September 7, 2010
As H.L. Mencken pointed out decades ago, governments prosper through the manipulation of panic. Rulers are always adept at manufacturing or exaggerating problems and crises.
The other half of that equation is this: Governments likewise seek to suppress concerns over genuine problems that undermine their authority. Yes, people are encouraged to panic – but only when prompted by their rulers, and then only about officially approved crises.
For example, we have standing orders to be alarmed over the supposed threat of global warming or the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, but no permission to recognize the accumulating crisis of unconstitutional deficit spending, which is bringing about a systemic economic collapse.
As Barack Obama rolls out another $50 billion “stimulus” proposal, the prospect of “sovereign debt default,” both here and abroad, is becoming a near certainty. So concludes the investment house Morgan Stanley, which warns that we’re about to enter “an age of `financial oppression.’” This is a perfect time to panic, with or without official permission.
Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
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September 6, 2010
What the government subsidizes, it controls. This principle applies not only to institutions, but also to individuals.
One possible future is foreshadowed in San Diego, California, where under a program called “Project 100%” anyone who receives county welfare subsidies is subject to unannounced visits from law enforcement officials.
Supposedly intended as an anti-fraud measure, the program permits police to rifle through closets, drawers, bathrooms and bedrooms seeking evidence of criminal acts. As attorney Christopher Brauchli notes, the assumption is that “welfare recipients are forced to trade the protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment for welfare benefits.”
Three years ago, this policy was upheld by the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court declined to review that decision.
The growing influence of government over the economy – a trend that began decades ago, accelerated dramatically under George W. Bush, and escalated even more radically under Barack Obama – portends a not-distant time when each of us will be subject to similar all-encompassing state control.
Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
]]>September 3, 2010
Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Washington dispatched advisors to set up a banking system modeled after our own. Thus it shouldn’t surprise us to see that Afghanistan is in the middle of a systemic crisis quite similar to the one that is destroying the U.S. economy.
Afghan depositors are making a run on the Kabul Bank, which has been a cookie jar for cronies of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a cut-out for various international financial rackets. Its board members include Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother, and Haseen Fahim, the brother of an Afghan vice-president.
President Karzai insists that the Kabul Bank is fully backed by his government, which has provided $110 million to stabilize the institution. Significantly, that money is not being used to guarantee deposits but rather to pay the salaries of 250,000 government employees.
Thanks to American intervention, Afghanistan is ruled by a corrupt central government rooted in Sharia Law and financed through fractional-reserve banking. What a splendid accomplishment.
Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
]]>September 2, 2010
“The planet does not need humans.” This assertion, embedded in a manifesto published by the late James Lee, is a tidy summation of the biocentric worldview that inspires radical environmentalism.
Lee was killed by a SWAT team at the Maryland headquarters of the Discovery Channel, where he had taken hostages. He demanded that the network promote his view that “filthy human children” not only contribute to pollution, but that they “are pollution."
Lee, who claims that he was “awakened” by Al Gore’s agitprop documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” littered his rambling manifesto with references to Darwin and Malthus and novelist Daniel Quinn, whose “Ishmael” books depict a series of dialogues between a man and a wise and sympathetic gorilla, including what are described as “provocative” re-writings of the creation accounts from Genesis.
The logic of radical environmentalism dictates that humans should vanish in order to save the planet. Whether through conviction or dementia, Lee was eager to put that principle into action.
Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
]]>September 1, 2010
Beirut was once called the “Paris of the Mediterranean.” After 35 years of foreign invasions and intermittent civil war, Beirut now conjures images of bloodshed and tragedy.
An Arab-ruled country of about 4 million people living in an area roughly the size of Los Angeles County, Lebanon has a Jewish population of roughly 500 people.
In the summer of 2006, the Israeli military launched an assault on Beirut that was described as retaliation for rocket attacks by the terrorist group Hezbollah. Thousands of Lebanese were killed, and over 1,000,000 displaced.
When Lebanon – which suffered terribly because of the Israeli invasion -- began to rebuild Beirut two years later, it gave high priority to repairing and renovating the city’s sole synagogue, located right in the middle of its own “Ground Zero.” The house of worship, ironically, had been bombed by Israeli pilots during the 2006 war.
In times like these, we should take hope wherever we find it.
Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
]]>August 31, 2010
The contrived controversy regarding the so-called Ground Zero Mosque illustrates how Islamic radicals benefit when we betray the principles we profess to believe.
Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who trained Iraqi soldiers and police, warns that the campaign against the Islamic Center in Lower Manhattan offers a propaganda windfall for terrorist recruiters. Taliban leaders in Afghanistan told Newsweek magazine that they would actually prefer that critics of the Center succeed in preventing it from being built.
“By preventing this mosque from being built, America is doing us a big favor,” one Taliban operative explained. “It’s providing us with more recruits, donations, and popular support.”
Taliban recruitment profited handsomely as a result of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, and revelations of officially sanctioned torture. “[And] now America gives us another gift with its street protests to prevent a mosque from being built in New York,” he exults.
Our hypocrisy is a form of self-destructive generosity toward those who hate us.
Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
]]>August 30, 2010
Government school officials in New Canaan, Connecticut – a very affluent community -- have been invited to participate in a federally funded program that would tag schoolchildren with Radio Frequency Identification chips.
California’s Contra Costa County School District received a grant to tag pre-schoolers with RFID chips embedded in school-distributed classroom attire.
These are just two examples of the way public schools are designed to cultivate collectivist docility.
Aaron Kupchik, author of the new book Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear, warns that government-run schools are teaching kids to “accept authority without question and that you have absolutely no rights to question punishment…. Kids are being taught that you should expect to be drug tested if you want to participate in an organization, that walking past a police officer every day and being constantly under the gaze of a security camera is normal.”
Within a generation, Kupchik warns, most Americans will be completely accustomed to living in an all-encompassing surveillance society.
Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
]]>August 27,2010
During a recent visit to his home country to attend his mother’s funeral, Australian actor Paul Hogan, best known to millions as the cinematic comedy-action hero Crocodile Dundee, was kidnapped for ransom.
The Australian Tax Office seeks to extort roughly $22 million from Hogan. The Australian government issued an order forbidding him to leave the country.
Douglas Urbanski, Hogan’s Los Angeles-based talent agent, describes his client as a victim of “an act of violence by a very violent police state…. I’m glad I’m not there.”
Mr. Urbankski spoke too soon. Last March, Congress passed the grandly named Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment -- or “HIRE” – Act. One provision of that Act requires foreign banks to withhold 30% of all outgoing capital flows and provide account information on U.S. expatriates to the IRS – or to close bank accounts owned by U.S. citizens.
The same trap that snagged Crocodile Dundee awaits any American who tries to protect his wealth from the rapacious government ruling us.
Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
]]>August 26, 2010
A recent public meeting in Libby, Montana offered retired nurse Judy Mattot an opportunity few will enjoy – and she made the most of it.
The event featured Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, the chief legislative sponsor of the Obamacare monstrosity, and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Kathleen Sibelius . Mrs. Mattot asked “if either of you read the health care bill before it was passed”; if not, “that is the most despicable, irresponsible thing.”
Baucus answered that he “essentially” wrote the socialized medicine bill, but admitted that he had subcontracted the details to unnamed – and unaccountable -- “experts,” which is how things are routinely done in Washington:
“I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill. You know why? It’s statutory language. We hire experts.”
If our supposed representatives can’t be bothered even to read what they enact into law, we have no responsibility to obey their enactments.
Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
]]>August 25, 2010
Fifteen years ago this month, roughly 250,000 ethnic Serbs were forcibly expelled from their homes in Kajina, a region of Croatia near the coast of the Adriatic Sea.
This human tidal wave was instigated by “Operation Storm,” a Croatian military offensive conducted with the aid of Military Professional Resources Incorporated, a Blackwater-style mercenary group. Croatian forces advancing under the cover of U.S.-led NATO airstrikes mowed down helpless civilians.
Canadian military observers later testified that the U.S.-organized Croat offensive concentrated on civilian targets. This generated what one historian called the largest European population displacement since World War II.
Many of the Orthodox Christian Serbs driven from their homes ended up in Kosovo, only to be driven from that province by another U.S.-led NATO military assault four years later. That attack tore Kosovo away from Serbia and handed it over to a government ruled by Islamic terrorists.
It often seems as if Washington’s foreign policy is carefully calibrated to create enemies.
Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
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