Social Security and Why the USSA Needs to End

There were some objections to my comment about Social Security in Tear Down That Wall of Central Planning’s Prison State that was on LewRockwell.com yesterday. I wrote that “ending Social Security and other programs immediately is actually better than gradual withdrawal.” But I followed that with: “But at the same time, the government thefts and trespasses of the people via taxation and regulatory intrusions must also be ended.”

There just wasn’t the space in that article to elaborate on each of my specific points, so I will try to do it here.

Some of the objectors noted past desocialization and past freeing of slaves in which slaves and government-dependents were not prepared for such sudden freedom, or the political class in charge were still devising policies to maintain some of their powers while simultaneously attempting to free slaves and/or dependents. As I mentioned in regards to the Soviet Union, during the early ’90s decentralization-desocialization process, Gorbachev and his fellow devoted communists were clinging to their bureaucratic fiefdoms and controls like a toddler not able to give up sucking his thumb. No wonder the people of the former Soviet Union were having such a hard time adjusting to their new freedom and to actually having choices in a freed market.

When I wrote that “the government thefts and trespasses of the people via taxation and regulatory intrusions must also be ended,” I really meant ended completely. Some people seem to believe that it will be less painful if we gradually remove that invasive, enslaving structure (perhaps comparing that to gradually quitting smoking or taking anti-anxiety medications, as to prevent withdrawal symptoms). But we are dealing with politicians here, bureaucrats who thrive on power and control, and they are not going to let go of their powers without a struggle, and they will come up with whatever manipulations of the system so as to keep their fiefdoms in place but making the people think they are being freed. Murray Rothbard wrote,

It is well known that the giant socialist bureaucracy will only seize upon such delay to obstruct the goal altogether. But there are further important reasons for speed. One, because the free market is an interconnected web or lattice-work; it is made of innumerable parts which intricately mesh together through a network of producers and entrepreneurs exchanging property titles, motivated by a search for profits and avoidance of losses, and calculating by means of a free price system.

Holding back, freeing only a few areas at a time, will only impose continuous distortions that will cripple the workings of the market and discredit it in the eyes of an already fearful and suspicious public. But there is also another vital point: the fact that you cannot plan markets applies also to planning for phasing them in. Much as they might delude themselves otherwise, governments and their economic advisers are not in a position of wise Olympians above the economic arena, carefully planning to install the market step by measured step, deciding what to do first, what second, etc. Economists and bureaucrats are no better at planning phase-ins than they are at dictating any other aspect of the market.

To achieve genuine freedom, the role of government and its advisers must be confined to setting their subjects free, as fast and as completely as it takes to unlock their shackles. After that, the proper role of government and its advisers is to get and keep out of the subjects’ way.

I very much suggest that readers check out that article by Rothbard cited above, “How and How Not to Desocialize.” And the other one I linked to in my original article, The Decline and Fall of Gorbachev and the  Soviet State, is the introduction to Yuri Maltzev’s 1992 book, Requiem for Marx (.pdf version here.). Maltzev compares Western interventionists to the Leninists:

One of the common denominators between Leninists and government interventionists in the West is the belief that the problems of monopoly are the problems of ownership: only private monopolies acting out of greed are harmful. These institutions are suppressing scientific and technical progress, polluting the environment, and engaging in other conspiracies against public well-being. Government monopolies, however, were believed to be ethical and upright; they substituted the “greed” of the profit motive with a “societal interest.” Yet group bureaucrats who manage and operate the public sector are no less self-interested than those who manage and operate private business. One important difference exists, though: unlike private entrepreneurs, they are not financially responsible for their actions and they operate without institutional constraints of cost control that private property and competition induces. The enlightened minds of planners and technocrats cannot overcome the problem of economic calculation without market signals….

And he describes how the Soviet state’s central planners destroyed their economy:

The decades-long effort to eliminate markets destroyed the work ethic, the mass misallocation of resources through centralized investment, the demolition of the base for private capital accumulation, distorted means of economic calculation, and technology so obsolete that the capital value of industrial enterprises is zero or negative.

Sound familiar? And Maltzev describes Gorbachev:

Gorbachev never learned economics in school. In all my dealings with him, I never saw even a slight flash of economic insight, or even any desire to learn more about economics. He preferred to think like a communist: everything can be done by issuing orders, no matter how perverse, contrary to human nature, and brutal they may be.

Beginning with the day he assumed power, he positioned himself as an opponent of freedom and the market. He singlehandedly destroyed what little market activity existed in the Soviet Union, wrecked the already-miserable lives of the public, presided over appalling violence against innocent people in the Baltic states, and openly supported old-guard communists. Yet the Western media decided not to be skeptical about his aims.

Hmmm. Sounds like Obama.

What he did in the Baltic States — authorizing the Soviet military to crack the skulls of innocent people in the Baltics — qualified him to be included among history’s litany of murderous rulers, but he was never included. Even while he was heralded in the West as a great reformer, he was also running labor camps, committing human-rights violations, and sending people to prison for speech crimes.

Sounds like Obama.

The “reforms” that Gorbachev implemented were really reforms to save socialism, not end it. That is exactly what we are hearing from our politicians in Washington, including the Republicans.

The Maltzev article is important to understand those clinging, selfish goons of the State. And yes, they are ALL the same, in the Soviet Union, in the European Union, and in the U.S. There is a certain class of people who are driven toward the powers of compulsion over others, the power of monopoly, and toward an institution whose agents are allowed to be above the law, allowed to commit acts of aggression, theft and trespass against others and get away with it.

Regarding Social Security, I know that a lot of people are dependent on that program for their livelihoods. But it is still an immoral scheme that includes forcing all workers to participate in a government-run retirement plan against their will, and is funded by taking some of the earnings of some people and redistributing it to others. No amount of emotionalistic rhetoric or sugar-coating can cover up what that and all these other immoral, illicit government schemes really are. No amount of propaganda and numbers-manipulating can change the fact that it is impossible for Social Security and other government-run, monopolistic financial schemes to avoid eventual bankruptcy and collapse. As with any other economic endeavors in life, managed retirement plans or other financial plans need to have competitive pressures in place to ensure efficiency and accountability, and markets must be freed to ensure stability in prices.

What I want, and I know a lot of other people want, is freedom. When you free people of government’s income- and wealth-confiscation that the people did not voluntarily consent to, they are then free and much more financially able to support their elderly family members. And private charities and churches would also be freed to provide for those in need and who feel in desperation at a time when (not if but when) their promised Social Security payments cease to be paid.

The truth about what has been happening is very hard to hear, but it’s the truth. No one “paid into” their Social Security retirement benefits that they would receive when retiring. That implies that you voluntarily paid into something. No, your rightfully-earned compensation for your labor was taken from you out of your paychecks, confiscated by the government. You were robbed, and that’s exactly what has been happening, and that’s what I referred to in my article when I wrote that we need to “cut our losses and move on in a decentralized society.”

Just as the people of the Soviet Union learned the hard way, socialism and central planning don’t work and are just plain immoral, as well as impractical. In the U.S., we need to get out now and end it, as a way to prevent the actual, predicted economic collapse, riots, looting and violence that is already beginning to happen as the elite central planners and all their dependent followers amongst the population cling on.

Tear Down That Wall of Central Planning’s Prison State

October 26, 2011

Copyright © 2011 LewRockwell.com (Link to article)

It appears that ex-Soviet ruler Mikhail Gorbachev has come out of the woodwork again. This time Gorby treats us with more “global governance” nonsense, calling for more centralization of power and more central planning. But more central planning means more imprisonment of the people by the State. Contrary to Gorbachev’s fantasy of world communism/fascism, what we need is more freedom!

When Ronald Reagan called out, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” the wall might as well have referred to the U.S. government’s imprisonment of the American people via the police state, regulatory intrusions and government’s always-increasing confiscation of private wealth. But the reality is that we need to go the other way, away from central planning and toward decentralization.

On the talk shows and in the news, and on YouTube videos and in public forums, there is an epidemic in America of denial and fantasy. Each election cycle, we have statist candidate A vs. statist candidate B, especially with the national elections, and there do not seem to be any candidates or voters who are willing to face the music and deal with the reality of the inherent destructiveness of central planning.

The denial amongst the American population in particular is characterized by people who know their candidates have a questionable background or record, openly engage in doubletalk and/or outright lies, and who just do not understand what actual liberty is. Yet the people support these candidates anyway, still hoping that the candidate of their choosing will get a clue after being elected and make the appropriate changes for better governance.

Deep down, those unrealistically hopeful voters know full well that such candidates will not be any better than the office-holders they replaced. The entire process has been a continually-degrading rearranging of deck chairs.

Central planning statism is a system that is doomed to fail, doomed to kill economic growth and doomed to destroy a society, right from the get-go. Just look at the Soviet Union, the European Union, and, of course, our United States. But when voting, the people look the other way, hold their noses and hope for the best.

Such denial over many decades has led to the crash of the American (and world) economy, the destruction of the work ethic and a nearly full shutdown of productivity. Contrary to what the populist pundits and the Occupy Wall Street crowd have been asserting, the situation we are now facing was not mainly because of the irresponsible actions of banks and other financial institutions, but by, as Doug Casey pointed out, the U.S. government (and its pathologically incompetent central planners). The crisis has been a direct result of the government bureaucrats in charge, including Alan Greenspan, Barney Frank, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and, especially more recently, Ben Bernanke. The irresponsible actions of the banks and financial institutions were enabled by the decisions and recklessness of those government hacks.

In addition to the price-fixing, fiat-money-printing, economy-busting Federal Reserve and banking policies, the Washington hacks destroyed America’s growth and progress with their police-state regulations, mandates and taxes, and other intrusions that have done nothing but stifle the incentive of businesses to invest and take risks with capital, expand their businesses and create real jobs. Besides the Fed policies’ subsequent price inflation, Washington has thus stimulated unemployment, and even pushed many American businesses to move overseas.

Ron Paul has proposed to drastically reduce the size and powers of the federal government, cut out entire departments and agencies, and reduce taxes. Additionally, Dr. Paul has said he wants to gradually wean Americans off Social Security and Medicare, and eventually end or privatize Social Security, if he “can get the people to agree and the Congress to agree.” The reality is that you’re just not going to get political hacks who are symbiotically enmeshed with that statist agency of aggression and criminality, the U.S. federal government, to agree to reduce their power and control over then people.

Once you recognize that the government’s central planning intrusions are immoral violations of the people’s lives and liberty, then you must get rid of those intrusions, for both moral and practical reasons.

For example, ending Social Security and other programs immediately is actually better than gradual withdrawal. But at the same time, the government thefts and trespasses of the people via taxation and regulatory intrusions must also be ended.

Murray Rothbard addressed the question of gradual vs. immediate desocializing in the context of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rothbard stressed that phasing in freedom gradually would do more harm than an immediate withdrawal of statist intrusions. During the Soviet collapse, Gorbachev was the ever-devoted, clinging communist, as economist Yuri Maltzev noted.

Many people think that such an immediate ending of those government programs, on which so many are unfortunately dependent, would be too “painful.” But our current situation has been causing a lot of pain, and will continue to cause more pain as long as the centralized structure remains in place.

When that Berlin Wall came down and those formerly enslaved captives of the Eastern Bloc were given their freedom back, they did not seem to be in much pain. (See here.) When Americans have been made slaves of their government, forced to work for four or five months until Tax Freedom Day, and when American businesspeople are restrained by nonsensical reactionary regulations passed by imbeciles in Washington, enforced by the State’s S.W.A.T. team raids, and when the people are forced at gunpoint to participate in a government-run retirement scheme while the government Ponzis siphon away the people’s IRAs and life savings, tearing down that damn wall immediately will not be too painful.

With immediate decentralization and restoration of our freedom, businesses would expand and invest in other enterprises, and real jobs would be created. Unemployment rates would crash. Millions of people would be free to keep what they earn and then be able to afford to care for their elderly family members once again.

People need to know the truth that the current welfare structure is there to take care of the political class – the politicians, the cartel of banksters, the neocon bureaucrats and their military-industrial-complex leeches. Please, let us throw their status of privilege into the dustbin of history! (And some people even think that we could do it in 30 days, in fact.)

The most crucial ingredient that makes a prosperous society – as America had experienced in the past – is liberty. Note how, throughout the 20^th Century to the present time, America’s dwindling personal and economic freedom has coincided with more severe economic downturns and stagnation.

When asked if the end goal of libertarianism is liberty or prosperity, Austrian school economist Richard Ebeling replied, in this lecture on economic liberty (at about 1:10:48),

As Lord Acton said, liberty is the highest political good. It is the right of the individual to control and manage his own life guided by his own inclinations and beliefs concerning good, bad, right and wrong…The benefit of the market is that it is the institutional arrangement in which people have that liberty, and has the positive and originally unintended consequences…that it also generates prosperity. As Adam Smith clearly understood, each man knows his interests and opportunities far better than a statesman far away in a state capitol who has the hubris and the arrogance to believe that he can manage other people’s affairs…The lack of freedom invariably involves diminished prosperity, or even the loss of prosperity if the heavy hand of the State is rigid enough.

To avoid a complete collapse of our entire system and economy, and subsequent riots and violence, the people are just going to have to face the fact that there is nothing anyone can do to reform the federal government. What our present generations of Americans must do is overcome the denial of that truth and, yes, cut our losses and move on in a decentralized society. If we don’t do this, our keeping the structure of centralized control in Washington will give us the impending chaos, impoverishment and civil unrest and violence that some people have been predicting will happen.

One of the most critical actions that we need to take is decentralizing money and the entire banking system. People have a God-given right to use whatever medium of exchange they so desire, and it is immoral for a band of bureaucrats to gang together and make a law forcing everyone to use a single government-issued currency. Such a top-down, authoritarian central planning scheme is intrusive into the people’s right of voluntary exchange and right to control their wealth. And it is the centralized, government-controlled banking cartel that has enabled the elites amongst us to seize control over the nation’s wealth. I wish the Occupy Wall Street crowd could understand this. (Why there are so many Gorbachev-like thinkers all across America is anybody’s guess.)

The Anti-Federalists wisely and intuitively knew that such centralization of power and control could not work, and would lead to a tyranny from which no Constitution and no Supreme Court (sic) could possibly protect the people. (And see here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

The other day Sean Hannity interviewed Pat Buchanan on the radio. I try not to listen to Hannity if I can avoid it, but there was a game on the other talk station. Oh, well. But when discussing his new book Suicide of a Superpower: Will American Survive to 2025?, Buchanan mentioned America’s huge cultural shift over the past 50 years or so. This cultural degradation is relevant here.

Our culture has degenerated to the depths of primitivism – despite the technological advances – exemplified by how much of a police state America has become, how much police brutality is sweeping the country, and how our government officials have engaged in atrocities overseas, crimes that many of our fellow citizens have cheered on enthusiastically.

Our culture has degraded to one of sheer barbarism, as Justin Raimondo observed, and it directly coincides with the growth of centralization of government power and the decline of personal responsibility. Hans-Hermann Hoppe explained this in great detail in his book, Democracy, The God That Failed.

We must reverse that trend if our society can survive and call itself “civilized,” and for that end, tearing down the wall of centralized tyranny is a must. We must free ourselves from the prison of the State.

Obama’s Search for New Monsters to (Create) Destroy

While listening to a discussion about Barack Obama’s newest idiotic military aggressions, this time in Uganda, I heard a couple talk show hosts and/or callers refer to the beginning of America’s involvement in Vietnam and the Vietnam War as starting during the Kennedy Administration. But this is incorrect.

First, according to the Department of Defense (sic), the official start of the Vietnam War, at least the start of American involvement with the U.S. government’s sending in “advisors,” was November 1, 1955. However, there was already U.S. involvement in Vietnam by the end of World War II in 1945. According to this BBC page (emphasis mine),

During World War II, the United States was allied with the Viet Minh, a communist-influenced Vietnamese independence movement led by Ho Chi Minh, against the French Vichy administration in Vietnam. The Vichy administration was cooperating with occupying Japanese forces. The United States provided some arms to the Viet Minh guerrilla forces, commanded by Vo Nguyen Giap. American officials and officers expressed support and admiration for Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh. The Viet Minh issued the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence in September 1945. That document began with a long quotation from the United States Declaration of Independence. Regional leaders of the OSS (which evolved into the CIA) and US military leaders in Vietnam celebrated. General Philip Gallagher, chief of the US Military Advisory and Assistance Group, sang the Viet Minh’s national Anthem on Hanoi radio…

Within two months, at least eight US troopships were diverted from their mission of bringing American troops home from World War II. These ships were used to transport French troops and Foreign Legionnaires from France into Vietnam, to begin a recolonization process. These troops and Legionnaires had been armed, at least partly, by the United States. America’s first casualty in Vietnam was killed in 1945. On 26 September, 1945, Lt Col A Peter Dewey, head of American OSS mission, was killed by Viet Minh troops while driving a jeep to the airport, from which he was going to leave the country…

The entire crews of four of these ships, all members of the US Merchant Marine, prepared a resolution condemning the US government for its use of US ships to transport troops ‘to subjugate the native population’ of Vietnam…

Now, there have been two main reasons why the U.S. warmongers have been committing their aggressions overseas, some of which began with the U.S. government sending over “advisors” (mostly giving bad “advice,” of course), for the past century, in my opinion.

One, because of the need that seems to be inherent in government officials and bureaucrats to expand their powers and governmental reach over other territories, territories that are not their jurisdictions. This expansion and aggressiveness is inherent in those who are drawn to the political class, drawn to coercive, compulsory monopolistic powers that only the State is allowed to have. Already these bureaucrats’ unaccountability is protected by the monopolies they have as government officials, and their actions and decisions do not have to face the scrutiny of competitive market forces.

And two, to seize the natural resources of other territories. The main natural resources desired by these U.S. warmongers of the past century, of course, has been oil. Duh. What do you think the Libya warmongering was all about? And now Uganda? There’s oil to seize control over, and Uganda is rich with minerals. Pepe Escobar writes,

Any student of realpolitik knows the US doesn’t do “humanitarian” interventions per se. Africom’s surge parallels the real name of the game; precious minerals – and mining. Uganda – and nearby eastern Congo – happens to hold fabulous quantities of, among others, diamonds, gold, platinum, copper, cobalt, tin, phosphates, tantalite, magnetite, uranium, iron ore, gypsum, beryllium, bismuth, chromium, lead, lithium, niobium and nickel. Many among these are ultra-precious rare earth – of which China exercises a virtual monopoly.

The mineral rush in Africa is already one of the great resource wars of the 21st century. China is ahead, followed by companies from India, Australia, South Africa and Russia (which, for instance, has set up a fresh gold refinery in Kampala). The West is lagging behind. The name of the game for the US and the Europeans is to pull no punches to undermine China’s myriad commercial deals all across Africa.

Then there’s the inescapable Pipelineistan angle. Uganda may hold “several billion barrels of oil”, according to Heritage Oil’s Paul Atherton, part of a recent, largest-ever on-shore oil discovery in sub-Saharan Africa. That implies the construction of a $1.5 billion, 1,200 kilometer long pipeline to Kampala and the coast of Kenya. Then there’s another pipeline from “liberated” South Sudan. Washington wants to make sure that all this oil will be exclusively available for the US and Europe.

Decades ago, in the early 1950s, the British regime didn’t like Iran’s nationalizing of Iran’s own oil that the British had been expropriating from Iran, so they got in cahoots with U.S. President Eisenhower to get the CIA to take down Iran’s democratically-elected leader and replace him with the pro-U.S. Shah. It wasn’t just to steal back Iran’s oil, but to support the Shah’s dictatorship, which led to massive anti-American sentiment throughout Iran from the 1950s up to the Iranian Revolution of 1979. (See this and this.)

The reason that the crazy Iranians took the Americans hostage there in 1979, and for 444 days up to the Reagan 1981 inauguration, was in response to the U.S. government’s support of the dictator Shah. The U.S. government’s actions of the 1950s created new monsters to destroy, “monsters” that have continued to develop in Iran since then, and now the U.S. warmongers may finally get their wish (to “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” as John McCain would say).

But, as I mentioned, it’s not all about stealing the natural resources from other peoples in other parts of the world. I think it’s mainly about power grabs, and causing conflicts as a means of justifying the always-growing, overly-bloated U.S. government huge budget and debts. Using the military wing of the U.S. government has primarily been the politicians and bureaucrats’ method of choice to expand. It’s never enough.

Here is another example, that I have referred to many times now. During the early 1990s, when the Cold War was ending, the U.S. government — then being run (into the ground) by President George H.W. Bush — needed to go overseas “in search of monsters to (create) destroy,” so Bush started his war of aggression against Iraq. As I’ve mentioned several times here, the U.S. military’s bombing and destruction of Iraqi civilian electrical, water and sewage treatment centers was intentional, according to Air Force Col. John Warden, as reported by James Bovard,

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.”

These aggressive actions by the U.S. military and the subsequent U.S.-led UN sanctions throughout the 1990s — preventing the civilian Iraqis from rebuilding water and sewage treatment centers and thus causing skyrocketing disease including cholera, cancer and high infant mortality rates — were the provocations the U.S. government found necessary to create their monsters to then go and destroy. And they did especially with the younger President Bush’s 2003 Iraq War to further destroy Iraq and murder hundreds of thousands more innocent civilians and 4-5,000 sacrificial animals for Bush’s political career and reelection U.S. troops.

So those aggressions by the U.S. government started by the Bushes in 1990 coincided with the fall of the Soviet Union, and that meant that the commies were no longer that much of a threat, and needed to be replaced with new bogeymen. In 1945, when World War II, the War that President Woodrow Wilson’s imbecilic warmongering actions led to, ended, the U.S. government began its quest for new monsters to replace Herr Hitler, so they saw opportunities in Vietnam.

Do you think that maybe –just maybe — more people ought to start listening to Ron Paul?

Americans in Denial: Futile Elections and Teflon Candidates

October 15, 2011

Copyright © 2013 by LewRockwell.com (Link to article)

If these talk radio shows I listen to are indicative of the American population in general, and Republicans and conservatives in particular, then, stop the world, I’m getting off. The statists among the Republican field of presidential candidates propose to change things a little bit here and there, but in them and their supporters there is a severe psychological denial and stubborn refusal to recognize that the entire system of central planning in Washington needs to go. It is inherently flawed.

The deniers and fantasizers are saying that, as long as anyone but Barack Obama is elected in 2012, then things will get better. No, they won’t. Many people are fixated on making sure that the Republicans choose someone who is “electable,” and they actually think that the Teflon Guy, Mitt Romney, is that candidate. However, one talk show caller to the Howie Carr show in Boston this week had it right: Romney will be just like McCain was in 2008, handing the election over to Obama on a silver platter.

But, even if Romney does get elected, and given that many of these pundits and political junkies are statists and think only in the short term, they never seem to be considering what happens after Romney’s inauguration. Will he do anything about the Federal Reserve, or Wall Street? Or stop the murderous warmongering? Nope. These statist candidates who love their central planning bureaucracies will not change a thing in Washington, even though it is those very central planning bureaucracies, especially the Fed and the national security-military complex, that have been destroying America.

On one of those annoying radio talk shows this week, conservative talk host Michael Graham took a call from someone in favor of ending the Federal Reserve “monstrosity,” and Graham’s reply was something like, “oh, and instead give Congress control over our money,” and so forth. But did Graham allow the caller to respond, possibly suggesting another alternative, such as having a free market in money with competitive currencies? Nope. Graham just concluded the conversation and took another call.

And talk host Howie Carr had a caller who disliked Romney and said he was between Herman Cain and Ron Paul. Carr seemed to agree with some of the caller’s positive comments about Paul, “except that Paul is crazy,” and “says crazy things.” Yeah, like closing down the Federal Reserve and allowing the people to have their freedom once again, and ending the police state and ending the warmongering that does nothing but provoke foreign people to act against us. Crazy, man. Ending those things is crazy. Keeping the status quo of statism is sane and reasonable. Welcome to 1984.

And, when political consultant Frank Luntz was interviewed by Sean Hannity, Luntz accused the media of trying to cause Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry to attack (and thus destroy) each other. Yeah, so? Is there something wrong with that? Please let the statist warmongers destroy each other, before they destroy us!

Meanwhile, over at the White House, Barry and Evita are working feverishly on their invitations for Inauguration Day, 2013.

Incidentally, Howie Carr is the one who wrote two books on organized crime mobsters, one on the notorious “Whitey” Bulger and one on Bulger’s hit man, Johnny Martorano. Perhaps Carr should consider writing a book on the criminal Wall Street and government gangsters, and how they embezzle the people’s hard-earned wealth through the Fed and banking cartel.

I honestly don’t know why I continue to listen to these radio talk shows. While some of these talk hosts are willing to point out Romney’s flaws, in hearing many of their callers, however, one would have to conclude that Romney literally bathes in Teflon. During the 1980s, with one scandal after another, and because nothing stuck to Ronald Reagan, President Reagan was known as the “Teflon President.” But he had nothing on Mitt Romney.

Even the terribly negative economic effects of Romney’s socialist and fascist medical plan in Massachusetts do not seem to influence voters. People don’t seem to care that, as governor, Romney was a champion of Big Government. And is it really that easy for people to forget Romney’s publicly expressed affection for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy when Romney signed the RomneyCare atrocity into law? And Romney’s snubbing of a medical patient in a wheelchair, when the patient asked if Romney would have him and his doctor arrested for using medical marijuana. Yes, Romney wants to make sure the patient is insured, and then he can arrest him.

Frankly, when I see a politician who exhibits the kind of carnival barker-like gestures that Romney does, I feel afraid, very afraid. But because he is made with Teflon, nothing sticks. Right behind Romney in Teflon content is Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Oh, well.

I think that, thanks to government-controlled American schooling, many Americans are in denial about how broken and unfixable our current federal, statist system of central planning is. They are in denial of the truth that our government’s foreign policy has been invasive of other peoples, and that such an interventionist policy is immoral. But when people hear those criticisms of our government, as Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger noted, so many people confuse the government (filled to the rim with corruption and imbecilic bureaucrats) with the actual country, America. During the 2008 presidential campaign, many people perceived Ron Paul as “blaming America” for terrorism and 9/11, when Paul was actually blaming the government’s counter-productive, interventionist foreign policy.

But on the talk radio shows and the TV pundit shows, so many people continue to shrug off Ron Paul and his support of freedom and individual rights, and the sanctity of voluntary contracts, private property and the rule of law. It’s as though the deniers are afraid of Paul’s views, as though they fear freedom and personal responsibility, and that such fears are why they don’t seem to want to consider Paul’s candidacy.

But in the event that Ron Paul does not win the Republican nomination for president, I strongly suggest that he leave the Republicrat Party for good and run as a third party Independent. Some people fear that such a move will siphon votes away from the Republican nominee and ensure an Obama reelection, even though a Romney nomination is what will ensure an Obama reelection. But others believe that a Ron Paul third-party candidacy will siphon anti-war, pro-civil liberties votes away from Obama. The best thing such a move would do is it would bother the hell out of those conservative radio talk hosts, especially Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. Just that in and of itself would make a Ron Paul-third party run simply delightful.

However, in the end, it doesn’t matter who is elected in 2012, because the whole system of central planning is inherently flawed, and it can’t be reformed. I’m sure that Ron Paul disagrees with me on that, but the idea of “limited government” is impossible. Central planning doesn’t work in money and banking, immigration, and certainly not in national security.

America needs to get rid of the one thing that has been the biggest cause of America’s destruction, the federal government. The country needs to decentralize, states need to secede and become fully independent and sovereign, just like the Soviet Union did, and the functions of money and security especially need to be de-monopolized away from government control. Have Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity ever even considered such ideas? Or are such ideas just too “crazy” to be considered?

But the bottom line for me is this: I’ve got to stop listening to those annoying talk radio shows!

The Pathological Selfishness of Government Officials

October 11, 2011

(Link to article at Activist Post)

Recently I wrote about how some people use the armed, compulsory powers of government to restrict the rights and economic activities of others as a means of protecting one’s own selfish economic interests, profits, etc. That includes the unions and minimum wage laws, and big corporations such as those among Big Pharma in their legal restrictions against generic and supplement makers.

But there is another kind of government selfishness, even worse. That is when the government officials themselves restrict the rights of and threaten those people who publicly express dissent and criticism toward those government officials and their bad policies.

On his blog yesterday, Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger wrote:

Leaving aside what Awlaki did to justify his assassination, one big problem is that governments often end up viewing citizens who oppose their policies as enemies of the state, ones who are considered just as dangerous to ‘national security’ as those who actually take up arms against the government.

Thus, governments with the omnipotent, non-reviewable power to take out their own citizens oftentimes end up sliding the assassination scale to encompass those who are threatening national security or demoralizing the war effort by simply opposing what the regime is doing…

In (government officials’ and statists’) minds, whatever the U.S. government is doing to combat communism or terrorism has to be good and anyone who opposes it must be helping the communists or the terrorists. The best way to describe this statist mindset is through the simplistic statement, ‘You’re either with us or against us.’ Thus, if a person is opposing the government’s actions against communists and terrorists, that person must be supporting the communists or the terrorists.

That’s how dissidents and critics end up on their government’s watch lists, terrorist lists, communist lists, no-fly lists, or assassination lists. By standing up against the government’s policies, they are inevitably viewed as enemies of the state by government officials.

You see, even though many of our government officials’ policies have been counter-productive and destructive to our liberty and unnecessarily murderous of foreigners overseas, these government officials are so selfish and narcissistic — and to a criminally pathological extent — that they must stifle through police actions the criticisms toward them amongst the civilian population. As America is becoming increasingly totalitarian, so too are our government officials becoming in their intolerance of dissent. It really becomes a personal matter among these self-centered politicians and bureaucrats.

It not only is an issue for individuals and groups who publicly criticize government policies, but with some people within that government, such as whistleblowers who have taken the risk of exposing actual crimes being committed by government officials. One example is Bradley Manning, who allegedly exposed war crimes committed by members of the U.S. military, from top levels on down to enlisted soldiers. Manning has been held in solitary confinement in most inhumane conditions for over a year without any charges or conviction of any crime. Manning may have embarrassed government officials.

I suppose if I were a pathologically narcissistic and selfish, incompetent, corrupt government official, I probably also wouldn’t want my incompetence, corruption and crimes exposed, and probably would want to keep surveillance on, silence, or kill my critics.  Cass  Sunstein and the Federal Reserve want to do so regarding the surveillance; VeriSign now wants to do it regarding the silencing, and Barack Obama has done it regarding the killing.

For example, if I were the incompetent and corrupt ignoramus that is our Attorney General Eric Holster, I also wouldn’t want exposed how I allowed a gun-running op to go on under my authority, running guns to Mexican drug lords that resulted already in the deaths of hundreds of people. I probably would want to silence those who want to expose that.

And, it is no surprise that the Federal Reserve wants to keep surveillance on bloggers, Internet websites and social media to find those who criticize the Fed and try to “set them straight” about how important the Fed really is. If I were the incompetent and clueless Ben Bernanke, I probably also would want my critics silenced. The Bernank is obviously no fan of Ron Paul, that’s for sure. (Oh, and by the way, End  the Fed!)

And if I were any of the thousands and thousands of corrupt psychopaths of the U.S. military, responsible for the deaths of hundred of thousands of innocent Iraqis and other Middle Easterners, for no good reason other than to provide profits for the military contractors, and provide government bureaucracy “jobs” for the otherwise unemployable amongst us, I wouldn’t want that exposed either. If I were former President George H.W. Bush, I wouldn’t want my act of starting a war of aggression against another country that was of no threat to Americans, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and, along with the sanctions throughout the 1990s that resulted in skyrocketing disease and deaths and widespread anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East, I also would not want such incompetence, buffoonery, corruption and criminal activities exposed and talked about, and probably would want to silence my critics.

Given how much worse the younger Bush and Obama have been, and how Obama has become the current War Criminal-in-Chief, should it be any surprise that Obama’s regime is also crushing civil liberties domestically, silencing criticism and punishing dissenters left and right? This is typical of totalitarian governments and their selfish narcissists at the helm.

But will the selfish narcissists of the State completely kill our right to expose the truth about them, protected by the First Amendment?

Will the people ever wake up? The people need to realize that the only way to restore our freedom is to abolish the federal government completely, and free the states to retain their individual sovereignty and independence, decentralize, de-monopolize away from government control, and secede from the centralized totalitarian monstrosity, that self-serving, occupying foreign government in Washington.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe Explains Private Law Society

A few months ago, Stephan Kinsella posted these videos of a lecture at the Mises Institute Brazil, in Porto Alegre, by economist-philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe. I mentioned Hoppe in a post yesterday regarding the immigration issue. Hoppe’s lecture here is on the choice between State or Private Law Society. Hoppe’s rational and common sense approach to the complexities of how a truly free society could exist is “masterful,” as Kinsella observes. Kinsella points out,

For example, Hoppe here brilliantly and succinctly argues that there is but one correct answer to the problem of social order–the libertarian-Lockean rule (see 7:49- of Part 1). At 8:32-9:04, Part 1, he explains why the only answer to the question of who owns your body, is you–who else would own it? And that all other competing rules are either incoherent, contradictory, or obviously unfair. And (at 9:25-10:04, Part 1) that when you appropriate an unowned resource, who else would have a better claim to it than the person who had it first?

One of Hoppe’s main points is how the State is an agency of territorial monopoly of ultimate decision-making. Among the State’s duties is to settle conflicts amongst the people, and also settle conflicts between people and the State itself. If the people don’t like the final decision that the State has made, tough luck, as there is no “higher authority” to whom to go (by the State’s compulsion), and there is no choice in the matter, no alternative for settling conflicts. And Hoppe expands on these points.
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Jail Time for Employers Who Hire “Illegal” Immigrants?

There is a bill now going through the Massachusetts state legislature that proposes to give jail time to employers who hire “illegal” immigrants. The bill was filed by freshman state Rep. Ryan Fattman from rural Sutton, Massachusetts. Rep. Fattman’s undergraduate degree is in “government,” and as of a year ago his graduate program is in “public policy.” (Barf!)

Regarding Fattman’s bill to jail innocent employers who hire innocent workers, he stated,

Employment opportunity is a big incentive (for illegal immigrants),” said Rep. Ryan Fattman, R-Sutton, who filed the bill in January. “If there’s an employer out there offering jobs to someone who’s not supposed to be here, that’s a major problem. There should be heavy penalties for it, and that’s what this bill does.”

Hmmm. Employment opportunity is a big incentive. God forbid. Well, as I have written previously, conservative statists just don’t get it, when it come to immigration, labor and employment. Many people are still stuck in this love-the-State mentality, in which we are all owned by the State. I probably received the most negative emails responding to my LewRockwell.com article on immigration and employment, than to any other article I have written. There are many people who must emotionally defend their socialist and communist idea that the State owns all the territory, the property and businesses and the people within the territory, and that the State must control all the personal and economic interests of the people.

Here in Massachusetts, there have been quite a few drunk-driving accidents and deaths caused by “illegal” immigrants. Boston talk radio hosts Michael Graham and Howie Carr do not hesitate to immediately conclude that a new drunk-driving-related death was caused by an “illegal.” Their way to deal with that is to crack down on the “illegals.” But, the emotionalism aside for a moment, it shouldn’t matter what someone’s immigration status is if one is driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. If someone caused an accident and injury or death because of driving irresponsibly, then perhaps we need to banish him from society and deport him out to some island somewhere.

And there are too many emotion-driven acts of legislation that let the government intrude into the lives of workers and employers because of the problems caused by “illegals” in the southern part of America, particularly in Arizona and Texas. One example is Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s bill to stop and question dark-skinned or Spanish-accented individuals and ask for their papers, regardless of lack of suspicion of any wrongdoing. What you need to do is get rid of the War on Drugs, because that kind of nanny government’s treating the people like babies is what has caused all the violent crime — just as during the alcohol Prohibition era of the 1920s — and all the government and police corruption. You also need to make people take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, such as punishing or banishing people who cause others’ deaths, as I have just mentioned.

But this idea of criminalizing business owners and employers for hiring workers? That comes from just plain ignorance of the ideas of individual rights, private property and contract rights.

All individuals have inherent rights of self-ownership, the right to life and liberty, the right to own one’s own life and one’s person and justly-acquired property, and the right to do with one’s life, person, and labor whatever one wishes, as long as one is peaceful and doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s same right. No matter who you are or what territory you’re from, you have a right to voluntarily trade your labor with anyone who is voluntarily willing to offer you something in exchange for your labor, and it’s no one else’s business, but solely between you and your fellow trader.

As I and others, especially Jacob Hornberger, have written plenty of times now, socialist central planning doesn’t work. And it isn’t working and won’t work in immigration as well. It is just impractical to give a government central planning control of the people inside the territory and over the people who want to migrate to that territory.

Now, if there are readers out there who want to say that someone else does have a right to intrude on that private relationship, that private contract between employer and worker, and that the government has that right or legitimate power of intrusion, then you are a communist, pure and simple. That is because, if you believe that the private contract between two traders, a willing and voluntary laborer and a willing and voluntary employer, really is the business of the neighbors, or the government or the police, then you believe that the neighbors or the community and the State own the business in question, the property, the capital, and the lives of the traders, for that is what communism is: collective and State ownership of industry and the people. And once you say that we share in ownership with our neighbors or the government, then, because the community at large and government officials outnumber the individual businessman and individual worker, then all final decisions will be imposed by the more powerful ones, hence in actuality they are the de facto owners.

Actually, regarding whether or not the community in general has any moral right to exclude others from the territory, no they don’t. Private individuals and businesspeople are the ones with the right of exclusion from their private property, their homes and businesses, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe pointed out.

But I would like to know what actual businesses young Rep. Ryan Fattman (or any other government officials for that matter) has ever owned and how many people he has actually employed, and if the answer is none, then perhaps he ought to give it a try, and then maybe he’ll change his mind about criminalizing businessmen who employ workers, who actually provide other human beings with a job and a paycheck.

Rather than jailing businesspeople for hiring workers, lets jail government officials and police who intrude into other people’s lives, property and businesses, and whose constant actions of aggression do nothing but harm people and society as a whole.

Occupy Wall Streeters Need to Understand the Ideas of Personal Responsibility, Freedom of Contract and Private Property

The Occupy Wall Street protests have been consisting of a diverse group of people, from the unions and anti-capitalist left to the anti-Fed activists to the Tea Partiers on the right. However, as Alex Newman notes at The New American, the Soros-Marxists-revolutionary-wannabes have been attempting to co-opt the protests, with the purpose of taking down whatever is left of free markets and private property in America. As seen in this video of the Occupy DC protest by Adam Kokesh, many protesters on the left don’t really know what the real causes of the financial crisis are, and some still want to reelect corporatist (and warmonger) Obama.

Anthony Gregory at the Mises Institute points out that the ruling elite benefit from all this because most of the protesters lack any true message of liberty — which includes the advocacy for free markets, private property and freedom of contract. And on the End of the American Dream Blog, the writer points out the 11 reasons why Occupy Wall Street protesters are hypocrites if they do not call for Barack Obama to resign.

And Alex Jones has called for Occupying Federal Reserve branches throughout the USA. That is because the main economic problems and crises in America are caused by the Fed’s money-printing that devalues the dollar and causes price inflation and unemployment.

While Washington’s Blog claims that there really is not a list of official demands from Occupy Wall Street, the Occupy Wall Street movement apparently does give an informal list of demands, showing an utter lack of knowledge and understanding of economics and economic history. Among the demands are raising the minimum wage to $20/hour. In actuality, when you raise the minimum wage, you cause employers who can’t afford a wage hike to cut jobs, and that harms entry-level youths the most, and explains the higher unemployment numbers for teenagers, and others just entering the job market, as Jacob Hornberger has pointed out, as have Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, and, yes, that old right-wing nutso, Murray Rothbard.

Here’s a just-plain-crazy demand from the Occupy Wall Street blog: “Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.” (No comment necessary here — it speaks for itself.)

Demand number 11 is the one to please the infantile crib-wetters of the left:

Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now!…

The message is to just be irresponsible, sign on to loans you know you can’t afford to pay back, “buy” homes you know you can’t afford, spend like drunken sailors with credit cards and don’t expect to ever actually pay the bills (i.e. imitate Congress). And, when you get in trouble, expect your neighbors and Big Mommy and Daddy Government to bail you out.

No, what we need is to go the other way: no bailouts for anyone. Banks need to be made to take responsibility for the consequences of their risky lending and investment practices, and if that means going bankrupt, so be it. If anyone commits fraud (which all banks already currently do with a Fractional Reserve Banking system in place), they need to be prosecuted and thrown in jail. People who are prospective customers for particular banks need to take the responsibility by looking into the long term, as far as investigating the reputation and history of their prospective bank into which to deposit their money. If a bank has been shown to engage in irresponsible practices, then don’t deposit your money there. (See here.)

Students and their parents need to think ahead into the future. Some kids are not made for college, and parents of those kids need to just acknowledge that, and encourage those kids to discover a skill or trade that they can do to support themselves after high school. If you are a teenager, having a part-time job now gives you a head start in finding full-time work after high school.

If the youngin appears to be college bound, then he or she needs to be encouraged during high school to work part-time and save money to help parents put him or her through college. Don’t rely on the government for student loans. The whole government-college-complex is a fraud and a rip-off scheme. It is NOT worth starting your young adult life already being in debt, especially to the government! (Look what happened to some people when the Dept. of Education sicked the SWAT team marauders on people!)

In our infantilized, immediate gratification society, people have been spending money they don’t have on things they don’t need. Stop doing that. People are thinking in the short-term but don’t look down the road to the consequences of their own irresponsibility, and they want to be coddled and force their neighbors through government redistribution schemes to take care of them when they make mistakes and foolish decisions. Stop doing that. Parents, you need to be more responsible with your kids. Encourage them to be independent. Going into debt throws people into states of dependence.

And the Occupy Wall Street crowd needs to learn economics, and understand that when you demand for more government confiscation of private wealth and capital, more guilty-until-proven-innocent regulations of private businesses, trade and commerce, you are calling for a greater police state, and that’s the bottom line for me. Occupy Wall Streeters need to demand that the government require banks to take responsibility for the consequences of their reckless lending and investment practices, and jail the fraudsters.

Further Reading:

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/anything-peaceful/wall-street-couldnt-have-done-it-alone/

http://mises.org/page/1470/Human_Action_HTML

http://mises.org/resources.aspx?Id=73a08308-9978-4cb7-a7de-26a2b5a5524d

http://mises.org/daily/3995

http://www.thedailybell.com/3015/Anthony-Wile-Blaming-Wall-Street-Is-Wrong

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard183.html

Do Not Allow President Obama To Impose Martial Law

October 3, 2011

Copyright © 2011 LewRockwell.com (Link to article)

Some people are predicting that there will be a major economic collapse, caused by unsustainable debts and other government intrusions into private economic matters, and by central banks’ excessive money-printing.

In America, the Federal Reserve’s continued irresponsible and reckless actions will result in further devaluing the currency and huge increases in price inflation, especially in food and energy prices. Some are predicting that there will be food shortages, looting, rioting, and civil unrest and violence in America.

There are some people who believe that such events will be followed by President Obama imposing a nationwide martial law. Recent terrorism drills, such as the major drill last week in Denver, are believed to be part of the U.S. government’s preparation for either terrorism or false flag events, or part of preparation for planned martial law. Obama was recently in Denver. One hopes that what former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura has documented, a possible huge underground government or military facility at the Denver airport, and other similar places, are not true.

But the subject of martial law needs to be discussed, because it’s important that the people of the U.S. states have an understanding of this before Obama imposes martial law, which is essentially a presidential-military-rule dictatorship.

Obviously, any imposition of martial law by the U.S. government would be not only a gross violation of state sovereignty, thus making the states even further subservient to the authoritarian rule of the federal government, but martial law goes against the Founders’ ideas of inalienable rights and liberty.

Martial law includes the suspension of civil liberties, such as freedom of speech and dissent, the right to bear arms and self-defense, the right to freedom of movement, and the right to presumption of innocence. The Declaration of Independence recognizes the right of each and every human being to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” These are inalienable, pre-existing rights, meaning that they are natural and inherent rights, not given to us by any government. That means that no one, including government officials, police or military, may violate these rights or remove them – otherwise, they could not be considered inalienable.

Specifically, the right of the individual to life and liberty includes the right to own and control one’s life, and the right to be free from the aggressions of others, including police and military. The right of the individual to one’s life and liberty includes the “right to be secure” in one’s person, property and effects. In America, there are supposed to be no intrusions into the person or property of the individual without actual suspicion that a specific individual has committed a specific crime against someone else’s person or property. Even in those cases, the people were advised by the Founders to nevertheless question the official judgments of government agents.

Any suspension of these rights and civil liberties such as under a martial law would thus be an act of criminality by government officials, including the president, military and police, against the people. There have been many aspects of the post-9/11 “War on Terror,” including the Patriot Act and new warrantless surveillance intrusions, and due-process-free policies of apprehension and detention of Americans by federal agents, that some people believe to have been a back-door means for military rule in America.

As I wrote in my article, Tea Partiers May Need the ACLU Soon, the rights to presumption of innocence (and thus the right to be left alone without suspicion) and due process have greatly diminished in America since the Bush Administration exploited 9/11 to expand the federal government’s intrusive police powers over Americans. Putting such policies as the Patriot Act into place, and allowing for the apprehension, detention and assassination of Americans as well as foreigners, policies that remove presumption of innocence and due process, has made the U.S. government a much bigger threat to our liberty than terrorists ever could be.

Given Obama’s assassination of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without any due process, without having been convicted or even charged with terrorism, but by merely having been labeled a “terrorist” by government officials, and given the preponderance of historical evidence as to why we should not trust the judgment of government officials, Americans need to be vigilant. Why? Just one example is how current administration officials’ continuously label government protesters and Tea Party activists, antiwar protesters and even anti-ObamaCare activists as threats and “terrorists.” The crackdowns on peaceful protesters show more clearly how America is quickly turning into the Soviet Union.

Now, if you are a governor, and President Obama imposes martial law and orders you as governor of your state to enforce such an order, you are obligated by law to disobey that order, because it would be an unlawful order. Government officials recite an oath as they take their office, as do police and military personnel. Part of the oath for governor of a state – and local police officers for that matter – includes “support” of the U.S. Constitution and respective state constitutions. In some cases, the oath states that they will “obey and defend” the Constitution.

Some police officers’ oaths state that they will “obey the orders of superior officers” on the force. And the oath for enlistment in the U.S. Armed Forces does include mention of obeying the orders of the President of the United States. However, when a superior officer or president gives an unlawful order, such as one that violates an individual’s right to due process or right to free speech or dissent, then the soldier or officer is obligated to disobey that order.

Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, explains here in this video why such unlawful orders must be disobeyed. The Oath Keepers organization notes that

Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of currently serving military, reserves, National Guard, peace officers, fire-fighters, and veterans who swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic … and meant it. We won’t “just follow orders.”

The Oath Keepers organization views the soldier, military officer or police officer’s primary obligation of service as being to the people, not the president, and that their loyalty is to the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. If the President of the United States orders governors, National Guardsmen, military soldiers, police officers, to enforce federal martial law, the purpose of which is to remove civil liberties and rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, then such an order, therefore, is an unlawful order, and government personnel are obligated to disobey such orders.

Here is the Oath Keepers’ list of orders they would not obey, particularly because, as the Oath Keepers themselves note, such orders are “unconstitutional (and thus unlawful) and immoral violations of the natural rights of the people. Such orders would be acts of war against the American people by their own government, and thus acts of treason. We will not make war against our own people. We will not commit treason.”

1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people
2. We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects – such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons.
3. We will NOT obey any order to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to trial by military tribunal.
4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state, or to enter with force into a state, without the express consent and invitation of that state’s legislature and governor.
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.
6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control” during any emergency, or under any other pretext. We will consider such use of foreign troops against our people to be an invasion and an act of war.
9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever.
10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

I never thought that in my lifetime I would see such a strong possibility of economic collapse, food shortages, civil unrest and martial law in America. But all of this is completely avoidable.

How are economic collapse, food shortages, civil unrest and martial law avoidable? First, get rid of the causes of food price inflation. That means ending the Federal Reserve, ending central planning in money and banking, and allowing for free, competitive banking and competing currencies. Encourage the people to use gold, silver or something else of value as their medium of exchange, or a currency that is at least backed by something of value. Get the government out of money and banking, period.

Second, end the federal government’s intrusions into, restrictions on and subsidization of food production and distribution. Decentralize the entire food industry, and make the federal government stop infringing on the rights of local farmers and food producers, food distributors, retailers and grocers. Those local producers and traders – not government central planners – are the ones who know best how to handle their businesses, and what the consumers want and how much food should cost. No more police S.W.A.T raids on raw milk producers and other food producers.

We just can’t allow America to descend into the third world police state dictatorship that it seems to be becoming (and that is being reinforced in the schools). One step in the right direction would be to end all restrictions on civilians’ right to self-defense, and protect their right to own, conceal or openly carry weapons. That is what really prevents crime.

And communities need to consider de-monopolizing local policing and security. There’s no good reason for government to monopolize those functions. Let voluntary groups and private, competitive firms handle those things – that is what will end the current police-thug phenomenon.

Also, the federal government needs to end its counter-productive aggressions overseas and War on Drugs.

Finally, besides invoking the 10^th Amendment and nullifying federal food, monetary and banking restrictions, and nullifying federal gun laws, if Obama orders martial law, then U.S. state governors must also nullify that, too. If Obama and federal agents and military insist on forcing martial law in the states against the authority of the states’ leaders, then the states’ governors may have to order state and local officials to arrest federal agents acting in violation of the states’ sovereignty and the people’s rights.

No, the way to deal with economic collapse, civil unrest and looting is not with a federal martial law presidential-military dictatorship. The way to deal with or prevent such a crisis is by going the other way: through decentralization and de-monopolization, and undoing all the governmental interventions that will have caused the crisis in the first place.

Americans Need to Protest Against ALL Government-Police Intrusions

My earlier post concluded with a video of Adam Kokesh interviewing some ‘Occupy DC’ protesters, who seemed to be clueless as to what are the real causes of and solutions to Wall Street-Washington corporatist gangsterism. While these protesters consist of people with a wide mix of ideologies, from Tea Partiers and anti-Fed people to leftists and unions, one potentially big problem is those groups of the left who want more government intrusion and regulations.

The Richmond Tea Party blogger expresses concern about the Van Jones-inspired “progressive counter-balance” to the Tea Party movement. And Ticker Guy Karl Denninger notes how some of the protesters are calling for outright communism as the solution to America’s economic crisis. Denninger want to know where the Tea Party is on this, and why haven’t they gotten directly or more actively involved in the current Wall Street protests.

One problem with the protesters on the left is their general economic ignorance. They need to learn about how Federal Reserve and government intrusions into business and private economic matters cause distortions in markets and prices, result in higher unemployment and inflation (e.g. see here).

Another worse problem from the left — who are currently in control at the White House — is their constant craving, as recently exemplified by Elizabeth Warren, for more and more government regulations and intrusions into the economy, and more treating businesspeople as criminals, with higher taxes and presumption-of-guilt reporting requirements and regulatory dictates.

As I tried to point out recently here and here, the Left or “progressives” become their own worst enemy as far as the conflict between protests and police-thuggishness is concerned, because the recent expansion of police powers and intrusions, and encouragement of police intimidation and “overkill,” have been a direct result of the left’s own regulatory police state. When you create more regulations for businesses as well as for the population in general, who do you think it is that’s employed to enforce such regulations? Just look at all the police S.W.A.T. raids now, with raw milk, guitars, “insider traders,” etc.

In  his book, Human Action, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises wrote,

Government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action.… Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

We need more freedom, not more government intrusions into private economic matters. What we have now is a collusion between Big Business and Big Government, a corporatist-State dictatorship, regulatory police state. In America, all matters of trade and commerce between and amongst individuals and groups must be voluntary, and all contracts must remain private and not violated by the trespassers of the government and the police. Murray Rothbard explains contracts here, and see Mises on Free Banking and Contract Law.

The Anti-First Amendment NYPD, and the Misinformed Youngins Amongst the Protesters

Regarding the Occupy Wall Street protests, according to the U.K. Telegraph, some of the protesters claimed to have been led by the police onto the bridge, only to then get arrested, indicating that the police had intentionally entrapped the protesters. (Washington’s Blog has more.) However, police say that they gave warning with a bullhorn beforehand, which was barely audible amongst the protesters, as seen in this police video at NY Daily News. The police who claim that a barely audible bullhorn announcement was valid warning, as though anyone could hear it, show that the NYPD are FOS. It is difficult not to believe the protesters who say they were intentionally led and trapped onto the bridge, with police deliberately making them think it was okay to go onto the bridge as the police led them onto the bridge, only to then arrest them.

The NYPD were not merely enforcing trespassing laws or laws against blocking traffic. They were arresting people for protesting, for exercising their First Amendment-protected right to freedom of speech and right to protest. America has become a totalitarian police state already, and we will see more and more anti-First Amendment abuses by police now. Specifically, the NYPD here are protecting Wall Street, as evidenced by JP Morgan’s “unprecedented $4.6 million (donation) to the New York City Police Foundation,” according to Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism, who also provides evidence of the NY Times covering up the NYPD’s entrapment of the protesters.

Madison Ruppert, of Activist Post, gives some details from a NY Times article (that apparently escaped the editors’ pro-police scrutiny) on how the massive NYPD arrests were planned in advance. The NY Times article notes,

Earlier in the afternoon, as many as 10 Department of Correction buses, big enough to hold 20 prisoners apiece, had been dispatched from Rikers Island in what one law enforcement official said was “a planned move on the protesters.”

And Eric Blair, also of Activist Post, writes that liberty activist and former RT program host Adam Kokesh interviewed some of the protesters of ‘Occupy DC’ in Washington, and found that many of them are confused about what it is they are actually protesting, and that some of them actually want to reward Barack Obomber with reelection. (Obomber needs to be impeached, not reelected.)

In this video provided in the post by Blair, Kokesh tries to reason with the youngins: