Restore Order in the Cities with Freedom

Yesterday Mark Steyn was filling in for Rush Limbaugh and he was discussing the Business Insider story of the 16 U.S. cities facing bankruptcy, and several of them are located in California, which itself is facing bankruptcy. And Steyn was asking, well if a city such as San Diego needs to be “bailed out,” how can nearly-bankrupt California possibly bail out San Diego, and so who is going to bail out California? And so on. That means that the debt-ridden federal government would have to bail out Commiefornia and its bankrupt cities? How absurd is all this stuff? This is a truly sick, dysfunctional country, when city, state and federal governments usurp so much control over community life and steal more and more private wealth and property away from the workers and business people, when organizations unionize and use collective might and intimidation to get city councils, state legislatures, governors and congressjerks to seize such control away from private individuals and businesses. These mob-ruling selfish parasites are literally turning America into a Third World tyranny.

One major problem, besides the usurpation of individual rights and confiscation of private property through taxation and regulation of course, is the centralization of government, not just nationally in Washington but in each state in which the state government has grown like a balloon about to explode and in the big cities in which the city government is becoming so tyrannical it is literally pushing the productive Middle Class and businesses out to the more “red” cities (as in “red state”), i.e. freer cities and states. Take New York City. Please. Rush Limbaugh isn’t the only one with any sense who has left NYC (and California for that matter) — those who don’t like being picked up and turned upside down and shaken down for every last cent by the greedy Mayor Bloomberg (and his fellow communist flunkies) are leaving in droves.

The more people who are fleeing these big communist cities, the less wealth there is for the politicians to steal from them. When you allow people in power to take your wealth and property, rather than requiring them to acquire such income through voluntary trade and contracts, you are removing from them the incentive to budget their incomes and treasury wisely and responsibly. And when you allow the governments to have monopolies that restrict the right of others to do business in whatever endeavor that has been monopolized, you are removing from them the incentive to serve their “customers” which is reinforced through competition.

In recent interviews Congressman Ron Paul has addressed the “moral hazard” of the monopoly that the Federal Reserve has in our monetary system, in which Americans are compelled by law to use the constantly value-crashing dollar for trade and commerce, while competitive currencies and the people’s right to use other means of trade and commerce are restricted by law. (Robert Wenzel has a post today, in which he thinks The Bernank is going to print more money in response to city protests and riots in the near future, so that with more phony money the cities won’t have to make any cuts in budgets.)

We are experiencing the same kind of “moral hazard” from other forms of government-monopolizations besides the Fed’s money scheme, such as in law and judicial decision-making, local policing of communities and territorial protection, among other activities that federal, state and local governments have usurped from the people. The “moral hazard” in the cities has also been exacerbated through cultural and ethnic collectivization and politicization, in which the traditional family has been torn apart by the welfare state’s discouragement of personal responsibility. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has addressed these issues in his book, Democracy: The God That Failed, and in many other writings including his 2005 article The Rise and Fall of the City:

With the upper class and the merchants leaving in larger numbers, however, one of the last remaining civilizing forces will be weakened, and what is left behind in the cities will represent an increasingly negative selection of the population: of government bureaucrats who work but no longer live there, and of the lowlifes and the social outcasts of all tribes and races who live there yet who increasingly do not work but survive on welfare. (Just think of Washington, DC.)…

Rather than regarding intra-family or -household matters…as no one else’s business to be judged and arbitrated within the family by the head of the household or family members, once a judicial monopoly has been established, its agents — the government — also become and will naturally strive to expand their role as judge and arbitrator of last resort in all family matters. To gain popular support for its role the government (besides playing one tribe, race, or social class against another) will likewise promote divisiveness within the family: between the sexes — husbands and wives — and the generations — parents and children. Once again, this will be particularly noticeable in the big cities.

Every form of government welfare — the compulsory wealth or income transfer from “haves” to “have nots” lowers the value of a person’s membership in an extended family-household system as a social system of mutual cooperation and help and assistance. Marriage loses value. For parents the value and importance of a “good” upbringing (education) of their own children is reduced. Correspondingly, for children less value will be attached and less respect paid to their own parents. Owing to the high concentration of welfare recipients, in the big cities family disintegration is already well advanced. In appealing to gender and generation (age) as a source of political support and promoting and enacting sex (gender) and family legislation, invariably the authority of heads of families and households and the “natural” intergenerational hierarchy within families is weakened and the value of a multi-generational family as the basic unit of human society diminished.

Indeed, as should be clear, as soon as the government’s law and legislation supersedes family law and legislation (including interfamily arrangements in conjunction with marriages, joint-family offspring, inheritance, etc.), the value and importance of the institution of a family can only be systematically eroded. For what is a family if it cannot even find and provide for its own internal law and order! At the same time, as should be clear as well but has not been sufficiently noted, from the point of view of the government’s rulers, their ability to interfere in internal family matters must be regarded as the ultimate prize and the pinnacle of their own power…

Just as the removal of the welfare state and other government interferences in private life must be removed in order to restore Liberty and order, especially in the cities, and require that people within communities help one another out voluntarily and not through government-imposed coercion or compulsion, politicians and bureaucrats must be forced to not just cut budgets but to eliminate whole programs that should be taken care of in the private (voluntary) sector. “Tough love” is necessary: No Bailouts!

Related: Carl Watner’s article, The Tragedy of Political Government

…The main tragedy of political government is that few people realize it is an immoral and impractical institution. Nor do they realize “that the power of any government is dependent on the cooperation of the people it governs, and that government power varies inversely with the noncooperation of the people.” They have been conditioned to accept government as a natural part of their environment. After being raised in a culture in which “politics” is the norm, and after attending years of public school and being taught that political government is a necessary component of society, most people place government in the same category as the weather – something they complain about, but can’t change. As people accept the structural trap called politics, they fail to realize that their actions support and undergird the State. Their demand for government services – from Social Security benefits to police protection – is what fuels the State.

Most people are capable of high values and responsible behavior, but once they enter the seductive garden of politics, they no longer notice that its wonders cannot be reconciled with individual responsibility and their own personal moral values of honesty and hard work. It is not usually apparent that what they are doing or supporting is vicious and would not pass the test of ordinary decency. So long as the criminality is veiled by the political process, most people accept it because they do not see that it conflicts with their basic values. The main tragedy of political government is not only that the voters are the ones pointing the gun, but, most importantly, that the indecency of this act is concealed from them by the political process. It is the concealment that is the tragedy. The concealment is not the result of some conspiracy by some distant elite: it is inherent in the political process…

The Treasonous U.S. Government

December 28, 2010

(Link to article at Strike the Root)

The ongoing WikiLeaks affair has been an exposé of who really understands the principles that define America, and who is truly confused. The “classified” leakers and their publishers (who include the New York Times and the Guardian) are merely attempting to expose the State and its crimes as well as its outright ridiculousness and irrationality. The ones who defend the State’s intrusions abroad, the killing of innocents, the occupations of foreign lands, the removal of due process through renditions, indefinite detentions and assassinations without cause or even suspicion, are the ones who want to suppress any exposing of those State crimes.

It is as though the defenders of the U.S. government’s secrecy and cover-ups think they are in countries like Iran, in which the act of revealing the crimes of the State is an act of blasphemy and deserving of one’s being stoned to death. These obedient defenders of the State are truly against moral values and the rule of law, yet they are the ones who refer to alleged leaker Bradley Manning as having committed “treason” against America.

The hopelessly flawed U.S. Constitution addresses treason:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

Worse, the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines treason as:

1: the betrayal of a trust

2: the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign’s family.

Unfortunately, the mainstream view of “treason” has been one of “defiance of State authority,” or disobedience. The WikiLeaker’s actions have not gone against America, but they apparently have been challenging to State authority, and that’s a no-no in authoritarian societies. It is in such societies that the State has access into every detail of every individual’s private life, as the Washington Post recently uncovered, but the citizens are not allowed to know what their government is up to. The great 19^th Century individualist Lysander Spooner clarified some of these issues in his publication, No Treason – The Constitution of No Authority.

In my view, acts of treason do not necessarily consist of “levying war” against one’s country or countrymen – if that were the case, then I suppose the American Revolutionaries were acting treasonously against Britain – but acts of treason can be those that go against the interests of one’s countrymen.

So to me, just about every act of the U.S. government since its beginning has gone against America’s interests, that is, if one believes that America’s interests are those of preserving liberty, and that the government’s purpose is to protect life, liberty and property. For instance, after the Southern States peacefully seceded from the American “union” in 1861, President Abe Lincoln “levied war” against them, that included his killing thousands of innocent civilians and burning entire cities to the ground. Lincoln’s need for greater centralized State control and dominance, and obsession with compelling millions into an association to which they did not want to belong, was worth his depraved acts of aggression, violence and murder. Lincoln acted treasonously, against his fellow Americans and the basic values of the America that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and their fellow Revolutionaries and secessionists-from-Britain believed in, and against the interests of the Southern secessionists who believed in freedom and prosperity.

The endless list of examples of treason by the U.S. government against Americans includes President Wilson’s unnecessarily entering the U.S. into World War I. When you take your country into other countries’ wars, you are at that point making your population vulnerable to hostilities, in addition to squandering away public funds that are not intended to be used for the benefit of other countries. Other examples include FDR’s New Deal of fascist/socialist property confiscation, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started by the two Bush presidents, President Obama’s new medical takeover, and so on. Those intrusions and acts of aggression by agents of the U.S. government against Americans and foreigners have all gone against the interests of Americans and against our freedom and prosperity. They are treasonous acts. They are all crimes committed by the U.S. government against the lives, liberty and property of many millions of Americans for many decades, and continuing.

The State’s Treasonous Foreign Policy

Regarding U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning’s alleged leaking and months of solitary confinement, former Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski writes about the hysteria of the federal State and its flunkies and defenders, and compares the alleged whistleblower soldier with actual convicted spies against America:

Charged but not convicted of any crime, American PFC Brad Manning is being held largely incommunicado at Quantico, without bedding or permission to exercise in his cell. He is purposely deprived of human contact. His current treatment – based on unproven charges – is far harsher than the treatment and sentences of four famous and convicted US federal-level spies.

Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested in early 2001, and charged with selling secrets to the Soviets during the preceding two decades. Upon arrest, Hanssen confessed and was able to hire as an attorney the extremely competent Plato Cacheris, who negotiated a plea bargain. After an entire career spent profiting from the sale of classified information to the Soviets and later the Russian Federation, he is held at Supermax in isolation. Well, not exactly like Brad Manning – Hanssen has bedding, books, and exercise.

The case of career CIA employee and horrific spy/profiteer, Aldrich Ames, is also instructive. After his arrest and lawyer-facilitated plea bargain, Ames was not held forever in isolation at a Supermax-style facility. Instead, he resides at Allenwood Federal Prison with the general population, and is able to receive visitors and to correspond with people outside the prison on issues of current interest.

Two other famous convicted federal-level spies of the same era include Army Warrant Officer James Hall and Army Colonel George Trofimoff. These military officers who sold secrets were not tortured, nor were they deprived of their constitutional rights to a fair defense. Even though they are convicted military spies, they are serving less intensive punishments than either Ames or Hanssen, and were treated far better than PFC Manning.

Manning is not accused of selling secrets, or profiting from their release. Washington has made charges; it suspects Manning is partly responsible for publicly embarrassing the federal security apparatus. But as the Pentagon and the State Department both admit, even if Manning was the source of some government documents, the revelations did not seriously impact government operations.

Some critics of the WikiLeaks release have referred to Manning’s alleged actions as “treasonous,” and compromising American security. But in actuality, the leaked documents have done nothing but expose the crimes of the State, which is what the Press used to do before that institution apparently merged itself into the State apparatus. The real “treason” that is happening is that of the agents of the State acting against Americans’ liberty and prosperity.

While the recent document leaker has not compromised America’s security in any way whatsoever, we can take a closer look at how the U.S. government’s agents just over the past 20 years have been the real culprits in compromising the security of Americans. That includes President George H.W. Bush’s taking the U.S. into war against Iraq in 1990-91, the U.S. government’s and United Nations’ sanctions against Iraq throughout the 1990s and how those hostilities against Iraqis have backfired against the U.S., and George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq and against Americans’ civil liberties.

In July 1990, then-Bush Administration U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met with then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and was said to have given the Bush Administration’s “green light” for Hussein to invade Kuwait, although, while some analysts disagree on whether that was intended by the Administration, other analysts believe that that was how Hussein interpreted the message. On August 2, 1990, Hussein began his invasion of Kuwait, followed in the next months by the U.S. military setting up their war on Iraq to begin January 15, 1991.

The Bush Administration had a well-prepared PR campaign to sell the Persian Gulf War, in which Bush took the U.S. military into war overseas against a country that was of no threat to the U.S.

Would a politician like the elder Bush tell a foreign leader that he, Bush, would look the other way if Hussein invaded Kuwait, only to then go and invade Iraq as though that was Bush’s intention in the first place? Well, that seems to be the way politicians, statists, internationalists, and government expansionists go about business, given the power they have as monopolists in territorial protection. And also, Bush probably felt safe politically and legally, given how so many Reagan Administration officials had gotten away with their schemes of selling arms to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan Contras in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s.

In author James Bovard’s analysis of the U.S. military’s bombing campaign on Iraq in 1991 and subsequent sanctions on Iraq, Bovard cites the Washington Post which quoted Pentagon officials that the bombing campaign targeted civilian infrastructure, particularly electrical facilities and water and sewage treatment facilities, as well as military targets. This was an intentional strategy of the U.S. military as a means of “disabling Iraqi society at large,” that supposedly would compel the Iraqi people to get rid of their leader Saddam Hussein.

As Bovard pointed out,

A Harvard School of Public Health team visited Iraq in the months after the war and found epidemic levels of typhoid and cholera as well as pervasive acute malnutrition. The Post noted,

In an estimate not substantively disputed by the Pentagon, the [Harvard] team projected that ‘at least 170,000 children under five years of age will die in the coming year from the delayed effects’ of the bombing.

The U.S. military understood the havoc the 1991 bombing unleashed. A 1995 article entitled ‘The Enemy as a System’ by John Warden, published in the Air Force’s Airpower Journal, discussed the benefits of bombing ‘dual-use targets’ and noted,

A key example of such dual-use targeting was the destruction of Iraqi electrical power facilities in Desert Storm…. [Destruction] of these facilities shut down water purification and sewage treatment plants. As a result, epidemics of gastroenteritis, cholera, and typhoid broke out, leading to perhaps as many as 100,000 civilian deaths and a doubling of the infant mortality rate.

The article concluded that the U.S. Air Force has a ‘vested interest in attacking dual-use targets’ that undermine ‘civilian morale.’

The bombing campaign and a decade of sanctions throughout the 1990s led to widespread disease and skyrocketing cancer and child mortality rates, which by 1999 were said to lead to the deaths of approximately 500,000 Iraqis.

The U.S. government’s invasion and bombing of Iraq in 1991 and sanctions, disease and death, as well as the U.S. government’s expansionism of military bases and other government apparatus on Muslim lands such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, and other intrusions and interventions are what have inflamed anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East and Asia. These actions of the U.S. government have been provocations against the inhabitants of those foreign lands, the effects of which have consisted of retaliations and attempted retaliations against Americans. In other words, we Americans have been made increasingly vulnerable to the aggressions of foreigners because of the aggressions that our government officials have been committing against people in foreign lands.

But rather than ending the murderous sanctions, occupations and other U.S. government intrusions and interventions on foreign lands, the response of the robotic, comatose U.S. government officials to the September 11, 2001 attacks was to increase the aggression, intrusions and violence overseas even more, as well as impose policies of rendition and indefinite detention and assassination of people without due process, without just cause or even actual suspicion – the George W. Bush Administration knowingly apprehended suspects at random and knowingly kept innocent people detained for years in Gitmo – as well as start a campaign against Americans and their what-used-to-be-known-as “inalienable rights” and “civil liberties.” In other words, every action and policy of the U.S. government, especially since 1990, has made Americans less safe and more vulnerable. We are less safe because of the provocations by our government of more terrorism against us, and we are less safe because of the abuses of our own government against us and our liberty. This is what I mean by treasonous actions of the U.S. government.

And how has the U.S. government been treating Bradley Manning for months, someone who has not been tried or convicted of anything, and whose alleged actions have harmed no one, but who allegedly dared to expose the agents of the State for what they are? Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald has been doing an exceptional job writing about Manning’s treatment.

According to Greenwald, Manning’s attorney David Coombs, and MIT researcher David House, Manning has been held in 23-hour-per-day solitary confinement for over five months, with one hour per day allowed for “exercise,” which consists of walking in circles in a small area, is made to respond to guards’ checking him every five minutes, is made to endure constant sleep deprivation and sensory deprivation, has very little contact with others and is deprived of knowledge of events in the outside world. In a more recent update, Greenwald noted,

…And in the wake of my report, there have been several reports of the damage to Manning that is now apparent, including in The Guardian (“Bradley Manning’s health deteriorating in jail, supporters say”), The Independent (Manning ”in weak health and wracked with anxiety”), The Daily Beast (“The conditions under which Bradley Manning is being held would traumatize anyone”), and from his lawyer (“who says the extended isolation — now more than seven months of solitary confinement — is weighing on his client’s psyche . . . . His treatment is harsh, punitive and taking its toll, says Coombs”)…

What the agents of the U.S. government are doing psychologically and physically to this one individual is how criminals, barbarians, degenerates and sickos treat other human beings. But the reason he is being held in solitary confinement and why he is being abused in such a sick way is that our government officials are responding not to any real threat to Americans’ security, but to an uncovering of U.S. government officials’ real character.

The American prisons aren’t even treating their convicted rapists, child molesters and murderers with that kind of cruelty and physical deprivation, which is particularly loathsome given that Manning has done nothing wrong and has harmed no one. However, this is in line with the U.S. military intentionally bombing water and sewage treatment facilities with the purpose of causing disease and deaths amongst the Iraqi civilian population in 1991, a scheme that comes from sick-minded barbarians. But in their emotional, gut reactions to the news about leaks of State “secrets,” the authoritarians who love and worship the State have made the uncovering of the true nature of today’s agents of the State a matter of blasphemy worthy of the sinner’s being stoned to death in a public courtyard. “We are all Iranians now,” the Palins and the Gingriches might as well declare.

But is merely uncovering the State’s true nature really a crime? Shouldn’t we instead penalize the agents of the State who start wars unnecessarily and thus make their own population more vulnerable to retaliation, as the warmongers did with the war against Iraq of 1991, and all the repercussions and blowback we have been suffering because of it? (And oh, what a coincidence the timing of those actions coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and a sudden lack of an enemy to justify the always expanding military welfare state, but that’s a different discussion for a different essay.) The devastation and physical destruction, the human toll and financial cost of the entirely political decision to invade Iraq in 1990 have treasonously damaged America. (And oh, what another coincidence that the 1990 warmonger’s son also started an unnecessary war against Iraq in 2003, and for solely political reasons, that would cause even further blowback against us!) These actions have damaged America in the most criminal sense, and these actions against America are treasonous.

To protect us from further damage to our liberty, security and property, we need more Bradley Mannings, and more WikiLeaks, and much less centralized power in Washington, given that just about every action of the U.S. government has been treasonous, against America and our founding principles, and is constant, daily proof that the Anti-Federalists were right.

The Ongoing WikiLeaks Soap Opera, and More…

Glenn Greenwald has this lengthy and confusing post today, with detail after detail regarding the ongoing soap opera drama that is the Bradley Manning-Adrian Lamo-Kevin Poulsen-Wired-WikiLeaks affair. Supposedly, Kevin Poulsen of Wired online only published 25% of the chat cables between alleged WikiLeaker Manning and the one who turned him in, Adrian Lamo, and Greenwald suggests that the other 75% of the chat cables are being suppressed by Poulsen. Greenwald is emphasizing the un-journalistic nature of Poulsen’s suppression of that information, but is saying that there’s really a lot more to this whole story.

It looks to me like there may actually be reason to believe that the allegations against Manning may actually be based on fabricated chat logs. Greenwald linked to this post by Marcy Wheeler, and apparently, there were time gaps, in which Lamo was fixing “technical issues” during their chats. All that looks very suspicious to me, now. What would be the motive for anyone to attempt to falsely accuse Manning of leaking classified documents? Well, apparently, Manning has had troubles in these past two years prior to this whole WikiLeaks fiasco, according to this article that Greenwald linked to.  And it appears also that Manning is gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. (But it’s possible that some people with ill intent may not like the fact that he’s gay.) Also, the one who turned Manning in to the government, Lamo, is a convicted felon and was involuntarily hospitalized, just three weeks before his chats with Manning, for “severe psychiatric distress,” according to Greenwald. This whole thing just doesn’t pass the smell test, if you ask me.

America the Nanny Police State: From Big Drugs to Big Agra

The New York Times has this article on the latest WikiLeaks release, Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency:

WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables.

In far greater detail than previously seen, the cables, from the cache obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to some news organizations, offer glimpses of drug agents balancing diplomacy and law enforcement in places where it can be hard to tell the politicians from the traffickers, and where drug rings are themselves mini-states whose wealth and violence permit them to run roughshod over struggling governments.

This is an example of how pathological a statist society such as ours can become, and the totalitarian lengths bureaucrats will go to in order to sweep the truth under the rug. The truth is that it is not the role of government to dictate what chemicals the people may or may not ingest. And when you start imposing such dictates, you get nothing but trouble.

Laurence Vance has this great piece on FFF, The Moral Case for Drug Freedom. It’s probably the best case I’ve seen for ending the War on Drugs. It is a case for freedom.

…All freedom-loving Americans should oppose the DEA and its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, its 21 domestic field divisions, its 227 field offices, its 86 foreign offices in 62 countries, its academy at the Quantico Marine base, its administrator, its deputy administrator, its chief of operations, its chief inspector, its chief financial officer, its chief counsel, its assistant administrators, its 10,000 employees, its 5,500 special agents, its foreign-deployed advisory and support teams, its mobile enforcement teams, its Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program (DCE/SP) (which eradicates millions of cultivated outdoor and indoor cannabis plants every year and seizes millions of dollars of cultivator assets), its $2.5 billion budget, and its Office of Aviation Operations with its 106 aircraft and 124 pilots…

…Practical and utilitarian arguments against the drug war are important, but not as important as the moral argument for the freedom to use or abuse drugs for freedom’s sake. The moral case for drug freedom is simply the case for freedom. Freedom to use one’s property as one sees fit. Freedom to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor in whatever way one deems appropriate. Freedom to use one’s body in the manner of one’s choosing. Freedom to follow one’s own moral code. Freedom from being taxed to fund government tyranny. Freedom from government intrusion into one’s personal life. Freedom to be left alone.

It is those of us who advocate the liberty to take drugs and a free market in drugs who are taking the moral high ground. How can anyone with any sense of morality support seizing someone’s property, destroying his family, and locking him up in a cage to be raped and humiliated for smoking a plant the government doesn’t approve of? What kind of a moral code contains stipulations like that? The case for drug freedom is a moral case because the war on drugs is a war on natural, civil, personal, and constitutional rights…

So he means the freedom to do what you want with your life, as long as you don’t interfere with anyone else’s life, liberty or property. But one thing he doesn’t really touch on that much is the aspect of personal responsibility in the context of drugs, including alcohol, which I have addressed several times here. I have noted that many conservatives support the War on Drugs (but not alcohol or tobacco which can be just as deadly) because they oppose the idea of personal responsibility. The conservatives love their authoritarian police state, but combined with the nanny state that asserts that people are incapable of accepting personal responsibility for their decisions and actions and need the State to relieve them of that personal responsibility and take care of them.

Well, I believe that a truly free society is one that encourages maturity and personal responsibility with that freedom: If you choose to ingest a particular drug or chemical, for whatever reason, then you must take responsibility for the consequences of your decisions and actions. If one smokes marijuana, snorts cocaine, injects heroin, (or drinks alcohol for that matter), and one gets into an accident that results in the death or injury of another, then one would be risking being permanently banished from that society. Sending the irresponsible, dangerous ones off to an island is something I have suggested in the past. And I’m not talking about “taking drugs and driving” as a crime because it’s not a crime if one has harmed no one, just like drinking and driving is not a crime because there is no victim in the act of drinking and driving — in such cases people have the right to be left alone. I mean that, if one has been in an accident that causes others harm, and it is found that one has ingested mind- or body-altering chemicals before the accident, then banish them from society. The risk is up to the individual. If you don’t want to take that risk, then don’t operate a big machine or vehicle after ingesting those chemicals.

And by “drugs,” we really need to be consistent, and refer also to prescription drugs. I have become a staunch opponent of prescription drugs, unless it’s an emergency or one is in an life-threatening health situation and there is no alternative. Doctors too easily hand out prescriptions like candy, including to kids. Oh, please don’t get me started on the schools and teachers what they’re doing to the kids these days. They’re labeling kids first, which is bad enough, and then they’re destroying the kids’ motivation, energy and their very personality with this Ritalin and other drugs that kids shouldn’t be getting.

So, I’m for total drug freedom and responsibility. And as far as prescriptions, there shouldn’t even be such a thing as a “prescription,” a doctor’s permission to get a drug. What are we, babies? If one wants a particular drug, then the local drug store should have whatever anyone wants. You shouldn’t be required to get a doctor’s permission for something. People need to inform themselves on these drugs, and the chemicals and what they do or could do. But strong drugs and what are known as “hard” drugs should be discouraged in a mature, responsible, evolved modern society. We need to bring back shame, and shaming people into not taking drugs (or drinking booze, in my opinion).

A big problem has been those doctors handing out prescriptions like candy, as I mentioned. And that’s because they get these free samples from the drug companies, in order to get people started on the drugs, so they’ll get hooked. These greedy drug companies, known as Big Pharma, are no better than the street corner drug dealer pushing drugs on today’s youths. Big Pharma want as many people getting hooked on their poisonous products as possible, because the profits they make are extremely important to them, regardless of the human costs on society. Worse than that is the Big Pharma-Big Government complex, the way these drug company sleazebags use the power of government to restrict the competition to protect their high profits.

Even worse than all that is the corruption involved, like with the revolving door between Big Pharma execs and the FDA, approving drugs that are harmful, and disapproving ones that aren’t. There shouldn’t be an FDA, but that’s a different story. Just recently, I wrote about a guest on George Noory’s show:

George Noory this morning interviewed food and drug law specialist Jonathan Emord regarding the FDA’s knowingly approving harmful prescription drugs, such as GlaxoSmithKline’s anti-diabetic drug Avandia, in which FDA testers repeatedly warned of harmful side effects only to be ignored by the bought-and-paid-for FDA head honchos. Emord cited a tester/reviewer who had claimed that a superior told him that the drug companies “are our customers,” and therefore the FDA was obligated to approve what they wanted approved.

Greedy sleazebags. And regarding bringing back shaming, we need to put shame on these greedy sleazebag corporate hacks for pushing bad stuff onto people for the sake of their own selfish profits. They’re the disgusting ones of society. And get rid of this nanny police state corporate fascism, and bring back Liberty and individual rights, freedom and responsibility.

What really gets me is these corporate fascists trying to suppress information about the value of nutritional supplements and vitamins, as well as trying to block the average citizen’s access to them. That’s what we’re seeing in the recent passage of the Food Fascism bill, pushed by the Food Nazis in Washington and their lobbyist flunkies, whose real purpose is to protect Big Agra and crush the smaller food farms that are part of the many small businesses that are the real backbone of America.

And that really is related to the Big Pharma-Big Government complex, this Big Agra-Big Government Complex, as Karen De Coster wrote about a few days ago on the Lew Rockwell Blog, on how WikiLeaks has revealed how the U.S. government has been pushing foreign nations to accept genetically modified organisms in their crops.

While most of the rest of the world is flat-out rejecting these manufactured toxins, the U.S. government, along with its corporate state giants (like Monsanto), has been trying to bully the EU, as well as other, smaller countries, into exporting the highly profitable GMOs. From the article, it is noted that one of the released cables (bold emphasis is mine):

describes a meeting between Senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and John Thune (R-S.D.) and two officials from Spain, which is one of the only European countries currently growing genetically modified crops (Poland is the other). One of the Spanish officials noted that Spain “had a relatively ‘liberal’ view with respect to biotechnology. However, even in Spain, the technology was controversial and faced NGO opposition.” The two senators then asked “what influence Spain could exercise in Brussels [the de facto capital of the European Union] on the issue,” to which the Spanish officials responded “commodity price hikes might spur greater liberalization to biotech imports.”

Note that Senator Grassley is a consistent advocate of the biotech industry, receives much in contributions from GMO king Monsanto (and ethanol king Archer Daniels Midland), and has long been fighting the EU on the GMO issue. In 2003, he advocated filing a legal case against the EU to challenge its moratorium on GMOs. The nerve of those French — and other Euros — to deny the Big Agra Complex and their dictates!

Are the Drug Nazis referred to at the beginning of this post going to start going after people who try to get non-GMOs (like there might be a black market in non-GMOs in the future!), or the people who want vitamins and supplements after the government bans them, too?

Who Has Integrity?

December 20, 2010

© 2010 LewRockwell.com (Link to article)

In 2010 there were many campaign ads in which each candidate claimed to have “integrity.” But as we have seen, campaign after campaign, election after election, most of the winning candidates are the ones who are merely the most skilled in rhetoric and demagoguery. As F.A. Hayek noted accurately in his book, The Road to Serfdom, “the worst get on top.” What attracts the worst to the State apparatus are the power of compulsion that agents of the State have over others, the power of monopoly that restricts the rights of others, and the adulation (and in some cases idolatry) toward agents of the State from the masses.

One example of the steady moral decay America has been experiencing is the recent election of Democrat Suzanne Bump to the office of Massachusetts state auditor. During her campaign, Bump was described in her one newspaper endorsement as “acting with independence, integrity, and competence.” Apparently, the Boston Phoenix hadn’t heard about Bump’s declaring property tax exemptions for both her homes in two different communities in Massachusetts, claiming each one as her “primary residence.” The campaign for state auditor was between Bump, whose main experience was as a state legislator and governor’s cabinet secretary but with no accounting experience, and Republican Mary Connaughton, a CPA and former audit senior manager at Ernst and Young as well as a financial consultant and state college accounting instructor, and who received endorsements from just about every newspaper in the state, including the “liberal” Boston Globe. But Democrat Bump won the election.

Economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe has pointed out how the “free entry” into government is fatally flawed:

Free entry is not always good. Free entry and competition in the production of goods is good, but free competition in the production of bads is not. Free entry into the business of torturing and killing innocents, or free competition in counterfeiting or swindling, for instance, is not good; it is worse than bad. So what sort of “business” is government? Answer: it is not a customary producer of goods sold to voluntary consumers. Rather, it is a “business” engaged in theft and expropriation – by means of taxes and counterfeiting – and the fencing of stolen goods. Hence, free entry into government does not improve something good. Indeed, it makes matters worse than bad, i.e., it improves evil.

But it is sad and unfortunate how the business of government has received such mass praise throughout the life of the United States, despite the damage that governments – federal, state, and local – have done to our country, while the business of business (the “private sector”) is constantly the object of disparagement.

One individual in the business sector who apparently has shown some integrity during the latest “insider trading” scam of the federal government, is John Kinnucan of Broadband Research, who was approached by the FBI asking Kinnucan to wear a wire while meeting with his clients as a means of gathering “evidence” of his clients’ trading with “inside” knowledge. Kinnucan not only refused the request, but had emailed his clients to warn them of the, in his words, “fresh-faced eager beavers.” He apparently was not warning his clients as a means of “covering up” anything; rather, he was protecting them from the State’s entrapment of innocent individuals. But as a punishment for Kinnucan’s show of integrity, federal prosecutors have subpoenaed his firm, but, according to the New York Times, not Kinnucan himself. The Times notes that the distinction is to do with removing Kinnucan’s right against self-incrimination. And according to CNBC, Kinnucan has stated that he will have to defend himself in court, because paying for lawyers would leave his family “destitute.” This is what the State has become, and is just one example of the State’s crimes against private citizens.

Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger had noted cases similar to this, in which the government requested cooperation from an innocent private citizen who then refused to cooperate and was thus the target of retaliation by the government. In his discussion of the WikiLeaks story and the cooperation with the government of the whistleblower website’s business associates Amazon.com, Mastercard and Paypal, Hornberger brings up the Bush Administration’s 2001 request of telecommunications companies to provide confidential information about their customers to help the NSA’s unconstitutional domestic spying program. The only one who didn’t cooperate with the request was Joseph Nacchio of Qwest Communcations. Shortly thereafter, the government indicted and then convicted Nacchio of “insider trading” laws.

During the 1980s, the securities firm Princeton/Newport Partners had to close its doors because it couldn’t handle RICO Statute indictments by then-U.S. attorney Rudy Giuliani, which the firm’s attorneys believed was punishment for the firm’s refusal to cooperate with Giuliani in his investigation of Drexel Burnham Lambert, Inc. According to author Paul Craig Roberts, the grandstanding Giuliani “staged a stormtrooper assault on (Princeton/Newport Partners) involving fifty federal marshals outfitted with automatic weapons and bulletproof vests.”

Roberts also noted how the overzealous Giuliani had no real legal case in his criminal persecution of financier Michael Milken, and had gone after Milken’s brother, as well as had the FBI visit Milken’s 92-year-old grandfather, to coerce a plea deal from Milken. Roberts also contends that, in Giuliani’s anti-business/anti-rich zeal, he framed hotel queen Leona Helmsley with suborned perjury, a conclusion also reached by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and former Judge Robert Bork.

It is of great irony – well, hypocrisy is a better word – that such a counter-productive “insider trading” persecution of private, innocent individuals who are not committing any acts of theft or fraud, comes from the same federal government many of whose participants embrace the revolving door between government monopolies and privileged corporate interests. Former Federal Reserve employees’ informing their post-Fed private sector clients of the inside details of Fed meetings and decisions, long before such information becomes public knowledge, is but one example. Compulsory government monopoly is what enables those going through that revolving door to enrich themselves at the public’s expense. As Prof. Hoppe has noted,

As a territorial monopolist of legislation and the money-printing press, the State has a natural tendency to grow: to use its “fiat” laws and “fiat” money to gain increasing control of society and social institutions. With “fiat laws”, the State has the unique power of threatening and punishing or incentivizing and rewarding whatever it pleases. And with its “fiat money”, it can buy-up support, bribe, and corrupt more easily than anyone else.

In regards to the federal government’s failed foreign policy of aggression for many decades, a current developing news story that has exposed the ones lacking in integrity – especially in government, political punditry and journalism – has been the WikiLeaks saga. There have been calls to have WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange prosecuted for espionage and even assassinated, and there has been support to suppress information associated with State indiscretions and outright crimes, support for censorship of media including the Internet.

But there have been those within government and the military who have shown integrity, especially in this decade of the War on Terrorism, particularly those who have left the government or military and returned to private life. It takes integrity (and courage) to recognize and testify on deception, corruption, even crimes in government.

One now-retired member of the U.S. military, former Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who is also a LewRockwell.com columnist, had anonymously written articles expressing her dissent from Pentagon policy in 2002 and 2003. Kwiatkowski had told of her own betrayal and anger as well as that of fellow military personnel, who felt that their assessments and advice on the Bush Administration’s plans for Iraq were being brushed aside by the civilian leadership.

And retired CIA officer Philip Giraldi, now a columnist for Antiwar.com, The American Conservative magazine, and Campaign for Liberty, and also executive director of the Council for the National Interest, has worked in intelligence in Turkey, Italy, Germany and Spain, dealing mainly with issues of international terrorism. Giraldi has been a critic of U.S. government policy in the Middle East, Israel in particular, and has written about alleged fabrications used by government officials and their flunkies as a means to go to war in Iraq and of deceptions to initiate sanctions or hostilities against Iran.

There have also been claims regarding widespread drug use and deliberate murders of civilians by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, some claims of which are being investigated, and only a few soldiers there have been willing to denounce such activities. The true bravery exists in the young soldier willing to disclose such immoral activities despite the possibility of his own death as punishment.

One can surely describe Kinnucan, Kwiatkowski, Giraldi and various whistleblowers as having integrity, while it is impossible to find integrity in government officials who use deception and propaganda toward expanding U.S. government apparatus and control into other regions of the world. Can it be possible for agents of the State with integrity to continually fire remote-controlled drone bombs at various targets in Pakistan, knowing that the ones they are killing are innocent civilians? And where is the integrity in government agents who go so far as to prevent a teenager from seeking honest employment while encouraging him to commit terrorist acts?

And what about America’s Fourth Estate – the Press? Where is their integrity when, instead of acting as the people’s important check on government powers, they have been acting as the State’s spokespeople and apologists for the multitudes of State abuses of power?

And where is the integrity in government officials who invent new laws out of thin air, such as “insider trading,” as a means of restricting the freedom of certain segments of society, or persecuting honest businessmen who have committed no crimes of violence, theft or fraud against others? The more statist and bureaucratized our society has become, the more petty resentment there has been toward those who benefit financially through their hard work, talents and abilities, and toward those who stand up to government bullies and who stand for principle, unfortunately.

So how can those who are driven toward State power possibly have integrity when the very apparatus over which they want control is inherently corrupting? Obviously, there have been plenty of those in the business sector who have shown a lack of integrity and have been corrupt, but the genuine business sector does not have the power of compulsion over others, the power to be above the law as does the compulsory government sector. And by genuine business sector, I mean that which is not tied to the State apparatus through “crony capitalism,” or corporatism.

It is thus nearly impossible to expect even the most honest individual to grab hold of monopolistic governmental powers, legislatively, militarily or otherwise, and expect one’s integrity to remain intact. There are some exceptions, of course.

Frail, Elderly Conductor Keeps On Truckin’

75-year-old symphony conductor Seiji Ozawa has completed his successful return to Carnegie Hall after many months of cancellations due to one health problem after another — you name it, he’s had it — with the performance of Benjamin Britten’s 1961-62 War Requiem, an 85-minute extensive and demanding piece, with the Japanese Saito Kinen Orchestra that Ozawa founded. Britten was a pacifist and had used some of English WW I soldier Wilfred Owen‘s poems for the Requiem.

Earlier in the week, Ozawa, the former Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for nearly 30 years, conducted two other concerts at Carnegie Hall. I probably had seen Ozawa conduct BSO concerts quite a few times at Boston’s Symphony Hall during the 1970s, 80s and 90s. There were several times in which he had to take extended leaves because of health problems, which continue to this day. Only recently, he’s admitted to being a workaholic, although I doubt he would use that word. His BSO successor James Levine is also a workaholic, being music director of both the BSO and New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and also with one health problem after another. Levine’s future with the BSO is shaky at best.

One of the controversies with the Boston Symphony during Ozawa’s time with them was when the BSO cancelled appearances by actress Vanessa Redgrave because of her outspoken support for the Palestine Liberation Organization. I clearly remember Ozawa’s response to reporters’ questions on the matter, that he just doesn’t get involved in politics and had nothing to say about it. In fact, he admitted on the stand at the trial of Redgrave’s lawsuit against the BSO that he had never heard of Redgrave before that controversy.

And, as far as not getting involved in politics, Ozawa wrote in the program notes for the recent War Requiem performance, “I personally do not care for political pieces” (I don’t blame him.), but he loves the music.

Rep. Ron Paul interviewed on C-Span

Congressman Ron Paul had a very informative interview with C-Span on “The Newsmakers,” with questions by Sudeep Reddy of the WSJ, and Robin Harding of the Financial Times and with host Susan Swain. The interview will be repeated on C-Span today, Sunday, at 6 PM ET, or you can view the interview here.

UPDATE: Here is the video of that interview:

Israel First

Philip Weiss on shocking testimonies of Israeli soldiers in occupied territories and Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians

Tax Cuts, Secession, and the Need to END Centralization

If the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire on January 1st, right in the middle of this huge economic downturn, it would be devastating especially combined with Ben Bernanke’s QE 2 that will effect in further increased inflation. Even if it were only those whose income is above $250,000 that would be affected, the so-called “millionaires and billionaires,” that would still have devastating effects on everyone, because when the “millionaires and billionaires” suddenly have much more of their income taken away by the government, they immediately close plants, cease expansions and capital projects and investment, which is followed by more and more lay-offs, higher unemployment.

I WAS supportive of that tax cut extension bill, even with that one compromise of extending unemployment benefits. However, now that I see that more and more crap is being added to the bill, more and more pork and deficit-spending, I can see now that it was a mistake even to support it with just the one provision to extend unemployment benefits.

My fear had been that if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire that that would be the point of the SHTF, and that such devastation during this recession/depression would spark new protests, and may be the real beginning of what the doom-and-gloomers Peter Schiff and Gerald Celente and others had been predicting: “civil unrest,” rioting, food riots, looting, societal chaos, etc. And empty store shelves, especially food store shelves, people literally starving. I’m not in the mood to see any violence, and, while most people will be worried about stocking up on their food necessities, I’ll be worried about stocking up on my vitamins and supplements. I don’t want to deal with that.

However, this tax cut bill currently in Congress is another temporary tax-cut extension, for only two years. I just don’t think such a temporary extension will encourage businesses to invest and expand any more than they already are. In fact, this whole thing is just ridiculous.

If the current Bush tax cuts expire on January 1st, the new Republican-led majority in the House and the higher number of Republicans in the Senate will probably not let too much time go by without fixing the situation right away in the new term. Or will they?

So right now, I am at least tentatively supportive of the Mike Pence-Jim DeMint Tax Relief Certainty Act, which would permanently extend the Bush tax cuts. THAT is what the economy needs — permanent tax cuts — so that businesses and investors have long-term confidence and security and are willing to take the necessary risks with THEIR money and capital. THAT is what will effect in the creation of new jobs and more prosperity for lower- and middle-income Americans, and a higher standard of living for all.

The current tax-cut extension bill is garbage, it’s like a band-aid, a kick-the-can-further-down-the-road piece of garbage, and worse, it’s loaded with tons of disgusting pork. Yech!

This morning, Robert Wenzel posted a video of Michael Milken, who remarked on California’s current crisis, and that the state — and maybe other states — may have to compromise states’ rights with the federal government as a trade-off for federal assistance. Sorry. It should be going the other way. The people of those other states who are living responsibly and aren’t engaging in the kind of socialist public theft that California is doing should not have to foot the bill for California’s irresponsibility. And the people of California shouldn’t be giving up their freedom and independence as a compromise for a nanny-federal government to take care of them. Wenzel also posted about Ireland’s fiscal problems, and about George Sorros’s suggestion that EU just print more money. Wenzel has the correct solution for Ireland, and for all the other EU states:

The only real solution is for individual countries to secede from the EU, bring back their own currencies, restructure their debt, i.e., go bankrupt, and start fresh with a new stable currency, and attempt to keep it that way, by shrinking the role of government and its drain on money.

You betchya! THAT is exactly what America should be doing! The only real solution for Europe as well as for the U.S. is for states to secede from their centralized, Leviathan parasitic monsters who have usurped the states’ freedom, prosperity and independence.

As we have seen, especially in the last decade or two of how the U.S. federal government has taxed and regulated the people into near-impoverishment, as well as making us less safe with the feds’ expansionism and provoking the inhabitants of foreign lands, centralism just doesn’t work. The idea of “limited government” is an impossibility, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe has noted. The federal government has grown and grown and grown since America began, and it has never, ever shrunk. And it never will shrink. This whole thing of centralism is a sham, a fraud. It can never work, and it never will work. Centralism only leads to totalitarianism, as we are seeing right before our very eyes. The only way to save our freedom and prosperity, and retain our security as a population of this North American territory, is to abolish the federal U.S. government, and let the states have their independence and sovereignty back that the feds stole and usurped.

And for those who believe that it is statism in general that is the evil, sure, we should get rid of all statism. However, for right now, the main problem is centralism. At least let’s get rid of the federal government, and the people of the states will be freer and much more prosperous. As Hans Hoppe has written quite a few times, especially in his book, Democracy: The God That Failed, it is much better to have many smaller States rather than one big State. If the people of each state can retain their independence and freedom from the federal leech, THEN they can worry about getting rid of their state government. Smaller States are better, because such an arrangement allows people to “vote with their feet.” If things in Illinois get out of hand, then people in Illinois can move to Ohio, etc. But it’s MUCH more difficult for Americans to leave the entire U.S., for many reasons.

But, as far as statism in general is concerned, we can address that with non-violent resistance, and have a revolution against despots and tyrants by, as Carl Watner has written, without firing a single shot. Perhaps just ignoring the State is helpful, especially if millions amongst the population would do that. Hans Hoppe has the right idea:

In any case, this goal (of rolling back State power) can only be reached if, instead of talking and seeking access to the State, the State is openly ignored, avoided and disavowed; and its agents and propagandists are explicitly excluded from one’s proceedings. To talk to the State and include its agents and propagandists is to lend legitimacy and strength to it. To ostentatiously ignore, avoid and disavow it and to exclude its agents and propagandists as undesirable is to withdraw consent from the State and to weaken its legitimacy.

Here is Prof. Hoppe in a 2005 lecture on the advantages of small States and dangers of centralization:

Abortive “Selective Reduction” of Twins

On his show today on 96.9 “Boston Talks,” Jay Severin was discussing the phenomenon of couples who find themselves pregnant with not just one baby but twins unexpectedly, and having the doctor practice “selective reduction,” that is, aborting the pregnancy of one of the infants but allowing the second one to continue developing. According to the Toronto-based National Post newspaper, some couples are now doing just that not for medical reasons, such as when there are three or four or more fetuses which raises the risks for the life of the mother, but solely for economic or other personal reasons.

I hope that any expecting couples or single mothers out there who have found they are pregnant with twins but are not able to care for, or can’t afford financially, more than one addition to the family, that you would seriously consider bringing both of the twins to birth and giving the second one for adoption. There are many, many couples out there on waiting lists to adopt a baby. Giving up an unwanted or “unaffordable” baby is always the more charitable and humane solution to this situation.

Invade Mexico on Behalf of the Futile War on Drugs?

Redstate.com has a post that asserts that in order to deal with the violence and chaos from the drug cartels south of the border that are invading Texas and Arizona, it is a question of not if but when the U.S. government must invade Mexico. Not once throughout the whole post is the idea of ending the war on drugs that’s causing the whole mess, yet that is the only way to solve that problem. Market Ticker’s Karl Denninger agrees with me.

Marine veteran Fred Reed matter-of-factly discussed this proposal of invading Mexico just a few weeks ago.

What the Pentaloons don’t understand, being armed Boy Scouts who believe their own propaganda – “Ooo-rah! Yes sir! Yes sir! Can do, sir!” is that they usually can’t. The chief reason is that people really, really do not like American soldiers invading their countries, wrecking cities and killing their children. The military, which thinks at right angles, cannot wrap its mind around this difficult thought. Thus Americans invariably begin by thinking, “We are right. We are for democracy. We are trying to help these people. Therefore they will love us.”

Must America lose another war, sacrifice more American lives, murder more foreigners, engage in more death and destruction, and put itself into even further bankruptcy because conservatives don’t like the thought of someone else having a good time, and don’t like the thought of personal responsibility? (And I thought it was the Left who were guilty of acting out their death instinct!)

It is mostly the conservatives who want to continue the War on Drugs, despite how futile and counter-productive that fascist scheme is, although most of those among the left who support it know that the government shouldn’t have the power to dictate to people what chemicals they may or may not ingest, but those particular lefties in on the scheme have something to gain by supporting it. But most conservatives don’t want people to have the freedom to choose what chemicals to put into their own bodies, because conservatives don’t believe in personal responsibility. Conservatives believe in this fascist nanny state, unfortunately, and it is this nanny state, anti-personal responsibility policy they support that is causing a black market in drugs, driving up the prices and making it highly profitable for the black market druggists, thus incentivizing those in such a scheme to push the drugs onto others, and engage in trafficking, and turn into savages not afraid to kill those who move in on their turf. Conservatives support this.

Why can’t people of our modern era learn from history, the history of Prohibition, which banned the production, sale and distribution and consumption of alcohol? That was over 80 years ago! Instead of learning from history, and supporting common sense and personal responsibility, conservatives want the nanny state government to have the power to dictate to private individuals what chemicals they may or may not ingest, and conservatives don’t want people to to be expected to take responsibility for the consequences of their decisions and actions.

Now, I personally oppose drug usage, as well as alcohol. The only times I ever drank alcohol were during high school and college, but that was many, many years ago. I’ve never even smoked. Why would I deliberately inhale the waste of burning garbage?

Instead of common sense and supporting freedom and personal responsibility, too many people, the statists, the warmongers, and the government expansionists, want to continue the senseless, murderous war on drugs, and want to militarily invade Mexico. Perhaps that’s the true long-term purpose underlying the War on Drugs anyway. Perhaps the statists and expansionists have wanted to invade Mexico all along, and continuing the War on Drugs to deliberately effect in chaos has been their way of getting what they really wanted.

Perhaps the War on Drugs statists really just want to make Mexico another U.S. territory. If that’s the case, then it would be similar to how the statists, warmongers, and government expansionists have for many decades been deliberately radicalizing and provoking the Muslims overseas, and deliberately eliciting their jihad against the West as an excuse for the statists, warmongers and government expansionists to invade and occupy Middle Eastern and Asian countries because ultimately they want to make those oil-rich lands U.S. territories. If so, then why can’t they just openly advocate the U.S. government’s conquest of the people of those countries and the seizures of their territories. At least that would be more aboveboard than what the statists, warmongers and government expansionists have been doing for the past several decades.

Boycott! Censorship! Joe Lieberman: Ignorance = Strength

Justin Raimondo has this very well done column at Antiwar.com, Defend WikiLeaks – Boycott Amazon, in which he asserts that because Amazon.com caved to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s demand that Amazon end its providing of Internet servers for WikiLeaks, therefore Amazon is an “extension of the state,” and Amazon needs to be boycotted. I have already linked to several good posts by libertarians who mostly oppose boycotting Amazon, and I agree with them. I have some points to make, though, in response to Justin Raimondo.

Regarding the call to boycott Amazon, Raimondo seems to be asserting that it’s a choice between politics or principle (something to which I have referred in the past), “You’re either for liberty, or you’re against it: there is no middle ground,” asserts Raimondo.

Now, if you are going to boycott Amazon.com because they have stopped providing WikiLeaks with servers, then, if you really are principled and consistent, you would have to boycott every other company that offers Internet servers and who isn’t providing WikiLeaks with servers. There are probably hundreds of them. Should we boycott all of them? Are they morally obligated to provide WikiLeaks with servers? Is Amazon.com morally obligated to provide WikiLeaks with servers, just because they, Amazon.com, possess and provide servers?

And also, I would think that we would boycott a company for doing something bad, not because the company isn’t doing something that we want them to do. For example, boycott a company that does business with a racist apartheid State, such as the old South Africa, or the present Israel. That would be a boycott against a company based on the company’s doing something of which we disapprove, or its colluding with a racist State.

But to suggest that we ought to boycott a company because it is isn’t doing something – in this case, not providing WikiLeaks with servers, and I know they were providing servers but then withdrew the support – is suggesting that you are saying to Amazon: “you must provide WikiLeaks with servers, or we’ll boycott you.” (Even though there are many other companies available that provide servers – Amazon isn’t the only one.) Is that really what Raimondo is advocating?

And Paul Craig Roberts has this article on LewRockwell.com, Western Civilization Has Shed Its Values, in which he comments on the WikiLeaks cablegate matter, and notes that the most important revelation was regarding Hillary Clinton Rodham’s secret cables requesting “credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers, frequent-flyer account numbers and biographic and biometric information including DNA information on UN officials from the Secretary General down, including ‘heads of peace operations and political field missions.’”

Now, that order by Clinton Rodham was in July, 2009, which implies that the items requested had already been or are being provided to her. Wouldn’t that mean that Hillary has committed ID theft? I think so. And, given that she’s a government official, and a high government official at that, there shouldn’t be any requirement that the evidence against her was obtained “legally”(and I don’t know whether information provided to WikiLeaks by someone makes WikiLeaks guilty of anything, because they didn’t actively go break into someone’s office and steal it).

On a related note, Michael Rozeff provides on the Lew Rockwell Blog, this quote from Murray Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty:

“In some areas, a radical distinction between private persons and government officials is acknowledged in existing law and opinion. Thus, a private individual’s ‘right to privacy’ or right to keep silent does not and should not apply to government officials, whose records and operations should be open to public knowledge and evaluation. There are two democratic arguments for denying the right to privacy to government officials, which, while not strictly libertarian, are valuable as far as they go: namely (1) that in a democracy, the public can only decide on public issues and vote for public officials if they have complete knowledge of government operations; and (2) that since the taxpayers pay the bill for government, they should have the right to know what government is doing. The libertarian argument would add that, since government is an aggressor organization against the rights and persons of its citizens, then full disclosure of its operations is at least one right that its subjects might wrest from the State, and which they may be able to use to resist or whittle down State power.”

If anyone is dangerous to America, and to our freedom, it’s Joe Lieberman. This nut wants to remove citizenship from people accused of terrorism – not convicted based on a trial with due process and evidence brought forth, but merely suspected of terrorism – and he wants to shut down the Internet, based on panic and fear-mongering, but really for the purpose of suppressing dissent, and he’s a damn warmonger with Iraq and now Iran, both cases being based on emotional propaganda and not facts.

I don’t think I’ve seen a government official so obnoxiously against freedom, against Presumption of Innocence, against the Rule of Law, against civil liberties, against Due Process, against private property, against freedom of association, against freedom of movement, against free speech, and against common sense. Joe Lieberman hasn’t a clue as far as what America is really supposed to stand for – you know, freedom? (Yeah, that thing.)

Speaking of Joe Lieberman’s Internet censorship, Glenn Greenwald notes that Lieberman has threatened another Internet software company into removing graphics from the WikiLeaks website. Greenwald writes about the senior imbecile from Connecticut and the State-worshiping news media:

He’s on some kind of warped mission where he’s literally running around single-handedly dictating what political content can and cannot be on the Internet, issuing broad-based threats to “all companies” that — by design — are causing suppression of political information…

What Lieberman is doing is a severe abuse of power, and even for our anemic, power-revering media, it ought to be a major scandal (though it’s not because, as Digby says, all our media stars can process is that “Julian Assange is icky”).

If people — especially journalists — can’t be riled when Joe Lieberman is unilaterally causing the suppression of political content from the Internet, when will they be?

In his subsequent post, The lawless Wild West attacks WikiLeaks, Greenwald highlights the Constitutional brilliance of the senior fascist from Kentucky, Sen. Mitch McConnell who says that WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange has done damage to the country! Can you believe that? Can you see how amazingly ignorant these people are n Washington? McConnell stated that Assange needs to be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” And, McConnell the ignorant fascist continues, if there is no particular law that Assange can be found to have broken, McConnell and his fellow totalitarians will just make one up! Just like a true Stalinist. Greenwald continues:

People often have a hard time believing that the terms “authoritarian” and “tyranny” apply to their own government, but that’s because those who meekly stay in line and remain unthreatening are never targeted by such forces.  The face of authoritarianism and tyranny reveals itself with how it responds to those who meaningfully dissent from and effectively challenge its authority:  do they act within the law or solely through the use of unconstrained force?…

…All the oppressive, lawless policies of the last decade — lawless detention, Guantanamo, disappearing people to CIA black sites, rendition, the torture regime, denial of habeas corpus, drones, assassinations, private mercenary forces, etc. — were designed, first and foremost, to instill exactly this fear, to deter any challenge.   Many of these policies continue, and that climate of fear thus endures (see this comment from today as but one of many examples).  As the treatment just thus far of WikiLeaks and Assange demonstrates, that reaction — though paralyzing and counter-productive — is not irrational.  And one thing is for sure:  there is nothing the U.S. Government could do — no matter how lawless or heinous — which (with rare exception) would provoke the objections of the American establishment media.

The State and its unchecked violence always prefers silence rather than information, and, given the slobbering the news media in general have been doing over their Savior, Barack Obomber, it should be of no surprise that the Fourth Estate — now hanging by a thread in its ever-increasing caving to the demands of the State to further curtail its dissemination of information — will not speak up in defense of WikiLeaks, and in defense of the American people’s right to know what their government is up to in their name. Unfortunately, many Americans lap up the propaganda for war, for anti-”terror” policies that are doing nothing but increasing the provocations of the inhabitants of Middle-Eastern and Asian countries and thus increasing the risk of terrorism against Americans.

At the time of the American Revolution, supposedly, 1/3 of the population were for secession from British rule and willing to fight for it, 1/3 were indifferent, and 1/3 supported the status quo. It’s not very much different now, I’m afraid.

The WikiLeaks Critics’ Pathological Obedience to the State

By Scott Lazarowitz
December 6, 2010

(Link to article at Strike the Root)

The most recent example of the sheeple’s State-obedience has been the response among many politicians and news media blabbermouths and scribblers to the latest WikiLeaks release. The documents show the utter ineptness of our government officials who have no idea what they’re doing, and the documents also show the bureaucrats’ crassness and attitude toward foreign leaders.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had written on her Facebook page that WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange has “blood on his hands.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that the document release “threatens our national security.” And U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said that Assange should be charged with espionage and that the release “is worse even than a physical attack on Americans; it’s worse than a military attack.”

Do we need any more proof that F.A. Hayek was right when he asserted in his book, The Road to Serfdom, that the worst get on top? And by “worst,” I mean morally and especially intellectually.

Now, when I listen to these people – and I try not to, believe me – I can’t help but conclude that it is just imbecilic for Sarah Palin to assert that Assange has “blood on his hands” merely by exposing the incompetence and buffoonery of government officials. One would think that the one with “blood on his hands” would be George W. Bush, who started both the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, and both based on either lies or propaganda, or both. Whoever starts wars has blood on his hands, and worse, when starting the wars was clearly based on deception and, even worse than that, for self-serving political reasons – in Bush’s case, to get himself reelected.

It is unfortunate that so many people don’t learn from history, and can’t see into the long term. People just don’t seem to comprehend that the U.S. government’s very policies of interventionism and territorial expansionism are really what have been undermining Americans’ security. Much of what we have been suffering now – an out of control federal government and its intrusions abroad that motivates the inhabitants of those foreign territories to retaliate, and a “War on Terror” police state run amok – is the result of the Elder President Bush’s first Iraq war, also totally unnecessary and based on lies and propaganda, that included the intentional destruction during the 1990s of Iraqi water and sewage treatment facilities that led to surges in cancer and child mortality rates and an even angrier Middle Eastern and Muslim population.

And Julian Assange has blood on his hands?

It is especially unfortunate that the American Fourth Estate – the Press – have abandoned their role and responsibility in challenging the status quo and the assertions put forth by government bureaucrats, whether it’s regarding the government’s assertion of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, or regarding the government’s ramming through Congress a new health care bureaucracy and mandates without debate. The Press have joined Main Street America in what has been an emotional, mystical worship of our centralized federal government as a god that can’t be questioned.

But the American people, in their passively believing the lies of government leaders, and in their allowing policies of institutionalized dependence to be put in place (such as the New Deal’s Social Security system, LBJ’s Medicare, etc.), have unwittingly fostered a system in which they remain children their whole lives, economically, and especially emotionally and intellectually.

Human rights advocate and antiwar writer Arthur Silber has written about the theme of obedience to authority that is instilled in many children who continue their obedience to authority into adulthood, and who merely transfer their internalized parents’ authority onto others later in life (such as political leaders). Silber makes much use of the work of psychologist Alice Miller. Silber notes,

By demanding obedience above all from a child (whether by physical punishment, by psychological means, or through some combination of both), parents forbid the child from fostering an authentic sense of self. Because children are completely dependent on their parents, they dare not question their parents’ goodness, or their “good intentions.” As a result, when children are punished, even if they are punished for no reason or for a reason that makes no sense, they blame themselves and believe that the fault lies within them. In this way, the idealization of the authority figure is allowed to continue. In addition, the child cannot allow himself to experience fully his own pain, because that, too, might lead to questioning of his parents.

In this manner, the child is prevented from developing a genuine, authentic sense of self. As he grows older, this deadening of his soul desensitizes the child to the pain of others. Eventually, the maturing adult will seek to express his repressed anger on external targets, since he has never been allowed to experience and express it in ways that would not be destructive. By such means, the cycle of violence is continued into another generation (using “violence” in the broadest sense). One of the additional consequences is that the adult, who has never developed an authentic self, can easily transfer his idealization of his parents to a new authority figure.

And while such authority figures can often include one’s professor, doctor or boss, as the size, power and influence of the State have grown dramatically over the past century, so have the phenomena of the dependence on, idealization of and obedience toward the authority figures of the State, such as police, soldiers, elected officials and especially presidents.

Contrary to that self-destructive idiocy, the Founding Fathers believed that always questioning the State’s authority is vital to preserve our liberty. But 200 years after the American Revolution, Americans have developed a dangerous blind obedience to the State. Unfortunately, many Americans are very childlike in their idealization of and blind faith in our agents of the State, no matter how much the State continues to lie to them and abuse them.

As libertarian author James Bovard pointed out,

We now have the Battered Citizen Syndrome: the more debacles, the more voters cling to faith in their rulers. Like a train engineer bonding with the survivors of a train wreck that happened on his watch, Bush constantly reminded Americans of 9/11 and his wars. The greater the government’s failure to protect, the greater the subsequent mass fear — and the easier it becomes to subjugate the populace. The craving for a protector drops an iron curtain around the mind, preventing a person from accepting evidence that would shred his political security blanket.

Such a phenomenon takes shape early in life. Oftentimes a parent will use emotional manipulation, deception or physical punishment – and, in some cases, sexual abuse – as a means of suppressing the natural expressions and feelings of the child, and to coerce the child into obedience, a scheme that Alice Miller refers to as poisonous pedagogy. And Silber quotes Miller on that:

Poisonous pedagogy is a phrase I use to refer to the kind of parenting and education aimed at breaking a child’s will and making that child into an obedient subject by means of overt or covert coercion, manipulation, and emotional blackmail.

The poisonous pedagogy of statism and collectivism has institutionalized the sacrifice of the individual, one’s rights and one’s liberty to serve the collective needs of the community, and to obey the will of the State, the community’s hired guns. A telling example of such poisonous statism has been the TSA’s totalitarian policies of “security” at America’s airports, in which travelers have two choices: go through the X-ray scan that causes radiation and is a cancer risk, as well as being a virtual strip search that creates literally pornographic nude images of someone, images that can be and have been saved; or be intimately frisked by TSA workers which includes the “groping” of one’s private parts. And to the disappointment of libertarians there have only been a few complaints about such humiliations and violations of the Fourth Amendment. Most of the passive sheeple remain silent and obedient. “It’s for your own good,” some say, including the “liberal” ladies of the TV show, The View, who seem to think that those who are complaining have sexual “hang-ups.”

Many on the left associate a pedagogy of repressive child-rearing, sexual forbiddance and intolerance with conservatism and religion. However, there can also be repressiveness on the part of those who think of themselves as “liberal” and who advocate sexual “openness,” especially with children. But such a pedagogy can be even more repressive toward children, in a well-meaning yet destructive effort to prevent a child’s later denial or repression of sexuality, in ways that involve over-stepping of physical boundaries that are sexually intrusive of the child. Such attitudes and behaviors have been prevalent for many decades and also play a role in the roots of invasive policies by governments.

Apparently, a scientist who was involved in the development of the TSA X-ray scan had in 2006 offered DHS officials a software fix in which images couldn’t possibly violate a passenger’s privacy. But when I read that the scientist’s offer was turned down by officials, I saw red flags everywhere, and heard alarms going off. “Warning! Warning!” as the little robot on Lost in Space would shout. When the federal government wants to keep the technology in place that can save nude images of any citizen, and refuses to put something simple in place to remedy that situation, then one must conclude that sinister motivations underlie the bureaucrats’ intentions.

As Dr. Miller has noted, a parent’s use of physical intimidation as a means to control the child, stifle the child’s natural intellectual questioning of the status quo, and make the child obedient is all too common. Miller has written about Adolph Hitler’s repressive upbringing by a pathologically domineering father, particularly in her book, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence, and elsewhere. Miller writes:

…by totally denying his pain, his feelings of powerlessness, and his despair–in other words, by denying the truth – Hitler made himself into a master of violence and of contempt for human beings. The result was a very primitive person, incapable of any empathy for other people. He was mercilessly and constantly driven to new destructive acts by his latent feelings of hatred and revenge…

Now, it is not just the neoconservative warmongers who show repressed anger and lack of empathy in their supporting the wars abroad that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis since 1990 and killed many innocent Afghans since 2001, as well as literally have destroyed those two countries. But such destruction and lack of empathy has been exhibited by plenty of people on the left, in their repressive economic policies and intrusions that have extremely destructive long term effects on society, as well as from the left’s highly profitable and murderous abortion industry.

It is sad that so many people prefer to be obedient and believe what their authorities tell them. The Founding Fathers knew that such a blind trust in government was dangerous and that the State must always be viewed with suspicion, and distrusted. The more centralized and powerful a government, the more dangerous it is. The Founders’ big mistake was their Constitution that gives the federal government a monopoly in territorial protection. Without the necessary pressures of competition in the business of security, the agents of the State will abuse the monopoly, and deliberately provoke foreign elements as a means of expanding the power of the State to satisfy the monopolists’ own craving for more power. Another mistake the Founders made was allowing the State – federal or local – to have the power of compulsion over others, and allowing bureaucrats, police or soldiers to be above the rule of law, which, ipso facto, undermines the rule of law.

The U.S. government’s intrusions, trespassing and mass murders abroad for decades and their natural blowback are what have most undermined the security of Americans. All WikiLeaks has been doing is exposing our government bureaucrats for what they are, and the State’s crimes for what they are.

Rather than being obedient sheeple, and rather than prosecuting or murdering Julian Assange and censoring WikiLeaks online, and rather than allowing virtual strip searches and sexual molestation at the nation’s airports, we need to protect ourselves from our government. And that means not only putting a stop to our government’s crimes, but ending centralism altogether, like the former Soviet Union did.

Continue to Expose the Crimes of the State, and Restore Our Freedom!

The coincidences between U.S. happenings and goings on in Israel never end. This situation with WikiLeaks and its latest release that exposes nincompoops like Hillary Clinton, and with neocon nudniks like Sarah Palin asserting that Julian Assange has “blood on his hands,” is very similar to the situation in Israel. A young female Israeli military clerk named Anat Kamm burned classified military information to CD as well as made copies of material in print and released that material to a Haaretz newspaper reporter, Uri Blau, who used the material to report on the military’s alleged crimes. In the words of Ms. Kamm,

There were some aspects of the IDF’s operational procedures in the West Bank that I felt should be public knowledge…

…When I was burning the CDs I kept thinking that history tends to forgive people who expose war crimes…

Kamm is not charged with espionage on behalf of another government, but she is charged with compromising Israel’s security. It’s very similar to the current situation with WikiLeaks. The Israeli media by and large is the propaganda organ for the government and military, just as our Fourth Estate here in the U.S. has become with the U.S. government. Thomas Jefferson is throwing up in his grave right now over this.

The Haaretz reporter Uri Blau had been in hiding in London, but had recently come forward for interrogation, but I don’t know whether or not he’s been charged.

But as British journalist Jonathan Cook put it,

During her conscription, Kamm copied possibly hundreds of army documents that revealed systematic law-breaking by the Israeli high command operating in the occupied Palestinian territories, including orders to ignore court rulings. She was working at the time in the office of Brig. Gen. Yair Naveh, who is in charge of operations in the West Bank.

Blau’s crime is that he published a series of scoops based on her leaked information that have highly embarrassed senior Israeli officers by showing their contempt for the rule of law.

In other words, the two are really accused of embarrassing government officials, and exposing their transgressions, just as Julian Assange and Bradley Manning are accused of with U.S. officials. But while this was initially going on several months ago, you just wouldn’t believe the hatred and venom toward those two Israelis in comments sections of various Israeli newspaper articles and opinion columns.

The worse of it, in my opinion, has come from Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick, who also has some things to write this week about WikiLeaks.

Make no mistake about it, the ongoing WikiLeaks operation against the US is an act of war.

Only a fool could actually think that Julian Assange’s releasing information that the American people have a right to know about what their government has been doing on their behalf could be an “act of war.” A fool, or someone who is so absorbed in the power of the State, so mindlessly mystical of the State and its military that any act by someone that is in the slightest way challenging of the State’s authority and integrity (which is not difficult — what integrity?) is to the State and its apparatchiks an “act of war.”

Glick also refers in that column to Kamm and Blau that Glick feels should be investigated for “treason,” yet it is our treasonous governments whose decades-long campaigns of aggression provoke people in other countries and have gravely backfired against us Americans, as well as against Israelis.

The reason for that is the mistake of the people assigning to their government a compulsory monopoly in territorial protection. Monopolists who have the power of law and order on their side, and whose mandate legally restricts others from providing a service of protection, will abuse such power and that is what we have seen repeatedly for a century or more. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe has noted,

The recently ended twentieth century was characterized by a level of human rights violations unparalleled in all of human history. In his book Death by Government, Rudolph Rummel estimates some 170 million government-caused deaths in the twentieth century. The historical evidence appears to indicate that, rather than protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of their citizens, governments must be considered the greatest threat to human security…

Hoppe has also noted the inherent nature of democracy and compulsory government in which the ruling monopolists will abuse their power as the initial aggressors in state-upon-state conflicts:

What appears to be standing in the way of peace and civilization, then, is above all the state and democracy, and specifically the world’s model democracy: the United States. Ironically if not surprisingly, however, it is precisely the United States, which claims that it is the solution to the quest for peace.

The reason for this claim is the doctrine of democratic peace, which goes back to the days of Woodrow Wilson and World War I, has been revived in recent years by George W. Bush and his neo-conservative advisors, and by now has become intellectual folklore even in liberal-libertarian circles. The theory claims:

• Democracies do not go to war against each other.
• Hence, in order to create lasting peace, the entire world must be made democratic.

And as a — largely unstated — corollary:

• Today, many states are not democratic and resist internal — democratic — reform.
• Hence, war must be waged on those states in order to convert them to democracy and thus create lasting peace….

But what was some kind of quest to force democracy down other countries’ throats had really become a crusade for U.S. government hegemony all over the world. Hoppe also brings up the Soviet communists’ crusade to spread communism in the East, in which the Soviet Union engaged in military conquest of other territories who were impotent in fighting back.

…For instance, no war broke out between the end of World War II and the end of the 1980s, i.e., during the hegemonic reign of the Soviet Union, between East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, etc. Was this because these were communist dictatorships and communist dictatorships do not go to war against each other? That would have to be the conclusion of “scientists” of the caliber of democratic-peace theorists! But surely this conclusion is wrong. No war broke out because the Soviet Union did not permit this to happen — just as no war between Western democracies broke out because the United States did not permit this to happen in its dominion….

… In any case, however, the result of the crusade to make the world safe for democracy was less liberal than what had existed before (and the Versailles peace dictate precipitated World War II). Not only did state power grow faster after the war than before….

Moreover, empirically democracies are anything but stable. As indicated, in multi-cultural societies democracy regularly leads to the discrimination, oppression, or even expulsion and extermination of minorities — hardly a peaceful equilibrium. And in ethnically homogeneous societies, democracy regularly leads to class warfare, which leads to economic crisis, which leads to dictatorship….

According to democratic-peace theorists, then, it would seem that we are supposed to war against foreign dictators, whether kings or demagogues, in order to install democracies, which then turn into (modern) dictatorships, until finally, one supposes, the United States itself has turned into a dictatorship, owing to the growth of internal state power which results from the endless “emergencies” engendered by foreign wars.

Hoppe has suggested that a free market system of private protection agencies and insurance firms would better and more efficiently protect a greater number of inhabitants of a population than the current protection racket run by a corrupt monopolistic regime. It would not only be more practical, but would be moral, by not restricting the inherent rights of individuals, rights that are recognized by the Declaration of Independence, AND would prevent the never-ending growth of an oppressive, tyrannical, totalitarian government as we have in our society right now. Hoppe notes,

Because they are not subject to and bound by contracts, states typically outlaw the ownership of weapons by their “clients,” thus increasing their own security at the expense of rendering their alleged clients defenseless. In contrast, no voluntary buyer of protection insurance would agree to a contract that required him to surrender his right to self-defense and be unarmed or otherwise defenseless…

…with regard to foreign relations, because states can externalize the costs of their own actions onto hapless taxpayers, they are permanently prone to becoming aggressors and warmongers. Accordingly, they tend to fund and develop weapons of aggression and mass destruction. In distinct contrast, insurers will be prevented from engaging in any form of external aggression because any aggression is costly and requires higher insurance premiums, implying the loss of clients to other, nonaggressive competitors. Insurers will engage exclusively in defensive violence, and instead of acquiring weapons of aggression and mass destruction, they will tend to invest in the development of weapons of defense and of targeted retaliation….

And to conclude, It is our duty as a people to restore and preserve our freedom, and that means it is vital to continue uncovering the truth about what the State really is. “The truth shall set you free.”

On the LRC Blog, Lew Rockwell is quite succinct:

As Ron Paul notes, “In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. When truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.”As Ron has also long noted, the American State claims the right to know every single thing about us: every dime we earn and spend, every phone call we make or email we send. To track our movements. To know what we are teaching our children. To ascertain our shower head and toilet tank. Now even to see all of you naked or feel you up. And a million and one other insanities, indignities, and outrages. Every single aspect of life is within the State’s jurisdiction, or so it claims.

But for us to know anything about the State, aside from its propaganda, is treason. That is, of course, because the State is a criminal enterprise that depends on our consent. The more we know about its murders, its looting, its lying, the less willing we are to consent, to be good little robots, indeed, to worship it as a god, which is always its ultimate ambition, pharaonic Egypt being its ideal.

Pledge allegiance to this gang? No thanks.