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.

The War Psychology and its Fruit

In order to bring a nation to support the burdens of maintaining great military establishments, it is necessary to create an emotional state akin to war psychology. There must be the portrayal of external menace. -- John Foster Dulles (HT2 LRC)

WW2 followed immediately by the Cold War addicted the American population to the adrenaline (and spending patterns) of the war psychology. Large parts of the population feel no sense of purpose (and may not have a job) if they don't have an existential external threat. This then becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, as the actions of a proud, boastful and fearful people directing half of the world's military spending will be antagonistic and scary to much of the rest of the planet.

The treatment by the US of Putin, who was dangerously (to himself) pro-US early on, demonstrates how this plays out over time.

Here is a very interesting interview by Scott Horton with Boyd Cathey (scholar and assistant to the eminent conservative author Russell Kirk).

Chris Rossini about North Korea

Chriss Rosinni talks about what the North Korean defector should do...

First, it's never the person (i.e., the tyrant, the dictator, the President, etc.) Rather it's the ideas and beliefs that are held by the victims. In this case, the main issue is not Kim Jong-un. He's just the flavor of the day. After him, there's surely a long and endless line of tyrants that would fill his void.
If the dominant idea held by the North Korean people is that they must be ruled, yearn to be ruled, and despise any other alternative, then the crumbling of Kim Jong-un idolization will mean nothing. They'll just idolize someone else.
People in the United States suffer from a similar dilemma. Americans are ruled by rotating tyrants. The idea was accepted that if the tyrants serve a term of 4-8 years, that this is somehow superior to it just being one person. Every new American tyrant is idolized at first, with tears and incense, while the tyrant whose term is coming to an end is cursed as a bum. Americans are like a dog that returns to his own vomit.

If all you want to do is unseat the current tyrant, then you're not accomplishing much. The new tyrant will have to consolidate power, perks, and pelf for his cronies the same as the last one did. He won't have the option of not doing that because the last one's cronies will be fighting to retain their sway and the new tyrant will need allies of sufficient heft to hold them back.

Each transition of power ratchets up the predation on the private/free economy and the liberties of the people, EXCEPT when there is an overriding mood on the part of the population that the last guy went WAY too far. A little too far isn't enough. The changing of the faces will overwhelm that.

When the people want to be free and are content to let their neighbor also be free, when they want to have leaders only of their own personal choice and don't want to impose that choice on their neighbors, THEN there will be progress.

Nobody said it would be easy, in fact, we know it is hard

http://mises.org/library/isaiahs-job

The purpose is to reassure the remnant, and to persuade those who are potential remnant. The masses are content to mutually loot.

100 years ago the Christian west paused in its self-imolation to remember the birth of Christ

Mary Theroux writes movingly about it at the Independent Institute.

http://blog.independent.org/2014/12/24/the-100th-anniversary-of-the-christmas-truce/

An excerpt:

Such warm fuzzies for “the enemy”, of course, undermined the cause of their rulers, and eventually all along the front officers retook charge of the situation, in some cases ordering their soldiers to take up arms or be shot themselves; in one case, a British officer shot a German soldier walking unarmed in no-man’s land, bringing the truce to a bloody end.
And thus the secret to maintaining war: we must never come to know our declared enemies, must never think of them as humans just as we are, loving their families, hoping for home and a better life. Faceless caricatures are so much better for keeping passions pitched.
And thus the secret every good ruler knows: divide and conquer. Portray “them” as different, sub-human, unworthy of the consideration we hold as our due, and certainly ones to whom Christ never intended the Golden Rule to apply.
“Them-ism” is equally effectively applied to our co-nationalists of a different color, socio-economic status, or religion. Keeping us suspicious of one another well serves our political masters, accruing ever-greater power.

Do you love Christ more than you hate those your rulers tell you are the cause of your problems and should therefore hate? They can, for the time being, fleece us and boss us around, but do we really have to let them stir up hatreds within our hearts for others, for whom Christ also died?

Why the torture?

Justin Raimondo makes an important point about the torture.

WHY was the Bush administration so eager to torture. Was it really afraid of 24 style ticking time bombs?

Um. No. They wanted to start a war with Iraq. And they needed justification for it.

The administration had already decided, early on, to attack Iraq: all that was needed was "proof" of Saddam Hussein’s connection to the 9/11 attacks – and they didn’t care how they got it. In a 2009 interview with the McClatchy news agency, a former highly-placed former US intelligence officer said:
"[F]or most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld were also demanding proof of the links between al-Qaeda and Iraq. … There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder."
As Patrick Cockburn points out in the Independent, detainees were subjected to the worst torture "in the run-up to the war in 2003, suggesting that rather than preventing further action by al-Qaeda, the US administration was intent on justifying the invasion of Iraq. One prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, who was wrongly thought to be an al-Qaeda leader by his interrogators, was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times in March 2003. The first questions asked of the latter after he was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, were all about Iraq and not about forthcoming al-Qaeda attacks, according to The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan." The book also relates how Cheney’s office wanted to waterboard a top Iraqi official to get him to "verify" the alleged Iraqi connection to al-Qaeda.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/12/18/why-did-they-torture/

So the even larger crime than the torture and imprisoning for over a decade of many people who'd just been turned in by locals to collect a bounty or to settle a private score is that the false "intelligence" gained from the torture was used to (re)start a war and kill in the neighborhood of a million people.

So while they resort to Jack Bauer torture porn situations to justify it, the torture that occurred was to extract a specific, pre-determined, response.

The joy of being the hyper-power is never having to say you're sorry, I guess. Destroying infrastructure so that people die from lack of sanitation, imposing sanctions which killed a half-million people (mostly children and the aged), all to "encourage" the people to rise up and throw off someone who previously was a US stooge... What guilt do the folks in D.C. bear from enabling and encouraging the 8 year war of aggression by Iraq on Iran? About 300,000 civilians killed. Many more soldiers. About $1 trillion in destruction.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Whose sons are the warmongers?

Christians for torture, atheists for sanity?

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/week-god-122014

This really challenges my faith, not in Christ, but in Christians.

Hahaha .... And more believable

From Bob Murphy

 

 

 

 

Torture?

Remembering back to the early 2000's when many of us were scared because D.C. wouldn't admit to why "they hate us for our freedoms", these articles about torture ring true to me.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/torturing-god-out-of-jihadis/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/torture-and-seriousness/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/millman/why-did-we-torture/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/no-accountability-for-torture/

The last article is probably the most depressing one. There will be no accountability in this life for those who authorized, carried out and justify and defended it. The state, as the monopolist of violence, will only limit itself so much as is necessary to prevent outright rebellion/loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the subject population.

Christians' citizenship is not in this world. We have no reason to justify the evil these folks do. We shouldn't be identifying with them.

A must watch speech

http://mises.org/library/natural-law-restraint-against-tyranny

In addition

I wanted to follow Jim's post with this from Lew Rockwell's blog:

In his City of God, St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great. Alexander demands of him, “How dare you molest the seas?” The pirate replied, “How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a thief. You, with a great fleet, molest the whole world and are called an emperor.” St. Augustine called this answer “elegant and excellent.”

I have been stressing on our radio show that Americans do NOT have a government, not one that can be defined as one, but most are under the allusion of such.
I was sent this today by one of my brother's:

What the America is supposed to be -
A Constitutional Republic
where the rights of the individual are protected

What we pretend it is -  
A Democracy
where the individual is forced to comply with the will of the majority

What it actually is -
A CORPORATION OWNED BY AN INTERNATIONAL BANKING CABAL, WHERE THE INDIVIDUAL HAS NO RIGHTS AND WHOSE LABOR IS USED AS COLLATERAL IN AN UNLAWFUL PYRAMID SCHEME.

  So the question of how would we take care of "X" without the State, is really missing the point, as Jim pointed out. Who cares? The real question is, how do rid ourselves of it?

 

"How will we deal with X without a state???"

The unique and defining feature of the state is social permission to AGGRESS against others.

The little people like the idea of the state because it permits them an avenue to AGGRESS against others ANONYMOUSLY.

All of the overreaches of the state happen because the people carrying out the deeds do so anonymously (just following orders, just enforcing the law) and the rest of society accepts this rather than holding them accountable for their individual actions which they choose to do.

The orders are issued and the laws made because the lawmakers are "just carrying out the wishes of the people", they're not personally responsible for the evil that they are calling for/enabling.

The people make the political demands because they personally won't be held accountable nor will they have to get their hands dirty with the actual violence or threats of violence which they're requesting.

And people think that a social arrangement like this can be limited. Even in the "glory days of the republic" the state was an engine of violence and aggression against those who weren't "inside" it -- Indians, Mexicans, etc to benefit the people who were inside it.

What will we do about the X?
X may be "child pornographers" or "poor" or "socially awkward" or "toe fungus".

What will we do about the X without a state? We'll do what we decide is right and we'll take responsibility for doing it, personally. We won't hide in a mob. We won't hide behind a bureaucrat "just carrying out policy" or a cop "just enforcing the law."

Terrorism, Trillions, and Fear-Mongering

William Binney is a "former Technical Director for Intelligence at the U.S. National Security Agency" with 36 years of experience there. He resigned in 2001 because he profoundly disagreed with the bureaucracy's omnivorous and unconstitutional spying. Here in one succinct paragraph, he tells us how and why the spooks do what they do:

"[The national security bureaucrats] try to get everybody afraid so they will do whatever they want, that’s the kind of leverage that they are trying to use not just against the public, but also against Congress. It’s just all based on fear-mongering. The whole point is to get more money and build a bigger empire which they have done. Over here, we’ve spend for all the 16 agencies close to a trillion dollars since 9/11. That’s really been a money-making proposition for them, this fear-mongering. Now they are doing it with cyber security. It’s how you control your population, how you manipulate them and how you let them pay for things you want done."

Indeed. Recall, too, that though the NSA frequently claims its espionage against us protects the country from bad guys -- at least those not in elected or appointed office--, more rational sources insist it "has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism."