As The State Grows

Public faith in elections shrinks.

Here We Go Again

Someone perverting history to advance the ungodly power of the state.

The United States Government

Too big to fail?

Could The Regime...

Be on its last legs?

How Did Fascism Begin?

Well, kids, there are ideas that DO have consequences, and this one turned out to be a real whopper.

And we ain't talkin' Burger King either.

High School Assemblies

Can these be used as preparations for war?

Here and there you may notice small, dark clumps of the disaffected, those dour punk/goth/whatever kids who don't seem impressed by any of this. They will be treated harshly by teachers for being negative, antisocial, or – heaven forbid! – lacking in proper "school spirit." There is something wrong with them, most would agree, or they just want attention. And these malcontents are all freshmen or sophomores. Upperclassmen of their ilk have long since learned that such rallies are the perfect time to sneak behind the school for a cigarette or a few bong rips.

Of special significance is the rally against the major rival school down the road, the archenemy who must be denounced, ridiculed, and defeated. No one can tell you why that particular school is the big rival. "Because they're the Broncos (or whatever the rival mascot might be)" is a typical, circular answer. Some don't even bother moving in a circle: "They just are," such people say, probably convinced, after a lifetime of learning to accept such answers from teachers, that this would appropriately resolve the question.

In my experience, one revealing answer came from my high school Latin teacher: "You must support the home team. Support the home team. Support the home team." (Also, teaching Latin by rote had apparently programmed her to repeat all statements three times. Not kidding.) She didn't follow up with any explanation of the virtues and benefits to accrue from home-team-supporting behavior. It was just crazy to think that, although the state forced us into this ridiculous institution, with its ridiculous rules and overlords, we would ever consider the school to be anything but our "home." We were certainly intended to identify it as such. The football team was there to defend our honor (against what, nobody knows).

Having read some Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Jefferson, I concluded that the entire culture and organization of public schools must be a mistake. There were so many authoritarian attributes, I thought, they weren't teaching kids to be responsible citizens of a republic, but subjects of a police state. Serious reforms were clearly needed. (Years later, having studied John Taylor Gatto and Austrian economics, I realized that a) the state raises kids this way deliberately, not by mistake, and b) a free market in education would quickly find and disseminate the best methods for teaching children.)

Sometimes these assemblies could be miniaturized versions of Nuremberg rallies.

The Federal Reserve: Totalitarians

As I have stated before, the Federal Reserve System must be done away with.

The united States of America...

A banana republic?

Imagine

If we had a society based on individual freedom and liberty instead of the force of the state.

I did not watch Senator Benito Obama's acceptance speech tonight. The Democrats' convention was largely a four-day infomercial for socialism.

Is it just me, or did the scene at Invesco Field look like a scene right out of a Nuremberg rally?

I would be just as incredulous if John McMussolini gave his acceptance speech at the Metrodome.

As for the Republicans, their convention, scheduled for next week in St. Paul, Minnesota, and sponsored by the Israel Lobby in association with the warfare division of the welfare-warfare state (which also sponsors the Democrats).

Speaking of the evils of the State,

Lew Rockwell hit the bulls-eye with his latest blogcolumn:

Note that they don't talk about this. But that is the core of all their plans for fairness and justice: an increased use of violence in society, and an increased centralization of political power. Often the person who recommends this path imagines that he will be the dictator, and that his plans alone will prevail.

They don't consider that the state they advocate is also wholly capable of doing things that they do not like, like crushing civil liberties and starting wars all over the world. Note that the left's critique of Bush's big government is not that it is crushing liberty; rather, they believe that government power is being used for the wrong purposes.

Another problem with these people: they can't stand capitalism. They resent the commercial society. They have not come to terms with the fact that without capitalism, most of the human race would starve the death. Why do they hate it? Because wealth under capitalism will always be unequally distributed.

They favor a different form of dictatorship.

Now to the Republicans, who imagine themselves creating a modern form of Sparta, with military strength and a disciplined citizenry unified in the drive to national greatness, courage, and heroism. Along with this comes support for national service (the draft) and a demand that Congress stop meddling in executive-branch matters.

They also say that they are for free enterprise, but what they really mean is that they support their main constituents who are large corporations dependent on government contracts and privileges. That goes for the banks and the mortgage companies too, whose interests they defend through a fiat money system that further fuels state growth.

This too is their version of dictatorship.

It is long past time for both of these parties to admit it. They won’t of course, so it is incumbent on the rest of us to at least recognize it for what it is. It is often said that there is not a dime's worth of difference between the parties, but there is little reflection on what precisely they have in common. It comes down to a love of some version of dictatorship, of which they believe they will be the administrators.

This country might be better off if there were no political parties.

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.

If A Business Wants To Discriminate....

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

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.

Are We Capable Of Self-Government?

Not so, say the ruling and political elites:

History has been loudly answering Jefferson’s question! Are we listening?

The two camps that exist within all political structures at all times and in all places are those who support government Over man – and those who support government Under man. To the former camp man is the tool of government. To the latter, government is the tool of man. All governments begin as tools of the man or class of men who design them. And so far, all free governments have later been perverted to the extent that individual liberty founded in the protection of life and property is limited, eroded or eradicated completely. The two currents of liberty and tyranny run against each other all of the time.

The Fear of Government Over Man is a principle that we ignore at our extreme peril. If you can observe the latest election cycle [which is more obscene than mud wrestling] and not conclude that we have trusted too much to "government" I will realize you have been "educated" but I will not condemn you. I do however have a few things I would love to have you read – and think about very carefully – as though your life depended upon it.

As soon as a government servant has made a decision based on party association, affinity, or loyalty, and in violation of his oath and ethics – he has in effect sold out. This experience usually happens very early in his party career – unless he is Ron Paul. Once you have sold out in the little things it becomes easier to move on to the big things. But if you happen to be a Ron Paul you tend to gain a reputation for being one of those recalcitrant people of true and enduring principles. Those folks can really annoy the establishment who regards them as hopelessly naïve – right up until the bottom falls out.

Right now, Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave.

HEIL, BARACK!

The Slumlord's Buddy has one hell of a nerve:

Here's Murray Rothbard...........

On combating evil:

How can anyone, finding himself surrounded by a rising tide of evil, fail to do his utmost to fight against it? In our century, we have been inundated by a flood of evil, in the form of collectivism, socialism, egalitarianism, and nihilism. It has always been crystal clear to me that we have a compelling moral obligation, for the sake of ourselves, our loved ones, our posterity, our friends, our neighbors, and our country, to do battle against that evil.

It has therefore always been a mystery to me how people who have seen and identified this evil and have therefore entered the lists against it, either gradually or suddenly abandon that fight. How can one see the truth, understand one's compelling duty, and then, simply give up and even go on to betray the cause and its comrades? And yet, in the two movements and their variations that I have been associated with, libertarian and conservative, this happens all the time.

Conservatism and libertarianism, after all, are "radical" movements, that is, they are radically and strongly opposed to existing trends of statism and immorality. How, then, can someone who has joined such a movement, as an ideologue or activist or financial supporter, simply give up the fight? Recently, I asked a perceptive friend of mine how so-and-so could abandon the fight? He answered that "he's the sort of person who wants a quiet life, who wants to sit in front of the TV, and who doesn't want to hear about any trouble." But in that case, I said in anguish, "why do these people become 'radicals' in the first place? Why do they proudly call themselves 'conservatives' or 'libertarians'?" Unfortunately, no answer was forthcoming.

Sometimes, people give up the fight because, they say, the cause is hopeless. We've lost, they say. Defeat is inevitable. The great economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote in 1942 that socialism is inevitable, that capitalism is doomed not by its failures but by its very successes, which had given rise to a group of envious and malevolent intellectuals who would subvert and destroy capitalism from within. His critics charged Schumpeter with counseling defeatism to the defenders of capitalism. Schumpeter replied that if someone points out that a rowboat is inevitably sinking, is that the same thing as saying: don't do the best you can to bail out the boat?

In spite of what some historians have said and written, the 20th Century was not exactly the freedom century. It was the century for the rise of mutant statism of one kind or another.

Garwsh!!

You know, we really do NOT live in a truly capitalistic society after all.

You Might Say That....

The New Deal originated under Herbert Hoover.

Laissez-faire, then, was the policy dictated both by sound theory and by historical precedent. But in 1929, the sound course was rudely brushed aside. Led by President Hoover, the government embarked on what Anderson has accurately called the "Hoover New Deal." For if we define "New Deal" as an antidepression program marked by extensive governmental economic planning and intervention – including bolstering of wage rates and prices, expansion of credit, propping up of weak firms, and increased government spending (e.g., subsidies to unemployment and public works) – Herbert Clark Hoover must be considered the founder of the New Deal in America. Hoover, from the very start of the depression, set his course unerringly toward the violation of all the laissez-faire canons. As a consequence, he left office with the economy at the depths of an unprecedented depression, with no recovery in sight after three and a half years, and with unemployment at the terrible and unprecedented rate of 25 percent of the labor force.

Anyone who comes up with this vapid argument that Mr. Hoover was this lazzez-faire politician who did nothing is either a mindless idiot, state-indoctrinated (brainwashed) robot, or a contemptous liar.

The "Great" Society

Just another indictment of just another failure on the part of The State.

Here's Food For Thought....

Another take from Lew Rockwell on freedom vs. the State.