Lew Rockwell Interviewed by Alex Jones on How Our Mad, Evil Rulers Lust for Power and Control

Lew Rockwell was interviewed by Alex Jones. Lew mentioned how all governments (and their bureaucrats and minions and flunkies) want to be totalitarian rulers, and they want to have total control over every aspect of the lives of their serfs and “mundanes,” the actual producers of society who provide for those very totalitarian bureaucrats’ large appetites for more control, power, and extravagant largess.

Lew Rockwell also mentioned how after 9/11 he predicted all these totalitarian intrusions such as the Patriot Act, and the more recent Nazi-like, Soviet-like criminal intrusions into our lives, liberty and property that the U.S. government is busy imposing on us.

Back in October, 2001, Lew wrote an article responding to all the post-9/11 fascist intrusions, titled, We Can’t Win This Way, referring to the war that George W. Bush started under false pretenses and all the other idiocies of the State, when, the real answer to prevent further terrorism would be to stop all the crimes, the murders of innocents, and the occupations imposed on those Arab and Muslim countries that the U.S. government has been committing for many, many decades, since well before 9/11.

But this new interview of Lew Rockwell by Alex Jones contained a lot of truths about what government, the State, really is, and about who the State’s bureaucrats really are. I sure hope that Lew has this interview transcribed as an LRC article.

I found the interview from the Alex Jones Show on YouTube:

Marco Stupido

Toward the end of his supposedly “major” political speech this week (that most “smart” politicians would memorize), Marco Stupido stopped and whined that he left the last page of his speech, and asked someone nearby for it, who then handed it to him. (“Oh, Mommy! Help me, Mommy!”)

Now, would Ronald Reagan have done that? Of course not. First of all, Reagan would have had his speech memorized, except for keeping some notes with him. If Reagan came to a point at which he either “left a page somewhere” or even just forgot what the next point was, he would have improvised the rest! I believe that Ron Paul never has prepared speeches and, with the exception of perhaps some brief notes with him, he improvises everything.

Ronald Reagan back then and Ron Paul now, both known for thinking on their feet. But Marco Stupido has an infantile dependence on his handlers nearby to save him from embarrassment. What are we going to do with a Vice President (or, God forbid, President) Marco who responds to a crisis by whining that he can’t finish a sentence or make a decision without his handlers?

Oh, and regarding his neocon warmongering and immoral, anti-liberty, anti-property government interventionism and expansionism, I wonder how much the “defense” contractors have contributed to Marco’s campaign coffers (or should that be, “coughers”?)

Justin Raimondo and Pat Buchanan give their responses to Marco Stupido’s “major” speech on how great neoconservativsm has been for America.

Neocons and Progressives: One Big Family of Aggressors and Central Planners, with Delusions of Grandeur

April 26, 2012

(Link to article at Strike the Root)

Regarding the traditional left-right scheme and modern uses of the terms “conservative” and “liberal,” the neoconservatives are hardly conservative and the liberals and progressives are hardly liberal or progressive. Rather than viewing “left” as liberal or progressive, and “right” as conservative or neoconservative, I view left as being collectivist and right as individualist.

Because both sides, progressives and neoconservatives (a.k.a. “neocons”) are of collectivism, I view both sides as on the left. Advocates of private property and voluntary exchange are on the right, in my view.

Collectivism includes the sacrificing of the individual to serve the collective, and the conscription of the individual’s labor to serve the interests of the collective via coercive taxation under threats of violence, i.e. involuntary servitude.

Individualism, on the other hand, includes the protection of the rights of the individual to self-ownership, the right to be free from the aggression and intrusion of others, the sanctity of justly acquired private property, and voluntary exchange, voluntary association and voluntary contracts.

Connections between the neocons and the progressive-left include covetousness, trespass onto the property of others, delusions of grandiosity and the use of aggression to force their delusional plans onto others. Both groups are also collectivist in nature, and their policies show a lack of respect for the rights of the individual. The individual , to these collectivists, is to be sacrificed to serve the interests of the community, or of the State.

The Progressives

In their utopian delusions of grandiosity, the progressive-left central planners seem to fantasize that the disadvantaged and the underprivileged would be helped if the government forced people to do certain things, with business regulations, mandates, licensure requirements, union protectionism, trade laws and restrictions, minimum wage laws, etc.

But as we have seen from America’s economic destruction over many decades, the progressives have inflicted on us their pathological “fatal conceit,” as coined by F.A. Hayek.

And the progressive-left probably don’t understand that when they support legislation, enforced by armed police agents of the State, that they are really supporting aggression and violence.

Why are the progressives’ grandiose schemes violent in nature? Because it takes the use of physical force or coercion and the State’s hired guns, the police, to enforce the progressives’ agenda. The progressives do not seem to accept the ideas of voluntary association, voluntary contracts and private property.

And the more intrusive legislation they support, such as the Dodd-Frank “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act,” and the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” a.k.a. “ObamaCare,” the more armed police (via FBI, IRS, SEC, local police, etc.) they require to inflict their grandiose utopian yet counter-productive schemes onto the rest of us.

Workers unions are a more direct representation of the violence imposed by the left and progressives. Unions have used intimidation to coerce their employers to pay them more than their labor would be valued in a free and open market [.pdf]. Employers have become slaves of workers, and as a result there are fewer workers, because some employers can’t afford to pay the salaries and benefits that the unions have forced them to pay either through “negotiations” or through legislative force.

Some people believe that it was unions’ unreasonable demands for further artificially higher pay and luxurious benefits that would have put General Motors out of business, were it not for the taxpayers who involuntarily “saved” the unions GM.

Believe it or not, or like it or not, State privileges such as those granted to private sector unions through protectionist coercion or legislation, as well as public employees unions’ extravagant benefits and pensions – taken by force through taxation from the private sector workers and producers – are in the same category of State-privilege for the “1%” Wall Street crowd who get their bailouts, their Primary Dealer government-fiat-money handouts and their extravagant bonuses – all at the expense of the taxpaying and compulsory-dollar-using working stiff.

And the Occupy Wall Street movement seems to have an agenda associated with that of the progressive left. Some of Occupy’s demands have included more governmental interventions and coercion (to further wreck the economy). Besides forgiveness of student loan debts and getting rid of corporate influence in elections, demands also include a further increase in the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the rich, universal or single-payer health care, and ending capitalism entirely.

Obviously, in my opinion, many amongst the Occupy movement are just not economically literate. Class warfare has been used by the left for a century to inflict its agenda of collective sacrifice of the individual and State theft of the individual’s property and wealth.

But as Sheldon Richman observed, Wall Street couldn’t have done it alone, and it takes collusions with government to cause the financial mess that America is now in. So the Occupy Wall Streeters also need to protest Congressional offices, the Federal Reserve, and the White House to be consistent.

As Richman concluded, the solution lies in a freed market. That is, markets of voluntary exchange and private property, in the absence of governmental intrusions and coercion.

Acts of intrusion into the private associations and contracts amongst individuals that the progressive-left have imposed have caused the reduction of employment opportunities and distorted prices of products and services. Whether it’s in the health care, financial or other industries, central planners’ authoritarian, top-down approach to resolving problems and inequalities of opportunity or wealth is impossible to achieve, because central planners lack the information that is necessary to know what is needed, how much is needed, where something is needed, and what price a product or service should be.

In contrast, in a freed society with freed markets, in which private associations and contracts are protected from intrusions and protected from aggression, trespass and theft, the consumers would determine what prices should be and who succeeds in what particular field of endeavor.

The Neocons

How are “neoconservatives” not conservative and instead socialists and much more closely linked with progressives than with real conservatives?

To be conservative can refer to adhering to traditional social and cultural values, as well as being fiscally conservative. But the neoconservatives spend tax dollars (received through coercive taxation and threats of violence against individuals) and borrow while increasing public debts in the name of expanding their military bases overseas.

Neocons are socialists in that they believe in the public ownership of the means of production in security. Neocons would never consider the idea of de-monopolized, privately owned [.pdf] means of production in security under the rule of law. That would remove the protectionism that the privilege of State-controlled, socialized national security gives favored defense contractors, and would instead provide the population with many more choices of competitive protection firms on a freed, open market.

Regarding the “moral values” of actual conservatism, the neocons have started wars against countries such as Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan, in which much of those countries’ infrastructure and property was destroyed, multitudes of innocent civilians were slaughtered or injured, families torn apart, and for no good reason.

But to believe in actual moral values, one would have to adhere to the Golden Rule of “Do unto others what one would want others to do unto you,” and “Don’t do unto others what one would not want others to do unto you.”

Sadly, when Ron Paul mentions this basic Christian, universal rule of moral civility, he gets booed by the neocons.

When it comes to true conservatism and moral values, the neocons are phony. They’re as phony as a dollar bill.

Besides their grandiose schemes and promotion of Big Government central planning, another aspect that puts neocons in the same category as the progressives is their globalist fanaticism.

In the neocons’ utopian delusions of grandeur, those central planning collectivists have been attempting to “remake the Middle East,” particularly with the first unnecessary and counterproductive Iraq War in 1991, and onward. As with progressive President Woodrow Wilson, the neocons want to “make the world safe for democracy.” (But not safe for freedom.)

As Justin Raimondo explains, modern neocons have their roots in the late Irving Kristol, father of chickenhawk Bill Kristol. The elder Kristol was a self-proclaimed Trotskyist. He opposed Stalinism but embraced Trotskyism.

Stalin, as Raimondo points out, favored “Socialism in one country,” such as USSR and its satellite countries, but not necessarily world revolution, while Trotsky embraced the idea of world revolution, defeating capitalist countries and spreading socialist paradise globally.

Further expansion of the neocon movement and of the U.S. government’s military-industrial-complex ensued following the 1991 Iraq War. In 1996, the younger Bill Kristol, and Robert Kagan (later foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, and who has been praised by Barack Obama), published the article, Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy. In the article the neocons called for “benevolent global hegemony.” And In 1997, Bill Kristol and Kagan founded Project for the New American Century, whose main policy paper, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, calls for the U.S. to spread its might and influence globally.

In 2007, Gen. Wesley Clark revealed that the neocons had by 2001 planned to invade and force regime change in particular countries, including “Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

George W. Bush merely called his crusade a “global democratic revolution.”

As Raimondo observes, the Trotskyite neocons transferred their loyalty from the USSR to the U.S., albeit not a capitalist America but a truly socialist American utopia, in which the central planning government controls all things domestically with its regulatory and armed police state, and expands itself globally as well.

With George W. Bush and Obama’s Patriot Act, NSA spying against Americans, the NDAA indefinite detention of innocents, America has become much more like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, thanks to the Demopublicans and Republicrats’ rubber-stamping the neocon police state agenda.

In a sense, one of the major neocons of our time, Dick Cheney, who has spent most of his adult life not in the private sector being productive but in the public sector feeding off the taxpayers’ labor, has a lot in common with the current president, Barack Obama, who has spent his entire adult life advocating the powers of the State to administer “social justice,” and who also advanced in life through privilege (and affirmative action).

But the “antiwar” progressive Democrat candidate of 2008 Barack Obama immediately became a Cheney neocon after being sworn in as President. Obama expanded the Bush imperialism warmongering and then the more typically progressive-left “humanitarian” warmongering.

Especially Orwellian is Obama’s new cringeworthy “Atrocity Prevention Board.”

Conclusion

Contrary to the neocon-progressives’ assertion about “spreading democracy” or fighting against terrorism, their aggression is hardly behavior of “peace-loving,” “democratic,” or “benevolent” cultures and societies. You can’t say with a straight face that you are “spreading capitalism,” when you are engaging in murders of innocent civilians, destruction of other people’s property and trespassing on other peoples’ lands.

Just as the progressives’ domestic economic interventions that allow State theft of and aggressions into private property have the natural blowback of “unintended consequences” (an economy in shambles, dwindling freedom, etc.), the neocons’ foreign interventionism has caused a great deal of blowback against America. The war of aggression that President George H.W. Bush and his defense secretary Dick Cheney started against Iraq in 1991, the destruction of civilian water and sewage treatment facilities, sanctions and subsequent disease and deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, all led to widespread anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East and the 9/11 attacks.

Terrorist attacks within America’s borders were actually predicted by Ron Paul during the 1990s, based on Dr. Paul’s understanding of the situation overseas, especially in Iraq, and his understanding that when central planners initiate aggressions against the lives, liberty and property of others, there will be negative consequences and blowback.

As I noted here, war is an artificial collectivist and statist concept used to rationalize criminal aggression. It comes straight from the left and from the State and its apparatchiks, propagandists, and merchants of death, certainly not from the individualist, voluntaryist right.

So-called conservatives such as Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity, who allegedly believe in traditional moral values and “small government,” seem to have been brainwashed into supporting the wars of aggression by the neocons that have destroyed much of the Middle East, and have given us the domestic police state that is now Nazifying America. Not very conservative, not really moral.

Real capitalists and individualists who believe in free markets, private property and voluntary exchange, do not impose themselves onto others with aggression. Aggression and invasion of property are the marks of socialists and interventionists.

Aggression, collectivism, and destructive central planning delusions are the characteristics which bond the neocons and progressives together in one big covetous family of power-grabbers. Can we possibly ever free ourselves of them?

60 Minutes Story on Christians in Israel

Apparently, the story that 60 Minutes did on Israel’s Christians has received some harsh criticism, including the Israeli ambassador to U.S., Michael Oren, complaining to the head of CBS News even before the story aired. Robert Wright notes,

You can see why Oren might rather the piece hadn’t aired. Things that Palestinian Muslims routinely say about the Israeli occupation may get more traction in America when Palestinian Christians say them. Such as this, from a Christian clergyman: “The West Bank is becoming more and more like a piece of Swiss cheese, where Israel gets the cheese–that is, the land the water resources, the archaeological sites, and the Palestinians are pushed in the holes.”

Also, Oren clearly doesn’t want this document [for link, see original article], mentioned by Simon, to get attention. In it an interdominational group of Middle Eastern Christian clergy–Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant–refer to the occupation as “clear apartheid.” …

Finally, the 60 Minutes piece complicates the post-9/11 Israeli narrative according to which Israel and Judeo-Christian America are involved in a common struggle against Islamic radicals, and the occupation should be viewed in that context. Hence the importance of the moment when Oren insists Christians are leaving the West Bank under duress from Islamic radicals, not because of the occupation, and Simon presents testimony to the contrary.

Here is the controversial 60 Minutes story:

http://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/cbsnews_player_embed.swf

Congress, Bush and Obama’s Acts of Treason

Glenn Greenwald has this piece, Surveillance State Evils. And Justin Raimondo has this, Is America a Free Country? today.

They are both referring to a recent edition of Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, regarding the Bush NSA spying-on-innocent-Americans that Barack Obama expanded since he became president. Goodman interviewed three people, one of whom a former NSA official, William Binney, who was threatened by the FBI because he testified to Congress about the illegal spying on innocent Americans. Goodman also interviewed an Internet specialist and a documentary maker. According to Raimondo, “Applebaum and Poitras have been detained, searched, and interrogated every time they have re-entered the US from abroad – Poitras over 40 times – and had their laptops seized and presumably copied. None of these individuals have been charged with a crime.”

You see, when dishonest and criminal cockroaches learn that their dishonest projects and criminality which violate other people’s lives, liberty and property have been exposed, they go after the ones who have turned the lights on them.

Now, in the past, I have referred to policies in which the government deliberately targets innocent civilians, such as the NDAA law, as “treasonous.”

The Constitution defines “Treason” this way:

“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

By “levying war against them,” as Thomas DiLorenzo notes, it is really the agents of the federal government who act treasonously when they target the states, or the people of the states. I pointed out here that, in my opinion, the blowback against America caused by the federal government’s incompetence, corruption and acts of aggression against foreigners could also be considered treasonous, albeit not in a direct way. The federal government’s aggressions against foreigners for many decades has deeply gone against the interests of the people of these United States, those interests being freedom, peace and security.

But for this post, I am addressing the more direct way that our federal government bureaucrats are acting treasonously against us.

I wrote here on the NDAA law, which gives the President the power to have the military arrest and detain indefinitely American civilians, without charges, without evidence against the accused, and referred to that as an act of treason. Any government official who commits such a crime against an innocent person without due process is committing an act of treason. In my opinion, the U.S. senators and congressfelons who voted for this legislation have, in those votes, directly threatened the safety and security of all Americans. Such a threat is, in my opinion, an intentional targeting of innocent civilians. This provision, as James Madison might have agreed, increases the likelihood that the President will use it to “levy war” against the people.

NDAA is a direct threat against our freedom and security by the U.S. government, and by Congress and by the President.

Regarding the NSA spying crimes that the federal government has been committing against innocent Americans without any reasonable suspicion against any specific individuals: This, too, is not only illegal and unconstitutional, but it is also treasonous. This program of intrusion against innocent Americans, violates our lives, liberty, property, privacy, our “papers and effects,” and our “right to be secure.” NSA spying could also be considered acts of war against the people of the states.

My question is, why aren’t there any senators or congressmen submitting one bill after another to impeach the President? Or do we have to go through what many societies have been through in the past instead?

The Zimmerman Case Continues…

This George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin controversy sure has gotten a lot of people talking and writing about it. It seems that everyone has an opinion on it, especially the professional race hustlers such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Shrapnel.

Most of the discussions seem to be concentrating on the altercation between Martin and Zimmerman and which one was the “aggressor.” I don’t know why people are not discussing who started the whole ordeal in the first place: George Zimmerman.

Zimmerman’s initial act of stalking Martin was the initial act of aggression. But is that relevant? It should be.

Some people don’t think that merely following someone is an act of aggression. But when one is actively following, pursuing, and staking someone else, one is obviously acting in a threatening and provoking manner.

George Zimmerman started the whole thing by choosing to stalk Trayvon Martin, and for no good reason. Zimmerman had no reason to suspect Martin of anything. Just because Martin was wearing a hoodie and was “just walking around looking about” after leaving the store is not “reasonable suspicion.” (Even though Zimmerman was not employed as police or security there, I would think that anyone who wants to go follow someone else should have reasonable suspicion.) Martin was not running from the store, which would obviously make him suspicious. As far as we know, Martin was not actually doing anything of a suspicious nature while walking on his way, only “just walking around looking about.”

Zimmerman was also quoted to have said, “This guy looks like he is up to no good or he is on drugs or something” and “these a******s they always get away.”

It was Zimmerman’s unreasonable aggression of stalking Martin that apparently made Martin feel threatened. Zimmerman provoked Martin. In this instance, Martin is the one who had the right to “stand his ground,” and defend himself. Were Martin armed, as Ann Coulter seems to think he should have been, Martin should have shown his weapon and ordered Zimmerman to stop following him. And that’s that.

Now, if the races were reversed, and the one who initiated the stalking aggression was black and the one he was provoking was white (or white/Hispanic), then I believe the radio blabbermouths would not be coming to the stalker’s defense as they seem to have been defending Zimmerman.

And most of them probably disagree with me that it was Martin who had the stand-your-ground right of self-defense. Were the shooting victim white and the stalker black, then most of the radio blabbermouths would be saying that the white stalking victim is the one who would’ve had stand-your-ground rights.

But I’m sick of all this race-obsession stuff on both sides. This case is a matter of aggression and who is threatening and provoking whom. Race should have no relevance here.

Does the First Amendment Still Protect My Right to Call Government Bureaucrats “Nazis”?

There is yet another article regarding the police state run amok now. At the U.K. Guardian, Jennifer Abel writes about the TSA airport goons and storm troopers moving on to our non-flying alternatives, the roads and highways with TSA VIPR Teams, and the bus stations and train depots. And it isn’t just train depots (as in Amtrak which compares to air/long-distance travel), but local subways and regular metro buses now.

Why are these Nazis harassing innocent civilians for no good reason? Because they get off on it, that’s why. And no, there’s no evidence of any terrorism anywhere to be found, they will not find any terrorists anywhere (except for the phony ones that the FBI lures into it, like they did Tarak Mehanna, etc.) The real terrorists here are these goons, as they harass and threaten innocent people for no good reason, and the high-and-mighty government bureaucrats who have unleashed them on us. These are the real criminals, as they threaten, search and interrogate innocent civilians without any just cause, without reasonable suspicion.

You see, for government bureaucrats and police to stop or approach anyone in a non-criminal way, one would have to have some actual reason to suspect an actual individual of some actual crime.

If you don’t suspect someone of anything, then you leave him or her alone. That’s the American way.

Unfortunately, Jamit Napolitano, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, John Ashcroft and Bob Mueller do not know their history, or they do know about it but don’t care. These people love power, they love putting the masses into disarmed submissiveness and helplessness, they love to rule over their serfs. And their underlings, all the little Nazi bureaucrats and police who follow their orders, also love their power trips as well.

I know some people are bothered by my use of the word, “Nazi,” and in recent months I have toned that down quite a bit. However, America really is turning into Nazi Germany, whether you want to face that fact or not.

After the airport TSA and their radiation scanning cancer-giving and groping and child molesting, now it’s on to train stations and bus depots, and the subways, malls, sporting events, for more illegal searches without suspicion, more child (and adult) molesting, more criminal assaults against our persons, property, papers and effects.

So where does all this lead? Does it stop there?

No, of course it won’t stop there. In Nazi York City, for instance, they already have NYPD going into apartment buildings to stop and frisk innocent civilians without suspicion in their own buildings! as well as the illegal stopping people on the streets and frisking them that these Nazi police have been doing.

But do you think this Nazi Germany stuff is going to end only with city apartment buildings? Get ready for these Nazi criminals doing these things to innocent people in the suburbs as well, and with suspicion-less, intrusions at your door and your being compelled to have to let them in, regardless of absence of warrant or absence of reasonable suspicion. Because “there might be terrorists.” Or “there might be drugs.”

Or there might be someone who didn’t separate the recycling from the regular garbage. (You think I’m kidding?)

Yes, it’s all coming.

Thanks to the sheeple who have voted overwhelmingly for their senators and congressfelons who gave us the Patriot Act and NDAA, and so forth. And it’s not really just George W. Bush who started all this. We can thank Ronald Reagan as well, who encouraged the drooling Oliver North, working out of the White House basement as he formulated his dream of military martial law in Amerika.

Each subsequent generation of Americans seems less and less understanding of the concepts of presumption of innocence and the right to be left alone. Each generation is less and less educated in history, and have no idea how Nazi Germany became what it was. Or the Soviet Union, for that matter. They find the police state acceptable now. Treating our fellow Americans like criminal suspects is now acceptable.

The terrorism meme has been a fraud and a sham. The real terrorists are these government bureaucrats and their Nazi police criminal underlings.

Turning America into Nazi Germany is not the way to prevent terrorism, for those of you who are concerned about that. The way to prevent those so-called Islamists and jihadists, and “home-grown terrorists,” from wanting to commit acts of terrorism here in America is for our government to STOP attacking and murdering foreigners and occupying their countries!

If that wasn’t really the case, regarding what went on before 9/11, then why did Ron Paul — several times — predict that because of the wars, sanctions, occupations and incitements by the U.S. government against foreigners especially throughout the 1990s, that there very well could be a terrorist attack on our shores because of it? He was right.

You see, when you start wars against other countries and slaughter their people who were of no threat to you, those are called provocations. When you provoke your neighbors across the street with aggression, trespassing and murdering their families, they might very well want to retaliate.

But because of the narcissistic, neanderthal attitude of so many Americans now, when Ron Paul points out the Golden Rule, and that we wouldn’t like it if foreign governments started wars against us on our shores, occupied our territories and murdered our people, he gets booed! Only ignorant, self-centered morons would boo the idea of equal under God and equality under the rule of law.

And there are still those out there who believe the lies of our government as far as justifying their turning America into Nazi Germany, and there are many, many Americans who are completely ignorant of actual history of the actions of our own government, and who live in denial, and who accuse those who point out the truths of history of being “on the side of the terrorists.”

No, I am not on the side of the terrorists, and I am not on the side of aggressors, criminals, and bureaucrats whose hired guns the police and military continue to commit crimes against our lives, persons, property and our freedom.

Paywall Obstructions and Copyright Obsessors

What has really been bothering me lately is those online editions of newspapers who insist on a paywall. These dinosaurs of the old media don’t understand the Internet, and I doubt they ever will. Much of the Wall Street Journal online, for example, is behind a pay wall. So if I find an interesting article that I’d like to link to, but it insists that you subscribe, then I won’t link to it. I know that many other bloggers and online writers are the same way. Why should I cause readers to waste their time clicking on a link, when chances are that they don’t have an online subscription and they probably won’t start one at that time, just to see one damn article?

But the print media dinosaurs suffer from the same kind of shortsightedness that government bureaucrats have. You see, when I link to a website, such as WSJ or the New York Times, and readers of this blog click on a link to read an article, that is giving those newspapers new readers, who will also be seeing (and maybe clicking on and maybe even patronizing) the advertisements. For the New York Times, it’s new readers (thanks to my and others’ links), and new clicks on their ads. But the dinosaurs don’t see that. In fact, because of paywalls, they will get fewer clicks, fewer readers, and thus lower ad revenues.

Because of modern day generations of present-oriented narcissists who lack the ability to see things in the long term, they make policies and create obstructions to their businesses that go against their own interests in the long term. Phenomena such as paywalls do just that. And so does copyright.

Unfortunately, the music industry people who support SOPA (and other legislation to “protect IP” on the Internet) don’t understand that they are acting as useful idiots for government tyrants who want to use IP-protecting legislation to censor information and commentary on the Internet that they don’t like.

Those IP-related Internet bills are solely for the government to suppress political dissent. I wish more people understood that.

Now, in the past when I had been looking for a Monty Python video to post here (such as this one depicting an ObamaCare-like doctor, and this one), I noticed that, on YouTube, the Monty Python people seemed extremely uptight about people posting their videos. They felt they were getting “ripped off.” Now I see that they have their own YouTube page, and it appears that since they launched their YouTube page, sales of their DVDs had hit the roof.

But there was never any need to have their own YouTube page to “get their money back” that they irrationally believed was getting “ripped off.” You see, if someone on the Internet posted a Monty Python video, there are a lot of people now who have never heard of them, particularly those age 30 and younger. When someone posts a video of that sort, and viewers to that web page or blog like what they see, they will then go to Google (or whatever search engine they prefer) and get more information, and they will probably find “shopping results” that include Amazon.com that sells Monty Python DVDs.

I guess what I’m saying is that when people post Monty Python videos on blogs or other websites, the bloggers are giving Monty Python (or similar kinds of video makers) free advertising.

I wonder if viewers of Family Guy who saw the episode that made fun of Carol Burnett’s cleaning woman character from her TV show (for which she unsuccessfully sued them) then searched to see who Carol Burnett is (let’s face it, many people under 35 probably don’t know who Carol Burnett is). There are many YouTube pages with classic scenes from the old Carol Burnett Show.

Below I’ll post the skit with Carol as a patient seeing a psychiatrist (played by Harvey Korman). Buy Carol Burnett Show DVDs here.

1965 Interview of Atheist Dissident Madeline Murray (Before the “O’Hare”)

Last week Jacob Hornberger posted this commentary on the “God Bless the USA” in public schools controversy. And just a few days ago, Michael Graham featured a discussion of a Winchester, Massachusetts government school that would not allow a production of Miracle on 34th Street, but will be showing the kids The Hunger Games.

Santa Claus is “offensive,” but violence, sadism, and cruelty are just fine with government school bureaucrats.

I agree with Jacob’s conclusion, that to resolve these kinds of issues we need to abolish government-run schools, and let people choose among whatever privately-run schools in which they want their kids to enroll. That would free the market and there would then be many more providers of educational products available. In a freed market, the schools who promote actual education, provide truthful information and common sense are those that would succeed, while the ones who promote social and political propagandizing and indoctrination would obviously go down the drain.

These discussions reminded me of the Madeline Murray O’Hare controversy of the 1960s. I posted this about a year ago, but only the first segment. Here it is again, along with the other segments that are also available at Jerrywilliams.org.

This interview by Jerry Williams of well-known American atheist Madeline Murray (before the “O’Hare”) took place in 1965. It was just two years after the Supreme Court ruled that forcing kids in “public” (i.e. government-run) schools to read from the Bible was a violation of the First Amendment’s “Establishment Clause.” Now, I am not an atheist, but I sympathize with people who stand up for their right to hold their minority views.

During the interview, Madeline Murray describes (in Part 1) how she was beaten several times, along with her children and her 74-year-old mother, in their home by the police, and made to go to the hospital.

So, given how violently some people react to any questioning of their religious views, their belief in God, or how violently some people react to any resistance to their trying to force their religious views down other people’s throats, I’m glad that religious fascist Rick Sanitorium has dropped out of the presidential race.

I am afraid that the growing trend toward intolerance of minority views, whether they be Jews, Muslims, atheists, and intolerance of questioning various political views such as ObamaCare or minimum wage and affirmative action, may mirror this kind of violent intolerance of earlier times, especially under the rude, authoritarian regime of Barack Obama.

(Unfortunately, on the Jerry Williams website, some of the links are out of place, so I rearranged their order more accurately, I think.)

Click on link, opens media player window

Part 1: http://jerrywilliams.org/audio/WBBM/wbbm05.m3u

Part 2: (for some reason, it goes silent from about 6:00 to about 19:00) http://jerrywilliams.org/audio/WBBM/wbbm08.m3u

Part 3: http://jerrywilliams.org/audio/WBBM/wbbm09.m3u

Part 4: http://jerrywilliams.org/audio/WBBM/wbbm10.m3u

Part 5: http://jerrywilliams.org/audio/WBBM/wbbm07.m3u

Part 6: http://jerrywilliams.org/audio/WBBM/wbbm06.m3u

America’s Self-Contradictory Constitution and Bureaucrats’ Illegitimate Monopolies

April 11, 2012

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

In my previous column I included some ways to protect ourselves from the tyrannically intrusive ObamaCare monstrosity, via the U.S. Constitution. However, in the same piece I questioned the Constitution’s legitimacy and its logic.

The Constitution contains a self-contradictory structure that monopolist government bureaucrats and the police have been ignoring for many decades.

In fact, it is the very Constitutionally mandated monopolies that bureaucrats illegitimately have that violate our God-given rights.

Here are some examples of the Constitution’s inconsistency: Part of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment states that “(no person) shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”

Note how it does not stipulate, “except during a war,” or “except during the U.S. government’s War on Terror.” That is because the Founders believed that there should be no exceptions to this rule.

And also, the Fifth Amendment specifies “in any criminal case,” but not in other cases in which police (or military) or other private civilians could very well not be investigating any criminal case, but could just be on a Gestapo-like fishing expedition.

The right to presumption of innocence is part of our natural, inalienable rights, and history has shown that government power-grabbers are not particularly concerned for the people’s right to presumption of innocence.

A century of government central planning has created generations of shortsighted, irresponsible rulers in America. With rule by emotion and not reason, we have police, legislative and court bureaucrats who do not seem able to see things form the point of view of an individual being criminally victimized by agents of the State.

The Fifth Amendment also states, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” It does not forbid the government from taking private property – it only states that when covetous government bureaucrats do take your property, with or without your consent, they are supposed to compensate you for it.

There is no provision in the Constitution that protects one’s person and private property from a criminal intrusion. There is a hint of that in the Fourth Amendment, with the phrase, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…” But federal, state and local governments have repeatedly committed person- and property-invasion crimes against innocent civilians, and courts have repeatedly defended those State crimes.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution is loaded with monopoly powers assigned to government that violate individuals’ God-given, inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It gives so much monopolistic, centralized power to the federal government that many of the Founders knew that such powers would be misused and become the Leviathan tyranny the federal government now is.

In Article I, Section 8, Congress is given the power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States.” But who the hell is a government bureaucrat to interfere with or intrude into an individual’s private contracts?

This immediately violates the individual’s right to establish voluntary contracts with others. Contracts among individuals are the sole business of the parties to such contracts, and not the business of government bureaucrats. My philosophy is that if it’s none of the neighbors’ business, it’s none of the government’s business.

A federal government with its artificial authority over an entire territory implies that the government owns the territory, and that the bureaucrats employed by the government have some sort of territorial ownership rights of control, a very communistic structure if there ever was one.

And who the hell are government bureaucrats to “coin money”? That’s also part of Article I, Section 8. Money is an important commodity and it is the individual’s right to choose by what means one wants to trade with others. Giving government control of the people’s money gives the government the power to steal from the people.

In contrast, the market would be efficient in the “regulation” of various media of exchange, that is, were the market freed from monopolistic, governmental bureaucratic intrusions.

Murray Rothbard explains the myth of “efficient government service.”

And Hans-Hermann Hoppe covers the origin and stability of the State, and noted the absurdity of a society with government monopolies and the absence of a contract between the people and the State.

The truth is, there’s really no need for a “Constitution” to maintain peace and civility in a free society. Just follow the rule of law, by forbidding the initiation of physical aggression, forbidding theft and fraud, and forbidding trespass.

Assigning a monopoly power to an institution – government – in which the people are compelled by law to use, with threats of violence to enforce such a relationship, is immoral and criminal in nature, and violates the individual’s right to choose which services one wants to use.

In a free, civilized society, no one should be above the law, and no one has any legitimate authority over anyone else without voluntary consent.

And regarding any actual need for a centralized government with power and authority over the entire territory, I have addressed that here, and here.

But everything in a society, particularly one as large as the United States, really must be controlled locally.

There are those who agree with localization, but worry about “national defense.” But in reality, the original purpose of the federal government’s Constitutionally mandated territorial security monopoly has long been forgotten. The bigger and more powerful the federal government had become, the more each temporary ruler has used such powers to intentionally act aggressively, inhumanely and belligerently against foreigners, the more they have done nothing but provoke foreigners to act against the people of the United States. I have addressed the federal government’s central planning monopoly in territorial protection here, here and here. (And for more, see this, this [.pdf], and this.)

And here Hans Hoppe analyzes the association between democracies and war.

And we have been seeing, day after day, how the local governments’ monopoly in community policing and security not only gives the government-monopolized police the power to be above the law, but many times now government police have been getting away with crimes of murder, assault, theft, rape, property destruction, and terrorizing innocent civilians. (Just see any of these LRC articles by Will Grigg to find many examples.)

And because of the power of local and state governments, as well as the federal government, to artificially make just about every civilian behavior a crime, no matter how harmless and innocent, the police are arresting people really for no good reason (except mainly to raise revenue to fund local and state bureaucrats’ six-figure salaries that they probably would not be getting in a freed market). This is what America has come to: lawlessness and criminality mainly committed by the agents of the State.

In a community in which policing were done by voluntary groups and individuals, and by competitive firms, all individuals would have to live under the rule of law, all individuals would be equal under the law, and no one would be allowed to be above the law. (And that would also apply to George Zimmerman, whose initial act of stalking Trayvon Martin was questionable at best.)

Currently, many government-monopolized police do not obey the rule of law because they have monopoly status in which they are above the law. The truth is that such an unequal, artificial relationship between civilians and armed government bureaucrats seems to naturally lead to a system of institutionalized criminality.

And now, thanks to the passive, sheeple-like compliance and submissiveness on the part of the American people, these local government bureaucrats (as well as the federal bureaucrats) have more and more armed power, and our liberty and security are going down the drain (along with our economic prosperity that we used to have, thanks to the monetary and financial monopolists in Washington).

Monopolists are not accountable. No “Constitution” holds monopolists accountable – that’s a fantasy, a dream that can never come true, because of human nature, and because no human being is an angel.

Giving people artificial armed power and authority over others has been the Founders’ biggest mistake. But can we reverse this? Well, where there’s a will, there’s a way, that’s for sure.

Eventually, Americans will have to face these truths and stop kicking the can down the road toward the necessary restructuring. And better sooner than later.

And no, there can be no Perestroika, or “reform,” of government monopolies and central planning. It all needs to be abolished, as the Soviets did, and decentralization and localization must occur.

Americans need to take back their freedom, not just with their right to self-defense and their right to bear arms, but by removing monopolies from government bureaucrats.

Gary Johnson? Who? The What? Libertarian Party? What’s THAT?!!

Market Ticker guy and modern Tea Party founder Karl Denninger has this post on the Libertarian Party and Gary Johnson. Denninger writes and complains about lack of principles there, but he not once mentions Ron Paul, one of the most principled libertarians around.

Now, Denninger seems approving of the LP’s requirement to sign a loyalty oath for LP membership. I think that’s rather childish. I will not proclaim any loyalty, certainly not to any political party, but I am loyal and faithful to the principles of libertarianism, and to liberty, and to the Non-Aggression Principle. I am loyal to the rights of the individual to life, liberty and property, free markets and freedom of association and freedom of contract. But I don’t have to sign something to prove my loyalty, that’s ridiculous.

Why Denninger does not mention Ron Paul, who knows. I think it might be because Denninger still supports government control over our money, while Paul supports monetary freedom, the right of the people to choose their media of exchange in an open and free marketplace.

And I don’t really believe in political parties, anyway. As I have mentioned here and here, George Washington spoke unfavorably about political parties. In his farewell address, Washington stated,

…Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy…

…Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

Now, on these elections, I agree with Justin Raimondo in his recent Open Letter to Ron Paul.

The best thing that could happen would be for the GOP to split, with your (Paul’s) supporters hiving off, leaving the GOP remnant to become a primarily southern-based regional party. This is their future, in any event, in spite of your energetic efforts to “save” them. Unfortunately – for them and for us – they don’t want to be saved.

And they don’t DESERVE to be saved!

Paul needs to seriously consider running for president as an independent candidate. I don’t even know about the Libertarian Party, given that organization’s problems throughout its entire 4-decade existence. Many of the Party leaders and insiders are a bunch of hacks, and are statist-lites, just as with the Demopublicans and the Republicrats.

Ron Paul has such a following that he can easily get his name on the ballot in all fifty states as an independent candidate, in my opinion, despite the totalitarian-like ballot restrictions in some of these especially more communist states.

And for those who are constantly saying, “Anyone but Obama,” and think that a President Romney is going to be any different or any less socialist than Obama, you are living in a dream world. Romney is perhaps one of the most unprincipled of politicians I’ve seen, the epitome of “weathervane pol.”

The Supreme Bureaucrats’ Decision on ObamaCare

April 6, 2012

Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com (Link to article)

No, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on ObamaCare and the individual mandate will not matter, especially when, as protected by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the states have a right to nullify the individual mandate – or all of ObamaCare if they want to.

The statists who rule over us, and their apparatchiks and propagandists, want to assert that the “Civil War settled everything” on issues of nullification and state secession. Those authoritarians suggest that President Abe Lincoln’s U.S. government war on the seceding states “settled” the states’ (and their individual inhabitants’) attempts at independence and the freedom to exercise their right to self-determination and the right to control their own lives.

The statists say that the federal government is supreme and the entire population must obey the will of our high-and-mighty federal rulers. But such an assertion goes against the principles of the American Revolutionaries.

Economic Historian Thomas Woods addressed these issues in his book, Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21^st Century. In an article that appeared last year, Woods addressed specific points made by the critics of nullification.

Of course people have a right to buy or to not buy health insurance. And yes, that right to choose is just as inherent and God-given a right as are the rights to self-defense and free speech. Just because the Bill of Rights does not list such a right to choose to buy or not to buy health insurance does not mean that such a choice is not a right.

The Bill of Rights could not possibly enumerate all the rights we as individual human beings have, or such a list would never end. This was addressed by the Ninth Amendment to the Bill of Rights, which states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Some people believe that the federal government is empowered to tell the people what to do, and that federal bureaucrats are our bosses. But the reverse is true. The states had formed the federal government as an agent to act on behalf of the states’ interests. The federal government is employed by the people of the states. The people of the states are the federal government’s boss.

And it was especially Lincoln’s war against the people that reinforced the reversal of that original relationship into a centralized, federal dictatorship. President Barack Obama’s communist-like recent Executive Order to seize all of America’s resources, including food, agriculture, water and labor resources during non-emergency peacetime was a huge step further down America’s descent into totalitarian tyranny.

Obama’s recent Executive Order – in addition to Obama’s command that all Americans must buy health insurance – was just the most recent in a long list of federal power-grabs since Lincoln’s War on Independence. Here are just a couple more examples:

• The order via legal tender laws that all Americans must use only U.S. government-issued currency as their sole medium of exchange. And this despite the fact that the Federal Reserve‘s central planning manipulators have distorted prices, caused massive swings in the business cycle, caused constantly high unemployment levels, and devalued the dollar and its purchasing power. Such authoritarian dictatorial policies have greatly diminished freedom and enhanced the bureaucrats’ power to steal from us poor slobs.
• The order that all Americans must participate in the federal government-run retirement scheme known as Social Security, against the will and better judgment of individuals. The promises made by the government could not possibly be kept in such an inherently flawed and treacherous scheme. It is immoral for anyone to interfere with an individual’s right to save, spend or invest one’s earnings or wealth however one wants.

Regarding the Supreme Court, just how has this gang of nine protected our liberty or our rights (particularly, as noted in the American Declaration of Independence, the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness)?

Just recently the Supreme Bureaucrats approved of police strip-searching arrestees of minor technical violations such as parking tickets and so forth. In a typical judicial monopoly departure of common sense and in statist loyalty to police power, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that “people detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals.” Obviously, Kennedy isn’t aware of how local police neanderthals are known to arrest as many civilians as they can in the name of revenue collection quotas (and for jailer pervs to get off on power trips strip-searching innocent people).

In his apparent love for the TSA and his reference to all Americans as potential terrorists, Justice Kennedy went on to state that, “One of the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks was stopped and ticketed for speeding just two days before hijacking Flight 93.” Hmmm. So we therefore better let the police strip-search Grandma or some teenager on her way to a part-time job, to use Kennedy’s obediently childlike reasoning.

And last year, in an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Bureaucrats approved of police criminally breaking into private property, and without a warrant, based on an officer’s belief that residents are flushing marijuana down the toilet (“destroying evidence”). “Oooo, someone has marijuana in his own home, we better break in and get him!” This decision shows just how much government schooling has influenced even the highest public officials in the land.

The common sense opinion by Justices would be to nullify the actual law that police are illegally trying to enforce, such as laws against harmless and victimless drug possession. And this common sense approach should apply to the Court’s decision on ObamaCare as well.

I am assuming that a President Ron Paul’s Supreme Court Justices would not only strike down bad laws or policies such as ObamaCare based on violations of particular Constitutional protections, but that they would also outright nullify bad laws based on common sense, the Constitution notwithstanding.

After all, the U.S. Constitution itself has been a flawed document from the beginning, and the product of Hamiltonian centralists who got the Leviathan monstrosity they wanted, despite the Anti-Federalists’ protests. As we have seen, from Lincoln to Wilson to Roosevelt to Bush/Obama, and from the Supreme Court, the FBI, the CIA and police departments all over America, the Constitution has been ignored time and again. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe has observed, the Constitution is itself “unconstitutional” in its multiple self-contradictions.

What the Constitution actually did was, instead of being a document whose rules and provisions were to protect the rights and liberty of the individual, it empowered a centralized, federal government to rule over the masses, and gave such an institution monopoly powers. Those monopoly powers go against the very core of the rights of the individual and the individual’s freedom to choose amongst various competitors in various industries, in health care, retirement planning, food and nutrition, and many other areas.

19^th Century individualist Lysander Spooner observed that the Constitution has “no inherent authority or obligation,” and that the Constitution’s alleged contractual obligations are to those who signed such a document, but not to others. (Members of the “Supreme” Court need to read more Lysander Spooner and less Barack Obama and Paul Krugman.)

Now, regarding Obama’s SovietCare and the idea of insurance mandates or government takeovers of the medical care industry (which has been Obama’s intention all along), Lew Rockwell noted that this socialized medicine is really “subsidizing sickness.” To me, health insurance discourages people to take care of themselves toward prevention of illnesses in the first place. An insurance mandate orders people to not act preventatively, and it implies that they should increase risky behaviors and lifestyles.

Unfortunately, rather than advocating personal responsibility and removing governmental restrictions on our medical freedom, politicians such as FDR, LBJ, Obama and Nancy Lugosi have gone the other way in diminishing our medical freedom and becoming more and more intrusive in our private personal matters.

But Hans-Hermann Hoppe had this better four-step solution to the health care situation in America:

1. Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health-care personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater variety of health-care services would appear on the market…
2. Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices. This means no more Food and Drug Administration, which presently hinders innovation and increases costs…
3. Deregulate the health-insurance industry. Private enterprise can offer insurance against events over whose outcome the insured possesses no control. One cannot insure oneself against suicide or bankruptcy, for example, because it is in one’s own hands to bring these events about…
4. Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy. Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. Subsidies for the ill and diseased promote carelessness, indigence, and dependency. If we eliminate such subsidies, we would strengthen the will to live healthy lives and to work for a living. In the first instance, that means abolishing Medicare and Medicaid.

As Hoppe noted, “only these four steps, although drastic, will restore a fully free market in medical provision. Until they are adopted, the industry will have serious problems, and so will we, its consumers.”

But, regardless how the Supreme Bureaucrats decide, and in addition to our exercising our right to nullify federal dictates, the real solution to protecting ourselves from clueless bureaucrats and their totalitarian medical intrusions is this: DON’T GET SICK!

Conservatives Do Not Believe in Personal Responsibility

In my post yesterday I noted that George Zimmerman was the aggressor between him and Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman felt that Martin was “suspicious,” based on Martin’s wearing the hoodie, and based on Zimmerman’s perception of Martin as “just walking around looking about.” Zimmerman was the aggressor because he made the choice to actively stalk Martin. We can believe that it was a stalking, because, according to Martin’s girlfriend on the cell phone with him, Zimmerman was making Martin feel threatened. And, according to Martin’s girlfriend, Martin asked Zimmerman why he was following him.

While I do not see this as a race thing — just an aggression thing — there are some people who would be screaming “murder” and “death penalty” were Zimmerman (who stalked, threatened, shot and killed Martin) black and Martin (the victim) white.

Further reason to charge Zimmerman with either murder or manslaughter (or something) is that analysts have stated that they believe that the one yelling “Help!” that could be heard was Martin, not Zimmerman. Add that to these comments that were heard spoken by Zimmerman on his 911 call to police: “This guy looks like he is up to no good or he is on drugs or something” and “these a******s they always get away.” So, this young guy leaving a store, walking not running, is, according to Zimmerman, an “a*****e.”

So in my post yesterday I was saying that the final result of Zimmerman’s aggression-stalking was his killing Martin, and for no good reason. Martin was running away from Zimmerman, because Martin saw that someone was following him and he felt threatened. (Duh.) So given that Zimmerman initiated this whole thing with his stalking and then acting aggressively against someone who had not shown any sign of criminality on his part, it is Zimmerman who is the responsible party. He started it. This reminds me of examples, on a much grander scale, of how politicians, police and bureaucrats who initiate acts of aggression do not take responsibility for it.

I don’t think that conservatives will be calling on Zimmerman to take responsibility for his aggressive actions. Conservatives don’t believe in personal responsibility. For example, most conservatives support the War on Drugs. They believe that the nanny state must assume a communist ownership of the people and their bodies and must forbid people from putting certain chemicals into their bodies. Conservatives do not believe that the individual should be free to choose what chemicals to put into one’s own body and then take responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions (with alcohol as well as drugs).

And conservatives tend to be blind, obedient and faithful supporters of the government-monopolized police. Day after day, however, we read of one cop after another involved in fatal shootings and other assaults against presumably innocent civilians, and they get away with it with impunity. The cops are above the law because they have a monopoly in community policing and security and monopolists are not accountable. Conservatives who don’t believe in personal responsibility just love this way of life. They love authority and armed power and might, and surely oppose the right of the individual to presumption of innocence (except for George Zimmerman’s presumption of innocence, as we can hear from those neanderthal talk hosts on the radio).

The thought of requiring cops to be responsible for their unwarranted aggression, even when they become actual murderers as well as criminal abusers of innocents, gives conservatives much anguish. No, let the government police get away with murder.

But on a grander scale in comparison to one individual choosing to stalk, chase, threaten, shoot and kill another, as George Zimmerman allegedly did, we have politicians who start wars on false pretenses and destroy entire countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, as they engage in many incidents of bombings and shootings and drone bombings and murders of innocent civilians. But, as Jacob Hornberger noted in this recent article, conservatives do not believe that presidents who start wars of aggression as did George W. Bush, should take personal responsibility for those crimes of starting wars of aggression and murders of innocents.

But in my opinion, anyone who initiates aggression against others, no matter whether it’s on an individual level such as between Zimmerman and Martin, or on a grand level such as with Bush starting wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, is the aggressor, and a criminal. And he should be made to take responsibility for his criminal acts of aggression.

The way to have a peaceful, civilized society is to forbid and punish the initiation of aggression.