Category Archives: Liberty

Democracy & Marriage

Thomas Jefferson

“Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%” — Thomas Jefferson

This comes to mind today with the Supreme Court decision to not hear the gay marriage issue. It opened the door to gay marriage in Nevada, despite our popularly voted state Constitution ban on such. Is it potentially freeing the 49% from the tyranny of the 51%? I think probably so. And I have no problem with the citing of the equal protection clause as justification.

Still, I find it interesting that no one is mentioning multiple marriage. After all, what if three women want to get married? Or two women and one man? Or two men and one woman? Surely that can also not be denied now – after all, don’t they also deserve the protection of the “equal protection” clause? It is only a matter of time. And don’t get me wrong, that’s not bad – that’s good.

That points out the fundamental libertarian belief that marriage is a contract between consenting adults, and it is none of government’s business. I hope we get to a point where we realize this, and things like filing joint tax returns either go away, or recognize plurality. Things like allowing ONE spouse on your insurance either go away or recognize plurality.

If you think about really what marriage ought to be, a family bond among consenting adults, involving a church if they so desire, or not… it’s none of government’s business to meddle in that at all, in any way shape or form. Whether it be one man & one woman, a gay couple, or a multi-couple.

I hope that we take the next evolutionary step and realize that, and remove anything having to do with marriage from any governmental body, including any preferential or detrimental use of government force thereto, including taxation.

Marriage is an inherently personal contract between consenting adults that may or may not involve religion, but it most certainly should not be *required* to involve the government, whether local, state, or federal.

What I fear is that when polygamists come forward and also demand equal protection, those supporters of “gay marriage” will recoil with horror using terms like “disgusting”, “reprehensible”, “no safe place for a child”, “abusive”, “bestiality”, “pornographic”, and so forth, which would of course be completely intolerant and highly ironic since those same arguments have been used to attempt to block the liberties of the gay rights movement for decades. I hope my fears are unfounded, and that gay rights advocates truly are for liberty for ALL minorities, not just their own.

Best case for all: get government out of marriage! Then you marry whoever you want however you want.

Bi-Partisanship…

My cringe word is “bi-partisan”. Whenever I hear that, I know we’ve just spent a crap ton of money we don’t have on both welfare & warfare. We’ve been “bi-partisan” for decades… where has it led us? Endless war and $17 trillion in debt. Our grandkids will pay it back with interest I’m sure…. NOT! Nor should they. We’ll be lucky if they bury us in something other than mass graves.

Due Process – Innocent Til Proven Guilty

California is at it again…

What a ridiculous idea. How exactly do you prove that there was an affirmative answer? This is exactly the opposite of innocent until proven guilty, upon which our whole legal foundation, and freedom by the way, is built. Terrible idea.

You might also need a witness to sign at the time of penetration & also at withdrawal. Your bodies are now considered a parking structure managed by government.

No one is for sexual assault, obviously, but this is nothing more than a fill our prisons with innocent people law. Better fire up Alcatraz again, I think ya’ll are going to need it. Don’t forget to raise taxes even more too, you know, to pay for it.

The Tea Party / Occupy Intersection

Been imagining this graphic in my mind for a long time now. Both are right on their diagnoses but Occupy is wrong on its solutions. If corporations have too much power, giving government even MOAR power does nothing to stop that – in fact it makes it worse – because government and corporations are in bed together. The solution is a return to a truOccupy / Tea Party Intersectionly free market where corporations are allowed to fail, and government is limited and held accountable to any cronyism like picking winners and losers, providing bailouts & “gift loans”, no bid contracts to Halliburton/Monsanto and so forth. Power needs to go back where it belongs – to the people – not the government nor corporations, and that is done via restoring the free market, not the crony market we currently have run by central bankers who work for the 0.01%.

“Risk-Free” Is So 2012

by John Rubino on March 25, 2013

dollarcollapse.com

The bank robbery of Cyprus
The bank robbery of Cyprus

So you’ve got this pile of cash and you’re not sure what to do with it. Nice problem, as problems go, but definitely not trivial, especially if you’re more concerned with keeping what you have than trying to make it grow.

Time was when you could simply deposit a few hundred thousand dollars or euros in your bank and relax, secure in the knowledge that even though your balance was above your country’s deposit insurance coverage limit, it was still pretty safe because your bank was, well, your bank. And no one loses money on a bank account. Even in the darkest days of the 2009 financial crisis, account holders at Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were never seriously threatened.

That pleasant delusion ended on Sunday night when the EU forced tiny, previously insignificant Cyprus to charge large depositors for the cost of bailing out its overextended banking system – and eurozone officials hailed the plan as a template for future crises. As Britain’s Economist Magazine put it:

Coming soon to uninsured deposits near you 
ON THE subject of euro zone fragility and the impact of the Cyprus incident on broader confidence in the single currency, an exhibit. Fresh off negotiating the Cyprus deal Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister and head of the “Eurogroup” of euro-zone finance ministers, said in comments to Reuters and the Financial Times that:

A rescue programme agreed for Cyprus on Monday represents a new template for resolving euro zone banking problems and other countries may have to restructure their banking sectors…

In other words, Cyprus is absolutely a unique case, BUT if trouble should come to banking sectors elsewhere in the euro zone hitting uninsured depositors would seem a sensible way to go. Alternatively: rich Spaniards, Italians and so on should perhaps think about moving money in excess of deposit guarantee limits elsewhere.

And with that, equities flipped from positive to negative on the day, and European bank stocks tumbled. It could just be that traders are antsy today. But euro-zone officials should at least consider the possibility that the barrier holding back a raging contagion from Cyprus might not be particularly thick.

At any rate, one has to respect the European commitment to ensuring journalists don’t put too positive a spin on things.

Some thoughts
The Cyprus saga contains at least two broadly-applicable lessons: First, by initially going after all bank accounts rather than just those large enough to be uninsured, Europe’s leaders gave a rare glimpse of how they really feel about private property, which is that it’s only private until the state needs it. That they backtracked in the face of public outrage (and the prospect of continent-wide bank runs) doesn’t change the fact that they’d have done it if they could have gotten away with it. Second, the revised “template,” by sparing small accounts, puts an even heavier burden on large accounts, which in some cases might be wiped out like any other unsecured creditor of a failed borrower.

So we’re left with a very different sense of what it means to have money in the bank. Small savers now know that their government will take their accounts if some future crisis makes it politically feasible. Large depositors now know that they’re unsecured creditors of extremely shaky institutions. In other words, a bank account yielding 1% is actually both riskier and lower-yielding than a portfolio of dividend paying stocks – or even a portfolio of junk bonds.

This turns the traditional risk/reward calculus on its head. Which, make no mistake, is a good outcome for the world’s governments and central banks. Cutting interest rates to zero and aggressively lowering the value of the dollar, euro and yen are intended to cause savers to become investors and investors to become speculators. The further out we all move on the risk spectrum the greater the chance that the old, indebted economies will “grow” through the next election cycle.

But turning savers and retirees into growth stock and junk bond investors means that the next 30% stock market correction (now long overdue based on charts like these) will be catastrophic for people who actually need their money. Meanwhile, in the bubbly here-and-now the same process will starve even well-run banks of deposits, since their CDs and savings accounts are now high-risk/low-return and thus not worth the trouble. The near-certain result: more banks will need bailouts, more savers will be expropriated, and more money will migrate towards risk.

The other unintended consequence of all this is — does it even have to be said? — a migration out of paper and into real assets. If there was ever a time to load up on physical gold and silver, this is it.

Well Well Mr. Obama, The American People “Get It”

By: Karl Denninger

I’ll be damned.

Two-out-of-three Americans recognize that their constitutional right to own a gun was intended to ensure their freedom.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 65% of American Adults think the purpose of the Second Amendment is to make sure that people are able to protect themselves from tyranny. Only 17% disagree, while another 18% are not sure.

You mean that 2/3rds of the American people read The Declaration of Independence and understand the difference between a right and aprivilege?

We’re making progress folks.

Look, this is really a binary thing.  The Declaration asserts that:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Government does not grant rights as government never possessed them in the first place.  Government may grant privileges but it may not infringe (under natural law) on rights.

This is the foundational principle of America. It does not matter if 51%, 66%, 75% or 99.999% of the people don’t want you to have one or more of your rights.

There is no legitimate act, whether by Congress, law, the Constitution or any other means to deprive you of your natural rights, because you are endowed with them by virtue of being human. 

Government may disrespect those rights but it cannot change the fact that you have them, no matter how much disrespect it shows. 

No man can take or restrict that which was not his to bestow in the first place.

If you don’t believe in this then you’re not an American, no matter where you were born.  You do not share American values.  You do not share the foundational beliefs that created and thus far have sustained this nation.  You are a traitor to Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Washington and countless others.  In advancing your views you are advocating violence against all in America, as the disrespecting of one’s natural rights is the initiation of force — the very definition of assault.

If you are an elected official and take any position or advocate any law to constrain the ownership of small arms by the people, as defined in our Constitution, you are deserving of immediate impeachment along with both civil damages and criminal imprisonment under 18 USC 242 and 42 USC 1983 for each person who suffers harm, no matter the form or degree, as a consequence of what you advance.

Yes, Obama and Feinswine, this includes (but is certainly not limited to) both of you.

You either believe all of the above or you are a proponent of slavery, the premise that one man is owned by and exists with the permission of another.

The Second Amendment is not a grant of a right by government to the people.  It is a declaration that your Right to Life and Liberty isunalienable and that because your Right to Life and Liberty is unalienable you are entitled to defend yourself against any tyrant that would take your life or liberty, whether that tyrant comes in the form of a rapist at 3:00 AM or an out-of-control government that is trying to murder you and shove you in the hole because of such factors as your religion, political beliefs, race or other characteristics.

The Colonists demonstrated their understanding of the unalienable Right to Life and Liberty at Lexington Common and Concord in 1775.  They were exactly correct in their actions then, and it is precisely due to their understanding of those unalienable rights that our nation and government exist today.

170 million people have been murdered outside of war by their governments in the last century.  Each and every one of those events was preceded by firearm registration, confiscation or both.  It is much more difficult to murder an armed citizen than an unarmed one, and it is especially difficult to commit mass-murder upon an armed population.

If you need more confirmation than Rasmussen provides just take a trip by your local gun store.  You’ll find empty shelves — they’re empty of both of weapons and ammunition.  You can take all the surveys you want by phone but the survey that matters is the vote that Americans express with their wallets, just as the political poll that matters is the one held on the first Tuesday in November.

The American people “get it”, by and large, and we must insist that all in every branch of  Government who refuse to both publicly confirm and act in conformance with same be immediately and permanently ejected from public office.

The Ant and the Grasshoppers

The Ant and the Grasshopper
The Ant and the Grasshopper

One of my favorite fables reminds me of the way America used to be not really that long ago: a nation of ants.  Here’s a quick summary:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.  The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and  laughs and dances and plays the summer away.  Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

The moral of the story of course:  Be responsible for yourself!

Today, with roughly 50% of households in the US receiving some form of government payment, and nearly 50 million people on food stamps, it is obvious we have strayed far from our origins & the founders’ intent: a nation of sovereign individuals.  It’s easy though to assume that the grasshopper is the sloth citizen, unwilling to work hard and better themselves, preferring instead to wait around for government to take from the hard working ant and redistribute to them.  I submit that there are actually two other kinds of grasshoppers, though, and they are far more dangerous to what would and should be our nation of ants.

Attack Grasshopper

This breed, rather than creating his own wealth, wants to meddle in, conquer, and steal the wealth of other ants & grasshoppers in other fields.  Of course he does not do this himself, he sends other grasshoppers & ants of his own tribe.  He also often attacks the freedoms of individual grasshoppers & ants within his field, wishing to force his belief system and morality upon the others; he’ll subject them to random search & seizure & deny their rights to due process.  He’ll keep them indoctrinated with tales of “field exceptionalism” and the “call of duty”.  He’ll pretend to be on the side of the regular grasshoppers all the while using more of the confiscated ants’ wealth on his militarism.  He’ll keep them all in a perpetual state of fear.

Crony Grasshopper

This breed, rather than really work & produce actual tangible results, uses his resources & connections to keep one of his own in power.  In doing so, he siphons off resources and gets exceptions and special treatment that regular ants do not get.  Often he goes in & out of power with his fellow crony grasshoppers through a revolving door.  He takes “positions” that would seem to indicate he is “working” when not in power.  He fosters a fake divide of resentment & bitterness between red ants and black ants, thus providing the illusion of the possibility of “hope” and “change” to the ants & regular grasshoppers.  Also works closely with Attack Grasshopper cousins to increase his power & ability to skim off the system.  He’ll keep the ants complacent by taking from them just enough so they are still content with a “decent” life while giving to the regular grasshoppers just enough so they can get bye & he buys their votes.

A Nation of Ants

The big problem is that we’ve either had Crony Grasshoppers or Attack Grasshoppers in charge for as long as I can remember, and often a grasshopper who is a mix between the two.

What if there is one candidate of the current five presidential contenders who is himself an ant and not a grasshopper of any sort?  One who wants his fellow ants to keep what they earn, and he wants to strongly & staunchly defend their field, not plunder & instigate in the fields of others, nor perpetuate a system of cronyism.  What if he were elected?