A LITTLE REBELLION

Obama: Centrist Republican?

Here's Glenn Greenwald on the biggest problem for the GOP in 2012:

It is in the realm of foreign policy, terrorism and civil liberties where Republicans encounter an insurmountable roadblock. A staple of GOP politics has long been to accuse Democratic presidents of coddling America's enemies (both real and imagined), being afraid to use violence, and subordinating US security to international bodies and leftwing conceptions of civil liberties.

But how can a GOP candidate invoke this time-tested caricature when Obama has embraced the vast bulk of George Bush's terrorism policies; waged a war against government whistleblowers as part of a campaign of obsessive secrecy; led efforts to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs; extinguished the lives not only of accused terrorists but of huge numbers of innocent civilians with cluster bombs and drones in Muslim countries; engineered a covert war against Iran; tried to extend the Iraq war; ignored Congress and the constitution to prosecute an unauthorised war in Libya; adopted the defining Bush/Cheney policy of indefinite detention without trial for accused terrorists; and even claimed and exercised the power to assassinate US citizens far from any battlefield and without due process?

Reflecting this difficulty for the GOP field is the fact that former Bush officials, including Dick Cheney, have taken to lavishing Obama with public praise for continuing his predecessor's once-controversial terrorism polices. In the last GOP foreign policy debate, the leading candidates found themselves issuing recommendations on the most contentious foreign policy question (Iran) that perfectly tracked what Obama is already doing, while issuing ringing endorsements of the president when asked about one of his most controversial civil liberties assaults (the due-process-free assassination of the American-Yemeni cleric Anwar Awlaki). Indeed, when it comes to the foreign policy and civil liberties values Democrats spent the Bush years claiming to defend, the only candidate in either party now touting them is the libertarian Ron Paul, who vehemently condemns Obama's policies of drone killings without oversight, covert wars, whistleblower persecutions, and civil liberties assaults in the name of terrorism.

I disagree with Greenwald on many issues, but he is a honest progressive that has provided perhaps the best journalism out there in defense of the Bill of Rights, regardless which wing of the same bird of prey is in charge.

Greenwald is spot on when he argues that Obama's hawkish policies present a dilemma for the Republican warmongers, but I wouldn't call Caesar "conservative." There is this unfortunate Left-Right dichotomy in American politics that tends to result in a fine-toothed-comb analysis of the 5% of difference between the two parties while ignoring the 95% of issues that they agree on, like perpetual war, empire, fiat money, and nearly unlimited Executive power.

And this general consensus among all "mainstream" candidates and Dear Leader isn't "conservative" or "liberal;" its roots are authoritarian, collectivist, fascistic, and pardon my bias, but fundamentally un-libertarian. Perhaps a better dichotomy might frame the debate not in the horizontal fighting of Left and Right, but between liberty and coercion and applying the non-aggression principle as consistently as possible.

This is not a criticism of Greenwald at all, I have all the respect in the world for him. It is just frustrating that the terms "Left" and "Right" are overused to the point that each of them has no consistent definition and are a great divide-and-conquer strategy for those who could care less what label you put on them. They want power - over you, me, liberals, and conservatives - and lots of it.

In fact, here's Greenwald doing a far better job than me at illustrating it in an even more recent column than the one linked to above:

This media invisibility of America’s victims is due in part to the fact that it’s considered unpatriotic to discuss them in any prominent way (as MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield pointed out in the 2003 speech that led to her demotion and firing), but also because, at this point, there’s no partisan gain to be had from it: given that it’s a policy supported by both parties, it doesn’t help one side or the other win an election, so what’s the point of talking about it? Anyone who does raise it will be immediately met with these vapid questions from election-obsessed partisans: but what does this have to do with the election [the one that's still almost a full year away]? Won’t it help Mitt Romney if you complain about this? In general, people aren’t tuning in to MSNBC to hear stories about the Muslim children killed by President Obama’s covert killing operations (and certainly aren’t turning in to hear their bereaved relatives interviewed): it doesn’t prove how horrible Rick Perry and John Boehner are, so it’s the last thing Ed Schultz or Al Sharpton are going to talk about (as Charles Davis so memorably put it in parodying the Democratic partisan mentality: “Remember when Michele Bachmann killed all those innocent people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq and Libya? Ugh. Hate her”).

The Federal Reserve Should Be Abolished

*This article originally appeared for PolicyMic as part of a debate on the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve should be abolished because it inflates the money supply, destroys the purchasing power of our currency, distorts the proper workings of the market economy with boom-and-bust cycles, and allows the federal government to expand without directly taxing the American people.

The Fed (and central banks in general) has been justified as a means to smooth out the supposed excesses of capitalism and provide stimulus when the economy is in a “liquidity trap.” The first problem with the Fed, however, is that the only tool at its disposal is the ability to inflate the money supply through the printing of money and the expansion of credit. As a result of this inflation, there is tremendous malinvestment, the value of each dollar in circulation falls, and prices of goods are forced up. This process benefits those who get to use the new money before prices adjust – banks, those with lots of debt – and harms those who get to use the money as it finally trickles down – the poor, the middle-class, and those who have savings.

The Fed also contributes to chaotic boom-and-bust cycles like the most recent crash of 2008. The Fed’s expansion of credit and bank reserves distorts the entire system of prices and production, creating a quick, but artificial, “boom.” But when the inevitable credit expansion stops, the misallocation of production and capital become more obvious and the recession, or “bust,” sets in. When the necessary readjustment and liquidation is needed, the Fed then steps in and pumps in more credit, masking the problem even further.

By giving the federal government a nearly endless stream of money and credit, the Fed is the enabler of the growth of federal power. Foreign wars, the maintenance of an empire, and bailouts are funded not by taxing us directly, but by borrowing and printing the money instead, transferring the cost to future taxpayers. This is how President George W. Bush can cut taxes during a war and President Barack Obama can cut the payroll tax despite ever-expanding Social Security requirements.

The above problems should concern us all; however, they are only symptoms of the inherent flaw of any central bank like the Federal Reserve (what economist Ludwig von Mises called “the calculation problem.”) In a market economy, prices help entrepreneurs rationally allocate scarce resources to their most productive use. The Fed, however, centrally plans interest rates (the price of credit), and often times far below the market rate. Without the market price for a given good or service, central planning is doomed to fail.

The alternative to the Federal Reserve system, as with all government monopolies, lies in the free market; in this case, a commodity-backed monetary system subject to the supply-and-demand forces of the market and interest rates based on savings and capital.

The market economy is a voluntary, interrelated and interdependent web coordinated through the signals and incentives that prices bring. Government intervention tends to create unpredictable and unforeseen ripple effects throughout this web, creating instability and stagnation. With inflation, boom-and-bust cycles, and the depreciation of the dollar, the Federal Reserve is no exception to the damaging effects of government intervention.

Can Christians Be Libertarians?

Although I do not consider myself a Christian, I do have a lot of sympathies with many aspects of the faith and regard it as an important and integral part of the Western tradition of classical liberalism.

Modern American Christians, however, seemed to have fallen under the spell of statism, the most dangerous, violent, destructive, and antisocial religion in human history. It is all too common to find many well-meaning Christians supporting wars of aggression, torture, the police states, and Republicans.

I am always saddened when I compare the Christians of today to the Christians living under the thumb of the Roman Empire. Back then, Christians refused to be drafted into Caesar's army, went to jail for their beliefs, were killed and martyred in the name of the Prince of Peace, and openly prayed for the fall of the Empire. Now, unfortunately, Christian chaplains offer justifications to soldiers who unsurprisingly find discomfort with killing, blindly turn away from the death and destruction unleashed on foreigners, and cheer on the warfare state.

But as Norman Horn writes in the Washington Post, thanks to the quiet, humble Christianity of Ron Paul and the philosophy of peace and non-aggression inherent in libertarianism, Christians may be beginning to turn away from their First Commandment transgressions and abandon the false god of statism.

Horn writes:

Christians in American politics have argued for years that God endorses the political agenda of Republicans or Democrats, but is there a third way to think about the relationship between God and government?

Christians from the left and the right are increasingly turning to libertarianism not because it is a “middle ground,” but because it is an entirely different way of thinking about government and power.

The core of libertarianism is the non-aggression principle: that the initiation of force against person and property is immoral, and it is in many respects a kind of political corollary to the Golden Rule. Thus, Christian libertarians think that government power should be limited, sound money and truly free markets should return, aggressive war must cease and civil liberties must be preserved. Despite objections raised by other Christians, many Christian libertarians have found a friend in Texas congressional representative, presidential candidate, and lifelong Christian Dr. Ron Paul, because he also believes in these important principles.

Libertarianism treats man’s sinful nature realistically. James Madison famously quipped that if men were angels no government would be necessary. Christian libertarians take this a step further, saying that it is precisely because men are not angels that government must have extraordinarily limited powers. God does not show favoritism nor does he give special privileges of position. Everyone is accountable to the moral law in the same way. When governments and politicians extend their power so that they can abridge people’s natural rights with impunity, they have crossed the line into immorality. Rep. Paul’s message is that the United States government has been far across this line for decades and the remedy is to follow the Constitution. The Founders created the boldest attempt in history to limit state power, yet presidents and congresses, both Republican and Democratic, have repeatedly refused to adhere to their own rules. True, lasting change can only be found in reducing the power of the federal government.

Libertarians talk a lot about economics, and rightfully so. Money is central to a healthy economy. Christians are also concerned about money; in fact God talks frequently about money in the Bible. God’s warning against unjust “weights and measures” in Leviticus 19 is a warning not to tamper with the market ecosystem of money and trade. Rep. Paul acknowledges the Bible’s concern for honest money as well in End the Fed : “The Bible is clear that altering the quality of money is an immoral act… It is dishonesty in money that has been a major source of evil throughout history.” If the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, as 1 Timothy 6:10 says, how much more seriously ought we to take how our society views the control over the supply of money? If it is true, as many libertarians contend, that the Federal Reserve is the primary cause of the economic crisis we have today, then the only solution is to restore honest, sound commodity money, free from political machinations and special interests.

It is truly unfortunate that modern American churches seem to think the state’s means of “spreading democracy” through aggressive war is more important than spreading the peaceful message of the Gospel of Christ. Jesus came to bring “peace on earth, good will to men,” and by extension the Christian’s goal ought to be the same. Rep. Paul wrote in Liberty Defined : “It’s a far stretch and a great distortion to use Christianity in any way to justify aggression and violence.” War kills the innocent, destroys property, and bankrupts nations. Christian libertarians believe that a non-interventionist foreign policy of peace, commerce, and honest friendship is more consistent with how God expects us to interact with world neighbors.

Libertarians think that everyone should be free to do as they will provided they do not infringe upon the rights of others. Christians can recognize the importance of this principle by simply observing history, recognizing how often that other Christians have been prevented from practicing their religion as their conscience requires of them. If we do not afford others the freedom to live their lives as they choose, how can we expect to receive the same freedom to do as we choose? Rep. Paul explains that government does not make people good in The Revolution: “The law cannot make a wicked person virtuous… God’s grace alone can accomplish such a thing.” God created us to be free to carry out the dictates of conscience. We cannot continue to demand state control to restrict people’s personal activity and yet assume our liberty is safe.

Through libertarianism, many Christians have found a way to move past their previous beliefs about politics and embrace a more consistent, more biblical political philosophy. The message of abolishing government power is powerful on its own. In Ron Paul, many Christian libertarians see a leader who points to principles that conservatives and liberals have long forgotten: “A system of government without limit, if unchecked, will destroy production and impoverish the nation. The only answer is to better understand economics and monetary systems, as well as social and foreign policies, with the hope that they will change once it becomes clear that government policies are a threat to all of us.” Libertarianism is not going away, and it surely will take an increasingly prominent place in the political discussion of Christians for years to come.

 

Christmas in Virginia

I will be do a lot of travelling in the next week and a half. Tomorrow I fly to Virginia to visit my Eva Peron and then back to the West Coast with the folks for a few days. So I probably won't be blogging much until after I get back to San Francisco. I might have the urge to rant while I'm laying over in Chicago and DC. I will, after all, be surrounded by a lot of state security theatre, pat downs, scanners, etc, and my libertarian fingers can only take so much restlessness.

But to the five or six loyal readers of my delusions of philosophical grandeur on this blog, don't worry, there will be a lot happening in upcoming weeks. The Iowa Caucus is January 3rd, I will be having a PolicyMic debate on the Federal Reserve, and of course the usual array of welfare-warfare statism that dominates American politics today.

Stay tuned.

But for now, here is Ron Paul being interviewed by New Hampshire media in great detail about his economic ideas, foreign policy strategy, and what he would do as president. Good, thoughtful questions on everything from the FDA and financial regulations to the "War on Terror" and letters of marque and reprisal.

It's about an hour, but I recommend watching the whole thing if you get the chance. Too often Paul is interrupted and cut off by the talking heads, and here he is able to elaborate on his arguments. Even though I have been an admirer of him since I was in high school, I still learn something new almost every time I listen to him.

 

Also, here's some new Avett Brothers.

 

Ron Paul is the Real Threat to Obama in 2012

This article originally appeared at PolicyMic.

In an interview with 60 Minutes that aired Sunday night, President Barack Obama discussed his record, the problems facing America today, and when it comes to GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, “It doesn’t really matter” who the GOP nominates. Obama is right that there is very little difference between Romney and Gingrich. But what the president failed to mention is that the only candidate that would seriously threaten Obama would be Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Paul is a threat not only because his economic ideas are antithetical to Obama’s, but because Paul’s fervent anti-war positions could also take away a significant amount of Democrat votes.

When it comes to the Republican front-runners, “The core philosophy that they’re expressing is the same,” the president said. “And the contrast in visions between where I want to take the country and … where they say they want to take the country is going to be stark.” But it’s this last point where Obama is wrong. 

Obama’s health care reform bill was modeled after Romney’s Massachusetts own legislation. Gingrich expressed support for the individual health care mandate 15 years before Obama was elected. On the same day that Obama gave a speech memorializing Teddy Roosevelt’s progressivism and a “new nationalism,” Gingrich lavished praise on Roosevelt for essentially the same reasons in an interview with Glenn Beck. Besides the individual policies that all three of them have embraced at one time or another, when it comes to their overarching view of foreign and economic policy, all of them accept the premise that the federal government must be powerful and expensive, both at home and abroad.

It’s easy to see why the president isn’t scared of Gingrich or Romney; both of them offer a similar, slightly more right-wing version of Obama’s inflationary monetary policy, massive deficits, federal intrusion of civil liberties, and an imperial role for the U.S. military. Although these policies are embraced by the mainstream of both parties and have contributed heavily to an exploding national debt, a dying dollar, and economic stagnation, when faced with two candidates with eerily similar platforms, voters will likely choose the devil they know over a thrice-married “historian” or a flip-flopping governor.

Paul, on the other hand, offers a completely different philosophy than the president and the rest of the GOP field. For decades, Paul has been warning about the dangers of easy credit, policing the world, deficits, government spending, and government intervention into the marketplace. If elected, Paul plans to slash the deficit, balance the budget, cut taxes, establish a sound currency, and stop policing the world. In their endorsement of Paul, The Daily Iowan cites Paul’s consistency, record, and the fact that  “the candidates who have a chance of winning the state often take stances that are not dissimilar to that of President Obama.”

This is why Paul represents the best challenger to Obama in 2012, both philosophically and practically. In a recent Iowa poll, Obama leads all GOP candidates except Paul. Real Clear Politics has him second only to Romney against Obama. In a key state like Florida, Obama has just a slight edge over Paul. 

Paul is polling incredibly well against Obama considering how little coverage and debate time the media gives him. With more time and more scandals plaguing the other candidates, Paul’s appeal will only grow. After all, a growing majority of Americans want the U.S. out of Afghanistan and 64% feel that “big government is the biggest threat to the country.” Paul talks openly about ending both.

As I wrote in a previous PolicyMic article, conservatives who actually value limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom have no choice but to support Paul over the Democrat-lites. And as Paul continues to gain support into the primaries, he remains the best, and most principled, challenger to Obama in 2012.

Opposing Empire Is Not 'Isolationist'

Writes Scott Horton:

A Letter to George F. Will

Dear Mr. Will,

I believe it would be fair to consider most paleo-conservatives and Green Party pro-labor factions to be "isolationist," in that they are opposed not only to foreign military intervention but open trade as well. They are happy to "look inward" at the United States alone and let the rest of the world get on as it may.

However, Dr. Paul always distinguishes the libertarian policy of non-interventionism from isolationism by emphasizing low tariffs for revenue, but never for punitive or protective reasons, and encouraging trade, travel and cultural exchange. He has also said he would be happy to play host to peace negotiations among other states as long as the U.S. would not be expected to promise any new American policy to either side.

He also seems to share, in some ways, the neoconservatives’ vision of America as a revolutionary influence (in a more American and less French way). He has stated many times that he believes by setting an example of what a real limited constitutional republic, with its unparalleled Bill of Rights and a sound market economy looks like, we could do a much better job of exporting our Enlightenment legacy around the world which sorely needs it.

In this article, Paul explains what he believes is the difference.

I understand that you may not agree with his definitions of these differing viewpoints, but it is relevant that they are his, that he discriminates between the two and chooses one - is it not?

A short side note in favor of his view:

1: We never hear complaints that China, Russia, Switzerland, Brazil or Mexico are "isolationist" states. They aren’t, are they? Even to the degree that they have statist trade policies, we don’t see them as isolationist, just normal countries with normal bad trade policies.

2: The oceans never protected us. When Washington, Jefferson, Madison, John Quincy Adams et. al. advised for friendship with all, alliance with none, our country was much less safe. The British were in Canada, the French in Louisiana, the Spanish in Mexico, and the U.S. had the weakest navy of all Atlantic powers.

3: The Blowback argument matters. If it is true that America was a sleeping giant on 9/11, targeted by religious fanatics’ due to their hatred of liberty, then we must keep fighting this purely defensive war of civilizations for the indefinite future. And if they were trying to scare us off, we had better steel ourselves and never back down.

If, on the other hand, we were attacked for political reasons, specifically the decade-long blockade of Iraq enforced from bases in Saudi Arabia, then more wars and occupations in the name of "draining the swamp" of dictatorships (unfriendly countries only, even though every single 9/11 hijacker was from a friendly one) could very well be a counter-productive way of securing the United States.

And if the enemy’s strategy is not to scare us off, but to trick us into over-reacting and spreading ourselves too thin until we are forced by bankruptcy to withdraw from the region completely (while radicalizing it in the process), then wouldn’t the prudent thing be to hold our horses and think very carefully about how we respond?

Thank you very much for your time.

Best,
Scott Horton

Defense Authorization Act Shows Obama's Awful Civil Liberties Record

This article originally appeared for PolicyMic.

In Congress’ 2012 Defense Authorization Act that was just passed 99-1 in the Senate, there includes an amendment cosponsored by Sen. Carl Levin and Sen. John McCain that would empower the military to detain American citizens captured on U.S. soil indefinitely and without due process. Although President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the bill if it passes the House, the Obama administration’s record on civil liberties should deeply trouble those who value the Bill of Rights.

Obama’s veto threat of the bill comes not from a principled opposition to the idea that the military should have the power to arrest U.S. citizens and detain them without trial, but as Glenn Greenwald points out, “Because the Obama administration already interprets the 2001 AUMF [Authorization to Use Military Force] so broadly as to vest them with all of the war-fighting powers in Levin-McCain” and that “Military custody for accused terrorists is already a staple of the Obama administration.” This is where Obama claims he has the legal right to wage war in Yemen, Somalia, Africa, assassinate American citizens, and also detain U.S. citizens without due process.

Although Obama has often offered lip service in reversing the Bush administration’s policies, his record on civil liberties proves that Obama’s stance on the Levin-McCain amendment should not be a surprise.

Last May, Obama, over widespread bipartisan objections, approved a four year extension of controversial parts of the Patriot Act that were set to expire. Federal wiretaps are at an all-time high, up 34% since 2009. 

The Obama administration has prosecuted five “whistleblowers” under the Espionage Act, more than all the other previous administrations combined. Under his watch, Private Bradley Manning has been held for over a year and has been tortured numerous times. Obama has used the excuse of “state secrets” to stifle investigations and dismiss cases against the Bush Administration and his own administration. The “material support” statute has been strengthened, allowing the federal government to criminalize legal actions of U.S. citizens if it falls under the increasingly vague umbrella of “supporting terrorist groups.” 

Within weeks of taking office, although specifically vowing to not prosecute medical marijuana facilities legal under state law, the DEA launched multiple raids in California.

These are only some of the more egregious examples of the Obama administration’s abuse of the liberties that the Bill of Rights was designed to protect. Is it any wonder that Obama’s only opposition to codifying the principle that the military can lock up U.S. citizens without a trial is that it will restrict his ability to prosecute the “war on terror” and create a bureaucratic paper trail for detentions?

What is ultimately missed behind discussions over civil liberties is that powers claimed by the president will be passed on to his successor. Conservatives outraged over Obama’s power grabs have only themselves to blame for their support of these very same abuses the last time a Republican was president. Progressives, too, should think twice about supporting a president with such a dysmal record on civil liberties.

The Opportunity Costs of Empire

(via MilitaryEducation.org)

Not One Cent for Empire

Bruce Fein - constitutional lawyer, former assistant deputy attorney general for President Reagan, and senior policy advisor to the Ron Paul 2012 campaign -  writes in The Daily Caller:

When it comes to deterring and preventing wars of aggression against the United States, no candidate for the presidency is more hawkish than Ron Paul.

His foreign policy would be an adaptation of the Founding Fathers’ creed saluted in the Constitution’s preamble: Billions for a common defense, but not one cent for extravagant preemptive wars seeking world domination, a risk-free existence, and a planet purged of tyranny and sin. He would not spend $120 billion annually to confront 50 members of al Qaida in Afghanistan with 100,000 troops when international terrorists can be captured or killed with special forces.

Ron Paul would close the hundreds of U.S. military bases abroad, redeploy weapons and soldiers now dedicated to defending foreigners and foreign countries to the U.S. to defend American sovereignty and Americans, and end our multiple treaty obligations that require us to wage war in defense of other nations. Our government shouldn’t send Americans abroad on quests to secure the liberty of foreigners.

As then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams explained in a July 4, 1821 address to Congress:

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be  unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own …

Ron Paul’s foreign policy strategy is not isolationism. It is the timeless wisdom of the ages. Ecclesiastes 1:9 sermonizes, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” The development of weapons of mass destruction has not altered human nature. They have not changed political motivations, the lust for power, or the law of self-preservation. As always, nations have no permanent friends or enemies. They have only permanent interests.

Candidate Paul favors the collection of intelligence on potential adversaries, trade between the United States and other nations, and cultural exchanges and embassies abroad. Like President Thomas Jefferson, he would seek “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

The 9/11 abominations would never have been perpetrated if the United States had practiced Paul’s strategy of non-entanglements. Contrary to mythology, 9/11’s savage murderers and their sympathizers were not infuriated by free elections, freedom of speech, or due process in the United States. They were provoked by the presence of U.S. military bases in the Middle East and by U.S. economic and military support for corrupt, oppressive, or bigoted despots in the region.

The cornerstone of peace and the common defense is deterrence. Ron Paul would embrace a retaliatory capability sufficient to destroy every living thing in any country complicit in an actual or imminent attack on the United States. He would deploy troops and weapons systems capable of foiling any acts of war targeting Americans on American soil.

Deterrence anchored to massive retaliation works. The Soviet Union flinched during the Cuban Missile Crisis. At present, no nation’s leaders — not even the semi-paranoid leaders of North Korea — would contemplate attacking Americans on American soil with weapons of mass destruction or otherwise.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, which the United States spawned by overthrowing Prime Minister Mohammad Mossedeq in 1953, is said by Paul’s detractors to be the one nation in the history of the world that would be impervious to deterrence if it acquired nuclear weapons because its rulers crave self-destruction. If there are greater foreign policy inanities preached by zealots for preemptive war, they do not readily come to mind. The Islamic Republic’s actions are driven by earthbound realities, just like the actions of other nations. It has negotiated the release of American hostages who were detained in Tehran, it has negotiated an end to a war of aggression initiated by Iraq, and it has negotiated an amicable resolution to a conflict that erupted after the U.S. Navy accidentally destroyed an Iranian civilian aircraft.

Ron Paul no more supports Iran’s development of nuclear weapons than he does the nuclear arsenals of Pakistan, India, or North Korea. But the best way to address the prospect of Iranian membership in the nuclear club is to renounce our current policy of regime change, promise annihilation of any country that employs nuclear weapons against the United States, and leave Israel free to do what it believes is necessary to defend itself. A war against Iran would be a $100 billion fool’s errand and would plant the seeds of blowback.

The War Party Doesn't Believe Their Own Propaganda

Here's Sheldon Richman on the neocon doublethink on Iran:

 Occasionally, leading neoconservative intellectuals forget that the wider world is listening and say things that belie their own case for war. Take, for example, Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. In a recent video statement Pletka said,

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you that Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately. …”

 And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem.

Let that sink in: the biggest — biggest — problem with Iran’s acquiring a nuclear weapon is that it might not use it. Got that? And why would that be bad? Because “naysayers” (that is, people against war) would be able to point to Iran’s responsible conduct as proof that Iran is not irresponsible. Imagine that!

Pletka leaves the implication that the U.S. government should attack Iran, which would devastate that country and murder countless innocent people, in order to stop it from demonstrating that it is not a reckless, insane, and suicidal power in the Middle East. Has there ever been a worse reason to launch a war?

 Even if Iran were to get a nuclear weapon, they wouldn't represent any threat whatsoever to the security of the US or the American people, of course. What it would represent, however, is a threat to the interests of the US Empire and US domination in the Middle East. Richman continues:

This is what passes for reason and logic among our “serious” foreign-policy thinkers in Washington. These are the same people who gave us Operation Iraqi Freedom, which killed or injured hundreds of thousands and created four million refugees.

But those who are prepared to sacrifice innocent Iranians to solve this “problem” aren’t mad. In their worldview, they are right to worry about Iran being perceived as a responsible power. Pletka’s colleague Thomas Donnelly spelled it out in The Weekly Standard: “We’re fixated on the Iranian nuclear program while the Tehran regime has its eyes on the real prize: the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East.”

In other words, how dare a country located in the Middle East aspire to challenge the American empire’s dominance there!

ATF Used 'Fast and Furious' to Make the Case For Gun Regulations

CBS News reports that the ATF's "Fast and Furious" program was used to even further encroach the right of every individual to own, sell, and buy private property.

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the "big fish." But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called "gunwalking," and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

ATF officials didn't intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called "Demand Letter 3". That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or "long guns." Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.

Unfortunately, as with most federal scandals, we probably won't know all of the details until after Obama, Holder, and the rest of the Junta are soaking up their pensions, selling books, and giving speaking tours.

This whole "Fast and Furious" program has turned into an absolute nightmare. It's a classic example of Ludwig von Mises's insight that government intervention always begets more and interventions.

The drug war, like alcohol prohibition before it, has led to the rise of ruthless and bloodthirsty cartels, which leads to border violence, which leads to more money flowing into federal agencies, which then leads to this hairbrained scheme by the ATF.

One has to wonder though: is it stupidity or the plan? Are Holder, the ATF, and the Justice Department that incompetent? These are, after all, government agencies. Or was "Fast and Furious" just an excuse to expand the scope of federal laws and controls over firearms?

Probably a little bit of both. Governments, of course, hate the idea that their subjects are armed; they, and only they, should have a monopoly on owning weapons. Privately-owned firearms are the mark of free individuals, make them harder to push around, and represent one of the biggest threats to the state's desire to monopolize any and all police protection.

And while we're on the topic of gun regulations, here is a great video of a story that got virtually no press a couple years ago when Hurrican Katrina broke the Army Corps of Engineer's government levees.

 

How Federal Regulation Screws Over Small Businesses: A Story of Cupcakes

Mightyheaton.com has a great article on how federal regulations cartelize industries and benefit large corporations over smaller businesses. Imagine three cupcake companies: one mega-multinational monster, a chain with three our four stores, and a startup. An incident of food poisoning causes the sheeple to panic and call Congress, and Congress decides that it must do something about the menace. What happens next?

At this point you might think a singular cupcake-induced mortality in Placenta, Maryland could best be dealt with by folksy, part-time bureaucrats at the Gelding County Health Board, but such an exercise of local control would be in flagrant disregard of the US Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which clearly states “Congress may do whatever the fuck it wants.”

It turns out, though, that not so many congressman know a lot about food poisoning. They need advisers. Congressional staffers are actually astoundingly competent and hard-working, particularly given what we as taxpayers angrily and reluctantly pay them. But the Legislative Assistant in charge of health, postal affairs, the Eurasian subcommittee, veterans issues, the Lawn Gnome Caucus and aviation is already pretty strapped on time. Yes, she’ll learn about cupcake regulation in between briefings, but there’s a limit as to what we can squeeze out of this particular civil servant.

Enter lobbyists:

These guys know all sorts of things about their respective issues, and it’s their job to represent the concerns of their clients, so that Congress doesn’t inadvertently screw over any businesses. Sounds good, right? In theory lobbyists are actually a positive thing, because they’re advocates which individuals and private businesses can hire to help craft the legislation which affects them.

Do you remember Pete and Sandy? They don’t have any lobbyists. They don’t even have lobbies. Do you know who does? Chuck, CEO of Globa-Muffs.

Don’t worry, though. Because Chuck’s highly-paid lobbyists work very hard to help craft federal legislation to protect public health. For instance, they convince Congress to insert a provision that every cupcake bakery has to have an egg inspector on the lookout for salmonella and other diseases; a flour-incendiary safety operations technician to ensure that no bakeries inadvertently explode; a bakery homeland security analyst to stop any potential biological threats posed by international terrorism to the nation’s cupcake supply; and a pest control specialist who can use only organic pesticides manufactured in the district of whichever congressman wrote the bill. A further tax rebate is introduced if a rabbi is kept on staff to certify stuff as kosher.

Coincidentally, Globa-Muffs already has all of these positions in its factory. The legislation doesn’t actually change anything for them at all. It’s suspiciously as if Globa-Muffs has written a legislative bill in the shape of a cookie-cutter that fits around their particular company.

Not for Pete or Sandy, though!

Now multiply this scenario to the Nth degree and you have the vast cobweb of the modern American regulatory state, where large corporations can mitigate much of the costs of facing the discipline and competition of the free market. The little guy, meanwhile, gets drowned in paperwork, regulatory hoops, licensing, taxes, and fees.

Ron Paul, the 'Big Dog' of the GOP

This article originally appeared for PolicyMic.

 

Although I heavily supported Ron Paul’s presidential bid in 2008, I was very disappointed by the TV and Internet ads that the Paul campaign ran during that campaign. These tended to be stuffy, poorly produced, and didn’t do a great job highlighting his strengths and differentiate him from his opponents. But whether it’s a change in staff or a growing mainstream popularity, Paul’s ads are a lot better this time around, and his latest Big Dog ad is not an exception.

In the ad, the narrator claims that the rest of the GOP field are “all bark and no bite” when it comes to conservative values and cutting government spending. “You want big cuts? Ron Paul’s been screaming it for years,” the ad says, then addresses his plan to cut $1 trillion from the Federal budget in the first year. Although the ad does remind me a bit too much of those annoying Ford truck commercials, the graphics are slick, the narrator’s voice is weighty, and most importantly, it manages to fit in the bulk of his campaign proposal — $1 trillion in cuts — in just a few seconds.

Even many of Paul’s libertarian supporters, myself included, have wished that he would be more aggressive in attacking his GOP opponents and talk himself up more. For example, many on the right call him an “isolationist,” but showing how Paul has received more campaign contributions from the military than the rest of the GOP field combined (just like in 2008) might persuade those who are on the fence.

Although a huge part of Paul’s appeal is his genuine statesman-like humility and his firm belief that it is his message, and not himself, that is the reason for his growing success, it is welcoming to see Paul’s campaign find a way to both accentuate his conservative-libertarian credentials while simultaneously attack his GOP opponent’s absence of any.

The Continuing Centralization and Militarization of Local Police

Courtesy of the Pentagram:

The U.S. military has some of the most advanced killing equipment in the world that allows it to invade almost wherever it likes at will.

We produce so much military equipment that inventories of military robots, M-16 assault rifles, helicopters, armored vehicles, and grenade launchers eventually start to pile up and it turns out a lot of these weapons are going straight to American police forces to be used against US citizens.

Benjamin Carlson at The Daily reports on a little known endeavor called the "1033 Program" that gave more than $500 million of military gear to U.S. police forces in 2011 alone.

1033 was passed by Congress in 1997 to help law-enforcement fight terrorism and drugs, but despite a 40-year low in violent crime, police are snapping up hardware like never before. While this year's staggering take topped the charts, next year's orders are up 400 percent over the same period.

As Ludwig von Mises wrote, "The characteristic feature of militarism is not the fact that a nation has a powerful army or navy. It is the paramount role assigned to the army within the political structure. Even in peacetime the army is supreme; it is the predominant factor in political life. The subjects must obey the government as soldiers must obey their superiors."

(h/t to the Mises FB page)

The Overpopulation Myth

 

Detroit's 47% Illiteracy rate

Here's a simple experiment.

Let's have a violent monopoly force everyone - with the threat or application of lethal force - to pay property taxes in order to to fund government schools, take kids when they're 4 or 5 and give them 12 years in a prison-like environment in which they are told what, not how, to think, continuously lower standards, and teach them that without this benevolent violent monopoly, there would be anarchy, chaos, unsafe products, old people without healthcare, and foreign government taking us over.

The result of this experiment: drugs, violence, and sex rampant in schools, and statistics like this.

Detroit’s 'shocking' 47 percent illiteracy rate

Nearly half of the adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate. Who's to blame for this jaw-dropping figure?

More than 200,000 Detroit residents — 47 percent of Motor City adults — are "functionally illiterate," according to a new report released by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund. That means they can't fill out basic forms, read a prescription, or handle other tasks most Americans take for granted, according to the fund's director, Karen Tyler-Ruiz, as quoted by CBS Detroit. Her organization's study also found that the education and training aimed at overcoming these problems "is inadequate at best," says Jackie Headapohl at Michigan Live.

Ron Paul: 'I'm the Flavor of the Decade'

Ron, characteristically modest, called himself "the flavor of the decade" in a recent interview on CNN's Union of the State:

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said Sunday he hoped voters attracted to Herman Cain's "independent mindedness" would take a second look at his presidential campaign with Cain now out of the race.

"We’re paying a lot of attention of that, because obviously they’re going to go somewhere," he said on CNN's "State of the Union." "I’m optimistic that we’ll pick up some votes from there."

"We continue to do what we’re doing. We’ve had the flavors of the month up and down so far in this campaign. I like to think of myself as the flavor of the decade," he said.

It may not seem exactly humble to call yourself "the flavor of the decade," but for someone like Paul, he really could make the case for being the flavor of the century (or at least a few decades).

I have definitely noticed a change in the way Paul presents himself from 2008 and now - funnier, wittier, more confident. But unlike the rest of the bloodthirsty empty suits out there, his campaign isn't about him. It's about the ideas he has just happened to champion eloquently, passionately, and humbly for the last 40 years: limited government, peace, free markets, a sound currency, and individual liberty.

Brave Chinese Women Smile in the Face of Authoritarian State

The Daily Mail has a great story on a few brave women on death row in China. Arrested for smuggling substances that the people calling themselves "the Chinese government" prohibits, they were sentenced to death.

Thankfully, a photographer was allowed inside the area the women were being held, and the pictures are a moving testament to the spirit of calm, unwavering optimism even minutes before they were to be killed. The women are shown eating, trying on shoes, mingling with their guards - all while smiling and joking. Just minutes after some of the pictures were taken, the anonymous women were taken outside and shot in the back of the head.

China is known for its liberal use of the death penalty, and uses executions in the way that all authoritarian states use them: for opponents of the regime, dissidents, and those that would dare to attempt to engage in peaceful market activity with substances that are "prohibited" by the Chinese state.

It is a sobering reminder that although much of China is growing rapidly thanks to the spread of capitalism and economic freedom, politically they still remain a medieval and torturous regime. As China continues to expand economically and become free, it will be interesting to see if the same thing happens with their civil and political liberties as well.

And on a somewhat similar note, the brutality of the Chinese regime is what many in this country have openly called for in America.

President Obama, within weeks of taking offices, launched federal raids into "illegal" drug distributors in California and continues to expand the scope of federal drug law.

And all of the Republican Presidential candidates (excluding Ron Paul, of course) believe that the status quo is just fine, or in the case of Fascist Newt, thinks that US drug laws aren't "draconian" enough. We need laws like Singapore, Newt says, and has previously supported the death penalty for drug smugglers. And he's the frontrunner!

On any issue, one can either advocate individual liberty or government coercion. Unfortunately, the US has travelled quite far in the direction of the latter. On the drug war, it is apparent that much change is needed, and despite the fact that tens of billions of dollars have been spent and America now is the prison capital of the world, the "establishment mainstream" wants to clamp down further, expand the police state, and possibly emulate the Chinese state.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that. But with the current crop of fascists, megalomaniacs, and warmongers to choose from in the next election, things don't look good.

100 Reasons to End the Fed

Here's the first ten according to Wesley Messamore:

1. The Federal Reserve System constantly decreases the value of our dollar by printing money out of thin air. (inflation)

2. Graph: The value of a $1 Federal Reserve Note in 1913 dollars (the year the Fed was created).

3. The Fed even recognizes its inflationary activity. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston says: “When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money.”

4. American economist Irving Fisher said: “Thus, our national circulating medium is now at the mercy of loan transactions of banks, which lend, not money, but promises to supply money they do not possess.”

5. If you or I did what the Fed does when it prints money, we would be found guilty of counterfeiting and locked up for a very long time!

6. The reason you or I would be arrested for counterfeiting is it’s theft! Every bill you create in bad faith, which doesn’t actually represent the creation of real goods and services, real value that has improved life by directing resources to their most productive uses, is a lie and an appropriation of value from the rest of the world, which gives the counterfeiter goods and services in exchange for nothing, because he or she did not actually create anything of value in return.

7. This is true of what the Federal Reserve does: “Neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities, intrinsically, a ‘dollar’ bill is just a piece of paper. Deposits are merely book entries.” – Modern Money Mechanics Workbook, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 1975

8. “The Fed creates absolutely nothing. It does not produce a single grain of wheat to feed people, a single drop of oil to power the engines of an industrial economy, nor a single ingot of metal from the ground to build the products and buildings that improve our lives.” -Wesley Messamore

9. This situation, in which you or I would be arrested for doing something the Federal Reserve does every day, is the hallmark of institutionalized theft and a legal system turned on its head. As French economist Frederic Bastiat said in the 19th century: “But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply… See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”

10. The inflation that results from the Federal Reserve’s massive counterfeiting operation steals from hardworking Americans by diminishing the value of the money they earn.

Read the rest here.

Chris Christie: The War on Drugs Isn't Working

Via the Forbes blog:

This is one reason I have a soft spot for the abrasive New Jersey governor. He’s basically just a brash, tough-talking moderate with a pretty good sense of certain issues I care about a lot – such as mass incarceration. His soft-spoken counterpart in Indiana, Mitch Daniels, is similarly savvy when it comes to our penal system and the War on Drugs.

Now that Gary Johnson is likely moving over to the Libertarian Party after being almost universally snubbed as a Republican, the remaining anti-drug-war candidate is Ron Paul. Paul doesn’t have quite the charisma of someone like Chris Christie. But Christie isn’t running so if the drug war is an issue you care about, Ron Paul is your best bet – certainly much better on the issue than the current president.

I disagree with Paul on lots of things, but he and Christie are both right that the drug war has failed. It failed a long time ago.