A Hundred Years of WarOne hundred years ago today, Austria-Hungary fired the first shots of World War I, sparking its conflict with Serbia. Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Mutual defense agreements ensured that the political clash did not remain regional. Austria-Hungary got support from Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria. Serbia found allies in Britain, France, Belgium, Greece, Romania, Italy, Russia, Portugal, Montenegro, Japan, Brazil and the United States. The gl... (more)
|
|
Drug-War Nonsense from a U.S. CommanderImmediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Pentagon got a bit freaked out. People were talking about a "peace dividend," by which they meant that Americans now had the opportunity to significantly reduce military spending now that the 45-year-old Cold War had ended.
In a bit of desperation, the Pentagon proceeded to explain why the enormous and ever-growing military part of America's governmental structure should nonetheless continue, notwithstanding the sudden and unexpec... (more)
|
|
High Priestess Ginsburg Rebukes the HeathenSupreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg professes to be offended by the idea that a commercial enterprise can claim protection under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. She is just as adamant in her insistence that an equally abstract entity called the “government” has “interests” that justify imposing on the property rights of private business owners.
“The exercise of religion is characteristic of natural persons, not artificial legal entities,” Ginsburg complaine... (more)
|
|
Yes, Obama is a Tyrant, Just Like His PredecessorIn the heat of a testy exchange with a hostile journalist, the White House press spokesman insisted that “Congress ... does not have constitutional oversight responsibility over the White House.”
This patently untrue defense of unaccountable presidential power was not offered by former Obama administration spokesman Jay Carney – although it certainly could have been. It was actually made by the late Tony Snow while he was working as the press spokesman for George W. Bush in 2007.<... (more)
|
|
Commerce is Civilization; Government is BarbarismAccording to Barney Frank, a former Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, “government is simply things we choose to do together.”
As it is used by the political class, the word “government” tacitly encompasses every form of human cooperation – because there is nothing they would leave outside of their sphere of control. Not only is it possible for people to cooperate without the supervision or interference of the state, such interference actually undermines peaceful and produ... (more)
|
|
Springsteen? Mellencamp? Creedence? Heretics All!As a necessary accompaniment to today’s saturnalia of state worship, the kind folks at Newsbusters (published by the Media Research Center, which is devoted to “exposing & combating liberal media bias”) have published the War Party’s equivalent of the Index Librorum Prohibitoru... (more)
|
|
What Exactly Is 'Racism'?I want to look at two words that the State and its hangers-on have employed with much success on behalf of increases in government power. One is racism. The other is equality.
What exactly is "racism"? We almost never hear a definition. I doubt anyone really knows what it is. If you're inclined to dispute this, ask yourself why, if racism truly is something clear and determinate, there is such ceaseless disagreement over which thoughts and behaviors are "racist" and which are not?... (more)
|
|
All Hail the Heroic Bootlegger -- Exemplar of the American SpiritNearly a century ago, the immortal Albert Jay Nock decanted one of the most potent condemnations of prohibition ever committed to print. Nock described the prohibitionist impulse as “simply unworthy of a free people, and, being unworthy [is] soon found intolerable.” He rebuked prohibitionists for their “hatreds, fanaticisms, inaccessibility to ideas … inflamed and cancerous interest in the personal cond... (more)
|
|
Inside the Belly of the Beast for Sunday ServiceWe went to a new church this morning at the invitation of a friend – Christ Fellowship in Boynton Beach, Florida. The first half hour was pure military worship and warmongering propaganda. There were two gigantic flags that dwarfed the rather tiny Christian cross. First came an excruciatingly long and slow rendition of the state’s war anthem (The Star Spangled Banner). Then two dudes dressed in military uniforms appeared wit... (more)
|
|
Big Brother Wants Your SonCalifornia Assembly Bill 2201 is indicative of a quiet but growing trend. The US is not only militarizing its police departments to handle a “national emergency” but it is also making certain it can conscript the civilian population at will.
AB 2201 is entitled “Selective Service and Drivers License for Vehicles.” Almost every male between 18 and 26 years old who applies for a driver's license or for a renewal at the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) would be autom... (more)
|
|
America Today
The trailer for the new Hunger Games movie.
|
|
The War Is On YouAfter 25 years of war on Iraq, the U.S. has what to show for it? A handful of dust. And at what cost in lives and property? It boggles the mind to consider the breadth and depth of the suffering.
Iraq was the great experiment following the Cold War for how the U.S. military machine could be used to make the world more free from tyranny — or so we were told.
Today, watching the crumbling of the house of cards, we see that the stated intentions of the world's largest ... (more)
|
|
They Don't Even Pretend to Obey the LawWhen summoned to testify before Congress regarding allegations that her agency had singled out conservative non-profits for special scrutiny, Lois Lerner – who headed the IRS's non-profit division – asserted her innocence and then invoked the Fifth Amendment.
Every citizen who files a tax return is expected to waive his protection against self-incrimination, and when the IRS accuses a taxpayer of fraud, those accusations are heard in a court the agency controls.
C... (more)
|
|
Iraq Pays for Washington's Sins -- And We Will, TooWhen Napoleon unwisely executed a political foe, his adviser Talleyrand said that it “worse than a crime – it was a blunder.”
The Iraq war was a world-historic crime. It was also one of the worst strategic blunders in recorded history. At least, that is the most charitable assessment that can honestly be made of the policy decisions that led to the unfolding regional catastrophe.
Prior to the US invasion in 2003, a handful of al-Qaeda cells found a haven in areas of... (more)
|
|
"The Future is Too Good to Waste on Lies": Bowe Bergdahl's Moral Odyssey “I can’t make up my mind to put the damn thing on again. I feel so clean and free. It’s like voluntarily taking up filth and slavery again….I think I’ll just walk off naked across the fields.”
John Andrews, a U.S. soldier in World War I who went AWOL, discusses his uniform in Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos
Trying to find their footing amid a gale-force outpouring of largely manufactured outrage, officials in Hailey, Idaho canceled their long-planned ho... (more)
|
|
Thank the Troops for Their Service?President Obama made a surprise visit over Memorial Day weekend to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Following a performance by country music star Brad Paisley, the President addressed about 3,000 troops in a hangar on the base. Video of the event, as well as a transcript of the president's remarks, are up on the White House website.
After a few jokes, the president personally thanked the troops:
To all of you, I'm here on a single mission, and that is to than ... (more)
|
|
The End of Oppression - Part 1: The Problem
"The End of Oppression" is a six-part series of videos which show what it will take for humanity to finally outgrow and escape its long history of violence and oppression.
Part One ("The Problem") explains why it is not greed, hatred, or merely the nature of man which is preventing humanity from achieving peace, prosperity and freedom for all.
... (more)
|
|
Optimism, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love FreedomIn the many debates I have engaged in on the relative merits of a free society, the most common charge that is leveled against me is that my arguments are Utopian, that they assume too positive and moral a human nature ever to succeed. "People are no good," I am chastised, "and therefore they must be controlled."
To this I always respond that, on the contrary, the success of a free society requires only that people will act in their self-interest, without assuming any implicit mor... (more)
|
|
The War on Terrorism Is One Fine ScamThroughout the Cold War, the proponents of the national-security state assured us that the only reason the United States needed to adopt this totalitarian-like apparatus was because of the international communist conspiracy emanating from the Soviet Union and Red China. Once the Cold War was won, the statists said, America could restore the limited-government constitutional republic that the Constitution established.
Of course, the argument was a sham. The proponents of empire, st... (more)
|
|
American Soldiers Did Not Die Defending Our FreedomI was at the Washington Nationals baseball game yesterday. Whenever I attend a Nats game, there is an air of militarism surrounding the game, but attending on Memorial Day helps to remind us what a truly militarized society America has become.
After all, what in the world does baseball, a quite peaceful and enjoyable pastime, have to do with America's countless foreign wars, which have killed, tortured, and maimed millions of people?
One of the most fascinating aspe... (more)
|
|
Are You Talking to a Agent Provocateur?The imagined look and persona of an agent provocateur in most people's minds probably couldn't be further from the truth. Most would probably picture the obscure, silent individual lurking in the back of the room while doing his best to conceal his identity and his movements. If you accept that image, you have also accepted the notion that the provocateur is really just peeking in on, documenting, and recording pre-existing criminal activities and shady plans going on around him. You haven't ... (more)
|
|
A Rotten Criminal-Justice SystemA good sign of a rotten criminal-justice system is the extent to which it is putting good, ordinary people into jail for inane criminal offenses while letting real criminals walk the streets free and carefree. Unfortunately, that is the type of system that now exists in the United States.
Recently, a man named Michael Steinberg was sentenced to 42 months in jail by New York City federal Judge Richard J. Sullivan. Steinberg is a former hedge fund trader on Wall Street. He and his w... (more)
|
|
"Check Your Privilege": A Totalitarian RefrainThe phrase “check your privilege” is among the most obnoxious expressions of recent vintage. This demand is an implicit accusation routinely directed at white, male students, who are supposed to feel guilt over being the beneficiaries of the institutionalized advantages that come with being part of an “oppressor class.”
Beginning this fall, first-year st... (more)
|
|
| 
