Jacob Hornberger has some questions for the Presidential debates.
Was FDR a Champion or Opponent of Liberty?
Here is a debate on whether President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was good or bad for liberty. The debate is between controversial British publisher Conrad Black and Robert P. Murphy of the Mises Institute and the Independent Institute.
Was the Creation of Israel Compatible with Libertarianism?
Tom Woods recently hosted a libertarian debate on Israel. On his blog, he writes,
With such libertarian luminaries as Murray Rothbard and Walter Block at odds with regard to the creation of Israel and its conformity or otherwise to libertarian principles, it seemed sensible to host a debate on the subject. The resolution: “Israel was founded on the basis of legitimate homesteading of land and reclamation of lost Jewish property from previous generations of Jews.”
Arguing in the affirmative is Rafi Farber, and in the negative is Jeremy R. Hammond.
Should Gary Johnson Be Cordially Excluded from the Presidential Debates?
I’ll admit that I’ve been critical of Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party. But lately I have noted that he is the only candidate who has said anything about making cuts in the federal budget as well as abolishing whole departments. He also has a good record in the private sector as an entrepreneur with his construction business and in the government sector as a governor having vetoed many bills and cutting budgets and cutting taxes as well. And I’ve been hinting that perhaps we can ignore his really stupid statements and some of his really bad, anti-liberty positions as well.
However, I think that when Johnson is dissing the Libertarian Party’s principles of free markets, freedom of association and private property rights, I guess he is telling us that he is no different from Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in being unprincipled statists and collectivists.
Johnson is telling us that people don’t have the right to their own property, to associate with whomever they choose, and that it’s okay to force people to do this or that against their will, that making things involuntary is just fine with him.
Johnson stated that “some of the baggage the Libertarian Party carries is that it’s ‘survival of the fittest’,” so “we’re not in that camp.” And part of the “baggage” Johnson referred to was the LP’s past advocacy for abolishing the government-run retirement scheme, Social Security. “We do believe in a health/safety net, for example … we’re for supporting Social Security.”
The basic principle of libertarianism — what Johnson enthusiastically rejects — is voluntaryism: that all relationships, contracts, associations, and transactions be voluntary. No coercion, no force or compulsion against anyone.
To use that example of Social Security, the government compels workers and employers to have to participate in the government-run scheme, involuntarily. This is especially immoral because that particular scheme is a fraud.
As Ron Paul, a genuine promoter of liberty, individualism and voluntaryism, has pointed out:
“When it comes to Social Security, we must understand that the system does not represent an old age pension, an ‘insurance’ program, or even a forced savings program. It simply represents an enormous transfer payment, with younger workers paying taxes to fund benefits. There is no Social Security trust fund, and you don’t have an ‘account’…
“…Social Security is simply a tax. Like all taxes, the money collected is spent immediately as general revenue to fund the federal government. But no administration will admit that Social Security is nothing more than an accounting ledger with no money. You will collect benefits only if future tax revenues materialize as hoped; the money you paid into the system is long gone.”
But regarding the Libertarian Party specifically, in its past platforms which Gary Johnson has decided to denounce, it has stated in its 1982, 1984, and 1988 platforms regarding Social Security,
“We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary. Victims of the Social Security tax should have a claim against government property. We note that members of the U.S. Congress, and certain federal, state and local government employees, have been accorded the privilege of non-participation, one which is not accorded the working men and women of America.”
And even recently in the LP’s 2012 platform, in which Gary Johnson was the nominee that year, they clarified the issue, not by watering it down, but by stating,
“Retirement planning is the responsibility of the individual, not the government. Libertarians would phase out the current government-sponsored Social Security system and transition to a private voluntary system. The proper and most effective source of help for the poor is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals. We believe members of society will become more charitable and civil society will be strengthened as government reduces its activity in this realm.”
I was shocked — shocked! — to read the same exact words in the LP’s 2016 platform! And so I then opined, “Why, this guy’s really full of it now — how can anyone take this guy seriously?” He’s running on a platform promoting the phasing out of Social Security, yet at the same time he’s telling people he supports Social Security. So he’s a fraud as much as those other statist pols who are drawn to Washington power like magnets.
Another really big problem with Gary Johnson, like most politicians and most Americans, quite frankly, is his lack of understanding of the difference between private property and public or government property. For instance, As I have mentioned previously, the 1964 Civil Rights Act should only have repealed the Jim Crow laws, and should have only banned racial, sex, and religious discrimination by government operations and on government-owned property, such as the public schools, the city parks and public transportation. But it should not have included privately-owned entities, whether they are “public accommodations” or not.
The 2016 LP platform doesn’t mention “civil rights,” but it implies repeal of civil rights legislation, by stating:
“As respect for property rights is fundamental to maintaining a free and prosperous society, it follows that the freedom to contract to obtain, retain, profit from, manage, or dispose of one’s property must also be upheld. Libertarians would free property owners from government restrictions on their rights to control and enjoy their property, as long as their choices do not harm or infringe on the rights of others. Eminent domain, civil asset forfeiture, governmental limits on profits, governmental production mandates, and governmental controls on prices of goods and services (including wages, rents, and interest) are abridgements of such fundamental rights. For voluntary dealings among private entities, parties should be free to choose with whom they trade and set whatever trade terms are mutually agreeable.”
Now, who exactly is the owner of private property? The truth is, the public does not gain ownership of private property the bigger it is, the more value it has, because it is a commercial entity, or because it is being used for “accommodations.” Unfortunately many people seem to believe such an erroneous assertion.
Like most people, unfortunately, Johnson clearly doesn’t understand that private individuals and private groups and private property owners do have the right to discriminate, and for any reason. If you’re going to criminalize someone’s reasons for not wanting to associate with or do business with others, then you are talking about thought crimes, as I have noted several times, and as Laurence Vance pointed out in this article.
I know that it is politically incorrect to say that individuals, including business owners, have a right to discriminate against anyone and for whatever reasons they might have, even what would be considered bad reasons according to most people. However, who owns the business? Does the government own the business? Does the public share in ownership of the business? What about your own home? Should people be prohibited from discriminating against others from entering their privately-owned home?
So either I have a right — the sole right — to decide who enters my property, home or business, or I do not have that right. But like many others, Gary Johnson is saying that the right we are talking about here is the right to enter someone else’s property against the will of the property owner.
Further — and I know this scenario has been discussed ad nauseam — Johnson believes that the government and the law should be empowered to force a baker to have to bake a cake for people whose lifestyle the baker strongly disagrees with.
And this isn’t a matter of religious liberty as many people suggest, it is a matter of individual liberty and freedom of thought and conscience, and freedom of association. But Johnson in his extremely un-libertarian way, doesn’t believe in freedom of association, as he believes that some people have a right to force others to associate with them and to do extra labor to serve them. Not good.
So Johnson has been trashing the Libertarian Party’s principles, and libertarianism in general, in addition to the fact that his claiming to be a libertarian is completely fraudulent. So why the hell should libertarians want to see him in the Presidential debates? To further misinform and confuse the American people on the ideas of liberty? Nope.
If people are frustrated with what Democrats and Republicans have done to America, I am sorry to say that the Libertarian Party is not the practical alternative. If you want to learn about actual libertarianism then Gary Johnson and the corrupted Libertarian Party are providing a disservice.
A better way to understand libertarianism is to read articles and books by Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell, and Ludwig von Mises, among many others.
Promoting voluntarism, individualism, private property rights, freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of conscience are what libertarians should be doing. And it is also time that the people seriously consider localism, and decentralizing and dismantling that evil Leviathan in Washington.
Children’s Hospital Hacker Comes Forward, Claims It’s on Behalf of Justina Pelletier
The hacker who attacked the Boston Children’s Hospital website, including its donation page during a major fund-raising period, has come forward and has been arrested. Martin Gottesfeld claimed that he brought down the BCH website on behalf of Justina Pelletier, the teenager whom the hospital’s “doctors” and staff are accused of torturing in addition to making her condition life-threateningly worse after suddenly changing the course of her treatment.
Now, I don’t condone Gottesfeld’s alleged actions, of course, as that would be under the category of “vigilante justice,” and that isn’t justice, in my view. Real justice would have been: when the doctors were changing Justina’s treatment without the consent or even consultation of Justina’s regular physician, hospital officials could not have prevented the Pelletiers from removing Justina from that hospital. The Pelletiers would have been allowed to get a second opinion. Justina’s father would not have been threatened with arrest if he had taken her out without the “authority” of hospital bureaucrats. Custody of Justina would not have been taken away from the Pelletiers and handed over to the state of Massachusetts. Mr. Pelletier would not have been further threatened with a “gag order” when he and Mrs. Pelletier had tried to tell their story of what BCH had done to them and their child.
The Pelletiers are finally seeking justice in their February, 2016 lawsuit against Boston Children’s Hospital. As of March, 2014, Mr. Pelletier was preparing to “file a writ of habeas corpus in Massachusetts Supreme Court for ‘wrongful imprisonment’ of his daughter,” according to ABC News. But I don’t know what the status of that is now.
And in further interviews of Mr. Pelletier we learned that the kidnapping of Justina was in the name of “behavior modification” experimentation. And in this very informative interview of Lou Pelletier by Howie Carr, we also learned that there were connections and collusions between Children’s Hospital and Harvard University, and between them and the Massachusetts state Department of Children and Families.
Additionally, Natural News has this partial listing of medical kidnapping cases in the U.S., and there’s a website devoted to these cases. In many cases, arrogant doctors and hospital staff treat a parent’s disagreement with doctors as “abuse” of the child. In some cases, doctors are just plain wrong in their course of treatment of patients. So adult patients and parents of child patients need to inform themselves about what’s going on, about their conditions, and about what the doctor suggests and prescribes.
I first wrote about Justina Pelletier in this post, which includes these two videos of Glenn Beck’s interview of the Pelletiers.
As part of my further commentary in that blog post, I wrote:
So, instead of allowing the “flushing” treatment to continue, these doctors forced Justina to instead sit on the toilet for hours, according to her father, Lou Pelletier. Mr. Pelletier stated that the term the doctors used for how they were treating her was “behavior modification.”
You see, there are some doctors who are objective, and they take all the information of a particular case into account and act accordingly in the best interests of the patient.
And then there are doctors who believe in an ideology. In this case, the ideology is “behavior modification.” When doctors — or other kinds of providers — have an ideology, they are not objective, they are instead fixated on their ideology. In this case, as I see it, the doctors receive a new patient, and, regardless of what her symptoms are, the doctors attempt to get the patient to fit into the particular structure their ideology calls for. But it doesn’t fit in with reality, or with what the patient is actually experiencing. Then, it becomes a cult, in my opinion.
In fact, that these doctors and hospital administrators seized custody away from the Pelletiers and gave that illicitly-obtained custody over to the state’s Department of Children and Families, is relevant to this “behavior modification” ideological mistreatment of Justina. This is because the hospital’s research agenda involves children who are a “ward of the state.” According to the Blaze, Boston Children’s Hospital’s own Clinical Investigation Policy and Procedure Manuel states that “Children who are Wards of the state may be included in research that presents minimal risk…or greater than minimal risk with a prospect of direct benefit.” The Blaze notes that there is no assurance as to whether or not Justina is being used in research.
In a different blog post I referred to an article by Kelly Patricia O’Meara, writing for the mental health watchdog CCHR International, who highlighted discrepancies between the DCF social workers’ court testimony and their prior discussions with Justina’s original medical doctor, and discrepancies between the Children’s Hospital psychiatrists guidelines for Justina’s case and those same doctors’ statements published in earlier research papers.
And Wendy McElroy wrote about U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s bill to “prohibit Federal funding of any treatment or research in which a ward of the State is subjected to greater than minimal risk to the individual’s health with no or minimal prospect of direct benefit.” That bill was never passed.
However, my own wording would be something like,”prohibit making a human being a ‘ward of the State,’ involuntarily; and prohibit experimentation on a human being involuntarily, regardless of age.” But regarding funding for research, my own solution is to prohibit all public funds for all research. If people feel that some particular research is necessary or for the “public good” (in their view), they can use their own funds, or organize private, voluntary funding for such research.
And as mentioned above, the latest action has been the Pelletiers’ lawsuit against Children’s Hospital, started this past February, 2016. I don’t know what the status of that is now. But here is an earlier, February, 2015 TV interview with the Pelletiers, after Justina had finally been freed from her involuntary imprisonment:
To some people, all this stuff might sound like “conspiracy theory” doctor-bashing, etc. But no, there have been many good reasons to question modern day medical “authorities.” After all, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the U.S., according to this NPR article. And the late pediatrician Barbara Starfield wrote (.pdf) that “an estimated 44,000 to 98,000 (Americans) die each year as a result of medical errors.”
But I found great interest in this Justina Pelletier case when it was brought to my attention because I myself have had plenty of issues with “doctors” and the mainstream medical establishment, especially from the late 1990s through the late 2000s. I really, really want to write about all that, and with details (excluding specific doctors’ names because I don’t want to be sued for “libel” or “defamation” or “slander”). But I do have a story to tell. And my own now-84-year-old father as well. Based on all that I’ve read about modern medical “care,” especially the statin drugs that are used to treat high cholesterol, I really believe that he wouldn’t have had his two strokes in 2013 or an arterial blockage had he not been given the Lipitor that he had been taking for several years. (I could be wrong, but that’s my own personal conclusion.) On LewRockwell.com, Bill Sardi had this article with links to some of his other articles debunking the “good” that statin drugs do. In fact, a most recent study which concludes that the risks of statin drugs are overstated and the benefits understated, has also been criticized by a prominent heart surgeon who points out that the study was funded by the drug companies (i.e. biased). Apparently Donald Trump is taking a statin drug for high cholesterol, and he still eats terrible fast food and doesn’t seem to care.
Anyway, I hope the Pelletiers win their lawsuit against Boston Children’s Hospital, and I also believe that criminal charges should be required against the hospital staff who wouldn’t let the Pelletiers take Justina back to her regular physician’s treatment, and who had held Justina against her will in a psychiatric clinic when she clearly had no mental health problems at the time.
The Chelsea, New York City and Elizabeth, New Jersey Bombings
Justin Raimondo has this analysis of the terrorist bombings this past weekend in New York City and Elizabeth, New Jersey. I don’t know about Raimondo’s assertion that “the US government is now at war with one billion Muslims – at least, that’s how they perceive it.”
I’m sure that many of the world’s Muslims perceive the U.S. government’s aggressions against Middle Eastern territories and peoples as such. However, many Muslims themselves in those areas overseas are dealing with living in very repressive cultures. So they have to deal with the violence of their own governments (and pseudo governments such as the “Islamic State”) as well as the violence of the more extremist non-government radicals there.
Raimondo is correct that the origins of this so-called war come from U.S. government foreign policy and its wars of aggression especially for 25 years now. But he says it goes way beyond that, to do with “jihad” being a “religious duty in mainstream Islam.” Hmmm, I would bet that most mainstream Muslims are not into “Jihad,” despite what the Pamela Geller crackpots try to suggest. But one thing that has been radicalizing those people, if those of the mainstream would be radicalized, has been the U.S. government’s out-of-control invasions, occupations, bombings, sanctions, and torture of innocents, especially since 9/11. You see, it’s bad enough when U.S. government bureaucrats poke hornets’ nests in other countries but we’re talking about primitive cultures there.
But Raimondo seems extremely pessimistic, when he states, “So what’s the solution? Simply put, there is none. We cannot undo the history of the last fifteen years: the winds of blowback are unstoppable.”
Well, one thing we can do is tell our government to end the invasions, the occupations including closing down all those trespassing U.S. military bases over there and bring the troops back to the U.S. where they belong, end the bombing of those countries and stop funding and weaponizing ISIS and al Qaeda as well. End ALL the aggressions, the interventionism and the wars immediately. I know, the bloodthirsty warmongers out there who are shortsighted don’t want to end anything, they want to increase it all. That’s nuts. But they let themselves get fooled and bamboozled by the government’s propaganda as repeated word for word by their drooling lapdogs, the stenographers of the mainstream media. The warmongers and gullible sheeple don’t want to acknowledge that all these terrorist attacks are blowback of the criminal, murderous violence our government has been inflicting on them especially since 1990. It was incredibly stupid and thoroughly criminal for George H.W. Bush to do what he did, invading and bombing Iraq in 1991.
Speaking of being shortsighted, according to Target Liberty, Donald Trump commented about how there are magazines which advertise or describe how to make homemade bombs. And The Donald’s shortsighted, ignorant solution is to “arrest the people that do that” (the people publishing those magazines) “because they’re participating in crime.” Yes, he said that. Trump really believes that someone writing in magazines is “participating in crime.” I think he’s having another Homer Simpson moment. Or perhaps I really am right, and that he is part of the below-100 crowd. But Trump does not believe that someone who intentionally concocts a bomb with a pressure cooker is responsible for his own deliberately making a bomb, and that the writers or publishers of the directions for it are responsible and that they should be arrested.
The “Conservative” Propagandists for TrumpCare
Besides Donald Trump’s wanting to use the armed powers of government to control Americans’ trade and consumer matters, to control international markets and labor and employment, and his wanting to expand Medicaid to have a Medicaid-for-All, government-run single-payer health care scheme, now Trump wants to force employers to provide child care and maternity leave coverage, regardless of the further unemployment this might very well cause, or other economic distortions.
And yesterday, Rush Limbaugh was apparently trying to sound critical of this new proposed government mandate but at the same time he’s propagandizing on behalf of Trump, saying that all the conservative think-tanks have been coming up with these same kinds of proposals anyway (so it’s okay for conservatives to support it). Limbaugh was actually trying to say that people have forgotten what conservatism is while he’s discussing Trump’s new scheme favorably, like this is a conservative proposal, a maternity-leave mandate on employers.
And then I hear Jeff Kuhner doing the same thing, and praising Trump for this socialist nonsense. If it were a Hillary plan Kuhner would be all over it with criticism and name calling, “Hillary Rotten Clinton,” and so on. So these “conservatives” are not really conservative, but they are unprincipled statists, that’s for sure. (Well, at least Kuhner’s changed the subject, as for the past week it’s been “Colin Crappernick” and the National Anthem controversy. Kuhner says that the NFL player Colin Kaepernick was “disrespectful” in his not wanting to stand for the National Anthem. I don’t know why so many people have such deep, emotional feelings for a “patriotic” song or the flag. They are reminding me now of the college nutsos who are “triggered” by every little thing. But like Hannity and Savage, Kuhner is such a State-worshiper, in fact, I think Kuhner said that he salutes the flag every day. Who does that? But honestly, some of these “conservative” talk hosts on the radio who aren’t really conservative seem to really just be authoritarians and obedient nationalist sheeple in their love of authority, the State and its emblems and symbols. But I digress.)
So now when Trump releases more socialist schemes, the “conservatives” praise him. Free-market capitalism is a foreign concept to these statists who can’t let go of their love for central planners.
As Robert Wenzel noted regarding the new Trump scheme,
It is remarkable how pedestrian, unsophisticated and lacking in insight are the views of Donald Trump, and apparently those of his daughter, Ivanka, when it comes to economics and society. They simply look everywhere to government technocrat solutions for everything.
It is clear they have zero understanding of how free markets work. The insights expressed by F.A. Hayek in his book The Roads to Serfdom, about the dangers and defects of central planning, have never reached their brains in any significant way.
For the Trumps, if there is a societal problem, they hold the simple minded perspective that there is a government solution for it, if the right leader is around to propose and manage the government solution.There is no awarness by them that this perspective is in direct contradiction to what great economists such as Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard and Hayek have taught us about the nature of man, individual decision making and the impossibility of one great central planner replacing the decision making that is done at the individual level.
Why should anyone bother to take “conservatives” seriously, when they are just as much socialists as those on the Left?
I think I’m going to have to stop listening to talk radio. They’re giving me a headache.
The Young People Are Being Raised with a Philosophy of Distrust, It Seems
I was listening to Kim and V.B. on the radio this morning, and they were discussing the issue in New Hampshire of that state’s banning of taking selfies in the voting booth. It sounded like particularly taking a selfie with one’s actual vote being visible. And V.B. said a text from a WRKO producer stated that she needed to take selfies, such as with their meeting Donald Trump at a media event, to “prove” that she actually met Donald Trump. Or in the case of voting for some specific candidate, to prove that you actually voted for someone.
Like people wouldn’t believe you if you tell them you met The Donald, or that you voted for a specific candidate. Now, this radio producer is someone in her 20s, I believe, and she might represent a lot of the young people now. But maybe not. It could be that the selfie issue is just one issue with her, but not with others.
Nevertheless, I am concerned about these young people now, and what things might be like in the future.
The young people now are growing up in the post-9/11 Amerika police state, in which you have to submit to searches to prove you are not carrying a suicide bomb vest, to prove that you are not carrying drugs up your rectum, and so on and so forth, whether you are suspected of something or not. This is clearly not the America that the post-Enlightenment Revolutionaries founded, based on presumption of innocence, and recognizing the right to be left alone and the right to not be molested or assaulted if the gubmint doesn’t suspect you of something.
As I have mentioned previously, the young people now only in their 20s were just teeny-tiny little kids when 9/11 happened. After that tragic day, George W. Bush and his minions and the Goebbels media stenographers repeatedly terrorized the American people with their scare-mongering propaganda about “al-Qaeda” and “Islam,” etc. They certainly didn’t mention what the U.S. government had been doing to those mainly in Muslim countries overseas prior to 9/11, as Jacob Hornberger reminded us yesterday. Only a few people had had the courage to remind people that when you poke hornets’ nests by invading and bombing other countries that had never threatened you, then obviously the people there will retaliate. As Ron Paul warned throughout the 1990s, we were likely to have a terrorist attack on our own territory because of our government’s illicit actions. And he was right.
But during that post-9/11 period for the little kids to be growing up with frightened parents constantly bombarded by TV news sensationalism and fear-mongering, I can imagine just how fearful and neurotic the now 20-somethings might be. And as I have mentioned previously, in addition to the fedgov’s and media’s fear-mongering regarding the Islamic terrorism threat, during the 2000s was the Al Gore-global warmist fear-mongering that included the schools including in their curriculum Gore’s movie “Inconvenient Politicians” (or something like that), and terrorizing those little kids with just that stuff. I remember hearing on talk shows or reading in articles that little kids were waking up with nightmares because of Al Gore and his ignorant followers’ campaign to terrorize the people. And by the way, the “science” they are mostly referring to consists of computer models which attempt to predict future climate changes, temperatures, melting polar icecaps, etc. But computer models are not “science.” The science, in fact, has largely disproved the Gore assertions. But I digress.
But the young people growing up with the tyrannical, criminal police state are being taught to just submit to this or that intrusion into their person or property. They’re being trained to just blindly accept that they don’t have any rights, including the right to be secure in their persons, papers, houses and effects, as the Bill of Rights rightfully recognizes. Instead, in addition to their accepting the invasions of privacy, the physical molesting of their persons (which are criminal acts against them), they are being indoctrinated to believe that they have “rights” which aren’t actual rights but privileges and entitlements: That they are entitled to other people’s earnings, they are entitled to trespass onto other people’s property and they have a right to force others to associate with them, especially if they are part of the LGBT community.
I wish that the young people would understand that they do not have a right to other people’s property. If so, then I have a right to their iPhones and their cars, and a right to take those things from them. But no, no one has any entitlement to forcibly take other people’s property. Nobody has a “right” to demand that the gubmint take other people’s earnings and give the earnings over to them. The young people need to learn that they, and only they, have the sole right to their own earnings, their own honestly acquired property, and anyone who takes such property or money from them involuntarily is stealing. That includes the government. Such acts including being under the pretense of “taxes” are acts of theft, and should not be permitted in a civilized society. Any kind of transaction or contract that is involuntary is an uncivilized action and should be considered criminal.
And as far as this attitude of having to show a selfie or submit to a search to prove that you’ve done something you have asserted to have done, or to prove that you haven’t done something wrong when there is no reason to suspect you of something of a criminal nature, I hope that the young people overcome that. Because they will be the rulers of the next generation. I am not looking forward to being a geezer going about my day with some young punk “law enforcement” person demanding to search me or my home with no reason to suspect me of anything.
When the rulers’ enforcers start acting like goons and thugs, and want to search for no good reason, it means they are either just out for a good looting, or they are on a fishing expedition to falsely accuse you of something because your views are not politically correct or because you do not practice the “correct” religion or are not registered with the “correct” political party.
When People Ask, “What Is Aleppo,” Perhaps We Need to Ask, “What Is America?”
Gary Johnson was severely criticized by the mainstream media morons for asking, “What is ‘Aleppo’?” when Mike Barnacle set him up for an attempted embarrassment and humiliation. But does it matter what “Aleppo” is or where it is? No, not really, not in the overall scheme of things. So, the mainstream media have their political biases and motivations in their going after certain people but propping up the others they like. Nothing new here.
The truth is, mainstream media and their readers and viewers just don’t want to hear the truth, especially when it comes to the truth that interventionism is what causes blowback, and the interventionist empire overseas needs to be dismantled, root and branch. And that’s what matters, not whether a candidate knows what “Aleppo” is.
But there are still a lot of people who just don’t want to hear the truth. Well, I’ll keep doing this despite my blog stats being very low lately. And I acknowledge that some of my opinions or expressions can be sarcastic, but I’m hearing even libertarians supporting totalitarian madmen like Donald Trump, like they really believe he’s “anti-Establishment” after he’s donated tens of thousands of dollars to corrupt, totalitarian statist hacks in Washington. Or that Trump is “antiwar” despite the bloodthirsty warmongers he has directing his campaign. It’s frustrating.
And look at the FBI letting Hillary Clinton get away with criminality for which mere commoners would be thrown in jail for decades and decades. In truth, Hillary should be in jail for those decades, not Bradley Manning, for instance. Bradley or Chelsea Manning should be celebrated for heroism in sacrificing his life in the name of revealing the truth about the war crimes of the U.S. military and the corruption and criminality of U.S. diplomats and others.
And now there is further confirmation that Hillary has severe health problems. It’s bad enough her repeated coughing fits remind me of Miss Anne Elk. I thought she was actually going to tell us about another theory. No more theories, please.
But yesterday Hillary collapsed at the 9/11 memorial in New York. Did you see the video of Hillary being dragged off to a van, in which she could hardly stand up? Hillary barely made it to the van. But she did make it to the van, with help. (That reminded me of the end of the big chase on What’s Up Doc, with Barbra Streisand repeatedly saying,”We can make it,” and then, “I don’t think we can make it” as their VW Bug plunges into the water. I think that might be Hillary’s campaign as of now.)
So regarding her recent collapse at the 9/11 memorial, supposedly her doctor says that Hillary has “pneumonia,” but a lot of people including doctors are speculating that Hillary really has Parkinson’s. I think she has a lot of things, including being an evil psychopathic lunatic. But now given all the conditions she has, and doesn’t have according to the deniers and cover-uppers, she’s now reminding me of Mae Peterson on Bye-Bye, Birdie. (“I got a condition. Never mind what kind of condition, I got a condition, etc., etc., etc.” — Perhaps Hillary, too, has “one-tenth of a normal heart.” But I digress.)
So maybe all of Hillary’s illnesses and coughing fits and fainting and buckling are signs that God or Nature are punishing her for all her deceptions, cover-ups, warmongering, and criminality over the years. Alas, she is like most politicians, very anti-freedom, anti-property, anti-life.
But so is Donald Trump. We know that he believes in property rights only with his own property, but not with other people’s. In his use of eminent domain he has put innocent people through stressful ordeals through the courts in attempts to steal their property away from them. And while I believe in presumption of innocence (even though Trump does not), it seems as though he is a fraudster in this apparent Trump University scam. And he is not someone of great moral character, as his main business has been casinos, encouraging people to throw their money away, and in some cases their life savings, because most people never win anything at casinos. Not only that, but can someone please tell me how is it possible that a casino could go bankrupt?
I have a feeling that the Democrat bigwigs will decide to replace Hillary. Some people are guessing Joe Biden, but I think his many gaffes over the years could be a problem. Also, Biden is almost 74. So, I think that it’s possible Al Gore might make a comeback. It can’t be Elizabeth Warren, please no.
But I am not that surprised now that we have two major party candidates who are as anti-freedom as Donald and Hillary are. They’re just a reflection of the American population of zombies now. The gullible sheeple have been believing all the government’s propaganda since 9/11 so they support the evil due-process-destroying Patriot Act, NDAA and NSA spying. Many people also ignorantly and self-destructively support Trump’s socialist wall on the government border. Private property walls yes, government walls no, I say! I think it is time to elect a non-Democrat who is also a non-Republican. Don’t you think? Democrats and Republicans have been criminally and treasonously using the armed power of government against the people and against foreigners all over the world.
What we need is freedom. Not government walls or government anything. The problems we have now in both immigration and national defense are caused by government central planning, and it all needs to be dismantled as much as the domestic intrusions. At least Gary Johnson says something about reducing government. Trump, Clinton, and Stein are all about expanding government, its power and control, which means further shrinking our freedom.
So when we have freedom, there will be prosperity and people will be more civilized with one another. When the leftists want to force Christians to provide abortions, Christian practitioners will say, “Sorry, but no,” and those seeking abortions can go to the multitudes of illicit abortionists to get their damn abortions and kill their offspring. And the government will not punish those Christian practitioners. That’s what freedom is (but not freedom for the aborted baby, though). And when the lesbian couple wants to force a Christian baker to bake a lesbian wedding cake, and the bakers say, “Sorry, but no,” the government will not punish the bakers, and when the lesbian couple attempts to take the bakers to court, they will be charged with extortion. That’s both freedom, and social justice. In other words, if someone doesn’t want to work with you or for you, you go find someone else. That’s the freedom way of doing things. But forcing them to serve you anyway even though they don’t want to, that’s just criminal, in my view.
And when there is freedom, and people are not allowed to use the armed force of government to force their ways onto others, I believe that the culture will resolve itself to more normal levels as well. There will be a time once again when we won’t see sick adults ruining their little kids’ lives with “transgender” indoctrination and age 4 sex-change operations. Those are yet more examples of criminal behavior, in my view. Sadly, all the candidates for President, including Gary Johnson, seem to believe otherwise. But at least he says something about reducing the size and power of the federal government. I really couldn’t care less if he doesn’t know about “Aleppo.”
Collectivism versus Liberty
Collectivism is the worst intruder philosophy or way of life that has most destroyed civilization, in my view. Collectivism has given us centralized governments whose agents steal wealth and property from the people, and whose enforcers have committed the worst atrocities against innocents.
In contrast, individualism has liberated people in the recognition of the freedom of the individual from the intrusions and aggression of the collective, the community or the State. Individualism and individual freedom have been most protected by economic free-market capitalism and private property, whereas socialism, an economic system of collectivism, has consisted of sacrificing the individual to serve the collective.
So I’m still at a loss to explain why so many people are so supportive of government-imposed immigration restrictions which include further government restrictions on labor and employment. In other words, restrictions on free markets and private property rights.
What those supporters do have is a collectivist mentality. They support collective ownership of a whole territory, to be under the control of central planners, in Washington. So it seems to me that the collectivist-minded people want government borders to obstruct markets and the movements of millions of people, restrict trades, and restrict labor and employment. But these government controls and central planning are certainly not examples of free-market capitalism.
In a society of laissez-faire, free-market capitalism, there would be freedom of the individual of self-ownership, in which the individual owns one’s own body, one’s labor and honestly-acquired property. There is no shared ownership of the individual’s life and property with the community, or with the government. And there is freedom to make use of one’s own person, labor, capital and wealth in whatever way one wants, as long as one is peaceful.
Free-market capitalism is not obstructed by the government, by arbitrary governmental rules, regulations or restrictions. That is why it’s called a free market, free of governmentally-imposed restrictions and intrusions, except for the basic rules of society against stealing, defrauding or initiating aggression against others.
And free markets are not obstructed by government-imposed borders. Free markets exist with private property borders, and in which contracts are voluntary, not compulsory or prohibited by bureaucrats.
The free society of free markets and private property rights is consistent with individualism and self-determination.
In the case of free-market capitalism versus socialist intrusions, when third parties impose themselves into the private trades, transactions, contracts or associations of individuals, without voluntary consent, then there is no longer a free market. And it doesn’t matter who is doing the intruding, private citizen or government official.
But who really owns the property in a socialist society such as ours?
If individuals or businesspeople don’t have control over their own property, and the government usurps that control away from them, then in my view those government bureaucrats are assuming a de facto ownership of the property. So the reality of our society is that it’s not really your property or your business into which you invested much hard labor and capital to have.
If you actually own something then you have complete control over it. If control over your property, your capital, your wealth, your earnings, is forcibly taken away from you, then you are not really the owner. Some people wish to pretend otherwise, however.
Private property rights are such that a business owner has the ultimate right to employ whomever one wants, as long as the contract is voluntary. It doesn’t matter where the worker comes from. If consumers don’t like the employees of a particular business, they can take their money elsewhere. That’s the free market at work. If you want to empower a government and its bureaucrats to order the employer to not hire someone without the government’s authorization, then really you are acknowledging that ultimately the government is the true owner of the business.
Unfortunately, the issue of immigration has become confused because the people have socialized immigration and empowered government bureaucrats to get involved in bringing in foreigners as part of their central planning agenda. The people have empowered the government to steal their own wealth and earnings called “taxes” to fund the welfare redistribution, none of which is morally justified (or authorized by the U.S. Constitution). So really authoritarians, not conservatives, think it’s wise to rely on central planners to protect them from actual intruders than relying on their own exercise of their right to keep and bear arms for protection.
There are other ways that the people have empowered the government to usurp control over their own property or businesses, by the way.
For example, with respect to private property rights, the business owner has a right to refuse to do business with whomever one doesn’t want to do business. And for any reason. To criminalize the businessperson’s various reasons for refusal, even if the majority of the people think those to be bad reasons, is to punish certain thoughts or ideas.
In our current socialist society in which the government has a de facto ownership of all the property, the Christian baker is persecuted for refusal of service to a lesbian couple. Who really owns the bakery? Why, it sure isn’t the bakers, as they would have every moral and legal right to refuse to do extra labor for whomever and for any reason.
For civil rights laws, the 1960s activists would have achieved greater social justice by only addressing government-run functions, such as the public schools, the parks, and the city buses and subways, but not privately-owned operations such as restaurants, private clubs, churches and other privately-owned organizations. But because they included private entities, those involve takings, in my view, and usurpations. And now we have social chaos as a result.
I wish that Gary Johnson understood private property rights. (You would think that “libertarians,” of all people…) But he agrees with forcing a Christian baker to have to do extra labor to serve a lesbian couple, and Johnson also stated hypothetically that he would force a Jewish baker to have to bake a Nazi wedding cake.
Which shows how absurd it will get when you empower some people of certain designated groups to force themselves onto other people’s private property or to force others to do extra labor to serve them involuntarily.
So I wish that the anti-immigration activists who support socialist government restrictions on private property and markets and a police state on the border would understand that all policies of collectivism and socialism are destructive of the freedom of the individual and the prosperity of the society as a whole.
Unfortunately, collectivists think of an entire nation and its territory as though they are one parcel of private property, and that foreigners entering the territory are “trespassing” or “breaking in,” even if their presence is with the consent of whichever private property owners have invited them.
Sadly, many of the people who look to government central planners to control immigration, labor and employment, are the same ones who show an authoritarian obedience to the government when it comes to security.
In my view, the collectivists are going to have to choose between a government-controlled society under the authoritarian rule of central planners, or a free society of free markets and private property rights.
The collectivists need to realize that “unalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” actually applies to individuals not to groups, and applies to all human beings, wherever they are in the world.
Authoritarianism in Amerika is Alive and Kicking
I’m trying to catch up on all the important issues and have many things bookmarked.
Just today, though, there is a terrific article by Butler Shaffer on LewRockwell.com on Colin Kaepernick who doesn’t want to stand for the National Anthem. Here is an excerpt:
Why the “national anthem” plays a central role in the statist weltanschauung requires examination. I doubt that any who insist upon others publicly acknowledging the subservience of their individual souls to the state’s institutionalized powers of death and violence, perform this ritual in their private lives. Television stations used to end their broadcast day with a playing of this music, but I suspect that even the most fervent boob-hustler does not end his day standing as the tune is played. Are family birthday parties or Christmas morning gatherings around a lighted tree prefaced by a video of the Marine Corps band’s rendition? Do eager patriots listen to the “national anthem” or salute the flag before cleaning the garage or mowing the lawn? Would those who say grace before a meal, be inclined to substitute the pledge of allegiance, with the state acknowledged as the source of their blessings?
There’s nothing like a good dose of common sense and challenging of the statist quo, in my view. But obviously, Donald Trump does not like that. Robert Wenzel writes about Trump’s new call for teaching “patriotism” (i.e. obedience, compliance, submission to the State) in the government schools (and probably the private schools as well). Trump is all about the State. He is not about freedom and freedom of thought and conscience.
And Ron Paul’s recent article on immigration makes use of some common sense regarding the government wall that Donald Trump wants to implement. Here is an excerpt:
It didn’t take long for the world to realize that the real threat to the East German leaders was that the people trapped in East Berlin would try to get out. We have all seen the horrific videos of East German civilians risking – and losing – their lives to escape that prison of razor wire and cinder block.
…
What a wild conspiracy theory, some may claim. The wall would never be meant to keep us from leaving. Well ask the IRS. Under a tax enforcement provision passed in 2015, the US government claimed the right to cancel any American citizen’s passport if Washington claims it is owed money.
Trump also made E-Verify the center of his immigration speech…
… a police state non-solution, as it would require the rest of us legal American citizens to carry a biometric national ID card connected to a government database to prove that the government allows us to work. A false positive would result in financial disaster for millions of American families, as one would be forced to fight a faceless government bureaucracy to correct the mistake.
It seems to me that those articles are appropriate together, because many of the same people who support authoritarian, collectivistic immigration controls also believe in showing loyalty and obedience to the State via National Anthem and Pledge of Obedience to a flag.
Also at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, Adam Dick writes about Donald Trump’s further police state advocacy in Trump’s love for “stop and frisk.” That is a thoroughly anti-American policy in which due process is trampled on by government thugs on fishing expeditions. America was founded on the ideas of the Enlightenment, supposedly, in which each individual has a right to presumption of innocence and a right to be left alone by the government if one is not suspected of anything criminal.
Speaking of un-American authoritarians and collectivist nudniks, there is this article by Paul Thompson, an extensive timeline of Hillary deceptions, acts of cover-ups and criminality going back to the 1990s. Such illicit behavior of Hillary actually goes back to Watergate.
And there is this Breitbart article on CNN’s attempting to pressure Dr. Drew Pinsky to retract his comments on Hillary Clinton’s health problems and her health care before CNN fired him. Hillary has been having more coughing fits, by the way. She sounds like Miss Anne Elk now. (But does Hillary have a better theory on the brontosaurus?)
So according to the Breitbart article, CNN “network honchos acted like the Mafia when confronting Drew.” It wouldn’t surprise me if first the CNN head honchos were probably themselves confronted by Clinton campaign, Democrat Party, or Obama Administration honchos regarding Dr. Drew’s comments. Like the “strong-arm tactics” of unions. (Note how unions have close ties to both the Mafia and the Democrat Party. Just thought I’d mention that.)
So who is the most dangerous to our freedom? Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein? Right now, regardless of the stupid things he has said or advocates, I would say that Gary Johnson is nevertheless less dangerous than the others. But I don’t know if Walter Block and Robert Wenzel would agree with me on that.
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