Voluntary Association and Non-Aggression
Arthur Silber: Against Annihilation of the Spirit: Let Us All Become Cowards and No, I do Not Support “The Troops”
Jacob Hornberger: The Troops Don’t Defend Our Freedoms
Laurence Vance: U.S. Presidents and Those Who Kill for Them
Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler: War Is a Racket
Robert Higgs: The Living Reality of Military-Economic Fascism
Morris and Linda Tannehill: Foreign Aggression
Murray Rothbard: War and Foreign Policy
Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Reflections on State and War
Some further comments on what I wrote about yesterday, on the presumption of innocence. Some people don’t seem to realize that government regulations, mandates, restrictions of, and demands for information about private business and private property are schemes in which the individual is presumed guilty and must provide information to the government or follow bureaucratic nonsensical rules to prove one’s innocence. I say that this is a bad thing.
For example, the Left’s elitist extraordinaire Elizabeth Warren is organizing the new fascist “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” which will not protect consumers’ finances, but will protect the corporatist, politically-connected bigwigs and only expand the political power that Washington already illegitimately has over the people and their wealth and property. Some people want Warren to be the Finance Dictator, and has been appearing before a House committee and wasted time arguing and bickering with the moron Republican chairman Patrick McHenry, an ignoramus up to his own ears in corruption, like former Sen. Chris “Countrywide” Dodd. They’re all a bunch of jerks.
My point is, no matter what business you’re in, banking, mortgage and lending, stock investments, financial planning, etc., you have a right to freedom of association and contract, between you and your customers or clients, and all of you have a right to be left alone, and no one has any right to intrude on your privacy, your terms of contracts, how you do business. People all have a right to presumption of innocence and be otherwise left alone especially by the State. The only moral justification for anyone to make any demand for private personal or financial information is if one is actually suspected of some actual crime against some actual alleged victim, crime of fraud or theft.
Banks and other financial institutions should be free to do their business with customers, depositors or borrowers, etc., and no one bank, large or small, should be given any extra protection by the government for any reason. If a bank is having a hard time financially, then that means they need to adjust their ways of doing business, and if that means going out of business, so be it. And it is the consumer’s responsibility to inform oneself of who the more qualified and better banks are and who are not. Like any other type of business that consumers patronize, their business with a bank will always have some risks.
People need to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions and decisions, and they shouldn’t be allowed to use the armed force of government to steal from others in order to receive bailouts.
But when we have a structure in which everyone must submit information about one’s business’s private contracts, customers and financial information to prove one’s innocence, and be constantly under the scrutiny of know-nothing bureaucrats like Elizabeth Warren, we then live in an increasingly Third World society, and that is what America has already become, and that also is another reason why there was a 2008 financial meltdown: too much government control and scrutiny over private businesses and their finances, that led to widespread irresponsibility, corruption and chaos.
(Robert Wenzel of Economic Policy Journal had this take on how clueless Elizabeth Warren is.)
Thanks (but not really thanks) to Manuel Lora of the Lew Rockwell blog for the link to this depressing HuffPo article on Barack Obomber’s now wanting to use his executive power to work around Americans’ 2nd Amendment-protected God-given right of self-defense.
This is no surprise and goes with how Obomber’s lackeys on the Supreme Corpse have endorse total police power, the power of the police to barge into anyone’s property for any reason. Currently, the main reason has been because the police feel like it, but it will soon become reasons of political motivations, just as it was in Stalin’s Soviet Union and in Nazi Germany. For those who think this is just chicken-little-like paranoia of government, all you have to do is just read in the news or on the web every day how our protections from government encroachments and intrusions have been gradually eroded away. It will only get worse. These encroachments will be used by people with the power of the State on their side against those deemed a threat to their power, and against so-called “undesirables.”
This is why monopoly = totalitarianism. Americans have allowed the federal government — through the fraudulent CONstitution, and other UN-Constitutional ways — to have monopolies in one thing after another, from currency production to “defense.” Monopoly has been a destructive force in America, destructive of our liberty, property and our prosperity as well. The most dangerous monopolies have been in “national security” and community policing. As Anthony Gregory notes in his article today, the monopoly in community policing must be abolished. Only unrestricted, free competition amongst local policing organizations will actually protect a community from the thugs, the violent criminals and thieves and rapists. And it’s the State’s being given that monopoly in policing that has enabled the cops themselves to become the thugs, thieves and violent criminals.
Even more important than just free competition in community policing are the vigilant members of a well-armed citizenry. But Barack Obomber wants to remove the people’s means of self-defense, so they cannot defend themselves from the criminals employed by their governments. That’s the bottom line.
“Barack Stalin Obama.”
Today on 96.9 “Boston Talks,” Michael Graham was discussing an increasingly popular policy of states taking away teens’ driver’s licenses to punish them for not graduating from high school, or to encourage them to stay in school and not drop out. I agree with Graham. If a teenager is not motivated to achieve academically, and prefers to work (as opposed to just dropping out to goof off and party, etc.), then he should have the freedom to do that.
In fact, schools are so bad these days, and many of the teachers are dumber than the students themselves, that, a kid dropping out of high school and getting a full-time job, or two part-time jobs, will learn a lot more from on-the-job experience, which may in turn motivate him later on to get a high school degree a few years later (which he is probably going to need at some point if he wants work that pays more than just that of a low-skill part-time job).
But the main point is, if a teen drops out of high school to work instead, how the hell is he going to be able to get to work if the State seizes his driver’s license?
Yet another thing that’s wrong with statism and fascism. This is an extremely immoral system we have, in which the individual’s right to travel and one’s right to work is so egregiously violated by officials and bureaucrats of the State.
But this idea of the stealing of driver’s license from teens is just small potatoes, compared to the thefts, trespasses and violence that our criminals “public officials” commit each and every day.
In fact, Thomas Knapp had this excellent article yesterday on the “Self-Service State“:
…Progressives and other naifs once dreamed of the “full service” state: Cradle-to-grave health benefits, guaranteed job security and a complimentary mint on your pillow from Uncle Sugar. What we got instead, and what we’re always going to get, is the “self service” state: You help yourself if you can, while the state helps itself to anything and everything it wants.
The purpose of the state is to serve the state. To protect the state. To perpetuate the state. To grow the state’s power…
That’s why Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid get together behind closed doors, unvexed by trivialities like public debate, to ram an extension of the USA PATRIOT Act through the US Senate. It’s certainly not something they did for their constituents. It benefits only the state.
It’s why Congress is giving President Barack Obama a pass on his illegal war in Libya, entered into without congressional declaration. That war has now continued past even the unconstitutional “War Powers Resolution” deadline without the requisite congressional approval — but hey, he sent a polite note informing Congress he doesn’t give a damn about the law and appreciates their support in violating it. And they’ll blink — (because) once the state has acted, its actions must always be supported and never, ever questioned.
It’s why it never seems to have crossed Obama’s mind that the “legitimate” job of White House staff might not involve actively propagandizing America on the Inherent Goodness of Dear Leader. Whatever justification we’re offered for creating the position of “Director of Progressive Media & Online Response,” the position’s purpose is to … gently assist … the serfs in learning to love their master.
“To secure these rights …?” If you’re still buying that one, let’s talk real estate. I’ve got some for you. Oceanfront. In Arizona. Priced to sell.
“To serve and protect?” Yeah, right. Ask Jose Guerena about that one. Wait, you can’t. He’s dead. After diligent service to the state himself, he fell inadvertently ran afoul of one of his own employer’s death squads earlier this month.
The state serves only itself — and demands that you serve it too. Like any parasite, it will happily kill its host to further engorge itself. Your only possible escape from that fate is to pry its teeth out of your skin, throw it to the ground, and stomp on it, hard.
Or at least, the federal State, the U.S. government. Here is a post by Stephan Kinsella on how the U.S. Justice (sic) Department is threatening the Texas state legislature to not pass the bill that outlaws sexual molestation committed by TSA Nazis, literally threatening, as Kinsella puts it, a “no-fly zone” over Texas. This is yet another example of why states need to secede or at least nullify federal laws, policies, mandates, restrictions, etc. that violate the rights of the people of the various states. As Knapp noted above, the State (especially the federal government) exists to perpetuate itself, as it parasitically feeds off the actual producers and workers of the society. The bigger the State (such as the federal government), the more parasitic and the more abusive.
And don’t forget, the government — or, the “State” — is not just some non-living material object that just happens to exist. The State is made up of professional career politicians and bureaucrats, many or most of whom have never had a real job their entire adult lives. And those who are at the highest levels would be the least employable in the private sector, and tend to be the ones of the least credible and least principled moral character. What did Barack Obama ever do that was productive and was an actual service to his fellow citizens? Bomb Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen? Impose federal medical intrusions against innocent people who did nothing to deserve such abuses? Did he ever actually produce anything of actual value to others? Did George W. Bush? What about Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, who started the first war in Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, that led to huge increase in widespread anti-Americanism and further terrorist retaliation against us?
In an article today, Paul Craig Roberts mentions how the idea of Presumption of Innocence is not understood by the younger generations, and by many in today’s degenerated culture in America. Roberts was referring to IMF weirdo Strauss-Con’s right to presumption of innocence. Yes, every human being has a God-given right to presumption of innocence, and any accusation against one of crimes must be proven beyond any reasonable doubt. The reason for this is that any one of us could possibly be targeted by agents of the State, by a neighbor, a “disgruntled employee” (or disgruntled employer), and falsely accused of something, and some innocent individual’s life then made miserable. You need hard evidence to convict someone of guilt of a crime of which one is accused, because if you don’t have that hard evidence, then you have to let him go.
Everyone has a right to be presumed innocent of anything, and otherwise left alone, especially by the State. We need to get rid of each and every State-imposed intrusion into our lives, regulations, mandates, restrictions, licensing laws, in which the individual is forced to report something of a personal nature to the State that is none of the government’s damn business. All these State-imposed intrusions are the State’s way of expressing presumed guilt of the individual (the State’s victim), with the burden on the individual to “prove one’s innocence.” Only those who practice moral relativism believe any of this is a good thing.
And finally, given how our Congress in loathsome Washington is ignorantly and self-destructively going to pass the four-year extension of the Unpatriotic Act (that they didn’t even read before passing it in the first place) that violates everyone’s right to presumption of innocence as well as rights to private property, freedom of association, violates the Fourth, Fifth and other Amendments to the CONstitution, how the ignorant lowlifes also passed Obama’s Soviet medical plan without reading that either (oh, that’s right, “Harry Can’t Reid”), is it any surprise that these neanderthals gave so much praise to the racist war criminal from Israel, Nutty-Yahoo?
Australian journalist John Pilger has this piece on Australia’s “dirty secret” of its racist and apartheid-like treatment of the Australian Aboriginal people, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s mass propaganda campaign against them.
The Australian publishes long articles that present Aboriginal people not unsympathetically but as perennial victims of each other, “an entire culture committing suicide”, or as noble primitives requiring firm direction: the eugenicist’s view. It promotes Aboriginal “leaders” who, by blaming their own people for their poverty, tell the white elite what it wants to hear. The writer Michael Brull parodied this: “Oh White man, please save us. Take away our rights because we are so backward.”
This is also the government’s view. In railing against what it called the “black armband view” of Australia’s past, the conservative government of John Howard encouraged and absorbed the views of white supremacists — that there was no genocide, no Stolen Generation, no racism; indeed, whites are the victims of “liberal racism”. A collection of far-right journalists, minor academics and hangers-on became the antipodean equivalent of David Irving Holocaust deniers. Their platform has been the Murdoch press.
Ouch. And Pilger asserts that much of the government-thefts of lands from the Aboriginals has been for the purpose of stealing their precious natural resources. But is that very much different from how Western governments have been treating the inhabitants of Middle Eastern and Asian territories? After all, the only reason that the British Empire, the U.S. Empire and other Western governments have had anything to do with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran and other areas there has been because of oil. If there were no oil there , there would be no West in the Middle East.
One radio commentator I heard recently noted that (paraphrasing), “We haven’t invaded, occupied and attempted to oust dictators in Africa.” (Except for Northern Africa, of course, such as Libya, because of…yup, oil.)
However — and I’ve mentioned this here before — when it comes to Israel, or Palestine, and the displacement and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Arabs there, and the outright institutionalized anti-Arab racism and oppression there, the Western governments did not take over that territory to establish a new Westernized country for the sake of seizing natural resources. The primary reason for the takeover and occupation has not been as much to provide a “safe haven for Jews,” because Israel has been anything but a “safe haven for Jews,” but more for some people to realize their dream of bringing to life the Biblical scriptures they hold dear.
Some people have expressed a dislike of my telling the truth about Israel like that, but the truth is the truth. I was listening to Glenn Beck this morning, going on and on about Israel and the recent anniversary conflicts there. Over the past century, the Christian Zionists in particular, who have had great influence as part of the earlier British Empire and then the U.S. Empire of the West, have, in my view, taken advantage of those who have been more genuinely concerned for the actual welfare of Jews — and I believe that the Christian Zionists’ actions over the past century (via the compulsory and militarist apparatus of their governments) have not been in the name of helping Jews but in the name of actualizing the stories of the Bible. That is what the conquest has been all about.
This morning on 96.9 “Boston Talks,” Jim and Margery were discussing the issue of campaign finance reform. Jim brought up how last year’s Republican senate candidate from Connecticut, Linda McMahon, the WWE wacko, spent millions on her own campaign, and the suggestion was that people shouldn’t be allowed to do that.
Of course, that argument doesn’t make any sense, given how McMahon lost her election to Democrat degenerate Richard Blumenthal. In fact, in California, goobernatorial candidate Meg Whitless lost her campaign as well, despite her having spent over $100 million of her own money. So what good would a rule be that forbids rich candidates from spending a certain number of millions of their own money on their own campaign?
One other example: Willard Romney, who wasted over $42 million of his own wealth on his losing 2008 presidential bid. (And probably more tens of millions on his losing 2012 presidential bid — Honestly, why bother, Mitt?)
You want campaign finance reform? I’ll give you campaign finance reform: People have a right to run for any public office they wish, and have a right to fund their campaign with their own money, or contribute any amount of their own money to any campaign they wish. That is their right, and stop interfering with it. It’s called freedom, baby. You don’t like that? Then go away — far, far away.
What good are these campaigns, anyway? Why even bother? There’s no point to any of this. This system we have is based on centralizing power and control, and this one institution in Washington, or state governments, etc., are given legally-protected monopolies while restricting the rights of others to enter such endeavors (such as community policing, etc.). Worse, the agents of this institution of government are legally permitted to be above the law. They are permitted to commit acts of theft, trespass and violence against others and get away with it. Who out there really thinks that such a system of moral bankruptcy and moral relativism should really exist in such a self-proclaimed “civilized” society? If you think that, then you’re nuts.
Charles Burris posted this regarding the two visions of libertarianism on the Lew Rockwell Blog this week. One vision, that of Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, the Cato Institute and former Governor Gary Johnson, is a “sterile, soulless utilitarian” vision of “consequentialist, cost-benefit analysis.” The other vision is one of moral principle, one based on the idea of the rights of the individual — that is the vision of Congressman Ron Paul, as well as economists Murray Rothbard, F.A. Hayek, Leonard Read, Hans Sennholz, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Ludvig von Mises, and others in the modern freedom movement, including Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo and Jacob Hornberger just to name a few.
The first vision of libertarianism is not even a vision, frankly, but more an ideology. And while that ideology is not exactly statism, at least not overtly, it is what I would call “Statism Lite.” This Statism Lite school of thought does not appear to have a firm grasp of the concept of property rights, which includes the individual’s right to own one’s own life — one’s body and the physical and intellectual exertion one can produce from oneself directed outward, i.e. one’s labor, and the contracts one can voluntarily establish with others using one’s own labor.
Bottom line: the Statist Lite “libertarians” still seem to go by the assumption that the community in which one lives — and their compulsory territorial State — ultimately owns the individual, the individual’s person and property.
The true libertarian recognizes the right of the property owner to have sole sovereignty ownership of one’s justly-acquired, justly owned property, and that when the State seizes it or usurps control over it, in the old days that would be called “stealing” and “trespassing.”
Looking at how federal, state and local governments impose many, many regulations of property and businesses, and other forms of State-confiscations of property ownership in America, we essentially have the same thing here in America: illegitimate State ownership of all property.
This is why, in the contest between the two “libertarian Republicans,” Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, it really is no contest. The one who understands the relationship between property and freedom and who wants us to have our freedom, which is our right to have, is Ron Paul. The other, not so much.
Further reading:
The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard
For a New Liberty by Murray Rothbard
Defending the Undefendable (.pdf) by Walter Block
Human Action by Ludwig von Mises
Natural Law by Lysander Spooner
No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority by Spooner
The Criminality of the State by Albert Jay Nock
The Free Market by Murray Rothbard
May 10, 2011
© 2011 LewRockwell.com.(Link to article)
There have been several events in the news this past week that have distracted Americans from the more pressing issues of the day. The distractions have included President Obama’s finally releasing his birth certificate to please Donald Trump, The Royal Wedding, and the Navy SEALs’ carrying out of Obama’s order to kill Osama bin Laden. The news of the bin Laden killing overshadowed the killing of Libyan leader Gadhafi’s son and three grandchildren in NATO’s failed attempt to kill Gadhafi himself. As Rad Geek explains,
Two of the (Gadhafi) grandchildren they killed were toddlers, a two-year-old girl, and a two-year-old boy. The other was a baby girl only 5 months old.
Now we have seen how premier Obama has snubbed the people’s representatives – Congress – by acting on his own executive power like a dictator, to bomb Libya and kill its civilians, and we have seen how the Obama Administration has given many contradictory details about the killing of Osama bin Laden. Only in an Orwellian socialist banana republic would we see these things happening. But Obama is merely taking on the expanded executive powers of Bush that the conservatives and Tea Partiers enthusiastically supported.
However, regardless how ghastly our Western governments are in their constant murders of innocent civilians especially children and little babies, and regardless of the constant distractions promoted by the subservient Washington press corps, Americans must face the truth about our current economic ordeal, and about our future: Washington’s runaway spending, debts and, really, the flawed structure of the centralized State itself.
Regarding the spending, conservatives and Tea Party congressmen and senators winced and dodged and brought their pledge to cut $100 billion from the federal budget down to $61 billion, only to then agree with Democrats to cut $38 billion, which it turns out will amount to a mere $353 million in cuts. This is out of a budget of $3.7 trillion.
And in addition to all that, if conservatives and Tea Partiers knuckle under with regards to the raising of the debt ceiling, that will be further proof of the accuracy of my prediction from March, 2010, that the November 2010 elections would be nothing but more “rearranging of deck chairs” on sinking Titanic America.
If Americans can’t see by now how insincere their representatives in Washington are in fixing the problems, and aren’t willing to consider changing the entire structure of governance, then change has to be up to individuals and organizations who actually believe in morality and our inalienable rights to life and liberty.
Americans must begin to face the hard truth that centralism and central planning just don’t work. The Social Security and Medicare schemes are naturally going bankrupt, and the Federal Reserve continues to produce more valueless paper money and in turn causes price inflation to further impoverish us.
It is impossible for any centralized institution, especially a territorial monopoly such as a federal government in Washington, to oversee a population of many millions and control a society’s daily functions and to provide services from a central authority based thousands of miles away. It is impractical for central planners to carry out such assigned caretaker duties, because they could not possibly know what is needed at any given time in any given part of such a large society.
The main areas of disastrous centralization have been in the U.S. government’s aggression against foreigners and the government’s invasiveness against Americans’ civil liberties and economic matters.
Centralization of Foreign Affairs and Government’s Civil Liberties Violations
The Tea Partiers have been supportive of an unconstitutional national security socialism that – as has been seen in past totalitarian societies – can be used as tools for conniving government bureaucrats to oppress their own people. Such threats to the people’s civil liberties and their due process rights, and invasions of their persons and property, seem to happen most the more centralized governing institutions are. (e.g. Soviet Union.)
But if only the Tea Partiers could connect the governmental encroachments, civil liberties intrusions and property trespasses of domestic policies they oppose (such as ObamaCare and the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies) with the governmental encroachments, civil liberties intrusions and property trespasses of the foreign policies they have naively supported (such as the PATRIOT Act, TSA intrusions etc.).
The Department of Homeland Security, TSA and CIA are not protecting Americans from terrorists – they are increasingly trespassing our persons and property, so we are increasingly threatened and unprotected from the predations of these agents of government, far more than we are threatened by terrorists.
But now, an even more serious warning sign than the TSA’s predations is the government’s implementing new invasive, extortive means of gathering private information, to make it difficult to even leave the country. That is the beginning of the process of the government’s keeping the people in the country, involuntarily. If this newest sinking into totalitarianism isn’t enough to make people finally consider decentralizing America, and secession and nullification, I don’t know what is.
As I have noted here, in contrast to the current centralized monopoly in Washington, which has done nothing but provoke foreigners against us, thus making us less safe, decentralizing and removing any monopoly in security would reduce the possibility of any one U.S. state using aggression against other states and against foreigners, and thus would make us safer. It would also remove the threat against our liberty that the totalcrats in Washington currently pose.
Centralization of Economic Affairs
Economically, in addition to loss of liberty, the trend toward more centralization and bureaucratization has resulted in more severe recessions, distortions of markets and further crises and catastrophes. This trend is due to the increasing lack of willingness to rely on the individual to control one’s own life and be responsible for oneself. In other words, independence – which logically coincides with liberty – has been unwittingly traded in for serfdom.
Now, as if the Federal Reserve were not bad enough, there have been calls for a centralized, global currency and global central bank. For some reason, so many people are just unwilling to admit what the Austrian economists have been trying to demonstrate for a hundred years, that the artificial extreme economic booms and busts have for decades been caused by governmental intrusions into the people’s economic and monetary matters, and that, if left alone by these compulsory governmental forces, markets and economic downturns will be self-correcting. Unfortunately, so many people have a weakness for dependence on authority and the officialdom of State controls, despite the disasters they have wrought.
The Federal Reserve has given the banks the ability to make risk-free loans and investments without the obligations to take responsibility for their actions. The Fed encourages banks to engage in financial recklessness, very much like the ability of Congress to borrow from future generations that enables or even encourages Congress to act recklessly. The centralization of a global currency and central bank are the exact opposite of what needs to be done.
As Ron Paul notes in his book, End the Fed, the federally-protected banks have been able to “privatize profits and socialize losses.” This moral hazard of centralization and socialism has been at the heart of economic dysfunction throughout our society and throughout the world for many years. But, as Dr. Paul declares, “The banking industry needs its welfare check ended.”
It is because of the Fed’s monopoly on our compulsory medium of exchange that has enabled the growing military-industrial-complex to expand its parasitic grasp on the fruits of the American producers’ labor. And, like the banking industry, the military-industrial-complex needs its welfare check ended.
Compulsory federal legal tender laws, compulsory central bank power and control, fraudulent fractional reserve banking and tax-funded bailouts are all based on government-expropriation of private wealth via back-door schemes and thus create moral hazards, as well as ultimately lead to the impoverishment of the masses. Therefore, the American people must decentralize monetarily and remove the federal government’s monopoly in money production and distribution – the Federal Reserve System – and allow for free, unrestricted banking under the rule of law, and allow competing currencies and money backed by something of actual value such as gold and silver.
Americans and the individual states also need to consider taking back ownership of lands that the federal government has illegitimately taken from them, decentralize their energy sources, and decentralize their utilities including water. It may be the case that Americans will have to use nullification and outright withdraw their consent to being shackled by federal government regulations, taxes, mandates and other intrusions that restrict Americans’ God-given inalienable rights to their liberty and prosperity.
Some people perceive such suggestions of civil disobedience and non-compliance as being an advocacy for “lawlessness” or even violence. But, I must point out that such non-violent acts of individual and group nullification of authoritarian dictates are necessary when the centralized government overreaches and becomes the people’s primary violator of individual liberty, trespasser of private property and expropriator of wealth.
It is the centralized government that has been guilty of the lawlessness and violence, and it must be stopped. As we have seen from the people’s representatives in Washington and their submissive unwillingness to stand up to the executive branch or to even adjust their deficits and debts, the idea of a “limited” government is just not realistic.
When people who are used to being dependent on the authority and power of the always-growing centralized federal government feel apprehensive in implementing such decentralization, they need to revisit the idea of local control, which is the real source of the “power to the people.” In contrast to the planned chaos produced by national centralism, it is the local level in which production, efficiency and prosperity are best achieved.
Additionally, at the local level, not only do most people actually know each other, but there is also more of a solidarity and common purpose that just cannot truly exist between centralized government bureaucrats and the rest of a big population. As economist Friedrich Hayek observed,
Agreement about a common purpose between a group of known people is clearly an idea that cannot be applied to a large society which includes people who do not know one another. The modern society and the modern economy have grown up through the recognition that this idea – which was fundamental to life in a small group – a face-to-face society, is simply inapplicable to large groups. The essential basis of the development of modern civilization is to allow people to pursue their own ends on the basis of their own knowledge and not be bound by the aims of other people.
As the necessary process of decentralizing America unfolds, Murray Rothbard addresses the issue of what to do about the national debt. Supposedly, we Americans owe others a lot of money – over $14 trillion – because our Congress has spent wildly, selfishly and irresponsibly. Rothbard states the difference between private debt and this immoral scheme of “public debt.”
If sanctity of contracts should rule in the world of private debt, shouldn’t they be equally as sacrosanct in public debt? Shouldn’t public debt be governed by the same principles as private? The answer is no…
If I borrow money from a mortgage bank, I have made a contract to transfer my money to a creditor at a future date; in a deep sense, he is the true owner of the money at that point, and if I don’t pay I am robbing him of his just property. But when government borrows money, it does not pledge its own money; its own resources are not liable. Government commits not its own life, fortune, and sacred honor to repay the debt, but ours…
In short, public creditors are willing to hand over money to the government now in order to receive a share of tax loot in the future. This is the opposite of a free market, or a genuinely voluntary transaction. Both parties are immorally contracting to participate in the violation of the property rights of citizens in the future. Both parties, therefore, are making agreements about other people’s property, and both deserve the back of our hand. The public credit transaction is not a genuine contract that need be considered sacrosanct, any more than robbers parceling out their shares of loot in advance should be treated as some sort of sanctified contract…
With the increasing federal government debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Pakistan, and the economic mess caused by Congress and the Federal Reserve, and the police state intrusions being waged against us by a tyrannical Obama regime, we are seeing that the U.S. federal government is the one institution most at fault and guilty of causing the ruin of the United States of America. This centralized government parasite’s shackles must be removed if we are to return to a civilization of economic solvency and human progress.
Americans are really going to have to seriously consider decentralizing the country and returning to state sovereignty and independence. If Belgium can do it, so can we.
So, just as little boys and girls must let go of their mommy and daddy’s hand eventually, so must the American people let go of their dependence on – and serfdom under – the smothering, punitive and reactionary centralized State, the U.S. federal government.
Well, the conservatives and warmongers’ moral relativism has come out in broad daylight once again, in their proudly exhibiting their ignorance of due process, and of why all human beings accused of something have a right to due process, and in the conservatives and warmongers’ love of torture. Of course, when the government they have so lovingly supported starts to use those very barbaric investigative procedures against them, they will change their minds about it. (Is that what it would take?)
There have been so many inconsistencies by the Obama Administration, and other sources over the past ten years, enough to lead one to conclude that Osama bin Laden actually died already years ago, either from disease or from the Battle of Tora Bora, and, in total 1984 fashion as Paul Craig Roberts describes, it wouldn’t surprise me if the whole scenario of the past week or two is completely made up. The sheeple eat it all up, every bit of it, hook, line and sinker, because they have been more concerned with American Idol and Lindsay Lohan’s latest shoplifting indictments.
But if we assume, just for the sake of argument (because that would have to be the only rational reason for assuming it), that Osama bin Laden really was still alive up until last week, it is extremely difficult for me to understand why the moral relativists of the right would want bin Laden dead out of revenge more than they would want him alive to give investigators more information, as a means of prosecuting the “war on terrorism,” to prevent further terrorism (even though that’s not what is required to end the terrorism). Don’t the moral relativists of the right ever think before they express their conclusions?
One of the conservative talk show hosts in Boston said yesterday morning that someone would have to be “mentally deficient” to be concerned about “Osama’s human rights.” Now, he was referring to Rosie O’Donnell’s recent concern about Osama not given his due process rights. Of course, Rosie O’Donnell is “mentally deficient,” but that’s not to say she doesn’t have a point.
The moral relativists do not seem to grasp the idea of due process. They seem to think that it would be absurd to think that even bin Laden would have a right to be presumed innocent until someone can actually present actual evidence that proves that bin Laden directed 9/11. Sorry. But when someone is deemed guilty of something because government officials, the president or CIA agents or military generals, said so, at their whim, by their own decree? No, that’s the way of a banana republic, not the way of a society under the rule of law. And yes, even bin Laden has that right of due process.
To look at that issue specifically, we need to be reminded that, as Jacob Hornberger has noted here and here, when the Afghanistan Taliban were harboring bin Laden after 9/11, the Bush Administration demanded that the Taliban release bin Laden to the U.S. The Taliban stated that they would extradite bin Laden to the U.S. if the U.S. government would present evidence of bin Laden’s complicity in 9/11. The Bush Administration refused. Could there be any other reason why the Bush Administration refused to present evidence of bin Laden’s 9/11 complicity than Bush having no evidence? And to this day, there has never been any actual evidence showing that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11, except that he publicly approved of it after the fact.
It is unfortunate that the majority amongst the masses prefer to passively believe whatever the government and its media propagandists produce, rather than question or challenge the State’s information and insist on further investigation and valid confirmation of the government’s assertions.
Now, the suggestion that torture was what led to the capture of bin Laden has been shown to not be the case. The chickenhawks just love their vicarious infliction of pain, anguish and suffering on others, the others being people accused of terrorism or being terrorism abettors, even though the majority of the people being tortured in the past ten years were innocent. But, the moral relativists just happen to believe in the philosophy of “guilty by State decree until proven innocent by facts.” When presumption-of-guilt policies of indefinite detention and torture turn around to bite the moral relativists, then maybe then will they get the point.
Here are links to articles regarding the Bush Administration’s knowingly sweeping up innocent individuals at random starting shortly after 9/11, and regarding the majority of Gitmo detainee and torture victims being innocent and uninvolved, and the purpose of the torture to get false confessions or falsely implicate other innocent individuals:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-children-old-men
http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/guantnamo-failures-politicians/
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2010/03/02/the-black-hole-of-guantanamo/
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/25/112796/wikileaks-just-8-at-gitmo-gave.html
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/05/war-criminals-try-to-evade-prosecution.html
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/05/bin-had.html
Unfortunately, as we have seen in the government’s increasing of police state security measures following the “death” of bin Laden, government bureaucrats’ primary motivation in anything they do is to increase their level of power and control over others. The real purpose of the TSA’s intrusions, now extending to trains, buses, shopping malls, etc., and other gestapo-like police state policies given to us by ignorant fools like Bush, Obama and Janet Napolitano, is to intimidate the masses, to imprison and rape the citizenry, but one can only hope that more people will begin to fight this crap.
Last week, a caller to Sean Hannity’s radio show brought up Ron Paul, and Hannity mentioned that he agrees with about 85% of Ron Paul’s views and positions on the issues. However, Hannity’s main disagreement with Dr. Paul is on foreign policy, a disagreement based mostly on ignorance and a compulsion toward believing the government’s emotional propaganda in the name of expanding government’s size and power as much as possible.
Hannity is a socialist and believes that it is the government’s monopolistic duty to engage in central planning, for “national security,” despite the constant ineptitude, failures and counter-productiveness for a century now of socialist, central planning “national security” debacles directed outward from Washington, D.C.
Hannity noted on his show, in response to Charlie from Pacifica, California, that America should maintain a big influence on the rest of the world. Hannity really means he wants the U.S. government to maintain a big influence on the rest of the world (through aggression, force, coercion, violating human rights and trespassing on property rights, etc.). And Hannity once again brought up his misinterpretation of Ron Paul’s criticism of U.S. government foreign policy. Hannity believes that Dr. Paul thinks America “invited” 9/11 or was responsible for it. Unfortunately, like many others, Hannity does not seem able to distinguish between America the country and its “governing agent,” the centralized U.S. government.
One of the matters of confusion has been Dr. Paul’s attempts to explain that the rise in terrorism over the past 20 years has been blowback, a reaction by people to the invasions, aggressions and occupations of their territories by the U.S. government, especially since 1990. Dr. Paul has several times used the collective pronoun “we,” such as in stating that “we” have been occupying other peoples’ lands. I have already stated my problem with that, and that Dr. Paul and others need to be more specific, and say that “the U.S. government” has been occupying and trespassing on foreign lands, murdering innocent civilians and destroying entire countries’ civilian infrastructures. These actions of aggression, initiated by the U.S. government and not by “us,” have been provocations of those inhabitants of foreign lands to act against us.
I’m sure that Hannity would have the same reaction as Iraqis, Afghanis, Pakistanis and Iranians, if a foreign government had begun to set up its military bases and other governmental apparatus on U.S. territories such as in Utah and California, had invaded Texas to take its oil resources, or continuously bombed and destroyed water and electricity facilities in New Jersey or Montana and then imposed blockades and sanctions to prevent folks in those states from rebuilding.
Another aspect to all this is the emotionalism upon which Hannity and others, particularly Sarah Palin, seem to form their views regarding international relations. Hannity and Palin seem to have an authoritarian view of America, which explains their emotion-based obedience to the U.S. government and their apparent enmeshment of self-identity with that regime.They, and many other Americans, unfortunately, did not question any of the federal government’s post-9/11 knee-jerk declarations, policies such as PATRIOT Act, or invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Hannity’s support for U.S. government powers that remove Americans’ right to due process can then be used by the Obama regime against Hannity and his fellow conservatives and Tea Partiers to punish their opposition and dissent of Obama policies.
It has been very distressing, to say the least, over the last almost decade now since 9/11, how some people can be so naively trustful of people in authority and believing of every word they say. While the post-9/11 knee-jerk, non-thinking reaction of the U.S. government that Hannity and Palin supported was to go to war against Afghanistan, the reasonable approach would have been what Ron Paul has been saying for many years: The terrorists who have attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were reacting to the many decades of U.S. government occupations, military bases, military coups and support for brutal dictatorships, especially the U.S. government’s 1990-91 invasion of Iraq and subsequent sanctions throughout the ’90s that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and widespread anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East — and that is why those invasive U.S. government policies need to be ended.
Because socialists and central planners who have government-controlled monopolies react to problems that they created with even further intrusive and counter-productive policies that make things even worse, that is why the U.S. government’s socialist bureaucrats went to war in Afghanistan in 2001, enacted the PATRIOT Act quickly and without any consideration and without even reading the legislation, and all based on the same kind of unthinking emotionalism and mysticism of how good and wonderful our unquestionable authoritarian federal government is. And they then went to Iraq a 2nd time based on lies and propaganda solely because George W. Bush had wanted to go to Iraq all along, at least since 1999, and for the sake of “political capital.”
Now, the typical socialist reaction to the alleged killing of Osama Bin Laden (and I still say Osama was already killed in 2001-02, so I don’t believe this newest of U.S. government lies to help Obama’s reelection bid) is one of immediate gratification: Oh boy, bin Laden is dead, we can go out and play, now. But a more rational view might be that even further blowback repercussions might occur, in the U.S. government-created terrorists’ possible instructions to commit revenge attacks based on the news of bin Laden’s death.
Bottom line: We need to reject Hannity and Palin’s socialism in national security, and dismantle the federal monopoly that usurps our right to self-defense, and decentralize America, as well as allow for private protection and defense firms to compete. Getting rid of central planning in national security will make us safer — from terrorists, as well as from the predations of the government — just as getting rid of central planning in medicine will make Americans much better served in their medical needs.
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