(Click on cartoon for better view.)

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Articles for understanding Liberty:

The principles of Voluntaryism

Murray Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty

Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains how the ruling and banking elite steal wealth from the workers and producers of society

Lysander Spooner’s Constitution of No Authority

The FBI wants us to believe that Internet privacy is a sign of “suspicious activity,” and/or one’s being a potential “terrorist.” The American Dream Blog writer gives some examples from the FBI’s latest nonsense, followed by the writer’s own comments:

“Are overly concerned about privacy, attempts to shield the screen from view of others”

Look, if I am doing some online banking or am composing an email to a friend I don’t want someone peeking at my screen.  Aren’t most Americans “concerned about privacy” and don’t most people want to keep their Internet activity to themselves?

“Always pay cash or use credit card(s) in different name(s)”

We have seen the government warn about this before.  It appears that from now on using cash in America is going to get you labeled as a potential terrorist.  How bizarre is that?

“Act nervous or suspicious behavior inconsistent with activities”

Some people are just naturally nervous.  This kind of vague language could be applied to almost anyone.

“Are observed switching SIM cards in cell phone or use of multiple cell phones”

What if your cell phone battery is dead and you need to use your wife’s cell phone?  Does that make you a potential terrorist?

“Travel illogical distance to use Internet Café”

A lot of times people will use Internet cafes when they are out of town on a trip.  Is there something inherently suspicious about that?

“Evidence of a residential based internet provider (signs on to Comcast, AOL, etc.)” …

“Evidence of a residential based internet (sic) provider”? So if I have a residential based Internet provider, that makes me “suspicious”? A “terrorist”? I think that whoever would write something like that either isn’t paying attention to what he or she is doing, or is on drugs, or perhaps may even be retarded, I don’t know.

But during all this “War on Terror” stuff, since George W. Bush started such a “war,” and started two military wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the real terrorists have been our government, as they force travelers to either go through cancer-scanners or get groped and raped at the airport (and now at other places, including train depots and subways, bus terminals and the NFL).

And these dangerous bureaucrats want people to report their neighbors for acting “suspiciously,” they want hotels to report their guests to the government. If anything is an example of terrorism, it is this **** from the U.S. government.

And now our disgusting U.S. Congress has given the president permission to indefinitely detain ANYONE he wants, or anyone some military soldier or general or bureaucrat says should be detained, without EVIDENCE against the accused, while denying the accused and detained access to legal counsel or one’s right to a trial.

Rather than turning what used to be a great place to live, what used to be a free country, into a third world banana republic police state dictatorship, if these damn bureaucrats want to prevent terrorism, they should stop invading and occupying and trespassing on foreign lands and murdering foreigners, which they have been doing for decades upon decades with no end in sight, and stop PROVOKING the damn foreigners! You see, the sheeple all across America have no clue that that is what our government has been doing all this time, not just since 9/11 but for decades before that, because they are products of government-controlled schools, and hypnotized by our degenerate culture now, and they get their news from the drugged-up and brain-dead stenographers of the MSM.

America wasn’t meant to be a third world banana republic police state dictatorship, you know.

Jeffrey Tucker: Ninety-Nine Years of Evil

Anthony Wile: Elite Campaign to Reelect Obama in Full Swing?

Karl Denninger: More Truth From the MSM (College)

Tyler Durden: Israel Puts Facilities on High Alert Following Warning of Rising Iran Strike Threat

Gary North: The Crucial Pillar of the New World Order

Washington’s Blog: Government Misrepresents Employment Picture

Karen De Coster: Government Nutrition Mandates

Clayton Cramer and David Burnett: Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens

John Mueller: Embracing Threatlessness

Michael Rozeff: Wrong Ideas Are Sinking America

Becky Akers: The Super Bowl’s ‘Security’

Herbert Spencer: The Right to Ignore the State (1851)

Eric Margolis: Graveyard of Empires

Linda Schrock Taylor: Cain and Palin Applaud Dishonor

Ryan McMaken posts on the LewRockwell blog that conservatives cheer the abduction and theft of children of so-called “illegal immigrant” parents, as the government terrorizes these innocent families. Here is that news story.

But I thought that conservatives were “pro-family,” and didn’t like the idea of the government kidnapping children and breaking up families (for example, in the name of “Child Protective Services,” etc.).

As Jacob Hornberger has pointed out, several times in fact, one of the big reasons we have an immigration problem is that immigration into the U.S. is controlled by the federal government. Perhaps if conservatives understood that this is an example of socialist central planning, they might not support such controls, and instead support property rights, economic freedom and the rule of law.

I have already pointed out that this issue is another example of the true communist nature of today’s conservatives. But they are by and large collectivists and exclusionists. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe observed, the right of exclusion is a private property right, not a collective, communitarian right. The conservatives believe in collective, communistic ownership of an entire territory and everything within, and they believe that the majority of a community may claim ownership and control over private property and businesses and they have the right to force exclusion to outsiders, against the will of “private” property and business owners. But this is yet another example of the moral, social and economic degeneracy of America.

Paul Joseph Watson writes on Infowars that the arrogant buffoons of the U.S. government are implicitly warning Iran that if Iran retaliates against an Israeli strike against them, the U.S. military will then get involved and do to Iran what they did to Iraq. Usually, “conservatives” cheer someone’s right of self-defense. When you are attacked by an aggressor, you have a right to use force to protect and defend yourself. Unfortunately, because America has degenerated so much, not just morally and culturally, but intellectually as well, the people who have been cheering on the U.S. government’s aggressions abroad over the past 20 years have been engaging in primitive intellectual rationalization to justify those aggressions against others. In their 21st Century primitive narcissism, the war supporters cannot understand the perspective of the targets of their government’s aggression, and instead have devalued those murdered foreign civilians, and perceive the victims’ retaliations as acts of “terrorism.” The Amerikan barbarians will treat their Iranian victims the same way. The U.S. and British Empires have a history with Iran.

To reinforce the American mindset of rationalization and primitivism, many people have been believing the U.S. government’s propaganda, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Iran. Well, if you really believe that Iran wants to “wipe Israel off the map” knowing full well that if they did anything it is THEY who would get the wiping off, then I have a bridge to sell you. But the sheeple believe the government’s propaganda that these Muslim people are “suicidal.” Some of them are, but so are some Americans, particularly in the military.

Another propagandistic message is that the Iranians are the “aggressors,” merely for possessing weapons for self-defense. Well, what would you do if you were completely surrounded by nukes, by many U.S. military bases and knowing that Israel (in its grossly pathological paranoid state) has hundreds of nukes? Many people actually think that in 1991 Iraq started the Persian Gulf War against the U.S., and that Iraq started the 2003 war against the U.S. That is thanks to government propagandists and their subservient media stenographers, and, of course, government-controlled schools.

But getting back to this arrogant message of “we attack you and you not fight back.” Bizarrely, it is the conservatives who say they believe in the right of people to self-defense. In our backwards, degenerated society now, the aggressors who attack people can sue if they get hurt when their victims retaliate, and the homeowner gets arrested and charged with assault or murder if the burglar, home invader or rapist gets hurt or killed.

The American Dream Blog has this post on how America is going insane. (How could we believe otherwise?) The writer points out that the country as a whole has been “dumbed down.” Many people think that is because of government control over education. The U.S. had a solid #1 ranking worldwide in education, but that started to decline since the federal Department of Education began thirty years ago. (Thanks, Jimma.) All Ronald Reagan had to do was to get rid of that unconstitutional department as promised, but he didn’t do it. What a wimp. Education has declined ever since.

The problem really began during the mid-19th century when the Progressive and anti-Catholic statists began to legislate intrusions into the private educational matters of private families. They “socialized” the concept of learning and that primarily has been what has crushed the critical thinking abilities and analytical skills of Americans. The education fascists love the centralization of everything and oppose localization, local control. They especially do not like the idea of a private family home-schooling the kids, and they have turned the government schools into prisons. No wonder Amerikans have been supporting sleazebag liars such as Willard Romney and Newt Gingrich. Guided mostly by emotion and not rational thought, so many gullible people believe that Romney is a “capitalist” and that he believes in “free markets,” regardless how much he raised taxes and fees in Massachusetts and knowing that he still supports his government-controlled health program, RomneyCareless. And many people are still emotionally fixated on this idea of American Exceptionalism which Romney uses quite a lot to manipulate the voters’ emotions.

The American Dream Blog writer also points out that the “terrorist watch list” has over a million names on it. Only in Amerika. And the writer points out that many people can get their names permanently on that list (including from anonymous tips). In my opinion, only dumb people support all this “If You See Something, Say Something,” and reporting of your neighbors who act “suspiciously.” To some people, expressing disagreement with ObamaCareless, or expressing support for Ron Paul is “suspicious.” I wouldn’t be surprised now if there are many people who understand where this nonsense leads who are scared to death of their neighbors and just don’t talk to people anymore out of fear that a false “tip” could happen to them.

And because of how barbaric and Nazi-like our local police have become, many people who are just going about their lives minding their own business are terrified of the police. What happened to people in America that has caused such small-sized tyrants and terrorists on our local police forces, and in the TSA for that matter? Why do so many of them act like Nazis? Why do they act like they are angry at you for just standing there, or, if you ask them why they are asking a personal question that is none of their business, why do they then accuse you of being “disorderly” or “insubordinate,” or of being a criminal? (Can the police station psychiatrist prescribe them Xanax?)

Yes, America has degenerated into Amerika. Many people now are afraid of their government. Many people fear the police. The people amongst the masses are viewed by many in government and the police as criminals, when in fact it is these government agents who have been committing the real crimes against the people. From illicit laws that persecute innocent people for engaging in activities that harm no one, and the police enforcing those illicit laws with a vengeance, to the police, TSA, DHS and military committing acts of violence against their fellow Americans and against foreigners, as well as against immigrants who thought they were coming to America for freedom and opportunity.

Amerika, the society of degenerates, with governments instituted for some people who get off on committing acts of aggression against others, and get away with it.

It’s depressing.

Eric Blair: 5 Wars That America Must End for Peace and Freedom to Prevail

The Daily Bell: Western Elites Caught ‘Red-Handed’ in Iran?

Infowars: Bills in state legislatures to nullify NDAA indefinite detention of innocent civilians

Paul Craig Roberts: The Real Economic Picture

Pat Buchanan: Ron Paul: Reactionary or Visionary

Henry Hazlitt: How Should Prices Be Determined? (1967)

Anthony Gregory: How Much Does the Safety Net Help the “Very Poor”?

Eric Peters: More Car Totalitarianism

Karl Denninger: “FB”: Do Not Buy

Justin Raimondo: Can Ron Paul Be Tamed?

Doug Casey on the Coming War with Iran

Washington’s Blog, David Swanson: 27 of 35 Bush Articles of Impeachment Apply to Obama

James Bovard: The EEOC’s Forgotten Racial Racketeering

Robert Fisk: Israel and Palestinians: The present stands no chance against the past

Russell Longcore: How Will the American Economy Die?

Tom Engelhardt: Iranian Aircraft Carriers in the Gulf of Mexico

Sheldon Richman: Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market

Economic Collapse Blog: The United Nations Wants to Crash the World Economy in Order to Save the Environment

Mike Masnick: Whistle-blowing Scientists Sue FDA for Snooping on Their Personal Email Accounts

Lew Rockwell interviews Will Grigg on Police State USA

Glenn Greenwald: ACLU sues Obama Administration over assassination secrecy

Laurence Vance: The Real Reason Guantanamo Should Be Closed

The Daily Bell: Obama Carefully Crafts Health Care Failure

The American Dream Blog: 19 Crazy Things That School Children Are Being Arrested for in America

Kurt Nimmo: CFR and Neocons Work Together to Hype al-Qaeda Iran Link

U.K. Guardian: Director of Gasland arrested at fracking hearing

Paul Joseph Watson: Republican Establishment Excludes Ron Paul from 2012 CPAC Event

Brett Arends: Jim Grant Says Gold Is the Future

John Pilger: The Assange Case Means That We Are All Suspects Now

Michael Rozeff: Get Off the Road to War: Stop the Sanctions on Iran

Gary Galles: Misrepresenting Inequality

John Glaser: Clapper’s Claptrap: Beware of Attacks from Weak, Isolated, Impoverished, Militarily Surrounded Iran

Michael Tennant: Columnist Calls for Internet “Quality Control” to Quash Dissent

Becky Akers: Throwing Stones from Your Glass House

Philip Giraldi: Another War on the Cheap

Luke Samuel: Don’t replace the drug laws with therapy laws

David Bernstein comments on the recent Rand Paul-Civil Rights Act controversy at Cato Unbound, and Sheldon Richman responds.

In May, Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul (and son of Congressman Ron Paul) made remarks regarding the 1964 Civil Rights Act that were actually too mealy-mouthed for even me to understand, but, essentially he was trying to say that the federal government perhaps went too far with that Act, but he really wouldn’t elaborate directly (because of being a mealy-mouthed politician) by stating (what I think he probably believes, and that I believe) that the Civil Rights Act should only apply to public property and government-run facilities and services, and should NOT apply to private property nor any privately owned businesses. However, this year’s campaign notwithstanding, according to David Weigel of the Washington Post, in 2002 Rand Paul wrote that

a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin … (It is) unwise to forget the distinction between public (taxpayer-financed) and private entities…

Certainly much less mealy-mouthed and more direct (because he wasn’t running for any public office at that time).

Bernstein explains some of the context of the 1960s:

… the issue that got Rand Paul into hot water: Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in public accommodations…

… From a philosophical perspective, libertarianism and Jim Crow laws are completely at odds. Consistent with their classical liberal heritage, libertarians believe that the government must treat all its citizens as individuals with equal rights, and therefore may not discriminate on arbitrary grounds, like race. The government must also apply its laws fairly and impartially, including by protecting members of unpopular minority groups from private violence. A penumbra of this opposition to government discrimination is that the right to vote must not be denied for arbitrary reasons. Finally, the government may not require private parties to discriminate.

Historically, many of the leading advocates of civil rights for African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th century—for example, Moorfield Storey, the first president of the NAACP—were, if not hardcore libertarians, at least classical liberal fellow travelers. In more modern times, the few prominent libertarian commentators of the early 1960s, such as Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, supported the provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that banned discrimination by state and local government officials. Conservatives, by contrast, typically bought into the notion of “States’ Rights.”…

…segregation and exclusion of African Americans in public places in the South wasn’t entirely a voluntary choice of business owners. Jim Crow segregation involved the equivalent of a white supremacist cartel. The cartel was enforced not just by overt government regulation like segregation laws, but also by the implicit threat of private violence and extra-legal harassment of anyone who challenged the racist status quo. This violence and extra-legal harassment was often undertaken with the approval of local officials; the latter, in fact, were often the perpetrators….

And Bernstein continues to describe how libertarians can be supportive of anti-discrimination laws including covering private sector interests.

And Sheldon Richman makes these points, among others:

Standard libertarian criticism of Title II, which prohibits racial discrimination in public accommodations, appears to treat the targeted restaurants and hotels as purely private businesses that, however odious their racial policies, were unjustifiably imposed on by government policies that violated private property rights. But this account misses something crucial. Outwardly those businesses looked like private enterprises, but the substance was different. As Bernstein points out, the social-legal environment in the pre-1964 South, when Jim Crow reigned, was hardly what any libertarian would envision as a laissez-faire environment. Rather, the region was in the grip of a pervasive social system based on white supremacy—one enforced by formal government rules, discretionary official decision-making, and extralegal measures, ranging from social pressure all the way to violence that was countenanced and even participated in by government officials.

A racially liberal entrepreneur who sought to compete next door to a segregated restaurant in the downtown of a Southern city would have been in for a difficult time. How would the city’s zoning, licensing, and building-code authorities have reacted?…

…Professor Bernstein seems to reluctantly accept Title II only because a “massive federal takeover of local government to prevent violence and threats against, and extralegal harassment of, those who chose to integrate” would have been “completely impractical.” Undoubtedly so.

But why does that exhaust the options? Why assume government is the only salvation? That’s an odd position, indeed, for a libertarian. Professor Bernstein does not so much as mention another strategy for ending racial discrimination in public accommodations: direct nonviolent social action by the people affected and those in sympathy with them.

We can’t dismiss that as impractical because it had been working several years before Title II was enacted. Beginning in 1960 sit-ins and other Gandhi-style confrontations were desegregating department-store lunch counters throughout the South. No laws had to be passed or repealed. Social pressure—the public shaming of bigots—was working…

…Title II, in other words, was unnecessary. But worse, it was detrimental…

…The social campaign for equality that was desegregating the South was transmogrified when it was diverted to Washington. Focus then shifted from the grassroots to a patronizing white political elite in Washington that had scurried to the front of the march and claimed leadership…

…Libertarians need not shy away from the question, “Do you mean that whites should have been allowed to exclude blacks from their lunch counters?” Libertarians can answer proudly, “No. They should not have been allowed to do that. They should have been stopped—not by the State, which can’t be trusted, but by nonviolent social action on behalf of equality.”

So in other words, going beyond social pressure (and boycotts, etc.) to change business owners’ treatment of others based on race, and instead using the armed power of the federal government to force private businesses to change was the beginning of an ever-increasing mountain of laws and regulations and further anti-discrimination laws that have actually caused our society to go the other way, as far as actually causing regressive attitudes and intrusions. For example, anti-discrimination has become “affirmative action,” in which people who are not qualified for a job or for admissions to college nevertheless get hired or admitted (because of their race, etc.) over others who are more qualified (which in itself is discrimination, racial, ethnic or otherwise, and violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act!). And I’m sure there have been plenty of restaurant or hotel owners or managers who have felt compelled to allow someone on their premises that they might otherwise not have wanted to allow, not based on race or ethnicity, but based on the patrons’ behaviors, lack or sobriety or their appearance, but didn’t reject such patrons out of fear of accusations of discrimination or fear of lawsuits.

People who own a business, whether it be a “public accommodations” business or not, have a right to be free from the aggression and coercion of others. The law against theft and trespass really is absolute — or ought to be — and can’t be compromised for any reason including well-meaning social good or “social justice.” People have a right to their private property and that their voluntary associations and voluntary contracts not be violated by anyone.

The real civil rights are with the individual, who has a right to be free from the aggression or coercion of others, whether it be one’s own person or one’s private property, home or business. Unfortunately, that right to be free from the aggression of others has turned into, via “civil rights” the right (or more accurately, power) of people to force themselves into someone else’s private property. That’s trespassing. I know that I’m in the minority who believe that laws against theft and trespassing must be absolute. You can’t say that only some trespassing is forbidden in society, but other trespassing — forcing oneself onto someone else’s private property or into someone’s private business against his will, without consent — is acceptable. I don’t think so.

Jacob Hornberger pointed out regarding the Rand Paul-Civil rights Act controversy that the people on the left would say that private homeowners have a right to decide who can go into their private home based on any reason, but not private business owners, because of the left’s problem with free enterprise and profit.

The left also have a problem with the idea of someone having complete control over one’s own property, as well as one’s own business, even one’s own life as an individual. That is why most of the left are collectivists and not individualists.

The anti-discrimination laws and “civil rights” laws, like zoning and other State intrusions into private property, are of a fascist system. While socialism is public ownership of property and the means of production, fascism is State control over privately owned property and the means of production. Those systems which violate private property rights contrast with capitalism, which is private ownership and control over property and the means of production. Capitalism, free markets, voluntary exchange, whatever you want to call it, is the only system that protects liberty, the rights of the individual, the right to one’s own person and to one’s own justly acquired property, the right of freedom of association and freedom of contract, the right to be free from the aggression of your neighbors, from criminals, from all others, especially the right to be free from the aggression of the State. Fascism, communism, and socialism are all systems in which the aggressions and intrusions by others are institutionalized.

But in the end, private property is private property, and we need to get rid of all the intrusions that federal, state and local governments impose on individuals and private property owners. And that includes the fascist zoning laws, which, as Sheldon Richman made reference to, might have been used in the 1960s South by local government officials to threaten non-biased private businesses to force them to discriminate against black Americans. That would be where the private business owners’ right to bear arms comes in — to protect them and their black customers from the violence of local officials.

Tony Cartalucci: US Intel Director Prepares Public for False Flag Event

The Daily Bell: Facebook IPO Is US Intel Operation?

Michael Rozeff: Dishonest Pro-War Bias from the MSM

Butler Shaffer: Herr Panetta’s Diktat

Jörg Guido Hülsmann: The Political Economy of Moral Hazard (2008)

Arthur Silber: Obama “bamboozled” into war? Barack Obama knows exactly what he’s doing

Gene Healy: Hassling the Innocent Is TSA’s Specialty

Kevin Carson: Why the State Will Fail

Pat Buchanan: Obama Sandbags the Archbishop

Gary North: Ben Bernanke: The Official Counterfeiter

Economic Collapse Blog: Making Money on Poverty: JP Morgan Makes Bigger Profits When the Number of Americans on Food Stamps Goes Up

Justin Raimondo: Iraq in Retrospect: What Did We Accomplish?

The American Dream Blog: Have You Ever …

JP Moore: 50 Best Ron Paul Posters

Patrick Cockburn: “Long Embargoes Kill More People Than Brief Wars”: The Ongoing War on Iran

Jacob Hornberger: Restoring Freedom, Peace, and Prosperity

Eric Giunta: The Bishops Are Wrong and Have No One But Themselves to Blame for Obama’s Persecution of Catholics

William Anderson: Duke University’s Eternal Bonfire of the Vanities

Antony Mueller: Inflation Targeting Hits the Wall

Here are some additional comments on why the Left (and everyone else) should oppose a regulated economy just as much as they oppose governmental intrusions into their personal lives.

One thing that those who support more regulations of private businesses don’t understand is that, the more regulations (that is, arbitrary rules, mandates and dictates given by government bureaucrats) there are, the more power you are giving to the armed agents of government to enforce those regulations, be they local police, FBI, SEC, FTC, etc. Just look at what Gibson Guitar had to endure, with S.W.A.T. team raids and government theft of the company’s property, and what Rawsome Foods suffered at the hands of the bureaucracy police because some people happen to prefer raw milk rather than the chemical-laden crap we buy at the local grocer.

This fascism of bureaucracy is only getting worse, as that is what can be expected when you abandon the ideas of individual rights, property rights and the rule of law, which is exactly what before-the-fact, presumption-of-guilt arbitrary government regulations, bureaucratic red tape and reporting requirements do. And this applies to the financial sector as well. There is no need for a psychopathic, fanatically bureaucratized, Soviet-like Dodd-Frank monstrosity, when all you really have to do is go by the rule of law.

For the financial crisis that we have had to endure in recent years, if there were actual free markets in banking, financing and housing, and no government mandates and bailouts, and under the rule of law that actually punishes theft and fraud, we would not have the problems our society has now. Some people on blogs and in articles recently have been calling such a situation (a situation that would be approved of by Thomas Jefferson et al. were they around today, by the way) “utopian,” but it actually is those who are calling for more and more nanny-state regulations and intrusions who are the utopians, as though the never-ending growth in regulations and intrusions that treat the population like babies and like criminals in their obedience to dumb, non-productive bureaucrats will finally solve problems.

No, Dodd-Frank and other intrusions calls for more bureaus and more bureaucrats, and gives more power to more police, FBI, and so on. With cases like Rawsome Foods and Gibson Guitars, and various “insider trading” laws and other made-up “crimes,” it only gives the armed agents of government more excuses to get off on their power trips in their raids and their more recent Nazi-like tactics. The police state that we have now isn’t just evident with the ‘Occupy’ movement, traffic fascism and the education system, but with all sorts of businesses in which people are just trying to make a living and have a right to be left alone and a right to be presumed innocent until actually suspected of some actual crime.

Further, the more regulations you have, and the more costly and intrusive they are, the more damaging they are economically to smaller businesses and those just starting out in their fields, and just plain discouraging of those who were merely considering entering the business world. And the more protective such regulations are of the more established businesses who can afford the extra lawyers, lobbyists, and, of course, those campaign contributions for the Congresspeople to vote for legislation to restrict smaller businesspeople and entrepreneurs, and that will help those established businesses in protecting their high profits.

Besides the police state that further regulations enhance, and the government-protectionism of established businesses, on a more fundamental level it is a matter of rights. Individuals have a right to live and right to liberty, and have a right to be free from the aggression and intrusion of others. This means more specifically that individuals have a right “to be secure” in their persons, property and effects from intrusions by others. People have a right to own their own lives, and that includes the right to own their labor, the energy and effort they themselves exert in order to be productive. The individual is the initial rightful owner of one’s labor, until one trades one’s labor with an employer, a customer or client in a mutually-beneficial, voluntary contract.

For some reason, some people seem to think that your labor is initially owned by your community in which you live or by the collective or the population in general. Those are the people who believe that the individual is owned by the collective and exists to serve the collective’s needs. However, the truth is that such a destructive philosophy, on which many of our current “laws” and regulations are based, is directly violating of the rights of the individual: the right of self-ownership, the right to be secure in one’s person, property and effects, and the right to use one’s own labor and productivity as one sees fit to sustain one’s own life.

People have a right to establish voluntary contracts with others, and those contracts are private contracts and they are only the business of those parties involved in such contracts. That applies to employer-employee contracts, private contractors dealing with clients, sales people dealing with customers, etc. For some reason, there are people who don’t like the idea of that kind of freedom, that kind of voluntaryism amongst free, consenting individuals, and that such contracts are really owned by the community and that the community has a right to know what the terms of private contracts are and even have a right to demand specific terms of contracts. And they believe that they have a right to a certain take on those contracts and/or profits from any transactions (via the State). But such demands, such takings are really intrusions into those contracts of others, and really amount to acts of trespass and theft (via the State).

There is also the idea of the government demanding information from you regarding your personal life or your economic life. This demanding of private information comes from the idea that people are guilty until they prove themselves innocent by allowing such governmental intrusions. That goes against the idea of presumption of innocence and the right to be secure in one’s person, property and effects. Intrusions are trespasses. Remember, if it’s wrong for your neighbors to intrude in your private affairs, then it’s wrong for the government to do so.

I know, a lot of people have been indoctrinated for generations and generations to believe otherwise, but no, if you believe in the rule of law, and you believe in true justice and living in a peaceful society, you have to decide whether only some acts of trespass and theft should be considered criminal, or whether all such acts are criminal. Unfortunately, our society has allowed the community and the State to encroach themselves into private people’s private personal and economic matters, in the name of this or that, when in reality, these intrusions are just institutionalized criminality. And at the same time, we have laws upon laws upon laws that make up phony crimes, in which people minding their own business are persecuted by their neighbors via government and police. Amerika has become an inside out, upside down world of a bizarre Orwellian nature.

Now, I would like to address this ignorant ideology of “soak the rich.” For some reason, some people seem to think that an individual’s right to one’s life and self-ownership, including the right to sell one’s labor and property as one sees fit, and the right to the fruits of one’s labor and the right to one’s justly acquired property, become diminished rights the more wealth one has. That is, for example, if someone accumulates $100,000, then one has less of a right to that wealth than someone who has accumulated $1,000. And that the neighbors or the community has a right or ought to be empowered to take more of the first individual’s wealth then the second individual’s wealth.

So the more wealth one honestly accumulates, the less he actually owns it and the more the community, one’s neighbors, can claim ownership of it? No, that just goes against the concept of a society forbidding aggression, and against the moral principles of private property and the rule of law. Just who are the neighbors to make a claim on that wealth without the consent of the owner? What’s the difference between those neighbors claiming such wealth via government force and those people just stealing it themselves by force? A society that says that some taking of private property is allowed by law is a society that is doomed to degenerate morally, and that is what we have today.

There is a control freakishness of some people in society, in which they must give orders and make demands on others, to reveal personal information and to open up bank accounts and businesses to government snoopers, and there are those control freaks who are just compelled to forcibly enter the private homes and businesses of others, this need to be intrusive. There is a covetousness of some people who must have what others have and take it from them by force. All these trespasses and thefts have had their rationalizations throughout the decades, but they are still thefts and trespasses, and it is still covetousness, regardless how it is rationalized.

“But, it’s for the poor,” etc. Actually, it has been these government mandates, regulations, reporting requirements, fees, licensure, minimum wage laws, union protectionism, etc. that have been stealing from the poor (as Jacob Hornberger noted recently here and here), stealing their opportunities by restricting their entering into the work force or from starting a small business, and so forth. It’s not “for the poor,” it’s for the government bureaucrats, and to protect the Establishment.

My earlier post on this issue included a list of links for further reading.

I hope that Ron Paul does not compromise on his principles of morality, private property, freedom of association and freedom of contract as Paul Craig Roberts requests of him on behalf of getting more votes from the Left. What we need is more freedom. Freedom begets economic prosperity and higher standard of living for the most number of people in a society.

Ron Holland: Reviewing The Poison Plum: The Rest of the Story About Plum Island

Jack Mullen: South Carolina sheriff’s defense of the right to self-defense

Karen De Coster: How the Public Schools Keep Your Child a Prisoner of the State

Kurt Nimmo: Government School: Six Year Old Guilty of Sexual Assault After Playing Tag

Hans Sennholz: The Supply of Labor (1984)

Hiroaki Sato: Aggression born of American ‘exceptionalism’

John Glaser: Obama Denies ‘Huge Number of Civilian Casualties’ in Drone War

George Monbiot: With its deadly drones, the US is fighting a coward’s war

RT interviews Lew Rockwell on Davos, the bankster elites, and Frau Merkel

Russ Baker: Wag the SEAL

Madison Ruppert: Police usage of armored surveillance vehicles becoming more widespread

Lucy Steigerwald: The Peacenik Republican

Jacob Hornberger: Pre-Election Euphoria

Walter Williams: Obama’s Racial Politics

Michael Rozeff: Reject the Ruling Psychopathology on Iran