“Fiat” is money with no intrinsic value beyond whatever an issuing government is able to enforce. When it enjoys a monopoly as currency, fiat inevitably turns the free market functions of money inside out. Instead of being a store of value, the currency becomes a point of plunder through monetary policies such as quantitative easing. Instead of greasing society as a medium of exchange, the currency acts as a powerful tool of social control. The second harm is far less frequently discussed than i... (more)
"Even if we did achieve what we wanted with a very small state, we'd just be resetting the clock back to 1776 and it would roll forward exactly the same way again," says Free Domain Radio's Stefan Molyneux.
Reason magazine's Matt Welch sat down with Molyneux at FreedomFest 2012 and discussed why he thinks the libertarian ideal of a small state will inevi... (more)
To mark the 11year anniversary of the Afghanistan occupation, the death toll for the U.S. military reached two thousand. The soldier who had the misfortune of both dying and becoming a stark symbol of America's longest running war died under unusual circumstances. Instead of being killed while on patrol, the unnamed soldier was the victim of an "apparent insider attack" that ... (more)
We read now from the Gospel according to Government, first book of Politicians, Chapter 1, Verse 1.
In the beginning, there was chaos and mayhem, and people were as wild beasts. And there was great wailing, and gnashing of teeth throughout the land. Then it came to pass that politicians came down out of heaven, shining in glory, and spoke unto the people, saying, "Were are the Lord thy government, and we have decided to bless you with our presence, so that we may save you from you... (more)
“Don’t shoot me! Don’t kill me!” screamed a terrified Frances Scott as heavily armed men broke down the door of her home near Malibu, California shortly after midnight.
Donald Scott, the 61-year-old homeowner, was startled awake by his wife’s screams. Although he was groggy from sleep and the effects of a “nightcap,” and his vision was blurry because of recent cataract surgery, Scott grabbed a loa... (more)
Don’t you love how all political debates seem to center around two false alternatives? The Obama administration’s school lunch guidelines, codified in a 2010 law and spearheaded by the First Lady, have prompted many students, teachers, parents, and conservative opponents of the regime to protest the smaller portions. Kids complain that they are hungry after eating the low-calorie meals. In response, liberals point to high levels of American obesity and say that under the status quo ante children... (more)
I'm 75 years old now and can identify completely with an old man watching in despair as his once great nation crumbles down around him. It's happening faster and faster to us every day. The diaries of people in nations like Nazi Germany are the precedents for those of us writing for private audiences about the awful truths about America today.
I was born in Paradise and have lived through a very long, slow motion Paradise Lost and the birth of Dystopian America. <... (more)
“Fear is the foundation of most governments.” – John Adams
Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police and marauding SWAT teams. America is entering a new phase, one in which children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents because of the content of their Facebook posts, and law-abiding Americans are being... (more)
"A people should know when they are conquered." Maximus responds, "Would you, would I?" – From the movie, Gladiator
One hundred years ago the American republic was overthrown and captured by financial elites and money power during the Taft and Wilson administrations, the first Republican and the second Democrat. Both the Federal R... (more)
I’ve found it: the organizing cell of what must be the world’s most dangerous intellectuals. It is right in this room where 100 people now sit, listening and discussing. But instead of heated and sweaty plotting, what we find instead is the atmosphere is of a 19th-century salon: polite, smart, fun. It’s the ambition and dream that is delightfully dangerous: to upend and overturn the oppression that most people in all nations suffer and figure there is little they can do about it.
I heard a conservative talk radio guy complaining about the president’s excessive time on the putting green. Allegedly, Obama has played a record number of holes for a first-term chief executive. A related complaint concerned his frequent vacations.
This is hardly the first time I’ve heard partisans protest the president’s golfing and holiday habits. Granted, I would have to go all the way back to. . . George W. Bush to recall similar accusations. Bush was always on the ranch or t... (more)
Pierson, a Marine combat veteran, had been riding his motorcycle near Alpine when another motorist called to complain about a biker passing a nu... (more)
A colleague at Center for a Stateless Society recently brought to my attention a story from late last year about unusually high concentrations of severe illness in the area surrounding a Crossett, Ark. paper mill. Members of eleven out of fifteen homes on Penn Road have died of cancer, and respiratory distress is common.
The local cluster of illness is controversial because the mill was owned by Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. As a result of waste dumped in a loc... (more)
From people being harassed for paying by cash or having a food garden, to Americans being arrested for letting their children play outside – innumerable examples over the past few months alone illustrate that the United States is no longer a free country.
The nanny state is no longer just on steroids, it has turned into the Incredible Hulk as collectivism, pernicious bureaucracy, regulation, mass surveillance and outright tyranny runs wild across the country.
“The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”—James Madison
For most Americans, the detention center at Guantanamo Bay—once the topic of heated political debate by presidential hopeful Barack Obama but rarely talked about by the incumbent President Obama—has become a footnote in the government’s ongoing war on terror.
Yet for the approximately 167 detainees still being held in that godforsaken gulag, 86 o... (more)
Perusing the New York Times editorial page on any given day should give any reader of average intelligence the indication that only zombies of men aimlessly barking one liners of "tax the rich" and "support the middle class" actually take the writing seriously. Certainly some of the paper's frequent writers add a bit of wit between their leftist rant. Yet the overall message remains the same: the state knows best. From welfare to warfare, the propaganda machine is in full effect seven days a w... (more)
Brandon Paudert was an officer in the West Memphis, Arkansas Police Department. At the time Brandon was killed, Robert was the town’s police chief; Brandon’s partner, Offic... (more)
Why would anyone ever give up his freedom, in favor of having a master? Because aspiring tyrants are very good at deceiving people into thinking that it's for their own good. It's sad that this ever works, since it's akin to a slave-master convincing a slave that the purpose of the institution of slavery is to serve the slaves. How on earth could a megalomaniac ever make such a ridiculous lie sound believable?
One very popular means of deception, used in an effort to justify tyra... (more)
There have been several different predictions and scenarios involving how inflation and austerity measures in the U.S. could bring about food shortages and other shortages, food riots, looting, violent protests, flash mobs, and martial law. All these things can be prevented, of course, if more people could wake up to the fact that government central planning in money and economic matters is inherently flawed and doomed to failure, societal self-destruction and collapse.
... (more)
I don’t normally visit websites like Military.com. The glorification of all things military just doesn’t appeal to me, as you can well imagine if you have read any of my articles on the military.
Military.com is said to be "the online presence of Military Advantage." It "is committed to the mission of connecting the military community to all the advantage... (more)
Cover the kids' ears! Hide their eyes! Shuffle the weak and frail from the room! A politician running for president has uttered a heresy that brings into question the holy grail of democratic politics. Romney has failed to pretend as if the country is one big happy family that uses our glorious voting system to discover ever better ways of governing ourselves.
Which is to say that Romney made a gaffe.
You know the definition of a political gaffe: inadvertent and uns... (more)
Bob Revere is the Mayor of Mount Columbus, a one-stoplight town in the Rocky Mountains. As a young man, Bob fought in the Vietnam War. Bob was proud to see his only son, Tom, enlist in the Army, but ambivalent when he was sent to fight overseas. Those misgivings were amplified by the fact that Tom was newly married, and his wife Kari was expecting the couple’s first child.
Just weeks before Bob’s first combat tour was to end, the Revere family (which by that time included Kari an... (more)
The twentieth century was the century of total war. Limitations on the scope of war, built up over many centuries, had already begun to break down in the nineteenth century, but they were altogether obliterated in the twentieth. And of course the sheer amount of resources that centralized states could bring to bear in war, and the terrible new technologies of killing that became available to them, made the twentieth a century of almost unimaginable horror.
