But Will Donald Trump Continue Donating to Democrats after He Loses the Election?

I’m receiving tons of emails responding to my recent post on Donald Trump. No, not really. But I do have some further comments on all this Trump stuff.

Some people are perceiving this Presidential campaign as “important” because Donald Trump is shaking up the Establishment and others see the campaign as important because Trump is restoring the same kind of sense of national pride (such as it is) that Ronald Reagan seemed to do during the early 1980s.

Justin Raimondo says, in this analysis of Trump’s recent foreign policy speech, that non-interventionist libertarians should “point out (Trump’s) contradictions, recruit Trump’s supporters into a broader movement to change American foreign policy, and break the bipartisan interventionist consensus once and for all.” Raimondo also notes that the Trump “phenomenon” has a “larger significance” in that “the American people are waking up, and rising up.”

However, there have been plenty of wake-ups and rising up, such as with the 2011-2012 Occupy movement, the 2009-2011 Tea Party movement, and, in earlier times, the 1994 “Republican Revolution,” the 1980 “Reagan Revolution,” and so on. I don’t think this Trumpist nationalist populism is going to result in any kind of revolution as Raimondo seems to be hoping for. That is because many amongst the masses support an even further expansion of the federal government’s power and control: many of them are very anti-foreigner, anti-immigrant and they want a government wall on the border. Many of them are being bamboozled into accepting the post-9/11 police state, because they believe the FedGov’s exaggerations of threats by radical Islamic extremists. And many of them are just very easily romanced by Trump’s foul-mouthed, degenerate mindset. No, these people don’t want true change, they don’t want to dismantle much of the government, they want it expanded, they are not particularly supportive of restoring our freedom. If they were, they would have supported Ron Paul in 2012.

Speaking of Ron Paul, he also has an analysis of Donald Trump’s recent foreign policy speech. Like Justin Raimondo, Dr. Paul also refers to “we” when he probably really means the U.S. government, such as when referring to “we invaded Iraq,” and so on. One of the important messages I think libertarians should be giving others is the relationship between individualism and liberty. Collectivism is a very bad thing. As I wrote the last time I pointed this out, it is helpful to distinguish who’s who and who did this and who did that. The U.S. government and its military are the ones who have been committing the actions of violence and destruction, invasions and occupations, overseas. And I am not a part of that group. So, “we” did not invade Iraq, clearly it was the U.S. military who did that. Otherwise I think that Dr. Paul’s analysis of Trump’s speech is right on.

As I wrote in my earlier post this week, I disagree with Justin Raimondo on “rooting for” Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination and worse, winning the election. It seems to me that while Trump will not get any government wall built, he will step up the drug war rather than end it which is what needs to be done. He will step that up regardless of how many thousands and thousands more deaths or otherwise lives that have been harmed and ruined by the government than by drugs themselves in this 50-year failure. Economically, I will not be surprised to see a President Trump further dis free traders and order the U.S. government to seize control over and nationalize industries as a way to force them to stay in the U.S. Trump is very much like Obama in terms of government “stimulus,” good and hard. Trump is a moron, an ignoramus, and a control freak. He is not someone we should want to grab hold of all that power in Washington, someone to rule over us, which he would do with an iron golf club.

At American Thinker, Tom Trinko tells it like it is regarding Trump’s being just another a part of the “donor class,” as Trump brags about his “history of buying politicians,” and so on. He gives good examples of why not to support (or root for) Trump. But the article then goes on to promote Ted Cruz for President. Yech. Dracula and Cruella. But Cruz will not get the nomination. If the Establishment takes the nomination away from Trump, they will install another Bob Dole-John McCain-Willard Romney. They really want Hillary, who in fact will probably win 50 states if Trump is the actual Republican nominee. It will probably be slightly closer if Dracula gets the nomination, however.

It would also be nice to have an actual free-market capitalist and entrepreneur as President. Unfortunately, that could not be Donald Trump. This Politico article explains how Donald Trump was never a “self-made” millionaire or billionaire, how he not only inherited his father’s fortune and business but also inherited his father Fred Trump’s political connections, without which Donald could never have succeeded. Donald Trump has been relying on government largess, government powers and government tax-thefts all his life to get where he is today. When the FedGov collapses on its own weight just as the Soviet Union did, what will The Donald do? (Actually, in all fairness to the almost 70-year-old, he will probably have already keeled over and croaked by that time. Oh, well.)

And finally, based on my own observations of Donald Trump thus far, I think his emotional maturity seems to be stalled at about the 7th grade period, I guess that’s age 12 or so. I don’t think I can support or root for a guy who calls a lady who needs to breast-feed her baby “disgusting.”

Exciting Political Convention Fight Involving Republican Party Intruder vs. Establishment?

It looks like Donald Trump will probably get the 1237 required delegates leading into the Republican convention. What Ted Cruz is doing now in his already picking Carly Fiorina for VP this early in the race, in addition to Cruz and John Kasich cahooting to try to prevent Trump from getting that first-ballot nomination, are signs of desperation. These kinds of moves are those of political hacks, power-seekers, power-grabbers, usurpers, people who really just want to grab the reins of power at all cost. In other words, typical politicians.

The real reason that Donald Trump is receiving so many votes in these primaries is partly because there are a lot of gullible suckers out there who are emotionally gratified by Trump’s rhetoric at campaign appearances and in all the free news coverage Trump gets from the mainstream media, and partly because a lot of Democrats are voting in the open Republican primaries for Trump because they know that he’s the one Republican the Democrat nominee will most easily beat in November. Note how in closed Republican primaries Trump does not do nearly as well. And the mainstream media are giving Trump all that free air time because they also want him to be the (R) nominee, because they also know that Hillary will mop the floor with his silly-looking George Hamiltonian face.

But there are a lot of suckers out there. They like Trump’s “Make America Great Again” rhetoric, his militaristic rhetoric, his protectionist ignorance, and so on. A lot of these are nationalists, conservatives, anti-Establishment Republicans. But I want to see Trump lose the first ballot and then get shut out of the nomination on a subsequent ballot, no matter which other degenerate the Republicans choose, not just because he is a loathsome hypocrite and an ignoramus, but because Donald Trump is not a Republican. Trump was a registered Democrat from 2001 to 2009, and has gone back and forth between Republican and independent at other times. He has also contributed thousands and thousands of dollars to Democrat hacks, particularly during the mid-2000s to help bring back the Democrat majority in Congress. It is probably not because Trump wants some kind of “quid pro quo,” as he has maintained, but because he agrees with Democrats on many issues. And for those reasons I have asked in the past whether Trump is really a straw candidate and on behalf of Democrats or more specifically Hillary. I have also noted that in this interview (at a little after 11:00) with Hannity, Trump makes a possible Freudian slip when he says, “I want to beat the Republicans,” and he wasn’t referring to the primaries but the general election. But whatever. You can have him.

And the kinds of policies Trump favors and wants to further implement? We know he wants to expand Medicaid for all, a single payer scheme that “takes care of everyone.” But he says it’s not “single payer,” it’s called “Heart.” “Big Heart” and “Compassion,” yup. And as an article in the Examiner noted: “TrumpCare: a mixture of socialism and incoherence.” Trump also believes in “fair trade, not free trade.” In other words, he wants government-managed, government-directed trade. He does not believe in free markets. For Trump, making Americans have to spend more on American-made products rather than save money by buying foreign-made goods is the price we have to pay for Trump’s selfish need for control.

So, Trump wants Fairness, Heart, Compassion. I think I’ll toss my cookies now. And, oh yes, Trump thinks that eminent domain is a “wonderful thing.” Eminent domain is government theft of private property. Crony capitalists love to use the armed powers of government to either directly take wealth or property away from its rightful owners, or indirectly take from others via bureaucratic rules and regulations that keep those at the bottom at the bottom.

Now, there have been some libertarians who are supporting or at least “rooting for” Donald Trump, and who knows why. Some people like his anti-interventionist rhetoric. But that’s when he’s not spewing a lot of pro-interventionist rhetoric. I guess they’ll choose to ignore the pro-interventionism rhetoric to make the anti-interventionist rhetoric taste better, I don’t know. Among Trump’s foreign policy advisors are the anti-due process warmonger Sen. Jeff Sessions, anti-Islam paranoid Walid Phares, and Joe Schmitz, a Bush DoD “Inspector general” who blocked investigations of Bush administration officials and who then went to work for Blackwater. Well, so much for The Donald’s “anti-interventionist” policies.

Justin Raimondo has said he’s not supporting, only “rooting for” Donald Trump. Raimondo points to this article by Murray Rothbard, who gives three reasons to defend demagogues. One is because “they disrupt the body politic and stir things up.” So far so good. Trump is doing that. But the other reasons are that the demagogue appeals directly to the masses’ base emotions and goes over the heads of the State’s “bodyguards,” the “intellectuals” and the mainstream media who traditionally mold public opinion. However, Rothbard notes that the reason to support this kind of demagogue is because that demagogue is bringing “the truth” directly to the people. That is clearly not what Trump is doing. Trump is merely mirroring the anti-free market masses’ authoritarian-statist impulses, Build a government wall, restrict the rights of businesses and laborers to sell their products, services and labor as they see fit, restrict the rights of American consumers, and so forth. Trump’s message is, in other words, nothing any actual libertarians should support. Trump is anti-liberty, anti-private property, and anti-free markets if anyone ever was.

So Trump appeals to authoritarians and collectivists, those conservatives and nationalists who love central planning as the answer to “America’s problems,” whatever they might be. He appeals to believers in American Exceptionalism, in which the True Believers want the U.S. government to be the Ruler over the rest of the world, who support the U.S. military’s invasions and occupations of foreign territories that are not U.S. territories, and who want the U.S. government to interfere in the internal matters of other countries. In other words, it is the American Exceptionalists who are the real “globalists.”

I hear these conservatives on the radio and elsewhere complaining about “globalism,” and refer to Establishment Republicans and Democrats and others such as Zbignorant Brzezinski who are the “globalists,” and so on. Sure, that may be true, but this American Exceptionalism (i.e. favoring moral relativism and exempting U.S. bureaucrats from the Golden Rule) stuff is the true globalism if you ask me. These authoritarian sheeple are the ones who favor a “One World Government,” that is, one government ruling the world, and that government specifically being the U.S. government.

Instead of looking at what the U.S. government had already done to the Middle East in the 10 years prior to 9/11, the historically-ignorant authoritarian sheeple rely on the propaganda and lies of the U.S. government and its media stenographers, and then obediently support their new wars, further bombings and murders of innocents and provocations, occupations, and domestic police state for no good reason!

I think that so-called “patriots” and “libertarians” are forgetting that it’s the U.S. government that has been the biggest cause of most of the world’s grief, especially our own grief in America. What needs to be done is a thorough dismantling of the Washington apparatus, the national security state and all the fascist-socialist bureaucracies who send their little S.W.A.T. teams against innocent people for the sake of petty theft and power grabs. We don’t need government walls, more intrusions, more theft by governments of innocent people. What America needs is total decentralization and a return to freedom, free markets, due process and self-determination. We need freedom, dammit!

So all you anti-free market, anti-private property authoritarians and collectivists out there have your little love-fest with The Donald. I hope the Republicans lock him out even if he does get his 1237. It was meant to be that way, given the whole political party thing is nothing but a criminal racket to begin with.

Some Misc. Items

The Mises Institute posted a Penthouse interview of Murray Rothbard. The interviewer asks questions typically asked of libertarians who promote private property and freedom, those “But who will build the roads?” kinds of questions, and Murray gives very good answers. It’s an enlightening interview.

Lew Rockwell is not afraid to call out the National Review crowd as leftists, and just another wing of the thought-control police. As I have been saying, the neocons and conservatives are authoritarians just as much as the communists. Not much of a difference.

Laurence Vance provides libertarian solutions to today’s issues.

Dan Sanchez discusses the pretense of nation-building.

Kelley Vlahos explains how wartime Washington lives in luxury.

Jacob Hornberger says the drug war is teetering, and that’s a good thing.

Richard Ebeling on educational socialism versus the free market.

Don Boudreaux says there ain’t no such thing as free college education.

Robert Wenzel discusses free trade, no trade, crony trade, and Trump trade.

John Whitehead lists several everyday activities that are guaranteed to get you censored, surveilled, eventually placed on a government watch list, possibly detained and potentially killed.

Jonathan Turley writes about Frau Merkel’s anti-free speech tyranny on behalf of the Turkey president.

Paul Sperry writes about the Saudi role in 9/11.

Joachim Hagopian has a thing or two to say about the global warming hoax and Paris climate talks (Right now, today at noon on April 26, it is 36° F in Manchester, NH,  34° F in Burlington, VT, and 33° F in Portland, ME.)

Jim Ostrowski on Trumping the Left.

And Jeff Jacoby says, Let the patient pay the piper, and the price of health care will fall.

LGBT Activists’ War on Privacy, Dignity, and Common Decency

Here is my latest article on LewRockwell.com, LGBT Activists’ War on Privacy, Dignity, and Common Decency

April 25, 2016

The latest victim of the PC crowd’s intolerance and intimidation tactics has been sports analyst and former Red Sox player Curt Schilling, who was released from ESPN. His crime? He wrote a sarcastic Facebook post on recent transgender, public restroom and shower controversies.

Merely promoting common decency and civility, Schilling sympathizes with the ladies in the ladies room who are uncomfortable with males intruding into their ladies room. But Schilling’s indiscretion is a no-no for the PC crowd, apparently.

The colleges and public schools seem to be brainwashing the young to believe and accept the latest LGBT nonsense. “Social Justice Warriors,” as the activists seem to be called today, are really anti-social and their activism consists of the use of aggression, intrusiveness and coercion — certainly not tolerance, and the idea of live and let live.

How did our society get to this point, in which males are being given the right to access the ladies room?

Legally, a big step toward such societal irrationality occurred with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Americans chose to ignore the moral violation by the State of private property rights and freedom of association when the Civil Rights Act enmeshed private property along with government-controlled functions. So there are “public accommodations” laws in which even private business owners may not discriminate against someone based on one’s color or race, or one’s sex or national origin.

But when anti-discrimination laws now include certain groups based on their lifestyles and private sexual activities, that is an entirely different matter. The legal activism is the activists’ way of forcing not only social acceptance, but forcing access into the private lives and private property of others.

The activists are becoming increasingly personal now. Such legal inclusions are now becoming personally invasive of the private activities and moral beliefs of the activists’ victims.

You see, the subjects of private bathroom or showering activities, nudity, sexuality and sexual-oriented lifestyles are very uncomfortable subjects for some people. That is because those are private matters. They are personal matters.

The activists say that traditionalists have a problem with their sexuality and their bodies, when no, it is those on the left who have the problem. Not only do the LGBT activists and their leftist cohorts show a lack of decency and discretion, and a lack of understanding of privacy and dignity in regards to human sexuality, but they now seem to side with intruders and invaders.

There have now been many lawsuits by LGBT activists against private businesses such as a bakery run by Bible-believing Christians who didn’t want to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. The absurdity of forcing the bakers to have to do extra labor for someone whose lifestyle the bakers personally oppose became even more absurd when Gov. Gary Johnson was asked at a recent “Libertarian” Party debate whether a Jewish baker should have to bake a Nazi wedding cake, and he answered, “That would be my contention, yes.”

Well excuse me, Gary, but if you’re going to call yourself a “libertarian,” then you should at least understand the basic principles of freedom of thought and conscience, private property rights and voluntary association, no?

For those who believe in freedom and the idea of live and let live, of course the Jewish baker or Christian baker or atheist baker should not have to bake a cake for anyone for whom he does not want to bake a cake. If prospective consumers don’t like that, they can go to a different baker. Which is exactly what most of those same-sex couples who sued bakers, photographers, and florists, did.

But, despite finding businesses who would serve them, the activists nevertheless felt it necessary to take innocent people to court for no good reason. Those lawsuits are the actions of bullies, those bent on coercion and intimidation. These activists are the ones who turn to the aggressive armed forced of the State to carry out their demands on others.

In contrast, those who say, “Okay, you don’t want to bake a cake for me, so I will go to a different baker. And that’s the end of that,” are the ones who believe in live and let live and who behave with a sense of common decency.

And now the transgender issue, and the various laws and bills regarding public bathrooms and locker rooms/showers. Transgender people are those who identify as the sex or gender opposite of what they really are biologically. It is not that an anatomical male is really a female, but that he believes or says he is a female. In my opinion, a lot of these people just seem brainwashed especially by their early school teachers, mentors, friends, family members, and social media.

Besides the courts, apparently teachers, students and families seem very accepting of a teenager who was born female but says she is a male and wants to use the males’ facilities in school. But how are all these people developing such acceptance of this Orwellian nonsense?

Just a few examples of the influencing factors from recent years include laws mandating schools teach only positive perspectives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, “anti-bullying” laws being expanded to outlaw criticism of homosexuality in schools and force “diversity training,” and the Obama administration’s promotion of homosexuality and transgenderism at the kindergarten level. There have even been training videos for activist teachers in the public schools on how to indoctrinate the kids. So the influences aren’t just coming from pop culture and social media, that’s for sure.

A few days ago this lady called the Howie Carr Show to say that her 14-year-old is transgender. The caller said that she knew this since he (or she) was 4. I was hoping that the caller was just one of those local comedians who calls talk shows and fools people, but that was not the case here. Oh, well.

And that reminded me of this Boston Globe op-ed by a lady who refers to her daughter as her “son” and as “he” when her daughter really is a “she.” So the lady is raising her daughter as a boy even though the child is only 5 years old. Can you believe this?

It is just disgraceful what some “adults” are doing to their kids psychologically, out of ignorance or ideology, or for other irrational reasons. Some people even think that this should be considered a form of child abuse as well. Are there really a lot of parents like this?

Dr. Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins Hospital has pointed out that 70-80% of children expressing transgender feelings had shed such feelings over time. They did so naturally, as a natural part of the course of childhood. Perhaps patience really is a virtue. And perhaps the Globe op-ed writer mom might consider that, as it is not too late given the child is only 5 years old. Just sayin’.

Dr. McHugh also noted that transgender people have shown higher rates of depression and suicide following gender reassignment surgery. Again, however, the controversy now is surrounding mostly those who haven’t had such surgical procedures, but merely those who believe or say they really are someone of the opposite sex.

The bottom line here is that the transgender ideology is doing great harm to children and to future generations. What we really need are a return to respect for the dignity of others and for private property rights, and, most of all, we need to get rid of government schools!

Politicians Involved in Alleged Union Thuggery?

The Boston Globe has a major piece on a federal investigation of union “strong-arm tactics.” Hmm, since when are “strong-arm tactics” ever associated with unions? Why, that never happens! And apparently it is involving Boston Mayor Mahty Walsh, who was a pinky-ring union thug union leader prior to his becoming Mayor of Boston.

Union membership has declined from about 24% of workers in 1973 to about 11% in 2014, according to WSJ. That is because there are a lot of workers who don’t like being pushed around and their union dues spent by union hacks on political campaigns the workers oppose. In my view, union membership should be voluntary. There should be no coercion in the relationships between employers and workers, from either side. And I am totally opposed to “collective bargaining.” Individual workers should negotiate contracts with their employers. “Collective bargaining” just doesn’t even  make sense to me.

Walter Block asks, Is there a right to unionize? and has this political economic analysis on labor relations, unions, and collective bargaining. And he also asks, Are unions criminal gangs? I have no answer to those questions, as I have not fully studied the issue. I do, however, have a good sense of right versus wrong, and it’s wrong morally to commit acts of violence, or even to use coercion by threatening violence against others and perhaps also if such threats are implied threats, “if you know what I mean,” and so on.

Another thing about unions. Walter Williams has noted the racist history of unions and their support of the minimum wage to shut out black or other minority workers. Thomas Sowell elaborates on those important points. Now, I am not suggesting that the mayor of Boston might be a racist or that his possible alleged union thuggery may have been to shut out a non-union contractor who possibly employed more minorities than Walsh’s preferred union contractors, I am not suggesting that. In fact, it is probably not the case, and, like most union cronies, Walsh would want to protect his fellow union workers regardless of anyone’s race. In my view, Boston does not have any more overall institutionalized racism than the rest of America in general, despite the terrible false reputation of racism that Boston’s judicially-imposed forced busing caused during the 1970s.

Nevertheless I am opposed to “strong-arm tactics,” no matter who is using them, whether it’s from the unions or their leaders or minions, or during political caucuses and conventions, and so forth.

Social Security’s Redistribution-of-Wealth Aspect

In my previous post I linked to Jacob Hornberger’s post asserting that Social Security is welfare just like food stamps. Now he has some further elaborations on the welfare aspect of Social Security and the immorality of Social Security. And today he notes that if Social Security and other welfare programs are repealed along with the taxes which are taken from the people to fund the programs, then families will retain much more of their own money and earnings that the government won’t be stealing from them. Thus it will be much easier for them to support their elderly family members. That’s the way things used to be. It sure is a more honest approach, and the way a free society would do things.

Far Out, Man: Donald Trump Wants Government to Show Compassion and Big Heart

This campaign season has been really loony-tunes and Orwellian. We have conservatives who are supporting a left-liberal progressive Donald Trump who had been a registered Democrat for quite a few years in recent decades and who has contributed thousands and thousands of dollars in campaign donations to … Democrats.

Sounding like he has gone total psychedelic, in a recent interview with Michael Savage Donald Trump said we “have to have big heart,” and that’s what should determine government policies. “You need tremendous compassion, tremendous heart.”

So now he’s a flower child? Okay, whatever.

“We have to take care of Social Security, we have to take care of Medicare, we have to take care of our people, we have to come up with, you know, a plan to replace Obamacare, which is a total disaster. We’ll repeal it and replace it.”

Replace ObamaCare with nationalized health care, single payer (same as Obama has always really wanted), which is what delusional Trump has said he wants to do. Trump does not believe in free markets in health care, which are what made America’s medical care system the best in the world. Trump want SovietCare.

But “Compassion” and “Big Heart” are the motivations behind the most disastrous government policies in history. Donald Trump is opposed to freedom and free markets, but conservatives support him anyway.

And on Social Security, most people want to “save” Social Security, even though it is nothing but a redistribution-of-wealth welfare scheme, as Jacob Hornberger explains just today. You see, most people don’t want to abandon Social Security, despite its moral hazard, its immoral foundation which involves involuntarily taking from some and giving to others. A lot of people really believe that they put money into some account and they will withdraw it when they retire. But, as Hornberger explains, that is not the case.

It is time that people at least overcome their denial (or ignorance), and deal with the truth about Social Security. Just how much are the people willing to let future generations suffer with this illicit scheme? I know, it’s not pleasant to acknowledge that one has been robbed, yet that is exactly what all this has been.

So no, Donald Trump, we do not have to “take care of Social Security and Medicare,” we have to restore our freedom, so that everyone can do what they want with their own wealth and earnings and government bureaucrats can’t lawfully steal it from them. And so everyone can have the freedom to plan and save for their own retirements and government bureaucrats can’t interfere with the people’s lives. Restoring our freedom is what really will “make America great again”!

Politics Is a Racket

Just this morning I heard a little bit of Dr. Grace on the radio. She’s the wife of another talk radio personality on another station, Jeff Kuhner, and Dr. Grace replaced Mike Gallagher in the morning. I was displeased at that change, as, while I don’t agree with him on everything, Mike Gallagher seems to go out of his way to be objective, to find out the whole story. Or as Larry Glick used to say, “The story behind the story.” But I see the station moved Gallagher up to late evening, which is past my bedtime, oh well.

But I heard a little of Dr. Grace this morning and her husband from the other radio station, Jeff Kuhner, called in and it sounded like they were disagreeing over the importance of some candidate winning people’s votes in primaries but the losing candidate taking all the delegates. I really like to hear disagreements on the radio, but in this one Dr. Grace was doing things like sounding a buzzer (like at hockey games, or when someone got a wrong answer on a game show) and maybe playing some other sound effects. That was hysterical. Now that I want to hear, and it’s especially delightful hearing this from a married couple on the radio. I was waiting for the throwing of dishes and slamming doors, but alas I didn’t hear any of that. They still cracked me up. Perhaps if they get divorced they can continue their arguing on the radio, but add the throwing of dishes and slamming of doors. Now, if you’re a divorcing couple then I apologize for causing any upset with my references to throwing dishes and slamming doors. In the old days, Jerry Williams constantly argued with callers, called them a “biddy” or a “Nazi” and so on. That was the good old days of talk radio when we really heard genuine disagreements. These days it’s mainly the host being conservative and taking calls from other conservatives who agree with him, mostly.

But on the issue of one candidate winning the people’s votes in a primary election but the other candidate taking all the delegates, well, that’s politics. The political world is with people trying to grab the reins of power and control over others, power and control over their neighbors’ lives and property and power over strangers. That is what the State is. It is all about legislating your will onto others, enforced by the State’s armed goons. Politics and the State are all about coercion, force, violence, aggression and compulsion. The State is the opposite of what a genuinely free and civilized society is all about. The free society is all about being voluntary. You may not impose your will onto me, and I may not impose my will onto you. All associations, contracts, interactions, transactions, trades, and relationships are voluntary. No stealing, no defrauding, no initiating of physical aggression against others, no violations of the persons and property of others. In contrast, the State is all about stealing, defrauding, aggression and violations by some people of the persons and property of others.

So it shouldn’t be of any surprise whatsoever that the process involved in these elections is all about corruption, with winners losing and losers winning, “strong-arm tactics,” voter fraud, cheating, multiple voting, votes getting thrown out or “ignored” by the little old ladies with blue hair working at the polling places, and so on. Politics is the way of life for those climbing over others to grab the State’s power and control so they can officially climb over others and steal from them via legislation, coercion, aggression, and from the guns and badges of their enforcers. But I don’t think that either Jeff Kuhner or his wife Dr. Grace really understand these things. They both continue with their support of either Trump or Cruz, or any Republican no matter how left-liberal-progressive as is the case with Trump, or no matter how warmongering and flip-flopping and inconsistent as is the case with Cruz.

The Republicrat Party will continue to use the armed power of government to steal from you, and imprison you if you get in its way.

Politics is not the answer to society’s decline. Freedom is the answer.

More News and Commentary

Bill Buppert says that the State is always a police state.

Kurt Nimmo examines what will not be included in the 9/11 “28 pages.”

Ron Paul notes that the word “liberal” used to mean freeing society from the shackles of the State.

Jack Perry suggests that it may be time for a parting of the ways with Washington.

Dan Sanchez asks, What if the Empire held an election and nobody came?

Ludwig von Mises on the ethics of capitalism.

Matthew McCaffrey asks, What’s so moral about moral hazard?

Thorsten Polleit says that when cash is banned, freedom is gone.

Larry White is against currency prohibitionism.

Jed Graham on minimum wage increases and retail job losses.

Butler Shaffer discusses infantile paralysis on campus.

Barry Farber on Vaxxed and Big Pharma/CDC lies on vaccines.

Trevor Timm on Bernie Sanders reminding voters of Hillary’s support for Iraq War

Jacob Hornberger discusses the inanity of the Cold War.

Don Boudreaux on the American College of Physicians’ call to action on climate change and its alleged catastrophic health effects.

Robert Wenzel comments on Bruce Springsteen’s cancellation of North Carolina concert.

William Grigg asks, When will Prohibition finally end?

Laurence Vance discusses the newest victims of discrimination.

Dr. Mercola on the atrocious state of cancer treatment in the U.S.

Human Rights Watch on Israeli police abuse of detained children.

And David Palumbo-Liu on the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The Neighborhood J. Edgar Hoovers

This is from the 1970s British TV comedy Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

The Decline of Convention Civility and Decency

LewRockwell.com reprinted a 2008 column by Butler Shaffer, which was his description of the 2008 Minnesota state GOP convention for Presidential election nomination. Butler gives a good description of how the civility and decency of past conventions have declined. Here are some excerpts:

If there was one sentiment that dominated this convention, it was the stark fear, by the party faithful, that Ron Paul’s message might actually be heard by the delegates…Paul’s message might remind Republicans of the importance of policies driven by moral principles; that ideas do have consequences…

…

While I felt a good deal of sympathy for the Ron Paul supporters — who presented the only solid base of decency I saw exhibited — I do think that if these people want to participate in politics, they need to become adept at playing the procedural and tactical games that go with it without, in the process, becoming a part of the problem. I noticed, for instance, that there were three-floor microphones from which delegates could address the chair. Around each of these microphones were some ten to twelve apparent McCain supporters not waiting to ask any questions, but to block access by any of the Paulists. As I watched this, I was reminded of visits I had made to China where I observed how effectively the Chinese were able to get through crowds with a pair of sharp elbows, a tactic the Paul supporters might have adopted.

…

Perhaps my greatest sympathy, however, went out to a man who wasn’t even in attendance: Jesus. I am not a religious person, but I do believe a man like this deserved far better treatment than he got from this crowd. Speaker after speaker expressed his or her love and devotion to Jesus, at the same time cheering on any and every expression of pro-war sentiment. When one delegate — presumably of Ron Paul’s persuasion — made a motion to allow those who opposed the Iraq War to be heard, he was greeted with a thunderous chorus of boos. I imagined what might have transpired had Jesus been a delegate and asked to address the convention on the essence of his message: love and peace. (Full article…)

Do the True Believers Really Deserve What They Are Getting in the Election Nominating Process?

Donald Trump has been complaining that the primary and caucus process is “rigged,” mainly as a response to Ted Cruz’s winning all the Colorado delegates, even though Cruz is winning them by playing by the rules. And Trump is correct that the whole process is rigged, because the rules for each state’s primary, caucus or convention are all different, some convoluted and some intentionally manipulative to help insider power-grabbers and lock out anti-Establishment types. So  candidates (such as the scheming and conniving Cruz) had better go into the process prepared and knowing the rules for each state’s party process. As I’ve written before, party politics is a racket.

But of course the whole process is “rigged,” Donald, as that is what politics is, a rigged scheme, a racket. We have all these very dishonest people who climb to the top in these parties and political offices, people who perhaps initially may have good intentions, but really in the end they like the idea of acquiring offices of political power and control over others. That is what government is. It’s an apparatus which provides the means for power-seekers to exercise power over their neighbors. It is not a “fair” scheme. The State is never ethical or moral, because its agents have the authority to be above the law. The State is therefore a racket. A criminal enterprise. So of course the processes by which to become an agent of the State is “rigged,” inherently corrupt and attracts the worst of the worst.

Yes, there are those rare times in which someone honorable and decent becomes a part of the system, such as former Congressman Ron Paul, who stuck to his moral principles despite the hatchet campaigns against him. In his Presidential campaigns he tried to get to a position in which he could implement some necessary changes to the system. In 2012 Dr. Paul came close, but the rigged system enabled all the cheating, voter fraud and rules changes which effected in locking him out of a nomination which voters seemed to want him to have (despite those other voters in the Republican primaries who oppose the Golden Rule, the true believers in American Exceptionalism who oppose the rule of law and equal treatment under the law, such as the South Carolina neanderthals who booed Dr. Paul’s mentioning of the Golden Rule at a debate, and so on).

So, while Ron Paul had been the rare ethical and decent politician who advocated moral principles, freedom and free markets, now we have Donald Trump, the unethical pol masquerading as a “businessman.” Okay, Trump is a businessman, but certainly no believer in free markets or private property. No, Trump is anti-market and would arrest honest businessmen for hiring workers not approved by or registered with the grubby gubmint in Washington, and he wants to build a gubmint wall on the border. Talk about against free markets, and obstructing markets. And many of the True Believers agree with him on those anti-free market, anti-American, socialist views. As far as I’m concerned they deserve their Reality TV Idol to be cheated and his delegates stolen. They also support someone who gave thousands and thousands of dollars to corrupt, socialist politicians including Hillary and other Democrats, and to the corrupt and criminal Clinton Foundation. Yech.

And given this socialist Trump’s love for eminent domain, for government theft of private property, perhaps he will use local governments’ eminent domain powers to steal the homes and properties away for those very True Believers who love him so much. Do the conservative Trump supporters even know that he wants nationalized health care, single payer, SovietCare?

And please don’t be fooled by the faux “conservative” Ted Cruz, who has spent much of his adult life feeding at the public trough. Cruz is someone who supported “fast track” to push the TPP ahead. So he wants government involved in the people’s trade matters. That’s not a supporter of free markets.

And Ted Cruz, like Donald Trump, praises the Bureaucracy’s interference with the travel and movements of millions, and who wants to build a Berlin Wall that will be used by future ‘Crats to keep the people in. It’s amazing how these Rethuglicans and Democrooks can fool so many gullible people and get so many people to support them and vote for them. I’ve been listening to both Glenn Beck and Steve Deace on the radio and they really are Cruz True Believers, which is a bit of cognitive dissonance given that both of them seem to preach Christian moral values from the radio pulpit. Deace of course is less preachy and thus more listenable.

I think that those people who really are conservative, who believe in moral values, private property and freedom in general, but who dismiss Ron Paul at the same time they take seriously crackpots like Ted Cruz and blowhards like Trump, do so because of so many years of deeply instilled, flag-waving pro-government propaganda. They believe government propagandists in governments’ excusing their wars of aggression overseas (such as Iraq and Afghanistan), and they believe the lies being told by the mainstream media stenographers to rationalize murdering innocents overseas and occupying their lands. I can see why so many of them are anti-immigration, anti-foreigner, because they are nationalists and collectivists. The Trumpbots’ group identity, based on Nation and race as well, is more of a self-identifier for them than their own individual identity could be, as the recent article in the Federalist pointed out. And for Donald Trump to say he likes Ayn Rand, the “rugged individualist,” is extreme absurdity given that his whole campaign is based on collectivism, collectivism, and more collectivism. (Doh!)

But also many conservatives, Trump supporters and Cruz supporters alike, believe strongly in their religious ideologies particularly from their Bible. Their response to Common Core and the federal Department of Education is not to totally separate education and State, privatize all the schools including getting local governments out of the picture, which is what is necessary to restore freedom in education. No, their response to Common Core and federalized diktats is to bring God back to public schools (i.e. government schools), bring back the Pledge of Obedience and saluting a flag, bring back the Bible to public government schools, and so on. And they want the law of the land to reflect their religious ideologies, superseding the moral principles which actually did make America great: private property, free markets, voluntary trade and contract, freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and freedom of association.

As with getting ALL government out of the kids’ education, in the medical area the proper response to ObamaCare is not to “repeal and replace,” replacing it with RepublicanCare, i.e. continued governmental intrusions into everybody’s medical matters just rearranging the deck chairs to make it appear less intrusive. No, the answer to that issue is to further repeal. Repeal ALL governmental intrusions into the people’s medical matters, including Medicare and Medicaid, medical-related regulations and licensure. And if you are serious in wanting to restore the “conservative values” and moral principles (of private property and voluntary association and voluntary contract) that made America great, then you would have to repeal, dismantle and abolish Social Security. You see, a lot of people have been indoctrinated into believing that the Social Security System gives people some sort of a retirement account, and you get back what you put into it. No, Social Security is merely a redistribution tax, and the funds which are taken from you involuntarily are placed into the federal government’s general treasury fund, which Congress has been stealing and spending and squandering. There is no retirement fund waiting for you. There’s no “account,” which many people believe there is.

Once you are able to face the truth that Social Security is nothing but a compulsory government-run “retirement” scheme, and a scam, and that the taxation required to fund that and everything else in Washington is involuntary, i.e. robbery, and face the truth about every other scam in Washington, then maybe the people can finally make some changes in our society. But until then, it will be business as usual. It will be crime as usual.

So, given that the entire apparatus in Washington is a racket, a criminal enterprise, is it any wonder that the election process that the people use to get into the act is itself a scam, is “rigged,” and is thoroughly the racket that the State itself is?

What Will Happen in November?

What will happen in November? Who cares? You know, it’s really sad to hear all these radio talk shows obsessively discussing this ongoing election for President. A lot of people are really worked up about whether this or that person will get the nomination or elected in November. What a waste of time, and a waste of money as well for those who are irresponsible enough to be sending their hard-earned money to those power-seekers and power-grabbers. But most of all, what a waste of emotional energy that so many people are investing in these kinds of things.

The truth is, no one President or political party is going to “save America,” or protect us from terrorists or otherwise foreign aggressors. As long as people remain faithful and devoted to the very system of centralized power and territorial monopoly which has been the cause of the problems, the situation of economic stagnation and weakened security will continue to get worse.

I think there was some kind of chance for real substantive change had Ron Paul gotten elected President. I know, many people out there have a negative view of Ron Paul based on all the propaganda and smears against him throughout his campaigns. But that was all due in part because of many people’s unwillingness to consider greatly diminishing the centralized structure in Washington, and in part because of many people’s child-like faithful dependence on government to protect them from the “bad guys.”

Another issue is many people’s inability to objectively consider facts of history, such as when someone points out the historical record of U.S. government actions prior to 9/11. Many people are emotionally immature even as adults and react to a telling of such earlier events prior to 9/11 with the same kind of emotional hurt feelings as a child whose classmates insulted the child’s mother or father. They don’t even want to hear of the possibility that their own government (that many people view deep down as a parent) contributed to the conflicts overseas. But that is exactly the case.

And also, is there any other candidate for political office who is willing to tell the truth about how the government acquires its funding? It’s through taxation, which is involuntary, and is lacking of any actual voluntary contract between the so-called services provider (government) and the citizens. If a transaction is involuntary, such as when the government demands that you must pay this certain proportion of your income whether you agree or not, then that is an act of theft. In politics, or in Washington, only Ron Paul has openly acknowledged this truth. A lot of people just brush that assertion off with a wave of the hand, in their brainwashed devotion to government authority and its crimes, and they side with the robber: “Yes, please take my money from me, convince me that you’re giving me something of value in return (even though it is nothing of the sort)” is the common theme of the masses.

Is there any candidate now who tells the truth not only about government’s theft of private wealth or property, and government’s own culpability in its own decades and decades of provocations of foreigners to act against Americans? Of course not. Either they all know the truth and don’t care because they just drool for power and control over others, or they don’t know the truth or understand the system for what it is and they too live under the child-like delusions of grandiosity that mommy and daddy government can or should be empowered to take care of the people.

There are a lot of young people out there who were brought up in the post-9/11 era. Which happens to also be the era of political correctness intolerance. The propagandistic media and government-school robots have influenced the young people to such an extent that the ideas of freedom are being flushed down the memory hole right before our very eyes. Those ideas of freedom include self-ownership, private property and private property rights, freedom of association, free exchange and the voluntary contract.

Covetousness, coercion and aggression are now the way of life in America, and the covetous, coercive and aggressive ones, on the left and on the right (and all points between), use the armed police power of government to implement their agendas against others.

“Civil rights” now means that some people have a “right” to force themselves onto the private property of others, and the right to demand that others do extra labor to serve them. A lot of young people now don’t see that as a bad thing, as they are now heavily influenced by this “Social Justice” crap, which is NOT justice, but in many cases just revenge, aggression and theft. Unfortunately there are some on the “conservative” side who say they oppose this “Social Justice” and political correctness degeneracy, but they themselves are not articulating the importance of self-ownership, private property and voluntary association as values and principles which need to be saved.

No, instead, they want gay marriage made illegal, they want religion and prayer brought back to the public schools, and so on. And while defending the Christian baker’s refusal to bake a cake for a gay wedding, many “Christians” and conservatives would not defend the right of atheist bakers to refuse to bake a cake for a Christian wedding. No mention or understanding of private property, freedom of association or voluntary contract. One of those I don’t hear discussing those principles is Ted Cruz. He’s the one who preaches the importance of “protecting innocent human life” and then promises to “carpet bomb” innocent human lives overseas. I hope the elites of the Establishment Republican Party lock him out of the nomination, by cheating, rules changes, or whatever they can do. I really can’t stand that schmuck.

And I don’t think I’ve seen a worse group of degenerates running for President than right now. They keep getting worse and worse in terms of their character, their inability to question the immoral system we live under, their ignorance and stupidity, and their dishonesty. I can’t believe all the sheeple who have been flocking to Donald Trump because of his sick Reality-TV influence on them. But despite all the crowds he has been getting at those rallies, they are in a very small minority. It looks like he will not get the 1237 delegates needed to win the Rethuglican nomination on the first ballot, and so obviously the elites of the Establishment Republican Party will lock him out the nomination as well. And I hope they do, with all their rules changes, voter fraud, cheating and whatever they can between now and the convention. You might as well have Bozo the Clown as their nominee. (With apologies to Bozo the Clown, of course. He’s much too respectable for this.)

So anyway, the young people need to learn about the ideas of freedom, and that centralization of power is a bad thing, that government monopoly is a bad thing, and that it is a big mistake to depend on bureaucrats to protect you from aggressors, from thieves, frauds, and murderers, when they themselves, those bureaucrats, are the worst aggressors, thieves, frauds and murderers of society. They keep starting wars and imposing deadly sanctions on other peoples of other societies. And it looks like the criminals who rule over us are going to impose price controls. Expect a Venezuela-like situation in the U.S., with empty store shelves, power outages, water shortages, and so on. How will you young people be able to power up your stupid little iPhones and other gadgets, waste time on Facebook, and shop for the latest tasteless crap at the stores when they are all closed down?

The real solution to society’s problems is to go the other way, to decentralize, re-localize, restore private property rights and turn our coercive society, a society with rule by threats and aggression, into a voluntary society of peace and freedom.

Tax-Cutting Activist Barbara Anderson, R.I.P.

Barbara Anderson has died at age 73. She was the leading tax-cutting activist of Massachusetts for over 35 years, as the executive director of the Citizens for Limited Taxation and Government, whose 1980 Prop 2 1/2 ballot question imposed limits on Massachusetts cities and towns’ property tax increase rates. Since then, several communities have overridden Prop 2 1/2, and raised their property owners’ taxes significantly. The latest property tax victims were in the People’s Republic of Brookline.

Howie Carr has this column on her and gives some details on her work over many years (in addition to Carr’s usual wisecracks, of course). For several years, Barbara Anderson would appear on the Jerry Williams Show on the radio, and she, Carr and Williams appeared together weekly as “The Governors.” It was a weekly anti-Michael Dukakis-fest and great talk radio. Those were the days, as Archie and Edith would say.

Here is a YouTube video of a discussion on politics shortly after the 2014 elections, with Barbara Anderson and two other Massachusetts political activists. It’s an interesting discussion, including Barbara bringing up the fact that every tax hike is a pay cut (and every tax cut is a pay raise!).

Sadly, in these later years, Barbara was diagnosed with leukemia, and one of her causes was fighting for the right of the people to die with dignity. She was advocating for the very controversial “doctor-assisted suicide” bill, which is still in consideration in Massachusetts. There are those who want to end their lives, maybe elderly or very sick, and they need help doing it, but don’t want their doctors to be unjustly arrested and thrown in jail because of it. It is indeed unfortunate that there are those who would deny someone her right to end her own life by her own control and direction, and who instead would force her by law to stay alive, in pain and with increasing suffering. Shame on those people.

Here is Barbara Anderson’s very last column from the Salem News. It is a column which she wrote knowing that she was in her last days. R.I.P., Barbara.

Some Misc. Items

28pages.org notes that 60 Minutes will do a major story this Sunday (April 10) on the linkage between 9/11 and Saudi Arabia (as I referred to here), and the related 28 redacted pages from the joint Senate and House intelligence inquiry prior to the 9/11 Commission’s report on 9/11.

Laurence Vance comments on the moral bankruptcy of just war theory.

Philip Giraldi on the FBI-iPhone controversy and “Government Hackers, Inc.”

Jim Davies discusses trade, free and managed.

Richard Ebeling says that this year’s Presidential politics equals continuing Big Government.

Ron Paul comments on the Vietnam War at 50 and asks, Have we learned nothing?

John Whitehead responds to Hillary Clinton stating that “the unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights.”

Glenn Greenwald discusses how governments exploit the term “terrorism” for their own self-serving reasons.

Glenn Reynolds says that juries should rein in overly-powerful prosecutors.

Robert Wenzel writes about Jerry Brown, the immoral governor of California.

Jacob Hornberger comments on minimum wage smartness in Switzerland.

Scott Sumner says that socialism is harder than it looks.

James Bovard comments on Donald Trump’s protectionist views.

Mark Brandly writes about the U.S. government’s ownership of more land than you think.

Andrew Bacevich says, Let’s end America’s hopeless war for the Middle East.

Joseph Stromberg on war of pure defense.

Wendy McElroy on what sports can teach us about politics.

Paul Joseph Watson with a story on government’s fear of the public learning more about the dangers of vaccines.

Justin Raimondo on the revolt against NATO.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth asks, Are women paid less than men? (.pdf)

Bill Sardi has some important and useful information on vitamin C.

Jack Perry on America’s nuclear cold war casualties.

And Washington’s Blog summarizes why you shouldn’t question the government’s conclusions on 9/11.