Category: Politics

They’ll Fit Right In

If you’ve been paying attention to Greek politics the name Golden Dawn has likely surfaced a few times. Golden Dawn is Greece’s fascist party that has been slowly gaining political influence. A recent article on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) has revealed that Golden Dawn plans to expand into the United States:

Golden Dawn members in the United States have told CBC News they plan to open chapters shortly in Chicago, in Connecticut and in Toronto.

All I can say is that they’ll fit right in. The United States is, in a practical sense, a fascist state ruled by two fascist political parties. The marriage between private and state interests is overt, rampant nationalism is apparent, and the use of military power to expand cannot be denied. Golden Dawn should find a great deal of inspiration in this country and may be able to use the history of America’s political system to bypass many mistakes commonly made by aspirant authoritarian regimes.

Watch Rand Paul Advance Tyranny Again

Rand Paul has become something of a punching bag for me. Some libertarians claim that I’m too hard on the man and urge me to support him because he is just “playing ball” in order to gain a position where he can bring liberty to the masses. I have two problems with such plees. First there is the fact that we have no guarantee that he will every being to advance liberty. At what point in time will Rand’s secret liberty agenda be unleashed? Will it only happen if he gets elected president? If that’s the case what happens if he never gets elected as president, will he just continue advancing tyranny indefinitely? That brings me to the second problem I have with Rand. So long as “playing ball” involves advancing tyranny we’re not going to be better off under his “leadership.”

Consider the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (NDAA’13). If you look at the roll call you’ll notice something very interesting:

Paul (R-KY), Yea

None other than Rand Paul voted in favor of this $631 billion spending bill. Rand likes to come off as being fiscally conservative but nobody can really hold that title if they’re willing to vote in favor of a $631 billion spending bill at a time when the country is already massively in debt. On financial grounds alone Rand should have voted against this bill. But the financial side of the bill isn’t the only issue, there was a lot of garbage added to the legislation such as an amendment to impose stronger sanctions on Iran. The people of Iran are already suffering greatly under current sanctions yet the United States government wants to impose even stricter sanctions (is there any wonder why Iran hates us). If you look at the roll call for the amendment you’ll notice something very interesting:

Paul (R-KY), Yea

Rand not only voted on the NDAA’13 as a whole but he specifically voted in favor of an amendment that places stricter sanctions on Iran. This isn’t a minor issue. By voting for this amendment Rand is directly supporting increased violence and suffering against the people of Iran. If “playing ball” requires harming innocent people then the liberty movement can’t afford to “play ball.” The liberty movement is supposed to be about increased the liberty of individuals. Increasing violence and suffering against a group of individuals is nothing more than enhancing tyranny. Sanctions are an act of war therefore supporting any amendment that imposes or increases sanctions against another country is war mongering.

Through his votes Rand has failed to support his claimed fiscal conservatism and demonstrated that he’s a war monger, but that’s not all. Before voting in favor of the NDAA’13 Rand threatened to filibuster the legislation if an amendment wasn’t included that guaranteed citizens detained under the bill the right to a trial by jury. What’s ironic is the amendment actually made it easier to indefinitely detain individuals:

Afran explained that the new provision gives U.S. citizens a right to go to civilian (i.e. Article III) court based on “any [applicable] constitutional rights,” but since there are are no rules in place to exercise this right, detained U.S. citizens currently have no way to gain access to lawyers, family or the court itself once they are detained within the military.

“The biggest thing about the [2012] NDAA was that you weren’t getting a trial … Nothing in here says that you’ll make it to an Article III court so it literally does nothing,” Dan Johnson, founder of People Against the NDAA, told BI. “It’s a bunch of words, basically,”

Afran noted that the newest version actually goes further than the NDAA that’s now in effect.

“The new statute actually states that persons lawfully in the U.S. can be detained under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force [AUMF]. The original (the statute we are fighting in court) never went that far,” Afran said. “Therefore, under the guise of supposedly adding protection to Americans, the new statute actually expands the AUMF to civilians in the U.S.“

Supporting legislation that has a pretty title but does nothing is par for the course for Rand Paul but supporting legislation that actually increases the state’s ability to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial is a new low.

I know a lot of people that are currently on the fence regarding Rand Paul. They have expressed a desire to wait and see what Rand’s record looks like. To those people I say his record is pretty obvious at this point and he’s proven to be no friend of liberty. He argued in favor of an amendment that actually makes it easier for the United States government to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial. Then he voted in favor of an amendment that stands to directly increase the violence and suffering inflicted on the Iranian people. Finally he voted for a bill that contained both of the previous amendments and allowed the spending of $631 billions the United States government doesn’t have. I’m sure Rand could create a more deplorable record if he tried but it would require quite a bit of work.

The Great GOP Purge Continues

Even though Ron Paul has left the political stage many liberty advocates continue to hope that the political process will be our ultimate salvation. They continue to believe the best way of reforming this country is to hijack the Republican Party, replace the old guard with new liberty candidates, and use the reverse the political machinery so that it can produce liberty instead of tyranny. When anybody points out the flaws of this strategy supporters are quick to list elected “liberty” candidates like Rand Paul and Justin Amash as proof that the strategy will work in the long run. Here’s the biggest flaw in that plan, the Republican Party isn’t going to play along. In fact the Republican Party has taken notice of the liberty movement growing inside of it and has begun a glorious purge to remove any potential liberty supporter from positions of power:

A day after learning he was yanked from from the Agriculture Committee, Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp lit into GOP leaders Tuesday, charging that conservative Republicans are punished for not toeing Speaker John Boehner’s line.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Huelskamp said at a Heritage Foundation event. “We were not notified about what might occur but it confirms in my mind the deepest suspicions that most Americans have about Washington D.C: it’s petty, it’s vindictive, and if you have conservative principles you will be punished.”

Huelskamp spoke at the briefing with Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who was booted from the Budget Committee as part of a series of committee moves by Republican leaders that drew criticism from the right.

[…]

Reps. Walter Jones (R-N.C) and David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) were also stripped of plum committee assignments.

Amash has been given notice that he will not be allowed to hold any position of influence. This is just another step by the Republican Party to purge any semblance of the liberty movement. In all likelihood those involved with purging the liberty movement from the Republican Party will become more and more paranoid. Eventually they will purge anybody who can be even remotely tied to the liberty movement. Nobody should be surprised by this outcome though, the liberty movement forcefully entered the Republican Party’s house and the homeowners aren’t pleased.

I’m sure the Republican Party will eventually mandate blood oaths before individuals are allowed to participate in their petty party politics.

The Feel Good Legislation of the Year

Denizens of the Internet are cheering Darrell Issa’s latest piece of legislation title the Internet American Moratorium Act (IAMA). The legislation purports to put a two year moratorium on Congress passing new laws that affect the Internet. Considering the recent number of government attempts to put restrictions on the Internet this bill seems like a no-brainer. Unfortunately this bill is nothing more than feel good legislation meant to build support for Issa without actually offering anything.

On Facebook Classical Liberal pointed out that the legislation is meaningless because of the simple fact Congress can repeal any law it passes. If the IAMA passed and Congress wanted to pass a law affecting the Internet they would merely have to repeal it then pass their desired legislation. It could be done in one bill.

I then noted the lack of any punishment stated if Congress violated this legislation. What if the (IAMA) passed and Congress passed legislation that violated the moratorium? Apparently nothing at all. Without some form of punishment a law really is toothless.

As far as I can see there is no point to the IAMA other than to make supporters of leaving the Internet free feel good.

Obama and Civil Liberties

Supporters of Obama likes to praise his advancement of civil liberties. Unfortunately such claims are entirely false as Obama has been busy eroding civil liberties since taking office:

Most troubling, however, is the state of our freedoms. Indeed, during Obama’s first term, our civil liberties were utterly and completely disemboweled. The great irony, of course, is that this happened with a self-proclaimed constitutional law professor at the helm—a man who was supposed to understand and respect the rule of law as laid out in the U.S. Constitution.

Not only did Obama continue many of the most outrageous abuses of the George W. Bush administration (which were bad enough), including indefinite detention and warrantless surveillance of American citizens, but he also succeeded in expanding the power of the “imperial president,” including the ability to assassinate American citizens abroad and unilaterally authorize drone strikes resulting in the deaths of countless innocent civilians, including women and children.

The article goes on to cover 17 of the more egregious civil liberties violations that have occurred under Obama’s watch. What’s interesting is considering how many people make political decision in this country. During 2004’s presidential race many of John Kerry’s supporters expressed outrage over Bush’s wars and civil liberties violations. They brought up the wars in the Middle East, the PATRIOT Act, Guantanamo Bay, and numerous other despicable situations caused by the Bush administration. When McCain ran against Obama in 2008 Obama’s supporters were brining up Bush’s actions again and claiming McCain would continue down the path to tyranny.

Fast forward to today. Obama has proven to be another George W. Bush. Since taking office in 2008 Obama has continues the polices put into place by the Bush Administration and added some of his own including signing a bill that grants the president the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without trail. You would think Obama’s supporters would have turned against him during the 2012 presidential race but he managed to maintain a great deal of support. How could a man who ran on a platform of civil liberties and undoing the tyrannical policies of the Bush administration continue to have the support of his 2008 followers? Simple, a majority of voters in the United States care more about teams than issues.

Most Americans have pledge allegiance to one of the two major political parties. While some of these party loyalists may periodically vote for somebody on “the other team” to convince themselves that they’re not party shills they generally vote party lines. If “their guy” doesn’t support their issues they’ll concoct reasons to support him. I saw some rather interesting concoctions during the 2012 race from both sides of the political fence. Those who were expressing support for Romney claimed he would support gun rights (even though his has a history of doing otherwise) and fix the economy (which a president has no ability to do). People on the other side of the fence claimed Obama would bring forth a new era of gay rights (which he’s shown no intention of doing) and ensure healthcare would be available for all (which he won’t). One of my Obama supporting friends even implied that people opposing Obama were racists.

Nothing will be changed in this country through the political system. As George Carlin pointed out the public sucks:

When people are more concerned about which party gets into office than finding solutions to the problems facing people there’s now hope of improving things. So long as people care more about “their guy” getting into office than stopping the wars, fixing the economy, and defending civil liberties the wars will continue, the economy will languish, and civil liberties will keep eroding. American voters have spoken and they resoundingly said they want “their party” in power regardless of his policies.

Dissuading the Liberty Movement from Participating in the Republican Party

This year’s presidential election demonstrated that the Republican Party has no interest in fighting for liberty. From the very beginning the Republican Party barred Gary Johnson from participating in the Republican Presidential Debates. During the presidential nomination process the Republican Party worked hard to prevent delegates for Ron Paul from making it to the Republican National Convention (RNC). At the RNC the Republican Party actually cheated to ensure Romney received the nomination even though there was no need for such shenanigans since Romney had a majority of delegates.

In what is likely a response to the liberty movement’s hijacking of the Minnesota Republican Party Ben Golnik is looking to reform the state party’s nomination process. His reason? Ron Paul delegates were able to use the current system to their advantage:

With the complicated process, a well-organized minority can defeat a poorly organized majority. At the Republican caucuses in February 2012, Ron Paul received about one-quarter of the votes cast. At the Republican state convention a few months later, Paul supporters represented more than half of the delegates. Bills, a teacher and first-term state representative, was selected by the ardent Paul supporters as the U.S. Senate candidate.

As Republicans look to run serious challengers to Dayton and U.S. Sen. Al Franken in 2014, strong candidates must be recruited — from both inside the existing structure and from outside. Prospective candidates should skip the endorsement process and run in a primary, rather than focusing solely on the endorsement process. Credible candidates must be able to demonstrate an ability to raise money and communicate a message to a broader audience than 2,000 Republican delegates.

The rules put into place by the Republican Party failed to prevent the liberty movement from interfering with the party’s statist agenda. Impromptu rule changes were successful at preventing liberty advocates form gaining too much influence in the nation Republican Party. Now the party bigwigs are looking to change the rules to ensure impromptu rule changes won’t be necessary during the next election. The establishment now recognizes the dangers of the delegate system. It allows a crafty and motivated group of individuals to gain influence. A straight primary system is harder to influence as the candidate with the most money and influence in the Republican Party has a much better chance of winning.

Once again I reiterate that advancing liberty through the political system is hopeless. Third parties are prevented from gaining influence and the two major parties have the exact same agenda: maintain the powerful federal state. Since the two major political parties control everything from federal campaign funds to presidential debates there is no hope for third parties to gain a foothold. Likewise since both major parties have the same agenda there is no hope in achieving liberty through either of them. Using the political system requires that the current establishment play by a consistent set of rules but the current establishment has demonstrated to willingness to change the rules whenever it suits them.

You Don’t Need Permission to Secede

After the election people have been petitioning the Obama administration to allow their respective individual state to secede from the union:

More than 100,000 Americans have petitioned the White House to allow their states to secede from the US, after President Barack Obama’s re-election.

The appeals were filed on the White House’s We the People website.

Most of the 20 states with petitions voted for Republican Mitt Romney.

I think the people filing petitions have little understanding of secession and statism. Secession is not something you need permission for, you can secede from anything at any time you desire. You may be violently punished for seceding but it is still your right as a free human being to decide you no longer wish to association with an organization. That brings is to our second issue, statism. States exist from expropriating wealth from others. Each individual state expropriates wealth from the people living within its borders and the federal government expropriates wealth both from individuals living within its borders and the individual states that makeup the Union. Because of this petitioning the federal government to allow your individual state and, by association, yourself to secede is pointless. The federal government isn’t going to allow such a thing to happen because you and your individual state are sources of revenue for itself.

Wars aren’t cheap and the federal government is waging plenty of them. The United States military is dropping bombs that costs thousands of dollars from drones that cost millions of dollars. Fighter jets and bombers that cost millions of dollars are launched from aircraft carriers that cost billions of dollars. There’s no way the federal government is going to voluntarily allow a source of its revenue to leave. In fact the last time states and individuals tried to leave the Union the federal government used a great deal of violence to prevent them.

Secession is the right of every individual. Individual states should be allowed to secede from the federal government, counties should be allowed to secede from individual states, towns should be allowed to secede from counties, and people should be allowed to seceded from towns. Unfortunately each of the mentioned state entities will use violence to prevent secession because it goes against their interests.

People Take Politics too Seriously

Politics is a joke, and not a very funny one at that. Yet people take it very seriously. I had several people defriend me on Facebook (Whatever shall I do?) when the election was heating up because I was viciously ridiculing their candidates. People got to the point of screaming at me because I expressed distain for their candidates. There were even a couple of instances where I thought somebody was going to resort to physical violence because of what I said about their candidates. Matt Tanous brought yet another example to my attention of people taking politics too seriously:

Holly apparently believed that Daniel’s failure to exercise his right to vote had caused President Barack Obama to win re-election, and thought that a second Obama term would be bad for their family, according to local news sources.

Witnesses said Holly chased Daniel in her Jeep while he was on foot, all the while yelling at him.

“Daniel reportedly took refuge behind a light pole while Holly drove around the pole several times while continuing to yell at him,” the ABC affiliate reported.

Holly then struck her husband with the SUV, pinning him between the car and the light pole.

How ironic. Holly claims that Obama’s reelection will be bad for their family so she attacks her husband, who is a family member. I guess hypothetical threats to her family are more worrisome than direct acts of violence against her family.

Considering Romney received 902,831 votes in Arizona and Obama only received 713,858 votes I think it’s pretty hard to claim Obama’s victory was caused by Daniel not voting. His state went to Romney by a notable margin, his vote wouldn’t have changed anything.

Even Ron Paul Says It’s Game Over

People keep talking about the encroaching fiscal cliff and what we must do to avoid it. I’ve given up on avoiding it and believe that the best option is to put a brick on the accelerator, jump out of the car, and let it go over the edge. There are too many statists in this country who want the government to do and provide everything for them. Ron Paul explained our problems succinctly:

“People do not want anything cut,” he said. “They want all the bailouts to come. They want the Fed to keep printing the money. And they don’t believe that we’ve gone off the cliff or are close to going off the cliff. They think we can patch it over, that we can somehow come up with some magic solution. But you can’t have a budgetary solution if you don’t change what the role of government should be. As long as you think we have to police the world and run this welfare state, all we are going to argue about is who will get the loot.”

People don’t want to stop the looting, they just want a piece of the loot. To once again quote George Carlin:

If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: ‘The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.’

A majority of people who participate in the political process are selfish and ignorant. Since the state has the capacity for violence necessary to take from the people en masse it’s not surprising that a majority of people who are attracted to it are those wanting to take from others. In fact that’s the root of the problem. The state lowers the cost faced by somebody wanting to rob another. Without the state an individual wanting to steal from another would have to face the entire cost of doing so, including the possibility of bodily harm or death, directly. With the state they can shove off a majority of the cost, especially the possibility of bodily harm or death, to everybody else. It’s a system designed for looters by looters, which is why reforming it will not work. Nobody wants to reform it because reforming it would cut off the gravy train.

Consider every person on welfare, every teacher working in a public school, ever police officer, every clerk at a government building, every soldier, etc. are dependent on the state. Now consider that the state is dependent on expropriation. Do you think we can turn this ship around? So many are dependent on the state and its expropriation that there’s no practical way to reform anything. The empire will collapse and there’s nothing anybody can do to stop it.

Cheer Up Republicans

I know there’s a lot of butt hurt going around the Republican Party after their nominee was handed his ass in Tuesday’s election but there’s good news, they actually won:

Yes, Obama began his presidency with bailouts, stimulus, and borrowing. You know who started the bailouts? George W. Bush.

[…]

Yes, Obama imposed an individual mandate to buy health insurance. You know who else did that? Romney. You know where the idea came from? The Heritage Foundation.

[…]

Remember how Democrats ridiculed George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq? Obama copied it in Afghanistan.

To any Republicans reading this I just want to tell you to cheer up. Even though your guy isn’t in the Oval Office there is a guy sitting there that has delivered everything you’ve been asking for. It’s time to stop crying and shout for joy because you just won the election.