nothing short of a currency war. They are committed to austerity measures at home, and don’t want to let the U.S. simply monetize its past sins at their expense.

All of these events culminated in a tremendous amount of political and media scrutiny aimed the Fed. Ordinary Americans are demanding answers and accountability, and they are putting heat on their political representatives in Washington to end the cozy “independence” from congressional oversight the Fed has enjoyed for so long.

In the 35 years I have been studying, speaking, and writing about monetary policy I have never before seen Congress or the financial press pay much attention to the Fed. Monetary policy has always been considered boring on Capitol Hill, something left to remote policy wonks far away from the din of presidential or congressional politics. Congress always has been eager to leave Fed governors well alone, with no oversight or accountability, as long as they played along and papered over the growing budget deficits.

But it’s amazing what a global economic meltdown will do to the political and media landscape. In just two short years, the Fed has become the hot topic and a lightning rod for criticism. While it is gratifying to see so many formerly uninterested politicians, economists, talk show hosts, and pundits suddenly rally to attack the Fed, one can only wonder whether they truly understand that central banking is inherently incompatible with our Constitution and a free market economy.

In other words, it’s not enough to show outrage at the latest Fed action or argue about the relative merits of Mr. Bernanke compared to his predecessors. To reclaim our dollar and our economy, Americans must oppose central banking per se. Fiat currencies cannot be “reformed” or “managed”. They are fundamentally subject to ruinous debasement courtesy of the political and economic ruling class. History shows that this is true in all nations at all times.

Ron Paul: Reject the Welfare/Warfare State

2010-11-08T13:34:00.001-06:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

Last week’s midterm elections have been characterized as a victory for grassroots Americans who are fed up with Washington and the political status quo. In particular, the elections are being touted as a clear indicator that voters demand reductions in federal spending, deficits, and debt.

If the new Congress hopes to live up to the expectations of Tea Party voters, however, it faces some daunting choices. For all the talk about pork and waste, the truth is that Congress cannot fix the budget and get our national debt under control by trimming fat and eliminating earmarks for “Bridges to Nowhere.”

Real reductions in federal spending can be achieved only by getting to the meat of the federal budget, meaning expenditures in all areas. The annual budget soon will be $5 trillion unless Congress takes serious steps to reduce spending for entitlements, military, and debt service. Yet how many Tea Party candidates who campaigned on a platform of spending cuts talked about Social Security, Medicare, foreign wars, or bond debt?

With regard to entitlements, the 2010 Social Security and Medicare Trustees report tells it all. It paints a stark picture of two entitlement programs that cannot be sustained under even the rosiest scenarios of economic growth. No one, regardless of political stripe, can deny the fundamental problem of unfunded future liabilities in both programs.

We should understand that Social Security was intended primarily to prevent old widows from becoming destitute. Life expectancy in 1935 was only about 65, when there were several workers for each Social Security recipient. The program was never intended to be a general transfer payment from young workers to older retirees, regardless of those retirees’ financial need. Yet today Social Security faces an unfunded liability of approximately $18 trillion.

First, Congress needs to stop using payroll taxes for purposes not related to Social Security, which was a trick the Clinton administration used to claim balanced budgets. Second, Congress should eliminate unconstitutional spending - including unnecessary overseas commitments - and use the saved funds to help transition to a Social Security system that is completely voluntary. At some point in the near future Congress must allow taxpayers to opt out of federal payroll taxes in exchange for never receiving Social Security benefits.

Medicare similarly faces a shortfall of $30.8 trillion in unfunded future benefits. The Part D prescription drug benefit accounts for approximately $15.5 trillion, or half of the unfunded Medicare liability. Congress should immediately repeal the disastrous drug benefit passed in 2003 by President Bush and a Republican Congress.

Fiscal conservatives should not be afraid to attack entitlements philosophically. We should reject the phony narrative that entitlement programs are inherently noble or required by “progressive” western values. Why exactly should Americans be required, by force of taxation, to fund retirement or medical care for senior citizens, especially senior citizens who are comfortable financially? And if taxpayers provide retirement and health care benefits to some older Americans who are less well off, can’t we just call it welfare instead of maintaining the charade about “insurance” and “trust funds”?

Military spending and interest on the national debt similarly represent large federal expenditures that Congress must address by rethinking our foreign policy and exercising far greater oversight over the Federal Reserve and the Treasury department.

I have for a long time criticized our interventionist foreign policy and the Fed, and I will continue to do so. It’s time for Congress to face the fundamental problems that affect Social Security and Medicare, and show the courage necessary to make real changes to both programs by rejecting the welfare/warfare state.

Ron Paul talks ending the Fed with help from Senator Rand Paul on Fox Business

2010-11-03T20:23:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the Liberty Maven for the heads up on this terrific interview of Ron Paul on Fox Business:

Well, to be quite fair Ron Paul said they talked about introducing a bill to end or audit the Fed on their first day in office together. Here is the entire long and excellent interview with David Asman on Fox Business channel.

Ron Paul also talks about becoming the new Chairman of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy with the GOP taking control of the House.

The subcommittee’s jurisdiction includes domestic monetary policy, and agencies which directly or indirectly affect domestic monetary policy, multilateral development lending institutions such as the World Bank, coins and currency including operations of the Bureau of the Mint and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and international trade and finance including all matters pertaining to the International Monetary Fund and the Export-Import Bank.

I don’t think there could be a more perfect subcommittee for Ron Paul.

Later in the interview Judge Napolitano joins the discussion. Check it out below:

Ron Paul: Saudi Arms Deal is About Iran

2010-11-01T13:00:00.001-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

This month the US Administration notified Congress that it intends to complete one of the largest arms sales in US history to one of the most repressive regimes on earth. Saudi Arabia has been given the green light by the administration to spend $60 billion on some 84 new F-15 aircraft, dozens of the latest helicopters, and other missiles, bombs, and high-tech military products from the US weapons industry.

Saudi Arabia, from where 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers came, is a family-run dictatorship, where there are no political parties, no independent press, and where any form of political dissent is met with the most severe punishment. We are told that we must occupy Afghanistan to encourage more rights for women, an issue on which the Saudi regime makes the Taliban look rather liberal by comparison. We are told that our increasingly aggressive policies toward Iran are justified by that country’s rigid Islamic laws and human-rights violations, while the even more repressive Islamic rule in Saudi Arabia is never mentioned.

So why would the US government, which spends hundreds of billions of dollars yearly and maintains hundreds of bases overseas to push global democracy, approve a deal like this with such a regime? As Stockholm Institute scholar Pieter Wezeman told the Washington Post, "Of course it's against Iran. Of course it's against Yemen. You can read between the lines ... but there are not any official statements about it." Although the deal must be approved by Congress, there is little chance of any significant Congressional opposition for the above reason.

Imagine if China had armed an aggressive, anti-American Mexico to the teeth. How would we feel? Threatened? That is likely how Iran feels with this massive arms sale to Saudi Arabia. To underscore this message, the US quietly announced early this month that it was selling 20 F-35 Stealth fighters to Israel. As Israeli military purchases are paid for with US foreign aid, we must realize that the weapons pointed at Iran in the Middle East are American made and largely paid for with American tax dollars. Certainly Iran understands this. Will such a provocative move, arming two anti-Iranian powers in the region to the teeth, lead to a trigger event to bring about a full invasion of Iran? The economic tsunami that would result from such a horrific turn of events would only be eclipsed by the death and destruction in the region -- and likely beyond.

Some will argue that these arms deals are international trade which we should encourage and applaud. Sadly, the United States does not build much that we can export these days. But the fact is that the US weapons industry is underwritten by the American taxpayer. From research and development to acquisition by the US military, the costs of the US arms industry are borne by American citizens. But, as so-called “private” companies, the enormous profits they make selling weapons to countries like Saudi Arabia are of course privatized. So the costs are socialized and the profits are privatized. There is a word for this arrangement and it is not “capitalism.”

Ron Paul: Government and Job Creation

2010-10-25T12:32:00.002-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

As the current economic downturn shows no signs of lifting, we hear quite a lot of rhetoric from current and potential office-holders about what government can and will do to create more jobs. This is especially disconcerting to those who understand that the best thing government can do for job creation is to simply get out of the way.

Jobs are properly created by businesses. Government-created jobs are either fueled by fiat money and manipulated market conditions or directly funded by taxes paid by businesses and individuals who then have less to hire people for real wealth creation. Government-created jobs destroy wealth and sap potential from the economy. The several stimulus bills passed by Congress have done much to expand government but not much to keep money in the hands of real job creators – the entrepreneurs.

Keynesian economists don’t see things this way. They see government spending as a stop gap measure that tides us over through rough economic patches. But is this really the case?

Far from it. The reality is instead of sustaining us until the economy can catch up, government spending perpetuates the problems the bureaucrats and the politicians created. Maintaining a high level of employment is one of the main objectives of the Federal Reserve, which is just one reason it is ill-conceived at its very core: it legitimizes economic intervention which is always destructive. When unemployment rises after the bust of a Fed-created bubble, you can be sure Congress will attempt to rescue the economy through various policies that will always prolong the agony and expand the downturn.

In the late 90’s, it was thought that encouraging home ownership would have a stimulative effect that would ripple throughout the rest of the economy and create jobs. Various government policies favorable to home ownership were enacted and the Fed kept interest rates artificially low so everyone would be able to buy a home, whether or not they could really afford it. For awhile, it worked. The housing boom increased demand for realtors, mortgage lenders, and construction workers. However, as reality sank in, not only are we back to where we were when the bubble began, but we are actually worse off. For example, not only have we lost all of the one million extra construction jobs the bubble created, but we lost another one million on top of that! So not only did the artificial wealth evaporate, but real wealth has been destroyed as well.

Even more sinister are jobs created by war. Recent reports highlight the increasing dependence on contractors to support our war efforts in Afghanistan. Massive corruption is endemic to these highly lucrative positions. Almost half of the contracting companies we use are Afghan owned and include such business models as recruiting away the very same Afghan police force we are training at great expense to the American taxpayer. Meanwhile we have pledged not to leave until the police force reaches a certain level. We also bribe many Afghans to simply not attack us. We are in a proverbial hole in Afghanistan. Our leaders need to just stop digging.

Neither a Keynesian big spending program, nor the military-industrial complex can create long-lasting employment or economic prosperity for our country. The only way to restore both peace and prosperity is to draw down our overseas commitments, along with unconstitutional spending at home and return to the founders’ vision of a limited republic that neither straddles the globe, nor micromanages the domestic economy.

Ron Paul: More Inflation Fears

2010-10-18T14:05:00.001-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

Inflation fears are heating up this week as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech in Boston on Friday, causing further frantic flight into gold by those fearful of the coming “quantitative easing” the Fed is set to deliver in November. Others who view gold as a short term investment engaged in immediate profit-taking after Bernanke's speech.

Gold is more correctly viewed as insurance against bad monetary policy decisions that erode the value of savings. Those bad decisions keep coming at an ever faster clip these days and we hear more and more talk of currency wars especially between the dollar, the Chinese yuan, the Japanese yen, the Australian dollar, and the Euro. As the economies of the world continue to stagnate or contract, monetary policy decisions become more relevant to people who once thought this topic arcane. We have several examples this week of major fumbles on the part of the US Central Bank:

· The Federal Reserve continues to insist that inflation is too low, even while the monetary base remains at record levels, and food and gas prices continue to climb.

· As the Fed continues to drive down the value of the dollar, the government accuses China of deliberately devaluing its currency, and the House has passed legislation aimed at punishing China for this alleged devaluation.

· Low returns on US bonds are driving investors into higher-performing foreign bonds. Some of these countries are responding by reinstituting capital controls to guard against hot money and the carry trade.

· The spat with China and reemergence of capital controls have led some to fear that we are in the first stages of an all-out currency war.

· The instability in the international monetary system, the decreasing value of the dollar, and the large amounts of new US debt could lead the IMF and countries such as China, Japan, Russia, India, and Brazil to abandon the dollar and adopt a new multinational currency.

While the big players in these currency games sort everything out, the people hurt the most are the savers, the workers, and those on fixed incomes as their money buys less and less. Make no mistake – the Fed and the Treasury Department are playing games with our money, especially in how they report statistics like unemployment and inflation. These games erode our standard of living and hide just how much damage their inflationary policies are doing.

Official core inflation for the US is only 1.14%, but that excludes such crucial day-to-day goods such as food and energy. Real inflation certainly is higher, maybe much higher. John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics calculates true inflation at a whopping 8.48%! But manipulated inflation statistics give the government cover when they again deny seniors a cost of living increase in their social security checks. They also serve to convince the public that further expansion of the money supply will boost the economy without causing any real pain, which has essentially been the core argument of Greenspan-Bernanke fed policy for the last 20 years.

Of course, the United States is not alone in its disastrous monetary policy decisions. These pressures are inherent in any fiat monetary system where money is created at will, for the benefit of the special interests. As all these currencies race to the bottom of the inflationary barrel, the only security to be had will be in honest money like gold as the system falls apart. My hope is that we can return to the wisdom of the Constitution and get back to sound, commodity-backed money before our dollar suffers a wholesale collapse.

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk 10/11/10: A Spooked Economy in October

2010-10-11T11:37:00.002-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

Last week we received worse than expected unemployment numbers, challenging recent claims that the recession has come and gone. Also, as the economy continues to suffer the after effects of the Federal Reserve-created bubbles of the last decade, there is renewed interest in gold. Fears that the Federal Reserve will pump even more money into the system had caused the price of gold to reach new highs. Also contributing to enthusiasm for gold is continued instability in the banking industry, symbolized this week by fraud allegations that have caused many banks to halt foreclosure proceedings, thus further destabilizing the housing market. Yes, October has a reputation for being a scary month economically and this month is shaping up to be frightening, as well.

The Fed has been wreaking havoc and devaluing our monetary unit steadily since 1913, and greatly accelerating it since the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement in the 1970s. This severing of the dollar’s last tenuous link with gold allowed the Fed to create as much new money as it pleased, and it has taken full advantage of this opportunity.

In 1971, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was $1.29 trillion. Today it is $14.6 trillion, nominally. But adjusted for all the inflating the Fed has been doing, it is only $2.73 trillion, which constitutes only a 1% real increase per year! So with all this extra money going around, we may appear nominally wealthier, but the reality is, we have barely moved at all. This is unfortunate especially for the prudent, conscientious savers, whose nest eggs are constantly being devalued. Unless of course, they have saved in something out of the Fed’s reach, like gold. While the economy has basically been in a holding pattern against the leeching of wealth by the Fed for 39 years, gold has seen an inflation adjusted increase in value of over 5% per year, if measured in 1971 dollars. This is due to the Fed’s ability to make dollars plentiful. And yet, this is the only tactic the Fed can come up with to rescue an economy already devastated by “quantitative easing”, as they call it.

The turmoil in the housing market demonstrates how disastrous it is to flood the economy with fiat money. Latest events with foreclosures are good examples of mistakes made in the market, in this case, by the banks, in the rush to soak up manipulated currency. This is why the truly free market depends on sound, honest money, free from false signals of artificially low interest rates.

The government finds ways to spend money even faster than the Fed can create it, bringing our national debt well past the point of the taxpayers ever being able to pay it off. Other nations who, in the past, have eagerly bought up any amount of debt we produced are now starting to resist. We are reaching a crucial point at which the dollar will no longer function, and in the absence of a functioning dollar, restoring sound money will be the only alternative.

The truly scary notion is that those in power might allow our system to collapse so chaotically to the detriment of so many people rather than simply obey the Constitution.

Joe Sobran, The Reluctant Anarchist (1946-2010)

2010-10-02T15:01:00.000-05:00

Joseph Sobran, one of the greatest and most eloquent conservative (and later libertarian) writers of our generation, died on September 30 at the young age of 64 from complications of diabetes. I credit his writings in the late 1990s for having a large part in my own conversion to conservatism and, eventually, libertarianism. In this article from 2002, Mr. Sobran talks about his own journey to a radical Rothbardian libertarianism:

My arrival (very recently) at philosophical anarchism has disturbed some of my conservative and Christian friends. In fact, it surprises me, going as it does against my own inclinations.

As a child I acquired a deep respect for authority and a horror of chaos. In my case the two things were blended by the uncertainty of my existence after my parents divorced and I bounced from one home to another for several years, often living with strangers. A stable authority was something I yearned for.

Meanwhile, my public-school education imbued me with the sort of patriotism encouraged in all children in those days. I grew up feeling that if there was one thing I could trust and rely on, it was my government. I knew it was strong and benign, even if I didn’t know much else about it. The idea that some people — Communists, for example — might want to overthrow the government filled me with horror.

G.K. Chesterton, with his usual gentle audacity, once criticized Rudyard Kipling for his “lack of patriotism.” Since Kipling was renowned for glorifying the British Empire, this might have seemed one of Chesterton’s “paradoxes”; but it was no such thing, except in the sense that it denied what most readers thought was obvious and incontrovertible.

Chesterton, himself a “Little Englander” and opponent of empire, explained what was wrong with Kipling’s view: “He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reason. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.” Which implies there would be nothing to love her for if she were weak.

Of course Chesterton was right. You love your country as you love your mother — simply because it is yours, not because of its superiority to others, particularly superiority of power.

This seems axiomatic to me now, but it startled me when I first read it. After all, I was an American, and American patriotism typically expresses itself in superlatives. America is the freest, the mightiest, the richest, in short the greatest country in the world, with the greatest form of government — the most democratic. Maybe the poor Finns or Peruvians love their countries too, but heaven knows why — they have so little to be proud of, so few “reasons.” America is also the most envied country in the world. Don’t all people secretly wish they were Americans?

Read the rest, and also see his hilarious primer on how to teach your children about the state.

Flanders Does Islam (Don Emmerich)

2010-08-23T14:30:00.002-05:00

Don Emmerich rails against the anti-Islam hystery widely seen in American Christianity:

Why does just about every Evangelical blogger on the planet think he’s an expert on Islam? Have you ever noticed that? Any mention of Islam in the news and they’ll go off on the Qur’an and all the evil things it supposedly teaches. What’s so crazy about this is that these people can’t even agree about their own scriptures. Just get a group of them together and ask what the Bible says about, say, baptism or eschatology, and you’ll be amazed at all the fights that erupt. And yet they think they have credibility when telling us, with the utmost of confidence of course, that they understand the Qur’an?

Now I myself have never read the Qur’an. I’d like to. Just as I’d like to one day read Finnegan’s Wake. But you know how it is: too much to read, too little time.

Nonetheless, I have a suspicion that most of what these Evangelicals say is total crap. More than anything else, I base this suspicion on the way I’ve seen them butcher their own holy book. Prooftext, prooftext, prooftext—’tis the mantra of most Christians today. Never mind understanding a passage’s historical context. Never mind trying to get at the author’s original intent. Your average Evangelical can twist almost any verse of Scripture to justify pretty much anything he desires.

Now I know the Qur’an has some problem passages. But so does the Bible. In the Old Testament, for instance, Yahweh repeatedly commands his people to commit genocide, sometimes even demanding that they slaughter innocent children. And in the New Testament, we find Jesus commanding his followers to hate their parents and spouses and children. And we find the Apostle Paul telling women to submit themselves to their husbands. Yet these Evangelical bloggers, with all the chutzpah humanly possible, claim that it is Islam, not Christianity, that is the religion of violence, hatred, and injustice.

I’m not trying to impugn Christianity. And I’m not suggesting that there aren’t adequate explanations for the above passages. But, for crying out loud, why don’t these Christians extend the same charity to Muslim apologists that they would like for themselves? Why all the energy spent slandering Islam? It’s not like discrediting Islam will somehow prove Christianity.

If these Evangelicals want to see their numbers increase, if they want to lead others to Jesus, then they should try showing a little restraint, exercising a little humility. Because, when you get down to it, people join religious communities, not because of dogmas, not because of arguments, but because those communities make them feel loved and accepted. And this, it seems to me, is why so many young people are turned off of Christianity and why church attendance continues to fall.

Ron Paul: Let the Housing Market Normalize!

2010-08-23T13:32:00.002-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

Recently there have been some encouraging signs that Congress is finally willing to admit what should have been evident two years ago. Even after a $150 billion bailout, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still bankrupt and should be abolished. Indeed Rep. Barney Frank, a longtime champion of Fannie and Freddie has made a few statements alluding to this and I have signed on to a letter asking him to clarify his remarks and hold hearings on this topic. There seems to be a growing consensus in favor of abolishing Fannie and Freddie. This is the good news.

The bad news is that instead of simply returning to the free market, Fannie and Freddie will probably be replaced with something equally damaging, and at this point we can only guess what that will be. One possibility is that instead of these two giant Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) the government will deputize thousands of smaller banks to do the same thing – that is to securitize mortgages with taxpayer guarantees to encourage lending that otherwise would not happen. In other words, there will be a myriad of smaller Fannies and Freddies, and government involvement will reach even deeper into the financial sector.

Fannie and Freddie, and thus the taxpayer, has an alarming $5 trillion exposure to the mortgage market. To some, spreading out this risk might seem tempting, and a smart thing to do. But the fact remains that if a bank expects to lose money on a loan, so will the taxpayers. Playing around with structures and definitions will still not deal with the root problem – government meddling in the housing market, playing fast and loose with our tax dollars, and central planning by the Federal Reserve.

Banks have complex risk assessment strategies in place that help them forecast if a particular loan will make them any money or not. If they expect to make money, they will approve the loan. If they have doubts, sometimes they will ask for a co-signer to improve their odds. You might do this willingly for a friend or a relative if you didn’t mind losing some money on their behalf, but current government policies essentially force taxpayers to become cosigners for risky borrowers that are complete strangers, who the banks have already determined to be bad risks. Taxpayers have no choice in the matter because politicians decided a few decades ago that dangling homeownership in front of more people seemed like a good way to garner votes.

That was sold to voters as a compassionate gesture to the poor and beneficial to society as a whole. After all, how could giving more Americans an ownership stake in society be bad? The combined policies of loose credit and government backing increased the demand for housing and drove prices sky high. When the housing market heated up to the breaking point everything came crashing down. Those suddenly facing foreclosure saw the reality of government compassion. Truly, when government offers you a gift, you should eye it with great suspicion.

Another tragedy is that many job seekers are now tethered to their locations because of upside down loan obligations. It takes a lot of effort with their bank and damage to their credit scores to figure out how to get out and move to a place where there are jobs. Will the government now be seeking ways to subsidize renters in some way because of this lack of mobility? Some think so.

My hope is that for the long term stability and health of the economy, the government will extricate itself from the market altogether and let it normalize. My fear is that in its usual misguided efforts at solving one crisis, it will create a thousand others.

Ron Paul: Left and the Right Demagogue Mosque, Islam

2010-08-23T12:27:00.001-05:00

Dr. Paul injects some truth into the "Ground Zero" mosque debate:

Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery?

It has been said, "Nero fiddled while Rome burned." Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like the politicians are "fiddling while the economy burns."

The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.

Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be "sensitive" requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from "ground zero."

Just think of what might (not) have happened if the whole issue had been ignored and the national debate stuck with war, peace, and prosperity. There certainly would have been a lot less emotionalism on both sides. The fact that so much attention has been given the mosque debate, raises the question of just why and driven by whom?

In my opinion it has come from the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it.

They never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars. A select quote from soldiers from in Afghanistan and Iraq expressing concern over the mosque is pure propaganda and an affront to their bravery and sacrifice.

The claim is that we are in the Middle East to protect our liberties is misleading. To continue this charade, millions of Muslims are indicted and we are obligated to rescue them from their religious and political leaders. And, we're supposed to believe that abusing our liberties here at home and pursuing unconstitutional wars overseas will solve our problems.

The nineteen suicide bombers didn't come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran. Fifteen came from our ally Saudi Arabia, a country that harbors strong American resentment, yet we invade and occupy Iraq where no al Qaeda existed prior to 9/11.

Many fellow conservatives say they understand the property rights and 1st Amendment issues and don't want a legal ban on building the mosque. They just want everybody to be "sensitive" and force, through public pressure, cancellation of the mosque construction.

This sentiment seems to confirm that Islam itself is to be made the issue, and radical religious Islamic views were the only reasons for 9/11. If it became known that 9/11 resulted in part from a desire to retaliate against what many Muslims saw as American aggression and occupation, the need to demonize Islam would be difficult if not impossible.

There is no doubt that a small portion of radical, angry Islamists do want to kill us but the question remains, what exactly motivates this hatred?

If Islam is further discredited by making the building of the mosque the issue, then the false justification for our wars in the Middle East will continue to be acceptable.

The justification to ban the mosque is no more rational than banning a soccer field in the same place because all the suicide bombers loved to play soccer.

Conservatives are once again, unfortunately, failing to defend private property rights, a policy we claim to cherish. In addition conservatives missed a chance to challenge the hypocrisy of the left which now claims they defend property rights of Muslims, yet rarely if ever, the property rights of American private businesses.

Defending the controversial use of property should be no more difficult than defending the 1st Amendment principle of defending controversial speech. But many conservatives and liberals do not want to diminish the hatred for Islam -- the driving emotion that keeps us in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don't want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators. Statistics of support is irrelevant when it comes to the purpose of government in a free society -- protecting liberty.

The outcry over the building of the mosque, near ground zero, implies that Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to those who are condemning the building of the mosque, the nineteen suicide terrorists on 9/11 spoke for all Muslims. This is like blaming all Christians for the wars of aggression and occupation because some Christians supported the neo-conservatives' aggressive wars.

The House Speaker is now treading on a slippery slope by demanding an investigation to find out just who is funding the mosque -- a bold rejection of property rights, 1st Amendment rights, and the Rule of Law -- in order to look tough against Islam.

This is all about hate and Islamaphobia.

We now have an epidemic of "sunshine patriots" on both the right and the left who are all for freedom, as long as there's no controversy and nobody is offended.

Political demagoguery rules when truth and liberty are ignored.

Ron Paul: Washington's Idea of Fiscal Restraint

2010-08-16T12:58:00.002-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

It has been months now since the new healthcare reform bill was passed into law. As is so typical, this massive piece of legislation was passed with a sense of urgency so acute that leadership declared America could not afford to wait until legislators, their staff and the general public had time to thoroughly read the bill.

The truth comes out eventually, however. Much like the recently discovered exemption from Freedom of Information Act requirements for the SEC that was slipped into the equally massive and “urgent” financial reform bill, we are finally seeing what other insidiousness has been hiding in the fine print of the healthcare reform bill. It seems that all provisions in this poorly written and poorly conceived monstrosity need to be repealed as soon as possible.

One such disaster-waiting-to-happen is one of the revenue generating provisions used to claim that the healthcare reform bill was “paid for”. $17 billion in additional tax revenues is supposed to come from an onerous new IRS reporting requirement that any taxpayer with business income who spends over $600 in one year with one business will have to report those expenditures to the IRS. Mind you, this is a cumulative total of $600 in transactions in one year. This will involve so much extra accounting and paperwork that the IRS claims it will be unable to deal with it effectively, and even the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (to whom it should be a boon) has come out against it! Apparently they realize they will actually lose customers, especially small businesses, to bankruptcy because of this!

Gold dealers are especially alarmed by this provision, as most of their transactions easily top $600. This represents a significant outlay of time and paperwork and no additional revenue for businesses with which to hire people. Not to mention this makes every business a de facto IRS agent, as if they didn’t have enough to worry about already!

Of course, there is a tremendous outcry against this. Several other legislators also see how unreasonable this is and are trying to repeal it. However, this would simply mean that $17 billion in healthcare funding will have to come from somewhere else, and there are no good options. Taxes from some other equally bad collection scheme? Borrowing and more debt? Creating more money from thin air and adding to inflationary pressures?

The best answer, of course, would be to repeal the entire health care law, along with all other unconstitutional spending. But Congress is more likely to continue the shell game to cover the fact that we are broke and can afford none of this.

This whole idea of “paying for” new programs is a political euphemism that suggests that raising taxes is just as good as cutting spending since neither one increases the national debt. Raising taxes and overwhelming small businesses with paperwork and regulations still increases governmental burden on our fragile economy. But this is our government’s idea of “fiscal restraint” in action. Washington needs to stop creating new programs and spending so much money. That would be true fiscal restraint.

Ron Paul: The Cycle of Violence in Afghanistan

2010-08-09T12:47:00.001-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

Last week the National Bureau of Economic Research published a report on the effect of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq that confirmed what critics of our foreign policy have been saying for years: the killing of civilians, although unintentional, angers other civilians and prompts them to seek revenge. This should be self-evident.

The Central Intelligence Agency has long acknowledged and analyzed the concept of blowback in our foreign policy. It still amazes me that so many think that attacks against our soldiers occupying hostile foreign lands are motivated by hatred toward our system of government at home or by the religion of the attackers. In fact, most of the anger towards us is rooted in reactions towards seeing their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and other loved ones being killed by a foreign army. No matter our intentions, the violence of our militarism in foreign lands causes those residents to seek revenge if innocents are killed. One does not have to be Muslim to react this way, just human.

Our battle in Afghanistan resembles the battle against the many-headed Hydra monster in Greek mythology. According to Former General Stanley McChrystal’s so-called insurgent math, for every insurgent killed, 10 more insurgents are created by the collateral damage to civilians. Every coalition attack leads to 6 retaliatory attacks against our troops within the following six weeks, according to the NBER report. These retaliatory attacks must then be acted on by our troops, leading to still more attacks, and so it goes. Violence begets more violence. Eventually more and more Afghanis will view American troops with hostility and seek revenge for the death of a loved one. Meanwhile, we are bleeding ourselves dry, militarily and economically.

Some say if we leave, the Taliban will be strengthened. However, those who make that claim ignore the numerous ways our interventionist foreign policy has strengthened groups like the Taliban over the years. I’ve already pointed out how we serve as excellent recruiters for them by killing civilians. Last week I pointed out how our foreign aid, to Pakistan specifically, makes it into Taliban coffers. And of course we provided the Taliban with aid and resources in the 1980s, when they were our strategic allies against the Soviet Union. For example – our CIA supplied them with Stinger missiles to use against the Soviets, which are strikingly similar to the ones now allegedly used against us on the same battlefield, according to those Wikileaks documents. As usual, our friends have a funny way of turning against us. Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein are also prime examples. Yet Congress never seems to acknowledge the blowback that results from our interventionism of the past.

Our war against the Taliban is going about as well as our war on drugs, or our war on poverty, or any of our government’s wars – they all tend to create more of the thing they purport to eradicate, thereby dodging any excuse to draw down and come to an end. It is hard to imagine ever “winning” anything this way.

We have done enough damage in Afghanistan, both to the Afghan people, and to ourselves. It’s time to re-evaluate the situation. It’s time to come home!

Aug. 6, 1945: "Now I Am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds"

2010-08-06T10:12:00.003-05:00

Today marks the 65th anniversary of the horrific nuclear attack on Hiroshima. Incredibly, there are still many who consider the murder 0f 200,000 people there and in Nagasaki to have been justifiable. If you are among them, please read Ralph Raico's powerful article on the bombings.

It begins:

The most spectacular episode of Truman’s presidency will never be forgotten, but will be forever linked to his name: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and of Nagasaki three days later. Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks and through radiation poisoning; the vast majority were civilians, including several thousand Korean workers. Twelve U.S. Navy fliers incarcerated in a Hiroshima jail were also among the dead.

Great controversy has always surrounded the bombings. One thing Truman insisted on from the start: The decision to use the bombs, and the responsibility it entailed, was his. Over the years, he gave different, and contradictory, grounds for his decision. Sometimes he implied that he had acted simply out of revenge. To a clergyman who criticized him, Truman responded, testily:

Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.

Such reasoning will not impress anyone who fails to see how the brutality of the Japanese military could justify deadly retaliation against innocent men, women, and children. Truman doubtless was aware of this, so from time to time he advanced other pretexts. On August 9, 1945, he stated: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

This, however, is absurd. Pearl Harbor was a military base. Hiroshima was a city, inhabited by some three hundred thousand people, which contained military elements. In any case, since the harbor was mined and the U.S. Navy and Air Force were in control of the waters around Japan, whatever troops were stationed in Hiroshima had been effectively neutralized.

Read the rest

(And if you're not aware of why I titled the post this way, that quote was made by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, after witnessing his handiwork at a test site in New Mexico. It is said that most of the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project later expressed remorse for what they had wrought.)

Ron Paul: On the Bloated Intelligence Bureaucracy

2010-07-26T14:11:00.003-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

I have often spoken about the excessive size of government, and most recently how waste and inefficiency needs to be eliminated from our military budget. Our foreign policy is not only bankrupting us, but actively creating and antagonizing enemies of the United States, and compromising our national security. Spending more and adding more programs and initiatives does not improve things for us; it makes them much much worse. This applies to more than just the military budget.

Recently the Washington Post ran an extensive report by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin on the bloated intelligence community. They found that an estimated 854,000 people hold top-secret security clearances. Just what are all these people up to? By my calculation this is about 11,000 intelligence workers per al Qaeda member in Afghanistan. This also begs the question - if close to 1 million people are authorized to know top secrets, how closely guarded are these secrets?

They also found that since the September 11 attacks, some 17 million square feet of building space has been built or is being built to accommodate the 250 percent expansion of intelligence organizations. Intelligence work is now done by some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private contracting companies in about 10,000 locations in the United States.

The former Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, has asserted that US intelligence now has the authority to target American citizens for assassination without charge or trial. How many of these resources are being devoted to spying on American citizens for nefarious reasons at home rather than targeting foreign enemies abroad?

It has been pointed out how much information we had about the impending attacks on 9/11, but because of layers upon layers of bureaucratic inefficiencies, our intelligence community was unable to act meaningfully on that information. Obviously we needed drastic change. But it was pretty clear that we did not need more bureaucracy, more confusion, more expenditures and more government.

It is even claimed by some leaders that the intelligence community has grown this way by design; that it is advantageous to have more than one set of eyes looking at the same information. With this logic, is there any number of intelligence employees at which we achieve diminishing returns? Can there ever be too many cooks in the kitchen, in their view?

Are there any problems at all that the government wouldn’t attempt to solve by throwing more money at them? Even now, the government is trying to solve our economic problems related to too much government spending and debt, with more government spending and debt.

The problem with our intelligence community before 9/11 was not an inability to collect information. Therefore, the post-September 11 build-up of the surveillance state does nothing to enhance safety. Instead what Americans have gotten in return for the billions of tax dollars spent on security is a surveillance state that reads our e-mails, wiretaps us without warrants, and strip searches grandmothers at airports. This is yet another instance in which Americans would be safer, richer and freer if our government would simply look to the Constitution and respect the boundaries it has set.

Ron Paul's Statement on the Flood Insurance Reform Priorities Act

2010-07-20T09:14:00.002-05:00

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul
House of Representatives

H.R.5114, the Flood Insurance Reform Priorities Act of 2010

July 15, 2010
Mr. Chair, the Flood Insurance Reform Priorities Act makes a number of changes to the National Flood Insurance Program. Some of these changes are in the interests of taxpayers, such as the new restrictions on subsidies for second houses and vacation homes, while others, particularly the coverage limits, are in the interest of those who own property in flood plains. However, taken in its entirety this bill is not really in the interest of taxpayers or property owners because it creates new federal programs that appear to serve no useful purpose and it continues to allow the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to impose unnecessary costs on local communities.

At a time when the flood insurance program is running a deficit of 2 billion dollars this legislation wastes millions of taxpayer dollars on ``outreach'' and "education" programs designed to make sure people living in flood prone areas are aware of the need for flood insurance. Madame Speaker, as a homeowner in a flood plain, I can assure you that property ownership these areas are very aware of the need for flood insurance and do not need any outreach or reminders of the need for flood insurance.

Many critics of flood insurance have pointed out that federally-subsidized insurance encourages people to develop land in areas where under a free market system flood insurance would be prohibitively expensive. This is a valid point; however, it is also true that the flood insurance program often imposes flood insurance mandates on property owners in areas where there is little actual risk of flooding. Much of the controversy over the redrawing of the flood plain maps revolves around concerns that FEMA may force local communities to spend millions of dollars refurbishing levees and dams even though these structures were constructed specifically to protect against the worst conceivable storms.

In some cases, FEMA is even demanding that communities spend money to alter levies that were constructed after consultation with the Corp of Engineers! While I am pleased the bill at least provides a phase-in of the flood insurance mandate for property owners living in the newly-mapped flood plains, I am concerned that it does not do enough to ensure communities and individuals are not forced to incur needless expenses simply to satisfy FEMA bureaucrats. At the least, Congress should not give FEMA the ability to impose new flood maps without adequate oversight. Yet, under this bill, it would be five years before Congress seriously re-examines the flood program.

The basic problem with the flood insurance program is that it assumes government officials are capable of knowing who should and who should not be required to purchase flood insurance, and also determine the premiums for every individual living in a flood-prone area. However, there is no way that government bureaucrats can determine correct amounts of coverage and premium prices for millions of individual homeowners.

If flood insurance were allowed to be provided by the market, private insurance could do an accurate job of pricing risk so that those who wished to live in flood-prone areas could do so as long as they were willing to pay for the risk. Under this market system, property owners and insurance companies would have incentives that are lacking when the program is subsidized by the government; i.e., incentives to adopt innovative ways to mitigate the damage from floods.

My district has experienced numerous storms and floods, including Hurricane Ike in 2008. After each incident, my office inevitably receives complaints from my constituents regarding FEMA's failure to provide them with timely assistance and compensation. My constituents' dissatisfaction with FEMA, along with the shameful way extension of the flood insurance program was held hostage last month in order to blackmail representatives into supporting adding billions more to the national debt, has strengthened my conviction that private markets, local communities, and states can more efficiently and humanely deal with the demand for flood insurance than the federal government.

The Flood Insurance Reform Priorities Act does take some steps toward fixing some of the problems with the flood insurance system, but it also needlessly spends taxpayer money and does not adequately address concerns that FEMA may impose unnecessary costs on local communities--communities which do have plenty of incentive to make sure they are adequately prepared for a flood. Therefore, I must oppose this bill.

Violent Christians and Iraq (Jacob Hornberger)

2010-07-07T12:46:00.002-05:00

Jacob Hornberger has a hard time understanding why a great number of American Christians seem to believe that "God supports the killing of some people (or even just one person) for the sake of bringing democracy to everyone else":

Ever since the invasion of Iraq, I have been absolutely amazed by the position taken by many American Christians. Needless to say, I’m no theologian but it just seems to me that it would be difficult to find a clearer example of a violation of God’s prohibition against murder than what the U.S. government has done to the Iraqi people, with the full support of many American Christians.

You’ll recall that initially, the Bush administration justified its planned invasion of Iraq based on its infamous WMD scare. Bush and other U.S. officials strongly suggested that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was planning to attack the United States with the WMDs, weapons that, ironically, the United States and other Western nations had furnished him several years before so that he could use them against the Iranian people. (That’s why Bush and his people were so certain that U.S. troops would find WMDs in Iraq — they had the receipts!)

Prior to his invasion of Iraq, Bush’s goal was to implant a tremendous post-9/11 fear into the American people, a fear that would motivate Americans into supporting an invasion of the country without asking too many challenging questions.

And it worked.

Read the rest at the FFF blog

Happy We-Should-Restore-The-Monarchy-And-Rejoin-Britain Day! (Stephan Kinsella)

2010-07-04T15:24:00.003-05:00

I used to think that the Declaration of Independence was a shining example of a libertarian political document. It turns out I was wrong. Read Stephan Kinsella's blog post on the subject from last year as well as the many eye-opening links it contains:

The celebration of the 4th of July as if it’s a libertarian holiday is a bit much to bear. Secession from Britain was a mistake. It’s easy enough to realize that the Constitution was not some libertarian achievement as conservatives and libertarians delude themselves into thinking. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 led to all the standard evils of war and raising an army–in the words of Jeff Hummel, “unfunded government debt, paper money, skyrocketing inflation, price controls, legal tender laws, direct impressment of supplies and wide-spread conscription.” Hmm, doesn’t sound very libertarian to me. (See also below on the language of the Declaration.) Stealing, conscripting, enslaving, murdering. The glorification of democracy. The expansion of empire. The entrenching of corporatist interests with the state. The substitution of traditional order with worship of the democratic state.

Read the rest at the Mises.org blog

U.S. Presidents and Those Who Kill for Them (Laurence Vance)

2010-07-02T12:22:00.002-05:00

A powerful article by Laurence Vance on how tyrants can do nothing without people under them willing to do their bidding:

"The Czar can send any of his officials to Siberia, but he cannot rule without them, or against their will."

~ John Stuart Mill

What kind of a man would kill someone he didn’t know for someone else he didn’t know? I suppose our opinion of such an individual would depend on the circumstances. Most people would condemn a hit man for hire even as they would praise a man who came to the defense of a little old lady in a parking lot who was being attacked with deadly force by a gang of thugs.

But what kind of a man would kill someone he didn’t know, who had never harmed or threatened him, his family, his friends, or anyone he knew for someone he didn’t know, who didn’t know him, and had never been harmed or threatened by the person he wanted killed?

And even worse, who would do such a thing at a moment’s notice, without giving it a second thought, laugh while he did it, brag about it afterward, and then expect to be lauded as a hero?

It pains me to say that the answer is a soldier in the U.S. military.

Read the rest at LewRockwell.com

Ron Paul on Anniversary of Department of "Justice"

2010-06-24T19:42:00.002-05:00

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul
United States House of Representatives

Statement on H. Res. 1422

June 24, 2010
Madam Speaker, the House of Representatives recently considered H.RES. 1422, honoring the 140th anniversary of the Department of Justice. I voted against this resolution because of the Justice Department’s history of violating individual rights.

It is the Justice Department that leads the ongoing violations of the Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments in the name of the “war on drugs.” It is Justice Department agents who perform warrantless wiretap, and “sneak-and-peak” searches under the misnamed PATRIOT Act. It is the Justice Department that prosecutes American citizens for violating unconstitutional federal regulations even in cases where no reasonable person could have known their actions violated federal law.

Some like to pretend that the Justice Department’s assault on liberties is a modern phenomenon, or that abuses of liberties are only carried out by one political party. However, history shows that the unconstitutional usurpations of power and abuse of rights goes back at least almost a hundred years to the “Progressive” era and that Justice Departments of both parties have disregard the Constitution and violated individual liberties.

During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson’s Justice Department imprisoned people who dared to speak out against the war. Following the war, the progressive assault on the First Amendment continued with the infamous “Palmer raids,” named for Wilson’s Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Just as President Wilson’s policies of foreign interventionism and domestic welfare served as a model for future presidents, Attorney General Palmer’s assaults on civil liberties served as a model for future attorney generals of both parties. Think of Robert Kennedy authorizing the wiretapping of Martin Luther King, Jr, John Mitchell’s role in the abuses of civil liberties by Nixon Administration, Ed Meese’s assault on the First Amendment with his “pornography commission,” Janet Reno’s role in the murder of innocent men, women and children at Waco, and the steady erosion of our rights over the past decade. In addition, it is the attorney general and the Justice Department that defend and justify violations of constitutional liberties by the president and the other federal bureaucracies.

Many civil libertarians were hopeful the new administration would be more sympathetic to civil liberties than was the prior administration. But the current administration has disregarded campaign promises to restore respect for civil liberates and has continued, and in many cases expanded, the anti-freedom policies of its predecessors. For instance, the current administration is supporting renewal of the policies of warrantless wiretapping, and other PATRIOT Act provisions. The administration, despite promising to be more open and transparent, is also continuing to use the claim of "state secrets" to shield potentially embarrassing information from Americans. According to the New York Times, the current administration is even outdoing its predecessors in the prosecution of government whistleblowers. It is little wonder that the head of the American Civil Liberties Union recently said he is disgusted with the administration’s record on civil liberties.

Of course, Madam Speaker, Congress bears ultimate responsibility for the Justice Department’s actions, as it is Congress that passes the unconstitutional laws the Justice Department enforces. Congress also fails to perform effective oversight of the Justice Department. Instead of honoring the Justice Department, Congress should begin to repeal unconstitutional laws and start exercising congressional oversight of executive branch agencies that menace our freedoms.

Ron Paul on Recognizing Juneteenth Independence Day

2010-06-23T12:44:00.002-05:00

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul
United States House of Representatives

Statement on H.Con.Res. 546

June 22, 2010
Madame Speaker, I am pleased to support H.Con.Res. 546, legislation commemorating a monumental day in the history of liberty, Juneteenth Independence Day. Juneteenth marks the events of June 19, 1865,when slaves in Galveston, Texas learned that they were at last free men and women. The slaves of Galveston were the last group of slaves to learn of the end of slavery. Thus, Juneteenth represents the end of slavery in America.

I hope all Americans will take the time to commemorate Juneteenth. Friends of human liberty should celebrate the end of slavery in any country. The end of American slavery is particularly worthy of recognition since there are few more blatant violations of America’s founding principles, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, than slavery. I am particularly pleased to join the recognition of Juneteenth because I have the privilege of representing Galveston.

I thank the gentleman from Illinois for introducing this resolution, which I am proud to cosponsor. I thank the House leadership for bringing this resolution to the floor, and I urge all of my colleagues to honor the end of slavery by voting for H.Con.Res 546.

The Abolitionist Argument in 35 Seconds

2010-06-21T13:37:00.002-05:00

An excellent article by Glen Allport on the most important lesson from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings:

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was released on Blu-Ray in April, which reminded me that I hadn't seen the first installment, The Fellowship of the Ring, since its theatrical release in 2001. While watching the film again I was struck anew with its abolitionist message – a message that is clear, direct, and at the very heart of the story.

The exchange below, from a 35-second sequence in the film, illustrates this message well. The wizard Gandalf has just described the Ring of Power to Frodo, into whose possession the Ring has come, and has told the frightened hobbit that yes, the Dark Lord Sauron and his evil horde have learned the whereabouts of the Ring and are already heading to the Shire to take it back.

The Ring will give Sauron enough power to enslave the Earth, and so the Ring must not stay in the Shire – it must be destroyed (almost impossible to do) or at the very least, hidden from those seeking it. Showing rare indifference to the powers conferred by the Ring, Frodo sensibly offers the Ring to Gandalf, who does not live in the Shire and whose magic might be enough to keep the Ring safely hidden.

Gandalf knows better. Even he – a wise and good soul and a powerful wizard – is hypnotically drawn to the Ring; Gandalf lusts for its power despite knowing that to use the Ring would corrupt him and bring great evil into the world. With visible effort, Gandalf refuses to even touch the Ring:

(Frodo, desperately handing the Ring to Gandalf)
Take it, Gandalf. Take it!

(Gandalf, backing away from the Ring)
No, Frodo.

(Frodo)
You must take it!

(Gandalf)
You cannot offer me this Ring.

(Frodo)
I'm giving it to you!

(Gandalf)
Don't tempt me, Frodo! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe. Understand, Frodo – I would use this Ring from a desire to do good . . . [long pause] . . . but through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine.

You can view this scene on YouTube, here (the sound level is a bit low; you may have to turn it up to make out the dialog). The clip is from director Peter Jackson's gorgeous and epic screen adaptation of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (part 1 of the trilogy). The dialog for this scene in Tolkien's book is longer than in the film, and makes the same point even more powerfully: that Power is almost supernaturally attractive and addictive, and creates horrifying outcomes even when wielded with the best of intentions. Many other scenes in the book and film reinforce this same message.

Read the rest at Strike-the-Root

The Napolitano Revolution Hits Television (Jacob Hornberger)

2010-06-14T16:36:00.002-05:00

Jacob Hornberger comments on the significance of Judge Napolitano's libertarian show Freedom Watch making it on the air:

The Napolitano Revolution Hits Television
by Jacob G. Hornberger | Future of Freedom Foundation

In October 2009 in an article entitled “Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Libertarian Phenomenon,” I wrote:

If Fox News were to decide to put Napolitano on the air, his show would undoubtedly shake up the nice, little comfortable world of the statists. Both conservatives and liberals would undoubtedly be stunned, shell-shocked, and dumbfounded over how to deal with a television show filled with purist, hard-hitting libertarians challenging the fundamental premises of the welfare-warfare state that is so beloved to conservatives and liberals.

Well, I can’t say that the statists who appeared on the judge’s inaugural show this past weekend were stunned, shell-shocked, and dumbfounded, but I can say that for the first time in television history, they were challenged to address libertarian positions by a libertarian television talk-show host. For that reason alone, it was an absolutely incredible hour in the history of the libertarian movement.

Read the rest on the FFF blog

U.S. Flag Recalled After Causing 143 Million Deaths

2010-06-14T12:35:00.002-05:00

Great stuff from The Onion:

WASHINGTON—Citing a series of fatal malfunctions dating back to 1777, flag manufacturer Annin & Company announced Monday that it would be recalling all makes and models of its popular American flag from both foreign and domestic markets.

Representatives from the nation's leading flag producer claimed that as many as 143 million deaths in the past two centuries can be attributed directly to the faulty U.S. models, which have been utilized extensively since the 18th century in sectors as diverse as government, the military, and public education.

"It has come to our attention that, due to the inherent risks and hazards it poses, the American flag is simply unfit for general use," said Annin & Company president Ronald Burman, who confirmed that the number of flag-related deaths had noticeably spiked since 2003. "I would like to strongly urge all U.S. citizens: If you have an American flag hanging in your home or place of business, please discontinue using it immediately."

Added Burman, "The last thing we would want is for more innocent men and women around the world to die because of our product."

Go to The Onion for the rest

Ron Paul: Authoritarianism is Bad for Your Health

2010-06-14T12:29:00.003-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

The administration's terrible healthcare reform bill is now law, but the debate over how-- and whether-- the federal government should be involved in providing healthcare services is not over. It is not too late for America to correct its course and stop the march toward a government run, "single payer" healthcare system.

Polls show that a large majority of Americans don't want Obamacare. Congress should seize the opportunity to repeal the very worst aspect of this new legislation, namely the mandate that forces every American either to purchase health insurance or face an IRS penalty. This mandate represents nothing more than an unconstitutional, historically unprecedented gift to the insurance industry. I introduced the "End the Mandate Act” (HR 4995) expressly to prevent the administration from ever putting this provision into effect.

Instead of mandating the same failed entitlement healthcare schemes that are bankrupting Europe, Congress should fundamentally re-examine the case for free-market healthcare. Our current model, based on employer-provided health insurance, did not arise based on market preferences. On the contrary, it makes no sense to couple health insurance with employment. But federal wage and price controls instituted during World War II left employers with no alternative to attract workers in a tight labor market other than offering extra benefits such as health insurance and pensions. Over time these nonwage benefits became the norm, especially since employers could deduct the cost of health insurance premiums from their income taxes while individuals could not. The perverse consequence is that employees lose both their paychecks and their health insurance when they lose their job.

As reliance on third-party health insurance grew, patients became detached from the true costs of their doctor visits. In the 1970s the Nixon administration, along with the late Senator Edward Kennedy, championed the cause of health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Congress accepted the faulty premise that HMOs would reduce costs through centralized management of patients, when in fact the opposite was true: more bureaucracy would only lead to higher costs, less accountability, and worse patient care.

In recent years Congress has only intensified the problem with more laws and more regulations, especially with the disastrous Medicare prescription drug benefit. The drug benefit was another example of naked patronage to a politically-connected industry, and it exponentially worsened the federal government’s balance sheet. Obamacare will be the last nail in the coffin of our bankrupt entitlement system.

More laws are not the answer. Instead, we need to allow a market system to operate that reflects consumer choices while rationally pricing services. In a market system patients likely would pay cash for basic services, while maintaining relatively high-deductible catastrophic insurance for serious illnesses and accidents. The cost of most routine medical care would drop if the patient paid the bill on the spot, especially if doctors no longer needed to employ large staffs solely to deal with insurance and billing.

Let me repeat: we need a system in America where patients pay cash for basic services, and carry insurance only for serious illnesses and accidents. “Health maintenance” is the responsibility of each of us individually. We cannot continue to collectivize the costs of healthcare and expect things to get better.

Authoritarianism is bad for your health. Congress should end the Obamacare mandate and allow market-based medicine to flourish.

Judge Napolitano's Freedom Watch on TV!

2010-06-12T17:23:00.003-05:00

In case you missed Judge Napolitano's inaugural episode of Freedom Watch on Fox Business, you can watch the entire episode here or on YouTube here. You can also watch it below:

Fighting Gravity

2010-06-09T00:21:00.002-05:00

A cool performance on America's Got Talent that's worth checking out:

Ron Paul Introduces the Private Option Health Care Act

2010-05-27T22:53:00.004-05:00

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul
United States House of Representatives

Statement Introducing the Private Option Health Care Act

May 27, 2010
Madam Speaker, I rise to introduce the Private Option Health Care Act. This bill places individuals back in control of health care by replacing the recently passed tax-spend-and-regulate health care law with reforms designed to restore a free market health care system.

The major problems with American health care are rooted in government policies that encourage excessive reliance on third-party payers. The excessive reliance on third-party payers removes incentives for individual patients to concern themselves with health care costs. Laws and policies promoting Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) resulted from a desperate attempt to control spiraling costs. However, instead of promoting an efficient health care system, HMOs further took control over health care away from patients and physicians. Furthermore, the third-party payer system creates a two-tier health care system where people whose employers can afford to offer “Cadillac” plans have access to top quality health care, while people unable to obtain health insurance from their employers face obstacles in obtaining quality health care.

The Private Option Health Care Act gives control of health care back into the hands of individuals through tax credits and tax deductions, improving Health Savings Accounts and Flexible Savings Accounts. Specifically, the bill:
A. Provides all Americans with a tax credit for 100% of health care expenses. The tax credit is fully refundable against both income and payroll taxes;
B. Allows individuals to roll over unused amounts in cafeteria plans and Flexible Savings Accounts (FSA);
C. Provides a tax credit for premiums for high-deductible insurance policies connected with a Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and allows seniors to use funds in HSAs to pay for medigap policies;
D. Repeals the 7.5% threshold for the deduction of medical expenses, thus making all medical expenses tax deductible.

This bill also creates a competitive market in heath insurance. It achieves this goal by exercising Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause to allow individuals to purchase health insurance across state lines. The near-monopoly position many health insurers have in many states and the high prices and inefficiencies that result, is a direct result of state laws limiting people’s ability to buy health insurance that meets their needs, instead of a health insurance plan that meets what state legislators, special interests, and health insurance lobbyists think they should have. Ending this ban will create a truly competitive marketplace in health insurance and give insurance companies more incentive to offer quality insurance at affordable prices.

The Private Option Health Care Act also provides an effective means of ensuring that people harmed during medical treatment receive fair compensation while reducing the burden of costly malpractice litigation on the health care system. The bill achieves this goal by providing a tax credit for negative outcomes insurance purchased before medical treatment. The insurance will provide compensation for any negative outcomes of the medical treatment. Patients can receive this insurance without having to go through lengthy litigation and without having to give away a large portion of their awards to trial lawyers.

Finally, the Private Option Health Care Act also lowers the prices of prescription drugs by reducing barriers to the importation of Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved pharmaceuticals. Under my bill, anyone wishing to import a drug simply submits an application to the FDA, which then must approve the drug unless the FDA finds the drug is either not approved for use in the United States or is adulterated or misbranded. This process will make safe and available imported medicines affordable to millions of Americans. Letting the free market work is the best means of lowering the cost of prescription drugs.

Madam Speaker, the Private Option Health Care Act allows Congress to correct the mistake it made last month by replacing the new health care law with health care measures that give control to health care to individuals, instead of the federal government and politically-influential corporations. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Ron Paul: Mental Health Month

2010-05-26T08:27:00.002-05:00

SPEECH OF
HON. RON PAUL
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MONDAY, MAY 24, 2010
Madam Speaker, I voted against H. Res. 1258 designating the month of May as National Mental Health Month to draw attention to the threat to liberty posed by proposals to perform mandatory mental evaluations of all schoolchildren without parental consent.

The New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has recommended that the federal and state governments work toward the implementation of a comprehensive system of mental-health screening for all Americans. The commission recommends that universal or mandatory mental-health screening first be implemented in public schools as a prelude to expanding it to the general public. However, neither the commission's report nor any related mental-health screening proposal requires parental consent before a child is subjected to mental-health screening. Federally-funded universal or mandatory mental-health screening in schools without parental consent could lead to labeling more children as "ADD" or "hyperactive" and thus force more children to take psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin, against their parents' wishes.

Too many children are suffering from being prescribed psychotropic drugs for nothing more than children's typical rambunctious behavior. According to Medco Health Solutions, more than 2.2 million children are receiving more than one psychotropic drug at one time. In fact, according to Medico Trends, in 2003, total spending on psychiatric drugs for children exceeded spending on antibiotics or asthma medication

Many children have suffered harmful side effects from using psychotropic drugs. Some of the possible side effects include mania, violence, dependence, and weight gain. Yet, parents are already being threatened with child abuse charges if they resist efforts to drug their children. Imagine how much easier it will be to drug children against their parents' wishes if a federally-funded mental-health screener makes the recommendation.

Universal or mandatory mental-health screening could also provide a justification for stigmatizing children from families that support traditional values. Even the authors of mental-health diagnosis manuals admit that mental-health diagnoses are subjective and based on social constructions. Therefore, it is all too easy for a psychiatrist to label a person's disagreement with the psychiatrist's political beliefs a mental disorder. For example, a federally-funded school violence prevention program lists "intolerance" as a mental problem that may lead to school violence. Because "intolerance" is often a code word for believing in traditional values, children who share their parents' values could be labeled as having mental problems and a risk of causing violence. If the mandatory mental-health screening program applies to adults, everyone who believes in traditional values could have his or her beliefs stigmatized as a sign of a mental disorder. Taxpayer dollars should not support programs that may label those who adhere to traditional values as having a "mental disorder."

In order to protect our nation's children from mandatory mental health screening, I have introduced the Parental Consent Act, H.R. 2218. This bill forbids federal funds from being used for any universal or mandatory mental-health screening of students without the express, written, voluntary, informed consent of their parents or legal guardians. This bill protects the fundamental right of parents to direct and control the upbringing and education of their children. I hope all my colleagues will co-sponsor H.R. 2218.

Ron Paul: Permanently Extending the First-Time Homebuyer Credit

2010-05-26T08:14:00.005-05:00

SPEECH OF
HON. RON PAUL
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
TUESDAY, MAY 25, 2010
Madam Speaker, today I introduce legislation to permanently extend the first-time homebuyer tax credit and to make the credit available to people whose homes have been destroyed by a natural disaster, such as a hurricane. The legislation also makes a number of changes to existing tax credits in order to enhance their usefulness to victims of natural disasters. Specifically, this bill makes the casualty loss deductions available to taxpayers who do not itemize and it makes the casualty loss provision available for five years after the disaster. This legislation also helps people who have lost their jobs because of a natural disaster by making unemployment payments provided under the Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act tax free.

Renewing the first-time home buyer's credit will help Americans purchase a first home with their own money, instead of having to rely on government-funded or backed programs. The other sections of this legislation were inspired by conversations my staff and I had with constituents who had to purchase new homes because Hurricane Ike destroyed their prior homes. The first-time homebuyer's tax credit could be of tremendous value to these people, yet the law denies them the credit because they are replacing destroyed homes. My bill not only reinstates that first-time homebuyer's credit, it also corrects that oversight.

It is hard to think of a more beneficial or compassionate expansion of the first-time homebuyer tax credit than to make the credit available to those whose homes have been destroyed or damaged by natural disasters. In addition, the changes to the casualty loss provision will help more taxpayers affected by natural disasters. Repealing the taxes on unemployment benefits provided to people affected by natural disasters will ensure those forced onto the unemployment rolls because of a natural disaster are not further burdened by having to pay taxes on their unemployment benefits. Providing tax relief to first-time homebuyers and to those affected by natural disasters should be one of Congress' top priorities. I therefore urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this legislation.

UPDATE: Also see the press release issued by Dr. Paul's office:

For Immediate Release
May 25, 2010

Paul Introduces Homeowner Tax Credit Extension and Expansion Act
Washington, D.C. - Congressman Ron Paul (TX-14) today introduced legislation to permanently extend the first-time homebuyer tax credit and to make the credit available to people whose homes have been destroyed by a natural disaster, such as a hurricane.

The legislation also makes a number of changes to existing tax credits in order to enhance their usefulness to victims of natural disasters. Specifically, this bill makes casualty loss deductions available to taxpayers who do not itemize, and makes it available to them for five years after the disaster. This legislation also helps people who have lost their jobs because of a natural disaster by making unemployment payments provided under the Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act tax free.

Renewing the first-time home buyer’s credit will help Americans purchase a first home with their own money, instead of having to rely on government-funded or backed programs.

The other sections of this legislation were inspired by conversations Congressman Paul and his staff had with constituents who had to purchase new homes because Hurricane Ike destroyed their prior homes. The first-time homebuyer’s tax credit could be of tremendous value to these people, yet the law denies them the credit because they are replacing destroyed homes.

“It is hard to think of a more beneficial or compassionate expansion of the first-time homebuyer tax credit than to make the credit available to those whose homes have been destroyed or damaged by natural disasters,” stated Congressman Paul. “In addition, the changes to the casualty loss provision will help more taxpayers affected by natural disasters. Providing tax relief to first-time homebuyers and to those affected by natural disasters should be one of Congress’ top priorities.”

Ron Paul: Expressing Sympathy to Families of South Korean Seaman Killed by North Korea

2010-05-26T08:07:00.003-05:00

SPEECH OF
HON. RON PAUL
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MONDAY, MAY 24, 2010
Mr. Speaker I rise in opposition to this legislation not because I do not wish to express sympathy to those killed in the recent sinking of a South Korean naval vessel near the border with North Korea, but rather because I object strongly to the threatening and militaristic language in this resolution. I do not believe Congressional expressions of sympathy for those who have lost their lives should include language that further escalates an already volatile situation on the Korean peninsula. At a time when the United States maintains nearly 30,000 troops in South Korea, serving as a tripwire for an American response should hostilities break out between North and South, this resolution should, if anything, counsel caution and diplomacy rather than urge the U.S. government "to take other appropriate actions in response to the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan and other hostile acts of North Korea." Further, in reaffirming the United States' "enduring commitment to the ..... security of the Republic of Korea," this resolution signals a U.S. willingness to commit military force should the current escalation in tensions continue between North and South.

It is difficult to imagine a more dangerous or inappropriate time for such statements. I believe this unfortunate incident should instead serve as a wake-up call for the United States to re-assess its military presence in South Korea in particular and Asia in general. Maintaining the U.S. global empire is costing us one trillion dollars per year and is undermining rather than contributing to peace and stability. The North and South Koreans have all the incentive to reach a peaceful solution to their long-standing conflict and have made strides recently in that direction. The U.S. military presence in South Korea some 50 years after the Korean War is an impediment to that progress and should be ended immediately.

Twelve Parallels in Political Economy (Bob Higgs)

2010-05-25T13:24:00.002-05:00

The always clever Robert Higgs uses parallels to describe the destructive nature of the political economy:

The federal budget is to a tolerable government

as the Palace of Versailles is to a two-car garage.

***

The Code of Federal Regulations is to the rule of law

as a trainload of cyanide is to a nutritious diet.

***

A member of Congress is to the preservation of our liberties

as a member of the Mafia is to the propagation of Christianity.

Read the rest

Ron Paul: More Blank Checks to the Military Industrial Complex

2010-05-25T13:21:00.003-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

Congress, with its insatiable appetite for spending, is set to pass yet another “supplemental” appropriations bill in the next two weeks. So-called supplemental bills allow Congress to spend beyond even the 13 annual appropriations bills that fund the federal government. These are akin to a family that consistently outspends its budget, and therefore needs to use a credit card to make it through the end of the month.

If the American people want Congress to spend less, putting an end to supplemental appropriations bills would be a start. The 13 “regular” appropriations bills fund every branch, department, agency, and program of the federal government. Congress should place every dollar in plain view among those 13 bills. Instead, supplemental spending bills serve as a sneaky way for Congress to spend extra money that was not projected in budget forecasts. Once rare, they have become commonplace vehicles for deficit spending.

The latest supplemental bill is touted as an “emergency” war spending bill, needed to fund our ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. The emergencies never seem to end, however, and Congress passes one military supplemental bill after another as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drag on.

Many of my colleagues argue that Congress cannot put a price on our sacred national security, and I agree that the strong, unequivocal defense of our country is a top priority. There comes a time, however, when we must take stock of what our blank checks to the military industrial complex accomplish for us, and where the true threats to American citizens lie.

The smokescreen debate over earmarks demonstrates how we have lost perspective when it comes to military spending. Earmarks constitute about $11 billion of the latest budget. This sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to the $708 billion spent by the Pentagon this year to expand our worldwide military presence. The total expenditures to maintain our world empire is approximately $1 trillion annually, which is roughly what the entire federal budget was in 1990!

We spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined, and far more than we spent during the Cold War. These expenditures in many cases foment resentment that does not make us safer, but instead makes us a target. We referee and arm conflicts the world over, and have troops in some 140 countries with over 700 military bases.

With this enormous amount of money and energy spent on efforts that have nothing to do with the security of the United States, when the time comes to defend American soil, we will be too involved in other adventures to do so.

There is nothing conservative about spending money we don’t have simply because that spending is for defense. No enemy can harm us in the way we are harming ourselves, namely bankrupting the nation and destroying our own currency. The former Soviet Union did not implode because it was attacked; it imploded because it was broke. We cannot improve our economy if we refuse to examine all major outlays, including so-called defense spending.

Working as Designed (Jim Fedako)

2010-05-19T15:50:00.002-05:00

Jim Fedako makes an interesting observation about America's system of government:

Working as Designed
by Jim Fedako | LewRockwell.com

Those who support our system of government and complain about the passage of Obamacare need to keep this in mind: The fact that Obamacare passed in spite of the wishes of a majority of Americans is proof that the system works as designed.

Be forewarned: I am not writing to defend the system. I am writing to condemn a system that provides no protection for either person or property – simply, a system that cannot be defended.

Types of Democracy

In a direct democracy, the voters decide, by majority vote, the issues of the day. The problem with this type of system is voters do not have the necessary time and expertise to understand all of the nuisances of proposed laws – the strategically placed comma, etc.

And they do not have the necessary time and expertise to understand all the near- and long-term impacts of those laws. Because of this lack of understanding, those seeking a political advantage can easily manipulate voters. So voters end up voting from positions of ignorance – voting against their own interests.

The solution is for voters to elect a representative, someone who has both the time and expertise to understand the issues. Someone the voters can trust to look out for their (the voters’) own interests.

Our System

We live under a representative democracy. As such, we elect our representatives to vote in our collective best interest, on all issues. They are not to simply vote according to the majority opinion – that would be a direct democracy by proxy. No, they are to vote in the interest of their collective constituents, as they – the politicians – think best.

Here is something to consider: The only time we know our political system works is when the elected representatives go against the majority of voters. If our elected officials vote with the majority of voters on every issue, our representative democracy would be no better than a direct democracy.

The same holds for your local representative. He must vote, at least occasionally, against the majority opinion of his constituents in order for you to know that our system is functioning properly.

That means my congressman was actually acting in accordance with the ideal of our political system when he voted for TARP and the bailout in spite of opposition from an overwhelming majority of his constituents (based on calls to his office before the vote, as reported in the local paper).

There is no reason for anyone in his district to get angry (assuming they support our current political system); his votes proved our system works.

Furthermore, there is no reason for anyone to get angry over Obamacare and the likely passage of other evils in spite of the desires of a majority of voters. These are all indicators of the health of a representative democracy.

The majority in both the House and Senate serve (and will continue to serve) our country well by voting opposite the majority from time to time. To complain about such a vote is to complain about our current system. And we all agree that our system is best. Don’t we?

The Ideal

Our system of government is based on the ideal – and this is utopian – of representatives going to DC and doing what is right. These folks educate themselves on all issues to the point of omniscience. And they vote, not based on the uniformed, fleeting opinions of their constituents, but on their (the representatives) understanding of the nuances of proposed laws, as well as an understanding of the current and future impacts of those laws.

Of course, this is pure fantasy. But it is the party line – the public school version of our current political system. In reality, we live according to the whims of the majority of elected representatives – which is to say that we live according the whims of the state

Individual Interests

We (you and I) do not share interests. You have an interest in an issue, as do I. But those interests are never the same. Sure, our individual interests may be similar, and we may even use some of the same words and phrases. But you and I never see things exactly the same. Because of that, melding our various and individual interests into a common set of interests that we share is impossible. Furthermore, it follows that it is impossible to aggregate all the various and individual interests across a congressional district (or some other local, state, or national political boundary) into a single set of interests that we all share.

So it is nonsensical to believe that an elected representative can vote in our (yours and mine) individual best interests, just as it is nonsensical to believe that he can vote in our (whether local, state or national) collective best interest. He cannot. And neither will he. He can and will vote in his own interest, only. We should expect nothing else.

A State without Bounds

Some will claim that we have a safeguard – a piece of faded, 200-year old parchment. They claim that we live in a republic, not a democracy. They claim that those words drafted in deceit, behind closed doors, protect their person and property.

While it is true that we have nominal protections, a document has no power, whatsoever. Don’t believe it? Test those assumed rights sometime, in a real, open way. Really challenge the state. You will be gambling your person and property on an interpretation of someone who represents the interests of the state – not your interests, and certainly not the ideals of person and property.

We have no safeguard other than ideas. And when the majority desires the safety of the wolves, our fate is obvious.

Conclusion

Those who desire to live in a representative democracy, a state without bounds, should be proud that their government has passed nonsense over their objections. And they should be proud that liberty is giving way to slavery, since even this is a product of their beloved political system.

For those of you who still hold onto the god of democracy yet see Obamacare as an omen, a harbinger of greater evils to come, may I suggest taking a harder look at the system of government you support. It is working as designed. Always.

May 19, 2010

Jim Fedako [send him mail] is a business analyst and homeschooling father of seven who lives in Lewis Center, OH, and maintains a blog: Anti-Positivist.

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Ron Paul: The Government as Identity Thieves

2010-05-17T12:38:00.002-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

The spotlight remains on the Greek sovereign debt crisis as the riots continue. The terms of the Greek bailout from the IMF and Eurozone countries remain contentious with citizens on all sides. Europeans hate having their governments throw public money away as much as Americans do. The Greeks are not happy about having their taxes raised while their pensions and salaries are cut. Meanwhile, it is rumored by the Financial Times, AFP and others that Greece may spend more than it saves from austerity measures on arms deals with Germany, France and the US as a potential condition of receiving bailout funds. If true, it is certainly not unprecedented for the global military industrial complex to benefit from deals made by their friends in the central banking community. After all, war is the health of the state. The last thing big government proponents want is for peace to break out in the world.

This free flow of fiat money from around the globe to Greece will not really save Greece as much as it will grant a temporary reprieve to central bankers from the consequences of their mistakes. Sadly, this will come at the expense of the Greek people and taxpayers in Europe and America. Taxpayers are of no consequence to either European or American central bankers. Even the mere desire for complete information on what they are up to in our name is rebuffed, as we saw last week in the Senate with the failure of Senator Vitter’s amendment containing my language to fully audit the fed. The hubris of powerful and secretive central bankers seems to know no bounds.

If someone incurred debts against you as an individual, without your knowledge or consent, you would call it identity theft. You would call your bank for a full accounting of the debts incurred in your name, and after some verification, those debts would be declared invalid and you would not be held responsible for them. Furthermore, if the culprit was found, they would be prosecuted and sent to jail.

Not so with governments and central banks. Governments that are supposed to be of the people and for the people routinely incur debts against the people. Some governments even borrow money to oppress their citizens, and then expect them to pay for their own oppression with interest. With a fiat monetary system, the sky is the limit for how much debt a government can place on the backs of the people.

We have reached the point in the United States where the debt our government has accumulated against us is mathematically impossible to pay off. Harder times, likely due to a wave of hyperinflation, will eventually find its way to our streets and I am fearful of how Americans will react. My hope is that we will come together peacefully and help each other, and that enough of us will be aware that the blame rests securely on the shoulders of the Federal Reserve and the special interests. They should not be looked to for salvation. They should not be given more power. Rather, they should be stripped of the powers that allowed them to create this mess in the first place.

Resistance to public transparency regarding public debts should be denounced in the strongest of terms, and the central bankers that incurred them should be seen as no better than common identity thieves.

When a Congressman Says X, He Is Thinking Y (Bob Higgs)

2010-05-15T22:03:00.003-05:00

Terrific commentary by Bob Higgs:

When a Congressman Says X, He Is Thinking Y

X : I will serve the people of this district to the best of my ability.

Y: I intend to look out for my own interest every step of the way, so unless you’re the highest bidder for my services, you’d better start saying your prayers now.

* * *

X: The people have spoken, and they have chosen me.

Y: The rich guys and well-heeled organizations that backed my candidacy picked me to run, and they coughed up enough dough to buy or steal this election for me. I’d be a damned fool to forget who put me in office.

* * *

X: America needs A, B, and C.

Y: My critical electoral coalition stands to make a shipload of money off of A, B, and C. If I want to keep my sorry ass in office, I’d better do everything in my power to see that the government carries out A, B, and C.

* * *

X: I will always level with you.

Y: Watch my lips. If they’re moving, I’m lying (because I’m not such an idiot that I’d ever own up to the disgraceful way I sell my soul to the devil every day of the week—and that includes Sunday, when I make a show of attending church.

There's lots more, so read the rest!

‘Panic’ in the Streets! (David Kramer)

2010-05-14T11:53:00.002-05:00

David Kramer wrote a nice blog post on all the NYC "incidents" of late:

I wonder how long this is going to go on? This is the second “false alarm” in New York City since the original ~~false flag operation~~ thwarted car bomb attack in Times Square a few weeks ago. Between the ongoing scare campaign in NYC (“If you see something, say something.”—actually quoted by one of the original vendors who reported the Times Square suspicious SUV when he was interviewed by the MSM!) to the pointless random bag checks at NYC subway stations by the NYPD, New Yorkers tend to become their usual jaded selves once the “scare” tactic event fades into the distant past. But I’ll say this much—for most Americans still, the cartoon below says it all:

The Myth That Justice Is Blind! (Butler Shaffer)

2010-05-12T19:35:00.002-05:00

Some terrific commentary by Butler Shaffer on Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court, and the limitless power inherent in the Constitution:

The Myth That Justice Is Blind!
by Butler Shaffer | LewRockwell.com

With President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, the choir has assembled to chant the mantra: "we are not supposed to know anything of her judicial predispositions." Questions designed to elicit indications of how she might rule on given cases are not to be asked. Lawyers, legal scholars, and judges – along with media lickspittles – will croon the liturgy.

I have always regarded this proposition as so absurd on its face as to be unworthy of respect from intelligent, rational men and women. It takes an Ivy League college graduate to vigorously defend the idea. Think of the implications of this doctrine were it to be applied to advice you might seek from others in your daily life. If you were suffering from appendicitis and sought the help of a medical practitioner, would it be any of your concern whether that person engaged in established medical analysis and remedies, astrology, chiropractic techniques, crystal healing, prayer, or New Age methods? Whatever you might think of any of these approaches to health, would you consider it beyond your right to inquire? If your financial advisor regularly consulted tarot cards, dream analysis, Ouija boards, or Ben Bernanke to inform his judgments, would you want to know of this fact prior to his making investment decisions on your behalf?

The general acceptance of this idea requires an underlying belief that there is something called "the law" – with the emphasis on "the" – which wise and well-educated men and women are able to discern through great effort. It is an idea that can be traced back to Plato’s notion of "philosopher kings," persons capable of discovering the objective principles and processes beneficial to a well-ordered society. The premise underlying this belief is that members of the judiciary are capable of listening to all sides in a dispute and rendering a decision consistent with these presumed objective legal standards.

Such thinking has also been influenced by scientific methods of reasoning, i.e., that one can test the validity of a given hypothesis through empirical means. One can set up experiments to determine the freezing point of water at sea level and, if the test is properly conducted, arrive at an answer upon which scientists can agree. (I will omit, for the time being, the discoveries from the study of chaos that call into question the "absolute" nature of the results achieved.) The ability of mathematicians to calculate answers to complex math problems upon which all can agree is another source of the undeserved faith in the judicial process.

But "law" – as with philosophy generally – is a normative proposition, grounded not in some imagined coherence of legal principles with the physical universe, but in subjectively-created values that differ from one person to another, one culture to another, and one time period to another. One can dispute the law of gravity and jump from the roof of a twenty-story building, but he or she cannot avoid the consequences of doing so. On the other hand, laws generated by legislative or judicial bodies can be ignored without adverse effects: have you ever seen someone driving 100 miles per hour without getting caught?

"Law," as something created and enforced by the state, is a product of nothing more than the preferences of those who control the machinery of the state. There is no more objectively-discovered validity to such a body of rules than there was in Ayn Rand’s preference for the music of Rachmaninoff over Stockhausen. What separates the pro-war from anti-war advocates are subjectively-held priorities regarding institutional interests and the value of life. None of this is to say that one person’s opinion is as good as another’s, or that a persuasive case cannot be made for a given normative standard. It is only that, no matter how strongly one holds to a given set of values – legal or otherwise – such preferences can never rise to a higher level than the thinking that produced them.

If some people are to rule others, however, the authority to do so must be seen to rest upon some higher principle than this. Every grade-schooler is aware that the bully’s power derives solely from his capacity to use violence upon others. Children are perceptive enough to understand this basic fact. Adults, on the other hand, insist upon being seduced into a state of subservience. Those who govern must be seen as deriving their powers from some higher source than the exercise of self-serving violence. Monarchs were once able to bamboozle their victims with the proposition that they ruled by "divine right." The Enlightenment – with its emphasis upon earth-centered explanations of reality, and individual liberty – forced the ruling classes to find other rationales for their arbitrary powers. This was found in the so-called "social contract" theory of social practices, with political systems presumed to have been created by an imagined collective will of all, subscribing themselves to a written constitution delineating the authority state officials were to have. That this "social contract" explanation has no more validity to it than "divine right" justifications for the existence of the state, need not concern us at this point. Other-directed men and women are capable – even desirous – of being deceived by any rationale for their subservient roles, provided it be couched in terms familiar to their conditioned mindset.

Thusly do otherwise intelligent men and women cling to the belief that written constitutions can restrain the arbitrary exercise of state power. Conservatives still speak of "returning to the Constitution." I am sorry to inform you that the American political system has never deviated from the Constitution; this document provides the state with all the authority it might ever wish to exercise. I try making the point by tweaking my conservative friends with the notion that "the Constitution is what keeps the government from doing all the terrible things it does!"

If more people bothered to actually read this document – including President Obama, who once taught constitutional law and who, in this year’s state of the union address, erroneously declared that the Constitution provided that "all men are created equal" – they would discover the unlimited powers it provided to government. Beginning with a preamble setting forth the purposes of the Constitution being "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty," the document proceeds to set forth how such purposes are to be attained.

Article I, Sec. 8 informs us that "Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, . . . to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States. . . ." Later on, we discover that Congress also has the power "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." Standing by themselves, these words would provide the most ambitious tyrant with the only grant of authority that would ever be needed to carry out his or her desired purposes. As Lord Macaulay so well expressed it, "Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor."

One of Ms. Kagan’s college professors has stated that "she’s a woman whose . . . deepest dedication is to the constitution of the United States." There is nothing startling in all of this: one can find in this document all the power needed for putting together any political program.

Suppose that I was given the authority to "provide for the general Welfare" and "to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper" for exercising this power? What could I not do, constitutionally, pursuant to such a grant? Who is to decide what constitutes the "general Welfare," or what laws are "necessary and proper?" By their very nature all words are abstractions, and must be interpreted as to their application in the world. As I ask my students, if a statute regulated the sale of "glasses," would this include drinking glasses? Would it even include "eye-glasses" if such glasses were made of plastic, or if contact lenses were at issue?

For those desirous of understanding the realpolitik – instead of just the rhetoric – of how (and by whom) constitutional powers are to be interpreted, one can begin with the insights of Humpty Dumpty, who advised Alice that "’When I use a word, . . . it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’"

Who, in our political scheme of things, is to be "master" of defining words, when one "can make words mean so many different things?" This is a power usurped, on behalf of the Supreme Court, by Justice Marshall in his opinion in the classic case of Marbury v. Madison. His convoluted reasoning came down to his finding, in Article III, a power of judicial review of the actions of other branches of the government, even though such authority is nowhere spelled out, or even hinted at, in the Constitution. When the Framers of the Constitution went to such great lengths to define – albeit in very abstract terms – the powers of the other branches, why would such a fundamental authority be omitted from the section on judicial powers?

The answer, of course, is to be found in the inherently arbitrary power associated with government in all its forms: those who are to rule must have a realm of final authority that is not subject to preemption by anyone else. The American political establishment was concerned – and with some justification, given the Reign of Terror that had occurred in France – that such a popular uprising might occur in America, and that the legislative and administrative powers of the state might be employed in ways that were inconsistent with institutional interests. Part of our make-believe democracy consists of the true owners of the state creating restraints on the efforts of the ruled to direct it to their purposes. Through the use of a power of "judicial review" that is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, Justice Marshall made the Supreme Court the "master" of the meaning of words found therein.

In this manner, the Supreme Court became, for all practical purposes, the sovereign political authority. Its pronouncements – not those of the electorate, or of their elected representatives – became the final interpretation of the meaning of words subject, of course, to a later court providing a different interpretation. The Supreme Court – whose members are not subject to being voted in or out of office by the general citizenry – became the seat of arbitrary power that defines every government as an agency enjoying a monopoly on the use of violence within a given territory. Members of the Supreme Court will vote their respective subjective preferences – or, more accurately, the preferences of the political establishment that elevated them to their status – for the ever-changing rules that will govern the rest of us in society.

This is why it is considered so impolitic to inquire of a judicial nominee his or her thinking on specific issues over which they are to promulgate binding definitions and rules of law. We may ask such questions of legislative or presidential/gubernatorial candidates – although experience shows we are unlikely to get either clear responses or promises that will be lived up to – but are not supposed to inquire into the thinking of those who will enjoy the arbitrary powers that define sovereignty. It is the nature of a sovereign not to be bound down, for such a limitation implies that his or her ultimate decision-making authority is subject to the approval or review of other forces who would, by definition, become sovereign.

What about the legality of federal bailouts of major corporations; or of congressional powers to audit the Fed; or of presidential powers to undertake wars without Congress’ declaration; or the constitutionality of torture; or the future of Roe v. Wade? These and other court-prescribed rules or constitutional interpretations are none of your business to ask of your sovereign rulers in advance of their assuming power. When it comes time for them to tell you of the rules to which you will be bound, rest assured that they will do so!

May 12, 2010

Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the newly-released In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938 and of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival. His latest book is Boundaries of Order.

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Peter Schiff: Gold to $10,000/oz!

2010-05-11T21:55:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to let all six of my readers know that my YouTube account is on the verge of being terminated. I got "Strike 3" today by the copyright police and they've threatened to shut down my account effective May 18. So I've begun a new account called C4Liberty, which can be found here. Here's my first video on the channel, where Peter Schiff reiterates his view that the Dow Jones to gold ratio will be close to 1:1 in the near future, which means gold might hit $10,000 an ounce!

Ron Paul: Fed Audit Under Fire

2010-05-10T12:32:00.002-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

It doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that the measure to audit the Federal Reserve is coming under continuous fire from the central bank and its cronies. For the first time since the Federal Reserve was created nearly a century ago, they have hired an actual lobbyist to pound the pavement on Capitol Hill. This is a desperate effort to hang on to the privilege of secrecy and lack of accountability they have enjoyed for so long. Last week showed they are getting their money’s worth in the Senate.

At the very last minute on the floor of the Senate, supposed compromise language was agreed to and substituted in the Sanders Amendment to the Financial Reform Bill. This language was acceptable to the administration, committee leadership, and to the Fed. The trouble is, while it is better than no audit at all, it guts the spirit of a truly meaningful audit of the most crucial transactions of the Fed. In fact, rather than still calling the Sanders Amendment an audit, maybe it should instead be called more of a disclosure at this point.

The new language of the Sanders Amendment requires a one-time disclosure from the Fed of 13(3) facilities, foreign currency swaps and mortgage-backed securities. Basically, their sins of the past would be revealed and Americans would know more about who got bailed out by the Fed and under what terms. This would be good, but its not nearly enough.

Taxpayers are sick and tired of bailing out privileged, dysfunctional institutions that should be allowed to fail in order to stop their ability to wreak havoc on our economy. Perpetuating these corporations at taxpayer expense is not just wasteful, it is actively harmful. It would be good to know what went on in the past, but what about accountability in the future? A one-time disclosure now will not do us a lot of good down the road when the cycle repeats itself and friends of the Fed find themselves in trouble again.

More importantly, agreements with foreign central banks are not touched by the new Sanders Amendment language. At a time when Greece, Portugal, Spain and other countries are experiencing dire financial crises and have their hands out to the international community, we need to know if our Federal Reserve is at all involved in bailing them out. As weary as we are of bailing out companies, the American people would not stand for bailing out entire countries. Our government is wasteful enough in its own affairs without contributing to the waste of other countries. Yet the Fed currently has the tools it needs to do just this, and to do it in secret.

If we cannot take away the Fed’s ability to waste trillions of taxpayer dollars on failing companies and failing countries, at the very least, we can take away their ability to do this with no transparency or accountability to the American people. While the Sanders Amendment no longer contains a full audit, Senator David Vitter has introduced an amendment which contains the Audit the Fed language that passed the House last fall. The Senate must pass the Vitter amendment for full disclosure and full accountability going forward.

1789 (Jim Davies)

2010-05-09T22:06:00.001-05:00

While I've long agreed with the incomparable Joe Sobran that a return to the Constitution would be a "tolerable compromise," the more I read about its origins, the more convinced I become that it was doomed from the start. Jim Davies wrote this terrific article that gives more evidence that this is the case:

1789 | LewRockwell.com
by Jim Davies

It's often said that America was once a free country, but that its freedom has been heavily damaged by a relentless growth in government. Some (like Aaron Russo in his documentary America: from Freedom to Fascism) date the decline from 1913, when the Federal Reserve was chartered and the Income Tax enacted; but I no longer think it began that late. The "Pristine State" advocates suppose that there was once in our history a kind of Eden from which we have fallen, and so that all we need now is somehow to get back there – to "constitutional rule." There wasn't, and we don't. I think our troubles began no later than 1789.

The drafting was done in 1787, and the needed nine States had ratified it by June 21st, 1788, so the Constitution became supreme law on that day. Then on March 3rd 1789 Congress opened its doors and the following month George Washington presided. It's very interesting to notice what the new Congress did, in its first session, from March through September of that year.

It committed six acts, before going home for the winter in September. See if any of them give you warm, fuzzy feelings; and in a moment I'll focus on the sixth, because of its huge importance.

First came some administration; deciding on how oaths of office were to be taken. Not too much there to bother us.

Second was the "Hamilton Tariff," under which revenue was to be raised. So the second-ever Act of the US Congress was to arrange for the confiscation of property. Sure, it was Constitutional – it was a set of tariffs, imposed on certain imports; some must have recalled that it was a tariff on tea that had sparked the Revolution in the first place, so may have wondered whether anything had changed except the geographic location of the thieves. The import duties favored Northern manufacturers by making foreign goods seem more expensive – it was protectionist – and hurt Southerners by making them pay more. From Day One, a division was being fashioned that led after seventy years to open warfare. So the first substantive thing Congress did was to start to set the scene for internal conflict.

Third came an establishment of "Foreign Affairs" – now the Department of State – by which the new government was to execute "policies" towards other nations. If the intention was to have a perfectly uniform policy towards all, that would not have been needed. By establishing one, it was clear there were to be some nations more favored, others less favored. That's what a "foreign policy" means, and it is ultimately the cause of war and, in our own era, of the unconventional war called "terrorism"; for had there been no foreign policy favoring Israel (recall Biden's call in March for "no space" between the policies of the US and Israel?) there would have been no 9/11, or if there had been one favoring Palestinians there would have been a "9/11" much sooner and much more devastating, executed by Mossad. So the third Act in the history of the new government was to set the scene for all future external conflict.

Fourth was an Act to set up a Department of War – now euphemized as "Defense" – and that was very logical. You play favorites with other nations, eventually you'll need to fight some of them. Better get ready.

Fifth came the Department of the Treasury, to take in and account for the collection and spending of the money confiscated by Act Two. It is to this Department that today's IRS belongs, so I need say no more.

So far, it's not too hard to detect the beginnings of all the most loathsome attributes of any government: tax, distortion, discord and warfare. This is to what our well-meaning "Constitutionalist" friends want to get us back.

The sixth action of that first session bore fruit on September 24th, 1789 and was the "Judiciary Act" – and it's notorious and breathtaking. Here's why.

On its face, its purpose was just to flesh out Article Three, which said there was to be a Judicial Branch in the new government. It had to do with establishing Courts – Supreme, District, Circuit – and government Attorneys, General and less general. But as well as that administrative stuff, the 1789 Judiciary Act declared that the Supreme Court had the power to hear actions for "writs of mandamus" as one of original jurisdiction, and so not to be just a court of appeal. Congress was therefore purporting to grant to its sister Branch a power which Article Three never gave it.

Oops! Right off the bat, in its very first session, Congress therefore tried to do something it was not empowered to do (if you'll allow for the moment that, contrary to Spooner, the Constitution actually empowered anyone to do anything). In so doing, Congress demonstrated its disdain for the fences placed around it by Articles Two and Five. Very clearly, government today acknowledges no limits on its power; the 1789 Judiciary Act made it plain that Congress never did acknowledge such limits, even in its very first session.

Was this arrogation of power deliberate, or inadvertent?

Either is possible if the Act is considered in isolation, but it wasn't isolated. While the Constitution was being drafted, Alexander Hamilton and other Federalists had wanted to specify powers for the Judicial Branch, just as the charter did for the other two Branches, and in particular to grant it the power of "Judicial Review," i.e., to say what is, and is not, valid law. He argued that that is what high courts normally do. However in Article Three no powers were granted to it at all, so as it's fair to presume that it was not to have zero powers (otherwise, why set it up?) consequently Article Three left them wide open – for unlike the wording of Articles I and II there are no limits or prohibitions named, either. It was a blank check, whose detail could be filled in later.

If Hamilton had had his way and the Constitution as drafted had said something like "The Supreme Court shall have power to decide what is law and what is not law" the new government would have been plainly seen as a dictatorship, and in my humble opinion it would have not had a snowball's chance of getting ratified; even as it was, that process was no sure thing. So that's why they left it blank – while the Federalist majority intended all along that such a power should, indeed, be owned by the Judicial Branch so that the new government could (with a little delay, and with its cooperation) do anything it wanted to do, while operating under the pretense of being strictly limited.

So Congress' 1789 attempt to endow the Supreme Court with a new power (to hear certain cases with original jurisdiction) was not accidental, but deliberate; that particular power wasn't very important, but it was to test the waters, establish a precedent. If they could grant it one small power then, they could later grant it bigger ones, and so eventually equip it with absolute, law-determining power. Take an inch at once, so as to take a mile later on.

Success came soon: Jefferson won the 1802 election and in the changeover from Adams' administration a certain judge, William Marbury, was not given his proper paperwork to take up an appointment in D.C. So he took advantage of the Judiciary Act, and filed with the Supreme Court a suit for a "writ of mandamus" – to handle that matter at once – against the new Secretary of State, Madison.

John Marshall's Supreme Court delivered a well-reasoned opinion, which confirmed that Marbury was properly entitled to his new job, but that the Supreme Court was not legally entitled to issue the requested writ. Marshall wrote that the Congress had no power to endow the Court with the right to hear such petitions as one of original jurisdiction, for by so doing it would have amended the Constitution, contrary to Article V. He was right; the 1789 Judiciary Act was unconstitutional. So as to clarify that Congress was not the final arbiter of law he then went on to write the sentence now engraved on the wall of the Supreme Court building:

IT IS EMPHATICALLY THE PROVINCE AND DUTY OF
THE JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT TO SAY WHAT THE LAW IS

Now, here's the awesome trick that was being pulled: in the very act of declaring that Congress was not entitled to amend the Constitution, Marshall's court was itself amending the Constitution! – or purporting to do so. Why? – because in Article Three, the Judicial Branch is not empowered to declare whether or not a law that Congress wrote conforms to the Constitution. That power of final arbitration or "judicial review" is simply not there. Hamilton wanted it there, and argued that it was implicitly there, but in fact it is not. Therefore, in issuing the Marbury opinion, Marshall put it there: he did for his own Branch exactly what the decision itself said was not allowed for another Branch.

Did his court have any alternative? – I don't think so, but to judge from the enthusiasm Marshall used in the quote above, I doubt whether that worried him. The Marbury decision filled in the blank check of Article Three; that was how power was grabbed. Since 1803, what is and is not law has been determined not by "The People" or their alleged representatives in Congress, but by a cabal of government people who decide what's to be done and, if challenged, get the Judicial Branch to declare it legal. The yawning chasm between what courts now routinely enforce regarding income tax, for example, and what USC Title 26 actually says (and indeed what the Supreme Court said about unapportioned direct taxes, between 1896 and 1921) is thereby fully explained: the Judicial Department "says what the law is," really and truly and actually, and so it's been ever since 1803 thanks to the empty text of Article Three and to Marbury v Madison.

Was the Marbury decision itself Constitutional? – that's the nub of the matter. No, of course it wasn't, for the Court exercised a power it had never been given. Yet on the other hand it exercised a power it had never been denied, either, and as Hamilton persuasively argued in the The Federalist #78, Judicial Review is quite customarily a normal function of high courts and so the power was implicit in Article Three even though not explicit. We can note also that even the power to decide simple cases of lawbreaking is not explicitly described there either, along with the prerequisite power to interpret what laws mean; yet those are accepted as normal functions of any judicial branch of government. In any case, who is to decide that key question? Some kind of super-supreme court? Sorry, that's not covered in the Constitution, not even in Article Eight. We have here reached the ultimate, fatal flaw in the pleasant fiction that governments are entities capable of being limited.

Ever since 1803, America's government has pretended to operate a limited, democratic republic but has actually been an oligopoly of lawyers. And since Article Three was crafted (and left blank) with all deliberate intent, I suggest that's the way the founders always planned it. The 1789 Judiciary Act was a kind of delayed-action poison pill, a really cunning plot, planned and executed by those honored even today as the founders of a free society. And this is perfectly logical; the notion that a government (something that governs) can ever be subject to limits (things that prevent governing) is nonsense on its face, an absolute contradiction.

May 8, 2010

Jim Davies [send him mail] is a retired businessman in New Hampshire who led the development of an on-line school of liberty in 2006, who expects to experience a free society in his lifetime, and who in 2008 wrote the books A Vision of Liberty, Transition to Liberty, and, in 2010, Denial of Liberty and To FREEDOM from Fascism, America!

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Dr. Dobson Changes Mind, Endorses Rand Paul!

2010-05-03T13:26:00.002-05:00

Last week, I read that James Dobson decided to endorse Trey Grayson for US Senate in Kentucky. Dr. Dobson has supported Neocons in the past, so I wasn't too surprised, but today I read that he actually did a bit more homework and changed his mind, making an endorsement for Rand Paul! Watch it here or in the embedded video below:

Also see this email from Rand earlier today:

Our defining moment

Dear Friend,

If you would lie to a man who has dedicated his life to God and family, you have no shame. You’re lies clearly can’t be believed. And you don’t deserve to be the next U.S. Senator from Kentucky.

That’s exactly what happened last week. Allies of the Grayson campaign misled Dr. James Dobson in urging his support for my opponent. Friends of ours – and of the truth – approached Dr. Dobson to ask him to look into this matter more fully. His search concluded with a personal interview with me, and today, with his endorsement, which you can read in full here.

While you and I now know about this, I need to let everyone in Kentucky know. TV. Radio. Mail. Email. This is a huge moment for our campaign.

Will you help me do that? You can help by clicking here to donate for our final two weeks.

These types of moments, where your opponent hands you something that can be a defining moment of the campaign, well, they don’t come around often. And our campaign MUST use this to its maximum potential.

Dr. Dobson's endorsement and acknowledgement that he was lied to by "senior GOP leaders" speaks to my opponent’s credibility. That is the message we must pound home, especially as he continues to launch the same lies at us in front of the people of Kentucky.

I know you’ve done a lot. But please, if you possibly can, help us get this message out. Time and money are short, but with your help, we’ll continue on to victory May 18th.

In Liberty,

Rand Paul MD

Ron Paul: Congress Freezes Its Own Pay

2010-05-03T12:04:00.003-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

Last week Congress did something fiscally responsible. It’s not very often I can say that. Granted, it was small in the grand scheme of things, but I was glad to be an original cosponsor, along with Congressman Harry Mitchell of Arizona, of a bill to block the automatic pay raise that Congress otherwise receives every year. Every Member of Congress gets this raise unless it is expressly voted down. For the second year in a row Congress has voted to freeze its own pay, which, in a time of skyrocketing deficits and high unemployment, is the very least Congress can do.

The country is in a serious recession, bordering on depression. Unemployment is grossly underreported, and not likely to get better anytime soon. American citizens and businesses are overtaxed, yet tax revenues still fall far short of our government’s voracious appetite for spending. This is no time to raise taxes. And since congressional salaries come from tax revenue, allowing ourselves a raise would fly in the face of economic reality.

Of course, Congress ignores economic reality all the time. But if Congress can freeze salaries as a first step towards fiscal sanity, it can freeze- if not drastically cut- a vast array of federal expenditures.

At the very least, Congress could freeze current spending levels, instead of constantly increasing them. We could stop increasing the debt ceiling every few months, as has become our habit. We could freeze regulations that add to the burden on our struggling small businesses. We could freeze intrusive bailouts that upset the balance of the market and cost us billions – billions we could instead use to eliminate the oppressive income tax! We could freeze the money supply and stave off the tsunami of inflation the Fed has been generating for years.

Furthermore, we could address the mismanagement and waste in foreign affairs which adds immensely to our budget. Like entitlements, militarism is expensive. We need to reject sanctions as a precursor to military action, and embrace free trade as the most effective method for spreading liberty. After all, as the great economist Frederic Bastiat said - when goods don’t cross borders, armies will. It is time to bring our troops home, instead of instigating expensive new wars when we’re already hopelessly mired in several conflicts already. We need to rethink the whole idea of pre-emptive war- not only because it’s wrong and counterproductive, but because we literally cannot afford it!

We could do much to restore fiscal sanity to this country simply by stopping the madness and bringing our troops home – from Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Japan, Germany, and so many other places. This costly global empire does not serve the interests of the American people and we should end it peacefully and voluntarily now, lest it end in chaos later.

Though it may be wishful thinking on my part, I’m encouraged by the small step taken by Congress last week. Fiscal sanity can begin with a small step, and I want to encourage Congress to move in this direction.

Ron Paul: Socialism vs Corporatism

2010-04-26T13:14:00.003-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist.

Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.

A careful examination of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and his allies in Congress shows that their agenda is corporatist. For example, the health care bill that recently passed does not establish a Canadian-style government-run single payer health care system. Instead, it relies on mandates forcing every American to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine. It also includes subsidies for low-income Americans and government-run health care “exchanges”. Contrary to the claims of the proponents of the health care bill, large insurance and pharmaceutical companies were enthusiastic supporters of many provisions of this legislation because they knew in the end their bottom lines would be enriched by Obamacare.

Similarly, Obama's “cap-and-trade” legislation provides subsidies and specials privileges to large businesses that engage in “carbon trading.” This is why large corporations, such as General Electric support cap-and-trade.

To call the President a corporatist is not to soft-pedal criticism of his administration. It is merely a more accurate description of the President’s agenda.

When he is a called a socialist, the President and his defenders can easily deflect that charge by pointing out that the historical meaning of socialism is government ownership of industry; under the President’s policies, industry remains in nominally private hands. Using the more accurate term – corporatism - forces the President to defend his policies that increase government control of private industries and expand de facto subsidies to big businesses. This also promotes the understanding that though the current system may not be pure socialism, neither is it free-market since government controls the private sector through taxes, regulations, and subsidies, and has done so for decades.

Using precise terms can prevent future statists from successfully blaming the inevitable failure of their programs on the remnants of the free market that are still allowed to exist. We must not allow the disastrous results of corporatism to be ascribed incorrectly to free market capitalism or used as a justification for more government expansion. Most importantly, we must learn what freedom really is and educate others on how infringements on our economic liberties caused our economic woes in the first place. Government is the problem; it cannot be the solution.

The Napolitano Phenomenon (Jacob Hornberger)

2010-04-23T11:53:00.002-05:00

Jacob Hornberger comments on the astonishing announcement that Judge Napolitano's Freedom Watch is coming to TV:

The Napolitano Phenomenon
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Last October I wrote an article entitled “Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Libertarian Phenomenon,” in which I stated: “Fox News legal commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Internet program Freedom Watch is one of the most fascinating phenomena in the history of the libertarian movement. There’s never been anything like it and if it were to break out to the Fox News television channel, it would constitute nothing less than a revolutionary development in American politics.”

Well, guess what has just happened! Judge Napolitano recently announced that Fox has given him his television show! It will be on the Fox Business Network, the same network where libertarian John Stossel has his show.

This is truly an amazing development because as most everyone in the libertarian movement knows, Fox News is predominantly conservative while the good judge is a hard-core, take-no-prisoners libertarian. That has all the makings of a fascinating dynamic.

There had to be considerable handwringing within the group at Fox that decides these sorts of things. After all, in many ways conservatives are as different from libertarians as liberals are. While conservatives often use libertarian rhetoric (“free enterprise, private property, and limited government”), the truth is that they love big government, big spending, big taxes, big debt, and big inflation. Just look at the 8 years of the Bush administration.

Why, just this week famed Fox News conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly emphasized to libertarian Stossel how necessary it is for big government to protect people from those scary Wall Street bankers. In essence, he was explaining how the chickens need to keep looking to the fox (small f) to take care of them.

And as we witnessed for 8 years under Bush, conservatives also love undeclared wars of aggression, torture, indefinite detention, suspension of habeas corpus, kidnapping, rendition, foreign aid to dictators, empire, militarism, denial of due process, warrantless searches, illegal wiretaps, governmental immunity, and assassination, even while repeatedly proclaiming, “We favor limited government.”

Not so with Napolitano. As a libertarian, his perspective is entirely different. Unlike O’Reilly and the other conservative commentators at Fox, he correctly sees the federal government in the same way the Framers did — as the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people. And unlike conservatives, Napolitano has the deep visceral distrust of the welfare state, regulatory state, and warfare state that characterizes libertarians.

So, moving Napolitano’s show to television had to have presented quite a quandary for Fox management. On the one hand, Napolitano clearly does not have the same conservative mindset as O’Reilly and others at Fox. On the other hand, however, the Fox people know that Napolitano is an inspirational star for the entire libertarian movement, especially college-age libertarians and libertarians in their 20s and 30s. In fact, in personal appearances on college campuses he’s treated like Mick Jagger! His Internet show Freedom Watch has only grown in popularity, week after week.

I think it’s a fantastic decision that Fox has made. Clearly they had to have sensed that libertarianism is rising in popularity among the American people. Clearly they had to have sensed that libertarianism might yet become the predominate political and economic philosophy of our time. Napolitano’s new show won’t just be riding that wave, it will be helping to produce it.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

Copyright © Future of Freedom Foundation

Ron Paul Speaks Against Iran Sanctions

2010-04-23T11:31:00.002-05:00

Dr. Paul rises to speak up against the immoral sanctions against Iran (H.R.2194):

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul
United States House of Representatives

Statement on Motion to Instruct Conferees on HR 2194, Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act
Mr. Speaker I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one trillion dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.

We hear war advocates today on the Floor scare-mongering about reports that in one year Iran will have missiles that can hit the United States. Where have we heard this bombast before? Anyone remember the claims that Iraqi drones were going to fly over the United States and attack us? These “drones” ended up being pure propaganda – the UN chief weapons inspector concluded in 2004 that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ever developed unpiloted drones for use on enemy targets. Of course by then the propagandists had gotten their war so the truth did not matter much.

We hear war advocates on the floor today arguing that we cannot afford to sit around and wait for Iran to detonate a nuclear weapon. Where have we heard this before? Anyone remember then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s oft-repeated quip about Iraq: that we cannot wait for the smoking gun to appear as a mushroom cloud.

We need to see all this for what it is: Propaganda to speed us to war against Iran for the benefit of special interests.

Let us remember a few important things. Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never been found in violation of that treaty. Iran is not capable of enriching uranium to the necessary level to manufacture nuclear weapons. According to the entire US Intelligence Community, Iran is not currently working on a nuclear weapons program. These are facts, and to point them out does not make one a supporter or fan of the Iranian regime. Those pushing war on Iran will ignore or distort these facts to serve their agenda, though, so it is important and necessary to point them out.

Some of my well-intentioned colleagues may be tempted to vote for sanctions on Iran because they view this as a way to avoid war on Iran. I will ask them whether the sanctions on Iraq satisfied those pushing for war at that time. Or whether the application of ever-stronger sanctions in fact helped war advocates make their case for war on Iraq: as each round of new sanctions failed to “work” – to change the regime – war became the only remaining regime-change option.

This legislation, whether the House or Senate version, will lead us to war on Iran. The sanctions in this bill, and the blockade of Iran necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. A vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to turn back from this unnecessary and counterproductive march to war.

It’s Official! Freedom Watch Coming To TV!

2010-04-22T12:37:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Marc Gallagher for this wonderful news:

After a little more than a year in existence Freedom Watch with Judge Andrew Napolitano will be making the switch to television. We just received official word that this is happening.

The new show will air during a weekend prime time spot on the Fox Business Network. The exact debut date/time are not known at this time.

You have helped make this happen by supporting and watching the Judge’s show since it debuted on the Web in mid-February of last year. If you are feeling nostalgic you can listen to that first show here.

We have to continue supporting the Judge and the freedom message by spreading the word about the TV show once it begins airing on the Fox Business Network.

Let the ratings soar and make “Stay Free!” the mission statement of every American!

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk 4/19/10: End the Mandate!

2010-04-19T14:03:00.003-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

Last week I introduced a very important piece of legislation that I hope will gain as much or more support as my Audit the Fed bill. HR 4995, the End the Mandate Act will repeal provisions of the newly passed health insurance reform bill that give the government the power to force Americans to purchase government-approved health insurance.

The whole bill is rotten, but this provision especially is a blatant violation of the Constitution. Defenders claim the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate “interstate commerce” gives it the power to do this. However, as Judge Andrew Napolitano and other distinguished legal scholars and commentators have pointed out, even the broadest definition of “regulating interstate commerce” cannot reasonably encompass forcing Americans to engage in commerce by purchasing health insurance. Not only is it unconstitutional; it is a violation of the basic freedom to make our own decisions regarding how best to meet the health care needs of ourselves and our families.

The new law requires Americans to have what is defined as “minimum essential coverage.” Some people may claim that the requirement to have “minimal essential coverage” does not impose an unreasonable burden on Americans. There are two problems with this claim. First, the very imposition of a health insurance mandate, no matter how “minimal,” violates the principles of individual liberty upon which this country was founded.

Second, the mandate is unlikely to remain “minimal” for long. The experience of states that allow their legislatures to mandate what benefits health insurance plans must cover has shown that politicizing health insurance inevitably makes it more expensive. As the cost of government-mandated health insurance rises, Congress will likely respond by increasing subsidies for more and more Americans, adding astronomically to our debt burden. An insurance mandate undermines the entire principle of what insurance is supposed to measure – risk.

Another likely response to rising costs is the imposition of price controls on medical treatments, and limits on what procedures and treatments mandatory insurance will have to reimburse. This is happening in other countries where government is intrinsically involved in these decisions and people suffer and die because of it.

This will only increase the bottom line of the very insurers the legislation was supposed to control. Meanwhile, alternate methods of healthcare delivery and financing, such as concierge doctors, alternative medicine, or physician owned hospitals will be greatly harmed, if not put out of business altogether, when the entire country is forced into the insurance model. It will be difficult for families to come up with extra money to pay for alternate healthcare of their choice when their budget has been squeezed by this mandate to buy insurance. This will in turn reduce competition for healthcare dollars. Health insurers, like many other corporations in other industries, have now used the legislative process anti-competitively to corner the healthcare market. Instead of calling this socialized medicine, we should call it corporatized medicine, since the reform is to force us all into being customers of these corporations, whether we like it or not.

Congress made a grave error by forcing all Americans to purchase health insurance. The mandate violates fundamental principles of individual liberty, and will lead to further government involvement in health care. It is time for legislation that fights back for the freedom of the people on this issue. It is time to End the Mandate.

Ron Paul and the Libertarian Moment (Justin Raimondo)

2010-04-16T12:04:00.002-05:00

Justin Raimondo wrote this terrific article on the astonishing rise of Ron Paul and the libertarian movement:

"Freedom in our time" – is it possible?

by Justin Raimondo, April 16, 2010 | Antiwar.com

The news that a Rasmussen poll has Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) running in a dead heat against President Barack Obama in a hypothetical Paul-Obama face-off for the White House has the pundits fuming. Ben Smith, over at Politico, can hardly contain his annoyance: the poll "is a useful reminder of how totally flaky early polling is," he rants, and "this is the Ron Paul who polled, literally, thousands of votes placing fifth in the Iowa caucuses," and then only breaking ten percent after everyone but McCain had bailed. This evaluation depends on a static model, however: back then, there was no bank bailout, no insurance industry takeover, no tea party movement, and Ron had no real public record to run on – the 2008 campaign, in short, was a way for the country to get to know Rep. Paul, and the Rasmussen poll is a clear indication they liked what they saw. Instead of invoking Paul’s showing in the Iowa caucus, it’s more useful to compare this poll to the results of another similar Rasmussen poll taken in 2008, in which, as the pollster reported, "For Ron Paul, 10% of all voters would definitely vote for him. Fifty-nine percent (59%) say it’s No, no matter what."

Voter sentiment is now completely reversed: today, he’s in a dead heat with a sitting President. No matter how hard you try to minimize that, it’s an astonishing fact.

Read the rest, and also see Lew Rockwell's reaction to the article:

Justin Raimondo has written many great articles, but his latest on Ron Paul and the libertarian movement ranks with his best. As Justin shows, Ron’s long record of being right on the Rothbardian synthesis of Austrian economics and anti-imperialism, his never-failing eloquence and courage in telling the truth about what the Fed is doing to our economy, and the empire to our freedoms, is resonating with the American people. We all know we’re in a pickle, but in DC, only Ron Paul says so, explains why, and shows what to do. We also admire Ron for his refusal to knuckle-under to the power elite. The “eccentric billionaire,” who Justin notes controls the Beltway “libertarian” movement, and who is also the Republican party’s biggest moneybags, has instructed his minions to marginalize and even smear Ron, a man whose yard he isn’t fit to mow. This obsession has gone on for more than 20 years, beginning when he ordered Ron to stop criticizing the Fed and otherwise to obey him. But just as, incompetent in ideological matters as he is competent in the state-related oil business, he tried to destroy Murray and Austrian economics, and failed abysmally, so he has failed against Ron. How blessed are we to be living in the Age of Murray and Ron, and to be able to join the right for freedom, peace, economic truth, and honest money. Austro-ibertarianism has a very bright future indeed, in the US and around the world. Carpe diem!

Ron Paul: The FCIC: Passing the Buck

2010-04-12T14:51:00.002-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

Last week the federal government’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission held hearings as part of their continuing investigation into the causes of the acute economic meltdown which occurred in late summer 2008. This bipartisan commission, partly inspired by the Pecora Commission- which investigated the causes of the Great Depression- is expected to report back to Congress before the end of the year.

Things don’t seem to be going well. The individuals questioned by the commission mostly seem to be diverting blame for the whole fiasco to someone else. Nobody is offering any tangible insights into the causes of the financial crisis.

Predictably, the commission will avoid calling any witnesses who might unequivocally indict the federal government for its role in the crisis, or suggest solutions which take away government power. Government commissions have a remarkable tendency to recommend granting even more power to the same useless government agencies that so utterly fail to prevent crises in the first place. We saw this with the Pecora Commission, we saw it after 9-11, and we’re seeing it again today with regard to financial regulations. For example, this latest commission almost certainly will suggest granting more power to the SEC, when in fact the SEC should be abolished as an embarrassing farce. Rest assured that this recommendation will be made without apology or sense of irony.

The reality is that the Federal Reserve relentlessly expanded the money supply through artificially low interest rates for over two decades, and this expansion of easy money caused a wholly predictable bubble. To a myopic Keynesian regulator, the bubble may appear to be caused by greed, but in truth it is completely predictable that humans will act in their own perceived self interest. If the Fed wants to dole out artificially cheap money, people and businesses- including Wall Street businesses- will line up to take it. We can condemn this as greed, but the fundamental problem is Fed policy itself. There will always be demand for cheap money, but we should not allow the Fed to debase our currency and create bubbles of false prosperity to satisfy that demand.

What the commission really needs are experts who understand free market economics rather than big government Keynesian fantasies. The commission has none of these, and has called no true free market witnesses. That perspective would only distract from their predetermined goals.

The commission will bemoan the complexity and inscrutability of our economic problems, but the solution is simple: allow freedom to operate in our markets. Allow U.S. financial, labor, and housing markets to normalize without political interference. Though solution is simple, and rather obvious, it would not be easy or painless, but we’d be so much better off for it in the long run. It would require admitting fiat money is a tangled web of monetary deception prone to catastrophic failure. It would require allowing Americans to choose a system of sound money, where the money supply and interest rates are set by market forces rather than centralized economic planners. Unfortunately, fiat money is like a drug to a Congress hopelessly addicted to spending vastly more than the Treasury collects in revenues. Because of this, our problems can only get worse and more complex before they get better.

Summers to the US Economy: Bang, Zoom, Straight to the Moon! (Bill Bonner)

2010-04-06T13:00:00.002-05:00

Summers to the US Economy: Bang, Zoom, Straight to the Moon!

By Bill Bonner | The Daily Reckoning

04/06/10 Baltimore, Maryland – No matter how absurd things get, they can always become more absurd.

“Summers: US nears ‘escape velocity’

That’s the headline on the weekend Financial Times.

Summers is jubilant. He got the latest employment figures on Friday. They tell the story of an economy that he thinks is headed into outer space, with 162,000 new jobs created in March. Hallelujah…all this intervention by the feds is paying off! Thank God Summers was on the job. If he hadn’t been…well, the economy would have had to get along on its own…right here on planet earth…just like it did for all those centuries up until the feds got control of it during the Great Depression (or shortly after).

Heck, you know how terrible it was back then. People would go broke… Speculators. Bankers. Promoters. They would be wiped out. Jobs would be lost. Businesses would go bankrupt. And then, a few months later, they’d have to get back on their feet…begging, borrowing, or stealing enough capital to make a fresh start.

But now things are different. Now, we have a better world, designed in part, by Mr. Summers himself. Now, people don’t go broke. Well, at least, major campaign contributors don’t go broke. They get bailed out. They stay in business. The feds give them money so they can keep doing what they did before. And then, the feds put a booster rocket under the whole economy…

Yes, dear reader…this is a happy day for Summers. But it also marks a giant stoop for mankind. Finally, man is free from the discipline of the market system. Now, Werner von Summers et al are on the case. So you can forget about anything really bad happening. Now, it’s to the moon and beyond…growth and prosperity from here to kingdom come.

Summers is not crazy. He is merely lost in space. He thinks you can manipulate the economy all you want…like solving an engineering problem…well…like sending a man to the moon. But you could say that about almost all modern economists. At about all those that don’t agree with us.

The other 2 or 3 are muttering to themselves while rummaging through trashcans hoping that someone left a little liquor in the bottle before throwing it away.

At least our president has his feet on the ground. Obama believes the US has “turned the corner” on the jobs issue.

But wait. The private sector added 123,000 jobs last month. According to our sources it needs to create 100,000 just to stay even with population growth.

So, we’re not at all sure that 23,000 jobs is really that great after two years, 8 million job losses and $10 trillion of stimulus.

Let’s see, at that rate, it will take approximately 320 years to get back to full employment…doesn’t sound like ‘escape velocity’ to us. We’ve seen Amtrak trains going faster. Maybe we’re missing something.

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning

Bill Bonner

Since founding Agora Inc. in 1979, Bill Bonner has found success and garnered camaraderie in numerous communities and industries. A man of many talents, his entrepreneurial savvy, unique writings, philanthropic undertakings, and preservationist activities have all been recognized and awarded by some of America’s most respected authorities. Along with Addison Wiggin, his friend and colleague, Bill has written two New York Times best-selling books, Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt. Both works have been critically acclaimed internationally. With political journalist Lila Rajiva, he wrote his third New York Times best-selling book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, which offers concrete advice on how to avoid the public spectacle of modern finance. Since 1999, Bill has been a daily contributor and the driving force behind The Daily Reckoning.

Copyright @ The Daily Reckoning

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk: Government and Gasoline

2010-04-05T12:06:00.002-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

As we head into the summer driving season and gasoline prices are again creeping up, the administration has announced plans to explore opening up more off-shore areas for exploration and drilling. On the one hand this can be lauded as a positive step. On the other hand, it is too little, much too late to have any meaningful or long-term effect on what Americans pay at the pump any time soon, if at all.

Indeed, if increasing domestic energy production was really a priority, the administration would direct the EPA to remove its many roadblocks and barriers to energy production. In fact, abolishing the EPA altogether would do much to improve our country's economy. Instead of protecting the environment as they are supposed to do, most of what they do simply chills the economy. Polluters should be directly liable in court to any and all parties they harm, rather than bureaucrats at the EPA.

Of course, last week's announcement was couched in terms of removing barriers and red tape. However, the fact that we had these barriers in the first place is yet another reminder of how the energy market is hampered and controlled by bureaucrats and central planners in Washington, rather than the demands of the people and the decisions of private investors.

Consider how extremely negative our government's reaction has been to other governments around the world that have nationalized their oil and energy industries, such as Venezuela and Iran. We deposed a democratically elected leader in Iran in 1953 for this very reason. Yet the level of involvement of our government and bureaucrats in energy is nearly absolute. Of course, the only thing worse than our government dictating energy decisions to its own citizens is our government dictating energy decisions to the citizens of other countries.

Along with the waste of prohibitions that leave our own natural resources untapped is the waste our government perpetrates with subsidies to alternative fuel sources. There is certainly profit to be made in perfecting cheaper, cleaner fuel sources, but government subsidy programs interfere with finding realistic long-term solutions. Subsidies divert resources towards certain politically-favored fuel types while ignoring others. If the market were left alone, private investors would put their own capital into the most promising alternative fuels. Instead, due to government incentives, resources are concentrated into politically chosen endeavors that could very well end up being dead ends. Meanwhile, precious time and money is wasted.

The government has the opposite of the Midas touch. This has been observed over and over by the reduced quality and rising prices in every private industry in which it entangles itself. Yet somehow people still seem willing, even eager, to relinquish to government control the most important and sensitive portions of our economy and society. Education, healthcare, and energy are all unfortunate examples of industries that are in my opinion, far too important to be left to government control when it is the market that has the golden touch.

Good Friday, AKA a Day of Roman “Justice” (Ryan McMaken)

2010-04-02T20:55:00.000-05:00

A terrific blog post by Ryan McMaken on the evil Roman Empire:

The civilization of the Roman Empire was bloodthirsty, militaristic, scientifically backward, and philosophically stunted. They had an inferiority complex about not being Greek for good reason. Politically, the Romans took war and terror everywhere they went. I’m amazed when people speak of the Roman for spreading “civilization.” The Pax Romana was the worst kind of international oppression and intimidation. An avaricious kleptocracy that built cities upon the backs of slaves, the Romans deified their rulers and slaughtered those who would not bow to the decadent parasites of the imperial palaces. Warmongers and statists of every age speak well of the Romans, from Hamilton to Napoleon to the Straussian neoconservatives of today.

Pontius Pilate, a first-century bureaucrat, soldier, and politician, condemned Jesus of Nazareth to death for reasons of political expediency, and then proceeded to use the Roman torture-execution method of crucifixion. If only that had been the only time Rome had tortured and murdered an innocent person. Killing Jews was pretty much a hobby for the Romans, as was defiling Jewish holy places.

Later, the Christians were treated to the same sort of Pax Romana that the Jews had endured. Here’s an example of Roman justice in AD 69:

When I was an atheist, I used to hear my co-religionists extol the many virtues of the Romans since we perceived them as the victims of those nasty Christians. “If only Roman civilization had not fallen” we used to say, “then there would never have been a dark age, and we’d all be living in a technological utopia today.” (This was a favorite claim of Madalyn Murray O’Hair) Yeah, right. Beyond roads and aqueducts, the Romans had no aptitude for science at all, and advancements in agricultural production and manufacturing were non-existent for centuries under the Romans. The far more scientifically-adept Europeans of the Middle Ages would have seemed magical to the witch doctors who passed for scientists in ancient Rome.

The primary legacy of the Romans is death. What few contributions they did make—such as that of legal codes—were accidental, and even then just part of the machinery they employed to murder Gauls and Celts and Germans and Jews and Christians.

See also Rev. Emmanuel McCarthy on Holy Week.

Ron Paul: Healthcare and Economic Realities

2010-03-29T13:27:00.002-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

With passage of last week’s bill, the American people are now the unhappy recipients of Washington’s disastrous prescription for healthcare “reform.” Congressional leaders relied on highly dubious budget predictions, faulty market assumptions, and outright fantasy to convince a slim majority that this major expansion of government somehow will reduce federal spending. This legislation is just the next step towards universal, single payer healthcare, which many see as a human right. Of course, this “right” must be produced by the labor of other people, meaning theft and coercion by government is necessary to produce and distribute it.

Those who understand Austrian economic theory know that this new model of healthcare will cause major problems down the road, as it has in every nation that ignores economic realities. The more government involves itself in medicine, the worse healthcare will get: quality of care will diminish as the system struggles to contain rising costs, while shortages and long waiting times for treatment will become more and more commonplace.

Consider what would happen if car insurance worked the way health insurance does. What if it was determined that gasoline was a right, and should be covered by your car insurance policy? Perhaps every gas station would have to hire a small army of bureaucrats to file reimbursement claims to insurance companies for every tank of gas sold! What would that kind of system do to the costs of running a gas station? How would that affect the prices of both gasoline and car insurance? Yet this is exactly the type of system Congress is now expanding in health insurance. In a free market system, health insurance would serve as true insurance against serious injuries or illness, not as a convoluted system of third party payments for routine doctor visits and every minor illness.

While proponents of this reform continue to defy all logic and reason by claiming it will save money, I worry about cataclysmic economic events. Already investors are more reluctant to buy US Treasuries, fearing that the healthcare bill, along with other spending, will cause government debt to explode to default levels. I had the opportunity last week to address my concerns with both Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, especially about the potential for the coming serious inflation. I am not optimistic that these important decision makers truly understand what is coming, why it is coming, and how best to deal with it.

The Federal Reserve finds itself in an unprecedented and unenviable position. To keep up with government spending and corporate irresponsibility, it has increased the monetary base by nearly $1.5 trillion since September of 2008. Excess bank reserves remain at historically high levels, and the Fed's balance sheet has ballooned to over $2 trillion. If the Fed pulls this excess liquidity out of the system, it risks collapsing banks that rely on the newly created money. However, if the Fed fails to pull this excess liquidity out of the system we risk tipping into hyperinflation. This is where central banking inevitably has led us.

The idea that a handful of brilliant minds can somehow steer an economy is fatal to economic growth and stability. The Soviet Union's economy failed because of its central economic planning, and the U.S. economy will suffer the same fate if we continue down the path toward more centralized control. We need to bring back sound money and free markets- yes, even in healthcare- if we hope to soften the economic blows coming our way.

Ron Paul vs Fed and Treasury

2010-03-25T12:31:00.002-05:00

Over the last week Ron Paul had the opportunity to question Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner once and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Benranke twice! Check them out:

Ron Paul vs Ben Bernanke 3/17/10:

Ron Paul vs Tim Geithner 3/23/10:

Ron Paul vs Ben Bernanke 3/25/10:

Nothing Outside the State (Robert Higgs)

2010-03-17T12:34:00.002-05:00

An outstanding blog post by Robert Higgs on our "Land of the Free":

A popular slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was, “Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato” (everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state). I recall this expression frequently as I observe the state’s far-reaching penetration of my own society.

What of any consequence remains beyond the state’s reach in the United States today? Not wages, working conditions, or labor-management relations; not health care; not money, banking, or financial services; not personal privacy; not transportation or communication; not education or scientific research; not farming or food supply; not nutrition or food quality; not marriage or divorce; not child care; not provision for retirement; not recreation; not insurance of any kind; not smoking or drinking; not gambling; not political campaign funding or publicity; not real estate development, house construction, or housing finance; not international travel, trade, or finance; not a thousand other areas and aspects of social life.

One might affirm that the state still keeps its hands off religion, but it actually does not. It certifies certain religious organizations as legitimate and condemns others, as many young men discovered to their sorrow when they attempted to claim the status of conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. It assigns members of certain religions, but not members of others, as chaplains in its armed services.

Besides, isn’t statism itself a religion for most Americans? Do they not honor the state above all else, above even the commandments of a conventional religion they may embrace? If their religion tells them “thou shalt not murder,” but the state orders them to murder, then they murder. If the state tells them to rob, to destroy property, and to imprison innocent people, then, notwithstanding any religious strictures, they rob, destroy property, and imprison innocent people, as millions of victims of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and millions of victims of the so-called Drug War in this country will attest. Moreover, in every form of adversity, Americans look to the state for their personal salvation, just as before the twentieth century their ancestors looked to Divine Providence.

When the state produces unworkable or unsatisfactory conditions in any area of life, and therefore elicits complaints and protests, as it has for example in every area related to health care, it responds to these complaints and protests by making “reforms” that heap new laws, regulations, and government bureaus atop the existing mountain of counterproductive interventions. Thus, each new “reform” makes the government more monstrous and destructive than it was before. Citizen, be careful what you wish for; the government just might give it to you good and hard.

The areas of life that remain outside the government’s participation, regulation, surveillance, and other intrusion or control have become so few and so trivial that they scarcely merit mention. We verge ever closer upon the condition in which everything that is not prohibited is required. Yet, the average American will declare loudly that he is a free man and that his country is the freest in the world. Thus, in a country where virtually everything is in the State, nothing is outside the State, and nothing against the State is permitted, Americans have become ideal fascist citizens. Like the average German during the years that Hitler ruled Germany, most Americans today, inhabiting one of the most pervasively controlled countries in the history of the world, think they are free.

Render Unto Caesar: A Most Misunderstood New Testament Passage, by Jeffrey Barr

2010-03-17T12:15:00.002-05:00

For those who think that Jesus' admonition to "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" instructs us to dutifully pay whatever taxes are demanded of us, Jeffrey Barr offers this persuasive argument to the contrary:

I. INTRODUCTION

Christians have traditionally interpreted the famous passage "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God, the things that are God's," to mean that Jesus endorsed paying taxes. This view was first expounded by St. Justin Martyr in Chapter XVII of his First Apology, who wrote,

And everywhere we, more readily than all men, endeavor to pay to those appointed by you the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught by Him; for at that time some came to Him and asked Him, if one ought to pay tribute to Caesar; and He answered, ‘Tell Me, whose image does the coin bear?’ And they said, ‘Caesar’s.’

The passage appears to be important and well-known to the early Christian community. The Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke recount this "Tribute Episode" nearly verbatim. Even Saying 100 of non-canonical Gospel of Thomas and Fragment 2 Recto of the Egerton Gospel record the scene, albeit with some variations from the Canon.

But by His enigmatic response, did Jesus really mean for His followers to provide financial support (willingly or unwillingly) to Tiberius Caesar – a man, who, in his personal life, was a pedophile, a sexual deviant, and a murderer and who, as emperor, claimed to be a god and oppressed and enslaved millions of people, including Jesus’ own? The answer, of course, is: the traditional, pro-tax interpretation of the Tribute Episode is simply wrong. Jesus never meant for His answer to be interpreted as an endorsement of Caesar’s tribute or any taxes.

This essay examines four dimensions of the Tribute Episode: the historical setting of the Episode; the rhetorical structure of the Episode itself; the context of the scene within the Gospels; and finally, how the Catholic Church, Herself, has understood the Tribute Episode. These dimensions point to one conclusion: the Tribute Episode does not stand for the proposition that it is morally obligatory to pay taxes.

The objective of this piece is not to provide a complete exegesis on the Tribute Episode. Rather, it is simply to show that the traditional, pro-tax interpretation of the Tribute Episode is utterly untenable. The passage unequivocally does not stand for the proposition that Jesus thought it was morally obligatory to pay taxes.

Read the rest

Peaceonomics, by Don Emmerich

2010-03-16T10:57:00.002-05:00

Dom Emmerich wrote this great open letter to the peace movement:

Dear brothers and sisters,

Why do you love the state? That’s one thing I’ve never understood. For the past ten thousand years, the state has wreaked more death and destruction than any other human institution—and yet whenever I go to an anti-war rally, I always find you guys decked out in your Che Guevara t-shirts, distributing your little socialist newspapers. The last time I went to a rally, I had to listen to a couple of you blather on and on about the Soviet Union, explaining how crop failure, and not communism, was the cause of its downfall.

My friends, I can’t take it anymore. We need to talk peaceonomics.

Let me start by asking you a question. Why are you peaceniks anyway? Obviously because you hate war. But why do you hate war? What makes war so bad? No doubt most of you will respond by saying that it’s unjust, that it inflicts violence on innocent people, taking their lives and stealing their property.

Okay, let me now ask you another question. If it’s wrong for the state to use violence against people living overseas, then why don’t you think it’s wrong for it to use violence against those living within its borders? Because, whether you realize it or not, that’s exactly what you believe. You see, violence and theft are the lifeblood of every state, even those with dovish foreign policies.

To see why this is so, consider any one of your beloved social welfare programs. Now on the surface, things like unemployment insurance and Medicaid hardly seem pernicious. After all, if someone falls on hard times, it only seems right to lend them a helping hand.

And, of course, it is right to help those in need—provided that you’re helping them with your own money. If a man decided to withdraw $100 from his savings account and give it to a homeless shelter, then he would obviously be doing a good deed. If, however, someone were to corner an old lady, stick a gun to her head and demand everything in her purse—well then, even if he proceeded to donate this newly acquired money to charity, he would rightly be regarded as a thug and a criminal.

The problem with the state is that it doesn’t have any money of its own. Everything in its possession has been extorted from others. It’s not like the man withdrawing money from his savings account, but like the one sticking a gun up to the old lady’s head.

In order to grasp this point, just imagine what would happen if you didn’t pay all your taxes. Say you didn’t like how the state was spending your money and decided that, instead of giving up 35% of your income, you were only going to give up 34%. Well what do you suppose would happen to you?

At first not much; you’d just receive a series of reminder letters from the IRS. Then they might send a bureaucrat to talk to you or they might go ahead and start seizing your assets. Eventually, if after all this you still refused to pay, you would find some gun-totting federal agents at your doorstep with a warrant for your arrest. If you tried to defend yourself, you would most certainly be shot, probably killed.

This of course is barbaric. Nobody has the right to use violence against someone because they refuse to surrender their personal property. And it makes no difference that the people committing the violence are sanctioned by the state. What gives the state the right? If neither you nor I have the right to engage in non-retaliatory violence, then why should it? The state is composed of human beings just like us, human beings whom, as far as I can tell, haven’t been given any special divine mandate to murder and thieve.

So what gives this group of people the right to commit actions that we would condemn in anyone else? It can’t be that they’ve been democratically elected. Morality is not decided by a majority opinion. And it can’t be that they perform a necessary evil, that life without their coercive measures would be nasty, brutish, and short. First of all, Hobbes died over three hundred years ago and, as far as I’m concerned, has been thoroughly refuted by the likes of Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe. And second, and more importantly, certain actions, things like theft and non-retaliatory violence, are always wrong, regardless of their consequences.

Stop making excuses, fellow peaceniks. It’s time you start seeing the state for what it is: a criminal organization whose every action is enforced at the barrel of a gun. Be true to your professed beliefs, fellow peaceniks. Renounce violence. Renounce violence abroad, and, just as importantly, renounce violence at home.

Sincerely,
Your loving fellow peacenik

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk: Supporting the War Instead of the Troops

2010-03-15T12:09:00.003-05:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

Last week, Congress debated a resolution directing the President to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan no later than the end of this year. The Constitution gives the power to declare war to the Congress, so it is clearly appropriate for Congress to assert its voice on matters of armed conflict. In recent decades, however, Congress has defaulted on this most critical duty, essentially granting successive presidents the unilateral (and clearly unconstitutional) power to begin and end wars at will. This resolution was not expected to pass; however, the ensuing debate and floor vote served some very important purposes.

First, it was important to finally have an actual floor debate on the merits and demerits of continuing our involvement in the conflict in Afghanistan. Most congressional action regarding Afghanistan has concerned continued funding for the conflict. Thus, members of Congress have cloaked their support for an increasingly unpopular war in terms of financial support of the troops. But last week’s resolution had nothing to do with funding or defunding the war, but rather dealt directly with the wisdom of an open-ended commitment of U.S. troops (and hundreds of billions of tax dollars) in Afghanistan. Members opposing the resolution had to make their case for the ongoing loss of American lives as well as the huge expenditures required for an intractable conflict.

In my opinion, this was an impossible case to make.

Supporters of the war made the same intellectually weak arguments for continuing our occupation of a nation with a long and bloody history of resisting foreign occupation. Ultimately, the war supporters in Congress prevailed in the vote on the resolution. Still, the vote was significant because it places every member of Congress on the record as supporting or not supporting the unconstitutional, costly, violent occupation of a country that never attacked us. This vote should serve as an important reminder to the American people of where their representatives really stand when it comes to policing the world, empire building, and war.

The War Powers Resolution was passed in 1973 in the aftermath of Vietnam. It was intended to prevent presidents from slipping this country so easily into unwinnable wars, wars with indistinct enemies and vague goals. Unfortunately, it has had the opposite effect by literally legalizing undeclared wars for 90 days. In the case of Afghanistan, 90 days has stretched into nearly a decade. The original purpose of the initial authorization of force – to pursue those responsible for the attacks on September 11 – is no longer applicable. Al Qaeda has left Afghanistan; we are now pursuing the Taliban, who never attacked us. The Taliban certainly are not our friends, but the more of them we kill, the more their ranks grow and the stronger they become. Meanwhile, we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan and accelerating our plunge toward national bankruptcy. Whose interests do we serve by continuing this exercise in futility?

Osama Bin Laden has said many times that his strategy was to bankrupt America, by forcing us into protracted fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union learned this lesson the hard way; and ultimately was forced to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in defeat and humiliation. This same fate may await us unless we rethink our policy and resist any escalation of our military efforts in Afghanistan. Our troops should be used for defending our country, making us safer and stronger at home- not for occupying foreign nations with no real strategy or objective.

Butler Shaffer: Culture is Running on Empty

2010-03-08T23:19:00.002-06:00

A terrific article by Butler Shaffer:

Conservative, n.: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

~ Ambrose Bierce

It is not surprising that, when culture is in collapse, so too is the level of thinking upon which it is based. This is doubtless the social equivalent of the proposition that water can never rise higher than its source. For a civilization to be creative and to thrive, it must have a substructure capable of producing the values that can sustain it. Our present civilization is dying because it no longer has such a base of support.

Western society has become so thoroughly politicized that it is difficult to imagine any area of human activity that can be said to be beyond the reach of the state. People’s diets, weight levels, child-raising practices, treatment of pets, how he can express anger, whether one can make alterations to his/her home – including replacing a lawn with rocks or plants: these are but a handful of private decisions intruded upon by the state. Other than complaints voiced by those directly affected by the state’s intervention, there are few who consistently defend the liberty of individuals to live as they choose.

A free, orderly, and productive society is held together not by the armed might of the police and military, nor by the dictates of rulers or the edicts of judges, but by a shared sense of the conditions that foster rather than inhibit life. At the core of such thinking is a belief in the innate worthiness and inviolability of each person, an attitude that manifests itself in terms of respect for one another’s property boundaries, within which each of us is free to pursue our respective self-interests. Peace and liberty are the inevitable consequences of living in a society so constituted.

Sadly, as our world has become increasingly infected by the virus of institutionalism – and its coercive agent, the state – men and women have intensified their attachments to these organizational forms. As we see in the repeated failures of government schools and the criminal justice system to meet the expectations so many have of them, people continue to invest heavily in the promotion of such governmental interests. The more such agencies fail, in other words, the more most people are willing to support them, an absurdity that provides such programs with an incentive to fail.

As the business world has experienced the consequences of moving from the self-disciplining nature of a free market system to the mercantilist coziness of the modern corporate–state arrangement, we find the same institutionally-serving impulses to use governmental force to benefit failing firms. Under the mantra "too big to fail," the corporate–state establishment has been able to bamboozle most Americans into believing that it is in their individual interests to be forced to support business enterprises that lack the resiliency, creativity, and other capacities to respond to competition; that they should be compelled to do what more and more would not choose to do in the marketplace.

I went to an Internet site and found a listing of now-defunct American auto manufacturers. Their numbers ran to some fifty-one pages. I am certain that, at their demise, the owners of such firms might have wished for the kinds of government-funded bailouts that their successors now enjoy. I can understand – although do not accept – the kind of thinking that would like to be on the receiving end of such state largess. It is not unlike Linus – in an early Peanuts cartoon – contemplating his death. After declaring "I’m too young to die," he finally admits "I’m too me to die!"

What I do not understand, however, is the innocence – the gullibility, if you prefer – of so many men and women who have brought themselves to share in the institutional mindset that the organizational system is to be more highly-valued and defended than the marketplace processes that created such enterprises in the first place. Such thinking is a symptom of just how deeply the virus of institutionalism has infected American society.

For various reasons that go beyond a principled criticism of our centrally-directed, vertically-structured society, the institutional order is in a state of turbulence. Political, corporate, and educational systems are increasingly unable to meet even the most meager of popular expectations. Our world is becoming more and more decentralized, with vertical systems being challenged – and even replaced – by horizontal networks governed by autonomous and spontaneous human activity. In the face of such changes, the establishment has become desperate to reinforce its crumbling walls. Because the state is defined in terms of its monopoly on the use of violence, it is not surprising to see it escalating the use of brute force in an effort to maintain its position.

Because, as Randolph Bourne advised us, "war is the health of the state," governments have sought to reinforce the support they enjoy from Homo Boobus by engaging in what the historian Charles Beard called the "perpetual war for perpetual peace." Whether such wars be undertaken for so-called defensive or preventive purposes is no longer a relevant consideration. The core offense at the Nuremberg Trials was the starting of a war; such aggression now serves, among many Americans, as an occasion for slapping bumper-stickers on their cars with the vulgar message: "support the troops." The war frenzy brings forth such displays of flag-waving as will cause the statists to give serious consideration to using nuclear weapons against Iran, as well as to warble idiotically: "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" during the 2008 presidential campaign!

The general absence of criticism over "preventive warfare" has led the defenders of statism to extend the practice to "preventive detention," by which men and women can be thrown into prisons and held without trial – or even charges filed against them – and without benefit of the writ of habeas corpus. While being so held, the captives may be subjected to all kinds of torture, a practice the statists wish to distinguish by calling it by a different name!

In an effort to plumb the shallowness of the minds of most Americans, the statists have reiterated the proposition, first enunciated by George W. Bush and continued under the Obama administration, that American citizens could be targeted for assassination as part of the "global war on terror." Just who the targeted persons might be, or who would have the authority to authorize their murder, was left unsaid. At long last, we have come full-circle from the political wisdom offered by Pogo Possum in the 1950s: "we has met the enemy, and they is us."

What next in the offing? Shall we soon be hearing of concentration camps, complete with gas chambers, to which Americans – or anybody else – might be sent for the "final solution" to the terrorism problem? Of course, the terminology will have to be cleaned up a bit, just as it was for the Japanese-Americans who, during World War II, were sent to "relocation centers" for the offense of having the politically-incorrect ancestors! As a recent bumper-sticker reads: "there will never be concentration camps in America; they’ll be called something else."

Nor would modern death-camps have to be specialized to the elimination of so-called "terrorists." What about other enemies of governmental programs? After all, if former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright can rationalize the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children in furtherance of her more mundane policies, how many millions might be sacrificed to such nobler ends as, well, saving the planet?

At last! A project to which Al Gore could be put in charge; one that would allow him to realize his life’s dream: to be in control of all life on the planet. How better to reduce carbon emissions on the planet than to systematically exterminate their contributors (i.e., human beings)? Of course, enough people would have to be left living in order to provide the energies with which to serve the state. But this is simply a matter of careful calculation to be engaged in by neo-philosopher-kings!

Will there be no end to the efforts of statists to keep upping the ante in their quest for absolute control over their fellow humans? Is there any indecency or atrocity which most Americans would be unwilling to embrace? Is there a moral threshold that most would refuse to cross?

As America continues to unravel, expect even more intensive efforts by the statists to regain and solidify their power. Look, further, to increasing numbers of your neighbors who sense that something is terribly wrong – quite evil – in America that must be resisted. To whom can we look for an assessment of the problem? Do the conservatives have anything to offer? Sadly, they are still too strongly attached to the kinds of thinking that got us where we are (e.g., the war system and police-state authority). As I read or listen to them, I find little more than name-calling, jingoism, and fear-mongering coming forth from those who lost their passion for liberty once the Soviet Union collapsed.

For the time being, at least, most of the liberal community is still in too much of a stupor over the election of a black president to be of much use in confronting the wrongdoing of the current state. The so-called moderates (i.e., the worst of all "extremists," who congenitally insist upon compromises between equally untenable positions) are, as in most matters, of little benefit. Nor will much assistance be found within most of academia, so many of whose members are in a terminal state produced by the institutional virus. The mainstream media will likewise prove to be a dry hole for enlightenment: they are the voices of the establishment; their job is to reinforce your institutional commitments. The Internet, by contrast, continues to be the best source of alternative thinking, what with entry into this medium being so easy. It is, perhaps, the best spur to individualized thinking since Gutenberg upset the established order of his day.

Because of the uncertain and unpredictable nature of complex systems, I don’t know of anyone – including myself – who has a monopoly on "all the answers" to what plagues us, both personally and socially. What we need to focus on, instead, are those who might have a better set of questions to ask as we try to distill a free, peaceful, and orderly society out of the carefully-organized insanity into which we find ourselves twisted and knotted. Perhaps it would do us well to recall the lessons from an etymological dictionary: that the words "peace," "freedom," "love," and "friend," have interconnected histories. Might our ancient ancestors have known what we have long-since forgotten as we traipse about in search of one divisive ideology after another?

March 9, 2010

Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the newly-released In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938 and of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival. His latest book is Boundaries of Order.

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Butler Shaffer Archives

Ron Paul on the Census: A Little Too Personal

2010-03-08T11:52:00.003-06:00

Dr. Paul's latest Texas Straight Talk:

Last week Congress voted to encourage participation in the 2010 census. I voted “No” on this resolution for the simple, obvious reason that the census- like so many government programs- has grown far beyond what the framers of our Constitution intended. The invasive nature of the current census raises serious questions about how and why government will use the collected information. It also demonstrates how the federal bureaucracy consistently encourages citizens to think of themselves in terms of groups, rather than as individual Americans. The not so subtle implication is that each group, whether ethnic, religious, social, or geographic, should speak up and demand its “fair share” of federal largesse.

Article I, section 2 of the Constitution calls for an enumeration of citizens every ten years, for the purpose of apportioning congressional seats among the various states. In other words, the census should be nothing more than a headcount. It was never intended to serve as a vehicle for gathering personal information on citizens.

But our voracious federal government thrives on collecting information. In fact, to prepare for the 2010 census state employees recorded GPS coordinates for every front door in the United States so they could locate individuals with greater accuracy! Once duly located, individuals are asked detailed questions concerning their name, address, race, home ownership, and whether they periodically spend time in prison or a nursing home - just to name a few examples.

From a constitutional perspective, of course, the answer to each of these questions is: “None of your business.” But the bigger question is - why government is so intent on compiling this information in the first place?

The Census Bureau claims that collected information is not shared with any federal agency; but rather is kept under lock and key for 72 years. It also claims that no information provided to census takers can be used against you by the government.

However, these promises can and have been abused in the past. Census data has been used to locate men who had not registered for the draft. Census data also was used to find Japanese-Americans for internment camps during World War II. Furthermore, the IRS has applied census information to detect alleged tax evaders. Some local governments even have used census data to check for compliance with zoning regulations.

It is not hard to imagine that information compiled by the census could be used against people in the future, despite claims to the contrary and the best intentions of those currently in charge of the Census Bureau. The government can and does change its mind about these things, and people have a right to be skeptical about government promises.

Yet there are consequences for not submitting to the census and its intrusive questions. If the form is not mailed back in time, households will experience the “pleasure” of a visit by a government worker asking the questions in person. If the government still does not get the information it wants, it can issue a fine of up to $5000.

If the federal government really wants to increase compliance with the census, it should abide by the Constitution and limit its inquiry to one simple question: How many people live here?