The state is the agency which decides in all disputes, including those involving itself...

If you sit on a jury, consider this when listening to the police testimony.

Jeffery Schultz: Are there any red flags that would indicate someone had been arrested for drugs they didn’t possess or that officers were planting evidence?

Deputy Sheriff: Not really. Planting evidence is done in such a way it can’t be disputed. Before we write our reports, we can review all the evidence. When our fellow deputies write their supplemental reports, they usually wait until the primary officer writes his report and then uses the facts from those reports. There is no independent recollection ever, and this is standard procedure everywhere. Chances are, if you are reading a police report, you are reading a well thought out, well-rehearsed story that has little in common with what actually took place.

Wouldn't you rather be policed by an organization in which the person talking to you could be personally held accountable for anything he does?

Like this?

You aren't sovereign if you're servile.

Will Grigg writes a heartrending article here.

It is interesting that the state calls people who file lawsuits against its minions "paper terrorists". However, if you fall under the state's malignant gaze the prosecutor will pile a mountain of life ruining CRIMINAL charges on you. The prosecutor charging you criminally will face a sympathetic, TO HIM, jury which will most likely convict on at least one of his charges. Plea or take that 1 in 200 chance that the jury will see your side of things. But THAT ISN'T terrorism, because the state is the one which designates who is a terrorist and who isn't. And IT isn't, no matter how it behaves.

As Will writes...

“Sovereignty” is a claim of ownership. If individuals cannot be “sovereign,” their only choice is servility. There was once a thoroughly imperfect but in many ways commendable country on the North American landmass that was created by people who understood that principle, and shed blood in righteous defense of individual liberty. That country has been supplanted by a soyuz in which even speaking of such things is often treated as a crime.

Obama gives no shortage of targets for substantial criticisms...

yet folks continue to harp on the trivial and stupid ones.

Daniel Larison opines here.

Obama was definitely the lesser evil in 2008

At The American Conservative, Daniel Larison has a very good article about McCain's odd sense of honor.

The article is worth reading, but this selection from a comment to the article seemed to precisely sum up the twisted logic behind the honor of war.

The problem with McCain and many other hawks is that they view war as a game....To them, once a war has started and people from “our side” have died, the US must persevere in order to “honor the fallen”. And so they pervert the logic of war from an act in which lives are sacrificed to prevent even greater loss of life into one in which lives are sacrificed to vindicate the decision to go to war and to justify the earlier loss of life.

How many Americans (and non-Americans, if anyone cares) have to die to fulfill McCain's sense of honor?

For those who feel so compelled, can they please not force me to participate by looting me and implicating me in their adventures? The world is full of fights. I try to stick to those where I have enough first hand knowledge of the circumstances that losing my property, honor, or life is actually a sensible risk.

It is common knowledge that D.C. politicians are liars and frauds, but somehow killing at their behest is "honorable". This doesn't compute.

A reminder.

The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv'd them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas'd them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath'd to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. — Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom." It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event. 
Samuel Adams
Where are the Sons of Liberty?!

Truth hurts??

Being anti-war is bad why???

Becky Akers writes:

No matter which brand of “Christians” represented Leviathan, they ruled in accordance with the Satanic State’s master rather than the Lord they professed. And always will.

The congregants rejected her observation.

Read her conversation with a fellow Alaskan here.

The complete and undeniable truth

Can you handle it?

How Germany became Nazi Germany

Richard Ebeling writes: 

Hayek documented, the Nazi movement had developed out of the “enlightened” and “progressive” socialist and collectivist ideas of the pre-World War I era in Imperial Germany, ideas that many intellectuals in England and the United States had praised and propagandized for in their own countries in the years before the beginning of the First World War in 1914.Large numbers of American graduate students went off to study at German universities in the 1880s, the 1890s, and the first decade of the 20^th century.They returned to the United States and spoke and wrote about a new and higher freedom observed in Germany, a “positive” freedom provided through government welfare state paternalism rather than the mere “negative” freedom of individual liberty in the form of absence of coercion in human relationships as practiced in America.

Sound familiar? Towards the end Dr. Ebeling graduates from preaching to meddling...

With the realization that it is a controversial subject, let me suggest that a type of person who searches out employment and specialized surveillance work in the National Security Agency because he truly believes that there are potential “enemies” everywhere threatening harm to the “homeland” is highly likely to be a person who gives few second thoughts about whether intruding into the privacy of ordinary people’s emails, phone conversations, text messages, and private computer documents is unethical, illegal or even simply “bad manners.” 

Indeed, the more zealous among such types of individuals will at the end of their workday not lose sleep due to a guilty conscience that a human being’s privacy rights have been violated. He is more likely to be thinking of tomorrow’s day of work and how he can find ways to do it even more effectively, regardless of high much more other people’s rights and privacy might have to be abridged in the attempt to attain the highly allusive goal of “national security.” 

Indeed, way back in 1776, the famous Scottish economist, Adam Smith, warned about such people in government, when he said that nowhere would such political power “be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.”Men are easily subject to arrogance and hubris, and never is that human weakness so to be feared as when government has the power that allows such individuals to practice their pretensions of superior knowledge and wisdom over their fellow human beings.

The earnest true believers are more dangerous than the cynics. As C.S. Lewis said, they do evil with the approval of their own conscience.

What are rights? How do we know we have them?

A very interesting discussion about how we know we have rights.

I'm currently reading The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Heumer. For those who have issues with the concept of natural rights his arguments may be persuasive. It isn't an either-or situation.

Becky Akers talks to a fellow Alaskan about the meaning of freedom

You can read it here.

Classical Liberalism rejects aggressive war.

(Classical) Liberalism rejects aggressive war not on philanthropic grounds but from the standpoint of utility. It rejects aggressive war because it regards victory as harmful, and it wants no conquests because it sees them as an unsuitable means for reaching the ultimate goals for which it strives. Not through war and victory but only through work can a nation create the preconditions for the well-being of its members. Conquering nations finally perish, either because they are annihilated by strong ones or because the ruling class is culturally overwhelmed by the subjugated. -- Ludwig von Mises HT2 FFF.org

Interestingly, no state ever presents any war to its population as one of its own aggression. It is a practice from time immemorial for states to hide their own acts of provocation from their people and present to them only the reactions of the other nations or peoples, going back at least as far as the Spot Resolution in the US. In Lincoln's time, as in our own, anyone who asks questions with uncomfortable answers is labeled unpatriotic, not hailed as being prudent about the future of his home, family and culture and protecting that future from political opportunists who see war as simply another patronage opportunity.

Smedley Butler got the essence of the issue right: "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

The Military Industrial Complex is "capitalism" in the same way that rape is love.


It is really funny to hear the nativists complain about illegal immigration and the fact that subjugated people maintain portions of their prior culture even when forcibly assimilated into the US, and vote accordingly, even while defending the manifest destiny which made it a logical inevitability. The irony is rich, but it is lost on them.

Mark Thornton to join Patriots lament

Tomorrow, January 31st, join us at 660 Kfar. On the web, 660 Kfar click the "listen live" button to tune in.
This is going to be great.

Jack Hunter opines about people criticism of American Sniper in the American Conservative.

Jack makes some good points. And this comes back to a point I made on the radio a few weeks ago. What sort of person DOES these things to other people? And the answer is NORMAL people do. Normal people who think that "just following orders" absolves one of moral responsibility for what one does. Normal people who think (as I once did) that THEY would never be THAT evil as to start a useless war or a war under false pretenses (not realizing that is how all of the prior ones were started). Normal people who are involved in their own lives and don't really think about what D.C. is doing to "little people" abroad and so, as Scott Horton says, history begins with the two planes running into the World Trade Center. People who see the things that they love under attack subtly and unable to come to terms with the problems then see a big, obvious battle as a straightforward way of doing, if not the right thing, something. Blaming our problems on people we don't much like anyway is easier, especially when "our" side has overwhelming military superiority.

Patriot's Lament with Dr. Walter Block

Dr. Block joins us for an hour of fantastic discussion.

Thank you Dr. Block.

Chris Kyle, benefactor of head drillers

Dan Sanchez writes about a popular movie at his blog.

The closing paragraph is weighty:

As radio host Scott Horton never tires reminding his listeners, the chief role of the American troops in Iraq was to fight a bloody civil war on behalf of the Shiite side and to install Iran-backed Shiite militias in power. These militias used death squads to ethnically cleanse Baghdad and other cities of Sunnis, and, as Will Grigg never tires reminding his readers, imposed a Sharia-compliant constitution over a once-secular country. This Shiite jihad was, in effect, Chris Kyle’s true mission, for which millions of American Christians now lionize him.

The reason our neighbors and family members go to the other side of the planet at the behest of our betters has nothing to do with keeping us safe. It has to do with flattering the egos of our betters, who tax and regulate our every move, and keeping their patrons in a competitively privileged position.

As Smedley Butler said, "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."

Government or Free Market certification?

http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-strange-story-of-how-a-completely-fake-gas-powered-clock-radio-got-its-energy-star-certification/

Did the scandal cut into the EPA's bottom line?

Were high level people sacked?

Would Underwriters Labs be so cavalier?

Hero or Traitor?

He’s infamous for something he tried but failed to do while the amazing feats he actually accomplished are forgotten.

He’s reviled as an irredeemable traitor when in reality he was one of liberty’s staunchest champions.

Critics of Edward Snowden sneeringly compare him to this long-dead hero—and they’re right but for the wrong reasons.

His name was Benedict Arnold, major general in the Continental Army of the American Revolution. Without him, Americans probably would have lost their battle for liberty—and yet they despise him. Most neither know about nor appreciate the lopsided victories he won against the most powerful empire of his day. And they certainly can’t understand why he suddenly reversed course to side with that empire. They damn him for trying to deliver one of the Continental Army’s most strategic forts to the British instead of thanking him for his triumphs at Valcour Island and Saratoga—triumphs that birthed an independent republic devoted, however briefly, to liberty.

Benedict Arnold was born 274 years ago this week. What better way to celebrate than to learn the real story behind this cardboard villain via my novel, Abducting Arnold? Ergo, I’m offering readers of Patriot’s Lament a special deal: 50% off the e-reader versions of Abducting Arnold and 50% off my first novel, Halestorm (in which Arnold makes a brief but unflattering debut). In other words, get both e-books for the price of one. And join me in toasting Benedict Arnold, Hero!

What are you fighting for?

It certainly isn't for democracy. The people who determine the majority of D.C.'s policies aren't elected, aren't even vaguely answerable to those people who ARE elected.

National Security and the Double Government

The abstract presents the solution as the electorate getting involved. Ha. That's a good one. The solution is the population not consenting, not approving of their children being used as cannon fodder (morally, if not as much physically), being sand in the gears of Leviathan, having the minds of free men and not identifying with the folks generating chaos abroad and at home.

Thanks to LRC Blog and Charles Burris for this.