On Universal Conscription

 

 "I honestly think that every US citizen should serve in the military for at least two years."
~ Comment on Facebook

As we look at the degeneration of our culture, it becomes apparent that younger generations are lacking in things like discipline, self-confidence, and the idea of serving one's fellow man, but are instead increasingly dependent, self-centered, and narcissistic.  It isn't surprising that simplistic solutions are floated - like this common suggestion above, that young people be subject to universal military conscription.

The reasoning would be sound - if we were dealing with animals or machines.  If something doesn't work, you apply outside force to get a different result.  But most of us treat human beings differently than golden retrievers or Wankel rotary engines.  Especially, as members of Western civilization, as being within the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition, and as Americans, a solution grounded in empowering the State to solve social problems ought to raise a red flag (perhaps even literally so).

Applying the "military for all" option for human beings rests upon the fallacy of "post hoc ergo propter hoc" - that because previous generations (such as the generation that went through World War II) were better equipped for life than the current crop of young men and women, and because our grandfathers and grandmothers were shaped by the rigors of military life, both at the battlefront and on the homefront, it follows that widespread military service would inculcate values of discipline, service, thrift, and personal responsibility into the current profligate and rootless generation.  Of course, this presumes that military service and such positive traits are related by causation instead of mere correlation.  

There are indeed a lot of variables in the current cultural soup, too many to presume that adding one ingredient will assure a pleasant stew.

Another problem with the "make everybody serve two years in the military" solution is that it is merely a conservative appropriation of a progressive idea, namely that the military exists for the purpose of social engineering.  The Left believes the military is a means to promoting the agenda of ethnic diversity, pushing quotas and overt race-consciousness - if not outright racial hygiene - within the ranks to achieve its social goals.  The Left also uses the military to promote sexual diversity and the mainstreaming of identities and behaviors that are not within the normal range of the bell curve.  The Left is now also pursuing a political agenda that seeks to cull out soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines whose political ideas may be considered too "extreme" (read: "conservative").

To all of these, the Right rightly cries "foul!" - but the Right likewise sees the military as its own Petri dish to effect social ends, by means of the oft-floated idea of compulsory universal conscription.

The purpose of the military is not to make people more accepting of the woke ideology, nor is it to get your lazy twenty-somethings to learn how to wake up and go to work instead of sleeping in on mom's couch and playing video games all day.  The purpose of the military is to defend the country against invasion, and to provide a deterrent to such attacks.  This is not to say that the United States doesn't use their armed forces to twist foreign arms, to threaten invasion for its own global interests, and to essentially occupy other countries.  But in general, for a country - any country - the military's primary job is to protect the people of that country from invasion.

Turning the military into a social experiment, jobs program, path to college, or a way to instill responsibility in the minds of ne'er-do-wells does not serve the purpose of the military.  And it would likely weaken it.

The suggestion of vastly increasing the size and scope of the military by drafting every 18-year old man and woman presumes that the armed forces are understaffed.  To the contrary, the Unites States taxpayers pay more for "defense" than the next ten countries combined, including all military expenditures of China and Russia.  To add to the numbers of personnel by the millions would be to create jobs that are not needed, and to push an even larger tax burden for the military than we have now at roughly a three-quarter of a trillion dollars per annum.  This influx of recruits would need to be housed, equipped, fed, paid, and trained.  Conservatives used to understand the dictum that money does not grow on trees, though it is printed fraudulently by the Fed. 

And there is also the temptation that having a vastly larger military establishment will result in looking for ways to use it.  When one's only tool is a hammer, one tends to see nails everywhere.  Expanding the military could well result in increased bellicosity on the part of the military and civilian leadership of the country.  After all, what good is a massive standing army if you don't have someone to invade, some "monster to destroy"?

As any serious student of American history knows, the founders were greatly opposed to the idea of a standing federal army, and made no provision for it in the Constitution.  The founders considered standing armies to be a threat to liberty.  

At the time of the founding of the Republic, there was indeed a military obligation of sorts - but not to a standing army.  Able-bodied males of fighting age were considered members of the militia - citizen soldiers - who voluntarily trained with their own families and communities.  They were not taken away from home and perhaps even sent into foreign countries.  Instead, they drilled on the community green periodically with their neighbors. And this was part of genuinely defending the country - even against the federal government itself if need be - hence the Second Amendment.  The militia was not a character-building exercise or scheme to make citizens appreciate racial differences.  Its members  continued to hold their civilian jobs and lives.  

This scheme of artificially increasing the government labor supply in the now-professional standing federal armed forces is the equivalent of FDR's alphabet agencies to pay men to dig holes and fill them as a fallacious way to stimulate the economy - which resulted in prolonging the Great Depression for many years.  For conservatives to suggest such a massive Big Government "solution" demonstrates a lack of understanding of basic market economics.  Were we to suddenly give the military an influx of millions of teenagers - whose services aren't really needed - would create a vast supply with no demand - with the burden of paying for this discrepancy placed on the back of the taxpayer.  And given our progressive tax structure, this would amount to a massive Marxian redistribution of wealth.

And this is coming from the conservative side of things, not the progressive.

Moreover, today's military is not your grandfather's service.  No indeed.  Physical standards have been lowered, the sexes train and serve in close contact, the training received by soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines is today less rigorous than that of the men who prepared for combat in World War II - who would not have imagined the idea of maternity flight suits for female aviators and support crews.  In fact, in recent years, the leadership of the military has become, well, "woke."  Conservatives have been plucked out of the highest levels of leadership, and the military - like other institutions of our society - has become focused on leftist political ideology and goals.

So what conservative in his right mind would think of sending all young people to be brainwashed with the same Critical Theory and Intersectionalism that one finds in the debauched universities?

There is also a constitutional issue.  Were our judiciary honest in submitting the federal government to the strictures of the Constitution, the black-robes would have long ago forbad conscription based on the Thirteenth Amendment.  For under that provision, slavery (or "involuntary servitude") is only permitted for convicts.  In other words, we may enslave jailed criminals and force them into jobs against their will, but to do this to those who are innocent of any crime is not permitted.  That's why slavery is illegal in the United States.  Those who join the military currently do so voluntarily.  They willingly set aside some of their rights (such as criticizing the president) for the time of their enlistment, being told what do to and when to do it, being under the Uniform Code of Military Justice instead of the civil courts, and being subject to orders - even orders that may well assure their deaths.  To conscript people and put them into such situations is simply slavery by a different name.

It is common to refer to military "service," to refer to the military itself as "the service."  It is common for citizens to thank veterans for their "service."  The word "service" is based on the Latin "servus" - which means "slave."  And there are other forms of service in which one is under orders: such as the police and fire services.  But these too are voluntary vocations into which one enters by means of a voluntary contract.

It is curious that conservatives, of all people, should advocate a form of State slavery to achieve an elusive, if not Utopian, social goal.

There is also the practical consideration that armies made up of conscripts are just not as good as those comprised of volunteers.  This is not rocket science.  Whom would you rather have building an addition to your house, a professional contractor who does that kind of work voluntarily?  Or a team of 18-year -old convicts who have been ordered by the State to show up and labor under compulsion?  

Universal conscription is also a manifestation of bad economics.  

Most people are not familiar with the term "opportunity cost" or Frederic Bastiat's "broken window fallacy."  The idea is that any action taken is done at the cost of the action not taken.  If a family vacations at the beach, it does so at the expense of vacationing in the mountains - because one cannot do both.  If a young man or woman is serving in the military, he or she is doing so at the expense of some civilian calling.  This could mean that a young person who is brilliant in math or theology or medical research will instead be learning how to march, to field strip an M16, and passing time polishing boots instead of studying nuclear physics, going into labor and nursing a child, or starting one's own business.  The costs of such roads-not-taken are unseen, and thus are not typically factored into the equation.  But those costs are very real.

One might argue that one can be an engineer or chaplain or doctor, or one could be both a mom and a Green Beret, but the reality is that serving in the military, as is every other career option, is at the expense of serving elsewhere, where market forces communicate information about careers and opportunities to those entering the labor market.  The military does not operate based on the market, but rather by bureaucratic government planning.  Thus the Army will have to find something else for an aspiring poet to do, the Navy will be put into the unenviable position of employing the Latin scholar, the Air Force will have to figure out where to slot a dog trainer, and the Marines will be forced to put a nursery school teacher to work somewhere in the Corps.  

Again, the purpose of the military is narrower than the free civilian marketplace.  Conscription would result in "malinvestment" of human capital, and would socialize a good part of the job market, not to mention taking away a resource of human capital from the private sector.  And this central-planning government approach is a conservative idea?

Such a scheme also violates the Christian doctrine of vocation. 

God has created people with different gifts and talents.  Not everyone is called into service vocations, like pastors, teachers, police officers, nuns, those who work in orphanages, EMTs, and yes, soldiers.  Rightfully understood, the military is a godly calling.  We see this all throughout the Scriptures.  Joshua led a famous military campaign into Jericho and other cities in Canaan.  King David had his "mighty men."  St. Paul even famously compares the Christian life to a soldier wearing armor.  The Church on earth is often called the Church Militant.  Traditionally, military life is the place for big men who can fight hand to hand against other big men.  Technology has expanded opportunities for military service, for example, to support the big guys who are in the field with rifles and grenades and bayonets.  But the life of the warrior is just not for everyone.

Moreover, the suggestion that any and all people, even all 18-year-olds, are capable of being soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines is quite the insult to the military vocation.  It suggests that one who is obese, sociopathic, antisocial, of low IQ, a person with authority issues, the uncoordinated, the physically weak, those with demanding physical ailments, etc. can all become warriors is not only ludicrous, but takes a position that the job of soldiering is the lowest common denominator, that there is no reason to cull out anyone from military life.  

Why would a conservative strap the officers and NCOs of the military with millions of new recruits who may well be entirely unfit, and perhaps a detriment to the readiness of the country to defend against attack?  Again, this is the same as the Left insisting that sexual minorities be accommodated in the ranks at any cost - whether it strengthens or weakens the military forces.

No, the solution to our malaise does not lie in State compulsion.  That is the easy and lazy way out, and it won't work.  There are always unintended consequences.  What we need is not conscription, but parenting.  We don't need every man and women to put on fatigues and tactical boots, but rather to put on the Armor of God, procreate, and raise boys and girls of honor.  We need mentors, not drill sergeants.  We need volunteers who will lead for the sake of love, not more taxpayer supported authoritarianism with an end goal that has nothing to to with doing battle.  We need to restore our lost institutions: morality, community, a commitment to liberty, etc. and that is hard work - far harder than just having the president sign a piece of paper and ordering all teenagers to Fort Benning or Parris Island.

Both progressives and conservatives have the propensity to turn to the State to solve social problems.  This is natural to progressives, but is a contradiction to conservatives.  Those who identity with the political and social Right should abandon seeing Big Government as a Savior, and should instead roll up their own sleeves and get to work improving society by means of liberty, sweat, and the power of human cooperation by means of the market.

Is Davis a Traitor? (1866)

Prof. A.T. Bledsoe

In 1866, a professor and former Episcopal priest (later Methodist minister) named Albert Taylor Bledsoe (1809-1877) wrote a remarkable book that may well have changed American history.

The War Between the States had ended a few months before, and Jefferson Davis, the ousted president of the Confederate States of America, was being held as a prisoner of war by the United States government.  He was imprisoned at Fortress Monroe in cruel conditions, indicted for treason, and looking forward to a trial and the opportunity to vindicate the Southern states.  However, many vengeful northerners waved the bloody shirt and were eager to see Davis hang.

The U.S. government, however, had a huge problem: the law was not on their side.

Is Davis a Traitor? or Was Secession a Constitutional Right previous to the War of 1861? came out as the country was in a quandary about the fate of President Davis.  This work is a scholarly refutation of the "national" theory of the United States, which was a repudiation and misrepresentation of the nature of the American Union according to the Constitution.

With grave concerns about the crisis of Davis (and thus the South) possibly being vindicated by a court of law, the federal government opted to release him from prison without a trial.  Many credit Bledsoe's book for Davis's liberation.  Owing to a loophole, unlike amnesty measures that restored citizenship to former confederate citizens, Davis's U.S. citizenship was not restored during his lifetime.  It was, however, reinstated posthumously in 1978 under U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

The book is today in the public domain and inexpensive.  Many people have asked me for the title of a concise book that presents the Southern side of the secession question.  This is a very good example.

As a bonus, historian Brion McClanahan of the Abbeville Institute led a five-part study of the book!    Dr. McClanahan was the last Ph.D. student of the legendary scholar and professor, Clyde N. Wilson, and is the author of numerous books pertaining to American History.

His videos of the study of IDAT? are linked here.  Thank you, Dr. McClanahan!:

Don't Mess With Chris!

Here is a clip from the December 17, 1986 Times Picayune about Chris Ziifle that Facebook keeps deleting. 

Violent pictures of Antifa mobs assaulting people and destroying property with rants of profanity are okay for Facebook, but not a 32 year old picture of a law-abiding citizen working in her gun shop. 

Chris retired in 2014, and the Picayune ran this piece about Chris's life and career.

States are Nullifying Federal Law!

Here is an article concerning the mainstreaming of the concept of nullification, which is being dusted off from the days of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John C. Calhoun.

This is one issue that unifies freedom-loving people from the left (who are resisting unconstitutional federal marijuana laws) to the right (who are resisting unconstitutional federal gun laws).  The federal government is too big, too intimidating, too powerful, too expensive, too expansive, and it is time for it to get back into its constitutional cage before it is too late.

Even if you are against marijuana and for gun control, these laws should be passed in accordance with the federal constitution and the rule of law.  Governments that are permitted to act above and outside the law quickly descend into the realm of concentration camps, police states, and Orwellian totalitarian bureaucracies.  The founders created a federal system of checks and balances - one of which is the check of the states against the federal government.  As it stands now, the only arbiter to determine the extent of federal power is the federal government itself.  This is antithetical to the very notion of republican government and individual liberty.  It is the legacy of Marx, Lincoln, Bismarck, and Mussolini.  And we see how it has worked in the international failure of 20th century history.  Every one of these advocates of big, centralized government acted "for the good of the people."

So they claimed.

It is gratifying to see the 21st century American people - from both sides of the aisle, as well as those who have opted out of the left-right paradigm - coming together in defense of liberty.  Nullification is a peaceful and lawful response to tyranny.  And it works!  We see an apostolic example of individual nullification in Acts 5:27-32.

For more about nullification, check out this magnificent book.  And here is a primer on the various kinds of nullification.

You can read more here.

Nullification Picking Up Steam, Zombies Unhappy

On nullification, 44% pro, 36% con, 20% undecided.  Details here.

Zombies are still not convinced...




But they are funny in their own brain-dead sort of way...



'via Blog this'

Do They Own Us and Our Children?

The above comedy video by Christian humorist Tim Hawkins is a self-parody of homeschooling. There is some truth in this little video, though (like all good humor) it is exaggerated and blended with stereotypes and misconceptions.

A relative recently decided to start homeschooling, and found out the snarky attitude of some of the establishment, one of whom told her that she "needed permission" to do it.  Now, in her locale, this permission consists of basically notifying the government with a simple letter.

This is basically the case in Louisiana - which is quite a homeschool-friendly state. Nevertheless, the fact that one has to petition the state to homeschool one's children does raise the question: "Why?" What is it any business of a bureaucrat - be it in Baton Rouge, Washington, or Geneva? Why should we seek their permission - especially considering the track record of a lot of these government schools (some of which allow children free access to contraception without parental notification, many of which allow for pseudo-religious indoctrination which may run contrary to the parents' religion, not to mention the foisting of a political point of view at odds with those of many people who do not agree with the dominant views of many in the educational establishment)?

So why should parents seek permission from the state? Why should it not be the other way around? Does the state own our children?  Does the state own us?

Why shouldn't the default position be that the parents have the right to educate their children as they see fit, and that the state should seek permission to indoctrinate the children? Or as member of the European parliament Nigel Farage famously challenged his power-grubbing "colleagues" in Strasbourg: "Just who the hell do you people think you are?"

The more people start asking these fundamental questions, the more people realize that the state has long since overstepped its bounds, that the servant now presumes to be the master, that the Frankenstein Monster is running amok and the constitutional chains that were designed to keep him in tow have been snapped like balsa wood, and that it doesn't matter whether the state is a democracy, a republic, a monarchy, or a dictatorship, it is wrong for any agency to presume to tell parents how to raise their children.  And if the state's wings were not still somewhat clipped as they are here, we would have a system like Germany and Sweden where homeschooling has been basically criminalized, and children have been taken away from their parents!  Think about that, dear reader, children have been taken away from their loving parents and placed into foster homes because the parents were homeschooling their children.  We are not talking about beating them or starving them, but educating them.

Their real "crime" is showing the inferiority of the bureaucratic John Dewey progressive model of "education" as well as taking the (God-given) liberty of handing down their own moral and political views.  In unbridled statist models of society, the state is omnipotent over the individual.  There are some in American capital cities and capitol domes who lust after such power to dominate.

But in the final analysis, who does a better job, the government (with its mercenary armies of paid bureaucrats pulling the strings with money and regulations in the luxury of marbled domed edifices)?  Or parents themselves, who love their children, sacrifice for their well-being, and who have a moral and natural right to teach their values to their children?  And by what authority does the state claim authority to lord over the parent-child relationship?  Just who do they think they are?

Homeschool families often get to see these questions in action, not merely presented as theoretical poly-sci premises for academic discussion, but rather up close and personal in the very real world.

Maybe that's why Tim Hawkins also made this video:

Happy New Year (1984?)

Some honesty from the Big Hollywood left wing: president Obama (Bush III?) is pushing a tyrannical Big Brother state on Americans who seem increasingly okay with the destruction of their own liberties.

Orwell shrugged?

Everyone in U.S. Under Virtual Surveillance

But somehow this is still true?

QUESTION MORE.

Walter Williams on the Morality of Free Markets

This was forwarded to me by the legendary Dr. Walter E. Block, Economics Professor at Loyola University, New Orleans.

I had met Dr. Walter E. Williams in Philadelphia twenty years ago when I presented an award to him from our local camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  Dr. Williams was, and is, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University.

 Both of these Doctor Walters (who share the middle name "Edward") are giants. Too bad our politicians and leaders in society from across the spectrum have never studied under either of them!

Reflections on the Loss of Liberty

Judge Andrew Napolitano (former New Jersey Superior Court judge and FOX News analyst) holding forth on American History, the Constitution, Just War Theory, and the NY Yankees and Mets. An absolutely spellbinding talk!

Blood-sucking Parasites and Ubiquitous Pests

Mosquitoes are blood-sucking parasites that have been causing mankind grief since the fall in the Garden of Eden.

Most of the time, mosquitoes are annoying.  They buzz around and sometimes manage to bite.  They inflict a small amount of venom.  Their wounds itch and cause a rash.  And we get drawn into a tit-for-tat game with them, appealing to the market to rid us of the pests.

Occasionally, the destruction caused by these evil little beasts is more than a little itching and a bit of lost blood.  Sometimes the little buggers are fatal.  And when they are, they can be a veritable plague of biblical proportions.

Now here is an example of the just how ubiquitous the pests are.

While enjoying the tail end of a delightful collection of essays by Murray Rothbard ("The Irrepressible Rothbard"), I decided to sit on the porch swing outside.  Preparing to meet the parasites head on, I asked my wife for the ingenious little Off! Clip On device that repels the pests.  The gadget needed a refill.  She glanced at the instructions, and immediately after the rubric "Directions for use" we learned the following:

"It is a violation of Federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling.  Read and follow all directions and precautions on this product label."

Wow.

I know about the dire consequences of tearing of mattress tags, I remember the oft-told childhood warning about the protected federal status of praying mantises, I'm also aware of the dire consequences of a U.S. flag touching the ground, and was once told that using a gym treadmill without the little safety clip was a "violation of Federal law" - but this label thing was a new one for me.

How wonderful of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the Office of the President and the Supreme Court of the United States of America to take interest in little old me, protecting me from myself from potentially misusing "this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling."  My gosh, what would we ever do without our dear Honorable Members and Commander-in-Chief to keep us from using "this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling"?  Can you just imagine the chaos, the horrific consequences if the Federal Government had not stepped in?  I mean, the State of Louisiana and the City of Gretna would have been paralyzed, crippled from protecting me from "use... inconsistent with its labeling" - not to mention my own common sense.  What would we ever do without bureaucrats - especially Federal Officials - to save us from the illegal scourge of "inconsistent" use?

I might have wedged the package of refills under my door as a door stop.  I might have used the thin envelope as a book mark.  I might have taped the packing to the wall as a form of pop-art.  Thanks be to God for Washington, DC for protecting hapless citizens like myself who are obviously at the mercy of the evil S.C. Johnson Company.  Without the Federal Government, who knows what might have happened to me this evening!  One shudders just to think of it.

And of course it goes without saying that the Interstate Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause empowers Washington, DC to have jurisdiction over how I use my little packet of Off! refills on my own property.  Never mind that I am not selling it, not crossing state lines with it, nor am I a member of the armed forces.  Never mind the 9th and 10th amendments.  Never mind that there is nothing in the Constitution granting the federal government jurisdiction over mosquito repellent being used on a private citizen's front porch.

Come to think of it, maybe mosquitoes are not the only "blood-sucking parasites that have been causing mankind grief since the fall in the Garden of Eden."

Maybe it is not only the mosquitoes that can be described thus: "Most of the time, are annoying.  They buzz around and sometimes manage to bite.  They inflict a small amount of venom.  Their wounds itch and cause a rash.  And we get drawn into a tit-for-tat game with them, appealing to the market to rid us of the pests."

Maybe this applies to other institutions besides mosquitoes: "Occasionally, the destruction caused by these evil little beasts is more than a little itching and a bit of lost blood.  Sometimes the little buggers are fatal.  And when they are, they can be a veritable plague of biblical proportions."

Indeed, maybe mosquitoes are not the only ubiquitous pests.

Kids Learning Real World Economics

Although I think American kids (not to mention adults) eat too much junk food, I think too much government meddling is far more damaging.  In fact, part of the reason Americans are so fat is that too many of us actually believe the government when it tells us to eat lots of grains and carbs.  How's that working?

I had to cheer when I read this account of students not only refusing to eat what the federal government (elected and self-appointed) pushes on them, they are willing to go without and/or find clever ways to beat the system.  Way to go, kids!

Even young people know that you cannot centrally plan supply and demand, and that whenever government starts mandating what we eat, the human will to freedom will find ways around it: including a black market resistance movement.  Awesome!  Parents should take advantage of this opportunity as a teaching moment, a true-life civics lesson, a laboratory of market forces and of the underground economy.

This is a heart-warming story of free enterprise and hope for future generations of Americans with the wherewithal to resist the Nanny State.  Maybe parents should have their kids write letters to Mrs. Obama reminding her that she is not elected, and not even her husband has constitutional authority to interfere with local school administrations and the most private decisions of all: what we private citizens choose to eat and what we choose to feed our families.  I don't tell Mrs. Obama what to feed her children (it is certainly none of my business and way off of my radar screen).  It never dawned on me that I should care what she feeds her own kids.  Heck, I'm not even sure how many kids she has.  What they eat is just not that interesting to me.

At any rate, every Nanny State claims to be "protecting the children" when it usurps the rights of the people.  The sooner children learn to say no to overreaching government, the safer our liberties will be in the future.

That reality alone is a great lesson in practical economics for these kids!

History Repeating Itself?

No real surprise about that, but it's too bad that it is happening on our watch.  I'm not really going out too far on a limb to predict that this won't end well.

The shame of it is that if we only pay attention to history instead of listening to talk radio entertainers...

A Video-Encyclical from the Archbishop

The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod seldom wades into political waters. Lutherans have a reputation for simply accepting every government mandate as somehow divinely inspired. I'm gratified to see this (rightful!) defiance against state compulsion in our church's leadership. As the reverend president points out, the LCMS was founded in part owing to resistance to state tyranny, coming to America because of our commitment - cultural and constitutional - to liberty.

"Love It or Leave It" or "Government By Consent"

Historian, economist, and political analysist Dr. Thomas Woods addresses a common line of reasoning that says that if you live in America, you implicitly consent to its government.

This short video is a helpful reply to those who would quell dissent with the reply: "Love it or leave it." I enjoy Dr. Woods's conversational and common sense approach to political and economic philosophy that is anything but dry and boring.

 Be warned: Tom Woods will make you think, re-think, and maybe even make you reconsider your past assumptions!  In short, he is a great thinker and teacher - one who makes it fun to use your brain cells!

Your Entertainment at Guantanamo...

If the federal government takes the next logical step in light of the NDAA and starts deporting its critics to GTMO without a trial, it won't be fun (I don't like swimming, how do you think I would react to waterboarding...), but there might be a plus side: free in-cage lectures on economics by Lew Rockwell, nostalgic reminiscences on the Constitution by Judge Andrew Napolitano, and entertainment by Tim Hawkins!

I guess it could be worse...

The Feds: To Serve Man... With Bleach?

Here is the article.

Is this is why we have a federal government?  So bureaucrats can invade a picnic and pour bleach on everyone's food?

If this isn't tyranny, plain and simple, I would like to know why it isn't.  One of the problems with the federal government is that in spite of all the talk of "democracy" and "republic" and "of the people" and "freedom," what we really have is an oligarchical top-down empire held captive to two nearly-identical political "parties."  There is no check and balance from the states and the people as envisioned by the founders.  Neither do each of the branches of the federal government check the other.  They have all gone into cahoots - and this is the result.

Moreover, our "elections" are completely overseen by these two extra-constitutional parties with crazy internal rules designed to allow the parties (The Party?) to keep a stranglehold on the entire process.

And for the most part, in response, the people focus on a media-driven goose-chase of buying into the politics by blaming the other party, name-calling, aping platitudes and talking points offered up again and again as mindless mantras on talk radio and in tabloid TV.  The politicians are all "outraged" and promise "change" - all the while benefiting by keeping the people divided against each other while they literally do things like pour bleach on people's food.  CNN-watchers blame the FOX-watchers; FOX-watchers blame the CNN-watchers.  The "liberals" blame the "conservatives" and the "conservatives" blame the "liberals" - all the while those terms have switched places back and forth, gotten mixed and matched, and have become utterly meaningless labels.

Hooray for our team!

Meanwhile, once entrenched in Washington, Republicans and Democrats continue growing old agencies and creating new ones like mushrooms, generating reams and reams of new laws and regulations, destroying civil rights and national security, and printing dollars until they are nearly worthless.  Both "parties" support both warfare and welfare - while cleverly convincing their own members that it's really the "other" party doing it.

It's Laurel and Hardy.  And it would be funny if they weren't equipped with the power to tax, to regulate, to control, to execute, to torture, etc. and with enough nuclear firepower to turn the planet into a cinder - all with the brainpower and wisdom of two toddlers that have unlocked the liquor cabinet and the gun rack.  A little bleach anyone?

Instead of blaming Bush and Obama, and getting all wrapped up in getting their partisans elected, Democrats and Republicans ought to ditch the party apparatuses and apparatchiks and blame the federal government (comprised almost exclusively of functionaries of both of these parties) and its arrogant, imperial, bureaucratic attitude toward the people they are supposed to serve, not rule.  Whether we are Republican, Democrat, or neither, we would all benefit by going back to the Constitution and restoring the republic.

There was a time when federal bureaucrats did not pour bleach on food.  There was a time when Americans could not secretly be executed by the president. There was a time when people had the right to a trial.  There was a time when people were free to eat whatever food they wanted to eat.  The Bill of Rights (that historic relic) actually addresses these things, although every amendment has been whittled away or outright abolished de facto by partisan lackeys in all three branches of the federal government, by both alleged parties, and by their confederates in the state governments who play along to get ahead themselves.  We are no longer a union of fifty states, but rather an empire of two teams (Red Team and Blue Team, the Elephants and the Donkeys) of the same ideological philosophy of government that holds ordinary people in contempt.

And the people have been lulled into playing along, serving as "food" as it were to the monster.  To borrow the punch line of the old Twilight Zone episode: "It's a cookbook!"

One day, maybe the people will say "enough is enough."  This is exactly the kind of thing that happens when power is left unchecked.  A little Clorox on your porterhouse, anyone?  How disgraceful and shameful!  Pouring bleach on food to ruin a peaceful picnic.  "We the people" indeed!

Have you had enough yet?  Or are you waiting for some party hack from the Red/Blue Team to vandalize your dinner table?  Public service indeed!  

America Needs Freedom!

You can read more here.

Interestingly, in his brilliant postscript to The Screwtape Letters (1942), an essay called Screwtape Proposes a Toast (1959), C.S. Lewis ascribes this creeping control of government involvement in everyday life to Satan.  Writing in the persona of Screwtape, a demon of some reputation as a tempter of men in hell's bureaucracy, states:

Even in England we were pretty successful.  I heard the other day that in that country a man could not, without a permit, cut down his own tree with his own axe, make it into planks with his own saw, and use the planks to build a tool-shed in his own garden.

Although our own country is deeply in debt - to the point of near-certain runaway (if not hyper) inflation, and although almost without exception, politicians of both parties (more like both wings of the same party)  in Washington (and in the state capitols) are clueless, or worse, there is a wave of libertarianism sweeping among mainly younger people, the ones who are literate, who think, who yearn to be free of the petty and not-so-petty tyranny that is simply the norm today at nearly every level of government.  As we see the failure of Big Government and the increasing ridiculousness of our laws, there is a movement toward embracing freedom and becoming more self-sufficient, rolling back the Nanny State and its "happy face fascism."

A good place to begin is with the U.S. Constitution.  It is not a perfect document, but if it were actually followed, we would be a much more free people today with a healthier relationship between the people and their governments at all levels.

What we have now is not working - at least to people who value freedom the way our ancestors did.

This is pure Soviet-style government...

Above: a cautionary tale from 1947

And it isn't in Russia.

Is this what the founding fathers had in mind when they declared independence from a government in which they complained of putting in place "a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance"?

By what right does any bureaucrat (who is getting his marching orders from Washington under the auspices of the USDA) have to come into a local school and interfere with what a parent feeds her own four-year old child?  Has a crime mentioned in the Constitution been committed here?  Has any crime at all been committed here?  At what point do we come together as a people and tell the federal government (and its surrogates in the state governments) "enough is enough!"?  I have not read the state constitution of North Carolina, but I suspect there is nothing in that document in which the people delegate to the state power to determine what parents feed their young children.  And if there is, shame on them!

And what a coincidence that these same "standards" in North Carolina are imposed by state bureaucrats in the other states.  What a coincidence, huh?

This is pure Soviet-style micromanagement of individual families and Kremlin-like domination over the states.  This is worship of the State.  This is not just Big Government.  Rather, we live in the days of the Government-god.  And the irony is that Americans call their national holiday "Independence Day" and spend fiat currency that says "In God We Trust."  You don't get much more Orwellian than that.

We are a people more dependent than our 18th century ancestors ever were!

In this North Carolina case, the dirty-work is being carried out by a state (as in one of the fifties) bureaucrat - but we all know the dirty little secret that our states today are mere puppets of Washington.  The federal government takes money from the people, and then doles it back to the people based on their state governments' compliance with (i.e. subordination to) Washington's dictates.  Isn't this yet more irony when you consider whom the City of Washington was named after?  The states have been reduced to being bossy big sister au paire surrogates of a super-Nanny State.  And there is a revolving door between the political offices in the state capitols and in Washington (which should really be renamed "Lincoln") - as the most efficient parasites who operate under the Democrat and Republican banners at the state level are tapped for bigger and better careers in looting at the federal level.

Once again, this is top-down tyranny - as all tyranny really has to be.

The USDA should be abolished.  The US Department of Health and Human Services should be abolished. All unconsitutional activity of the federal government needs to be brought to a screeching halt. And the people of North Carolina (whose ancestors accounted for a fourth of all of the quarter million Confederate deaths in the War Between the States) should stand on their hind legs and reclaim their rights as free people.  If you can't even send your four-year old to school with a non-government-approved sandwich, you are slaves.

And a good number of Americans think the federal objective of the War for Southern Independence was the abolition of slavery!  Another irony.

I wonder what it will take before Americans (whose modern notion of "freedom" seems to be some kind of abstract bumper-sticker slogan or "Go USA" type cheerleading) start telling their governments to mind their own business.  That is what real freedom is.  If you cannot even make a decision regarding family meal planning without bureaucratic oversight (even being compelled to purchase a state-approved meal), you are not free, Comrade.

HT: Mike Adams and Karen De Coster, the latter of whom sums it all up quite well:

The child was forced to eat processed chicken nuggets - after all, they meet the federal dietary guidelines! - in place of the lunch her mother chose for her. And the parents can be charged for the federalist foods provided to their children without their permission. Does this quote from the article bring you to the realization that you are sending your children to a centrally-planned, totalitarian gulag?

“With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that’s the dairy,” said Jani Kozlowski, the fiscal and statutory policy manager for the division. “It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standard.” The lunch has to include a fruit or vegetable, but not both, she said.

This is the consequence of a government's fascist "war" on obesity and its fraudulent health & wellness paradigm.

Of course, as government takes over more and more, this kind of thing seems more and more "normal."  And when members of the political parties will typically excuse such actions as "for the health of our children" if these policies are being carried out under their own political party.  Even when they don't approve of such tactics, they won't cede the power because they think they will use such power properly when they are elected.

But then again, that is exactly how Soviet systems work: it is a bureaucratic and autocratic denial of liberty (often replacing parental authority with state authority) carried out in what appears to be a democratic process by a single party that claims it is acting "for the good of the people."

All that's missing is the hammer and sickle.

Should Counterfeiters Go to Prison?

The above is a recent speech before the European Parliament.  And Mr. Bloom is right!

Central banking (including our Federal Reserve System) is nothing other than theft by stealth under the color of legitimacy.  We are being looted by our own banking system.  Finally, people are waking up to this.  This should be seen as a moral issue (rather than being treated as arcane politics or as simple disagreements about economic policy).  If the local grocer were constantly changing the value of his scales (defining a pound as a little bit less and less each day), or if the gas stations were to jimmy up their pumps so that each successive gallon is smaller than the last gallon, we would be calling for trials!

The dollar is likewise a standard symbol of measurement.

This is why when private citizens print valueless paper and pass it off as dollars, they are convicted of counterfeiting.  It is a serious crime that undermines the entire economy.  In fact, the reason your quarters and dimes have serrated edges is because in the days when these coins actually contained silver, and the edges guarded against crooks shaving some of the silver off of the coins.  The joke is on us - there is today no reason for edging on any of our coins (with the exception of the nickel, which ironically is smooth-edged, as it is still made of real metal - at least for the time being).  The reason is because every bit of precious, or even industrial metals, has been removed (again, with the exception of the nickel. for the time being).  It's almost wrong to call them coins when they are really tokens.

So, counterfeiting is a crime, but when government (at the behest of bankers) manipulates the currency (by means of removing the metal from the coins and printing banknotes backed by nothing out of thin air - thus devaluing the dollar to their own advantage), we're all supposed to treat this as moral and legitimate.  Why?  Because the government says so.

Even the Scriptures condemn such playing around with standards of weights and measures.

Of course, a lot of people turn to Romans 13 to argue that government can do just about anything, because by definition, if they are doing it, it must be legal.  Some will distort Luther's doctrine of vocation to attempt to bully people into submission and subjugation to the state, even when the state is committing immoral acts.  Indeed, as the analogy goes, a surgeon takes off peoples' clothes and cuts them with a knife - and within his vocation, this is legal.  If someone off the street, not a doctor, were to do the same thing, it would be a crime.  Some use this analogy to make the case that if a private citizen were to print banknotes on his printer, it would be counterfeiting.  But if this private citizen were part of a super-secret elite group of bankers in bed with government - than somehow the very same act of counterfeiting is ipso facto legal.

This is a gross abuse of Luther's doctrine of vocation.

Government does not have carte blanche.  Theft is theft, and when government does it, it only compounds the sin by adding corruption to stealing.  We should hold those in government - especially judges and politicians - to extremely high standards of morality, as they essentially can, by force, take from us that which is ours - our property and even our lives.  Agents of the government have the power to put innocent people in prison or even to death.  We no longer have the right to trial or the guarantees of the fourth amendment in some cases.  A corrupt government is almost impossible to fight - especially a government that increasingly encroaches on the rights and the constitutional protection of its citizens.

And the sad part is that schools do not teach about money, banking, and the federal reserve.  Nor do colleges and universities typically even broach the subject.  Very few theologians would even see this deliberate theft as a sin.  Many, in fact, will congratulate themselves on voting for candidates who give fiery speeches about Christian morality all the while approving (or even abetting) the manipulation of the currency to the detriment of honest people who work for a living.

Also sad is how partisan people are.  No, Republicans, you can't blame Obama for this.  No Democrats, you can't blame Bush.  This is a bi-partisan syndicate that is 99 years old.  Almost no-one in the federal government will say anything bad about it or even approach it as a matter of moral principal.  But that is starting to change, both in Europe and in the U.S.  China (which is the number two holder of U.S. debt, right behind the Federal Reserve) is buying massive quantities of gold.  Gold-backed currency cannot be manipulated by bankers anywhere near the ability to do the same with a central bank with government-run printing presses.  Could it be that the Chinese Central Bank knows something our own bankers and bureaucrats don't?  Namely: ponzi schemes eventually run out.

Mr. Bloom's speech above shows that this is becoming a front-burner issue around the world, as every currency on the planet is today managed by central banks and manipulated by cartels of bankers, politicians, and bureaucrats.  Some countries (like China) may well see the writing on the wall as they try to find an exit strategy out of holding U.S. dollars (the post-WW2 world reserve currency) in savings, and instead seeking something of real value (such as gold) to store value and issue notes against.

The current system - even when it isn't ending up in riots and civil strife as in Greece - creates bubbles and booms and busts, transfers wealth from the poor to the rich, bankrolls federal boondoggles and military quagmires (in which central bankers, politicians, and their children do not shed blood), discourage thrift and savings and encourage borrowing and debt.

It also makes us (Americans) dependent on other nations to bankroll the whole ponzi scheme - and if and when they decide to get out, we will be left holding the bag.

Should someone in Weimar Germany have gone to jail when an entire nation was impoverished through outright theft of the value of the Deutschmarks in people's pockets?  This is money that people earned at a specific rate and then were forced to spend at another rate (think: some people were in a position to do just the opposite, namely bankers and those who can spend the cheap printed money before it devalues with the passage of time).  This is money under which contracts were signed at one value, and which devalued exponentially in the middle of the contract.

The same thing (hyperinflation) happened recently in Argentina and Zimbabwe.

Should those who benefit from this go to prison (like Bernie Madoff, who did not have government "cover" for his crimes)?

Actually, the founding fathers of the United States (who warned repeatedly against central banks and "paper" money) did not think such people should be incarcerated.  They had another penalty in mind.

Will there come a day when currencies are again honest and constant in value?  I'm afraid things will get a lot worse before they get better.  But on the other hand, thanks to the lessening of government control of information thanks to the Internet, this issue is now on the table.  And it is an issue that is being looked at from across the political spectrum: from conservative investment firms, mainstream conservative thinkers, and even youthful Occupy Wall Street folks on the left.

Ending the Fed is something people from all across the political spectrum ought to be able to agree on.  There are few teachings more universal than the Seventh Commandment.  The Fed has been allowing institutional theft from the people of this country for a century.  It's nice to see this being recognized in the European Parliament as well.

Thank you once again, Mr. Bloom!

Consider an investment: not of money, but of time.  The following 42 minute documentary (or read the transcript here) explains the whole thing - including why this is relevant.  The film's style is dated (it was produced in 1996) - which is actually good.  You can see how things have gone since that time.  A lot has happened in the world's economy - especially since 2008.