THE MAN THAT SHOULD BE PRESIDENT

WHAT I THINK.......KAL KOTECHA

2012-02-14T09:15:00.000+02:00

There is still a chance for Americans to stem the inexorable push “To Narnia!”, as exhorted by fake Presidential candidate and comedian, Stephen Colbert. As humourous as it may be that Colbert trumped a candidate in a GOP Presidential nomination poll in South Carolina (nailing 5% of the votes to Jon Huntsman’s 4%), it’s a sobering footnote in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Sobering footnotes riddle America. America’s national debt increases an average of $3.96 billion per day. And, as economic Armageddon ravages America, the Presidential race is rife with candidates completely clueless about basic economics.

Who will staunch the bleeding of America – and how?

The lone GOP candidate to grasp the immensity and complexity of monetary policy is the 11-term Congressman from The Lone Star state – Dr. Ron Paul. He’s seen blood before – first as a flight surgeon in the U.S. air force; then as a Texas obstetrician delivering 4,000 babies; and, more recently, as a politician.

Paul supports an audit - then a cut - of the Federal Reserve System, believing it should be abolished. Typifying The Fed as counterfeiters, he has been vociferous about the “power and authority by Congress to create money out of thin air”. In February 2009, he introduced a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, opining that the “financial system is very friable, very vulnerable….and that it was the Fed that was creating the bubbles”. Believing that Americans have long been boondoggled by an increasingly corrupt Congress (the chicken that laid The Fed egg), Paul admitted that, as a Congressman, he can find out more about the CIA than the Federal Reserve System. Smell that rotten egg.

It’s time to cut the cozy “symbiosis between Congress and the Fed”. While speaking about the Federal Reserve, Paul noted that “not a lot of American people understand it and not a lot of people here in Congress understand it either” and “even members of the banking committee have come up to me and said you mean our dollar isn’t backed by gold anymore”?

Long advocating that gold is “the surest path back to sound money”, Paul eschews the fiat monetary system of money, staunchly supporting the gold standard which will tighten up the printing of ridiculous sums of currency and keep in check the powers that are responsible in doing so. This would also be bullish for gold as the reserve would have to back at least part of the currency with gold sending the price of the precious metal northward.

In his 1981 book (re-released in 2007) “Gold, Peace and Prosperity: The Birth of a New Currency”, Paul wrote “The gold coin standard, although imperfectly adhered to, permitted startling economic growth combined with falling prices in the 19th century. In the 67 years since the abolition of the gold standard, the Consumer Price Index has gone up 625 percent. In the previous 67 years, under an imperfect gold coin standard, the CPI increased 10 percent”.

But, does Ron Paul put his money where his mouth is?

As reported in the Wall Street Journal on December 21, 2011:

According to data available through his 2010 “Form A” financial disclosure statement, filed last May, Rep. Paul’s portfolio is valued between $2.44 million and $5.46 million. (Congressional disclosures are given in ranges, not precise amounts.)

Most members of Congress, like many Americans, hold some real estate, a few bonds or bond mutual funds, some individual stocks and a bundle of stock funds. Give or take a few percentage points, a typical Congressional portfolio might have 10% in cash, 10% in bonds or bond funds, 20% in real estate, and 60% in stocks or stock funds.

But Ron Paul’s portfolio isn’t merely different. It’s shockingly different.

Yes, about 21% of Rep. Paul’s holdings are in real estate and roughly 14% in cash. But he owns no bonds or bond funds and has only 0.1% in stock funds. Furthermore, the stock funds that Rep. Paul does own are all “short,” or make bets against, U.S. stocks. One is a “double inverse” fund that, on a daily basis, goes up twice as much as its stock benchmark goes down.

The remainder of Rep. Paul’s portfolio – fully 64% of his assets – is entirely in gold and silver mining stocks. He owns no Apple, no ExxonMobil, no Procter & Gamble, no General Electric, no Johnson & Johnson, not even a diversified mutual fund that holds a broad basket of stocks. Rep. Paul doesn’t own stock in any major companies at all except big precious-metals stocks like Barrick Gold, Goldcorp and Newmont Mining.

Rep. Paul also owns 23 other miners – many of them smaller, Canadian-based “juniors” whose stocks are highly risky. Ten of these stocks have total market valuations of less than $500 million, a common definition of a “microcap” stock. Mr. Paul has between $100,010 and $326,000 (roughly 5% of his assets) invested in these tiny, extremely volatile stocks.

Rep. Paul appears to be a strict buy-and-hold investor who rarely trades; he has held many of his mining stocks since at least 2002.

If there was ever a time to raise the (gold) standard in American political history, this is it. Our support goes to the lone golden candidate – Ron Paul.

THE LATEST OBAMACARE OVERREACH

2012-02-14T09:09:00.002+02:00

Many religious conservatives understandably are upset with the latest Obamacare mandate, which will require religious employers (including Catholic employers) to provide birth control to workers receiving healthcare benefits. This mandate includes certain birth control devices that are considered abortifacients, like IUDs and the "morning after" pill.

Of course Catholic teachings forbid the use of any sort of contraceptive devices, so this rule is anathema to the religious beliefs of Catholic employers. Religious freedom always has been considered sacrosanct in this country. However, our federal bureaucracy increasingly forces Americans to subsidize behaviors they find personally abhorrent, either through agency mandates or direct transfer payments funded by tax dollars.

Proponents of this mandate do not understand the gravity of forcing employers to subsidize activities that deeply conflict with their religious convictions. Proponents also do not understand that a refusal to subsidize those activities does not mean the employer is "denying access" to healthcare. If employers don't provide free food to employees, do we accuse them of starving their workers?

In truth this mandate has nothing to do with healthcare, and everything to do with the abortion industry and a hatred for traditional religious values. Obamacare apologists cannot abide any religious philosophy that promotes large, two parent, nuclear, heterosexual families and frowns on divorce and abortion. Because the political class hates these values, it feels compelled to impose—by force of law—its preferred vision of society: single parents are noble; birth control should be encouraged at an early age; and abortion must be upheld as an absolute moral right.

So the political class simply tells the American people and American industry what values must prevail, and what costs much be borne to implement those values. This time, however, the political class has been shocked by the uproar to the new mandate that it did not anticipate or understand.

But Catholic hospitals face the existential choice of obeying their conscience and engaging in civil disobedience, or closing their doors because government claims the power to force them to violate the teachings of their faith. This terrible imposition has resonated with many Americans, and now the Obama administration finds itself having to defend the terrible cultural baggage of the anti-religious left.

Of course many Catholic leaders originally supported Obamacare because they naively believe against all evidence that benign angels in government will improve medical care for the poor. And many religious leaders support federal welfare programs generally without understanding that recipients of those dollars can use them for abortions, contraceptives, or any number of activities that conflict deeply with religious teachings. This is why private charity is so vitally important and morally superior to a government-run medical system.

The First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty is intended to ensure that Americans never have to put the demands of the federal government ahead of the their own conscience or religious beliefs. This new policy turns that guarantee on its head. The benefits or drawbacks of birth control are not the issue. The issue is whether government may force private employers and private citizens to violate their moral codes simply by operating their businesses or paying their taxes.

WHAT I THINK........WALTER BLOCK

2012-02-13T17:39:00.002+02:00

Here is a letter sent to me by one of my readers. I quote it in full (very slightly edited for clarity, and to fill in abbreviations).

"I am curious about all this ‘veterans’ support for Ron Paul. I am a 63-year-old veteran and belong to many vet organizations including one from the unit I served with. The unit I was with,1st Infantry, Black Lions, has a Yahoo-based site that we communicate with each other by common e-mails sent through that site. The flood of outrage that was expressed by Ron Paul's statement that one of the ‘American citizens’ who was recently killed by a drone was denied his right to a trial flooded my e-mail box. Honestly I have to agree with that outrage. Does Ron suggest that we should have risked our troops by sending them in to capture this terrorist so we could give him his Miranda rights and a ‘fair’ trial? I just don't see the support for Ron from any of the organizations I belong to. I can say this much, those organizations are by far mostly Republican supporters and I like some of Ron Paul's ideas in other realms however I cannot support his mind set of the ‘Golden Rule’ in combat situations. In war there is no sense of fair play. On ambush patrols we would ideally wait for the enemy to pass our ambush site and shoot them in the back wherein, if in their death throes they squeezed their triggers, it would not be in our direction. Do you have any statistics regarding support for Ron from other generations of veterans?"

I disagree with this reader almost entirely. To take the last point first, there is no doubt that active servicemen overwhelmingly support the Ron Paul candidacy. Whether this is due to the fact that he is the only one of the five candidates presently running who is not a chicken hawk (Gingrich, Obama, Romney, Santorum), or because active duty soldiers like his policies, I cannot say. But of that fact there can be no doubt. All you need do is google "military donations by candidate" or "military donations Ron Paul" or any other such combinations of words and you will see this for yourself. See, for example, the following: here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

As to their "right to a trial" I don’t see why you place scare quotes around "American citizens." Does not that phrase mean something to members of the military such as yourself? According to our constitution, which you and the president are sworn to uphold, American citizens are not to be executed without a fair trial. Do you really oppose this?

Former Captain of the Air Force Ron Paul was widely denounced for his criticism of the way Obama handled the demise of Osama bin Laden. Yes, the Congressman from Texas wanted this murderer of the innocents to have a trial. We accorded this aspect of a civilized order to Nazis at the end of World War II. The Israelis dealt with Eichmann in that manner. Is Osama so much worse than these folk that he did not deserve to be heard in a court of law? We are presumably fighting for a civilized order, among other things. Well, laws, courts, trials, the presumption of innocence are all aspects of countries that are not out and out barbarians. Do you favor barbarism? As they say in the western movies, first we give Osama a fair trial, and then we hang him.

The whole defense about water boarding is that it will help us get information about our enemies. I don’t necessarily advocate this practice for bin Laden, but, why oh why was he summarily executed, before what he knows could be wrung out of him? Does that strike you as somewhat anomalous? That Captain Paul (I like that title) could wonder out loud about this does not make him the wuss and sissy you imply that he is. You don’t wonder about this?

You are totally confused about Ron Paul’s position on terrorists such as Osama bin Laden. A constitutionalist (have you ever heard of that document? look up article I, Section 8, paragraph 11), Dr. Paul advocated the use of Letters of Marque and Reprisal. These are permissions or warrants or commissions for private individuals to engage in acts that would otherwise be considered murder, or piracy or theft (see on this here, here and especially here.) Does this sound to you as if the next president of the U.S. was advocating the use of Miranda rights abroad?

As to "fair play" in war, have you ever heard of the Geneva Conventions? This does not mean that the U.S. allows the enemy to win; that we do not shoot enemy soldiers in the back, contrary to the Marques of Queensbury rules. Mr. Paul’s view on war is that we should rarely engage in it, only then in self defense, that such an act should be declared by Congress as stipulated in the Constitution, and that we should win it quickly.

Last but far from least, let us consider the "Golden Rule." According to it, one must do unto others as one would have them do unto us. If we rule out masochists who want you to beat them and therefore feel justified in beating you in accordance with this rule, this is a pretty good regulation for a civilized order. Of course, Ron Paul never ever in a million years meant this to be applied to warfare conditions as you more than imply. It would be grotesque for Ron Paul when he becomes Commander in Chief of the U.S. military, to order his soldiers to obey this rule during wartime when faced with the enemy. But, when not applied to wartime conditions, it is a very, very good rule. Since we would not want the Iranians to kill our women and children, we shouldn’t kill theirs. Since we wouldn’t want the Iraquis to set up military bases on our territory, we shouldn’t set up any in theirs. Since we wouldn’t want our citizens assassinated, we should not engage in such despicable acts ourselves. Since we wouldn’t want foreign drones killing our residents, we shouldn’t fly them over places like Pakistan.

I hope and trust you now see the candidacy of Ron Paul in at least a slightly different light. He is not at all "giving away the store." His is a counsel of peace, commercial relations with the rest of the world and prosperity. But, if anyone dare attack us, or even credibly threaten to do so, he will make every effort to protect us. He favors defense not offense. He offers the very common sense notion that the best way to protect us is not to send our soldiers all over the world, but rather to stay at home where they can engage in defense.

WHAT I THINK........THOMAS EDDLEM

2012-02-13T17:37:00.002+02:00

The mass media have repeated the official results for the Maine GOP presidential caucuses that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney narrowly beat Texas Congressman Ron Paul by a 39 percent to 36 percent margin. But the official results are incomplete. And postponement of the results from one of Ron Paul's strongest counties, Washington County, because of a forecasted snowstorm may alone have tipped the balance in Romney's favor.

Ron Paul's campaign confidently predicted victory when the final votes are tallied. "Only 194 votes [statewide] stand between Paul and a first place victory," RonPaul 2012 blogger Jack Hunter pointed out in a post after the media declared Romney the winner. "Washington County is a stronghold for Paul and has yet to report. It might be a week before we know the final outcome there and Washington County is expected to yield 200 votes or more." Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum placed third with 18 percent of the vote in the official Maine caucus statewide vote tally, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich placed fourth with six percent of the vote.

Hunter's prediction is not braggadocio. In south Washington County, Maine, Paul beat Romney by 132 votes in a February 7 Cottage Grove precinct-level caucus preceding the county "super-caucus" that was supposed to be held February 11 but will now be held February 18. Maine's South Washington County Bulletin reported February 8: "In District 57 ... Texas Congressman Ron Paul was the favorite among Republicans. Paul earned 237 votes in the non-binding poll, followed by Santorum’s 209 votes. Mitt Romney had 105 votes in the district, Newt Gingrich 61 votes." The February 7 south Washington precinct-level caucus results, which were not reflected in the official statewide total, were alone sufficient to offset two-thirds of the difference between Romney and Paul in the official statewide totals.

The cancellation of the Washington County super-caucus alone among Maine caucuses scheduled for February 11 has led many Paul supporters to suspect electoral shenanigans by the Republican establishment to deny Paul a state victory. That Washington County would vote heavily in favor of Paul was well-known, and Paul was widely seen as the only credible threat to Romney.

Maine state GOP Chairman Charlie Webster vowed that later caucuses would not be counted in the vote totals. "Some caucuses decided not to participate in this poll and will caucus after this announcement," Webster told the Associated Press February 11. "Their results will not be factored in. The absent votes will not be factored into this announcement after the fact."

The Washington County super-caucus was the only one to have been postponed because of an anticipated snowstorm. But while some media forecast six or more inches of snow, the Washington County forecast from the National Weather Service for February 11 was for a total of 3-5 inches of accumulation during the day, hardly out-of-the-ordinary for the Maine climate in February. Moreover, the Portland area was forecast to have almost as much snow, 1-3 inches, while nearby Hancock County had an identical forecast as Washington County. Yet caucuses were not cancelled in those areas.

Ron Paul 2012 national campaign chairman Jesse Benton predicted victory when the delegate process is completed in a website statement. “We are confident that we will control the Maine delegation for the convention in August. Our campaign is so thankful to all of our supporters in Maine, and all over the nation, and we want them to know that we plan to take this message all the way to the White House.”

Rep. Paul's campaign has stressed that the establishment is desperate to get Romney a couple of state wins after losing Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri to former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum earlier last week. "Maine is a state in Romney’s backyard that he should’ve been able to walk away with easily. That Mitt almost lost to Ron tonight — and that Mitt still may lose to Ron in the days to come — does not bode well for the establishment candidate," Ron Paul campaign blogger Jack Hunter argued as the caucus results emerged.

Romney did win the CPAC presidential preference poll in Washington, D.C., this weekend with 38 percent of the vote. Other presidential candidates earned the following percent: Rick Santorum 31 percent, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich 15 percent, and Ron Paul 12 percent. The CPAC poll carries no delegates toward the presidential race, but it measures a mixture of movement conservative opinion, campaign organization, and energy in the campaigns. Ron Paul had won the CPAC poll the previous two years, but did not make an effort to bring his young supporters to the conference again this year.

Romney announced in his Maine victory speech that "I am the only candidate in the race who has never served a day in our broken federal government. The voters of Maine have sent a clear message that it is past time to send an outsider to the White House, a conservative with a lifetime of experience in the private sector, who can uproot Washington's culture of taxing and spending and borrowing and endless bureaucracy." Of course, Romney helped to grow Massachusetts state spending and increase taxes and has been marinated in the tax-and-spend culture during his government service. As Governor of Massachusetts, Romney asked the state legislature for 88 "fees" to be increased in order to propose a balanced budget he was required by state law to submit. Many of these fees — such as increases on firearms permit applications and automobile licenses — were just tax increases disguised as "fee" increases.

WHAT I THINK........LAWRENCE VANCE

2012-02-13T17:33:00.003+02:00

"We don’t need to pay all this money to keep troops all over the country, 130 countries, 900 bases. But also, just think, bringing all the troops home rather rapidly, they would be spending their money here at home and not in Germany and Japan and South Korea, tremendous boost to the economy." ~ Ron Paul, February 7, 2012

In a post on February 9th at the Washington Post’s The Fact Checker blog, which claims to give "the truth behind the rhetoric," Glenn Kessler writes about "Ron Paul’s Strange Claim about Bases and Troops Overseas":

This comment by GOP presidential aspirant Ron Paul after Tuesday night’s caucuses caught the ear of our editor. Paul’s phrasing could have left the impression that he thinks there are 900 bases in 130 countries, but normally he makes it clear he is talking about two different things.

For instance, in the GOP debate Sept. 12, Paul said: "We’re under great threat, because we occupy so many countries. We’re in 130 countries. We have 900 bases around the world."

We will lay aside Paul’s loose definition of "occupy" – which denotes taking away a country’s sovereignty. You could also quibble with the concept of a "base," but we’ll accept that he’s talking about any military facility.

Are there any facts to back up these eye-popping figures?

I never read anything by Kessler until this piece on Ron Paul. The Fact Checker blog says that he "has covered foreign policy, economic policy, the White House, Congress, politics, airline safety and Wall Street."

In giving us the facts to evaluate the truth of Dr. Paul’s assertions, Kessler refers, but not by name, to two Department of Defense documents: the annual "Base Structure Report" dated September 30, 2011, and the quarterly "Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country," most recently issued on September 30, 2011.

Regarding the number of foreign bases, Kessler correctly notes that "the DOD list shows a list of 611 military facilities around the world (not counting war zones)." However, he discounts that figure because "only 20 are listed as ‘large sites,’ which means a replacement value of more than $1.74 billion." He also notes that most (549) of the DOD foreign sites are listed as being small sites.

Regarding the numbers and locations of U.S. troops in foreign countries, Kessler correctly notes that the "Personal Strengths" document lists "53,766 military personnel in Germany, 39,222 in Japan, 10,801 in Italy and 9,382 in the United Kingdom. That makes sense." "But wait," he says, "most of the countries on the list, in fact, have puny military representation." He points out that the U.S. has only nine troops in Mali, eight in Barbados, seven in Laos, six in Lithuania, five in Lebanon, four in Moldova, three in Mongolia, two in Suriname and one in Gabon." Then he says that he counts "153 countries with U.S. military personnel, actually higher than the 130 cited by Paul." But he dismisses both numbers by saying that "the list essentially tracks with places where the United States has a substantial diplomatic presence. (The United States has diplomatic relations with about 190 countries.)." He charges Paul with "counting Marine guards and military attaches as part of a vast expanse of U.S. military power around the globe." And after all, "this document indicates that only 11 countries actually house more than 1,000 U.S. military personnel."

Kessler concludes that "Paul’s statistics barely pass the laugh test. He has managed to turn small contingents of Marine guards into occupying armies and waste dumps into military bases. A more accurate way to treat this data would be to say that the United States has 20 major bases around the world, not counting the war in Afghanistan, with major concentrations of troops in 11 countries."

As one who is very familiar with both of the aforementioned DOD documents and has written about these things long before Ron Paul even ran for the Republican presidential nomination the first time, I can say with confidence that it is Glenn Kessler and the Washington Post that need some fact checking.

First of all, according to the Base Structure Report, the Defense Department "manages a global real property portfolio consisting of more than 542,000 facilities (buildings, structures, and linear structures) located on nearly 5,000 sites worldwide covering more than 28 million acres." Officially, as Kessler reports, there are 611 of these facilities in 39 foreign countries (excluding war zones). But why dismiss sites that are not "large sites"? Even small sites can have a replacement value of up to $929 million. True, some of the sites are not technically bases, but what about all the foreign bases that are not on the official list?

I recently wrote in "The Real Reason Guantánamo Should Be Closed":

The late Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis, and one of the foremost authorities on the subject, always maintained that the official Defense Department figures regarding overseas military bases were too low because they "omit espionage bases, those located in war zones, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and miscellaneous facilities in places considered too sensitive to discuss or which the Pentagon for its own reasons chooses to exclude – e.g., Israel, Kosovo, or Jordan." Johnson estimated the number to be closer to 1,000. We know now that he was right about the Defense Department’s figures, for Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, has recently confirmed that Johnson’s figure of 1,000 foreign bases is actually too low. The number is really closer to 1,100.

Nick Turse’s work painstaking work on the number of foreign U.S. military bases can be seen here, here, and here. Although Kessler acknowledges the existence of "106 U.S. military facilities in Afghanistan," Turse has reason to believe that the number is much greater and concludes that the military doesn’t even know the true number:

Last January, Colonel Wayne Shanks, a spokesman for the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told me that there were nearly 400 U.S. and coalition bases in Afghanistan, including camps, forward operating bases, and combat outposts. He expected that number to increase by 12 or more, he added, over the course of 2010.

In September, I contacted ISAF’s Joint Command Public Affairs Office to follow up. To my surprise, I was told that "there are approximately 350 forward operating bases with two major military installations, Bagram and Kandahar airfields." Perplexed by the loss of 50 bases instead of a gain of 12, I contacted Gary Younger, a Public Affairs Officer with the International Security Assistance Force. "There are less than 10 NATO bases in Afghanistan," he wrote in an October 2010 email. "There are over 250 U.S. bases in Afghanistan."

By then, it seemed, the U.S. had lost up to 150 bases and I was thoroughly confused. When I contacted the military to sort out the discrepancies and listed the numbers I had been given – from Shanks’ 400 base tally to the count of around 250 by Younger – I was handed off again and again until I landed with Sergeant First Class Eric Brown at ISAF Joint Command’s Public Affairs. "The number of bases in Afghanistan is roughly 411," Brown wrote in a November email, "which is a figure comprised of large base[s], all the way down to the Combat Out Post-level." Even this, he cautioned, wasn’t actually a full list, because "temporary positions occupied by platoon-sized elements or less" were not counted.

Along the way to this "final" tally, I was offered a number of explanations – from different methods of accounting to the failure of units in the field to provide accurate information – for the conflicting numbers I had been given. After months of exchanging emails and seeing the numbers swing wildly, ending up with roughly the same count in November as I began with in January suggests that the U.S. command isn’t keeping careful track of the number of bases in Afghanistan. Apparently, the military simply does not know how many bases it has in its primary theater of operations.

Turse specifically mentions the countries of Qatar, Pakistan, and Kuwait. Qatar is not listed on the Base Structure Report, but contains Al-Udeid Air Base, a billion-dollar facility where the U.S. Air Force secretly oversees its on-going unmanned drone wars. Pakistan is also not listed on the Base Structure Report, but U.S. drone aircraft, operating under the auspices of both the CIA and the Air Force take off from one or more bases in that country. And then there are the other sites like the "covert forward operating base run by the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi," and "one or more airfields run by employees of the private security contractor Blackwater (now renamed Xe Services)." And Kuwait, which has one nameless site on the Base Structure Report, has a number of U.S. military facilities.

Suppose that each of the 39 "official" countries with U.S. military bases decided to build the same number of military bases in the United States that the United States maintained in its country? The DOD claims 194 "sites" in Germany. Would the United States government object if Germany insisted on occupying 194 "sites" in the United States? How about just 94? Would the U.S. military not object because they were just "sites" and not technically bases?

Secondly, Kessler is wrong about U.S. troops being in 153 countries. The United States actually has troops in 148 countries and 11 territories. The last time I gave a complete list of all the countries and territories where the United States had troops was in my article of February 11, 2010, titled "Same Empire, Different Emperor." If you add to the list there the countries of Antigua, Congo (Brazzaville), and Suriname, and subtract from the list the countries of Eritrea, Iran, and Somalia, you will have an updated list. The current eleven territories where U.S. are stationed are: American Samoa, Diego Garcia, Gibralter, Greenland, Guam, Hong Kong, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, St. Helena, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Wake Island.

But why does Kessler use the arbitrary number of 1,000 in saying: "This document indicates that only 11 countries actually house more than 1,000 U.S. military personnel." Does this mean that it is okay if the United States has military personnel in a country that number 1,000 or less? And why, after giving the figures of "53,766 military personnel in Germany, 39,222 in Japan, 10,801 in Italy and 9,382 in the United Kingdom," does Kessler remark: "That makes sense"? What makes any sense about the United States stationing all of these troops in Germany, Japan, Italy, and the UK when World War II ended in 1945? What makes any sense about the United States stationing 723 troops in Portugal, 1,205 in Belgium, 163 in Singapore, and 335 in Djibouti? How many Americans have ever even heard of Djibouti? What makes any sense about the United States stationing troops in 75 percent of the world’s countries? Kessler makes much of the low figures of "nine troops in Mali, eight in Barbados, seven in Laos, six in Lithuania, five in Lebanon, four in Moldova, three in Mongolia, two in Suriname and one in Gabon." But what makes any sense about any U.S. troops being in those countries? And what makes any sense about the United States sending twenty-two of its military personnel to Ecuador, fourteen to Guatemala, seven to Mozambique, and six to Togo? What makes any sense about U.S. troops being stationed anywhere overseas?

Suppose that each of the 148 countries with a contingent of U.S. military personnel decided to send an equal number of their troops to the United States? Would the United States government and its military tolerate 1,491 troops from Turkey, 2,142 from Bahrain, and 354 from Honduras since those are the numbers of troops the United States has in those countries?

And third, Kessler is just plain wrong in dismissing the U.S. troop presence in foreign countries as "places where the United States has a substantial diplomatic presence" or "Marine guards and military attaches." I did a major study of this back in October 2004 called "Guarding the Empire." It has been online ever since, but rather than doing a little research, Kessler was content to just accuse Dr. Paul of turning "small contingents of Marine guards into occupying armies."

In my article I showed beyond any doubt that the U.S. troop presence in foreign countries cannot be blamed on Marines guarding embassies. Read the article. I can’t tell you how many people have written me after I wrote something negative about the U.S. empire of troops and bases that encircles the globe and dismissed my research as a waste of time since, so they said, most of the U.S. troops stationed abroad were just Marine embassy guards. That is simply not true. I did the research and provided a link to the research, but they were just too lazy to click on the link. Don’t be lazy; read "Guarding the Empire." Yes, I know it was written in 2004. Yes, I know that some of the figures have now changed. Yes, I know that some of the links no longer work. But my conclusions still stand:

The United States has an embassy in some countries, but does not have any troops.
The United States has an embassy in some countries along with Army, Navy, and/or Air Force troops, but there are no Marines listed as being in the country.
The United States has an embassy in some countries with troops including Marines, but not the minimum number of six Marines necessary for embassy security guard duty.
The United States has Marines in some countries, but no embassy to guard.

And if the United States has "diplomatic relations with about 190 countries," then how can Kessler say that the list of 148 countries with U.S. troops "essentially tracks with places where the United States has a substantial diplomatic presence"? That is a difference of 42 countries.

Kessler never gets to the real issue. The real issue has nothing to do with the exact number of foreign bases the United States has or the exact number of countries the United States has troops in or the exact number of troops the United States has stationed abroad or the exact number of foreign sites that are really bases.

The real issue is why the United States has troops and military bases in foreign countries in the first place. Especially since the United States doesn’t afford other countries the same privilege.

When I first wrote about U.S. troop presence around the globe in March 2004 in "The U.S. Global Empire," I documented that the U.S. had troops in 135 countries and 14 territories. Both numbers have only changed slightly since then. There was no change in U.S. foreign policy from Bush to Clinton to Bush to Obama. Just like there would have been no change in U.S. foreign policy if John Kerry or John McCain had been elected. Both parties are committed to a foreign policy of aggression, intervention, and meddling. Both parties are committed to a foreign policy of policing the world. Both parties are committed to a foreign policy of bombing and war. Both parties are committed to a foreign policy of empire.

The Washington Post ought to be writing about Ron Paul’s sane claim about bases and troops overseas.

WHAT I THINK........DONALD MILLER

2012-02-09T13:49:00.000+02:00

Members of Generation X, born 1962 to 1981, and Generation Y, 1982-2004, are rallying behind Ron Paul in his run for president. Media commentators find it odd that people under the age of 40 in the X Generation and especially voters under age 30 in the Y Generation are so taken with this unassuming, soft-spoken 76-year-old candidate. Ron Paul is in the Silent Generation, whose members are now 70 to 87 years of age (born 1925-1942).

Exit polls show that Ron Paul won the majority of voters under age 40 in the Iowa caucus and in the New Hampshire primary. He received 21.4 percent of the votes in Iowa (first-place Rick Santorum got 24.6 percent) and came in second in New Hampshire with 22.9 percent of the votes (first-place Mitt Romney got 39.3 percent). More voters under age 30 chose Ron Paul over the other candidates in the South Carolina primary and Nevada caucus. He garnered 41 percent of the under 30 vote in Nevada – Mitt Romney got 36 percent; Newt Gingrich, 16 percent; and Rick Santorum, 7 percent. But only a small minority of older people has voted for him, as was especially evident in the Florida Republican primary.

In Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584-2069 (1991) and The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy (1997), William Strauss and Neil Howe examine the four main generations alive today, including the Boom ("Baby Boomer") Generation, born 1943-1961. They show how these generations mirror ones in the past. They note that a "Young Hero and Elder Prophet" pairing occurs repeatedly in history, myth, and art, as with Joshua and Moses in the Old Testament, the Gray Champion in Colonial America, King Arthur and Merlin in Celtic myth, Tolkien’s Frodo and Gandalf, and Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. In Star Wars, Episode IV, Obi-Wan Kenobi instructs Luke in the ways of the Force and in Episode VI tells him that killing Darth Vader (his father) is the only way to destroy the evil Galactic Empire. And as Joseph Campbell, the American mythologist, notes, the young hero’s close bond with a wise elder is essential to his ultimate success.

The "Gray Champion" precipitated the Boston Revolt of April 1689, mounted to protest King James II’s increasingly autocratic rule of the British-American colonies. As Nathaniel Hawthorne describes it in his Twice-Told Tales, the King-appointed governor of New England marched British troops through Boston to intimidate the public and quell any thoughts of colonial self-rule. Hawthorne writes:

"Suddenly, there was seen the figure of an ancient man, who seemed to have emerged from among the people, and was walking by himself along the center of the street, to confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress, a dark cloak and a steeple-crowned hat, in the fashion of at least fifty years before..."

This elderly champion with a manner "combining the leader and saint" commanded the soldiers to stop; and "at the old man’s word and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still." Then, "inspired by this single act of defiance, the people of Boston roused their courage and acted. Within the day, Andros [the governor] was deposed and jailed, the liberty of Boston saved, and the corner turned on the colonial Glorious Revolution." This revolt led to the American Revolution 85 years later.

Ron Paul is the Obi-Wan Kenobi and Gray Champion of our time, and the Darth Vader of our U.S. Empire is the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve System, with its network of twelve regional private banks, was established in 1913. The Fed is the country’s third central bank (the first two, established in 1791 and 1816, each lasted for 20 years). The Fed issues token coins and paper dollars, and creates and transfers unlimited amounts of computer-generated digital money. Manufacturing money this way, during its 99-year existence the Fed has destroyed 98.8 percent of the value of the dollar, as calculated by the Shadow Government Statistics (SGS)-Alternate-Consumer Price Index (CPI). Using this measure of inflation, a basket of goods and services that cost $100 in 1913 now costs $8,204! (Even the Bureau of Labor Statistics admits that the dollar has lost 96 percent of its value since 1913, with that $100 basket of goods and services now said to cost $2303.) Using the more accurate SGS-Alternate-CPI, the greatest drop in the dollar’s value, 95.1 percent, has occurred since 1971, when president Nixon severed the dollar’s last remaining link with gold, turning it into an effortlessly issued fiat currency. (A fiat currency is one that has no hard asset backing it such as gold and derives its value from government edict.) Like a virulent virus, the Fed has infected the U.S. dollar and made it grow like a cancer.

The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1921 killed somewhere between 20 to 40 million people (including my 22-year-old grandmother and my wife’s 23-year-old grandmother). What the Fed is could result in an equally dire hyperinflationary economic collapse, similar to what happened in the Weimar Republic, Austria, and Hungary in the 1920s, Argentina in 1989, and Zimbabwe. (A practical definition for hyperinflation is that the country’s largest pre-inflation bank note – for the U.S., the $100 bill. – becomes worth more as toilet paper, or for stoking a fire, than as a currency. The currency remains "current" but no longer serves as a medium of exchange.)

Dr. Paul prescribes an Austrian cure for our country’s economic problems (see below). A professor at the University of Vienna, Carl Menger (1840-1921), founded the Austrian School of Economics, which is named for its country of origin. (Government officials and economists in Austria do not follow or endorse "Austrian Economics.") This branch of economics studies the action of individuals in the marketplace and puts forward a subjective theory of value. It explores important subjects like marginal utility (the amount of benefit derived from consuming one additional unit of a product or service, a concept that debunks the labor theory of value), moral hazard (where being covered against loss increases risk taking – executives at the leading investment banking and securities firm, Goldman Sachs, make a bad, multibillion dollar investment in AIG, and the government, i.e., U.S. taxpayers, bails them out), and malinvestments (making the wrong kind of investments, like building too many shopping malls, encouraged by Fed-set artificially low interest rates). Austrian economists don’t spin their wheels constructing mathematical models of the economy on a large, "macroeconomic" scale, something that Keynesian economists like to do and which have little bearing on the real world of human action. In contrast to pump-priming, big government Keynesianism, Austrian economics stresses the importance of free markets and a stable currency for economic calculation and setting prices.

Starting at a young age, Americans need to learn the basics of Austrian Economics and appreciate how it restores economic health. But government schools do not teach Austrian economics or the concomitant Jeffersonian vision of individual liberty. These subjects make a compelling case for limited government and are thus politically incorrect.

The primary role of government schools, where 90 percent of U.S. children are educated, is to inculcate, in the words of John Calvin, "the duty of obedience to rulers." Government-employed bureaucratic officials determine what political and economic ideas children are to be taught. Compulsory government schooling has become a zero-tolerance, one-size-fits-all, dumbed-down operation that focuses on social engineering rather than on learning and individual achievement. James Ostrowski, in Government Schools Are Bad for Your Kids, puts it this way: "[The government school] produces barely literate, historically ignorant, uncultured lovers of big government." Sadly, public schools have evolved into prison-like indoctrination centers that children and adolescents in the Y Generation currently endure – six and seven hours a day for thirteen years. For a sobering assessment of what our nation’s public schools have turned into, watch the online documentary on tagtele.com titled "War on Kids," available HERE.

Nevertheless, there is reason for hope.

The outpouring of support by young people for Ron Paul is truly heartening. In Texas, for example, students at the Hudson Middle School in Hudson overwhelmingly cast ballots for Ron Paul in the school's mock GOP primary, "after spending weeks studying the candidates' views on the issues and watching debates among the hopefuls" according to a newspaper account, which reported: "They liked Paul's anti-war stance, as well as his willingness to talk straight and not attack his opponents to make a point. ‘He's just like this down-to-earth dude who just seems like he knows what he's doing,’ seventh-grader Danielle Heidkamp said."

Generation Y members like Danielle will carry the Ron Paul banner forward. The Y Generation is also named the "Millennial Generation," coming of age as it is at the beginning of a new millennium. This generation must cope as young adults with the unfolding global financial crisis. When the Baby Boomer generation was growing up in the 1950s and 60s U.S. government debt increased $2.5 Billion a year. Life was good. Today, with the Millennial Generation coming of age, U.S. government debt increases by $2.5 Billion every 16 hours.

After the housing boom peaked in 2006 and foreclosures began to mount, the so-named "Millennial Crisis" began in February, 2007 when the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) announced that it would no longer buy subprime mortgages or mortgage-related securities (collateralized debt obligations). The Y Generation facing this crisis today bears some likeness to the GI Generation, born at the beginning of the last century (1901-1924), who became young adults during the last big crisis in U.S. history, the Great Depression and World War II. Strauss and Howe see the GI and Y generations as both manifesting a "Hero" archetype – can-do heroes and competent pragmatic managers who possess confidence and optimism.

Strauss and Howe name Generation X the "13th Generation" because it is the thirteenth one to call itself "American," beginning with the Awakening Generation born 1701-1723. The Glorious Revolution (Revolution of 1688) brought this about, which dethroned King James II and led Parliament to pass the 1869 English Bill of Rights, called "An Act declareing the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Setleing the Succession of the Crowne." This Act enabled people in the American colonies, emboldened by the Boston Revolt and this Bill of Rights, to see themselves as distinctly American and not servile British subjects.

Progressives view human history as a linear process. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson early in the last century, progressives have sought to expand government power and use it to effect what they consider to be beneficial social, political, and economic change. They are notable for launching the FED, an income tax, World War I, Prohibition, and the New Deal. Linear thinkers, which include politicians, the mainstream media, and CEOs of big corporations, work to maintain the status quo and their power and wealth. Rather than progress in a linear fashion, however, human history has a more seasonal, cyclical nature. As Mark Twain observed, "It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible." Twain is also alleged to have said something like, "Although history doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes" (source unknown). Whatever "rhyme" or "repetition" that might have helped bring about the Millennial Crisis, having a linear-thinking progressive president will only serve to make things worse. That includes President Obama and all the Republican presidential candidates except Ron Paul. He alone knows what is really going on, understands it, predicted it, and knows how best to deal with it.

Not counting the earlier crisis that caused the colonial Glorious Revolution and its Boston Revolt (1675-1704), there have been four crises in American history: the American Revolution (1773-1704), followed 66 years later by the Civil War (1860-1865), 64 years later by the Great Depression and World War II (1929-1946), and 61 years later by the current Millennial Crisis (2007-?). Each crisis has been worse than the previous one. There were 25,000 deaths in the American Revolution. Some 600,000 to 800,000 people died in the Civil War. And in World War II 50 to 70 million people died (civilian and military). In the American Revolution hyperinflation of the Continental Dollar rendered it worthless, and in the Civil War the Confederate Dollar suffered the same fate.

In The Fourth Turning, William Strauss and Neil Howe predicted, in 1997 when the book was published, that the next period of crisis in our country’s history, the "Fourth Turning" (following the first three crises) which they named the Millennial Crisis, would begin in 8 to 10 years. They were spot-on predicting when it would begin, 10 years later (in 2007), and this is what they say about its course:

"The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. Thus might the next Fourth Turning end in apocalypse – or glory. The nation could be ruined, its democracy destroyed, and millions of people scattered or killed. Or America could enter a new golden age, triumphantly applying shared values to improve the human condition. The rhythms of history do not reveal the outcome of the coming Crisis [the one we are experiencing now]; all they suggest is the timing and dimension."

One thing is certain. This crisis, now in its 6th year, will not be over anytime soon. How bad it becomes will depend on whether or not our country heeds the teachings of Ron Paul and his advocates.

Unfortunately, the establishment media tries to ignore Ron Paul and pretend he doesn't exist. Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, skewers the media's talking heads on this score, asking "How did Ron Paul become the 13th floor in a hotel?" in "John Stewart Shows How Ron Paul Is Feared By The NWO Mafia Controlled Mainstream Media," which can be seen on YouTube HERE. But other wiser heads can see and appreciate his true worth.

Bill Buckler, Captain of the financial newsletter The Privateer, published in Australia, has this to say about Ron Paul:

"Dr. Paul’s great and merited attractiveness to a growing number of admirers has a very simple source. He is that rarest of creatures – a FREE man. He is beholden to nobody. He has developed his ideas and his convictions over a long and fruitful life of independent thinking. He does not compromise. He homes in on the fundamental issue and principle of any political issue and serves it up without salt or other ‘seasoning.’ He says what he means and he means what he says. He is the living embodiment of the ‘dream’ that most Americans have long since given up on as they saw it slip further and further beyond their grasp. He is the only prominent person who is doing everything he can to turn the non-debate which masquerades as the ‘mainstream’ in the US and global political economy into something of substance. That, far more than presidency, is his goal."

Ron Paul wants to legalize freedom and have the government stop punishing people for using the freedom that is rightfully theirs (as long as you, of course, do not encroach on other persons and their property). All the other leading candidates who want to be elected president are pro-big government and seek power. Mitt Romney is Wall Street’s Republican candidate, with the investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs being his biggest contributor. There is little difference between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, except perhaps that Romney is even more pro-war than is Obama. I highly recommend Andrew Napolitano’s YouTube video "Judge Napolitano What if the Government Has Been Lying to You" where he portrays Republicans (excluding Ron Paul) and Democrats as "two wings of the same bird of prey."

Ron Paul is different. As the YouTube video What Is It About Ron Paul? affirms,

"Once you get hooked on Ron Paul you can no longer bear listen to a man who wants power. You become instantly disgusted whenever they begin to speak. Before they were just boring, but now they’re revolting. Listening to a Romney, or a Gingrich, or a Bush, or Obama makes you sick; and you just don’t understand how Ron Paul can get through those debates without getting nauseous. You see a political veneer in these politicians that is so transparent, like a ghost flapping its ethereal tongue at you."

A poster shown in the video states, "Once you get hooked on Ron Paul you can no longer bear to listen to a man who wants power."

People all over the world are getting hooked on Ron Paul. A Canadian citizen, Terry Neudorf, for example, writes this in a blog titled "Ron Paul Shakes the World":

"When the name Ron Paul is mentioned to my grandchildren, a smile will creep across their faces, and they will recall, and speak with excited tones about a time where an idea was born, a message was spread, and a revolution took hold that shook the world. That's the time I'm living in right now. I will treasure every moment. Thanks for all you do."

Young Americans are joining The Ron Paul Movement, like those manning phone banks to promote and raise funds for his campaign. (Don’t expect Goldman Sachs to contribute any money to Ron Paul’s campaign.) Leaders of the X and Y Generations allied with Ron Paul are our best hope for the future – and for coming through the Millennial Crisis without war. A third world war, with nuclear weapons in play, could well prove to be even more devastating than was World War II. But even if he is not elected president, all is not lost. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ron Paul’s spirit and teachings will live on and guide a new generation of Luke Skywalkers, including his son, X-Generation Rand Paul, to lead our country safely through this time of economic and social peril.

The Austrian Cure for Economic Illness

Dr. Paul’s Austrian treatment for the Millennial Crisis comprises six parts:

1) End the Fed – close down the central bank. "Unplug the machinery of the Fed," as Ron Paul puts it in his book End the Fed (see also the other three books he has written on government and liberty in "Suggested Reading" below). The market must be free to set interest rates without a central bank artificially lowering them and inflating the money supply. Banks should once again exist as free-enterprise institutions without privileges or bailouts from the state. ATMs, Web-based systems of funds transfer like PayPal, and online trading can function perfectly well without a Fed.

2) Restore sound money to the economy – privatize the country’s monetary system, abolish legal tender laws, and allow the free market to determine the forms of money it prefers.

3) Lower taxes and cut government spending – close military bases that the U.S. maintains in more than 130 countries around the world and bring the troops home; defund unconstitutional departments like Education, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, etc.; abolish the personal income tax.

4) No bailouts – the economy needs to liquidate all the malinvestments and mistakes made during the boom in order to be able to move on and recover from the bust.

5) Allow prices and wages to fall to levels the market sets – propping up prices stifles recovery, as the Great Depression proved.

6) Regulate the government, not private property and markets – entrepreneurs and investors will only make long-term investments that spur recovery and boost employment if they feel that their property is secure. (Fifteen cabinet-level departments control different parts of the economy, along with 100 federal regulatory agencies that have produced more than 81,000 pages of regulations, not including those set by state and local governments.)

Disclosure:

Like Ron Paul, I am a member of the Silent Generation.

Suggested Reading:

Articles

Ron Paul. "Mises and Austrian Economics: A Personal View" (1984. 23 pages. Ludwig von Mises Institute)

Murray N. Rothbard. "To Save Our Economy From Destruction" (The Freeman, 1995. Reprinted on LewRockwell.com)

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. "Why Austrian Economics Matters" (1995. Ludwig von Mises Institute)

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. "Money and Our Future" (2009. LewRockwell.com)

Donald W. Miller, Jr. "A Fourteen Point Plan for a Post-Wilsonian America" (September 28, 2001. LewRockwell.com)

Donald W. Miller, Jr. "The Austrian Cure for Economic Illness" (June 2, 2008. LewRockwell.com)

Books

By Ron Paul

Pillars of Prosperity: Free Markets, Honest Money, Private Property (2008, Ludwig von Mises Institute)

The Revolution: A Manifesto (2008. Grand Central Publishing)

End the Fed (2009. Grand Central Publishing)

Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom (2012. Grand Central Publishing)

Others

F.A. Hayek. The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2) (1944, Reprinted 2007. University of Chicago Press)

Ludwig von Mises. Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (1944, Reprinted 2011. Liberty Fund, Inc.)

Murray N. Rothbard. What Has Government Done to Our Money? and The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar (1963, 1962, Reprinted 2005. Ludwig von Mises Institute)

William Strauss and Neil Howe. The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy (1997, Broadway Books)

Adam Ferguson. When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany (1975, Reprinted 2010. Public Affairs. Also available for free download from the Ludwig von Mises Institute)

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse 2009, Regnery Publishing)

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse (2011, Regnery Publishing)

STILL THE MAN

2012-02-08T14:06:00.002+02:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

WHAT I THINK........ROBERT WENZEL

2012-02-07T09:13:00.000+02:00

True conservatism goes back to the pre-William F. Buckley days, where conservatives believed in small government and staying out of the affairs of foreign countries. It's not quite libertarianism, but very close.
WaPo has a fascinating take today on this, though I doubt they truly understand what they have uncovered.

Let's start with an understanding of the Old Right

In 1994, Murray Rothbard explained the Old Right:

The original right of which I speak, and of which I am one of the few survivors, stretched from 1933 to its approximate death, or fading away, upon the advent of National Review in 1955. The Old Right began in 1933 in response to the coming of the New Deal. It was "reactionary" in the best and most generous sense: it was a horrified reaction against the Roosevelt Revolution, against the Great Leap Forward toward collectivism that enraptured socialist intellectuals and enraged those who were devoted to the institutions and the strict limitations on centralized government power that marked the Old Republic...

The Old, original, Right realized the horrors of the New Deal and predicted the collectivist road on which it was setting the nation. The Old Right was a coalition of ideologies and forces that did not have one single, common, positive program, but "negatively" it was solidly united: all opposed the New Deal and were committed to its total repeal and abolition – lock, stock, and barrel. The fact that its unity was "negative" did not make it any less strong or cohesive: for there was total agreement on rolling back this collective excrescence and on restoring the Old Republic, the true America...

The Old Right experienced one big sea change. Originally, its focus was purely domestic, since that was the concentration of the early New Deal. But as the Roosevelt administration moved toward world war in the late 1930s, the Old Right added intense opposition to the New Deal's war policies to its systemic opposition to the domestic New Deal revolution. For they realized that, as the libertarian Randolph Bourne had put it in opposing America's entry into World War I, "War is the health of the State" and that entry into large-scale war, especially for global and not national concerns, would plunge America into a permanent garrison state that would wreck American liberty and constitutional limits at home even as it extended the American imperium abroad. As anti-foreign interventionism was added to the anti-New Deal mix, the Old Right lost some adherents and gained even more. For Eastern Establishment anti-New Dealers, such as Lewis Douglas, William L. Clayton, Dean Acheson, and the Morgan Bank, embraced the entire New Deal package once it came wrapped in the enticing trappings of American Empire. On the other hand, antiwar progressives, originally New Dealers, men such as Senators William Borah and Gerald Nye, intellectuals and writers such as John T. Flynn and Harry Elmer Barnes, began to realize that there was something very wrong with a strong state that could expand into foreign adventures, and so they gradually became anti-New Dealers in every sense of the word.

World War II added foreign policy to the mix, so that by the end of the war, the Old Right was opposed to big government on every front, foreign and domestic. All parts of the right were opposed to global crusading, to what Clare Booth Luce wittily labeled "globaloney." They were opposed to what the former New Deal historian-turned-noninterventionist Charles A. Beard labeled the foreign policy of "perpetual war for perpetual peace."

This, of course, has to be contrasted with the current day neo-conservatives, or media conservatives. For these conservatives, it's all about more and more foreign entanglements. The more, the better. This is the exact opposite of the Old Right.

So when WaPo says that Ron Paul is the "true conservative", and this is what they are saying: That most conservatives are not neo-cons and that they are anti-war, small governmnet conservatives, that is, Old Right conservatives.

Here is Aaron Blake in WaPo this morning:

Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are fighting for the right to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.

But they both lost that battle in Nevada – to Ron Paul.

Entrance polls from Saturday’s Nevada caucuses show Romney racking up huge wins among the vast majority of demographics, which isn’t surprising given that he took about 50 percent of the vote.

But the one demographic that is supposed to be Gingrich’s and Santorum’s bread and butter – people looking for the “true conservative” in the race – didn’t go for either one of them.

Which begs the question: Just what is the argument for their candidacies right now?

The entrance polls show about one in five voters said the most important attribute they want to see in a candidate is that he is a “true conservative.”

Among those voters, Romney took just 4 percent – a showing that lends credence to the idea that there is room for a true conservative alternative.

But those voters didn’t spurn Romney for Gingrich or Santorum; instead, they went for Paul, who won the demographic with about 40 percent.

Now, it’s fair to point out that Nevada is one of the more libertarian states in the country, so it’s not surprising that Nevada Republicans’ idea of a “true conservative” might be different from other states.

But this is really a must-have demographic for Gingrich and Santorum, and the fact that neither of them tapped it is bad news for their campaigns and their cases for pressing forward.

Exit and entrance polls give voters four options for their top priority in picking a candidate – that they can beat President Obama, that they have the right experience, that they have strong moral character and that they are the true conservative in the field.

With the exception of South Carolina, where Gingrich won, it has become clear that Romney is viewed as the candidate most prepared to beat Obama; he has won this demographic with huge majorities in every state except the one, and this is easily the most popular priority with GOP voters so far.

Romney has also shown himself to be strong enough in both of the other two most-important demographics: moral character and experience.

The “true conservative” vote, then, is really the only one where he is going to cede big votes. It’s a necessary – if not sufficient – demographic for any would-be anti-Romney candidate.

But if a significant amount of these voters are going to Paul, then Gingrich and Santorum have no chance.

Whoa baby, the Old Right is alive and kicking, and WaPo has discovered it!

WHAT I THINK........LAURENCE VANCE

2012-02-07T09:02:00.000+02:00

"My point is, if another country does to us what we do to others, we’re not going to like it very much. So I would say that maybe we ought to consider a golden rule – in foreign policy. Don’t do to other nations what we don’t want to have them do to us" ~ Ron Paul

The war-crazed conservatives in the crowd at one of the Republican presidential debates recently held in South Carolina booed and jeered when Ron Paul called for a golden rule in U.S. foreign policy. "We endlessly bomb these other countries and then we wonder why they get upset with us?" added Dr. Paul.

Naturally, the bloodthirsty warmongers at Frontpagemag.com consider Paul’s foreign policy to be absurd, dangerous, and clueless.

But just for a minute, let’s suppose a few things –

Suppose that a presidential candidate in another country said that the U.S. president needs to be taken off this planet. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that a presidential candidate in another country said that the U.S. president would go to hell if he died. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the government of another country said that the U.S. president needed to step down. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the government of another country forbade its citizens from traveling to the United States. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the government of another country imposed sanctions on the United States. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the government of another country had a secret program to develop nuclear weapons for offensive purposes. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the military of another country insisted that it had the right to build over 1,000 military bases in foreign countries. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the military of another country insisted that it had the right to station hundreds of thousands of troops on foreign soil. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the military of another country insisted that it had the right to build bases and station troops on American soil. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the government of another country spent more on defense than all the governments of the rest of the world combined. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the government of another country claimed it had the right to assassinate anyone in the United States. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the intelligence agencies of another country insisted on infiltrating the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies to spy on them. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the government of another country spent a trillion dollars on defense, most of which was really for offense. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the government of another country said that the United States must get rid of its nuclear weapons. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the military of another country bombed American soil. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the military of another country invaded the United States. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the military of another country occupied the United States. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the president or secretary of state of another country said that the United States needed a regime change. How would Americans feel about it?

Suppose that the intelligence agencies of another country flew drone planes at will over the United States. How would Americans feel about it?

You know exactly how Americans would feel about these things. So why is it that foreigners aren’t expected to feel the same way?

It is U.S. foreign policy that is absurd, dangerous, and clueless. Ron Paul is the only sane voice that one will hear in the remaining Republican presidential debates.

TRUST US; WE'RE THE GOVERNMENT

2012-02-06T20:41:00.000+02:00

While much has been made recently of the President's unconstitutional appointment of Richard Cordray to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), lost in the hubbub has been any discussion of the unconstitutionality of, or the need for, the CFPB itself. Proponents of the CFPB claim that this new bureaucracy will help consumers by protecting them from fraudulent activity. In reality, it will only expose consumers to more financial harm.

Housed within the unconstitutional Federal Reserve, and funded not through Congressional appropriations but through the Federal Reserve's interest revenue off the trillions of dollars of US government debt it holds, the structure of the CFPB ensures that it is run by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, with no effective oversight from Congress. Given broad power to regulate the activities not only of banks, but also of any other entity which the government deems offers a financial product, there is almost no limit to the scope of financial activities which the CFPB can oversee.

Giving impetus to the CFPB's creation was the poor reputation of Wall Street banks and financial firms that developed as a result of the financial crisis. Banks which received trillions of dollars of taxpayer-funded bailouts turned around and shafted their customers by foreclosing on homes, raising credit card interest rates, and introducing numerous new fees.

But rather than keeping Wall Street in check as its proponents allege, the CFPB will end up placing further restrictions on the ability of Main Street Americans to engage in productive financial endeavors. Current law already allows only the richest Americans to invest in potentially lucrative ventures such as hedge funds because such investments are deemed to be "too risky" for the average American to invest in. The government in its paternalistic wisdom treats American investors as too stupid to know what to do with their own money, and "protects" them, supposedly, by keeping them poorer than they otherwise would be. We can expect even more of this once the CFPB is running in full stride.

The CFPB will further harm consumers by encouraging them to use only financial products which have received the Bureau's approval. Many consumers will assume that these products are "safe", and will fail to engage in their own due diligence, with predictably unfortunate results. We have seen this with the stock markets and the cases of Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, where investors trusting the SEC to prevent fraud ended up suffering huge losses. Social Security is a similar case, in which millions of people placed their trust in the government to take care of them in their old age. The inability of Social Security to pay its future obligations is well understood but ignored, and millions of Americans will likely once again learn the hard way that the government cannot be taken at its word.

WHAT I THINK........LINDA SCHROCK TAYLOR

2012-02-04T14:10:00.002+02:00

I have no respect for the current election paradigm – "Chose a Player Then Destroy All Others" – and the news that Herman Cain will now put his support behind Newt...added to Palin's defection...have almost destroyed any remaining hope that I had for the restoration of America.

They, along with so many others, have forgotten the original intent of the Founding Fathers, who created a government that would only be as honorable as the elected officials that We the People choose.

Everywhere, we witness the decay that is engulfing America. The main root of the rot is in the three branches of government. The Supreme Court refuses to acknowledge that its purpose is to judge constitutionality, not to legislate and deform our culture with decisions that trump common sense and morality. The Senate and the House spit on the trust that the voters placed in them and instead kowtow to corrupt leaders, members, and lobbyists, further destroying freedom in America. The president refuses to understand that he is the Chief Policeman who works for the People, rather than a legislator and a king.

Some would hold We the People at fault. "Citizens need to be better read. Citizens should listen more carefully to the news issues of the day." However, citizens cannot be held totally responsible when their information sources rush to corrupt information; to hide, ignore or lie about the truth.

Voters are left with few sources from which to gather honest information which can help them make informed decisions as to which candidates are honorable people. Even fair and balanced news agencies hide news, distort issues, and slant dialogue toward favored candidates. I have nicknamed one major news person, The Election Fixer.

So voters turn to friends, neighbors, and other persons they believe to be trustworthy. Many people, me included, have viewed Sarah Palin and Herman Cain as almost-neighbors; as trustworthy people who share our distrust and dislike of the government in charge. That is, until they chose to default on that trust by supporting a candidate long known for dishonorable behavior and decisions. Palin and Cain chose to join the election fixers to misdirect the thought processes and the morals of the citizens.

Palin and Cain see Newt as the best candidate yet 3everyone I meet looks at Newt and sees a philanderer rather than an honorable person. We look at Newt's wife and see a second mistress...not even a first one...instead of a potential First Lady. Obviously, Palin and Cain have taken their fingers off the pulse of America.

I have met no one who honestly likes, trusts, and respects Newt. The less decisive people just hem and haw, mumbling about him being...bright. Ah...and articulate. Um...and he debates well...even as they forget that those are the same irrelevant measuring sticks that were used to measure Obama's presidential skills. Yet, Palin and Cain will succeed in causing many citizens to believe that those two must have some magical information upon which they based their decision. Again, Americans are being encouraged to distrust and dismiss their best intuition, common sense, and morals. Sensible voices cannot even be heard when Palin and Cain take the stage and tell their followers how to think. Unfortunately, too many voters will give Palin and Cain too much credence; will sit back and refuse to think for themselves.

If a self-assured but dishonorable man swaggers his way to face Obama in November, each vote for Newt could very well mean a vote for Obama, and that is exceedingly frightening. I, for one, refuse to vote for the Lesser of Two Evils and everyone with whom I speak all feel the same. We will stay home rather than vote.

America needs honorable spokespersons who support honorable candidates. Newt is not only a poor choice, his cadency is forcing other, more desirable candidates to quit the race. We are so fortunate that an honorable man like Ron Paul is willing to stay in the race, and we are so fortunate that his supporters provide financial backing. Speaking of Ron Paul ...consider the how his potential for winning the ticket would improve if 1.) people at all levels would stop repeating the erroneous "He would be great as president but he has no chance of winning," and 2.) if spokespersons with a following would publicly put their support behind an honorable man.

I keep picturing an algebraic formula with "RP" representing voters who already support Ron Paul; with "Y" representing voters who would listen to their better judgement if they were not led astray by the Media and by the influence of other; with "P" and "C," respectively, representing votes for Ron Paul that Palin and Cain could encourage: RP +Y +P +C = An Honorable Victory for America

It is heartbreaking to realize that winning has become more important than honor.

WHAT I THINK........PATRICK BUCHANAN

2012-02-03T09:22:00.000+02:00

After his fourth-place showing in Florida, Ron Paul, by then in Nevada, told supporters he had been advised by friends that he would do better if only he dumped his foreign policy views, which have been derided as isolationism.

Not going to do it, said Dr. Paul to cheers. And why should he?

Observing developments in U.S. foreign and defense policy, Paul's views seem as far out in front of where America is heading as John McCain's seem to belong to yesterday's Bush-era bellicosity.

Consider. In December, the last U.S. troops left Iraq. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta now says that all U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan will end in 18 months.

The strategic outposts of empire are being abandoned.

The defense budget for 2013 is $525 billion, down $6 billion from 2012. The Army is to be cut by 75,000 troops; the Marine Corps by 20,000. Where Ronald Reagan sought a 600-ship Navy, the Navy will fall from 285 ships today to 250. U.S. combat aircraft are to be reduced by six fighter squadrons and 130 transport aircraft.

Republicans say this will reduce our ability to fight and win two land wars at once – say, in Iran and Korea. Undeniably true.

Why, then, is Ron Paul winning the argument?

The hawkishness of the GOP candidates aside, the United States, facing its fourth consecutive trillion-dollar deficit, can no longer afford to sustain all its alliance commitments, some of which we made 50 years ago during a Cold War that ended two decades ago, in a world that no longer exists.

As our situation is new, said Abraham Lincoln, we must think and act anew.

As Paul argues, why close bases in the U.S. when we have 700 to 1,000 bases abroad? Why not bring the troops home and let them spend their paychecks here?

Begin with South Korea. At last report, the United States had 28,000 troops on the peninsula. But why, when South Korea has twice the population of the North, an economy 40 times as large, and access to U.S. weapons, the most effective in the world, should any U.S. troops be on the DMZ? Or in South Korea?

U.S. forces there are too few to mount an invasion of the North, as Gen. MacArthur did in the 1950s. And any such invasion might be the one thing to convince Pyongyang to fire its nuclear weapons to save the hermit kingdom.

But if not needed to defend the South, and a U.S. invasion could risk nuclear reprisal, what are U.S. troops still doing there?

Answer: They are on the DMZ as a tripwire to bring us, from the first day of fighting, into a new land war in Asia that many American strategists believe we should never again fight.

Consider Central Asia. By pushing to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, and building air bases in nations that were republics of the Soviet Union two decades ago, the United States generated strategic blowback.

China and Russia, though natural rivals and antagonists, joined with four Central Asian nations in a Shanghai Cooperation Organization to expel U.S. military power from a region that is their backyard, but is half a world away from the United States.

Solution: The United States should inform the SCO that when the Afghan war is over we will close all U.S. military bases in Central Asia. No U.S. interest there justifies a conflict with Russia or China.

Indeed, a Russia-China clash over influence and resources in the Far East and Central Asia seems inevitable. Let us get out of the way.

But it is in Europe that America may find the greatest savings.

During the Cold War, 300,000 U.S. troops faced hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops from northern Norway to Central Germany to Turkey. But not only are there no Russian troops on the Elbe today, or surrounding West Berlin, they are gone from Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Between Russia and Poland lie Belarus and Ukraine. Moscow no longer even has a border with Turkey.

Why, when NATO Europe has two nuclear powers and more than twice the population of a Russia whose own population has shrunk by 8 million in 20 years and is scheduled to shrink by 25 million more by 2050, does Europe still need U.S. troops to defend it?

She does not. The Europeans are freeloading, as they have been for years, preserving their welfare states, skimping on defense and letting Uncle Sam carry the hod.

In the Panetta budgets, America will still invest more in defense than the next 10 nations combined and retain sufficient power to secure, with a surplus to spare, all her vital interests.

But we cannot forever be first responder for scores of nations that have nothing to do with our vital interests. As Frederick the Great observed, "He who defends everything defends nothing."

WHAT I THINK........THOMAS BROWN

2012-02-01T20:33:00.000+02:00

I was reading a great article today that was posted on The Art of Maniless today that really defined how folks should evaluate the candidates in the GOP primary as well as any other election. The article is titled
The 4 Qualities of a True Statesman and points out the difference between a political and a statesman. The article goes through the 4 core qualities that make up a statesman which are as follows;

1 A bedrock of principles
2 A moral compass
3 A vision
4 The ability to build a consensus to achieve that vision

While reading this article I could not help but think of one candidate who embodies all of these qualities. His name is Congressman Ron Paul. I will go through the 4 qualities and show you what I mean.

1. Bedrock of principles

-Ron Paul has had a core set of principles which he has promoted and stood by for over 30 years while in public office. He never once wavered despite many of his issue being unpopular. His principles are as follows, a sound money back by gold and the end of the Federal Reserve. Promoting free trade and diplomacy through ideas and not with interventionism through military or covert means. The steadfast adherence to the U.S. Constitution.

2. A Moral Compass

-As far as Congressman Paul’s moral compass one need not look any further that his 54 year marriage to his wife Carol. But, if that is not enough he always puts things in absolute right and wrong. A few examples are his voting no on every single debt ceiling increase since in Congress as he always stood against deficit spending that is caused by militarism and growing the state beyond the confines of the Constitution. He was one of a very few to vote no on the Patriot Act in 2001 as he saw the implications of voting yes as a path towards a police state that essentially shreds the bill of rights.

3. Vision

He understood that all the spending and manipulation of the dollar by the Federal Reserve would create distortions in the market and has written and spoken extensively about this over his 30 plus career in Congress. He is the only candidate on the stage that understand our foreign entanglements and occupations have consequences and had a role in the terror attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. He speaks out about this fact despite being ridiculed by his own party and other candidates running against him for the Republican nomination for President.

4. The ability to build a consensus to achieve that vision

Congressman Paul has slowly built up a following of people many of them young people who are not just drawn to his ideas of less government intrusion but allow his economic policies of free markets and the ending of the fraction reserve banking system and the Federal Reserve. He has also gotten folks who are interested in his message to read books and study history and economics so that they don’t just parrot talking points as many supports of other candidates do. But, so they can understand the details of what he is talking about and intelligently discuss it with others to educate and spread this message.

I could list dozens of examples for each quality listed but I think this gets the point across that when talking about a statesman there is only one in the race for President.

FAILED FED POLICIES PROLONG THE AGONY

2012-01-31T21:24:00.002+02:00

The Federal Reserve's interest rate price-setting board, the FOMC, met last week. They will continue to set the federal funds rate at well below 1%, and plan to keep it low until the end of 2014. That's a year and half longer than they planned when they met just last month. Chairman Bernanke says they are keeping interest rates so low for so long because the economic outlook warrants it.

The fallacies in their reasoning would be amusing if they weren't so dangerous. The Fed wants to keep the price of money at essentially zero – in other words "free" – to boost the economy. But the boost they are attempting won't get here for another three years. That's not a recovery. And we've already tried this tactic. That's how we got into this mess in the first place: with interest rates artificially low for a very long time. Free money doesn't stimulate growth, as Japan's two lost decades clearly show. Artificially low interest rates only serve to punish saving, distort market signals, and cause further malinvestment. They also do nothing to address the only real solution to our economic woes: liquidation of the bad debt that hangs around the neck of the world's economy, preventing recovery. Artificially low interest rates merely ensure that we remain a debt-financed consumer economy guaranteed to end up with a weaker economy and higher prices.

What baffles me even more is that two decades after the collapse of Soviet planning and decades more since the U.S. and economists purportedly rejected the idea of price setting, we find nothing wrong with the Fed setting the price of money. We all agree it is a bad idea to have a board saying the price of wheat should be $250 a ton today, or carpenters wages should be $25 an hour until the end of 2014. But we are perfectly comfortable with having a board set the price of one half of every transaction in our economy. And our markets are supposedly free.

The Fed policies of low interest rates, Operation Twist, and rounds of quantitative easing are all attempts to keep the economy alive artificially. But the 12 FOMC participants cannot manage the economy any better than the bureaucrats of the Soviet Union. The policies haven't worked. They won't work. Real economic recovery cannot come until we liquidate the bad debt, until we eradicate the poor decisions we made over the last decade, and start with a sound foundation. It is time we acknowledge the truth of the Fed's activities: they are merely using fancy words for price setting.

Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon was correct in the 1920s when he said "liquidate everything." That's what we did in the severe depression of 1920-21, and we recovered so quickly it is never even talked about. We didn't take his advice after the 1929 crash, and ended up with the Great Depression. We are committing the same mistakes, destined to live in this Great Recession for a decade or more—it has already been four years, the Fed says it will be at least three more! It's time we start rethinking what the Fed's policies are really doing to our economy, because obviously, by their own admission, they haven't helped.

WHAT I THINK........JOE SOBRAN

2012-01-24T14:34:00.000+02:00

I guess I’ve known Ron Paul for a quarter of a century now, and I don’t remember how we met. My first memory of him is a quiet dinner on Capitol Hill, during the Reagan years. He told me with dry humor of being the only member of Congress to vote against some bill Reagan wanted passed. For Ron it was a matter of principle, and he was under heavy pressure to change his vote.

What amused him was that the Democrats didn’t mind his voting against it; all the pressure came from his fellow Republicans, professed conservatives, who were embarrassed that anyone should actually stand up for their avowed principles when it was unpopular to do so.

That was Ron Paul for you. Still is. The whole country is getting to know him now, and the Republicans still want to get rid of him. The party’s hacks, led by Newt Gingrich, have even tried in vain to destroy him in his own Texas district.

They’re right, in a way. He doesn’t belong in a party that has made conservative a synonym for destructive. George Will calls him a “useful anachronism” because he actually believes, as literally as circumstances permit, in the U.S. Constitution. In his unassuming way, without priggery or histrionics, he stands alone.

He may have become at last what he has always deserved to be: the most respected member of the U.S. Congress. He is also the only Republican candidate for president who is truly what all the others pretend to be, namely, a conservative. His career shows that a patriotic, pacific conservatism isn’t a paradox.

If they can’t expel Ron Paul from the party, they can at least deny him the nomination. The GOP front-runner, Rudy Giuliani, who says he hates abortion more than any other constitutional right (or words to that effect), went into raptures of phony indignation during the first “debate” when Paul said simply that the 9/11 attacks were a natural result of U.S. foreign policy. The pundits applauded the demagogue, but millions of viewers were thrilled to find one honest man on that crowded stage. (By the way, Paul is a doctor who has delivered thousands of babies and never killed one.)

Ron — I’m very proud to call him my friend — fares well not only in comparison with the party’s sorry current candidates, but also with its legendary conservative giants, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. He lacks their charisma and of course Reagan’s matchless charm, but he excels them both in consistency, depth, historical awareness, courage, and honor. Heaven grant him some of Reagan’s luck!

Which brings us to the big question: does Ron Paul have a prayer? Well, he may have a prayer, but that’s about it. He doesn’t have a billion dollars; delivering babies, often free of charge, is not the way to amass a staggering fortune. He has nothing to offer the special and foreign interests who pour millions into Rudy’s and Hillary’s coffers. Sorry, this isn’t a Frank Capra movie.

But virtue — honor — is rare enough to be an asset, especially when the two big parties don’t have much of it. If both offer pro-war, pro-abortion New York liberals next year, there could be an urgent demand for a third option, especially since Giuliani could smash what’s left of the Bush-riddled GOP coalition while Hillary remains, well, Hillary.

What if Ron Paul runs for president on, say, the Constitution Party ticket? Who knows? I can only attest that to know him is to love him, and knowing him for many years has only deepened the esteem I felt for him when we were both much younger men. This is a man who strikes deep chords in people’s hearts.

Every attempt to portray him as an extremist, or even eccentric, founders on his palpable probity and wisdom. His words are the carefully measured words of one given to meditation. Ron Paul is a man you listen closely to.

The odds are heavily against his being elected president next year. But if he is on the ballot in November, the odds are far heavier against his candidacy’s being forgotten. He will say things worth pondering long after the votes are cast.

Until now, the GOP has been able to contain Paul by pretending he wasn’t there. But the silent treatment can no longer stifle this soft-spoken man. He has been proved right too often.

STOP INTERNET CENSORSHIP

2012-01-23T21:55:00.000+02:00

Although Congress was back in session for scarcely more than a day last week, private citizens across the country managed to cause an uproar felt across Capitol Hill. The uproar took the form of hundreds of thousands of phone calls to both Senators and Representatives, urging them to oppose two draconian new bills that threaten the free and unbridled flow of information on the internet.

On Wednesday last week, dozens of prominent websites like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Craigslist, were blacked out in protest of two bills known in DC jargon as SOPA and PIPA. SOPA is the House bill; PIPA is its Senate companion. These bills ostensibly will combat internet piracy, and of course we also are told they will help us wage the never ending "war on terror."

What these bills actually do is force website owners to police the internet; create entry barriers to the only relatively free and open medium of communication; and threaten to break the technological structure of the internet itself. They also violate our 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech and our 4th Amendment freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.

SOPA and PIPA have been drafted not only without respect for the Constitution, but also without an understanding of the how the internet works. These bills attack the very system upon which the entire orderly organization of the web depends. Search engines, internet service providers, advertising sites, and sites with user-generated content such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter--all magnificent creations of the market-- are directly threatened by these bills. They will be held responsible if even a single of their millions of users posts even one link to a website that a copyright holder claims is violating a copyright.

Note that under the bills as written, the Department of Justice or a copyright holder do not have to prove that their copyright was violated-- they simply have to claim copyright infringement and an entire site is shut down. The burden of these regulations on the internet will be enormous, shifting resources away from productivity and innovation and into monitoring and censoring. It turns internet companies into involuntary tools for Big Brother government, further eroding our Constitutional rights.

As is typical of so many bills in Congress, SOPA and PIPA were not crafted to make life better for the American people, but rather were written at the behest of big business trying to enlist the federal government as its strong-arm. For example, the Motion Picture Association of America spent more than $1.2 million so far lobbying for their passage.

But the internet community is fighting back effectively, not just with websites that went black but with millions of users who expressed their solidarity. Congressional sponsors of both bills have been jumping ship in response to the outrage. The House Judiciary Committee canceled the SOPA hearing they were planning to hold last Wednesday; the House leadership announced they have no intention of considering this bill; and at the end of the week Senator Reid announced he was postponing the vote until a "compromise" could be reached. The American people are speaking, and with their continued grassroots efforts the marketplace for free ideas and communication will prevail over government controls and censorship.

WHAT I THINK........JOHN DeVOE

2012-01-19T09:23:00.000+02:00

Ron Paul is an enemy of the people. That is, in a literary sense. In 1882, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen penned a tragicomedy that, in many ways, mirrors Dr. Ron Paul's political career.

'An Enemy of the People' addresses the irrational tendencies of the masses, and the hypocritical and corrupt nature of the political system that they support. It is the story of one brave man's struggle to do the right thing and speak the truth in the face of extreme social intolerance," according to Wikipedia.

The protagonist of the play, Dr. Stockmann, "is taunted and denounced as a lunatic, an 'Enemy of the People.'" In the end, the well-intentioned doctor loses his friends and reputation, but emboldens himself with these words: the strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.
Years ago, I'm ashamed to admit, I dismissed Ron Paul as a crazy old man. Of course, I did so without listening to anything that Dr. Paul had said or reading anything that he wrote. I was parroting what I heard from others (they were probably doing the same.

Then came the financial crisis of 2008, and I was led down a rabbit hole.

The political response to the crisis (bailouts, opacity, rewarding failure) did not sit well with me -- I became obsessed with economics, the Federal Reserve and the track record of U.S. politicians. Within months, I had disavowed political parties (may the best man, or woman, win) and taken an interest in Mr. End the Fed, Ron Paul.

Nobody's Right All the Time (or, Interest Rates are Tough to Predict)
When Ron Paul opposed the war in Iraq in 2002, he was a vocal minority. Unfortunately, his concerns proved valid.

In the same year, Congressman Paul warned of a housing bubble and went so far as to introduce legislation intended to limit taxpayer exposure to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the bill never made it past a committee led by Rep. Mike Oxley and minority ranking member, Rep. Barney Frank).

While Paul's foes -- both Republican and Democrat -- would like to portray him as a stopped clock (unwavering, and only accurate a small percentage of the time), this is simply not the case.

In a speech before Congress, Paul confessed his fears of how America might change in the next five to 10 years. A decade later his warnings seem a lot less crazy, rather, heartfelt and prescient.

A Champion of Conservatism -- and Liberalism?

In 2004, Dr. Keith Poole -- a political science professor at the University of Georgia -- ranked 3,320 politicians (who have held office anytime between 1937-2002) from most liberal to most conservative. Ronald Reagan ranked as 77th most conservative, Barry Goldwater, 50th.
Ron Paul ranked first.

So how can it be that GOP voters (as polled by Rasmussen) view Ron Paul as the least conservative of the GOP candidates? Or that pundits like Dick Morris have referred to Dr. Paul as a left-wing radical. I offer this assessment:

Republicans have forgotten what conservatism once meant:

■conserving the resources and finances of the Republic,
■conserving the lives of American troops, and
■conserving the powers of the federal government.
This is the platform that Republican Congressman Howard Buffett (#40) -- Warren Buffett's father -- once stood on, and this is the platform that Ron Paul stands on now.

However, it is important to note that by conserving the powers of the federal government, this allows for liberal ideas to flourish (should the people of individual states want them to).

But states' rights aren't perfect -- far from.

Under Ron Paul's strict interpretation of the Constitution, states could impose ridiculous, backwards laws that restrict personal freedom. These states, however, would probably suffer an exodus of talented individuals (or the government would soon be overturned).

In essence, states' rights are a form of antitrust act -- it's much easier to escape to one of 49 other states than it is to abandon your citizenship in the face of oppressive federal laws. It's also what our Founding Fathers had in mind.

Not Anybody but Obama

My closest acquaintance s (mostly Republicans) think I'm a nut for my willingness to support Ron Paul because they fear that he (as a third party) will erode the vote of an "electable" GOP candidate, thereby securing a second term for President Obama.

I, too, would find that outcome undesirable -- but I'm no happier with the other side of the coin.

On New Year's Eve, without scrutiny, President Obama codified his ability to detain and imprison American citizens indefinitely, without trial. My acquaintances decry the president for this, yet ignore the fact that the bill received near-unanimous support from Republican legislators. Every GOP presidential candidate -- with the exception of Ron Paul -- has expressed support for overreaching executive power.

Never mind the fact that the U.S. has already abused similar powers (holding an innocent Turkish man prisoner, for years, without charge or trial). We've also assassinated American citizens abroad (one of them a teenager), again, without charge or trial.

This does not make America safer -- it provides our enemies with powerful propaganda and makes America a more attractive target.

The Illusion of Choice (and Change)

Democrats have long voted for war and reduced civil liberties. Republicans have voted for increased government and unbridled spending. Both parties have offered the power of government to the highest bidder.
I once wrote that in choosing a political candidate, Americans should first ask themselves two questions:

1.Would this candidate allow any form of harm (economic, social, physical) to be inflicted on America if it meant scoring a personal or political gain?
2.If not, does this candidate have the wherewithal and strength of character to ask the same question of his or her peers?
In my opinion, Ron Paul passes this test. For that matter, so does a guy like Rep. Dennis Kucinich (167th most liberal), whom I hold in higher esteem than the president or his GOP opponents. Integrity can be found if we look for it.

Where I Stand

I hate guns. Same goes for drugs and war. I believe that rights are, by definition, applicable to all persons of any creed, religion or sexual orientation. I don't think a gold standard is necessary.

I wish that education, housing and health care were available to all Americans, yet I'm realistic enough to admit that our government's involvement in these industries (though well-intentioned), has led to ever-escalating costs. Decades ago, a single income could pay for a home, an education and medical services. Inflation and wage stagnation have made this a distant memory for nearly all Americans.

I don't believe that Ron Paul has all the answers, and if he were elected president, I don't believe that he could achieve most of his policy goals (by his own admission, this is a good thing -- the president is not a dictator).

Nevertheless, Ron Paul has my vote.

My intention in writing all of this is not to persuade you, the reader, to vote for Ron Paul. Persuasion is the tool of political parties, or "pressure groups," as Ludwig von Mises liked to call them.

Instead, I hope that you -- if you have not before -- will stop voting on party lines and instead, trust in your own judgment. Elections are an investment in the future of our country. To that end, I'll leave you with the immortal words of the "father of value investing," Benjamin Graham:
You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right.

WHAT I THINK.........MARK CROVELLI

2012-01-19T09:11:00.000+02:00

Republicans sure have short memories. It was just four years ago that they went to the polls in the primaries and elected the most "moderate" and "electable" candidate they could find in the hope that they had a man who was palatable to the general population. Their reward for their unprincipled pragmatism was an ass-kicking in the general election that few Americans will ever forget. John McCain and Sarah Palin certainly won’t forget it.

Four years later, having learned absolutely nothing from the election of 2008, Republican voters are once again lining up behind the most moderate and supposedly "electable" candidate that they can find in the pragmatic hope that they can beat Obama in the general election. They have become so unprincipled and pragmatic, in fact, that they are lining up behind the very man who brought European-style socialized medicine to our fair shores, simply because they have been told that he is more "electable" than anyone else in the field. How they can expect an outcome that’s better than four years ago is difficult to fathom, unless they think that their new moderate’s plastic hair can compensate for his obvious blandness.

In one respect, moreover, the selection of this particular "moderate" is even more ridiculous than the selection of the kooky moderate four years ago. This guy came in second place in the primaries to the "moderate" who got his ass handed to him in the general election. Think about that for a minute. This guy was moderate enough to come in second in the primaries four years ago, when the Republicans first decided to eschew principle and select a moderate, and yet he was deemed less "electable" than the guy who lost so badly.

In other words, if the more "electable" moderate got his ass kicked four years ago, how badly is the second-place moderate going to do this time around?

Here’s a novel idea for Republicans: Vote based upon principle, not based upon whatever the bobble-headed morons in the media establishment say is strategically expedient. Your strategic pragmatism got you nowhere four years ago. Young people and independents in this country are not any more impressed with bland flip-floppers from Massachusetts than they are impressed with nut-job moderates from Arizona. These guys don’t even impress Republicans themselves. If they want a "moderate" who stands for war and socialized medicine, they might as well stick with the moderate, warmongering socialist they already have.

How about nominating someone who has a record of standing up for individual liberty for once? How about nominating someone who believes in the Constitution for once? How about nominating someone who opposes liberal nation-building and warmongering for once? How about voting for a real capitalist for once?

In other words, how about voting based upon your own damn principles for once, instead of voting like pragmatic Trotskyites taking strategic orders from the political-media establishment? Forget this ridiculous, immoral and futile idea of "electability" and vote for Ron Paul and the principles of your own party.

WHAT I THINK.......TOM DiLORENZO

2012-01-19T09:09:00.000+02:00

Yet another neocon Republican establishment political hack has demonstrated ignorance, deceit, and bad manners in yet another attack on Ron Paul. This time it is one Jeffrey Lord, a "contributing editor" to The American Spectator magazine. Writing in a January 15 article on the Philly.com Web site, Lord feigns outrage over the fact that five years ago Ron Paul told NBC’s "Meet the Press" that the Civil War was unnecessary to end slavery. Lord is being deceitful here by taking what Ron Paul said out of context. I remember Ron Paul’s appearance on that show, and the point he was making was that all the rest of the world – the British, Spaniards, French, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, the Northern states in the U.S. – ended slavery peacefully in the nineteenth century. His point was that we should have done what the British did, and used tax dollars to purchase the freedom of the slaves and then ended it forever. That, Said Ron Paul, would have been preferable to a war that ended up killing over 650,000 Americans (850,000 according the the very latest historical research) while destroying a large part of the U.S. economy. Lord is obviously ignorant of all of this history.

Lord cites my book, The Real Lincoln, to feign additional outrage over the fact that I supposedly called Lincoln a "Dictator-President." He apparently suffered a case of the vapors when he discovered that Ron Paul listed The Real Lincoln as "recommended reading" at the end of his own book, Revolution: A Manifesto. I don’t ever recall ever using those exact words about Lincoln, but I do know that generations of historians have routinely referred to "the Lincoln dicatatorhip," although usually calling it a benign dictatorship. They have done this because of Lincoln’s illegal suspension of Habeas Corpus, the mass imprisonment of tens of thousands of Northern political dissenters, the shutting down of hundreds of opposition newspapers, the deportation of opposition member of Congress Clement L. Vallandigham, the rigging of elections, and worse. (Read Freedom Under Lincoln by Dean Sprague; and Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln by James Randall). Lord is obviously ignorant of these historical facts as well.

Jeffrey Lord is simply lying when he writes that "[Ron] Paul shares with DiLorenzo the belief that the war was not fought over issues of Union . . ." That in fact is exactly what I have argued in my writings. Southerners (and most Northern newspaper editors as well, by the way) believed that the union was voluntary, that the states that ratified the Constitution were sovereign, and that they therefore had a right to join or not join the Union. Lincoln believed that the union was a compulsory union from which there could never under any circumstances be any escape, and that he consequently had a right to wage total war on the civilian population of the South to "save the union." I have argued that Lincoln destroyed the American union of the founders, which was in fact a voluntary union.

I have also quoted Lincoln himself as saying that his invasion of the Southern states was not to free the slaves but to "save the union" by destroying the right of secession. Lord expresses additional outrage that I have repeated Lincoln’s own views in my writing, instead of the comic book version of history that he prefers, which says that Lincoln launched an invasion to supposedly free the slaves. Of course, the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress also announced to the world at the beginning of the Civil War that the purpose of the war was not to interfere with slavery but to "save the union." Jeffrey Lord is obviously ignorant of this aspect of American history as well.

What’s even worse, says Jeffrey Lord, many contributors to LewRockwell.com, such as myself, "are no fans" of some of the more notorious members of the neocon cabal such as "William F. Buckley, Jr., Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin"!! To this I plead guilty. Why, even "Rick Santorum also makes the list" of political figures who have been criticized by people like myself on LewRockwell.com. Off with our heads!

Jeffrey Lord also lies when he writes that "The Constitution, DiLorenzo maintains, is a ‘subversion’ orchestrated by Founding Father Alexander Hamilton to overthrow what DiLorenzo calls America’s first constitution – the Articles of Confederation." First of all, I am hardly the first to note that the Constitution overthrew the Articles of Confederation. Scholars have been saying this for more than 200 years, but Jeffrey Lord is of course ignorant of this fact as well.

Secondly, I have never argued that Hamilton "orchestrated" the Constitution as some kind of "subversion." Hamilton was essentially the original neocon, who showed up at the constitutional convention advocating a permanent president who would appoint all state governors, who would in turn have veto power over all state legislation. He did not get his way; the Constitution did not create a king, nor did it allow for the creation of an interventionist, mercantilist, corporate welfare empire of the sort Hamilton desired. (It wouldn’t be until the Lincoln administration that that was achieved). Hamilton did invent the idea of "implied powers" of the Constitution, and was the first to make the expansive interpretations of the Welfare and Commerce Clauses of the Constitution that have been used to essentially destroy the ability of the Constitution to limit the growth of government. I explain the Hamiltonian subversion of the Constitution that took place for decades after Hamilton’s death in my book, Hamilton’s Curse.

Perhaps the most ridiculous part of Jeffrey Lord’s rant is that he invokes the left-wing hate group known as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as one of his "authorities" in criticizing Ron Paul (and me). The SPLC espouses a communistic political philosophy and is so radical that it holds the confessed terrorist and murderer William Ayers up as a role model for children on its Web site, along with a woman named "Red Emma" Goldman, a twentieth-century communist who advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government in order to adopt communism in America. (Ayers admitted setting off bombs at the Capitol Building in Washington and at police stations in the 1960s, and recently told the New York Times that he wishes he had set off even more bombs).

The modus oprandi of the SPLC is to publicly label any and all critics of its left-wing extremism as "haters" or somehow "linked to" hate groups. When the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. sponsored a public lecture on immigration policy, for example, the SPLC accused AEI of "mainstreaming hate." The scholars at AEI are all really KKK guys in nice suits, you see. When the TEA Party movement was formed as a response to Obama’s mad rush to socialism the SPLC issued a special report on the movement that had the subtitle, "The Year in Hate." These are the kinds of people who Jeffrey Lord of The American Spectator magazine chooses to associate himself with to assist him in his ignorant smears of Ron Paul and me.

WHAT I THINK........PAT BUCHANAN

2012-01-13T16:34:00.002+02:00

Last May, Ron Paul filed his financial disclosure form, and The Wall Street Journal enlisted financial analyst William Bernstein to scrutinize his investments.

"Paul's portfolio isn't merely different," said an astonished Journal, "it's shockingly different."

Twenty-one percent of his $2.4 to $5.5 million was in real estate, 14 percent in cash. He owns no bonds. Only 0.1 percent is invested in stocks, and Paul bought these "short," betting the price will plunge. Every other nickel is sunk into gold and silver mining companies.

Bernstein "had never seen such an extreme bet on economic catastrophe," said the Journal.

"This portfolio," said Bernstein, "is a half step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and 9-millimeter rounds."

"You can say this for Ron Paul," conceded the Journal. "In investing as in politics, (Paul) has the courage of his convictions."

Indeed, he does. Paul's investments mirror his belief that the empire of debt is coming down and Western governments will never repay – in dollars of the same value – what they have borrowed.

And here we come to the reason Paul ran a strong third in Iowa and a clear second in New Hampshire. He is a conviction politician and, like Barry Goldwater and George McGovern, the candidate of a cause.

Aware it is unlikely he will ever be president, the 76-year-old soldiers on in the belief that this cause will one day triumph in a party where he was, not long ago, seen as an odd duck, but a party where today he speaks for a national constituency.

It is easy to understand why the young are attracted to him. There is a consistency here no other candidate can match.

Republicans may deplore the GOP Great Society of Bush 43. Paul stood almost alone in voting against every Bush measure. By two-to-one, Americans now believe the Iraq War was a mistake. Paul, alone among the candidates, opposed the war.

And because his campaign is about a cause larger than himself, it is a safe bet he will not quit this race until the last caucuses have met and the last primary has been held.

Prediction: Paul will go into the Tampa, Fla., convention with more delegates than any other candidate save the nominee of the party.

There is a gnawing fear in the GOP that Paul will quit the party when the primaries are over and run as a third-party candidate on the Libertarian or some other line in the November election.

Not going to happen. Such a decision would sunder the movement Paul has pulled together, bring about his own and his party's certain defeat in November, and re-elect Barack Obama.

Paul would become a pariah in his party, while his son, Sen. Rand Paul, who would be forced to endorse his father over the GOP nominee, would be ruined as a future Republican leader.

Why would Dr. Paul do this, when the future inside the GOP looks bright not only for him but for his son?

The course Ron Paul will likely take, then, is this.

Commit to this nomination battle all the way to Tampa, contest every primary and caucus, amass a maximum of delegates.

If Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich lose in South Carolina, they will lose in Florida, and begin to peel off and drop out, for none is a cause candidate and each will soon come to realize that his presidential aspirations are done for now if not for good.

Their departure will leave the Republican contest a Romney-Paul race, giving Paul half a year on the campaign trail to increase his visibility, enlarge his following, grow his mailing lists and broaden his donor base.

In return for a commitment to campaign for the ticket, Paul should demand a prime-time speaking slot at the convention and use the speech to emulate Barry Goldwater in 1960 when he admonished conservatives at the convention to "grow up," so that "we can take this party back."

Assuming the nominee is Mitt Romney, should he win in the fall and Paul has campaigned for him, Paul will not only have a friend in the White House, but be a respected figure in the party with a constituency all his own.

Most important to Paul are the issues he has campaigned on: a new transparency and accountability for the Federal Reserve, a downsizing of the American empire, and an end to U.S. interventions in foreign quarrels and wars that are none of our business.

Whether Paul goes home to Texas when his last term in Congress is over in January 2013, or whether he remains in Washington in a policy institute to advance the causes he believes in, his views will be sought out by the major media on all the issues he cares about.

Moreover, his fears of a coming collapse, manifest in his portfolio, could come to pass, making of Ron Paul a prophet in his own time.

THE ULTIMATE CONSUMER PROTECTION

2012-01-09T22:49:00.002+02:00

This week, partisan games in Washington reached a fevered pitch as Congress acted to prevent recess appointments, yet the administration made them anyway. Congress has been gaveling into session for less than a minute every three days for the express purpose of technically staying in session. The 40 second "pro forma" sessions may strike supporters of the President as obstructionist, but Congress was using its clear constitutional authority and playing by the rules. Frustrated, the President simply disregarded the Constitution, and appointed Richard Cordray as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Board, and Sharon Block, Richard Griffin, and Terence Flynn to the National Labor Relations Board anyway.

Playing fast and loose with the Constitution only gets worse with every administration. Because of the dangerous precedents being set, both parties would be wise to defend constitutional bounds, no matter who crosses the line. Defending a constitutional overstep always comes back to haunt them once power changes hands.

The Obama administration expressed extreme frustration with the Senate's refusal to confirm its nominees. The truth is, for better or worse, these are the cards the voters have dealt Washington. The Constitution, with its system of checks and balances, not only allows for gridlock, it practically guarantees some degree of it. The Founders knew that gridlock can be a very good thing. If nothing can be agreed upon in Washington, harm to the country is limited. Considering the Obama administration's ideas of what caused our problems, and how to solve them, the wisdom of the founders certainly shines through today.

According to the administration, the new Consumer Financial Protection Board is an absolute necessity. Another bureaucracy, with more rules and red tape and paperwork and procedures is supposed to protect the people from bad actors in the marketplace. On the contrary, the answer was staring us in the face in late 2008 when these bad banks and corporations threatened to go belly-up. The laws of economics were working to remove corrupt companies from the market forever, to never abuse or defraud another customer or depositor or shareholder again. Bankruptcy is the ultimate consumer protection, and what did Washington do? It protected the banks instead, and created more bureaucrats.

This is exactly why constitutionally-inflicted gridlock should be respected. But instead it is clearer than ever that we are now a nation ruled by men, not laws. This nation needs to respect the Constitution again. No exceptions. The oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution is still in effect when checks and balances get in the way of a political agenda. If not, it has no meaning at all.

WHAT I THINK........JUSTIN RAIMONDO

2012-01-09T09:50:00.002+02:00

The results of the Iowa caucus have the news media spinning a "victory" for Mitt Romney, the Goldman-Sachs candidate, and the supposedly all-but-inevitable nominee of his party. Just why he was deemed the "frontrunner" before even a single vote had been cast is a mystery known only to the professional pundits, who seem to have bestowed this title on him because of his perfect hair and his perfectly unauthentic persona. Romney is the Stepford Candidate, robotically repeating those phrases which are expected of him with all the conviction of a simulacrum. Which leads one to wonder: how can this preprogrammed human automaton ever hope to defeat the personable and relatively authentic Obama?

For those with more imagination, the victor in this fight has been Rick Santorum, whose surge toward the end put him within a dozen or so votes of Romney. Hours after the results were announced, we were treated to the sight of breathless commentators anointing a candidate with no money and no real conservative credentials as the One True Anti-Romney who could snatch the crown from Mitt’s brow.

The Iowa caucus results are supposed to be all about "expectations," which begs the question: whose expectations? Why, the mainstream media’s, of course, a fact which – you’ll note – allows these guardians of the conventional wisdom to play their key role as the final arbiters of what all this voting means. And the formulaic "spin" had been determined far in advance: if Romney won, then his coronation was supposed to be foreordained. If anybody but Romney won, it would simply delay Romney’s final victory. If Ron Paul won, then the Iowa caucuses would henceforth be deemed "irrelevant."

Peter Feaver, writing on foreignpolicy.com, was typically dismissive of Paul’s showing:

"The Iowa results probably indicate that there will not be a big crack-up within the Republican party on foreign policy because the caucus returns are likely to be the high-water mark for the candidate with the most distinctive foreign policy platform in the field: Ron Paul. He did well enough to gain another week of press attention. But in the one contest best-suited to his unusual political operation, Paul did not beat expectations. He would have to really surprise in New Hampshire in order to remain relevant in the later primaries, and those are likely to be even tougher terrain for him."

It’s all about "press attention" – but what if it isn’t? What if it’s possible to bypass the traditional gatekeepers and create a movement weaned on alternative media and rising populist anger at the Washington-New York power elite? Because that is precisely what Paul has done, and that movement has hardly crested in the wilds of Iowa: it’s only owing to a deficiency of imagination on the part of Feaver and his confreres, a curious sort of tunnel vision, that allows them that assumption.

The reality of Paul’s accomplishment is clear, as the feisty congressman pointed out in his final Iowa speech to his supporters:

"But also, the great strides that we have made has been really on foreign policy. The fact that we can once again talk in Republican circles and make it credible. Talk about what Eisenhower said that beware of the military-industrial complex. Talk about the old days when Robert Taft, Mr. Republican, said that we shouldn’t be engaged in these entangling alliance. He believed what the founders taught us. He didn’t even want to be in NATO. We certainly don’t need NATO and the UN telling us when to go to war.

"But we have seen a great difference. The majority of the American people are behind us on this whole war effort. They’re tired of the war. Cost too much money. Too many people get killed. Too many people get injured. Too many people get sick. And the majority – maybe 70% or 80% – of the American people now are saying it’s time to get out of Afghanistan."

At every debate, and every campaign appearance, Paul is transforming the discourse. Forced to start noticing him due to his steadily climbing poll numbers, the mainstream media invariably dismissed his ability to expand beyond a narrow libertarian base, which was supposedly limited by his "isolationist" foreign policy views. Yet he managed to pull off what was essentially a three-way tie, denying the alleged frontrunner and the media-anointed "conservative" a clear victory.

I’ll note, in passing, that Democrats opposed to our aggressive foreign policy are almost never described as "isolationists," and one can hardly imagine a reporter referring to the demonstrations protesting the Iraq war as "isolationist" rallies. The left-right, red state-blue state lens the media clamps over every event distorts and masks a somewhat more complex underlying reality.

Much has been made of Paul’s youthful constituency, and his lead in commanding the support of political independents and Democrats who signed up as Republicans for the evening, and yet less is said about the 18 percent of evangelicals who cast their lot with the one presidential candidate who wants to dismantle the Empire. In spite of a relentless smear campaign led by Fox News and the neoconservative would-be policemen of the right, nearly a quarter of Iowa Republicans stood with Paul at the caucuses.

The icing on this cake is that the candidate made no attempt to downplay or hide his supposedly "controversial" foreign policy views: indeed, he emphasized them even when he was talking about domestic policy, tying the conservative project of dismantling the federal Leviathan to the need to drop the burden of empire. That over 20 percent of Iowa caucus-goers voted to endorse Paul’s uncompromising anti-interventionism scares the bejesus out of the GOP establishment because the Paulians aren’t going to go away. Well-funded and blessed with a growing army of enthusiastic volunteers, the Paul campaign has the resources to go all the way to Tampa.

The Iowa results lay bare the contours of the GOP’s constituency, and the changing face of the American right. The Romney camp represents the often-pronounced dead but never quite moribund Eastern Establishment or "moderate" wing of the Republican party. Santorum, for his part, is an unrepentant Bushian Republican, although you’ll never hear that name pass his lips. Ideologically, he represents Big Government conservatism married to an impossibly bellicose foreign policy which has us bombing Iran next week. In this, he is simply a younger, slimmer Newt Gingrich, with two less wives: it’s no surprise the original Newt has proposed a non-aggression pact with Santorum, offering to serve as Rick’s attack dog against Romney.

The real news out of Iowa is that the terms of the foreign policy debate in this country are being changed, and it’s all due to Paul’s singular voice. For the first time since the Vietnam war era, the electorate is being given the chance to vote for or against our foreign policy of perpetual war. What’s more, that battle is being fought inside the party that presided over and directed America’s post-9/11 rampage through the Muslim world: the very heart of the War Party’s territory. That this debate is even taking place is a victory in itself. Airily dismissed in the salons of Georgetown and Manhattan’s Upper West Side as a "fringe" candidate and the GOP’s "crazy old uncle," Paul’s solid showing demonstrated his growing political clout.

The various "conservative" aspirers to the role of the Anti-Romney all crashed and burned because the various strands of conservative thought they embodied have all failed to provide Americans with any way out of the crisis we face. Bachmann’s paint-by-numbers sloganeering and her reputation as a fount of misinformation, Cain’s cynical and formulaic pragmatism, Perry’s pastiche of Bush II, Newt’s warmed-over "compassionate conservatism" served up with a dollop of corruption – all have failed miserably in the realm of ideas, as well as at the ballot box.

Santorum represents the last best hope of the same neocons who led the Republicans to defeat in 2008. When Santorum denies the very existence of the Palestinians as a people he is appealing to the Likud wing of the GOP – a constituency hotly contested by Romney, whose foreign policy team is weighted heavily with neocons. The problem with this strategy is that the majority of Republicans are just as war-weary as the rest of us: while Santorum and Romney are bemoaning the official end of the US occupation of Iraq, polls show a majority of self-identified Republicans think the Iraq war wasn’t worth it. In this judgment they reflect the views of the majority of Americans, who want us out of Afghanistan, too.

We hear loud war cries emanating from the vicinity of Washington and New York, but where are the massive pro-war demonstrations demanding we act to stop the alleged [.pdf] Iranian "threat"? All we see and hear is Michelle Bachmann and a bunch of bleach-blonde Fox News anchors bleating that Paul is "dangerous" because he wants to avert World War III. All we hear is failed presidential candidate and bloated braggart Newt Gingrich declaring he’d vote for Obama rather than the "isolationist" Paul.

At least Gingrich is being honest for once. He’s telling us that all the talk about fiscal conservatism, the free market, and individual liberty is just window-dressing: what he and his fellow neocons are really after is the ability to launch more and bigger wars, and if they have to throw their "smaller government" baggage overboard to reach their goal, then so be it.

How long before the Santorum bubble expands beyond its capacity to encompass the truth and pops is anyone’s guess: mine is that it will be sooner rather than later. As more of Santorum’s Bush era positions come out, especially on economic issues, party conservatives in search of an alternative to Romney will have no one but Ron to turn to.

Paul is often disdained as a "protest" candidate, but every revolution starts out as a mere episodic protest. Paul’s Iowa campaign proved two things: 1) the anti-interventionist wing of the GOP is substantial, and 2) it is here to stay. Paul has set an important precedent: for the first time since the 1930s, a Republican politician who challenges the militarist malarkey coming out the mouths of our "conservative" politicians commands a mass following. That is a victory all advocates of peace, on the left as well as the right, ought to be celebrating.

WHAT I THINK........GARY NORTH

2012-01-07T12:49:00.002+02:00

Ron Paul is a master of rhetoric. The average TV commentator does not understand this. I do. That's because, ever since age 16, I have been a very effective speaker. I always wanted to be a master of rhetoric. "Nice try. No cigar." Ron Paul got the cigar.

In 1976, I wrote a speech for him: 2-minutes long. He decided not to use it. That was one of his wiser moves. He never has used a speech writer. That, too, has been wise.

I hear the criticism that Ron Paul is not a polished speaker. This criticism is correct. But he is a nevertheless a master of rhetoric.

How can both positions be true? Because rhetoric is all about persuasion. Great oratory is not necessary.

It is usually assumed that a spellbinder is a master of rhetoric and vice versa. This is not necessarily the case. The mark of mastery of rhetoric is this: the speaker persuades a crowd to accept something that it had previously opposed. A supreme master is a person who has not only changes their minds but persuades the listeners to take action. This is so rare as to be unheard of.

The greatest master of political rhetoric in American history was William Jennings Bryan. He was also a great orator. He made a fortune on the lecture circuit after 1896. With one speech in 1896, he changed American history. He converted the low-tariff, low-tax, pro-gold standard Democrat Party into a Populist, statist political organization. It was captured by Progressive Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Nothing like this had happened before. Nothing like it has happened since.

The Wiki account of his "Cross of Gold" speech is accurate.

Now, Bryan was ready to conclude the speech, and according to his biographer, Michael Kazin, step "into the headlines of American history".

Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
As Bryan spoke his final sentence, recalling the Crucifixion of Jesus, he placed his hands to his temples, fingers extended; with the final words, he extended his arms to his sides straight out to his body and held that pose for about five seconds as if offering himself as sacrifice for the cause, as the audience watched in dead silence. He then lowered them, descended from the podium, and began to head back to his seat as the stillness held.

Bryan later described the silence as "really painful" and momentarily thought he had failed. As he moved down the aisle, the Coliseum burst into pandemonium. Delegates threw hats, coats, and handkerchiefs into the air. Others took up the standards with the state names on them with each delegation, and planted them by Nebraska's. Two alert police officers had joined Bryan as he left the podium, anticipating the crush. The policemen were swept away by the flood of delegates, who raised Bryan to their shoulders and carried him around the floor. The Washington Post newspaper recorded, "bedlam broke loose, delirium reigned supreme."

In that brief time of silence, a thousand delegates reconsidered a political legacy going back to Thomas Jefferson, extending to Andrew Jackson, and -- still in office -- Grover Cleveland. Then they switched sides. That was rhetoric in action.

Ron Paul possesses this gift. He is persuading people to change their minds. He is gaining support where it should not be available: among recent graduates of the tax-funded school system.

This report in Time is indicative.

David Richardson, clad in his black leather Led Zeppelin jacket, rode his bicycle into the middle of the Iowa Speedway in Newton. There were no drivers on the track, but there was a different kind of race under way in a small building at the center of the facility -- one fueled by money and votes instead of gasoline. Texas Congressman Ron Paul was there on Wednesday afternoon to make his case for becoming the next President.
One look at Richardson, a 28-year-old factory worker, and it was clear he had already been won over. Along with a thick nose ring, he sported a Paul beanie and a Paul T-shirt bearing Iowa's state motto: "Our liberties we prize, and our rights we will maintain." Richardson is one of many young people rallying to the 76-year-old Republican's candidacy. Some, like Richardson, have volunteered for him and are committed to voting for him; others are just intrigued. But the appeal is undeniable, and it could well determine where Paul finishes in Tuesday's first-in-the-nation caucuses.

Despite his age, there is an air of rock 'n' roll around Paul. One supporter even flashed the rock-out-horns sign when asked on Thursday whether he was sold on the candidate: "Hell, yeah, for Ron Paul!" he said. "The message of liberty is really appealing to younger people," says Richardson, a heavy-metal fan who got interested in politics through battles over music censorship. One can spot dreadlocks or "Paul is my homeboy" T-shirts in the crowd at his campaign events. American Idol pop star Kelly Clarkson recently endorsed Paul on Twitter.

This is surreal. Paul is the oldest person ever to be a serious contender for a major party's nomination for President. (Mike Gravel was older, but he was never a serious contender. Harold Stassen in his last -- twelfth -- try in 2000 had been a joke ever since 1964, and he knew it. He was doing a recurring Pat Paulson routine.) Reagan, playfully referred to as "geezer," was 73 when he ran against Mondale in 1984. He had already won once. Yet Paul does not seem old. Everyone knows he is 76, but it's not a major topic in the media. It helps that, except for his knees, he is in better physical shape than the talking heads. He has always been in top-flight physical condition -- except for his knees. In a swimming pool or on a bicycle, he is not to be trifled with.

[I have an idea for a YouTube ad. Paul is riding his bicycle. He is wearing a gold colored jacket. On its back we see this in red: Judgment Day. He is carrying a pole. As he rides down a bicycle trail, he passes a series of signs. Federal Reserve System. Whack! Down it goes. Department of Education. Whack! Department of Energy. Whack! And so on, as he rides off into the sunset. There would be a pirated version that goes viral. A voice-over is heard. "I am Ben Bernanke, and I do not approve of this ad."]
The article continues. The heart of his message is optimism. (Note: that was also true of Reagan's rhetoric.)

And there are parts of Paul's stump speech that communicate youthful earnestness and optimism. "What you want to do with your life, what your religious beliefs are, what your intellectual pursuits are, what your private habits are -- that's part of freedom," he said in Council Bluffs on Thursday. Paul's campaign manager, Jesse Benton, says young people have an "amazing BS meter," and they often say they see Paul as more sincere, more reliable than the other candidates. "He's somebody that will solve the problems going on right now," says 17-year-old Aaron Schoppe, who will attend his first caucus this year. "They haven't had time to become cynical yet," says Benton.
They are young. They do not really understand the Austrian theory of the business cycle: "Intense pain now, permanent relief later." They may not have mortgages. They may not have wives and kids. But they do see what's coming if the federal deficit is not brought under control: disaster. No other candidate hammers on this.

The article observes: "It's not just stylistic." This is the heart of the matter. For 2,300 years, rhetoric has been associated with style. Yet this is not the heart of rhetoric. Persuasion is.

Paul's antiestablishment policies can be every bit as bewitching as his antiestablishment rhetoric. "I never thought I would see the day when it would be cool to be a libertarian on a college campus, but it is," says Blake Whitten, a statistics professor who sponsors the group Youth for Ron Paul on the University of Iowa campus, where the student newspaper endorsed the candidate this month. "We have all these kids running around with T-shirts that say 'End the Fed,' and a lot of them don't completely understand what the Fed is." When asked what piqued his interest in Paul, a 22-year-old Atlantic cook who caucused with Democrats in 2008 cited "regaining value to the U.S. currency."
Then there is the issue of war. He really is the only peace candidate in modern American history. He has the voting record to prove it. Generally, young people favor peace, as long as the country is not literally under attack. Why? Because their age group will pay the price. In one sense, his success here is not a mark of his rhetoric. Young people do not need to be persuaded. But in a deeper sense, his war stance is crucial to his rhetoric. He voted against the wars when it was unpopular to do this. That established his bona fides. Voters know they can trust him. He walks the talk. People are more likely to be persuaded by someone they trust.

Paul is a strict noninterventionist, opposed to all foreign aid and in favor of pulling U.S. troops back worldwide. "I'm not a typical conservative in that I don't like war," 28-year-old Ryan Sjaarda said at a town hall on Friday. "I think it's bad. I appreciate Ron Paul for that."
The article goes on: "But for all Paul's youthful support, there's still some question as to whether he can transform it into concrete electoral results." That is not my interest here. My interest is the fact that his ideas are getting a hearing where few of the pundits imagined they would as recently as six months ago.

The political engagement of young voters in the Hawkeye State gives the campaign some cause for optimism. A report released this summer by the nonpartisan group Rock the Vote found that young Iowans ranked second in the nation for voter participation: 63% of them cast ballots in the 2008 presidential election. And recent polls, like this one from Fox News, have shown that Paul's support doubles among voters under 50.
Richardson is doing his small part. After listening to Paul speak at the speedway, he hopped on his bicycle and pedaled toward home. After descending a hill, he suddenly stopped and turned around. He rode back to the building at the racetrack, where he picked up an armful of yard signs. Richardson didn't need one for himself -- he said he still has the giant lawn sign he put up in 2008. Even though the placards would be trying to carry on his bike, Richardson was determined to take them home for his neighbors -- a small price to pay for spreading the gospel of Paul.

He received 48% of the 18-29 voters in Iowa. These supporters are recent survivors of the indoctrination system known as the public schools. They had never been told of the existence of non-interventionism in foreign policy -- "isolationism" as it is refereed to. They had not heard of the gold standard. The last Presidential candidate to run on that platform was Alton B. Parker -- not a household name, surely. (I, of course, am a big Parker fan.) They had been conventional, that is, content with the welfare state. Ron Paul has changed their minds. He has also changed their behavior.

This is what rhetoric is all about. It is usually connected with masterful oratory. Not this time.

WHAT I THINK........ELLEN FINNIGAN

2012-01-06T11:18:00.002+02:00

In January 2003, two months before American forces invaded Iraq, in an address to the Diplomatic Corps, Pope John Paul II listed “certain requirements which must be met if entire peoples, perhaps even humanity itself, are not to sink into the abyss.” Among them he listed “Yes to life!” “No to death!” and “No to war!” In the political culture at large, war is rarely discussed as a moral issue, but as Catholic American voters, we must consider it one.

I believe that Ron Paul’s ideas on foreign policy, on war and peace in particular, when considered in light of Pope John Paul’s statements, make him the only truly pro-life candidate.

Regarding “Yes to life!” the Pope said, “War itself is an attack on human life, since it brings in its wake suffering and death. The battle for peace is always a battle for life!”

Ron Paul has said, “I get to my God through Christ. Christ, to me, is a man of peace. . . . He is not for war. He doesn’t justify preemptive war. I strongly believe that there is a Christian doctrine of just war. And I believe this nation has drifted from that. No matter what the rationales are, we have drifted from that, and it’s very, very dangerous, and in many ways unchristian. . . . That is what I see from my God and through Christ. I vote for peace.”

Congressman Paul even considers sanctions, such as the ones imposed on Iraq in the 1990s—which resulted, by some estimates, in over 100,000 Iraqi deaths—“an act of war.” He opposed the sanctions on Iraq and calls them immoral. He opposes sanctions on Iran. In his view, “[Sanctions] result in terrible, unnecessary suffering among the civilian population in the target countries and rarely even inconvenience their leaders.”

In addition to challenging diplomats and nation states to say no to war, Pope John Paul called for “respect for law.” The Pope acknowledges that the rule of law forms “the foundation of national and international stability.”

According to the Constitution, our supreme law which every president must swear to “preserve, protect and defend,” only Congress has the power to declare war. The last time Congress declared war was on Dec. 11, 1941. Since then, it has been abdicating this responsibility and transferring the power to the executive branch under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a process which circumvents the Constitution and ultimately the American people. Since then, we have had no clear victories in “war,” only an endless series of convoluted, indefinite entanglements with murky goals, murkier results, and thousands of lives lost.

Congressman Paul is the only presidential candidate who claims to have a problem with the way we now go to war, calling it not only “complex and deceptive” but “a danger to world peace.” He filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its “illegal war in Libya” and “abuse of war powers” in an effort to “force the Obama administration to obey the clear letter of the law.”

Paul is always the champion of the Constitution, which is to say the rule of law, but especially when it comes to war, because “a declaration of war limits the presidential powers, narrows the focus, and implies a precise end point to the conflict.”

Pope John Paul also outlined a “duty of solidarity,” saying that “it is important to spare no effort to ensure that everyone feels responsible for the growth and happiness of all.”

Congressman Paul has said that “history shows that without weapons and war, there is more food and prosperity for the people.” He describes his foreign policy as follows: “I would replace [a policy of mutually assured destruction] with a policy of mutually assured respect. . . . This requires simply tolerance of other cultures and their social and religious values and the giving up of all use of force to occupy or control other countries and their national resource. . . . This would result in the U.S. treating other nations exactly as we expect others to treat us, offering friendship with all who seek it, participating in trade with all who are willing. . . . This is the only practical way to promote peace, harmony and economic well-being to the maximum number of people in the world.”

In his eyes, “If America indeed has something good to offer—the cause of peace, prosperity, and liberty—it must be spread through persuasion and by example, not by intimidation, bribes and war.”

Pope John Paul explained to the Diplomatic Corps: “The peoples of the earth and their leaders must sometimes have the courage to say ‘No’. . . no to death! no to selfishness! and no to war! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity.”

Not only is Congressman Paul known as “Dr. No” on Capitol Hill, he does not mistake bellicosity for courage. On the issue of Iran, Paul said: “I think this wild goal to have another war in the name of defense is the dangerous thing. The danger is really us overreacting. . . . If [Michele Bachmann] thinks we live in a dangerous world, she ought to think back when I was drafted in 1962 with nuclear missiles in Cuba, and Kennedy calls Khrushchev and talks to him and talks him out of this, and we don’t have a nuclear exchange. You’re trying to dramatize this. We have to go to treat Iran like we treated Iraq? And kill a million Iraqis? And some 8,000 Americans have died since we’ve gone to war. You cannot solve these problems with war!”

As Pope John Paul suggested, “International law, honest dialogue, solidarity between States, the noble exercise of diplomacy: these are methods worthy of individuals and nations in resolving their differences.”

Similarly, Congressman Paul has said, “This policy of American domination and exceptionalism has allowed us to become an aggressor nation, supporting preemptive war, covert destabilization, foreign occupations, nation building, torture and assassinations. This policy has generated hatred toward Americans and provides the incentive for almost all of the suicide attacks against us and our allies.”

“We have 12,000 diplomats in our government. I suggest we start using our diplomats and do a little bit of diplomacy once in a while.”

Fittingly, Congressman Paul has named Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks as two of his heroes for their effective leadership through a commitment to the Gospel message of nonviolence. They were social diplomats for change through peace.

* * *

In a press conference on May 2, 2003, then-cardinal Ratzinger said, “Given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war'.”

Nobody really knows how many civilians have died in the “War on Terror,” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and the other countries we have bombed or are currently bombing. (Honestly, I can’t keep track. What are we up to in Yemen? Are we bombing them? Or are we are “just” assassinating American citizens with drone strikes?) A conservative estimate puts the number around 130,000 civilians dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, 1,500 in Pakistan, and 7,000 in Somalia. As Catholics, we must be honest with ourselves: Is this a Just War?

These deaths do not take account of the spiking suicide rate among American soldiers and veterans. Of the 30,000 suicides each year in America, about 20 percent are committed by veterans (from all wars), which makes for about 6,000 every year, or 18 per day. The suicide rate has been increasing significantly among young men who have fought in the War on Terror. About 300,000 troops suffer from PTSD. Psychologists are now saying that guilt, known clinically as “moral injury,” is a leading cause of PTSD. Moral injury describes ongoing inner conflict, feelings of guilt and shame related to moral dilemmas encountered in war, rather than the lingering anxiety from terror experienced during combat, at the sight of dead bodies or from fear of getting killed.This suggests that our military is suffering inner conflict as to whether what they are doing, or why and how they are doing it, is right and just.

And let us not overlook the 13,000 troops that have suffered traumatic brain injuries, the 40,000 maimed and wounded, the thousands who are drug addicted (to alcohol, illegal drugs, or prescription drugs for depression or chronic-pain management), not to mention the deaths caused by the war indirectly once soldiers get home (they have a much higher likelihood of dying in things like motorcycle crashes and drunk-driving accidents). Let us not overlook the children who are being raised with an absent parent due to deployment overseas, or the spouses of soldiers who struggle daily to raise their children alone. Let us not forget the families who see an increase in verbal and physical aggression after soldiers have come home mentally and spiritually crippled by PTSD.

“One of the greatest threats to the family is war,” Congressman Paul has said. “It undermines the family.”

Congressman Paul, who wants to “Bring home the troops!” and put and end to American empire abroad, has received more campaign donations from military personnel than all of the other Republican candidates combined. If we want to support the troops, maybe we should start paying more attention to who the troops support.

When asked what he thinks is the most pressing moral issue of our time, Congressman Paul said: “We now promote preemptive war. We have rejected the just war theory of Christianity.”

I think we Catholics need to start thinking a lot more about war as a “moral issue” and a “life issue” and not simply as an “election issue” or a matter of “policy.”

Congressman Paul says “yes to life.” He respects the Constitution and the rule of law. I believe his foreign policy, based on “mutually assured respect,” would encourage solidarity with people throughout the world. He has the courage to say no to war and reject war propaganda, and would instead engage in diplomacy, dialogue, and free trade to promote peace. He wants to protect all human life. For this, he has my vote. And I think, at a minimum, he is deserving of respect from Catholic voters.

Congressman Paul had this to say upon Pope John Paul II’s passing: “I would encourage those who wish to honor his memory to reflect on his teachings regarding war and the sanctity of life, and consider the inconsistencies in claiming to be pro-life but supporting the senseless killing of innocent people that inevitably accompanies militarism, or in claiming to be pro-peace and pro-compassion but supporting the legal killing of the unborn.”

The United States has the largest, most expensive and expansive, technologically advanced, dangerous military the world has ever known.

What if, as Ron Paul claims, Christianity actually teaches peace and not preventative wars of aggression?

What if, as John F. Kennedy proved, diplomacy could be far superior to bombs and bribes when it comes to protecting not only America, but the world?

What if, as Pope John Paul II said, “choices need to be made so that humanity can still have a future,” and “it depends on each of us?”

What if, as the Pope said, “Yet everything can change”?

Peace on Earth. Good will toward men. Ron Paul 2012

WHAT I THINK........GREG BULS

2012-01-06T11:16:00.002+02:00

The outcome in Iowa has Ron Paul solidly established and in an ideal position to move forward with confidence. If you’re watching the race at all, you’ve noticed that the GOP establishment has brought out the long knives, with Gingrich calling Paul’s supporters ‘indecent’, and Santorum saying that Paul is ‘disgusting‘. Virtually every ‘news’ story referencing Paul includes a declaratory statement that Paul cannot be nominated, or ‘almost certainly’ cannot. TV talking heads such as Politico’s Roger Simon were at least honest about the shared intent of the media and the GOP establishment: ‘If Paul wins Iowa we’ll just take it out (of the picture)’. Iowa’s own governor downplayed the importance of his state’s caucus outcome, should Paul win – something no other governor has done in American history.

In spite of the relentless assault against him, Paul’s support held up well, with a result mirroring most of the polls leading up to the caucuses. His supporters can’t possibly be discouraged – Paul’s support grew steadily over the months, and he finished near his peak. Santorum’s turn as ‘flavor of the week’, coming right after voters got another look at Newt Gingrich, came at the perfect time, further fracturing the establishment vote.

The Iowa results boost Paul’s chances for long-term success for a number of reasons.

- A lot of the negative attention that was aimed at Paul will now be focused on Santorum. The media may give Arlen Specter’s most important political ally a break, for now, but his opponents won’t. To the media, Santorum is a perfect GOP candidate – one they can easily trash when the time comes. His current appeal is a mile wide and a millimeter deep; there’s nothing of substance driving it – no scheme like Cain’s ’9-9-9 plan’, no great legislative achievements, nothing aside from the perception that he’d be ‘tough on terror’, that he speaks in earnest, and that he’s not Gingrich or Romney. As long as Santorum is in it, Romney and Gingrich will remain in, they likely think that Santorum’s chances to actually secure the nomination are nil.

- Romney’s finish makes any ‘inevitability’ talk look ridiculous. He seems to have a ceiling of 25%-30% of GOP primary voters, with no noticeable crossover enthusiasm from democrats, and little appeal to independents. The undecided voters will continue to ping-pong between the other candidates, with some sticking to Paul with each bounce. It seems that no matter what Romney says, does, or spends, he can’t gain any broader traction. He isn’t trusted by most republicans, for far better reasons than the GOP establishment posits for opposing Paul. There’s little prospect that Romney can change that fact, but he’s still going to grind it out.

- There isn’t much the GOP establishment can do to derail Paul going forward. Ballot registration deadlines are passing, and the look of a real race means the appearance of a new entry (from a bench that is shallow and all-establishment) is less likely. The GOP has shown an interest in gaming the convention, but they have already deeply alienated many of Paul’s supporters, who will easily constitute the difference in the next election, whether Paul is on the ballot or not. The more the GOP does that seems designed to deny him a fair chance at the nomination, the more people they will alienate. The damage may already be done; it’s hard to find any Paul supporters who show any enthusiasm for any other candidates. They know that this actually isn’t just like every other election, a choice between two evils. Our country is in the grip of something awful which transcends Obama, and we’re approaching the event horizon. For millions there is one way out and one captain, everything else is a distraction from reality.

The cake may already be baked for the GOP. They’ve made support of something akin to our current foreign policy the new litmus-test for respectability in the GOP. The damage they’ve already done to their party, with their wholesale abandonment of the party’s long-held ’11th Commandment’: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any republican”, may be too much to undo. If they are not yet worried and introspective, they should be.

- All of the candidates except perhaps Bachmann and Perry will remain in the race. They all realize that 15%-20% of GOP primary voters are up for grabs in any given month, and Bachmann and Perry’s supporters would add 15% or so to that pool. Paul should hope that the establishment vote remains divided for as long as possible, as he steadily builds his support.

- Gingrich’s finish, well behind Paul, makes it more likely this will be viewed as a two or three-man race, minus Gingrich. So he’s likely to get even more desperate. He’s the literal face of the establishment, bragging about his past ‘successes’ as our country circles the drain – he’s the GOP’s Obama. Gingrich’s remaining supporters are probably the least likely to support Paul. They’re comfortable with their man calling an elder statesman, who enjoys respect across the political spectrum, ‘indecent’. The longer Newt Gingrich hangs on, the better for Paul.

- The respectable Iowa finish gives Paul’s supporters hope for future success, and they will continue pushing hard. Every day that passes is another in which more people take a closer look at Ron Paul, and like him. His support can only grow; once attached, his voters aren’t easily shaken loose. Once you come to agree with Paul, you see the vast gulf between him and the other candidates. For most people, crossing that gulf is a one-way trip.

Paul’s message will improve and his arguments will crystallize in voters’ minds as he moves forward. He will paint a vivid picture of what life under constitutional government will be like for Americans, and show them a credible way to transition to that reality. Eventually, most voters will soberly compare the importance of Paul’s mismanagement of a newsletter with the establishment’s mismanagement of everything. Further moves against Iran will not sit well with war-weary voters, particularly if gas prices are affected. Backing off from confrontation with Iran bolsters Paul’s message that our policy is erratic, and that conflict is not inevitable. If conflict comes, Paul is also vindicated, since it will be far from ‘necessary’ and will have little to do with America’s security. It will be hard for the GOP to complain about anything Obama does to Iran; they have established their respect for undeclared war repeatedly, and they’ve been banging the war drums for months. Obama’s mistakes in Iran will be their mistakes as well. At home, private central bankers will continue to kick the debt can down the road, with more damaging intervention into the economy and more ‘money’ creation to fund the establishment’s fiat-money Ponzi scheme. Things are likely to unfold much as Paul has said they will, further enhancing his credibility.

In their hearts, most voters believe that at best, things might get a little better. And most of those voters only see the edges of reality. They are asleep to the depth of the rot and ruin that has been sowed by a ruling class which feels little for them but disdain. Though Ron Paul’s supporters share a greater awareness of this reality, they are also the only people in American politics who share a genuine hope about the future. Everyone else is knowingly faking it, their consciences paralyzed by fear of unknowns, such as constitutional government. Much of the confidence in Paul is based on his record of being right, and offering a proven path back to sanity – the restoration of constitutional government.

If our recent history were a disaster movie, the standard audience reaction would be quite predictable: most viewers would be hoping that the characters who didn’t warn about the disaster or do anything to avoid it would finally shut up, and let the guy who’s been right since the start of the film take over. Take the politics out of it and it becomes quite simple. On a purely rational level, this would be the only major issue in the campaign: Is there anyone competent running who saw how and why we got into these messes, has any idea what to do about them, and has the sand to do it?

WHAT I THINK...........THOMAS WOODS

2012-01-05T18:00:00.002+02:00

A few belated thoughts on Ron Paul and the Iowa caucuses.

Certainly it’s a disappointment. Some people counter that what matters are the delegates, but in my opinion what actually matters right now is momentum, and an Iowa victory would have been great in that department. At the same time, 22% in a state that is not ideologically in Ron’s camp, with all the media hate and ridicule so intense for two solid weeks – and heck, with Ron’s opposition to ethanol subsidies thrown in – is nothing to sniff at.

So many people worked so hard in Iowa for this 20+% showing – particularly A.J. Spiker, David Fischer, and Drew Ivers, all friends of mine – and we owe them our thanks.

As a knowledgeable friend explained to me in 2008, it is extremely difficult to reach many traditional voters, who decide on which candidate to choose on the basis of how much he sounds like the typical GOP product they’ve come to expect. So they listen for a speech that says, “I love America, Americans are the awesomest of the awesome, we need jobs, Obama is bad, war war war – and did I say Americans were the most awesome people ever, in the most awesome country, and the only reason anyone might not be thrilled with our government is because of our sheer awesomeness?”

At the same time, the race is still up in the air in the sense that voters have not settled on the preferred anti-Romney. This morning, while involuntarily subjected to FOX News, I heard a newscaster say, “You can’t get more anti-Mitt than Rick Santorum.” You know what? I’m pretty sure you can.

What lifted my spirits last night was Ron Paul’s speech. The man is as genuine as can be, as we already knew, so his enthusiasm last night wasn’t a put on. He is thrilled that issues once neglected are now being discussed everywhere. He is delighted to see young people flocking to something other than the standard GOP talking points from 1983, which appear to satisfy older voters too set in their ways to have an original thought. He crushed everyone in the under-40 vote. That means his ideas are the future.

He has every reason to be proud right now – of his supporters, and of himself.

Not one of us would have begrudged Ron Paul a quiet retirement had he chosen not to run this year. He had already awakened more Americans to the real American tradition of liberty, along with the Austrian School of economics, than any living person, and he had stared down the Ministry of Information and its war-propaganda politicians more consistently than anyone I can think of.

Yet he chose to impose on himself the unthinkable physical and mental toll of a rigorous presidential campaign. He opened himself up to ceaseless, vicious attack by intellectual and moral pygmies who enjoy nothing more than dragging the name of the one honest man in politics through the mud.

I’m sure Ron could have lived without the exhausting travel, the nonstop attacks from left and right, all of it. But he’s enduring it for us, because – corny as this may sound – he knows these ideas are the key to a better world.

That’s why I’ll be standing by him, doing whatever I can for the cause, in the weeks and months ahead, and helping promote peace, freedom, and prosperity. No way is this not worth fighting for. Now we simply fight all the harder.

I hope you’ll continue to join me.

WHAT I THINK........JERRI WARD

2012-01-05T17:57:00.002+02:00

The purpose of the state is supposed to be to protect life, liberty and property and to settle disputes. Today, we have a government that protects killing, and at times, even finances it. The growth and scope of our government is totally out of control and fails the test for a limited government in a free society. ~ Ron Paul, Challenge to Liberty: Coming to Grips with the Abortion Issue

Ron Paul has long been an "unshakeable foe of abortion." While pro-life groups, in an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade, have long engaged in the fruitless struggle to elect the presidential candidate who will then appoint the "just right" jurist to sit on the Supreme Court, Ron Paul has repeatedly introduced legislation which affirms that life begins at conception, legislation that would exclude the issue of abortion from the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, thereby overturning Roe v. Wade and returning the issue to the proper authorities, the individual states.

In light of this, it is unfortunate that the respected and stalwart American Right to Life has stooped to condemning Ron Paul for his principled and constitutional approach to the abortion issue by using fallacies, defamatory and villainous rhetoric, and the kind of reasoning characteristic of the sophists of pagan Greece. According to ARTL, Ron Paul’s pledge to oppose abortion is inadequate because he refuses go along with ARTL’s support of a proposed federal law that would authorize the use of the 14th Amendment to protect the pre-born. Because Ron Paul recognizes and publicly states that this approach is not constitutionally proper and is a usurpation of state authority, ARTL’s director of research makes the ludicrous (and viciously false) claim that "Ron Paul agrees with the central finding of Roe v. Wade itself."

While the absurdity of such a claim is clear on its face, let me also add that the central finding of Roe v. Wade would never have seen the light of day were it not for the overbroad application of the 14th Amendment by activist judges. That the 14th Amendment has been the most effective, dangerous, and misapplied tool of activist judges is something that Conservatives once understood. Such an understanding was reaffirmed in 1977 when Conservatives lionized Raoul Berger’s release of Government By Judiciary, The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which demonstrated completely and unequivocally that the 14th Amendment had long been construed far too broadly, resulting in a "vast array" of unconstitutional decisions, including Roe v. Wade. In fact, Berger made the case so well in the book and in his rebuttals to its critics that the critics began, in the words of Forrest McDonald, "to assert that neither the words of the Constitution or the intentions of the framers are any longer relevant."

This truth has apparently either (1) gone down the memory hole or (2) Conservatives have become every bit as cynical and unprincipled as the left-leaning activist jurists they demonize. Conservatives now want to pass a law that will approve solidifying the federal judiciary’s chokehold on the abortion issue by using, to their own ends, the same overbroad construction of the 14th Amendment that generated Roe v. Wade.

It seems apparent to me that nationalizing the issue of abortion resulted in over 50 million abortions since 1973. States that would be saving babies right now (were Ron Paul’s legislation passed when Republicans controlled Congress and the Presidency) have been able to do nothing but pass incremental measures seeking to slow down, but not end, the death of these babies who reside in their mother’s wombs. That is why I can’t understand why ARTL and others are determined to keep the issue in thrall to the same courts who brought about this tragedy.

The most effective solution is contained within the bills which Ron Paul has proposed session after session. His bills, which require only a simple majority vote, acknowledge that human life begins at conception and that it is within the authority of the States to protect that life. The legislation would deny the federal judiciary jurisdiction of the abortion issue, lawfully and constitutionally removing the power to overturn State laws which protect pre-born life. Under his legislation, Roe v. Wade would be dead, as pro-life activists have wanted for decades.

In response to Ron Paul’s proposing the above legislation, ARTL makes the laughable claim that he "is pro-choice, state-by-state. He believes states should be allowed to keep abortion, which is like allowing states to keep slavery." I can only assume that the ARTL did not get the 10th Amendment memo from the Tea Party. In fact, here we have Conservatives using the very accusations thrown at the Tea Party by race-card-playing leftists who assume that if we don’t unconstitutionally allow the federal government to dictate to the states what they may and may not do, Jim Crow laws will "rise again."

I am not as cynical about our constitutional form of government as ARTL appears to be. I am confident that pro-life people will be very successful in ending abortion in their own states once the federal grip on the issue is broken. Moreover, I agree with Raoul Berger’s statement: "I cannot bring myself to believe that the Court may assume a power not granted in order to correct an evil people were, and remain, unready to cure. Justification of judicial usurpation – the label Hamilton attached to encroachments on the legislative function – on the grounds that there is no other way to be rid of an acknowledged evil smacks of the discredited doctrine that the ‘end justifies the means.’" Berger went on to say: "Then there are the costs to constitutional government of countenancing such usurpation. As the Court itself has demonstrated, unconstitutional action establishes a precedent to cure a manifest evil, as Washington and Hamilton warned, that encourages transgression when such urgency is lacking." Berger’s point aptly applies to the proposal advanced by the ARTL and others to retain this usurped power (as opposed to restoring lawful federal authority) to regulate abortion at the national level, rather than the constitutionally appropriate state level. Such a "hair of the dog" solution is every bit as delusional as "fixing" our economy with the same monetary policies that crippled it, but too many are blinded by the appeal of manipulating illicit statist power to see it.

More importantly, as a Christian, I believe that once we shake off the chains placed upon us by the modern day pharaohs in Washington and return authority over this matter to its rightful place, we will be blessed by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit to end abortion within each State. I do not believe that He will so bless us if we continue to use and co-opt the cynical, despotic, lawless tactics of our opponents. Such power-concentrating tactics use the arm of man in the same manner as the builders of the Tower of Babel did in their efforts to reach heaven – but trusting in "the arm of flesh" always brings God’s curse, never His blessing (Jer. 17:5). Asserting a messianic role for the federal government bespeaks practical atheism and an unthinking return to Hegel’s view that the state is god walking on earth, wherein Christians who should have known better inexplicably choose to fight in Saul’s armor. The mindset of those who are willing to undermine rather than redeem constitutional government, and who seek to use the swollen statist federal leviathan as the means to their ends was aptly skewered by one of Cromwell’s chaplains, John Howe, in his sermon, The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit, using words that still ring across the centuries:

"An arm of flesh signifies a great deal when the power of the almighty Spirit is reckoned as nothing."

WHAT I THINK........WALTER BLOCK

2012-01-04T18:42:00.002+02:00

The closure of an international body of water is an act of war. If Iran implemented such a policy in the Strait of Hormuz, it would thus constitute an act of war. This is because in order to do so, this country would have to physically violate the rights of peaceful shippers. One might object that at present, Iran has only threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz. However, in my understanding of libertarian theory based upon the non aggression principle (NAP) not only are people (or governments!) not permitted to actually invade, or violate the rights of peaceful individuals, they are not entitled to threaten this either.

However, before we unduly criticize the Iranians for this threat, let us put the matter in context. The U.S. government has also threatened a blockade of Iran. With many statements emanating from Washington D.C. to the effect that the U.S. government "is not taking anything off the table," they are menacing actions a lot more serious, and invasive, than a mere blockade.

Why is the U.S. acting in so bellicose a manner? This is because it seems to be a settled part of present American policy that Iran should not persists in its (supposed) goal of arming itself with nuclear weapons.

Now, somewhat paradoxically, I agree with the Obama administration on this matter. Iran should not have nuclear weapons. But, neither should anyone else! Why not? This is because they are necessarily offensive. This type of ordnance cannot be used in a way that distinguishes between the guilty and the innocent. States Rothbard in this regard: "… while the bow and arrow and even the rifle can be pinpointed, if the will be there, against actual criminals, modern nuclear weapons cannot. Here is a crucial difference in kind. Of course, the bow and arrow could be used for aggressive purposes, but it could also be pinpointed to use only against aggressors. Nuclear weapons, even ‘conventional’ aerial bombs, cannot be. These weapons are ipso facto engines of indiscriminate mass destruction." (For a further elaboration of this thesis and a discussion of its implications, see here.)

However, this demand of Iran on the part of the U.S. comes with particular ill grace given the fact that the latter country has thousands of such nuclear devices. If the Obama Administration had suddenly become infused with libertarianism in general, and with Rothbard’s analysis of nuclear weapons in particular, it would certainly be justified in continuing to press the Iranians not to develop such firearms. But it would begin this quest by getting rid of its own stocks first.

But are not the Iranians unstable? Are they not likely, under the leadership of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to use these items against innocent people? Did not this person threaten to wipe Israel off the map with them, that is, use such weapons against that country? No. This was a mis-translation of what he actually said (see here, here, here, here, here and especially here). Nor is it possible to ignore the fact that there is only one country on the face of the earth that has actually employed atomic weapons against innocent men, women and children. And that country, strangely enough, is not Iran. Rather, it is the good old U.S. of A., land of the free and home of the brave. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and especially here).

So, while I certainly endorse Rothbard’s analysis according to which any and all atomic weaponry is illicit according the NAP, it does not at all logically follow that a country with thousands of such armaments, that has the distinction of being the only one to have ever murdered people with such a heinous weapon, is justified in using force to prevent another nation from obtaining one for itself. (I here stipulate, arguendo, that this is indeed the case; Iran of course insists it is interested in nuclear power for entirely peaceful purposes.)

Now that we have explored the context, let us return to the Iranian threat to close the Straits of Hormuz. From a libertarian point of view, in order to assess the validity of this threat, we must ask, Does this constitute initiatory aggression, or threats, or retaliation? For libertarians are not pacifists. We reserve the right to employ threats, aggression, violence, provided, only, that it is in response to a prior act, but does not constitute the prior act itself. So, did Iran "start up" with the U.S., or did the U.S. begin the hostilities?

When put in this stark manner, it is difficult in the extreme to see the Iranians as the aggressors. At worst, they were going to build a nuclear weapon, not merely avail themselves of the peaceful use of this technology. Along comes a country, much larger and more powerful than theirs, certainly lacking "clean hands" in this regard, and orders them to cease and desist, under dire threat. So, in response, the Iranians issue a threat of their own: to close off international waters to peaceful shipping. Yes, Iran is in the wrong for so doing. But, they are not the real villain of the piece. That guilt lies elsewhere. The threat of the blockade against Iran came first. Only then did the Iranians make their own threat.

WHAT I THINK........DAVID GORDON

2012-01-04T18:41:00.002+02:00

This brilliant book collects fifty short essays by Ron Paul on issues that range from abortion and assassination to unions and Zionism. It is no disparate assemblage, though; rather it is unified around a central theme, the vital importance of liberty. Paul’s defense of liberty and opposition to its contemporary enemies put him at odds with all establishment politicians, both Republican and Democratic.

As he puts the point with characteristic force: "For more than 100 years, the dominant views that have influenced our politicians have undermined the principles of personal liberty and private property, The tragedy is these bad policies have had strong bipartisan support. There has been no real opposition to the steady increase in the size and scope of government. Democrats are largely and openly for government expansion, and if we were to judge the Republicans by their actions and not their rhetoric, we would come to much the same conclusion about them."(p.20)

What exactly is the liberty that Paul favors? He makes clear at the book’s start what he has in mind: "Liberty means to exercise human rights in any manner a person chooses so long as it does not interfere with the exercise of the rights of others. This means, above all else, keeping government out of our lives." (p.xi) And of course the liberties in question include property rights: a free society rests on a free market economy.

Few if any in American politics will openly avow total opposition to liberty and property, but the mainstream approach toward these values differs entirely from Paul’s. As conventional politicians see matters, liberty and property, whatever their importance, must be balanced against other values, such as social justice and security. Is it not reasonable, they say, that the rich should surrender a little of their wealth to help the destitute? Again, does not an absolutist conception of civil liberties ignore the peril of terrorism? Even if we must submit to bothersome surveillance and intrusions, is not the price worth paying if these measures reduce the dangers of a terrorist assault?

It is a principal merit of Liberty Defined to refute these all too common contentions. As Paul trenchantly points out, attempts to surrender a slight amount of liberty in pursuit of competing values lead rapidly to drastic incursions on freedom, if not its virtually complete curtailment. "Granting food stamps benefits to 2 percent of the population in need seems like a reasonable thing to do. But what is not realized is that though only 2 percent get undeserved benefits from the 98 percent, 100 percent of the principle of individual liberty has been sacrificed. . . it was only to be expected that the dependency of 2 percent would grow and spread. . .Here is a good example of how a compromise can lead to chaos. The personal income tax began at 1 percent and applied only to the rich. Just look at the size of the tax code today." (pp.129-30)

Paul’s contention should not be set aside as a "slippery-slope" argument. His view is not that it is logically necessary that any incursion on liberty lead on to others. Rather, his contention is twofold: people who favor balancing liberty against other values have failed to arrive at a principled limit on sacrifices of liberty; and experience with such balancing shows that it abandons freedom.

Precisely the same process of incremental surrender takes place over security. "Many Americans believe that it is necessary to sacrifice some freedom for security in order to preserve freedom in the greater sense." (p.253) This belief has at times led to the defense of gravely immoral behavior: "In recent years, especially since 9/11, a majority of the American people have been brainwashed into believing that our national security depends on torture and that it’s been effective. The fact is, our Constitution, our laws, international laws, and the code of morality all forbid it. . .The old ruse is to ask what if you knew someone had vital information that, if revealed, would save American lives. . . The question that supporters of torture refuse to even ask is, If one suspects that one individual out of 100 captured has crucial information, and you don’t know which one it is, are you justified to torture all 100 to get that information? If we still get a yes answer in support of such torture, I’m afraid our current system of government cannot survive." (pp.290-91)

But if we renounce, in all instances, the use of torture, do we not put our nation at risk? To the contrary, the view that security depends on the state, let alone state-mandated torture, rests on illusion. If a genuine threat to life and liberty is present, people in a free society can deal with it voluntarily: government coercion is superfluous. "In a free society, where depending on government is minimal or absent, any real crisis serves to motivate individuals, families, churches, and communities to come together and work to offset the crisis, whether it comes from natural causes. . .or is man-made." (p.254)

Are threats posed by foreign nations an exception to this contention? Not at all. These alleged threats are grossly exaggerated in order to aggrandize the State’s power. The so-called "war on terrorism" perfectly illustrates how the State uses a blown-up crisis to its own advantage: "For a little bit of reassurance – even with all the bad mistakes that contributed to the terrorist dangers – it is more likely that an American will die from being hit by lightning than from a terrorist attack." (p.97)

With great courage for someone seeking the presidency, Paul notes that our misbegotten quest for "security" has led to America’s becoming a menace to other nations. "Now many Americans can’t even conceive of other countries believing the United States to be a threat. And yet, ours is the only government that will travel to far distant lands to overthrow governments, station troops, and drop bombs on people. The United States is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons against people. And we are surprised that many people in the world regard the United States as a threat?" (p.257)

The policy of American aggression unfortunately did not begin with the Bush and Obama administrations. These presidents followed in the footsteps of many eminent predecessors in office. Not least of these was Franklin Roosevelt, who spoke of "freedom from fear" but was a past master at arousing the very emotion he professed to allay, in order the better to pursue his bellicose scheming: "Roosevelt’s motivation and intent [in the Four Freedoms Speech] are unknown to me, but the results of his effort did not serve the cause of freedom in the United States. Within seven months of this speech, Roosevelt stopped all oil shipments to Japan, which helped lead to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. All the while, Roosevelt preached a distorted view of freedom; he was maneuvering us into war." (p.125)

In light of the campaign of contumely to which Ron Paul has of late been subjected, one turns with particular interest to his remarks on racism. He insightfully draws a connection between racism and a war-dominated foreign policy: "Wartime is an environment that breeds wicked forms of racism. This is because governments love to turn existing prejudices into hate in order to mobilize the masses. . . If we hate racism, we must also hate war since it is war that has bred all these malignant types of racism. . .Government-backed racism is designed to shore up government power. The idea is to stir popular opinion that should be directed against one’s own government toward some evil foreign enemy."(pp.239, 241)

Paul’s struggle against American empire has won him wide notice, but he is equally famous for his campaign for sound money and a free economy. Indeed, the two battles are closely linked, since it is military Keynesianism that supports the extensive government spending that the quest for empire requires. "Military Keynesianism supported by both conservatives and liberals has led to an obscene amount of taxpayer dollars being spent, now surpassing the military spending of all other nations combined. . .Military Keynesianism invites mercantilist policies. Frequently, our armies follow corporate investments around the world, and have for more than a hundred years. . .There’s something about military Keynesianism that I dislike even more than domestic economic Keynesianism. Too many times, I’ve seen how the conservative agenda of cutting government gets overtaken by this ideological attachment to unlimited military spending." (pp.174-76)

Paul does not confine himself to criticism but has a remedy for this dire state of affairs. The government should retire altogether from economic intervention and allow the free economy to work unhindered. In particular, the government should altogether renounce its control over the money supply. His familiar rallying cry "End the Fed" is part of a larger program: "I would like to see a dollar as good as gold. I would like to see the banking system operating as it would under free enterprise, meaning no central bank. I would like to see competitive currencies emerge on the market and be permitted to thrive.. . .Paper money is a drug and Washington is addicted. . .Washington should get out of the way and let another system built on human choice emerge spontaneously." (pp.201-202)

Paul’s entire political program rests firmly on moral principles. He movingly sums up what he believes in this way: "What moral system should government follow? The same one individuals follow. Do not steal. Do not murder. Do not bear false witness. Do not covet. Do not foster vice. If governments would merely follow the moral law that all religions recognize, we would live in a world of peace, prosperity, and freedom. The system is called classical liberalism. Liberty is not complicated." (p.211)

WHAT I THINK.......THOMAS DiLORENZO

2012-01-04T18:39:00.000+02:00

Former Bush administration speechwriter Michael Gerson, who is now a columnist for the company newspaper of the company town known as Washington, D.C., recently authored yet another hysterical neocon rant over the Ron Paul candidacy. Ron Paul is on a "quest to undo the Party of Lincoln," blared Gerson’s headline. Every freedom-loving, patriotic American can only hope and pray that Ron Paul succeeds.

Gerson’s tone is dripping with venomous hatred when he accuses Ron Paul of being some kind of nut by calling the Civil War "senseless" and of saying that Lincoln ruled with an iron fist. Generations of historians have also called the Civil War "senseless" or something similar. "The bumbling generation" is how some historians describe the Civil War-era politicians who plunged the nation into war, the most preeminent of whom was Lincoln himself. But when Ron Paul refers to the war in that way what he has in mind is the true historical fact that all other countries of the world that ended slavery in the nineteenth century – including most of the Northern states in the U.S – did so peacefully. The British, French, Spaniards, Dutch, Swedes, Danes, and others ended slavery in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, all of Central America, Mexico, Bolivia, Uruguay, the French and Danish colonies, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela without resorting to the mass murder and destruction of war. (See Jim Powell. Greatest Emancipations: How the West Ended Slavery; Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery; and Slavery in New York, published by the New York Historical Society).

Only Gerson’s beloved "Party of Lincoln" used slaves as political pawns in a war that all of them – Lincoln as well as the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress of 1861-1865 – stated over and over again was commenced to "save the union" (and consolidate political power in Washington, D.C.), and not to disturb Southern slavery. As Lincoln said in his famous 1862 letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union." On July 22, 1861 the U.S. Congress announced to the world that the purpose of the war it had commenced was NOT "interference with the rights or established institutions of those states" [i.e., slavery], but to preserve the Union with the rights of the several states unimpaired." Gerson is obviously unaware of all of this.

Of course, Lincoln’s "save the Union" rhetoric was always outrageous nonsense. The original American union of the founding fathers was a voluntary union based on the Jeffersonian notion in the Declaration of Independence that the just powers of government result only from the consent of the governed, and whenever that consent was withdrawn, it was the duty of the governed to abolish that government. It was nothing more than a practical political arrangement and not some magical, mystical, sacred union that "justified" the mass murder of more than 350,000 Southerners to "save" it. Indeed, the founding fathers would probably have thought such a thing to be perhaps the biggest atrocity in world history.

Lincoln’s war destroyed the union of the founding fathers by forcing all states, North and South, to obey without question the dictates of Washington, D.C. – or else. Michael Gerson seems completely ignorant of all of this history when he mocks Ron Paul by saying "Paul is the most anti-Lincoln public official since Jefferson Davis . . . . According to Paul, Lincoln caused 600,000 Americans to die in order to ‘get rid of the original intent of the republic.’" Exactly. Even if it was not Lincoln’s intent – which it most certainly was since he was the political heir to the Hamiltonian/consolidationist wing of the American political tradition – it was undeniably the effect of Lincoln’s war. It is what would lead to such absurdities as someone like Michael Gerson becoming a propaganda mouthpiece for our rulers in Washington, D.C.

In his first inaugural address Lincoln threatened "invasion" and "bloodshed" in any state that refused to collect the newly-doubled tariff on imports, which at the time constituted more than 90 percent of all federal tax revenues. Two years later the Republican Party apparently decided that the murder of hundreds of thousands and the destruction of entire cities in the South could not be justified before world opinion if it was motivated by the greed for money and power – which of course it was, as is almost always the case with all wars. So the slaves were used as political pawns to cover up the true intentions of the Party of Lincoln, which from that time on has described itself as the "Grand Old Party" or the party of great moral ideas! (When you hear that rhetoric, think of the party’s great moral leaders, such as Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, or Newt Gingrich, all of whom have employed speechwriters like Michael Gerson to compose such nonsense for them).

Gerson also mocks the notion that Lincoln ruled "with an iron fist," which also demonstrates his complete ignorance of this aspect of American history. It is well known by anyone who bothers to learn about it that Lincoln illegally suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus (even his own attorney general said so) since only Congress can legally do so. He ordered the military to mass arrest thousands of Northern critics of his administration, without due process, and imprison them indefinitely. These included many opposition newspaper editors, and even the Mayor of Baltimore, Congressman Henry May of Maryland, and the grandson of Francis Scott Key, who had editorialized against Lincoln’s tyranny.

Lincoln issued an arrest warrant for Chief Justice Roger B. Taney after Judge Taney issued his opinion that Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus was unconstitutional. He deported the most outspoken member of the opposition party, Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio; confiscated firearms in the border states; instituted the first federal military conscription law; oversaw the daily shooting of hundreds of deserters to his army; and even announced that merely remaining silent when his administration’s policies were being discussed constituted "treason." Most importantly, the Republican Party’s invasion of the Southern states was the very definition of Treason under the Constitution. All of this – and worse – is why generations of historians have referred to the Lincoln presidency as the "Lincoln dictatorship," another historical fact that Gerson is oblivious to.

Treason is defined in Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution as follows: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort" (emphasis added). "United States" is always in the plural in all the founding documents, signifying the free and independent states. Treason was defined as "only" waging war against the free and independent states, which of course is exactly what Lincoln and his party did. Again, Michael Gerson is ignorant of all of this.

Gerson’s ignorance of the history that he pretends to pontificate about gets even worse. He claims that Ron Paul’s "conception of liberty is not the same as Lincoln’s." Yes, and thank God for Ron Paul. What advocate of liberty would destroy the Constitution, imprison political dissenters, murder hundreds of thousands of his own citizens over tax collection, and then claim the moral high ground by including a few Biblical phrases in his political speeches (even though he himself was an atheist)?

Gerson is also unaware that the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to "rebel territory," where the U.S. Army had no ability to free anyone, and that Lincoln called it a "war measure" that would have ended had the war ended on the next day. In other words, it freed no one, and had the war abruptly ended Lincoln was perfectly satisfied to allow the Southern states to do whatever they wanted to do with the slaves as long as they continued to pay federal tariff taxes. Indeed, in one speech he nonchalantly forecast that slavery would probably fade away sometime in the early twentieth century.

In addition to his shocking ignorance of American history, Michael Gerson is just plain hysterical and nonsensical with some of his other broadsides against Ron Paul. For example, any reasonable person who spends a small amount of time educating himself about the actual effects of the government’s "war on drugs" would have to conclude that it has been a colossal failure: It has utterly failed to reduce drug use; it has made the illicit drug trade more profitable by causing the price of illegal drugs (and the profits from selling them) to increase dramatically; it is the primary cause of violence in America, just as alcohol prohibition was in the 1920s and early 1930s; it has corrupted police and judges; it has lured untold numbers of children into the business because of the money they can make; and it has led to the grossly disproportionate imprisonment of young African-American men for victimless "crimes." Gerson mentions none of these facts, but only screams that Ron Paul has "proposed . . . legalization"!!!!!! This is supposed to be a self-evident fact that proves Ron Paul to be "disqualified" as a presidential candidate, says Gerson.

Unlike Ron Paul, who champions the constitutional dictum of equality under the law for all Americans, Michael Gerson parrots the Washington establishment’s view that inequality under the law in the form of institutionalized discrimination against white males, which is what "civil rights regulation" became immediately upon passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is more appropriate. To Ron Paul, government-sanctioned discrimination is discrimination, no matter what the skin color of the victims. Two wrongs do not make a right, in other words. Michael Gerson apparently never learned this elementary lesson.

Since David Duke is also known to have run for political office in Louisiana several decades ago by protesting racial hiring quotas and reverse discrimination, Gerson outrageously accuses Ron Paul of "defending former Ku Klux Kan Grand Wizard David Duke," proving that he is dishonest as well as ignorant of the subjects he is writing about.

Gerson is also outraged that Ron Paul has described American foreign policy as "aggressive" and "expansionist." Has Michael Gerson ever stepped foot outside of Washington, D.C.? Does he really reside on Planet Earth?

In one final burst of stupidity, Gerson concludes his essay be claiming that the U.S. entered World War II to save the European Jews from the Holocaust. (Earth to Michael Gerson: The Holocaust happened; the U.S. government did not save the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis). He makes this remarkably stupefying statement so that he can proclaim to his Washington Post audience that "Paul’s conception of liberty . . . would have freed the occupants of concentration camps from their dependency on liberating armies."

Michael Gerson pretends that Ron Paul has invented out of thin air his own personal conceptions of "liberty." Anyone who knows anything about Ron Paul – unlike the Michael Gersons of the world – understands why this is so absurd. Ron Paul has for many decades been a serious student of the classical liberal tradition of European and American thought. He is extraordinarily well educated in the free-market economics tradition of the Austrian School of Economics, associated with such scholars as Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Henry Hazlitt. He is well schooled in the natural rights philosophy that informed the American founding fathers, and which is so beautifully articulated in such publications as The Law by Frederic Bastiat. He understands the logic of the foreign policy ideas of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who I would wager were far more thoughtful and educated on the subject than Michael Gerson is.

One thing that Gerson gets right is that Ron Paul’s conception of liberty, based on the above-mentioned literature, is indeed very different from those of Lincoln’s. Lincoln probably never even read The Federalist Papers; his personal library consisted almost entirely of books on rhetoric and speech making and political strategy. He was a champion of central banking, protectionist tariffs, and corporate welfare, all for the benefit of the Northern business elite that financed his career and his party at the expense of the rest of the public. He was willing to wage total war on his own citizens for the benefit of his own political benefactors. He was a machine politician who would make today’s Chicago politicians look like so many Mother Theresas by comparison. He deplored constitutional limitations on his own dictatorial powers, and waged war on his own countrymen for refusing to have their federal taxes doubled. Read Lincoln’s first inaugural address for yourself.

If Ron Paul succeeds in his "quest to undo the Party of Lincoln" it would be the greatest advance in freedom for Americans since the ending of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1866.

DEBT BURDEN THREATENS AMERICAN FAMILIES

2012-01-03T09:41:00.002+02:00

Last week, as most Americans were celebrating the holidays with family and friends, the Obama Administration announced plans to seek yet another debt ceiling increase in the New Year. While some fiscal conservatives will try to block this increase, their efforts are designed to fail thanks to the procedure set up by the last debt ceiling negotiations. Congress would have to pass a joint resolution opposing the increase, which the president could simply veto. Thus, an additional $1.2 trillion on top of our already unsustainable debt is a foregone conclusion. Our Gross Domestic Product continues to contract and now stands at $14.5 trillion. The debt already far exceeds that and will soon hit the new ceiling of $16.39 trillion.

Everyone in DC acknowledges that the debt is unsustainable, yet few are willing to take serious steps toward addressing it. Politicians in Washington cannot face the fact that the blank checks must stop. Many think we can ignore the mounting debts and deficits and eventually the economy will magically turn around and grow its way out of the mess. If you really understand why the economy is foundering, you understand the burden cannot all be put on the backs of the American people while politicians stick their heads in the sand.

According to a USA Today analysis, there are currently over $61.6 trillion in unfunded future government liabilities, which amounts to $528,000 per American household. A huge part of these liabilities are Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – promises made to make the American people feel secure in their futures. But how secure should the American people feel knowing that a default is becoming more mathematically unavoidable with every NEW program added, every bailout, every debt ceiling increase, every new war we rush into, and every round of quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve? The last thing politicians should be doing is adding to that $528,000 household burden, with either more spending or more taxes. This is unequivocally a problem of too much spending by a government far outside its Constitutional bounds.

It is especially a slap in the face to the American family when the Federal Reserve dilutes the dollars we work for in order to bail out profligate banks and governments in Europe. The already perilous state of our economy and our currency should not be further endangered in a futile attempt to save the Euro. The least the government can do is allow Americans a choice in how to actually secure their financial futures that doesn’t depend on a sinking dollar and irresponsible government. My competing currency bill allows for that and I will continue to fight for economic freedom from foolish and selfish whims of the central bank.

It is nothing new for Washington to kick economic pain down the road. Optimistic politicians hope things will stay cobbled together just long enough to get through another election cycle, or that another administration will have to deal with the mess. The longer this cowardly attitude prevails, the bigger the problems become. Congress and the administration should exercise some good judgment, some political courage, and make the needed budgetary changes now. It would not be that difficult to do if Washington would simply work its way back to the Constitution instead of straying even further from it.

WHAT I THINK......GARY NORTH

2011-12-31T13:06:00.000+02:00

Whenever any would-be borrower approaches a lender for a loan, he must be prepared to offer collateral, just in case he cannot repay the loan. If he defaults, the lender wants to be able to gain possession of the collateral, and obtain it quickly.

Every government that uses bond sales to maintain its level of expenditures must offer collateral. This collateral is its ability to extract sufficient revenue from those people under its jurisdiction so that it can make interest payments on the bonds.

In the South of 1850, a planter could buy slaves on credit. He pledged the future productivity of his slaves as collateral for the loan. He made sure that he extracted sufficient wealth from the slaves to pay off his loans. He lived well. They didn't.

Why did he borrow? In order to buy more slaves. He used leverage. He built his plantation with borrowed money and the heirs of kidnapped victims. It was good business.

The typical voter thinks of himself as a free man. After all, he has the right to vote. He does not think of himself as a slave. While trade union organizers – a truly hopeless career these days – still use the phrase "wage slave," it never made any sense, either legally or economically. A worker can legally walk away from his employer. A slave cannot.

Washington has borrowed more heavily than any planter ever dared to or could do. Why so much debt? To get more leverage today. What is being leveraged? Promises. Voters trade votes for government promises. This system requires an ever-increasing supply of slaves in order to pay the interest on the debt. Problem: the rate of population growth is slowing. There will not be enough slaves to pay off the debt.

Voters have not thought through the implications of government debt. They do not perceive themselves as collateral for loans. But they are. This is the meaning of the phrase, "the full faith and credit of the United States government."

"FULL FAITH AND CREDIT"

Whenever you hear the phrase, "the full faith and credit of the United States government," an image should pop into your head: a slave overseer in Alabama 1850, whip in hand, sitting on a horse at the edge of a cotton field. The field is filled with slaves, bent down, fingers scarred, dutifully picking cotton. You are not the overseer. You would be lucky to be his horse.

The public buys government promises to pay future money in exchange for present votes. The trouble is, the promises are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. That means the overseer will handle the payment system.

The U.S. government is borrowed short and lent long. To understand this arrangement, you must understand the currency. The Treasury borrows money on average for about five years. (http://bit.ly/USdebtMaturity) It spends this money to meet its obligations. These are political obligations. The politicians bought past votes with promises of future payments. Today's expenditures are these payments, which come due day by day. The government must borrow about $1.3 trillion a year to make good on past promises. This is in addition to $2.5 trillion in tax revenues.

Candidates for office continue to make new promises to voters. The benefits of votes accrue to the elected candidates when they take the oath of office. The costs are postponed. The price of votes keeps rising. The politicians promise to make even larger future payments.

The federal government is borrowed medium-term in the credit markets: a five-year rollover of the debt. It needs cash to pay off past promises. So, it borrows long: promises to pay far more money over the next 75 years: Medicare and Social Security.

This is a Ponzi scheme.

Why do voters consent to this? Because they, like the planter in Alabama in 1850, think this system can go on forever. But there is this crucial difference. The planter never worked in the fields. The voters do.

Voters think of themselves as buying the right to sit on the veranda and sip mint juleps in their old age. Those who got into the Ponzi scheme early did just this. Ida Fuller is the classic example: $24 paid in, $23,000 pulled out. But most voters will spend most of their days in the fields. There will be no mint juleps for them.

"WE OWE IT TO OURSELVES!"

This one became popular in the New Deal in the mid-1930s. It was still popular in the 1950s. We do not hear it as often these days, which is a good thing.

We need a mental image for this, too. There is a crowd in front of a large domed building. There is a much larger crowd behind it. Members in the crowd in front have gray hair, white hair, and no hair. They are all sitting in battery-powered carts. There is a large sign in the middle of the crowd: "Ourselves." The people lined up at the back door also are marked by a large sign: "We." Everyone has his wallet open. The people in front of the building have the money slots facing up. The people at the rear have the money slots facing down. On the domed building, there is a sign: "Promises R Us."

The implications of the credit/debt relationship are not understood well by voters. The system is based on differences in time. Voters see themselves as spending their golden years in one of those battery-powered carts. They believe that if they pay for a ticket to a cart through their working years, they will get their carts. They lend long (working years) in order to receive the fruits of their investment (retirement).

To facilitate this, the federal government issues tens of millions of dated tickets: "Good for a free cart and all that goes with it." But the ticket refers the holder to a web page. There, in obtuse legal language, we find a qualification: "Subject to revision by the issuer." This means that the date on the ticket can be changed. A wheeled walker can be substituted for a cart. A cane can be substituted for a walker. Finally, a card that says "Think Vertically!" can be substituted for a cane.

"I OWE YOU SOMETHING"

An IOU is a promise to pay. The value of this IOU depends on four factors: (1) the solvency of the borrower, (2) the expected future value of the asset promised, (3) the length of time before the IOU comes due, and (4) the current interest rate for a loan of that maturity. Through competition, a price is set by the market.

A government-issued IOU is different from a legal contract between private parties. A debtor government is the enforcer of the loan. It can therefore change the terms of the loan at any time. So, the public must have great trust in the government. Voters must assume that the government's word is law. They are correct: it is law. This is the problem. The law can be changed at any time by a new crop of politicians.

With respect to solvency, the U.S. government is assumed to be the most solvent borrower on earth. The U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency for central banks. The U.S. Treasury today pays about one one-hundredth of a percent for 90-day IOUs. There is nothing else like this anywhere. There has been nothing like it ever since the Great Depression.

Yet the level of federal debt is growing rapidly: by $1.3 trillion a year in the on-budget world, and even faster with respect to unfunded Medicare and Social Security debt. The vast majority of economists insist that the United States can and will grow its way out of these obligations. This means that the government's collateral – you and I – will increase our productivity and also consent to have at least 25% of it removed by federal taxes.

Federal solvency will not be maintained for another decade. The numbers point to a default. But investors do not care. Every large nation's solvency looks equally bad or worse. By comparison, the dollar is the one-eyed man in the world of the blind.

The other national governments are running huge deficits that are also unsustainable. Because the politicians of every large nation sell promises for votes, the international exchange rate of the dollar is holding up. The liars in other nations indulge in the same exchange. Their lies are no more believable than ours, and maybe less.

What about the market value of the asset designated by the IOUs? What about the long-term purchasing power of the U.S. dollar? Today, price inflation is low. Lenders assume that they can sell the government's IOUs if this low rate starts up. This assumes that most investors will sell their bonds in time. Sell to whom? At what price?

The dollar will fall in value because the Federal Reserve will inflate. But this question confounds investors: lower compared to what? Gold, euros, yen? Real estate? What? When? How fast? How soon?

The IOUs of the world are based on digital currencies manipulated by central banks. The dollar looks good in the future because of how bad the other currencies look. The Federal Reserve is trusted by investors.

The longer term the IOU, the more opportunities for default, inflation, and new legislation to destroy investors' hopes. This is why 30-year bonds are risky. But with the FED twisting – buying long-term bonds and selling short-term bills – the low long rates on T-bonds can be maintained for years. People say that there will soon be a popped bubble in 30-year T-bonds. This threat always exists. If commercial banks start lending to the public again, thereby converting the FED's more than doubled monetary base into M1, the money multiplier will increase. So will prices. But this has not happened. There are few signs that it will happen in 2012. So, twisting keeps T-bond rates low. Also low are Fannie/Freddie mortgage rates.

So, the U.S. government's IOU-something still has a strong market. It owes U.S. dollars, which are in high demand as the euro moves towards the precipice. The Treasury is in the catbird seat. It can sell its IOUs at historic low rates.

MISSING COLLATERAL

Residents in any nation are collateral for various government's loans. The politicians have pledged a substantial portion of the taxpayers' future productivity.

But there is a problem facing lenders: this collateral votes. Collateral for all loans except loans to a government is inanimate. It can be collected by the lender after the debtor's default. This is not true of human beings. They cannot be transferred to the lenders after the bankruptcy.

This is why it is not possible for a private lender to collect payment from a civil government that decides it will not pay. The lender is left with a dead IOU: "You should have read the fine print, dummy." The fine print says that civil governments are sovereign. They pay their debts at their discretion.

When voters at long last recognize that the promises made by the government have become too expensive to fulfill, voters will send this message to Washington: "Stop payment." It will take several election cycles to elect enough politicians who will be in a position to issue a "stop payment" notice to the Treasury, but it can be done. More than this: it will be done. The escalation of the debt is so rapid as to make "Stop payment" inescapable.

The political battles after the election of 2016 will focus on which departments will receive the "insufficient funds" memo. If the answer is "none," then the political question will be this: "How high a rate of price inflation will the voters tolerate?"

At some point, voters abandon a hyperinflationary currency. They refuse to offer goods and services in exchange for the currency. The currency falls to zero value. This is what Ludwig von Mises called the crack-up boom. After it ends, a new currency is declared by the government.

Note: there have been few such crack-up booms in modern history. Most came after the loss of a major war. Here is a crucial fact: the replacement currencies were fiat currencies. No government ever since 1914 has gone from a crack-up boom to a precious metal currency. Every government has inflated again. The citizens have never insisted on a gold standard of any kind, let alone a gold coin standard in which the government shuts down both the mint and the central bank. Not even Andrew Jackson did this.

This is political reality. We hear of a supposed reform by some national government to introduce some variety of fractionally reserved, non-redeemable gold standard. I pay no attention to these rumors. First, central bankers are not Austrian School economists. Second, without full redeemability in gold coins, any gold standard is a promise-based standard, a pseudo-gold standard. It is a counterfeit. It is just one more political promise. Political promises have gotten us into the present mess. They will not get us out.

Until there is a free market-based gold coin standard and also the abolition of the central bank, voters have not escaped from their status as collateral. For as long as there is a market for government bonds, taxpayers are still collateral. They reserve the right to unilaterally remove themselves from full liability. When it comes to debt, a government is a limited-liability organization. It can default on all or a part of its debt. That is what the U.S. government will do: declare a partial default. The longer the government runs $1.3 trillion annual deficits, the more extensive the default will be.

There is another possibility, rarely discussed. The Federal Reserve can stop buying Federal debt. If the FED ever decides, as it did under Paul Volcker's early years, late 1979 to mid-1982, to cease buying Treasury debt, that would be the equivalent of "Stop payment." Why? Because the FED would cease to supply the money necessary to make the otherwise unfunded payments. The Treasury would have to sell its debt to private citizens or other central banks. That would mean rising interest rates and broken promises.

CONCLUSION

All debt must have some sort of collateral. If voters understood that they are the collateral for the federal government's debt, they might rebel. They might demand a total default. But I don't think this is likely. The vast majority believe that they will be the folks sitting on the veranda sipping mint juleps.

I would like to think that Ron Paul is Moses, calling the slaves to resist. But I recall their reaction.

And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were in evil case, after it was said, Ye shall not [di]minish ought from your bricks of your daily task. And they met Moses and Aaron, who stood in the way, as they came forth from Pharaoh: And they said unto them, The LORD look upon you, and judge; because ye have made our savour to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to slay us (Exodus 5:19-21).

WHAT I THINK........RAFI FARBER

2011-12-31T12:58:00.000+02:00

Lately I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I sit here in my living room in Karnei Shomron, Israel, on the 8th night of Chanukah, wondering what other miracles lay in store on January 3rd and in the months ahead. The name Ron Paul is constantly at my fingertips. I’ve typed it in so many times the past month it’s insane. I’m experiencing an excitement I’ve rarely ever felt, and I don’t even live in America anymore. During the last Republican debate I woke myself up at 3am Israel time to watch an 8pm EST live stream on YouTube, with no fatigue whatsoever. I’m on overdrive, and I can’t calm myself.

I’ve only recently figured out what this excitement actually is.

I first got interested in the whole freedom movement when I heard that Ron Paul wanted to end all foreign aid, including to my country, Israel. This seemed like a spectacular idea to me. I hate the idea of taking American tax payer money I don’t need. The only reason we take it, by the way, is not because we need it. It’s that we don’t want to feel alone, and Jews always feel a deep existential isolation and loneliness. “As I see them from the mountain tops, gaze on them from the heights, this is a people that dwells alone, not counted among the Nations,” says Balaam of the People of Israel in Numbers 23:9. We still feel that loneliness. So we take the money. It’s shameful, it’s theft, it’s destructive, it’s morally wrong, and it makes people hate us for tying them into a conflict they have no business trying to solve. I wanted it to end and didn’t trust any Israeli leader to give it up on his own, so I looked up more about Ron Paul.

What I found was fascinating. On the forums, I learned of people who, back in ’08, literally gave their lives short of death to this man. Some poured money into his campaign they could not afford to give, and some even lost their marriages because of their single-minded insane dedication. This shocked me. I couldn’t yet understand it, but after a few days of listening to him, it began to click.

What is it about Ron Paul that inspires such extremes? Such maddening support on the one hand, and such fear and loathing on the other? I can give the answer in one word: Soul.

The essential soul of a human being is by definition free. The idea that men are free as determined by God is a concept that is foreign to most men. This is because most men want to control others, to take away their freedom. This is usually referred to as the drive for power. The drive for power is antithetical to freedom because power means the ability to control others. There is only one legitimate thing that power can and should be used for, whether it be military, legislative, or executive power. That is, to legalize freedom.

Ron Paul doesn’t want to be President to “give” me freedom. He doesn’t own my freedom and he didn’t give it to me. The only reason Ron Paul wants to be President is to stop punishing people for using their freedom that is rightfully theirs. He wants no power. This is clear to anyone who listens to him speak.

There are two kinds of human beings. Those who want power, and those who want freedom. You can tell which one’s which very easily. Those who want freedom are straight-edged. They are consistent, principled, and you can feel their human soul when they speak to you. There’s a continuum out there of human souls somewhere in spiritual cyberspace, and when you come into contact with one of these souls, you know immediately, because souls are by definition free. You sense sincerity, realness, consistency, a free human being. If you’re a man who seeks freedom and you come into contact with a real human soul, you become instantly addicted and you swallow up anything you can get your hands on. You want to unite immediately, no matter what you disagree on. There are people in the freedom movement that don’t exactly like Israel, especially me being a “settler” and I don’t care. If they want freedom, I sense it and my human drive for individualism suddenly turns into an intense desire to unite into a collective – but a collective of free individuals. It’s a beautiful dialectic, and it doesn’t matter what we agree or disagree on, as long as we agree on freedom.

You get hooked on Ron Paul and you desperately seek more and more, any video you can find from the past, any speeches you missed, anything he said that you haven’t heard yet, even though you’ve heard it a thousand times already in different words. You can’t help yourself. The voracious hunger to be able to use your God-given freedom takes you over entirely. It’s like you suddenly realize you’re human and the Divine Image with which God created you comes alive and catches fire.

But something else happens to you. Once you get hooked on Ron Paul, you can no longer bear to listen to a man who wants power, and you become instantly disgusted when they start saying words. Before, they were just boring. Now they’re revolting. Listening to Romney or Gingrich or Bush or Obama makes you sick and you don’t know how Ron Paul gets through those debates without getting nauseous. You see a political veneer in these politicians that’s so transparent it’s like a ghost flapping its ethereal tongue at you. You can’t bear it.

What’s so maddening about hearing Romney or Gingrich talk is that there’s someone standing there saying things, but there’s no soul in it. These are not free men. These are power men. Not that Romney or Gingrich don’t have souls. They do. They are men just like you and I. But they have practically forfeited their souls to try and attain power, to control others with spin and talking points and contradictory statements like “I want to cut the budget and expand the military!” and they’ll say it with a polished tone and a straight face, just like a soulless recording. Their humanity is so buried under the mountain of lies they have told themselves, that neither they themselves nor you can even sense their souls in the human continuum. The scene of a human body speaking but no soul communicating can drive a free man mad.

The reason that Ron Paul never goes down in the polls is that he’s not “convincing” people in the everyday sense that he’s right on whatever issue. He’s activating human souls, lighting spiritual fires one by one speaking about freedom. Once a soul gets activated, and the man realizes that he IS free no matter what people do to him or tell him, there is no turning back. The other candidates are trying to turn heads with snappy one-liners that sound cool. Slaves follow these one-liners like mobs, and follow each other from candidate to candidate. Slowly but surely, Ron Paul activates a few of the individual souls in the mob as they bob from snappy comeback to snappy comeback and he goes up in the polls.

Yet, we cannot expect every man woman and child to understand or get excited about the message of liberty. In fact, most just can’t handle it. Being truly free is as terrifying as it is electrifying. The Bible tells us this very clearly in the story of the Exodus from Egypt. When Moses finally accepts the role of deliverer from God, he was assigned to say the following to my great-grandparents the Israelites:

“Therefore say to the Israelites: I am God. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with amazing signs. And I will take you to be My people and I will be your God, and you will know that I am the Lord who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians.” (Ex. 6:6-7)

And what was my grandparents’ response?

“And Moses told this to the people, but they didn’t listen due to lack of spirit and cruel bondage.” (6:9)

Not everyone can handle the message of freedom. It’s too frightening for some people, and some are just too enslaved. Those are the people that despise Ron Paul, the same types who rebelled against Moses in the desert and attempted to go back to Egypt. Freedom is too much for them and they can’t handle the Divine gift. They want and need someone to control them. Their souls have been too battered by slavery, taxation, and wars.

But nonetheless, God forced my stiff-necked great grandparents to leave Egypt, and as a result I’m here today, preaching freedom once again, fighting not only for America’s freedom, but for my own from America’s influence in my own region.

Vote Ron Paul and let my people go once again! Stop meddling here and stop trying to buy influence by giving me money. Stop trying to be the all powerful Peace Maker and let us work out the problems here on our own! If we think Iran is a threat, we can handle it and we’ll take the consequences. It’s not America’s problem and you can’t afford another war.

Now I understand why people will give everything to this man. Whenever he’s asked the question, “Would you legalize heroin?” Ron Paul answers, “I want to legalize freedom!” Little do these people understand that freedom is a thousand times more addictive than heroin.

American Jews! Wake up! Set your brothers in Israel free! We were the first nation ever to be set free by God, and we brought the concept of liberty to the world when we left Egypt over 3000 years ago. It’s about time we set the example we were chosen to set.

WHAT I THINK.......JUSTIN RAIMONDO

2011-12-31T12:55:00.000+02:00

“Between government in the republican meaning, that is, constitutional, representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other, or one will destroy the other. That we know. Yet never has the choice been put to a vote of the people.”

Garet Garrett had been an editor of the Saturday Evening Post, a financial writer for the New York Times, a renowned author and journalist of the “roaring Twenties,” an intransigent opponent of the New Deal, and sometime novelist: his career spanned the era of Coolidge, Hoover, FDR, and Truman. In those days his was the voice of mainstream conservatism, albeit of a sort alien to the Newt Gingriches and Charles Krauthammers of this world, and he wrote the above cited words just as the US was embarking on its postwar crusade to save the world from Communism.

He had lived through the previous holy war against the Axis powers, witnessed the demise of the Old America and the rise of the Welfare-Warfare State, and saw – even then – that the country would face ruination if the crusading spirit prevailed over the need for self-preservation. He saw what would happen if we acquired an empire and sought to remake the world in our image. He annoyed his fellow libertarian, the novelist and ideologue Rose Wilder Lane, with his “keening” note of pessimism, which mourned “a world forever lost.” Lane was sure the “world revolution” of freedom was coming, yet in those dark days when the spirit of freedom was seemingly forgotten it looked as if her friend Garrett was right.

Garrett died in 1954, a few years after the publication of his prescient essay: Rose followed him in 1968. Neither got to see the rise of a movement that would take the former’s insights and the latter’s optimism and forge a new path – and a new hope – for lovers of liberty. But I like to think they are still hovering over us, delighted at the success of their intellectual heirs, who today call themselves libertarians. No doubt they are buoyed by the success of presidential candidate Ron Paul, whose thrilling ascent in Iowa and beyond is redeeming Lane’s optimism – and Garrett’s hope – that the choice between empire and our old republic will – finally – be put to a vote of the people.

Paul’s success – he is currently the frontrunner in Iowa, although the “mainstream” media is doing its best to downplay the numbers – has provoked an outburst of hysteria and pure hate from the War Party. Iowa, they declare, will be rendered “irrelevant” if Paul wins: Joe McQuaid, the bombastic editor of the neocon Union-Leader, rants that “Ron Paul is a dangerous man.” How is that? Well, you see, Paul agrees with the overwhelming majority of Americans who don’t think the Iraq war – which McQuaid and his tabloid supported – was worth the costs in lives and taxpayer dollars. Paul’s anti-interventionist foreign policy views, says the would-be New Hampshire kingmaker, “have been largely overlooked by a news media more interested in the presidential ‘horse race’ than in the candidates’ positions on issues.”

McQuaid is getting on in years, and so probably doesn’t get out much: while he is railing about the media’s inattention to what he considers to be Paul’s mortal sin, virtually every article assessing Paul’s chances since the beginning of the campaign season has harped on precisely this theme. Paul’s appeal is necessarily “limited” due to this: there is a “ceiling” on his support, they aver. As he began to climb in the polls, and this “ceiling” began to lift, the punditocracy declared that Iowa is passé, irrelevant, and an archaic tradition which ought to be ignored from now on by Those In The Know: Gail Collins gave voice to the New York-Washington axis when she sniffed that we ought to “feel free to ignore Iowa,” because “in some rural districts, the entire caucus will consist of one guy named Earl.” That she wouldn’t dare say that if Earl lived in, say, the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn – where plenty of Earls reside, to be sure – underscores the bigotries our elites allow themselves, these days. In the world of Ms. Collins, some Earls are more equal than others.

The alleged dissonance between Paul’s anti-interventionism and the frothy-mouthed militarism that has been Republican gospel ever since Robert Taft was cheated out of the GOP presidential nomination by the party’s Wall Street wing – (see Phyllis Schlafly’s classic A Choice, Not An Echo, p. 52, for a recap of the Eastern Establishment coup) – has been the constant theme of these pieces, written by youngsters with no understanding or knowledge of history. The one exception, oddly, was John Nichols in The Nation, a liberal-progressive periodical not known for its devotion to libertarianism, who recalled the history of the Old Right in his perceptive piece about the intellectual roots of the Paul campaign. McQuaid, for his part, neither knows nor cares about the history of the conservative movement he presumes to advise: he gets his “conservative” gospel from other sources. He cites Dorothy Rabinowitz’s darkly threatening characterization of Paul as “the best-known of our homegrown propagandists for our chief enemies in the world. One who has made himself a leading spokesman for, and recycler of, the long and familiar litany of charges that point to the United States as a leading agent of evil and injustice, the militarist victimizer of millions who want only to live in peace.”

He left out the part about Paul being a “propagandist for our enemies,” perhaps because it was too much even for him. To the Rabinowitzes of this world – and the Gingriches, the Santorums, the Bachmanns, and the rest of that crazed crew – falls the solemn responsibility of determining the Enemy of the moment. Debate is limited, on this subject, to the question of which Enemy ought to be targeted at this particular point in time. Paul has broken this rule, and allowed that the main enemy – for those who want to limit the power of government, cut $1 trillion dollars from the budget, and emerge out of our economic morass – is in Washington, D.C., not Tehran.

This is literally treason in Rabinowitz’s book, but then again that slim volume only contains several variations on a single theme: anyone who criticizes the regime of war and the constant erosion of our civil liberties is lacking in patriotism, and is quite possibly a “traitor,” a “fifth columnist,” a secret plotter against America and the supporter of its enemies – her enemies. In person – or, at least, on television – her bile is more acidic: here she compares Paul to Hitler and Mussolini while a panel of nattering neocons eggs her on.

One wonders what holds Rabinowitz back from calling for Paul’s arrest as an “enemy combatant” – such restraint goes against the grain of her personal style. It is a style that has long since gone out of style, an echo of the bad old days of the Bush era, when the smoke had hardly cleared from the skies over Manhattan, and the country trembled at the commanding tone of the neocons as they accused war critics – “the decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts,” as neocon tool Andrew Sullivan put it – of wanting to “mount a fifth column.”

One of the most expected – and most welcome – developments of the primary campaign so far, from my perspective, has been Sullivan’s withdrawal of his endorsement of Rep. Paul, after pressure from his friends on the Washington-New York cocktail party circuit and outraged emails from his dwindling fan club of gay waiters and sad young women who love only their cats. It’s funny how everyone is howling that Paul must actively denounce and cast out any support from some white supremacist no one has ever heard of, but not a peep about the odiousness of an endorsement from someone who advocated, at the height of the post-9/11 hysteria, the launching of a nuclear attack on Iraq. Oh well, each to their own moral priorities.

Rabinowitz and McQuaid and the rest of the hate-mongers, who come up with a fresh Enemy every time we knock off the old one, or tire of the task, know who their real enemy is – and it isn’t the President of Iran, or the Communist Party of China. It’s those patriotic Americans who believe we ought to be putting the interests of Americans first – and that the empire is an albatross hung around our necks. It’s the one-third of veterans who, according to a recent poll, think the Iraq war wasn’t worth it: it’s the majority of the American people who think we ought to pursue a policy of “minding our own business” abroad – these are the enemies Rabinowitz rails against. Paul is just a stand-in for the great Outer Wilderness that exists – so some say – outside the Washington-New York axis of power. That the great unwashed masses beyond this perimeter don’t share the obsessions tormenting the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the Georgetown cocktail party circuit has been of little concern to Dorothy and her friends, the Cowardly Lions of the chickenhawk brigade and the Tin Woodsman a.k.a. Mitt Romney. Along with the scarecrows of the Fox News commentariat, together they’ve been marching down the yellow-brick road to war with Iran with nary an opponent to vilify. Suddenly they find themselves confronted by one who combines all their fears in a single convenient package: anti-interventionism (which they call “isolationism”), anti-elitism, and a well-organized and ideologically coherent movement targeting not only “big government” but the big financial interests, centered in New York, who profit from a system based on government debt.

The American empire – indeed, the entire colossus that is our bloated federal government – could not exist a single day without enslaving the American people to the demon of debt. The obvious beneficiaries [.pdf] are those collecting the interest on that debt – the big financial institutions that buy and sell US government securities. They finance the wars, they profit from government spending, and this is the essence of the real issue of “crony capitalism” some of the lesser Republican presidential candidates babble about without understanding or acknowledging that it isn’t just Solyndra. That’s small change compared to the massive theft being pulled off by the Federal Reserve as it inflates away our savings and enriches the few.

How do we pay for our overseas empire? The same way we pay for our burgeoning welfare state: by monetizing the debt, i.e. degrading the currency by creating “money” out of thin air, and inflating the bubble until it bursts again. This has been Paul’s issue from the beginning, and it’s a powerful one: it has substantially shaped the political discourse, with the other candidates forced to jump on board the anti-Fed bandwagon.

This is the Ron Paul Effect, and it has Dorothy and the War Street Journal running scared. Here is a conservative populist who is challenging their power, and in the very redoubt of neoconservative orthodoxy, the GOP! They who have always lived in fear of the rest of the country – in fear of the day those peasants with pitchforks gather in the streets below and yank them out of their Manhattan towers – are seeing in Paul their worst nightmare come true. That accounts for the spittle on Rabinowitz’s cruel lips as she likens a gentle country doctor to the architect of the Holocaust.

It won’t be long now before we hear baseless charges of “racism” and “extremism” supplemented by an overarching explanation for the Paulian phenomenon that echoes the clichéd “sociological” analysis of the neocons Richard Hofstadter and Seymour Martin Lipset, whose characterization of “pseudo-conservatism” as “status resentment” and “the paranoid style” given political form was an all-purpose smear, to be trotted out when liberal commentators were forced into discussions of conservatism. Conservatism, in this view, isn’t an ideology so much as a mental affliction: Hofstadter and Co. were merely popularizing the Marxist theories of Theodore Adorno and the “Frankfurt School,” who opined that opposition to FDR and the New Deal was evidence of a “father complex,” the touchstone of “the authoritarian personality.” Similar psycho-smears are deployed against Paul, who is said by his enemies to be a “crazy old uncle,” “a crazy old codger,” and a “crank,” with neocon professional prig and “movie critic” Michael Medved calling him “Dr. Demento.” This is the level of the “debate” the neocons want: prove you’re not a crazy old Nazi!

The New York Times has collected and codified the “paranoid style” campaign against Paul, essentially stealing (with only minimal attribution) the “analysis” of Dave Weigel and Julian Sanchez, who inveighed against Paul’s “right-wing populism” in the pages of Reason magazine. In that essay, they charged that Paul has deliberately cultivated racists and other even less reputable elements while under the influence of his ideological Svengali, the libertarian theorist Murray N. Rothbard. The Times piece tries to link the good Doctor to one self-proclaimed neo-Nazi, who runs a racist web site – coincidentally the same person who was linked by the media to the Republicans in the infamous battle for Broward county, Florida, where disputes over ballot-counting escalated to the level of physical confrontations. Or not so coincidentally, as the case may be. In any case, the Times writer soon turns to the “right-wing populist” theory first floated by the anti-Paul tag team of Weigel and Sanchez, which is supposed to account for the racists and other troglodytes who are supposedly rallying to Paul’s banner. Weigel-Sanchez characterize this populist strategy as based on “racism,” and they present the following timeline:

“During the period when the most incendiary items appeared—roughly 1989 to 1994—Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist “paleoconservatives,” producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters recently unearthed by The New Republic.”

What was it about that period – roughly 1989 to 1994 – that stands out in one’s mind? If you’re a foreign policy analyst, or even if you’re just an ordinary educated person, what it recalls is the downing of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet empire. This, and not some mythical appeal to the followers of David Duke, was the impetus for the “right-wing populist” strategy. Weigel and Sanchez cite as their source Rothbard’s 1992 speech to the John Randolph Club, but fail to provide a link – leaving their readers to the interpretive mercies of these two mendacious authors. These two turncoats are liars plain and simple, for the speech, delivered before a group of writers and activists who represented both the libertarian and conservative strains of the emerging “paleo” coalition, was a passionate appeal for unity now that the greatest cause of their previous separation – the cold war – was over. It was a call for the conservative movement to return to its anti-imperialist Old Right roots:

“What I call the Old Right is suddenly back! The terms old and new inevitably get confusing, with a new ‘new’ every few years, so let’s call it the ‘Original’ Right, the right wing as it existed from 1933 to approximately 1955. This Old Right was formed in reaction against the New Deal, and against the Great Leap Forward into the Leviathan state that was the essence of that New Deal.

“… The most radical view of the New Deal was that of libertarian essayist and novelist Garet Garrett, an editor of the Saturday Evening Post. His brilliant little pamphlet The Revolution Was, published in 1938, began with these penetrating words – words that would never be fully absorbed by the right:

“’There are those who still think they are holding a pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the night of depression, singing songs to freedom.’

“The revolution was, said Garrett, and therefore nothing less than a counterrevolution is needed to take the country back. Behold, then, not a ‘conservative,’ but a radical right.

“In the late 1930s, there was added to this reaction against the domestic New Deal, a reaction against the foreign policy of the New Deal: the insistent drive toward war in Europe and Asia. Hence, the right wing added a reaction against big government abroad to the attack on big government at home. The one fed on the other. The right wing called for non-intervention in foreign as well as domestic affairs, and denounced FDR’s adoption of Woodrow Wilson’s Global Crusading which had proved so disastrous in World War I. To Wilson-Roosevelt globalism, the Old Right countered with a policy of America First. American foreign policy must neither be based on the interests of a foreign power – such as Great Britain – nor be in the service of such abstract ideals as ‘making the world safe for democracy,’ or waging a ‘war to end all wars,’ both of which would amount, in the prophetic words of Charles A. Beard, to waging ‘perpetual war for perpetual peace.’”

Racism? “Exploitation of class and race resentment”? There is none of that here: go and see for yourself. David Duke gets a mention in passing. Joe McCarthy is praised for his anti-elitism, populist appeal, and instinct that the main danger to liberty is right here at home, while Rothbard notes ruefully that the militant anti-Communism of the McCarthyites was soon transmuted into a militant foreign policy that nearly plunged us into a nuclear showdown with the Soviets.

With communism out of the way, however, conservatives could unite with libertarians to get rid the last vestiges of leftism: for while the Bolsheviks were defeated, to Rothbard’s great joy, their Menshevik cousins were in power in every Western country, including the United States. At the end, he conjures up a vision of a world eerily descriptive of the hysteria surrounding Paul’s rise in the polls:

“Social democracy is still here in all its variants, defining our entire respectable political spectrum, from advanced victimology and feminism on the left over to neoconservatism on the right. We are now trapped, in America, inside a Menshevik fantasy, with the narrow bounds of respectable debate set for us by various brands of Marxists. It is now our task, the task of the resurgent right, of the paleo movement, to break those bonds, to finish the job, to finish off Marxism forever.”

This is precisely the task Paul has set for himself, and in the process he is creating – or, rather, recreating – a conservatism that is anti-war, anti-elitist, and anti-corporatist to the bone. This has the neocons fighting mad, but there is very little they can do about it except attach themselves to Romney, the Establishment candidate, and hope the peasants with pitchforks can be smeared out of existence.

We are, indeed, trapped inside a Menshevik nightmare world, in which peace is demonized as “appeasement” and the uniquely American antipathy to the exercise of arbitrary government power is deemed “unpatriotic.” Paul, it seems, has found the trap door out, however, and it looks like many of his fellow citizens are pouring through the breach. – much to the horror of our arrogant elites, who don’t recall authorizing any such movement.

Note the sheer breadth of the Anti-Paul Popular Front, extending all the way from the Beltway “libertarians” of the Weigel-Sanchez-“cosmotarian” school to the Union Leader, the War Street Journal, and the identity-politics lefties who think Rachel Maddow is a real “radical.” At the core of the smear campaign, you’ll note, are our old friends the neocons: the self-proclaimed “homosexual warrior” Jamie Kirchick, who effortlessly wafted from The New Republic to Radio Free Europe and thence to the extremist edges of the neocon movement inhabited by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The latest “rediscovery” of the infamous newsletters was prompted by a rehash published in Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard, who is still hoping that David Petraeus or some general on a white horse will come riding in to save the GOP from Paul.

This is a classic neocon smear operation, and it has only just begun. Before long, we’ll be treated to endless elaborations of the New York Times-Weigel-Sanchez “analysis,” which will no doubt bring in all the familiar demons that haunt the nightmares of our elites: no smear campaign involving the alleged “evils” of right-wing populism is complete without invoking the specters of Father Coughlin, the German-American Bund, and the allegedly pro-Nazi sympathies of the old American First Committee, the biggest antiwar movement in American history and one that was mercilessly smeared by the left and actively persecuted the US government. And, of course, as Ms. Rabinowitz proved, the inevitable comparison to Hitler – because in Bizarro World, don’t you know, the peacemakers are Hitlerites and the war-makers are the Good Guys.

This campaign will fail: indeed, it is already failing. Nobody is buying it. That’s because the people are tired of our arrogant, self-satisfied elites, who think they can determine the outcome of an election before a single ballot is counted. The more they say “but of course he can’t win,” the more the average person wonders: isn’t that our decision to make?

I can’t help feeling gleeful. The old paradigm that Republicans are invariably – genetically – warmongers is coming apart at the seams, and the War Party is livid. Well, that’s tough, but all good rackets must come to an end, especially when the sheep discover to what extent they’ve been fleeced.

It’s the thrill of a lifetime to see the neocons in such a frothy-mouthed lather: they are calling Paul a hater, but they are the ones exuding hate from every pore. And the people can smell it as it stinks up the political atmosphere, poisoning the election and obscuring the issues they care about. That’s why the haters can’t touch Paul, and won’t touch him with their vicious tactics – although I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if their accusations of “racism” and worse inspire violence against Paul’s followers and possibly even against the candidate himself. Which is why I hope and pray Paul has some good security in place, because he represents the last chance we have to change American foreign policy before we’re all dragged down by the impending collapse of the American empire.

WHAT I THINK......KURT NIMMO

2011-12-31T12:51:00.000+02:00

Appearing on Alex Jones’ nationally syndicated radio show today, the former governor of Minnesota and best selling author, Jesse Ventura, emphatically declared his support for Ron Paul’s presidential run.

“Ron Paul has Governor Jesse Ventura’s endorsement without a doubt,” he said. “It’s not even close. Because I want a new president that is going to change the direction of this country. I want a new president that is going to follow the Constitution. I want a new president that is going to believe in states’ rights. I want somebody that will shock the status quo.”

Jesse said Ron Paul is the only candidate that will put an end to the establishment’s wars and foreign adventures.

“It’s a simple as this,” he said. “If people truly are looking for an attempt at change in this country – changing who are and what we will be in the future – then there is only one candidate, and that is congressman Ron Paul. He’s the only candidate that wants to audit the Federal Reserve… he is the only candidate that wants to talk rather than wage war, so I think this will truly be an agenda for the United States of America, an agenda to determine what we stand for. Do we stand for being the most aggressive, war-mongering country in the world who is all set to go to war with Iran, too, or are we going to be a country that stands for peace?”

Jesse said that there has not been a president since John F. Kennedy who worked for peace and opposed the endless war policies of the ruling elite. Ron Paul is the first candidate since Kennedy to oppose the perpetual war agenda, he explained.

He criticized the corporate media for its effort to portray Paul’s foreign policy philosophy as “scary” and said the exact opposite it true – the foreign policy of the establishment and its handpicked candidates is scary. “All we do is go to war – one after another after another – and I’m one of the people being a veteran who says stop it, that’s enough of this,” Ventura said.

If America wants a change in direction, Jesse said, the only choice for president in 2012 is Ron Paul. “He is then only one who says we ought to talk before we shoot.”

Ventura cited as an example the response of the United States to Iran’s announcement that if may block the Strait of Hormuz if the United States and the EU impose a crippling embargo – essentially an act of war – on the country. The U.S. has vowed to respond if Iran blocks the strategic waterway.

He compared the latest actions of the U.S. to an earlier embargo – the oil embargo imposed on Japan by the United States that ultimately resulted in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the start of the Second World War.

WHAT I THINK.......MICHAEL SCHEUER

2011-12-31T12:50:00.000+02:00

Two recent experiences underlined for me what Iowans will vote for next week in the field of foreign policy if they do not vote for Dr. Ron Paul. On Christmas day, I heard Chris Wallace’s program on FOX. He had a guest – Mr. Charles Lane – who made the false and scurrilous claim that Dr. Paul’s foreign policy was the same as that of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s America-hating policy, a doctrine that appealed to Barack Obama for more than twenty years and which the president and his party are now implementing. Following this imbecilic assertion of Mr. Lane to its logical conclusion, U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines also must be ardent devotees of Rev Wright’s anti-Americanism as they donate many times more money to Dr. Paul than to all the other Republican candidates combined.

Then on 26 December, I visited Mount Vernon’s new and extraordinary multi-media museum documenting the life of George Washington. At the end of the exhibition there is video of U.S. Senators reading Washington’s Farewell Address into the record, something they appear to do every year. When I arrived in front of the video Senator John McCain was reading Washington’s clear warnings about the dangers of foreign intervention and the fatal impact of mindlessly favoring one country over another. To hear this from McCain’s interventionist, war-mongering, and Israel-is-always-right mouth was sound evidence of his hypocrisy and deceitfulness, as well as his and his senatorial colleagues’ ignorance of Washington’s ideas and U.S. history generally.

Based on these two experiences, let us look at what Iowans not voting for Ron Paul will help to inflict on an America already terribly wounded by the Republican and Democratic interventionism in the Muslim world.

1.) A foreign policy that will complete U.S. bankruptcy. While there is a lot of talk about cutting domestic spending to bring the federal debt under control, it is obvious that neither party is willing to make substantial cuts in that area. Indeed, both are counting on drastic cuts in defense spending to help reduce the federal debt. While they may agree on and even make defense-spending cuts, any such reductions will be short-lived and then restored to much more than current levels. Obama and any Republican save Dr. Paul will continue to intervene in the Muslim world and so will motivate more Muslims to fight us. A third-grader could tell you that you cannot cut defense spending when Washington’s unrelenting interventionism is cultivating new enemies who are intent on attacking U.S. citizens and interests. If you are being attacked, our third grader would patiently explain, you have to spend whatever it takes to defend yourself. And there is no doubt that we and our vital interests are going to keep being attacked by Islamists as long as we continue to intervene in their world.

2.) Obama’s return or the election of any Republican but Dr. Paul means the continuation of the State Department’s not-so-secret computer/Facebook/Twitter proselytizing campaign to incite people to overthrow their governments in places like Iran, Russia, Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere. [NB: Three offices of Mrs. Clinton’s elitist democracy/feminism crusade in Cairo were raided and shut by Egyptian authorities on 28 December 2011 for intervening in Egypt’s domestic affairs.] This mindless promotion of anarchy alienates the governments targeted and will motivate them to harm the United States in some manner. Of no concern to Obama, Mrs. Clinton, and Senators McCain and Graham, of course, are the thousands of young and naive people who will die at the hands of the regimes they are instigated to overthrow by the democracy-pushing federal bureaucrats and their elitist political masters, all of whom are safe and secure here in North America. Dr. Paul’s non-interventionist policy will allow foreigners to work out their political destiny in their own way and at their own pace; prevent unnecessary additions to America’s growing list of enemies; and save countless young lives.

3.) All the Republican contenders and the Obama administration are whole-hearted believers that the Arab Spring will bring the installation of secular democracy across that region. This has been and still is a nonsense that only adolescent idealists – or deliberate liars – could believe, and one that has been proven fatuous by the fact that Islamists have won every election held since the start of the Arab Spring. Neither the Obamaites nor the Republicans will admit they are wrong on this issue and they will pump billions of dollars in foreign aid into the Arab-Spring countries in a feckless, Muslim-alienating effort to build secular democracies and install the crazed feminism of Mrs. Clinton. Such aid not only will be wasted, but it surely will cause more Muslims take up arms against America. Indeed, the continuation of this bipartisan cultural/feminist war on Islam is likely to start the clash of civilizations Professor Huntington predicted.

4.) Electing anyone but Ron Paul will further increase the already strong chances of widespread Islamist-conducted violence inside the United States. Any other Republican candidate or a reelected Obama will keep lying to Americans by claiming that we are being attacked because of our liberties, gender-equality laws, and elections rather than because of Washington’s constant intervention in the Islamic world. This now two-decade-old lie – which is abetted by most of the media – has hidden from Americans the fact that all of the would-be Islamist attackers who have been captured in this country were motivated by the invasion of Iraq, U.S. support for Israel, or some other U.S. government action in the Muslim world. As Dr. Paul has explained, our Islamist enemies are motivated by Washington’s bipartisan foreign policy, and as long as that foreign policy does not change the number of young, U.S.-citizen Muslim males willing to attack their fellow citizens will keep increasing. For those who doubt this reality, a quick look at the recently adopted Defense Appropriations Act will clear their eyes. That Act’s authorization for the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens in the United States is clear evidence that the leaders of both parties know that their foreign policy is going to bring war to America’s streets and towns and that the U.S. military will be called on to fight Islamists militants here at home.

5.) Obama and any Republican candidate, except for Dr. Paul, will slavishly obey the U.S.-citizen-dominated, pro-Israel lobby that bribes and suborns them by getting into a war with Iran. Indeed, Washington, Tel Aviv, and London are already conducting a lethal, covert-action war inside Iran which is killing Iranian nuclear scientists and destroying nuclear-related facilities, as well as trying to goad Tehran into reacting with violence and thereby give the West a casus belli. Such a war would be a financial and military disaster for the United States, and would be watched with glee by Russian and Chinese leaders who – while their countries would lose some trade with Iran during a war – would applaud another U.S. self-inflicted would that further erodes the already failing economy that is the base of American power. Moreover, if U.S. political leaders would not permit the U.S. military to defeat Afghan and Iraqi mujahedin armed with Korean War-vintage weapons, they surely will not allow the military to defeat a much better armed nation-state like Iran. Thus we would have yet another politically imposed defeat for the U.S. military. More painful for Americans will be the Iran-sponsored attacks that will occur in the United States if Washington and/or Israel launch a first strike on Iran. The only serious threat Iran poses to the United States is the result of more than 35 years of near-criminal bipartisan negligence by the U.S. executive and legislative branches in the fields of border control and domestic security. Both Iran’s military and intelligence services and their Lebanese Hizballah surrogate have created clandestine entry points along our southern border, as well as a large clandestine infrastructure in the continental United States, one which works with similar networks in Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Iran is too smart and fearful of U.S. military power to use this apparatus to strike first in North America, but the network clearly is meant to allow Tehran to respond violently here if Iran is attacked by America and/or Israel.

6.) While all of the Republican candidates and Obama talk about their plans to make America energy self-sufficient to the greatest extent possible, there is no reason to believe any of them. In the past 40 years, the two parties have made virtually no progress toward this goal, unless you count moving up Daylight Savings Time by three weeks as a major gain. Both parties have taken the easy and profitable route: dependence on oil-rich Arab tyrants, a policy that mandates that the U.S. military spends billions each year to defend the Arab Peninsula’s fundamentally anti-U.S. police states. Only Dr. Paul could be counted on to allow the unfettered development of all domestic energy resources to promote energy self-sufficiency and allow the gradual abandonment of our mujahedin- motivating exploitation of Muslim oil. But even Dr. Paul cannot prevent the United States from fighting an oil war that the Republicans and Democrats have fixed on the national agenda, one that America will wage in the Niger Delta region – from which we will soon get 20-25 percent of our crude – because of the Islamist insurgency that is gathering steam in Nigeria and threatening the oil-rich Delta region’s stability.

Notwithstanding the damnable lies about Dr. Paul’s foreign policy constantly proclaimed by his fellow Republican candidates, leading pro-Israel/pro-intervention U.S.-citizens and their journalist friends, and most of the media, only the gentleman from Texas speaks for the Founder’s non-interventionist vision of America’s role in world affairs and for plain common sense. In the Founders’ non-interventionist design for U.S. foreign policy that is championed by Dr. Paul, Iowans will find a proven road to the maintenance of America’s sovereignty, independence, peace, and prosperity. In the realm of common sense, Dr. Paul beats his fellow candidates, the Obamaites, and the media hands down. Dr. Paul challenges the interventionists in both parties on their plans for spreading secular democracy – and causing wars thereby – on historical grounds that are irrefutable because they are just good commonsense. We, the British, the Australians, and the Canadians have been building our republics/democracies since Magna Charta in 1215 – that is for nearly 800 years – and we are not yet quite perfect. If Iowans and all Americans truly think about what Dr. Paul is saying – and not what the interventionists say he is saying – they would respond favorably to the Texan’s logical conclusion that what we have not fully accomplished in eight centuries cannot possibly be attained in Egypt, Afghanistan, or elsewhere in the Muslim world in 6 weeks, 6 months, or six years, not least because none of those places separate church from state. Dr. Paul’s precise use of history and commonsense exposes the exorbitantly costly effort to build democracies in the Islamic world for what it is; namely, Washington throwing money down the drain for a cause that is impossibly lost from the start and one that will involve us in wars where we have no interests.

In the words of Dr. Paul’s Republican opponents, the Obamaites, and most of the media, on the other hand, Iowans ought to easily be able to hear the elitist, racist, and war-causing Wilsonian doctrine of intervening abroad to impose democracy and secular social beliefs on foreigners at the point of bayonets. Indeed, the national-security policy advocated by Dr. Paul’s opponents and critics boils down to the clear and absurd argument that: America needs more and more wars – and the dead/maimed military personnel attendant thereto – that are motivated by Washington’s intervention abroad if Americans are to be safe and secure at home.

For Iowans and Americans as a whole, then, the best choice for their children, grandchildren, and country clearly lies in the Founder’s foreign-policy wisdom and Dr. Paul’s sturdy advocacy and promised application thereof.

WHAT I THINK.......GEORGE SMITH

2011-12-31T12:46:00.000+02:00

Ron Paul published Gold, Peace, and Prosperity in 1981. What makes his pamphlet especially attractive today is the speed with which it can be consumed. A reader could get through his robust prose during an hour lunch break.

But why would a reader want to do that? Why not read one of Paul’s more recent books instead, even if it couldn’t be read in one sitting?

The answer is, the earlier work provides an excellent foundation for his later writings. It offers a clear, non-technical summary of his views on money and the economy.

Ron Paul has made his mark as an advocate of sound money. As such, he is totally opposed to fiat money and its imposition through the government-supported cartel, the Federal Reserve. It is largely through a hijacked monetary system that government has become a threat to civilization. In this pamphlet, Paul puts it all in perspective with everyday language, as if he’s talking to you – over lunch.

Sound money, he says, is money that is “fully redeemable.” The paper currency people use in transactions is only a substitute for money proper, which traditionally has been gold and silver coin. The adverb “fully” means that every note issued is a claim ticket to a specified weight of gold stored in a bank warehouse.

Why is this arrangement sound? Because it makes the value of money depend on the profitability of mining gold, rather than the “politics of the hour,” as Mises put it. A money that’s sound means the money supply remains relatively stable.

Unsound money is money that bankers and government can inflate virtually without limit. Unsound money equates “monetary policy” with varying degrees of inflation, as determined by a panel of politically-influenced bureaucrats.

Since inflation is indistinguishable in its effects from counterfeiting, the bureaucrats are simply counterfeiters with grandiose titles; their sacred monetary policy is nothing more than “legalized counterfeiting.” Inflation, Paul explains, citing Murray Rothbard, is “new money issued by the banking system, under the aegis of government.”

Blaming Arabs, businessmen, labor unions, or consumers for rising prices doesn't drown out the steady hum of printing presses running 24-hours-a-day, ballooning the money supply, and thereby debasing every dollar previously printed.

Referencing Hans Sennholz, he says:

An increase in the money supply confers no social benefits whatsoever. It merely redistributes income and wealth, disrupts and misguides economic production, and as such constitutes a powerful weapon in a conflict society.

If inflation is so bad, why does it exist? Because it benefits “whoever gets the new money first” – government, bankers, and favored businesses.

A good example is the credit the government created to bail-out the Chrysler Corporation, largely to finance a labor contract that pays the employees twice the average industrial wage. But unions, like businesses, can only persuade government to inflate if the inflation mechanism is in place. A redeemable currency would make this impossible.

Who pays for inflation? The poor and middle classes, and those on fixed incomes. By the time they get the new money – if they get it at all – prices have gone up (or they’ve failed to drop, as they would have without inflation). These groups are cheated by inflation, and eventually are either wiped out through currency depreciation or made dependent on government favors. This pattern has been known for ages, as Paul shows with numerous historical references.

Expansion of the money supply through "spurious paper currency," noted [Andrew] Jackson, "is always attended by a loss to the laboring classes."

"Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind," added Daniel Webster, "none has been found more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money."

But if prices rise from an increase in the money supply, wouldn’t the price of labor go up, too? Quoting William Gouge, President Jackson’s Treasury advisor in 1833, Paul writes:

Wages appear to be among the last things that are raised. . . . The working man finds all the articles he uses in his family rising in price, while the money rate of his own wages remains the same.

When Lincoln issued greenbacks to pay for the Civil War, Paul notes, “prices rose 183%, while wages went up only 54%. During the World War I inflation, prices rose 135%, and wages increased only 88%. The same is true today.”

In answer to the claim that the Fed was created to prevent inflation and the periodic panics that erupted in the 19th century, Paul points out that inflation was written into the central bank’s founding charter, in the requirement to provide a more “elastic” currency. With the Federal Reserve Act of 1913,

a 40% gold cover for Federal Reserve notes and 35% for Federal Reserve deposits were required. The fact that it was not 100% showed that the central bankers planned more inflation. . . .

The central bank never set out to protect the integrity of our money. In fact, the Fed set out to destroy it by institutionalizing inflation. The gold coin standard was doomed and today's inflation made inevitable the day the Federal Reserve was created.

A gold coin standard, regulated by the market, acts as a restraint on inflation because it is the money, not the paper issued as a substitute. This is why governments hate gold – they can’t produce it in unlimited quantities. Using a non-redeemable paper currency avoids the risks of raising taxes while allowing politicians to pay for their wars and bureaucracies by running the printing press behind the curtain.

Since a gold standard enables the average person to restrain the government's attempts to inflate, control the economy, run up deficits, and fight senseless wars, the central planners had to eliminate this fundamental American freedom to own gold. This was accomplished with the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, which outlawed private ownership of gold, prohibited the use of "gold clause" contracts, and abolished the gold coin standard.

Thanks to Paul and others who support sound money, the government in 1974

reversed the unconstitutional 1934 law that barred private ownership of gold. In 1977, gold clause contracts were legalized.

One of my favorite passages in the book is Paul’s succinct comment on the Great Depression. Ben Bernanke wrote a collection of technical essays on the subject and has earned the reputation among his Keynesian colleagues as an expert on the Depression, never mind that he got it wrong. In 2002 he famously apologized to Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz for the Fed’s mismanagement of the money supply after the Crash, which he concluded could have been avoided if central bankers had provided “low and stable inflation” as a monetary background. (For an in-depth discussion of this episode, see Joseph Salerno’s Money, Sound and Unsound, Chapter 16, “Money and Gold in the 1920s and 1930s: An Austrian View”.) Applying the Austrian theory of the trade cycle, Ron Paul summarizes the Depression in 25 words:

Federal Reserve inflation during the 1920s, combined with economic interventionism by both Republican and Democratic administrations, caused and perpetuated the Great Depression of the 1930s.

One could hardly state the truth more concisely.

Many commentators are pointing out that the U.S. is declining into a police state, if it isn’t there already, but what some – especially the monetarists – overlook is the connection between honest money and freedom. For Ron Paul, freedom is “the ultimate justification for honest money.” And here he presents one of the most familiar quotes in libertarian literature, a non-Keynesian comment written by Keynes himself:

There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and it does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

Ron Paul was one of those one-in-a-million many years ago. Sit down with him some lunch hour and see why.

IT IS UP TO YOU

2011-12-31T12:40:00.002+02:00

WHAT I THINK.........JOHN KELLER

2011-12-29T12:23:00.000+02:00

The establishment media and republicans are in a panic that Ron Paul is in a position to win the Iowa caucus, and is gaining momentum in New Hampshire. One of the main strawmen put forth is that Ron Paul has a small but fervent set of supporters, perhaps 1 Million, who take over online polls, and have now realized how to organize on the ground. In other words, the establishment argues that Ron Paul’s apparent popularity is really driven by a small group of Ron Paul fans, rather than being reflective of the majority of voters, and in a real election Ron Paul will be unable to win. Let’s use widely available Internet tools to examine this argument and draw our own conclusions.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and here’s my favorite. It was created using Google Trends, and I invite you to use the tool to replicate what I’ve done here: http://www.google.com/trends (Enter Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney). I changed the default time range to 30 days.

This set of graphs shows 3 major things – I’ve added a big #1, #2, and #3 by each point. First, unless Ron Paul supporters are getting up and using Google every morning, search volume shows that Ron Paul is overwhelmingly the most searched about candidate. The top line references Ron Paul to 1, and compares the search volume for Newt and Mitt to Ron (see the big #1) – He has 2x times the search volume of Newt Gingrich, and 4 times the search volume of Mitt Romney. He has more Google searches than Mitt and Newt, combined. Bottom line: the general public has interest in Ron Paul – note that this does not tell us if the interest is positive or negative, but it is sustained and growing.

Second, the bottom graph is Google’s index of news story mentions. See the big #2, and note that the Mainstream Media really is ignoring Ron Paul. See how it is only now, when Ron Paul has been polling #1 in Iowa and gaining momentum in New Hampshire that the news media are starting to run stories on him. No wonder they call them dead tree dailies. They are not serving the public the information they want to know about, they are serving up the establishment line. Note to entrepreneurs: the gap between search volume above and news story volume below has a name – "opportunity".

Third, the city by city breakout of interest is very telling – see the big #3. The beltway insiders in Washington DC are breathing their own exhaust. They are the only area where searches for Newt Gingrich approach those of Ron Paul. When I first pulled this graph a few days ago, Newt was actually ahead. The level of groupthink is truly amazing, and helps explain the utter befuddlement as the Washington desk chiefs, K street gang, assorted lobbyists, and political hacks try to understand how and why Ron Paul can actually win in Iowa and New Hampshire.

There are many other sources of information to confirm that Ron Paul is really the people’s choice, and the most interesting candidate in the field. Note that I haven’t cherry-picked these, as Mitt is clearly winning in some areas. I will point out that Gross Google Results includes news stories and cross postings of news, which is why I prefer actual search volume to represent interest. Similarly, Mitt is ahead on Facebook "likes", however, Ron is gaining ground after his fine debate performances and Tonight Show Appearance . The Youtube videos are especially telling. Ron Paul’s results page has multiple videos with hundreds and thousands of views each, and no video on the first page with less than 25,000 views. Mitt Romney’s results page has a clip with 42 views in the number 6 position.
In summary, the mainstream media attempts to show Ron Paul as a fringe candidate to discourage undecided voters from aligning themselves with him. Don’t be fooled, and don’t be fooled by the "Ron Paul can’t win" canard. The real world statistics and indicators show that the mainstream media has and is consistently underestimating the strength, depth, and breadth of Ron Paul’s support.

WHAT I THINK........WALTER BLOCK

2011-12-28T17:50:00.002+02:00

There is a segment of the electorate that greets Congressman Paul’s continual harking back to the Constitution, and to the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, as follows: Sure, those were good ideas, then; but nowadays, things are far more complicated. We lived a relatively simple bucolic life as a nation in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. We travelled by horse and buggy, at best. There was no television, no computers, no Al Qaeda, no cars, no weapons of mass destruction; there was far less poverty, crime, juvenile delinquency, divorce, etc. Dr. Paul’s ideas are two centuries out of date. Nowadays, due to the complexity of modern society, his type of limited government free enterprise system simply cannot suffice. Congressman Paul should wake up to the fact that we are now in living the 21st century. An old fuddy-duddy who is continually looking back to the past cannot possibly be a good presidential candidate in 2012.

There is much wrong with this negative assessment of Ron Paul’s limited government philosophy. I shall address these "he is out of date" criticisms under three headings: foreign policy, civil liberties and economics.

1. Foreign policy

In the early days of our nation, we were protected by not one, not two, not three but four oceans: the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic. Even if we made mistakes, and engaged in "entangling alliances," and searched for "monsters to destroy" abroad, these bodies of water served as a buffer. Yes, the sailing ships could come get us, but that would take a long time; we could see them coming long before they got here.

Nowadays, modern technology has rendered the preventative function of these bodies of water pretty much inoperable. So, any mistakes we make are likely to be met with faster and more effective blowback, e.g., 9/11. If George Washington’s advice to be non interventionists was right during his day, it is even more correct at present.

Similarly, if there were a "terra-ist" in, say, the year 1799 who had it in for us, whether for just or unjust reasons, he would come to our shores armed, only, with a sword, or a musket, or some such weapon. At worst, he could murder but a very few innocent Americans. Nowadays, this is simply not the case. It thus behooves us to be more cautious with our foreign policy in the modern era than ever we needed to be in the earlier epoch.

Terrorists do not put us in the cross hairs because we have rock music, mini-skirts and freedom. Many other countries that have not been attacked exhibit the first two; as for the third, the U.S. is no longer among the freest of nations. According to one source, we are only tenth, after these others: Hong Kong, in first, Singapore in second, New Zealand in third, Switzerland in fourth, Australia in fifth, Canada in sixth, Chile in seventh, the UK in eighth, and Mauritius in ninth. Rather, we have been recently targeted by murderous killers because of what we have done: we have been poking sticks in hornet’s nests in every corner of the globe. Then, our mainstream media have registered shock and horror when some of these insects come back here and bite us. In contrast, in the early days of our republic we pretty much minded our own business, and did not have these horrid events befall us.

According to Dorothy Rabinowitz, Dr. Paul is "the best-known American propagandist for our enemies." Not at all. Dr. Paul, as a physician knows full well that he cannot cure any medical problem until he is clear as to its underlying cause. As a presidential candidate he is fully cognizant of the fact that he cannot stop an outbreak of attacks on our country and our people unless he fully understands their genesis. And, how can this be accomplished? For Ron Paul as doctor, this involves the stethoscope, the x-ray machine, the thermometer, blood pressure measurement devices, the cat-scan and the MRI. For Mr. President Paul, it requires, at least, listening to what they have to say when they explain why they have attacked us. It necessitates reading what the intelligence community of our country has to say about blowback. (See here for the reading list on these matters that Ron Paul utilized to instruct former New York City mayor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.)

2. Civil liberties

We did not have a drug war until the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. Before that time, these drugs were a medical crisis, only. Afterwards, the medical challenges became exacerbated, and an entire new whole host of problems ensued. Black people are about 14% of our population, but account for some 63% of the prisoners in jail for drug crimes. Numerous deaths have been attributed to these vicious laws as well. Before and after alcohol prohibition this substance, too, was only a medical problem, best dealt with by doctors and groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. But during Prohibition, this drug, also, created havoc in our society, needless deaths due to fighting over territory, and poisonings due to "bathtub gin."

Yes, Ron Paul "wishes to turn back the clock" to a previous era here too. But earlier does not necessarily mean worse. Would anyone seriously like to turn the clock forward and reinstitute alcohol prohibition? Of course not. And, yet, anything that can be said in criticism of alcohol can probably be said, or worse, of narcotics. Both are dangerous substances; but more people die of the former than the latter. The prohibition of each of them leads to deaths. Libertarians oppose allowing children to have access to either of them, but if we cannot trust adults to make decisions about them, how can we justify giving them the right to vote?

In like manner, Congressman Paul opposes the Patriot Act and NDAA and SOPA because they trash the Constitution and violate our basic civil rights. Here, too, he prefers an earlier epoch to a later one, because he is not at all concerned with dates, but rather with rights.

3. Economics

Yes, our present day economy comprised of one third of a billion Americans, and billions of other people across the globe, is far more complicated than the one over which the founding fathers presided. But this is not an argument in favor of more regulations, it is an argument against them. For, the more complex is an economy, the more it needs to rely on the "magic of the market," not on central direction. If there is any case for a centrally planned economy, it applies not at present, but 300 years ago, when matters were far simpler, and thus socialistic planning could not, paradoxically, be quite as deleterious.

At the beginning of our Republic, some 98% of the people were farmers. They didn’t need price signals as much as modern entrepreneurs do. They could pretty much judge the best way of engaging in human action based on tradition. Grandpa planted such and such, and so did dad, so the way was clear ahead for the present farmer. But in an epoch where automobiles supplant horses and buggies, computers take the place of typewriters and telephones, etc., when there are millions, maybe billions of prices, not merely a few tens of thousands, it is imperative that economic freedom and private property rights coordinate economic activity. Yes, the Jamestown colony almost died out due to socialism. I am not advocating any such system, for any time. But I do insist that the simpler an economy, paradoxically, the less harm that price controls and socialism can do.

In like manner, it is also paradoxical that if you must have governmental interferences with the economy, it will hurt fewer people, and less seriously, if this is confined to luxury goods. If price controls and central planning are imposed on diamonds, jewelry and Rolls Royces, users of these goods will be disaccommodated. But they will not perish. However, if these dirigisme initiatives apply to milk, bread, meat, apples, etc., many people will die, particularly the poor. Yet, it is the rare socialist-fascist who advocates a government take-over of luxury goods. Rather, these economic illiterates target things like housing (rent control) and food. They make a mistake akin to the one made by those who think that since our economy is now more complicated than ages ago, it needs more tender loving care by government, inc.

Let us conclude.

It is not at all the case that newer is necessarily better than older. Murray N. Rothbard has characterized this as the Whig fallacy. Yes, certainly, in some arenas, many of them, we have made great progress. Transportation, communication, medical practice, all readily come to mind in this regard. But it cannot be denied that in other areas, we have retrogressed. We no longer have the technology or the skills to manufacture Stradivarius quality violins. Although this is of course subjective, I and many others would argue that modern music is vastly inferior to that of Bach, Mozart and Handel. And so it is with our Founding Fathers (apart from slavery, of course). Their foreign policy was arguably better than that of Bush and Obama. Just because it is historical, does not render it fallacious, as critics of Ron Paul all too often "argue." Similarly, Congressman Ron Paul sees our drug policies pre-1914 as far more humane and beneficial than our present drug war. It will not suffice to prove him wrong to note that he is living in the past. No, these things have to be argued out on their merits. It is simply fallacious to maintain that since this policy was once tried and then rejected (with the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914), it is inferior to present day practices. As far as economics is concerned, the move from Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard to the likes of Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Ben Bernanke was one of retrogression, not progress. By going "forward," we have lost, not gained.

THE NDAA REPEALS MORE RIGHTS

2011-12-28T11:44:00.000+02:00

Little by little, in the name of fighting terrorism, our Bill of Rights is being repealed. The 4th amendment has been rendered toothless by the PATRIOT Act. No more can we truly feel secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects when now there is an exception that fits nearly any excuse for our government to search and seize our property. Of course, the vast majority of Americans may say “I’m not a terrorist, so I have no reason to worry.” However, innocent people are wrongly accused all the time. The Bill of Rights is there precisely because the founders wanted to set a very high bar for the government to overcome in order to deprive an individual of life or liberty. To lower that bar is to endanger everyone. When the bar is low enough to include political enemies, our descent into totalitarianism is virtually assured.

The PATRIOT Act, as bad is its violation of the 4th Amendment, was just one step down the slippery slope. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) continues that slip toward tyranny and in fact accelerates it significantly. The main section of concern, Section 1021 of the NDAA Conference Report, does to the 5th Amendment what the PATRIOT Act does to the 4th. The 5th Amendment is about much more than the right to remain silent in the face of government questioning. It contains very basic and very critical stipulations about due process of law. The government cannot imprison a person for no reason and with no evidence presented or access to legal counsel.

The dangers in the NDAA are its alarmingly vague, undefined criteria for who can be indefinitely detained by the US government without trial. It is now no longer limited to members of al Qaeda or the Taliban, but anyone accused of “substantially supporting” such groups or “associated forces.” How closely associated? And what constitutes "substantial" support? What if it was discovered that someone who committed a terrorist act was once involved with a charity? Or supported a political candidate? Are all donors of that charity or supporters of that candidate now suspect, and subject to indefinite detainment? Is that charity now an associated force?

Additionally, this legislation codifies in law for the first time authority to detain Americans that has to this point only been claimed by President Obama. According to subsection (e) of section 1021, “[n]othing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.” This means the president’s widely expanded view of his own authority to detain Americans indefinitely even on American soil is for the first time in this legislation codified in law. That should chill all of us to our cores.

The Bill of Rights has no exemptions for "really bad people" or terrorists or even non-citizens. It is a key check on government power against any person. That is not a weakness in our legal system; it is the very strength of our legal system. The NDAA attempts to justify abridging the bill of rights on the theory that rights are suspended in a time of war, and the entire Unites States is a battlefield in the War on Terror. This is a very dangerous development indeed. Beware.

WHAT I THINK.......JAMES JAEGER

2011-12-23T10:12:00.002+02:00

If you have been watching the news, you know that Ron Paul is now beating both Gingrich and Romney in the polls and could walk away with a win in Iowa.

Some say he could also walk away with a win in New Hampshire, and possibly even win the Republican (GOP) nomination.

For the Republican National Committee (RNC), this must be uncomfortable – the idea that they would be forced to nominate a principled, Constitutionalist just because WE THE PEOPLE demanded it.

But here's what really terrifies them: Ron Paul is in a position to hand the election of 2012 over to Barack Obama and the Democrats because he would be a "spoiler." But even more terrifying is the fact that Dr. Paul is in a position to be much more than a "spoiler" – he's in a position to be a "winner."

Etymology of the term SPOILER:

The term "spoiler" is a derogatory term that was dreamt up by statists in the Democratic and Republican parties in order to sucker the public into continuously voting for no one outside the Establishment. In other words, if you vote your conscience, YOU are a "spoiler." If you run on principles of your conscience and take votes away from an Establishment candidate, YOU are also a "spoiler."

Thus, since Ron Paul votes his conscience, since he rejects certain aspects of the Establishment – such as the Federal Reserve's abuse of the monetary system and its financing of the welfare-warfare empire we have now become – there is no way apparatchiks in the GOP will nominate Dr. Paul no matter what WE THE PEOPLE want.

And to this end, lackey pundits in the CFR-dominated, mainstream media continuously chant that Ron Paul has "no chance to get the Republican nomination." They spew this so often, it's obvious they don't believe their own lies.

But here's the joker: Ron Paul does not even need the GOP to win the general election. If he were to walk away for a third party, he would take at least 12% of the Republican vote with him. He would also take another 15% from the Independents and at least 11% from the Democrats. This would give him 38% – enough of the vote to win the Presidency in a three-man race.

GOP strategists know all this and this is why you will never hear them utter these statistics in the mainstream media. If the public were to become too "hopeful" – if they were to understand the mathematics of the situation – even more people would vote for Ron Paul if for no other reason than to be on the winner's bandwagon.

So, the GOP has some serious choices to make.

Either they morph into a small-government party and support the Ron Paul Revolution of "getting back to the Constitution," or they risk losing their power to a new political party. And a new political party would not only mean the demise of the Republican party, but the Democratic party as well.

Since the Democratic Party AND the Republican Party are BOTH the parties of BIG government, a new political party of SMALL government would reveal to the public – more than ever – what the two mainstream parties have become.

The two mainstream parties – the Democrats and Republicans – have become, in essence, two departments of the same police state. They are the same political party, in effect: growing the government ever larger and ever more militaristic, both domestically and internationally. The PATRIOT Act expands the police state domestically, and the UN, IMF, WTO, NAFTA, GATT and NATO -which they BOTH continuously and blindly support – expand the police state internationally.

Due to serious abridgments of the US Constitution and principles stated in the Declaration of Independence, the United States are now run by a dictating oligarchy known as the UNITED STATES. And this dictating oligarchy is dominated by cultural Marxists and corporate fascists who have hijacked the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively.

The "DemoPublicans" have established the Department of Homeland Security for the purpose of administering their police state and the PATRIOT Act has become their new Constitution.

If you accept the idea that the Democrats and Republicans (again the "DemoPublicans") have become two departments of the same police state – two wings of the same ugly bird – you will have to accept that ultimately it does not matter whether a Democrat or Republican is elected to the presidency. It does not matter if Obama or Romney is elected president. Establishment politicians in either of these "two" parties will continue to use the Federal Reserve System to monetize debt (print money out of thin air) and use this fraudulent "fiat" currency to build their welfare-warfare state.

It could be said that Republicans specialize in printing money to build weapons and wage wars – Democrats specialize in printing money to address the sick and the poor. The Republicans thus CREATE the sick and the poor with their WAR-fare policies and the Democrats HEAL the sick and the poor with their WELL-fare policies.

Thus when an entity controls the HEALING and HURTING of Humankind, doesn't that entity, in essence, CONTROL Humankind? Well, welcome to the DemoPublican control mechanism – something you might think about the next time you vote or mindlessly scream out for your Clinton-, Bush-, Obama-, Gingrich- or Romney-candidate.

Taken as a whole, the Demopublican machine – now assembled more by supra-national, international banking families than American citizens – has destroyed US politics that used to center on constitutional principles. Controllers in this CFR-led embryonic world government have created a well-oiled machine to maximize the plunder of millions, if not billions of people, through the mechanism of central banking, debt and the hurting-healing cycle. Would it not be reasonable to posit that the Democratic and Republican Parties are thus primary tools in what seems to be a master plan of globalization?

Ron Paul – a strict limited-government Constitutionalist with an appreciation for ethnonationalism – does not fit in with the New World Order's management plans. Therefore, if he wins the popular vote not only in Iowa and New Hampshire but across the nation, the DemoPublican controllers have a serious problem.

They can either rig the elections so it looks like Dr. Paul did "not" win, or they can blackmail him by threatening his family, like they did when Ross Perot was getting too popular.

If Dr. Paul walks away from the GOP to go Indy, in reality he will "spoil" nothing, for as discussed above, the Democrats and Republicans are the same political party in effect, so there is nothing that CAN be "spoiled".

Also, since the DemoPublicans must continue the cockfight between them – so the illusion that they are "different" parties can be maintained – this fighting has been, of necessity, escalating into a GRIDLOCK. Note the endless fighting about extending payroll tax cuts, Obamacare and illegal immigration. Thus, even if Ron Paul is labeled a "spoiler" – for thwarting the Establishment Controller's plan to get one of their puppets nominated or elected – he will spoil nothing.

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR RON PAUL TO BE A SPOILER, BECAUSE:

A) THE DEMS AND GOP ARE THE SAME PARTY IN EFFECT, AND;

B) EVEN IF OBAMA GETS REELECTED, THE DEMS AND GOP WILL BE GRIDLOCKED AND THUS NOTHING WILL GET DONE.

Summary:

The term "spoiler" is used by two groups of people:

1) the ignorant or IQ-challenged person who knows little or nothing about politics or the art of war, and

2) the statist propaganda-merchant who is trying to give the public the illusion that there is a "difference" between the Democratic and Republican Parties.

The reason the statist propaganda-merchant is trying to perpetuate the meme that there is a difference between the two major parties is so the general public will not look elsewhere for the solution to their problems. If one can get the Democrats and Republicans fighting with each other, it gives the illusion that they are "different" to the degree they "fight." Indeed they DO have "differences"; however, the differences are over trivial issues. On all the major issues the Democrats and Republicans are identical, overtly and covertly, thus they are the same political party in effect. You saw how many of Bush's policies Obama kept in place when he came into office ostensibly to "change" things. The same thing will happen if the Republicans take back the White House, ad infinitum.

So this is why Ron Paul is such a threat to the Establishment. He's running on the GOP ticket basically so he can get mainstream media exposure. The mainstream tried to ignore him in the last election. Remember how Hannity practically spat on Dr. Paul in the 2008 election? Remember how all the other pundits treated him? Then, when he suddenly raised millions of dollars with his "money bombs" and millions of voters started joining the grassroots Ron Paul Revolution – which kicked off the Tea Party Revolution – it wasn't "politically correct" to spit on him any longer. Worse, they couldn't ignore him into oblivion like they ignored all other dissenting candidates. Third-party candidate Ross Perot was only able to get mainstream media exposure because he purchased it with his personal wealth. Neither Ralph Nader nor Harry Brown, on the other hand, have been able to purchase such exposure; thus they have never been able to get an alternative vision into the public domain.

Thus, if Ron Paul continues to get support from the rest of the nation he's currently getting in Iowa, the GOP should technically nominate him, but it's a long-shot they will.

After all, for Ron Paul to win and use the vote to destroy the cultural Marxist-infested, totalitarian fiat empire, being built by controllers of the "liberal world order" is incomprehensible to them even though Pat Buchanan details in his new book, Suicide of a Superpower, the reasons why the moment of globalism and "free" trade has passed.

But such is the power of the zeitgeist for the world is in revolt, from the Middle East to Wall Street. The 99-percent don't know exactly HOW they have been screwed, but they do know that they HAVE been screwed – at least for the past 100 years. From the Tea Partiers to the Wall Street Occupiers in America, WE THE PEOPLE are fed up with:

1) a Congress that has been bought and sold by corporate fascists,

2) Presidents that start wars and act like Marxist dictators,

3) an activist Supreme Court that legislates from the bench making one-size-fits-all laws that ignore the original intent of the Founders.

WE THE PEOPLE are fed up with many other things, but both the "Right" and the "Left" can agree with much of what Ron Paul offers, because his principles are American principles, and American principles are Constitutional Principles which accommodate both liberals and conservatives, Left or Right.

So don't let CFR-infested, Establishment propaganda spewed through the mainstream media or the DemoPublican police state dissuade you from voting for Ron Paul, whether he stays on the GOP ticket, goes Independent or starts a new party.

It is vital that all Americans stay true to their conscience, NOT their political parties. Remember, the US Constitution does not even mention political parties. In fact, many of the Founders warned us against them; they called them "factions" and said that membership in them is dangerous to a democratic form of government. They warned us to stay away from entrenched political parties – such as the Democrats and Republicans – because entrenched political parties are only one step away from dictatorships.

It is not too late to act. Vote out the incumbent congressmen and vote in Ron Paul no matter what scare tactics the pundits on CNN, FOX News or MSNBC attempt to use on you. Ron Paul CAN get 38% of the vote and win the presidency. This is not an opinion; it's mathematical fact.

BEWARE THE COMING BAILOUTS OF EUROPE

2011-12-20T20:56:00.002+02:00

The economic establishment in this country has come to the conclusion that it is not a matter of "if" the United States must intervene in the bailout of the euro, but simply a question of "when" and "how". Newspaper articles and editorials are full of assertions that the breakup of the euro would result in a worldwide depression, and that economic assistance to Europe is the only way to stave off this calamity. These assertions are yet again more scare-mongering, just as we witnessed during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis. After just a decade of the euro, people have forgotten that Europe functioned for centuries without a common currency.

The real cause of economic depression is loose monetary policy: the creation of money and credit out of thin air and the monetization of government debt by a central bank. This inflationary monetary policy is the cause of every boom and bust, yet it is precisely what political and economic elites both in Europe and the United States are prescribing as a resolution for the present crisis. The drastic next step being discussed is a multi-trillion dollar bailout of Europe by the European Central Bank, aided by the IMF and the Federal Reserve.

The euro was built on an unstable foundation. Its creators attempted to establish a dollar-like currency for Europe, while forgetting that it took nearly two centuries for the dollar to devolve from a defined unit of silver to a completely unbacked fiat currency note. The euro had no such history and from the outset was a purely fiat system, thus it is not surprising to followers of Austrian economics that it barely survived a decade and is now completely collapsing. Europe's economic depression is the result of the euro's very structure, a fiat money system that allowed member governments to spend themselves into oblivion and expect that someone else would pick up the tab.

A bailout of European banks by the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve will exacerbate the crisis rather than alleviate it. What is needed is for bad debts to be liquidated. Banks that invested in sovereign debt need to take their losses rather than socializing those losses and prolonging the process of adjusting their balance sheets to reflect reality. If this was done, the correction would be painful, but quick, like tearing off a large band-aid, but this is necessary to get back on solid economic footing. Until the correction takes place there can be no recovery. Bailing out profligate European governments will only ensure that no correction will take place.

A multi-trillion dollar European aid package cannot be undertaken by Europe alone, and will require IMF and Federal Reserve involvement. The Federal Reserve already has pumped trillions of dollars into the US economy with nothing to show for it. Just considering Fed involvement in Europe is ludicrous. The US economy is in horrible shape precisely because of too much government debt and too much money creation and the European economy is destined to flounder for the same reasons. We have an unsustainable amount of debt here at home; it is hardly fair to US taxpayers to take on Europe's debt as well. That will only ensure an accelerated erosion of the dollar and a lower standard of living for all Americans.

AND WHY NOT?

2011-12-18T09:42:00.002+02:00

WHAT I THINK.....JUSTIN PTAK

2011-12-15T12:07:00.003+02:00

I got involved in politics because of the tragic decisions I saw our so-called statesmen making in Washington D.C. I was troubled by the laws being passed that impact our lives on a daily basis. Those crucial issues of our day that no man or woman can sit back and let be decided by those out of touch and unresponsive from the first day they get into office. These men and women who state they are public servants doing the common good, and yet are nothing but petty thieves with silver tongues and shiny three thousand dollar suits. To quote: "Don't steal, the government hates competition." An informed electorate is our only hope for the future. We can no longer afford to let the Federal Reserve act as a common pickpocket. Nor allow the military industrial complex to pillage and plunder around the world as they blaze a trail of bloody innocence.

I never thought of running for President when I was a hall monitor and felt the awesome yet abusive power over other people. Nor do I want to become President in order to continue the family tradition. And, I do not seek this office to enlarge the riches of my friends or those who have donated to my campaign. I will grant neither privilege nor favor to reward loyalty or support.

I aspire to the presidency to give you back control of your lives. I do not know how to run your life. Unlike many others in this race, I do not pretend to. I want the American people to enjoy the privileges of our forefathers and experience the benefits of self-determination that they fought and died for. Those are your right and privilege that the founding fathers in their infinite wisdom bestowed upon us if only we are willing to preserve them.

This is the greatest challenge we face today.

We live in a time of a constantly deflating dollar. A time where we see deficits and debt increase at levels we have not seen in 40 years. Our civil liberties are vanishing at the whim of the president's signature. It is a time when our empire is expanding and causing untold devastation and destruction with no end in sight.

I want to make a difference, to send a message to the world that the remnant is still alive, that it is growing stronger and stronger every day as its message spreads by word of mouth, roads, byways, and the amazing electronic superhighway. And, foremost, to educate the citizenry that we can indeed return to the path of peace, freedom, and prosperity.

I believe that we can become a beacon of hope for the world. We can regain the goodwill that we once enjoyed as a symbol of hope and opportunity for all. We can once again aspire to be "the shining city on the hill" that Ronald Reagan once dreamed of. But, we cannot achieve this by robbing from Peter's grandchildren to pay the privileged Paul's of today.

We will have to face the reality of this path toward destruction that we have set ourselves on by listening to the false promises of politicians without principle. We will have to make tough choices and take responsibility. Responsibility both personally as it relates to our own lives and as a whole when it comes to matters of finance and friendly relations with the rest of the world. The American people yearn for this freedom. We all yearn for the ability to be free to choose and direct and determine the future of our own lives and that of our families. We, as citizens, also seek to restrain the growth of government and even decrease its size in order to take back our lives and limit the burden that we place on our children and our children's children.

We cannot let this go on anymore. It is just that simple. If we are set on this course then we are destined for "the dust heap of history." It is a hard fact to swallow, but it is a certainty. We shall follow the fate of Rome. Or, we will become another chapter in the history books just as the British Empire has.

Fortunately, we have time to redirect and set sail upon a new wind of respect for life and liberty. Our time is running out, but it is not too late. The choice is ours to dedicate ourselves with new determination toward that often heard phrase, but rarely executed: a new birth of freedom.

We are no longer disparate voices in the wilderness without a cause to rally around. The time is now to join together around principle and send a message to the powers that be that it will not be more business as usual on K Street, Wall Street, 20th Street and Constitution Avenue, 1400 Defense Pentagon, and, certainly not at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION VS MUTUALLY ASSURED RESPECT

2011-12-13T20:43:00.000+02:00

The Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear bomb on August 29, 1949, leading to the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, shared by both the USA and the Soviets. The unwritten agreement by the two superpowers deterred nuclear war with an implied threat to blow up the world, if need be, to defend each of their interests.

I well remember the Cuban missile crises of October 1962, having been drafted into the military at that time. Mutually Assured Destruction had significant meaning to the whole world during this period. This crisis, along with the escalating ill-advised Vietnam War, made me very much aware of the problems the world faced during the five years I served as a USAF flight surgeon.

It was with great pleasure and hope that I observed the collapse of the Soviet Empire between 1989 and 1991. This breakup verified the early predictions by the free market economists, like Ludwig von Mises, that communism would self-destruct because of the deeply flawed economic theories embedded in socialism. Our nukes were never needed because ideas are more powerful than the Weapons of War.

Many Americans at the time were boldly hopeful that we would benefit from a generous peace dividend. Sadly, it turned out to be a wonderful opportunity wasted. There was to be no "beating their swords into plowshares," even though history shows that without weapons and war there's more food and prosperity for the people. Unfortunately, our leaders decided on another course that served the special interests who benefit from constant wars and the arbitrary rearrangement of national borders for control of national resources.

Instead of a peace dividend from ending the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction, US leaders opted for a foreign policy of American world domination as its sole superpower. It was all in the spirit of Woodrow Wilson's idealistic goal of "making the world safe for democracy" by pursuing a war to end all wars.

The mantra became that American exceptionalism morally required us to spread our dominance world-wide by force. US world dominance, by whatever means, became our new bipartisan foreign policy. There was to be no peace dividend, though our enemies were virtually non-existent.

In many ways America had been "exceptional" but in an opposite manner from the neo-con driven foreign policy of the last 20 years. If America indeed has something good to offer the cause of peace, prosperity, and liberty it must be spread through persuasion and by example; not by intimidation, bribes and war.

Maintaining world domination is based on an intellectually and financially bankrupt idea that generates dependency, war, loss of civil liberties, inflation and debt, all of which contribute to our economic crisis.

Saddest of all, this policy of American domination and exceptionalism has allowed us to become an aggressor nation, supporting pre-emptive war, covert destabilization, foreign occupations, nation building, torture and assassinations. This policy has generated hatred toward Americans and provides the incentive for almost all of the suicide attacks against us and our allies.

To continue to believe the fiction that the militants hate us for our freedoms and wealth may even result in more attacks against us – that is, unless our national bankruptcy brings us to our knees and forces us to bring our troops home.

Expanding our foreign military intervention overseas as a cure for the attacks against us, tragically, only guarantees even more attacks. We must someday wake up, be honest with ourselves, and reject the notion that we're spreading freedom and America's goodness around the world. We cannot justify our policy by claiming our mission is to secure American freedoms and protect our Constitution. That is not believable. This policy is doomed to fail on all fronts.

The policy of Mutually Assured Destruction has been gone now for 20 years, and that is good.

The policy of American domination of the world, as nation builder-in-chief and policeman of the world, has failed and must be abandoned – if not as a moral imperative, then certainly out of economic necessity.

My humble suggestion is to replace it with a policy of Mutually Assured Respect. This requires no money and no weapons industry, or other special interests demanding huge war profits or other advantages.

This requires simply tolerance of others' cultures and their social and religious values, and the giving up of all use of force to occupy or control other countries and their national resources. Many who disagree choose to grossly distort the basic principles shared by the world's great religions: the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, and the cause of peace. Religions all too often are distorted and used to justify the violence engaged in for arbitrary power.

A policy of Mutually Assured Respect would result in the U.S.:

Treating other nations exactly as we expect others to treat us.

Offering friendship with all who seek it.

Participating in trade with all who are willing.
Refusing to threaten, bribe or occupy any other nation.
Seeking an honest system of commodity money that no single country can manipulate for a trade advantage. Without this, currency manipulation becomes a tool of protectionism and prompts retaliation with tariffs and various regulations. This policy, when it persists, is dangerous and frequently leads to real wars.

Mutually Assured Respect offers a policy of respect, trade and friendship and rejects threats, sanctions and occupations.

This is the only practical way to promote peace, harmony and economic well-being to the maximum number of people in the world.

Mutually Assured Respect may not be perfect but it's far better than Mutually Assured Destruction or unilateral American dominance.

NO MANDATORY MENTAL HEALTH SCREENING FOR CHILDREN!

2011-12-13T16:31:00.001+02:00

Maryanne Godboldo, a mother in Michigan, noticed that pills prescribed by her daughter's doctor were making her condition worse, not better. So Mrs. Godboldo stopped giving them to her. That's when the trouble began. When Child Protective Services (CPS) bureaucrats became aware that the girl was not receiving her prescribed medication, they decided the child should be taken away from her mother's custody on grounds of medical neglect. When Ms. Godboldo refused to surrender her daughter to the state, CPS enlisted the help of a police SWAT team! On March 24 of this year a 12 hour standoff ensued and young Ariana was taken into custody. The drug involved was Risperdal, a neuroleptic antipsychotic medication with numerous known side effects. Ms. Godboldo had decided on a more holistic approach for her daughter. She is still engaged in a costly legal battle with the state over Ariana's treatment and custody.

This is one example of how government's increasing proclivity to medicate children with questionable psychiatric drugs violates the rights of parents. Just recently, the Government Accountability Office released a report on the astonishingly high rate of prescriptions for psychotropic drugs for children in the foster care system. It is absolutely astounding that nearly 40% of kids in foster care are on psychotropic drugs, some of them taking up to 5 different pills at a time. Some of these children are under one year of age - too young to safely take over the counter cold medication!

To fight this dangerous trend I reintroduced the Parental Consent Act of 2011, HR 2769, which prohibits federal funds from being used to establish or implement any universal or mandatory mental health or psychiatric screening program. The previous administration pushed hard for this type of federal intrusion into the medical decisions of families through its wildly misnamed "New Freedom Commission on Mental Health." Everyone interested in parental rights and true health freedom must fight to make sure the commission's findings and dubious psychiatric science are never used as justification to force mental health screening on American kids at school without their parents' consent.

There has been a persistent lobbying effort, funded by pharmaceutical companies, to increase the number of these prescriptions to even more children. A universal screening program is the stated goal of these lobbyists. I would not be at all surprised to see the recent attention to the issue of schoolyard bullying used as a tool towards these ends.

Imagine the potential ramifications of a universal, mandatory psychiatric health screening program in a public school, considering how some bureaucrats are wont to behave! The diagnostic criteria for many mental illnesses remain vague and subjective. Therefore it is all too easy for a bureaucrat in a white coat to label a child with some sort of psychiatric syndrome simply because they were having a bad day, or behaving as a typical rambunctious child. That label could follow them around the rest of their school career and come with a number of prescriptions attached, which the state, as in the Godboldo case, may try to force the parents to administer, whether they want to or not.

I plan to continue the fight to ban federal funding of any universal screening program that imposes mental healthcare screening on children without express informed consent from parents.

STILL PLUGGING ALONG

2011-12-10T10:36:00.002+02:00

WHAT I THINK......WALTER WILLIAMS

2011-12-06T20:22:00.002+02:00

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column titled "Free to Die" (9/15/2011), pointed out that back in 1980, his late fellow Nobel laureate Milton Friedman lent his voice to the nation's shift to the political right in his famous 10-part TV series, Free To Choose. Nowadays, Krugman says, "'free to choose' has become 'free to die.'" He was referring to a GOP presidential debate in which Rep. Ron Paul was asked what should be done if a 30-year-old man who chose not to purchase health insurance found himself in need of six months of intensive care. Paul correctly, but politically incorrectly, replied, "That's what freedom is all about – taking your own risks." CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer pressed his question further, asking whether "society should just let him die." The crowd erupted with cheers and shouts of "Yeah!", which led Krugman to conclude that "American politics is fundamentally about different moral visions." Professor Krugman is absolutely right; our nation is faced with a conflict of moral visions. Let's look at it.

If a person without health insurance finds himself in need of costly medical care, let's investigate just how might that care be provided. There are not too many of us who'd suggest that we get the money from the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. That being the case, if a medically indigent person receives medical treatment, it must be provided by people. There are several possible methods to deliver the services. One way is for people to make voluntary contributions or for medical practitioners to simply treat medically indigent patients at no charge. I find both methods praiseworthy, laudable and, above all, moral.

Another way to provide those services is for Congress to use its power to forcibly use one person to serve the purposes of another. That is, under the pain of punishment, Congress could mandate that medical practitioners treat medically indigent patients at no charge. I'd personally find such a method of providing medical services offensive and immoral, simply because I find the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another, what amounts to slavery, in violation of all that is decent.

I am proud to say that I think most of my fellow Americans would be repulsed at the suggestion of forcibly using medical practitioners to serve the purposes of people in need of hospital care. But I'm afraid that most Americans are not against the principle of the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another under the pain of punishment. They just don't have much stomach to witness it. You say, "Williams, explain yourself."

Say that citizen John pays his share of the constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government. He recognizes that nothing in our Constitution gives Congress the authority to forcibly use one person to serve the purposes of another or take the earnings of one American and give them to another American, whether it be for medical services, business bailouts, handouts to farmers or handouts in the form of foreign aid. Suppose John refuses to allow what he earns to be taken and given to another. My guess is that Krugman and, sadly, most other Americans would sanction government punishment, imprisonment or initiation of violence against John. They share Professor Krugman's moral vision that one person has a right to live at the expense of another, but they just don't have the gall to call it that.

I share James Madison's vision, articulated when Congress appropriated $15,000 to assist some French refugees in 1794. Madison stood on the floor of the House to object, saying, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents," adding later that "charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." This vision of morality, I'm afraid, is repulsive to most Americans.

WHAT I THINK......WALTER BLOCK

2011-12-06T20:18:00.000+02:00

The Republican Jewish Coalition bars Ron Paul from their Presidential Debate, saying he is too "misguided and extreme."

According to the website of the RJC, "seven of the top Republican presidential candidates (will) gather next week at a forum hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition." They do not condescend to name Ron Paul as the one top candidate who will be shunned by this group, but their spokesman elsewhere makes this clear: "He's just so far outside of the mainstream of the Republican party and this organization," Brooks said. Inviting Paul to attend would be "like inviting Barack Obama to speak."

Outside of the Republican party mainstream? No, not at all. Rather, Congressman Paul’s seven competitors, all invited by the RJC, are the ones outside of the Republican mainstream, at least if this includes people like Robert Taft and Howard Buffett; see on this here, here, and here. States Taft: "It follows that except as such policies may ultimately protect our own security, we have no primary interest as a national policy to improve conditions or material welfare in other parts of the world or to change other forms of government. Certainly we should not engage in war to achieve such purposes." No, it is not Ron Paul who is out of step with (at least this kind of) Republicanism. It is, rather, the seven dwarfs (Romney, Gingrich, Cain, Bachmann, Perry, Huntsman and Santorum) who are marching to a non Republican drummer (actually, a neo-con drummer, comprised mainly of ex-commies, Trotskyites and Democrats).

Is Dr. Paul "far outside of the mainstream of … this organization?" Well, that depends upon what are the goals of the RJC. Here is its mission statement: "We seek to foster and enhance ties between the American Jewish community and Republican decision makers. We work to sensitize Republican leadership in government and the party to the concerns and issues of the Jewish community, while articulating and advocating Republican ideas and policies within the Jewish community. We are committed to building a strong, effective and respected Jewish Republican voice in Washington and across the country." And here is its position on Israel: "We fully embrace a pro-Israel foreign policy. The RJC is a Jewish organization; we recognize and support the importance of Israel as a Jewish state to Jews and non-Jews worldwide. As the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel shares our values and is a bulwark against the forces of repression and anti-human rights regimes. It is our obligation to ally with other nations who share our fundamental values – there are few enough of them – especially those who are willing to stand up and fight for those values. Israel is our only ally that has never asked for American blood to be shed in her defense. " I could not find anything on their website discussing anti-Semitism, but I think I may take it as a given that the RJC opposes this scourge.

So, to repeat, is Dr. Paul "far outside of the mainstream of … this (RJC) organization?" I think not. Congressman Paul, a U.S. air force veteran, the only non chicken-hawk of the group of seven (apart from Perry), "fully embrace(s) a pro-Israel foreign policy." Is it the same policy as that of the other contenders for the Republican nomination? Of course not; otherwise, he, too, would have been welcomed by the RJC to their "debate." But it is a different "pro-Israel foreign policy." How so?

For one thing, Ron Paul espouses a policy of ending all U.S. transfers of funds to foreign nations; since the Arab countries, all together, receive far more than does Israel, although this "hurts" (read Peter T. Bauer for an explanation of these scare quotes) Israel absolutely, it helps that country relative to its enemies. Jews are supposed to have great intelligence, and they do. But sufficient to grasp this admittedly complicated point (I’m kidding, here)? Evidently, not enough of this intellectual ability has percolated down into the membership and leadership of the RJC. I wonder; given their obtuseness, are they real Jews? Surely, Israel’s absolute power to impose its will is as nothing compared to its power relative to that of its enemies.

For another thing, the Representative of the 14th congressional district of Texas favors Israeli sovereignty, unlike the other candidates for the Republican nomination for president, and, presumably, the RJC. This means that Ron Paul trusts the population and leadership of Israel to defend itself more than he trusts the population and leadership of the U.S. for this vital task. Under a Paul Administration, Israel will no longer have to ask U.S. permission before it sneezes. More to the point, before it erects buildings wherever it wants to, before it bombs installations it deems hazardous to its national health, before it negotiates with bordering peoples (e.g., Obama’s claim that the 1967 borders must serve as a jumping off point for any subsequent treaty between Israel and its neighbors.) Had a non-interventionist of the Paul stripe been in charge of U.S. policy in the 1950s, the land of Greater Israel would now include the entire Sinai Penninsula.

But what about Iran? Ron Paul alone of the all the candidates for the Republican nomination, has seen all this before, with Iraq. The neo-cons whipped up public sentiment for that disaster, and are now attempting to satisfy their blood lust yet again. How many countries has Iran actually invaded in the last epoch? None, that is how many. They want to kill every Jew in Israel? Why, then, have they not started with the Jewish community of Tehran? Is bombing innocent men, women and children in Iran really the best way to safeguard Israel? Or will poking yet more sticks into more hornet’s nests only achieve blowback against Israel and the U.S. as well? The U.S. and the Soviet Union endured several decades of Mutual Assured Destruction. Would it not be better for the Israelis to go through a MAD period like this with Iran, when and if the latter gets a nuclear device? Are these ideas, for goodness sakes, not even worth discussing?

Is Ron Paul an anti-Semite? To even ask this question is to insult this good man. I am of a Jewish background and I have known Dr. Paul for more decades than either of us would be happy to admit. I have had numerous discussions with him, I have broken bread with him on more than a few occasions, and have attended many conferences with him. I tell you, my "nose" for this sort of thing is as a good as any other Jew’s, and never have I encountered even the slightest whiff of anything of this sort in my long association with Ron. My friends Murray Sabrin and David Gordon have had similar experiences with this member of the House of Representatives, and fully share my assessment. There could hardly be an organization Jews for Ron Paul were there any scintilla of doubt about Dr. Paul on this matter. Want some more evidence? The two economists who are the favorites of the next president of the U.S. are the Jewish intellectuals Murray N. Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises. Ron Paul never tires of citing them when he discusses not only economic subjects such as money, the business cycle, unemployment, Austrian economics, but also, ethics, liberty, freedom. These two are his greatest intellectual and moral influences. Can anyone imagine a real anti-Semite befriending the likes of me, Gordon and Sabrin, welcoming an organization of Jews dedicated to supporting him, and mentioning two prominent Jews as his prime mentors? (I have written about these issues on many occasions; for further elaboration, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

But, let us assume, arguendo, that it is indeed true that, as charged, Ron Paul is wildly outside of the mainstream of the Republican party, and, perhaps even more important, holds views that counter by 180 degrees those of the RJC. (In case any members of the RJC do not understand the concept of "arguendo," this does not mean I stipulate these points to be true. As a matter of fact, I sharply disagree with them, see links above. Arguendo means, "for the sake of argument." So, I am now assuming the RJC charges against Dr. Paul to be true.) Does it even then logically follow that you the RJC are wise or even justified in excluding him from your debate?

It does not.

Here are several reasons. Given that the goal of the RJC is to reduce the chances of Ron Paul becoming the next president of the U.S., the last thing it needs is for him to garner more publicity. But its decision to exclude him has already given him an additional and gargantuan amount of press coverage. Thanks to the RJC, more precious ink and electronic time will be given to this man than had he been invited. (Hey, he could have been limited to 89 seconds; there is precedent for that sort of thing. No, maybe, give him two or three minutes; that attempt to shut him up didn’t really work.) And not only that. Ron is now an underdog, as a non invitee. People root for underdogs. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if more people voted for him than otherwise would have been the case for this reason alone. If the goal is to squelch him, it has already backfired. Is there a renegade cabal of Ron Paul supporters deep within the bowels of the RJC who concocted this exclusion idea so as to promote his candidacy? Naw; couldn’t be. Conspiracy theories, by definition, must all be wrong. (I’m kidding about this too.)

In chess, every time you make a move, you’re supposed to ask yourself, "If I do this, what will my opponent do in response?" Well, how will the Paul campaign react to this insult? Take it lying down? Not bloody likely. Dr. Paul might schedule a press conference, where he gives a major speech on how his policies will actually help Israel, and thus demonstrate that he is the very opposite of an anti-Semite. He might schedule this event right before or after, maybe even during your phony "debate." Very likely, the contrast between his creative ideas for the protection of Israel and the tired old shopworn bumper sticker "thoughts" of the other seven (let’s throw more money at Israel, let’s bomb Iran back to the stone-age) will draw attention away from your event and toward his.

Then, there is the issue of anti Semitism. Have you people lost your minds? Do you not realize that there are real anti-Semites out there, just looking for an excuse in support of their views? Why strengthen them, for goodness sake? They will use this as yet another bit of "evidence" demonstrating the perfidy and unfairness of our co-religionists.

Further, just suppose, hey, for argument’s sake, arguendo (if you have forgotten what that means, look it up) that Ron Paul becomes the next president of the United States. (Mathematically, the odds of this occurring are one in sixteen, or 6 percent: there are 8 Republican candidates; let us award each of them a 12% chance; then, take half of that, given that the Democrat candidate also has a 50% shot at winning. Of course, if Ron Paul loses the Republican nomination and runs as an Independent or on the Libertarian Party ticket, and New York City Mayor Bloomberg also launches a foray, then Paul’s chances rise to 25%). Do you really want it on record that an important part of the Jewish community gave a gratuitous slap in the face to the man who will lead the country for four years?

We Jews are supposed to be people of the book. This means, if it means anything, that we are supposed to be open to ideas. Your decision to exclude Paul is a disgrace to this precious tradition. It is a shonda for the goyim.

The RJC of course has a right to invite anyone it wants to its functions. This is not censorship; that only occurs when the government prevents free speech. But, it is unwise, unfair, unjust and immoral. It trashes our reputation for lighting a light to the nations. So, I implore you, in the name of Judaism, safety for Israel, protecting our community against anti-Semitism; reconsider. It is not too late. Ron Paul is gentleman enough, I think, to accept an invitation from you, even a belated one.

EURO CRISIS DESTABLIZING THE DOLLAR

2011-12-06T20:15:00.000+02:00

In response to pressure from Wall Street, the White House and central banks in Europe, the Federal Reserve last week drastically cut interest rates for currency swaps to benefit troubled European banks. This will flood world markets with more dollars and will soon mean rising prices for every American at the grocery store. This extra liquidity will temporarily ease the cash crunch for irresponsible bankers, but in the long run it will make the situation much worse for consumers all over the world. Equities markets registered big gains at the news, but only for a day. Make no mistake - this is not capitalism, and this is not how a free market operates. In a free market, bankruptcies happen, even to large banks. We must remember, free markets are the true and best regulators of financial mismanagement.

By contrast, under our current form of special interest corporatism certain businesses are granted too-big-to-fail status and are never allowed to go bankrupt. They keep profits generated during the good times generated by the Fed's monetary inflation, yet their losses are socialized through inflationary bailouts. This means you and your family eventually pay for the Fed's decisions because every dollar you earn is worth less. Few people make the connection that they have enriched bankers in Europe through doubling and tripling prices on milk, eggs, gasoline, and clothing, but that is exactly what is happening. The increased pace and size of these types of desperate financial maneuvers means price inflation will hit sooner and far too fast for wages to keep up. This is how the middle class gets wiped out, as has happened so many times in the past when fiat money fails.

The Fed's latest actions in cooperating with foreign central banks to undertake liquidity swaps of dollars for foreign currencies is just one more reason why Congress needs enhanced power to oversee and audit the Fed. Under current law Congress cannot examine these types of arrangements. Those who would argue that auditing the Fed or these agreements with central banks harms the Fed's independence should reevaluate the Fed's supposed independence when the Fed bails out Europe so soon after President Obama promised US assistance in resolving the Euro crisis.

Rather than calming markets, these arrangements should indicate just how frightened governments around the world are about the European financial crisis. Central banks are grasping at straws, hoping that flooding the world with money created out of thin air will somehow resolve a crisis caused by uncontrolled government spending and irresponsible debt issuance. But those governments and central banks never grasp that it is their own monetary policies that allowed European banks to become so wantonly overleveraged in the first place. If those banks need liquidity, they should generate it the old fashioned way: by attracting depositors. If they cannot do so, they should be allowed to fail. Congress should not permit this type of open-ended commitment on the part of the Fed, a commitment which could easily cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars. These dollar swaps are purely inflationary and will harm Americans as much as any form of quantitative easing.

Americans deserve sound money that cannot be manipulated and created out of thin air by central planners who deceitfully promise prosperity. Fiat money caused this European crisis and the financial crisis before it. More fiat money is not the cure. The global fiat currency system has proven itself a failure. We need real monetary reform. We need sound money.

NEWT

2011-12-06T20:11:00.002+02:00

WHAT I THINK......THOMAS WOODS

2011-12-02T22:24:00.001+02:00

One thing I notice more and more is that when the mainstream media deigns to acknowledge a libertarian viewpoint, it does so not with the intention of refuting it. Perhaps these media sources can’t refute it, but I suspect they’re not even interested in trying. What they want to do is demonize and exclude. They present the anti-state view, often tendentiously, and make clear their disapproval. And that’s it.

My first exposure to how the MSM uses this tactic against dissidents came in early 2005, when the New York Times denounced my book The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History – which had already spent two months on that paper’s bestseller list by that point – on its editorial page. That denunciation was written by a former employee of a well-known thought-control organization that monitors American life for deviant opinions. (A deviant opinion is one that – need I say it? – diverges from the Joe-Biden-to-Mitt-Romney spectrum of allowable thought.)

The Times warned Americans that my book contained all sorts of subversive arguments – but without actually explaining my positions, disclosing any of the evidence I had offered for them or – and this is the point – bothering to show why I was wrong. It was enough to state what I had said – usually in a way intended to make it sound ridiculous – and leave it at that, as if it were self-refuting. That was the treatment I deserved for being ungrateful for all the gifts the political class had bestowed on Americans.

For example, I pointed out in the book that European recovery after World War II owed little or nothing to the sacred Marshall Plan. In response, the Times merely restated the conventional view: the Marshall Plan "lifted up devastated European nations after World War II," the very premise I had challenged, and which the Times did nothing to rehabilitate apart from merely repeating it.

Where was I wrong? Which arguments were mistaken? My mistake, evidently, was questioning the received version of U.S. history. A deviant like me was not entitled to having the nature of his errors explained to him. It was enough to list my offenses and banish me.

The book’s sales actually picked up more steam following the New York Times’ attack, as I figured they might. So I can’t say I was surprised that when Meltdown, my Austrian look at the financial crisis, made the Times’ bestseller list for ten weeks, the paper ignored it altogether.

I’ve seen the same pattern in a lot of the attacks on Ron Paul, and I’ve spent my time making videos and writing articles and blog posts defending Dr. Paul against these non-arguments. The most recent of these comes from Salon.com, which ran an article by Gary Weiss called "Ron Paul’s Phony Populism."

Of course, it doesn’t matter whether the word "populist" is appropriate to describe Dr. Paul or not. The word itself doesn’t matter. What matters is the charge behind the Weiss article: that when Ron Paul postures as the champion of the people against the entrenched interests and the power elite, he is blowing smoke. Ron Paul is a "friend of the oligarchy," Weiss contends.

That must be the most unrequited friendship in history.

But the gist of the article is this: Ron Paul wants to cut A, B, and C. A, B, and C have nice-sounding names, so there’s no need to defend them. Their names are so nice-sounding that we don’t even need to inquire into why Ron Paul might want to eliminate them or whether, amid all their wonderfulness, there may be anything even a teensy-weensy bit problematic.

We learn that Ron Paul is opposed to "the very existence of the Federal Reserve," though again we’re not given any reason to believe he is wrong. (I always get a kick out of it when alleged progressives rush to the defense of the reactionary Fed, which no doubt appreciates having progressive cover.)

As in the usual treatment, Weiss makes no effort to understand Dr. Paul’s position. Here, believe it or not, is the view he attributes to Dr. Paul: "It is not the function of society to provide healthcare for the poor. If they get sick, tough."

When has Ron Paul ever said providing health care for the poor isn’t supposed to be one of the functions of "society"? Never, of course. At every opportunity he has said the very opposite. In his own medical practice, as even NPR reported not long ago in an interview with Dr. Paul’s medical partner, his policy was to treat the needy for free.

Weiss has committed the elementary – and deeply reactionary – error of confusing government with society. Merely because we do not wish to entrust a particular task to guys with guns does not mean we do not want to see the task performed.

Then we get the usual lecture that if Ron Paul cared about the people, he’d go through the tired charade of coming up with "more regulation" to rein in Wall Street. I reply to this line of thinking in Rollback, my book from earlier this year, and in brief in the video below. Weiss likewise takes Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank to be self-evidently good, so there’s no need to try to understand why someone might oppose them, apart from a belligerent refusal to help mankind. Same for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which Weiss tries to claim is "underfunded." Sure it is.

Once in a while I make a longer video, in which I go through an article like this one from Salon point by point. I do this partly to show the anti-Paul side that there are arguments aplenty to support his views, though it’s my shorter videos that are probably more effective with opponents. But I do it also to help equip Ron Paul supporters with arguments they can use with their friends, on blogs, in comments sections, or whatever, so people like Weiss can’t get away with attacking the true man of the people, and the great principles he represents, so easily.

WHAT I THINK......DAVID GREENHUT

2011-12-02T22:20:00.000+02:00

I can’t forgive myself for voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor during the 2003 recall. I selected a “winnable” loser rather than Tom McClintock, a principled conservative who knew what policies to pursue to right California’s sinking fiscal ship. If everyone who voted for Schwarzenegger under the belief that McClintock couldn’t win had voted for McClintock, who’s now a congressman, perhaps he would have won the governorship.

The Schwarzenegger vs. McClintock race springs to mind as Ron Paul, the quirky Texas congressman with unwavering libertarian principles, pursues the GOP nomination for the presidency. Paul is not a dynamic personality, but he has a firm grasp of the issues. Currently, he is near the top of polls for the Iowa caucuses, and his national support has remained strong.

We know that none of the other Republicans will seriously slash the size of government, even if they have Republican majorities in Congress. None of them will bring the troops home, regardless of how costly those wars have become or how contrary they are to the traditional Republican belief of nonintervention in foreign affairs.

Despite encouraging rhetoric from some candidates (i.e., Rick Perry’s description of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme), the “serious” candidates will not try to swap U.S. entitlements with private alternatives.

None of them will address the Federal Reserve, which, according to Paul, makes it easy for the feds to print the money needed to finance their free-spending ways. At best, a winning mainstream Republican will tinker around the edges of reform, perhaps limiting government just enough to let the economy heat up again.

Even if Paul pulls off the upset of the century, he may not have the skills or congressional support to succeed. He can be obtuse, such as the time when he was asked about his favorite Ronald Reagan legacy and gave a boring answer about the money supply. But despite his many flaws, he at least he understands that the nation’s problems center on its gargantuan government.

Too bad everyone knows he can’t win.

Media Blackout

Comedian Jon Stewart once featured a devastating segment (YouTube below) on the media coverage of the primary race. Paul had high poll numbers but the talking heads wouldn’t mention his name. They talked about the hapless Jon Huntsman, who was barely registering on the polls, but didn’t mention Paul. After one blogger took him to task for writing about the presidential candidates without mentioning Paul, Jonah Goldberg, editor of National Review Online, responded: “The reason I didn’t mention him is precisely the reason [he] suspects: I don’t take Ron Paul seriously as a presidential contender because (in my opinion) he isn’t one. He is the Right’s version of Ralph Nader.”

Conservative writer Warner Todd Huston wrote recently that Paul is not a serious candidate because he has not built a serious statewide organization, which might be a legitimate argument except that Huston hurled unfounded accusations at Paul, charging his minions with anti-Semitism and surrender in the face of “Islamofascism.” His diatribe against the mild-mannered physician/candidate touches on why most conservatives won’t take him seriously – Paul’s foreign-policy views.

Foreign Policy

To the hawks who dominate the modern GOP (and the Democratic Party, too, lest you wonder why the president’s foreign policy differs little from his predecessor’s), Paul’s focus on reducing military commitments and concentrating on defense rather than on nation-building is the equivalent of appeasement in the face of Nazism, which is the analogy Huston used.

You’d think it a waste of time to hammer a candidate with no chance of winning. But those conservatives committed to military expansion abroad and who have little concern about the “war on terror’s” effect on civil liberties at home don’t want to take chances. The lefties dislike him too, as Bob Schieffer’s rude interview on “Face the Nation” last weekend showed.

Nevertheless, Paul might just win Iowa. I was active in the caucuses there years ago. It’s a socially conservative state. But the libertarian Paul is making inroads. In these dire economic times, more voters are noticing that government growth, debt spending and the economy are paramount.

Paul might not have a good campaign ground game going, but Herman Cain doesn’t have much of a ground game, either. That didn’t stop Cain from getting weeks of serious national media coverage. His campaign was derailed by sexual harassment allegations, and by his painfully embarrassing answer to an newspaper editorial board’s puffball question about President Obama’s Libya policy. Cain knew nothing about the topic as he aimlessly searched his empty mental Rolodex for answers. Cain’s collapse came after Perry’s infamous “oops” moment during a GOP debate when he was asked which three federal departments he would eliminate, but he couldn’t think of a third one.

Anyone But Mitt

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is the flavor of the month, as GOP primary voters search for anyone but Mitt Romney, whose slick personality and fairly liberal policies turn off grass-roots activists.

But Gingrich has malleable principles himself, and he is dogged by personal scandals.

It’s hard to be impressed by any of the other Republican candidates, who range from the hopelessly establishmentarian (Rick Santorum and Huntsman) to the fringy (Michele Bachmann, who has been dubbed the winner of the “Who’s Crazier Than Sarah Palin” contest by comedian Conan O’Brien, because of some of her rhetoric).

When you look at the Republican lineup or at the out-of-his-depth former community activist who went from state senator to Oval Office in four years, it’s hard to make the case that Paul is somehow not serious. In reality, Paul “can’t win” because the political establishment knows how serious he is about his limited-government views.

Even in the most optimistic scenario, Paul is a long shot. But the country’s problems are so deep that perhaps it’s time to take a chance on someone with the right answers, regardless of the odds. Unless, of course, you’re still celebrating the way that Gov. Schwarzenegger saved California from disaster.

WHAT I THINK.....DAVID SIROTA

2011-12-02T22:16:00.002+02:00

Despite a sustained campaign by the Washington media and political establishment to marginalize him, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is still a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. That has a lot to do with the support he’s receiving from young voters. In almost every survey and activist straw poll, Paul draws big numbers from voters between the ages of 18 and 29.

The laziest way to explain the counterintuitive phenomenon of youth rallying around the GOP’s oldest candidate is to insist that it’s about kids’ silly college fling with unrealistic libertarianism or that it’s about kids’ affinity for drug use — and more specifically, Paul’s support for legislation that would let states legalize marijuana. This degrading mythology ignores the possibility that young people support Paul’s libertarianism for its overall critique of our government’s civil liberties transgressions (transgressions, by the way, now being openly waged against young people), nor does the narrative address the possibility that young people support Paul’s drug stance not because they want to smoke weed, but because they see the War on Drugs as a colossal waste of resources. Instead, Paul is presented as merely a fringe protest candidate, and the young people who support him are depicted as just dumb idealists, hedonistic pot smokers or both.

One problem with this fantastical tale, of course, is that it insults the intelligence and motivation of young voters. But another, even more troubling facet of this tale is how it uses speculative apocrypha and stereotyping about ideology and drugs to suppress concrete social survey data about the far-more-likely foreign policy motivations of young Ron Paul supporters.

Paul, of course, is one of the only presidential candidates in contemporary American history in either party to overtly question our nation’s invade-bomb-and-occupy first, ask-questions later doctrine and to admit what the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledges: namely, that our military actions can result in anti-Americanism fervor and terrorist blowback.

Predictably, Paul’s foreign-policy honesty has generated Washington media scorn (most recently and explicitly, as Glenn Greenwald points out, from CBS News’ Bob Schieffer). No doubt, that scorn has much to do with that media being disproportionately older, more establishment-worshipping and more hyper-militaristic than the general population. But far away from D.C. green rooms in Real America — and especially among younger voters — Paul’s foreign policy positions are generating the opposite of scorn. Indeed, as a new Pew Research Center report suggests, these positions are almost certainly a driving force behind the support for his candidacy.

The new study tracks how younger voters are now strongly rejecting traditional American hubris in favor of Paul’s more empirical views on foreign policy. For instance, it finds that while older citizens embrace American exceptionalism in insisting our culture is inherently superior, younger voters do not. But the key finding as it relates to Paul’s candidacy has to do with blowback, which Paul frequently discusses on the campaign trail. As Pew reports (emphasis mine):

Two-thirds of Millennials (66 percent) say that relying too much on military force to defeat terrorism creates hatred that leads to more terrorism. A slim majority of Gen Xers (55 percent) agree with this sentiment, but less than half (46 percent) of Boomers agree and the number of Silents who share this view is 41 percent. A plurality of Silents (45 percent) believe that using overwhelming force is the best way to defeat terrorism and 43 percent of Boomers share that view.

These findings have been largely ignored by the media and political establishment. That’s predictable. These poll numbers undermine the dominant fairy tale that Americans universally support status-quo militarism — and so they are largely omitted from the media discussion of the presidential election. It’s the same thing for Paul’s foreign policy positions in general — they are either ignored or mocked by a political and media culture that is ideologically invested in marginalizing them.

Nonetheless, there are two good pieces of news in all this.

First, whereas in earlier eras such establishment hostility to a politician’s position could prevent that candidate from making a serious run for president, polls show Paul’s foreign-policy message is likely getting through to a key demographic, giving him a genuine shot at his party’s nomination.

Second, whether Paul eventually wins the GOP nomination or not, the trends embedded in his current electoral coalition will affect our politics long after his candidacy is over — and even if you don’t support Paul’s overall candidacy, that’s a decidedly positive development for those who favor a new foreign policy. (A brief side note: This article is in no way a personal endorsement of Paul’s overall campaign — I have serious problems with some of his economic positions.)

With the defense budget bankrupting our budget and with our imperialist foreign policy making us less safe, the younger generation’s rejection of hubris and hyper-militarism — and that generation’s willingness to support candidates in both parties who similarly reject that militarism — provides a rare ray of hope in these political dark ages. And not just a fleeting hope — but a long-term one.

As the Pew data show, the younger generation, whose foreign policy views were shaped not by World War II triumphalism but by grinding quagmires like Iraq and Afghanistan, has a far more realistic view of America’s role in the modern world. While that position may shift somewhat over the years, the numbers are striking enough to suggest an impending cultural break from the past. As the younger generation assumes more powerful positions in society and more electoral agency in our democracy, the possibility of such a break gives us reason to believe America can create a new foreign policy paradigm in our lifetime.

WHAT I THINK.....DAVE TROTTER

2011-12-02T22:13:00.000+02:00

Establishment political personalities are quick to claim poor "electability" to diminish Ron Paul’s chances because they presume that Paul holds no positive advantage in a head-to-head matchup against Obama in the general election. That’s an apparent premise of their calculation.

This is either a sublime miscalculation or a profound deception. If Ron Paul can win the Republican nomination, the path to the White House could seem downhill by comparison. Why?

Unprecedented debt circumstances demand an unprecedented reimagining of US government priorities and obligations. The U.S. national debt is categorically unsustainable and literally, it’s now mathematically impossible to repay, too. That the debt, banking, and finance system is increasingly proven to be a rigged Ponzi scheme in mainstream media only underlines Ron Paul’s tenured criticism of the oligarchical Federal Reserve System itself. Further, increasing numbers of voters awaken daily to the direct correlation between endless foreign interventionism and that categorically unsustainable debt that vexes the nation.

Indeed, from wars, rumors of wars, a fading dollar, climbing prices, hopeless unemployment, and an overreaching federal police state, the time is ripe for Ron Paul’s small-government message.

There’s merely that small prerequisite for the general election: winning the Republican nomination.

The first contest, the Iowa caucus, is an activist-gathering, hand-raising event that heavily favors a strong ground organization. Ron Paul, by all accounts, enjoys a robust ground organization in Iowa – the strongest of the field. Ron’s numbers are up recently in Iowa, too, leading many previously dismissive pundits to consider seriously the prospect of a Paul victory next month.

After all, Paul fell just short of winning the Ames Straw Poll in August by a mere 150 votes to Michelle Bachmann, who’s since collapsed utterly from relevance – or posing any serious threat of repeating. Bachmann was merely the first of several anybody-but-Romney candidates to grab the "frontrunner" baton for a few precious moments of prime time.

The momentum for Ron Paul coming out of an Iowa victory could roll right through New Hampshire, considered a more libertarian-leaning electorate, and in turn, trigger Romney’s long-inevitable glass house collapse.

Despite a hiccup here or there, maybe in South Carolina, no other already-passed-the-baton "frontrunner" could stop Ron Paul after victories in both Iowa and New Hampshire. So there you go: early victories, nomination, a speech, and on to the general election.

In that general election matchup, Ron Paul would make short work of Obama, for these eleven reasons.

Ron Paul significantly outclasses Obama in any extemporaneous, conventionally conceivable economic or foreign policy debate format not involving teleprompters. How does Obama justify expanding the bailouts, the wars, and the police state at home after promising the opposite – "hope and change" – throughout his 2008 campaign? Filling his cabinet with crony bankster speculators and lobbyists? Secretly bailing out insiders and foreign banks alike? How does Obama defend Solyndra or Fast and Furious? Answer: He can’t.
I say "conventionally conceivable" because it seems there’d be one offsetting chance here for Obama: cancel the debates. And the election.

One thing’s clear, though: if Ron Paul wins the Republican nomination, the debate moderators will have much more difficulty ignoring him on a stage of two or three than in the midst of eight or more in the GOP primary debates.

Ron Paul wins the issue of war and foreign policy for anti-war liberals, independents, libertarians, and constitutional conservatives. Don’t look now, but that’s a sizable and growing coalition, and one that isn’t currently gauged by restricting polling samples to GOP primary likely Republican voters. There’s upside there, too, as Paul makes progress with traditional Bush-supporting "conservatives" who begin to recognize that wars cost trillions, and the U.S. is flat broke.
There’s a significant portion of Obama’s base that elected him based on his antiwar rhetoric, which he subsequently abandoned upon inauguration. These disillusioned liberals and independents have witnessed Obama expand the war in Afghanistan as he drew down symbolic numbers in Iraq (and replaced those troops with mercenaries). They watched Obama expand the front in Pakistan with collateral damage-inflicting drone strikes – even as he launched a completely new conflict in Libya – without a declaration or even an unconstitutional authorization from Congress.

The most depraved recent offense? Obama executed an American citizen and his children in Yemen without a trial, presentation of evidence, or any authentication whatsoever of the speech crimes allegedly committed by him. (Anwar Al-Awlaki, this new Boogeyman/Goldstein/Osama, had himself questionable ties to the US military industrial complex shortly after 9/11.) Consider that with Ron Paul and Barack Obama on a debate stage, Obama becomes the pro-war candidate. Needless to say, any voter who trends anti-war will likely vote for Ron Paul.

Ron Paul wins the domestic police state issue before the debate even begins. After all, Obama is the one on that stage who must answer for gratuitous TSA abuse. Seemingly all voters have either had bad experiences themselves with the TSA, or have heard anecdotes from friends or relatives describing the rampant violations of dignity and body so common now to airport travel. Everyone’s heard the stories about TSA agents raping, stealing, leering, and murdering. Would Obama attempt to suggest that the TSA keeps us safe – by exposing our children to pat-downs by pedophiles?
With domestic surveillance, Obama essentially expanded Bush’s worst abuses and then argued for more. Even more disaffected liberals and independents will join the libertarian and constitutional conservative coalition over these issues and vote for Ron Paul.

Ron Paul wins the federal drug war issue by arguing to end it. By killing that decades-old federal boondoggle, Paul wins the support of most California, Washington, Nevada, Montana, South Dakota, New Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii, Colorado, and Oregon medical marijuana patients who’ve watched as Obama’s DEA raids state-approved medical marijuana dispensaries contrary to state law. You know who else would appreciate an end to federal drug enforcement? Minority populations, who are disproportionately prosecuted for nonviolent federal drug crimes. Still think Obama has an unquestionable advantage with minority groups? How is this growing coalition of voters even quantified?

Ron Paul wins the abortion issue. Ron Paul is unabashedly pro-life in his personal life, and as an obstetrician, he speaks with conviction – from wisdom and personal professional experience. He will own the Christian vote on this issue, obviously. But Paul argues that the federal government holds no jurisdiction over the issue, and if individual states wish to pass more restrictive or permissive laws, those states should pursue the legislation that best fits their unique populations.

It’s a compromise, in other words. So even if pro-life Christians can’t be enthusiastic about Paul’s lack of advocacy for a federal ban on abortion, "pro-choice" abortion supporters can’t credibly be existentially threatened by Paul’s 10th amendment approach, which is less strident than sound-bite saber rattling over a federal ban. In other words, don’t look for this issue to serve as a convincing single-issue rallying cry for Obama supporters, which qualifies it as a win for Paul.

Ron Paul wins the homeschool, pro-organic, anti-mandatory vaccination, and other pro-liberty niche crowds. Who else but Ron Paul has argued for the rights of the people to consume raw milk? Who else but Ron Paul has proposed granting tax credits and more freedom to homeschooling families to set their own curricula? Contrast this with Obama’s attempts to nationalize education standards further on the back of Bush’s overreaching "No Child Left Behind," and the more recent viral images of armed FDA goons raiding organic food store Rawesome Foods in Venice, California. Yep, even more Californians sympathetic to Paul.

Republicans will turn out en masse to support the GOP nominee – even if it’s Ron Paul. Consider how anti-Obama the lowest common denominator of GOP talking points has become, as voiced by pundits, talk radio, and primary candidates in the debates. Making Obama a "one-term President," repealing "Obamacare," and so on.

Republican voters, long accustomed to "lesser of two evils"-type calculated rationalizations, won’t bat an eye when pulling the lever for Ron Paul. After all, Paul’s single heresy from current GOP orthodoxy is over his principled resistance to interventionism abroad. But he’s the first to point out that it’s the current GOP that’s out of step with the traditional Republican Party platform, not him. Those voters whom Paul can’t convert on morality can also be swayed by fiscal arguments. Wars cost trillions. The U.S. is broke. Rationalizations abound.

Either way, expect a giant anti-Obama Republican turnout in November, 2012 – regardless the GOP nominee. The advantage with a Paul nomination is that Republicans can expect Paul supporters to support the Republican nominee – something they can’t do if they nominate Romney or Gingrich.

The Tea Party rallies behind Ron Paul because his Trillion Dollar Plan is a perfect ideological match. After all, Ron Paul supporters are the ones who started the Tea Party movement in 2007 – the proto-Tea Party. As far as the electorate recognizes the problem to be government spending, Ron Paul is the clear answer.

Ron Paul wins on auditing and ending the Federal Reserve. Who can claim that the US has a "free market" despite artificial price fixing of interest rates at the very core of the economy? What free market advocate supports crony secret taxpayer-funded bailouts of speculators and foreign banks? The Tea Party and the entire GOP field now parrots Ron Paul on the Federal Reserve.

But there’s yet more upside here for Paul: the Occupy movement makes a special point to protest crony capitalism and the abuses of a corrupt, insider financial oligarchy. If Paul can tap that sentiment, which clearly overlaps with his arguments against crony capitalism and the lack of transparency of the Federal Reserve System, he can convert a portion of those Occupy voters into voting Paulistinians. Rest assured, Paul volunteers are already performing this outreach on the ground.

Ron Paul wins on torture and the Bill of Rights. Let Obama attempt to characterize water boarding as something other than torture, as his neocon counterparts have, and Ron Paul will provide a stark contrast – an iconic symbol of authentic, principled "hope and change." As for the Bill of Rights in general, Ron Paul wins clearly with any voter who cherishes the idea of not having to present his or her papers at random checkpoints; for whom government surveillance of citizens is anathema; who cherishes the idea that the government is the slave to the people and not the other way around; or in particular relevance to the Obama record – to anyone who cherishes the idea that we have a right to be left alone.

Circumstances and current events in November, 2012, will play right into Ron Paul’s wheelhouse. This one is the clincher. After repeated, nefarious inflations of the money supply through bailouts and Fed treasury purchases, Obamaflation will be unmistakable at the grocery store, the doctor’s office, and at the fuel pump. Gold will be well over $2,200/ounce. And after an eleven-year string of templated, bankrupting, and needless interventionist wars abroad, voters won’t be easily convinced that high gas prices are solely Iran’s fault. Ron Paul is expertly capable of clearly articulating the causation between interventionist foreign policy and poor economic circumstances at home – including the inflation that will be hitting voters right smack in their wallets as they head to the voting booths.

So there you have it. If only Ron Paul can win the Republican nomination, global and domestic current events in November, 2012 will assure that a Ron Paul victory in the general election is a very high probability. Compared to the primary fight, some might even describe that general election matchup as a cakewalk for Paul.

One word of warning for pro-war Republicans: if you fail to nominate Ron Paul and instead nominate an establishment neoconservative like Romney or Gingrich, expect Paul to run on a third party ticket, and due to the reasons outlined above, expect him to win a higher percentage of the overall vote than Perot did in the 1992 general election (greater than 18.9%). That would undoubtedly reelect Obama.

Is that what you want?

Save your outrage and answer instead this question: given your less than courteous opinion of Paul, how can you possibly explain your sense of entitlement toward his supporters and their votes? Answer: you can’t.

Besides, even if Ron Paul did not run third party, and even if he were to endorse the neoconservative Republican nominee, his supporters wouldn’t necessarily follow his lead. I know I wouldn’t.

THE FOLLY OF SANCTIONS

2011-12-02T22:07:00.002+02:00

Many people have the misconception that sanctions are an effective means to encourage a change of behavior in another country without war. However, imposing sanctions and blockades are not only an act of war according to international law, they are most often the first step toward a real war starting with a bombing campaign. Sanctions were the first step in our wars against Iraq and Libya, and now more sanctions planned against Syria and Iran are leading down the same destructive path.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) latest report, just out this month, there is no evidence that Iran has diverted enriched uranium from the peaceful and lawful generation of power toward building a nuclear weapon. According to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Unfortunately, US foreign policy has boxed Iran into a corner where they may view development of a nuclear weapon as the only way to maintain sovereignty. They are surrounded by unfriendly nuclear powers and history has shown that having a nuclear weapon is the best way to avoid being bombed or invaded. The unintended consequences of our confrontational policies toward Iran may be to actually encourage them to seek nuclear weapons capabilities. We should be using diplomacy rather than threats and hostility.

Fortunately there is another way. Nothing promotes peace better than free trade. Countries that trade with each other generally do not make war on each other, as both countries gain economic benefits they do not want to jeopardize. China is a massive nuclear power yet it does not seek military confrontation with the United States. Trade is much more profitable. Also trade and friendship applies much more effective persuasion to encourage better behavior, as does leading by example. Alarmingly, tough new sanctions are under consideration that would also punish Iran's trading partners, including China, Russia, and possibly our NATO allies such as Germany.

Conversely, sanctions allow regimes to blame their shortcomings on foreigners, thereby maintaining a hold on power. They rarely even inconvenience elites in the target countries. They simply provide a common enemy to rally the people against and undermine internal dissent. Consider how well the embargo has worked against Cuba. Fidel Castro and his regime may be annoyed by the inability to trade with their neighbors just 90 miles away, but American businessmen also lose out in the bargain. That means less jobs and less freedom at home.

We should be clear about this: sanctions against Iran are definite steps toward a US attack. Already we see US warships approaching the region, moving dangerously close to Syrian waters. The tougher sanctions currently under consideration would disrupt global trade and undermine the US economy, which in turn harms our national security. Foreign companies or foreign subsidiaries of US companies would be severely punished if they did not submit to the US trade embargo on Iran. We must change our foreign policy to one of economic freedom and diplomacy. That is the only way to promote peace and prosperity. This race to war against Iran and Syria is both foolhardy and dangerous.

PATRIOT ACT

2011-11-26T09:51:00.002+02:00

WHAT I THINK......PETER GRIER

2011-11-24T10:02:00.000+02:00

OK, it’s hard to really say anyone “wins” a debate, given that there’s no scoring, and Wolf Blitzer doesn’t come out afterward and hand out a medal. In general, last night’s word fight was high-minded and good for everybody, except maybe Herman Cain, since he didn’t say much.

CNN’s Blitzer did well, too – drawing candidates into real conversations, and emceeing questions from assembled think-tank luminaries. The whole thing was a real debate in that it juxtaposed real differences of opinion.

Which is where Congressman Paul comes in. It was him against the Republican world last night. His positions are often very different from those of his GOP opponents, and he defended them with his typical well-honed points. You’re reminded once again that he’s been at this for decades. Even longer than Mitt Romney.

University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato tweeted last night that Paul tied with Newt Gingrich as last night’s winner. Sabato gave both a “B+.”

New York Times polling analyst Nate Silver similarly gave Paul a “B+.” He thought both Newt and Jon Huntsman rated an “A,” however.

Paul “sounded authoritative and made his points clearly” judged Politico’s Maggie Haberman.

Our own reaction to Paul was that nobody laid a glove on him, despite the fact that many of his positions are controversial both within the GOP and in US politics at large. (He said foreign aid is “worthless,” for instance. Really? Not even the other GOP candidates went that far. US cash is paying for much of Africa’s fight against HIV/AIDS, for instance. Is that not money well spent?)

But take the opening sequence, when most all the other candidates supported Patriot Act antiterror provisions as necessary intrusions on liberty at a time of danger for the US. Paul was having none of that.

Ron Paul's strength in Iowa shows it's too soon to write him off
GOP debate: all but Ron Paul want Patriot Act extended
Ron Paul denies third-party run. So why are pundits still talking about it?

“I think the Patriot Act is unpatriotic, because it undermines our liberty,” said Paul in the opening moments of the debate.

The longtime libertarian was just getting warmed up.

“So if you advocate a police state, you can have safety and security, and you might prevent a crime, but the crime then will be against the American people and against our freedoms,” said Paul.

Paul then went on to differ with the crowd by saying the US should “let Israel take care of itself.” That meant, apparently, don’t meddle with Israel if it wants to bomb Iran, but don’t give it any money to do the deed, either.

(As an aside, we’ll ask this: Did the Texas congressman let slip some interesting and closely guarded info in his response? He said, “Israel has 200, 300 nuclear missiles, and they can take care of themselves.” That’s on the high end of the estimates experts outside the US government make as to the extent of Israel’s nuclear program.)

Then there was the whole defense budget-cutting thing, in which Paul and Mitt Romney went at it.

First Romney opposed the possibility of a trillion dollars being cut from the defense budget. That might happen because the congressional super committee didn’t figure out a way to reduce the budget by $1.2 trillion over 10 years, so automatic cuts might take effect next year.

“They’re not cutting anything out of anything,” replied Paul. “All this talk is just talk.”

Paul appeared to be referring to the fact that nothing is in stone yet – some in Congress want to repeal the automatic cuts, many of the “cuts” are reductions in growth as opposed to actual reductions in the size of government programs, and so forth.

Romney disagreed. He ticked off a list of weapons systems Congress has already trimmed. “They’re cutting ... into the capacity of America to defend itself,” he said.

AND WHY NOT?

2011-11-21T21:12:00.000+02:00

ON THE SUPER COMMITTEE

2011-11-21T21:01:00.000+02:00

This week marks the deadline for the so-called congressional Super Committee to meet its goal of cutting a laughably small amount of federal spending over the next decade. In fact the Committee merely needs to cut about $120 billion annually from the federal budget over the next 10 years to meet its modest goals, but even this paltry amount has produced hand-wringing and hysteria on Capitol Hill. This is only cutting proposed increases. It has nothing to do with actually cutting anything. This shows how unserious politicians are about our very serious debt problems.

To be fair, however, in one sense members of the Super Committee face an impossible task. They must, in effect, cut government spending without first addressing the role of government in our society. They must continue to insist the federal government can provide Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits in the future as promised, while maintaining our wildly interventionist foreign policy. Yet everyone knows this is a lie.

Keep in mind that the 2011 federal deficit alone was about $1.3 trillion, which means the Super Committee needs to cut that much PER YEAR rather than over a 10 year period. If Congress ever hopes to address its debt problem, it must first stop accumulating any new debt immediately, in 2012.

Federal revenue likely will be about $2.3 trillion in fiscal 2012. The 2004 federal budget was about $2.3 trillion. So Congress simply needs to adopt the 2004 budget next year and the federal government will balance outlays and revenue. That’s all it would take to produce a balanced budget right now. Was the federal government really too small just 7 years ago, in 2004? Of course not. Only Washington hysteria would have us believe otherwise.

Yet our Republican and Democrat friends on the Super Committee want to take 10 years, or even 30 years, to produce a balanced budget.

Government spending isn't just wasteful; it is often actively harmful to stated goals. The Super Committee could simply apply 2004 spending levels across the board and a tremendous victory for fiscal sanity would be accomplished.

What seems more likely, however, is a rearrangement of the tax code in an attempt to bring in more revenue. Deductions and credits will be taken away, and the Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire. As a result, less money will remain in the private sector to create jobs and produce economic growth. The Super Committee has an opportunity to take a small baby step in the right direction. Instead, they no doubt will take this opportunity to raise taxes and make everything worse. But increasing taxes will only diminish freedom and deepen the recession. Instead of looking for ways to hike taxes under the guise of “raising revenue,” the Super Committee should put forth a plan of real spending cuts to put America back on the path to liberty and prosperity.

REALITY CHECK

2011-11-19T10:16:00.000+02:00

RON PAUL WITH MIKE MALONEY

2011-11-17T19:25:00.002+02:00

WHAT I THINK......BILL FANGIO

2011-11-15T15:12:00.000+02:00

If it is the case that elected officials reflect the desires of the voters then we are in a world of hurt. Andy Cobb and the Partisans recently appeared at a rally carrying a sign that read, Obama is a Keynesian. Many were outraged and took Cobb to task for suggesting that President Obama was from Kenya. And, there is the American electorate for you – they don't know the difference between a country and an economic system.

These same people populate the comment strings whenever there is a news story regarding Dr. Ron Paul for President. Here are some of their reasons why Paul should not be President.

1) He is an old coot. Now there is a comment that really exercised the gray matter. Of course, coot refers to a kind of bird but can also mean a harmless, simple person. I agree that Paul is harmless, but to suggest he is simple misses the mark by a few light years. No other candidate for office of the President of the United States can meet Paul head on in a debate without coming out looking like a fool. If you don't agree with that statement just read a few of Paul's books, Keep a dictionary handy.

2) He is a nut. I suspect this shallow comment means that Paul is foolish, eccentric, or crazy. No proof is offered. It is just a baseless ad hominem attack.

3) He is an isolationist. This comment is clear evidence that the writer has made no effort at all to understand Paul's foreign policy. It just happens to be identical to that of Thomas Jefferson. "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none." If we had followed that foreign policy throughout our history almost no wars would have been fought. We fought a war in Vietnam during the 1960's. EVERY day in 1968 we brought an average of 80 boys a day home in body bags. Why did we fight that war? Containment? How did that work out? Then we normalized relations with Vietnam in 1979 and began the foreign policy of Paul and Jefferson. Guess what? We have a friend in Vietnam and trade regularly. What we could not do with bombs and bullets we have accomplished with commerce, friendliness, and example. Paul is not an isolationist – he is for non-intervention.

4) He doesn't understand that we are at war with Islam. Really? Is that the express or implied policy of the United States? Shall we ask Congress to formally declare war on 1.5-billion Muslims? Islam may be a problem but any debate should take place in the free market place of ideas. Paul understands this quite well.

5) He is unelectable. This comment comes from watching too much television rather than thinking for oneself. A reporter put that question directly to Paul during one of the debates in 2008 without even realizing he was insulting the voters in Lake Jackson Texas who had consistently elected Paul to Congress multiple times. Did the reporter think that the voters of Lake Jackson were someway not demographically representative of the nation as a whole? More likely the reporter did not think at all.

6) He favors letting Iran have nuclear weapons. No, Paul does not believe in interfering in the internal affairs of other nations. Many nations possess nuclear arsenals. What is special about Iran? Test your memory – when was the last time Iran attacked anyone?

Many other comments are similarly inane. He is not a pure Libertarian, he is pro-life, he doesn't look presidential, his supporters are nuts, etc. So, will Paul be given the opportunity to heal the nation? Probably not. Because as a people we are worse than ignorant, we think government is good.

EUROPEAN DEBT CRISIS THREATENS THE DOLLAR

2011-11-15T14:43:00.002+02:00

The global economic situation is becoming more dire every day. Approximately half of all US banks have significant exposure to the debt crisis in Europe. Much more dangerous for the US taxpayer is the dollar's status as reserve currency for the world, and the US Federal Reserve's status as the lender of last resort. As we've learned in recent disclosures, this has not only benefitted companies like AIG, the auto industry and various US banks, but multiple foreign central banks as they have run into trouble. Nothing has been solved, however, by offering up the productivity of Americans as a sacrificial lamb. Greece is set to be the first domino to fall in the string of European economies at risk. Rather than learning from Greece's terrible example of an over-consuming public sector and drowning private sector, what is more likely from our politicians is an eventual bailout of European investors.

The US has a relatively small exposure to overwhelmed Greek banks, but much larger economies in Europe are set to follow and that will have serious implications for US banks. Greece is technically small enough to bail out. Italy is not. Germany is not. France is not. It is estimated that US banks have over a trillion dollars tied up in at-risk German and French banks. Because the urge to paper over the debt with more credit is so strong, the collapse of the Euro is imminent. Will the Fed be held responsible if the Euro brings the US dollar down with it?

The most disingenuous aspect of the narrative about the European sovereign debt crisis is that entire economies will collapse if more resources are not bilked from productive people around the world. This is untrue. Tough times are coming for the banks, to be sure, but free people always find a way back to prosperity if the politicians leave them alone. Communities within Greece are coming together and forming barter systems because they know the Euro is becoming unstable. Greeks are learning how to engage in commerce with each other, without the use of fiat currency controlled by central banks. In other words, they are rediscovering what money really is, and they are trading with each other in ways that cannot be controlled, manipulated, squandered, inflated away and generally ruined by corrupt bankers and the politicians that enable them. Farmers will still grow food, mechanics will still fix cars, people will still make things and exchange them with each other. No banker, no politician can stop that by destroying one medium of exchange. People will find or create another medium of exchange.

Unfortunately when politicians try to monopolize currency with legal tender laws, the people find it harder and harder to survive the inflation and taxation to which they are subjected. Bankers should take their dreaded haircut rather than making innocent people pay for their mistakes. The losses should be limited and liquidated, rather than perpetuated and rewarded. This is the only way we can recover.

Government debt is often considered rock solid because it is backed by a government's ability to forcibly extract interest payments out of the public. The public is increasingly unwilling to be bilked to make bankers whole. The riots and the violence in Greece should tell us something about the sustainability of this system.

If we continue to bail out banks and bankers so they can continue to lose money, if we cavalierly put this burden on the taxpayer, it is all too predictable what will happen here.

TAKING EXECUTIVE ORDERS TOO FAR

2011-11-07T22:55:00.000+02:00

These are frustrating times for the President. Having been swept into office with a seemingly strong mandate, he enjoyed a Congress controlled by members of his own party for the first two years of his term. However, midterm elections brought gridlock and a close division of power between the two parties. With a crucial re-election campaign coming up, there is desperation in the president’s desire to "do something" in spite of his severely weakened mandate.

Getting something done is proving to be a monumental task. This may be news to the supposed constitutional scholar who is now our president, but if the political process seems inconvenient to the implementation of his agenda, that is not a flaw in the system. It was designed that way. The drafters of the Constitution intended the default action of government to be inaction. Hopefully, this means actions taken by the government are necessary and proper. If federal laws or executive actions can’t be agreed upon constitutionally- which is to say legally- such laws or actions should be rejected.

The vision of the founders was to set up a government that would remain small and unobtrusive via a system of checks and balances. That it has taken our government so long to get this big speaks well of the original design. The founders also knew the overwhelming nature of governments was to amass power and grow. The Constitution was to serve as the brakes on the freight train of government.

But the Obama administration, like so many administrations in the 20th century, chooses to ignore the Constitution entirely. The increasingly broad use and scope of the Executive Orders is a prime example. Executive Orders are meant to be a way for the president to direct executive agencies on the implementation of congressionally approved legislation. It has become increasingly common for them to be misused in ways that are contradictory to congressional intent, or to bypass Congress altogether in enacting political agendas. The current administration has unabashedly stated that Congress's unwillingness to pass the president's jobs bill means that the president will act unilaterally to enact provisions of it piecemeal through Executive Order. Obama explicitly threatens to bypass Congress, thus aggregating the power to make and enforce laws in the executive. This clearly erodes the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances. It brings the modern presidency dangerously close to an elective dictatorship.

Of course, the most dangerous and costly overstepping of executive authority is going to war without a congressional declaration. Congress has been sadly complicit in this usurpation by ceding much of its war-making authority to the executive because it wants to avoid taking responsibility for major war decisions, but that is part of our job in Congress! If the President cannot present to Congress and the people a convincingly strong case for going to war, then perhaps we should keep the nation at peace, rather than risk our men and women's lives for ill-defined reasons!

This administration certainly was not the first to behave in ways that have defied the Constitution to overstep its bounds. Sadly, previous administrations have set precedents that the current administration is only building upon. It is time for Congress to reassert itself and its constitutional role so that future administrations cannot continue on this dangerous path.