Socialism vs. Freedom

Some people don’t seem to understand when I assert that Republicans, like Willard Romney and Charlie Baker, are socialists, and that socialism is a bad thing. It is necessary to understand how socialism as a system violates individual rights and Liberty.

The Declaration of Independence recognizes the rights of the individual to one’s life and liberty. That means that each individual has an inherent right to own one’s life, one’s person, one’s labor, and the fruits of one’s labor and whatever wealth and property one honestly acquires by means of peaceful trade and voluntary contract, and the right to be free from any aggression imposed against one’s life, person or property. That means that no one may force any individual to exert any labor of one’s mind or person against one’s will for any reason, and therefore may not take any of the fruits of one’s labor.

Socialism, on the other hand, is public ownership of the means of production, of wealth and property, and a system of socialism (which we have had for many years, a century in fact) automatically denies those inherent rights of the individual, and is in fact a system in which the individual does NOT have a right to own one’s person, labor and fruits of one’s labor, but is sacrificed to serve the collective or community by force against one’s will, via the State which enforces the demands of the collective on the individual through coercion and threats.

The Economic Collapse Blog has this article on the “30 reasons why people should be getting really nervous about the state of the U.S. economy.” One of its points is how California is “a complete and total economic disaster zone,” and Detroit “is literally dying.” This is because of socialism, because of state governments whose bureaucrats refuse to let go of all their privileges and extra agencies and bureaus that house their family members and friends and campaign supporters, and public unions who want something for nothing and whose pay and benefits are extracted by the state’s redistributing wealth from the actual producers of it.

A local talk show was discussing the recent rants of one of the cable comedians, who was criticizing his favored Democrats, and saying that the only thing Democrats are useful for is “dragging” the rest of us up to the 21st Century, referring to “Tea Partiers” and conservatives who are apparently living in the Dark Ages of ignorance and so on. It is actually these people on the Left who are ignorant, of history and economics, and who are “dragging” the rest of us backward into the Dark Ages, with their socialist confiscations of private wealth and property and the use of the State to trespass into your neighbors’ property and into their private business.

First, we can look at ObamaCare and, here in Massachusetts, RomneyCare, the state and federal governments’ usurpation of our health care rights and freedom, which is not only “socialized medicine,” but “fascist medicine.” While socialism is public ownership of wealth and the means of production, fascism allows (!) private ownership of wealth and the means of production but the control over that is usurped and trespassed by the government. That’s where all government regulations of private property, business, associations and contracts are fascist policies.These collectivist intrusions into the individual’s private life, health matters and private businesses violate the individual’s inherent, inalienable rights to life and Liberty, the right to be free from the aggression and intrusion of others. Not only are these policies immoral because of those intrusions, but they are impractical and just don’t work, because they are contradictory to the basic laws of economics: a centralized bureaucrat can’t possibly know what is needed and where it is needed at whatever given time. As Perry Como once said, “It’s just impossible.”

Not only must states nullify the fascist ObamaCare mandates and regulations, but individuals — patients, doctors, insurance agents and so on –must nullify those dictates of the ignoramuses in Washington.

And the conservatives are just as socialist in their counter-productive policies as the Left, with socialist central planning immigration controls and restrictions. Those also violate the rights to life and Liberty of people who want to work and the employers who want to hire them. For example, if a Mexican sees a job opening in Arizona advertised and wants to work for that employer, the Mexican has every God-given right in the world to work for the employer in Arizona who is voluntarily willing to hire the Mexican, and the employer has a God-given right to hire anyone he damn well wants to, and NO ONE may interfere with that voluntary contract. Jacob Hornberger has this great article to explain that. That voluntary relationship between the employer and the worker is a peaceful one, because neither one is interfering with anyone else’s life or liberty, but the State-imposed restrictions against that association are of aggression and do violate those individuals’ rights.

Social Security is the biggest socialist, redistribution of wealth Ponzi scheme in the history of America, as FDR took advantage of the panic, vulnerability and helplessness of many Americans and thus usurped their retirement independence and prosperity. FDR’s crimes were new fascist mandates and State confiscations of the fruits of labor of Americans. Jacob Hornberger also has this great article on why people shouldn’t worry if Social Security ends, as long as the unconstitutional taxation that funds it ends as well. When the SS taxes are also eliminated, that enables people to afford to care for elderly family members. This is the truly moral way to deal with the Social Security fraud that FDR schemed up and has punished America with for the last 75 years.

Also by Jacob Hornberger: The Minimum Wage Protects the Rich.

The Federal Reserve and its money counterfeiting is another socialist scheme, a child of Herr Lincoln’s Legal Tender Laws and Banking cartel, in which the right of the people to trade with commodities of their choice is usurped, the right of people to engage in the banking trade is usurped, and, the economic repercussions of which we are now suffering. State control over anything, including money, doesn’t work, as well as its being immoral in its restrictions of Liberty. This is why we need to end the Fed and take back our economic freedom, and the sooner the better!

And the Wall Street Bailout was a socialist redistribution scheme of private wealth from the actual producers of society’s wealth and workers over to the already rich Wall Street executive parasites.

Now, on to Dick Cheney’s socialism: The National Security-Military Welfare Complex. It’s beyond me how to figure out these so-called “anti-communists” like Dick Cheney, who merely transferred his anti-communism to anti-Islam when he saw the Soviet Union collapsing and needed a new enemy to justify the always-growing Defense Socialism Leviathan and socialist redistribution of wealth schemes, redistributing  wealth from private workers, laborers and producers over to military contractors and defense bureaucrats who could never survive alone in the actual private sector. Those neocons with their government expansionism overseas are just as communist as Stalin and just as socialist as Hitler in the neocons’ territorial expansionism, with their hegemonic expansion of U.S. government apparatus all over the Middle-East, Asia and Europe.

At the time of the American Revolution, the biggest mistake the Founders made when creating America was the instituting of a federal government, whether for national defense or for any other reason. Centralized agencies and bureaucrats in Washington can’t possibly protect 300 million Americans over thousands of miles from harmful foreign elements. It’s literally impossible (as Perry Como would say). States should handle their own defense. All that does — giving centralized bureaucrats a monopoly over the defense of 300 million people in 50 states — is it gives those centralized bureaucrats power, and because power is addictive, they will do everything they can to expand that power. It’s just human nature. All they will do is deliberately provoke foreign elements as a means of starting conflicts to justify their monopoly. FDR deliberately provoked Japan with embargoes and then, even worse than that, with the knowledge ahead of time that the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor FDR did nothing to stop it! And George H.W. Bush  in 1990 gave Saddam Hussein the message that if Hussein invaded Kuwait Bush would look the other way, so when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Bush then not only didn’t look the other way but took U.S. forces and invaded Iraq, and began years of violence and then sanctions that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, many of them children, that Sec. of State Madeline Albright said was “worth it,” and all this, of course, further inflamed anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East. If the terrorists have been declaring that their terrorism has been because they don’t like what the U.S. government has been doing to people in the Middle East, I think that bureaucrats in Washington are either retarded, deaf, or are using their territorial expansionism and violence as a means of deliberate provocation to further justify their existence in Washington.

And Obama knows that, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal noted, for every innocent civilian you kill in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iraq and so on, you create 10 new terrorists, as the military and CIA continue those drone bombings against the innocents. That is why Obama is continuing those murders of innocent civilians. Obama is either retarded, or he wants more terrorists against America to justify the military industrial complex’s existence, those wonderful people in the private sector who donate more to Democrats than to Republicans.

The leftist cable comedian said that Democrats are only useful in “dragging” the rest of us into the 21st Century, even though he sides with the Left’s tribalist urges of collectivist sacrifice of the individual which is a Dark Ages way of life. The Dick Cheney tribalist military socialism Left is right there in the same category as socialist redistribution of wealth schemes. The Left drags the rest of society backward into the Dark Ages with socialism, reversing the Founders’ principles of private property and individual Liberty under the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law means No Theft, No Trespass, No Aggression, and that means that everyone must live under the Rule of Law, including agents of the State!

The mistake was a centralized federal government at the expense of the independence, sovereignty and freedom of the states. Centralism doesn’t work. Socialism is theft, and usually, immoral schemes turn out to be impractical and unworkable. I think that was God’s way of doing things.

Further Reading:

Socialism, by Ludwig von Mises

The Myth of National Defense, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

For a New Liberty, by Murray Rothbard

The War on Terror, by Paul Craig Roberts

Pearl Harbor Historiography: A Lesson in Academic Housecleaning, by Gary North

Liberalism Is the Enemy of the Poor, by Jacob Hornberger

Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises

Private Production of Defense, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

No More Military Socialism, by Murray Rothbard

The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

The Myth of Efficient Government Service, by Murray Rothbard

Iraqi Sanctions and American Intentions, by James Bovard

The Origins of Nullification, by Thomas DiLorenzo

Wall Street, Banks, and Foreign Policy, by Murray Rothbard

Military Economic Fascism, by Robert Higgs

100 Years of Medical Fascism, by Dale Steinreich

America’s Great Depression, by Murray Rothbard

Free Market, by Murray Rothbard

Private Law Society, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

What We Can Learn from Woodrow Wilson’s Great Blunder, by Jim Powell

The Case Against the Fed, by Murray Rothbard

Monetary Central Planning and the State, by Richard Ebeling

Origins of the Federal Reserve, by Murray Rothbard

Causes and Consequences of World War II, by Richard Ebeling

“Liberal” NY Times smears WikiLeaks’ Assange

Glenn Greenwald writes on today’s “Nixonian henchmen”: The New York Times and CNN as the “Establishment Media,” smearing WikiLeaker Julian Assange in the same way that President Nixon’s “Plumbers” smeared Daniel Ellsberg as punishment for his leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. While in 1971, officials of the government broke into a journalist’s psychiatrist’s office to get private information with which to do the smearing, now it is a journalist’s fellow journalists doing the smearing on behalf of protecting the government from public disclosure over its own criminality, deceit and war crimes associated with the Iraq War.

This is further confirmation that the jounalists of today are shills for the illicit State, and not the finders and tellers of news and truth that they’re supposed to be.

And this is CNN and the New York Times, mind you, so-called “liberal” media. Whatever happened to the anti-Iraq War crowd in the media from 2004 and those Dan Rather types? Do these “liberal” news media elites who hated Bush for Iraq now love Iraq for Obama?

Meanwhile, NYT and CNN aside, Fox News seems to be covering Assange with at least some balance and fairness, and at least some lack of smearing. (By the way, CNN ranks far behind in the cable wars, and the New York Times is just about ready to go out of business.)

If U.S. government officials from the president and generals on down to soldiers and contractors committed war crimes, let the truth be told. Don’t shoot the messenger — jail the criminals.

Zionism, Collectivism, and the State

October 22, 2010

(Link to article at Strike the Root)

In their political movement to establish a Jewish national homeland, Zionists asserted a collective claim on the land of Palestine, now called Israel, based on the Biblical scriptures and symbolism of those specific lands. Sadly, collectivist political movements have been a force against individual freedom, and the State has too often been empowered to enforce collectives’ desires at the expense of the individual. While it is not politically correct to criticize Zionism –and many who do are often mislabeled “anti-Semitic” – I believe the truth is important, and will proceed forthwith.

In the current attempts at peace negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinians, there may be an agreement reached and there may be peace, but it won’t last very long, because the Arabs are angry at how their ancestors have been treated over the last century, mostly by those with the power or influence of State apparatus. And Arabs are angry at how fellow Arabs and other non-Jews are currently treated in Israel. It is not good.

History and Migration

Here is a brief history. Following the French Revolution, 19^th Century Western European Jews assimilated from the ghettos into the enlightened West, but many Eastern European Jews seemed to remain in ghettos. The persecutions of Jews during the Russian and Polish pogroms led many Jews to leave those areas. Theodor Herzl’s activism was motivated by mass anti-Semitism in France and he believed that Europe was such that Jews needed a State of their own outside of Europe. There were also several movements in Eastern Europe whose priority was the preservation of Jewish identity, but the European Zionist movement had become fixated on Palestine, which, according to economist and historian Murray Rothbard, made no sense:

Zionism (was) a movement which began blended with Jewish Territorialism. But while the Territorialists simply wanted to preserve Jewish-Yiddish identity in a newly developed land of their own, Zionism began to insist on a Jewish land in Palestine alone. The fact that Palestine was not a virgin land, but already occupied by an Arab peasantry, meant nothing….Furthermore, the Zionists, far from hoping to preserve ghetto Yiddish culture, wished to bury it and to substitute a new culture and a new language based on an artificial secular expansion of ancient religious Hebrew….

Because of the Arabs resident in Palestine, Zionism had to become in practice an ideology of conquest.

Previously, during the mid-19^th Century Ottoman Empire, land in Palestine was inhabited and cultivated by mainly Palestinian peasants, who until this time were considered to be the rightful owners of the land, but did not have actual formal titles to their land. New Ottoman laws were made that required registration of land ownership, and the territory’s elites took advantage of the new laws and registered land titles in their names, which essentially removed the Palestinian peasants’ rights to their lands. These elites were then known as “absentee landlords,” who sold lands to Jewish settlers.

From the turn of the 20^th Century through World War I and the British Mandate’s questionable acquisitions of lands in Palestine, and following continuous Arab and Jewish rioting especially during the 1920s and ‘30s, further conflicts continued through the 1940s and led to the United Nations’ formal establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Besides European Jews, the new Israel had also become home to hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab nations, a result of Muslim persecution of those Arab nations’ Jews, which was mainly associated with the 1948 political events.

Instead of peaceful migration of Jews to Palestine that would have occurred based on freedom of association, exchange and property transfer, the compulsory apparatus of States were used, which amounted to takings, a form of “eminent domain.”

In the years previous to the formal establishment of the State of Israel, Jews (and others) were being persecuted and murdered, particularly in Hitler’s Nazi Germany. However, because of U.S. government immigration quotas, many Jews were prevented from entering what could have been for them a much more practical and safer place, the United States. This problem was an example of the socialistic central planning nature of State-imposed immigration controls, all a part of State-usurpation of property and freedom of association rights. On immigration controls, the Future of Freedom Foundation’s Jacob Hornberger noted,

As Mises, Hayek, and the (Austrian economists) showed long ago, central planning can never succeed because the planner can never possess the requisite knowledge to centrally plan a complex market, especially one as complex as an international labor market. All the planner inevitably does is produce chaos, distortions, and perversions into the market process….

In fact, as any citizen in the former Soviet Union will attest, it is socialist central planning that produces chaos. It is what Mises termed ‘planned chaos.’…

Had there not been the “planned chaos” of U.S. government immigration quotas, Jews could have left the various tyrannies of Europe and come freely to the U.S. to live and work. Private individuals and groups in the U.S. who wanted to save Jews from being persecuted in Europe could have exercised their inherent right of association and voluntary exchange to accept the prospective immigrating Jewish people onto these Americans’ own private property and into their homes and businesses. However, the State-imposed socialism of forced immigration controls prevented them from doing that.

A Jewish State in Palestine was established, with a compulsory government, an example of State intervention and central planning.

The founding of Israel and the years leading up to that included what was essentially the displacement of indigenous Palestinian inhabitants, and had culminated in what was an Arab majority at the turn of the 20^th Century having turned into a Jewish majority within that territory. Turning the population form Arab to Jewish majority was not through natural occurrences but through the artificial means of State coercion and manipulation.

As Murray Rothbard noted, the current State of Israel is for all intents and purposes a European nation that was placed in the Middle East, in a location that was chosen based not on practicality, but on Biblical symbolism. Israel’s culture is affected by 19^th and 20^th Century Western expansionism that grew as the various Western governments grew, particularly the American and British empires.

Israel’s Treatment of Palestinians

Many among the Arab population have been treated inhumanely since Israel’s 1948 founding. Anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian discrimination is institutionalized in laws and government policies. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own nephew, Jonathan Ben-Artzi, who has served an 18-month prison sentence as a military conscription conscientious objector, noted,

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…

Civil freedom is no better: In an effort to break the spirit of Palestinians, Israel conducts sporadic arrests and detentions with no judicial supervision…

…perhaps one of the greatest injustices takes place in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is collectively punishing more than 1.5 million Palestinians by sealing them off in the largest open-air prison on earth.

And as Palestinian journalist Laila El-Haddad has written recently, “Calling Gaza a prison camp is an understatement.” El-Haddad continues:

 …the siege is not a siege on foods; it is a siege on freedoms – freedom to move in and out of Gaza, freedom to fish more than three miles out at to sea, freedom to learn, to work, to farm, to build, to live, to prosper.

Gaza was never a place with a quantitative food shortage; it is a place where many people lack the means to buy food and other goods because of a closure policy…

Prices are on par with those of a developed country, except we are not in a developed country. We are a de-developed occupied territory.

Because of the Israeli State-imposed restrictions on freedom of movement, Palestinians are prevented from leaving Gaza to receive medical treatment or to buy cheaper necessities including food, and are prevented from visiting relatives in the West Bank or Turkey, and students are prevented from traveling between Gaza and the West Bank to study.

Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are prevented by force from leaving the area. It is no different from former East Berliners’ inability to get past the Berlin Wall or Russians attempting to escape from the Soviet Union. How would the world react to news that a Jewish population were forcibly locked inside their territory?

And because the 2008-09 war between the Israeli government and Gaza’s governing Hamas severely damaged water and sewage treatment facilities, Palestinians within the Gaza blockade are forced to use untreated water. That the Israeli government had given the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip some kind of “independence” in having their own government and elected governing agents means nothing when the Israelis continue to block the means of repairing damaged water facilities, and forbid the Gazans to dig their own wells.

Analysis

It seems to me that Western nation collectivists treating the inhabitants of less advanced societies as less than human has been a recurring aspect of the past century, particularly exemplified by the U.S. government’s intrusions into the Middle East since World War II.

During and after World War I, the British Empire made deals with both Middle Eastern nations and Zionists, which were mostly to the disadvantage of the Middle Eastern inhabitants. The British lived and prospered with Iranian oil to the huge disadvantage of Iranians. The U.S. government supported a dictatorship in Iran for 25 years. And we have seen the U.S. government’s senseless and counter-productive aggressions into Iraq and Afghanistan for many years.

In 1979, when asked about Israel, philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand remarked that she would side with Israel over the Arabs because Israel is “the advanced, technological, civilized country amidst a group of almost totally primitive savages, who have not changed for years, and who are racist, and who resent Israel because it’s bringing industry, intelligence, modern technology into their stagnation.”

One might respond by pointing out that the many intrusions, transgressions and exploitations by the already more developed nations against the Arabs (and Persians and others) of these less advanced societies had in fact been hindrances against their own modern development. In Israel specifically, the Palestinians’ natural process of modernization and prosperity had been severely disrupted by invasive forces since the turn of the 20^th Century.

In my own attempts to analyze this past century of State dominance and aggression, I have concluded that, as Western democracies had become more advanced and their governments more powerful, there seemed to coincide a collective attitude of dehumanizing the inhabitants of the less advanced societies. The U.S. government has for many years subordinated the inhabitants of especially Iraq and Afghanistan, to rationalize the deaths of their innocent civilians and destruction of their territories, or to prevent those societies from further advancement. An objective look at the last century of how Western governments destroyed or took over the territories of these less advanced societies, including Palestine, with a coinciding abandonment of basic Western principles of private property, freedom of association and individual human rights, exposes the more “primitive” nature of our supposedly more advanced and “civilized” societies.

But there is a difference between being an advanced society economically and technologically, such as America and other Western nations including Israel, and being a civilized society.

From the Enlightenment and the American Revolution and Founding came the recognition of the inherent rights to life and Liberty of the individual and the sanctity of private property and voluntary exchange. But the American Founders unwittingly began the downward trend of civilization by creating a democratic “public government,” mirrored by other Western governments, with territorial monopoly and the power to expropriate private wealth and property, and with whose monopolies restricted commerce and productivity. Thus, it is actually the apparatus of democratic compulsory government itself that has enabled the aggressive and uncivilized actions of Western governments toward the Middle East and Asia.

By giving some people the power of compulsion over others, such a compulsory government negated those inherent individual rights to life and Liberty recognized during the Enlightenment. This has been referred to by economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, particularly in his book Democracy: The God That Failed, as a main part of the “decivilization” process. And now, Americans have given their government powers the Founders never intended it to have, and we are now seeing how the U.S. government is behaving most uncivilly toward its own citizens as well as toward the people of foreign territories. But unlike America, which was founded on the principles of individualism, private property and voluntary exchange, Israel was founded through collectivism, internationalism and statism.

Conclusion

The world Zionist movement insisted on the territory of Palestine and only Palestine as the homeland for Jews, and would not consider any other territory in the world, based more on a collective sense of cultural and ethnic belonging tied to the Biblical scriptures than on any actual “belonging” tied to individual family ancestry, or based on providing Jews a “safe haven” to protect them from persecution. Such an identity to a specific territory, while based on Biblical scriptures, had become a political ideology, and throughout the history of modern democracies since the American Revolution, political ideologies have been a powerful motivation for State-imposed aggression and military violence.

It is necessary to forthrightly acknowledge that stubborn insistence on Palestine and only Palestine to be the “safe haven” for Jews worldwide, and the means of aggression and exploitation used to carry that out. It should not be difficult for those who believe it is important to tell the truth of history to see why for a century Palestine’s indigenous Arab population and their Arab and Islamic neighbors in the Middle East have reacted negatively, and that such negative consequences have given Jews an unsafe haven.

There needs to be a realization in today’s real world that Israel will always be threatened as long as territories were acquired by means of aggression, coercion, and deceit. Similarly, the U.S. will never get rid of terrorist threats originating from Middle-Eastern inhabitants as long as the U.S. government keeps its governmental and military apparatus occupying those foreign lands, which for decades is what has provoked those territories’ inhabitants in the first place.

And it seems that a pervasive negative attitude toward Palestinians in Israel now includes the insistence by the government that Arabs must swear to an oath of loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish State.” Regardless of what one wants to believe as to the origins of the current state of Israel, such a loyalty oath could actually be considered an effrontery to Palestinians.

But what seems to be offensive to some Israel loyalists in recent years, and can’t be tolerated, is one’s merely pointing out the injustices and violations of basic human rights in Israel. Even passive, non-violent supporters of Palestinians’ human rights are treated as criminals, as Jewish Boat to Gaza passenger Lillian Rosengarten, 75, had recounted when her boat was seized by Israeli authorities in September,

For me the deportation process was humiliating. Jew against Jew is totally against the dreams of so long ago, what we imagined how our beloved Israel would evolve. That dream was for me a safe haven, a country of compassion. Tolerance for all, and a completely open society. I can imagine that Israel would have become a beacon of light for the world to follow. In this dream there would be tolerance for political difference. Now sadly, Jews have become divided against one another and it is no longer a safe haven. We from the Jewish boat were treated as traitors and people to get rid of. We were not “good Jews,” but “bad Jews to deport without being allowed to enter Israel again.” Only in Fascist regimes are people forced to think the same. I experienced humiliation when arrested. I was not physically mistreated but suffered emotionally. I suffered when the immigration person asked me if I was Jewish after I told him I was a refugee from the Nazis, the last generation to be able to tell the heinous story. He wanted me to prove that I was Jewish. How was I to do that and yes, how deeply humiliating. When I witness the Israel of today, I feel enormous pain. I was deported because of my human rights beliefs and nonviolent actions. In detention I no longer felt safe or cared about. I don’t even think it mattered that I am Jewish. Now I will not be allowed to return to Israel as the cycle of hate and fear goes on and on. Those of us who dreamed of a different kind of Israel can only weep.

Now, the divine mysticism of Zionism and statism has grown to such an extent that the Israeli government’s aggressions have been increasingly brazen, as well as its psychology increasingly insecure to the point of irrationality. Israel won’t admit to having nuclear weapons, yet insists that Iran disclose its nuclear program, and with Israel’s fear of Iran and Iran’s fear of Israel, despite Israel’s aggressions and ill treatment of Palestinians, Israel appears to want to avoid responsibility for its actions.

Meanwhile, for many decades now, some of the more frenzied Israel supporters in America have been using Israel as a center for geopolitical strategy for U.S. government hegemony in the oil-abundant Middle East at the expense of Middle-eastern security, American security, Jews’ security, American sovereignty, and, most of all, freedom and prosperity. Many of America’s staunch supporters of Israel are mystical, despite Israel’s past and current transgressions against the U.S., and continue to push for war on Iran, which can only backfire on both Israel and the U.S.

These 21^st Century circumstances are tragedies wrought by collectivist ideologies.

More on the Joe Miller Private Guards “Arresting” Reporter for “Trespassing” on PUBLIC Property:

On Monday I had a post about Alaska Tea Party (but not so much anymore) Republican senatorial candidate Joe Miller, and his private bodyguards who arrested a reporter for “trespassing” on public property. Glenn Greenwald has further details today about that fiasco:

This story became much worse yesterday when video was released that was taken by a reporter from the Anchorage Daily News showing that these guards thuggishly threatened at least two other reporters, from ADN, with physical detention as they tried to find out what happened, demanded that they leave or else “be handcuffed,” and physically blocked them from filming the incident all while threatening to physically remove them from the event…

ADN now reports that not only was Joe Miller’s excuse for why he had hired private guards a lie, but two of the guards who handcuffed the journalist and threatened others are active-duty soldiers in the U.S. military…

If it’s not completely intolerable to have active-duty soldiers handcuffing American journalists on U.S. soil while acting as private “guards” for Senate candidates, what would be?  This is the sort of thing that the U.S. State Department would readily condemn if it happened in Egypt or Iran or Venezuela or Cuba:  active-duty soldiers detaining journalists while they’re paid by politician candidates?  The fact that Joe Miller has been defending the conduct of his private guards in handcuffing a journalist and threatening others with handcuffs should be disqualifying by itself.  That reveals a deeply disturbed authoritarian mind.  But the fact that these guards are active-duty U.S. soldiers makes this entire incident far more disturbing.  Shouldn’t American journalists of every stripe be vehemently protesting this incident?…

America is apparently at a crossroads. We have been seeing, thanks to the Bush Administration and now Obama, how the tendency toward a religious reverence of the State has effected in foreign policies that deliberately intrude and trespass foreign lands so as to provoke the inhabitants of those lands, as an excuse for further expansion of an already expanded, overly bloated and powerful Leviathan State. The idolatry of the State breeds the authoritarianism we have been seeing, and I think this incident with Alaskan Airhead Joe Miller and his goons is just the tip of the iceberg.(Thanks, Sarah Palin.)

I’m glad that Justin Raimondo had this recent article on the truth about various military actions overseas. The people who idolize our military and police live in a delusional fantasy world. Or, they’re just blind authoritarians. And why is it that the conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh have such a problem with the left-Obama S.E.I.U. “thugs” but don’t have a problem with police or military people abusing others? Is it because police and military are “officials” and have legal authority? Well, guess what, conservatives: the “Original Intent” of the Founders of which you so fondly speak includes “questioning authority,” especially authorities of the State and their enforcers. And that includes the freedom of the Press to question. And guess who will be enforcing all the new laws, regulations and policies of the Obama Left including the new dictatorial health care law?

And also, this incident with the Miller goons obstructing an American’s right of Freedom of Press reminds me of the BP-police state during the gulf oil spill just this year. The BP-Government Complex down there made it a police state in which the Press were literally forbidden from finding out what was going on. As Glenn Greenwald wrote at the time,

The very idea that government officials are acting as agents of BP (of all companies) in what clearly seem to be unconstitutional acts to intimidate and impede the media is infuriating.  Obviously, the U.S. Government and BP share the same interest — preventing the public from knowing the magnitude of the spill and the inadequacy of the clean-up efforts — but this creepy police state behavior is intolerable.  In this latest case, the journalists were not even focused on the spill itself, but on BP’s other potentially reckless behavior with other refineries, and yet there are DHS agents and local police officials acting as BP’s personal muscle to detain, interrogate, and threaten a photographer…

This trend is very disgusting, and certainly un-American!

God help us if there ever is to be that Martial Law that some have predicted that would occur with the possibility of an impending economic collapse, civil unrest, looting and chaos. Thanks, Herr Lincoln. Thanks, Wilson, FDR, Bush 1 and Bush 2. But most of all, thanks much to the Anti-Federalists who caved and kowtowed and agreed to sign on to the biggest rape of freedom in American history: The Constitution.

No Slavery and Dictatorships In America, Please

It’s bad enough there is the involuntary servitude of the income tax and other means of State-imposed force against the will of innocent individuals, but this morning on 96.9 “Boston Talks,” Jim Braude and Margery Eagan were discussing, apparently, K.T. McFarland’s FoxNews op-ed suggesting that the State force people to vote — “Or Pay the Price.” Jawhol, mein Diktator! (Jeepers!) I’m glad K.T. is no longer working with the DOD (if you call that “working”). And there was this article just today on “jury duty” at LewRockwell.com.

Jim and Margery were really discussing this idea of forcing people to vote in elections — how Soviet Union! What are you going to do, Jim and Margery, and K.T., if someone doesn’t show up on election day, go to their homes and apprehend them and drag them off? And what is the point in voting when there is no candidate that actually wants to undo all the statists’ miserable violations and encroachments on our freedom and property? There is NOT ONE candidate out there who believes in the same principles of freedom that the American Founders believed in, the sanctity of private property and freedom of association, NOT ONE! So, you want to FORCE people to go off to have to pull the lever for one of two or three statists?Thanks, but no thanks!

Jim and Margery were talking about some kind of “obligation” to society. “OBLIGATION!” You see, thanks to the last 150 years of government-run schools, we now have an entire population who thinks that each individual citizen is “Obligated” to “Serve” the State, and “Owes” something to the rest of society and to the State. Sorry. In a free society such as what ours was supposed to be, no one is “obligated” to anyone else or anything, unless one willingly and voluntarily enters a specific contract with others, with specific terms and “obligations,” etc. In a free society which ours was supposed to be but isn’t and never was (thanks to the Constitution which empowers the State and enslaves the individual), no one may force anyone else to do anything against one’s will.

There are those who believe we have a “duty” to NOT serve, and in fact to “civil disobedience!” (You betchya!)

No one has a “duty” to others or to “serve” others — only in a dictatorship, whether it be a single imperialist-monarchist like Obama or a collective dictatorship like in Jim Braude’s home town of the People’s Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in which “majority rules” (i.e. Mob Rule), are people forced to vote. That’s not “democracy,” K.T., that’s slavery.

The Truth About Terrorism, and the U.S. Government

October 20, 2010

© 2010 LewRockwell.com (Link to article)

My writing this was inspired by Paul Craig Roberts’s great article The War on Terror, in which he tells the truth about what’s really going on, and I wanted to expand more on this terrorism subject.

There are many reasons why the U.S. government needs to place itself on the Terrorist Watch List, but since there isn’t enough space to include all that here, I’ll just touch on the most important points.

To begin, millions of Americans report their income and employment status to the U.S. government out of fear, and for no other reason. It certainly isn’t out of the goodness of their hearts (except for the most naïve amongst us). Most Americans who are required to pay a certain percentage of their income to the feds aren’t really paying – it is being taken from them under the threat of various intrusions, such as garnishing their wages or putting a lien on their homes (like a lien on one’s home really matters anymore now in the time of ForeclosureGate). For many Americans, the taking is automatic, directly from their paychecks. So employers as well as workers must submit to the threat of brute force if they don’t comply with the demand for information on employment status and payment. Millions of Americans are terrorized by the federal government, not only for what might happen to them if they don’t comply with the demands, but if a mistake is made. There have been horror stories told by many Americans of what happened to them because a mistake was made – including mistakes made by the government.

And many owners of businesses, especially of small businesses, are terrified that they will be persecuted by some government bureaucrat for not following one of the many thousands of regulations that businesses must obey, regulations that exist for no good reason – only to protect larger businesses’ profits. (Thanks, Herr Lincoln.) And especially because of the unstable economic environment now, millions of businesses are afraid to take risks, make any new investments, or hire new workers because they don’t know what the situation will be for them even months from now, let alone years. And Congress won’t even let people know whether or not the Bush tax cuts will be extended or allowed to expire after January 1^st, 2011. No one knows what to do. (I’m sure businesses and workers all across America would prosper, if we could only abolish Congress.)

Regarding the War on Terrorism and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), I am now terrified of flying. This is not because a terrorist might hijack the plane, but because of the intrusiveness of what people now have to endure when going through security checkpoints: the pornographic X-rays, the frisking and groping, the searching of my clothing and belongings, the harsh interrogations. Out of their blind faith in the State, the American sheeple have assumed that there should be no alternative to the State’s monopoly in territorial protection, and have passively accepted the constantly growing intrusions by the State against the people and their Liberty. As an experienced pilot has suggested, the airlines should be responsible for their security, not the government. And arm the pilots as well. And arm the passengers as well. In the meantime, I won’t fly.

And then there are the anti-civil liberties, anti-Due Process presidential powers that the Bush Administration had usurped, and that the Obama Administration seems to enjoy having, of apprehending and detaining individuals without actual suspicion, of extraordinary rendition, torture, even presidentially-directed assassinations of individuals deemed by the president and his agents to be “terrorists” without due process or trial. And, given that the whole world, including U.S. territory, is considered to be part of the Global Battlefield in the Global War on Terror, and given that Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano has issued warnings against “right-wing extremists,” essentially those who disagree with Obama’s policies, and given that I happen to be one who disagrees with just about all of Obama’s policies from his war crimes to his communist social policies, then obviously no place in America is safe, and it really is terrifying now.

And regarding the federal government’s intrusions into Americans’ private health matters, I know someone who has said that, because of the new ObamaCare medical intrusions, he will not have his follow-up medical procedures as long as ObamaCare is in place. He just doesn’t want his medical details being scrutinized by government officials. And I also have some health situations for which I rely very much on OTC vitamins and supplements. But, because the Obama FDA wants to crack down on OTC supplement makers, that really is a direct threat to me. I am literally terrified that these bureaucratic misfits in Washington want to take away my only real means of keeping me in (somewhat) good health, and all on behalf of Big Pharma. It’s disgusting how so many people in various federal agencies are on the boards of large pharmaceutical industries, and the cahoots between Big Pharma and Big Government, with lobbyists and campaign donations to legislators to vote Big Pharma’s way, is downright scary.

Also, because the U.S. government has done nothing but provoke Muslims in Middle Eastern countries to act against Americans, I am terrified of another major terrorist attack in the U.S. It would be solely because of what the U.S. government has been doing, especially since 1990. The U.S. government’s actions of terrorism against innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other parts of the Middle East, and its intrusions into just about every aspect of daily life, have been making me less safe, as well as all other Americans.

Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Bush’s father George H.W. Bush actually should all be tried for war crimes and terrorism, especially against Muslims in the Middle East. The IRS, the FDA, the TSA, and other extensions of the federal Leviathan also need to be held accountable for their actions. If we can’t have that, then at the very least, the U.S. government must place itself on the Terror Watch List, as it is the one organization that has been most responsible for terrorizing the most people, ever.

Neanderthal Senate Candidate

Apparently Alaska Tea Party Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Joe Miller doesn’t understand the First Amendment. It seems that, at a “Town Hall” event in a public middle school, a reporter tried to ask him some questions, and Miller’s private security goons pushed the reporter who then pushed back, followed by the reporter’s being arrested — by the private security guards! The zealous protectors of the would-be senator accused the reporter of “trespassing” on public property!

Miller has already made it clear that he won’t answer any more questions regarding his background, apparently not understanding that, if he wants to be a U.S. senator and have that much power and control over our lives as Americans, then we have every right in the world to ask questions, either directly or through the Press, about who he is and what his background is. If he doesn’t like that, then he needs to rethink his career path. He also needs to study First Amendment issues and the relationship between the Press and government officials. If he has security guards, that’s fine. But if he is a candidate for a powerful office such as U.S. senator, he needs to make his guards know that shoving a reporter isn’t the way to handle that. Who does he think he is, Martha Coakley?

Candidates for Attorney General Debate – But Could a State Nullify Federal Martial Law?

In Connecticut, the candidates for state attorney general had a debate this week, and part of the debate included a discussion of nullification, the act of an individual state “nullifying” a federal law or policy that the state has decided either violates the U.S. Constitution, the state’s constitution or otherwise infringes on the rights of the state’s citizens in some way. Thomas Jefferson and most of the Founders, especially the Anti-Federalists agreed with this inherent right of states to disregard bad federal laws.

The two candidates who debated were Republican Martha Dean and Democrat George Jepsen. (Say, wasn’t he a cartoon character in the 1960s, who worked at Spacely’s Space Sprockets? Well, he certainly sounds like someone who’s in outer space, that’s for sure.)

It is unbelievable how ignorant some people are. When the discussion of nullification came up, Jepsen, formerly of Spacely’s Space Sprockets, blurted that nullification “has no place in our discussion today … The U.S. Supreme Court is the final arbitrator with what is constitutional and not constitutional. It’s not for the states to decide.” Yikes! “It’s not for the states to decide?” Apparently, the space shot doesn’t understand that the states actually created the federal government — the states really are supposed to be the boss, the federal government their employee, so to speak.

Thomas Woods, author of the recently released book, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, commented on this debate on his blog, and gave an analogy:

If you and I give a third person (call him Person C) a limited power of attorney to help govern our affairs, and that person oversteps the boundaries outlined in the contract we signed, who gets to decide if Person C is in violation of the contract? Is it Person C himself?  Or is it you and I, the people who wrote and signed the limited power of attorney in the first place?  Likewise, the states, as the principals to the constitutional compact, have a far better logical claim to be the judges of constitutionality than their agent, the federal government.

Now, one of my main concerns, however, regarding the current state of things here in the USA, is that, if there is to be an economic crisis of the magnitude that some doom-and-gloomers are predicting, such as Peter Schiff and Gerald Celente, both of whom have made very accurate predictions in the past, then there’s a good possibility that the Obama Administration will take advantage of such a crisis and impose Martial Law. And I want to know if Martha Dean believes that, if the federal government imposes Martial Law, the states would have a right to nullify such a Martial Law. For me the answer should be obvious: Of course the states have a right to nullify any federally-imposed Martial Law and, if there is civil unrest and looting, and so on, then a state has the God-given, inherent right to nullify federal gun laws and allow citizens to exercise one’s right of self-defense in such a situation, and not rely on “federal marshals” or worse, the military, to protect them.

In the case of economic collapse and civil unrest, violence and looting, it really is the right and responsibility of the people to protect themselves, their families, their property and their businesses, not the federal government, or even the state governments.

If such an economic collapse occurs, followed by civil unrest, violence and looting, we can blame Alan Greenspan, George W. Bush, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd et al. But if the federal government imposes Martial Law, it will be solely because the Obama Administration is taking advantage of the crisis and panic, only for the sake of usurping further power grabs, and for no other reason. And that’s the truth, now. That’s the kind of people we’re dealing with in Washington, whether it be Obama or Bush or Cheney. Martial Law = military dictatorship.

And also, in such a case of Martial Law, there would be “curfews.” Jeepers! Can you believe the mentality of people who would support these kinds of things? In NO circumstances should any innocent individual be locked in one’s home or in any place! Freedom of movement is a God-given right, and in these instances where these kinds of threats are expressed by the federal government, the states should tell the federal government to go to Hell. Remember, “More Guns, Less Crime.” Don’t allow the centralized Leviathan to become a military dictatorship. Not in America! There’s NO excuse!

What Causes Terrorism? Government Bureaucrats

Glenn Greenwald writes in They hate us for our occupations:

In 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld commissioned a task force to study what causes Terrorism, and it concluded that “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies”:  specifically, “American direct intervention in the Muslim world” through our “one sided support in favor of Israel”; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, “the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan” (the full report is here).  Now, a new, comprehensive study from Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, substantiates what is (a) already bleedingly obvious and (b) known to the U.S. Government for many years:  namely, that the prime cause of suicide bombings is not Hatred of Our Freedoms or Inherent Violence in Islamic Culture or a Desire for Worldwide Sharia Rule by Caliphate, but rather.  . . . foreign military occupations….

Imagine that.  Isn’t Muslim culture just so bizarre, primitive, and inscrutable?  As strange as it is, they actually seem to dislike it when foreign militaries bomb, invade and occupy their countries, and Western powers interfere in their internal affairs by overthrowing and covertly manipulating their governments, imposing sanctions that kill hundreds of thousands of Muslim children, and arming their enemies.  Therefore (of course), the solution to Terrorism is to interfere more in their countries by continuing to occupy, bomb, invade, assassinate, lawlessly imprison and control them, because that’s the only way we can Stay Safe.  There are people over there who are angry at us for what we’re doing in their world, so we need to do much more of it to eradicate the anger.  That’s the core logic of the War on Terror….

The only caveat I’d add to Professor Ahmed’s remarks is that a desire to exact vengeance for foreign killings on your soil is hardly a unique attribute of Pashtun culture.  It’s fairly universal.  See, for instance, the furious American response to the one-day attack on 9/11 — still going strong even after 9 years.  As Professor Pape documents:  ”when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns . . . and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100% of the terrorist campaign.”

I’ve been repeating that quite a lot here. The terrorists themselves have made it perfectly clear what motivates their terrorism and violence, and, while there have been religious aspects involved in their rage, the primary motivation has been political: They don’t like foreign governments occupying their lands. The U.S. government has been colluding and scheming with other governments in the expansion of U.S. government apparatus especially military bases on their foreign territories for many, many decades, but, aside from the governments of those foreign countries, the actual inhabitants of those countries, particularly the Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia, have perceived that as being intrusions and acts of trespassing, and they are correct.

I’ve made note of this before here, but I’ll repeat this comparison. Those people here in the U.S. who see nothing wrong with our government expanding itself on foreign lands probably would react negatively if Barack Obama were to make an agreement with the Chinese government to put Chinese military bases in Texas or Montana. It’s just a guess. But for some reason, the more self-centered among us seem to think it’s different if its our government trespassing on other people’s lands.

But I wanted to address the unwillingness or inability of government bureaucrats to recognize the real causes and effects going on in these international conflicts. For example, the CIA had overthrown the Prime Minister of Iran in 1953 and replaced him with the Shah and supported the Shah and his dictatorial, murderous regime for 25  years, leading up to the 1979 taking of Americans hostage by enraged Iranians in Iran. Shouldn’t Americans have learned from that long episode? There was a moral lesson there: Don’t intrude in the affairs of other peoples, don’t trespass on their lands, don’t support dictatorial State regimes who oppress their people.

But nooooo, in 1990, President George H.W. Bush gets an administration flunky to go over to Iraq and give Saddam Hussein the message that if he invaded Kuwait that the U.S. government would look the other way. Then, when Saddam invaded Kuwait, Bush then invades Iraq. The Bush crowd wanted Iraq all along for the sake of U.S. government expansion, more power, and oil. (In fact, Ronald Reagan wanted to reduce the size and power of the U.S. government — in philosophy he was not an expansionist, but the Reagan Administration during the 1980s was infected with Bush cronies throughout the Administration.) And then the Bush administration went on to destroy Iraq (the first time), wreck water and sewage treatment facilities (much in the same way that the Israeli government has done in the Gaza Strip, and refuses to fix it) and through sanctions had deliberately withheld the means to repair that infrastructure, leading to increased cancer and child mortality rates and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, many of them children, by 2001.

But why is it that, despite our knowing full well that terrorists –from the 1993 WTC bomber to Osama Bin Laden — had been reacting to the U.S. government’s invasions, intrusions, sanctions, and support for murderous regimes, the government bureaucrats’ answer to terrorist attacks against America is to do more of the same thing that’s causing the problem?

A similar example is the American medical system — it’s in shambles. The reason it is so dysfunctional and costly is not because “the free market failed,” but because of all the government interventions, interferences, intrusions, regulations, bureaucracy, taxes and fees that have been distorting the medical system. There hasn’t been a “free market” in the medical system in decades, a century, in fact. But the government bureaucrats’ answer to this crisis has been to do more of the same! ObamaCare! It’s like government bureaucrats and statists never learn.

The same situation is in foreign policy. The causes of problems and crises are government interventions, interferences, and intrusions in both domestic and foreign affairs.

When you have problems and crises in private business, what do the leaders of private businesses do (or usually do, and when they aren’t enmeshed with government agencies)? Do they go into their neighbors’ homes and other people’s businesses and interfere, intervene, and intrude? No, of course not. They’d get arrested for trespassing, theft or being a public nuisance. But the government bureaucrat’s answer to problems and crises has been and probably always will be to do more of the same: more intrusions, more interventions and more interferences. That is because that’s the nature of compulsory government: Government bureaucrats have the power of compulsion that “regular” people don’t have, the power of legally-protected monopoly that others don’t have, and, most important, the power to be above the law, whether those bureaucrats are in “national defense” like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld or in domestic affairs like Kathleen Sebelius or Arne Duncan.

That is the difference between government bureaucrats and private citizens or businessmen. Businessmen wouldn’t go over to Iran and overthrow democratically elected leaders and replace them with dictators, and businessmen wouldn’t go invade a country that didn’t attack them — only professional, career government bureaucrats and politicians do that.

My fear is that the upcoming electoral “cleansing” in Washington, that will supposedly sweep in Republicans and oust Democrats, will also be perceived as a “mandate” for continued Republican-initiated policies: more U.S. government intrusions in the Middle East, and that will be because government bureaucrats never, ever learn.

To Hell With the IMF and the Political Pigs – Bring on Martha Dean

Economic matters in the United States continue to worsen, and international leaders have failed to make agreements at the latest IMF gathering (like “I agree that we should cease centralizing monetary production, cartelizing banking and internationalizing Americans’ private economic matters, etc.” for example). And Federal Reserve chairman Ben Burnbanker is now hinting or even admitting that America’s financial situation is up you-know-what’s creek. But the politicians here in America, most of whom are complete economic ignoramuses and live in the way-out, drug-influenced galaxies of Neverland fantasizing, continue their election campaigns with rhetoric and mud-slinging that just continues to remind me that these elections are really an awful waste of time and money. Hardly anyone speaks of principles and moral values, but we do hear a lot of superficial claptrap and emotional whining on both sides of the aisle, which, when you get right down to it, is really the same side of the aisle: The Statists. They are on their one big side and the very small minority of Liberty-promoters are on the other. We rarely hear from the ones promoting Liberty, only the ones, Republican and Democrat, who love the State.

For example, in the People’s Republic of California, Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitless has been accused of making some backroom deals with unions in order to win their endorsement. Should that be too much of a surprise, given that Ms. Witless is spending tens of millions of dollars of her own wealth for this campaign? She obviously has no principles — otherwise she would spend tens of millions on worthy causes. And it is no surprise to me that a statist politician such as she would cut a deal with unions, particularly public unions, promising them that their pensions won’t be cut.

And then there’s the issue with her “illegal” housekeeper. If she didn’t know that the housekeeper was an “illegal” immigrant (which is an invalid concept, given that all human beings have a right of freedom of movement, freedom of association and freedom of contract, and it’s immoral for the State to restrict that), then Witless must be a retard. Or, if she fired the housekeeper when “discovering” her “illegal” status, would Witless really have fired the housekeeper if Witless were not running for governor? (Nope. She obviously fired the housekeeper for the sake of political ambitions, and, like 99% of our politicians these days, Witless has no principles.)

I saw some brief clips of candidates in Connecticut running for U.S. Senate to replace Sen. Chris “Countrywide” Dodd, Republican Linda McMahon and Democrat Richard “I went to Vietnam/I didn’t go to Vietnam” Blumenthal. The two of them are thoroughly ghastly creatures, right out of the Black Lagoon. I’ve already said enough here about McMahon so I’m not going to get into that now, except she is very much like Meg Witless, spending tens of millions on her campaign, drooling to get herself a spot in Washington for her share of the power trip. And Blumenthal — just look at him, or, better yet don’t look at him. Yikes, he’s one ghoulish dude. Yech.

Blumenthal has been Connecticut’s attorney general for nearly 20 years, and, given his outrageous government activism and meddling in everybody’s private business, I can’t believe the people of that state continue to reelect the guy. The election to replace him, however, as attorney general actually has someone of moral principles and who believes in the ideas of inalienable, natural rights and private property: Republican Martha Dean. Dean supports states’ rights and nullification, and good for her, because here in communist New England, it’s hard to find someone who actually believes in the rights of the individual and in the right of states to their self-determination, as opposed to authoritarians who favor a powerful federal government that dictates orders and mandates to the states. (Oh WHY didn’t she run for senator rather than attorney general? Instead, it’s this Linda McMahon person. Oh, well.)

So here is Martha Dean’s latest speech. She seems a bit like she did the last time I saw her, perhaps a bit to anxious, or maybe more accurately, a bit too verklempt. But she is quite inspiring, that’s for sure.

Private Law

I have referred to private, competitive law, justice and insurance services here in the past. The reason that we need competitive freedom in that area to ensure that actual justice is served, as well as encourage people to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, is that the system we currently have in place — State-controlled, State/government-monopoly of law and administration of justice — is inherently flawed. When anyone is given the power of government-protected monopoly, with competitive services restricted by force, this automatically negates the principles of the Rule of Law and inalienable rights as recognized by the Declaration of Independence. Agents of the State with monopoly and compulsion over others are given the power to be above the law, above the natural order Rule of Law, and, given those powers, and given human nature, they will act not in the interests of justice or the interests of “clients” — the plaintiffs or the accused — but the agents of the State with monopoly and compulsion will act in their own self-interests: ego, further expansion of their power, financial gain, etc. Here are some articles to continue this discussion:

Hans-Hermann Hoppe: The Idea of a Private Law Society

James Ostrowski: American Justice?

William Anderson: A Tale of Brutality, Theft, and Judicial Misconduct

Wendy McElroy: Lysander Spooner

Robert Murphy: But Wouldn’t Warlords Take Over?

Robert Murphy: The Possibility of Private Law

S.M. Oliva: DOJ Declares War on Doctors

William Grigg: The Government “Protection” Racket

Per Bylund: Competition in Private Justice

Murray Rothbard: The Tyranny of the Bench

Lysander Spooner: No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority

Jim Davies: Where Not to Throw Stones

William Anderson: Why the Duke Hoax Continues

Lew Rockwell: Neither Conservative Nor Progressive

Murray Rothbard: For a New Liberty, Chapter 12, “Police, Law, and the Courts”

William Grigg: ‘Mysteries of Policy’: Officially Sanctioned Murder

Governor Ignoramus and the Senior Imbecile From Vermont; More on Massachusetts Race for Governor

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has recently stated that he would like to see a “graduated” state income tax instead of the current flat tax of 5.3% that is being stolen from residents’ paychecks in addition to the federal taxes and other taxes being confiscated by the voracious parasitic governments. Of course, the ignoramus (who probably spends hours each day staring out his office window daydreaming) downplayed his remarks later when asked about that.

When you take more from those higher-income folks, you take away whatever capital they might have to use to invest in expanding their businesses — which means creating new jobs — or otherwise invest in or purchase other businesses, or use to put into the economy in some way. When the government takes more from people, nothing of actual value comes of that. It is merely politicians and bureaucrats taking private wealth away from others and such wealth really ultimately ends up as an “investment” in expanding more government, more power for politicians, more intrusions into the lives of the people. Get rid of these taxes completely, including the federal taxes, and you’ll see economic boom like never before and ALL will benefit from that. When “The Rich” get to keep all of their income, they expand businesses, start new businesses, and more and more people are employed, and you have much greater progress and prosperity.

Unfortunately, communist ignoramuses like Deval Patrick and his envious ilk don’t understand these basic facts of human existence.

Going north of Massachusetts, the senior imbecile from Vermont, Sen. Patrick Leahy, is proposing legislation that would allow for a self-recused Supreme Court Justice to be replaced by a retired Justice for just those specific cases from which the current Justice has recused himself. For example, Justice Elena Caveman Kagan is recusing herself from 25 out of 51 cases to be heard by the Supreme Court this term. Leahy wants a retired Justice — in this case, Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter or Jean-Paul Stevens — to replace Kagan when those cases come up.

I think that this is one of those times that term limits are in order. However, I’m against the idea of term limits, so scratch that. Perhaps the people of Vermont can recall Leahy. Is he up for reelection? Why, AAMOF he IS up for reelection, and his Republican opponent is Len Britton, who, according to Politics1 is a “Lumber store owner and ex-movie screenwriter,” and various info on the web indicates that he’s a goofball. There are several other candidates on the ballot, but all the pundits are indicating that Leahy’s reelection is safe. I wonder if Senators Joe Lieberschnitzel and Al Frankenstinker agree with Leahy on this issue.

(Like Leahy would be proposing this if the current retired Justices in question were conservatives like Rehnquist, Scalia or Clarence Thomas!)

Back to Massachusetts, with one of the more bizarre races for governor in a while, yesterday I wrote this:

And now we’re hearing that Democrat-turned-Independent candidate for governor Tim Cahill, the current state treasurer, is suing the Republican candidate, Charlie Baker’s campaign and the Republican Governor’s Association for infiltrating the Cahill campaign with Baker flunkies to sabotage Cahill and help Baker. Prior to this lawsuit, several Cahill campaigners, including Cahill’s running mate, had abandoned the Cahill camp and jumped to the Baker camp. Meanwhile, in the emails that Cahill is using as evidence against Baker, Baker is looking for evidence that Cahill is using recent state lottery ads as Cahill campaign ads at taxpayer expanse.

And now, for crying out loud, Cahill’s former running mate, Paul Loscocco, who is now with the Republican Baker camp, is charging Cahill with having been in cahoots with Gov. Deval Patrick from the very beginning to have Cahill there as a straw candidate to help ensure Patrick’s reelection. DUH! Who couldn’t see that?!!

Jeepers, this whole thing is unbelievable, especially given the fact that these campaigns mean nothing, state or national, and that all these elections are merely a rearranging of deck chairs. That is because “democracy” is a flawed concept, and will never, ever work, and will always be illegitimate and cause society to be dysfunctional and finally collapse.

This Massachusetts gubernatorial race (a word that begins with “goober,” by the way), however, now reminds me of 1986, which was also a bizarre election year. That year, incumbent Gov. Michael Dukakis was sailing to reelection and had no worries whatsoever. The Republicans….it was really bizarre. The first one to be the Republican challenger, Greg Hyatt, then a former director of the Massachusetts Citizens for Limited Taxation, was in his office one day, and he was changing his clothes. Nothing wrong with that — people change their clothes in their own private office all the time, just lock the door so the secretary won’t come in, etc. But apparently he didn’t think to lock the door, and the secretary walked in and saw him “with his pants down.” THAT was the end of Greg Hyatt’s campaign, believe it or not.

His replacement for the Republican nomination was state Rep. Royall Switzler, who is actually running for his old seat again from his town of Wellesley. One time back then, the Boston Herald had a headline that referred to him as Royall Swizzler. Anyway, the reason that Royal Swizzler dropped out of the race is because he was caught with HIS pants down — his Vietnam pants, that is: He lied about his military service in Vietnam (He didn’t serve in Vietnam. Hmmm, that sounds familiar now.)

After Royall Swizzler dropped out of the race, he was replaced by George Kariotis, who was too late to get his name on the ballot for nomination, so he had to run on a write-in campaign. The final November election was Dukakis 68%-Kariotis 31%.

With all the bizarre controversies going on in the 2010 Massachusetts gubernatorial race, perhaps the Green candidate, Jill Stein might pick up some steam (like going from 1 to 2%).

Can somebody please tell me why the Massachusetts Libertarian Party hasn’t had a candidate for governor since 2002? Did Carla Howell scare them away? Carla Howell was brilliant in her ballot question campaign to eliminate the state income tax in 2008. Too bad 70% of the voters were either hacks or just like to be slaves. And now Carla is trying to reduce the sales tax. I’m verklempt.

Only in Hackachusetts

Here in Hackachusetts, there is just so much going on in mighty hackdom, I just don’t know where to begin. First, there’s Congressman John Tierney’s wife, Patrice. According to this Boston Globe editorial,

Patrice Tierney pled guilty yesterday to four counts of aiding and abetting the filing of false tax returns by her brother, Robert Eremian, who allegedly ran an illegal gambling and racketeering enterprise on the island of Antigua. Her other brother, Daniel Eremian, is also under indictment for racketeering, illegal gambling, and money laundering. Robert remains a fugitive. Patrice Tierney, according to her husband, agreed to pay Robert’s bills, including upkeep for their mother and Robert’s three children, out of a bank account into which Robert funneled at least $7 million.

According to Representative Tierney, Patrice didn’t know the money was shady, and thought she was telling the truth when she filed Robert’s income tax forms claiming the money was from “commissions.’’ But that’s not what she asserted in court: A guilty plea is an admission to having knowingly committed a crime. John Tierney’s statement said that Patrice agreed only that she should have been more inquisitive about the true nature of her brother’s income. It was, in fact, a stunning lack of curiosity, since he previously had been charged with illegal gambling in the United States.

Duh. So, this Patrice Tierney, wife of U.S. Rep. John Tierney (D-Neptune), is either just plain retarded, or just plain corrupt like her husband. Tierney’s Republican opponent is Bill Hudak. Dan Kennedy of Media Nation has more on Hudak.

And now we’re hearing that Democrat-turned-Independent candidate for governor Tim Cahill, the current state treasurer, is suing the Republican candidate, Charlie Baker’s campaign and the Republican Governor’s Association for infiltrating the Cahill campaign with Baker flunkies to sabotage Cahill and help Baker. Prior to this lawsuit, several Cahill campaigners, including Cahill’s running mate, had abandoned the Cahill camp and jumped to the Baker camp. Meanwhile, in the emails that Cahill is using as evidence against Baker, Baker is looking for evidence that Cahill is using recent state lottery ads as Cahill campaign ads at taxpayer expanse.

Meanwhile — yes, there’s more today — Democrat candidate for state auditor Suzanne Bump is being accused of tax cheating, by trying to avoid property taxes at both her homes, in Boston and Great Barrington, claiming both as primary residences. Her Republican opponent is Mary Connaughton, who has actual degrees in accounting and is an actual CPA. Bump’s experience is in Democrat politics and hackery. Now, I’m not a Republican, just an independent non-partisan anti-politics kind of guy, but these people in Hackachusetts really make me want to actually go vote for Republicans (which probably still won’t happen). Scary.

Speaking of “primary residence” politics, 34-year Democrat Congressman Ed Markey apparently doesn’t take care of his primary residence in Malden, where there supposedly are high grass and weeds, according to his Republican opponent, Gerry Dembrowski, who gives Markey the title, “The Undocumented Congressman”:

Jason Lewis’s Book on States’ Rights

Last night on his syndicated radio show, Jason Lewis discussed his newly released book, Power Divided Is Power Checked: The Argument for States’ Rights, and, while I haven’t read it, given how articulate he has been on his show in expressing these ideas of freedom and the Founders’ views on states’ rights, he probably communicates those ideas in this book just as well. (Here are some excerpts [.pdf] from Chapter 1 of the book.)

Now, he has said on his show that he isn’t exactly urging that states secede from the federal government’s control, but he is describing how people have a right to interact amongst one another voluntarily, and are not obligated to be compelled to be part of a “union” by force.

In the Chapter 1 excerpt cited above, Lewis has a reference to economist Thomas DiLorenzo, who has written several books about Herr Lincoln and the war between North and South and the Lincoln cult, and DiLorenzo’s noting that Lincoln could have ended slavery peacefully without waging war on the people of the Southern states but chose not to do that.

And Lewis writes in that chapter that motivations for the South’s secession weren’t really to do with slavery, as the popular myth suggests, but more to do with Lincoln and the North’s treatment toward the South economically:

Alexander Hamilton’s 1790 plan for a national bank, for instance, generally favored the North…it was federal protectionism designed to preserve the North’s manufacturing base that had long been an irritant simmering in the South. When Lincoln moved to raise tariffs on those Southern states that were heavily reliant on imports, he reopened an economic wound that went all the way back to the “tariffs of abominations” in 1828.

As I mentioned, I haven’t read the book, but it is nice of Lewis and the publisher to provide that excerpt online so that we may have a feel for the direction of the book. As far as the book’s sales outlets, I don’t know exactly why the book isn’t available on Amazon.com, and, besides the book’s website, there isn’t that much mention of the book on the Internet, perhaps because it’s just out.

Now, the talk show host and that book’s author Jason Lewis considers himself a federalist, and anyone who’s familiar with me and this blog here knows that I am an Anti-Federalist. That’s because I like to deal with reality and truth. The federal government has done no good, only bad, and it is the federal government’s existence and actions that will be the main cause of the death of America, if that actually occurs.

Massachusetts’s Drooling Hacks

Also in Massachusetts, Republican candidate for state treasurer Karyn Polito (“That’s Karyn with a Y,” as the commercial goes) succeeded for a whole week as a state representative to block the state House Democrats’ passage of a $400 million spending bill (which will include spending on increasing the legislators’ paychecks) in the current informal session. In their regular session, they already passed the state budget for the next fiscal year. This is an informal session, in which “light” business gets taken care of. But the hacks wanted to spend right away (always the retarded Keynesians) the $400 million from federal “stimulus” money, that Rep. Polito thinks should be put away in the state’s “rainy day” fund, which is the responsible thing to do. Unfortunately, she was two minutes late in arrival on Monday and the crooks passed that spending bill, federal “stimulus” money that will go toward the hacks’ increased paychecks among other things. But where were the other Republicans in the House? Why didn’t THEY block the bill? (No testicles.) And Will the Republicans in the state Senate block passage when it comes to a vote there? (I doubt it.)

Karyn Polito’s (“That Karyn with a Y”) Democrat opponent for state treasurer is Steve Grossman, former chairman of the national Democrat party and former president of AIPAC, and, as an Israel Lobby hack, he pushed for the Massachusetts state legislature to pass the Iran Divestment Bill (I know, I’ve mentioned that here before), which supposedly will cost Massachusetts taxpayers millions in readjustments and fees that also disrupts the state pension fund (which shouldn’t exist, but that’s for a different discussion). Apparently, Polito voted for the bill, perhaps not seeing the trouble ahead that it’s going to cause state taxpayers, and the state treasurer’s office in overseeing it (as well as trouble for the people of Iran — it is always the people of the country, not its government, who suffer from any kind of sanctions imposed against them).