If you control the language, you control the argument
If you control the argument, you control information
If you control information, you control history
If you control history, you control the past
He who controls the past controls the world” – Big Brother, 1984
The deepest form of social control is to govern what a human being believes is true and false, right and wrong. When you short-circuit a person’s critical faculty and moral sense, he ... (more)
What kind of events are worth reporting on in real time, with updates every few seconds? Such events have to be pretty dramatic. Well, the release of the iPhone 5 apparently qualifies. The tech blogs were all over it, and so were the wire services and big papers.
A moment to celebrate? Sure! It was the smart phone that changed the whole way people live and access information in our time. The smartphone…is nearly everything you can think of in the size of a deck of cards. It is the... (more)
With the U.S. presidential election right around the corner, Americans are getting themselves all in a tizzy to go to the voting booth and remind the holders of public office who they work for. Because it's a presidential election, the stakes are looked to as even higher as the media paints the contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney as a conflict with extreme consequence. The statist tramps known as mainstream journalists are championing the race as a great ideological battle. The fact ... (more)
President Obama is tearing the shroud of secrecy off his once hush-hush death-by-drone program.
From his interview with Ben Swann, host of Fox 19's Reality Check, to his sit-down with CNN's chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin, the kill-list compiler-in-chief is gradually exposing details of the principles he purportedly f... (more)
Who’s more obsessed with the fluids we ingest, Mayor Mike "Nanny" Bloomberg or the TSA?
New York City’s Board of Health, whose members Nanny appoints, will vote this week to restrict the quantity of soda consenting adults may sell and other consenting adults may buy to 16 ounces. Though only in certain venues: we are still supposedly free to purchase two-liter jugs of such poison (nope, I don’t drink soda. Hate it, in fact) from supermarkets. But if you wish to slurp ... (more)
The drug war is one of the most misunderstood subjects in the mainstream political dialogue, even among people who are sympathetic to the plight of responsible drug users. It is rare for someone to come out and say that all drugs should be legal, but in all honesty this is the only logically consistent stance on the issue. To say that some drugs should be legal while others should not is still giving credence to the punishment paradigm and overlooking the external consequences of drug prohibit... (more)
What happened to 26-year-old decorated Marine Brandon Raub – who was targeted because of his Facebook posts, interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys – has happened many times throughout history in totalitarian regi... (more)
What is the world's most powerful and violent "ism"? The question will summon the usual demons such as Islamism, now that communism has left the stage. The answer, wrote Harold Pinter, is only "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged", because only one ideology claims to be non-ideological, neither left nor right, the supreme way. This is liberalism.
In his 1859 essay On Liberty, to which modern liberals pay homage, John Stuart Mill described the power... (more)
A fragment of folk wisdom dubiously attributed to Bismack informs us that God watches out for “fools, small children, and the United States of America.” During a campaign stop in Seaman, Ohio, Joe Biden’s proprietary blend of foolishness and childishness may have proven fatal were it not for the intervention of Providence – or, at least, the close supervision of the Secret Service.
Biden inflicted himself on customers enjoying an otherwise pleasant Sunday meal at Cruiser’s Diner. ... (more)
On the eve of September 10, 2001, I went to sleep a libertarian, distrustful of the state, holding both major political parties in contempt, seeing the federal government as the primary enemy of the American people, their lives and liberties. The next morning, watching the horrific news of the murderous attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, I found myself on the side of the government for the first time in years. That is to say, I thought it would be appropriate for the government to f... (more)
Even after the armed Mexican drug dealer punched me in the face for the third time I didn’t regret my decision to move to Mexico. I’d been in Acapulco just over a month at that point. I’d been here for a couple weeks the year before and had felt just as safe as could be in that little seaside city.
This time around I got a bit more settled in and comfortable because I was planning to be back in Mexico often for longer and longer stretches.
"All the profits of drug trafficking and none of the risk."
That's how the prosecutor in a federal criminal case described Carlos Garcia's smuggling operation that has landed him in the federal pen for 13 months.
Before wearing leg irons and striped pajamas, Garcia was a top executive in Marcone Inc., a leading supplier of home appliances. Today he is just a statistic, the newest addition to the world's largest prison population.
Federal prosecutors in San Antonio claim that they have legal cause to seize two homes owned by Sindy Chapa, a professor at Texas State University. Although Chapa hasn’t been charged with a crime, prosecutors insist that the homes were purchased with the proceeds of criminal activity. The affidavits supporting the seizure have been sealed.
It is the saddest quotation from classical liberalism. On the eve of World War I, British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey stated, "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time." The lamps or lights were freedom and peace. Grey did not see them again.
Today the lights are going out all over America. Many people are sick at heart about the future of freedom, and understandably so. But there is no need to live in darkness. Freedom is not an ... (more)
In the 1990s, I read an interview with a rock star optimistic about the country's direction. He thought President Clinton's admission to having tried marijuana was a good sign. America was becoming more socially liberal. The new generation was in charge. And as one consequence, maybe the disastrous war on drugs would end.
Not only did Clinton continue waging the drug war as rigorously as his predecessor. He stepped it up in Latin America and began the crackdowns on California's me... (more)
When he gazes into the mirror, Lubbock County Judge Tom Head apparently sees the Lone Star State’s equivalent of the Roman military hero Horatius, or perhaps Wang Weilin, the “Tank Man” of Tiananmen Square.
When the next U.S. debt ceiling comes around, one thing is for sure: the mainstream press will be shouting and crying about how important it is to lift the ceiling once again, thereby permitting the federal government to pile even more debt onto the backs of the American people.
Unfortunately, in the period of time leading up to the debt ceiling, the mainstream press never objects to the government programs on which all that money is being spent and, in fact, criticizes calls t... (more)
"Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society to support foreign dictatorships."
The encryption of computer data is one of the most powerful tools individuals have to protect themselves against an intrusive state.
Encryption is the process of converting data into encoded text produced by an algorithm. To convert the encoded text back to its original form requires either a ‘key’ or tremendous effort. A key is a sequence of numbers that senders typically offer to those they wish to decrypt the protected data. All others must use the ‘tremendous effort’ option.... (more)
Debating militarists can be very frustrating, but I believe worth the effort.
I despise the military as an institution. Of course, I share no love with its controlling state apparatus, as well. Those civilians who comprise the state are the controlling thugs of the operation. They are usually hidden and unapproachable. Lying is a big part of their profession, to the point of being pathological. They are usually too self-deluded to realize the immorality of their insti... (more)
"There’s nothing American about what just happened," protested Nevada Republican delegate Wiselot Rouzard after the convention refused to seat the delegation from Maine. "This is the death of the Republican Party."
What Wiselot and fellow Ron Paul delegates had experienced was a memorable display of the Republican Party’s fetid essence.... (more)
Are you or somebody you know suffering from the delusion of democracy? Did your parents and teachers lead you to believe that government is necessary in order for society to function? Did they teach you that democracy represents the will of the people and that tax pays for schools and roads and hospitals?
If so, don't worry, you're not alone. Million... (more)
Electoral politics is a moral and intellectual wasteland. There is no room for anyone of principle, whatever that principle might be.
As a libertarian, I see little difference between Obama and Romney. They both favor a perpetual war on terror, an occupation of Afghanistan, military aid to Israel, indefinite detention of terror suspects, military imprisonment outside the bounds of habeas corpus, warrantless wiretapping, the TSA, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the FDA, the war on drug... (more)
The United States Constitution recognizes American prisons as forced-labor camps. The Thirteenth Amendment, enacted in 1865 to outlaw slavery and involuntary servitude, includes an exception. It reads,
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall
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