Capitalism and Individualism

The many ways the Pope is wrong about capitalism by David Gordon, and Why Marx hated individualism by Ludwig von Mises.

Cognitive Dissonance from the Left and Right

Another funny post by Thomas DiLorenzo on the “radical leftist cultural Marxists who organized the Trash-the-Constitution rally in D.C. and elsewhere last week,” and their leader David Hogg, “with arm raised in a Hitler-like salute to repeat F-bomb after F-bomb…”

My, the sense of decency and respect for others these kids have. Who are their parents? Do they have parents?

DiLorenzo referred to Hogg as “Little Hitler” who encouraged his followers to harass Laura Ingraham’s advertisers, because she made fun of Hogg’s college application rejections. (Can’t these kids take a joke? Wait, isn’t this the crowd who called Dana Loesch a “c-word,” etc.?) Is it true that Ingraham merely tweeted the teasing on twitter, but it wasn’t on her TV show? And the advertisers still withdrew their ads from her show? Idiots.

As someone on American Thinker indicated, would these young people tolerate anti-abortion groups having rallies and saying to these kids that they “have blood on their hands” in advocating abortion, just as the anti-gun speakers say that the “NRA has blood on its hands”? In my view, no, the little dictators-wannabe would not tolerate that. They would say how dare you try to infringe on my abortion rights! (The right to kill their offspring, that is.)

The young people hysterically want to take guns away from civilian people and make them defenseless, but not take guns away from the police, of course. The young people in their cognitive dissonance want a disarmed civilian population but a heavily armed government police, because the young people WANT to be terrorized and shot up by armed S.W.A.T. teams breaking into their homes all because of marijuana and underage drinking. Government schools!

And I wonder what psychiatric drugs some of these hysterical trained sheeple are on. They are showing what useful idiots they are in the turning of this society into a third-world “s-hole.”

Are these future authoritarian fascists going to put the rest of us in the gulags for dissenters?

Anyway, another thing that’s in the news is the high school student in Connecticut who posted a picture of a toy gun on social media, and the school “Zero Tolerance” Nazis called the police and had him arrested. The article lists many, many past incidents of utter lunacy coming from the government schools, terrorizing and assaulting, unlawfully detaining and incarcerating innocent kids. If it were my kid, I would insist on pressing charges against the school “authorities,” teachers, administrators, principal, whoever it was who took the action, and I would have them arrested and charged with endangerment, harassment, false imprisonment, etc. And I would sue those particular individuals financially for emotional damages for the distress they will have caused my kid. Sue the actual people who sicced police on innocent harmless kids, don’t sue the school, because it is wrong to make taxpayers bail out criminal school bureaucrats.

So, the kids are dumbed down in today’s government schools, the kids who don’t understand what freedom means, and who don’t know their history. And I think these school bureaucrats are also dumbed down from their own awful government education years. They are clearly morons.

But on conservative talk radio, you see, while they tend to be in agreement with me on those aforementioned issues, they then nevertheless go off the deep end in their anti-foreigner nationalism and anti-immigration stuff, and the “national security” stuff.

On national security they tend to actually believe the bureaucrats in Washington with the warmongering and militarism, when it actually would be safer to assume that the bureaucrats are always lying. Don’t believe what the bureaucrats are saying in justifying more wars, more U.S. military aggressions and invasions, more illicit sacrifice of young Americans for no good reason. But for some reason, the folks on the conservative side believe. (It’s like a blind faith. I wish they would shake it.)

On the immigration stuff, I hear Howie Carr and this Jeff Kuhner person on WRKO.com. I’ve heard Kuhner many times now with the nationalism collectivist claptrap. Very anti-free market and droolingly supportive of government central planning in the planners and bureaucrats’ futile attempts to control the movements of millions of people and erecting a giant police state against the people. Kuhner is one of those hard-core anti-immigration nutcases who wants to deport those who are “here illegally,” who haven’t gotten a bureaucrat’s permission to travel and find a better place for themselves and their families. Whatever happened to “unalienable rights”? (Unalienable what?) Sadly, some people favor sending immigrant kids back to their old country to be exploited for sex trafficking and slaves for drug lords, all in the name of good ol’ US of A’s socialist government controls. In my view, if it were the 1930s, these people, like Kuhner, Hannity and Limbaugh would be right there with FDR sending the Jews back to Germany. (I’m glad it’s not the 1930s.)

The anti-immigration socialists need to listen to Hornberger and Ebeling on that issue.

Former SCOTUS Justice Wants to Disarm People And Make Them Defenseless

Here is another example of why we who love freedom still have to keep writing on behalf of freedom. Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, nearly 98 years of age, has written an op-ed on the New York Times, suggesting that we “repeal the 2nd Amendment.”

Well, I expect the many young high school students who marched and protested last weekend to be as ignorant as they are, guided solely by emotion and hysteria and completely lacking in rational thought. They are high school kids, after all. But I don’t expect that of a Supreme Court Justice, or former Supreme Court Justice. (Although, thank God he’s no longer on the bench, right?)

So Jacob Hornberger has this excellent post responding to Justice Stevens’s ignorance. Here is an excerpt:

Our right to own guns doesn’t come from the Second Amendment. Our rights don’t come from the Bill of Rights. They don’t come from the Constitution. And they don’t come from the government. Our rights preexist the government, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. They are inherent in us. They are endowed in us by nature and by God.

Thus, we have the right of free speech whether or not there is a government, a constitution, and a bill of rights. The same goes for religious liberty. The same goes for the right to own guns or any other property. Indeed, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out in the Constitution, our general rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness do not come from government but instead, are natural, God-given rights that preexist government.

What is the purpose of government? As the Declaration of Independence also points out, the purpose of government is to protect the exercise of people’s natural, God-given, preexisting rights.

Such being the case, how can a repeal of the Second Amendment operate to destroy a right that exists independently of the Second Amendment?

Let’s review how the federal government came into existence…

Read the whole piece. He really gets to the heart of the matter regarding why the writers of the U.S. Constitution thought it necessary to include a Bill of Rights.

Adrian Lamo Has Died: Informant Who Ratted on Bradley Manning

Adrian Lamo has died at age 37. Don’t know the cause of death. Wichita police said it was “nothing suspicious,” but didn’t elaborate.

Lamo was the guy who turned in Bradley Manning to the feds for leaking to WikiLeaks.

Now, authoritarian sheeple who think that government and military crimes and war crimes should not be exposed applauded Lamo turning in Manning, and would refer to Manning as the “traitor,” because he exposed government crimes. To authoritarians, showing lack of obedience to government authorities is “treason.” The talk radio ditto-heads seem to think that way, it has been my observation. I know, I keep criticizing the nationalist conservatives on their authoritarianism, militarism and worship of the national security state. Sorry about that. You know, they could stop blindly and naively believing the war propaganda that Washington spews, especially since 9/11.

But anyway, Lamo was the bad guy in that situation, in my view. He had no credibility. I wrote about Lamo in 2010, “It looks to me like there may actually be reason to believe that the allegations against Manning may actually be based on fabricated chat logs. (Glenn) Greenwald linked to this post by Marcy Wheeler, and apparently, there were time gaps, in which Lamo was fixing ‘technical issues’ during their chats…Also, the one who turned Manning in to the government, Lamo, is a convicted felon and was involuntarily hospitalized, just three weeks before his chats with Manning, for ‘severe psychiatric distress,’ according to Greenwald. This whole thing just doesn’t pass the smell test, if you ask me.”

And I wrote in this 2013 post, “But in 2011, when Wired finally released the full chat logs, Greenwald asserted that they ‘provide vital context and information about what actually happened here.  To say that (Kevin) Poulsen’s claims about what Wired withheld were factually false is to put it generously’.”

As Marcy Wheeler wrote about the whole situation, Manning leaked the documents and videos for the American people to know the truth, not the “enemy.” And that is exactly what he had told the informant Lamo in their online chats. But Lamo turned him in anyway. Lamo was not just a sheeple, but a stasi. Because of Lamo, the wrong people got sent to jail. Good riddance, in my view.

Important Recent Articles on What Washington Is Doing to Ruin America, and More

More FBI shenanigans: Zero Hedge with an article on the trial of the wife of the alleged Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen who killed 50 people. It now appears that Omar Mateen’s father has been an FBI informant for years, and that is why repeated reports to FBI on Junior Mateen’s threatening behavior were ignored by FBI. In other words, did the FBI enable the nightclub shooting? Should the families of those murdered sue the FBI and press charges against the officials involved? And also, it appears that like other officials former FBI director James Comey also knew that Junior Mateen was trouble. And prior to Comey’s directorship, former director Robert Mueller might also have had knowledge. Not good.

On a different situation, Zero Hedge has this article regarding comments law professor Jonathan Turley made about former FBI flunky Andrew McCabe, who may have thrown Comey under the bus for perjury. And, also according to Zero Hedge, “Former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom said that there was a plot among ‘high-ranking’ people throughout government – ‘not just the FBI,’ who coordinated in a plot to help Hillary Clinton avoid indictment.” They are all incredibly dishonest and corrupt, in my view.

Ron Paul says that the neocons are back with a big war budget and grandiose plans to further ruin the Middle East and Asia, and North Korea, etc. etc. Dr. Paul writes: “The military-industrial complex continues to generate record profits from fictitious enemies. The mainstream media continues to play the game, amplifying the war propaganda produced by the think tanks, which are funded by the big defense contractors. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. This is conspiracy fact. Enemies must be created to keep Washington rich, even as the rest of the country suffers from the destruction of the dollar. That is why the neocons continue to do very well in this Administration.”

Also, Gareth Porter on the untold story of John Bolton’s campaign for war with Iran.

Shashi Tharoor says that Hollywood is rewarding a mass murderer in its portrayal of Winston Churchill.

Jacob Hornberger says that the CIA’s cover-up of the JFK assassination will continue.

Brian Saady with an article showing that the drug war is deadlier than drugs themselves.

Andrew Cockburn has an article, “Mobbed Up,” on how the U.S. government boosts the Afghan opium trade.

The Daily Bell on a Harvard investigation that shows doctors are paid huge sums to prescribe opioid drugs.

Matt Agorist discusses a pharmaceutical company illegally obtaining data on kids to sell them drugs that they didn’t need.

Laurence Vance writes about the free market at work.

Richard Ebeling asks, Why not private provision of many government services?

Wendy McElroy on exporting Roosevelt’s New Deal through aid, investment, and threat of war.

Peter Hitchens says, The ‘patriotic’ thought police came for Corbyn. You are next.

And Brian Wilson on the evolution of devolution.

America’s Moral Decline: Zuckerberg

This Zero Hedge article describes Mark Zuckerberg’s early lack of respect for the security and privacy (and dignity) of others. He supposedly called Facebook users “dumb f***s.” While still at Harvard, he allegedly nonchalantly hacked into email accounts of Harvard Crimson staff to find out whether they were going to publish the assertion that he stole an idea for Facebook. So, if all this is true, then that shows that Zuckerberg does not seem to have very high ethical standards or understanding of boundaries and the rights of others. It really reflects the general moral decline of our society. No big surprise that he might be aiding and abetting the criminal surveillance police state.

“America’s Hitler Youth On Parade”

Thomas DiLorenzo writes:

These images reminded me of how the Nazis confiscated guns from Jews and other perceived potential enemies of the state. “Youth parades” were one of Hitler’s favorite propaganda gimmicks.

Today’s socialist tyrants are quick to applaud the use of children as political pawns in service to mob rule by radical leftists like themselves.  Of course, they use more pleasant-sounding euphemisms like “community organizing.”

Another Protest March, This Time by Kids

Yesterday many young people marched in Washington to express their anger at the NRA and express their intention to disarm law-abiding people and make them defenseless, because a crazy kid shoots up a school and kills people.

The marching kids have almost no real life experiences but they are good at repeating what they are propagandized with by the schools. And the most outspoken ones show that they have been well-trained and coached in doing what they are doing now.

They hysterically call for “common sense gun laws,” even though there are plenty of federal gun laws already on the books that criminals and psychopaths don’t obey.

I’d like the young activists to answer how criminals who don’t obey laws against shooting innocent people, don’t obey laws against assault, and don’t obey laws against rape and so on, why would they then decide to obey laws against gun ownership or gun possession? Do the young people ever think about that?

And how does banning the sale, purchase, or possession of any items prevent people from getting them? Look at drugs.

Now there’s something these young people know a lot about. They love their pot and other street drugs, and many of them love their ritalin, their adderall, and when they aren’t satisfied with ritalin and adderall they can then graduate on to zoloft and xanax. There are many, many psychiatrists out there who love giving these young people the psychiatric drugs like handing out candy at Halloween. And that’s not an exaggeration, by the way. Read Dr. Peter Breggin about that.

So when you ban things, like drugs or guns, then a black market forms. And that is where the crime comes about. Obviously, criminals who are intent on going into a school to kill will get their guns illegally, one way or another. The young people out there (and oldsters as well) will have to face that fact of life. It’s reality. One way to deal with the young mass killers is to stop giving them those damn psychiatric drugs.

Another way is to just let law-abiding people have their guns, let them conceal or openly carry them. Including in the schools. When someone like Nikolas Cruz the alleged Parkman Florida high school killer goes in and starts shooting, then someone there who is armed will stop that shooter as soon as possible, like what just happened this past week in Maryland.

The young activists who want to disarm innocent people and make them defenseless need to read about actual “common sense” gun issues. I know, young people don’t read anymore. But try doing it anyway. Here are some suggestions.

The organization Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership asks, “Why then do so many American Jews hate guns and fear gun ownership so much?” I think the same question should be asked of ALL people who hate and fear guns. JPFO then lists ten reasons to explain that phenomenon, as shown by their research:

The adamantly anti-gun-rights Jews are bowing to:
1. A desire for utopian moral purity
2. A disproportional incidence of hoplophobia
3. A quest for power through victimization of peers
4. A utopian delusion that if guns would just “go away,”
crime would end and the world would be a peaceful safe place
5. Self hatred and a wish to be helpless, acting out guilt-based
behavioral problems that develop in childhood
6. The Ostrich Syndrome
7. Garden-variety hypocrisy
8. Adulterated religion — Jews In Name Only (JINOs)
9. Feel-good sophistry
10. Abject fear that yields irrational behavior

But all these reasons could easily apply not just to Jews but to anyone who is so much against gun rights, and who desperately wants to disarm innocent people and make them defenseless. Like all those young people we heard or saw in the news this weekend protesting and marching in Washington and other cities.

JPFO elaborates on all those points. Here is some elaboration of two of those points:

A disproportional incidence of hoplophobia
…

Dr. Sarah Thompson, M.D., in her ground-breaking essay on the subject, Raging Against Self Defense, pointed out that hoplophobes often use the psychological defense mechanism of projection in dealing with their fear. Unable or unsure of their ability to control their own internal conflicts, they project their conflicts onto people around them. They fear losing control, going berserk, shooting people around them or shooting themselves in a mad, chaotic expression of rage. It’s only natural for them to then assume that anyone else with a gun could or would do the same; the occasional madman serves to reinforce their fears.

This explains at last the perpetual hysteria that proclaims, every time a Second Amendment infringement is lifted: we will suffer shootouts at stop lights, slow waiters murdered on the spot, or Dodge City bloodshed as a result. Every new carry-permit law, the repeal of the National Parks possession ban, the expired Clinton-era rifle bans, lifted restrictions for adult gun carry on campuses — all were met with the same barrage of irrational fears. It is a knee-jerk mantra loudly shouted and then brazenly promoted by an unethical media every time.

And the imagined fear? It never manifests. It is but an empty neurotic fantasy. Media corrections are never published, and so the fantasies and lies are repeated and recycled. Shame on those who would forever repeat the same absurd lies, never recant, and refuse to seek help for their neuroses.

We must show tolerance and understand: Facts mean little to people with morbid irrational fears…

…
A quest for power through victimization of peers
…

Governments are historically the greatest threat to Jews (or anyone), responsible for horrendous mass-murder campaigns and pogroms throughout history. Murder by government, democide, is by far the greatest killer of innocent human beings. People imbued with the intoxicating power of government authority exterminated 262 million people in the 20th century, according to political scientist R. J. Rummel. Murderous criminals don’t hold a candle to the deadly threat government poses to the public.

Yet Jewish leaders — in Congress of all places (e.g., Charles Schumer, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Barney Frank, Frank Lautenberg, Carl Levin, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, others) — are the anti-rights leaders on the self-defense gun issue. They are the very strongest proponents of relying on government for safety and of destroying the right of the individual to keep and bear arms. Somehow, America’s liberal Jews expect the police to protect them, a reliance that has failed the Jews throughout history.

As you may already know, police are actually free of any legal obligation to protect you, as documented for all 50 states in Dial 911 and Die (Attorney Richard W. Stevens, Mazel Freedom Press, 1999). The U.S. Supreme Court has confirmed this repeatedly, most recently in Castle Rock v. Gonzalez, 545 U.S. 748 (2005).

JPFO also provide this page with links to many articles following the Sandy Hook school shooting.

JPFO also have articles by several different authors.

Here are the article archives for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.

Here are Wendy McElroy’s articles.

And here are L. Neil Smith’s articles. One of his articles is “Yoko Ohno,” which is especially relevant given that “Sir Paul” McCartney recently appeared in New York at one of those hysterical marches remembering his colleague John Lennon who was murdered there, and “Sir Paul” calling for even more gun control.

“Enough is enough,” Sir Paul. I wish these celebrities would shut up and stop being so ignorant and hysterical. (Doh!)

Why don’t those marching kids ever protest the U.S. military going overseas and shooting, bombing and murdering hundreds of thousands of innocents especially since the early 1990s? Do these kids really want a disarmed civilian population in America and only let government police and military have the guns? Sadly, most people don’t know that, as mentioned above by JPFO, there were more government-inflicted deaths in the 20th Century than by any other class of … people.

Did Mueller Conspire to Keep Innocent Men Framed by FBI in Prison for Life for a Murder They Did Not Commit?

According to Howie Carr, the Boston Globe and a longtime member of the Massachusetts Parole Board say yes.

Madness in Washington: John Bolton to Be “National Security” Advisor

For a new national security advisor Donald Trump has picked the blood-thirsty neocon John Bolton to replace H.R. Disaster H.R. McMaster, the bald bureaucrat who had ousted several Trump courtiers from the White House. Bolton was a major pusher for war on Iraq in 2002-03 as well as a supporter of preemptive strikes based on hysteria and propaganda. Subsequent to Iraq he has wanted to start new wars on Iran and North Korea.

So Bolton is a thoroughly discredited neocon warmonger, yet Trump wants him on the Trump team. Might as well. Especially with the “hawkish” Mike Pompeo as secretary of state. Don’t worry, Donald, George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s foreign policy disasters were so bad that yours couldn’t be nearly as bad … NOT!

So far, Trump has accomplished the continued escalation of bombing in Syria and Yemen and more and more murders of innocent civilians. With John Bolton on the team the disastrous results will of course be much worse than the previous Presidents’ fiascos. And that’s not a mustache on John Bolton, that’s foam from all the foaming at the mouth he’s been doing in his propagandizing for more war, for bombing Iran and North Korea.

Bolton’s views are of those ignorant of history and based on myths, belligerence and short-term thinking. Obviously, had he known or understood that the U.S. military’s first war and sanctions on Iraq throughout the 1990s caused blowback and retaliation, including 9/11, and had he rationally thought through the possible consequences of another war on Iraq in 2003, Bolton might have thought differently. But noooo.

Besides those on the left, the anti-Iran neocons and others on the right such as conservatives are also afflicted with an immediate gratification, short-sighted mentality, and a narcissism as well. After all, who but a narcissistic individual would reject the philosophy of “Do unto others what one would want others to do unto you,” and “Don’t do unto others what one would not want others to do unto you.”

The neocon warmongers and militarists reject the Golden Rule when they say the U.S. government should start wars against or invade other countries but it’s bad if other governments start wars against or invade the U.S.

Narcissists believe that it’s acceptable for the U.S. military to have its military bases on other territories but it’s not acceptable for foreign governments (such as the Chinese, Iranians or worse, the British) to have their military bases on U.S. territory. Or a foreign government such as China or Iran having its military bases on Canadian or Mexican territory, or even off the U.S. coasts. God forbid.

So the U.S. military has its bases on territories and its ships in the seas completely surrounding Iran, but imagine the cries of the U.S. nationalists and neocons if Iran has an Iranian ship off the U.S. coast. It’s very narcissistic, in my view.

Donald Trump, a central-planning obsessed socialist, believes that imposing tariffs on American consumers is a way to “punish” China or other foreign producers even though stealing more from Americans via tariffs is punishing Americans. Duh, Donald. Like his fellows on the left, Trump thinks with emotion, with immediate, short-sightedness. But what will this new government imposition do in the long term? (“Huh?”) In the same way, John Bolton and his fellow neocons can’t seem to fathom the longer-term consequences of the government and militaristic intrusions they support.

On Iran, the anti-Iran crowd seem to hold a petty grudge against Iran because of their still feeling humiliated by Iranian militants’ taking of Americans hostage in Iran in 1979-1980. I think that is the main reason why all this anti-Iran frothing all these years. It’s like the anti-Russian “keep the Cold War going” stuff since the end of the Cold War in 1990 or so. The national security state (the CIA, military, NSA, etc.) needs an “enemy” to justify its existence (and its overly-bloated budget!). And John Bolton is a hanger-on of the national security state if there ever was one.

Now, I’m not justifying the Iranian militants’ taking of Americans hostage in Iran in the late 1970s. While it’s immoral to take innocent people hostage, obviously, one really is taking a risk by traveling in foreign areas, especially when one is in diplomatic office representing one’s government — a U.S. government, by the way, that had supported a totalitarian Iranian regime for decades prior to the hostage takings.

But I wonder if Bolton and company know about or dismiss the relevance of the history of U.S. government’s instigating the coup in Iran in the early 1950s that replaced its prime minister with the Shah and subsequently supported the Shah’s totalitarian police state, SAVAK. The coup supposedly was on behalf of the British who wanted to seize Iranian oil. The CIA then supported Iran’s police state throughout the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. And this further radicalized the Islamic fundamentalists of Iran at the time.

So based on the humiliation of Iranian hostage-taking of Americans, there has been that Iran-hate, based on the national security state’s propaganda in its needing more enemies to justify its existence (and its overly bloated budget!). But what about the Saudis? Why don’t our “national security” overlords in Washington hate Saudi Arabia?

As I wrote in some earlier posts, the Saudis are big sponsors and promoters of extremist Islamic jihad throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, and they may have actually provided financing and planning for the 9/11 terrorists. So the Saudi regime is much more evil and dangerous than Iran because the Saudis are much more fanatical in their religious zeal, and because of the Saudi regime’s murderous treatment of its own people who are prisoners of the government (much like those in North Korea).

But does John Bolton say anything about the Saudis? Does he want to bomb Saudi Arabia? Nope. (And no, I’m not suggesting that Saudi Arabia be bombed.)

Also, the Iranians have much more freedom than the Saudis, and, believe it or not, the Iranian government is less threatening to Iranians and to the outside world than Saudi Arabia’s regime is. “Oh, they’re trying to get nukes” (and the Saudis aren’t?), the neocons cry about Iran. The irrational Benjamin Nutty-Yahoo has been warning for 25 years that the Iranians are “three to five years” from having nukes. Well, the U.S. government has had nukes for longer than that, and actually has a history of dropping The Bomb on civilian populations and murdering tens of thousands of innocent civilians. The people in Washington are real psychopaths, and they have been for decades and decades.

But the war frothers still seem able with their propaganda to convince the gullible to join them in promoting more belligerence and violence against foreigners, against innocents. The U.S. national security state needs to justify its existence (and its overly bloated budget!) as I mentioned above, so they need to make stuff up, as well as start fights and criminally start wars with foreigners. Otherwise, the bureaucracy-loving warmongers might have to try getting honest work in the private sector. God forbid.

Before Congress Votes on New Budget Bill…

…they need to read Laurence Vance on how to make America great again (and follow his advice).

Are There Any Libertarians Still in Amerika?

Justin Raimondo asks, Whatever happened to the libertarian movement? in his recent article in Chronicles magazine. The principles of liberty seem to have been forgotten and the “social justice” warriors have taken over the movement, i.e. joined the left. The Cato Institute became drug-addicted, with their drug being Washington Power, and the Niskanen Center pushes for universal income and climate change laws. Gary Johnson the pothead and Bill Weld the Hillary supporter pretty much told the rest of the world that the Libertarian Party was no more.

Raimondo has been writing in defense of Donald Trump, who has been targeted by a huge smear campaign especially by the national security state, a.k.a. deep state. Raimondo notes Cato’s Julian Sanchez’s defense of the FBI in its illegal use of surveillance powers against the Trump campaign. So hatred of Donald Trump seems to interfere with the rational thinking of some people now.

I think the Donald Trump phenomenon has affected things in the movement to promote liberty and dismantle the State, in some ways. The good part of the Trump factor is Trump’s eliciting the media and pundits’ outrage at his political incorrectness, and this past year or two his exposing the news media for the ignorant, biased and corrupt people that many of them are. Trump also gives me a good laugh, such as “low-IQ Mika” and other causes of gasps and tsk-tsks. But Trump’s love for the military and government police is sickening, his militarism taking things where Bush and Obama left off, is criminal, in my view. And Trump wants to execute drug traffickers — but what about the doctors and pharmacists and Big Pharma who are trafficking in legal drugs that are contributing to a lot of violence and deaths? The simple-minded, short-sighted Trump doesn’t see the big picture, that ending the drug war and ending prohibition removes the black market which will effect in ending the violence and criminality associated with it. And that shaming doctors for giving patients powerful, addictive opiates, people who don’t need them, might help as well.

In his Chronicles article Raimondo praises the Ron Paul movement — good — and the Mises Institute. He gets into his nationalism stuff briefly, without mentioning “America First” which he has been calling for throughout the Trump election. Frankly, I don’t know what America has to do with freedom anymore, or how “America First” is associated in any way with libertarianism. As I’ve said plenty of times here, the country is too big, it’s too big in area — 3.7 million square miles — and it’s too big in population — 320 million — to be a “united” republic. It needs to be decentralized, and eventually it will be just as the Soviet Union fell apart, and the European Union is also doing. But sadly, there are generations of people who were raised to worship this “America” thing, not really to understand the actual ideas and principles which were its underpinnings, but follow the mythology of “America the beautiful,” “city on a hill,” and so on. It’s just not realistic, especially when we have centralized rulers who refuse to let go of the power and their fiefdoms.

One thing Raimondo made reference to that I wanted to address was an appearance on Tucker Carlson by Reason magazine’s Katherine Mangu-Ward, who, when asked if it mattered that immigrants get some jobs in America rather than Americans, she apparently answered no. Justin doesn’t provide actual quotes. He then writes, “Who cares if they’re Americans? Who cares if it’s the family next door? Who cares about the country? America isn’t a place; it’s an Idea!”

But it shouldn’t matter, in my view. What matters is that we have a free society. Isn’t that what libertarians are striving for? Nationalists and conservatives against immigration seem to have this notion that Americans are entitled to jobs in America. No, Americans are not entitled to a job provided by an American employer. Are you entitled to an employer hiring you even though another applicant is better qualified?

On the contrary, it is the employer who is entitled to hire whomever the employer determines to be the best qualified candidate for the job. And that entitlement is based on private property rights and freedom of association, which are very important principles that libertarians should be advocating.

If Mexican Carlos gets the job that American Dave also applied for, then that should incentivize American Dave to strengthen his abilities and qualifications to get a better job that he wants to get.

Just like in trade, when American consumers who choose to buy a better quality product from a foreign producer at a lower price — that should incentivize American producers to make better quality products at lower prices. So this kind of economic freedom and personal freedom, which should be universal, is the freedom that libertarians should be promoting. Right? Free trade in consumer goods and services as well as free trade in labor and employment. That’s the libertarian way.

So the nationalism stuff takes our freedom down a few notches (or more than just a few), in my view. During the period of the late 19th Century into early 20th Century there was quite a bit more freedom than there is now. But the nationalists and the progressives came along and gave us the Fed, the income tax, wars and the national security state. Why are there “libertarians” who support those awful branches of the evil State?

The national security state? That’s another thing. Is that now a part of the Libertarian Party? Apparently, the current LP Chair (It says “Chair” on the website, not “Chairman,” because they are afraid of offending the SJW loony-tunes snowflakes.) Nicholas Sarwark is on the WikiLeaks list of intelligence assets, the “Global Intelligence Files.” Well, after the warmonger Bob Barr and the idiot Gary Johnson, and the watering down of LP principles, I guess I am not surprised, if it’s true, anyway. It might not be true.

Tom Woods tweeted this tweet by Nicholas Sarwark, in which Sarwark links to this article about white male privilege. In that Sarwark tweet, Sarwark writes, “A helpful article from @scalzi on how the game of life works.” Besides showing that Sarwark is an SJW, in that tweet’s comments he corrects other commenters’ grammar and spelling. “You’re,” not “your” and so on. (My, how appealing.)

Hmm, I have just seen that Sarwark is now running for mayor of Phoenix. AZcentral.com writes: “Although he’s deeply involved in the Libertarian party, he said he’s focused on getting the city back to its basic functions, like keeping the ‘streets safe and clean water’ — not partisan ‘pet projects’.”

I didn’t know that libertarianism involved “getting the city [City Hall?] back to its basic functions, like keeping the streets safe and clean water.”

So, the “Chair” of the Libertarian Party is an SJW who wants to preside over a city government to keep streets safe and the water clean. What about the right to keep and bear arms? Won’t that keep the streets safe? City government will keep the streets safe? What about protecting private property? I guess this “libertarian” likes centralization of power. Oh, well.

Now, I am sorry that the Cato-Reason-Gary Johnson crowd had to come along and further erode the libertarian movement with their “social justice” crapola. Johnson would force a Jewish baker to have to bake a cake for a Nazi. The Libertarian Party has been going downhill since the days of Ron Paul and Harry Browne, and especially since its 2003 support of the Iraq war via a central planning “exit strategy.” Yech.

In my view, the libertarian way of life would have to coincide with a thorough rejection of the State. The State is the one organization and apparatus of people that has most violated the lives and freedom of innocents throughout time. Nothing comes close! The State is evil, a criminal racket, and it cannot be “reformed.” But it’s difficult to get that across to people who have spent the first 12 to 16 years of their lives in government schools, or government-controlled private schools, being raised to be “good citizens” i.e. obedient sheeple and subservient to the bureaucrats and enforcers of the State.

I want to see more libertarians who believe in self-ownership, and in freedom of thought and conscience. The SJW stuff doesn’t belong in libertarianism, because libertarianism coincides with individualism, in which group identity shouldn’t matter. Many self-identified libertarians accept the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because they reject private property rights and freedom of association. Those concepts, which actually are part of the underpinnings of America, are almost lost.

However, nationalism is a part of “group identity” politics as well. I wish the nationalists could see that. Collectivism is a very bad thing, just like the State. Nationalism is a form of collectivism, and in my view that collectivist nationalism is just as destructive as the State and statism.

I’m sure that some will disagree with me on this, but real libertarians will always oppose the initiation of all wars, as such libertarians will immediately disbelieve the government propaganda to justify war. You have to assume that the bureaucrats are lying, and unless their intelligentsia and “journalist” stenographers are brainwashed True Believers, they are lying, too! Real libertarians are for civil liberties and will have to agree that there would be no NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS, and TSA in a free society. And no central planning controls on the movements of millions of people either, foreigners or domestic inhabitants. A libertarian world would be a free society. Really, a free society. Sadly, a lot of libertarians just don’t get that.

So, while I disagree with him on his “America First” (I’m for “Freedom First” —  that’s better.) and this nationalism and anti-immigration stuff, I am nevertheless with Justin Raimondo on his yearning for the old libertarianism of decades ago. And I hope he completely gets rid of that cancer so he can get on with his life and go on with his writing at Antiwar.com and his informative and sometimes funny tweets.

Education and Child Care: Get the Government Out

Here is my article today at American Thinker, Education and Child Care: Get the Government Out:

March 19, 2018

Maryland lawmakers are following the lead of hysterical California kooks and are proposing new guidelines for Maryland homeschoolers. Proposals include intrusive monitoring requirements, compelling homeschoolers to submit to in-home visits by school bureaucrats, according to the Free Thought Project.

The anti-homeschooler legislators’ rationale is the recent case of child abuse and torture allegedly inflicted by a California couple on their 13 kids. Did you hear about that case? The one in which the parents kept the kids chained to beds, kept them malnourished and so on. So just because those parents happen to homeschool their kids, the apparatchiks are slamming their iron fists down on all homeschoolers.

The rulers are hard-core control freaks, and education is an important means to control the people. So is the “child protection” racket.

The State compels kids to attend unsafe government schools, and creates draconian restrictions if parents want an alternative. There are the State’s abusive “child welfare” agencies. And the schools are not safe because they are either an Orwellian police state or teachers and staff are disarmed by law and unable to protect kids from intruders.

There are now many examples of the various government child care agencies such as CPS (Child Protection Services) and DCF (Department of Children and Families) which have demonstrated the viciousness and indecency of the State.

To begin, according to Jenifer McKim of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, between 2001 and 2011, at least “95 Massachusetts children whose cases were overseen by state social workers have died directly or indirectly because of abuse or neglect.”

In 2014, this Boston Globe article disclosed that “hundreds of children in the Massachusetts welfare system” had gone missing.

More recently, as reported by Masslive.com, “there were 76 deaths of children under state care or supervision” in fiscal 2017.

And this is happening not only in Massachusetts. As of December of 2017, more than 70 foster care children were missing in Kansas.

This 2013 article discussed the Oklahoma state Department of Human Services and the 78 missing children from its CPS who may very well have been taken into sex-trafficking. The late Georgia state senator Nancy Schaefer worked to expose (.pdf) CPS and its alleged child sex-trafficking connection.

Why would government child “protection” involve sexual misconduct of any kind?

The Boston Herald has covered several disturbing cases in Massachusetts, including an 11-year-old foster boy who alleged that he was sexually assaulted in that foster home. The DCF dismissed it as ‘consensual sex’. There are many other cases, including one in Worcester, as reported by the Herald, in which DCF degenerates worked feverishly to get 3 kids in foster care back to their parents, even though the kids made “allegations against the parents of rape, molestation and being ‘taught’ sexual acts they performed on each other and the parents, physical beatings, and a lack of food in the home…”

According to the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, a policy known as ‘viewing bodies’ involved strip searching the foster children on each visit, without probable cause. They continued the strip searches even though that procedure was determined to be illegal.

Why is child “protection” becoming so sexualized and invasive? One conclusion by the American Dream Blog was that the government schools seem to be playing a major role in that.

I think that intrusiveness toward others in a most private way is something that now pervades the left, from government child “welfare” to the radical LGBT extremists. When the activists infiltrate the schools with sexual-related matters that little boys and girls are too young to be exposed to, then I view that as extreme intrusiveness and it becomes “abuse,” in my view. It is just immoral to treat a child in that kind of invasive way, or to invasively expose a child to “alternative” adult lifestyles.

And the State is intimately enmeshed into these intrusions because the State controls the education of most kids.

Even further, the Massachusetts child “welfare” departments openly promote sickos to be foster parents. In 2014 the Boston Herald reported that a Massachusetts DCF handbook stated that people with criminal records and who have been convicted of “inducing sex from a minor … violent offenses, including assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, armed burglary and involuntary manslaughter” are suitable to be foster parents.

In 2013, a 5-year-old foster child, Jeremiah Oliver, had been missing and was later found dead in a suitcase. Apparently, the children in that foster home had been abused by the mother and her gang-member boyfriend.

And I have covered the case of now-19-year-old Justina Pelletier, who had been treated for Mitochondrial Disease. At one point when she was taken to see a doctor at Boston Children’s Hospital, her case was seized by psychiatrists who changed her diagnosis to “somatoform disorder,” and immediately withdrew her from her treatment. Custody of her was seized by the state of Massachusetts, and she was then involuntarily placed into a mental health facility for troubled teens, even though she was clearly not “troubled.” Her physical condition deteriorated and she then had to use a wheelchair.

Justina then found herself in captivity and under the constraints of “behavior-modification” ideology-driven and research-driven psychiatrists, according to her father, Lou Pelletier. The Pelletier family is suing Boston Children’s Hospital and the doctors, and the lawsuit trial is still pending.

And that hospital and the doctors are clearly private-sector workers. However, in this case doctors relied on the state’s DCF seizing custody of Justina. And the doctors’ receiving government research grants also plays a large role here. Some people refer to this case as one of “medical kidnapping” by the doctors and their government partners.

Now, this is not to suggest that all these problems occur solely because “child protection” has been monopolized by the State. There actually are some decent government social workers who had rebuked their agencies.

In the private sector, however, workers are made to be accountable under the law, while the agents of government-monopolized services have shown themselves time and again to be above the law.

The invasive sexual deviancy and the “child welfare” racket and CPS abuses are bad enough. But add to that the crazy police state in the schools, as discussed by John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, and terrifying terrorism drills in the schools. And now Donald Trump wants to impose an escalated police state in the government schools?

In my view, the police state inflicted on kids for no good reason is a form of child abuse — along with its imposing gun-free zones, mandating that no one may be armed in the schools, and therefore no one may be able to defend the kids from a psychopathic shooter. With civilian disarmament and mandated gun-free zones, the government schools turn kids into sitting ducks.

No wonder people want to homeschool their kids. Imagine the government’s local homeschool “supervisors,” as threatened by Maryland and California bureaucrats. Could they be just as bad as the government “child protective” social workers?

So it is time to finally take control over education away from the government, as well as remove its monopoly over “child protection.”

“National Intelligence” (sic)

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has some comments to make on the recent House Intelligence Committee Republicans finding no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.

The committee’s “Initial Findings” released on Monday specifically reject the assumption that Putin favored Trump.

This puts the committee directly at odds with handpicked analysts from only the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who assessed that Putin favored Trump – using this as their major premise and then straining to prove it by cobbling together unconvincing facts and theories.

Those of us with experience in intelligence analysis strongly criticized the evidence-impoverished ICA as soon as it was released, but it went on to achieve Gospel-like respect, with penance assigned to anyone who might claim it was not divinely inspired.

Until now.

Rep. K. Michael Conway (R-Texas), who led the House Committee investigation, has told the media that the committee is preparing a separate, in-depth analysis of the ICA itself. Good.

The committee should also take names – not only of the handpicked analysts, but the hand-pickers. There is ample precedent for this.

…

I recall reading the ICA as soon as it was published. I concluded that no special expertise in intelligence analysis was needed to see how the assessment had been cobbled together around the “given” that Putin had a distinct preference for Trump. That was a premise with which I always had serious trouble, since it assumed that a Russian President would prefer to have an unpredictable, mercurial, lash-out-at-any-grievance-real-or-perceived President with his fingers on the nuclear codes. This – not name-calling – is precisely what Russian leaders fear the most.

Read the rest…

Just Say NO – to “Hardening” the Schools

John Whitehead has a terrific column rejecting Donald Trump’s idea of “hardening” the schools with even more police state, with more armed officers of the State, metal detectors, etc. This is what I hear from the conservative talk radio people, such as Sean Hannity. It is as though they have a one-track mind. More armed police. More government police, in other words.

No, how about just sticking with repealing gun-free zone laws and other gun control laws, and let teachers and other school staff members be armed if they want to be. Better yet, abolish the government schools! Hooray!