Getting carried away...

Michelle Malkin continues her plunge into the neo-con abyss of thoughtless rhetoric with her latest post talking about buying Danish products in order to fight the islamofascists.

If buying a nation's products had an impact on the threat and success of the islamofascists, wouldn't it make sense for us to buy our own products (at least those few that we still make here...)?

Tomorrow's State of the Union speech...

Any chance President Bush's speech will sound anything like this one?

How about this one?

Sadly, I doubt any such ideas will creep their way into the speech. Instead I suspect we'll hear mostly old ideas repackaged to appeal to the sheep and their shephards on talk radio.

The Marlboro Man of Iraq wouldn't go again...

It's very easy for Rush or Hannity to sit on the sidelines and cheer for soldiers and Marines who fight wars on behalf of the American government. However, fighting in those wars is much more difficult.

The 'Marlboro Man', a.k.a. James Blake Miller of Kentucky, has now come home and had time to reflect on the war so many Americans find noble and heroic.

"I mean, how would we feel if they came over and started something here?" he [Miller] asked. "I'm glad that I fought for my country. But looking back on it, I wouldn't do it all over again."

The real A.D.D. ...

Many Americans have little or no idea how government works or who is holding the reins on their lives. The majority of American voters do not know the name of their congressman, the length of terms of House or Senate members, what the Bill of Rights guarantees, or what the government is actually doing in the vast majority of its interventions. A survey after the 2002 congressional election revealed that less than a third of Americans knew "that the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives prior to the election." Recent polls show that almost two-thirds of Americans could not name a single Supreme Court justice and that 58 percent of Americans could not name a single cabinet department in the federal government.

Americans are assured that they are free because rulers take power only with the people’s informed consent. What does "informed consent" mean these days? It means knowing the names of the president’s pets but not knowing his record on key issues. It means knowing the sexual orientation of family members of candidates for high office, but falling prey to their rewriting of history. It means recalling the phrases the government endlessly repeats, and screening out evidence of government atrocities.

Attention Deficit Democracy by James Bovard

Supporting the troops...

A recent column by Joel Stein is likely generating major ripples across the dial as the talk-radio shephards turn their venom on the newest critic of Bush's failed war.

His column begins as follows:

I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

Free Republic is all over this guy, exhibiting their supposed Christian beliefs in the usual hypocritical fashion. (Agree with us, and we'll pray for you. Disagree with us, and we want you dead.)

Now, clearly some of Mr. Stein's column is hyperbolic rhetoric, designed to make waves by saying that which most are unwilling or politically unable. But the bottom line is that American kids are killing and dying to advance the failed policies of recent American Presidents.

Who really supports the murders of nameless, faceless people thousands of miles away who pose no threat to anyone whatsoever, except those in positions to profit from our current foreign policy?

Authoritarianism...

The New American blog has a bone to pick with Pat Buchanan over his willingness to permit Bush to ignore laws at his own discretion.

I don't often disagree with Pat, but in this case I do. I am very nervous about the centralizing of power in the White House, especially the way Bush thinks he is beyond Congressional or judicial review.

What if we're told that the 2008 election cannot be held, due to national security threats, in accordance with some mysterious provision deep within the FISA law or the bill granting Bush power to invade Iraq?

Sure, I don't think "it could happen", either. I also didn't think "it could happen" until the Supremes ruled on the Kelo v. New London case, either.

Competition and privatization...

Competition improves quality. Monopolization of a market or industry leads to reduced quality, as a producer has no incentive to improve the quality of its product.

One area in which this rule demonstrates itself regularly is in the realm of education. Given a chance, people overwhelmingly opt out of government schools and into charter schools or private schools.

Another area that the government has failed to manage successfully is our roads. Joe Mysak says privatize them.

Cintra-Macquarie to take over Chicago Skyway for $1.8b

Wishful thinking...

Dr. Curtis from Laurel, MD on Potential v. Opportunity:

"When I see a repeated pattern of failure or low-level performance, I treat potential as noise and not data. My colleagues often talk about a patient's potential when there is chronic failure, but it always requires an if.

The data is that Maurice Clarett and others like him have repeatedly done what is necessary to produce the negative outcomes that they have experienced. His predicament today is a summary of his actions from a series of yesterdays. Clarett's athletic success is an interruption in his criminal career, not the other way around.

This behavioral approach to reality applies to individuals and to political philosophies. In politics, the left gets caught up in if statements and other forms of wishful thinking. Socialists and their siblings will insist that Hayek is wrong and that socialism fails because it has not been done right. In other words, that socialism has a lot of potential but...It is the ifs, buts, and shoulds that underpin it, not the devastating reality of it. Its potential, like Clarett's potential, is pure noise. The good that socialism may do on rare occasion is a distraction form the overwhelming pattern of failure that it has produced wherever it has been tried.

I wish Maurice Clarett had what it took to make better decisions, but he didn't. His story is written by what he did, not by what he should have done or could have done. I also wish that 9/11 had not occurred, but it did. I voted for Bush because he did not use wish statements about our enemies. The left did, and still does, as in, "If only we understood why they hate us..." I refused to give the people who would not look at the data squarely my vote. Our enemies want us dead. I can wish it were different, but I would place my wife and children in peril with that wish. As with people, so too with policy.

Michelle Malkin: GOP cheerleader...

Michelle Malkin has posted some excerpts from a speech given today by VP Cheney. One of them is as follows:

Another absolutely vital requirement in the War on Terror is that we use whatever means are appropriate to try to find out the intentions of the enemy. To this end, in the days following 9/11, the President authorized the National Security Agency to intercept a certain category of terrorist-linked international communications.

Wait a minute. I thought we've been told that Bush's NSA spying program is merely a continuation of decades worth of prior precedent. Now we're told that Bush extended the scope of the NSA even more than was done by Clinton and his band of criminals?

It's too bad, I used to think Michelle was truly on the side of individual liberty and government restraint. It appears she's fallen into the government-media complex trap in order to sell books and get on television. Once upon a time, I think Michelle would have thrown a flag on this flagrant attempt by President Bush and his followers to grab power and to centralize it inside the White House.

What happened?

America's last hope...

Ron Paul is the only member of the United States Congress who takes his oath seriously and who governs according to the original intent of our once sacred Constitution. Perhaps as many as a handful of others come close, but it seems to me that only Ron Paul is unwilling to "play the game" when it comes to supporting or opposing legislation or spending bills.

Yesterday, he gave this speech on the floor of the United States House of Representatives about the recent "lobbying scandal" involving Jack Abramoff and several as yet unnamed Congresspeople.

Here are some of the more noteworthy excerpts from Rep. Paul's speech:

It’s been suggested we need to change course and correct the way Congress is run. A good idea, but if we merely tinker with current attitudes about what role the federal government ought to play in our lives, it won’t do much to solve the ethics crisis. True reform is impossible without addressing the immorality of wealth redistribution. Merely electing new leaders and writing more rules to regulate those who petition Congress will achieve nothing.

This system of government is coming to an end – a fact that significantly contributes to the growing anxiety of most Americans, especially those who pay the bills and receive little in return from the corrupt system that has evolved over the decades.

The theft that the federal government commits against its citizens, and the power that Congress has assumed illegally, are the real crimes that need to be dealt with. In this regard we truly do need a new direction. Get rid of the evil tax system; the fraudulent monetary system; and the power of government to run our lives, the economy, and the world; and the Abramoff types would be exposed for the mere gnats they are. There would be a lot less of them, since the incentives to buy politicians would be removed.

The system of special interest government that has evolved over the last several decades has given us a national debt of over eight trillion dollars, a debt that now expands by over 600 billion dollars each year. Our total obligations are estimated between fifteen and twenty trillion dollars. Most people realize the Social Security system, the Medicare system, and the new prescription drug plan are unfunded. Thousands of private pension funds are now being dumped on the U.S. government and American taxpayers. We are borrowing over 700 billion dollars each year from foreigners to finance this extravagance, and we now qualify as the greatest international debtor nation in history. Excessive consumption using borrowed money is hardly the way to secure a sound economy.

The biggest rip-off of all – the paper money system that is morally and economically equivalent to counterfeiting – is never questioned. It is the deceptive tool for transferring billions from the unsuspecting poor and middle-class to the special interest rich. And in the process, the deficit-propelled budget process supports the spending demands of all the special interests – left and right, welfare and warfare – while delaying payment to another day and sometimes even to another generation.

The enormous sums spent each year to support the influential special interests expand exponentially, and no one really asks how it’s accomplished. Raising taxes to balance the budget is out of the question – and rightfully so. Foreigners have been generous in their willingness to loan us most of what we need, but even that generosity is limited and may well diminish in the future.

The prime beneficiaries of a paper money system are those who use the money early – governments, politicians, bankers, international corporations, and the military industrial complex. Those who suffer most are the ones at the end of the money chain – the people forced to use depreciated dollars to buy urgently needed goods and services to survive. And guess what? By then their money is worth less, prices soar, and their standard of living goes down.

Whether government programs are promoted for “good” causes (helping the poor), or bad causes (permitting a military-industrial complex to capitalize on war profits), the principles of the market are undermined. Eventually nearly everyone becomes dependent on the system of deficits, borrowing, printing press money, and the special interest budget process that distributes loot by majority vote.

Today, most business interests and the poor are dependent on government handouts. Education and medical care are almost completely controlled and regulated by an overpowering central government. We have come to accept our role as world policemen and nation builder with little question, despite the bad results and an inability to pay the bills.

The question is, what will it take to bring about the changes in policy needed to reverse this dangerous trend? The answer is: quite a lot. And unfortunately it’s not on the horizon. It probably won’t come until there is a rejection of the dollar as the safest and strongest world currency, and a return to commodity money like gold and silver to restore confidence.

If we’re inclined to improve conditions, we should give serious consideration to the following policy reforms, reforms the American people who cherish liberty would enthusiastically support:

1. No more “No Child Left Behind” legislation;
2. No more prescription drug programs;
3. No more undeclared wars;
4. No more nation building;
5. No more acting as the world policemen;
6. No more deficits;
7. Cut spending – everywhere;
8. No more political and partisan resolutions designed to embarrass those who may well have legitimate and honest disagreements with current policy;
9. No inferences that disagreeing with policy is unpatriotic or disloyal to the country;
10. No more pretense of budget reform while ignoring off-budget spending and the ever-growing fourteen appropriations bills;
11. Cut funding for corporate welfare, foreign aid, international NGOs, defense contractors, the military industrial complex, and rich corporate farmers before cutting welfare for the poor at home;
12. No more unconstitutional intrusions into the privacy of law-abiding American citizens;
13. Reconsider the hysterical demands for security over liberty by curtailing the ever-expanding and oppressive wars on drugs, tax violators, and gun ownership.

Beginning to have doubts...

Notice the date on this Ron Paul column - 9/3/2001. Any chance that 9/11 was an inside job, designed to provide a smokescreen behind which our government and the Fed could disquise an overdue devaluation of our markets and our currency?

Is there any real reason to have full faith in the official story put out by the federal government? After all, the 9/11 commission was a whitewash, and much of the evidence has been destroyed or securely hidden and off limits to the public.

Couple that with the rest of the lies we've gotten from the Bush administration on topics ranging from non-existent WMD in Iraq, to the supposed strength of our economy, to their lackluster attempts at securing our borders, to the chronic spending that has led to huge deficits and inflation, to the secret statist philosophies of Supreme Court appointments Roberts and Alito.

As much as I try to tell myself that such theories are too disgusting even for evil men like Cheney and Rumsfeld, I cannot shake the thoughts presented in Martial Law 9/11: The Rise of the Police State (2005).

Assisted suicide...

The United States government does not rightfully or legally have any legitimate claim on your life. It belongs to you, and according to natural law, every individual retains sole decision-making authority to end his own life.

I am rather mystified by the split in the Supreme Court decision that came down recently, most specifically the thought process used by Clarence Thomas.

Now, the shephards on talk radio and the Democrat party will tell you that Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are birds of a feather, but they are not. Scalia is much more of a statist when it comes to many issues. Thomas, on the other hand, believes fiercely in the Federalist concept, and recognizes that the United States of America is a plural noun.

In his dissent of the Oregon physician assisted suicide case, Thomas lambasted his colleagues who voted previously to use the Controlled Substances Act to overrule the California law which had made medical marijuana legal in certain circumstances, yet somehow in this case found a way not to apply the same doctrine to doctors who prescribe and administer lethal doses of otherwise legal narcotics.

Using their own language from the prior decision, Thomas asks how the same justice can say that using medical marijuana violates the "legitimate medical usage" requirement of the CSA while being prescribed lethal doses of narcotics does not.

Of course, I don't think that the federal government has any role to play in determing what constitutes "legitimate medical usage" of a drug, nor does it have a responsibility to prevent individuals from making decisions which may be detrimental to their health. Are we to allow the government the power to force a cancer patient to undergo chemotherapy? How about allowing the government to prevent a person with no hope of recovery the ability to obtain chemotherapy treatment if he so desires it?

I'm not surprised at all that Roberts and Scalia (statists, both) voted to expand the scope of federal legislation while ignoring the 9th and 10th amendments, but Thomas' opinion seems to make no sense. If he were true to the principles of federalism as he claimed in the medical marijuana case, and again in this dissent, wouldn't have have voted in the affirmative, thereby recognizing the power of the State of Oregon and its people to determine for themselves a solution to this difficult question?

I believe that America would be much better off if States reasserted their sovereignty. After all, the Constitution is not a pact that grants the federal government all the power that it seeks or desires.

If the People of Alabama want a stone monument displaying the 10 commandments in their State Supreme Court building, that is their right.
If the People of California wish to allow its residents access to medical marijuana, that is their right.
If the People of Oregon wish to allow doctor-assisted suicide, that is their right.
If the People of Massachusetts wish to allow same-sex couples the benefits of legal marriage, that is their right.
If the People of Pennsylvania wish to declare abortion to be murder within their State, that is their right.

Overuse of the "full faith and credit" clause of the Constitution has needlessly led to an enormous division in this country on social issues. The only ones who win are the politicians who bamboozle the sheep year after year with empty talk about solving these problems, yet never quite getting around to doing it. (See H.R. 4379, a bill that would reign in the federal judiciary as Republicans have told us they want to do in recent campaigns)

If Americans were less focused on religion, guns, and abortion at a national level, perhaps we could begin to seriously address the actual problems which face our Republic, instead of endlessly fighting the culture wars while our politicians continue to rob us blind and get us into illegal wars for no legitimate purpose.

Up is down, left is right...

I'm getting tired of hearing the socialist Democrats complain that "the far right" wants to limit civil rights, and how only Democrats are truly interested and capable of preserving individual rights as enumerated in the Constitution.

Of course, the leftists are interested in preserving all sorts of invented rights which appear nowhere in our Constitution, such as the rights to public school, housing, medical care, infanticide, affirmative action, etc...

But the bottom line is that only those who seek to restrain the size and scope of government actually advocate real protection of individual rights because it is government that tramples on the rights of the individual. As such, it stands to reason that the bigger the government, the more power it has to constrain the rights of the individual seeking to be free from unnecessary governmental regulation.

In the end, people like myself who advance the ideas of federalism are the only ones who honestly believe in the sovereignty of the individual, and the unalienable right he enjoys to his life and property.

Authoritarians who use government force to redistribute wealth have no respect for the right of property once enjoyed by Americans. Is that not precisely the bedrock foundation upon which today's Democrat party is built, namely the use of government force to reallocate property from one individual to another, while taking a healthy cut for themselves along the way?

Empty Republican rhetoric...

H.R. 4379 states the following:

The Supreme Court of the United States and each Federal court--

• (1) shall not adjudicate--
• (A) any claim involving the laws, regulations, or policies of any State or unit of local government relating to the free exercise or establishment of religion;
• (B) any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or
• (C) any claim based upon equal protection of the laws to the extent such claim is based upon the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation; and
• (2) shall not rely on any judicial decision involving any issue referred to in paragraph (1).

How many United States Representatives have co-sponsored this bill?
How many members of the "pro-life" Republican party have agreed to back this piece of legislation which actually seeks to return power and responsibility of legislating into the Congress where it belongs?
How many individuals have signed onto this bill which, if passed, could have an immense impact towards restoring our Constitutional Republic, as well as restoring political power into local and State arenas where People are once again free to participate in their government?

Zero. Ron Paul is again on his own, standing up for the principles used as campain fodder by Republican politicians every other year. To him, those words are more than obligatory statements needed to satisfy a constituency. To the rest, they mean nothing.

Second annual UN flag burning...

The People of New Hampshire make me proud, and give great comfort in knowing that I am not alone in this struggle against the tyranny and the authoritarians who believe themselves to be entitled to power by birthright.

Watch the video

The writing is on the wall...

According to Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley Chief Economist:

It is quite possible that we’re being too analytical in attempting to discern why it all went so well on the global macro front in 2005. It may simply be that the stars were in near perfect alignment, enabling the world to buy an extra year of time. I think the odds are low that an unbalanced world economy will continue to draw support from such a favorable constellation of forces. Reversals are possible on three fronts -- the liquidity cycle, the US property market, or the dollar. Shifts in any one of these areas could well be enough to transform the global outcome from benign to malign. The interplay between these forces could be especially lethal.

According to John Snow, United States Treasury Secretary:

[T]he U.S. economy is the picture of economic health and we remain, as the president often notes, the economic envy of the world.

Let's see, the federal government is selling one version of the truth, and the chief economist of one of the largest corporations in the world is selling quite a different version.

I'll go with the latter, but as they say, buyer beware.

The failing empire...

Coercion by force never works. Every time that a society has tried to expand itself through the use of force, it has failed. Look back through history at the examples from China, Rome, the Mongols, the English, the Russians, the Turk, the Germans, the Italians, the Japanese. Now, compare that with today's modern American empire.

We have troops in more than 100 countries. In recent decades we've tried to covertly or overtly affect the stability of dozens of governments around the world. I believe that we are now reaching the end of our empire building road as today's young Americans are increasingly unwilling to fight for the welfare state that we have become.

As James Burnham says:

[Modern liberalism] does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice, and death. There is no tragic dimension in its picture of the good life. Men become willing to endure, sacrifice, and die for God, for family, king, honor, country, from a sense of absolute duty or an exalted vision of the meaning of history… . And it is precisely these ideas and institutions that liberalism has criticized, attacked, and in part overthrown as superstitious, archaic, reactionary, and irrational. In their place liberalism proposes a set of pale and bloodless abstractions—pale and bloodless for the very reason that they have no roots in the past, in deep feeling and in suffering. Except for mercenaries, saints, and neurotics, no one is willing to sacrifice and die for progressive education, medicare, humanity in the abstract, the United Nations, and a ten percent rise in Social Security payments.

Unless you are a ditto-head sheep, you can probably figure out that our economy only appears strong because of the hidden fraud committed by the Federal Reserve as it continues to print money at record pace.

Unless and until our politicians dramatically change course, and begin to curb their borrowing and spending on social programs and pork barrel projects, our Republic inches closer to depression or collapse.

It is my view that the American ideal of individuals who enjoy the unalienable rights to life, liberty and property by birthright is the best concept ever committed to paper. Sadly and predictably, corruptible men have twisted and mangled the concepts over the years as the American people continue to ignore the warnings given by our founding fathers who implored us to be ever-vigilant against tyranny and democracy.

We now find ourselves in a terrible position where our government has transformed into precisely the same as that of King George, who was defeated by George Washington and his Army of liberty-loving Patriots in the Revolutionary War.

How does this all tie together? Our supposed leaders trample on the once respected unalienable rights of Americans as they seek to impose what they proport to be the “American way of life” around the world. In order to confuse the average American fool, the federal government artificially inflates the strength and stability of our economy in attempt to boost its credibility both domestically and internationally.

We are being told at the war in Iraq is all about spreading freedom through the Middle East, yet I dare ask, how can America spread a concept in which most of us do not subscribe?

How can we possibly teach Iraqis about the value of free speech or private property when our government recognizes neither?

Why would somebody believe that free and fair elections are virtuous when our own elections are anything but free and fair? If Iraqis utilize finger ink to ensure the one man/one vote concept, why not use the same system in America?

How could an Iraqi learn to appreciate the concept of warrant requirements when it comes to search and seizure when our President does not uphold the practice, even when he has a court at his disposal that rubber-stamps warrants with alarming regularity?

I challenge anyone to select a single Article or clause in the Bill of Rights (except perhaps the 3rd or 7th ) that has not been dramatically altered in favor of the government and against the individual since its inception.

No, the truth is that this war has nothing to do with freedom, and our government has no respect for individual rights or human liberty. If there was any doubt left in my mind before this week, it was erased permanently when I heard Judge Alito explain his view that there is no check or balance on the Supreme Court outside of its members themselves.

Understandably, the big government socialist Democrats didn't object, but nary a word was uttered by the Republicans who supposedly believe in limited government.

Judge Alito stated clearly that he believes in government power when it comes to limitations on free speech, such as the “free speech zones” set up at the 2004 RNC Convention, and he believes in giving very wide latitude when it comes to the scope of search warrants, as evidenced by his opinion in the case of a strip-search of a 10-year-old girl who happened to find herself in the wrong house at the wrong time.

The American Republic is collapsing before our eyes, and most of us are either asleep or busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic that is America and our Constitution.

My only solution is to prepare myself and my family for the inevitable dark times which surely await us in the coming decades.

American Empire

Bush calls this freedom...

First we had Campaign Finance Reform.

Then we had "free speech zones" at the 2004 RNC convention.

Now, we have the "annoying email" law.

You can be sure the true believers like Rush and Hannity will continue to lead their mindless followers into deluding themselves that George Bush cares about individual liberty and believes that the government's primary role is to preserve said rights.

Thankfully, I have realized that Bush Co. sees the primary role of government to be their own personal enrichment.

Doctors have had enough...

It seems that doctors are getting tired of having their patients chosen for them by the government.

California physicians turning away new patients

As Medicare’s 4.4% pay cut is compounded by a 5% cut in Medi-Cal, California Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries are finding it more difficult to find a doctor.

Greg Knoll, an attorney who directs the Consumer Center for Health Education and Advocacy in San Diego said that he frequently cannot find a doctor for poor patients.

Escondido internist Akber Safi closed his practice in June and opened an import-export business. He said that “Medicare, Medi-Cal and insurance company bureaucracy wouldn’t allow me to do what I’m trained to do—take care of patients.”

According to AMA projections, physicians’ expenses will increase 15% between now and 2011, while Medicare fees are to be slashed by 26%. Medi-Cal fees in California are near the bottom of Medicaid payments nationwide, and HMO payment rates, which often track Medicare’s, are 30% less than the national average.

If Congress overrides the cut, Medicare beneficiaries will have to absorb $3 to $4 billion of the $10.8 billion in restored payments, said Kirsten Sloan, a spokeswoman for the American Association of Retired Persons. She accuses physicians of trying to make a point at the expense of patients’ health

Don't get me wrong. I do not draw any joy from people who cannot obtain health care that they seek. However, I do draw joy at the collapse of government orchestrated health care systems. I believe that a withdrawl from the medical field by politicians, coupled with sensible reform of our legal system in the area of malpractice suits would dramatically reduce the numbers of "poor" people unable to find the health care they seek.

The chains of bondage...

It's that time of year again to begin thinking about filing your tax returns with the Internal Revenue Slavemasters. That means I'm angered about the state of affairs in America, and need to rant.

Mises has a great article on this subject here.

The bottom line is simple. Either a man owns his own labor in its entirety, or he does not. There can be no other option.

If he owns his own labor, he is to be considered a free man. He may choose to enter the marketplace in an attempt to trade his labor to an employer for whatever compensation he will agree upon with that employer.

However, were a man not the sole owner of his labor, he would be considered a slave in bondage, and rightly so. Just as the plantation slaves of centuries past were not the owners of their labor, neither am I.

Of course, I am always free to bargain with my employer or seek another one all together if I feel that my wages are insufficient to meet my needs, but either way the reality of my circumstance remains the same.

The federal government confiscates some portion of each dollar I earn in exchange for my labor before I take possession of it. Therefore, it cannot be said that I own my labor because I am only able to take possession of that portion of compensation that the government does not take first.

If the government has the first claim to the fruit of my labor, I cannot simultaneously make the same claim. If I cannot make first claim to the fruits of my labor, how can it be said that I own them?

Sadly, I thought that the men who fought and died to establish this Republic secured for the People the unalienable rights to life and property. Unfortunately, that is not the case anymore.

Each and every day we get up and go to work, we are working first for the government and only secondly for ourselves. Yet, our leaders have succeeded in convincing millions and millions of Americans across successive generations that this is called liberty.

We are told what a wonderful system of government we have in America, most surely the finest one ever established for its revolutionary and historically unrivaled protections of individual rights and for the ways in which it secures the liberty of the people by restraining the size and scope of the government.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Today's American government is no different than so many that have come before it, and like those, it too will collapse and fall into the faded memories of history along side the rest of the tyrannically abusive empires that have come before and will come in the future.

What you didn't learn in government school...

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
-- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1861

According to John Denson:

The Orwellian historians have falsified the true purposes or motives behind most of America’s wars, and have instead given us glorified accounts designed to mislead the public in order to justify the sacrifices the people have made. All wars, whether won or lost, tend to centralize and increase the power into the national government, increase the debts and taxes and diminish the civil liberties of the citizens. It is time we begin to see through the myths and false propaganda about American wars so that we can prevent future wars. Americans have a strong tendency to accept as true the false wartime propaganda which now appears in the history books and which is repeated by politicians and intellectuals to the effect that all of America’s wars have been just, necessary and noble. This tendency of the Americans to accept this false propaganda tends to prevent them from questioning the alleged reasons for current wars. There is also a strong tendency by Americans to measure a person’s patriotism by how much that person supports an American war rather than how much the person supports the concept of American freedom and the ideas of our Founders, which includes a noninterventionist foreign policy

I must admit, I once fell victim to this type of rhetoric by the President and his propogandists on talk radio, but with the recent revelations about the NSA I have come to a very different conclusion about the motives of this "war" in Iraq.

Lincoln

The Iraq debacle...

What have you heard about the situation in Iraq?

Americans living "in poverty"...

Aside from the simple reality that "poor" Americans still live better than most of the rest of this planet's 6 billion residents, the message being peddled by communists in Democrat clothing via the MSM about the "poor" in America is simply a lie.

Here's one example from a Palm Springs, CA newspaper:

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, American television viewers were aghast at the sight of thousands of poor people who did not have the resources to flee the city before it flooded.

That same week, the Census Bureau reported that the number of Americans living in poverty rose in 2004 for the fourth consecutive year to 37 million, or 12.7 percent, up by 5.4 million from 2000.

What they never tell you is what "living in poverty" actually means. They know that most people who read their "news" story will automatically dream up pictures in their heads of starvation, squalor, sickness, homelessness, etc...

Not to mention, these "news" stories are designed on the notion that it is the responsibility of "society" to see that everyone in that "society" has some minimum standard of living, an idea which is not realistic nor beneficial to most members of society.

According to the US Census Bureau, a person is in poverty if his income for a given year does not meet or exceed a given "poverty threshold". In 2004, a four person household with two children under 18 has a threshold of $19,157.

A person who works a full-time, minimum wage job grosses just over $10,000 in a year. If two parents both work a 40 hour per week job all year, they are not "living in poverty".

Not to mention, wealthy people who recognize no income (other than capital gains) during a given year are considered to be "living in poverty".

College students who do not live in a dormitory are "living in poverty", though many receive loans, grants or support from family.

Also, since the thresholds do not vary by geographical area, someone living in an expensive area (urban/suburban areas in the northeast or west coast) making $15,000 is deemed to be in an identical financial position as someone living in a very inexpensive area (rural areas in the South).

Of course, the communist left in America has so skewed our culture that it is now racist or bigoted to even suggest that the time-tested family planning model of graduating high school, getting married, then having kids actually proves superior to single-parenthood by high school dropouts who rely on the taxpayer for survival.

The State has replaced the father, and I believe this effort has been pushed forward deliberately and systematically. Karl Marx would be proud to know that his ideas, though empirically discredited, have been almost fully adopted in America.

A home run from Steyn...

Mark Steyn's article here clarifies a simple but critical point. Western populations ("civilized people") are dying off and being replaced by imports from the Middle East, Asia, or Africa.

Couple this trend with the continuing rise of the American welfare state and the money printing addiction of the Fed and our politicians, and the picture begins to look very bad.

I can only hope that the supposedly smart people who are in power have solutions for these problems that they just haven't shared with the rest of us yet, but in the meantime I can only assume that they do not.

Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries.

That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb.

The default mode of our elites is that anything that happens--from terrorism to tsunamis--can be understood only as deriving from the perniciousness of Western civilization. As Jean-Francois Revel wrote, "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

For 30 years, we've had endless wake-up calls for things that aren't worth waking up for. But for the very real, remorseless shifts in our society--the ones truly jeopardizing our future--we're sound asleep

There is much more, but I'd just end up excerpting the entire article. Read it.