International Relations, 2010

International relations have been rotten for many, many decades, at least for the past century, especially since President Woodrow Wilson’s very stupid decision to take the U.S. into World War I. The statists and internationalists have thrown America into war many times now, and unnecessarily. The U.S. government’s intrusions into foreign territories have all backfired. We have false flag operations and increased government intrusions into Americans’ persons, property and privacy, in the name of fighting terrorism, rather than acknowledging (at least publicly) that much of the terrorism committed or attempted by people against the U.S. is motivated by the U.S. government’s intrusions into those territories, particularly in the Middle East and Asia, inhabited by people who don’t like their territories intruded, invaded, occupied and their fellow inhabitants murdered and their internal matters interfered with by the U.S. government.

As I wrote yesterday, when the FBI encounters a young, impressionable teen whose rage could lead him into trouble, the moral and honest thing to do would be to encourage the kid to deal with his rage by more peaceful means, and discourage him from engaging in acts of violence. But because the FBI are bureaucrats whose only incentive is to enlarge the bureaucracy and expand their power and control because they have no competitive pressures on them, the agents went the other way and not only encouraged the kid in Oregon to go bad and commit acts of violence against others, but provided him with materials. The bureaucrats did this just so they could put another notch on their “terrorist” quota list. And use the whole situation as a further excuse for the government to further expand its “national security” apparatus, the real purpose of which is to further enslave Americans and further empower the State.

Glenn Greenwald writes regarding the FBI’s way to protect themselves from accusations of “entrapment,”

…in order not to be found to have entrapped someone into committing a crime, law enforcement agents want to be able to prove that, in the 1992 words of the Supreme Court, the accused was “was independently predisposed to commit the crime for which he was arrested.”  To prove that, undercover agents are often careful to stress that the accused has multiple choices, and they then induce him into choosing with his own volition to commit the crime.  In this case, that was achieved by the undercover FBI agent’s allegedly advising Mohamud that there were at least five ways he could serve the cause of Islam (including by praying, studying engineering, raising funds to send overseas, or becoming “operational”), and Mohamud replied he wanted to “be operational” by using exploding a bomb (para. 35-37).But strangely, while all other conversations with Mohamud which the FBI summarizes were (according to the affidavit) recorded by numerous recording devices, this conversation — the crucial one for negating Mohamud’s entrapment defense — was not.  That’s because, according to the FBI, the undercover agent ”was equipped with audio equipment to record the meeting.  However, due to technical problems, the meeting was not recorded“ (para. 37).

Thus, we have only the FBI’s word, and only its version, for what was said during this crucial — potentially dispositive — conversation.

Michael Rozeff writes on the Lew Rockwell blog on the moral aspects of this latest FBI entrapment case:

Two persons informed me of some traditional Catholic moral code, namely

Nine ways of being an accessory to another’s sin.
1.By Counsel
2.By Command
3.By Consent
4.By Concealment
5.By Defense of Evil Done
6.By Partaking
7.By Provocation
8.By Praise
9.By Silence

Catholics who subscribe to this should be strongly condemning the FBI’s actions in the Oregon case and other similar instances. One person writes: ” I knew many FBI and Treasury (IRS) agents over the years. Most have retired. From the late ’70?s these decent, (mostly) Catholic men became more and more disenchanted with their agencies – especially the FBI agents. The remaining few still living, hate to talk about their feelings of betrayal; a few tried and couldn’t continue – it really choked them up – tears and all.”

And now we have warmongers and chickenhawk cowards who want to declare WikiLeaks a “terrorist organization,” following the latest in their series of document releases that embarrass government officials. Of course, the largest and worst and most murderous of terrorist organizations has been for many years the U.S. government.

Unfortunately, some people are just so fixated in their love for the State and view any questioning of the State and its actions and exposing of the incompetence, buffoonery and outright crimes of the U.S. government as “treasonous,” when in fact it has been the actions of the U.S. government and its agents that have been the most treasonous against us Americans. Contrary to Rep. Peter King and his blind allegiance to the government no matter what it does, we must shine a light on the cockroaches and that is what WikiLeaks is doing. Watch the little bugs panic and scamper and attempt to control the damage to their already fragile image (of incompetence, buffoonery and outright crimes).

On “The Big Dump,” Justin Raimondo writes,

The US Secretary of State’s intelligence-gathering diktat to our embassies worldwide, uncovered by WikiLeaks, has shocked the international community with its weird insistence on collecting biometric data – including DNA samples, iris scans and fingerprints – on foreign officials. In a missive sent to US embassies worldwide, Hillary ordered staff to obtain credit card information, computer passwords, personal encryption keys, and details of network upgrades. A part of this was a massive spying operation aimed at UN diplomats, including those of our Western allies, but there was also an order to gather similar dossiers on British MPs…
That Hillary would risk embarrassment to the US of this magnitude – after all, the chances of being caught (as we were) are pretty high – in order to collect this degree of information, is little short of appalling. Yet it is hardly surprising – after all, we’re talking about Hillary Clinton here, the control freak par excellence.

“What goes around, comes around,” as they say. However, these bureaucrats want to do all that kind of invasive, totalitarian spying on us Americans! That’s because paranoia is inherent in the nature of the bureaucrat. We’re not allowed to expose the totalitarian bureaucrats’ spying on us, yet they want to punish any exposing of what they’re doing! How do they live with themselves? And what the hell is going on in the noggins of those who defend them?

I think that totalitarians know deep down that what they do is wrong morally, their crimes against humanity, their crimes against innocent human beings, and they are always looking behind them, always in fear that they will be caught. And they should be caught. Unfortunately, government officials like King and Sen. Joe Lieberman, and private citizens and journalists such as Jonah Goldberg actually want to prosecute (and murder as well) those people who expose the criminal State for what it is.

The worst amongst the bureaucrats are the warmongers, because they are the ones responsible for the actual murders of innocent human beings, let alone everyday human rights and civil liberties violations committed by governments. Ironically, these days many of the warmongers on the right are also “pro-life” or anti-abortion. They are concerned about people killing innocent unborn human beings, as they should be, but they promote the killing of innocent Afghans, innocent Iraqis, innocent Pakistanis, innocent Iranians, innocent North Koreans, etc. Go figure.

Speaking of North Korea, Arthur Silber writes about the warmongers and specifically mentions Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds, quoting Reynolds on North Korea: “If they start anything, I say nuke ‘em. And not with just a few bombs. They’ve caused enough trouble — and it would be a useful lesson for Iran, too. We can’t afford another Korean war, but hey, we’re already dismantling warheads…”

It seems that there continue to be calls for bombing of North Korea and Iran, and more killing of innocents. And for no good reason. I think these people who want so much war are just sick. Arthur Silber continues regarding the warmongering:

Leaving aside the huge numbers of innocent people who would be murdered by the dropping of nuclear weapons on North Korea — individuals whose primary and often sole concern is avoiding starvation, and who cannot reasonably be found guilty of any wrong against the United States under any analysis (and if you do leave this factor aside, may you be damned) — it hardly requires world-shattering brilliance to acknowledge that widespread death and horrifying illness from radiation and nuclear fallout might be a concern to, say, China and Japan (among others). And then there are the tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers very nearby, in South Korea. What of them? And how difficult is it to imagine that a U.S. attack on North Korea could very quickly lead to escalation involving other countries? One lesson that history teaches repeatedly is the immense, incalculable danger of unforeseen consequences. Yet as I observed in the earlier essay: “We refuse to learn any lessons at all.”

The U.S. especially hasn’t learned any lessons at all, from the first Iraq war and its consequences throughout the ’90s and why 9/11 happened. And any war against Iran would not only be against the interests of the United States, just as were the two wars against Iraq and the war in Afghanistan (as well as Barack Obomber’s wars in Pakistan and Yemen, etc.), but would only be a war on behalf of Israel. Israel is the one who has a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons but won’t openly admit it, but at the same time wants to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. Israel is the one with the Armageddon suicide scenarios and the Samson Option, who have been threatening Iran for years, and Iran is the dangerous one!

I know, I know, we’re not supposed to talk about Israel disparagingly. That would be politically incorrect. We can’t say anything negative about Israel or question that state’s integrity or motives because that might offend some people. After all, Jews were murdered by Hitler. However, as I’ve pointed out in the past, tens of millions of Chinese were murdered by Mao, and tens of millions of people were murdered by Stalin, but we don’t pussyfoot around Chinese people or Russians and other ex-Soviet bloc people for fear of offending them, do we? Why is that?

Perhaps as with the very reason for the “Jewish Homeland’s” location with its Biblical symbolism, we can’t say something that’s politically incorrect about Israel because Jews were meant by God to be the “chosen” people. Even my pointing that out is “politically incorrect,” but I don’t particularly care about being politically correct or incorrect, I care about the truth. The truth is very important, whether it’s to do with what the U.S. government’s intrusions and murders in the Middle East or the U.S. government’s intrusions into our liberty, or the Federal Reserve’s deliberate destruction of the dollar leading to economic collapse, or to do with Israel. “The truth shall set you free.” And the truth is, much of U.S. foreign policy is to do with Israel, and that’s the truth, as Edith Ann would say.

But as I’ve tried to point out in the past, the beginnings of the current state of Israel throughout the first half of the 20th Century were based on the deceitful actions of the British Empire and the British Mandate (like most of the actions of the British Empire), and based on the displacement of generations of indigenous Arabs from Palestine, as well as actual ethnic cleansing — and that’s what it is, now, ethnic cleansing, and that’s the truth, now. After the state of Israel was officially founded in 1948, the Israeli government’s actions over many decades now have been to expand its territory well beyond the 1947-48 partition (that Philip Weiss refers to in this post yesterday) and the government continues to take Arab-owned land to this day. What the Israeli government has been doing to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is criminal — if it were an Arab government doing the same thing to a Jewish population, the whole WORLD would be up in arms about it! But like the dehumanizing of the people of less-advanced societies that the Western warmongers have been waging war against for decades, and want more war and continue with their dehumanizing rhetoric, the Israeli government (with the help of the U.S. and other Western governments) have been engaging in their own campaign of dehumanization of Palestinians for decades as well. And that’s the truth, now — if you want to look the other way and be in denial of it, that’s up to you. I’ll deal with the truth.

But it is quite something how Americans, particularly the Israel First crowd, will defend everything Israel does, and will blindly believe every bit of propaganda the Israeli government feeds them. This despite all the spying Israel has done on America, the more recent American Mossad spying on American Muslims, and even the possibility that Israel may have had complicity in 9/11. But much of U.S. government foreign policy is to protect Israel’s “security” (really, its legitimacy), and with all the blind allegiance that one can find in the American sheeple. And don’t forget Netanyahu’s loyalty to the U.S., now. That’s important. He really gives a damn about us. (I heard the Brooklyn Bridge is for sale again.)

The Zionists insisted on Palestine and only Palestine to be the place for all Jews worldwide, and refused to consider any other territory in the world — even though Palestine was already inhabited, it was not virgin land — and based solely on Biblical symbolism.

Those Zionists were brilliant. Placing Jews in a tiny territory completely surrounded by millions of Arabs and Muslims to be a “safe haven” for Jews. That was wicked smart. Wasn’t it?

But don’t blame me, I’m just some poor old Jew, trying to tell the truth about what’s happened to us in the past century.

How are international relations now, throughout this modern, evolved world? Ah, they could be better.

The Latest ‘Insider Trading’ Scam

by Scott Lazarowitz
November 26, 2010

© 2010 LewRockwell.com. (Link to article)

The FBI has raided several firms with charges of “insider trading,” claiming that “expert networks,” have given “non-public” information to clients working in mostly hedge funds and mutual funds, according to the Wall Street Journal. I had never even heard of “expert networks” until this latest example of why there should not be a State-monopoly in law and justice.

According to the Journal, expert networks are companies that “set up meetings and calls with current and former managers from hundreds of companies for traders seeking an investing edge.”

Yeah, so?

Jeepers, it’s too bad that the government’s monopoly in law and justice has created a criminal racket in and of itself in the business of persecuting people for behaviors that harm no one. Usually, a “crime” is something in which there is a victim.

But this sure is bringing back memories of when former New York U.S. attorney and horse’s ass Rudy Giuliani was persecuting financier Michael Milken. What was Milken’s crime, and who were his victims, Mr. Giuliani? Milken’s crime was making a lot of money, but some public “servants” such as Rudy didn’t like that.

The welfare state in America has created generations of people, especially those who feed at the public trough, who feel great resentment and envy toward someone who gets rich honestly (as opposed to getting rich by feeding at the public trough). In fact, Milken wasn’t even involved in “insider trading,” according to Milken’s website, which clarifies the many myths surrounding Giuliani’s persecution of Milken.

In the current situation, the expert networks allegedly acquired information from present and former managers of various companies, and then gave the so-called “inside” information to clients who then made investments accordingly. But neither the expert network people nor their clients are alleged to have committed any actual acts of theft or fraud. Did the networks steal the information? Did they engage in any acts of trespassing or breaking and entering to acquire that information? Apparently not.

To me, and to most people who really have any actual understanding of ethics and morality, in a land of freedom, which ours was meant to be but obviously isn’t, the only categories of acts that should be considered “against the law” are theft, trespass, fraud and actual physical aggression against others. It’s all based on the same kind of private property rights that the American Founders (at least, most of them) believed in. That was what America was to be based on.

Libertarian author Tibor Machan, who wrote about the feds’ persecution of Living entrepreneur Martha Stewart for so-called “insider trading,” noted that

If one learns of something from a friend or overhears a conversation or obtains the knowledge via a psychic, there is nothing wrong with making a profitable move that others hadn’t had the chance to make…

This, by the way, is so elementary that it is amazing that more editorialists and pundits do not make note of it. After all, in the newspaper business a great deal hinges on scooping the competition. Indeed, reporters receive prizes for doing this, namely, jumping ahead of the crowd with information only they got a hold of so as to score! They and their editors should be especially keen on condemning federal insider trading laws – by the logic of such laws, scooping would have to be prohibited…

Insider trading laws aim to mimic rules of golf, baseball and football, all of which aim to even things out between competitors. But this isn’t because it is unfair to have an advantage, not at all. It’s because the fans wouldn’t like a contest in which the same folks – individuals or teams – keep winning. So, to make things interesting, rules are introduced that will mix things up a bit.

Finance, however, is not a game! Its aim is to secure prosperity, economic success. And that requires savvy, acumen, not bending over backwards to please one’s competitors.

Unfortunately, with the government’s monopoly on law and justice, we now have a Justice Department, FBI and others among the royal bureaucracies with investigations and persecutions of innocent businessmen who are not committing actual crimes, while the bureaucrats seem to be ignoring the widespread egregious fraud that has allegedly been going on with the banks in what is probably the biggest foreclosure fraud scandal in America.

“But that’s too difficult for us,” the sainted crime bureaucrat exclaims. “Going after people who are minding their own business is much, much easier for us. Gimme a break!”

Well, right along with what I see as our desperate need to get rid of the current federal monopoly in national security, which so much evidence from the past century and current times suggests is making us less secure and less safe, so should we also get rid of the government’s monopoly in administering law and justice.

The biggest mistake the Founders made was to allow agents of that centralized institution in Washington called the federal government to be above the law. Given a monopoly in anything, and with the power of compulsion over others and the power to be above the Rule of Law, and given human nature, the monopolists will act not in the interests of justice or the interests of “clients” – the plaintiffs or the accused – but will act in ways to feed their egos, gain financially and/or further empower the State.

Like the monopoly in national security, in which we clearly see the road to totalitarianism via the TSA, the federal government’s monopoly in law and justice, with ever-accumulating power and control over just about every aspect of life, is also exhibiting a more Soviet style of justice than ever before.

While it may sound absurd to some people, we need to take the power of monopoly away from the government, and that includes the business of law and justice. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe noted, the pressures of competition under the Rule of Law is what would motivate those working in the “justice industry” to actually serve the public, certainly better than the existing compulsory monopoly does.

As Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger suggested, when he wrote about the Securities and Exchange Commission’s persecution of Mark Cuban,

There is really only one solution to this tyranny and oppression, and it’s not one that involves “reform”: Abolish the SEC, one of the most tyrannical, destructive, useless agencies in American history, and repeal all economic regulations, including insider-trading laws. Or to put it another way, restore free enterprise – that is, enterprise that is free of government control – to our nation.

And finally, for a much more accurate perspective on the current insider trading fiasco that the feds have initiated against people whose only crime is making an honest living, CNBC’s John Carney gives the bottom line:

Mobsters and terrorists have genuine victims, often easily detectable by their corpses; while the victims of insider trading are far harder to detect. That should be the starting place in any story about government enforcement; who is the victim? When it comes to insider trading, the victim is so hard to detect that it’s far easier to suspect that it may not exist. The victim of insider trading is a Snuffleupagus, someone visible only to the Big Birds behind government desks.

“I Am a Socialist”

by Scott Lazarowitz
November 24, 2010

© 2010 LewRockwell.com (Link to article)

Recently, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell announced that he is a “socialist.” O’Donnell referred to Milton Friedman’s quote, “We’re all Keynesians now,” and President Richard Nixon’s quote, “I am now a Keynesian,” in the context of Keynesian economics being very similar to socialism. O’Donnell went on to assert his pride in being a socialist, and even suggested that Glenn Beck, Rand Paul and others are also socialists in one form or another.

So here is an elaboration of someone, whoever that might be, explaining why he is a socialist:

“First and foremost, I am a socialist because I disagree with the Founding Fathers’ ideas on morality and the Rule of Law. It is important that we have a centralized government that redistributes all the wealth. The State needs to have the power to take some of the wealth away from those the State decides have too much of it. Obviously, no one has a ‘right’ to one’s own wealth or property. And I don’t believe that ‘all men are created equal’ because, if there is a law against theft, then obviously because we need to allow agents of the State to take wealth away, then therefore laws against ‘theft’ must exempt agents of the State. That means that some people should be above the law.

“And I am a socialist in medical care because I think that the centralized government should control everyone’s medical care – it’s as simple as that. It is important that government bureaucrats and their government doctors and medical services have a monopoly in the medical industry so they don’t have to deal with competitive interests, as opposed to a free market in medical care in which the consumers determine which doctors and medical plans would stay in business and which ones would fail. Some people assert that that gives ‘power to the people,’ but we socialists don’t want the people to have that kind of power – it takes control away from government bureaucrats and that’s why I don’t like that. It’s important that government officials control the ultimate decisions in what affects American medical patients (and because the Blue State grandmas are more likely to vote for the “good guys” than the Red State grandmas, if you know what I mean).

“I support socialist immigration central planning because the State has a right, for example, to prevent an employer in Arizona from hiring an applicant from Mexico despite the fact that the employer believes that individual is qualified for the job and the Mexican applicant is willing to accept the job at the wage both agree on. Their prospective contract should not be in their control, it should be in the central planners’ control. When we say that socialism includes public ownership of the means of production, then that includes ownership of the employer’s business, as well as the prospective employee’s direction of employment (as well as the employer and employee themselves – after all, one of the most important of the means of production is the people).

(If I may interject here while Mr. Socialist goes to take a brief powder: Some of what is being described is actually fascism. While socialism can generally be described as public ownership of wealth and the means of production, fascism allows for private ownership of wealth and the means of production but the control is usurped by the State. So, there are elements of socialist programs that are also fascist in nature, and vice versa. In immigration, for instance, the central planning nature of public ownership of wealth and the means of production also includes State control over immigration which is really part of fascism, so our socialist here is also a fascist, but don’t tell him I said that. Actually, there really is little difference between socialism and fascism when you get right down to it. But, for the sake of discussion, we’ll continue with our self-proclaimed “socialist” in his discussion of why he favors socialism.)

“To continue, I am a socialist because I support the central planning of chemical ingestion, otherwise known as the War on Drugs. While the common sense answer to the ‘drug problem’ might be freedom and personal responsibility, it is nevertheless important that the centralized bureaucrats have the power to dictate to people what chemicals they may or may not ingest (even though this causes a black market in banned drugs, dramatically raises the prices of drugs and thus incentivizes the black marketers to form gangs and cartels that causes turf wars and increased violence, and incentivizes them to push the drugs on impressionable youths and adults some of whom turn to robbery to afford the pricey substances, as well as distracts and corrupts the police).

“Speaking of police and protecting the public, I am an enthusiastic supporter of the socialist central planning monopoly in territorial security (as opposed to a free market in security, in which those in the protection business would have to deal with profit-and-loss as determined by competitive agents and consumer control). It is important that 300 million Americans are compelled by law to use the monopoly of centrally planned ‘defense’ in Washington to protect them from harm by foreign elements, while legally forbidding anyone from competing in the business of protection.

“I also believe in that central planning military socialism because I haven’t read Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s books, The Private Production of Defense and The Myth of National Defense, or Morris and Linda Tannehill’s book, The Market for Liberty, and because I really do believe in the myth that the U.S. government’s committing aggression on foreign lands actually protects Americans and doesn’t instead provoke those in the foreign lands to retaliate against that aggression and intrusion. I don’t want to admit that giving central planners a monopoly in defense, without the constant checks on their behavior that the pressures of competition in a free market and the requirement to follow the Rule of Law would bring, actually encourages central planners to use the government apparatus to further expand their power and control (and profits at taxpayers’ expense). Can you imagine a private security firm or insurance agency deliberately provoking the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor, or deliberately encouraging Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait as an excuse to invade Iraq? A private firm with competitive pressures and under the Rule of Law would not only lose business but its agents would end up in jail. But, despite the messes in Iraq and Afghanistan that our central defense planners in Washington have caused, and the fact that Washington’s intrusions abroad have made us less safe, I still want to pretend that this socialism in defense actually works. As Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted, “the system worked.”

“Of course, given that I’m a proud supporter of redistribution of wealth schemes, military socialism is effective in taking wealth from American producers and laborers and redistributing it over to those in the defense contractor industry (and Wall Street). While this socialist (and fascist) monopoly of territorial protection may be completely disorganized because there is no incentive among the government bureaucrats to be efficient and productive, such a scheme nevertheless effects in getting contractors’ campaign contributions in the pockets of those politicians who need the jobs they get in Washington as they would otherwise be unemployed in the private sector. It’s important for America.

“After all, the Founding Fathers were also socialists in that their Constitution mandates a centralized government monopoly in defense, in which free, open competition in that area is outlawed. That’s been good for America.

“And finally, I support the socialized commerce that the Federal Reserve provides, with the help of legal tender laws and loose fractional reserve banking permissions, because I believe that it is vital that a centralized government control the money supply and banking. We can’t allow the people to have the freedom to choose a bank based on its record of service to the community, because that would take control away from the centralized authorities who know better as far as what’s best for the people, and we can’t allow the people to have the freedom to choose among competing currencies, because that would take control away from the centralized authorities who know better as far as what’s best for the people.

“Like the central planning micromanagement from ObamaCare, Social Security and government-run education, the Federal Reserve is important to micromanage the economy, despite all the damage it has caused since its founding in 1913. So, as a socialist, I feel it’s important to continue the Fed’s control over and intrusions into our money, banking, savings and investments (and our prosperity, security and Liberty as well).

“We need as many government intrusions into every aspect of human existence as possible, so most of all, I guess I’m a socialist because I like power and oppose freedom.

“Bye.”

Yeah, goodbye, Socialist. Now, get lost – we’re better off without you.

Martial Law vs. ‘Let Us Separate’

by Scott Lazarowitz
November 23, 2010

(Link to article at Strike the Root)

It seems that President Obama, Congress and especially Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are determined to cause economic collapse in America. Some people, such as economist and investment analyst Peter Schiff and trend forecaster Gerald Celente, have been predicting that, because of Washington’s spending sprees, debts, perpetual wars and monetary printing, America is indeed headed for that economic collapse.

But one aspect of that inevitable economic collapse that really concerns me is the possibility of martial law. Celente has stated that by 2012 there will be civil unrest, looting and food riots.

If there is going to be an economic collapse along with the complete destruction of the dollar, then there probably will be rioting, looting, robberies, burglaries, muggings, vandalism and murders, which will mean that federal martial law will follow. Even the Wall Street yuppies will turn to violence, as they will need to support their addictions to Prozac and Xanax, or whatever the hell it is the Wall Street yuppies take these days.

If martial law is inevitable, then nullification and secession are in order. Thomas Jefferson sided with those who believe in the right of nullification and secession, and said that if the people of the states find secession necessary, then, by all means, “let us separate.”

Thanks to a post-9/11 panicked America and a federal government not hesitant to take advantage of a crisis situation as a means of expanding its size and power, we now have a stronger federal State apparatus in place to further encroach our Liberty and trespass our property.

Militarizing “Public Safety”

In a martial law situation, “law enforcement” and “public safety” duties are usurped by the federal military, which also includes the suspension of civil liberties.

Now, one of the most important documents in American history, the Declaration of Independence, notes that we are all equal under the law and have inherent, inalienable rights to life and liberty. My interpretation of those rights is that each individual has the inherent right to one’s own life and has a right to be free from the aggression of others. And that means that everyone has a right to be left alone and a right to presumption of innocence, unless and until someone suspects an actual individual of some actual violation against some other individual’s life, person or property. These are “inalienable” rights in that no one may take them away.

However, the whole concept of martial law is based on the suspension of these inherent rights, in which one’s rights to freedom of movement, speech and presumption of innocence and so on are suspended, without actual suspicion of crimes, without due process. That means that, if individuals’ rights to life and liberty are inalienable, then any government-imposed suspension of those inalienable rights would be crimes committed by agents of the State.

We are unfortunately experiencing the culmination of the “perfect storm” for totalitarianism in America. The buildup of decades of state-worshipping indoctrination in our schools to the point of developing a prevalent police state mentality is not helpful to liberty, to say the least.

In this day and age of TSA porn Nazis and molestation sickos, which is a federal government policy run amok now at America’s airports, and which is a policy primarily to empower agents of the State to remind us mere subjects of the State’s supreme superiority, the real (albeit unstated) reason for any martial law will not be to “protect the public,” but to further empower the State. The real purpose of martial law would be to stifle political dissent and for the federal State to remind the sheeple who’s the boss, just like the TSA is doing.

And we have seen over the years from this “War on Terror” started by George W. Bush, the kinds of people who have been appointed to be our “protectors” of society, in the TSA.

Additionally, the possibility of a military martial law should be of serious concern to Americans, especially given the character of many who join the military, especially in recent years. There are groups such as the “Thrill Kill” unit in Afghanistan, in which a young soldier had testified that members of his unit had committed acts of murder for the “thrill” of it. Incidents of sexual assault against female soldiers have been on the increase, and we have an increase in crimes by and mental illness of soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that President George W. Bush started, the military has been stretched and had by 2006 lowered its standards, including accepting recruits with criminal backgrounds.

Our society is now one in which the rich and powerful have been getting away with actual criminal behavior, while the common man, woman and child are constantly victimized with intrusions by the Authorities into their private lives, homes and businesses. This is seen in every aspect of daily life, from the cops harassing people in private businesses and pulling over innocent drivers for no good reason except to collect money for the State, to people being harassed by the IRS for making tiny errors in complicated tax forms, while the Wall Street fat cats and the big banks are now getting away with egregious acts of fraud and theft as though they are in competition with organized crime syndicates (and winning).

With those who are either in power or close to it in Washington, from the unions and ACORN on the left to the militarist warmongers on the right, it’s enough to scare the bejesus out of anyone who has read any history of what happens when groups based on force and intimidation grab the reins of power. The federal government has increased its control and intrusiveness into our lives with the passage of ObamaCare and the passage of the Dodd financial regulations, with hundreds of new bureaucracies, thousands of new IRS bloodhounds and plenty of armed flatfoots to enforce all these intrusions and dictates.

Are branches of the U.S. military already preparing to run America’s cities? Who knows. But there are very good reasons to oppose a fusion between military and local law enforcement, given Hurricane Katrina and the BP fiasco. A martial law situation in America now will be one in which it will be difficult to distinguish the “officials” from the criminals.

Now, one solution to prevent a police state with martial law would be to undo the federal economic and monetary policies that have led the U.S. to the point of possible economic collapse: repeal ObamaCare and DoddCare, repeal all the existing costly medical and financial bureaucratic intrusions, refuse bailouts for the banks and financial firms and require them to follow the rule of law, and get rid of the Federal Reserve and repeal legal tender laws and allow for competing currencies and a return to the Gold Standard.

But will that happen any time soon? Nope. We can’t rely on the same nincompoops and scoundrels in Washington who are committing these acts against our liberty to actually reverse themselves. As Perry Como would say, “It’s just impossible.”

Nullification and Secession

A much more practical solution would be for the people of the states to nullify all federal laws and policies, police state dictates and mandates, a “de facto secession,” as Congressman Ron Paul had described. And not just any federal martial law that might be imposed, and ObamaCare, but especially the banking and legal tender laws that restrict competition in money and banking, and allow for competing currencies in the states and a return to the Gold Standard. (And don’t forget the important recognition of the individual’s right to bear arms.)

Each state needs to do these things.

And the states do have a right to nullify federal laws, whether the statists of the left and the right like it or not. Thomas Woods, author of Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21^st Century, noted on his blog recently regarding the relationship between the states and the federal government:

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.

The people of the states have a right to nullify federal laws that violate their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, period. And they also have a right to fully secede from the “Union” as well. No one has a right to force someone else to be a part of an association against one’s will. The federal government has no moral right and no legal authority to force the people of any state to be a part of a “Union,” in which that union’s government is destructive of their liberty, prosperity and security.

As the Declaration of Independence notes: “…That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive…it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…”

This is a time in the life of the United States of America to recognize that, while creating America was a relatively good idea, the Founders’ creating a centralized, federal government with a monopoly in territorial protection and a monopoly in the administration of law and justice was utterly misguided, and has led to all the trouble we now face. Economically, when people are given a monopoly of some kind in which competitive interests are restricted by law and the population are compelled by law to use the monopolists’ services, then without competition and profit-or-loss motivations, the monopolist lacks the incentive to actually serve the needs of his “clients,” and in fact will use the armed power he is given for his own advantage. The monopolist’s main motivation becomes not the “protection of the public,” but the expansion of the federal State, and the monopolist’s power and control.

Because of this aspect of human nature, the institution of centralized monopolies just doesn’t work, as centralism is not only counter-productive, it naturally begets totalitarianism.

When the Soviet Union experienced an economic collapse, the people there did the right thing: they decentralized and broke up the “Union.”

Americans had better not allow the DC Leviathan federal government to inflict martial law on us. So, to save our liberty, prosperity and our security, as Thomas Jefferson said, “Let us separate.”

America Can’t Survive With Continued Government Monopolized Money and Cartelized Banking

In Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s latest scam, Quantitative Easing the 2nd, he is going to be deliberately “printing” up a whole new trillion in new money for the most typically selfish of government bureaucrat reasons: to help the selfish government bureaucrats to pay off some of the public debts that THEY have been causing with their reckless government spending, their selfish, short-term oriented deficit spending that is ruining America. Even pro-Fed, pro-fiat paper money Milton Friedman recognized this kind of economic self-destruction for what it is.

As economist Richard Ebeling notes in his article, A Return to the Gold Standard?,

In the mid-1980s, leading free market economist, Milton Friedman, who for decades had advocated a paper money monetary system restricted to increasing the money supply within a narrow “rule” of three percent a year, admitted that he had been all wrong in believing that such a system could ever work. He said that he, now, realized that it would never be in the interest of governments or their central banks to resist the temptation of printing money to cover government spending, serve special interest groups, and advance other short-run political purposes. He concluded that, in retrospect, the costs on society since 1914 from inflations and the boom and bust cycle caused by central bank mismanagement were far greater than the costs that would have been associated with a real, politically-free gold standard from mining, minting and storing gold, and facilitating transactions through use of the yellow metal during the 20^th century.

Yesterday, Congressman Ron Paul on CNBC had harsh words to say about Keynesian economist Paul Krugman, and wondered how Krugman can possibly get away with having so much credibility for views that are, well, utterly ignorant of actual history and economics, in my opinion. And I’m really just an amateur at studying economics, and even I know that deficit spending and putting oneself into debt, and further debt, is just plain dumb and self-destructive. (Actually, Krugman is not a real economist — he’s an e-commie-nist. His main field is not really economics but politics, i.e. he’s a political hack.)

People such as Krugman are clueless about what actually causes economic prosperity for the masses: freedom. Freedom gives us all opportunity and the means of growth. Government stifles it. That is why political hacks love all of government’s usurpations, the central bank, the government-protected banking cartel, the State-imposed restrictions on currency competition and banking competition, and so on. Political hacks love the government power that government’s monopoly usurpations take away from the masses. They love power.

Even more telling about who these hacks really are and what motivates them, more than their love for power and control over others, is their infantile need to satisfy their “id,” their desire for immediate gratification. Krugman is a Keynesian, an advocate of deficit spending and debt. People who love politics and its power hate self-control and personal responsibility. Deficit spending and debts are examples of abandonment of responsibility. To continue spending and creating further deficits is not just showing lack of responsibility, but is extremely selfish in that, at least with public money and finances, it is putting extra burdens on future generations. That, to me, is extremely selfish, to force your grandchildren and great-grandchildren to have to pay for your out-of-control, selfish immediate gratification impulses, and WORSE is when you force MY grandchildren and great-grandchildren to pay for it!

And now I see, as a result of what Washington’s legislative and executive branches have been doing to America, and as a result of Chairman Bernanke (whom I have referred to in the past as “Burnbanker,” and rightfully so) and his reckless, knowingly and deliberately causing more inflation that will make regular visits to the grocery store difficult for poor schmucks like me, some indications that the banks are not only holding off on lending, but not allowing some people to withdraw certain amounts of cash. This new one began as I saw Tyler Durden’s post that apparently some ATMs are not able to give you the cash you want to withdraw. Some of the comments to that post were even more disturbing. And Robert Wenzel had this post on that post.

One individual (and I don’t know whether I’ll believe this) stated that his bank wouldn’t let him withdraw $4000 because “they didn’t have the money.” Now, if banks are unable to give you your own money you have in their bank because “they don’t have it,” then I think there’s something wrong here, and there will be something even more wrong if there are to be actual “bank runs.”

What would be most responsible for “bank runs” would be this fraudulent system of Fractional Reserve Banking. FRB allows a bank to have much less cash in its reserve vaults than the amount of what their depositors have put into the bank. This is fraud. If I agree to a contract with a bank in which I deposit my $5,000 in their bank, for safe keeping or to grow with interest and so on, then, unless there’s a stipulation in the contract of “penalty for early withdrawal” etc., then I have every right to withdraw my entire $5,000 (or $100,000) from their bank, whenever I want to. If they won’t give me my money when I want it, then they are committing fraud. Not only that, but if they choose to lend out that money and don’t have reserves to cover it when I want my money, they are in effect stealing my money to lend out to someone else. This is the theft and fraud of Fractional Reserve Banking, and will be the main cause of any “bank runs,” in which too many people try to take their money out of the banks in a short period of time when the banks just don’t have the cash in their vaults to pay out. Another example of the irresponsibility that’s been institutionalized in American money and banking for over a century.

Murray Rothbard explains FRB in this article. And further in this article, Anatomy of the Bank Run.

Fractional Reserve Banking is a result of laziness and incompetence (and corruption) on the part of those who run the industry, whose laziness, incompetence and corruption is protected by the government that protects their banking cartel. And so it goes (as Linda Ellerbee used to say).

But my question regarding all that is this: If it’s true that people are having a hard time just withdrawing something like $4,000 because the bank “doesn’t have the money,” then what’s all this I’ve been hearing about the banks sitting on a trillion dollars in reserves and not wanting to lend it out? If banks are sitting on a bunch of cash, then why can’t some dude get his measly $4,000? Hmmm. Something smells rotten in Denmark. (Actually, it might be preferable to live in Denmark at this time.)

Government’s interventions in money and banking have done nothing but gravely reduce the value of our currency, distort economic matters of everyday life, and cause extremes in booms and busts, whereas, if government didn’t interfere with natural economic occurrences, the booms and busts wouldn’t have been nearly as extreme as they’ve been. More than that, government’s interventions, interferences and manipulations are intrusions. It is nothing different from your neighbors intruding in your private financial lives and manipulating various factors either without your consent or your knowledge, and then causing your economic life to go downhill through no fault of your own and/or causing problems that you then have to go out of your way to waste time trying to fix.

These government intrusions are immoral. They are nothing other than acts of trespassing, theft and fraud. These government manipulations and intrusions are literally nothing more than a criminal racket. But because government is the institution of “authority” that has the monopoly on “law and justice,” government gets away with these crimes.

Much of this started with Herr Lincoln and his banking cartel, the government-protected monopoly of the big banks, which restricts competitors from getting in the business. This cartel monopoly removes the incentives from the banks to actually serve the interests of the consumers, which is the situation for any monopoly. Because of lack of competition they have no profit-and-loss incentives. For example, in a free market in banking under the Rule of Law, if the banks get out of line and engage in lousy business practices, such as Fractional Reserve Banking or fraudulent loan and foreclosure schemes, they would go to jail for fraud and theft, obviously. But in a government-controlled, government-protected cartel monopoly as we have now, the banks that have been committing the fraud and theft are being bailed out by the government that protects their cartel. They are not held accountable for their actions and are getting away with actual crimes.

And the government’s currency monopoly we have now, protected by Herr Lincoln’s Legal Tender laws, forbid currency competition. It is competition that drives prices down for the average consumer, and it is government-protected monopolies that drive prices up. The Federal Reserve is an example of that, as their actions have reduced the value of the dollar by 95% since the beginning of the Fed in 1913.

And even worse than all that, the problems that government has caused will get worse, and the government bureaucrats’ answer to the problems has been more intrusive regulations and monopolies  and usurpations, such as with the Dodd financial regulatory law in which a know-nothing communist punk like Elizabeth Warren will be given so much power and control to “regulate” to death the smaller firms as a means of protecting the cartels and monopoly of the big financial institutions, whose executives donate tons of money to the campaigns of the hacks who gave Warren her job.

I agree with Rothbard and Ron Paul: Get the government out of the banking business and allow competition in banking and currencies, require people to actually be responsible for their actions under the Rule of Law, and get rid of the criminals.

More on Social Security and Government’s Intrusions

There was a bit of anger and bitterness expressed in some of the emails I had received regarding my article that was on LewRockwell.com on hoping the new Republicans elected to Congress will reject government interventionism once and for all.

The anger and bitterness centered around my views on the Social Security system. Unfortunately, many people have a mistaken view of what the Social Security system is all about. No, you don’t “pay into” the system, and no, it is not a “contract” in which you have signed an agreement with government officials whereby they are obligated to pay you a certain amount when you retire.

You don’t “pay into” the Social Security system; money is seized from your earnings against your will by the government — you have no choice. That is not a “contract.” It is not a “retirement account” or any kind of bank or savings account that you contribute into toward your retirement. The money that is taken from you is used to fund older people in their retirement, and when you retire and receive Social Security payments, that money you receive is money taken from current workers’ paychecks. And that is what it is, that’s exactly what it is, despite the need to believe that it’s a “retirement account.” It is a real-time redistribution of wealth scheme, and that’s it.

Worse, it is a fraudulent scheme, a Ponzi scheme. It is an act of deliberate deceit, a fraud. Social Security is a scheme in which the government has been deliberately giving people the idea that the money that is taken from their paychecks and other earnings will be there for them when they retire, when over the years that has been increasingly not the case and becoming impossible now, especially in these times of Big Deficits, Big Debt and such an utterly dysfunctional centralized system of socialist misallocation of resources.

How can we expect any system that is based on theft, the government demanding a certain proportion of your earnings by threats of violence, to pass the smell test? Any system that is based on that initial part of the scheme, something that is itself morally bankrupt, is destined to crash.

One emailer perceived my call to end Social Security as causing people to starve and be out on the streets. However, I noted that if we end Social Security we would also have to end the income tax, because when the younger workers no longer have to pay those taxes they will then be able to take care of elderly family members. And in the case that retired or elderly people don’t have younger family members, ending those taxes would also free up people to donate to private organizations and charities to afford to take care of those who don’t have younger family members. In the Soviet Union, there was plenty of impoverishment to go around despite that (or, more accurately, because of) the government “took care of” the people.

My main point has been that FDR took advantage of the panic and vulnerability that was widespread in America following the Crash of ’29, and his new schemes were a State usurpation of freedom, usurping Americans’ retirement freedom, independence and prosperity from them — no different from any street criminal holding a gun to your head and demanding not only your money but that you “agree” to pay him your earnings and let him organize and manage your retirement, whether you like it or not.

We have to watch out when the State wants to help us at a time of panic and vulnerability. Unlike private businesses, government is an institution of compulsion, in which agents of the State have the artificial authority to use compulsion over others against their will, hardly a moral kind of institution, in my opinion. When government gets itself involved in private people’s private economic lives, young or old, working or retired, that is an intrusion — the government’s intrusions, well-intended or not, are nothing but acts of trespass and theft.

 

Here’s Hoping the New Republicans Will Finally Reject Government Interventionism

November 5, 2010

© 2010 LewRockwell.com. (Link to article)

Are Republicans capable of learning and heeding the lessons of history, economics and common sense, and the lessons of past Republicans’ abandonment of the Founders’ principles of limited government? Well, they had better learn quickly, and realize that repealing every policy of government interventionism is the only way to reverse the moral decline and economic impoverishment into which our politicians have brought us for the past century.

So far, the Republicans and conservatives seem to have the same kind of reluctance to reduce government’s intrusions as do the left.

For instance, after his 1980 election as president, Ronald Reagan promised to eliminate the Department of Education and Department of Energy because he recognized that socialism and federal intrusions into education and energy increase bureaucracy, and reduce the quality of education and create misallocation of energy resources, and he was exactly right. But did Reagan fulfill his promise? No.

Reagan cut taxes, but he also raised taxes, on business and capital gains, and through higher Social Security taxes, higher fees, plugging loopholes, and other methods, according to economists Murray Rothbard and Sheldon Richman.

And after the 1994 Republican Revolution, the Republicans, rushed into Washington to reverse the Clinton Big Government partying, caved and kowtowed to Democrats and special interests in a new race to outspend the Clinton Democrats. After 2000, the Bush “compassionate conservatives” continued the trend of ever-increasing socialism and government spending, waste and debts.

There are two aspects to the root of problem: human nature, and the system of centralism.

With so many of our politicians, as soon as they get to Washington and get absorbed into a system of such huge centralized power and control, they can’t seem to control themselves with such power – even the most noble amongst us. The power just mesmerizes them, unfortunately.

And systemically, for the past century the U.S. government has become a Leviathan socialist regime, particularly with such regressive institutions as President Wilson’s income tax and Federal Reserve, and the welfare-state interventionist schemes of FDR’s Social Security and LBJ’s Medicare. And the policies of Wilson-Progressive foreign interventionism continue to this day.

Not unexpectedly, we have already seen the Republicans’ lack of understanding from their House Pledge to America, which promises to repeal ObamaCare but replace it with a little less socialism (but enough to get reelected). Alas, if only they could recognize the main causes of the American medical system’s high costs and dysfunctions – the government intrusions, mandates, bureaucracy, taxes, licensure and regulations already in place – then they might see the light of the real solution: repealing all those initial intrusions, cutting those chains of government-imposed bondage and letting the people be free to control their own medical associations and contracts. Then the costs will come down, way down, and private individuals and organizations will then additionally be able to afford to help those in need, like it used to be before FDR arrived and usurped that freedom away.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s usurpations were through his taking advantage of the utter despair and vulnerability that many Americans suffered following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, even though he campaigned on a platform of reducing the burdens that the Hoover Administration had placed on Americans and their businesses that were Hoover’s quick, short-term fixes for the damage that occurred following the Crash. FDR’s grandiose interventions laid the groundwork for the further destruction we are now suffering.

The Truth about Social Security

The truth is, Social Security is not the “retirement account” that many Americans think it is. It is a real-time redistribution of wealth scheme, in which the younger workers’ paychecks are siphoned by the federal government and redistributed to retired people (and others). FDR manipulated the panic and vulnerability of many Americans and literally removed actual independence and prosperity from Americans’ retirements in this deceptive scheme. FDR’s other transgressions included new intrusive bureaus and mandates, and higher confiscations of the fruits of Americans’ labor.

These socialist programs helped FDR to get reelected, and help our current politicians get reelected, as they promise the voters, “I won’t touch Social Security.” But while short-term fixes really help the politicians’ self-interests, government-mandated and administered socialist programs are immoral and have disastrous long-term consequences.

Now, if Americans were to finally accept the truth about Social Security and end that program, then that would probably terrify many Americans with the thought of losing their only means of sustenance. That is why the income tax would also have to end. The removal of income and Social Security taxes will enable people who are still working to care for their elderly family members. These actions, though initially difficult, would be the moral and practical way of saving Americans’ ability to plan their retirement years.

Unfortunately, people whose paychecks were siphoned by the central planners in Washington for many decades may just have to accept those losses. The Social Security system is inherently flawed, and we need to deal with that reality now, because kicking the can will only make things even more difficult for future generations, whereas dealing with it now will free future generations and their ability to care for themselves and their families.

The Federal Reserve

In 1913, the Federal Reserve was created, turning America from a mainly laissez-faire economy into one of “centralized statism,” as Rothbard explained. The Fed was a product of President Wilson and the Progressive movement. Progressives over the past century have shown a love for government and for State control over private economic matters, including money, one of our most important commodities.

Unfortunately, the mainstream pundits and economists blamed laissez-faire economic freedom for the Crash of ‘29, as well as the downturn of 2008, even though both crashes were actually caused by the government intrusions into private economic matters that Congress and presidents installed prior to those points. In fact, the Federal Reserve itself was created by interventionists in 1913 as a solution for the business cycles – the booms and busts – and the panics and depressions that were actually caused by previous government interventions.

With the 2008-2010 bailouts and stimulus, the passage of medical care usurpations and the Dodd financial regulatory bill, and with the Federal Reserve’s obsessive authoritarian top-down micromanaging of the economy and distorting the markets, we have seen up close how literally delirious our government bureaucrats really are.

A good example of the pathology of centralized statism is Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s hinting at further interventionism. Bernanke, referred to by economist Robert Wenzel as a “mad scientist,” may be printing more money, with the hope that it will decrease the unemployment rate. Wenzel describes this as “going nuclear,” and says that Bernanke is using new “tools“ to attempt to manipulate monetary and economic matters, while ignoring the old tools used by most other Fed chairmen. Bernanke’s first new tool, interest on excess reserves, has resulted in a trillion dollars in excess reserves and is out of control, according to Wenzel. And Bernanke has more new tools, such as selling Treasury securities to money market funds, to fix the first out-of-control tool, and Wenzel predicts that any new flood of money printing will lead to further instability and the “dagger” of hyperinflation.

Rothbard noted that the Fed’s money printing not only causes the devaluing of the currency and thus effects in inflation, the rise in prices of everyday goods, but is a system whereby the money printers and early receivers of the newly printed money (the big banks) are expropriating assets from the later receivers (particularly those on fixed incomes), a “massive scheme of hidden redistribution.”

The new Congress needs to take a serious look at the entire authoritarian centralized Federal Reserve system, and needs to consider competitive alternatives in banking and currency. Like Social Security and all other forms of centralized government interventionism, the Federal Reserve is inherently flawed. Only free markets under the Rule of Law can adequately adjust to the changes in economic activities, while bureaucratic monetary central planners and government-protected bank cartels stifle those factors. Socialist central planning intrusions of government interventionism in money and banking in fact undermines the Rule of Law, and thus it should be no wonder that such a system has led to so much fraud and corruption at this time.

Foreign Interventionism

For decades, the U.S. government has been engaged in many acts of interventionism in other countries’ affairs, and has expanded its various government apparatus in foreign territories.

Unlike entrepreneurs in the private sector, who must compete through the structure of profit and loss in the free market and based on the private producer’s ability to allocate scarce resources, the government bureaucrat lacks the incentive of profit and loss and instead relies on central planning committees and agencies and whose main goal, stated or not, is the survival and expansion of the bureaucracy. Unlike private businesses that must follow the Rule of Law and must respect the property rights of others and may not trespass, governments do not seem bound by the same rules. And because the government bureaucrat is given a monopoly that the citizenry are compelled to patronize without any alternative choices, the expansion of government, its bureaus and the bureaucrats’ power become the main incentives of the government bureaucrat. And this is the case in foreign policy as well as domestic policy.

For the past decade, the federal defense bureaucrats have given us more government, more bureaucracy and more intrusions at home and abroad. Iraq is now under Sharia Law, and Afghanistan is a mess. And Americans are becoming increasingly uneasy with the additional intrusions – not just inconveniences, but intrusions, groping pat-downs and virtual strip searches – at American airports.

Meanwhile, some people have raised the point that the hundreds of U.S. military bases and other government apparatus on foreign territories since World War II have been serious provocations, particularly in Middle Eastern countries.

Likewise, Americans probably would react negatively if President Obama were to sign an agreement with China to install Chinese military bases in Texas or Montana.

That hypothetical is a fair comparison, because the idea of national sovereignty is important. The U.S. government is not the Government of the World, and its various apparatus on other countries’ territories are intrusions, and clearly go against the Founders’ original intent.

Conclusion

The Founding Fathers would never have approved of any redistribution schemes that involved the taking of any individual’s wealth or property. They would have recognized that as theft, pure and simple. Most of the Founders were against fiat paper money and centralized banking, and they certainly would not have approved of hundreds of U.S. military bases and other U.S. government apparatus on other countries’ territories or the U.S. government involving itself in other countries’ affairs. The Founders believed that governments must not violate the liberty or property of its own citizens or of those in foreign countries, and believed that governments must behave under the Rule of Law.

With their regained control in Washington, Republicans had better get back to the Founders’ principles of Liberty and limited government. If the politicians’ recklessness and utter violations of the Rule of Law continue too much longer, then secession of states might have to be the next alternative.

Obama’s Trip to India (Please, STAY there!)

Today Glenn Beck expressed concern about Barack Obomber’s safety while the Nincompoop-In-Chief is visiting India. The main concern should not be Obama’s safety, but rather the cost to American taxpayers, that Beck is saying is as much as $2 billion for this trip, but it’s probably closer to $1 billion. But since when does a billion here or a billion there actually matter in the loony world of Beltway Neverland?

Concerning Obama’s safety, the top bananas will be protected by supposedly many more Secret Service than he really needs, and his entourage will also include 34 warships. The Times of India explains:

He will also be protected by a fleet of 34 warships, including an aircraft carrier, which will patrol the sea lanes off the Mumbai coast during his two-day stay there beginning Saturday. The measure has been taken as Mumbai attack in 2008 took place from the sea.

Arrangements have been put in place for emergency evacuation, if needed…

From there, he will drive down in Lincoln Continental — the Presidential limousine — to the nearby the Taj Hotel. [where the 2008 terrorist attacks took place]

Two jets, armed with advanced communication and security systems, and a fleet of over 40 cars will be part of Obama’s convoy.

Around 800 rooms have been booked for the President and his entourage in Taj Hotel and Hyatt.

I don’t think that Glenn Beck should worry about Obama’s safety. Even the coconuts were removed so Obama wouldn’t get hit by a falling coconut. (But he should worry about the ones they might throw at him, given that he’s giving so much military aid to India’s enemy Pakistan, and Indians are not thrilled with that, according to the India Tribune.)

No, the real concern here is the cost of this luxurious trip, which is a reminder of her majesty Queen Michelle (or, as Rush Limbaugh refers to her, “Moochelle”) and her recent trip to Spain. These elitists live high on the hog, and don’t have to pay a dime for it. Meanwhile, while they go over there to get served and pampered, Ben Bernanke has just begun the process of causing the cost of daily necessities here in America, such as food, to go way up.

But the people in Washington just don’t care, since they are all so damn rich. They never go to the grocery store, and don’t care about someone else’s grocery bill. So, Congress really doesn’t care about the Fed’s “quantitative easing,” which will give us Big Inflation. Actually, the economic ignoramuses and functionally illiterates in Congress like the new money the Fed is printing out of thin air and giving to the banks, so the congressional knuckle-draggers can spend, spend, spend (as well as borrow, borrow, borrow) to give themselves more pork, perks and privileges, and give their corporate lobbyists and campaign supporters more gifts.

But apparently, one reason for this Obama trip to India, that will also include CEOs of several major U.S. corporations and presidents of U.S. universities, is to deal with outsourcing and trade issues, although supposedly India outsources jobs to the U.S.

Regarding issues of trade, the problems involving trade issues are that governments are involved, just like the problems with everything else are because governments are involved. Get the governments out of trade — it’s none of their business. Individuals and groups and businesses have a right to trade with any other individuals, groups and businesses anywhere in the world, as long as they are peaceful and don’t engage in fraud or theft. It is when governments — institutions of compulsion that institutionalize fraud and theft– involve themselves in the activities and business of private individuals that conflicts arise.