Scott Lazarowitz's Blog

May 17, 2012

Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com. (Link to article)

While Ron Paul will no longer actively campaign in the remaining state primaries, he will nevertheless continue in the delegate-winning strategy, and go to the Republican convention. Contrary to State-shilling media hoaxers and propagandists, Dr. Paul has NOT dropped out of the race, and those who hope for a future of freedom should vote in remaining primaries.

But one must wonder why Ron Paul has not received as many votes as he should have during this election campaign.

Well, one of the unfortunate consequences of democracy and especially government’s seizure of education has been the decline in critical thinking and common sense in America.

In the mainstream of America, the people love the State, and they demonize those who challenge the State’s authority, legitimacy and policies. It seems that some of those most maligned are the libertarians, particularly the Austrian economists, historical revisionists, anarcho-capitalists or market anarchists, and voluntaryists.

Remarkably, it is these libertarians whose views are closer to those of the American Founders than the modern mainstream statists. Yet it is the libertarians – advocating individual freedom, the non-aggression principle, private property rights, freedom of trade and voluntary exchange, and equality under the rule of law – who are dismissed as “Tinfoil Hat” wearers.

Our society has become an Orwellian, Bizarro World in which dependence, irresponsibility, recklessness and aggression are good – and peace, independence, responsibility and prudence are bad.

Only in Amerika does advocating independence, responsibility and the rule of law give one a “Tinfoil Hat” status.

Here, I will set the record straight, that the opposite of all that is actually the case, in government spending and monetary policy, and in foreign policy.

Government Spending and Monetary Policy

In a recent debate between Ron Paul and Paul Krugman, Ron Paul summarized the differences between him and Krugman: “(Paul Krugman) believes in big government … and I believe in very small government. I emphasize personal liberties. I don’t like a managed economy, whether it’s through central economic planning or monetary policy, or even Congress doing it.”

There Ron Paul described the true fiscally conservative and responsible approach that Krugman in the past declared to be of the “Tinfoil Hat” crowd.

Krugman and his fellow Keynesians support increasing government debts and deficit spending, and believe that more people should be dependent on the government, such as “the poor,” students and the elderly. And they advocate greater tax-thefts of the workers and producers of society to involuntarily finance such dependence and serfdom.

The Keynesians and statists continue to fantasize that corporatism, militarism, tax-thefts, debts and deficit-spending are helpful to Americans.

But when crashing back down to Earth, we learn that those who are most helped by stimulus, government social programs and war profiteering are the government bureaucrats themselves and corporate special interests. (e.g. ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, Solyndra, body scanners, etc.)

Can you get any more “Tinfoil Hat” than the elitist daydreamers wanting more of such government activism and intrusions?

In reality, the State is the true “1%,” as evidenced by the wealthiest districts of America surrounding Washington, D.C.

But we must no longer allow these elitist daydreamers to continue forcing their delusions onto the rest of us! The people have a right to know the truth!

Government deficit-spending and the National Debt force future generations to have to involuntarily pay for current and past generations’ self-indulgence and irresponsible spending habits.

Philosophically, Ron Paul believes that if it’s wrong for your neighbors to take your earnings from you (that is, to force you to do extra labor to serve others involuntarily), then it’s just as immoral for government bureaucrats and their armed police to do that.

No one should be above the law.

And Ron Paul understands that when you rely on funding the government through borrowing, you are creating a moral hazard.

There’s no “Tinfoil Hat” there – only a sound, rational belief in protecting the rights of the individual, protecting private property from theft and intrusion, and a belief that no one should be above the law.

Another moral hazard is the printing of money out of nothing. For a government to just spend money that doesn’t exist, or that has nothing of value backing it, is extremely irresponsible. It ought to be considered a crime, as it is equal to actual theft and fraud.

This fiat money printing causes inflation. It is a sneaky, backdoor way of government bureaucrats and their “private” banking cartel associates to get easy money right away to spend – while causing price inflation of everyday necessities, which makes it more difficult for those in the lower and middle classes to afford to provide their daily needs, especially in food and energy.

Through this backdoor inflation-tax, the Primary Dealer Big Banks are virtually stealing from the poor and middle class. This is not just a real moral hazard, but it also should be considered a crime.

So the truth is, those who advocate these schemes of debts robbing future generations and fiat-money printing robbing the current population are really the true “Tinfoil Hat” wearers of our time.

For more on these issues, see Murray Rothbard in Taking Money Back and Repudiate the National Debt, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe in Why the State Demands Control of Money. (And more information here [.pdf], here, here, here, and here.)

And here is an important interview of Ron Paul covering monetary policy, the business cycle, government-stimulated artificial inflation and bubbles, and the role of government in private economic matters.

By the way, unlike clueless Krugman and Bernanke et al., Ron Paul predicted the housing bubble and economic downturn of 2007-2008, as did many amongst the Austrian school of economic thought. That was based on their knowledge of history, and understanding of cause and effect, as well as the moral hazard that results from excusing people from personal responsibility and the rule of law.

In economic matters and monetary policy, Ron Paul wants to bring the government’s budget back down to only funding that which the Constitution authorizes, and eliminate the tyrannical IRS (and most of the other dirty three-letter words in Washington).

Ron Paul also wants to repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, repeal legal tender laws and allow for competing currencies.

Unthinkingly, many people believe that those proposals are of a Tinfoil Hat variety, whereas it really is the status quo of monetary serfdom that only real Tinfoil Hatters would support.

Forcing the entire population to only use the one government-issued, government-debased currency is very authoritarian and dictatorial, and it violates the people’s right to freedom of exchange.

People have a God-given right to choose any medium of exchange they want, and, unlike the chaos that the current central planning monetary dictatorship causes, a natural order would result from a society of monetary freedom.

And regarding the government’s control over the nation’s banks and the people’s wealth and savings, why can’t an individual or group who wants to serve one’s community own and operate a bank? In a society of freedom, there would be no central government bank (and thus no revolving door between a “Federal Reserve” and the dreaded private sector), banks would compete for the people’s business, and the currently legalized fraud of fractional reserve banking would not be allowed under the rule of law.

More important, in such a society of freedom, those bankers who engage in risky and irresponsible investment and lending practices would be held accountable and would not be bailed out by taxpayers involuntarily. Those local banks with the best reputation would attract more customers, while the irresponsible ones would be forced out of business or be sent to jail. A system of freedom would also reward consumers who take responsibility for their own banking choices, too.

As Jacob Hornberger noted just recently, we need to separate banking and state.

Only real Tinfoil Hat wearers would support an authoritarian, top-down central banking authority and a cartel of government-controlled “private” banks who can get away with crimes of theft, fraud, and “bailout” extortion-looting.

Foreign Policy

On foreign policy, I still can’t believe the number of people who actually “boo” Ron Paul’s suggestion that we apply the Golden Rule to foreign policy.

Now, a lot of people have this false “Tinfoil Hat” view of Ron Paul and libertarians in foreign policy mainly out of ignorance of actual history, as well as lacking skills in critical thinking.

Unfortunately, too many Americans simply believe the propaganda that government bureaucrats tell them, as repeated to them by the State’s lapdog media stenographers.

Besides ignorance, a problem with many Americans is their belief in American exceptionalism – that the U.S. government may trespass on foreign lands with military bases and occupations against the will and approval of the actual inhabitants of those lands, but foreign governments may NOT trespass and occupy OUR lands. This long-ingrained moral relativism has reinforced many Americans’ narcissistic, communistic self-appointed role as rulers of the world, as owners of the entire world’s territories.

It is this attitude of American covetousness that has contributed to so many people viewing as absurd Ron Paul’s asking how we would like it if a foreign government invaded our territory and occupied our lands. The question is not so absurd, when you consider all the aggressions and provocations committed by the U.S. government against foreigners.

And when I refer to most Americans as ignorant, many of them actually don’t know such facts of history as our government having started a war against Iraq a first time (even though Iraq was of no threat to us), in 1991, and intentionally destroyed Iraq’s civilian water and sewage treatment centers. Those actions, along with the sanctions and no-fly zones on Iraq, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis throughout the 1990s. And all this led to widespread anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East.

Prior to that during the 1950s, on behalf of the British Empire and its covetous craving for Iran’s oil, the U.S. government and its CIA staged a coup and overthrew the Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddegh, and installed the Shah of Iran for the next 25 years. The U.S. government supported the Shah’s tyranny, and that led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Iranian population knew damn well that the U.S. government was the main supporter of their tyrant leaders.

Just look at this description of the Shah’s notorious torture and spy regime, and how it compares to America’s current police state of NDAA, NSA spying, torture regime, the DHS and the TSA.

Unlike the Tinfoil Hat wearers, Ron Paul understands that when you go across the street and provoke your neighbors, trespass on their property and steal their stuff (and murder their family members), they will try to retaliate against you.

Dr. Paul wants to dismantle the Leviathan militarist and police state apparatus that are turning us into the Soviet Union.

The real Tinfoil Hat wearers support keeping or even expanding the current Leviathan nightmare.

Now, do people really believe that if we close down the foreign U.S. military bases and bring the troops home, stop initiating wars against others who were of no threat to us, and shut down the Nazi-like, Soviet-like police state at home, that we would make ourselves even more vulnerable to terrorism?

Sorry, the opposite is true. Our government’s aggressions, intrusions, and provocations are what really have compromised our security and made us vulnerable to terrorism.

After all, during the 1990s Ron Paul actually foresaw the increased probability of terrorist attacks on our soil, based on the U.S. government’s provocations overseas.

Only Tinfoil Hat wearers would think that you can provoke your neighbors but think they wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) fight back.

The truth is, the main purpose of post-Cold War militarism and the “terrorism” charade has been for certain special interests to profit from the labor and savings of the American workers and producers. (For more on that, see this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.)

Conclusion

While the Ron Paul campaign will probably be accused of “stealing” Republican national Convention delegates, it is really the Ron Paul campaign who are following the rules of primaries and state conventions in their accumulation of delegates.

But it is the Romney people who have been committing the shenanigans, and are the true alleged cheaters and alleged vote-stealing fraudsters.

Some people just crave political power and artificial financial advantages over the people, while Ron Paul wants the opposite: Freedom!

There is a reason why so many people are enthusiastic about Ron Paul: Because they believe in freedom, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who has said that he wants us all to have our freedom.

The younger crowd amongst the Ron Paul supporters have a very good understanding of the dwindling freedom and prosperity we have in America, and it is they who will have to suffer many, many years in the future of the kind of Total State-controlled, impoverished society that the Obama and Romney statists are giving us, and the young people know it.

But the Tinfoil Hatters want it all to continue, and at these young people’s expense, to which the young people reply, “Up your nose with a rubber hose!”

For those whose only real familiarity with Ron Paul is from the propagandist mainstream media and the neocon talk radio blabbermouths, here are some of Dr. Paul’s own writings and speeches:

Hundreds of articles by Ron Paul (Three of my favorites: Paper Money and Tyranny, The End of Dollar Hegemony and What Really Divides Us) and Ron Paul’s many books promoting freedom, peace and free markets

Here are some of Ron Paul’s books that are available for free online:

• A Foreign Policy of Freedom [.pdf]
• The Case for Gold [.pdf]
• Freedom Under Siege: The U.S. Constitution After 200-Plus Years [.pdf]
• Gold, Peace, and Prosperity [.pdf]
• Pillars of Prosperity: Free Markets, Honest Money, Private Property [.pdf]

And there are these more recent books:

• Liberty Defined (Intro, with links to buy the book)
• End the Fed
• The Revolution: A Manifesto

There were quite a few emails in response to my recent article on LewRockwell.com, The Right to Marry. Several of the emailers joined in the chorus of the so-called conservatives with the religious point of view, and some gave me some Biblical quotes. That’s fine, but there are many Americans who don’t believe as these people believe, and don’t believe in the Bible. It is your view that God views marriage or homosexuality in this or that way, but the words of the Bible are not the rule of law. The rule of law is to protect the individual from the aggression of others.

Another emailer made the suggestion of intellectual property: “Nobody owns marriage.” That’s correct. If you are a firm believer in the “institution of marriage,” and that marriage should only consist of one man and one woman, that is fine, but others disagree with you. You don’t own marriage and don’t have a right to put your view of marriage into the law that all others must obey. When you claim ownership of marriage, and use the State to enforce your view of marriage and how other people ought to live, and force all others into the State’s rules of relationships and contracts, then you are claiming ownership of the people, which is a very communist point of view.

I’m really tired of this subject. There was an article posted on Strike the Root yesterday, by William Hubbard. It was very brief and to the point:

Amendment Done

I have sullied myself this day, and for no profitable reason. I have stained my soul and made a lopsided deal with the devil. I entered the voting booth this afternoon, for the last time, against my principle, in order that I may fight for other principles. I have not voted in years. This is not out of apathy but out of strength in my beliefs. I do not believe one should force their opinions on their fellow man at the point of a government’s gun. Three wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner is no way to protect the meek, but today I mistook the ends justifying the means. This is never the case and my soul has historically known better. I am ashamed. I hoped to vote against one evil and for a good. My fellow man does not share my beliefs; of this I am now sure.

There was a man whom I hoped was the last voice of freedom and peace to hold this country from ruin. This statesman, Dr. Ron Paul, was the only presidential candidate of the last 50-odd years to truly take to heart the Christian admonition of the Golden Rule and apply it to our policy of dealing with our neighbors; the only man in more years than I have lived to believe in loving your enemies, not bombing them–man, woman and child alike, for harming us in no way. His campaign will be not more than a footnote in our history, if that.

It appears the people in the once great state of North Carolina are more concerned with whether or not two men may love each other enough to commit to a lifetime together than if their tax dollars are used to incinerate children across the globe. They are more worried about enforcing one set of so called biblical values on their fellow Americans than standing by the values straight from the mouth of their professed savior. I am not a Christian, but Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality, yet repeated at length the admonition of love, peace, forgiveness and not judging each other. I hoped by turning on my strident belief against the polls, I might stand against the hatred embodied in Amendment One of this state’s constitution and stand for an end to our country’s violence against our fellow man. Instead I have only degraded myself. I have turned to what I knew was wrong only to be shown it was for naught. It was not fighting the good fight. It was not a last stand. It was a vile, despicable act of which I cannot wash myself clean.

Open Borders Blog: The Old Testament on Immigration

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Israel Becoming Its Own Worst Enemy

Jacob Sullum: Bloomberg Reveals Unconstitutionality of Suspicionless Stop-and-Frisk Searching

Matt Harwood: What Are You Afraid of If You Have Nothing to Hide?

Ray McGovern: Honoring a ‘Terror War’ Architect

Kevin Kervick: GOP Establishment Makes a Mockery of the Democratic Process in Oklahoma

Lew Rockwell: Party Unity?

The American Dream Blog: Why Is the Obama Administration Allowing the Chinese Government to Buy Up $Billions in U.S. Oil and Gas Deposits?

Darian Worden: State-Capitalist Plutocracy or Free Market Prosperity?

Madison Ruppert: Thanks to U.S. Appeals Court, We Will Likely Never Know the Details of the NSA-Google Relationship

Pepe Escobar: Long Live ‘Our’ Gulf Bastards

James Bovard: TSA — Tenth Anniversary of a National Nightmare

Laurence Vance: Should Libertarians Be Conservatives?

Economic Collapse Blog: If You Live in California, Things Just Got a Whole Lot Worse

Justin Raimondo: The Parchin Deception: The Latest Attempt to Lie Us into War with Iran

RT: Russia, US Start First Joint Anti-Terror War Games on American Soil

The Daily Bell’s Interview of Vermont Secessionist Thomas Naylor

Carl Close: Water and Markets Flow Together in Aquanomics

Edward Klein: Michelle Obama’s Jealousy, Rage, and Resentment Toward Oprah

Jonathan Benson: GM Super-Bugs Mutate in India, Rendering Antibiotics Impotent — and Spreading

Mary Theroux: 30 Years Later: The Academe as Refuge for Anti-Abortion Protest?

Eric Peters: Risk Is Not Dangerous

John Zogby: Libertarian Leanings of Young Votes Dampen Obama’s Appeal

Tom Engelhardt: Predator Nation

Nina Burleigh: Obama’s Settlement Failure and Israel’s Huge Reward

May 12, 2012

Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com (Link to article)

Once again, the “gay marriage” or same-sex marriage distraction is in the news and on the talk shows. Some people say it is a societal or cultural issue that government must address, and others say it is a religious issue.

The same-sex marriage issue is a private issue. And yes, the individual has a right to marry.

Who the hell is the government to allow or forbid private people to establish their own voluntary associations, relationships, contracts and marriages?

Regarding the right to marry, while the Bill of Rights does not mention that specifically, the Ninth Amendment does state that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

There are an infinite number of rights that human beings have. Each individual has an inherent right as a human being to one’s life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as long as one doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s same right.

Based on this right of self-ownership, each individual has an absolute natural right to do with one’s life, one’s person and property as one wishes, as long as one is peaceful. Unfortunately, statists and politicians do not understand this.

Murray Rothbard addressed the right to self-ownership in his magnum opus, The Ethics of Liberty. (Here is The Ethics of Liberty online at the Mises Institute.)

In my view, the individual owns one’s own life.

The community in which you live does not own you, your neighbors do not own you, the State does not own you.

You own you.

Therefore, the State has no jurisdiction over your life and has no legitimate authority to determine whether you may or may not marry or whom you may or may not marry.

Each individual has the right of self-ownership and jurisdiction over one’s own life, as long as one does not violate anyone else’s person or property. And each individual human being has a right to establish voluntary contracts with others who are mutually agreeable to said contracts. Such contracts are not the business of the State or of your neighbors, as they are private contracts. The terms of the contracts and who may or may not participate in them are the business of those who are the parties to such contracts, those who voluntarily agree to such terms, and it’s no one else’s business.

Third parties who attempt to intrude themselves into such contracts, whether they be your neighbors, Grandma Harriett, or government bureaucrats, are intruders, trespassers, and just plain meddlesome busybodies. And that includes marital contracts.

Does it matter what past court decisions have said about marriage and marital contracts? Not really. Courts are State monopolies of ultimate judicial decision-making; therefore they are illegitimate, because, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe has noted, many people within a given jurisdiction did not voluntarily agree to or sign on to a contract to employ such courts. If there is a dispute in a marriage involving a marital contract, the moral and ethical way to settle such a dispute is for the parties to the contract to find a third-party arbitrator. They should not be compelled by legal force to have to use the State’s one monopoly court.

Now, the only candidate for President who believes that the government should stay out of the marriage issue, to my knowledge, has been Ron Paul.

And in my opinion, there should be complete separation of marriage and state. No one should have to get a license issued by government bureaucrats to marry. It is not the business of the government to permit or forbid a private individual to establish one’s own private contracts voluntarily.

It seems to me that some so-called conservatives, such as Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, believe that the State owns the lives of the people, and should use its armed power to dictate who may or may not marry, and should dictate the terms of these private contracts. Obviously, some religious conservatives do not believe in the inalienable rights of the individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These statists support a community’s use of the State and its compulsory legal and police powers to force a certain social view onto the entire population, a.k.a. social engineering.

I believe that Willard Romney does not have the same kind of repressive social convictions as the other statist reactionary politicians, as Romney is the epitome of finger-in-the-air weathervane pol. Despite his past support of “state’s rights” on the issue of same-sex marriage, currently for political reasons, Romney supports the proposed federal constitutional amendment defining marriage to please the religionists and conservatives who believe in socialist government-managed social engineering and societal central planning in marriage.

Regarding the idea of employment- or tax-related financial benefits or privileges associated with marriage: Private employers have an inherent right to dish out whatever benefits they want to give employees, and based on their own views of morality. No one should interfere with that basic private property right.

But since government employers are government agencies, and because everyone owns the government, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe observed in his book, Democracy: the God That Failed, then everyone should be included in benefits without arbitrary discrimination against certain groups of people.

And with the complicated, destructive tax-theft system now in place, what we have now is social conflict and the planned chaos of socialism and central planning. The only way to resolve these issues is to get rid of the socialist system now in place, get rid of the welfare state, and restore the people’s freedom of voluntary association and contracts, and their right to keep every bit of the fruits of their labor.

But really, we need to ignore these petty distractions and concentrate on the more important issues, such as the wars that George W. Bush started and that Barack Obama has escalated and expanded in our government’s continuing provocations of people overseas, and the police state that further destroys our liberty and compromises our security.

Yes, the right to marry is as much a right to establish contracts in any other part of life, and it’s nobody else’s business. It is just as much a human right as the right to not be drone-bombed to death or detained indefinitely sans due process by a dictatorial President run amok.

Among the current presidential candidates, only Ron Paul supports freedom of contract, as well as promises to repeal many of the intrusions into our lives, liberty and property that government bureaucrats have inflicted on us. Romney and Obama do not believe in restoring such individual freedom; their desire is for more power and control for themselves and their fellow government elitists over the lives of the people.

Let’s hope that Ron Paul continues to make waves in the GOP, and if he doesn’t get the nomination, let’s hope he then runs against the two Republicrat and Demopublican statists Obomney and Rombama.

Jacob Hornberger: Hitler’s Tribunals

David Swanson: Sibel Edmonds Finally Wins

The American Dream Blog: Big Brother Psychopathy: Governments and Businesses Might Want to Implant Microchips in the People

Richard Ebeling: Government, Fiscal Responsibility, and Free Banking: The Case of Panama (2004)

Justin Raimondo: NATO: The New Holy Alliance

Washington Times Editorial: Uncle Sam the Snooper

Philip Giraldi: A Tipping Point for Israel

Paul Joseph Watson: Nigel Farage: We Face the Prospect of Mass Civil Unrest in Europe

Percy Greaves: Why Speculators? (1964)

Bruce Ramsey: The Chen Affair: American Imperialism Wrapped in Humanitarianism

Ron Paul: Bankster Power

Mark Crovelli: Cops Should Act Like Firemen in a Free Society

Kevin Carson: ALEC’s Fake “Free Market” Apologists on the Right

Becky Akers: RIP, Dr. Tom White from Voice of the Martyrs

Conor Friedersdorf: Stop Grading Obama’s Foreign Policy on a Curve

Bill Sardi: Growing Up Poor Helped Make Me Rich