Saturday, July 31, 2010

Freedom Watch: a Libertarian Dispute

Those who have not seen Judge Andrew Napolitano's new program on Fox Business, Freedom Watch, should tune in. It is a great program––maybe the best in many, many year, and greatly needed as the nation teeters on the brink of all out tyranny.

The first four programs have been outstanding. That is not to say certain issues have not engendered disputes––not just with democrats, neocons, radical liberals and republicans, but among Libertarians themselves.

This Saturday morning was one of those instances. Judge Napolitano disappointingly and, I believe, incorrectly criticized the Arizona Law as one that would profile and take the rights and liberties of Mexican Americans––even though the law expressly forbids such action four times–– and usurp the Federal Government's Constitutionally assigned task of defending US borders.

The following is a letter I sent to the Judge in response to that segment on his program. I leave Armadillo readers to it with one small closing remark: Judge Napolitano is a great man, a generous man, a passionate and courageous man and worthy of all our admiration and respect for his unswerving and uncompromising stance for American Liberty and his categorical opposition to tyranny. He is, like Dr. Ron Paul, the real deal.

Our dispute here shows only one thing: what Liberty is and what Tyranny is, though in most cases is clear, is sometimes a difficult and complex thing to discern and something about which men honestly seeking the truth can passionately content.

With that I enter the ring with my superior, but with many more questions begging for satisfactory resolution than claims or conjectures to make. I invite a response and will publish it on my site if given or hope for further clarification on a future program.

ARIZONA LAW
Judge Napolitano,
I am a Libertarian because of you, Tom Woods, DiLorenzo, Rockwell and Dr. Paul. I am a big fan and supporter of your work--but I object to you presenting your position on this matter as THE Constitutional one and THE Libertarian one.
Please consider these IMPORTANT issues, none of which you brought up or even remotely touched upon as meaningful in this debate.
––Doesn't it bother you that you are reading things into the AZ law that aren't there and basing some of your objections on hypotheticals rather than actual facts and actions? It seems to me your whole argument is not based upon reality but simply a priori conjecture.
How is that Constitutional?

Without even bringing up the fact that your objections to the law are also objected to in the AZ law and expressly and repeatedly forbidden, considering the following things about "carrying your papers" and reconsider: the Third Reich is already here!
1. I am a citizen of the great Freestate and Sovereign Republic of Texas. Every time I'm stopped by a Texas highway patrolman, even for a tail light being out, I have to produce identification––papers, if you will. If the officer is suspicious he will also ask anyone riding with me for ID (papers).

And if I do not produce said documents post haste, including up to date insurance, I'll be put in jail and fined (at the very least).

I realize the patrolman uses the excuse that "driving isn't a right" to check me out.
But, in effect, when he asks for my license and insurance he is not just checking IF I have a valid license, but WHO I AM, What my police record is, what other violations I might have had (for which he could also arrest me), if my car is stolen, if I have outstanding local warrants, my registration, if I'm wanted in Texas or other states, how much I owe the local public library for outstanding books, and God knows what all else about me.

He's not just concerned with my tail light or if I have valid license to operate a vehicle. He's doing a whole background check. He could probably get my grade school records back in 1955 at Ages, Kentucky if he wanted and find out I'm not very smart––and futher take advantage of me.
All of this indignity I must bear; simply because I have a freaking tail light out I have to go through a complete background check on the spot, without any recourse to defense or objection!!!!!!!

If he were just checking for my license he could just do that standing at my car.
"Yes, I have a license and, yes, it's valid and up to date. I am a licensed driver, now what seems to be the problem, officer?" But that is the least of what he is interested in.

What he really wants is to
a) see what he can find in order to confiscate what little $$ the government has been gracious enough to leave me after their relentless forced tribute called "taxes" and to
b) exert the absolute police power the government holds over me––to keep me afraid of them and in servile obedience to their slightest whim and every demand, no matter how invasive, absurd or draconian. THAT, to me, is a LOT more offensive and invasive than simply seeing if someone actually has a legal right to be in the country. Yet, US citizens put up with it and are unjustly fined and jailed by the thousands because of it––and there's not a pip or a squeak from anyone in our defense.

Yet, you defend illegals but are silent on this matter–you gulp down a camel but choke on a gnat!


Now let's get somewhat less personal and existential and speak a little more broadly about the consequences of your reading of this law.

2. Doesn't the result of your misreading of the Az. law render the state of Az. absolutely helpless in defending itself when the Feds fail and/or refuse to do the job the Sovereign State of Az. has commissioned its mere agent, the Fed. govt., to do?

If so this brings up the following questions:
––Was the Constitution written so the entities that signed the Compact are rendered helpless and stripped of all means of just defense when the delegated Agent fails in its constitutionally assigned duty?
––Must the assigned duty simply go undone because it benefits the few in America and those with no legal rights while gravely harming the states and the great mass of citizens?
How is this not tyranny of the minority? How is this not a lawless and anarchic interpretation of the Constitution?
Under your reading such seems to be some of the noxious effects.
Where is the Liberty in that?
Further:
––Did the framers ever conceive that the Agent of the states would (or could) shirk said Constitutional duty to defend the border and the Sovereigns would be judged (by Federal judges exclusively) powerless to do anything whatsoever in lieu of said failure and/or refusal?
––Did the Framers ever imagine that the Agent could practice GROSS disobedience to the Constitution while at the same time demanding the Sovereigns kowtow to its every jot and tittle, as interpreted exclusively by the Agent?
Your interpretation seems to say, "Yes."
If so, I get it. I understand you now: implicit in your interpretation, the Sovereign States cannot refuse their Agent's demands, but the Agent can thumb the nose at the Sovereigns with impunity––the deck is stacked, and it is stacked with your assistance because you accept the judgement of Federal courts over those of analogous state courts, (even though that is Marshall's mere theory and NOT in the Constitution.) Thus, the states enter the ring with both hands tied behind them, facing a vicious opponent and a referee who lacks impartiality.

Is that your reading of the Constitution? That the Constitution renders the Sovereigns without resources of any kind, even forbidding them to use their own means and making them helpless to their mere Agent's intents and purposes, no matter how arcane, obscure, injurious---and treasonous?
Does the Constitution restrain the Agent or the Sovereigns---Does the dog wag the tail or the tail the dog?

Under your reading it seems the tail not only wags the dog, it exerts absolute power over it. I see exactly what you're saying: the Constitution was not written to protect, strengthen and empower the states and the people against possible Federal encroachment, abuse and usurpation, but to render them helpless against BOTH Federal ACTION and INACTION?––the sword of Government, according to your interpretation of this law, cuts both ways, but it's the States and the people who receive both wounds while the Feds remain untouched and unscathed.
Is that what you believe? For that is what seems to be implied in your reading of this law?

If so, does your reading not actually utterly contradict the statement you make at the opening of every Freedom Watch: that the Constitution was written to restrain the Agent and protect the people?

What the Hell happened to the "Sovereign" in Sovereign States? Did it go the way of the Dodo bird and the bomp in the bomp a bomp a bomp or vanish with the hoola hoop?

––We know that the Feds, as the agent of the states, are charged with the duty to control the borders. But nothing is said about what the Sovereigns may or may NOT do when the Agent fails and/or refuses to fulfill its Constitutional Commission. Does not the 10th amendment makes it clear that the States can do what ever they please, because their powers are not limited and innumerated. Or does the Constitution contradict itself on this one point and must, therefore, be judged as incoherent and inconsistent?
––Did the states surrender their power to defend their borders in the Constitution or only delegate that power?
––If that power is delegated and not surrendered cannot it be recalled when the Agent fails or refuses its duty?

3. Doesn't your objection extend Citizen rights to non-Citizens, and does so by robbing the rights of Citizens?
Where is that in the Constitution?
––Isn't it a lot less offensive for a non-Citizen here legally to produce proper identification, than the background check I, a citizen, must presently go through every time I have a tail light out in Texas––or any other state?

4. Doesn't it bother you that your objections make it essentially illegal for law officers to determine if anyone is here legally (even a terrorist who is planning to detonate a nuclear device---like the nut who was going to blow up downtown Dallas a few months ago), and that is it the illegal non-citizens (who are without constitutional rights) who really benefit from your argument?
By your argument are you not, in reality, sacrificing the rights of citizens on the altar of non-citizens? How is this not a legal version of the welfare state? Redistribution of rights--that's all we need, don't you think? To those who have not from those who have. Legislated Marxism in the field of citizen rights. Let's share. Why have borders? After all, are we not citizens of the world?....and therefore, subject to INTERNATIONAL courts and tribunals!?!

In summary:
It's an imperfect world but I find your position based upon hypotheticals and conjecture rather than facts, lacking common sense and, frankly, Utopian---Utopianism is neither reason, nor common sense, nor is it oriented to Liberty––it is, in fact, quite the opposite in each case. Utopianism in all its forms seems to me to be a mood, a bad mood if you will, commonly identified with our intellectual enemies on the left.

Your arguments in this instance, in my view, lack common sense and basic human understanding. To wit, if I must choose between living under:
a) the dread of bearing a full background check for a broken tail light or
b) the dread of myself, my family here in Dallas and Dallas itself being largely destroyed by a nuclear devise because the police were helpless to find out who a terrorist was due to the fact that Utopian laws tied their hands to "protect and defend the innocent"–––
I will take the dread of that ID check after a broken tail light as opposed to the high probability of nuclear annihilation each and every time---after all, unlike illegals under your reading of the AZ law, I, as a citizen, must even now undergo that background check, even as your precious illegals go scott free so that some hypothetical citizens of Mexican heritage may not be offended.

I guess, I, as an American citizen of non-Mexican heritage am the only one who has no right to be protected from offense and no right to be physically safe in my own land and the land of my fathers, in order that the Utopian view of a few Libertarians (and a great mass of radical liberals) might be blindly and ubiquitously implemented, and implemented based upon what? The slavish obedience to the Hamiltonian disciple John Marshall's mere theory of ubiquitous Federal Judicial supremacy.

Nonsense. No state would have signed the Compact with that understanding.

I WANT MY CONSTITUTION BACK WITHOUT THE POISON OF JOHN MARSHALL'S CENTRALIZING THEORIES that Federal courts have repeatedly used to nullify the express will of We the People and destroy our rights and the Sovereignty of our States!

Address these objection and I'll see if I can't regain at least a shred of respect for your position on this issue. Many thanks for taking the time to consider my objections.
sincerely,
Tom Ridenour (wm ridenour)


Friday, July 30, 2010

How Individuals can Control the Government (without casting a single vote)

Fiat money and easy credit, all driven by government policies, have created an economy that depends upon consumer spending for its appearance health. Businesses not only depend upon this, and gear up accordingly, but the government does to. Here's how: the government profits through taxes confiscated---oops, I mean, collected---though consumer salaries and corporate profits.

Short term thinkers may think of this a positive, but the problem with a spending based economy is that it's build upon consumption and debt, not savings and profit. Only by investing real savings and creating a superior product for less money=real profitability and a healthy (aka "realistic") economic climate.

Right now we have a false economy, a zombie economy, based upon spending and debt. This means many zombie companies that cannot really compete are being propped up by our Zombie Federal Government: the auto and bank bailouts are prime examples.

So how can seemingly helpless consumers help stop the march of the zombie companies and being building a solid economy based upon savings, realistic interest for loans, and productivity? By one simple thing: saving, saving, saving, and doing for ourselves what the Federal government refuses to do for itself: denying ourselves the free spending ways to which we have become accustomed.

This means not taking a Disney World vacation, maintaining and fixing things you OWN rather than going into debt to buy something new and scores of other things to economize.

IF Americans begin doing this in greater and greater numbers Federal taxes will tank, because the false profits won't be there to tax.

Americans are willing to cut back, and larger and larger numbers are already doing so. But it's not enough. A vast majority must concentrate upon savings, eliminate debt and practice self-denial. We must resist all the temptations our debt ridden Federal Government sets before us to further spend and go deeper and deeper in debt. Great numbers of Americans doing this will force the Federal government to cut back. In this way we need not cast a single vote to make our voices heard. We will vote with our actions!

This will be painful and require thought an discipline---something boomers never learned and were never taught by indulgent parents and a libertine society. We must learn it now if our economy is not just to appear as healthy and vital but be healthy and vital.

We are seeing the sorry fruit of the false economic ideas of John Maynard Keynes. Essentially, this means appearance is giving way to reality, as it eventually must always do. Americans must let the Feds know they are willing to embrace that reality and act accordingly, and in the process, wrestle the Feds down and force them to do so. WE THE PEOPLE MUST LEAD by our Actions!

Let's get at it!

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The Unenforcible Law

Imagine a situation analogous to the following:
Four people share the apartment and the single bathroom. Caleb is the main person since his name is on the lease. John, Ted and Bill pay a share of the monthly rent. The bathroom needs cleaning. It's in appalling condition.

At the beginning they all agreed to perform specific duties, but four months in and it is becoming painfully clear that Caleb is not holding up his share of the agreed to bargain. He's done nothing to clean the bathroom and it both shows and smells---smells to the point it's polluting the whole apartment. The first thing anyone who enters the apartment becomes strikingly aware of is the stench permeating the air.

After four months of neglect Ted decides he's had it. He gets a mop, bucket and some Comet and Lysol and heads for the bathroom, only to be stopped on the way by Caleb.

Caleb asks him in a aggressive tone, "What the Hell do you think you're doing?"
Ted responds, "I'm going to clean the bathroom. It stinks to high heaven!"
Caleb fires back, "That's my job. We have an agreement. Remember? You signed it!"
"But you're not doing it!"
"No, and I'm not going to, " answered Caleb, "and neither are you. It's my apartment. I'm the guy whose name is on the lease, and I decide what goes on. If you don't like it, you can just get the Hell out."

Ted and the others are upset but feel powerless to do anything. After all, they had an agreement Caleb insisted they live up to---even though Caleb seems to not see his obligation to do likewise. When they remind him his response was that he agreed to be the one to clean the bathroom, but nothing in the agreement said when, how often or how thoroughly he would do it---if at all.

So we have a horrible situation in the apartment---a dangerous one as well, since sickness and disease follow fast on the heels of unsanitary conditions. Soon, all the people in the apartment, including Caleb, are feeling the effects of declining health. Still, Caleb holds his position fast. He insists upon refusing to act on the rule but denies all others the liberty to so in his stead.

The situation is intolerable. Soon the situation devolves into hostility and violence breaks out.

Such is the consequence when those in authority who persist in anarchic behavior and refuse to perform their duties. The consequence of lawlessness is unavoidable, and it matters not whether the practitioners are rulers in seats of authority or whether they are on the fringes of society––the results are the same: injustice and violence.

That such will happen is a foregone conclusion. If it will happen cannot be doubted. The only question remaining is when it will happen and on what initial scale.

Fat Cats

Mr. Obama said he did not rise to office to be helping out a bunch of Fat Cat bankers on Wall Street.

Yet, his stimulus and bailouts did just that to the favored few. It might even be fair to say, those pieces of legislation did only that, especially since no one else has any idea where all that money went.

So O has averred contempt for Fat Cats?

But who are the real fat cats? When we compare employees of the Federal government to those of the private sector we see Federal employees get 30% higher pay for the same work, job security unheard of in the private sector, and retirement benefits that private sector employees could only dream about in the world to come. Politicians and their families get lifetime health care under a system distinct from and superior to that of the average citizen and they don't have to pay into Social Security.

So, who really are the fat cats? It's easy to figure out. Here's the way you can know:

The fat cats are those who are accusing everyone else of being fat cats. It's a story that is repeated ad nauseam: the bigots are those ready to accuse all others of bigotry, the haters are those who are constantly accusing others of being haters, the thieves are those who are always calling others thieves, the slave masters are the utopian collectivists who point the finger at others, accusing them of wanting to return to slave days.

Government and those who work there ARE the Fat Cats. It is the government, and not the private sector, that has unlimited ability to print money out of thin air and a monopoly on absolute police power. You can take it to the bank.

Proper ruling on Arizona Immigration Law

Here's the CORRECT ruling from the Federal Judge that ought to have been rendered:

Whereas honest examination of reason, history and law all conclude that the States are the sovereigns and the Central Government, called Federal, is merely their agent, and

Whereas each sovereign State, having signed the Constitutional Compact according to the understanding of their ratification committees, has the right to render judgment of Federal Law according to that understanding and nullify what it deems abusive and unconstitutional and to, if need be, interpose and protect its citizens from abusive Federal judgments, and

Whereas the Central, called Federal, government, possesses no sovereignty, but only delegated authority, and

Whereas delegation of authority is, by its nature, only temporary and conditional and distinctly different from surrender of either authority or sovereignty, and

Whereas the Federal government has utterly failed to carry out its delegated duty and assigned task to defend the borders of the Sovereign States from foreign encroachment, therefore,

The duty and right to defend America's borders, having been abdicated by the Federal government, is reclaimed by the legitimate Sovereigns to act upon as they, the Sovereigns, see fit in order to protect the property, wealth and lives of the citizens whom they were created to serve.

In short, it is the judgment of this court that it, being a Federal court, has no right to judge the acts, laws and judgments of the true Sovereigns, the states, and that in regard to Az. 1070 or any other bill appertaining to the internal concerns, conditions and relationships of the sovereign States, the Federal Government, by reason of its status as agent and its repeated criminal acts of abuse and hostility towards the sovereign States and the people of the states, can get fucked.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Slave/Master Mentality of the Political Left

A few years ago Hillary Clinton told a San Francisco audience that, in regard to the Bush tax breaks, "We may have to take that money back."

Today, President Obama criticized the Republicans about holding up the extension of the unemployment benefits by saying, they were hedging on passing the extension but had no compunction about "spending billions on Tax breaks for the rich" in the Bush years.

"Take...back!" "Spending billions?"

Their choices of words is revealing. The fact is, Hillary can't "take the money back" because it was not her's (or the government's) to begin with. In regard to O's word choice, the Republicans didn't "spend billions on tax breaks" because the didn't have it to spend. What they did was refuse to confiscate those funds in the form of the usual forced tribute from the private sector––so the private sector could spend what they earned.

In short, Hillary and O think it's all their money and what we have, we have, not by our labors, skills and knowledge, by their graciousness and benevolence, allowing us to "keep" what they "gave" us, or by the government "spending" upon some of us lavishly in the form of "allowing" us to keep some of what we earn.

They think they own us, or rather that the government, of which they are a part of the ruling class, owns us, all that we have, including our families, which includes the right to overrule us and propagandize our children for future use. As they see it, we are all slaves of the state, mere government chattel, and they, the rulers of the state, are our masters who regulate and dictate our lives from cradle to grave.

That's the long and short of it, and you can take it to the bank. A vote for them is not a vote for servants who are committed to do the wills of their constituencies, but a vote for being ruled by slave masters.

With them in power the institution of slavery is alive and well in America.


Obama: His training, his thinking, his goals and the best Solution

Obama is a lawyer; lawyers are not to be trusted because they are taught a kind of speech and way of looking at reality that means whatever they want it to mean at any given time. The Sophists and Skeptics of Socrates’ time approached life and reality this way. They are the patron saints of today’s lawyers, especially those who litigate in this age of Positive Law.

Lawyers are trained to lie to the point they do it reflexively––they lie even when they don’t have to just to stay in practice.

Now, while this is the case with Obama his lies concerning taxes, as well as many other issues, are not just a lawyer staying in practice; they were made with malice aforethought.

He is in office to get revenge for “the downtrodden masses.” He believes the Marxist mantras and commits to the Marxist vocabulary, including one of their favorite and most effective collectivist terms: racism.

He tries to keep his image clean while his minions do his dirty work. Do you, for instance, think for one moment that he disagrees with Holder’s outrageous decisions? Do you think he was unaware he has social radicals and Marxists in his cadre of Czars? Do you think he was really forced into the corporate take overs he accomplished early in his term? If you think that I’ve got some ocean front property I’ll sell you here just south of Dallas.

I don’t know if the man is American or not––that’s immaterial. The important thing is his thinking is substantially UnAmerican; it is totalitarian and he is trying to transform America into a totalitarian system. He’s even willing, if need be, to sacrifice his presidency to that end. Thanks to the Imperial presidency post-Lincoln, the ground work for him doing so has been well laid.

Since so much power is now concentrated in the Executive it is mind blowing how much damage he has already been able to do. And, he’s just getting warmed up.

We are at a cross roads: we can either be pushed by endless, government generated crises and fear-mongering towards a completely centralized, totalitarian, command and control Empire, or courageously reject Empire and return to the subsidiarity of a federated Republic, with personal liberty, state’s rights, state’s sovereignty, free markets and a foreign policy of non-intervention.

Sad to say, when you see where we presently are, the journey to totalitarianism is a much shorter one than the return to the Founders and the rebirth of a constitutionally limited central government. In addition, the voices and forces for Liberty are very weak at this point, and have been so for many decades. Almost all of our Liberty has been exchanged for Government Largess in the past century.

There is a third solution. In my opinion, peaceful secession would be the best, most humane and most noble solution, with states forming coalitions with others of like mind. (For God’s sake, let birds of a feather flock together.) Thus we would end up, ironically, with part of the nation slave and part free. The real irony is most of the slave states would be those that fought for the Union (for a powerful centralized government) and most of the State’s Rights/free market/low tax/free trade states would be in the South.

While such a division may seem shocking and unpalatable for many, it’s still a lot better than letting Obama enslave us all to a totalitarian, Robin Hood-style Marxist, centralized state.

Beyond that, there's even a greater danger to personal liberty, if that's possible.

While the present Union breaking up into different political and sovereign bodies may seem hard for some of you to swallow, consider the following as a real possibility if things continue developing toward increasing consolidation of Federal power (primarily in the Executive).

As the central government of the American Union unconstitutionally usurped the sovereignty of the several states via 1) an unconstitutional war and 2) the 1869 Supreme Court decision (White vs Texas) banning secession––
ex-post facto!! (In other words, making the sovereign states which joined the union essentially a sovereignty suicide pact), so the political and legal sovereignty of the resultant consolidated American State, under which we presently suffer, is being increasingly threatened by forces determined to establish International Government––primarily through (but not only) the courts.

In other words, it could be, as the pro-Lincoln Supreme Court betrayed the true sovereignty of the states in White vs Texas, Our present Supreme Court could possible betray the sovereignty of our hegemonic, so-called Federal Government, putting us under the authority of international courts.

Think about what we’ve seen come to pass in America in the last ten or twenty years before you shake your head and say, “That could never happen!”…Really? Have you paid no heed to comments on international law by some of the Big Nine?

So, ultimately, which do you want––which is more ideal while being, admittedly, imperfect?

1. A group of different political alliances in America, which is bound to have one or more free, Constitutional Republics in which Liberty reigns, or

2. The subjects (a.k.a. citizens) of the tyrannical, Consolidated American State made subservient to the supremacy of international law, as interpreted by the even greater tyrannical authority of International Courts half way around the world?

You make the choice.

The Armadillo's 2 ¢.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

The Mad Logic behind Government Stimulus

An animal is hungry, goes on the hunt and finds something to eat---which he greedily does.
A man and woman marry and have sexual relations and bear children.
These are legitimate means of health for the animal and fruitfulness for the couple.

Let's consider another scenario:

An animal is hungry and suddenly sees something to eat. Without thinking he snaps at it and begins eating voraciously. After several large bites he realizes what he saw was his tail and realizes he's bleeding badly––but it's too late. Rather than gaining health from what he consumed he collapses and bleeds to death.

A couple marry but choose to please themselves sexually by what has traditionally been called the sin of self abuse. Years pass---and they wonder why they have no children.

These two latter examples are analogous to a Government stimulus. To wit: Expecting to have a vital economy through Government Stimulus is like expecting an animal to nourish itself by eating its tail or to have a family by masturbating.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Tea Party Racism??? Really?

Ben Jealous of the NAACP has all but frothed at the mouth condemning the Tea Party for alleged racism, citing fictional signs and equally fictional events for which there is no evidence. Al Sharpton has, in an apparently co-ordinated attack, risen up and accused the Tea Party of rasicm, citing their alleged vaunting of the doctrine of state's rights.

Sharpton says TEA Party folks want to turn the clock back when states could have policies that denied services to blacks based on their race and so forth.

Mr. Sharpton's historical memory does not go back very far. If he bothered to look a little further back he would find state's rights was used most by northern states and they used it mostly to refuse conforming to the fugitive slave law; every power, it seems, is like a sword and cuts both ways.

One asks if Mr. Sharpton would be so much against state's rights when slavery was Constitutional?

But the fact is Sharpton's criticism based on state's right is a red herring. It is something Sharpton invented out of whole cloth as a means of attacking the TEA party.

Any unbiased observer will conclude that the TEA party is not, in substance, about state's rights. TEA party people come from every state in the Union. If the TEA party were about state's rights one would have to ask which state and what issue?

Clearly, the TEA party is not about state's rights. If anything many states are in as much trouble with TEA party folks as the Feds. The TEA party is about a direct issue between We the People of the several states with the abusive taxation policies of the Federal Government.

It is absurd to say that the TEA party is about race as well. Look at the facts:

TEA party groups have supported candidates of all kinds of ethnic back grounds. TEA party folks support Marc Rubio, a cuban-american, over white Governor Christy in the Florida senate race, Indian-American Nikki Haley over three white opponents and Tim Scott, a black, over Strom Thurmond's son! TEA Party groups have also invited speakers of all races. Alan Keys has spoken at many rallies, as had Michelle Malkin, Star Parker and scores of others, and all have been greeted with great enthusiasm.

Clearly, the TEA party is conforming to Dr. Martin Luther King's exhortation to look on someone's character and not their color. It is the NAACP that is betraying the very core principle of one of its most famous members and leaders, for they are obsessed with race and color and nothing else and promoting a socialist, big government agenda. If they were about character they would give the TEA party their highest encomium while excoriating the embarrassment of the racist New Black Panthers. But such is not the case.

Rather than shun minorities, TEA parties are delighted to see individuals from all races join them in the fight to reduce government, keep more of the fruit of our labors, promote fiscal sanity in Washington and reclaim our Constitutional freedoms. If you can find race in that agenda then you are a sick person indeed and in need of help.

Even the recent highway sign in Iowa placing Barack Obama in the midst of two earlier tyrants, Adolph Hitler and Nicolai Lenin has nothing to do with race. Hitler and Lenin were white, for God's sake! It has to do with the nature of political though and methodology. And in regard to methodology and the goal of an all powerful unitary state Barack Obama most definitely has a place among these men.

The TEA party's name states its concern: TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY! The TEA party is about reigning back government and reclaiming individual liberty, and the fact that TEA party groups completely unhesitatingly support those of like mind, regardless of race, puts the lie to the false claims of race hustler Al Sharpton and the increasingly irrelevant NAACP––a group that has lost its way and has become a mere instrument of partisan politics.

These accusations of racism are completely false and they mark another instance of playing the race card as an act of desperation when liberals are losing the argument of substance. And like the boy who repeatedly cried wolf, what they are saying is losing effectiveness and traction each time they say it.




Wednesday, July 14, 2010

The NAACP Today: A serious problem for responsible Blacks

The NAACP today is no more about blacks achieving equality than NOW is about defending women. These organizations, and many others, have been co-opted by opportunists, ideologues and social revolutionaries.

You see, every legitimate problem in society becomes a cause that gains support. The cause grows into an institution. The institution has some success, does some good, and then opportunists, seeing its success, seize control of it and turn it into a racket.

This is what you’ve seen in the big Unions, including the UMW my father belonged to as well as the UAW and the AFL-CIO and SEIU. And it’s what you’re looking at in today’s NAACP–– Government approved (and funded) racketeering, not altogether unlike the Radical Republican sponsored Union League that terrorized southerners during so-called Reconstruction.

Allied to them are the prominent Race Hustlers who have made whole careers of using race to shake down institutions––making them offers they can’t refuse.
For blacks in America who are just regular folks, who live, go to work and try to carry on a good and responsible life with their families the NAACP has not only ceased to be beneficial—it has become downright harmful. But, it is not completely useless. It’s still a cash cow for the hi-jackers, Jacobin revolutionaries, and collectivist, Marxist ideologues who have seized control and use it to increase their personal power and put more of their real favorite color in their bank accounts: green.

If responsible blacks really care about their lives and their children's future (and I know they do), they should form a counter organization that will labor to help address the real problems facing the black communities all over America––and the least of these are a few fictional TEA Party bigots (No photos were taken but I understand a few days ago someone saw one of them drinking with two leprechauns while they rode on a unicorn to Camelot).

Leak Prognostication

Click to enlarge

Monday, July 12, 2010

Today's Drudge Report Headlines

Obama spokesman: Dems could lose House.
Liberals analyze their despair...
Oil continues to gush
Flashback: No more oil spilling in Gulf after June says Whitehouse
Crisis await banks as trillions come due
Obama hits Golf Course.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Obama, Socialism, Fascism and Small Business

Recently the Armadillo saw a segment on FOX News where the results of a recent poll given by Democratic pollster, James Carville, was discussed. The poll question of concern asked if "socialist" was a fitting term to describe Obama. 55% answered in the affirmative. In other words, 55% of those polled believe Obama to be a socialist.

Well...duh!

What Obama is politically may be hard to pin down when you get to the niggling fine points of academic analysis. Since academics can hardly ever agree as they labor in splitting the intellectual atom let's pass on their abstract hairsplitting and settle for something a bit more workable, practical and immediate. If we do that I think we can safely say that if Obama has anything to do with capitalism at all the word must be accompanied by the prefix “crony.” It would be difficult to find a Republican of the past who is more in bed with big business than Obama, giving certain companies and banks decided advantage over others.

One of the commentators during the segment was the distinguished Congressman Dr. Ron Paul from our Texas 14th. Dr. Paul was on point throughout, but was especially insightful in drawing attention to the fact that socialism is, by necessity, authoritarian and that Obama is, by nature, autocratic.

In defense of this assertion I think my son put it best in a serendipitous response to an economist during a friendly game of Texas Hold'em. The economist said, “As an economic system I prefer socialism, but that’s just me.” My son protested, “No, no, that’s just the problem with it. It’s not just you. You can’t do socialism without forcing me into your system. But I can do free markets without coercing you in the least. You’re for a system of slaves and masters––I'm for liberty.”

From the mouths of babes.

The fact is, we have a three tiered system presently in America. We have socialism for the very poor and crony-capitalism (fascism) for the very rich. And we have a severely dwarfed, crippled form of free market capitalism for small businesses and their employees––if by "capitalism" you mean "you're on your own, baby."

It is these poor folks in the middle, made poor by Government confiscation of the Federally required tribute, who are paying for the indolence of the non-working poor on the one hand and the foolishness of the idle rich on the other. It is these working folks who are made poor because they are required to fund the system. It is they for whom there was and is no bailout––nor will there ever be. There can be no bailout for them for they are those who fund the sundry bailouts time and again. They are also the ones upon whose children future payment for our present bailouts will fall.

Related to these facts, it is also significant to note that among all the lobbyists and special interests who crowd into Oligarchiopolis on the Potomac to "get theirs" from the Dolemasters, small business (the real job providers and bailout funders) has no representation whatsoever.

The reason we are having a "jobless recovery" (aka, no recovery at all) is a consequence of the contempt, neglect and hostility the Obama administration has shown small businesses. Even now small business asks not for a "bailout" for small business instinctively knows that a government bailout equals a buyout, and consequently, a loss of the little mastery they presently have over their fiscal destinies. All small businesses ask is for "the Man" to take his foot from their necks and remove his draconian policies, regulations and taxes. Small business will do the rest––it will even bailout the politicians worthless asses.

It would be hard to imagine a system more inequitable, unfair and hostile to those who labor and are productive, to those who hope for good and prosperity for themselves and their families. For it is they, in this grotesquery some dare to call a "system," who are made de facto slaves to fund the dole, while the politicians (who are both on the dole while assuming the role of Dolemasters) are made the Rulers in this former Republic turned Imperial Oligarchy.

And what of the argument that Obama is, by nature, autocratic?––A tyrant in the making? Well, the consistency and manner of his actions and the nature of his policies provide such powerful, irrefutable evidence that nothing more need be added.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

The Wrong Respondent

Steele opined we could not win
This war of Barry's choice.
But the protest he heard
In response to his word
Was not O's but the Neocon's Voice.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Libertarianism and Diversity

If there is one thing the Libertarian is not it is a Utopian. We Libertarians leave Utopianism to the immature, childish loons infesting today's left and right and engaged in their phony, irrelevant repartee.

Because we are no utopians we do not seek to right every social wrong or correct every perceived social ill. We believe the Nanny State that does seek to do these things merely creates a whole host of much greater evils than the evil it seeks to prevent in the form of unintended consequences.

Libertarians too seek to limit the damage things like drugs can do. But our means are different. We seek to limit them by legalizing them and putting the onus for the consequences of irresponsibly using them squarely where it belongs: the abuser.

The greatest teacher besides one's parents is that of experiencing the consequences of one's actions. This cannot happen while the Nanny State is there enabling irresponsibility and selfishness by creating the conditions of moral hazard. In such conditions the irresponsible play and the responsible are robbed by the Nanny State to pay for the sorry consequences.

No doubt there will be sad stories and even tragic ones in a society based upon personal responsibility. But that is a small price to pay for living in a free society where choice and virtue are still possible and valued.

In short, what we Libertarians do is promote and encourage the liberty of individuals and groups to live out the good (and even the bad if they are not harming others) as they see it. But we don't support the creation and funding of Nanny State safety nets that save a person from suffering the consequences of their foolishness and irresponsibility: Personal liberty and personal responsibility go hand in glove. One cannot exist without the other.

We believe consequences are very effective deterrents, while Nanny State safety net programs actually encourage fools to be even more foolish in engaging in high risk behavior. Essentially, we believe these social safety net programs have the same effect on social behavior that bailouts have on Wall Street Investment firms: they encourage foolishness and risk taking that would otherwise not take place.

Liberty requires choice; choice that results in real consequences. Choice and consequence is something those on the left and the right often find offensive, because it puts the individual in control and not the politician, and it doesn't grow the power of the state to rule and control our lives.

No, the left and the right want their game to be the only game in town and no other. It is their way or the highway; everyone must fall captive to their particular orthodoxy––or else...or else the full power of the State will come down upon you.

One of the best descriptions of America (as conceived by the Founders) and of Libertarianism I know of I read years ago and cannot recall the source. The statement I recall went something like this: America is made up of islands of intolerance co-existing in a sea of tolerance.

What this means is that birds of a feather can flock together. No bird is forced into a community he does not want to live in, and no community is forced to mitigate its ways, customs and public expressions because of the views of a few dissenting birds. All are free to go where they choose, seeking, finding and living in the communities that most suit their views.

We see this very reality being lived out early in the New American Republic. Massachusetts with its state unitarian church did not feel it must impose its church upon religiously pluralistic Virginia or Calvinist Alabama, or Baptist Tennessee. No state was outraged at Massachusetts having a state church––which they did until the 1830s. None feared the others would force their ways upon them because their sovereignty and liberty of expression was protected by the Constitution. The constraints and restraints of the Constitution did not apply to the states. They applied only to the General Government, sometimes called The Federal Government.

That some of these constrains and restraints have now been applied to the states and to local communities has caused great harm to American Liberty and the authentic diversity resulting from its exercise. The right to apply these restraints in the bill of Rights to the states and the people is not given in the Constitution. It is the application of a mere theory, called "the Theory of Limited Incorporation," another invention of the courts to suppress freedom, enforce uniformity and conformity and create what is becoming a Utopian monstrosity.

The colourful tapestry of the early American Republic is now rapidly being replaced by a despotic Central Government turning the American landscape into a gray plain of slavish conformity, to be accomplished by any and all means necessary: bribery, threats, extortion, coercion and out and out violence.

These evils and the losses of individual and community freedoms are the results of forsaking Liberty as the core American value and replacing it with an almost mindless push for equality in every dimension and aspect of American life––except the political. (Please understand, the oligarchs must sustain their lofty, elevated positions in order to rule effectively.) It is the supplanting of the mind of Thomas Jefferson with that of Karl Marx via Abraham Lincoln's "proposition nation" us down the path of tyrannical consolidation. Presently, the Marxian dynamic is steaming ahead with little resistance toward the Utopian Hell of Universal Slavish Conformity envisioned by the present ruling regime.

Thank you, Mr. Lincoln, thank you ever so freaking much!




Sunday, July 4, 2010

America's First Insider Trading Scheme

Though most Americans have heard of the Constitutional Convention few have heard of the Annapolis Convention the year before, without which there would never have been a Constitutional Convention. Almost no one knows the Philly convention was not called to create a constitution for a new government but merely under the pretext of amending a few of the articles of Confederation. Fewer still know a great patriot of Liberty like Patrick Henry vigorously resisted the new Constitution because of its obvious consolidating tendencies and said of the Articles of Confederation that they deserved our "highest encomium." For it had not encroached upon the Sovereignty of any of the new 13 nations, yet it had allowed the colonies in secession to work together to defeat the greatest military power on earth at the time.
Fewer know Hamilton was furious when he did not get many of his consolidating items and stormed out of the Convention, returning only in the final days to sign the documents. His intention then was the same as the intention of those who introduced the Federal Reserve Bill in 1913: Do what you have to do to get it to pass and then you can "fix it" later. Within 20 years the Fed. Reserve bill passed it had been amended almost 100 times, bringing it to the point it served the intentions of those who cooked up the scheme on Jekyll Island in 1908. Evil friggin' men the were––Hell is wide open for such men, but no place can be found low enough in its bowels fitting for such people.

We owe the framers a great deal, to be sure. But we cannot forget that many of these were the same people who signed on to the Constitutional Scheme, and did it to collect a vast fortune from that new government to compensate them for their Revolutionary War bonds. They did this because the Articles of Confederation did not provide any means of collecting their Revolutionary War Bonds.
Many of those "in the know" about the bonds went up and down the land buying up war bonds from average Americans at pennies on the dollar before the new Constitutional government was put in place in 1791. They did this knowing that as soon as the New General Government came to power the bonds could be redeemed and the value of those bonds would explode. You might say, this was America's first insider trading scheme. Bernie Madoff would have felt completely at home in the company of these men.
As a consequence of these events, many of these people made fortunes from the bonds they already possessed when combined with those they scammed from average folks like us.
To his eternal credit, one who stood to gain the most but refused to take any part in the scam was George Mason–– a man of great honor and character; a man who loved liberty more than money.
Outside of him and a hand full of men like Patrick Henry, the switch from George III to the new General Government turned out to be the mere difference from being ruled by the farmers or the pigs on Animal Farm.
No joy is taken on reflecting on these sad facts--but it is essential that they be reflected upon and there is no better day of the year than July 4th.

The burning House

They woke in the middle of the night screaming. The house was on fire. The only family member that survived was their young teen-age daughter.

Upon examination it was found the fire started in the kitchen and spread from there. The daughter who survived was interviewed at the local hospital where she was being treated for smoke inhalation. She said the fire could have been stopped, but her father was drunk. When the fire broke out he was terrified. All he could do was huddle in his bed, clutching the fire extinguisher. He was too afraid to use it but he refused to let any one else use it either. As they struggled with him to get the extinguisher the fire quickly spread.

The young girl said at a certain point it became clear to her the fire was spreading to the point no one could escape. She dropped to the floor and began to crawl through the house until she found the front door. She opened it and ran into the front yard. Only moments later the house seemed to explode.
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How is this story different from the story of the present conflagration on the US southern border and the leader in Washington who, drunk with power and fearing political backlash from his constituency, not only refuses to do his job and use the fire extinguisher, he also vows to do all he can to stop anyone else who will?

Is it right that one man can allow a whole nation to burn while he uses the situation to play politics? Just how low is the character and great is the ego of the man who would do such a thing as put his own political interests and perceived good above that of the good and safety of entire states and, indeed, the whole nation?

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Reflection on Independence Day

Most Americans think that the holiday we call Independence Day is the celebration of the day we received our independence from Great Britain. This, of course, is not historically accurate at all. No independence, American or otherwise, was gained on July 4th of any year. However, calling it "Independence Day" is, sadly, more accurate than most of us would care to admit, for if We the People ever had any real independence it was a period that lasted only slightly longer than a day. Let's recount the historical facts to support the point.

First, July 4th 1776 was hardly our Independence Day. It was the day we presented the official document justifying and declaring the beginning of our struggle for Independence––but nothing was gained on that day save for the contempt of the British tyrant, George III.

Independence would not be actually gained until a bloody and protracted conflict with the British lead to their ultimate defeat at Yorktown in 1781. Even then, full and official Independence would not be gained until the signing of the Treaty of Paris in September of 1783––over seven years after the signing of Jefferson's famous Declaration. There 13 separate articles of surrender were signed and given to 13 separate Sovereign Nations.

Only four short years later those 13 Independent nations signed on to yet another consolidation scheme Alexander Hamilton devised and presented at the Annapolis Convention of 1786.

It was there he cooked up the plan to end the Articles of Confederation and create an entirely new, consolidated government. His idea was to call delegates from the 13 sovereign nations, who, as colonies had banded together to defeat the British. They would be called together under the pretext of the alleged "need" to amend the Articles of Confederation so that these newly independent nations could better work together for their mutual benefit.

Hamilton's real plan was to create a consolidated government with a King who would have even more powers that the tyrant George III.

At that plenary convention, held in Philadelphia in 1787, Hamilton's scheme was proposed and eventually passed. Hamilton did not get all powerful king he wanted, but he did get enough of his plan to build on through the process of amendment and bad Supreme Court rulings. (Hamilton would eventually become the first Secretary of the Treasury and his protege, John Marshall, would be elevated to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. His rulings would consistently be in support of increased centralized power––but that is a story we cannot tell here.)

To make a long story short, the result was the creation of a new central government, to function under the definitions as outlined in its Constitution. Thus, the convention called to "amend the Articles..." became known as "The Constitutional Convention of 1787."

Once Hamilton's scheme was fully disclosed in Philadelphia many of the men who had risked their lives, their wealth, their property and their sacred honor fighting the centralized British state vigorously objected. Patrick Henry declared the plan, once adopted, would create a centralized government that would usurp the sovereignty of the ratifying states and take the wealth and freedom of the people, as he put it, "without due notice."

His protestations were not totally in vain. Henry's efforts garnered a Bill of Rights for the poor helpless citizens being unwittingly victimized by the English born, Alexander Hamilton (a tyrant and monarchist by nature). All Americans have Patrick Henry to thank for that.

The 13 ratifying committees were also given assurances that the new general government would be weak, and strictly limited to its delegated powers and no more. Virginia was given the assurance that if the compact, once signed on to, were to show itself to be harmful to Virginia interests that Virginia could opt out. Virginia was also assured it could declare judgements by the Federal Government it regarded as unconstitutional of no effect. Other states received similar assurances. Under those pretexts and assurances one Sovereign after another ratified the Constitution.

As we know from hindsight these assurances were never honored, and that should have been a dire warning to the Indians never to trust the American General Government, for it would not honor any contract proposed to them by "the Great White Father".

This new general government with its new Constitution went into effect in 1789, barely five years after the 13 Colonies received individual articles of surrender and were elevated to the status of Sovereign Nations.

Thus, it was only, historically speaking, a blink of time that Americans were truly free and sovereign. These sovereigns were only free of one form of tyranny for a little over five years before they sign on to another––another of their own making; a tyranny that would be infinitely more powerful, more devious, more power grabbing, more hegemonic and much more confiscatory than the one they had escaped.

It would not be unfitting to say what occurred in those five short years was tantamount to a man, having just escaped the clutches of a bear, running head on into a whole Pride of famished and glutenous Lions (Mr. Alexander Hamilton and company).

The rest, as they say, is history, one moment of which we incorrectly celebrate each July 4th. On that day we repeat to ourselves yet again the distorted and profoundly inaccurate albeit satisfying fairytale which we have been taught to substitute for the true historical facts and which we use to blind ourselves to unpleasant present realities.

The centralized monstrosity unconstitutionally ruling over us in Oligarchiopolis on the Potomac wouldn't have it any other way.