Ron Paul Blasts Congress" Political And Personal Immorality

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Many Americans have been shocked by recent revelations of the extent of sexual harassment in Congress.

However, no one should be too surprised that those who spend their lives defending and expanding the welfare-warfare state engage in immoral personal conduct.

It is only natural that an immoral system, like the welfare-warfare state, tends to attract individuals likely to practice personal immorality.

The welfare-warfare state is built on a foundation of taxation and fiat currency controlled by a secretive central bank. While some type of taxation may be necessary to fund the few legitimate functions of government, taking people’s money to fund a redistributive welfare state at home and a global empire abroad is nothing more than theft. The Federal Reserve’s erosion of purchasing power is also a form of theft.

The welfare-warfare state relies on violence. Every law preventing us from living our lives as we choose — whether forbidding us from working for below minimum wage, preventing us from smoking marijuana or drinking raw milk, telling private business owners who can and cannot use what restroom, or requiring us to purchase government-approved health insurance — rests on the threat of force being used against those who refuse to obey.

The warfare side of the welfare-warfare state is obviously rooted in violence. War inevitably leads to deaths, including the deaths of innocents. A permanent warfare state is also the quickest way to lose our liberties. This is why the Founding Fathers counseled against standing armies and foreign entanglements.

The neocons and “humanitarian interventionists” who control our foreign policy have disregarded the wisdom of the Founders. They actually promote endless wars not to protect our security but to promote “democracy” and “universal human rights.” They are impervious to evidence of the failure of military interventions to achieve these goals and indifferent to the human and fiscal costs of endless war. They dismiss the loss of innocent lives — including the deaths of children — as unavoidable “collateral damage,” while using their influence in the media to spread pro-war propaganda. They also smear their opponents as aiding America’s enemies and sympathizing with terrorists.

No one holding political power wants to admit the system he supports is immoral and a failure. Therefore, defenders of the welfare-warfare state rely on lies and deceptions. They ignore all evidence of the failure of big government to accomplish its ends, instead pretending they can fix the system with a few reforms. They also work with allies in the media to promulgate the lie that without the welfare state the masses would remain poor and uneducated, and without the warfare state we would be overwhelmed by those who hate us for our freedoms. They never mention that many foreigners hate America because of the suffering caused by our hyper-interventionist foreign policy.

The welfare-warfare state is built on violence and deceit.

It is thus inevitable that many of those participating in this immoral system will combine their immoral politics with immoral personal conduct. Hopefully the revelations of sexual misconduct among the welfare-warfare state’s Capitol Hill and media defenders will lead more Americans to question the morality and the wisdom of allowing the federal government to run the world, run the economy, and run our lives.

Mass Shootings: The Military-Entertainment Complex's Culture Of Violence Turns Deadly

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

This latest mass shooting in Las Vegas that left more than 50 people dead and more than 500 injured is as obscure as they come: a 64-year-old retiree with no apparent criminal history, no military training, and no obvious axe to grind opens fire on a country music concert crowd from a hotel room 32 floors up using a semi-automatic gun that may have been rigged to fire up to 700 rounds a minute, then kills himself.

We’re left with more questions than answers, none of them a flattering reflection of the nation’s values, political priorities, or the manner in which the military-industrial complex continues to dominate, dictate and shape almost every aspect of our lives.

For starters, why do these mass shootings keep happening? Mass shootings have taken place at churches, in nightclubs, on college campuses, on military bases, in elementary schools, in government offices, and at concerts. This shooting is the deadliest to date.

What is it about America that makes violence our nation’s calling card?

Is it because America is a gun culture?

Is it because guns are so readily available? After all, the U.S. is home to more firearms than adults. Curiously enough, the majority of gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides, not homicides.

Is it because entertainment violence is the hottest selling ticket at the box office?

Is it because the government continues to whet the nation’s appetite for violence and war through paid propaganda programs (seeded throughout sports entertainment, Hollywood blockbusters and video games) - what professor Roger Stahl refers to as “militainment” - that glorify the military and serve as recruiting tools for America’s expanding military empire?

Is it because the United States is the number one consumer, exporter and perpetrator of violence and violent weapons in the world? America spends more money on war than other countries. America polices the globe, with 800 military bases and troops stationed in 160 countries. And the war hawks have turned the American homeland into a quasi-battlefield with military gear, weapons and tactics. In turn, domestic police forces have become roving extensions of the military - a standing army.

Or is the Second Amendment to blame, as many continue to suggest? Would there be fewer mass shootings if tighter gun control laws were enacted?

Then again, could it be, as some have speculated, that these shootings are all part of an elaborate plan to incite fear and chaos, heighten national tensions and shift us that much closer to a complete lockdown? After all, the military and our militarized police forces have been predicting and preparing for exactly this kind of scenario for years now.

Perhaps there’s no single one factor to blame for this gun violence. However, there is a common denominator, and that is a war-drenched, violence-imbued, profit-driven military industrial complex that has invaded almost every aspect of our lives.

Ask yourself: Who are these shooters modelling themselves after? Where are they finding the inspiration for their weaponry and tactics? Whose stance and techniques are they mirroring?

In almost every instance, you can connect the dots back to the military.

We are a military culture.

We have been a nation at war for most of our existence.

We are a nation that makes a living from killing through defense contracts, weapons manufacturing and endless wars.

In order to sustain the nation’s appetite for war over the long haul in spite of the costs of war in lives lost and dollars spent—and little else to show for it—the military has had to work overtime to churn out pro-war, pro-military propaganda. It’s exactly what President Eisenhower warned against (“the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”) in his 1961 farewell address.

We didn’t listen then and we’re still not listening now.

All the while, the government’s war propaganda machine has grown more sophisticated and entrenched in American culture.

All of the military equipment featured in blockbuster movies such as X-Men and Transformers is provided—at taxpayer expense—in exchange for carefully placed promotional spots aimed at indoctrinating the American populace into believing that patriotism means throwing their support behind the military wholeheartedly and unquestioningly.

Even reality TV shows have gotten in on the gig.

It’s estimated that U.S. military intelligence agencies (including the NSA) have influenced over 1,800 movies and TV shows.

And then there are the growing number of video games, a number of which are engineered by or created for the military, which have accustomed players to interactive war play through military simulations and first-person shooter scenarios.

This is how you acclimate a population to war.

This is how you cultivate loyalty to a war machine.

Not satisfied with peddling its war propaganda through Hollywood, reality TV shows and embedded journalists whose reports came across as glorified promotional ads for the military, the Pentagon turned to sports to further advance its agenda, “tying the symbols of sports with the symbols of war.”

The military has been firmly entrenched in the nation’s sports spectacles ever since.

Remember, just before this Vegas shooting gave the media, the politicians and the easily distracted public something new to obsess over, the headlines were dominated by President Trump’s feud with the NFL over players kneeling during the national anthem.

That, too, was yet another example of how much the military entertainment complex - which paid $53 million of taxpayer money between 2012 and 2015 to pro sports teams for military tributes—has infiltrated American culture.

Are you starting to get the picture now?

When you talk about the Las Vegas mass shooting, you’re not dealing with a single shooter scenario. Rather, you’re dealing with a sophisticated, far-reaching war machine that has woven itself into the very fabric of this nation.

You want to stop the gun violence?

Stop the worship of violence that permeates our culture.

Stop glorifying the military industrial complex with flyovers and salutes during sports spectacles.

Stop acting as if there is anything patriotic about military exercises and occupations that bomb hospitals and schools.

Stop treating guns and war as entertainment fodder in movies, music, video games, toys, amusement parks, reality TV and more.

Stop distributing weapons of war to the local police and turning them into extensions of the military—weapons that have no business being anywhere but on a battlefield.

Most of all, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, stop falling for the military industrial complex’s psychological war games.

Look Around! Common Law Works. Government Statute Doesn’t.

Via The Daily Bell

How can something be considered a crime if there is no victim?

This is a problem. You can go through life making sure you don’t hurt anyone, and still break the law. Wouldn’t that be great if you could simply base your actions on common sense and respect for the standards of a community?

Instead, people must also make sure they don’t do anything labeled wrong by the government. Of course, it is impossible to know all the laws which the government has created. And what they call wrong is not always intuitive, nor offensive.

Government statute law goes beyond the resolution of disputes between individuals and groups. In contrast, the whole point of common law was to settle disputes in non-violent ways.

Now, there are third-party enforcers trolling around looking for a statute that has been broken. There doesn’t have to be a victim. No one has to have been wronged by the legal breach. They actually create conflict instead of resolving it. Their actions often lead to violent altercations, rather than deescalating disputes.

In an essay called “The Obviousness of Anarchy,” John Hasnas discusses the origins of common law, and how it was born out of anarchy. He says that clearly, no society can exist without governance. Part of the definition of a society is that it is somewhat organized and held together by common traditions. But that does not necessarily mean government, as the term has come to be understood.

In arguing for anarchy, I am arguing that a society without a central political authority is not only possible but desirable. That is all I am doing, however. I am not arguing for a society without coercion. I am not arguing for a society that abides by the libertarian non-aggression principle or any other principle of justice. I am not arguing for the morally ideal organisation of society. I am not arguing for utopia. What constitutes ideal justice and the perfectly just society is a fascinating philosophical question, but it is one that is irrelevant to the current pursuit. I am arguing only that human beings can live together successfully and prosper in the absence of a centralised coercive authority. To make the case for anarchy, that is all that is required.

Inevitably, there will be disputes between humans. Hasnas argues that the best society achievable is one where the entire governing structure exists exclusively to settle disputes. The rule of law was born out of trying to peacefully solve disputes that might have otherwise erupted into violence. Common law is a collection of these outcomes. Others in similar predicaments can look to precedent to see what worked to avoid violent outcomes in past similar circumstances.

…common law provides us with rules that facilitate peace and cooperative activities. Government legislation provides us with rules that facilitate the exploitation of the politically powerless by the politically dominant. The former bring order to society; the latter tend to produce strife. Hence, not only is government not necessary to create the basic rules of social order, it is precisely the rules that the government does create that tend to undermine that order.

This means there had to first be a conflict before any legal proceedings started. No Victim, no crime. Without an alleged injured party, there was nothing to resolve. People went about their business unmolested.

Courts consisted of respected members of a community who had been involved in previous conflict resolutions. They were therefore well equipt to suggest outcomes that had in the past avoided violence. Their job was to find an arrangement that satisfied both parties involved in the dispute.

English common law is, in fact, case-generated law; that is, law that spontaneously evolves from the settlement of actual disputes. Almost all of the law that provides the infrastructure of our contemporary society was created in this way. Tort law, which provides protection against personal injury; property law, which demarcates property rights; contract law, which provides the grounding for exchange; commercial law, which facilitates complex business transactions; and even criminal law, which punishes harmful behavior, all arose through this evolutionary process.

When it comes to criminal law, obviously things get a bit more complicated. But none of those complications are avoided in the current legal system. They are actually exacerbated by having the same group make the laws, enforce the laws, prosecute the cases, and judge the cases. These are no longer disinterested third parties. They have many interests wrapped up in performing their jobs to satisfy bosses and colleagues rather than victims and people in dispute.

And it is further complicated by the fact that government has mixed arbitrary statute law with laws which allow real victims recourse for wrongs done to them. But is the government really necessary to say, murder is wrong, theft is wrong, and rape is wrong?

It is true that most of our current law exists in the form of statutes. This is because much of the common law has been codified through legislation. But the fact that politicians recognised the wisdom of the common law by enacting it into statutes, hardly proves that government is necessary to create rules of law. Indeed, it proves precisely the opposite.

Rape, murder, and theft were being resolved and punished before the government codified those crimes into law. This is because victims and their families naturally have an incentive to bring suit against people who have wronged them.

In common law, the best practices naturally became widespread. The entire point is to solve a problem. The best solutions were more widely adopted.

But that doesn’t mean those solutions and methods had to be implemented in other places. Cultures are different, and communities have different values and standards. One culture may see picking an apple off a neighbor’s tree as trivial, while another may take the crime quite seriously.

But still, obeying common law does not require years of legal study.

Understanding the traditional rules of common law requires only that one be a member of the relevant community to which the rules apply, not that one be an attorney.

Government legislation, in contrast, need have no relationship to either the understanding or the moral sensibility of the ordinary person.

So it is the responsibility of an individual to understand how the rules differ from place to place. But under common law, that would only require not victimizing. If you don’t know the cultural acceptance of picking apples that don’t belong to you, don’t do it!

By contrast, governments have arbitrary statutes that are not intuitive. You may know that walking around with an open alcoholic beverage isn’t hurting anyone, yet the legality of this action differs from town to town, and state to state. The same applies to carrying a concealed weapon, possessing marijuana, and taking your shirt off. Yet none of these actions hurt anyone.

Throughout his piece, Hasnas repeatedly tells readers to look around when it comes to evidence that things can, will, and do function just fine without government law in certain areas.

Business is contracted around the world among parties from virtually all countries. Although there is neither a world government nor world court, businesses do not go to war with each other over contract disputes. News is almost always the news of violent conflict. The very lack of reporting on international business disputes is evidence that international commercial disputes are effectively resolved without the government provision of courts. How can this be?

The answer is simplicity itself. The parties to international transactions select, usually in advance, the dispute settlement mechanism they prefer from among the many options available to them. Few choose trial by combat.

What businesses avoid is American courts because of their slow speed and unpredictable rulings. And this is the main argument for why there would still be effective governance without government. Disputes, violence, and unpredictability threaten profits and wealth.

So we don’t need legislatures: all law can be created through dispute resolution. We don’t need government courts: in current situations with no government, disputes are settled just fine without violence.

And we don’t need government enforcers. They create conflict by initiating violence when a statute has been violated, even when no victim exists.

Government sponsored law enforcement is relatively recent, and society as we know it predates public police.

The proper response to the claim that government must provide police services is: look around. I work at a University that supplies its own campus police force. On my drive in, I pass a privately operated armored car that transports currency and other valuable items for banks and businesses. When I go downtown, I enter buildings that are serviced by private security companies that require me to sign in before entering. I shop at malls and department stores patrolled by their own private guards. While in the mall, I occasionally browse in the Security Zone store that sells personal and home protection equipment. I converse with attorneys and, once in a while with a disgruntled spouse or worried parent, who employ private detective agencies to perform investigations for them. I write books about how the United States Federal government coerces private corporations into performing criminal investigations for it. When I was younger, I frequented nightclubs and bars that employed “bouncers.” Although it has never happened to me personally, I know people who have been contacted by private debt collection agencies or have been visited by repo men. Once in a while, I meet people who are almost as important as rock stars and travel with their own bodyguards. At the end of the day, I return home to my community that has its own neighborhood watch.

Look around!

The most important laws that actually protect people from harm were not created by government. The most effective courts which settle disputes without violence were not created by government. And most current security which keeps us safe, investigates crime, and brings people to justice are not government forces!

No, it’s not about creating utopia. But what could exist is a society in which it becomes extremely unprofitable to be aggressive.

Portland Rose Parade Cancelled Amid Violent Threats From Anti-Fa: "You've Seen How Much Power We Have... Police Can't Stop Us"

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

For a bunch of peace loving, tolerance spewing social justice warriors, it sure does appear that the new “progressive” movement in America is rapidly turning to Bolshevik tactics to force their will upon a free and non-violent people.

The latest example of a society on the brink of civil war comes to us from Portland, Oregon, where every year the 82nd Avenue of Roses Business Association kicks of the city’s annual Rose Festival with a family-friendly parade.

Except this year, there will be no parade. Organizers have cancelled the event amid threats of violence from groups referring to themselves as “Anti-Fascist.” According to The Washington Post, the reasoning behind the threats is reportedly outrage over the fact that the county’s Republican Party was given one of the nearly 100 spots in the parade.

Then came an anonymous and ominous email, according to parade organizers, that instructed them to cancel the GOP group’s registration — or else.

“You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us from shutting down roads so please consider your decision wisely,” the anonymous email said, referring to the violent riots that hit Portland after the 2016 presidential election, reported the Oregonian. “This is nonnegotiable.”

The email said that 200 people would “rush into the parade” and “drag and push” those marching with the Republican Party.

“We will not give one inch to groups who espouse hatred toward LGBT, immigrants, people of color or others,” it said.

Earlier this month we reported that members of the so-called anti-fascist, left leaning progressive movements are preparing for war by organizing combat fighting classes and even going so far as to suggest it’s time to start bringing guns to such protests as a show of force:

In short, as predicted, they are turning to militancy and mob action by mobilizing individuals and groups to attend combat training seminars, acquiring better equipment like baseball bats and helmets, and of course, if things really go bad… guns.

Yes, we seemed to have lost today. The alt-right held their ground. If we wanna take action against them, we need to be better organized and better trained. It doesn’t help that it’s only the far left opposing them, any trump supporter can be radicalized far easier than any liberal.

I hope we learn from today

…

A shocking number of our comrades went in there with absolute no combat training. We need to set up seminars or something of the sort.

…

We also need better equipment

Full report: There Will Be Blood: Left Prepares For War After Berkeley Beat Down: “Combat Training, Better Equipment, Guns…”

While these folks may think silencing the free speech of political ideologies contrary to theirs through violence is a means to a worthy end, it was the Bolshevik ideology, similar to what we’re seeing from “comrades”  in the anti-fascist movement, that eventually gave way to one of the world’s most brutal dictators and was responsible for the deaths of, quite literally, over 100 million people in the 20th century.

On another and perhaps equally interesting note, we’ll mention the fact that for years the Department of Homeland Security and domestic law enforcement agencies had warned Americans that it was lone wolves with conservative values who stockpiled guns, food, bibles and peacefully protested government overreach who were, by officials and congressional members, deemed terrorists.

In fact, there were a variety of identifiers used to qualify an American citizen as a potential domestic terrorist:

So how does a person qualify as a potential domestic terrorist?  Based on the training I have attended, here are characteristics that qualify:

• Expressions of libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)


• Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership, holding a CCW permit)


• Survivalist literature (fictional books such as “Patriots” and “One Second After” are mentioned by name)


• Self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)


• Fear of economic collapse (buying gold and barter items)


• Religious views concerning the book of Revelation (apocalypse, anti-Christ)


• Expressed fears of Big Brother or big government


• Homeschooling


• Declarations of Constitutional rights and civil liberties


• Belief in a New World Order conspiracy

We wonder if similar classifications will be assigned to those who threaten families and children at parades?

"As Ye Sow..."

Submitted by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,

Our deranged world is a product of deranged minds.

Philosophy begins with invariably difficult questions. Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? Is there a god or gods? What is right and what is wrong? How should groups of people be organized and function together? Ironically, when such questions are infrequently asked, when philosophy is generally ignored or disparaged, as it is now, is when it’s needed the most.

Political philosophy is the branch that addresses the question of how coercive power is to be distributed in a society. It’s a knotty issue, but one question provides clarification, enabling further analysis and leading to useful conclusions. Who owns a political unit’s resources? This question differentiates between governments that protect individual rights and property and those that don’t. It also highlights a key problem: on planet earth, every government falls into the latter category.

The United States’ founding documents pay tribute to individual rights and private properly. Some of the founders may have thought they were establishing a government subordinated to protection of individual rights, which would have been an historical first. However, none thought such a government would be easy to maintain, and their fears were borne out. The US government places prominently on the inglorious list of governments claiming ownership over everything within their dominion, defined as any place where they can exercise their coercive power.

To those who say the institution of inviolate private property still exists in the US, what asset can the US government not seize? The income tax gives it first claim on income. No real estate is exempt from eminent domain. Intellectual property claims are at the sufferance of the patent, trademark, and copyright authorities. Financial assets held within the banking system can be “bailed in,” and plans are afoot to ban cash. The already extensive range of assets subjected to civil asset forfeiture continues to expand. More ominously, assets can be seized from parties never adjudicated guilty. Conscription grants to the government the lives of the conscripted. The US government is no exception to the general rule, nothing is inviolate expect perhaps a person’s thoughts, and undoubtedly it’s working on that.

Individuals who assert the right to initiate aggression against whomever they choose are philosophically unhinged, candidates for an asylum or a penitentiary. Rejecting the first principle that must guide human interaction—that no one may rightfully initiate force against another person—such individuals have no rational foundation for their thoughts or actions. The “garbage in” of their philosophical premises produces “garbage out” emotional states, mental processes, and ultimately, lives. Having abandoned reason for coercion and violence, reality becomes a chaotic, incomprehensible void.

Governments’ coercive power allow them to take: might makes right. A philosophy that recognized a right of some individuals to steal from others fails on first principles; there is no logical distinction possible between the privileged and the subjugated. Does the aggregation of individuals into a unit which calling itself a government give them a right which none of them have individually? One could say that the aggregate was for the protection of its constituents’ persons, property, and rights, but a government so limited is acting as their constituents’ subordinate agent, exercising and enhancing their right of self-defense. Efforts have been made, notably the American experiment, but no government has ever been restricted in this manner.

No matter its guiding “ism,” every government has granted itself the power to initiate violence against its citizens. Just because the ruling agglomerate asserts this privilege doesn’t render it philosophically valid. What it does is legitimate the initiation of violence for any and all causes—domestic and foreign—the government deems proper.

Having violated the first principle of nonaggression, nothing can stop that philosophical default from trickling down to the subject population. The ragged thief who holds up a liquor store lacks the polish and articulation of the politician who asserts the government’s first claim on a nation’s production, the central banker who depreciates its currency, or the general bent on global dominance who wages offensive wars, but philosophically they’re soul mates. In fact, the thief has a moral one up on the others: he doesn’t claim to be protecting the values he destroys.

Millions have decried the violence that prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking at the University of California at Berkeley, just as millions on the other side decried mostly illusory violence among Trump supporters during the campaign. However, not one in a thousand of those denouncing the violence as violations of fundamental civil liberties denounce the daily violations of fundamental liberties visited upon them by their own government. America’s corruption is so complete that those who insist that they are not fodder for the government, that their lives are their own, and that the only proper government is one subordinated to the protection of their individual rights—and maintain positions consistent with those principles—could hold a convention and not fill a high-school gym.

This small group is the victim of a terrifying pincer movement from above and below. When a society abandons itself to violence, “legal” and otherwise, it abandons itself to mindless irrationality driven by hate and antipathy towards every positive value. Violence is not a means to any end other than destruction and death; violence itself is the end. Humanity has been fed the same tripe for centuries: noble ends justify evil means. Violation of the first principle—the stricture against initiated aggression—bars consideration of the purported ends. A “discussion” with a gun is no discussion. Violence exercised in self-defense protects positive values, but when violence is initiated, destruction, death, and the depraved pleasure of loathsome minds are its only ends.

An individual who claims by word or deed the right to initiate violence - and the consequent rights to subjugate, injure, and kill - is a rabid, deranged, and dangerous animal. A government that asserts that right is a pack. In self-defense, the virtuous, if they are to protect their liberty, rights, and lives, must quarantine or kill the rabid. A necessary corollary of the stricture against initiated aggression is that we have the right to use all means necessary to defend ourselves from it—with pity, perhaps, but no remorse.

The chaos, the terror, of our deteriorating world is a true and faithful reflection of souls abandoned to hate. The free mind and its methods—intrepid curiosity, truth, and logic—stand as their ultimate enemy. If those who would oppose this destruction and death abandon their souls, they become the mindless evil they opposed. Those who defend their rights, values, and lives without surrendering their morality will rebuild from the rubble the kind of world in which they deserve to live. They will do so unobstructed—hate inevitably leads to its own destruction.