Glenn Beck Is Right About Obama on This One

Some bloggers, such as Juan Cole, and Media Matters and news media elites have been making fun of or criticizing Glenn Beck for Beck’s implying that Obama might be planning to assassinate Tea Partiers, or others being falsely labeled as “militants,” “extremists,” etc. by the Obama Administration, and described by the DC rulers as  “threat” or as “terrorists.” Well, a lot of people either don’t know their history, just from this past century, the history of any regime anywhere in the world that has been a communist or otherwise all-powerful State regime, or they just don’t care. I have written about why the Tea Partiers should be concerned here. And yes, we do have reason to be concerned.

Here are the facts:

• Obama has given himself extended executive powers, including the power to apprehend and detain indefinitely and assassinate anyone anywhere in the world, including Americans, that Obama and his CIA and other U.S. agents have determined are “terrorists,” or otherwise a threat, without due process, without trial, and even without any formal actual suspicion of a specific individual. The Bush Administration knowingly swept up masses of innocent individuals randomly and without suspicion and held them including torturing them at Gitmo and other areas. As long as agents of the mighty U.S. State have accused someone of something, that’s good enough.
• Obama has taken over whole industries, including much of the U.S. automobile industry, the health care industry, and now the financial industry. He’s a socialist, a fascist, and a communist.
• The Obama Administration consists of like-minded individuals such as Elena Kagan, Cass Sunstein and Eric Holster, all of whom approve of Obama’s extended, strengthened dictatorial executive powers, including silencing talk radio, shutting down the Internet and especially censoring bloggers and other sources who are critical of the little Marxist dictator in the White House.

All you have to do is study the history of just the last century, and how the leaders of the major regimes –democratic or communist (same thing) — such as Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Mao, FDR, etc. treated people in their own countries, and just look at Obama’s past relationships with people such as Bill Ayers and Obama’s following of the Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals and you would understand what I’m talking about.

Unless, of course, you agree with Obama, and agree that the centralized State in DC should be as strong and powerful as possible and that the people should be serfs for the State, and people who question the authority of the State and criticize it should be “taken care of.”

Politics or Principle

July 24, 2010

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com  Link to this article at LewRockwell.com

“Politics or Principle” was the theme of Congressman Ron Paul’s farewell speech in 1984 and of his two presidential campaigns. Advocating the principle of Liberty is the theme of those in the libertarian school of thought, including the American Revolutionaries and Founders, who advocated individual freedom, private property rights, and freedom of association and voluntary contract. Throughout history, the State has been Liberty’s most egregious violator.

As sociologist and economist Franz Oppenheimer noted in his book, The State, there are two forms of sustenance: first, through one’s honest productive activity and voluntary exchange with others, or the economic means; and second, through theft and violence, the force and coercion of the State, or the political means. For that is what politics is: the aggression of the State, which is why the State’s actions can never be principled.

The Founders’ Declaration of Independence is probably one of the most succinct documents declaring that the rights to life, liberty and property are inherent among all individuals. The Constitution, however, assigned to a federal government one monopolistic power after another, and gave to centralized bureaucrats in Washington the power of compulsion over their fellow Americans. Such a restrictive monopoly and that power of compulsion contradicted the very rights recognized by the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration declares the principles of Liberty, but the Constitution is the politics and power of the aggressive, parasitic State.

One thing I don’t understand is how the Tea Party movement, which supposedly supports limited government and moral values, nevertheless supports the U.S. government’s Leviathan bureaucratic military socialism, its foreign interventionism, and wars with indiscriminate murder of innocent human beings and destruction of whole societies abroad. Unfortunately, the Tea Party movement includes those military interventionist conservatives who partake in the mysticism of the State as a god, and cannot see that State interventionism into foreign lands is just as immoral as domestic State interventionism.

But any form of theft, trespass and murder, is immoral, period.

The Constitutionally mandated dependence of Americans on the socialist planning of centralized federal bureaucracy with a monopoly of territorial protection has turned the principle of self-defense into a parasitic political phenomenon. Such a monopoly has enabled politicians and bureaucrats to further a career in bureaucracy and power at the expense of Liberty, and has caused deterioration in quality of territorial protection.

But there is something about human nature that causes so many people to abandon principle when given a position of State power. The State is the only institution with the power to be above the Rule of Law. Agents of the State may commit theft and robbery through taxation, and may trespass and there is nothing any individual can do about it. It’s not what the Founding Fathers had in mind for America.

Two examples of how people who may have had potential in advancing Liberty and helping their fellow Americans through voluntary means, but instead have chosen the path of politics and the coercive apparatus of the State, are former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

During the earlier part of his pre-political career as a capital investment executive, Romney was extremely frugal with funds and careful not to take big risks “with other people’s money,” to such an extent that his firm Bain Capital hardly made any investments. He would seem to be the ideal candidate for many Americans, particularly conservatives, to help solve the nation’s financial crises. But not unlike most politicians, former business executives and otherwise, Romney seemed to change as shown by his decisions as governor of Massachusetts.

Perhaps Romney’s worst deed was RomneyCare, the health care bureaucracy and mandates he installed in his last year as governor. Given his expertise as an entrepreneur and capital investor, and his knowledge of how markets work, one would think that Romney would instinctively know that more government intrusions are the cause of our medical system’s dysfunction and not the cure.

Or perhaps he did know. Politicians oftentimes compromise principle for the sake of political strategy. At the time of his signing RomneyCare into law, mid-2006, it was widely speculated that then-U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton would be running for president in 2008, as well as Romney. Clinton’s own 1993 proposals for nationalized health care would be quite useful to compare to a Republican’s own proposals or policies.

For perhaps a better explanation of his record of government expansion and apparent attraction to the power of the State, it needs to be noted that Mitt Romney grew up in a very political family. His mother Lenore Romney had been a candidate for public office, and his father George Romney was a lobbyist in Washington for the aluminum industry and the automobile industry, and, as governor of Michigan for 8 years, George was credited (or blamed) for his instituting the state’s first state income tax, and greatly expanding state government. George Romney bitterly opposed Barry Goldwater for the Republican nomination for president in 1964. Mitt Romney seemed to follow in his father’s footsteps in advocating more government interventions and intrusions, not fewer, into private economic affairs.

During his last 365 days as governor until January 2007, Romney spent over 200 of those days traveling outside of Massachusetts, “testing the waters” for a 2008 presidential bid. During that last year of Romney’s gubernatorial tenure, many of the duties of governor were taken up by Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, who was running her own failed campaign for governor. You would think that Romney would resign as governor to run his presidential campaign, but this is politics, after all. The political “public sector” inherently discourages its employees from maintaining a consistent job attendance.

And what does it say about someone such as Romney who spends $40 million of his own wealth on a presidential campaign, only to lose to the competition? It is doubtful that he or anyone would spend so much money to be hired as a CEO of even the most prestigious private firm. But that just shows the extent to which some people will go to achieve political power.

Sarah Palin is one of the leaders of the Tea Party movement, but her endorsements in 2010 have not all been for Tea Party conservatives. Palin, who supposedly advocates small, less intrusive government, low taxes and low government spending, and traditional moral values, endorsed for reelection Big Government Republican Senator John McCain, over his opponent, conservative J.D. Hayworth, probably more out of personal loyalty than of loyalty to those conservative principles. Granted, McCain gave Palin a huge advance in her career by choosing her as his 2008 presidential campaign running mate. But McCain is actually one of those inside-the-beltway politicians responsible for the very problems with the federal government that have been the stimulus for rebellion by Sarah Palin’s own Tea Party movement.

Palin also endorsed moderate Republican Terry Branstad over 2 conservatives for governor of Iowa. As conservative pundit Pat Buchanan observed,

The endorsement of Branstad suggests Palin, a politician of principle, has a pragmatic streak. She acts not only out of instinct but cold calculation. How else to explain the Branstad endorsement over a social conservative than a decision to befriend a future GOP governor in the first battleground state of 2012?

And Palin is somewhat similar to Mitt Romney, having grown up in a family with very close ties to the State apparatus.

Palin endorsed Texas Gov. Rick Perry for reelection over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and the actual Tea Party candidate, Debra Medina. Some Texas Tea Partiers were surprised, but understood that Medina was not well known. But given Sarah Palin’s anti-Establishment agenda in Alaska politics, one would think that Palin would not endorse a ten-year governor for reelection, and instead would choose a genuine private citizen and businesswoman such as Medina who was also challenging Establishment politicians. Medina’s single-digit polling numbers nevertheless rose following the Palin-Perry endorsement, but Medina’s candidacy was derailed by her interview with Glenn Beck. Some people believe that the interview was a set-up, and that Beck was in cahoots with Gov. Rick Perry.

And that brings me to the role of journalists, intellectuals and the news media who, as a group, developed – or devolved – from the principled tellers of truth and exposers of corruption, such as Tom Paine, Lysander Spooner, H.L. Mencken, Murray Rothbard and Daniel Ellsberg, to the current propagandists and stenographers for the State.

Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald has been doing a terrific job covering such a decadence of the journalism guild and their enthusiasm as State propagandists here, here, here, and especially here and here. And Judge Andrew Napolitano has excelled in his exposing of the State’s deceit and Orwellian newspeak on his FoxNews TV show Freedom Watch with the Judge, and his recent book, Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History.

Both Greenwald and Napolitano have discussed extensively the principles of civil liberties and due process, especially in the context of the Bush Administration’s War on Terrorism, and have thoroughly covered how the left and right propagandists disseminate their evangelism promoting the State and its extended powers.

And Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation is another principled and uncompromising modern day advocate of individual liberty, private property and civil rights.

The Bush Administration enacted policies based on political considerations that were favorable to expanding State power, rather than upholding the principles of Liberty and individual rights our American Founders strongly believed in, and the Obama Administration has been expanding such unconstitutional powers, all being cheered on by the left and right mouthpieces for the State. However, now that the Obama Administration is in charge, Sarah Palin and many other conservative Tea Partiers who have supported the Bush-initiated policies may eventually regret such support.

Unfortunately, the modern movement to restore Liberty by dismantling the Leviathan State has been maligned by not only those on both the left and the right whose parasitic livelihoods are dependent on that destructive State, but also by some libertarians, particularly those “regime libertarians,” some of whom work with the Cato Institute and write for Reason Magazine. Some organizations, while having done much to promote some aspects of Liberty, have tended to advance the libertarian philosophy more as a “lifestyle” issue rather than the moral principle of freedom from State intrusions. Too many people just seem to be attracted to the addictive power of the State, and tend to join in the popular witch hunts against those who advocate a society of actual independence under the Rule of Law. As Murray Rothbard noted,

We have seen clearly why the State needs the intellectuals; but why do the intellectuals need the State? Put simply, it is because intellectuals, whose services are often not very intensively desired by the mass of consumers, can find a more secure “market” for their abilities in the arms of the State. The State can provide them with a power, status, and wealth which they often cannot obtain in voluntary exchange.

In his 2006 Mises Institute article, Natural Elites, Intellectuals and the State, Hans-Hermann Hoppe notes that the “natural elites” of earlier times achieved status and success through their own natural abilities and talents, were characterized by wisdom, bravery and farsightedness, and acted as “judges and peacemakers” out of a genuine sense of duty to others, and often without financial compensation. But their status changed as democracies evolved:

The fortunes of the great families have dissipated through confiscatory taxes, during life and at the time of death. These families’ tradition of economic independence, intellectual farsightedness, and moral and spiritual leadership have been lost and forgotten. Rich men exist today, but more frequently than not they owe their fortunes directly or indirectly to the state. Hence, they are often more dependent on the state’s continued favors than many people of far-lesser wealth. They are typically no longer the heads of long-established leading families, but “nouveaux riches.” Their conduct is not characterized by virtue, wisdom, dignity, or taste, but is a reflection of the same proletarian mass-culture of present-orientation, opportunism, and hedonism that the rich and famous now share with everyone else.

Because of the monopolization of law and justice in modern democracies, Hoppe argues, the role of the “natural elites” was taken over by the State apparatchiks as the expanding power of the State was further encouraged by the intellectuals.

On the other hand, while the natural elites were being destroyed, intellectuals assumed a more prominent and powerful position in society. Indeed, to a large extent they have achieved their goal and have become the ruling class, controlling the state and functioning as monopolistic judge.

This is not to say that democratically elected politicians are all intellectuals (although there are certainly more intellectuals nowadays who become president than there were intellectuals who became king.) After all, it requires somewhat different skills and talents to be an intellectual than it does to have mass-appeal and be a successful fundraiser. But even the non-intellectuals are the products of indoctrination by tax-funded schools, universities, and publicly employed intellectuals, and almost all of their advisors are drawn from this pool.

Prof. Hoppe recently wrote about the first five years of his Property and Freedom Society, which he and others established to promote Austrian School economics Libertarianism, and the sound moral principles of justly acquired private property, freedom of contract and freedom of association:

…The goal of “limited” – or “constitutional” – government, which Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan and other Mont Pelerin Society grandees had tried to promote and that every “free-market” think-tank today proclaims as its goal, is an impossible goal, much as it is an impossible goal to try squaring the circle. You cannot first establish a territorial monopoly of law and order and then expect that this monopolist will not make use of this awesome privilege of legislating in its own favor. Likewise: You cannot establish a territorial monopoly of paper money production and expect the monopolist not to use its power of printing up ever more money.

Limiting the power of the state, once it has been granted a territorial monopoly of legislation, is impossible, a self-contradictory goal. To believe that it is possible to limit government power – other than by subjecting it to competition, i.e., by not allowing monopoly privileges of any kind to arise in the first place – is to assume that the nature of Man changes as the result of the establishment of government (very much like the miraculous transformation of Man that socialists believe to happen with the onset of socialism)….

… …Thus, I concluded that the property and freedom society not only had to exclude all politicians and government agents and propagandists as objects of ridicule and contempt, as emperors without clothes and the butt of all jokes rather than objects of admiration and emulation, but it also had to exclude all economic ignoramuses.

I couldn’t agree more. It is inherent in an institution with the power of compulsion over others and a territorial monopoly of anything to naturally usurp the rights of all the inhabitants within that territory. The Founders’ original intent was for the individual states to retain their independence and sovereignty within the framework of the newly organized union of the states, the United States of America. But the skeptical Anti-Federalists knew instinctively that giving any monopolistic powers to a federal government would spell the end of freedom for the territory’s inhabitants.

The way for Americans to save our freedom is not through politics, but through principle – being uncompromising advocates of the sanctity of private property, freedom of association and individual rights. In practical terms, it may be necessary to practice secession, nullification and, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe has written, particularly in his book, Democracy: The God That Failed, through mass peaceful “passive non-cooperation.”

Some Things Need To Be Said

The Andrew Breitbart-Shirley Sherrod fiasco aside, this week’s uncovering of the ‘Journolist’ conspiracy to suppress stories that were unfavorable to then-2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama has piqued my interest. The Daily Caller’s Jonathan Strong writes:

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage. In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with (Rev. Jeremiah) Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Today’s news journalists are, I’m sorry to say, unfortunate victims of the last half-century of pro-State propaganda, particularly instilled in the nation’s school system. Post-World War II generations have been fed a steady diet of television and other media that have turned Americans in general into zombies.

But why the control-freakishness of the news media, mainstream and otherwise, in their obsession with manipulating news delivery in such a pathologically biased manner, to the point that the Truth about this or that public figure must be suppressed, and the otherwise true Truth-tellers then maligned and smeared as “racists,” or “anti-Semitic?”

To me, the “liberal news media” have shown their true colors by ending their opposition to the Bush-led wars abroad at the point the wars became Obama-led wars. The “journalists” who bashed Bush for eight years have told me in no uncertain terms that the reason they were bashing Bush and his war policies was not based on principle — of opposing “imperialism” and unnecessary military violence — but was solely because they hated George W. Bush.

Were the “journalists,” particularly news reporters, editors and producers, the objective “truth-tellers” they are supposed to be, they would continue reporting on what the U.S. government is doing abroad. But we don’t hear — at least not from mainstream news sources — about how Obomber has strengthened his executive powers as president and can order the apprehension and indefinite detention of any individual, American or foreigner, without actual suspicion of having committed actual specific acts of terrorism or otherwise harm to others, as well as order the assassination of any individual, American or foreigner, at home or abroad, at any time and anywhere the president deems necessary.

Nor do we hear from any of these “news journalists” about the CIA’s remote-controlled drones that are killing mostly innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Iranians are next.)

Nor have we heard from the news media about how the Justice Department dropped an open-and-shut case against black members of the New Black Panthers Party accused of voter intimidation and threats against white voters in 2008, because top lawyers in the DOJ refuse to work on cases in which black people are accused of civil rights violations against whites. This erases the idea that “Justice is Blind” and it goes right with the news journalists who have thrown Objectivity in the trash.

For the last 30 or 40 years or so, it seems to me that the journalism schools have no longer been teaching the importance of getting all the facts out there, the what, who, when, where, why, how, etc. As Larry Glick used to say, get “the story behind the story.” Instead, it is important to use one’s role as a news journalist to be an activist and a do-gooder.

But by and large, they have gone beyond that, to the point of actively promoting a pro-State agenda, in which such promotion includes the suppressing of important news stories, and the smearing of those who attempt to bring those topics into the discussion. This pro-State propagandizing is not just of the left, who love expanded State social welfare programs and the Big Government bureaucracies that push them, but of the right, who love their Big Government military socialism and their politicized Leviathan police-state security apparatus.

The journalists of today don’t like the ideas of freedom, because it gets in the way of their worship of their god: the State. The rights of the individual and anyone who advocates those rights are to be silenced in favor of promoting the power of the collective over the individual.

In the pursuit of an agenda by left and right media mouthpieces and their flunkies, the one thing the two sides have in common is their looking down their noses at anyone who promotes Liberty, private property rights, freedom of association and contract, individual responsibility and the moral values of people behaving peacefully and voluntarily in a society of non-aggression.

And in their worship of the State as God, the nudniks (and in some cases, retards) on the left side of the biased journalists had found their idol, their God of our time, Barack Obama. They felt it was vital to their idiocy to ignore and suppress all the information that was out there that showed what an incompetent ignoramus Obama was and what an inexperienced nincompoop he was. The Obama Cultists ignored Obama’s anti-white racism and belligerence and his pro-Islamic Third World anti-Progress bias from “his” books that he (supposedly) wrote, his 20-year intimate relationships with the anti-white, anti-American, anti-Jewish Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the ‘small-c communist’ Bill Ayers, and they ignored Obama’s non-accessible academic record.

Most importantly, the left-biased journalists actively suppressed information and actively worked to get Obama elected for one reason and only one reason: because of his race. I don’t know if it’s because of white guilt or what the reason might be. But when you support someone or oppose someone on the basis of race, that is exactly what racism is. This obsession with race and other superficial qualities of people has become such a social pathology and a sickness. In total defiance and opposition to what Rev. Martin Luther King stood for, judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, the left-biased journalists actively got a totalitarian madman elected president.

Thanks, guys.

New Book: “Libertarianism Today”

Here is economist Walter Block’s very interesting review of what sounds like a very interesting new book, Libertarianism Today by Jacob Huebert.

If It Feels Good, Do It

Last night, Michael Savage was ranting and raving about the recent court decision that struck down the Stolen Valor Act as unconstitutional. The case was about someone who falsely claimed to have been injured in Iraq and received a Purple Heart, even though the military has no record of his service. The government has to prove that someone was actually harmed by the individual’s false statements, and no one was. It really is a matter of free speech. However, one cannot falsely claim something as a means of acquiring a particular good or service from someone else — that’s fraud. But Savage is like many other people who have a blind love for the military and the State, and don’t like someone “dissing” the State.

But Savage also mentioned some other topics, particularly the idea of “sexual repression” being a good thing, and that’s why I’m taking this time out of my Saturday to write this. I actually agree with Savage on that. He was referring to the “liberal” philosophy of “If it feels good, do it,” and a destructive belief that not going with your urges is otherwise “repressive.” A few months back, I wrote, among other things:

Just look at the Left’s continued advocacy of drug use and promiscuous sex. In fact, I would argue that promoting drugs, a behavior of self-destruction, especially among today’s youth, is regressive and goes against evolving. And irresponsible, promiscuous sex is in the category of short-term, immediate gratification, as well as possibly dangerous, and reinforces one’s more immature and regressive impulses. One could argue, contrary to the Left’s assertion that “going with your urges” is a defeat of “repression,” etc., that such behaviors that go against self-control actually work towards repressing emotions and intellectually evolutionary activity. It is the self-control that exemplifies a more evolved human being.

America has been an impulsive, immediate gratification society for well over a century. Because of democracy and our State territorial monopoly and the State’s power of compulsion over others, those politicians and bureaucrats who are drawn to the State and its compulsory power use the State’s power of force to keep themselves in power, and further expand the power of the State, as a means to satisfy their own immediate gratification desires.

For example, President Woodrow Wilson was drooling to get the U.S. into World War I, which he knew would expand the power of the U.S. government. Wilson’s self-identity and purpose in life was merged into and enmeshed with the State.

FDR campaigned for president on a platform of reducing governmental intrusions into economic matters, and campaigned against Herbert Hoover’s interventions. After FDR was elected, however, he used the powers of the State to expand itself in every way imaginable into the lives of the American people, and greatly expanded the size and power of the federal government. FDR‘s self-identity was also merged into and enmeshed with the State. That’s how statist politicians are.

FDR deliberately lured the Japanese government into bombing Pearl Harbor, because he wanted to get the U.S. into World War II, which he knew would further expand the size and power of the U.S. government, especially all over Europe. And even though Harry Truman knew that the Japanese were already going to surrender, Truman nevertheless dropped those bombs on Japan anyway.

The excuse for wars in Korea and Vietnam for Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon was to prevent “the spread of communism,” but the real purpose for their wars in Korea and Vietnam was for further expansion of the U.S. government, at home and abroad, especially to spread its own powers across the lands of Asia, in addition to the spreading of U.S. governmental agencies and forces across Europe as FDR and Truman had done. In their spreading of their own governments across foreign lands, these immediate gratification oriented politicians became the communists they supposedly wanted to prevent from spreading communism. But their needs for immediate gratification of the ecstasy of State power was satisfied.

No need to go over more recent history of the two Bush presidents, Clinton and Obama. It’s self explanatory.

But for those who don’t see how that more recent history is self-explanatory, I will add this. Rather than see what the terrorists themselves were saying as far as their motivations for their terrorism — the many decades of U.S. government interferences, interventions and intrusions into Middle-Eastern territories and Middle-Eastern affairs — the statist, immediate gratification-oriented officials of the U.S. government instead directed even more interferences, interventions and intrusions in the Middle East, thus even further motivating the terrorists to commit even more terrorism against the U.S. and other Western nations.

And so it goes (as Linda Ellerbee would say).

ObamaCare and Israel’s Intolerance

Hitlerian-Stalinist ObamaCare

William Grigg has this article today at LewRockwell.com, Obamacare Begins — In Idaho. Grigg describes how a group of doctors exercise their First Amendment rights of “redress of grievances,” as they attempt to organize opposition to the new fascist ObamaCare regulations that they fear will put them out of business.

The Federal jihad against Idaho’s rebel orthopedic surgeons is a field test for the coming regulatory and legal assault on physicians under Obamacare. One eminently predictable – and most likely intentional – result of that onslaught will be health care rationing as the pool of health care providers is depleted.

The next logical step would be to criminalize a doctor’s decision to leave his profession because of price controls. After all, if a doctor can’t withdraw from a government-mandated health coverage program, why should the government permit him to withhold his services by choosing another profession?

Grigg also linked to another article written in 1999, Overdose of Socialism, by Dr. Miguel Faria of the Associaltion of American Physicians and Surgeons.

It just shows how zealous the agents of the State and their little helpers are to control private relationships and transactions among Americans, including those between patients and doctors, and among doctors or among other professionals. These private activities and relationships are none of the State’s business, period! And now the State is punishing people for protesting the State’s intrusions!

Another factor in the Obommunists’ intrusions into the lives of professionals is the Obommunists’ resentment towards those who possess great skills combined with their genuine concern and care for their fellow human beings, which the Obommunists do not have. The Obommunists are also driven by their resentment of those who achieve something in life and are rewarded for it, financially, in a way that is honest, and through the wholesomeness of voluntary associations and voluntary contracts and not through force and aggression. The State is aggression.

Israel’s Hitlerian ‘Jewish’ Pledge of Allegiance for Arabs

Put this in the “I’m not making this up” category: Israel is going to vote on whether to impose on Palestinians a loyalty oath to Israel as a Jewish State. According to Antiwar.com’s Jason Ditz,

…The measure would require Palestinians who are married to Israelis to swear loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish state” before being granted an identity card to live with their families. Other requirements already in place include providing “financial guarantees’ to the Israeli government.

The requirement is particularly onerous as Israel’s population is only about 75% Jewish, and it would require large numbers of non-Jews to swear their fealty to keeping the government treating them and their children as second-class residents. Officials say the move is necessary to “stop terrorism.”…

…Israel’s Parliament has already approved measures criminalizing the “denial” of Israel’s status as an eternal Jewish state, and threatening to jail any Arabs caught commemorating Nakba, a day of mourning for the expulsion of large numbers of Arabs on Israel’s independence day.

So much for democracy, pluralism and tolerance for diversity in Israel.

David Cameroon Wants Obama On Top, and Sean Hannity Still Fixated On Ronald Reagan

British Prime Minister David Cameroon has stated that the U.K. is in a ‘special relationship‘ with the U.S., and that Britain is the ‘junior partner.’ Do you think that David Cameroon and Barack Obama might trade places when they meet together next week? No, I’m just kidding. They’re meeting in the Oval Office, not the Lincoln Bedroom.

But what is this ‘special relationship,’ ‘partner’ business? I thought that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson et al. settled all that.

And every time I tune into Sean Hannity, it’s “Ronald Reagan” this and “Ronald Reagan” that. He is fixated on Reagan. Hannity seems to think that Reagan was a great president, and that “America needs another Ronald Reagan.” Well, Ronald Reagan had ‘greatness,’ and a lot of potential, at least according to his anti-government, pro-freedom rhetoric in 1980, but he was not that great a president. As Murray Rothbard noted in 1987,

In 1980, the last year of free-spending Jimmy Carter the federal government spent $591 billion. In 1986… the federal government spent $990 billion, an increase of 68%. Whatever this is, it is emphatically not reducing government expenditures….

…Jimmy Carter habitually ran deficits of $40-50 billion and, by the end, up to $74 billion; but by 1984, when Reagan had promised to achieve a balanced budget, the deficit had settled down comfortably to about $200 billion…

…the famous “tax cut” of 1981 did not cut taxes at all. It’s true that tax rates for higher-income brackets were cut; but for the average person, taxes rose, rather than declined. The reason is that, on the whole, the cut in income tax rates was more than offset by two forms of tax increase. One was “bracket creep,” a term for inflation quietly but effectively raising one into higher tax brackets, so that you pay more and proportionately higher taxes even though the tax rate schedule has officially remained the same. The second source of higher taxes was Social Security taxation, which kept increasing, and which helped taxes go up overall…

…Since the tax cut of 1981 that was not really a cut, furthermore, taxes have gone up every single year since, with the approval of the Reagan administration. But to save the president’s rhetorical sensibilities, they weren’t called tax increases. Instead, ingenious labels were attached to them; raising of “fees,” “plugging loopholes” (and surely everyone wants loopholes plugged), “tightening IRS enforcement,” and even revenue enhancements.” I am sure that all good Reaganomists slept soundly at night knowing that even though government revenue was being “enhanced,” the president had held the line against tax increases.

We don’t need another Ronald Reagan. Reagan added three new cabinet-level bureaucracies, rather than removing the two (Education and Energy) that he had promised to remove. Reagan signed each and every budget that Congress submitted, including the U.S. government’s very first trillion dollar budget. Were he a true, principled conservative, Reagan would have thrown each budget back at Congress and ordered them to eliminate the unnecessary, pork-filled programs that should be handled by the private sector. That’s what Robert Taft (1889-1953) and Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) would’ve done. We need another Robert Taft, and Sean Hannity needs to throw out his Ronald Reagan doll.

Obama the Socialist Fascist Communist

July 15, 2010

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Link to this article at LewRockwell.com

A recent poll showed that 55% of Americans believe that Barack Obama is a “socialist,” and many Americans believe that the nation is on the “road to socialism.”

The road to socialism? Where have these people been for the last 75 years? America has been a socialist – as well as fascist – nation for many decades, especially since FDR’s New Deal. Socialism primarily is public ownership of wealth, property and the means of production. So, of course Obama is a socialist. He has expressed that.

For some reason, many people mistakenly believe that Social Security, an important outcome of the New Deal, is a program in which some of Americans’ earnings are taken and put into some kind of “savings account,” to be available to them when they retire. In actuality, Social Security is a real-time redistribution of wealth scheme administered by the State, in which income is taken from producers and redistributed to non-producers, mainly retired persons and the elderly. LBJ’s Medicare program is an extension of this.

Further examples to show that Obama is a socialist include his vote as a U.S. Senator in favor of the Wall Street Bailout, often mistakenly seen as an example of “capitalism,” but which was actually an example of socialism: redistribution of wealth from the middle-class workers and producers to the already rich Wall Street bankers and financial executives.

Obama also clearly supports the ongoing military socialism through the wars he has been continuing and strengthening abroad: redistribution of wealth from American workers and producers to defense contractors, consultants and lobbyists, oil executives and Wall Street bankers, which really has been a main objective for American wars throughout the last century. As the late USMC Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler would say, “War is a Racket.”

And as the late economist Murray Rothbard put it, regarding World War I:

Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter the war may have been the single most fateful action of the 20th century, causing untold and unending misery and destruction. But Morgan profits were expanded and assured.

Things have not changed in 100 years.

Obama’s stated intention has been for redistribution of wealth as a means to help the poor, the underprivileged and so on. But his unstated intention is the same as all politicians of his ilk: to reach into as much private wealth as possible as a means towards expanding State power and control.

Many people also mistakenly believe that Obama’s medical takeover is “socialized medicine,” but we already have socialized medicine in Medicare as mentioned, and other similar programs. ObamaCare is actually a fascist program.

Fascism is another major aspect of FDR’s New Deal, which gave us an untold number of regulations, mandates and enmeshments between business and government. Fascism primarily is State control over privately owned property, wealth and industry. All government mandates and regulation of private economies are examples of fascism. ObamaCare consists of one mandate and regulation after another of private doctor-patient relationships, patient/doctor-insurance company relationships, and a laundry list of medical related industries.

In addition to ObamaCare fascism and Obama’s strengthening of his own executive dictatorial powers as president, some other examples of Obama’s fascism include his new financial regulations, and the environmental regulations that he used as a means of interfering with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s duty to protect the people of Louisiana from the oil spill that threatens their livelihoods.

While allowing doctors’ practices, HMOs, and insurance companies to continue to be privately owned, the federal government will nevertheless dictate to them how their contracts and associations will be run. However, given a variety of factors, this dictatorial control over the medical industry will most likely lead these still privately owned interests into bankruptcy, much like what the federal government has done to the financial and mortgage lending industries, and the federal government will most probably take upon ownership, as well as control, of much of these industries.

That is where Obama’s communism comes in. The “road to socialism”? No, already there. Fascism? Already there. But are we on the road to communism? You betchya!

Communism is, by and large, complete State ownership and control of all industry, wealth and property, and the means of production. So far, we have seen this from Obama in his leading the charge of confiscation of much of the automobile industry, as well as the federal government’s ownership of much of the mortgage and finance industries. And eventually, most likely, the entire medical industry.

Whether Obama is intentionally implementing a communist America by way of long-planned “stealth,” as some people have suggested he is doing, or whether he has a communist agenda by way of his long-time partnership with admitted terrorist bomber and “small-c communist” Bill Ayers, or whether Obama follows the teachings of “radical community organizer” (or “communizer”) Saul Alinsky, is actually not as important as Obama’s actual actions as president.

So far, we have noted that Barack Obama is:

• A Socialist. He supports public ownership of the means of production, redistribution of wealth from some segments of society to others.
• A Fascist. He supports State control over private industries and the means of production, and just about every aspect of citizens’ daily lives.
• A Communist. He supports State ownership as well as control of industry and the means of production.

But what isn’t Obama?

• A Capitalist.

Barack Obama is not a capitalist because he opposes voluntary exchange, private property rights, voluntary contracts, associations and markets free of State intrusions, and under the Rule of Law. The true capitalist, voluntary exchange-private property system that coexists with individual liberty is exactly what the American Founders believed in, for which they fought a Revolution to have and preserve for their posterity. This capitalist system is the only system that exists under the Rule of Law that protects all individuals in such a society from the theft and trespass of others including agents of the State.

In contrast, socialism, fascism and communism all institutionalize the violation of the Rule of Law as they institutionalize the violation of all individuals’ inherent rights to life, liberty and justly acquired property.

In those totalitarian systems, the individual is a sacrificial animal for the collective, and a serf for the State.

Alas, America has not actually experienced true capitalism, at least not since the U.S. Constitution was written and ratified, and especially not since the presidency of hardcore banking and monetary fascist and warmonger-business protectionist Abraham Lincoln.

The choice for America is whether to continue on the road to communism, or to turn back, dismantle all of it, and restore our freedom and prosperity.

‘Scott Brown 41′ Becomes ‘Scott Brown 60′

Sen. Scott Brown has just announced that he will vote for the Chris Dodd-Barney Frank financial reform bill that will further ruin America’s banking and finance industries and give the government further intrusions into Americans’ private financial matters. In addition to RINO Susan Collins, Brown will give the Democrats the votes needed for passage of the bill.

This makes it official: Turning Brown from being a “Brown 41″ into being a “Brown 60.” Well, I wrote about Brown in January, before Brown’s special election, but I will not say, “I told you so.”

Just one look at Brown’s record in the Massachusetts state legislature, from his support for RomneyCare to his support for the Northeastern states cap-n-trade regulations, and his opposition to state tax cuts and support for Massachusetts teachers unions, told us that he could be nothing but a Bob Dole-John McCain-Nelson Rockefeller Big Government Republican.

It was not pleasant hearing the talk radio hosts here and conservatives claim how “conservative” Brown was, and describing him as the “Tea Party” candidate. Nothing could be further from the truth. Brown is exactly like his mentor, Willard Romney — mealy-mouthed, opportunistic ignoramuses.

More on “Jewish State” Collectivism; Warmonger Collectivism

I wanted to bring up some points relating to the way support for Israel connects to support for U.S. government involvement in Middle-Eastern wars.

Some people seem to have a problem with my asserting that in the British Mandate of the late 19th through 20th Centuries and the formation of the current state of Israel in 1948, lands which were rightfully owned by Arabs were involuntarily taken away from them. Some people want to assert that, according to the Bible, the “original inhabitants” of the Land of Israel were the ancestors of modern Jews, and therefore Jews — all Jews, supposedly — have the moral claim on that land as a “Jewish homeland” promised to Jews by God.

Whether people want to acknowledge it or not, the majority of the Jews currently inhabiting Israel are descendants of Europe, particularly Poland, Russia and Germany, and not of the Middle East. Now, if one wants to claim that the Land of Israel is the promised land of all Jews regardless of where their ancestors originated, because God promised that via the Bible, that is up to you. There were Arabs and Arab families who were settled in the Land of Israel up to the late 19th-mid 20th Centuries, and were there for many generations. They were uprooted and displaced, some were murdered and some were exiled. Those are just facts. Some people want to say that those Arabs were “occupying” Jewish lands, and some want to say that Jews via the British Mandate and later the U.N. are doing the “occupying.”

Now, if you want to say that the Arabs had been occupying land that was inhabited originally by the Jewish ancestors, and Jews had a right to oust Arabs like that throughout the 20th Century, then you would have to be consistent and admit that, therefore, because lands in America were originally inhabited by the “natives” of these North American territories and were invaded and taken over by the Europeans who came here, then because the “natives” are the rightful original inhabitants then they have a right to have their land returned to them. (“But the ‘natives’ didn’t have a Bible that stated that God intended that the land they inhabited be not only their land but that of all their future descendants.” Oh well.)

I guess for me, it doesn’t matter what the Bible says, because that collection of documents is based on religious beliefs, and the validity of the Bible is based on faith.

But I must suggest that the idea of a “Jewish State” is a collectivist concept. An entire territory to be set aside primarily for people of a particular religion or religious culture? Hmmm. I happen to favor individual rights and property rights.

If you own a parcel of property, it’s yours. Your right is to that property, the right to occupy it, build on it, house a 17-car garage on it, sell it to whomever you want. That’s known as private property rights. However, let’s say that an entire territory is set aside for people of a particular religion or culture — in this case Israel, and Jews. And, for example, one Jewish resident owns a property within Israel. His God-given, inherent right of property includes the right to sell the property to whomever he wants, Jew, Arab, Christian, doesn’t matter. There are some parts of Israel (if not all, I don’t know) in which the Jewish property owner may not sell it to an Arab, because Arabs are not allowed to live in certain areas. Therefore, this means that the individual doesn’t really own that property. The State is the real “owner.” Or, the collective. It’s just like here in the U.S. In other words, if you really believe that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty,” and property (Jefferson erred in not writing “property”!), then you would have to acknowledge that anyone has a right to acquire property from a willing, mutually agreeing buyer and settle on the property, anywhere in the world.

Unless you are a collectivist, and have a collectivist mindset. That’s up to you.

There shouldn’t be a Jewish State, a Muslim or Islamic State, a Christian State, a gay State, a Black State, a White State, etc. Those who disagree with me are collectivists. Collectivism has been a damaging mindset throughout modern democracies. In fact, democracy itself is collectivist, therefore we can see what damage it has done, especially to America since the Founding.

It seems inherent in setting up a “Jewish State” to result in Jewish-promoted anti-Arab racism and persecution, and it has. For those who don’t believe this, they have their heads in the sand.

But I wonder if the conservative Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck crowd have guilt feelings about Jews and the wrongs that were done to them, in the same way that white leftists have guilt feelings about blacks and the wrongs that have been done to blacks. Otherwise, just what is it that makes the Christian Zionist conservatives seem like they are more pro-Israel than they are pro-America?

The neocons support war against Iran based on the same kind of State-issued lies and propaganda with which they supported the war against Iraq, which has destroyed that whole country just as the war against Afghanistan has been wrecking that country as well, and killed thousands of innocents as well as thousands of Americans.

Why don’t the bureaucrats and parasites of the U.S. government do things a little more openly and honestly? If you feel that the U.S. should own and control these Middle Eastern territories, then why don’t you just go conquer and seize all the lands by force in a conquest, and claim them as additional U.S. states? At least that would be more aboveboard, unlike what the U.S. government has been doing especially these last 20 years. And when openly taking over all those territories, why don’t they do the ethnic cleansing more openly and aboveboard as well, like the killing of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis they’ve been doing since the first U.S. government invasion in 1990-’91, and Afghans and Pakistanis (and soon the Iranians) etc., rather than doing it in the passive-aggressive, euphemized way they’ve been doing especially since 1990?

That’s what collectivists and statists, and vulturous bureaucrats do.

But I will continue to stand for morality and speak up in favor of moral values and human rights, because that’s the kind of guy I am. It’s immoral to uproot families from their justly acquired homes and it’s immoral to kill innocent human beings.

Including the unborn. I wrote a few months ago that “one of the unfortunate rationalizations of the killing of the innocent unborn has been their subordination, their being made to have lesser value as human beings based on their being at a less advanced stage of development,” and that “the U.S. government’s rationalizing, consciously or subconsciously, of its various intrusions into less developed societies abroad may implicitly suggest that those societies’ inhabitants have lesser value as human beings, and implies making such subordination and deaths of others acceptable.”

But when either the U.S. government or the Israeli government initiates war against Iran — they already have with sanctions — it will backfire and cause even more blowback against Israel and against the U.S. that the bureaucrats and parasites of government have already been causing. It is counter-productive as well as immoral to start wars.

Racism, Collectivism and the State

The open and shut voter intimidation case — of black members of the New Black Panther Party being accused of threatening white voters in Philadelphia during the 2008 presidential election — that was dropped by the Justice Department — is still in the news, but you wouldn’t know it. As Glenn Beck and others in the non-Establishment media have been saying, the mainstream news media won’t cover this story, and haven’t really relayed the story of a former DOJ official testifying before the Civil Rights Commission just this past week stating how several higher-ups in the DOJ refuse to work on cases in which blacks are accused of racially motivated incidents against whites. And the news media certainly won’t show you the video of that incident, and of one of the members of the NBPP declaring,

I hate white people — all of them. Every last iota of a cracker — I hate him. Because we’re still in this condition. We didn’t come out here to play today. There’s too much serious business going on in the black community to be out here sliding through South Street with white, dirty, cracker whore (expletive) on our arms.

You want freedom? You’re going to have to kill some crackers. You’re going to have to kill some of their babies. Let us get our act together.

Well, this post is probably going to bother some people.

Here is what I have to say about this. It isn’t just these anti-white “extremists” who seem to have a lot of anger regarding past discrimination and/or violence by white people against black people and other minorities. In recent years, most of violence going on in which black people are the victims is perpetrated by other black people, and much of the violence has its roots in the unconstitutional, immoral, counter-productive War on Drugs. No, the anger toward white people because of past discrimination and/or violence against black people (which is almost non-existent now) is not only expressed by some black people but also by some white people, and a major element of this anti-white ignorance and racism is part of a larger political ideology, that of collectivism and Marxism. If you aren’t aware that Barack Obama is heavily influenced by that kind of destructive, anti-freedom ideology, then you are getting your information from CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, The New York Times and Newsweek.

I really can’t believe what I have been hearing with all these things that I only thought was a “little bit of anti-white resentment” from old has-beens and nudnik also-rans like Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Shrapnel. But the attitude of resentment toward white people (and toward successful black people) by some black people seems to be pervasive in America now, and is being encouraged by the Obommunist left who do not like individualism, individual freedom, voluntaryism, and private property rights, and instead support dependence especially on the State (which translates to enslavement of the masses — of all colors, races, ethnicities, etc.), governmental intrusions against the individual, and have an anti-individual, collectivist mindset.

You would think that after not only the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which mistakenly included intrusions into private property rights and freedom of association rights), but after all the Affirmative Action programs, special favors and privileges, and special government programs to help black youths get a head start or get special education help and post-high school advancement programs, you would think that the activists would maybe drop their resentment and expressions of need for “reparations” and so on. But it seems to have gone the other way. The racism that we are seeing is by blacks against whites, and if you don’t believe it, then look at the Justice Department lawyers who refuse to work on civil rights cases in which the alleged victim is white and the alleged offender is black.

So far, some people on the left won’t like what I’ve written here, but some conservatives might. However, the next part of this probably won’t be the favorite of the conservatives.

I definitely see a connection between the anti-white racism and resentment by the Obommunist Marxists and many among the Israeli population, I am sorry to say, in which anti-Arab racism has grown in the last decade especially. The reason I see a connection here is because of the circumstances involving the founding of the current state of Israel. Those circumstances, that especially started in the late 19th Century up to at least the 1948 official founding of Israel, involved the taking of lands away from and displacement of many Arabs.

Those who are blindly pro-Israel and are ignorant of the history of the past century probably strongly disagree with that, but if one feels it is necessary to be blindly pro-Israel more than being pro-America, as the Israel-First-Above-The-U.S. folks happen to be, then that’s the way it is, I suppose. But as the aforementioned Glenn Beck is constantly saying, “Always tell the truth,” and I agree with that, and I believe that the truth is very important, and sweeping history under the rug or looking the other way and ignoring injustice is a bad thing.

The Jews of Israel, primarily of European origin and not Middle Eastern origin, for an entire century had been given a lot of special privileges and help from Western countries in their relocating out of the oppressive Pogroms of Poland and Russia, as well as from the tyranny of Stalin and Hitler. And the reason many could not relocate to the U.S. was because of government-imposed (not private citizen-imposed) restrictions and immigration quotas, that the U.S. government has no business imposing, and has no business restricting the right of oppressed Jews to come to America. There were many private American citizens and organization who wanted to help the Jews, but our stupid and anti-Semitic government bureaucrats wouldn’t let them.

But here is the moral question: Did the tyrannies and pogroms and American government immigration restrictions justify taking justly-owned land from Arabs in Israel (that some people want to refer to as Palestine), and even displacing the Arabs out of their homes where families had been for many generations?

That moral question aside — and I know that some people will find this offensive (and that will be because they won’t really think about my point here) — I do see a connection between the apparent resentment, anger and anti-white racism (and in some cases, outright blind hatred) by some blacks and members of this Marxist  “Black Nationalism” movement, and the anti-Arab racism that is institutionalized in Israel. If you don’t know that anti-Arab racism is institutionalized in Israel, that is because you probably rely solely on the mainstream media and/or conservative talk radio for your information.

Regarding the displacement of Arabs in Israel throughout the late 19th and first half of 20th Century, to me it is very closely related to the wretched idea of “eminent domain” (i.e. government theft of private property). Will Grigg has written a piece on eminent domain in Chicago just today. But I didn’t want to get into that here.

Regarding the anti-Arab racism in Israel, I am reminded of the article that Benjamin Netanyahu’s own nephew, Jonathan Ben-Artzi wrote for the Christian Science Monitor a few months ago, that I have already referred to here. Jonathan served 18 months in prison in Israel for being a military conscription conscientious objector, and is now apparently studying at Brown University for a graduate degree in Math. In his article, he writes,

…Some of the acts of segregation that I saw while growing up in Israel include towns for Jews only, immigration laws that allow Jews from around the world to immigrate but deny displaced indigenous Palestinians that same right, and national healthcare and school systems that receive significantly more funding in Jewish towns than in Arab towns….

….Some of the acts of segregation that I saw while growing up in Israel include towns for Jews only, immigration laws that allow Jews from around the world to immigrate but deny displaced indigenous Palestinians that same right, and national healthcare and school systems that receive significantly more funding in Jewish towns than in Arab towns.

…Another example is discrimination in water supply: Israel pumps drinking water from occupied territory (in violation of international law). Israelis use as much as four times more water than Palestinians, while Palestinians are not allowed to dig their own wells and must rely on Israeli supply.

Civil freedom is no better: In an effort to break the spirit of Palestinians, Israel conducts sporadic arrests and detentions with no judicial supervision. According to one prisoner support and human rights association, roughly 4 in 10 Palestinian males have spent some time in Israeli prisons.

Now, it is doubtful that this guy, this intelligent Math and Physics grad student, would be intending to embarrass his uncle, particularly when his uncle is the leader of his country. Jonathan Ben-Artzi probably knows what he’s talking about, having grown up in Israel. He is like me — he doesn’t like seeing people being treated as subhumans. Any people, black or white, Jew, Arab, atheist etc.

As I have written in the past, and several times now, the ones who are causing the injustices, whether it be by the U.S. Department of Justice or the Israeli government or Hamas, are usually agents of the State. It is the State and its agents that have been the perpetrators of persecution and violence against others, including the pogroms, the gulag and the Holocaust, as well as many, many instances of violence and intrusions initiated by agents of the U.S. government and local government against Americans. Much of the anti-black racism preceding the ’64 Civil Rights Act was from government-imposed laws and policies that restricted black people from government-run functions and facilities, for example.

It is governments that are doing the things that have been the most counter-productive and end up actually harming the very people such actions are intended to serve. And this is because governments — States — have the power of monopoly that restricts the right of others from participating in whatever it is that’s being monopolized, and have the power of compulsion over others. When you give anyone the power of restrictive monopoly and compulsion over his fellow people, such power will act as a drug. I know, I keep repeating this. Sorry about that.

The problem with the State parasites and monopolists is, such a position of power attracts present-oriented control freaks who do not have a clue when it comes to studying history or seeing things in the long term, despite some of their rhetoric (“strategic planning”) to the contrary.

Only the U.S. government and its CIA would deliberately radicalize Muslims in Afghanistan during the 1980s as a means of helping Afghans fight the invading Russians, despite seeing how the U.S. government and its CIA’s propping up a brutal dictator for 25 years in Iran during the 1960s and ’70s inflamed combined anti-Americanism and Islamic extremism.

And only the Israeli government would deliberately create or play a major role in the creation of Hamas to counter the PLO in the 1980s, only to find out later on that the Israeli government had created their own worst enemy.

Private security firms would not be so stupid.

A Need for Separation of the Press and State

Glenn Greenwald today has this piece on conservative columnist “Charles Krauthammer’s propaganda,” in which Krauthammer criticizes a refusal to acknowledge that it is “radical Islam” that motivates terrorist violence against the U.S., and refers to Krauthammer’s only partially quoting attempted terrorist bomber Faisal Shazhad as evidence. Greenwald notes Krauthammer’s omission of Shazhad’s full statement that Shazhad’s actions are in response to the U.S. government’s drone bombings killing innocent civilians in Pakistan, and in response to other actions against the Middle East by the U.S. government.

To me, for some reason the conservatives are the ones who “refuse to acknowledge” that what has been motivating the terrorists has been the intrusive actions of the U.S. government in the Middle East for 60 years and longer. I don’t understand why the conservatives in the media have been propagandizing rather than telling the whole story in these years since 9/11.

But it’s not just the conservatives. It’s the whole mainstream news media in general. In Glenn Greenwald’s other piece a few days ago on how “thoroughly devoted the American establishment media is to amplifying and serving (rather than checking) government officials,” Greenwald points to the Washington Post, the New York Times and NPR as examples — not exactly right-wing media outlets.

This reminds me of an article Hans-Hermann Hoppe wrote for the Mises Institute a few years ago, Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State. In that article, Hoppe notes the difference between “natural elites” and elites who are both sponsored by and promoting of the State. In the old days before our modern democracies took hold, the natural elites were the elites who achieved status through their own abilities and talents, characterized by “wisdom and bravery,” and who possessed “natural authority,” and were those of highly regarded personal conduct and farsightedness, and were the ones that others turned to to act as judges and peacemakers “often free of charge out of a sense of duty.” Hoppe noted how “the State” was actually formed by the monopolization of those functions of judge and peacemaker.

Hoppe notes that, in the transition from monarchies to democracies, the intellectuals were unable to recognize that the problems with justice under monarchies were the rulers’ monopoly of justice and law and instead of promoting the removal of those monopolies from the government, the intellectuals promoted keeping government’s monopoly but just replacing the monarch with “the people” in a democracy. But, as Hoppe notes, “To the intellectuals, this meant by them, as the people’s spokesmen.”

Hoppe goes on to explain in his article what happened to the “natural elites” as democracies evolved:

The fortunes of the great families have dissipated through confiscatory taxes, during life and at the time of death. These families’ tradition of economic independence, intellectual farsightedness, and moral and spiritual leadership have been lost and forgotten. Rich men exist today, but more frequently than not they owe their fortunes directly or indirectly to the state. Hence, they are often more dependent on the state’s continued favors than many people of far-lesser wealth. They are typically no longer the heads of long-established leading families, but “nouveaux riches.” Their conduct is not characterized by virtue, wisdom, dignity, or taste, but is a reflection of the same proletarian mass-culture of present-orientation, opportunism, and hedonism that the rich and famous now share with everyone else.

And Hoppe continues with a critique of “free-market intellectuals,” such as Milton Friedman, and also criticizes Hermione Gingrich and the 1994 so-called “Republican Revolution,” and Gingrich’s praise of the New Deal and Civil Rights Act legislation at that time:

What kind of a revolution is it where the revolutionaries have wholeheartedly accepted the statist premises and causes of the present disaster? Obviously, this can only be labeled a revolution in an intellectual environment that is statist to the core.

Hoppe also noted that “there are more propagandists of democratic rule around today than there were ever propagandists of monarchical rule in all of human history.”

The propagandists are on the left, the right, the center, everywhere on the political map. Propagandists are those who promote the State, who apologize for the State’s abuses and its tyranny against its own people and against those of other nations and territories. And just today we are hearing of a Gen. David Petraeus-Max Boot email “propagandize for me” sideshow goof.

The majority of today’s news media are not the truth-seekers and truth tellers that they were in days past. They are not in the same league as H.L. Mencken, Edward R. Murrow, and certainly not Thomas Paine, nor Thomas Jefferson. And, while journalistic praise was given to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein at the time of Watergate, just where are they now? And Daniel Ellsberg and the New York Times exposed the offenses of the U.S. government at the height of the Vietnam War, but now the New York Times acts as one the Bush/Obama Wars’ chief propagandist rags.

However, hope is not all lost. As Hans Hoppe notes:

Fortunately, the ideas of individual liberty, private property, freedom of contract and association, personal responsibility and liability, and government power as the primary enemy of liberty and property, will not die out as long as there is a human race, simply because they are true and the truth supports itself.