Happy New Year!

I really believe that 2016 will be better. I hope.

All Human Beings Have a Right to Fight Back in Self-Defense Against Aggressors

I was listening to what was probably a “best of” edition of Mike Gallagher this morning, and he brought up a story about a school kid who was getting beat up, supposedly punched in the face repeatedly be a bully punk, while the teacher apparently wasn’t doing anything about it. The main issue for Gallagher was that the victim wasn’t fighting back at all. The reason for that was that, apparently, the schools are now instilling some kind of bullying policy in which if you fight back against someone who is physically assaulting you, you will be punished for it, too! And the punishment goes on their records.

Now, if someone assaults you then of course you have a right to fight back. Duh. But I believe that if the schools really are making these rules which discourage and even threaten punishment of a kid who attempts to fight back when he is assaulted, then, in the case that a student is assaulted and can’t or won’t fight back because of such rules, the actual school administrators or teachers who are imposing such rules should be criminally charged with aiding and abetting the criminal assailants who are assaulting such victims.

The schools are really out of control now, with their political correctness nonsense, the “you can’t say this or that that might offend a transgender student” crap, the “Zero Tolerance” craziness in which a student who points his finger and pretends to be shooting a gun gets disciplined, the anti-bullying Twilight Zone in which merely teasing someone is “bullying” and punishable but so is defending yourself against an actual criminal assault, etc., etc.

But regarding that story of the student who just stood there getting punched and wouldn’t fight back, I agree with Mike Gallagher’s criticism of that situation. But I wonder just how much for self-defense and fighting back he is. For instance, if a cop is beating up on some guy (or gal), does that victim have a right to fight back? Of course, morally the victim has a right to fight back. Unfortunately many of these conservatives — regardless of their talking a good game about “morality” — are very authoritarian and side with police. I have read plenty of articles and blog posts by William Grigg, Radley Balko, the CATO Police Misconduct blog, etc., and obviously such government police abuse of innocent victims goes on all the time, from beatings, taserings, clubbings, shootings, and so on.

And I also heard just in the past day or two Dennis Prager on the same station who was critical of a Muslim columnist stating that she doesn’t think she should have to condemn Islamic terrorists. Prager was critical of her, saying that of course you should condemn Islamic terrorist attacks. But my criticism of the columnist is that she didn’t even mention the hypocrisy of those in the anti-Muslim crowd who never condemn our government’s own wars of aggression and destruction of those foreign Islamic countries, such as two wars against Iraq and a war against Afghanistan, neither country ever being a threat to Americans and had never attacked us, and the continuing U.S. government occupations of those lands and U.S. drones bombing and murdering innocent civilians, which are the main victims of the drones (especially when our CIA drone forces intentionally target weddings and funerals and rescuers). The neocons and chickenhawks reflexively support U.S. military aggression against foreigners especially starting with the Persian Gulf War, but view as “militants” those foreigners who attempt to defend themselves against our military’s invasions and to the warmongers therefore it is morally acceptable to murder such foreigners. I never hear these conservative moralists condemn the U.S. government’s own murderous aggressions overseas.

Some Misc. Items for the New Year

Laurence Vance explains the consistency of libertarianism.

James Ostrowski on why progressives make bad journalists.

Hogeye Bill analyzes the libertarian position on immigration.

Jacob Hornberger on the two illegitimate functions of government.

Radley Balko describes the criminality and corruption directing and enforcing the drug war.

Thomas DiLorenzo reviews Brion McClanahan’s book, 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America — And Four Who Tried to Save Her.

Brendan O’Neill discusses identity politics and the crisis of character.

Paul Gottfried discusses Republican terror and anger toward Donald Trump.

John Lundin says that both Reagan and the elder Bush pushed “climate change” and “global warming.”

Richard Ebeling says that the fear of terrorism is destroying our freedom.

And Linh Dinh discusses Turkey’s weasel problem.

Freedom of Speech and the Right to Criticize Criminal Bureaucrats

Glenn Greenwald has this response to the authoritarian calls to limit freedom of speech in the name of the faux war with ISIS. He cites Newt Gingrich and others who want to limit the free speech rights of “terrorists.” Of course, as is most often the case with people who don’t really think about what they’re saying, when the Gingriches of the world say “terrorists,” they really refer to accused terrorists. The authoritarian-minded ones don’t care about due process and presumption of innocence (that is, until President Hillary decides that they are “terrorists” without evidence presented and a chance for Mr. Gingrich et al. to defend themselves and Hillary then acts on her own idea of punishment — then these hysterical reactionaries will think twice about removing others’ freedom of speech and due process rights!).

And also, these authoritarian-minded ones are too narcissistic and arrogant to comprehend that many of these foreigners are merely responding to our government‘s criminal invasions against them for 25 years. But Greenwald specifically cites the freedom of speech right of the people to advocate retaliatory violence against government aggressors.

There are millions of people in the world who believe and argue that the U.S. has been supporting tyranny and bringing violence to predominantly Muslim countries for decades as a means of dominating that region, and that return violence is not only justifiable but necessary to stop it (just as there are millions of westerners who believe and argue that they must bring more violence to the countries of that region). In particular, it’s astonishing to watch Americans – whose favorite political debate is deciding which country should be bombed next or which individuals should be next assassinated – propose changes to the First Amendment to make it a crime for others to justify (not engage in, but merely justify) the use of violence in what they argue is valid self-defense.

Abusing the force of law to silence legitimately expressed views – by criminalizing the advocates of one side of that debate – is as direct an attack on core free speech rights as anything that can be imagined … Trying to dictate which views can and cannot be expressed on the internet, aside from being futile, is the modern-day hallmark of an authoritarian. Throughout its history, the U.S. has suffered far greater harm from overwrought authoritarians acting in the name of security than it has external threats; the tyrannical impulses that drove the Alien and Sedition Acts, World War I prosecutions of anti-war dissidents, the internment of Japanese-Americans and McCarthyism did at least as much damage to the U.S. as any foreign adversary.

… no human beings or human institutions should ever be trusted to promulgate lists of Prohibited Ideas and Viewpoints.

Another Gem from Planned Parenthood

According to The Federalist, Planned Parenthood’s international association has released a booklet specifically targeted toward youth with HIV (the virus which causes AIDS), attempting to promote a youth’s hiding one’s HIV status from sexual partners or prospective sexual partners. The group maintains in the booklet that it is the youths’ right to not disclose to others their HIV status.

So not only do these kinds of groups promote irresponsible and promiscuous sexual activity in youths, most of whom are too young and immature to emotionally handle getting involved in sexual relationships, let alone promiscuous one-night-stands. And emphasizing the importance of immediate gratification, of course, because that is what Amerika is all about now. But further than all that, get your immediate gratification whenever the opportunity happens, even at the expense of risking the lives of others. And that’s really what this is about.

As is emphasized in the Planned Parenthood booklet, the HIV-positive individual has a “right” to withhold important information about oneself from one’s newest sexual partner, and thus removing the partner’s own right to decide whether or not to take such a risk. This is the kind of selfishness, by the way, that is promoted by a culture associated with collectivism and statism, systems which replace the family and the individual with the State and the collective. People have a right to use others to gratify one’s own urges — from personal sexual relations to government power-grabbers — at the others’ expense.

So according to the End of the American Dream Blog, 1 out of every 4 teen girls in the U.S. has a sexually transmitted disease, and 24% of the teens in the U.S. who have such diseases say they still have unprotected sex. Well, I guess that second statistic explains the first one.

So all you women’s libbers out there, the sexual revolutionaries and so forth, who have raised your boys to take stupid self-destructive risks, and raised your girls to be sluts: Was all that screaming and bra-burning worth it?

Merry Christmas!

Here are some very informative and enlightening articles to enjoy on your vacation.

Jacob Hornberger on the cure of non-interventionism.

David Gordon says there’s no such thing as a neutral government.

Army Col. Ann Wright challenges U.S. military overseas bases.

Laurence Vance asks, Who can stop the drive to war?

Ron Paul asks, Do we need the Fed?

Sheldon Richman comments on the asymmetrical war against the Muslim world.

Daniel Lazare asks, The coming Saudi crack-up?

Joshua Krause discusses a NASA study which finds that burning fossil fuels cools the planet.

Justin Raimondo on the decline and fall of the “mainstream” media.

Becky Akers with information on “InterApps” which enable police to search and steal your phone data.

Radley Balko says that 2015 saw no “war on cops” and no “national crime wave.”

William Grigg comments on police, unable to stop criminals, now pulling people over for “driving safely” (i.e. to harass innocent people).

Marcy Wheeler on Marco Rubio’s leaks on the phone dragnet.

Daniel McAdams comments on Hugh Hewitt’s demonic visions.

Stephen Zunes on the bipartisan effort to justify the killing of civilians in the “war on terrorism.”

Kelley Vlahos says the cult of air power won’t destroy ISIS.

Ted Galen Carpenter on the principal cause of radical Islamic terrorism.

Matthew Harwood discusses the logic of the police state.

Laura Knight-Jadczyk says that knowledge and freedom are the antidote to the rising fascism.

Tho Bishop says that Ludwig von Mises is winning.

Thomas DiLorenzo reviews Tom Mullen’s book, Where Do Conservative and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

Patrick Hedger says that leftists are the economic science deniers.

Vasko Kohlmayer has this Christmas challenge for his fellow evangelical Christians.

John Whitehead asks, What if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later in the American police state?

Andrew Napolitano on America at Christmas.

Seymour Hersh on U.S. intelligence sharing in the Syrian war. (Scott Horton’s interview of Seymour Hersh.)

Richard Ebeling says that compulsory unions means less worker freedom.

Robert Wenzel asks, Are capitalists repeatedly “fooled” by business cycles?

Simon Wilson says that government debt is not like private debt.

Isaac Davis with a 239 year timeline of America’s involvement in military conflict.

Bionic Mosquito on the Hundred Years War.

Walter Block comments on women in the military.

Lucy Steigerwald says that technology is a mysterious enemy to politicians.

Thomas Sowell comments on compulsive busybodies.

Roger Stone reviews John Meacham’s book on George H.W. Bush.

And Gareth Porter on IAEA’s “Final Assessment”

A Moral Case Against Socialism and Its Criminality

I had several more points to add to my post describing socialism as a criminal racket. That post was perhaps a bit harsh, as I am really trying to get people to think about the current system of government monopoly control, which really is a criminal racket. And incidentally, is there any real difference between socialism and government (more accurately, compulsory government) in general?

The truth is, it would probably be better for all of us if we had a civilized society, in which people behaved peacefully. But as long as the agents of the monopoly ruling government are permitted to initiate aggression against peaceful people, then we do not have a civilized society.

Here I wanted to provide scenarios which describe how the current police state apparatus restricting the lives of the people, including immigrants, is immoral and uncivilized as well as being against free markets.

And I’m not advocating that people just disobey unjust laws, by the way, because you can really put your life in danger if you do that. I’m just pointing out the reality of the criminal and unjust socialist society in which we currently live.

Here’s a scenario regarding the immigration issue. Carlos lives in Mexico and applies for a job to work at a business in Phoenix. The businessman determines that Carlos is the best for the job and the one who would best serve the consumers. After Carlos travels to Phoenix, finds a place to live and begins work at his new place of employment, he is arrested and detained, charged with violating immigration laws. And the businessman is arrested and charged with hiring an “illegal.”

Now, already a lot of people have a problem with the first part of that, in which they say that Carlos can’t just go across the border willy-nilly and find a place to live and work at an American business. He’s a “Mexican,” or a foreigner. He’s not a “U.S. citizen” and so on. And so the complainers approve of Carlos’s arrest, detainment and deportation.

But Carlos committed no crime whatsoever. He acted peacefully. In fact, he offered his labor to the businessman which was needed and the businessman hired him. Such a voluntary employment contract was established peacefully and without violence or fraud on either part. So no actual crime was committed. There was no victim. But, the collectivists say, Americans are the victims of Carlos’s not following “our rules.”

The collectivists are not concerned with moral laws and private property and contract rights. They are more concerned with obedience to authority and adherence to a collectivistic ownership of the territory which must not be “trespassed.”

So what the collectivists are saying is that Americans as a group share in the ownership of the individual businesses including this one which hired Carlos. Funny how conservatives defend the right of businesses to freedom of association and contract not out of principle but in defense of social agendas, such as when a Christian baker refuses service to a lesbian couple. The moral principle here is freedom of association and contract and private property rights. It doesn’t matter where Carlos is from. He has an unalienable right to association and contract with an employer, period. The rules of a free society are “don’t trespass, don’t steal, don’t commit acts of aggression.” Contrary to what collectivists think, the community as a whole does not have the moral authority or right to take control over the private businessman’s business and contracts or the workers’ contracts. That is a thoroughly socialist construct.

I don’t understand the conservative collectivists’ desire to deprive total strangers of their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The socialist-minded “moral” self-righteous conservatives would forcibly send immigrants back to tyranny, drug lords and poverty, which in my view is itself a criminal act against them.

It really bothers me that Ted Cruz, the alleged Christian moral preacher-like politician, refers to “criminal aliens.” Cruz is really referring to foreigners who are trying to make a better life for themselves and their families, immigrants who haven’t harmed any actual people but are actually serving their fellow human beings by contributing to the manufacturing of goods and provision of services for consumers.

Contrary to the millions of productive immigrants in the private sector, exactly how has Ted Cruz productively served the consumers of America? Hmmm? While he has spent just a few years as a private attorney, most of his adult life has been spent as a government employee, from being an appeals court clerk to being Texas solicitor general, being an FTC bureaucrat, a George W. Bush campaign operative, and now U.S. senator. It’s a fair criticism, given this pol’s inflammatory rhetoric.

So, the workers are not “criminals,” as there are no victims. But it is indeed criminal when the armed agents of the government enforcing immigration laws violently uproot people, jail them, and commit other crimes against them.

Now, if you have a problem with the U.S. government welfare state which acts as a magnet for the riff-raffs, the dregs of foreign areas, then get rid of the welfare state! As I mentioned in my previous post, the entire U.S. system of taxation-theft and redistribution schemes is a thoroughly criminal operation, a racket. Get rid of it.

So, on the one hand we have peaceful people who move to a different area to find a better life. They are not criminals. They merely have disobeyed arbitrary, artificial rules made up by collectivists who oppose private property and contract rights and freedom of association and trade. On the other hand we have actual criminals, agents of the almighty State (that conservatives worship as much as the progressives), who on a daily basis criminally enforce unjust laws.

Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling, by the way, had a very thought-provoking discussion on the immorality of socialist immigration controls.

And if I haven’t convinced the anti-immigration collectivists that freedom and private property are the answer to society’s problems with the immigration issue, there are other issues. Here are some more situations:

First, the gun laws. To those who understand the idea of natural rights and moral principles, such as self-defense, this might seem a bit more clear-cut. A mugger attempted to rob some lady in the city, but a passerby who happened to have a gun then brandished the weapon and held the robber at bay while another person called police. When the police arrived, they arrested the life-saving passerby and charged him with violating gun restriction laws.

In another scenario, an anonymous tip to police brought the armed government goons to an innocent person’s home, and they broke into the home and arrested the person for “illegal possession of firearms.”

In the first scenario, the hero, non-criminal is the guy with the gun who saved the lady from the robber. His possessing a firearm without bureaucrats’ approval was not a real crime, only a phony made-up one, but really an act of disobedience toward bureaucrats’ unjust laws which violate the people’s right to self-defense and their right to keep and bear arms. The real criminals are the government enforcers who criminally manhandled and assaulted, kidnapped and threw into a cage the hero who saved the lady’s life.

And in the second scenario, the first actual criminal is the anonymous tipster who criminally endangered the life of an innocent human being by siccing government goons on him merely for possessing the means of self-defense he has a right to have. The other criminals are the ones who broke into his home (that’s “breaking and entering”), and committed the same criminal acts against an innocent human being as in the first scenario.

Government medical mandates and other intrusions. I can go on and on with these scenarios. A doctor and his patients choose not to follow the Affordable Care Act and all other medical-related government intrusions and diktats. Eventually, they are all arrested for not obeying the government’s authoritarian mandates, charged with racketeering, fraud, and other made-up “crimes” government prosecution bureaucrats typically make up in order to meet their enforcement and prosecution quotas. Who are the real criminals here? To those with a moral conscience and common sense, the question answers itself, no?

I’ll bet some of the conservatives who didn’t like my points on immigration did like my points on gun rights and ObamaCare. However, I don’t believe that their views are principled. Only based on certain social agendas. They still want the socialized State to have ultimate control and authority over the people’s lives.

And then there is the drug war, which most conservatives support. Yet, they don’t support alcohol prohibition. What’s the difference? And for a scenario I can just point to the above one regarding the government goons breaking into the home of the one accused of “illegal gun possession,” just in this case “illegal drugs.” Same thing. Some guy buying, selling, using, growing or possessing various chemicals made “illegal” by bureaucrats, even though the enforcers’ victim has not harmed anyone — no, that’s not a criminal. The real criminals are those who have broken into his home and taken him away to be caged, raped and so on. Laurence Vance has written on the moral case for drug freedom as well as in his book, The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom.

But all these cases are examples of socialism: immigration central planning and controls, drug laws, gun restrictions, the Affordable Care Act, etc. The entire government apparatus, especially the centralized regime in Washington, is a socialist apparatus, every last bit of it. And it is an entirely criminal operation. That is what socialism is. Government bureaucrats seize ownership of your property, businesses, your lives and your bodies, yet they have convinced the masses that it’s for your own good.

Thus, socialism is a criminal racket, and it needs to be abolished and thrown into the dustbin of history. How could anyone with a moral conscience disagree with that?

Socialism: One Big Criminal Racket That Even Conservatives Love

I have been criticized occasionally for my writing about socialism, sometimes by those who seem to go by mainstream dictionary definitions of socialism. But dictionaries are written generally by biased leftists. For a better understanding of economic terms such as socialism you would really need to read Ludwig von Mises or Murray Rothbard. The Mises Institute, incidentally, has recently been mentioned as the 9th most influential “think tank,” even though it is not a think tank. The Mises Institute promotes Austrian economics. If there is any one particular general point of view of the Austrians, they tend to favor free markets and are critics of central planning. I agree with that point of view.

However, I try to concentrate on the overall concepts and I tend to think in abstractions, which may be a problem for some people. While many people are quite indoctrinated to a statist and collectivist way of thinking, I nevertheless believe there are a lot of open-minded ones out there. So I keep on trying.

I have tried to make references before to fascism, in which the government usurps and maintains intrusive control over privately owned industries and property via regulations, mandates, zoning, reporting requirements, etc. All such mandates and regulations are examples of fascism. And in my view, when government bureaucrats require any individual to involuntarily submit to such bureaucrats controls and intrusions over the individuals’ private contracts and property, such bureaucrats are criminally trespassing into the private matters and lives of the people. Like socialist mandates, requirements, and demands, in fascism such orders and intrusions on the people are not just trespasses but examples of criminal extortion.

But my latest conclusion is that there is no substantial difference between socialism and fascism. In either system, the people’s labor and their property are owned, in truth, by the government — by the centralized criminal racket that presumes to rule over their lives. If you do not have the ultimate control over your labor, your contracts and your property, control which the bureaucrats have usurped away from you, then you are not the real owner.

As Thomas DiLorenzo noted recently, socialism and welfare statism involve involuntary servitude. You are a slave if you must involuntarily do extra labor to serve government bureaucrats with your earnings or wealth.

So, because “fascism” sounds nasty while “socialism” doesn’t sound nasty to many people, I will refer to socialism/fascism as “socialism.”

One problem that I have is with people who say they are “against socialism” but support all the socialist policies which have gradually been destroying America throughout the past 200 years. Everything from Social Security, the income tax, the Federal Reserve System, and “protection” service rackets from socialized local government law enforcement to national security. And today’s “anti-socialists” support the U.S. government’s current central planning immigration controls. That is because their collectivist ideologies supersede their stated belief in moral society, private property and free markets.

What, do you think that the Social Security scheme is an example of free market capitalism? The coercive income tax, government confiscation of private wealth, that’s a free market?

Sorry, all these government schemes and rackets, which involve involuntary participation of and involuntary funding by the people, are entirely socialist, and there’s nothing free market about them, nothing of a “capitalist” nature (except for crony State capitalism, which is still socialism, because special interests and government-connected businesses are still profiting from wealth seized and redistributed from the theft victims).

Socialism is supposedly a public or government ownership of the means of production, of various industries or functions, and involves a centralized bureaucracy of clueless parasites to administer those schemes. Socialist bureaucracies historically have required being funded involuntarily by the people over whom such bureaucrats rule, in the form of taxation. Socialist schemes also involve redistribution of the stolen funds to recipients not approved by the involuntary subsidizers.

The truth is, socialism in the traditional sense is a criminal scheme, a racket, imposed on the people by bureaucrats and their enforcers who take the people’s wealth and siphon from their incomes involuntarily. Such bureaucrats are no different from a private criminal gang or the Mafia, in which threats are made against people unless they hand over the loot.

And that is what the income tax scheme is. A criminal scheme. But why do we never hear conservatives or those who claim to be “against socialism” criticize it? Because they approve of it! They are not opposed to robbery at all, when it is committed by the “authorities,” especially when it is being used to implement their socialist programs that they believe in. The self-proclaimed “anti-socialists” really don’t believe in the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as mentioned in the Declaration of Independence that many of the advocates profess to follow.

But the society will continue to decline economically and morally as long as these criminal rackets and schemes remain in place. In a civilized society, for contracts, associations, transactions and trades to be legitimate they must be voluntary. If there is coercion, compulsion based on threats made by “authorities,” if contracts are involuntary, then they are thoroughly illegitimate — and criminal, in my view.

And legitimate contracts can only be the business of the parties to those contracts. The terms of those legitimate contracts are voluntarily agreed to and are the business of only the parties to those contracts and no others. When third parties such as government bureaucrats come along and make those private contracts their business — whether the traders or associates like it or not — then those third parties are criminally violating, they are trespassing.

When the bureaucrats demand that the workers or traders reveal and report their own private personal matters such as income or bank accounts and the bureaucrats demand some of the earnings involuntarily, there is no more accurate term to describe these violators and extortionists as criminal.

The rule of law in a moral society would have to consider as criminal all theft, fraud, extortion, threats of violence, and trespass. To exempt members of this one artificial institution called the State or the government from those basic rules of civilized society invites institutionalized criminality. And that is what we live under presently.

And another example: Social Security. Just how moral and legitimate could it be when the government orders you to involuntarily participate in its own government-run and monopolized retirement scheme, and orders your employer to pay certain amounts, involuntarily, to support it?

Another socialist aspect of Social Security is its redistribution of wealth scheme in which the current workers and producers are involuntarily subsidizing the elderly and retired people and the disabled. And it’s all involuntary, thus criminal, and a racket.

But the conservatives, the moralists, the promoters of the Declaration of Independence and its principles of the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, never criticize Social Security for the fraud and the racket it is.

I’m really getting tired of hearing those talk radio people and various others referring to “socialism” when they themselves are socialists. For example, take Donald Trump. (Please.) I’ve mentioned this here before but I’m going to reiterate this. There are all those so-called conservatives out there who say they oppose socialism but are nevertheless drawn to Trump whose rhetoric elicits their primal emotions.

Trump makes the sheeple feel good in the same way that Bernie Sanders’s rhetoric of envy and class warfare makes the Left feel good. But Trump has for many years been a liberal Democrat. He favors nationalized medical care, single payer and so on. So I guess you can fool a lot of the people much of the time, or something like that.

And as I have mentioned before, Trump loves eminent domain. What is eminent domain? It is exactly what socialism is: government theft of private property. Socialism is all about theft. Taxation is government theft of wealth and income. It is theft because it does not involve voluntary contracts, voluntary transactions. Taxation is involuntary. The government-run programs in which the people are compelled by law to fund and participate are involuntary. Eminent domain is when bureaucrats tell you that you must agree to give them your property and for a price determined by them, the bureaucrats. If you don’t get out of the property then you will be arrested or otherwise removed by force. The government now owns your property in the same way a thief “owns” what he has stolen from his victims.

Donald Trump says he loves eminent domain because the property that the government steals on his and other developers’ behalf will be used to “provide jobs,” etc. and the community will benefit. Therefore the initial criminal act of theft is “justified.” But that’s based on a promise or a prediction of benefits. Even Trump has admitted that at least one occasion when a property owner wouldn’t give up the property, it turned out that in that case such promises wouldn’t have panned out. Just like Social Security, by the way, in which the government implicitly cons people into thinking that their livelihoods will be taken care of when they retire, but the truth is that’s also a lie and a fraud. But Trump nevertheless has benefited from eminent domain.

Speaking of government theft of the people’s wealth and property, “conservatives” such as Rush Limbaugh are rightly criticizing the new $1 trillion omnibus boondoggle as “caving” by Republicans. But they are crying because the spending bill doesn’t fund their government wall or fence on the southern border, one of the biggest examples of socialism if there ever was one.

I know that a lot of people are in denial and will try to rationalize their socialism in today’s America as “capitalism.” Hmm, the government wall they want to seal the border is an example of “free market capitalism.” Only in Soviet Amerika, of course.

The problem with them is their ingrained collectivist mindset. They want to keep certain groups of people out of an entire country. They don’t believe in private property rights, contracts rights and free markets.

But the anti-immigration stuff coming from these people, jeepers. This is the biggest issue, I believe, in which they completely trash their alleged belief in those “unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Their collectivist sentiments take over, and they support socialism and central planning big time, begging Big Daddy Government to centrally plan the movements of millions, erecting a police state to intrude in the employment matters of private American businesses — and such socialist utopian grandiosity ends up screwing things up even more than they were before.

I guess foreigners don’t have “unalienable rights” to life, liberty and property. The Declaration of Independence only applies to “Americans,” is what the anti-immigration socialists seem to be saying. Which is not consistent with the idea of “unalienable rights” which preexist the formation of any government. Contrary to what the collectivists think, those rights are individual rights, and they really are unalienable. There are no group rights, which the collectivist-minded anti-immigration people seem to think there are, only individual rights.

But such rights of self-ownership and freedom from aggression apply to everyone, including the right to self-defense and self-sustenance and the right to seek opportunities to trade one’s labor with willing traders. As long as one does not trespass others’ persons or private property.

But look at Donald Trump’s government wall, which is a huge example of socialism. What, do you think that’s a capitalist wall? A free market capitalist wall? It’s a government wall, to block markets, to block labor and transactions and commerce. It violates the principles of free markets, in which if a businessman in Texas wants to employ a worker from Mexico the government wants to block that. That’s socialism.

Unfortunately, the collectivists don’t believe in private property because they are … collectivists. They really believe that individuals are not the ultimate owners of their own persons and labor, their own property, their capital and wealth, their businesses, their lives. The collectivists and socialists believe the government is the people’s ultimate owner. They totally reject free markets and prefer government-controlled markets.

In other words, there is no big difference between the Bernie Sanders-Hillary socialists and the conservative statist socialists, except for having different social agendas.

Both sides support the criminal rackets and intrusions of the State, and oppose the principles of non-aggression, self-ownership, private property, and free markets upon which America was founded.

Did You Sign the Constitution?

Okay, I’ve had my fun and let my hair down, in my previous post, and made fun of candidates’ names while criticizing their policies, and so on. But now it’s time to get serious again. It’s Christmas (as George H.W. Bush once said).

In a post on the Mises blog, Ryan McMaken says that the Bill of Rights is the only good part of the U.S. Constitution. However, the wording of some of the Amendments is terrible and vague, in my view. He gives a suggestion for a one-paragraph Constitution, and even that I disagree with. I don’t even think there should be a federal government. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe pointed out, smaller states are better than larger more centralized ones. Centralization is a very bad and dangerous thing. Statists and collectivists tend to favor larger, centralized regimes to rule over them. That’s because they like being slaves and prisoners of the central-planning criminal bureaucrats.

One big problem with Ryan McMaken’s suggested Constitution is that it would seem to presume that all those living within the jurisdiction covered by such a Constitution would be in voluntary agreement with it. As I wrote in an article in 2010, Lysander Spooner observed that the U.S. Constitution’s “contractual obligations” applied to only those who actually signed it. And even if it applied to all those living in the U.S. at the time (albeit some involuntarily), it couldn’t have applied to those of future generations. Spooner noted that

only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now…. It is not only plainly impossible…. that they Could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them…. the language neither expresses nor implies that they had any right or power, to bind their “posterity” to live under it. It does not say that their “posterity” will, shall, or must live under it. It only says, in effect, that their hopes and motives in adopting it were that it might prove useful to their posterity…

I actually don’t mind requiring the government and its employees to operate under the Constitution. However, I think that also what Spooner should be referring to here are the legislative diktats being fabricated by corrupt sleazebags in Washington and forced on the people who do not consent to such intrusions imposed on them.

But if anyone MUST obey the U.S. Constitution, it’s the aforementioned bureaucrats and their enforcers. They swore an oath to obey the Constitution. Even though the Constitution’s rules are regarding the federal regime in Washington, even local police and state government bureaucrats swear an oath to obey the U.S. Constitution as well as their state constitutions. I will not get into just how many government “workers” no longer actually obey the U.S. Constitution. Bureaucrats such as FBI, NSA and so on constantly rationalize how their criminally breaking the law of the land is necessary to “protect the people,” such as from terrorism, from drugs, from this or that. But the Constitution they swore to obey doesn’t give exceptions to its rules. If you want to search someone’s person, property or effects you must have a reason to suspect him of something illegal, and you must be specific as far as what you are looking for, and you must get a warrant signed by a judge. But no more. The bureaucrats and their enforcers now act criminally against the people, and with impunity.

I’m for total decentralization and privatization of everything. In that way, no one will be above the law, as currently government bureaucrats and their enforcers are. In the current situation, government bureaucrats and their enforcers ARE the law. Not good for the rest of us schleps.

Another Debate to Determine Who Is Best to Rearrange the Deck Chairs

Well, the Warpublicans had yet another debate. Does it matter? Nope. I didn’t watch it, of course, as I stopped watching TV over 20 years ago, and when I used to watch TV I never had cable. But with this most recent “debate” I have already heard quite a few excerpts in an early morning rerun of Steve Deace as well as Glenn Beck and some other shows on the radio, as well as getting a taste of what happened from Justin Raimondo’s tweets he did during the debate. I found this page at the WaPo helpful. But here is my take on all that.

So, does Ted Scruz have multiple personality disorder? One minute we hear him saying bomb the hell out of “ISIS” (when he’s really referring to the Middle East, and with total disregard to these conflicts and terrorism being wrought by all the aggressions committed by the U.S. government against them for decades and continuing). And then at this “debate” we hear Scruz talking like a non-interventionist, criticizing all the interventionism in Libya and Egypt, etc. He has to make up his mind which side he’s on. I don’t think you can talk interventionism, bombing and mass murder out of one side of your mouth, and then sound like Ron Paul out of the other side of your mouth. Worse, Ted Scruz agrees with Donald Duck in wanting to build a socialist government Berlin Wall at the Southern border. (And also, does he inhale helium before public appearances? Just askin’.)

And then there’s Ted Scruz’s buddy, Marco Stupido. It seems to me that, given his own or his family’s immigration history, Marco is tuned in to his intuitive sense that all human beings have a right to migrate (as long as they don’t trespass on private property, of course). But he caves to the anti-immigration crowd, the Archie Bunkers who want to prevent foreigners from exercising their right to freedom of movement and travel. And also, Marco Stupido could be another case of multiple personality disorder, going from showing compassion for immigrants to then wanting to intervene throughout the Middle East. He also loves the criminal NSA spying on innocent Americans because, like many others, he gullibly believes that such treasonous criminality will thwart terrorist plots, which it doesn’t.

The Dom DeLouise guy from New Joisey wants to strengthen the “tools” of the criminal NSA spying and “law enforcement.” More “tools”? Then go to Home Depot. I just heard a Home Depot commercial for a Dremel Multi-Max. Good stuff there. Yes, we already know that you don’t get the 4th Amendment, whatever.

And Dr. Carson reiterated that “we are at war,” when no, we are not at war. He just believes that because, like millions of other Americans he’s a brainwashed sheeple who believes the propaganda. (Oops, did I just describe Dr. Carson as “brain” washed? Well, so are his patients, apparently — leaving a sponge in their brains might do it.)

Dr. Carson also said that “our nation is in grave danger.” Yes, we are in danger because of the idiots and morons in Washington who keep inflicting aggressions and violence against foreigners and provoking them to act against us Americans, and our belligerent bureaucrats’ immorally occupying those foreign lands. And we are in danger because of a centralized banking system and compulsory government-produced monetary scheme that enables and empowers the banksters and shysters to steal the people’s wealth and property.

The other candidates were all the same as far as keeping the foreign interventionism going. At the “undercard debate” (a.k.a. the “kid’s table”), were Rick Sanitorium, Limpy Graham, Mike Hockeypuckabee, and George Tacky. I have no idea who this “Princess Buttercup” is, but I would vote for her before any of the aforementioned clowns.

Why are all these people and millions of “American Exceptionalists” and gullible sheeple so brainwashed to believe the propaganda? Who knows. I recently heard Ann Coulter on with Mike Gallagher and Ann said that only Trump could possibly beat Hillary in November, while none of the other candidates could beat him. However, that’s despite the most recent head-to-head matchups which showed that Hillary beats Trump by a huge margin, but that Hillary would lose to Marco and Dr. Carson. (Clueless Coulter loved the socialist weathervane pol Willard Romney, by the way.)

Speaking of clueless, also at the main debate, Curly Fiorina said that she had been “called every B word in the book.” But probably not the one B word she hopes to be: “BUREAUCRAT”! They all want to be the Bureaucrat-in-Chief. And the Bomber-in-Chief. But the truth is, we don’t need a woman President, and we don’t need a man President. We actually don’t need any President ruling over us, because having one for over 200 years has proven to work against us, and that will never change unless a President dismantles the criminal racket in Washington, and pardons all those in the prisons and jails who haven’t violated the persons or property of any other, and someone who promises to pardon and set free any other victims of the sadists and psychopaths enforcing the thousands and thousands of immoral “laws,” rules, mandates, and diktats intruded upon us by Leviathan.

More News and Commentary

Hans-Hermann Hoppe with a classic 2003 article on Iraq.

Robert Wenzel on “radical” Muslims, Mexicans, terrorism, and Donald Trump.

Walter Williams discusses squandered resources on college education.

WND with an article on progressives coming unglued over “white” student unions.

Andrew Napolitano discusses the bureaucrats looking for a needle in a haystack.

David Gordon comments on the dreary utopia of the socialists.

Stephen Kinzer on what truly conservative foreign policy looks like.

Philip Weiss says that Donald Trump’s religious test for immigrants is standard practice in Israel.

Glenn Greenwald on Americans attacking Muslims.

Sheldon Richman says, Please don’t say “radical” if you mean “violent.”

Ivan Eland asks, Does it even matter who wins the Presidency in 2016?

Eric Margolis’s message to crusaders: Look before you charge.

Justin Raimondo says the biggest danger to U.S. national security is right in our nation’s capital.

Butler Shaffer has this case for Ebenezer.

Jacob Hornberger on the crises that feed Leviathan.

Lew Rockwell says that a much-read libertarian website may be in trouble.

Richard Ebeling on paper money versus the gold standard.

Louis Rouanet disagrees with Thomas Piketty on the concentration of wealth.

Dan Sanchez says that Trump stumps for ISIS.

Thomas Knapp says to Millennials: “Let’s you and them fight.”

Laurence Vance on military penis transplants.

NBC News with an article and video of funny brawl at Ukraine Parliament.

Ryan McMaken discusses government’s manipulation of murder rates.

And Fred Reed analyzes terrorism incidents, past and future.

Amerikan Stasi Craziness

With the Donald Trump-inspired resurgence in nationalism there is the renewed campaign of suppression of dissent and “If You See Something, Say Something,” in which the gubmint is encouraging the sheeple to spy on their neighbors, and turn in those they don’t like or whose views they don’t like, or whose religion the newly recruited stasi look down upon. Parents will be encouraged to spy on their kids and report possible “radicalization,” and kids encouraged to turn their parents in to police for owning guns or for criticizing the Regime. In post-9/11 Amerika, Gladys Kravitz is alive and well, and there are millions of her just waiting to rat on someone — anyone — to make themselves feel self-important. I have written before that in an America without due process and common sense, there will be more than just stasi neighbors merely turning in other neighbors.

I have included this quote on historian Robert Gellately, author of Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, in his research on the people of Nazi Germany before, and wanted to include that here again.

“There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors.”

. . .

As he was uncovering who was acting as the Gestapo’s unsolicited agents, (Gellately) also began to discern what motivated neighbor to inform on neighbor. The surviving myth told the story of informers who were motivated either by a commitment to the Third Reich or by a fear of authority.

But the motives Gellately found were banal—greed, jealousy, and petty differences.

He found cases of partners in business turning in associates to gain full ownership; jealous boyfriends informing on rival suitors; neighbors betraying entire families who chronically left shared bathrooms unclean or who occupied desirable apartments.

And then there were those who informed because for the first time in their lives someone in authority would listen to them and value what they said.

Dependence on Government Bureaucrats to Protect You Is a Fool’s Errand

Here we go again. The “Islamic terrorist” hysteria is causing even some of the most liberty-minded people to lose touch with reality. It’s just like the post-9/11 period, in which “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists,” and so on. Never mind property rights, freedom of speech, due process, the Bill of Rights and all that.

“Don’t criticize the war effort! That would be treasonous!” Actually, the warmongers are the real traitors, as their staring wars in the Middle East and provoking foreigners are what have made the American people less secure and more vulnerable.

In fact, in his desperate, ignorant and un-American call to shut down the Internet, Donald Trump now says that freedom of speech advocates are “foolish people,” even though it’s been his right to freedom of speech in which he can make fun of disabled reporters, criticize Hillary and Obama, and so forth.

It’s part of the “We’re at war!” mentality, in which, as Glenn Greenwald observed, terrorism is for some reason not just criminality, but an “act of war.” The truth is, though, terrorist acts are acts of criminality. But as I have noted before, war is an artificial concept for criminal aggressors to rationalize their acts of criminal aggression. And by “criminal aggressors” I mean the government! The government warmongers then turn the apparatus of armed violence, spying, and unlawful detention against the American people, especially those who dissent. Those government officials are acting treasonously.

So besides the criminal destruction caused by U.S. bureaucrats in the Middle East, especially since 9/11 they have imposed a de facto martial law in the U.S. As I wrote before regarding martial law, that includes “the suspension of civil liberties, such as freedom of speech and dissent, the right to bear arms and self-defense, the right to freedom of movement, and the right to presumption of innocence. The Declaration of Independence recognizes the right of each and every human being to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ These are inalienable, pre-existing rights, meaning that they are natural and inherent rights, not given to us by any government. That means that no one, including government officials, police or military, may violate these rights or remove them – otherwise, they could not be considered inalienable.”

Thus, the US. government’s imposition of each and every restriction on Americans’ natural rights, including freedom of speech and the right to keep and bear arms, has been an act of massive criminality on the part of the ruling bureaucrats.

So no, we are not “at war,” that’s a lie being spread by government bureaucrats who love power, and helped by their media minions and lap dogs.

In fact, war itself is a crime, because whoever actually started whatever war is a war criminal. As the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal determined, starting a war was in and of itself a war of aggression, and thus a crime.

As I have mentioned here repeatedly, in 1991 President George H.W. Bush started his war against Iraq for no good reason. Iraq was of no threat to us. Bush Sr.’s violent criminal war included even worse war crimes, by his military’s bombing of civilian water and sewage treatment centers, followed by sanctions and no-fly zones which prevented construction materials, medical supplies and food from being imported into Iraq. All that caused the Iraqis to have to use untreated water, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

Here is then-U.S. ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright on 60 Minutes, defending the criminality of the U.S. military and UN sanctions causing the deaths of over 500,000 civilians in Iraq from 1991 through 1996, the time of this interview. The sanctions and further hundreds of thousands of deaths continued up to the year 2000. And all that was before 9/11/2001.

And then the elder Bush’s son started an unnecessary and counter-productive and criminal war of aggression in Afghanistan, a country that was not a threat to the U.S. And then the younger Bush started their 2nd war on Iraq in 2003, with many more hundreds of thousands murdered, their lives torn apart and their homes bombed and ruined. And look at Iraq now. Thanks to the Bushes. And those who survived through all that in Iraq have had sickness, birth defects and disease to deal with as a result of all the bombs and chemicals used by the U.S. government.

And then there have been the constant drones, the CIA drones bombing civilians, targeting rescuers, targeting wedding parties and funerals, and provoking many more people over there and driving them to retaliate.

It’s been a 24-year-long campaign of egregious criminality committed by the U.S. government and military against innocents in the Middle East and Asia. But the totalitarians among us say it’s “treasonous” to bring all that up, because “We’re at war!” and they want to keep the racket alive, jail the dissenters.

And Donald Trump and others are sparking a resurgence in nationalism as the convenient terrorist attacks have been going on now. You should hear some of these talk show hosts on the radio, especially Jeff Kuhner and Michael Savage. Their emotional nationalism blinds them from seeing reality. And that’s what it is, it’s all emotional. No thinking there.

Nationalism is dangerous. Nationalism is a combination of collectivism, statism, and authoritarianism. Nationalists are not big on individualism, private property rights, free markets, and freedom of association and speech. Their rhetoric favoring those things is good. But when it comes to this phony war on terrorism, and with each new terrorist incident that occurs, they get more and more hysterical and will support the government’s escalations and crackdowns.

And Michael Savage has been on this “Borders, Language, Culture” thing for many years now. Not particularly private property borders, though, but government borders. And with the immigration issue, I’ve heard Kuhner several times now talking about the U.S. southern border as though it were private property, and he refers to the American people as one big family, and the illegal immigrants are like home invaders breaking into “our” home! Doh!

So the nationalists are big on socialist government borders and socialist government walls around the border like the Berlin Wall. And they like fascist bans on certain whole groups of people based on their religious or political views. Talk about un-American. Talk about nuts, in my view.

The immediate way to stop the terrorists such as that guy Farook and his wacko wife Malik at San Bernardino is for people to be armed. And that’s it. Not police. I mean the civilian people. THAT is what the early Americans intended by the 2nd Amendment. But the nationalists in their wild emotionalism don’t really understand that, and instead in their ingrained dependence-mindedness they look to government bureaucrats, government police, and government military as the means of protection from terrorists and other violent criminals.

And a longer-term helpful hint is to recognize what the U.S. government has done and continues to do to the people of those foreign lands, and to cut it out.

The Sheeple Love Fascists, They Love “Bigot Talk”

Donald Trump wants to ban all Muslims, at least temporarily, from entering the U.S. until our ruling bureaucrats can “figure out what is going on.” He said that Muslims’ hatred for America is “beyond comprehension,” and we need to find out “where this hatred comes from and why.” He said, “They want our buildings to come down. They want our cities to be crushed.” And he has no idea why? Hmm, perhaps it’s the foreigners own buildings coming down and their cities crushed, especially in Iraq, caused by the U.S. government? And all the bombing and destruction of Middle Eastern cities and murdering of innocents by the U.S. military for the past 25 years? Ya think?

I know, the propagandized TV-staring zombies in America can’t understand that explanation. Like Sean Hannity, they interpret someone pointing out actual historical facts as “blaming America.” But “America” is not to blame for all the destruction over there, the U.S. government is what’s to blame.

The American Exceptionalists i.e. narcissists who oppose the Golden Rule and have no moral conscience cannot comprehend the idea that if it’s immoral for foreign invaders and terrorists to bomb our buildings and murder our people here then it’s immoral for our government to invade and bomb foreigners’ lands and their homes and murder their people. We’re talking over a million innocent civilians since 1991 just in Iraq, let alone the thousands of murdered innocents in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and other countries that continues to this day from the U.S. drones and bombs. (Update: See Sheldon Richman: “The Phony Mystery of Why ‘They’ Hate Us, and Justin Raimondo: “The Dangers of Refugee Humanitarianism.”)

And I thought there was something called the First Amendment that all those “Christian” talk radio personalities keep bringing up in regards to the Islamists’ persecution against Christians and so forth. Besides the First Amendment, doesn’t the Constitution say something about prohibiting the government from requiring a religious test? What the hell is Trump going to do, ask each prospective immigrant what his religion is? Such a scheme inherently invites intimidation and persecution by our own government “workers” against totally innocent people who happen to want to move to America like my grandparents and great-grandparents did, which they did without being asked intrusive personal questions by imbeciles and misfits that would have been none of their damn business!

But I don’t really believe Trump in what he’s been saying during this campaign. We know from his previous policy statements and his views that he is a liberal, or “progressive” if you prefer that term, and that he’s a Democrat. He’s not a Republican and he sure isn’t a conservative. But he’s a good actor and he knows how to manipulate his audience’s emotions and get cheep cheers. He himself isn’t one of the knuckle-draggers and neanderthals, but he knows how to attract them to his traveling circus. As they say, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” or something like that. He is very talented at making good use of “trigger” words to elicit the masses’ fears, anger and hunger for revenge. So, I think that the accusations might very well be correct, that he’s in it to tear apart the GOP on behalf of Democrats, and perhaps specifically Hillary (maybe she has something on him, who knows?). However, given how power hungry the establishment Repugnicans are, they probably will use every trick in the book to prevent The Donald from even getting the nomination regardless of primary and caucus results, like they did to Ron Paul. So, it will probably be Jeb or Ted vs. Hillary or Bernie. And if Obama’s FBI decides to indict Hillary, it probably won’t be Hillary.

Is There Really a War With Islam Going On?

On one side we have the conservatives, the nationalists, the neocons, and Christian warvangelicals all saying that we are in a cultural war with Islam, and that “radical Islam” is a redundancy. Those people want to further empower the government to “do something” to “protect us from Islamic terrorists,” they want the feds to either strengthen their NSA criminal spying, expand the U.S. military’s destruction in the Middle East, round up all the Muslims, or all the above.

On the other side we have the social justice warriors and social activists who want to outlaw “hate speech” and who want “sanctuary cities” to bring in Syrian or other Middle Eastern refugees. And one of those apparent social justice warriors, U.S. law enforcement commissar Loretta Lynch threatens to prosecute “actions predicated on violent talk,” referring to “anti-Muslim rhetoric.”

So, I tend to believe that this DOJ bureaucrat is yet another one who confuses mere words (that aren’t even threats) with actual physical violence. However, it seems to me that after hearing her discussion with a Muslim group on those matters, from which she has been quoted, she is clearly talking about prosecuting violent actions against Muslims or people perceived to be Muslims. She doesn’t seem to be saying that she is going to prosecute “anti-Muslim rhetoric.” So she wants to go after people who express “anti-Muslim rhetoric,” with the accusation that such rhetoric could lead to actual physical violence, even though the people expressing such verbal rhetoric are nevertheless peaceful. Yet, she is violently prosecuting the drug war against peaceful, innocent people with the full violent force of police and S.W.A.T. teams. So really it’s another example of government committing acts of violence against peaceful people, and against speech and political dissent. Nothing new here.

But there is still the issue of whether we are “at war with Islam,” and whether Islam is inherently a religion calling for violence against those who do not believe in it, those who criticize it and those accused of being apostates or “infidels.” Some people respond to assertions that Christians long ago had such culture wars and crusades of intolerance with accusations that it was the Islamists who started such wars and crusades.

In fact, just recently two Nederlanders covered a Bible with a Koran book-cover and read the Bible passages to passersby making them think those were Koran passages and surveyed their responses. Such passages included, according to the U.K. Mirror,

They include Timothy 2:12’s: “I do not allow a woman to teach” and (Deuteronomy) 25:12’s “You shall cut off her hand.” … Another passage from Leviticus 20:13 read: “If two men sleep with each other they will both have to be killed.”

And Pamela Geller and others have claimed that the Koran contains such violent rhetoric and she quotes from the Koran. Such quotes seem to indicate just as much violence and intolerance as the Bible’s quotes.

Now, I have Googled and wasn’t able to find any discussion of possible bias involved in the English translations of the Koran. But the problem isn’t the Koran, and the problem isn’t the Bible, or even anyone’s strict interpretation and adherence to what they think is in any religious document.

The problem is people who are lacking in moral scruples, lacking in conscience, whether they are Muslims, Americans, Christians, etc. But Donald Trump and the talk radio personalities are hysterical with all this “anti-Muslim” rhetoric and panic. They are like chickens running around with their heads cut off.

Speaking of heads being chopped off, there are the arguments over whether ISIS is a “State,” and there are arguments over whether ISIS is really “Islamic.” Yes, it is a “State,” because its controllers have taken power and control over several parts of Middle-Eastern territory, maintaining a monopoly of rule by force over the people of those territories. So that is a “State.” But there is no real difference between such a State and any criminal gang. Governments are criminal rackets, regardless of the bamboozled boobus’s faith in and allegiance to said rackets.

But why are so many millions of people, especially in these parts of Middle East and Asia, so primitive-minded and brainwashed to act and think so fanatically about Islam, the Koran, Allah, Muhammad, etc.? One reason is the Western rulers over the past century having been the control freaks, psychopaths and sadists that they are, with their deliberate manipulating of events in those territories, constantly causing chaos and oppression of those peoples. Why would the Western bureaucrats and cronies want to manipulate events and conditions over there to keep those societies primitive and prevent them from fully developing civilly and culturally? One reason is, just for kicks. Those who are attracted to power such as government monopolies enforced through threats and violence tend to be control freaks, psychopaths and sadists. But also, the Western bureaucrats have been manipulating things in those foreign territories to maintain a competitive advantage. How many major inventions, big discoveries or social advances have come from the Middle East in the past century?

But the West has been acting just as primitively. Western rulers have been guilty of the worst atrocities and mass murders over the past century. The U.S. government bureaucrats and their military with the bombing campaigns against civilians in Japan and Germany, including the atomic bombs on Japan murdering tens of thousands of innocents. And then there are the millions whose lives have been murdered, torn apart or displaced in Iraq since the 1990s. And all this has been rationalized by generations and millions of brainwashed American boobus sheeple who would buy the Brooklyn Bridge if enough propaganda were used. They pray to the almighty State, the U.S. government in Washington. They love their slave master.

So Islamic State or ISIS is really just a criminal gang maintaining autocratic rule over the people by force, threats and violence. Their rulers are really interested in accumulating wealth stolen from the people and living in luxury while the commoners continue to be impoverished, it seems to me. Their rulers and enforcers just love power and control, and money. I don’t believe Islamic State controllers’ sincerity as far as their stated belief in and adherence to the Koran. It’s all about the money, and the power. No different from the West. No different from what the U.S. government is — a racket. But the easily-fooled and manipulated American masses believe otherwise. Just as the easily-fooled and manipulated Middle-Eastern and Asian Islamic masses also believe in the sincerity of their rulers, and they fear them and that is how the rulers’ rule is maintained, and the millions of the enslaved masses obediently take the word of the Koran seriously.

And the Saudi rulers are of that same cloth as ISIS, as far as I’m concerned. The Saudi rulers became the rulers by being part of the royal family. I don’t believe their sincerity as far as adherence to Koran or Islam either, even though the regime has redefined as “terrorism” to include anyone who questions Islam or promotes atheistic thought, and anyone who seeks “to shake the social fabric or national cohesion, or calling, participating, promoting, or inciting sit-ins, protests, meetings, or group statements in any form, or anyone who harms the unity or stability of the kingdom by any means.” The “insulting Islam” stuff us just a cover, as I see it. They just like rolling in money and chopping people’s heads off.

In Turkey, their leader Erdogan is making that country more strictly Islamic and less secular. But I can’t believe his sincerity or his fellow Turkish bureaucrats’ sincerity with Islamic law either, given how Erdogan had a $615-million Presidential palace built for him at taxpayer expense, which itself goes against the Koran’s condemning greed.

So, is there really a war between Islam and the West, or a Western war on Islam, or vice versa? Nope. There is no war, no clash of civilizations.

But there has been a war being prosecuted by governments against their people, whether it’s the U.S. government against Americans or Saudis and Islamic State against their victims. Bureaucrats can easily act criminally against their people simply because the illegitimate apparatus of the State, its monopoly and its compulsory empowerment enable them to do that. Therefore all governments’ rulers are stealing and plundering from and enslaving their brainwashed and obedient masses. That is why the State attracts the bad guys to it. All forced-monopoly States are a scam and the worst get to the top, as Hayek wrote.

But what to do about the Islamic terrorism that seems to be coming from the Middle East and Asia being fomented, funded and supplied by Western regimes? At least, what should people in the U.S. do? A lot of nationalists, warmongers, government expansionists and internationalists won’t like this idea, but the U.S. government needs to close down all foreign U.S. military bases, embassies and other U.S. government apparatus, return all U.S. forces, troops, and diplomats to the U.S. (and, preferably putting them to work in the private sector). Let any American or group travel abroad for whatever reason, but with the knowledge that they are at their own risk. No restrictions on Americans’ right to travel, American businesspeople’s right to trade and associate with foreigners. And domestically, no restrictions on the people’s right to self-defense.

And regarding “foreign oil” that people are so worried about, the dependence of which Americans apparently can’t let go of, there’s plenty of oil within the states of the United States. The people of the states need to just drill and make use of all that oil in Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Alaska, regardless of what the feds say. Nullify all those unconstitutional and enslaving rules and restrictions imposed by the EPA, Energy Department, and so on. (In fact, close down the EPA, the Energy Department, and so on!)

But most of all, this “clash of civilizations” stuff. Given that the West has not been as civilized in reality as it has purported to have been, the people of the West need to look in the mirror and stop supporting Western governments’ wars of aggression on other territories and their hornets’ nests-poking foreign occupations as well.