Stockholm syndrome

Many voters on both sides of the political spectrum are currently experiencing ‘Stockholm syndrome’.

Mitt Romney has a terrible record as governor of Massachusetts, and so does US House Representative Paul Ryan. And yet now that they are on the campaign trail they say a few nice things that make us feel good, and the republicans support them.

The same is true with the Democrats. Barack Obama has been a terrible president, and yet his supporters still root for him as the lesser of two evils, even  though he passed the NDAA act and kept our troops over seas.

George Bush was supposed to be a moderate conservative and yet he massively increased spending, the debts, government and he started two wars. Obama is a continuation of that presidency, and Mitt Romney is an expansion and continuation of that further. And yet we see people on both sides clinging strongly to their statist candidates because they are afraid of what ‘the other side’ might do if elected to office. Rather than realize that their own party is as damaging to their livelihoods and freedoms as ‘the other side’.

We are now expected to vote through fear of what the other side might do if allowed to get office, rather than realizing that both are wrong and will only harm us.

The republican establishment showed last week that it is not interested in your constitutional rights, they laid out in plain sight this year that they are only interested in unbridled power. The RNC prevented Ron Paul from speaking, and shut down any chance of him being nominated.

We have heard that “we need to vote in Romney in first! Then we can influence him!” which sounds like something Nancy Pelosi would say “we need to vote for it first before we read it”.

We’ve now got people thinking that Mitt Romney is a good manager and thinking outside of the box for picking Ryan as a fiscal conservative, which is completely unfounded, given his voting record.

Paul Ryan is not a good man, and is beginning to show his colors again while campaigning. Remember that Paul Ryan practically begged for the auto bailouts:

Mitt Romney chose to shun Ron Paul, who, if only he’d been allowed to speak, and his delegates been allowed to share their voices and concerns, may well have put their support behind him. Instead he choose to put up Clint Eastwood, whom I admire greatly. But Mitt Romney’s Dirty Harry stunt backfired. The liberal media of course derided the speech, but interestingly, so did the conservative media including Glenn Beck. This has helped to expose the fallacy of the left/right media paradigm, and has exposed that they are all corrupt. Not only that, but Clint Eastwood’s speech overshadowed Mitt Romney’s highly edited, polished and robotic speech which was very vague and didn’t specify how to actually fix the economy or return lost liberties to the nation.

It’s very telling of what the republican establishment is doing, when they’d rather have an old man talk to a chair in front of the crowd, than allow another old man to talk about the future of the party and how to restore liberties. I liked the things that Clint said as much as the things Ron say’s, but I’ll stick with Ron on not endorsing Romney.

In a time when information is available everywhere, ignorance is a choice.

I would encourage you to learn about the candidates, what they stand for, and to look at what the power structure is doing in each party.

The republicans are already showing their true colors again. They did nothing good for the country during the Bush administration, and now that they are close to having full power of the house, senate and presidency, they are showing once again what fumbling fools they are. They are simply a milder version of the democrats. Think of Bud light and Budweiser, there’s not much difference in the two of them.

Many people who are over sixty years old believe that anyone but Obama will be good for the country, but they cannot support their arguments with facts, only rhetoric, and memories from the good old days of Eisenhower and Reagan. On the opposite end of the spectrum you have the people who are under forty, almost all of whom support Ron Paul, and are beginning to understand that both parties are deeply flawed and do not follow the constitution.

The liberals were infiltrated by statist ideas a long time ago, and it has become very obvious. The infiltration of the right is less obvious, but it has happened.

The Overton window is a political theory that describes as a narrow “window” the range of ideas that the public will respond to as acceptable, and that the political viability of an idea is primarily defined by this rather than individual preferences of a given politician. It is named after its originator, Joseph P. Overton, former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. At any given moment, the “window” includes a range of policies considered to be politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too “extreme” or outside the mainstream to gain or keep public office.

So how do we escape the perpetual downward trend of statism? The first thing to do is to recognize the problem. This chart will help you figure out where you stand on liberties and freedoms:

Take the quiz and see where you rank!

Libertarians offer an alternative answer to our current problems. You might even be a libertarian yourself.

There is only one escape option left for the nation right now, and that is a 3rd party candidacy. Ron Paul was our last chance to steer the republican party from within.

FROM DR RON PAUL

8.27.12

As we enter the fall political season, we will hear a great deal of rhetoric from both major political parties and their many candidates for office. It’s important for us to remember, however, that words can be made meaningless by misuse or overuse. And when we as citizens allow politicians to obscure the truth by distorting words, we diminish ourselves and our nation.

For example, we’ve all heard politicians use the words “democracy” and “freedom” countless times. They are used interchangeably in modern political discourse, yet their true meanings are very different. They have become what George Orwell termed “meaningless words”. Words like “freedom,” “democracy,” and “justice,” Orwell explained, have been abused for so long that their original meanings have been eviscerated. In Orwell’s view, such words were “often used in a consciously dishonest way.” Without precise meanings behind words, politicians and elites can obscure reality and condition people to reflexively associate certain words with positive or negative perceptions. In other words, unpleasant facts can be hidden behind purposely meaningless language. As just one example, Americans have been conditioned to accept the word “democracy” as a synonym for freedom. Thus we are conditioned to believe that democracy is always and everywhere benevolent. The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with freedom. While our Constitution certainly features certain democratic mechanisms, it also features inherently undemocratic mechanisms like the First Amendment and the Electoral College. America is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Yet we’ve been bombarded with the meaningless word “democracy” for so long that few Americans understand the difference. If we intend to use the word freedom in an honest way, we should have the simple integrity to give it real meaning: Freedom is living without government coercion. So when a politician talks about freedom or liberty–regardless of the issue being discussed– ask yourself whether he is advocating more government force or less. The words “liberal” and “conservative” have also been abused. “Liberalism,” which once stood for civil, political, and economic liberties, has become a synonym for omnipotent coercive government. Liberalism has been redefined to mean liberation from material wants, always via a large and benevolent government that exists to create equality on earth. “Conservatism,” meanwhile, once meant respect for tradition and distrust of active government. But in recent decades conservatism has been redefined as support for big-government grandiosity via military adventurism, corporatism, and inflationary monetary policy. The modern political right has redefined conservatism into support for an all-powerful central state, provided that the state furthers supposedly conservative goals. Orwell certainly was right about the use of meaningless words in politics. Our task, therefore, is to reclaim our language and reclaim our liberties. If we hope to remain free, we must cut through the fog and attach concrete meanings to the words politicians use to deceive us.
I hope my posts are somewhat of a counsel to those who are rubbing their eyes in disbelief. I know its hard to give up ideas you’ve held for so long about certain people and certain parties, but the cause of liberty and freedom is worth the sacrifice. I’d rather be told a cold hard truth and learn to live with it, than to be told a comforting lie, only to have its bitterness slowly seep in over time and rot from the inside out.
Do not be discouraged, do not be upset, once you have learned what has happened to both sides of the two party system, you can begin to rebuild your ideas and share them with others. There are many good intellectual libertarian websites out there where you can learn more, and do your part to return liberty and free market concepts to this once free nation.
The time for a third party has come. The time to restore liberties is now. We must restore this nation. Give me liberty or give me death!

Talking about my generation

My generation is now experiencing first hand the fall out of bad governance, crony corporatism, special interests, and interventionism.

My generation is growing up into an encroaching police state. Our country is completely divided, while some people cling to the left, and some people cling to the right. But the problems lie much deeper than that.

Our currency is now completely off the gold standard and is now backed by nothing. This fiat currency loses more and more value every day. Never in human history has a country survived on fiat currancy alone. Our 41’st anniversary with fiat currency just went by.

To go along with the fiat currancy, we also have an unprecedented amount of debt. Never in human history has a country accumulated so much debt. And all nations that do not resolve their debt problems go into decline.

Wars are expensive. Not only are they bloody and brutal, but the costs of maintaining them always drags down a nation’s wealth and resources. As of right now, we have over one hundred military bases around the world, and are engaged in a number of conflicts. Including the war in Afghanistan, and using drones and hellfire missiles to kill people in Pakistan and many other middle eastern and African countries.

Our elections are now completely fraudulent. In the 2000 presidential election we caught our first taste of this. And during the primaries this year, there have been many reports and law suits filled over the GOP’s handling of the nomination process. There are accusations of Ron Paul’s votes being counted as Romney’s, and counties that weren’t even allowed to vote. It seems that the GOP can’t even play by its own rules.

With my generation the buck stops here. We are no longer able to tollerate the charade of political deception being played by the establishment and enshrined in the media.

When I came to this country, I learned a lot about freedom and individual liberties. It’s the kind of knowledge that once you know, you don’t forget. In fact, once you know it, you begin to espouse it, and you can’t stop talking about it. Once you know what true liberty and freedom is, it gets stuck in your veins, and you’ll fight to maintain it.

When I first moved here, and after the 2008 elections, I tuned in to fox news and discovered Glenn Beck. Up until the beginning of this year I loved the guy and everything that he stood for. But then things stopped adding up. Something seemed wrong to me. Some of the actions he was taking and things he was saying didn’t make sense, they didn’t add up. I felt like he was going against the very principles he stood for. After discovering these things, I came to the conclusion that he is either completely miscalculating with the information he receives, or that he is an agent of misinformation, here to take our thoughts and upsets at the government, and flip them right back around to continue the establishment, to further their agendas. The problem with people like Glenn Beck is that while they are right in most aspects. They are also wrong in many others, and this leads us into a false dichotomy, and does nothing to help our reasoning skills. Always take what you hear from others with a pinch of salt, don’t take it as prophesy.

One of the biggest problems we have is that our media establishment is completely bias. I’ve heard the Tea Party and Glenn Beck complain for years now that the liberal media is bias. Now where I don’t dispute that, I would point out that FOX News and many of the other ‘conservative’ news channels are bias also. In fact all the liberal and conservative channels are all geared toward the big government and big brother agenda in one way or another. All they have to do is get you to argue about trivial issues, and you end up missing the point entirely.

Corruption is rife in this country. Of course no country is void of it, but you see it even on a local level here. There are very few politicians in power who do not accept lobbying from one group or another. Congress is now no longer concerned with our well being, but completely concerned with furthering their own interests, their own profits and their own convoluted agendas.

The corrupt politicians, the crony businessmen, the sold out media, and all the special interests groups are all working hand in hand for their own agendas, while looting the wealth of the nation. This is a cycle that cannot continue and will collapse in on itself, taking many innocent people with it. If we cannot put a stop to it, we will go down as a nation, whether we self destruct as a police state, or fall into total anarchy, our future looks extremely bleak, if we continue on our present path.

So where do we go from here? And what can we do about it? How can we fix these problems?

For all their current faults I still admire The tea party. I like it when groups of people get together and try to hammer out solutions to pressing problems. The local tea party groups in my area have had much success at the state and local level.

I believe that the future of this country is to build from the ground up at local levels. To elect new congressmen and new senators. To go across the isle and vote for both democrat and republican candidates, based on their knowledge of the constitution and their explanations of how they would roll back government.

And finally, the best thing you can do as an individual is to speak out and build a better tomorrow. If more voices come into the fray, then our debates get livelier, and we can weed out the ideas that don’t work and find more common ground.

The problems that face my generation are unprecedented in our country’s history. It is no longer a simple case of voting for one side or the other. It will take a great deal of effort and awakening by the older generations to help steer our country back onto the path of liberty and prosperity.

Learn about the constitution, and have the guts to stand up for what is right, don’t just go along with the crowd or the establishment. The stance that you make and show to the younger generation will make a lasting impression. Remember that the future is always built, by the up and coming generation. So together, lets make sure we make it a good one!

Remember the Alamo

We are currently facing our own Alamo in just a few days time. We may or may not prevail at the RNC convention against the tyrannical establishment, but this is a battle that must be fought.

The Battle of the Alamo (February 23 – March 6, 1836) was a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution. Following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna launched an assault on the Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar (modern-day San Antonio, Texas, USA). All but two of the Texian defenders were killed. Santa Anna’s perceived cruelty during the battle inspired many Texians—both Texas settlers and adventurers from the United States—to join the Texian Army. Buoyed by a desire for revenge, the Texians defeated the Mexican Army at the Battle of San Jacinto, on April 21, 1836, ending the revolution

If Ron Paul does not win the nomination at the GOP convention, and isn’t allowed to speak, his message will be heard elsewhere regardless. The Republicans will fail in their attempt to tamp out dissent, and the Ron Paul Revolution will become stronger than ever.

We might lose this battle, as we have lost others, but the of message of liberty and fiscal responsibility will spread faster than ever before and it will be heard all over the world.

The time of Ron Paul is coming, our constitution will be resurrected, and our freedoms will be restored.

The tighter the establishment and media try to keep a lid on us, the more people will rally to our cause. That is the reason for the internet security bills, and that is why they will not let Ron Paul speak at the convention.

“The tighter your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers” – Leia, Star Wars – A New Hope.

Now I’m not particularly interested in self sacrifice, but I will fight till my last breath in conversation and typed word online, during these next two weeks to help give Ron Paul and the nation a chance at victory.

If we lose, I will retire from the presidential race debate and recover. But when the election is over, I and many others will come back with a vengeance.

Sir Winston Churchill suffered many defeats during the 1930’s, many called him a kook and said that his suspicions of the Nazi’s were ludicrous. Many thought his career was over, and said he would have been better off not to talk about such issues. But he spoke out anyway because it was the right thing to do. When the war broke out, he became first lord of the admiralty again, and soon after became prime minister. He led my home nation and the rest of the free world to victory in the most bloody conflict in human history. Anyone can succeed, anyone can victor over evil if they just continue to fight and expose the weaknesses in the enemy. Our current enemy lies in totalitarianism, collectivism and socialism on both sides of the political spectrum. It is a fight that will take everything in us to overcome.

“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm” – Sir Winston Churchill

In this battle for liberty, as it was during the revolutionary war, we will lose many battles, but we must fight them, so that we can win the overall war for independence again.

So remember the Alamo!