Wire Report

Jacob G. Hornberger – Founder & President, The Future of Freedom Foundation

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at The Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, publisher of The Freeman.In 1989, Mr. Hornberger founded The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is a regular writer for The Foundation’s publication, Freedom Daily. Fluent in Spanish and conversant in Italian, he has delivered speeches and engaged in debates and discussions about free-market principles with groups all over the United States, as well as Canada, England, Europe, and Latin America, including Brazil, Cuba, Bolivia, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Argentina. He has also advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows. Most recently, he has regularly appeared as a commentator on Fox News’ legal commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Internet-based show Freedom Watch. His editorials have appeared in the Washington Post, Charlotte Observer, La Prensa San Diego, El Nuevo Miami Herald, and many others, both in the United States and in Latin America. He is a co-editor or contributor to the eight books that have been published by the Foundation.

(WIRE/FFF) – What happens when the military is used in a police capacity? You get a “war on terrorism,” one in which people think that the laws of war now apply to the situation. But in actuality, nothing could be further from the truth. What you actually get is a criminal-justice problem that inevitably goes horribly awry, causing the problem to escalate into a deadly and destructive horror story.

Consider the war on drugs. Most everyone concedes that drug dealing and drug possession are federal criminal offenses. Drug offenses are listed as crimes in the U.S. Code. People who are caught violating them are arrested, indicted by a federal grand jury, and prosecuted in U.S. District Court. The Bill of Rights requires the government to accord drug defendants all the rights and guarantees of the Bill of Rights, including trial by jury and due process of law. Incompetent, irrelevant, and illegally acquired evidence is excluded from the trial. The defendant is presumed innocent and must be found not guilty unless the government provides sufficient evidence to convince the jury that the defendant is guilty. Cruel and unusual punishments are prohibited. The defendant has the right to remain completely silent, before, during, and after the proceeding.

Now, consider the following scenario. In a concerted effort, a couple thousand members of powerful Latin American drug cartels cross the Mexican border into the United States. Employing automatic weapons, bombs, and grenades, they begin killing DEA agents, federal judges, and local cops and blowing up federal buildings in retaliation for U.S. military actions against drug cartels in Colombia and DEA actions in Mexico. The drug gangsters slip back into the populace, only to engage in more assaults in the following weeks.

The local cops take on the drug gangs, but they are clearly outgunned. The state governors ask the president to send the U.S. military to help them out. The president persuades Congress to suspend the posse comitatus law, and he reassigns U.S. military forces fighting the drug war in Colombia to the U.S. southern border.

Question: Does the military’s participation in the drug war automatically change the drug war into a real war, like World Wars I and II and the Vietnam War?

Answer: No. The matter continues to remain one of criminal-justice. The gangsters are violating laws against murder, mayhem, drug dealing, illegal entry, and no doubt dozens of other criminal laws on the books. But the fact that the military is being employed to assist the police doesn’t mean that the matter is now governed by the laws of war. The gangsters do not become enemy combatants. They remain criminal suspects.

The military is simply being used in a police capacity, albeit one employing much more force than the cops employ. But in principle the situation remains the same: when the military is used in a police capacity, it is still subject to all the rules and processes that govern the police. When the military takes one of the drug suspects into custody, the suspect is entitled to all the rights and guarantees that drug suspects are entitled to when the police take them into custody.

Why don’t we use the military to enforce the drug war and other federal crimes here in the United States? Why is there a policy against it? After all, the U.S. military is used to wage the drug war in Colombia, and the Mexican government employs its military to fight the drug war in Mexico. Why don’t we do the same thing here?

The reason is that the mindset of a law-enforcement officer is completely different from that of a soldier.

The mindset of policeman is: apprehend the suspect and bring him to justice, which means a trial to determine whether he’s guilty, and, in the process, do your best to ensure that innocent bystanders are not hurt.

The mindset of soldier is: kill the enemy and win the war. The killing of innocent bystanders is acceptable as collateral damage, especially if the action results in the killing of the enemy and protection of U.S. troops.

That brings us to the subject of terrorism. Like drug dealing, terrorism is a federal criminal offense. No one can deny that. It has long been listed in the U.S. Code as a crime. That’s why terrorists are indicted in U.S. District Court and accorded all the rights and guarantees in the Bill of Rights, just like drug defendants. It’s why such famous terrorists as Ramzi Yousef, Zacharias Moussaoui, Jose Padilla, and Timothy McVeigh, to name only a few, were indicted, tried, and convicted in federal court.

In fact, the Yousef case provides a good example for analysis. He’s the man who committed the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, an attack which, in principle, was no different from the subsequent attack on the same building 8 years later, on September 11.

After attacking the WTC, Yousef, a foreign citizen, escaped from the United States. In 1995, Pakistani law enforcement agents learned that he was holed up in Pakistan, arrested him, and extradited him to the United States, where he stood trial for terrorism in U.S. District Court and convicted. He is now serving a life sentence without possibility of parole in a federal penitentiary.

Was Yousef’s attack on the WTC an act of war? No. It was a federal criminal offense. When he was taken into custody, he wasn’t taken to a prisoner of war camp. He was instead turned over to U.S. law-enforcement agents.

Let’s suppose that Yousef had been located in an area of Pakistan in which he was protected by 3,000 compatriots who had conspired with him to commit the terrorist attack. Would the large size of co-conspirators convert the attack into an act of war? Again, the answer is no. It doesn’t make any difference whether a criminal act has 2 co-conspirators or a thousand. It still remains a criminal act, albeit one involving a larger conspiracy.

Suppose that Yousef and his gang were armed with automatic weapons and that the Pakistani police and military were unable to take him into custody. Let’s say that the Pakistani government invites the U.S. government to send in its military forces to take Yousef into custody. The U.S. military enters the country, attacks Yousef and his cohorts, and takes him into custody.

Has the matter now been converted into a war, like World Wars I and II and the Vietnam War, simply because the U.S. military is involved and doing the apprehending?

Again, the answer is no. The issue of war does not turn on whether a nation’s military branch is used to subdue and apprehend a suspected criminal. Once the military took Yousef into custody, it would be required to do what the police did — turn him over to the authorities for trial. By subduing and apprehending Yousef, the military has simply functioned in a police capacity, albeit one with overwhelming force.

Consider Al Capone and his gang during Prohibition. They used machine guns against local cops and federal agent Elliot Ness and his “untouchables.” Did that constitute war? Of course not. But what if it had been necessary to bring the military into the situation to overcome Capone’s massive firepower? Again, the military would simply have been operating in a police capacity and, thus, subject to the rules that govern the police.

The problem though, as I mentioned earlier, is that the military, because it has a different mindset than the police, will inevitably treat the matter differently than the police. For example, the police will stake out a building for days where they suspect that a criminal suspect is holed up. That’s not what the military would do. If they are reasonably certain that the suspect is in the building, they would simply drop a bomb on it. And if it turned out that the suspect was killed in the blast, the military would consider the operation to be a success, even if a several innocent bystanders were killed in the process.

All this brings us to Osama bin Laden and the military invasion of Afghanistan.

The attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 was, in principle, no different from the attack on that same building in 1993. Again, terrorism is a federal criminal offense. As the suspected planner of the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden was in no different position from people who conspired with Ramzi Yousef to commit the 1993 attacks.

After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush demanded that the Afghan government turn over bin Laden to U.S. officials, just as Pakistan had turned over Ramzi Yousef to U.S. officials. If the Afghan government had complied with Bush’s request, then U.S. law dictated that bin Laden be treated the same way as Yousef and, for that matter, 9/11 conspirator Moussaoui, were treated — that is, indicted in U.S. District Court and prosecuted for conspiring to commit a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

However, the Afghan government refused to unconditionally comply with Bush’s demand. For one thing, there was no extradition agreement between the United States and Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the Afghan government expressed a willingness to deliver bin Laden to an independent third party for trial if the U.S. government provided evidence establishing bin Laden’s complicity in the attacks, the type of evidence that would have been required in an extradition hearing.

Bush refused those conditions and emphasized that his demand for bin Laden was unconditional. The Afghan government refused. At that point, the United States attacked Afghanistan. Thus, that involved the U.S. military in two separate actions: a war against the Afghan government for refusing to comply with Bush’s extradition demand and a police action to apprehend Osama bin Laden.

The action against the Afghan government constituted war, like World Wars I and II. It was a conflict between two nation states. Clearly it was an illegal war, given that it was waged without the congressional declaration of war required by the Constitution but it was a genuine war nonetheless.

Not so, however, with respect to the military action intended to apprehend bin Laden. Like our examples regarding Ramzi Yousef, Al Capone, and the Latin American drug gangs, that action remained a police action, one in which the military was being used in a foreign country to employ its overwhelming force to bring a suspected criminal to justice.

The problem arose when the U.S. government made no attempt to distinguish between legitimate prisoners of war and suspected terrorist criminals. Instead, it intentionally conflated the two and then defaulted into making all them — Afghan soldiers and al-Qaeda members alike as “illegal enemy combatants.”

At the same time, of course, was the massive war-on-terrorism propaganda that the Bush administration issued after the 9/11 attacks. In the fear-laden environment of post 9/11, federal officials embarked on a big hype campaign in which they convinced people that this particular criminal offense was either a criminal offense (which is precisely why they indicted and prosecuted 9/11 co-conspirator Moussasoui in federal court) or an act of war, at the option of U.S. officials. At the same time, by conflating the prisoners of war taken captive in the war against Afghanistan with suspected members of al-Qaeda taken captive, U.S. officials succeeded in confusing the separate issues of war and criminal justice in people’s minds.

Thus, we have the horribly muddled situation today, one in which some people are saying that some suspected terrorists should be treated as criminal defendants, while others are saying they should be treated as illegal warriors, while others are saying that the government should continue to have the option of treating them either way. Perhaps the most bizarre suggestion came from those who said that the Detroit bomb suspect should have been turned over to the military for torture and then returned to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution in federal court.

We now also have a warped dual-track judicial system with respect to suspected terrorists. One track involves criminal prosecution in the federal judicial system established by the Constitution, where people are presumed innocent and the Bill of Rights applies. The other track involves criminal prosecution in an alternative, competing military tribunal system established by the Pentagon, one in which people are presumed guilty of terrorism, subjected to torture and abuse, and tried in kangaroo proceedings where the Bill of Rights does not apply. The government has the arbitrary, ad hoc power to decide which track people are going to be subjected to.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the horrific consequences of the Bush administration’s decision to employ the military to apprehend bin Laden, unlike the case with Ramzi Yousef several years before.

In Yousef’s case, no bombs were dropped on Pakistan. U.S. officials waited patiently for two years before he finally turned up and was taken captive, with no loss of life to innocent bystanders.

Contrast that with the horrific mess in Afghanistan. In the midst of all the anger and hatred that people all over the world now have for the United States, it’s easy to forget the outpouring of sympathy and friendship that came from all over the world after 9/11, including from the Muslim community. If U.S. officials had simply waited out the situation, as they had with Yousef, bin Laden would have been isolated. That is, he could never have travelled freely and there were countless people all over the world sympathetic to the United States who would have been willing to turn him, especially for a sizable reward. His recruiting efforts would have been limited to people who were angry with U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East (e.g., unconditional support of Israel, the sanctions against Iraq, etc.)

Instead, the Bush administration sent in the military — the people with the mindset of “kill the enemy even if it kills innocent bystanders,” which produced massive death and destruction in Afghanistan, which in turn converted all that sympathy and friendship for the United States into widespread anger, hatred, and rage, which in turn greatly fueled bin Laden’s recruiting efforts. And, oh, by the way, even after 8 long years of death and destruction in Afghanistan, they still haven’t apprehended bin Laden.

Finally, I should also point out that the terrorism-is-war crowd has never answered a critically important question: How is the war on terrorism expected to end? That is, how do we know when all the terrorists in the world have been killed? Or, better yet, how do the terrorists surrender? Does the president of the TAW (the Terrorist Association of the World) sit down on a U.S. ship and sign the surrender papers, just like Japanese military officials did at the conclusion of World War II? Yes, that is ridiculous, but it goes to show what the terrorism-is-war paradigm has led us to — perpetual military conflict, along with perpetual death and destruction, along with ever-increasing military expenditures, along with ever-growing infringements on civil liberties.

It’s time to bring the military home and end its role as domestic and international cop.

© 2001-2010 The Future of Freedom Foundation. All rights reserved.

Wire Report

Steven Horwitz, Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics, St. Lawrence University

Steven Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. He is the author of two books, Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective (Routledge, 2000) and Monetary Evolution, Free Banking, and Economic Order (Westview, 1992), and he has written extensively on Austrian economics, Hayekian political economy, monetary theory and history, and the economics and social theory of gender and the family. His work has been published in professional journals such as History of Political Economy, Southern Economic Journal, and The Cambridge Journal of Economics. He has also done public policy research for the Mercatus Center, Heartland Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, and the Cato Institute. His current project is a book tentatively titled Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of the Modern Family. Horwitz currently serves as the book review editor of The Review of Austrian Economics and as an academic advisor for the Heartland Institute and a contributing editor to Critical Review and Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines. A member of the Mont Pelerin Society, he completed his MA and PhD in economics at George Mason University and received his A.B. in economics and philosophy from The University of Michigan.

FUTURE of FREEDOM FOUNDATION -  On December 2, 2009, Steve Horwitz gave the following speech at The Future of Freedom Foundation’s “Economic Liberty Lecture Series.” The speech can viewed below in its entirety.

Allison Bricker

Social news site reddit.com interviews 14th Congressional District representative, Ron Paul. Questions were asked and voted upon by the reddit community, with the top ten questions asked during the course of the interview.

1. Kitanata: Dr. Paul, you have stated that you do not support Net Neutrality. Could you define Net Neutrality as you see it, then elaborate on what aspects of Net Neutrality you do not support and why? Thank you.




2. Fauster: Do you think that scientists are politically motivated with regard to issues of global warming and evolution? As a medical professional, you probably understand the value of deferring to specialists outside areas of your expertise. Nonetheless, you openly disagree with overwhelming scientific consensus in these two areas. While hardly anyone thinks Greenland will melt in twenty years, the overwhelming majority of scientists believe the effects of climate change will be lasting and severe in the next 50-100 years. With regard to evolution, almost all biologists, geologists, and physicists would say it’s better characterized as a law than a theory. Do you think the Bible provides a superior account of the origins of life on Earth, and thus claim a different source of expertise? Or rather, do you believe that scientific claims are grossly wrong, biased, or politically motivated?




3. SquirrelOnFire: Congressman Paul, The current health care legislation seems to be moving closer to the insurance industry’s ideal (minimal change + mandatory insurance) each day. What can be done to tip the balance of power in the congress away from lobbyists and towards the voters? Thank you for agreeing to speak with us.




4. Blackf1sh: Congressman Paul, Government investments in science and technology have historically yielded great returns. For example, it has been estimated[1] that, “technologies derived from quantum mechanics may account for 30% of the gross national product of the United States.” Money from the US government has led to the development of the internet[2] and a long list of NASA spin-off technologies have contributed to our daily lives[3].

   In contrast, the risk-averse private sector has little incentive and a poor track record for funding these types of long-term projects. Although the exploratory research in academic settings is often inefficient at achieving specific goals, it has the unique potential to yield unexpectedly amazing results on decade-long timescales.

   How can one justify reducing the budget for science and technology in spite of the quality of life and national security afforded by the developments from government-funded research?




5. Rightc0ast: Dr. Paul, Regarding the theory of evolution, I realize you have said you don’t feel the issue is important, but it’s been a topic discussed at great length at reddit, and other web sites. We’d really appreciate an answer to this.

   Allow me to clarify. Many people mistakenly confuse actual evolution with abiogenesis, or life coming from inanimate matter. Evolution is not a theory of creation. It is a theory encompassing genetic drift and selection, and describing changes in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Do you accept evolution in this regard as the foundation upon which nearly all biological knowledge is based, or do you truly believe change within species from generation to generation does not occur?




6. DoesMyKeyboardWork: Dr. Paul, What would a “return to sound currency” look like? Realistically, how would it play out? Would people exchange their dollars for a new gold/silver backed currency?

   As much as I agree with you (donated for the original money bomb, sticker on my car, wrote you in for the election), the defeatist in me thinks this is impossible and the entire system is eternally ruined. Thank you (and sorry for the pessimism)




7. TheHiveQueen: Dr. Paul, How do you reconcile the fact that you believe that the Federal Government has no place in Gay Marriage debate with your support of DOMA?




8. Playeren: Sir, should the government be able to keep secrets from the public at all? And Is ultimate freedom more important than ultimate security?




9. Chungkaishek: Dr. Paul, Given your well-established belief in the merits of the free market system, I’d like to know how you feel about the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA establishes restrictions and requirements on businesses, something I imagine goes against free market principles, yet it also ensures, for example, that a blind customer with a service animal such as a seeing eye dog will be treated like any other customer and not turned away for bringing a dog into a store.

   Should a free market decide which customers get service, or is this the responsibility of the federal government?




10. Jboeke: Dr. Paul, I’m trying to be a good libertarian, but I’m conflicted. I live in Phoenix, AZ and we just started up our light rail system earlier this year. I love it! I use it to commute to work and take it to the bar on weekends so I don’t drive drunk.

    But, light rail was a big public works project which took millions in taxpayer money from the three different cities and the Federal government. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine a scenario where something like light rail would have ever been built by the free market. How can I enjoy this project and still be a good libertarian?

The Smoking Argus

(OFFICIAL STATEMENT) – WASHINGTON D.C. – Things seem to be unraveling quickly for the new administration. The latest unemployment numbers are worse than the last reports. For all the billions of dollars spent and committed to fixing our economic problems, the situation is only getting worse. This was to be expected by those who understand the root causes of the problems. Throwing money around and creating more government programs is both simplistic and damaging to the economy. Of course, the administration claims that we would have been much worse off without these efforts. You can’t improve this situation by adding to our mountain of public debt for the benefit of big banks and other special interests. The American people know this. When will Washington learn?

In addition, the president’s plans for healthcare reform – or health insurance reform – are becoming more and more unpopular as details are examined. But because of all the alarmist rhetoric, politicians in Washington feel obligated to pass something, even if it doesn’t help. Rarely are liberty and prosperity at greater risk than when politicians feel they must “do something”. It is frightening to watch Washington toy with our healthcare purely for political reasons.

However, the saddest shortcoming of this administration is its utter failure to pursue a more peaceful foreign policy. Just last week up to 90 people, apparently mostly civilians, were killed in Afghanistan in an airstrike, and the violence is only getting worse. The administration is mulling over how many more troops they will send as part of their “Afghan Surge” with advisors getting it exactly backwards. They qualify sending fewer troops as “high-risk” and sending more troops as “low-risk”. This is not the perception at all if you were to ask the families of those being sent over. The best answer would be to stop risking any of our troops for the sake of what is, for all intents and purposes, a violent occupation, helping no one.

But all of these problems and their wrong-headed solutions come from one greater problem – which is not understanding the reasons that we are here. The economy is in bad shape because of too much government intervention producing a myriad of unintended consequences and perverse incentives. Healthcare is broken because the doctor-patient relationship has been broken down by hyper regulation and too much government interference. Afghanistan is a mess because they ignored the mission approved by Congress – to seek out those who attacked us on 9/11. They have instead gotten sidetracked with nebulous interventionist tasks such as promoting democracy and nation building. Eight years later, there is no real progress. The Soviets bankrupted themselves fighting in the mountains and caves of Afghanistan and we’re about to do the same. If we would just look to history it would be self-evident that there is nothing left to win in Afghanistan, and everything to lose.

Most of all, we need to understand that we don’t understand Afghan culture and politics, and for that reason alone, intervening in their affairs is unlikely to produce positive results. The best thing we could possibly do now is to bring our troops home, from Afghanistan, from Iraq, from Japan, from Germany, from all occupied countries, and concentrate on mending badly damaged relationships around the world. Free and honest trade has always been the best way to do that, without fail. Not understanding the benefits of peace, freedom, and nonintervention will always bring about catastrophe.

—END OFFICIAL STATEMENT—

Related Material(s)
	Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Straight Talk, “Government Solutions Lack Understanding” Transcript (13.6kb PDF)

Source(s): U.S. House of Representatives, Texas 14th Congressional District, Representative Ron Paul web page • The Smoking Argus YouTube Channel “Rep. Ron Paul Texas Straight Talk: Government Solutions Lack Understanding”

Allison Bricker

Allison Gibbs who also works for the Campaign for Liberty as their Director of Outreach recently launched her own social media website, the “Ladies of Liberty Alliance” (LoLA). She undertook this venture as a means to provide grassroots activist training for the rising women leaders scattered throughout the freedom movement.

Currently the site is free to all who wish to join and participate; however, Ms. Gibbs does hope to offer paid membership in the near future for users who are interested in receiving additional training as it relates to speaking, writing, as well as various other techniques needed to facilitate a successful grassroots campaign.

In pursuit of the her desire to offer an expanded package of professionally geared services to women in the liberty movement, Ms. Gibbs commissioned a professional photo shoot to design and publish the first official “Ladies of Liberty Alliance” calendar. The sixteen-month calendar features mostly individual LoLA members who were free to choose their desired look in conjunction with their stance on a specific political issue.

The calendar is available to individuals who contribute a minimum of twenty-dollars via the PayPal/Google Checkout widget located on the site. As is also becoming standard practice in the liberty movement, the group is keeping a running tally of the money raised to date along with the project’s stated fundraising goal.

While some take issue with the calendar and see it reinforcing the stereotype of relegating women to sex symbol status to the detriment of their intellectual accomplishments, Ms. Gibbs states that her main impetus is solely to fill an underserved niche within the pro-liberty community, which in turn benefits the entire freedom movement.

Source(s): Campaign For Liberty – Staff Listing, Allison Gibbs, Director of Outreach • Ladies of Liberty Alliance website • Motorhome Diaries “Libertarian Activist Allison Gibbs on Her Journey to Liberty & the Founding of LOLA” published August 11th, 2009

Guest Contributor

Raymond Powell

Raymond Powell is the Editor in Chief of “Liberty Network News”,  a “Revolution Broadcasting” radio personality, and is a member of several other ventures in the liberty movement. All of which are all accessible through RaymondPowell.com Mr. Powell considers himself to be a libertarian minded freedom seeker who became serious about changing the world in July of 2007 when Dr. Ron Paul was campaigning for the Republican Presidential Nomination.

The planners behind the New World Order movement are once again showing their pure brilliance. For decades, they have worked to maintain a two-party system and ensure that people have only one of two groups to identify with. These groups have been labeled “liberal” and “conservative”. If you want to study this technique, do some research on the Hegelian Dialectic. Of course you can always read Carroll Quigley as well to get all the specifics on their plan.

Please note that when I refer to “liberals” and “conservatives” throughout this article, I am not attempting to validate their usage. I am only pointing out that these are the two ideologies that have been created by usage of the technique I just described. That is why I enclose those words in quotes.

Every time one side of the Hegelian takes a clear political advantage, they know that the other side is surely feeling completely disenfranchised. The patriot/freedom movement has had the luxury of being able to reach out to a disenfranchised group for almost 2 years now. We have made significant progress with the “liberals” before the 2008 election, and we are making major progress with the “conservatives” now that the “liberals” are running the federal government. Of course we did make progress with the “conservatives” before the election too due to the Bush administrations complete lack of identity with “conservatism”. Due to that lack of identity, the “conservative” side has been weakened.

The planners behind the New World Order cannot allow the freedom movement to continue to make progress. With Obama being elected, the “liberals” now have their home. But the “conservatives” have none. They have now shown us how they intend to solve their dilemma. This new “we surround them” project will give all the “conservative” side a home again; a place from which they can re-invigorate their battle with the “liberals”. Of course this on-going battle has always served, and will always serve, to create a more restrictive society.

Let’s not be fooled. While this list of things may appear on the surface to be progress for the freedom movement, we know better. In order for this to be progress, it would mean that News Corp and other large media players have suddenly come around and joined us! To believe that, one would have to be seriously uninformed about the power, scope, goals, and experience in societal manipulations of the planners behind the New World Order.

Remember how this all started with Glenn Beck suddenly apologized to Ron Paul supporters for calling them “terrorists”? Once again, to really think he had just miraculously come around on his own, is to not understand the scope of the problem we are fighting against. I clearly remember watching his apology and addressing Ron Paul supporters and being extremely suspicious at the time.

While all of the evidence I am presenting is purely circumstantial, I believe anyone who has been paying attention to circumstances in current day and over the last 100 years or so, can see this evidence as clearly as I can.

I believe Glenn Beck was appointed to infiltrate our message. First, they decided that CNN is not the place for him- that is the “liberal” news network. They needed to put him in the right place, working for Fox News, who is the “conservative” news network. They did a small field test with his broadcasts over the last few weeks. They have done studies on the reaction and have come up with a clear plan as to what void needs to be filled in the “conservative” side of the Hegelian. Now that they have that, they have created a 9-point scheme, created a nice, easy to remember name for the project (we surround them) and are now attempting to enlist the big “conservative” guns, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Once this plan goes into effect, the uneducated, and misinformed populous will not be able to differentiate between the true message of freedom, and the message of the new “conservative” meme which is being created. But that same segment of the populous will find some comfort in their message, and they will be able to hear it in their car, see it on TV, and read it in all the conservative publications. The real message of freedom will be drowned out, and the populous will be manipulated, as always, into a false battle of fighting against those evil “liberals”.

I will now provide my analysis of their 9 points, and what I think they are trying to accomplish with each:

1. America is good.
   This sounds great! In reality, the only thing truly good about America (The United States of), is our constitution. Of course since that document is being totally ignored these days by our federal government, this statement is pretty meaningless and only serves to create false patriotism which ultimately leads to support of a big federal government.

   
   

   
   

   
   

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
   By this, they most certainly mean the “popular” version of God that has been created over many centuries of manipulations of the world population. That version of God is carefully maintained presently by the “National Council of Churches”. This point serves to separate those “conservatives” who tend to more regularly attend church and buy into the God concept they have created, from those “liberals” who tend to be afraid to address the issue of God in their lives. This ongoing battle will now be re-invigorated and keep everyone distracted from the fact they are continuing to restrict our freedoms and enslave us economically.

   
   

   
   

   
   

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
   Not sure about this one. Just seems to be good feeling fluff. Of course everyone wants honesty. Once again, it only serves to divide because once you have the “liberals” fighting against this platform, those who support the platform, will believe in their mind that those in opposition obviously don’t believe honesty is important.

   
   

   
   

   
   

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
   This statement is designed to grab those who support less government, but convince them, at the same time, that by believing in less government, you must act completely selfishly. Of course, working together and recognizing our shared responsibility for our community is paramount to a successful “free” society. This will divide the two groups and tap into people’s common sense understanding that we must share those certain responsibilities and present government as the only solution. Also note the use of the word “spouse”. This implies that those who choose to enter into the governments approved version personal relationships are somehow more worthy.

   
   

   
   

   
   

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
   This statement forces those that bought into this platform because of the freedom elements, to also accept that law must be enforced at all costs- regardless of real morality of freedom, and regardless of the constitutionality of the law in question. This will also allow people to sit back and accept the enactment of harsh penalties that we have never seen before.

   
   

   
   

   
   

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
   This statement gives the “conservatives” the ammunition to say “don’t complain you whiner”, whenever the government comes down hard on freedom-fighters. It subtly says “freedom is a neat idea, but don’t complain when you don’t get it.”

   
   

   
   

   
   

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
   This is “conservatism” at its best. This would be generally acceptable on its own in a pure sense, of course, to “liberals” this will appear to be insensible selfishness and only add fuel to the Hegelian battle. Experienced freedom fighters know that in order to get away with making statements like this, it always needs to be worded more like: While giving to others and being charitable is important in a functioning society, it can never be the role of government to use force or coercion to enforce morality.

   
   

   
   

   
   

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
   Once again, this enforces false patriotism in this “America” concept. The freedom movement would simply say something like: “The constitution enumerates my rights which allow me the freedom to rail against the government or to express my opinion.” But this would be far too sensible and not nearly divisive enough to accomplish the goals of their project.

   
   

   
   

   
   

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.
   Once again, this statement has shades of sentiment of a freedom-fighting constitutionalist. But we know these people aren’t. They are actually enforcing the concept of big government. They are saying big government is ok, as long as we (“conservatives”) are in control.

Part of me wants to write another several pages to make my argument crystal clear. However, I have real freedom-fighting work to get back to. I only hope that our movement can see through these tactics and not be fooled. This is a complicated game- and the road to winning back our freedom just got harder.

If you made it all the way through my post. Thank you for taking the time. You must have saw some little bit of wisdom here!

The Smoking Argus

ATLANTA, GEORGIA – Kurt Wallace, formerly of  Break the Matrix, has undertaken a new project to find the best pro-liberty/freedom movement articles and videos from around the new-media blogosphere. Kurt is seeking to expand upon the niche originally fostered by Matt Drudge of ‘The Drudge Report’ only obviously biased towards the expansion of freedom and a restoration of the Constitution.

Mr. Wallace feels that even in the environment of micro-blogging sites such as Twitter as well as the larger blogosphere itself, there is still a role for media aggregation. The idea first occurred to him after he would spend hours scouring the old-media news sites and blogosphere in preperation for his radio show. Thus last week the ‘Liberty Pulse’ officially went live with a full bevy of pro-liberty news. Currently the site is not monetized, but plans to offer advertising sometime in the near future.

On the Web: LibertyPulse.com

Tarrin Lupo

LANCASTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE – Last week I traveled to “Roger’s Campground” in Lancaster, New Hampshire to cover the Porcupine Freedom Festival 2009 (PorcFest) organized by the members of the Free State Project (FSP). For those unfamiliar,  the FSP began in 2001 when Dr. Jason Sorens, then a doctoral student at Yale, wrote an article discussing his analysis as to why Libertarians continued to fail to win elected office. As the original idea continued to evolve, it was postulated that efforts would be more effective by consolidating liberty oriented activism into one state. Thus, the “Free State Project” was born and after several rounds of voting, the state of New Hampshire was declared as the winner.

Currently there are 9,373 members, of which 720 have already moved to New Hampshire.

Source(s): The Free State Project

Joseph Marohl

France’s conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy¹ has publicly stated that he backs a coalition of French legislators expressing “concerns” over the increase in burqa wearing among Muslim women in France:

“The issue of the burqa is not a religious issue, it is a question of freedom and of women’s dignity.”

“The burqa is not a religious sign, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women. I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on our territory.”

“We cannot accept that some women in our country are prisoners behind a grille, cut off from social life, deprived of their identity.”

Nobody has said anything (yet) about “banning” burqas, though it is worth remembering that, as of 2004, French law prohibits the wearing of overt religious symbols (including crucifixes, headscarves, and yarmulkes) in secular state institutions, including state-operated schools².

President Sarkozy’s words “not welcome,” which grate in American ears, are part of the government’s century-old attempt to define and preserve an idea of French culture in a mobile and diverse society. As such, President Sarkozy’s speech is consistent with the French concept of laïcité and an effort to preserve a level of peace and order in public institutions at a time when religion can be compared to gang membership in the minds of many, many of both secular and religious mindsets.

Laïcité is a uniquely French concept, only somewhat comparable to America’s separation of church and state—which, in case you haven’t noticed, are hardly ever actually separate in this country.

French secularism was a nineteenth-century innovation to separate education, traditionally a Catholic system (all the medieval universities, for instance, were arms of the Church), from the control of the clergy. More strictly, then, than in the United States, France has kept government out of religion and religion out of government—no oaths on the Bible, no “one nation under God,” no crèches at city hall, no politicians crowding the pulpits.

Further, laïcité is as much a concept of French culture as it is of French law. French secularism does not deny the value of faith and spirituality. It does, however, separate it from the public sphere, viewing religion as a distinctly “private” matter, not to be meddled with in public and not to be allowed to meddle in matters of importance to the common collective good of the French people, of whatever creeds or none.

Still, it is hard not to hear President Sarkozy’s words in the context of the conservative European backlash against immigrants, especially Arab immigrants, since 2001 and the rise of the “demographic winter” conspiracy scenarios currently popping up around the continent—diluted in mainstream films like Children of Men and fortified in far right religionist to neo-Nazi propaganda blaming feminists, gays, and abortion clinics for the shrinking numbers of white Christian babies.

His [Sarkozy] stated concern—women’s freedom and dignity—, though, is clearly not anti-feminist or strongly sectarian. The question remains whether the statement truly reflects his and the legislators’ intent—because we Americans may remember how neoconservatives opportunistically embraced feminism (for a few days) to justify wars, not so very long ago.

French laïcité has been criticized as an attempt to homogenize French culture. And in the burqa controversy, President Sarkozy’s stance could backfire, as fundamentalist Muslims might then refuse wives and daughters the liberty to go out in public at all, not to mention draw fire from Islamists for whom there is no such thing as the secular.

Are burqas a sign of religious freedom or an emblem of the subjugation of women? In America, such matters are usually left alone—rightly or wrongly designated as matters of religious choice and therefore protected under the First Amendment. In exceptional cases, such as when parents refuse needed medical care for their child in the belief that medical science denies faith in God’s healing powers, sometimes the state intervenes—but, even then, usually to some controversy.

I, for one, applaud France’s efforts to define a society based on secular values, while protecting religion as a privacy issue. I think America could do more to assert, protect, and enforce a secular culture that still maintains individuals’ right to worship (or not) as they please. Such a culture is essential to a society that values both individual freedom and the common good of its citizens.

Despite well-choreographed propaganda, the word “secular” does not and never really has meant the same thing as “anti-religious.” Some American religious zealots are comfortable persecuting others, while claiming martyrs’ crowns for themselves. For example, in my state (North Carolina), the biggest impediment to the just-passed anti-bullying law was not original-intent Constitutionalists, with their technical legal concerns, but church groups claiming that the inclusion of “real and perceived sexual orientation” as a protected category was an assault on their fundamental values, which hold that some types of children deserve all the bullying they get.

I cannot claim a great deal of sensitivity towards religion these days (I was brought up a fundamentalist Baptist) or much knowledge at all of Muslim practices. But purely from an outsider’s point of view, the burqa does, yes, look to me like the subjugation of women—even though I do realize that many women gladly and voluntarily don these heavy, forbidding coverings … mass self-subjugation is no less an affront on the human spirit than external constraints, lest we forget that many slaves claimed to love their masters, prided themselves in their faithful servitude, and would never have dreamt of trying to escape.

Definitely, I would feel different if in some Middle Eastern countries women who refuse to cover their heads in public had not been beaten and stoned in recent years. Under other circumstances, in a different historical context, I would tolerate the burqa as one more alien and sexist quirk of fashion—of which haute couture has seen plenty just as alien and just as sexist. But women in Paris are not physically attacked for refusing to wear Chanel or Franck Sorbier.

We live in a multicultural world. We have to live and let live. If we do not, we will divide and destroy ourselves.

But tolerance does not mean toleration of the patent degradation of whole groups. If burqas were merely offensive to my scruples or tastes, I would have nothing to say about them here. If burqa wearing was clearly a matter of personal preference and choice, I would have nothing to say against it.  If I could hear a reasonable, liberal, and (yes) secular defense of the burqa, I could still change my mind about it.

But, in my admitted ignorance of the custom, the burqa looks degrading, and degradation of the human spirit is un-democratic. It is also un-French, if not yet (sadly) altogether un-American.

Source(s): ¹Reuters “Sarkozy says burqas have no place in France” by Estelle Shirbo, published Monday, June 22nd, 2009 • ²French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools (English Translation by BabelFish)

Kelly

This past Memorial Day, just weeks after Pastor Steve Anderson was beaten and tazed by Border Patrol in Arizona, he and a small group of people headed to a border checkpoint with the intent to hold up signs and protest the unconstitutionality of such checkpoints.  The following video is the footage of the confrontation between Pastor Anderson and the Border Patrol security officers.

Make no mistake, this is only the beginning of a long fight for liberty.