Saturday, December 31, 2011

Ron Paul: Iran Would be Justified in Closing Strategic Waterway in Response to Sanctions | CNSnews.com

Kudos to the author for not branding Ron an "isolationist":
As Iran ratcheted up its rhetoric Thursday about closing the Strait of Hormuz, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul revisited his earlier criticisms of Western policy towards Tehran, adding that Iran would be justified in cutting off the strategic waterway in response to sanctions.

Paul’s views on Iran and other foreign policy issues – essentially a noninterventionist, anti-war approach – have sparked clashes on several occasions during the GOP presidential primary season, and are attracting growing scrutiny as the Iowa caucus looms.
Ron Paul: Iran Would be Justified in Closing Strategic Waterway in Response to Sanctions | CNSnews.com

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The most humble Ron Paul quote ever

"This country is in a revolution. They're sick and tired of what they're getting, and I happen to be lucky enough to be part of it."
Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), quoted in Bill Moyers Journal

Our Fear of Iran-Iraq Shiite Government Partnership Makes Perfect Sense

So let me get this straight:

(1) We invaded Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, who suppressed the Shiite minority over the years.
(2) We are now scared that the Shiite-led government will collaborate with the Shiite Government of Iran.

That makes perfect sense.

According to the Daily Telegraph:
Lt Gen Firouzabadi added that Iran was now "ready to expand its military and security ties with Iraq."
It continues:
US analysts have expressed concern that Iran could exploit the vacuum left by the US withdrawal to bolster links with Iraq's Shiite-led government.
New readers, please note the irony.

Nicholas Kramer on what goes into raising a child

When you think about the volume of love, sweat, and tears that go into raising a child, it is almost unfathomable to think that any life can just be snuffed out. Even more astonishing is the fact that each human life is quite literally the product of the entire history of the human race. When any person is killed, a direct line going back to the very first human that walked the earth is erased from our future. We will never know the artists, poets, and peacemakers who have never lived because their parents were killed in senseless wars.
Nicholas Kramer, Are We Gods?

Is Hamas Going Non-Violent? « Antiwar.com Blog

Jane’s, an internationally respected British security and defense risk-analysis firm, has recently reported that Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, is on “the brink of renouncing armed resistance and moving to a policy of nonviolent resistance to Israel.”
Is Hamas Going Non-Violent? « Antiwar.com Blog

Monday, December 26, 2011

Video: Cenk Ugyur Has It Right « Antiwar.com Blog


Cenk Ugyur Has It Right « Antiwar.com Blog

Walter Williams on the Racist Origins of the Davis-Bacon Act

In the context of the 2012 presidential campaign, Ron Paul should explain the racist origins of American minimum wage legislation and add a repeal of minimum wage laws to his platform since in an earlier debate he said he advocates the repeal of minimum wage laws.
The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 is a law with racist origins and broad congressional support. During the 1931 legislative debate over the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates super-minimum (mostly union) wages on federally financed or assisted construction projects, racist intents were obvious. Rep. John Cochran, D-Mo., supported the bill, saying he had "received numerous complaints … about Southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South." Rep. Clayton Allgood, D-Ala., complained: "Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor. … That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country." Rep. William Upshaw, D-Ga., spoke of the "superabundance or large aggregation of Negro labor." American Federation of Labor President William Green said, "Colored labor is being sought to demoralize wage rates." The Davis-Bacon Act remains law. Modern rhetoric in support of it has changed, but its effects haven't. It continues to discriminate against nonunion construction labor. Most black construction workers are in the nonunion sector.
Walter Williams, Economic Fairness

Consumers Paid More for Food in 2011, CPI Data Show | CNSnews.com

This trend will favor Ron Paul in 2012.
The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS) show that despite some decreases in the price of certain types of food, U.S. consumers paid more to eat overall in 2011.
Consumers Paid More for Food in 2011, CPI Data Show | CNSnews.com

Friday, December 23, 2011

Leo Tolstoi: If Christianity is true, then patriotism must 'by every means' be rooted out

If patriotism be good, then Christianity, as giving peace, is an idle dream, and the sooner we root it out, the better. But if Christianity really gives peace, and if we really want peace, then patriotism is a survival of barbarism, and it is not only wrong to excite and develop it, as we do now, but it ought to be rooted out by every means, by preaching, persuasion, contempt, ridicule. If Christianity be truth, and we wish to live in peace, then we must more than cease to take pleasure in the power of our country; we must rejoice in the weakening of that power, and help thereto.
Leo Tolstoi, Patriotism, or Peace?

Gibbs & Gibbs give a cautionary note on the Constitution

"As great as the Constitution is, and as much as it was influenced by the Bible and by the Godly men who wrote it, we must never put that document on the same level as the Bible. The Bible should be the only source upon which Christians base their duties and responsibilities toward both God and government. The Bible alone is to be the exclusive source of a Christian's belief about the role of government--nothing else. A Christian should not base his beliefs upon a source that is less than absolute. Anything other than the Bible is a flawed source."
Gibbs & Gibbs, Understanding the Constitution: Ten Things Every Christian Should Know About the Supreme Law of the Land

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Ron Paul's Inaugural Address, Written by His First (and Only) Speechwriter | Godfather Politics

In June of 1976, I was Ron Paul’s speechwriter. Shortly after I joined his staff as his newsletter writer and economic analyst, I recommended that he do what I had been doing for a year: buy a Code-A-Phone telephone answering machine and make a weekly 3-minute recording for people in his districts to call.
Ron Paul's Inaugural Address, Written by His First (and Only) Speechwriter | Godfather Politics

Sunday, December 18, 2011

A preview of the Paul-Obama debate



Ron Paul had Barack Obama's number in 2008 -- and he still does.

Quote from the 2008 clip above:
"Change" means nothing. It's just a word. And it's a cliche. And just to repeat it has no meaning. You have to say "what are you going to change?"

And I would argue: "You offer no change." You have the same foreign policy. You want more troops in Afghanistan. You're not talking about only going to war with a declaration. You don't want to deal with the monetary financial crisis in this country. You want to keep, you know, the system together for the benefit of banks and the big corporations and the politicians--you know, that argument.

And what kind of change do you have on social policy? Do you care about sick people using marijuana? I mean have you come out for that?

And I would just hit him hard on that he doesn't want change. He wants the status quo.

Christopher Hitchens on the Essence of Tyranny

“The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.”
Christopher Hitchens, quoted in Vanity Fair

Friday, December 16, 2011

Jacques Ellul on not being conformed to this world

"Nevertheless, over against involved Christians, we have to avoid falling into the trap of the dominant ideology of the day. As I have noted already, the church was monarchist under the kings, imperialist under Napoleon, and republican under the Republic, and now the church (the Protestant Church at least) is becoming socialist in France. This runs contrary to the orientation of Paul, namely, that we are not to be conformed to the ideas of the present world. Here is a first area in which anarchism can form a happy counterweight to the conformist flexibility of Christians."
Jacques Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Dem lawmaker blasts ‘Professor Obama’ as arrogant, alienating - The Hill's Congress Blog

After observing President Obama for the last three years, it has become obvious to me that the president might prefer to be a university professor rather than do the job he holds today. While he might not realize that he feels this way, the evidence is very clear to those who work with or watch him closely.
Dem lawmaker blasts ‘Professor Obama’ as arrogant, alienating - The Hill's Congress Blog

Ron Paul and Moshe Feiglin - The Hill's Pundits Blog

“[T]he state of Israel, with the GNP of a modern country, can easily do without aid that amounts to just one and one-half percent of its budget — aid for which Israel essentially surrenders its independence. Why do Israelis insist on developing a sense of imaginary dependence on the U.S. and Europe, specifically at the point that Israel is both economically and militarily vigorous? The answer to that question is not at all connected to Israel's military or economic capabilities. It is on a totally different plane.”
Ron Paul and Moshe Feiglin - The Hill's Pundits Blog

Doctors Remember What Newt Gingrich (and GOP) did in 1996

Writes Jane M. Orient, M.D.:
Newt Gingrich and other Republicans promise to repeal ObamaCare, but doctors remember what they did in 1996. Just after they “defeated” ClintonCare, they changed its name and enacted the very worst parts of it.
She continues:
Republicans evidently don’t read the bills either. They appeared to be shocked when I called this addendum to their attention, and its remarkable similarity to parts of the Clinton plan. In fact, parts were practically a verbatim “cut and paste.”
And again:
Gingrich is a long-time advocate of “health information technology” (HIT). American medicine makes use of computerization in many ways, but Gingrich thinks it lags far behind Wal-Mart, and that a massive electronic changeover would greatly reduce costs and improve quality. Many physicians urge caution, as HIT has serious potential hazards for patient safety as well as privacy. Gingrich and many others appear to want to impose rapid implementation of government-dictated technology from the top down, without waiting for the free market to pick the winners and losers.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

"I don’t believe in this right-wing humanism"

In response to an article I wrote on Iranian nuclear capabilities (or the lack thereof), a commenter attempted to take me to task, so I wrote the following (much more is in the link):
"I don’t believe in this right-wing humanism."
Read the rest of the comment here

N.T. Wright on why the Jubilee Project is not a 'top-down' panacea

"But this project can never be a way of Christians imposing a solution on the world from a great height. It will be a matter of Christians who are involved with finance and economics, with banking and business, with foreign policy and government wrestling with the issues, often in a Gethsemane-like anguish in which the pain of the world and the healing love of God are brought together in prayer--in articulate prayer.

How easier, metaphorically, to escape to Qumran and say you're just a private Christian paying your taxes, not wanting to get involved in international finance--or to compromise with the present system and hope things will work out somehow; or to embrace a shrill and shallow agenda which doesn't take seriously the depth of the problem.

Some of you here are called to live in that Gethsemane so that the healing love of God may reshape our world through you at a crucial and critical time."
N.T. Wright, Jesus as the World's True Light

William Lane Craig on Atheistic Anti-Humanism

"On atheism there isn't any reason to think that humanism is true. Humanism is a faith commitment to the value of human beings in an atheistic universe.

And here my sympathies are entirely with the atheistic anti-humanists; namely, given atheism, I just don't see any basis to affirm that humanism is true.

Humanism historically is rooted in Christianity. It is because we are made in the image of God that human beings have intrinsic moral worth and God-given human rights. But once you remove God from the picture then all you're left with is the blind evolutionary process with all its contingencies and variabilities and instabilities and no basis for affirming humanism is right after all."
William Lane Craig, Atheistic Anti-Humanism podcast

The podcast was a response to this article: The atheistic critique of humanism has been all but forgotten

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Ron Paul “Hardly” agrees with Herman Cain on Federal Reserve


Watch video here

Washington (GoinsReport.com) – When asked whether he agreed with GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain on his suggestion that Federal Reserve should go back to a single mandate focusing on price stability, GOP Presidential Candidate Ron Paul said that he “hardly” agrees.

Price stability refers to the concept that prices levels are constant enough that people won’t take into account price inflation when making decisions as a consumer – not that the value of the dollar will remain the same.

On numerous occasions this year, including at the CNN-Tea Party Republican debate in September and during a press conference with reporters at TeaCon 2011, Herman Cain said that he did not want to end the FED but return it to a single mandate where the central bank allegedly only focused on price stability.

During the CNN Tea Party debate in September, Cain said “For many, many decades the FED did its job when it was singularly focused on sound money.”

At TeaCon 2011 he said, “it [the FED] really needs to just focus on monetary price stability the way it did from 1913 all the way up to the year 2000. It got off track when the federal national debt hit 14 trillion dollars and when foreign countries cooled off on buying our debt.”

After reading the quotes from Herman Cain, GoinsReport.com asked Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) “Do you agree with that analysis and do you agree with his history?”

Paul said: “Well, hardly. He’s part of the Federal Reserve System and I want to get rid of it. So he’s trying to patch it up. No, I wouldn’t agree with it.”

The Texas congressman made his remarks Wednesday morning (Nov. 16) after the 29th Annual Monetary Policy conference in Washington, DC.

In his speech Paul was skeptical of the idea moving the FED’s dual mandate of using monetary policy to maximize employment and achieving price stability to a single mandate focusing on price stability alone.

“Since I don’t like the Fed, I’m not interested in worrying about what the mandate should be because they’re not going to do it anyway,” Paul said.

“They’re mandate is that they’re supposed to have full employment. They’re failing there. They’re supposed to have stable prices. They’re failing there. So why do we have any trust whatsoever in what they do,” he continued.

He added that “deep down in their hearts” their real goal is to accomplish the liquidation of debt with inflation.

“That’s not too hard to understand that if they can get 50 percent inflation rate in a year or two that takes our $15 trillion debt and cuts it in half,” Paul said.

In his speech, Paul said that he would not end the Federal Reserve in one day because it will “eventually shut itself down” when it destroys the currency. Rather he will work to break the FED’s monopoly on issuing currency by legalizing sound money including gold and silver and repealing legal tender laws.

“My idea is sort of a copy of what Hayek’s had talked about,” he said. “Why don’t we denationalize money, legalize competition, allow free markets to work, allow free market banking to work?”

He added that we should repeal taxes on gold and silver and even allow private mints to issue gold.

GoinsReport.com also asked Mark Calabria, a Cato Institute policy scholar in attendance, to give his opinion about Herman Cain’s statements about the Federal Reserve.

Calabria answered in two parts.

On Herman Cain’s timing of when the Federal Reserve abandoned a policy of price stability he said, “I would disagree somewhat in that particularly during the 60s and 70s we where seeing double-digit inflation. We certainly weren’t seeing a very good track record from the Federal Reserve.”

He added that because of the FED’s involvement in the Great Depression, which is still debated by economists today, “it would probably be generous to say that the FED has been a success even half the time it’s been around.”

In support of that, he highlighted the FED’s role in contributing to the real estate bubble and stock market bubble in the 1920s. He also said that problems the FED got into in 60s and 70s were a result of abandoning price stability as their primary goal.

Additionally, he said that he agreed with Cain’s comments that if the FED focused on price stability alone then they would do a better job.

Calabria said the FED got off track “long before” the U.S. national debt hit $14 trillion, a point it hit in late 2010, and when foreign countries slowed their purchases of U.S. debt. He added that when the debt started to skyrocket “they got even more off track.”

For him, the Phillips curve framework where “they believe that a little more inflation gets them a little less unemployment” took the FED off track. As an example, he cited the Federal Reserve cutting interests rates after the dot-com bubble and again after Sept.11 out of concern for reducing unemployment.

Calabria recently testified in October before the House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Committee on Financial Services which Paul serves as chairman.

At the TeaCon 2011 press conference, Cain also said that the Federal Reserve System is not unconstitutional – a point in which Congressman Paul would sharply disagree with as well.

Rick Santorum has also said that he would, like Herman Cain, focus on bringing the Federal Reserve to a single mandate.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

NB Interview: Peter Schiff on Media and the Economy, OWS | NewsBusters.org

From the NewsBusters blog:
For conservatives, one of the bright spots of the Occupy Wall Street protests was when millionaire investor Peter Schiff went down to Zuccotti Park with video camera and a sign reading "I Am The 1% - Let's Talk."

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of speaking with Schiff by telephone in a sweeping interview about his experience at OWS, how the financial media are doing, and ending with his rather frightening view of the economy and the future of our nation (video follows with transcript)
NB Interview: Peter Schiff on Media and the Economy, OWS | NewsBusters.org

Video: Cenk Uygur on Ron Paul: 'Ron Paul is Coming'

Video: Ron Paul Ad - Newt Gingrich Serial Hypocrisy 60 second

Monday, December 5, 2011

Ron Paul: 'I didn't know Trump had the ability to anoint people'

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul took a bit of a swipe at Donald Trump Sunday, saying he didn't quite understand the reality star's power status in the 2012 election.

"I don't understand the marching to his office. I didn't know he had the ability to lay on hands and anoint people," said Paul on CNN's "State of the Union."
Ron Paul Jabs Donald Trump: 'I Didn't Know He Had The Ability To Anoint People' | Huffington Post

Farmers Worry New Labor Rules Will End Teen Jobs | CNSnews.com

"Most kids my age don't even have jobs," said Taylor, who assists her father at one southwest Oklahoma farm and her grandparents at another. "We already know what hard work is."

Many other young kids won't be allowed to do those kinds of chores if the U.S. Labor Department approves new rules on children working in agriculture. While the Mullers would likely be exempt because it's a family business, the proposed rules would prohibit most children under age 16 from driving tractors, using power equipment, working with livestock in certain circumstances and doing work at heights over 6 feet.
Farmers Worry New Labor Rules Will End Teen Jobs | CNSnews.com

The Campaign for Liberty Article Archive


The Original Campaign for Liberty Article Archive

Monday, November 28, 2011

Ron Paul and the new age of political culture - The Hill's Pundits Blog

Ignore the Paul/Kucinich third party advice lower in the article:
Ron Paul brings to government culture today a vision as complete and comprehensive as that which Martin Luther brought to religious culture. He is close to Luther in this regard as well: Ron Paul, like Martin Luther, dispels the worship of idols. Europe could not conceive of life without Roman dominance in the 1500s even as it descended into massive corruption. Until Luther, when half of the European establishment flipped. Paul and his libertarian cadre disdainfully view the political establishment of Washington, D.C., and it may be about to flip.
Ron Paul and the new age of political culture - The Hill's Pundits Blog

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Dubious Racist Origins of The Davis-Bacon Act

In 1927, Rep. Robert Bacon (R.-N.Y.)--whose pet issue was protecting America’s racial "homogeneity"--introduced what became the Davis-Bacon Act after a contractor employed African-American workers from Alabama to build a Veteran's Bureau hospital in his district. The "neighboring community," Bacon reported, was "very upset," as were local unions.
David Bernstein, Bush 'The Emancipator?'

Video: Families Living In Cars

Why People Become Rich

Piggybacking off of Walter Williams:
People become rich because of the democracy of the free-market. Steve Jobs didn't become rich because he systematically expropriated the incomes of the millions of people across the world who bought his products. Steve Jobs became rich because he systematically offered products that improved the lives of those very people.

My Article Featured on Ron Paul 2012 Website


Many thanks to Charleston City Paper Blogger Jack Hunter for picking up on this. Read the blog post here.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Ron Paul's 1987 Resignation Letter to the RNC

Ron Paul excoriates the Reagan regime (thank you Wikisource):
As a lifelong Republican, it saddens me to have to write this letter. My parents believed in the Republican Party and its free enterprise philosophy, and that's the way I was brought up. At age 21, in 1956, I cast my first vote for Ike and the entire Republican slate.

Because of frustration with the direction in which the country was going, I became a political activist and ran for the U.S. Congress in 1974. Even with Watergate, my loyalty, optimism, and hope for the future were tied to the Republican Party and its message of free enterprise, limited government, and balanced budgets.

Eventually I was elected to the U.S. Congress four times as a Republican. This permitted me a first-hand look at the interworkings of the U.S. Congress, seeing both the benefits and partisan frustrations that guide its shaky proceedings. I found that although representative government still exists, special interest control of the legislative process clearly presents a danger to our constitutional system of government.

In 1976 I was impressed with Ronald Reagan's program and was one of the four members of Congress who endorsed his candidacy. In 1980, unlike other Republican office holders in Texas, I again supported our President in his efforts.

Since 1981, however, I have gradually and steadily grown weary of the Republican Party's efforts to reduce the size of the federal government. Since then Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party have given us skyrocketing deficits, and astoundingly a doubled national debt. How is it that the party of balanced budgets, with control of the White House and Senate, accumulated red ink greater than all previous administrations put together? Tip O'Neill, although part of the problem, cannot alone be blamed.

Tax revenues are up 59 percent since 1980. Because of our economic growth? No. During Carter's four years, we had growth of 37.2 percent; Reagan's five years have given us 30.7 percent. The new revenues are due to four giant Republican tax increases since 1981.

All republicans rightly chastised Carter for his $38 billion deficit. But they ignore or even defend deficits of $220 billion, as government spending has grown 10.4 percent per year since Reagan took office, while the federal payroll has zoomed by a quarter of a million bureaucrats.

Despite the Supply-Sider-Keynesian claim that "deficits don't matter,"the debt presents a grave threat to our country. Thanks to the President and Republican Party, we have lost the chance to reduce the deficit and the spending in a non-crisis fashion. Even worse, big government has been legitimized in a way the Democrats never could have accomplished. It was tragic to listen to Ronald Reagan on the 1986 campaign trail bragging about his high spending on farm subsidies, welfare, warfare, etc., in his futile effort to hold on to control of the Senate.

Instead of cutting some of the immeasurable waste in the Department of Defense, it has gotten worse, with the inevitable result that we are less secure today. Reagan's foreign aid expenditures exceed Eisenhower's, Kennedy's, Johnson's, Nixon's, Ford's, and Carter's put together. Foreign intervention has exploded since 1980. Only an end to military welfare for foreign governments plus a curtailment of our unconstitutional commitments abroad will enable us really to defend ourselves and solve our financial problems.

Amidst the failure of the Gramm-Rudman gimmick, we hear the President and the Republican Party call for a balanced-budget ammendment and a line-item veto. This is only a smokescreen. President Reagan, as governor of California, had a line-item veto and virtually never used it. As President he has failed to exercise his constitutional responsibility to veto spending. Instead, he has encouraged it.

Monetary policy has been disastrous as well. The five Reagan appointees to the Federal Reserve Board have advocated even faster monetary inflation than Chairman Volcker, and this is the fourth straight year of double-digit increases. The chickens have yet to come home to roost, but they will, and America will suffer from a Reaganomics that is nothing but warmed-over Keynesianism.

Candidate Reagan in 1980 correctly opposed draft registration. Yet when he had the chance to abolish it, he reneged, as he did on his pledge to abolish the Departments of Education and Energy, or to work against abortion.

Under the guise of attacking drug use and money laundering, the Republican Administration has systematically attacked personal and financial privacy. The effect has been to victimize innocent Americans who wish to conduct their private lives without government snooping. (Should people really be put on a suspected drug dealer list because they transfer $3,000 at one time?) Reagan's urine testing of Americans without probable cause is a clear violation of our civil liberties, as are his proposals for extensive "lie detector" tests.

Under Reagan, the IRS has grown bigger, richer, more powerful, and more arrogant. In the words of the founders of our country, our government has "sent hither swarms" of tax gatherers "to harass our people and eat out their substance." His officers jailed the innocent George Hansen, with the

President refusing to pardon a great American whose only crime was to defend the Constitution. Reagan's new tax "reform" gives even more power to the IRS. Far from making taxes fairer or simpler, it deceitfully raises more revenue for the government to waste.

Knowing this administration's record, I wasn't surprised by its Libyan disinformation campaign, Israeli-Iranian arms-for-hostages swap, or illegal funding of the Contras. All this has contributed to my disenchantment with the Republican Party, and helped me make up my mind.

I want to totally disassociate myself from the policies that have given us unprecedented deficits, massive monetary inflation, indiscriminate military spending, an irrational and unconstitutional foreign policy, zooming foreign aid, the exaltation of international banking, and the attack on our personal liberties and privacy.

After years of trying to work through the Republican Party both in and out of government, I have reluctantly concluded that my efforts must be carried on outside the Republican Party. Republicans know that the Democratic agenda is dangerous to our political and economic health. Yet, in the past six years Republicans have expanded its worst aspects and called them our own. The Republican Party has not reduced the size of government. It has become big government's best friend.

If Ronald Reagan couldn't or wouldn't balance the budget, which Republican leader on the horizon can we possibly expect to do so? There is no credibility left for the Republican Party as a force to reduce the size of government. That is the message of the Reagan years.

I conclude that one must look to other avenues if a successful effort is ever to be achieved in reversing America's direction.

I therefore resign my membership in the Republican Party and enclose my membership card.
Ron Paul, "Dear Frank" Letter (1987)

Video: Liberal Democrat Alan Colmes Defends Ron Paul against Newt Gingrich and Neocon defender

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Gary North on the Left's "Equalitarians"

Any attempt to equalize outcomes through political power is doomed. The Left's equalitarians are willing to accept inequality in academia, where they think they have an advantage, but not in the economy, where less intelligent people can outperform them.
Gary North, The Super-Smart Do Super-Well, but Not in Every Field

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Michael Barone implies Dems switched shoes with GOP on military interventionism

From 1917 to 1968, the Democrats were the more militarily interventionist of our two parties. Since 1968, they have been the party more likely to oppose military intervention. That transformation, whatever you think of it, was the work of the peace movement.
Michael Barone, Tea Partiers, Like Peaceniks, Upset Political Order

Video: Nigel Farage: "I want you all fired"

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Fed Now Largest Owner of U.S. Gov’t Debt—Surpassing China | CNSnews.com

In its latest monthly report, the Federal Reserve said that as of Sept. 28, it owned $1.665 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. That was more than double the $812 billion in U.S. Treasury securities the Fed said it owned as of Sept. 28, 2010.

Meanwhile, as of the end of this September, entities in mainland China owned $1.1483 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities, according to data published today by the U.S. Treasury Department. That was down slightly from the $1.1519 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities the Chinese owned as of the end of September 2010.

At the end of September 2010, the Chinese owned about $707 billion more in U.S. Treasury securities than the Fed owned at that time. At the end of September 2011, the Fed owned about $516.7 billion more in U.S. Treasury securities than the Chinese owned.
Fed Now Largest Owner of U.S. Gov’t Debt—Surpassing China | CNSnews.com

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Let's deflate the myth of Ronald Reagan

This from a comment thread on the Charleston Tea Party blog. Apparently, he compared Herman Cain to Ronald Reagan and I took him to task on it:
I think all these comparisons to Reagan are irrelevant to the young people who didn’t even know who he was. And besides Reagan may have had so-called leadership, but what did he lead us in to? And how far away did Reagan stray away from his conservative principles? Reagan was horrible on paper–and judged by traditional conservatism–and yet his myth still lives on today.

I think these Reagan comparisons will back fire when people read about his horrible record.

And I’ll give them a hand:

The Sad Legacy of Ronald Reagan
http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=488

The Reagan Fraud
http://mises.org/daily/5009

The Myth of Reaganomics
http://mises.org/daily/1544

The Reagan Phenomenon
http://mises.org/daily/5011

Monday, November 14, 2011

Video: The Funniest and Yet Most Accurate Ron Paul spoof video ever

The Funniest and yet most accurate Ron Paul spoof video ever. Brings me back to 99' when the Pokemon craze came over to the U.S. from Japan.

(A fan created it to help with the money bomb.)

Video: Herman Cain vs. Ron Paul On Economy



Ron Paul in 2002 and 2003 on the housing market.
Herman Cain on the "alleged housing bubble."

Cain: "Fed focused on price stability from 1914 to 2000;" Fact: 1914-1977


(GoinsReport.com) -- In mid-October, former Federal Reserve chairman Herman Cain mistakenly said that the Federal Reserve focused on price stability alone for a little more than three quarters of the 20th century, although by law the dual mandate law didn't come into effect until the late 1970s.

Update: The Fed didn't actually do a good job of focusing on price stability as the high inflation in the 70s attest.

Video: Young Peter Schiff Discusses the Tech Bubble in 2002

Video: Schiff and Woods on Government Nonsense


CBS shamefully shafted Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul in the foreign policy debate - The Hill's Pundits Blog

It is not the place of those who cover presidential candidates as journalists to censor those candidates they do not respect or like. It is their job to present voters and viewers with a full choice and diversity of opinion rather than tell viewers whom they are allowed to watch, and whom they are allowed to vote for.
CBS shamefully shafted Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul in the foreign policy debate - The Hill's Pundits Blog

Cain: 'I would be scared if Ron Paul was President'

From Talking Points Memo:
Of all his opponents it was Ron Paul that disturbed Cain the most.

“I would be scared if he was President,” Cain said.

Cain explained that he is “puzzled by what [Paul] stands for. Puzzled by some of his extreme statements, like ‘End the Fed!’ ‘End everything!’ Can’t we fix something?”
That's precisely Herman Cain's problem. He's approaching government like business. But as Mises point out, government can not be run like a business.

Second, with all the Reagan-invoking Cain has been doing, he should be made aware that Reagan was for ending the Department of Education in his campaign platform; he just never did it.

Murray Rothbard's Typewriter -- by Gary North

Rothbard was a lucid writer. Few scholars have ever combined the paraphernalia of academia — footnotes galore — with the ability to write clearly. Rothbard added effective rhetoric; his writing was lively, which has never been common among economists. I once wrote that if the Nobel Prize in economics were awarded for clarity — as John Wayne aptly put it, "that'll be the day" — Rothbard should win it.
Gary North, Murray Rothbard's Typewriter

Ron Paul had good words for Pope John Paul II

From a 2005 column:
Just two years ago conservatives were busy scolding the Pope for his refusal to back our invasion of Iraq. One conservative media favorite even made the sickening suggestion that the Pope was the enemy of the United States because he would not support our aggression in the Middle East. The Pontiff would not ignore the inherent contradiction in being pro-life and pro-war, nor distort just war doctrine to endorse attacking a nation that clearly posed no threat to America — and conservatives resented it. September 11th did not change everything, and the Pope understood that killing is still killing. The hypocritical pro-war conservatives lauding him today have very short memories.

Liberals also routinely denounced the Pope for maintaining that Catholicism, like all religions, has rules that cannot simply be discarded to satisfy the cultural trends of the time. The political left has been highly critical of the Pope's positions on abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, feminism, and contraception. Many liberals frankly view Catholicism as an impediment to the fully secular society they hope to create.

Both conservatives and liberals cannot understand that the Pope's pronouncements were theological, not political. He was one of the few humans on earth who could not be bullied or threatened by any government. He was a man of God, not a man of the state. He was not a policy maker, but rather a steward of long-established Catholic doctrine. His mission was to save souls, not serve the political agendas of any nation, party, or politician.

To the secularists, this was John Paul II's unforgivable sin — he placed service to God above service to the state. Most politicians view the state, not God, as the supreme ruler on earth. They simply cannot abide a theology that does not comport with their vision of unlimited state power. This is precisely why both conservatives and liberals savaged John Paul II when his theological pronouncements did not fit their goals. But perhaps their goals simply were not godly.
Theology, Not Politics

Dr. Brown asks about Gingrich; I answer "Paul"

Ask Dr. Brown asks (via Facebook):
Would you vote for Newt Gingrich as president? On the one hand, he has tremendous wisdom, is a real statesman, and argues for the importance of God and faith in the nation. On the other hand, he's had two affairs and is on his third marriage. Your thoughts?
Some random person:
Newt Gingrich is the only chance for defeating Obama in either debate or personal charisma.
My response:
No Gingrich is not the "only chance for defeating Obama in...debate." Congressman Ron Paul has Obama beat in a debate on economics alone and will call him out for his lawlessness and defiance of the constitution from health care to foreign policy. He also has him beat for consistency and honesty.

Dr. Brown I ask that you invite Dr. Thomas Woods onto your show to discuss the Christian Case for Ron Paul. (tomwoods.com to contact him)

A Christian Case for Ron Paul:
http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/woods-on-iowa-radio-the-christian-case-for-ron-paul/

Letter to the Catholic Community on Behalf of Ron Paul:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods83.html

Letter to the Protestant Community on Behalf of Ron Paul:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance127.html

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Video: Greeks abandoning cash resort to barter

A barter society emerges in Greece

I believe in the following possibility, at least for some people:
One day, there may be no jobs to be had, which means we’ll have to create our own jobs. And unlike most of today’s laborers, we’ll actually have to produce something of value that can then be traded to others for something else of value.

Start preparing for tomorrow’s barter economy today.
Barter Society Emerges in Greece As Crisis Deepens

How to Eliminate Social Security and Medicare

If we want to protect the value of individual human life, particularly in old age, when it is most vulnerable, we must reverse direction and start dismantling Social Security and Medicare, two potentially deadly collectivist institutions. We must restore to the individual the responsibility and the power to determine his own future through forethought and saving. The individual must have his own individual property with the freedom to use it for his own well-being, as he sees fit. Government officials must be barred from the process.
How to Eliminate Social Security and Medicare

Monday, November 7, 2011

CBS article casts Obama and Bush foreign policy in same light; Says Ron Paul is different

This article is amazing because it's not just saying that he's distinguished himself from Obama and Bush. It's putting Bush and Obama's foreign policy in the same bucket.
Paul’s remarks put him at odds with both the Bush and Obama administrations; U.S. policy has relied heavily on sanctions and diplomacy to try to convince Tehran to abandon its atomic program. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.
Ron Paul: Iran’s Nuke Program ‘Blown Out Of Proportion’ « CBS Washington

Jonah Goldberg on Isolationism

From the NRO:
“Isolationism is a very complex historical label that is almost always used either in ignorance (often well-intentioned) or part of an ideological agenda.”
Jonah Goldberg, Don't Call It Isolationism

ABC News: Foreign Policy Experts Agree With Ron Paul’s Controversial Foreign Policy

Ron Paul is often chided by his Republican opponents for his extreme views on American foreign policy. His calls for ending all foreign wars and shutting hundreds of military bases across the globe have drawn howls from his GOP rivals, who have labeled the moves...
Foreign Policy Experts Agree With Ron Paul’s Controversial Foreign Policy

Related articles:
Russian FM warns against any mil... JPost - Iranian Threat - News
Obama must stop Netanyahu, Barak from attacking Iran - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Ron Paul: Offer Iran Friendship, Not Sanctions | CNSnews.com

See the video Here. Story Below.

Ron Paul: Offer Iran Friendship, Not Sanctions | CNSnews.com

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Herman Cain: Nein, Nein, Nein! by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com

The conservative movement of today is a Bizarro World version of the historical doctrine of the American right, which up until the 1950s was anti-imperialist as well as anti-government. It was interventionist liberals, from the time of FDR to the Truman era, who invented the smear term “isolationist” to describe conservatives opposed to foreign adventurism. Today, our Bizarro “conservatives” hurl that epithet knowing neither its pedigree nor its real meaning, and, although they swear by the Constitution, they ignore the Founders’ advice when it comes to going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
Herman Cain: Nein, Nein, Nein! by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Video: Murray Rothbard on the Causes of Recessions

Ron Paul: Fed is finally ‘on the defensive’ - The Hill's Video

From The Hill:
“I’m attacking the status quo like never before,” he said. “I mean the whole entitlement system, and I think there’s a whole lot of support out there for what I’m talking about and they realize that and they’re not going to give me a boost because I’m challenging the whole banking system, the military industrial complex, the welfare state, our foreign policy. I want to go back to following strictly the Constitution.”
Ron Paul: Fed is finally ‘on the defensive’ - The Hill's Video

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

From Philomath to Polymath

I'm just a philomath trying to become a polymath.

Mises on Government Lust for Inflation and Credit Expansion

"It is a fable that governments interfered with banking in order to restrict the issue of fiduciary media and to prevent credit expansion. The idea that guided governments was, on the contrary, the lust for inflation and credit expansion. They privileged banks because they wanted to widen the limits that the unhampered market draws to credit expansion or because they were eager to open the treasury a source of revenue. For the most part both of these considerations motivated the authorities. . . . The establishment of free banking was never seriously considered because it would have been too efficient in restricting credit expansion" (p. 441).
Ludwig Von Mises, Quoted in Mises on Money

Monday, October 31, 2011

Gary North on the Enemies of the Gold Standard

"What all the enemies of the gold standard spurn as its main vice is precisely the same thing that in the eyes of the advocates of the gold standard is its main virtue, namely, its incompatibility with a policy of credit expansion. The nucleus of all the effusions of the anti-gold authors and politicians is the expansionist fallacy."
Gary North, Mises on Money

Paul would advocate the same foreign policy as the Founding Fathers

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."
Ron Paul: I Advocate the Same Foreign Policy the Founding Fathers Would

Thomas Sowell on the Media's Love Affair with Big Government

Government intervention may look good to the media but its actual track record — both today and in the 1930s — is far worse than the track record of letting the economy recover on its own.
Thomas Sowell, An Unusual Economy?

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Peter Schiff on Herman Cain's Hidden Nine

It's really a 9-9-9-9 deal, Schiff says.
However, the plan has deep flaws, the most glaring of which is its creation of a hidden payroll tax which represents a fourth "nine." This serious pitfall has been unmentioned by Mr. Cain and overlooked by those who have analyzed his plan. 
Peter Schiff, Herman Cain's Hidden Nine

The Hangover is not the Problem

"The hangover is not the problem. The party was."
Johan Norberg, Understanding the Financial Crisis

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Weekend Homesteaders build their own off the grid cabin

This is the story of how two middle-aged city dwellers became weekend homesteaders, and how we bumbled our way through planning and building an off-grid survival cabin. Top to bottom, the project took about two years to complete, working only on weekends. We started out naïve but ambitious, and learned everything as we went along.
Weekend Homesteaders

Video: Henry Paulson Says Investments Were Made To Protect The American People | CNSnews.com

He's still praising TARP. Click the link to see the video.

Henry Paulson Says Investments Were Made To Protect The American People | CNSnews.com

Coroner: Amy Winehouse died from too much alcohol

Soul diva Amy Winehouse died with empty vodka bottles in her room and lethal amounts of alcohol in her blood — more than five times the British drunk driving limit — a British coroner ruled Wednesday.
Coroner: Amy Winehouse died from too much alcohol

Hyde Was Right, Bush Was Wrong | CNSnews.com

Notable quotables:

Quote #1
Hyde argued that those who thought democracy could be grafted onto any nation on earth did not understand how deep the roots of representative government must run in a culture.
Quote #2
"But democracy is more than a single election, or even a succession of them," he said. "It is a way of life for a nation, embracing its life and institutions, and all of their complexity, and embraced in turn by its people and their actions, thoughts and beliefs.

"Viewed in its more compete historical context," Hyde said, "implanting democracy in large areas would require that we possess an unbounded power and undertake an open-ended commitment of time and resources, which we cannot and will not do."
Quote #3
"America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," Bush said. "From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights and dignity and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of heaven and earth."

This principle - articulated in our Declaration of Independence and based on an understanding of God and man that traces back to both classical philosophy and the Bible - is undoubtedly true. But the dominant cultural forces in the very lands Bush tried to fashion into democracies deny it.
Hyde Was Right, Bush Was Wrong | CNSnews.com

Monday, October 24, 2011

Ron Paul: We have to stop worrying about whose mowing Mitt Romney’s yard




(GoinsReport.com) -- GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul qualified his recent comments about being disgusted during the Las Vegas Presidential debate on Meet the Press, adding that the debates need to focus less on who’s mowing whose lawn and more on pertinent issues.

Meet The Press Host David Gregory asked Paul on Sunday what turns him off about the presidential debates.

“I guess it’s the uselessness of some of this rhetoric,” Paul said. “I mean arguing over who mows Mitt Romney’s lawn in the midst of a crisis—a sovereign debt worldwide crisis. The biggest in the history of the world and the financial system of the world is about to collapse.”

Paul added that the United States is getting ready to have another devaluation of its credit rating and that the United States has to get it’s spending under control.

“We’re gotta have to get a hand on this. We have to quit worrying about whose mowing Mitt Romney’s yard,” Paul said.

The Des Moines Register quotes Paul on Friday as saying “I can tell you that after the first 45 minutes I was tempted to walk off that stage. I thought it was disgusting.” Paul made those comments after he toured a wind-turbine blade manufacturer in Newton, Iowa.

Tom Woods Explains The Student Loan Racket

I knew this and wrote about it December 2010. I write:
What bothers me so much about this statistic is that colleges can keep the price of tuition higher than what it would have possibly been if the student loans weren't there in the first place.

University planners, knowing that financial aid is guaranteed, plan expansion based on somewhat false signals in the markets (federal grants, student loans). It does not matter how big or small the false signal.
I remember my state of mind when writing "somewhat false signals." I was too nice. They are false signals.

Excerpted from Rollback:
Of course, it is the subsidies themselves that push tuition costs ever higher. Here’s the obvious point everyone pretends not to realize: colleges know the students have access to low-interest loans courtesy of government. Aware that prospective students enjoy artificially increased purchasing power, college administrations raise tuition (and cut back their own aid programs) accordingly. When tuition thus continues to rise, as any fool could predict, we hear huzzahs for the government – for however could students pay this high tuition without government assistance? It is the classic case, as Harry Browne said, of the government breaking your leg, handing you a crutch, and saying, “See Without me you couldn’t walk.”
Thomas Woods, The Student Loan Racket: Ron Paul Right Again

Santorum: Ron Paul nomination would give him 'indigestion' - The Hill's Video



Read the rest of the story. Click the link below.
Santorum: Ron Paul nomination would give him 'indigestion' - The Hill's Video

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Don't become entangled in an evil alliance even with a common enemy

A common enemy does not justify an alliance with evil.
Gary North, Occupy Wall Street (And Defecate on People's Doorsteps)

Yes, Governments Do Lie To Those They Govern

On the recent Iranian terror plot, the writers at the Daily Kos express some skepticism about Hillary Clinton's very telling question regarding the believability of the foiled plot. If you missed it, Hillary said: "The idea that they would attempt to go to a Mexican cartel to solicit murder-for-hire to kill the Saudi ambassador, nobody could make that up, right?"

The Daily Kos Responds: "Wrong, Hillary. Somebody Could Make That Up To Start a War With Iran. Remember Curveball?

The Daily Kos isn't the only outlet who expressed some skepticism on the matter.

Monthly Review expresses major doubt on the matter as well. They are more forthright.
Sure they could, Madam Secretary. You could. So could the same people who lied to us about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, ties to al-Qaeda and responsibility for 9/11. You guys lie all the time. That's your job.

Iran hasn't attacked another country in more than 200 years. Its government works day and night to improve its relations with its mainly Muslim neighbors. But as ludicrous as the assassination plot charge is, it comes at a very serious time.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Imagine by Ron Paul

Ron Paul's classic foreign policy essay: Imagine by Ron Paul

Richard Bernstein on the threat Free-Thinking Blacks pose to the Dems

Ironically, the political party which portrays itself as the "champion of tolerance and freedom" knows that free-thinking black Americans represent a mortal threat to its power base.
Richard Bernstein, The Democrat Plantation

Richard Bernstein on the Democrat Plantation

So what's changed? For an overwhelming majority of black Americans, nothing much. They still embrace a plantation mentality, but they've changed "masters:" from slave-owners to the Democratic Party.

Perhaps blind loyalty to a political party they perceive as their "protectors" is an inevitable consequence of black Americans' unique history. That such loyalty is to a Democrat party whose own history is a tattered tale of segregation and racism is mind-boggling.
Richard Bernstein, The Democrat Plantation

John Hayward on the Failure of Class Warfare

If class warfare rhetoric fails under these high-pressure conditions, the Democrats are in deep trouble. After all, they don’t have anything else.
John Hayward, The Failure of Class Warfare

A Prophetic Statement About Tax Cuts

From a 2004 column:
“The growing federal debt is virtually certain to lead to offsetting tax increases down the road. Does anyone really believe that in 10 years, when Social Security and Medicare benefits are imminently threatened, Congress will not try to increase revenues to keep the benefits flowing a bit longer?”
Daniel Sahviro, Quoted in "Tax Cuts = Big Government"

Reppert on Relativism and Human Rights

Relativism is incompatible with an idea that many of us hold dear, the idea of inalienable human rights. If relativism is true, we are endowed by our culture, not our creator, with certain rights, and if the culture denies those rights, as in cases like slavery or female circumcision, then there is nowhere to go to justify a claim that, contrary to what the culture has decreed, our rights are being violated.
Victor Reppert, Relativism and Human Rights

Monday, October 10, 2011

As a Model for Values, Ron Paul Prefers ‘Our Original King, Our Creator’ to the Gov’t | CNSnews.com

(CNSNews.com) – Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul says he would rather look to God – “the original king” and creator – than to the government as a model for moral values.

Addressing the Values Voters Summit in Washington D.C. on Saturday, Paul said it was in his view “impossible” to get morality from the government. Instead it comes from individuals, families, churches, and God.

“But I prefer the different king, the original king, the instruction that comes from our creator, not from our government,” he continued. “Our government should be strictly limited to the protection of the liberties that allow us to thrive.”
As a Model for Values, Ron Paul Prefers ‘Our Original King, Our Creator’ to the Gov’t | CNSnews.com

Two Books on The Federal Reserve (and how to prepare for inflation)

The Alpha Strategy

I have been sharing this link to The Alpha Strategy since 2009. It is the book that got me started in economics before I went on to study more works on free-market capitalism. It was my "gateway drug" so to speak.

As I've explained then:
This book is probably the most informative book on inflation (and how to prepare for it) than any other book available. It is written with the layman in mind. It is only 99 pages long and available in PDF form.

The book was written by John A. Pugsley in 1980. In 1981, it was on the New York Times bestseller list for about nine weeks. It contains some of the same material covered by Peter Schiff in his 2007 and 2009 "Crash Proof" series.
I go on:
The Alpha Strategy talks more about the history of inflation, its causes, and how to prepare for it.

Crash Proof seems to be tailored toward those who are already investors and includes more recent information on the housing bubble, the stock market crash, and the underlying causes of the recent financial meltdown.
To read the rest of my description, go here and then download the book.

Modern Money Mechanics: A Workbook on Bank Reserves and Deposit Expansion

This book should be read after you read the Alpha Strategy. It goes more into detail on the material that is covered in pages 16-21 of The Alpha Strategy (sections titled "Banking" "How Banks Create Money" "The Federal Reserve System" "Turning Federal Debt into Money").

It is an out-of-print book that was written by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. It is for more advanced readers. However, it is only 50 pages.

The purpose of the book is stated in the introduction:
The purpose of this booklet is to describe the basic process of money creation in a "fractional reserve" banking system. The approach taken illustrates the changes in bank balance sheets that occur when deposits in banks change as a result of monetary action by the Federal Reserve System - the central bank of the United States. The relationships shown are based on simplifying assumptions. For the sake of simplicity, the relationships are shown as if they were mechanical, but they are not, as is described later in the booklet. Thus, they should not be interpreted to imply a close and predictable relationship between a specific central bank transaction and the quantity of money.

The introductory pages contain a brief general description of the characteristics of money and how the U.S. money system works. The illustrations in the following two sections describe two processes: first, how bank deposits expand or contract in response to changes in the amount of reserves supplied by the central bank; and second, how those reserves are affected by both Federal Reserve actions and other factors. A final section deals with some of the elements that modify, at least in the short run, the simple mechanical relationship between bank reserves and deposit money.
You can download it here.

My expectation of you as a reader is not for you to go off and study economics like I did.

My expectation of you as a reader is to become an informed citizen. That is having enough knowledge to make informed decisions in life -- and especially at the polls.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Ron Paul Values Voter Summit Speech (Audio)



U.S. REPRESENTATIVE RON PAUL (R-TX): Thank you. Thank you. So early in the morning, too. I appreciate that. Thank you very much for coming.

And I appreciate very much this opportunity to visit with you to talk about families. Obviously family values are very, very important. And, as was mentioned in the introduction, I have delivered a few babies. And that does contribute to family, let me tell you. (Laughs.)

But also I’m from a rather large family. I have four brothers. But we have five children and 18 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren as well. (Cheers, applause.)

But, you know, the one thing that is fascinating to me when we bring new life into the world or a new baby comes into the family has always been the reaction of the siblings – maybe one, two, or three, four years old. I’m always fascinated with the intrigue of the siblings looking at a small baby. And I thought, well, that was natural and good and really symbolizes what the family is all about.

Unfortunately, our families have been under attack. And I have a few ideas about why that has occurred and what we might do about it. But the value of the family was something that was early described in the Bible. And there’s one reference to the family that I thought was very important. That was in Samuel, 1 Samuel, chapter eight. And this is when the people, not the elders, came to Samuel when he was very old and they knew he would be passing on, so the people came and said to Samuel, what we need is a king. We need a king to take care of us. We want to be safe and secure.

And Samuel, although he knew he wasn’t going to be around long, he advised the people of Israel not to accept the king, because the king, he warned, would not be generous. He would undermine their liberties. There would be more wars. There would be more taxes. And besides, accepting the notion of a king would reject the notion that, up until that time, since they had left Egypt, their true king was their God and the guidance from their God.

But the governing body was the family. And they did not have kings, but they had judges. And that’s what Samuel was. But this was the time there was a shift away from the judges and the family into a king. And I think a lot of that has happened to us in this country. We have too often relied on our king in Washington, and we have to change that. (Cheers, applause.)

Samuel warned that the king would want to make servants of the people. And he even talked about taxes going up and he talked about the use of young men being drafted and he talked about the women and young women being used by the king. And the warning was not heeded, as Samuel didn’t expect it to be heeded. But he also said that if you depend on the king, the morality of the people will be rejected, the emphasis on the people themselves; the morality should come from the people and not from the king. And generally it doesn’t work that way.

You know, morality of the people or the lack of morality of the people can be reflected in the law. But the law never can change the morality of the people. And that is very important. (Cheers, applause.)

In the 1960s and the 1970s, there were dramatic changes in our country. During the Vietnam War there was a lot of antiwar sentiment. There were a lot of drugs. This was the decade that abortion was done flagrantly against the law. And, lo and behold, the laws got changed after the morality changed.

But it was also - about the time we had Roe versus Wade, we also had the breakdown of our monetary system, the rejection of the biblical admonition that we have honest weights and measures and honest money. And not to have honest weights and measures meant we were counterfeiting the money and destroying the value of the money, which implies, even in biblical times, they weren’t looking for a central bank that was going to counterfeit our currency. (Cheers, applause.)

But the culture certainly changed. The work ethics changed. The welfare state grew. And it wasn’t only for the poor who were looking to be taken care of, but we finally ended up with a system where the lobbyists were from the rich corporations and the banks that would come to Washington and expect to get their benefits. And the whole idea of a moral society changed.

But, you know, biblically there’s a lot of admonitions about what the family should be in charge of. Certainly the 10th commandment tells us something about honoring our parents and caring for them. It didn’t say work out a system where the government will take care of us from cradle to grave. No, it was an admonition for us to honor our parents and be responsible for them, not put them into a nursing home and say the federal government can take care of them. Besides, sometimes that leads to bankruptcies and the government can’t do it anyway. So that responsibility really falls on us.

In the Bible, in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, Christ was recognized to be the prince of peace. He was never to be recognized as the promoter of war. And he even said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be the children of God.” He never said blessed are the war makers. It was the peacemakers that we must honor and protect. (Cheers, applause.)

Christ was very, very clear on how we should treat our enemies. And some days I think we quite frequently forget about that. Early in the history of Christianity, they struggled with the issue of war and peace, because Christ taught about peace. Did that mean Christ was advocating pacifism? The early church struggled with this and came to the conclusion, at least in those early years, that Christ was not a pacifist, but he was not a war promoter.

And this is when they came up with the just-war principles, saying, yes, war could be necessary, but only under dire circumstances, and it should be done with great caution. All other efforts should be exhausted before we go to war, and always under the proper authority. And today I think the proper authority is not the U.N. or the NATO forces to take us to war. (Cheers, applause.)

We are taught in the New Testament about caring for the poor and caring for our families and our neighbors and friends. But never did Christ say, you know, let’s go and lobby Rome to make sure we’re taken care of. It was a personal responsibility for us. Christ was confronted at one time by a prostitute, but he didn’t call for the centurions. He didn’t call for more laws. But he was very direct and thought that stoning was not the solution to the problem of prostitution.

So do laws take care of these things, or do we need a better understanding of our Christian values and our moral principles?

Life is most precious. I talk about life and liberty. I defend liberty to the nth degree, as long people aren’t hurting and killing each other and stealing and robbing. But you cannot defend liberty unless you have a clear understanding of life. And believe me, as an experienced physician and knowing the responsibility of taking care of life, from the earliest sign of life – I know, legally and morally, I have a responsibility to take care of two lives. And therefore you cannot be a great defender of liberty if you do not defend and understand what life is all about and where it comes from. (Cheers, applause.)

You know, many great religions, and especially both the Old and New Testament, talks about a golden rule. And I think it’s an important rule. We want to treat – we should treat other people the way we want to be treated. And I would like to suggest that possibly we should be thinking about having a foreign policy of the golden rule and not treat other countries any way other than the way we want to be treated. (Cheers, applause.)

There were great dreams by Isaiah in the Old Testament about the time that would come when the swords would be bent into plowshares and spears into pruning forks, the dream of ending the wars and to the point where peace is prosperous. And I have come to a strong conviction that one of the most greatest threats to the family is war. It undermines the family. (Cheers, applause.)

Just in our last decade, an undeclared war that we’re dealing with, we’ve lost over 80,000 – 8,500 men and women in our armed services. We have 40,000 who have returned, many of them with severe amputations. And it’s, in essence, forgotten by the general population of this country. We have literally hundreds of thousands begging and pleading for help.

I talked to a young man the other day and he was telling me about losing all his buddies and his frustration with the war and not having a goal of winning the war and not knowing when it would end. And yet his conclusion was – almost in tears he said to me, he says, I lost my buddies over there, but now I’m losing many of them to suicide.

And when you think of this, of what the consequences of war, the death and destruction, what does it do to the families? What does it do to the husbands and the wives and the mothers and the daughters who have to deal with these problems? So, yes, it is very, very damaging. War costs a lot of money. It causes a lot of poverty. Poverty and the economic crisis in this country is undermining the family. But $4 trillion of debt has been added in the last 10 years to fight a war that seems to have no end.

Wars generally lead to inflation, the destruction of money. We don’t honor the biblical principles of honest money. We invite this idea that we can spend endlessly and we can print the money, and literally it undermines the family and undermines the economic system. When you lose a job, it’s harder to keep the family together.

Divorce rates are very, very high among the military, because these young men are being sent back two and three and four times. And there was one story told me about a little boy, a little boy who was 10 years old, and his dad was getting ready to go back again. He was screaming, I hate you, daddy, I hate you, daddy, because he was leaving him.

So this is why, in the early church, they talk about being very careful about going into war, and also to be thinking about the admonition that peace is far superior to war. That should be our goal. (Cheers, applause.)

The goal of a free society, from my viewpoint, is to seek virtue and excellence. And only we as individuals can do that. When we turn this over to the government, when we seek our king and depend on our king, it can only be done at the sacrifice of liberty. And that means eventually all liberties – our personal liberties, our civil liberties, our religious liberties, our right to teach our children and our responsibility to teach our children, whether it’s home schooling or religious school - it’s always under attack.

The more we turn it over to the government – it was a sad day in this country when we went this full measure about acknowledging the authority of the federal government to educate our children. There was a time when the Republican Party said that we shouldn’t even have a Department of Education. And I believe it should go back to the family, not the federal government. (Cheers, applause.)

If we – if we do not get our moral values from our government, which I think it’s impossible to get it from them, where does it come from? First, it comes from us as individuals. We have the responsibility for dealing with our eternity and salvation. But we have our responsibility to ourselves to do the best we can with our own lives.

But then our next step is our families; you know, our children and our parents, and then our neighbors and our churches. That’s where the moral values should come from. And, quite frankly, that is where I think we have slipped. So you can pass all the laws that you want. You can fight more wars than ever that’s going to bring us peace and prosperity. But if the basic morality of the people does not change, it will not matter. We must change our hearts if we expect to change our family and treat our family values as they should be. (Applause.)

We have been blessed in this country by having the freest and the most prosperous. We’ve had a good Constitution, far from perfect. But today we are living way beyond our means. We are living in debt. And debt is not a biblical principle, whether it’s personal debt or whether it’s a national debt. We owe $3 trillion to people overseas. We are suffering from a mountain of debt because we have accepted this idea that we have this responsibility to mold the world, mold the people and mold the economy.

Government is incapable of doing that. The responsibility of the government is to provide the environment which is proper to allow us to thrive, for us to work hard and have the incentive. If we have our right to – (applause) – if we have a right to our life and liberty, why is it that we don’t fight for the right to keep the fruits of our labor? (Cheers, applause.)

If we accepted that, there would be no demands for the king. The people – the early Israelites demanded the king to be taken care of. But we have too, and we have accepted this notion as a country and as a whole that the king will take care of us.

But I prefer the different king, the original king, the instruction that comes from our creator, not from our government. Our government should be strictly limited to the protection of the liberties that allow us to thrive. (Cheers, applause.) And our liberties and our economy, they are under attack today. There is no doubt about it.

So we will have to meet up and make these decisions. To me, the most important decision that we have to ask, just as they asked, you know, in biblical times, as well as at the time of our founding of this country, what should be government like? What should the role of government be? It isn’t, you know, where do you cut this penny or this penny, and what do we do here and there, and tinker around the edges. It should be what should the role of government be? The founders said the role of government ought to be the protection of liberty. That is what the role of government ought to be. (Cheers, applause.)

But the experiment is about to end unless we reverse this trend. I would say that we have gone downhill nearly for 100 years, especially for the last 10, and especially for the last four, when we think of our economy. But the real challenge is, are we going to transition from the republic to the empire and to dictatorship? And there are so many signs that we are, you know, transforming into empire and dictatorship. And just think of the bearing down on our personal liberties today. Think about what happens when we go to the airports. Think about now you have no privacy whatsoever. Now the government can look into every single thing.

So we are living in an age when government is way too big. And it’s time this government act properly, and that is to protect our freedoms. (Cheers, applause.) The – if you read the Constitution carefully, you will find out that the Constitution is directed at the government. There aren’t restraints placed in the Constitution on you. The restraints are that you don’t hurt and kill people, that you fulfill your promise that you’re honest and you fulfill your moral obligation. The restraints are placed on the federal government.

So as long as we allow the federal government to grow and we don’t obey those restraints, things will get worse. But the good news is there’s a whole generation of Americans right now rising up and saying we were on the right track at the right time. Let’s get back on that track. Let’s restore liberty to this country and prosperity and peace. (Cheers, applause.)

Thank you.

(Music.)

(END)


Source: Time.com

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Ron Paul: Golden Rule Could End Terrorist Attacks | The National Press Club

If the United States stopped occupying other nations, terrorist attacks would cease, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said Wednesday at the National Press Club.

Paul, a Republican who represents the Texas 14th Congressional District, said America’s decision years ago to build military bases in the Middle East incited terrorist attacks which drew the nation to begin occupying the region, causing further attacks. Citing Lebanon in the early 1980’s as an example, the congressman said when American military personnel withdrew the attacks “just stopped.”

“I don’t know why we can’t think about a foreign policy of good will…treat people like you would like to be treated. The Golden Rule could apply," he said.
Ron Paul: Golden Rule Could End Terrorist Attacks | The National Press Club

Friday, October 7, 2011

Christian Academic: We reject the utopian delusions of no state and of an omni-competent state.

We reject the utopian delusions of no state and of an omni-competent state.
Why Christians favor small goverment | The Washington Post

[Editor's note: The man never makes his case against anarchism.

Although I linked to the Jesus Radicals page, I vehemently disagree with their "Economics" sub-section under Anarchism which advocates socialism. The reason for linking to their description of anarchism is because it provides a coherent explanation of the relationship between Christianity and anarchism.

That's it.]

Herman Cain on Iran: Would Tell Ahmadinejad to ‘Make my Day’ | CNSnews.com

“I would make it a priority to upgrade all of our Aegis surface-to-air ballistic missile defense capabilities of all of our warships, all the way around the world," he said. "Make that a priority, and then say to Ahmadinejad, ‘Make my Day.’”
Herman Cain on Iran: Would Tell Ahmadinejad to ‘Make my Day’ | CNSnews.com

This bold and irresponsible statement comes within two weeks of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying that it isn't too late to fix U.S.-Iran relationship and Iran's Navy Head saying Iran will send ships near U.S. borders.

Why won't Herman Cain take a stand for peace?

Video: The Official Video of Ron Paul @ The National Press Club

Video Flashback: Ron Paul schools Laura Ingraham

The Nuremburg Trials Definition of Aggression

An aggressor, for the purposes of this article, means that state which is first to commit any of the following actions:

1. Declaration of war upon another State.

2. Invasion by its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State.

3. Attack by its land, naval or air forces, with or without a declaration of war, on the territory, vessels or aircraft of another State.

No political, military, economic or other considerations may serve as an excuse or justification for such actions, but exercise of the right of legitimate self-defense, that is to say, resistance to an act of aggression, or action to assist a State which has been subjected to aggression, shall not constitute a war of aggression.
Source: The Avalon Project

The Ten Planks of Communism

Does the 5th one look familiar?
According to The Communist Manifesto, Communism has ten essential planks:

Abolition of Private Property.
Heavy Progressive Income Tax.
Abolition of Rights of Inheritance.
Confiscation of Property Rights.
Central Bank.
Government Ownership of Communication and Transportation.
Government Ownership of Factories and Agriculture.
Government Control of Labor.
Corporate Farms and Regional Planning.
Government Control of Education.
Source: All About Philosophy

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Henry Hazlitt on the frustation of studying economic policy

A mere recital of the economic policies of governments all over the world is calculated to cause any serious student of economics to throw up his hands in despair.
Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson

Friday, September 30, 2011

John Adams: No government can contain passions unbridled by religion

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams, Moral Hazard | The Charleston Tea Party Blog

New Rule Could Prolong Race for GOP Nomination | CNSnews.com

The Republicans have adopted a new rule designed to extend their nominating process this time around.

The rule limits the ability of candidates to win large numbers of delegates in primaries and caucuses held before April. Delegates must be awarded in proportion to the votes a candidate receives. States with winner-take-all rules will have to wait until April to hold their primaries.
New Rule Could Prolong Race for GOP Nomination | CNSnews.com

WCF Chapter One "Of Holy Scripture" Sunday School (Sept.-Oct. 2021)

Our text for Sunday School (also "The Confession of Faith and Catechisms") Biblical Theology Bites What is "Biblical Theology...