ONLY COURAGE CAN SAVE AMERICA!

by James Craig Green

 

 

As I get older, I no longer care so much about how my ideas may be perceived by other people, though I enjoy lively debates and criticisms of my beliefs (when respectfully courteous). Call it maturity, insanity, or just plain, old-fashioned dementia or delusion... it is where I am now in my life. I wouldn't be twenty again if I could.

 

It never ceases to amaze me that so many people - especially Americans - still see the STATE, or some other coercive, monopolistic, wealth-destroying GOVERNMENT as some kind of savior.

 

Government is, BY FAR, the most addicting and destructive narcotic ever invented. By comparison, Bernie Madoff and other private criminals were pikers... Amateurs really... compared to the STATE. In fact, it was only after private financial interests and victims of Madoff had repeatedly, without success, tried to get him charged with multiple crimes of fraud, that the STATE finally consented to prosecute him, after it was too late for his victims. He stole about $65 million from his victims, and pissed it all away.

 

How ironic that most people seem to trust the STATE to catch criminals, when the STATE itself is the biggest one of all. One of my most treasured mentors is Thomas Sowell, who said...

 

 

"It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay

for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think we can

afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a govern-

ment bureaucracy to adminster it."

 

 

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Republicans and Democrats argue over a very small portion of the federal government's ON BUDGET spending, while the most significant portions of government spending (entitlements) enjoy ongoing, hardwired increases, completely on automatic pilot, without any need for ongoing, endless debates in Congress. This protects duplicitous (i.e., ALL) Congressmen and women against having to be seen as voting against them - not even small, silly, trivial reductions. Are you beginning the get the picture???

 

AND now, the secret of all secrets even your parents never knew - REPUBLICANS grow government faster than DEMOCRATS... At least, after Roosevelt but before Obama. It's just that my conservative friends (including most of my relatives and all my ancestors) have actually taken the hook, line and sinker LIE that Republicans are for small government and free markets.

I don't mean ALL Republicans necessarily believe in growing the State - only a majority of those elected to federal office. Only a small MINORITY in most Congresses ever have been, at least in the last Century:

 

 

                           (CLICK GRAPH TO ENLARGE)
 

 

I originally published this graph in 2009, later updated in 2012, on my blog, LIBERTY ALUMNI DISCUSSIONS. It graphs government spending AND public debt, which I created in early 2009 (shortly after OBAMA was elected). In other words, both major political parties are screwing all of us BIG TIME, contrary to what the well- meaning but completely neutered, so-called LIMITED GOVERNMENT conservatives have to say. Today, a black President has most of them shaking in their boots so as to not be called racist... a trump card that no other President in history was able to play.

 

Combine that with Obama's upbringing by a Marxist mentor (FRANK MARSHALL DAVIS) and other radicals like terrorist Bill Ayers, with unique, anti-American influences at every turn of his young life, well... you know the rest.

 

There... I've said it. Think what you like. Now, back to the main issue...

 

 

See my November 2012 blog post to see this article in which my government spending/debt graph was first published:

 

 

http://libertyalumnidiscussions.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-problem-with-government.html 

 

 

The Republican Party, ever since its creation just in time for Abraham LINCOLN to become America's first Dictator, has ALWAYS been a big government party - but they just believe in DIFFERENT government subsidies than Democrats, and both promote special favors from government to themselves and their friends. The complicity with Democrats that modern Republicans display - allowing KING BARACK the FIRST to get away with turning our Facist state (which he did not create ) into a Socialist one is more than criminal... it is TREASONOUS.

 

Read Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution, and see if you agree. If you can stomach it, also read Article II (Congress), Section 8 for most of the limited but approved duties of Congress. You won't find most modern government agencies there, which comprise the bulk of federal government spending. Keep in mind that the Federal Reserve DID NOT change the Constitution, unlike the 16th Amendment's Income Tax in the same year (1913).

 

Besides LINCOLN, who were the other America Dictators?  Simple - WILSON, both  ROOSEVELTS, JOHNSON (58,000 dead in Vietnam without any tangible reason), NIXON (my Commander-In-Chief during the Vietnam War), and before-the-fact Nobel Laureate, savior of the whole human race... OBAMA. Others might be included, but these are my all-time list of SEVEN FREEDOM DESTROYERS. Each had in common an extraordinary ability to sway, intimidate, defraud and cajole large majorities in Congress.

 

To put it simply, separation-of- powers is no longer a real feature of American politics, though it's still right there in the Bill of Rights (first TEN Amendments, never changed).

 

My dear conservative friends won't like my inclusion of LINCOLN, but he was responsible for more American lives lost needlessly - By Far -than any other President. There were better ways to eliminate the uneconomic practice of slavery than some Americans murdering 600,000 others. Like most wars, that one was completely unnecessary for all it accomplished (or didn't). We can't change history, but we can learn from it and do better.

 

 

MY SOLUTION

 

I have a simple, but not-so-easy solution to this dilemma of a runaway Congress:  Pass a Constutional Amendment abolishing the election of INCUMBENTS. In my opinion, only this refrorm could likely work to break the chronically-destructive cycle of LIFETIME POLITICAL CAREERS. Few will vote for freedom if the addictive power of decades-long political careers and the hyper-wealth they bring is not fixed.

 

Absent this reform, we'll just have to wait until the next crash destroys the economy from a lifetime of fiscal irresponsibility enjoyed by both major parties. Frankly, I think this latter,  WORST alternative is the most likely way government will ultimately be reduced.  But, without something this fundamental, government will simply grow until the STATE becomes so SOCIALIST instead of FASCIST, that its control of the economy is largely broken.

 

 

When I was running for Congress as a Libertarian twice in the 1980's, I was always confronted with the criticism, "...But we don't want to get rid of the GOOD ones (politicians). I didn't have the presence of mind or understanding then for a good answer, but I do today... EVERY MEMBER OF CONGRESS IS CORRUPTABLE, and will become so when the dull-normal people, or Worse, the geniuses who get elected to Congress can MAKE LIFETIME CAREERS and lucrative retirement packages for a few terms in Congress. This unsavory incentive corrupts the uncorruptable, or at the very least, keeps principled people like the Ron Pauls of the world (Yes, there are more than a few) chronically irrelevant in Congress. The beast will NEVER reform itself, because it is too lucrative a profession to entice many REAL government-limiters. The incentives are all too anti-freedom, anti-limited government, and too anti-AMERICA in the way the Founders saw it.

 

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The MARKETS that create all wealth are repeatedly reviled, rejected and demonized by too many Americans educated in government schools who "drank the Kool-Aid," lacking the mental tools to see the idiocy of Today's Government-Gone-Wild.

When a thief (government) steals money from those who earned it (taxpayers) and gives half of it to those who didn't (moochers), most Americans seem to say or think... "AW, How Compassionate."

What they should say is, "SHIT, there goes another wealth-destroying, money-losing, corrupt lie and fraud."

 

WELCOME to (Nixon-Ford-Carter-Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush)-CARE. Without the others, Obama would have been just another Chicago gangster thug/pimp.

 

Every one of these (some even exalted) demagogues continued the insanity of his predecessor. AND, each and every one of them grew government when they had the help of at least one part of Congress (House or Senate). EVERY public official in the entire US (not just Congress, President, Judges and State legislatures) TAKES AN OATH to uphold and defend the Constitution, which is by far the greatest government-limiting tool ever created by any government. Unfortunately, it has been ignored by all three branches of government for AT LEAST a Century.

 

Many of the idiots in Congress think the three branches of the federal government are the President, House and Senate. You should read Article I (Congress), Article II (President) and Article III (Supreme Court) to make yourself much, much better informed and smarter than the 535 idiots who call themselves CONGRESS. (If you attended public school, I hope you won't be offended by my reminding you that the HOUSE has 435 members, and the SENATE has 100). They represent only ONE branch of federal government. If your confused, re-read Article III above.

 

 

*****

Government CONSUMES wealth; it does not PRODUCE it, EXCEPT AT A FINANCIAL LOSS to the economy. For every government program for which you can name, more money is LOST than is gained by its beneficiaries. This is exactly why the Founding Fathers promoted the virtues of private property protection, a DEFENSIVE military (not one like ours that seems to be primarily a jobs program for Generals or other warmongers, or to tell other countries how they  should run their societies).

 

If any part of this makes sense to the small minority of you who will notice it, you MIGHT enjoy being further corrupted further by the following:

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/libertarianism-beyond-nozick/ 

 

Have a GREAT day, year and life, what's left of it. Our screwed up society will NEVER change enough by voting, but it will change, because it has adopted hook, line and sinker the conservative and liberal PROGRESSIVISM that has destroyed the Founders' dreams  long before you, I, or OBAMA was born... which is completely unsustainable in the long run. Unfortunately, John Maynard Keynes said in response... "In the Long Run, We are All DEAD," which  seems to inspire more American politicians than ever to take the anti-Founding-Father concept of unlimited government focusing on the Fascist-toward-Socialist model. Unfortunately, Karl Marx is alive and well in America.

 

You might think I am a pessimist, but I am not. Although we have a long, long road on which things are going to get worse, eventually, they will get better, for one simple reason I have been writing  about for decades... THE HUMAN SPIRIT always finds a way, especially in this special, unique place we call AMERICA, which even to my Canadian and Mexican friends, means the United States of America.

 

 

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Get busy living, or Get busy dying... (credits to the movie SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION).

 

 

JEFFREY TUCKER ON TODAY'S AMERICAN GOVERNMENT

by James Craig Green

Today, I present an article by Jeffrey Tucker, Executive Editor for Laissez-Faire Books. It crystalizes, in a few well-chosen words, the main problem with America and the world today - the insatiable, uncontrolled, destructive growth of government at all levels.

Simply stated, Mr. Tucker's piece presents the case that for at least the last two Centuries, the federal government of the United States has morphed into something the founding fathers couldn't have imagined, especially after its elegant beginnings in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution (including its elegant Bill of Rights, never changed). Today, Mr. Tucker asserts, the American State is immune to the "will of the people" as it resists any and all fundamental changes while maintaining the false illusion that the so-called "public," or "people" are somehow in charge of it. I have noticed this for at least two decades, but have never seen the case made so simply and effectively as Mr. Tucker's current article.

This is why I formalized my libertarian roots three decades ago and joined the Colorado Libertarian Party, abandoning it after a few years of hopeless, unconstrained government growth at all levels without any serious attempt from within to control itself. American government, at all levels, has become an unconstrained monster, regularly thumbing its nose at its Constitution as amended, established legal precedents and the so-called and usually fraudelent pandering to the will of the people.

There is nothing representative, limited, or positive - on balance - about American government today, contrary to the Constitution.

The federal government is an out-of-control, massively destructive monster, becoming even more bold with demigods like Barack Obama, who, contrary to the opinions of my conservative friends, is only different from them in that his boldness to become a dictator has no bounds - not even the pretense that he respects limited American government. Both major political parties survive and prosper while maintaining the steady growth of government - especially the federal government, without regard to what is good for the people, especially in the long run. American government, once proudly representative and supposedly limited to the consent of the governed, is now an unrestrained tyrant. It will be put back in its place only after a massive economic collapse from its continued purposeful, century-long destruction of the American Dollar.

If you think Republicans are serious about limiting, or even slowing down, the growth of American government, then please see the following chart I researched and produced a couple of years ago, for the decades BEFORE Obama was elected (click to magnify):

In short, when Republicans have been in control of the federal government, it grows faster than when Democrats are in charge - only focusing on subsidizing the rich instead of the poor. However, Obama is taking up where George W. Bush left off - unrestrained growth of government without apology or serious consideration for Constitutional limitations like the Tenth Amendment, which has never changed.

Barack Obama was not the solution, and is not the problem. The emotional, almost hysterical support of so many Americans to his unrepentant socialism is not something new - just something much, much more honest than anyone but Ron Paul has shown in contemporary American Politics.

I hope you enjoy the following article as much as I did.

James Craig Green
1/6/2012
(edited 1/19/2012)


Whiskey and Gunpowder Newsletter
Article by Jeffrey Tucker
January 5, 2012
Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A.


Elections and the Illusion of Choice

The political season has unleashed its predictable frenzy, much to delight of people who make a living off it. But to what end? There are only two types of politicians who end up holding office, wrote H.L. Mencken: "first, glorified mob-men who genuinely believe what the mob believes, and secondly, shrewd fellows who are willing to make any sacrifice of conviction and self-respect in order to hold their jobs."

That about sums it up. The plus side of elections is that sometimes the debates, discussions, candidates and parties raise fundamental questions about what kind of society we want to live in. That's the best we can hope for.

But there is a downside to all this hullabaloo: It gives the impression that the mere existence of the electoral process gives "we the people" a fundamental choice about the kind of state we want. This is not true. The politicians we elect are veneers or facades. They are bandits, but they do not constitute what is called the state. This goes for just about every developed state in the world for the last 200 years.

The whole election process leads people to believe that the state is embedded in leaders. Not so. In France, this system ended with the execution of Louis XVI; in Germany, with the ascent of Bismarck; and in Russia, with the Bolshevik Revolution. The personal state died in the U.S. pretty early on, as even Thomas Jefferson discovered when he became president in 1801; he felt himself powerless to do anything.

The modern state lives outside the will of a particular leader or administration. Voting and elections only change the temporary managers, but do not touch the core of the problem.

The first book that saw through the facade was by the great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer. It is called, appropriately, The State. It was written in 1908, just as the state had begun to entrench itself deeply into the social order -- more so than at any point in the previous thousand years. He described the state as the one class that dominates all others, obeying a different law and thriving off violence against person and property. He sums up this violence in a phrase: the "political means." He contrasts this with the "economic means," the essence of which is voluntary human association and trade. (His book came to have an amazing influence through Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy, the State.)

Violence? That sounds like the opposite of elections, doesn't it? Surely, we are exercising our free will in deciding who leads us. The truth is that the people who run for office specialize mostly in what they do best: running and getting elected as an end in itself. The real state is beneath the surface of this public theater. It is the vast army of professional bureaucrats and the mandates they carry out. It is the enforcement apparatus that oversees a gargantuan tax code. It is the Federal Register that is too large to print. It is the central bankers, their staffs, their machinery, their mandate to bail out the state no matter what. It is the hundreds and thousands of agencies that purport to control every aspect of life.

No voter ever approved any of this; no election puts any of this at risk. This is because the state itself is not subject to any plebiscite. Imagine if all the elected officials in the entire country and all those who work in their offices decided not to show up to work for an extended period. What would happen? New bills wouldn't pass. The media wouldn't have politics to cover. There would be a periodic scramble over superficial issues like the debt limit. But otherwise, the state would go on just as before. Nothing fundamental would change.

Nor is it the case that any of the elected officials have the power to do serious damage to this system. This goes for the president, too. They can often influence the way the state grows, but they can't actually fundamentally threaten the apparatus itself. The longer they are in office, the less personal power they realize that they have. The reason is simple. The system is not structured to permit them to dismantle it, even if they wanted to. They are temporary managers of a ruling class, and the members of this class mostly scoff at these people, treating them like actors on a stage that the class itself owns.

The best source to gain a full grasp of the realities of the modern state apparatus is Robert Higgs' amazing work, Against Leviathan. No contemporary author has so fully documented the vast expanse of the modern leviathan in all its permutations. He sees how welfare and warfare are not opposed to each other, but work together to form the main two activities of the modern state. He sees how central banking works to sustain the system. He understands the ways in which the state serves as a cash cow for every form of interest group, and how it works to trick the population into believing that the state is doing good for people when it is really wrecking their lives.

Most of all, Higgs gets that the political system that so enraptures the public mind is not owned by us. It is owned and managed by the state itself and for a precise purpose: to perpetuate the idea that we have all chosen the regime that rules us. That is why there is so little difference between the political parties. As Higgs puts it, the U.S. has "two revolving factions of a one-party state farcically masquerade as authentic alternatives, the one specializing in crushing economic freedom and the other concentrating on crushing every other form of freedom."

After the election is all over -- in a grueling 10 months! -- and our new managers take their seats, the talking heads will tell us once more: "The system worked." Yes, it did work in exactly the way they want it to work. Nothing much will change. If you don't like the results, there is something wrong with you. If you don't like the rules, taxes, human suffering, wars, inflation, intrusions, confiscations and all the rest of the apparatus, you had better run for office, give to another candidate or otherwise throw yourself into the politics full time!

This is not choice. When we go to the grocery, we face a choice of what to buy. Or we can walk out without buying at all, keeping our money instead. Whatever the result, it is really in our hands. The electoral system is different. The store is the state. The products it offers are produced by the state. There is no real choice, only enough shadings of differences to keep us entertained. And we cannot really walk away. There is "no none of the above" and there is no keeping your own money.

Every once in a while, someone comes along who offers a fundamental challenge to the whole racket and somehow manages to attract public attention and even use the system to urge the dismantling of the system. This is what has happened with the candidacy of Ron Paul, and it is precisely why the media strains so hard to keep from reporting on him or letting others speak out for his views.

The elites are not so concerned that he can be elected. The system is fixed well enough to prevent that outcome. The real threat -- and Dr. Paul understands this better than anyone -- is the fundamental intellectual challenge that he offers. His book Liberty Defined contains enough radicalism and enough intellectual power to destabilize the entire structure that Oppenheimer and Higgs have so beautifully described.

The ideas in these books are far more powerful than any ballot box. They expose the illusion of choice for what it is and unmask the violence embedded in the state-dominated society, a system that no one chose but has been imposed on the population through propaganda, wars, payoffs and every manner of trickery. If there were a way to re-channel all the human energy that people put into politics into reading and thinking, the state would have finally meet its match.

Regards,
Jeffrey Tucker
Executive editor, Laissez-Faire Books