Forbes fighting back

This morning I read an amazing article on www.forbes.com highlighting the sheer and utter failure of Barack Obama’s leadership and the idiotic collectivist mindset that the left has spewed onto our nation.

Obama To Americans: You Don’t Deserve To Be Free

President Obama’s Kansas speech is a remarkable document. In calling for more government controls, more taxation, more collectivism, he has two paragraphs that give the show away. Take a look at them.

there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes–especially for the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ’50s and ’60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

Though not in Washington, I’m in that “certain crowd” that has been saying for decades that the market will take care of everything. It’s not really a crowd, it’s a tiny group of radicals–radicals for capitalism, in Ayn Rand’s well-turned phrase.

The only thing that the market doesn’t take care of is anti-market acts: acts that initiate physical force. That’s why we need government: to wield retaliatory force to defend individual rights.

Radicals for capitalism would, as the Declaration of Independence says, use government only “to secure these rights”–the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. (Yes, I added “property” in there–property rights are inseparable from the other three.)

That’s the political philosophy on which Obama is trying to hang the blame for the recent financial crisis and every other social ill. But ask yourself, are we few radical capitalists in charge? Have radical capitalists been in charge at any time in the last, oh, say 100 years?

I pick 100 years deliberately, because it was exactly 100 years ago that a gigantic anti-capitalist measure was put into effect: the Federal Reserve System. For 100 years, government, not the free market, has controlled money and banking. How’s that worked out? How’s the value of the dollar held up since 1913? Is it worth one-fiftieth of its value then or only one-one-hundredth? You be the judge. How did the dollar hold up over the 100 years before this government take-over of money and banking? It actually gained slightly in value.

Laissez-faire hasn’t existed since the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. That was the first of a plethora of government crimes against the free market.

Radical capitalists are just beginning to have a slight effect on the Right wing. The overwhelming majority on the Right are eclectic. Which is a nice way of saying inconsistent.

The typical Republican would never, ever say “the market will take care of everything.” He’d say, “the market will take care of most things, and for the other things, we need the regulatory-welfare state.”

They are for individualism–except when they are against it. They are against free markets and individualism not only when they agree with the Left that we must have antitrust laws and the Federal Reserve, but also when they demand immigration controls, government schools, regulatory agencies, Medicare, laws prohibiting abortion, Social Security, “public works” projects, the “social safety net,” laws against insider trading, banking regulation, and the whole system of fiat money.

Obama blames economic woes, some real some manufactured (“inequality”) on a philosophy and policy that was abandoned a century ago. What doesn’t exist is what he says didn’t work.

Obama absurdly suggests that timid, half-hearted, compromisers, like George W. Bush, installed laissez-faire capitalism–on the grounds that they tinkered with one or two regulations (Glass-Steagall) and marginal tax rates–while blanking out the fact that under the Bush administration, government spending ballooned, growing much faster than under Clinton, and 50,000 new regulations were added to the Federal Register.

The philosophy of individualism and the politics of laissez-faire would mean government spending of about one-tenth its present level. It would also mean an end to all regulatory agencies: no SEC, FDA, NLRB, FAA, OSHA, EPA, FTC, ATF, CFTC, FHA, FCC–to name just some of the better known of the 430 agencies listed in the federal register.

Even you, dear reader, are probably wondering how on earth anyone could challenge things like Social Security, government schools, and the FDA. But that’s not the point. The point is: these statist, anti-capitalist programs exist and have existed for about a century. The point is: Obama is pretending that the Progressive PGR -2.02% Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society were repealed, so that he can blame the financial crisis on capitalism. He’s pretending that George Bush was George Washington.

We radical capitalists say that it was the regulatory-welfare state that imploded in 2008. You may disagree, but let’s argue that out, rather than engaging in the Big Lie that what failed was laissez-faire and individualism.

The question is: in the messy mixture of government controls and remnants of capitalism, which element caused the Great Depression and the recent financial crisis?

By raising that question, we uncover the fundamental: the meaning of capitalism and the meaning of government controls. Capitalism means freedom. Government means force.

Suddenly, the whole issue comes into focus: Obama is saying that freedom leads to poverty and force leads to wealth. He’s saying: “Look, we tried leaving you free to live your own life, and that didn’t work. You have to be forced, you have to have your earnings seized by the state, you have to work under our directions–under penalty of fines or imprisonment. You don’t deserve to be free.”

As a bit of ugly irony, this is precisely what former white slave-owners said after the Civil War: “The black man can’t handle freedom; we have to force him for his own good.” The innovation of the Left is to extend that viewpoint to all races.

Putting the issue as force vs. freedom shows how the shoe is on the other foot regarding what Obama said. Let me re-write it:

there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The government will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just pile on even more regulations and raise taxes–especially on the wealthy–our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the losers are protected by more social programs and a higher minimum wage, if there is more Quantitative Easing by the Fed, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle up to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle up, well, that’s the price of the social safety net.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our intellectuals’ collectivism and Paul Krugman’s skepticism about freedom. That’s in Harvard’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the Soviet Union. It’s not what led to the incredible booms in India and China. And it didn’t work when Europetried it during over the last decades. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this statist theory.

How does that sound? That’s blaming an actual, existing condition–government controls and wealth-expropriation–not a condition that ended in the late 19th century.

So which is the path to prosperity and happiness–freedom or force? Remember that force is aimed at preventing you from acting on your rational judgment.

Obama’s real antagonist is Ayn Rand, who made the case that reason is man’s basic means of survival and coercion is anti-reason. Force initiated against free, innocent men is directed at stopping them from acting on their own thinking. It makes them, under threat of fines and imprisonment, act as the government demands rather than as they think their self-interest requires. That’s the whole point of threatening force: to make people act against their own judgment.

The radical, uncompromised, laissez-faire capitalism that Obama pretends was in place in 2008 is exactly what morality demands. Because, as Ayn Rand wrote in 1961: “No man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others. . . . To claim the right to initiate the use of physical force against another man–the right to compel his agreement by the threat of physical destruction–is to evict oneself automatically from the realm of rights, of morality and of the intellect.”

Obama and his fellow statists have indeed evicted themselves from that realm.

As you can see, this article is hard hitting, and smacks the Obama administration and all the foolish progressives square on the nose. It is easily one of the most well written articles against collectivism, and for capitalism, that I have ever read. I applaud Harry Binswanger for his decisive and edgy article.

I’ll keep my guns thanks

So Barack Obama and many liberals want to take away guns from law abiding citizens. Has anyone thought to ask the question yet; ‘how will they take away these guns?’. OK kids, this is how they do it; they break into your house and steal them from you, and if you’re in the house they’ll probably shoot you. Does that sound much like a free country to you? No? That’s because it isn’t.

What about all the people being murdered by guns each year! I hear you cry. Well did you know that more people are killed in road accidents each year than in gun related deaths? Should we ban cars now for being too dangerous?

What about assault rifles! What about all the people killed by these military grade weapons! Who needs an assault rifle anyway? I hear you cry.

Well did you know that more people were killed last year by hammers than by assault rifles? Should we ban essential tools now for being too dangerous? But who needs an assault rifle anyway right? It’s not like the government is threatening to smash down your door in the middle of the night and take them away from you. Oh wait, yes, yes they are. You see, no patriotic constitution loving American is going to part with their guns because some criminal in Washington DC decided to make an executive order to ban them. It simply isn’t going to happen. If Barack Obama is stupid enough to sign such an order, or any other of the criminals in Washington DC are foolish enough to ram through new gun restrictions, they only thing they will be successful in doing is starting a civil war.

You see the second amendment isn’t there to allow us law abiding citizens to go duck hunting, it’s there so that we can defend ourselves from enemies both foreign and domestic. Neither the Japanese during the second world war nor the Russians during the cold war ever seriously thought about invading this country because they knew that there would be an American with a rifle behind every blade of grass.

So the answer to the hottest question of the day about ‘who needs an assault rifle anyway’ is a resounding ‘everyone!’. If everyone had an assault rifle we’d have the lowest crime rate in the world. Don’t believe me? Why don’t you look up Switzerland. Every household in that country is required to own an assault rifle and yet it has the lowest violent crime rate on the planet. Oh, and it hasn’t been invaded for hundreds of years either. I wonder why?

To be fair to Piers Morgan, yes there were very few murders in Britain last year at the barrel of a gun, while there was a staggering number in America. But to be fair to Alex Jones, you’re right, violent crime skyrocketed in Britain after the gun ban, while violent crime has fallen significantly in America over the last decade as gun sales have only continued to grow. Traditionally America has always been more violent than Britain, but as statistics show; gun control doesn’t work. It takes the weapons out of law abiding citizens while allowing criminals to do as they please.

Incidentally all the greatest dictators of the last century abolished gun rights and confiscated weapons before mass murdering millions of people. Just food for thought.

Thanks for thinking that banning guns will help reduce crime, but unfortunately you’re dead wrong, its effects are the exactly opposite. If its all the same to you, I’ll keep my guns thanks. With mindless do-gooders enabling a psychopathic government to get away with whatever it wants, I might just need them to save myself from a concentration camp in the near future. Sorry, they don’t call them that anymore do they, what’s the new name? FEMA camps aren’t they?

Sorry I won’t be going to one of those. Like many millions of Americans, I’d rather die protecting myself and my family first. And that’s what the second amendment is all about. But I’m no nut case. I’ll never pick up my guns in anger, like millions of other Americans I only keep them just in case I ever need them. I pray the liberal government and its supporters come to its senses soon because people like myself are not interested in getting into an armed conflict either here or abroad, we’re only interesting in the ability to defend ourselves in our own homes.

But I’ll tell you what, if the government disbands the military, and officials give up their armed guards, I’ll consider giving up my firearms. But they won’t do that, they have those weapons because they understand that they’re there for their protection. Except that I and millions of other Americans have never fired our guns in anger, all the while these bureaucrats have started multiple wars and murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people overseas. So who’s really the nut case?

You have to decide, and before long you’ll have to choose a side. Because it won’t be people like me who start the conflict. I’m doing everything I can to avoid it. It’ll be the bureaucrats in Washington who start this war. They’ve gone too far, and soon enough they’ll realize it, and by then it may be too late. So if it’s all the same to you, I’ll keep my guns thanks, just in case.

Libertarians light the way

There were two things to be taken away from the Republican National Convention in Tampa this week.

One is that the Republican leadership is completely corrupt and does not support the base whatsoever.

The second is that we now live in a police state.

My generation has grown up during the Bush and Obama administrations, and cannot tell the difference between them. We cannot tell the difference between Obama and Romney, and we see through the political spin and pandering. They are all part of the same corrupt bipartisan establishment.

The way we see it; our parents and grandparents generations have lost their way, they believe the lesser of two evils is the way to go.

It has become apparent that only we can forge the future, and that if we don’t, the country will only fall ever deeper into a collective police state abyss.

We understand the free market system as much as the conservatives, and perhaps more so, because we know that our foreign policy is deeply flawed and that the more we trade with other nations instead of bomb them, and the more we cut taxes across the board, the bigger the economy will grow. Libertarians are not liberals, libertarians are capitalists, and believe in fiscal responsibility.

Lady liberty shines her light on the libertarian party. Only 12% of colonists fought the British during the war of independence. The liberty movement is growing, and with shameful acts of aggression from Romney’s people during the republican caucuses, we are now emboldened further in our cause to return liberty to this nation.

We must light the way, because all other policies and parties have failed. Darkness covers the land, and we must become the shining beacon in the night.

If the Tea Parties are successful in electing Romney to president, they will have become the very thing they swore to defeat only a couple of years ago.

In order to win, the libertarians must act like Jedi from Star Wars and use logic and non-violence to expose the shortcomings of both democratic and republican parties. With the DHS stocking up on over a billion rounds of hollow point ammunition, we simply cannot afford to start bloodshed.

People like ‘The Minister of Truth’ are the future of this nation. Here is a black man who is not only railing against Obama, but all the shenanigans of the republican party. ‘TMOT’ understands what true liberty is. I am honored to have found such a person out there in the world. TMOT shows that there is no greater weapon on earth than the human soul on fire.

We libertarians have many prominent voices out there. Ron Paul was our rallying call, and Gary Johnson is now our choice for president. There are many leaders and voices for liberty across the world wide web and in our communities. No matter what the republican establishment tries to tamp out dissent, it will only back fire on them.

We are the future of this country, we are the republicans if they will have us, and if not we’ll do it by ourselves. We have drawn a line in the sand, as the founding fathers did, and we have the constitution and another 200 years of economics and studies of governments and liberties behind us to embolden our views. We will rebuild this country, whether we get started this election or not. Libertarians light the way.

The left vs the right

I started writing this post a couple days ago, and it was originally a rant about Glenn Beck. It was more of a post to myself to get ideas and thoughts off my chest, and I wasn’t going to publish it. I like Glenn, but from time to time his actions perplex me. After I had typed the original content, I went back to it and re-edited it. I decided that with the added content, it was worth publishing. I usually just proof read my posts before I commit them, and then I set them to be published at 7:30pm each day. With this post I realized that there was a lot more to it. It’s not just about what Glenn does or doesn’t do. It’s about how we’re all played to become ‘left’, ‘right’, or simply become numb and ‘apathetic’ to the whole political process. Before anyone gets upset that I’m bashing Glenn, I’m not. I love Glenn because he is brave enough to ask the tough questions that no-one wants to ask, and he exposes the truth as he sees it. So thank you for that Glenn. You have opened up doors for many Americans, including myself. When I write I often try to see the subject from different view points to make it more balanced and to find the truth in it. This post is still a bit fractured, since there is so much I have to say, so take it as you will. Anyway, here is how I see things as far as the left and right spectrum of politics in America right now:

People like Glenn Beck talk about the 10% of people needed to lead us in a new direction. I believe there is more than 10%, but that they do not all talk to one another, they are divided, and they have their differences.

I cannot understand why Glenn will not get behind Ron Paul. Here is a candidate who is more like George Washington (Glenn loves Washington so much he wrote a book about him) than any candidate since the great man, and yet he will not support him. It is divisions like this as to why we’re not getting out of this mess any time soon. Glenn has helped to wake many people up, and yet he keeps himself closed off to so much. He is very quick to label others and shut down those who speak out against anything he says.

I think the reason Glenn does this is because of where he gets his information from. Glenn is a good hearted guy. I think when he finds certain information that he doesn’t like, he gets upset and labels it as evil. Personally, I take a more scientific approach. I usually take a step back and think about where the information is coming from, and why the source feels the way that they do. Now Glenn is very good at connecting the dots, but I feel that sometimes he allows his emotions to get in the way and allows things to become too one sided.

Why is he going on a comedy tour ‘unelectable 2’ during a presidential campaign year, when there is a George Washington who desperately needs his support? And why is Glenn trying to prepare us for doomsday when we have the capability right now to save ourselves from that?

I see that too many people allow themselves to be easily influenced by bias, they allow themselves to be pitted in a group of left vs right. And currently the new trend is to call everyone an ‘evil liberal’ or a ‘socialist’. While that’s all fine and dandy (and those who know me, know I hate socialism), they forget about fascism from the right. They forget about the crony capitalists, they forget all the evil on the right that liberals hate. I think most liberals have a good heart, and don’t want a big government. They’re probably just misguided into thinking that the government can provide so many things. A few social securities is not necessarily a bad thing, its how we go about them that’s important.

Why not have a social security for the elderly? But why not make it optional? Personally I’d rather do it myself, and that has a lot to do with my math and finance skills. If I were not good at these two subjects, I’d probably want to put it into someone else’s hands also.

The problem with big companies is when they get involved with big government. Special interests take over, and the little people get screwed.

Glenn wants us to turn everyone back to God. And he seems to play into the idea that the left are godless swine’s. Apparently the youth are stupid also and should be ignored, and on this point I do agree that many youth are misguided. But there are many who are fully in the fight for freedom, and many of them are not conservative. They are libertarian. They are more like the founding fathers than many conservatives I have met. Yes, many of the founding fathers believed in divine providence, but this is a secular nation. One where any religion can be practiced. Up until the 1950’s the pledge of allegiance did not have ‘under god’ in it. The whole Godly right and atheist left idea is designed to divide and conquer us.

I am not very religious, but I believe heavily in morality, and I like many of the teachings of Christianity and indeed many of the other popular religions.

The mainstream media has done a good job of labeling Ron Paul as a fruitcake and I find it deeply disturbing because combating the ‘left wing’ by going to the extreme right is a surefire way of losing liberty.

I see how easily good hearted conservatives often get thrown into the far right, and how good hearted liberals get thrown into the progressive crowd. I think most Americans want to maintain their independence, and all this infighting will get us no-where. Of course, there are some on the very far right that will say I’m collectivist for saying that. No, I’d rather agree to disagree with ‘the other side’, than allow the republic to fracture and allow our system of government to be completely taken over by oligarchy.

We get so wrapped up in our daily lives, that we don’t see the obvious problems in front of us. By the end of a long day we sit down and listen to the MSM (mainstream media) because it sounds so appealing. ‘Those darn liberals’ we say to ourselves as we watch Sean Hannity bash ‘the left’, and we say ‘those darn tea baggers’ as CNN bashes ‘the right wing nuts’. We don’t sit down long enough to realize that it is all a complete farce, that we are pitted against each other to serve the special interests of a select few.

It’s time to wake up America; you are being used! And yes, that includes conservatives too.

I am libertarian for a reason. I believe in freedom and liberty. I do not allow myself to fall into one side or the other because that has become the special interests strategy for dividing and conquering the country.

This country has no place pushing our might around in the world. Our strength comes from our willingness to trade and our innovations. Our products are created from our ingenuity and we are able to invent new ideas because we have the freedom to do so.

Long drawn out wars do not serve our republic, and calling liberals and libertarians ‘pacifists’ is a very fascist thing to say. Those who are talking about creating war in other nations might want to check their facts before they begin beating their war drums some more. If I get attacked, I’ll put the criminal on the ground. If my house gets broken into at night, I’ll shoot to kill, if our country gets attacked, we should use everything in our might to repel the attack. But: we have no place bullying other countries in the world into submission. That is imperial, that is empire, and that weakens our nation as we print fake money to pay for our soldiers to be blown to bloody bits.

Wake up and stop being a ‘useful idiot’, yes that includes conservatives. The only way forward, the only way upward, the only way to restore the republic and the constitution is to create unity through freedom and independence; find a common ground from there, it is our only hope. We can go back to our silly left vs right bickering later.

Do not fall into the trap.