The Master Builder

Excellent explanation on what went wrong in our economy. While thousands are hacking at the leaves of evil, one is striking at the root. The root is the Federal Reserve. Government cannot be trusted to manage our currency. They made this crisis possible.

I'm currently reading 2 of Thomas Woods' books. I'm a big fan. For more information on this subject you should read his book Meltdown.

Regulation's Dark Side

I have come to despise regulation more than taxes. Indoctrinated people believe regulation is a gift from a benevolent government to keep us all safe from dangerous greedy capitalists. Try not to laugh at that statement.

Regulations are initiated by:

1. businesses who want to use the government's guns to stifle competition
2. politicians who need campaign contributions
   
3. politicians who want to serve the public good (okay, I threw this one in as a joke)
   

For businesses who want to stifle competition, let's examine my favorite example of civil disobedience. In 2005, a man named Michael Fisher gave his first manicure to someone right outside the state Board of Barbering, Cosmetology and Esthetics office to protest "needless obstacles facing small businesses in the state." He got arrested. Forcing licensing is a way for established businesses to make it more difficult for the little guy to compete.


Put down that nail polish you dangerous man!

For politicians who need campaign contributions let me quote a California legislator in the book Money for Nothing by Fred McChesney: "[a politician] in need of campaign contributions, has a bill introduced which excites some constituency to urge [the legislator] to work hard for its defeat (easily achieved), pouring funds into his campaign coffers.”

Thomas J. DiLorenzo writes: regulation bills "are designed to 'squeeze' cash out of corporate coffers in return for not harming the corporation with proposed legislation and regulation."

They're called "Juicer Bills", "Milker Bills", "Fetcher Bills", or "Cash Cows."

The Proper Role of Goverment

People argue what the government should do and how it should do it, but underlying principles are usually ignored. People on the "right" and on the "left" see the government simply as a large force that they can use to force their ideals onto the citizenry.

"I don't think there should be poor people, therefore I will use government force to ensure there are no poor people." "I don't think people should be able to do drugs, therefore I will use government force to ensure others live by my moral code."
Let's go back to the basics. I am going to borrow some words from "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat because I can't state them any better.

"Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property...If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly." We delegate the job of much of our protection to our government. We charge our government to defend our lives and property. We cannot allow our government to do anything we can't do on our own. We also cannot give our government the responsibility of defending our liberty because the only thing that can take our liberty is government. The responsibility to protect our liberty stays with the individual. It is our responsibility to keep the government in check to not overstep its bounds in its only missions:

To protect our lives and property. That's it.

We cannot charge our government to do anything that we have no natural right to do on our own. Therefore:

• We have no right to charge the government to take anything from one person and give it to another.
  
• We have no right to charge the government to interfere in any activities that do not directly harm the property or lives of other citizens.
  
• We have no right to force the government on any individual.
  

For the government to give someone something (like food stamps or medicare benefits), they will have to take from another person by force. This violates one of the primary purposes of government: to protect property.

Some have tried to stretch the responsibility of government protection to allow them to forbid people from smoking in public because it may harm the health of another individual. You could also stretch the government's responsibility and say anyone who has a cold can't go out in public and risk infecting others. Not only would that be impossible to enforce, it would violate the rights of one person to benefit another.

Also, I completely agree with Lysander Spooner (an abolitionist who opposed the Civil War - kind of strange for the state-educated mind to grasp) when he wrote:

"All, whether white or black, who want the protection of this government, shall have it; and all who do not want it, will be left in peace, so long as they leave us in peace."

Freedom. It's a completely foreign concept to America. These views on government are considered extreme. People actually believe that the government has the right to keep us safe by force through regulations, as if people have no right to measure risks on their own. People actually believe that only government can keep the "poor" fed by taking from the productive parts of our society by force. Government has been bastardized beyond belief.

Upsetting

"Last week, [Judge Andrew Napolitano] asked South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, where in the Constitution it authorizes the federal government to regulate the delivery of health care. He replied: 'There's nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do.' Then he shot back: 'How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?'"

Our leaders are clueless about the Constitution. Read Amendment 10:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

My Conversion

I can now say I am a full-on libertarian. I've been listening a lot to the media put out by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and I can't intellectually dispute what they have to say.

I have described myself as conservative with libertarian leanings for a while. But what's the difference between a libertarian and a conservative? Shouldn't they be the same? They both believe in smaller government, right? I've come to the conclusion that much of conservatism simply defends the current position (a concept I addressed in a previous post). Here are a couple key issues:

• Drugs and prostitution: conservatives believe drugs should stay illegal; libertarians think it's none of the government's business what people do with their own lives as long as they don't harm other people.
• War: conservatives support the military and defend what they do; libertarians do not trust government force.
• Social security/medicaid/medicare/schools etc.: conservatives want to add some free market forces into these government programs; libertarians want them abolished because they trust individuals more than government.

Those are some key issues that I can think of right now. This means I have switched my position on the Iraq war. I can't justify preemptive war anymore. I defended it before because I was defending the current position. It was the position of "my side", the people in my "foxhole" so I defended it.

Does this mean I completely distrust the military? No. At one point I felt myself falling into the libertarian foxhole. It was tempting to adopt all the stuff I hear many libertarians say against the military just because I was affixing myself to their movement. As I started falling into that mindset I noticed the foxhole concept. I am glad we have a strong military, but there is a lot to correct about it as well as all the other government functions. I will discuss that later when I lay out my ideas of a perfect government.

Fox Holes

When joining a cause or affixing your mind to an ideology it can be tempting to drop yourself into a sort of fox hole. While in this fox hole with all your teammates, you will typically look outward at others in other fox holes instead of inward. Your intention can turn to defending your fox hole at all costs. This can lead to at least two very dangerous things:

1. Everyone outside of your fox hole becomes your enemy
   
2. Everyone inside your fox hole is an ally and their faults are easily overlooked, even if the faults resemble the ideologies adopted by people in enemy fox holes

We should defend truth. Seeing some people as enemies is not a problem because there are many people, including those in our government, who are enemies. They want to subject us to their will. They do not know better. Even if they did, it's not their right to impose their will upon me. But how can we recognize our enemies we refuse to look in certain places? Know your enemies who are inside and outside of your fox hole.

Nukes and Unicorns

Obama presided over the United Nations Security Council today. They voted to eliminate nuclear weapons.


Then they voted to ban unicorns from shoving their tusk things up the butts of gnomes.

ACORN, Sex Slaves, and Murder

You've got to see this footage. A couple young independent investigative journalists take some hidden cameras into several ACORN offices posing as a pimp and a hooker who want to bring some underage sex slaves into America. They enlist the help of ACORN. And ACORN delivers.

A Baltimore Office:





A Washington DC Office:





A New York Office:





A San Bernardino Office:







These videos were broken on the website biggovernment.com.

Before these videos broke, they were partners with the Census Bureau (yea, I'm sure nothing could have gone wrong there). The Census Bureau has given ACORN the shaft.

Before these videos broke, ACORN was getting government money. The Senate voted to change that. Seven Senators still thought government money should go to fund these dirt bags. Seriously, I hate these politicians. See if your Senator is completely braindead. These are the ones who thought ACORN should keep getting money that was stolen from us:

1. Burris (D-IL), Nay
2. Casey (D-PA), Nay
3. Durbin (D-IL), Nay
4. Gillibrand (D-NY), Nay
5. Leahy (D-VT), Nay
6. Sanders (I-VT), Nay
7. Whitehouse (D-RI), Nay

I personally don't think prostitution should be illegal and I think the income tax is an awful abuse of power from the government. I do have a problem with people bringing in little teenagers to be sex slaves. And ACORN shouldn't have been helping make that happen.

9/12/09 Washington DC Rally

Today I made my way on over to Washington DC, the armpit of our country, to join in the protest against our federal government's foolishness. Way back in 2007 I mentioned how a rally in Texas for Joe Horn sent chills up my spine (unfortunately the youtube video on that post isn't available anymore). What was interesting to me was how it was regular people out there making their voices heard; not the typical weirdo political types you see at political conventions (you know, the ones with weird shirts). Since then it has only escalated. You will hear people on the news try and spin it as if this is ALL about Obama. No. Bush woke us up. Now Obama is pushing us further. He's picking a fight with us. And we're not going to back down.

I got off the subway and started in on the march down Pennsylvania Avenue. You can see the Capitol Building in the distance (where the plundering of America is executed).

Getting closer.

It was very interesting seeing all the different types of people. I was hoping to see some SEIU or ACORN thugs. Maybe they backed out because they were recently exposed as being supportive of sex slavery.


Just a view backward.

The people started bunching up tighter the closer we got to the destination.



We were herded around like cattle. Unfortunately we were moved to the left instead of toward the right (in the direction of the mall).



I fought my way through the crowd to get closer to the stage there were crowds of people all around me. I have never seen so many people in my life. I have never been stuck in such a large mass of humanity. The crowd went beyond my field of vision on all sides.

(on the other side of that picture of Obama as the Joker is one of Bush as the Joker - but apparently this was a Republican thing, right?)

This is as close as I got to the capitol steps. There were several random speakers. One lady got up and sang the national anthem. The crowd started singing along, or tried to. The lady tried to be all artsy so she sang it slow. The crowd kept trying to slow down enough to be in sync with her. All parts of the crowd were singing at different speeds. They were too big to keep together.

Before everyone was done talking I got kind of overwhelmed with the crowds so I walked down the mall toward the Washington Monument. This is a view from the distance of the sea of humanity.

This is as close to the White House as I got. We had a nice cloud cover the whole time and a perfect temperature with a little breeze. It was a great blessing to have such nice weather. Even with the cloud cover my face is now red with a little sunburn.

A flag for the completely unconstitutional EPA was at half mast. I hate that agency. Seriously, we need to abolish all these tyrannical agencies and sell the land they sit on. Replace the anti-productive with something productive.

Quickie

While under a free government, a man has the ability to do things a bureaucrat would consider stupid.

In America, we are forced to do stupid things a bureaucrat considers brilliant.

A Tribute to Ted Kennedy

Defending the Present Condition

I have recently come to disagree with many things that I used to think were correct. The only reason I thought these things were correct was because I was taught to think that way. I hadn't gone through every bit of knowledge stored in my brain and questioned it. The past few months I have been doing that and have made an even more radical shift away from trusting the government than ever before.

Why did I defend certain things that I thought were true before? Because that's the way things have always been. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, sometimes if you have been dealing with something all your life you don't realize that it's broken.

The healthcare debates have given me some insight on the tendency to fight against change and defend the present condition even if the change is just an extension of the present condition. People are fighting against government healthcare while accepting Medicare and Medicaid.

I recently attended a town hall meeting with my representative. At the end someone made the same comment I wanted to make. He said the public option shouldn't be considered because it is unconstitutional (met with a rousing applause). Then he said medicare and medicaid should be abolished because it is unconstitutional as well. I was the only person in a room full of hundreds of people who clapped. Why?

Not everyone in that room benefited from medicare or medicaid. I can't imagine them clapping at that because they would be opposed to their plunder stopped. Why didn't everyone else who was against the public option clap?

While it may not have been the same case for everyone, I contend it was because of the condition I have been dealing with. Accept conventional wisdom and defend against future intrusions even if the principles guiding the refusal of future intrusions are violated by current conditions.

The Broken Window Fallacy

For more on this topic, read Bastiat's broken window fallacy. When government redistributes wealth, they effectively break the windows of the producers of the company by just taking their money at the point of a gun. Then they spend that money and clap their hands because someone earned some money off the wealth they took from people who actually produce.

It's wrong for me to steal money from my neighbor. Why is it okay for the government?

Apparently I'm Wooed

No, actually I'm not feeling wooed, even though this AP article says Obama has wooed me:

On defense, Obama woos right, left on health care

Oh, my! Obama is so amazing!

He's so amazing that he "wooed" one of his supporters, talk show host Michael Smerconish. No, Smerconish is NOT a conservative. He endorsed Obama before the elections. I stopped listening to his show a while ago because you can hear the glee in his voice when he talks about the main stream media. He's a wanna-be media elitist. So don't believe the media lies that Obama is bringing everyone together. Sickening propaganda.

Luwig von Mises Institute

The Ludwig von Mises Institute is my favorite Institute. I have been listening to their podcasts, downloading their videos from Youtube, and downloaded their free audio books and other media to listen to at work. They also have a blog that I follow. They have challenged my understanding of freedom. I highly recommend their stuff.

I am not 100% on board with everything in all the speeches I have downloaded (a lot of them are anarchists and they generally don't like the military at all), but I still like to hear what they have to say.