It is true that the theory of our Constitution is, that all taxes are paid voluntarily; that our government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily entered into by the people with each other; that each man makes a free and purely voluntary contract with all others who are parties to the Constitution, to pay so much money for so much protection, the same as he does with any other insurance company; and that he is just as free not to be protected, and not to pay tax, as he is to pay a ta... (more)
Fact is, you cannot appease tyranny. Once people understand that the thirst of tyrants cannot be quenched, then people will begin to realize and appreciate the severity of their circumstance. The United States of America is no longer. We are ruled by the color of law, and peaceful protest is now brutally crushed; two clearly undeniable indicators that America has fallen into the hands of the authoritarians.
The Constitution tells us that we have the right to peaceably assembl... (more)
[Pictured: No surrender, no retreat: Andrei (l) and Viktor Gorodilov at the bridge.]
“What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? Or, if during the periods of mass arrests ... people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood that they had nothi... (more)
Some pundits really don’t understand why libertarians dislike government and therefore want it to do little, if anything at all. Unable to grasp the reason, the pundits assign bad motives to those who disparage government: They don’t like poor people, or workers, or the sick, or education.
But what’s so hard to understand? Government is significantly different from anything else in society. It is the only institution that can legally threaten and initiate viol... (more)
As an economist I have never had much patience with Paul Krugman’s economics, stuck as he is in 1940s-era Keynesian demand-side economics. I have sometimes concluded that Krugman had rather denounce Ronald Reagan that to acknowledge that supply-side economists have established that fiscal policy has supply-side, not just demand-side, effects.
However, Krugman does display at times a moral conscience. He did so on September 11 in his New York Times column... (more)
In the US on September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of 9/11, politicians and their presstitute media presented Americans with “A Day of Remembrance,” a propaganda exercise that hardened the 9/11 lies into dogma. Meanwhile, in Toronto, Canada, at Ryerson University the four-day International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001, came to a close at 5pm.
During the four days of hearings, distinguished scientists and scholars and professional architects and eng... (more)
Last month, the National Drug Intelligence Center at the U.S. Department of Justice released its "National Drug Threat Assessment" for this year. No doubt hoping no one will notice or care, the report itself observes that "[t]he abuse of several major illicit drugs, including heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine, appears to be increasing, especially among the young."
Nevertheless, the report, like the statistical insanity emanating from the telescreens in Orwell's 1984, emphatic... (more)
George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, got a few things wrong — for example, the date. But he was dead-on in depicting the cause-and-effect relationship between language and politics, between language and our ability to think clearly; the process of using words as social control was called Newspeak. What cannot be expressed cannot be effectively understood or opposed. Neutralizing language defuses the most powerful weapon against oppression: the ability to think.
During the recent memorial of the September 11 attacks, I heard a lot of discussion by people remembering where they were and how they felt when they first heard news of the attack on the World Trade Center. I remember it very vividly myself.
I was awakened by my clock radio while the local morning DJs were still excitedly discussing the plane impact on the first tower. Before long, another plane hit the second tower. It became pretty clear then that the first on... (more)
Last Friday’s New York Times carried a front-page article entitled “Desperate Guatemalans Embrace an ‘Iron Fist,’” which showed how the failures of government interventionism inevitably lead toward calls for dictatorship to bring “order and stability” to society.
The article is about the drug war, perhaps the mo... (more)
On September 10, 2001, many who thirsted for liberty smelled hope in the air. The Clinton era was over and the new Bush era showed signs of being less eventful, even more peaceful. The Republican had won on a platform of a humbler foreign policy than Clinton-Gore's, and had by late 2001 pushed through his tax cut. More to the point, he already seemed an impotent president, having just barely won after one of the most contentious rounds of recounts and court challenges in electoral history. The S... (more)
Individual men and women don’t need enemies. Many want a challenge with an opponent, someone with whom to compete cooperatively, but not an enemy. Governments, however, do need enemies to get their citizenry to submit to coercion.
Some of us accept that as almost axiomatic, a self-evident fact that’s so blatant we can’t understand why the rest of society doesn’t recognize the obvious. So the question arises: Why are people so willing to put on blinders and... (more)
“Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward,” said George W. Bush on September 11, 2011. “And freedom will be defended.”
President Obama apparently agrees that the U.S. government’s response to 9/11 has been to defend freedom. This past Memorial Day he announced, “From Gettysburg to Kandahar, America’s sons and daughters have served with honor and distinction, securing our liberties and laying a foundation for la... (more)
New Jersey has provided a blueprint on how not to solve a social problem. The blueprint will almost certainly create a barrage of new difficulties without relieving the old one.
The “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act” took effect on September 1. The New York Times (August 30) reported, “Under a new state law in New Jersey, lunch-line bullies ... can be reported to the police by t... (more)
"It is the mandatory nature of any travel document that converts it into a violation of rights."
"Your papers!" In old movies, the demand is barked at trembling travelers by a Nazi with a guttural accent. If the demand is made in the opening scene, then the audience knows immediately that they watching a totalitarian state in which travelers are in danger.
"Your papers!" now rings out at every American airport and border crossing. The accent is different but travele... (more)
What is the true legacy of 9/11? Unfortunately, it may be how the American people have responded to that event. 10 years after 9/11, is America a better place? Sadly, the answer clearly is no. In the ten years that have passed, a fundamental shift in our culture has occurred. The American people have eagerly given up large amounts of liberty and freedom in exchange for vague promises of increased security. We were once the land of the free and the home of the ... (more)
After reportedly feeding a crowd of five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, Jesus Christ of Nazareth was recently served with formal legal notice from industry trade associations, demanding that he cease and desist from what they charge is an illegal food-sharing operation under the terms of the Miracle Millennium Anti-Replication Act (MMAA).
Miracle-working rabbis like Mr. Christ, and their alleged property rights infringements, have been the center of controversy in recen... (more)
The Washington Post woke up a few days ago and realized that despite everything that has happened since 9/11 -- no successful Terrorist attacks on the Homeland in 10 years, a country mired in debt and imposing "austerity" on ordinary Americans, and the election of a wonderfully sophisticated, urbane, progressive multinational... (more)
"Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward, and freedom will be defended." ~ George W. Bush, September 11, 2001
We have heard it repeated loudly and continuously since 9/11 – the troops are defending our freedoms. This claim is made so often and by so many different segments of society that it has become another meaningless national dictum – li... (more)
Five years ago, antiwar liberals calling the Bush administration fascist were labeled as kooks, marginalized by their own party leadership, accused by conservatives of treasonous thoughts worthy of federal punishment, even deportation. A few years pass, the policies hardly change, and the political dynamic turns upside down: Tea Party conservatives accusing the Obama regime of fascist impulses are compared to terrorists, accused of being racists, told that their hyperbole is a real threa... (more)
The August 3, 2011 shakedown of the Rawesome food cooperative in Venice, California, in spite of the tragic outcome, has produced one positive result. The ruthless raid on the part of miscellaneous government agencies has sparked a wave of unprecedented discord over the question – How can government dictate what we choose to eat when we each have unique standards for good nut... (more)
I left the United Soviet States of Amerika (USSA) five years ago and never looked back. Upon discovering that government forces executed what I learned was a “false flag operation” (thank you Loose Change), that the economy was one giant Ponzi scheme (thank you G. Edward Griffin) and that there truly did exist a movement for totalitarian world government mirroring Biblical depictions (thank you Alex Jones), I figur... (more)
In the wake of hurricane Irene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is expected to come hat in hands asking for more money from Congress. Like the rest of the government, it is broke. It has been suggested that any additional funds allocated to FEMA should come from cuts elsewhere. This seems harsh and lacking in compassion to big government advocates who do not understand economics, but I would go a step further. FEMA should never have been established. It is based on misguided ideas o... (more)
A fascinating example of the mindset of American mainstream journalists is provided by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote a glowing piece this week praising the U.S. government’s humanitarian intervention in Libya. It’s entitled “Thank You, America!”
Kristof’s article comes across as a gloriou... (more)
On September’s first Monday we supposedly honor those who labored hard in the past by taking the day off. That alone should suggest something is wrong with the occasion. Normally, when someone has worked an awful lot and you want to show your appreciation, you do so by picking up some of the slack, not slacking off yourself.
More to the point, let us ask: Who takes off Labor Day?
In the commercial sector, plenty of people enjoy the three-day weekend, and there... (more)
