COLONEL KWIATKOWSKI ON 9-11

by James Craig Green

Many of my conservative friends tolerate my libertarianism, because so many of them knew me before they knew much about my three-decade commitment to it. Some, along with liberal friends, think of me as merely naive, lost in some ideological utopian vision. They are kind, and seem to have affection for me as an entertaining and interesting, though misguided, pet. Some, to their credit, have agreed with me on some issues and have politely debated with me on others. They remain my friends (and loved ones), because they don't just fill me with kind words to avoid offending me. Others frequently try to get me to support some Republican cause or candidate, even though I have repeatedly railed against Republican complicity with Democrats to continually expand the Welfare/Warfare state. My liberal friends know better than to ask me to support their political causes. At least they're honest, with their rhetoric usually revealing their true intentions.

Recently reminded about tomorrow's celebration of America's non-defensive militarism and foreign nation-building, I have contemplated writing about it. The dangerous and destructive growth of American government since that fateful day a decade ago has hurt most Americans far more than external enemies have. Over the last 10 years, I have seen the greatest expansion of government against liberty in my life. Reading about HOOVER AND ROOSEVELT in the 1930's was just history to me. Living through Johnson, Nixon and the Vietnam War as a college student and then an Air Force officer was the experience of a young and uninformed citizen dangerously naive about politics until I ran for Congress twice in the eighties. I am reminded of the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz' quote about the subject: War is politics carried on by other means. Perhaps this is why Democrats, who portray themselves as the "peace" party, have involved America in more wars than Republicans.

The Welfare/Warfare state desperately needs both complimentary sides of its left/right symbiosis to maintain its illusions of aggression disguised as protection, theft rights disguised as compassion (see my June blog post CONFUSION ABOUT RIGHTS) and democratic tyranny disguised as statesmanship or representation, when only about 20-25 percent of Americans actually elect the President and Congress.

I just today stumbled on the recent writings of Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel who was at the Pentagon on 9/11/2001. In the following article, she says so many of the things I would scream at the top of my lungs if I had given it more thought.

I hope you enjoy Col. Kwiatkowski's take on tomorrow's climactic, but endless and obsessive, celebration moving America further away from the things that made it great and toward bigger government, dependency, tyranny and blaming foreign scapegoats to justify an aggressive military foreign policy designed to fight the now-defunct Soviet Union. Like most Americans, I blame the Syrian and Egyptian terrorists who flew the planes into the World Trade Center for the mass murders on 9/11/2001, as well as their Syrian mastermind and banker, Osama Bin Laden. What I do not do is assume they acted without provocation by the U.S. Government. This government has installed and maintained brutal dictators all over the world for decades, and deserves at least some of the blame conveniently bestowed by a revenge-obsessed populace on a nebulous thing called "Radical Islam." President Bush should have found and killed Osama bin Laden and destroyed his terrorist organization within a year or two after 9/11. Instead, he invaded Iraq under false pretenses, an undeclared war that has killed more Americans than the 9-11 terrorists. At least Afghanistan was a plausible hiding place for Bin Laden in the early years.

If you like the sentiments and principles propounded by Col. Kwiatkowski below as I do, you might also like to see some of her other articles at Lew Rockwell.com:

THE BEST OF KAREN KWIATKOWSKI


Here's an excerpt from her 9/11 article I really liked, which says more than I could have with fewer words:

Farce, gross incompetence, and tragedy is the hallmark of big centralized government, wherever it develops. Big centralized government has developed in the United States year after year since the 1930s, and it has both solidified and metastasized since 9-11. Today, we live at the will and by the grace of a dystopian and grasping government. There is not an exceptional amount of time left before this government collapses, but before it does, we the people will suffer far more than we have suffered to date. Banking collapses, mortgage fraud at the highest levels, government bailouts, currency printing, and inflation in food and energy are just a foretaste of the future, led by the same Washington public-private cartel we have suffered for decades.

HOW I'LL REMEMBER 9-11 THIS YEAR

by Karen Kwiatkowski

HORNBERGER ON THE TEA PARTY

by James Craig Green

I joined the Colorado Libertarian Party in the summer of 1980, setting me on a lifetime course to better understand government, politics, economics, and many other fields of knowledge by which the vast majority of people are so easily manipulated into believing complete, unadulterated BULLSHIT. I ran for Congress in 1982 and 1984 as a Libertarian, which turned me off politics -- the most dishonest and destructive of all human endeavors -- forever.


War is politics carried on by other means
-- Prussian General von Clausewitz in ON WAR


The first time I heard the word "libertarian" was in 1976, when a friend at work told me about a presidential candidate named Roger McBride, representing the Libertarian Party. Apparently my strong, independent, nonconformist parents' ethics had rubbed off on me, since I thought McBride was a much-needed breath of fresh air in that election year, when the dolt Gerald Ford (Nixon's appointed successor who immediately pardoned him) ran against the government-subsidized Georgia peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter. McBride said, "We need to cut not just fat from the federal government, but also LEAN," and in another speech, "We need to take a meatax to the federal budget." I was very impressed with McBride, a state legislator from Virginia, but not enough to vote for someone who didn't stand a chance against the dolt and government-subsidized peanut farmer. So, four years before getting serious about libertarianism, I simply chose not to vote.

Jacob Hornberger's THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM FOUNDATION is one of the best libertarian websites, in my opinion. Thanks to my friend Fred Holden, a Republican who actually believes in free markets, for bringing the following article about the Tea Party to my attention.


The Problem with the Tea Party

by Jacob G. Hornberger
Thursday, August 4, 2011


Okay, so the Tea Party is good at speaking out against out-of-control federal spending and debt, even if its members in Congress are not so good at reining in government spending and borrowing when voting on whether to permit the federal government to pile another $2.7 trillion of debt onto the backs of the American people during the next two years.

And, okay, the Tea Party is good at opposing tax increases. In fact, let’s keep giving credit where credit is due: many Tea Party members are ardently opposed to the Federal Reserve’s longtime debasement of the currency through inflation to enable federal officials to continue their big-spending, big-borrowing ways.

Yet, opposing big spending, big debt, big inflation, and even big government in the abstract really isn’t that difficult, is it? What’s difficult is to call for the abolition of the federal programs that all that spending and borrowing goes toward.

Does the Tea Party ever call for the abolition of, say, Social Security? Of course not. Like most statists, they run for the hills if anyone even hints that this socialistic program — the crown jewel of the welfare state — should be repealed immediately.

What about Medicare and Medicaid? The response is the same. Either stunned silence at any suggestion that these socialistic programs be repealed immediately or a knee-jerk rejection of the idea.

How about the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and the entire overseas military empire of the U.S. government, including the 700-1000 military bases in some 130 countries? Silence there too. We have to support the troops, they tell us, which always means keeping them right where they are, especially since they’re supposedly defending our “rights and freedoms” thousands of miles away.

Yet, it’s Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the military that are the biggest components of the big-spending, big-borrowing, big-inflation, big-government problem. Anyone who says he wants to rein in federal spending while leaving these big socialist and imperialist programs in place is just blowing smoke.

What’s left after the biggies? How about education grants, community grants, farm subsidies, foreign aid (including to Middle East dictatorships), corporate subsidies, public housing, FDIC, and food stamps? When was the last time you heard any Tea Party member calling for the abolition (i.e., not the reform) of any of those? I certainly haven’t.

How about the Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy, Labor, Health and Human Services, HUD, EPA, and Homeland Security? Nope. I don’t know of any Tea Party members who have ever called for the abolition of any of them.

The fundamental problem with the Tea Party is it’s still wedded to the New Deal/Great Society socialist, interventionist, imperialist paradigm. In a word, they are still statists. They still believe in the welfare-warfare way of life for our country.

How do we know this? Because the most Tea Party members will ever do is call for reductions in federal spending on welfare-warfare state programs. They never call for abolishing the programs, like libertarians do.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, reducing spending by, say, 20 percent on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Iraq, Afghanistan, foreign aid, the Patriot Act, education grants, and the like leaves all those programs in existence. Obviously, that’s completely different from calling for the abolition of such programs, which is what libertarians do.

The fundamental philosophical difference between libertarians and Tea Party types is that we come up with different answers to the following question: What should be the primary role of government in a free society?

We libertarians say: to protect the inhabitants of the country from the violence of others.

Tea Party members answer differently. Like statists everywhere, they say that the primary purpose of government is to take care of people and, if it’s the U.S. government, to police the world. They’re just upset that it costs so much money and are convinced they can come up with a way to do it on the cheap.

Thus, while Tea Party types devote their efforts to figuring out how to make the welfare-warfare state more affordable, libertarians reject the welfare-warfare-state paradigm entirely and want it replaced with one based on economic liberty, free markets, free enterprise, voluntary charity, and a constitutionally limited republic.

Perhaps the best example of how Tea Party members do not wish to upset the welfare-warfare-state applecart is the drug war, which integrates elements of the welfare state, the police state, and the warfare state. What better way to rein in federal spending and borrowing than by ending the drug war? For libertarians, it’s a total no-brainer. Here’s an immoral and expensive federal program that’s been going on for 40 years, with nothing to show for it but death, destruction, crookedness, and corruption.

Yet, are Tea Party members calling for drug legalization? Nope. And the reason is that at a fundamental level Tea Party types, like statists everywhere, still love the nanny state, the police state, and the warfare state and, therefore, remain as committed to preserving them as much as any other statist.


Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM FOUNDATION.

CONFUSION ABOUT RIGHTS

by James Craig Green
(updated 3/20/2013)

Today, it seems like wants become needs, needs become rights, and, well... you know what happens when enough people say they have a right to something. It becomes yet another excuse to grow government.

John Locke's ideas on NATURAL RIGHTS were based on your ability to mix your labor with unowned natural resources to create something new; thereby becoming your property. In other words, you OWN the fruits of your labor. By producing something new, you have a right to keep it, sell it, give it away or otherwise decide how it is used or disposed of. Also, Locke talked about man's inherent rights to life, liberty and property. This was revolutionary in the 1600's, when the prevailing law was that the King owned everything, including you. Unfortunately, these rights are once again revolutionary.

The Declaration of Independence described these rights as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but retained Locke's idea of natural rights.

Groups may facilitate the protection of these natural rights, but group rights depend on and are limited by the individual rights of those who create or support the group. Frederic Bastiat wrote about this in THE LAW.


THEFT RIGHTS

Contrary to the natural, defensive right to protect yourself and your property from theft or other aggression; another, completely different set of "rights" sprang up over the last several decades, especially since the New Deal of the 1930's. To best describe these "rights," I call them Theft Rights, because that is how they differ from Locke's natural rights. Theft Rights, as the name implies, depend on theft against innocents.

Following the popular "progressive" tide by taking some people's property and giving it to others, President Roosevelt came up with some new rights in 1944, mixed with the old ones so few would notice the difference. His ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS (AKA Second Bill of Rights) included several new benefits, which had nothing to do with protection of individual rights. On the contrary, the only means of providing these would be the forceful theft of money and property from others to fulfill them. These "rights" included the idea that everyone should be provided with the following tangible things:

• Employment with a living wage
• Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies
• Housing
• Medical Care
• Education
• Social Security

These "rights" greatly enhanced the power of government to implement Roosevelt's progressive agenda, changing government from a protector of individual natural rights to a gang of thieves who takes property from some by force and gives it to others. It was Republican President Hoover, a former mining engineer and Roosevelt's predecessor, who began the New Deal, which Roosevelt finished. Roosevelt perverted one of the natural rights described in the Declaration, (pursuit of happiness, which became just happiness) as an excuse to provide these Theft Rights. In short, government now guaranteed happiness (not just freedom to pursue it), without mentioning the only way to do this is to steal wealth from others. This became the second-greatest fraud of the twentieth century (first was the Fed).

Tibor Machan recently (2013) published an essay that supports my thesis here:
WELFARE RIGHTS ARE WRONG

The Fed, income tax, New Deal, escalation of the welfare state and decades of undeclared wars since 1945 were all the result of this brilliant, though destructive, power grab. This idea, and its addictive "free" benefits to some, is why today's U.S. government has unfunded future financial liabities between 50 and 100 TRILLION DOLLARS, depending on assumptions. The highest credible estimate I've seen, by the Cato Institute, is 120 trillion dollars, which is more than eight times current GDP. The lower figure is more consistent with former Comptroller General of the U.S. David Walker's estimates, who quit the federal government and went to work for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to promote government austerity measures from outside the beast. Roosevelt's power grab, arguably the most blatant, was not the last. Today, every branch of the federal government rountinely steps outside the bounds of its constitutional powers. Without exaggeration, America's government is no longer limited.

It's good to be the King.

No Congress, no Supreme Court, no Constitution, not even a popular vote; just the President promising prosperity by theft. This is why some call today's democracies "kleptocracies," where everyone is entitled to steal from everyone else. Although Roosevelt's action was not the first such aggression against the natural, defensive rights upon which the American Republic was founded, it was arguably the most destructive. It opened the flood gates for everyone to claim they have a right to anything, for which somebody else would pay. This is why government is so large and oppressive today, so easily manipulated by the left and the right.

Both the left's welfare state and the right's warfare state were greatly enhanced by these policies, to the detriment of every American's freedom - even those who directly benefit from them.

Since I was born in 1945, the year of Roosevelt's death, It's been like a decades-long football game between Democrats and Republicans, where each time one team gets the ball, it has grown much larger. Eventually, the ball will explode. Whoever has the ball when it explodes will get blamed for both parties' sins, but by then, it won't matter.

Of course, when Roosevelt was concocting these new Theft Rights, which would eventually be cheerfully embraced by both political parties, there was no mention of the theft part. Since 1913's Sixteenth Amendment (income tax) was passed (previously unconstitutional) and the Federal Reserve Act (also in 1913; still unconstitutional), the U.S. government had cleverly segregated its revenue from its spending. After these two advances in "progressive" government, now supported by almost all conservatives, government began a long, modern tradition of endless promises of benefits without considering costs or tradeoffs. Now might be a good time to review how this was done by Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt by reading Lawrence Reed's excellent pamphlet, GREAT MYTHS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION.

If you think these new "rights" represented a cornucopia of wealth, please remember that the Mafia, just like government, can also create prosperity by theft, but only for its beneficiaries. Similarly, 60% of Americans today get more from government than they pay in, while 40% pay more than they receive, as I discussed in WHO BENEFITS AND WHO PAYS FOR GOVERNMENT. After 1913 and again during and after the New Deal, the U.S. Government became a super-Mafia, combining theft and intimidation with unconstrained violence to benefit some at the expense of others. Both organizations do the same thing - take (steal) portions of the lives of productive people, deduct government's (mafia's) cut, and give the remainder to those who worship it as benefactor and savior. This is what American Mafia Government has become.

The Godfather should be so lucky.

THE PROBLEM WITH DEMOCRACY

by James Craig Green

Here and elsewhere, I have written about today's out-of-control government spending, public debt and the failure of Republicans, including their new brash-talking tea party congressmen, to do anything about it. The pathetic, anemic and trivial rhetoric coming from six months of a born-again Republican House of Representatives has resulted in no spending reductions of any kind, or even their prospect. In fact, the only member of Congress who I respect (Ron Paul) hit the nail on the head a while back when he said, Instead of the left agreeing to cut social spending and the right agreeing to cut military spending, the right agrees to more welfare and the left agrees to more warfare.

I have often pointed out the tragic conversion of America's federal government from a small republic limited by the U.S. Constitution to a few important tasks, into a massive, bloated behemoth that, along with its Frankenstein Monster the Fed - has accomplished unlimited government spending for anything and everything imaginable. As I described in PRIVATE PROPERTY PUBLIC PLUNDER and my Unchain the Builders series article on JAMES MADISON, America has unfortunately become much more democratic, and less republican, than the American founders intended.

I should point out the obvious, but so many refuse to see: today's so-called republicanism has almost nothing in common with the republicanism of America's founding. If it were not for current Republicans' empty rhetoric which never translates into meaningful, government-limiting results, there would be no connection at all.

Also, as I described in MARKETS WORK-GOVERNMENTS DON'T, CRONY CAPITALISM and SOLAR JOBS, government today almost always does more harm than good when it gets involved in the economy. This is because it only knows how to used its oppressive tools: the sledgehammers of unconstitutional law, promotion of coercive monopolies and forced wealth transfer.

The American Republic's founders thought they made sure the new federal government being considered from 1787 to 1791 would be able to avoid the michiefs of faction described by James Madison in FEDERALIST NO. 10. They were wrong.

I can think of no better analogy to illustrate the silliness of democracy than a family operating under democractic principles to show what is wrong with America today, and why.

KIND BUT MISGUIDED PARENTS

Imagine a fairly typical American family, with two working parents who bring in all the family's income, and their three young children who do not work. Suppose, in their zeal for democracy, unrestrained by any rule of law, much less a Constitution, these compassionate parents decide to implement pure democracy in their family.

All it takes is a simple rule: every dollar spent by the family will be based on a majority vote of all five members. So, if the parents want to make a house payment but the kids want to go to Disneyland, the house payment does not get made. The kids are so happy about the trip, they next vote for anything and everything they want, realizing their parents will have to comply, by the parents' own chosen rules.

At this point, you might consider this the stupidest thing that any group of adults ever did, but you would be wrong. As P.J. O'Rourke once opined, Giving Congress the power to tax is like giving teenage boys whiskey and car keys.

Well, America, you have not only done just that, but much, much worse. You have given your immature children (voters, looking for "free" benefits at the expense of others) not only whiskey and car keys, but a printing press with which to make unlimited amounts of money (The Federal Reserve) without increased production of goods and services. All this from the insane idea that unbacked paper money, and not real goods and services, represents wealth. If the Fed really improved the economy, then everyone should be allowed to have a money-printing press in his basement, and the illusion that counterfeiting is illegal could be done away with once and for all.

And, as if this weren't enough, you've given these immature, reality-challenged voters the idea that they have a right to continue their high-on-the-hog lifestyle, regardless of cost or damage to others. Of course, it is easy to see how quickly any family who would be so foolish to live under pure democracy would quickly be bankrupt, or worse. But, like the childish members of public employee unions who believe they haven't gotten enough from taxpayers already, they also want the right to force more, and more, and more money from those who actually produce the useful goods and services they consume at the expense of more productive enterprises. As Mel Brooks said in the movie Blazing Saddles: We've got to protect our phony-baloney jobs, gentlemen.

You might think I chose the two working parents and three nonworking kids by chance, but it is actually a pretty good representation of America today, as shown in my recent post WHO BENEFITS AND WHO PAYS FOR GOVERNMENT?. Sixty percent (three out of five) of Americans receive more from government than they pay in, and only 40% (two out of five) pay more than they receive. A democratic America is already here.

The excesses of democracy, frequently called mob rule by American Founders, clearly manifested themselves in differences between the American and French Revolutions. Whereas the constrained republicanism of the American Revolution produced the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the almost purely democratic French Revolution a few years later produced the Reign of Terror, the Guillotine and eventually, the Emperor Napoleon.

Today's America resembles more closely the democratic excesses of the early French democracy, than the constitutional republic created by America's founders.

Several famous people have characterized the damage done by democracy:

• Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself - John Adams
• Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people - Oscar Wilde 
• A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. - Thomas Jefferson

As with the French Revolution, too much democracy, as evidenced by unfunded U.S. government liabilities estimated by the Cato Institute to be between 45 and 100 TRILLION DOLLARS (Table 1 on Page 7), cannot be continued without severe additional damage to the American economy.

If Americans don't soon get their government addiction under control; foreign bankers, bond markets and more economic collapses will.