A Disagreement With Collectivist Anti-Business Conservatives on Immigration

June 27, 2012

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

The conservatives are up in arms over Barack Obama’s “executive order” regarding immigration and deportation laws, his granting amnesty to about a million young people whose parents brought them over to the U.S. when they were children. “He’s pandering to the Hispanics in an election year,” they cry. “Obama is inviting more ‘invaders’ into the country, a whole new group of voters for Democrats!” and so forth.

Of course Obama’s move is political. Does Obama really care about the lives of all these people, and about protecting them from immoral deportations? Not really, given how deportations have skyrocketed in record numbers during his administration.

But very briefly for those worried about Obama’s Executive Orders: Yes, there is a huge problem if those orders involve further dictatorial intrusions, restrictions on our liberty, or property or wealth confiscations.

But I have no problem if such an Executive Order involves ignoring or nullifying existing intrusions, restrictions or confiscations.

When an act of positive law, an ordinance, government-imposed mandate or restriction violates someone’s life and liberty, then that is an immoral act of positive law (enforced by armed police), and it must be repealed forthwith.

It doesn’t matter who repeals it, Congress or the President, struck down by courts, nullified by the people – whatever – or whether “proper constitutional procedures” are followed. If something is an immoral act of aggression against innocent human beings, get rid of it, immediately!

Philosophically and morally, the conservatives who see entrants not officially authorized by the U.S. government as “invaders,” do not realize how communistic their views of State-controlled exclusion really are.

The conservatives support the federal government’s central planning of the population as far as who gets in and who doesn’t. And with such central planning, they thus support the collective ownership of the entire territory. However, when the collective assumes ownership and control of an entire territory, then everything within the territory goes with that collective (or State) control.

It is impossible to empower a collective population with that kind of group territorial ownership but at the same time say that each individual, each parcel of “private” property, and each business within the territory is privately owned, and that each private owner has ultimate control and sovereignty of one’s property, business, and one’s life. In reality, each individual is merely “renting space,” and is owned by the collective.

Part of this communistic approach to things by the conservatives can be seen in their apparent obsession with citizenship. Do you see how some conservatives are obsessed with Obama’s citizenship, like that matters? Oh, the constitution says something about “eligibility,” but the Constitution itself is extremely flawed.

But being a “citizen” really does go with that idea of collective ownership of the territory and of everything and everyone within it.

Is an individual more a citizen of the government than of the country or of the territory? Unfortunately, many people conflate the country of America with the government.

Citizenship is really a euphemism for how the government owns us. And the more imperialistic and hegemonic the U.S. government has become, the more it has claimed ownership over other territories, foreign lands and economies, and the foreigners themselves.

What we have now is a contradiction of the principles of liberty and self-ownership, as referenced in the American Declaration of Independence.

Sadly, there are many narcissistic people who want to believe that the individual’s rights to life and liberty mentioned in the Declaration only apply to Americans. But no, all human beings have inalienable rights to life and liberty.

So, if we accept the premise that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and that such rights are natural, inherent rights that each individual has as a human being, then we would have to acknowledge that of course all human beings have a right to freedom of movement, freedom of travel, and the right to migrate anywhere in the world, as long as they don’t trespass on private property.

Actually, as consumers of goods and services in America, we should want to have as many people migrating to America as we can have. The more immigrants, the more people who are available not only as laborers, but as businesspeople and entrepreneurs to employ more Americans.

The immigration issue shows the conservatives’ contempt for consumers, and for private property rights and freedom of contract. The conservatives approve of the intruder government’s seizure of and control over private businesses and contracts between employers and laborers, at the ultimate expense of consumers.

These central planning intrusions not only violate the property and contract rights of both business owners and workers in the moral sense, but such government intrusions have shown to be impractical, and cause distortions in markets.

Or planned chaos, as Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises would call it. And as Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger noted in Immigration Socialism versus Freedom and the Free Market,

Hayek pointed out that the central planner, no matter how brilliant, can never possess the requisite knowledge and expertise to plan and direct a complex market activity. One of the primary reasons for that inability is that market conditions, which turn on ever-changing subjective valuations of people, are changing constantly, and they’re different in every particular locale across the land.

With the idea of immigration freedom, Hornberger compares the freedom to travel, work and establish voluntary employment contracts with how Americans of different U.S. states interact:

After all, look at the United States, the largest free-trade and free-movement zone in history. People are free to cross borders of the different states. No border patrol. No customs. No interstate checkpoints. No passports. No papers. It works the same way when people cross from county to county.

It didn’t have to be that way. The Framers could have said, “Each state shall have the sovereign prerogative of controlling its borders from the people of other states.” Thank goodness they didn’t do that, because if they had, there is no doubt that many a state government would today be exercising that power, to protect its state from competing workers and producers …

The same principle of free trade and free movements of people that characterize the domestic United States is what should be adopted for international borders as well: people freely crossing back and forth, visiting, touring, buying, selling, investing, opening businesses, working, and living their lives as easily as people do domestically.

The true moral defense of private property rights and contract rights in immigration, labor and employment is this: Each individual has a right of ownership of one’s own life. The businessperson has started one’s business with one’s own effort, labor and capital. Therefore, that individual has a God-given right to do with one’s own property whatever one wishes, as long as one does not violate the persons or property of others.

That means that any third party who interferes with that individual’s business, including the contracts that such a businessperson establishes voluntarily with one’s customers and employees, that third party is being an intruder, a trespasser.

Such intruders and trespassers include government bureaucrats and their armed agents attempting to enforce artificial socialist controls over the lives, property and businesses of others.

And from the laborers’ perspective, the foreign worker has right to work, earn an income to support one’s family, and has a right to travel as long as one doesn’t trespass on private property, and has a right to establish voluntary contracts with employers.

And consumers have a right to trade their wealth with the businesspeople and seek the best quality service or goods at the best price, and it’s no one else’s business.

The current collective- and government-ownership of the territory, businesses, labor and the people effects in an egregious diminution of liberty and is a disservice to consumers.

The current socialist, central planning control over businesses forces the consumers to be served by only non-immigrant workers, many of whom may be less qualified than immigrant workers may be.

In a free society of private property and the sanctity of private contracts, the consumers would rule and be better served by the producers of goods and services, the employees of whom being the best available workers according to the producers’ own judgments and the consumers’ satisfaction – but NOT according to non-productive government bureaucrats!

Alas, conservatives prefer the current situation of socialist government controls, economic central planning, restrictions, intrusions, even police state policies such as the Arizona “Your Papers, Please” law, and arrests and deportations, in the immigration issue.

Further, many people erroneously view immigrants as draining America’s wealth and productivity and making us less safe in our communities. I would agree that the welfare state has acted as a magnet for the foreign-born non-productive class.

But at the same time, America had also been a magnet for the very productive and motivated amongst foreigners wanting to come here for a better life for themselves and for their families. (But not so much now for foreigners, or for native-born Americans, unfortunately.)

In fact, a major recent study has shown that, with large changes in immigration laws since 1965, there is “no evidence that (immigrants) have reshaped the social fabric in harmful ways,” and concluded that “America is neither less safe because of immigration nor is it worse off economically.”

However, what really have reshaped America’s social fabric are the welfare state policies of FDR and LBJ, and government’s seizure of control over education, which have added to the destruction of the family and the discouragement of independent living and critical thinking among the general population.

America is worse off economically not because of immigrants but because of the obscene growth of the government sector, which siphons wealth from the productive sector.

And America is worse off economically because of government’s intrusions in Americans’ economic lives, with taxation-thefts and regulatory trespasses, and especially because of government bureaucrats’ imbecilic fiscal and monetary central planning.

And America is less safe not because of foreign immigrants but because of the growing police state, and because of U.S. government foreign policy, which for many decades – certainly well before 9/11 – has consisted of invading and occupying foreign lands, interfering with foreign peoples’ business, and bullying and provoking foreigners.

But when some of these collectivist-conservatives on the radio bark about immigrants as “intruders” who “don’t belong in our country,” there is a definite need for clarification on who the real intruders are.

The ones who really don’t belong in America are the communist-oriented non-productive bureaucrats in Washington. The legislators who make laws that violate our liberty, their aides who actually write the bad laws that are really meant to favor special interests and established businesses, the contractors, the government “workers” with their bloated pensions.

In other words, the non-productive government sector, many of whom are hostile to the very principles of private property and individual freedom that made America the once-great nation that it was.

Those are the real intruders, the true foreign invaders occupying our precious lands. They are the ones who should be given a dishonorable discharge, deported, exiled, given the heave-ho, and taken away to places more acceptable to them, such as North Korea or Iran or Cuba, rather than their continually making America into their Soviet-style police-state paradise of plunder and pillage and siphoning off the hard labor of the productive class.

Those non-productive Washington prison wardens really ought to cut the government’s shackles that tie us down, enslave and imprison us. So too should they cut the shackles of the entrepreneurial immigrants who would otherwise start businesses, provide jobs, and provide goods and services to consumers (that non-productive government bureaucrats don’t do!).

More people are now realizing how impossible it is for Washington central planners to run things in a territory as large and populated as the U.S. So, eventually we will have to break up into smaller sections or just return sovereignty and independence to each state. Obviously, migration into states would then be handled much more easily.

Perhaps President Obama has only begun to set people free, first with the immigration issue. Maybe next by ending the illicit and immoral drug war. (Or maybe not.)

But as long as Executive Orders set people free, how could anyone in his right mind oppose them?

Psychopathic Criminal Government Bureaucrats

Apparently,  AG Eric Holster lied to Congress about Obama’s medical marijuana crackdown. The Reason article details the proof. The Holster DOJ is pressing very hard against anyone who might possibly be involved in medical marijuana, including state employees who comply with state medical marijuana laws (that contradict the feds’ precious wishes) and the use of asset forfeiture to seize buildings away from landlords in which “pot shops” might be located.

So, what is it really that these bureaucrats are doing? Are they really concerned that people might hurt themselves if they use marijuana? Or are they really just trying to teach people a lesson about not defying the Nazi-like dictates of the feds?

I think that they are just sick control freaks, and they have these certain orders for the population that they want everyone to obey, and that’s just about it. These bureaucrats seem to become personally involved in their love of ordering people around, in their administering, enforcing and prosecuting of their bureaucrat commands of the rest of the population.

Because, quite frankly, why is it soooo important to enforce these stupid drug laws? And yes, they are stupid laws, because they are counter-productive. They are counter-productive because prohibition of the people’s exercising their right to put certain substances into their own bodies causes black markets (or, as Murray Rothbard referred to them, “markets”), it drives up the prices and turns what would have been harmless interactions and human behaviors into a criminal racket that begets violence. The real criminal racket is these government bureaucrats, from the AG on down to local police and the corruption and bribery that goes on, and a lot of dead civilians for no good reason!

But really, it’s a power trip for government bureaucrats who otherwise would not be employed if left solely to the free market to provide for them. C’mon, asset forfeiture and seizing buildings away from landlords because of harmless “pot shops”? What kind of sicko would do that to people? Only criminal psychopaths would steal property from others for these stupid reasons.

Besides the illegal gun-running to Mexican gangs on behalf of trying to disarm the American people, this Eric Holster Justice (sic) Department criminal behavior reminds me of how in 1993 federal officials didn’t like the particular secluded, alternative lifestyle of a particular group called the “Branch Davidians” in Waco Texas. False accusations of child abuse etc. were made and the feds wanted to charge them with phony weapons violations. The zeal with which then-AG Janet Waco and her FBI and ATF cohorts waged a military-style siege against the complex and gassed and burned buildings to the ground in their murders of some 80 innocent children, women and men, including the machine-gunning of those attempting to run away from the burning buildings. (For more, see here, here, and here,)

Only sick, psychopathic criminals could possibly do these horrible things to other human beings. It’s disgusting, these people.

And I am also reminded of the 1985 “MOVE” fiasco under Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode (who was not so “goode”), in which police dropped a bomb from a helicopter over several houses, destroyed over 60 houses, killed 11 people including 5 children, in an example of extremely zealous government bureaucrat-police overkill. As of 2005, the whole aftermath was still unsettled.

Back to the preset, another example of government power-tripping criminal psychopaths is New York City, which is cracking down on feeding the homeless. Oooo, someone is feeding a homeless person! You better arrest those people, and throw the homeless ones in jail, too. That’ll teach some poor homeless person for trying to have food in order to survive!

Banning certain beverages of certain sizes or certain foods from nanny-Nazi Bloomberg is not enough. Now he wants homeless people to starve. But really, it has to do with this insatiable need of government bureaucrats to order people around and bully people to obey their Nazi-like orders.

These people in government now are nothing but control freaks. They do NOT care about anyone’s well-being, they care about ordering people around and getting off on their power trips. These are sick puppies, these government psychopaths. I would not be surprised if I hear that dissidents and civil disobedients refuse to obey orders by police and Nazi Mayor Bloomjerk to stop feeding the homeless, and then the feeders get fired upon with bullets and gassed and police drop bombs on them via drones. That is how zealous control freak government bureaucrat psychopath dictators behave, unfortunately.

Romney’s Inaccessibility, The Media’s Subservience to the State, and the Pauls

Boston-based media analyst Dan Kennedy has this post on how Willard Romney’s handlers kicked journalists out of a Romney event held at the “Newseum,” a “journalism museum” which makes the First Amendment a priority. The members of the press were allowed in to cover the event, but they were made to leave when it came time for Q&A. Granted, it was a private event and held in a private meeting place. But the Willard team could’ve used better judgment in throwing out journalists in a museum devoted to news journalism with a four-story-high panel showing the entire First Amendment along the outside of the building. It may have been a wiser move to hold the event at Holiday Inn.

The Romney team’s judgment notwithstanding, just the act of removing the press so they couldn’t hear or report on Q&A (even though plenty of event attendees probably recorded that on their cell phones) is typical of today’s politicians, contemptuous of those who seek the truth and the facts about what they are up to. It turns out that Obama did the same thing at the same building in March. (Cenk Uygur has his reaction to the Romney Newseum fiasco.) The pols just want to tell the voters and their favored special interest groups what they want the voters and special interest groups to hear, and the pols don’t want to be challenged or asked by more objective people for further elaboration on the issues.

This Politico article about Hermione Gingrich’s schmoozing with reporters notes the contrast between Gingrich and Romney, who, the article notes, doesn’t make small talk with reporters about the news of the day. “No one gets close enough.” At one campaign stop, Politico tells us,

Romney (was) stopped at a BBQ joint to shake hands and approached a family with a basket full of hush puppies. When a Washington Post reporter innocuously asked Romney if he planned to try one, the staff cut him off, insisting it was an off-the-record stop.

When the press tweeted about the incident, angry emails were dispatched from the former Massachusetts governor’s staff to offending reporters.

Another time, Willard became nasty when he was questioned by a voter about the “1%” vs. the “99%.” Another time, he snapped at and argued with then-AP reporter Glen Johnson regarding lobbyists with the ’08 Romney campaign. And when he was asked by Brett Baier about insurance mandates, Willard complained that such questioning was “uncalled for” and “overly aggressive.”

One thing that the aforementioned Cenk Uygur observed was how the reporters who were kicked out of the Newseum didn’t seem to make any waves, didn’t seem to write about it or find it newsworthy. You see, many reporters, newscasters, writers and editors today are so enmeshed with the State and its apparatchiks, their obedience has become sickening to those of us who value open and honest discussions and disclosures of the criminality of the State and its daily offenses.

Willard can’t wait to get on top of the federal government. Being governor of just one state was his gateway drug. But if Romney becomes President, God forbid, he will appreciate the news media’s symbiosis with the State.

For examples of such sickening symbiosis, Glenn Greenwald is probably one of the best writers out there on not just uncovering and communicating the crimes of our government, but the sick obedience and subservience that many of today’s “journalists” have to the government, and to politicians.

Most recently, Greenwald has written about Scott Pelley’s profile of Defense Sec. Leon Panetta, as “13 uninterrupted minutes of drooling propaganda.” “As pure as propaganda gets.” And Greenwald recently wrote about a “repulsive” video produced by Newsweek/Daily Beast glorifying Obama’s drone strikes and murders of innocent civilians abroad.

In February, Greenwald wrote about the U.S. media’s propaganda on behalf of the neocon-Obama warmongers to promote war with Iran and how Diane Sawyer and Brian Ross belong in a fear-mongering museum, and how Erin Burnett was the “worst of the worst” in exaggerating the “Iranian threat,” and is a spokesperson for Wall Street.

Here is Greenwald on the Washington Post and transparency: total strangers, on Jeffrey Goldberg as “so representative of the American media because the more discredited his journalism becomes, the more blatant propaganda he spews, the more he thrives in our media culture,” and on the universality of war propaganda.

But one thing that politicians probably shouldn’t count on is any subservience-to-State by many in the alternative media, particularly the Internet news writers, bloggers, researchers, historical revisionists and citizen journalists. We need them now more than ever, because the American people can no longer count on the “professional” journalists to tell us what is really going on, what our elected and appointed government bureaucrats are doing to us.

An example of such an alternative journalist’s attempt at getting answers out of a politician was when Luke Rudkowski tried to ask Rand Paul about the Bilderberg Group and Romney (whom Rand had just endorsed) having made an appearance at the Bilderberg meeting just recently. Now, granted Rand Paul suggested that Luke “make an appointment” because apparently Rand was discussing things with his staffer. But should politicians, on their way from one decrepit government building to another, really suggest to a reporter (or just a citizen who is asking a question) to “make an appointment” to give a simple non-rehearsed answer to an honest question?

Here is the exchange, with Luke replaced by Abby Martin to try to get answers.

Now, Rand Paul has been in Washington for a long time now. Not just as a U.S. Senator since elected in November 2010, but he’s been there at various times with his father, Congressman Ron Paul, who has been in Congress (on and off) since the 1970s. Rand should know by now that, unless he wants to make more people more cynical about how Washington’s politicians operate, he should be open with the media (just as his father has been). And it’s not like he’s unfamiliar with Internet or alternative media, as those very alternative media and organizations and the Internet were very much responsible for getting him elected. In this instance, all he had to do was say something like, “No, I’m not familiar with the Bilderberg Group,” or, if he is familiar with them, just say what he knows about them, or about Romney’s possible involvement with Bilderberg. (However, it is possible that Rand felt uncomfortable because Bilderberg is quite “controversial,” to say the least.)

As Gary North wrote in today’s LewRockwell.com, because politics is different from the private sector, many people, when they get into politics, get bitten by the political bug. “The political bug, when it bites, seems to transmit a disease that is close to incurable. People keep coming back to be bitten again and again. The ambition that is transmitted by the political bug is such that people seem to be afflicted with it all of their lives.” Except for Ron Paul, of course. I happen to believe that Rand most certainly (and unfortunately) has been bitten by the political bug.

The bug-bitten pols constantly make more and more legislation and executive-branch policies that are increasingly intrusive and harmful to everyone else in society. Or they disguise it as a false “privatization,” as Becky Akers writes today about Sen. Rand Paul’s bills regarding the notorious pervs and molesters of the TSA.

However, Ron Paul has submitted bill after bill that would repeal a lot of these intrusions, and dismantle a lot of those intrusive agencies and departments. But unlike the bug-bitten pols, who want more government power for them and less freedom for us, Ron Paul wants less government power for them and more freedom for us.

And the news “journalists” of today have merged themselves with these bug-bitten bureaucrats in Washington, and they propagandize on the pols’ behalf, and on behalf of the State. To remind you of how bad they are now, here is Jon Stewart showing example after example of the national news media’s ignoring Ron Paul, despite his high numbers in pols.

Speaking of Ron Paul, Willard Romney, and Rand Paul and Rand’s endorsement of Romney, economist Walter Block had this article also on LewRockwell.com this week regarding whether or not Ron Paul should endorse Romney and what all this means for the liberty movement. Another economist, Robert Wenzel, has this reaction to Block. Here is my reaction: No, of course Ron Paul should not endorse Romney, not after 40 years of conscientious work, writing and speeches, research and educating people on the principles of liberty. Willard Romney is the opposite of liberty. Willard represents the State, its aggressions and its criminality.

As I have mentioned before, Ron Paul should get out of the Republican Party, a party of the State, one half of the Government Party, and he should run for President as a third-party Independent. All this that’s going on now is futile, with delegates and that no-good convention in August. As Lew Rockwell advised, the Ron Paul delegates would be safer just not going. It will be a police state in Tampa.

Here is another reason why they should not even bother with Tampa, and why Ron Paul should run third-party: the use of NATO military exercises in Tampa. Like they are expecting some kind of terrorism there for the convention? Or a war in Tampa? No, it’s because anti-Romney, anti-bankster, anti-Wall Street, anti-war activists and protesters will not be tolerated. They are the real enemy of the State, and, in the end, so are the journalists as well.

I can’t believe the people of Florida or Tampa are ALLOWING this kind of foreign invasion to occur! NATO troops? In America? For a political convention? Yech!

Is Rand Paul Endorsement of Romney the End of the Tea Party?

June 15, 2012

Link to article at Activist Post

Rand Paul, the most popular 2010 Tea Party favorite for U.S. Senate, has endorsed Big Government socialist Willard Mitt Romney. But, if there has ever been a candidate so representative of the opposite of Tea Party principles, that candidate is Willard Romney.

So, in such an endorsement, one can very well conclude that Rand Paul has betrayed that very Tea Party movement that helped to elect him to the U.S. Senate.

Apparently, Party loyalty supersedes principle here.

All that having been noted, it seems to me that Willard Romney’s lure of Rand Paul is yet another example of the Big Government GOP’s co-opting of the Tea Party movement.

But there are other reasons for the Tea Party’s demise, however, some from outside threats, and some self-inflicted.

Throughout 2009 and 2010 the Tea Party movement held many town hall meetings and events, leading up to the 2010 elections in which many Tea Party-endorsed candidates won. Those many town hall meetings and events specifically addressed out-of-control federal spending excesses, the federal budget deficit and the National Debt, and specifically the dreaded ObamaCare that Obama’s Democrats rammed through and passed in March, 2010.

Some people seem to think that Gov. Scott Walker’s win in Wisconsin’s recall attempt was an indication of the strength of the Tea Party. But that contest was specifically to do with out-of-control state and local public union pay, benefits and pensions. The recall did not address federal government employee unions or federal government issues in general.

Some people believe that the Tea Party movement nationally has mainly been working “behind the scenes,” and focusing on state and local issues.

But, as CNN’s Jack Cafferty had pondered, how many Tea Party town hall meetings and events have there been since the 2010 election? I know there have been some. But I have seen almost no coverage on the usual blogs and in talk radio.

And several times now I have heard radio personality Michael Savage ask the same question, and I heard him speculate that one reason why there has been very little Tea Party activity is because of union intimidation tactics. I heard at least one talk show caller say that at some Tea Party events some people were seen taking photos or videos of the license plates of Tea Party attendees’ cars. Savage has repeated that reference several times.

For some reason this doesn’t surprise me. Some unions are known for using intimidation tactics to get what they want from management or to silence opponents. For example, during a 2009 health care town meeting, a black man who merely was trying to sell buttons and Don’t Tread On Me flags was beaten by three men wearing S.E.I.U. shirts and sent to the hospital (more).

Much of the Democrats’ Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. “ObamaCare,” as well as other Obama Administration-led policies in the past three years such as stimulus packages, were written (or waivers have been allowed) to benefit public employee unions, particularly the services unions. These privileges and extravagances that government redistribution-of-wealth schemes offer to government employees are not from the competitive free market in such industries. If the employers of such workers had to pay such largess out of their own pockets and not depend on their government guns pointed at taxpayers, such extravagances probably would not exist. So it should be of no surprise that the beneficiaries of such extravagances, particularly the public employee unions, who are not pressured by competition and the bottom line, may react negatively when their long-enjoyed excesses might be reduced.

If it is true that people were taking photos or videos of Tea Party event attendees’ license plates, one wonders what exactly they might have done with that information. Could this be another reason why there have been so fewer Tea Party events in these two years since the 2010 elections?

Similarly, the National Labor Relations Board’s newer rules include the right of union bosses to collect from employers the names and address of all employees, against employees’ wishes. What other reason for unions to have that information, particularly of non-union employees, but to phone or visit their homes as a means of intimidating people into joining unions?

I wouldn’t be surprised if Michael Savage might be on to something, regarding those Tea Party events. Savage’s ukulele is proving to be quite helpful.

Another possible cause of Tea Party impotence could be the alleged intimidation and stonewalling by the IRS of Tea Party groups attempting to register as non-profits.

According to U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, a Tea Party group in his district…

tried to register as a non-profit with the IRS. Despite repeated and numerous inquiries, the IRS stonewalled this group for a year and a half, at which time it demanded thousands of pages of documentation – and gave the group less than three weeks to produce it.

The IRS demanded the names of every participant at every meeting held over the last two years, transcripts of every speech given at those meetings, what positions they had taken on issues, the names of their volunteers and donors, and copies of communications they had with elected officials and on and on.

As I have observed repeatedly, the U.S. is quickly becoming much like the Soviet Union. The thug-like tactics of intimidation are not just from unions but from our very own government.

But the demise of the Tea Party also has self-inflicted causes. Throughout this election cycle, there had been quite a few Republicans campaigning to oppose Premier Obama in November. Unfortunately, many amongst the Tea Party movement were mainly attracted to the GOP socialists, social fascists, the ignorant warmongers and the unprincipled flip-floppers, Gingrich, Santorum, Romney, Bachmann, and Cain.

But the Tea Party apparently steered clear of the only genuine conservative Tea Party advocate of truly limited government, Ron Paul. Why? Partly because of ignorance of history, fear, and the arrogance of “American Exceptionalism,” in my opinion.

Regarding the events leading up to 9/11, millions of self-proclaimed conservatives reacted emotionally to Ron Paul’s suggestion that the 9/11 terrorists’ motivations were to do with an intrusive and trespassing U.S. government and military overseas throughout the 1990s. Many people now obediently and unquestionably believe the propaganda that U.S. government bureaucrats have been spoon-feeding them, especially since 9/11. Unfortunately, when they hear Ron Paul criticizing the government’s foreign interventionism and wars of aggression since 1991, too many people emotionally interpret that as criticizing America. That is because so many people ignorantly conflate the government with the country.

So many people now are brainwashed by their years of government-controlled schooling, they believe in the idea of American Exceptionalism. America is “special,” “privileged,” morally superior over other countries or territories, and therefore is “entitled” to seize foreigners’ natural resources, and occupy foreign lands that U.S. government bureaucrats say should be occupied. Republican debate audiences arrogantly booed Ron Paul’s suggestion of applying the Golden Rule to foreign policy. How dare someone suggest that if we wouldn’t want foreign governments invading and occupying our lands, therefore we shouldn’t be invading and occupying foreigners’ lands. The booers favor moral relativism, apparently.

“We are special, and we have a right to occupy and trespass on other peoples’ territories,” the American Exceptionalists might as well declare.

I liken this American Exceptionalism thing to the demands of the Occupy movement, believe it or not. Many of the Occupiers expressed a self-centered belief that they were “special,” they were “privileged” and “entitled” to have the government compel their neighbors (via involuntary taxation) to fund their health care, their education, etc. They, too, have an ignorance, mainly of economics and ethics. And, while they had a right to protest on public property, the Occupiers seemed to proclaim a right to occupy other people’s private property.

The propagandized and fearful, pro-war, militarist American Exceptionalist wing of the Tea Party movement really do not believe in localism, decentralization, and “small government.” They are nationalists who merge their own personal identities with the State, particularly the centralized Leviathan in DC, and its military. Whatever the post-9/11 DC socialists said, the nationalists believed without question.

Instead of supporting the honest conservative Ron Paul, the Tea Party went with the corrupt central planners who co-opted them two years ago, and they decided to go for the socialist, unprincipled, central planning-lover, flip-flopper Willard Romney, pretending that he will reduce the government’s size and intrusiveness.

But just as with many Obama-supporting Democrats, many conservatives and Republicans just cannot seem to grasp that both parties are two sides of the same Big Government, expansionist, anti-liberty coin.

Small government conservatives still have a blind faith in the GOP, despite its constant betrayals and failures. Reagan expanded government and raised taxes, the 1994 Republican Revolution ended up further expanding the federal government, and George W. Bush might as well have been a Democrat.

Conservatives and Tea Partiers still have “Hope for Change,” but it never happens with the Big Government statist GOP.

As Murray Rothbard wrote, about the Left’s accurate vision of the conservatives:

… first, left-liberals, in power, make a Great Leap Forward toward collectivism; then, when, in the course of the political cycle, four or eight years later, conservatives come to power, they of course are horrified at the very idea of repealing anything; they simply slow down the rate of growth of statism, consolidating the previous gains of the Left, and providing a bit of R&R for the next liberal Great Leap Forward. And if you think about it, you will see that this is precisely what every Republican administration has done since the New Deal.

The GOP’s co-opting the Tea Party, union thugs, Soviet-like IRS intimidation tactics, alignments with militarist Big Government neocons – the Tea Party’s chances of surviving in Soviet Amerika were never very good to begin with. But I would suggest that Rand Paul’s endorsement of Willard may have been the final nail in the Tea Party coffin.

But, given that the State itself, as Rothbard suggested, “is a vast engine of institutionalized crime and aggression, the ‘organization of the political means’ to wealth,” it should be of no surprise that so many groups who depend on the power of the State for their very survival would want to shut down or co-opt a movement whose main goal is to reduce the size and power of the Leviathan that empowers and enriches the State’s beneficiaries.

The Truth About Social Security

Walter Williams has this article, Duped by Congressional Lies, in which he responds to readers who complained about his previous column, Immoral Beyond Redemption. In the previous column, Prof. Williams had referred to Social Security and Medicare as “handouts.” In the current column he clarifies what exactly Social Security is and what it is not. Social Security is NOT a “bank account,” in which you put some of your earnings, reserved for you to be paid later after retiring. You don’t “pay into” Social Security, the money is taken from your earnings by the government without your consent. And the source of the payments that current Social Security recipients receive is NOT from any “account,” but from the earnings of those currently employed. It is a redistribution of wealth scheme, from primarily younger working people to older mostly retired people, and that’s it.

I have written quite a few times now about how the Social Security system needs to end. A lot of people depend on Social Security checks, however. But if we get rid of the IRS and the income tax and capital gains taxes, and other taxes at the same time of ending Social Security (as well as replacing the Federal Reserve and legal tender laws with banking and monetary freedom and competing currencies and free choices sans government intrusions), families can once again be able to afford to care for their elderly members, as it should be, and as it was before Fascist Delano Roosevelt came in and took advantage of the despair and vulnerability that swept the country after the Crash of ’29 and during the Great Depression.

It is a clear violation of liberty for the government to order someone to participate in the government bureaucrats’ retirement schemes, regardless of how profitable, efficient, or convenient they might be. People have a right to choose whatever retirement plans they damn well want to use, and it’s none of the government’s damn business!

More:

Murray Rothbard on the “Social Security Swindle”

Ron Paul on Social Security,

Jacob Hornberger on Social Security and more FFF.org articles on Social Security

Frank Chodorov on “Soaking the Poor“

Peter Schiff Faces Hostile Ignoramuses of the DC Politburo

From last Thursday, June 7, 2012

The moonbats and dingbats are so brainwashed, they can’t understand the concept of personal responsibility (e.g. people who can’t afford to buy a house shouldn’t buy a house; and instead of relying on government-enabled flood insurance, people shouldn’t have a home near flood-prone areas or near the ocean in which a city is below sea level, etc.). And they are so brainwashed by Everything Government, the idea that the free market, in which producers actually provide for the consumers’ needs without bureaucrats’ intrusions, would actually WORK if only the damn bureaucrats would stop their intrusions and their meddling.

Rand Endorses Willard

Philip Giraldi mirrors my sentiments on Rand Paul’s endorsement of Willard Romney for Criminal-in-Chief.

And below, filling in for Peter Schiff, Tom Woods addresses the issue of whether Ron Paul should endorse the socialist, chickenhawk warmonger, globalist banksterist ignoramus Willard Romney:

Gary Johnson: Statist

June 8, 2012

(Link to article at Strike the Root)

Economist Robert Wenzel recently gave Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson a tough interview. Wenzel pushed hard for honest answers on behalf of mainly his “hardcore libertarian” readers and listeners. By “hardcore,” he refers to those with a bias toward Austrian School economic thought, Rothbardian ethics and an emphasis on civil liberties.

But trying to get answers from Johnson to basic questions, such as what books on Austrian economics he’s read and who his top libertarian authors are, seemed like a dentist trying to extract a tooth. At times, it was very painful to hear.

In the end, we can conclude that Johnson is not really libertarian, and not really liberal or conservative. No, Gary Johnson is a politician. And a statist politician at that.

In that very revealing interview, we learned that Gary Johnson doesn’t really know or understand the basic moral, philosophical and economic underpinnings of libertarianism, of liberty: the recognition of the rights of the individual to self-ownership, the importance of non-aggression, the sanctity of private property, voluntary contracts and voluntary exchange.

If Johnson is a libertarian, then he is more of a “lifestyle libertarian,” without any particular regard to the aforementioned principles of liberty. But Johnson is much more of a statist than a libertarian, and not just a minimal statist or minarchist, such as Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation or Congressman Ron Paul, but a statist in general. To Johnson, it seems, the State comes first, followed by the people and whatever liberty or property the State lets them have.

For example, Johnson supports the legalization of marijuana, but not other drugs. This shows that Johnson doesn’t understand the basic moral principle of self-ownership, that the individual owns one’s own body and has a right to put into it whatever one wants, as long as one takes responsibility for the consequences of one’s decisions.

Worse than that statist position on drugs, Johnson has stated that he would tax marijuana. He also supports the “Fair Tax,” a national consumption tax. Johnson here doesn’t understand the moral sanctity of private contracts. In this instance, forcing an individual to pay government bureaucrats some extra fee just because of purchasing and consuming some product is as much theft as forcing an individual to report one’s earnings to the government and forfeit a portion of the fruits of one’s labor to a non-productive bureaucrat. Such a consumer tax-theft is also regressive in that taxing consumers of any economic background generally negatively affects the lower and middle classes but not particularly the upper classes.

Additionally, in principle, any third-party intruding itself into the private contract between traders, between buyers and sellers, is engaging in acts of intrusion. To me that is the same as trespassing and ought to be considered as such.

Another example of Gary Johnson’s apparent view of the State as above principles are his foreign interventionist views, and his proposal to cut “43%” from the military budget, and close only some of the U.S. foreign military bases. This shows a lack of understanding of the moral principles of No Trespassing and the Golden Rule. Obviously, most of us in the U.S. would not want foreign governments to place their governmental apparatus and military bases here in Massachusetts, Idaho or Georgia, so we really should not have our governmental apparatus and military bases occupying and trespassing on other countries. We would not want foreign governments starting wars against us here, so morally, our government should not be starting wars against foreign peoples who are of no threat to us, such as Afghanistan and Iraq (or Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Libya, etc.).

Another libertarian candidate for President who is not an anarchist but a minimal statist like Jacob Hornberger is Ron Paul. If elected to the presidency, Dr. Paul would close all U.S. foreign military bases and bring all the U.S. troops home, as he recognizes that we wouldn’t want Russian troops or Saudi troops stationed in Texas or California, so therefore U.S. troops should not be occupying those foreign lands that are not U.S. territories.

When asked by Robert Wenzel to cite some of his favorite libertarians or libertarian authors, Gary Johnson named the Reason Foundation, the Cato Institute and the late economist Milton Friedman. Johnson was asked specifically about Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt, but seemed to show total ignorance of who those great masters of libertarianism were.

Milton Friedman was supposedly a self-proclaimed libertarian, but he really was a true statist who supported central banking and government control over the people’s money. Friedman only suggested that those institutions and policies could be reformed or replaced with other government institutions and made to work better.

Sorry, not really. When the state seizes control over the people’s money and banking, and over the people’s wealth, those agents of the State will use such monopolies and restrictive monetary laws for their own enrichment, and that is what we have today. It is a corruptive system that is inherently doomed to fail, a system that inherently violates the people’s right to their own choice of media of exchange and trade, their right to the fruits of their labor and their right to establish voluntary contracts in the fields of banking and investments.

The party that nominated Gary Johnson for President, the Libertarian Party, has been around for 40 years, and has not made any progress in making itself known to the general population, and it’s not solely the fault of the exclusive statist media. One true principled libertarian the LP nominated was Ron Paul in 1988, endorsed by Murray Rothbard, of course. Harry Browne was another one.

But the LP has more recently shown cluelessness in not really knowing who their nominees really are, particularly with Johnson now and their 2008 nominee Bob Barr. Barr was an inconsistent libertarian at best. But really, like Johnson, Barr is just another politician. How could a “libertarian” endorse the socialist warmonger Newt Gingrich as Barr had done this election cycle, and not Ron Paul?

And also, the statist or minarchist Libertarian Party is not really the “party of principle” when its platform shows one compromise of principle after another, and getting worse each election. As a group, they have not really taken seriously the ideas of the market-anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, voluntaryists, anti-statists, i.e. the people most of whom actually believe in the absolute rights of the individual, the sanctity of property, contracts and non-aggression.

While Ron Paul is a minimal statist and a “constitutionalist” (Doh!), at least Dr. Paul would close down those trespassing U.S. foreign military bases and end the U.S. drone strikes that do nothing but murder innocent civilians abroad and provoke foreigners and create new “militants” (i.e. people who don’t like their innocent family members being blown up and murdered and don’t like their homes and schools bombed to smithereens, etc.). And Paul would end the Federal Reserve System and repeal legal tender laws, he would repeal all drug laws and let non-violent State-hostages out of the cages to resume their lives. It seems that Johnson would never consider doing any of those things.

I am glad that Robert Wenzel was able to out the statist in Gary Johnson, able to extract from Johnson the extreme ignorance of the principles of economic freedom and civil liberties that I’m sure many STR readers already understand.

The Libertarian Party sure needs to get its act together and start considering the real principles of freedom, and include people who oppose central banking and instead favor monetary and banking freedom, and they need to get rid of the warmongers.

But, in the end, the LP and everyone else need to realize that central planning doesn’t work, and DC can never be “reformed,” as Ron Paul seems to want to do.

Perhaps voting for no one might be the best alternative going forward to a better future.

But the reality is, the federal government needs to be totally dismantled. Here is Lew Rockwell’s 30-day plan to accomplish just that. And then, after we get rid of the federal government, we can concentrate on each and every one of America’s 50 state governments. And then, we can remove each and every county and city and town government and all the non-productive bureaucrats and monopolists whose daily trespasses and thefts are the true crimes of our society.

Perhaps some day Gary Johnson will read Rothbard, Mises, Paul, Rockwell, Hornberger, and Hans Hoppe (among many other real libertarians), to give him a better understanding of what “libertarianism” really is all about.

Romney Will Raise Your Taxes – Just Sit There and Fork It Over

The neocon ignoramus talk radio hosts are saying how important it is to get behind Willard Romney. Talk about brainwashed sheeple. Michael Savage has said repeatedly that he’s supporting Romney, as bad as Romney is, based on two issues: taxation and national security. He actually believes that Romney is going to “keep taxes low.” Talk about gullible, naive and unrealistic. “Read my lips,” Savage. I am obviously referring to the ghastly elder George H.W. Bush’s no-new-taxes lie in 1988.

And now we see I’m right. Willard Romney says that, while he would attempt to cut taxes for middle-income folks, one of his economic advisors has stated that, “The bulk of the adjustment [should] be borne by upper income households.” Romney will “put everything on the table,” according to HuffPo.

So right now, via this economic advisor, Willard is doing a Walter Mondale. But he is once again reminding us what an economic ignoramus he is, and a socialist. Willard does not understand that when you impose or raise taxes on wealthier individuals, that results in the wealthier ones investing less in their businesses and in other businesses, and not only will there be far fewer expansions of companies in the private sector, there will be more reductions, more cuts, more plant closings, more layoffs, more unemployment.

You see, after he is through raising taxes on “the rich,” and the economy still crashes and burns because socialists like Willard live in a fantasy world twilight zone, then he will raise taxes on everyone. They all do. And he will keep the bankster-enriching Federal Reserve and continue with its inflation-causing money-pumping, with such inflation being a stealth-tax on the poor and middle class.

Romney is just another selfish politician who just wants to have a lot of power and control, and that means funding the massive warmongering-military-industrial-security complex, by stealing more from the productive class (i.e. the private sector). Unfortunately, so-called “conservatives” and these radio blabbermouths like Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, etc. are just dupes for socialism, are gullible sheeple who should have supported Ron Paul. But nooooo, they and their followers just eat up the government’s and these politicians’ propaganda about those terrorists, those Muslims, and Iran. It’s very sad now.

But Willard and his fellow socialist supporters (like Hannity and Savage) don’t understand that if you eliminate the income tax and capital gains taxes, as Ron Paul would do, you would see the largest expansion in the private sector, the largest growth of productivity from the productive class, and millions and millions of new jobs created and the hugest decline in the unemployment rate. But the gullible, brainwashed sheeple out there let themselves get bamboozled by the national security shysters and regress into their infantilized dependency on government bureaucrats, and they will eat up Willard’s crap, hook, line, and sinker, as they did Reagan’s, and the two Bushes’ as well.

Muffy Healey

I recently linked to an article that included a partial list of Willard Romney’s advisors, many of them delusional neocons. One of his advisors, however, is Kerry “Muffy” Healey, Romney’s former lieutenant governor.

Muffy was a delegate this year at the Massachusetts Republican state convention, but she lost to a Ron Paul supporter (heh). Muffy will not be going to the convention in Tampa. However, I remember reading that the Healeys moved to Florida. This article by Glen Johnson states that the Healeys were listed as switching their “domicile” to Florida. But, supposedly Muffy stated that her “residence” would be in Massachusetts.

Hmmm. Does this mean that Muffy might be pulling an Ann Coulter, voting in both Florida and another state? And also, I hope she really is registered to vote in Massachusetts, or else her being at the Massachusetts Republican state convention might have been illegal. (Thank God she lost her delegate status anyway, though.)

As I mentioned in this space a year ago, the Healeys purchased as their new Palm Beach home, a huge 9,775 sq. ft. mansion for $17 million. The Healeys also own another home in Florida, two homes in Massachusetts and one in Vermont. As Elizabeth Warren might say, “Good for them!”

Unfortunately, though, Muffy’s husband Sean took a pay cut last year from his job as CEO of Affiliated Managers Group, earning a measly $14.9 million, down from $20 million the year before. Oh, well. I guess they’ll have to cancel their cable subscription.

Prior to his job at Affiliated Managers Group, Sean Healey was a Goldman Sachs flunky. (Is that such a big surprise?) Muffy Healey has been once again on the campaign trail defending Willard Romney’s record as governor. The Goldman Sachs connections are so pervasive amongst all these political hacks now, I’m dizzy from it all. I’m sure if Romney is elected, he will put Muffy in his cabinet. Where, I don’t know. Perhaps Secretary of Treasury, given that she has a lot of money and doesn’t know what to do with it.

But it’s amazing to me how these political underlings, especially the women, get treated like a doormat by their political “bosses,” and they still go on to work for them and help the boss further his own political career. For example, during his last year as governor of Massachusetts, throughout the year 2006, Romney was already traveling all over the country “testing the waters” for a 2008 presidential run, as Romney’s lieutenant governor Muffy Healey took over many responsibilities for the office of governor. According to the Globe, Romney was an absentee governor for 212 days during the year 2006. And at that time, Muffy herself was running for governor, won the Republican nomination, but lost to Deval Patrick.

So, if Romney was so self-absorbed with his ambitious career moves and didn’t feel responsible to continue doing the job he was elected to do — for a whole year! — then shouldn’t he have just resigned as governor, and let Muffy take over as the official governor? Romney didn’t even do any campaigning for Muffy. Were I Muffy, I would have felt slightly taken advantage of.

But this was nothing new in Massachusetts. In 1988, then-governor Michael Stanley Dukakis was running for President. So obviously, Dukakis was also an absentee governor for two years. But did he step aside, resign, and let his lieutenant governor take over as governor? Nope. Evelyn Murphy was left there merely being the acting governor at various times when certain events called for it. So, were Murphy an incumbent governor during the election in 1990, it might have helped her campaign for governor.

But probably not. In January of 1991, there was a huge anti-tax rebellion going on. I remember hearing that, as Bill Weld was taking over the corner office, Michael Dukakis broke a long tradition, which was that the vacating governor would exit through the front doors of the State House, amid much fanfare and farewell. But, knowing that there was a huge crowd of Dukakis haters and protesters out front, Dukakis exited out the back doors of the State House on his last day. (Now, that is what I remember, particularly from the Jerry Williams Show, but it may be incorrect. I can’t find any references to it on the Internet.)

But things are different now. Despite all the destruction that these incompetent, narcissistic politicians cause, they are celebrated and cheered. (Bush and Obama, for instance.) And, despite the continual driving people out of the state that current Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has been doing, I’m sure he will be cheered when he finally leaves the corner office. (I wonder if Howie Carr has any more of those “Don’t blame me, I voted for Muffy” bumper stickers.)