Kent Snyder, RIP

Kent Snyder, who was campaign chairman of Ron Paul's presidential campaign, passed away last week from pneumonia.

Here is a statement from Dr. Paul.

As Many Folks Had Said....

These folks are watermelons.

"I understand that global warming is a religion conceived to suppress human freedom," he told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. "It is used to justify an enormous scope for government intervention vis-a-vis the markets and personal freedom."

The 66-year-old Mr. Klaus was in Washington this week for talks with senior U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, and to tout his new book, "Blue Planet in Green Shackles," about the dangers to life, liberty and prosperity posed by the modern environmental movement.

Green on the outside, red on the inside.

You Might Say..............

The non-voters are making their voices heard.

The Power Elite

May not be too thrilled with the growing emergence of the dreaded non-voter.

Now a massive public opinion poll conducted in the U.S. shows that those traditional beliefs don't hold true any more – and the key differences in values in American society are much scarier than those between Democrat and Republican supporters. The poll was undertaken by the highly-respected polling company, Environics, and the results are published in a new book, American Backlash, written by the polling firm's Canadian president, Michael Adams.

The key finding of the poll, which surveyed more than 8,000 citizens in four waves from 1992 through 2004, is that the differences between Democrats and Republicans are small indeed compared with the gulf that divides those who vote and participate in the democratic process, and those who do not. The values divide gets even bigger when one looks at the values of the politically involved with the thousands of young adults who appear to have become so disenchanted by the political process that they are completely alienated from political activity in any form.

Perhaps more folks---especialy younger ones----may be declaring their independence from the modern establishment-dominated political process.

Believe It Or Else....

There was a Nevada Republican state convention this past Saturday in Reno.

The April convention was abruptly shut down before final votes on what was shaping up as a national convention delegation with more backers for Ron Paul than presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain.

Paul supporters and others voted Saturday to reconvene the state convention after determining the 327 delegates in attendance constituted a quorum.

I think there would be more than a few Republicans who will vote for someone other than Senator McMussolini this coming November.

Pro Libertate: The Heller Misdirection

Pro Libertate: The Heller Misdirection

Here is William Norman Grigg's take on the recent Supreme Court ruling concerning the District of Columbia's ban on handguns.

South Korea: Why Are We Still There?

Why is it that when it comes our continued presence (after nearly six decades) in South Korea, we say it is for the South Koreans' own good?

President Bush (what a source!) has referred to the "Korean Model" for Iraq. Also, in discussing plans to keep US troops in Iraq, John McCain stated: "We've been in South Korea... for 60 years." and Defense Secretary Robert Gates: "So I think that the reason that Korea's been mentioned is – and it's been mentioned in contrast to Vietnam, where we just left lock, stock and barrel." and White House Press Secretary Tony Snow last year mentioned it too:" ... in South Korea, where for many years there have been American forces stationed there as a way of maintaining stability and assurance on the part of the South Korean people against a North Korean neighbor that is a menace."

Maintaining stability? Oh, yes, like against democratization movements. From the CIA Factbook: In 1993, Kim Young-sam became South Korea's first civilian president following 32 years of military rule. To many South Koreans, the long American presence in their country is a reminder of tacit U.S. support for a series of ruthless despots. "South Korea between '61 and '89 was ruled by some of the worst military dictators created during the Cold War," [Chalmers] Johnson says. "Finally the Koreans got rid of them and have quite a healthy democracy now. But all the credit goes to the Koreans – there is a terrible tendency for Americans to mislead themselves about the good things they have done in East Asia." During that period, Korean history was marked by the The Gwangju Democratization Movement, a popular uprising in the city of Gwangju, South Korea from May 18 to May 27, 1980. During this period, citizens rose up against Chun Doo-hwan's military dictatorship and took control of the city. During the later phase of the uprising, citizens took on arms to defend themselves, but were crushed by the South Korean army. Senior officials in the Carter administration approved South Korean plans to use military troops against pro-democracy demonstrations ten days before former General Chun Doo-hwan seized control of the country in a May 17, 1980, military coup, according to newly released U.S. government documents.

So our guys helped in domestic repression, but the South Koreans need help defending against the menace of North Korea, right?

Not exactly. South Korea currently ranks 12th in the world militarily, whereas North Korea is 18th. South Korea has twice as many men available to the military (24 million to 11 million) and roughly twice as many under arms (657,000 to 382,000). Economically the South ranks 13th in the world with a GDP of $982b (just above Australia), the North ranks 156th with $2b (just above Greenland). North Korea's gross national income was valued at $26.7 billion last year, with its per capita gross national income at $1,152, according to the Bank of Korea. By contrast, South Korea's $971 billion economy grew 5 percent last year, giving it a per capita income at $20,045.

Nevertheless, about 27,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950–53 Korean War. The two Koreas (and the US) are still technically in a state of war since the 1950–53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

But while the US is technically still at war with North Korea, it no longer considers Korea to be a combat zone. In fact, the US Defense Secretary considers the country to be safe.

Another part of this country's legacy of treating other countries as if they were American provinces.

The Slumlord's Buddy vs. Senator McMussolini

Here is Alan Stang's take.

Pro Libertate: Martial Law: A License to Loot, a Permit to Plunder (Updated)

Pro Libertate: Martial Law: A License to Loot, a Permit to Plunder (Updated)

Ahhh, yes. Ain't martial law wonderful?

It Doesn't Really Matter

We have, in essence, two socialists as the top two candidates for the role of American Caesar. 

America's big problem is the rapid, unstoppable expansion of government at every level. This isn't just a problem of affordability – as in making sure there are sufficient tax dollars to sustain the growth. It's a problem of liberty. The bigger government gets, the more it extinguishes the choices made by individuals. We all enjoy fewer freedoms as regulation grows, the number of government agents expands, taxes increase, programs grow, wars continue and laws proliferate. It's as simple as that.

Obama and McCain both act as if government is a magical force that can shower goodies, ranging from free health care to permanent security, on the American people. They both view government as something unquestionably good and noble, although they prefer different aspects of Leviathan. But, as George Washington explained, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." Dangerous or fearful – those are your choices, whether or not modern Republicans (who claim to believe in limited government, but have been most effective in expanding it) or Democrats want to admit it.

Because America's founders understood that government always is about coercion, they created a system that was designed primarily to limit the size and power of that government and to create competing levels of government to check one another. They knew something Americans since have forgotten: The biggest threat most of us face is from our own government, not foreign invaders. 

The sooner this country breaks up, the better.

Dubya: Robert Mugabe In Whiteface?

Paul Craig Roberts with what he believes is the utter lawlessness associated with the current administration.

It is now an incontrovertible fact, known all over the world, that George W. Bush and his regime’s operatives lied through their teeth in order to launch wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, and that the Bush regime is doing the same thing again in hopes of launching an attack on Iran.

There have been a number of memoirs from high-ranking Bush appointees who cannot stand all the lies. Bush’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill, told us that an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda prior to 9/11. There is the leaked Downing Street Memo in which the head of British Intelligence told the British Prime Minister and his cabinet that the Americans have decided to attack Iraq and are creating the “intelligence” to justify the attack.

And now we have the White House’s own spokesman from 2003–2006, Scot McClellan, ratifying what we already knew, that President Bush deceived us and led us into war based entirely on lies and fabrications, and that he, Scott McClellan, was deceived into issuing a false public denial that top Cheney aide Scooter Libby and White House operative Karl Rove were involved in committing a felony under US law by revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame.

As a consequence of Bush’s lies, there are a million dead Iraqis, mostly women and children, and four million displaced Iraqis, 4,100 dead American soldiers and tens of thousands of seriously wounded. No one knows how many dead in Afghanistan. And there is the ongoing Israeli slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese that has fallen under the rubric of the “war on terror.”  

Could the current occupent of the White House proclaim martial law and remain in power indefinately?

"Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War"

Paul Gottfried's take on Pat Buchanan's new book.

Throw Dubya In The Pokey?

Here is food for thought.

If A Business Wants To Discriminate....

That's the business' business, NOT the state's!

Environmentalism: Guilty As Charged

Here is George Reisman, in an article posted in 2001 on the Ludwig von Mises website.

Another Indictment...

Of the war on drugs.

Loving Tribute To Tim Russert......

NOT!

The Federal Reserve: America's Crooks

Here is the late Murray Rothbard with another take on our monetary system.

Supreme Legislator Of The United States....

Is NOT one of the duties authorized to the President by the US Constitution.

The authors of the Constitution had just finished a long and bitter war with Great Britain, whose king they saw as a tyrant. The last thing they were going to do is give kingly powers to their own chief executive.

The duties of the president are simple to state: He can require reports from department heads; he may grant pardons and reprieves; with the advice and consent of the Senate, he can make treaties and appoint ambassadors, consuls, ministers and judges; he can receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he must take care to faithfully execute the laws; and he commissions all U.S. officers. He is the commander in chief of the armed forces. From "time to time," he is to report to Congress on the state of the union.

The last duty to be listed says he may "recommend certain measures" to Congress. Congress, of course, is under no obligation, legal or otherwise, to accept his recommendations or, in fact, to do anything he asks Congress to do. The one exception is that under extraordinary circumstances, he can order Congress to convene.

The chief executive was NEVER intended to become King or Emperor.

If You Wanna Blame Someone For The Sad State Of American Education...

You could start with the Know Nothings.

Why Is It...

That the State has this penchant for making economic problems worse?


So what does Washington do? In an act of incredible stupidity, Congress has passed an extension of unemployment benefits. The old rule remains true: if you subsidize something, you get more of it. So this will give us more unemployment. No question about that. It will thereby worsen and prolong the problem.
It takes only a second of economic logic to see why. In a recessionary environment, we need freer, not more socialized, labor markets. Business needs to be able to hire workers at lower prices. You don’t want to increase the cost of hiring; you want to reduce it, especially with unemployment rising. Instead, Congress loots the workers of this country in order to prevent people from entering the job market.
This is not only stupid; it is highly dangerous. Britain tried this in the 1930s, and more than any other action, this contributed to the high unemployment rates that fueled socialist political movements, which led to the destruction of that economy. It could do the same here in the United States.



The economy works best when it is left alone.

The Peace, Freedom, And Sound Money Candidate's Run For The White House May Be Over, BUT

Ron Paul left an undeniable mark on a great many Americans in his campaign for the return to constitutional and noninterventionist government that could last for a long time to come.

Christianity And War

Here is Laurence Vance's take:

But Christianity is in a sad state. In the Church can be found some of the greatest supporters of the state, its leaders, its military, and its wars. Christians who are otherwise good, godly, disciples of Christ often turn into babbling idiots when it comes to the subjects of war, the military, and killing for the state. There is an unholy desire on the part of a great many Christians to legitimize killing in war. There persists the idea among too many Christians that mass killing in war is acceptable, but the killing of one’s neighbor violates the sixth commandment’s prohibition against killing. Christians who wouldn’t think of using the Lord’s name in vain blaspheme God when they make ridiculous statements like "God is pro-war." Christians who try never to lie do so with boldness when they claim they are pro-life, but refuse to extend their pro-life sentiments to foreigners already out of the womb. Christians who abhor idols are guilty of idolatry when they say that we should follow the latest dictates of the state because we should always "obey the powers that be." Christians who venerate the Bible handle the word of God deceitfully when they quote Scripture to justify U.S. government wars. Christians who claim to have the mind of Christ show that they have lost their mind when they want the full force of government to protect a stem cell, but have no conscience about U.S. soldiers killing for the government.

There is an unseemly alliance that exists between certain sectors of Christianity and the military. Even Christians who are otherwise sound in the faith, who are not fooled by Bush’s pseudo-Christianity and faith-based socialism, who believe that the less government we have the better, who don’t support the war in Iraq, and who oppose an aggressive U.S. foreign policy get indignant when you question the institution of the military. Some churches would have no trouble doubling as military recruiting centers. There are Christian colleges that even offer Army ROTC. Most churches fawn over current and former members of the military, not just on Veterans Day, but on other holidays like Memorial Day, Armed Forces Day, and the Fourth of July, and also on special "military appreciation" days that they designate. Well, like those in foreign countries on the receiving end of a U.S. military intervention, I don’t appreciate most of what the military does today, as I will explain later.

Yessir, friends and neighbors, to those of the Christian faith who are, unfortunately in league with the prointerventionist neocons, war and Christianity go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Senator McMarx

Anyone who thinks the senior Senator from Arizona is not a socialist is either stupid or is a God-condemned liar.

Libertarianism's Fork In The Road

You might say that anti-statism is at a crossroads.

I Wonder Just How Many Folks...

Have a longing nostalgia for the days prior to the Caesarization of the office of the Presidency?

Pro Libertate: The Depraved Majesty of Totalitarian Democracy

Pro Libertate: The Depraved Majesty of Totalitarian Democracy

Yessir, boys and girls, Bushevism marches forward!


Looks like to oblivion.

Does The President Really Have The Power...

To become Supreme Legislator of the Oval Office?

In fact the United States operated under a continuous state of emergency from 1933 until 1976, according to By Order Of The President by Phillip J. Cooper.

To correct this ridiculous situation Congress passed The National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601–1651) in 1976 to stop open-ended states of national emergency and formalize Congressional checks and balances on Presidential emergency powers. The act sets a limit of two years on states of national emergency. It also imposes certain "procedural formalities" on the President when invoking such powers, and provides a means for Congress to countermand a Presidential declaration of emergency and associated use of emergency powers.

The perceived need for the law arose from the scope and number of laws granting special powers to the Executive in times of national emergency (or public danger). Constitutional protections are subject to revocation during a state of emergency including the right of habeas corpus.

In addition, many provisions of statutory law – as many as 500 by one count – are contingent on a state of national emergency. According to a 1990 report to Congress the President may seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens.

A popular penalty in recent presidential edicts has been to block property transfers of any offenders. There is never a mention of due process, of course. When it comes to executive privilege justice is not only blind but deaf and dumb.

A big part of the problem is the assumed "executive powers" by presidents who want to act like kings (naturally). From the founding of this nation, American presidents have developed and used various types of presidential or executive "directives." The best-known directives are executive orders and presidential proclamations, but many other documents have a similar function and effect. Presidential directives have been raised to dangerous levels by Presidents William Clinton and George W. Bush. Another excellent reference in this area is With A Stroke of the Pen by Kenneth R. Mayer. It includes a quote from a Clinton advisor which described the strategy: "Stroke of the pen . . . . law of the land. Kind of cool."

Is that what we elect our representatives to Congress for?

If You Value Freedom.....

Please, by all means, read Ron Paul's new book.

Pro Libertate: "Tumult and Blood"

Pro Libertate: "Tumult and Blood"

Talk About Yankee Imperialism....

Try these for coercive utopians:

A "Yankee" is "self-righteous, ruthless, and self-aggrandizing," which is why Hillary Clinton is "a museum-quality specimen of the Yankee," writes Professor Wilson. The Yankee temperament, moreover, "makes a neat fit with the Stalinism that was brought into the Deep North by later immigrants." (He was obviously referring to the burgeoning communist movement in New York City in the early twentieth century, which produced so-called "red diaper babies" such as the former communist rabble rouser David Horowitz.)

In another LRC essay entitled "Saint Hillary and the Religious Left," Murray Rothbard noted the tendency of the Yankees, rooted in New England, upstate New York, and the upper Mid-West in the nineteenth century, to embark on a "fanatical drive" in "devoting tireless energy to bringing about, as rapidly as they can, their own egalitarian, collectivist version of a Kingdom of God on Earth." The Yankee "kingdom" is "egalitarian and collectivist, with private property stamped out, and the world being run by a cadre or vanguard of Saints."

Even when the Yankees embraced abolitionism it was rarely, if ever, because of any concern about the well-being of slaves. As Professor Wilson writes: "abolitionism, as opposed to antislavery sentiment shared by many Americans, including Southerners . . . was not based on sympathy for the black people nor on an ideal of natural rights. It was based on the hysterical conviction that Southern slaveholders were evil sinners who stood in the way of fulfillment of America’s divine mission to establish Heaven on Earth . . . . [M]any abolitionists expected that evil Southern whites and blacks would disappear and the land be repopulated by virtuous Yankees."

Munich, Sudetenland, and Danzig

Pat Buchanan's take:

The seeds of the crisis were planted at the Paris peace conference of 1919. There, the victorious Allies carved the new nation of Czechoslovakia out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

But instead of following their principle of self-determination, the Allies placed under the rule of 7 million Czechs 3 million Germans, 3 million Slovaks, 800,000 Hungarians, 150,000 Poles and 500,000 Ruthenians. These foolish decisions spat upon Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points, under the terms of which the Germans, Austrians and Hungarians had laid down their arms.

By 1938, Germany had arisen, re-armed and brought Austria into the Reich, and was demanding the right of self-determination now be granted to the 3 million Germans in Czechoslovakia, who were clamoring to be free of Prague to rejoin their kinsmen.

Britain had no alliance with, and no obligation to fight for, the Czechs. But France did. And Britain feared that if Adolf Hitler used force to bring the Sudeten Germans back to German rule, France might fight. And if France declared war, Britain would be drawn in, and a second bloodbath would ensue as it had in 1914.

Chamberlain went to Munich because he did not believe that keeping 3 million Germans inside a nation to which they had been consigned against their will was worth a world war.

It is quite conceivable that all this would have been avoided had the United States not entered World War I.

Yes, Virginia....

There is a fundamentalist religious left.

No: the hallmark and the fanatical drive of the left for these past centuries has been in devoting tireless energy to bringing about, as rapidly as they can, their own egalitarian, collectivist version of a Kingdom of God on Earth. In short, this truly monstrous movement is what might be called "left-post-millennialist." It is messianic and post-millennialist because Man, not Christ or Providence, is supposed to bring about the Kingdom of God on Earth (KGE), that is, in the Christian version, that Christ is only supposed to return to earth after Man has established the 1,000-year KGE. It is leftist because in this version, the KGE is egalitarian and collectivist, with private property stamped out, and the world being run by a cadre or vanguard of Saints.

This was written by the late Murray Rothbard not long before his passing in 1995.