Sheep Led to the Slaughter: The Muzzling of Free Speech in America"If the freedom of speech be taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."--George Washington
The architects of the American police state must think we're idiots.
With every passing day, we're being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship, violence, corruption, hypocrisy... (more)
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The Mountain of Legal Injustice in the USAIn view of the thousands of laws in the USA for whose violation people are punished even though no identifiable person has been harmed by their actions, is it not wholly appropriate to say that those who are punished are in fact being punished for political crimes?
For example, persons entering or leaving the USA must file a declaration of the exact amount of cash and negotiable monetary instrume... (more)
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The Government's Tax on Peace of MindIn the USA, thousands of distinct actions that violate no one’s natural rights have been declared illegal. Often the law provides for draconian punishment of those who violate such unjust laws. Sometimes, especially in cases involving alleged violation of tax laws or drug laws, the government may seize an alleged violator’s assets, making it impossible for him to mount an effective defense, conduct a business, or even live a normal life. In this perverse legal environment, ordinary people know, ... (more)
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Guns, Drugs, and Booze: Why Both Political Parties Love ProhibitionIt’s been noticed more than a few times that there aren’t many substantive differences between the Republicans and Democrats. While this is true in many ways for the parties themselves, the Left and Right certainly differ on a range of issues from welfare to abortion to gay rights.
What they have in common — at least the mainstream varieties — is a desire to use the state to shape society in whatever way they see fit. As Andrew Napolitano put it, “We have migrated from a two-p... (more)
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Vicente Maduro: A New Hero for American ConservativesVenezuela's dictator Vicente Maduro, who American conservatives have long reviled for his socialism and economic fascism, has suddenly become a new hero to them.
How did such a remarkable transformation take place?
Maduro has instituted a reign of terror against illegal immigrants in Venezuela, specifically those from Columbia. And that's enough to make Maduro a new hero to American conservatives, who wish that President Obama (or his successor) would take the same ... (more)
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Vester Lee Flanagan, Social Justice AvengerA Communist is merely a socialist in a hurry. Vester Lee Flanagan, by his own description, was an impatient social justice warrior. The murderous means he employed to punish those he accused of bigotry made visible the latent lethal violence that resides in State policies oriented toward the same objective.
Flanagan, also known by the professional name Bryce Williams, was a promiscuous pe... (more) Related: Gunman in on-air deaths remembered as 'professional victim'
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Follow the Silk RoadStretching some 4,000 miles, the "Silk Road" was a trade network connecting the continent of Asia. From around 200 B.C., the route, running from China to India, to the Mediterranean Sea, the horn of Africa, and beyond, the route is largely credited for opening up trade in much of the world, leading to the development and exchange of everything from spices and cloth, to religions and political philosophies.
In 2011, a new Silk Road sought to once again bridge the gap between buyers... (more)
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Sometimes We CrashMy daughters and I were recently in a car accident. The whole thing happened behind us so we aren't sure of the details, but so far as we have been able to discover, a driver swerved to avoid someone who was driving erratically. As he swerved, his car hit ours. He went into a ditch, and we went into a spin in the middle of four lanes of high-speed traffic. The erratic driver never stopped or even slowed down.
Everyone involved in the accident is okay.
After I got ho... (more)
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The Raping Of America: Mile Markers On The Road To Fascism"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."--Martin Luther King Jr.
There's an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a facade of law and orde... (more)
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Captured, Cuffed, and Jailed: A Personal StoryIt was a lovely day otherwise but, for me, most of it was spent in jail.
From one minute to the next, I went from seemingly free to cuffed and captured. Anyone who has ever experienced such a thing knows exactly what I mean. If you haven't experienced it, I hope you never do.
It might be best described as a loss of innocence, plus a new presence of awareness that all that we love and cherish in this world hangs in the balance. The balance can be tipped, with or wi... (more)
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Why Government Policing Monopolies Can Neither Serve Nor Protect YouIn 1920, the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises expanded on what is known as the “economic” or “socialist calculation problem” in his work, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.
Mises describes the nature of the price system under capitalism and describes how individual subjective values are translated into the objective information(pric... (more)
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We Are the Government: Tactics for Taking Down the Police State“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people. The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”—John Lennon
Saddled with a corporate media that marches in lockstep with the government, elected offic... (more)
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Capitalists Have a Better PlanTo early 20th-century intellectuals, capitalism looked like anarchy. Why, they wondered, would we trust deliberative, conscious guidance when building a house but not when building an economy?
It was fashionable among these socialist intellectuals to espouse "planning" as a much more rational way to organize economic activity. (F.A. Hayek wrote a famous essay on the phenomenon.) But this emphasis on central planning was utterly confused both conceptually and empirically.... (more)
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The War on Air Conditioning Heats Up It started with the pope. In his recent encyclical, Laudato Si’, he singled out air conditioning as a particularly good example of wasteful habits and excessive consumption that overcome our better natures:
People may well have a growing ecological sensitivity but it has not succeeded in changing their harmful habits of consumption which, rather than decreasing, appear to be growing all the more. A simple example is the increasing use and power of air-conditioning.... (more)
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The Brilliance of Carlo Rossi"Never buy wine in a jug with a handle."
A friend gave me this advice in my youth.
It was the worst wine advice I ever received. It reinforced the culture of wine snobbery that has pillaged many generations of consumers.
Wine snobbery treats this drink as if it were always a serious undertaking requiring expertise, snootiness, and a high budget.
Have you been at a wine tasting held by a local aficionado? People stand around sipping and ... (more)
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Afghan Wedding Parties and Hiroshima and NagasakiOne of the things that has fascinated me about the U.S. government's war on Afghanistan has been the multiple attacks on wedding parties -- eight wedding parties to be exact, at least as of 2013. What's with Afghan wedding parties that they seem to attract U.S. bombs?
Of course, the official position of the Pentagon is that all these bombings were accidents. Those smart bombs and surgical strikes just aren't always so smart or so surgical, they tell us. It was just a coincidence t... (more)
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Abolish Child Protective ServicesStanding in an office while two kids beg me to go back to their home, I begin retreating back into my inner-child. I imagine how I would have felt if I was seven years old and a Child Protective Services (CPS) investigator told me I couldn’t stay with my mom anymore. Their mother had committed the crime of respecting the children's desire to play outside.
Paperwork has already been checked by the supervisor, the judge has backed it, and now I have to find a placement. I put them i... (more)
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At it Again: Law Enforcement Officials' Anti-Encryption New York Times Op-Ed Yesterday, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. and law enforcement officials from Paris, London, and Madrid published an anti-encryption op-ed in the New York Times--an op-ed that amounts to nothing more than a blatant attempt to use fear mongering to further their anti-privacy, anti-security, and anti-constitutional agenda. They want a backdoor. We want security, ... (more)
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