The Philosophy of Liberty: Plunder
In this follow up video to The Philosophy of Liberty: Property, we explore Frederic Bastiat’s concept of Legal Plunder. Is it ever OK for government to steal your stuff and give it to someone else? Or is government just a glorified organized crime syndicate ala Tony Soprano? Does it really make sense for citizens to [...]
New Strategy for Liberty
Americans today can’t possibly fathom the principles of true freedom and small government. They’re inflamed with the symptoms of deficit spending, endless war, an increasingly demanding welfare system, and a nanny state that encroaches on every aspect of society. Thus, I propose a new strategy: crush up the pill.
Progressives want “direct action” but a disarmed public
Progressive William Rivers Pitt has lost patience with the Obama regime and with British Petroleum (“Enough of This Crap,” June 15, Truthout). To break through the news blackout that BP maintains over the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill, he wants a hundred thousand Americans to “just show the hell up down there and demand access.”
Pitt is correct that this “is the kind of direct action that has been missing from our national narrative, not just in the Gulf but all over.” Obama, he says correctly, is a “narcotic” for progressives. Apparently, for many progressives having a black man, or a 50 percent black man, in the White House is what is important, not the fact that he is a continuation of Bush/Cheney.
If a hundred thousand people marched on the Gulf Coast, “big things would happen.” Pitt writes that “either the people would break through those unconscionable corporate barriers and show the world what is really going on in the Gulf, or the forces BP has arrayed against the truth would react with violence, which would tell us everything we need to know about what is happening, and would be enough to break that God damned criminal corporation finally and forever.”
It was, of course, the Bush-Cheney-Obama administration that permitted the drilling. BP didn’t go about it on its own. This aside, and also putting aside my sympathy with Pitt’s outrage, here we have a progressive advocating direct action that likely would end in violence, not merely from BP mercenaries but from local, state, and federal government forces. The anomaly in the picture is that it is progressives who have been most determined to disarm the American people. What would the one hundred thousand do when withering fire is directed at them? Amerika’s forces of “law and order” and conquest enjoy killing people. It doesn’t matter if they are women and children. In fact, killing women and children is the way to win 30-year wars like the one we are one-third through in Afghanistan.
Pretense of a Republic Masking the Police State Kleptocracy
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
June 12, 2010In his book Friendly Fascism, author Bertram Gross argues that when fascism comes to America it will be “friendly” and lack the overt brutality of the classic varieties of German and Italian fascism.
Richard Nixon once said that average American is like a child in the family.
Nixon was merely expressing the dominant opinion of the ruling elite who consider us contemptible children in need of adult supervision. Hitler, too, considered the German people children in need of adult supervision.
For the elite, a political activist is the worst sort of unruly child, one that directly challenges the authority of the father who represents the state. In order to modify the behavior of a rebellious child the state must instill fear. It must intimidate but — as Gross noted — it must do this with a friendly face. It must uphold the pretense of “democracy.” A frog must be boiled slowly.
“No truly sophisticated proponent of repression would be stupid enough to shatter the facade of democratic institutions,” wrote Murray B. Levin.
http://www.infowars.com/austin-mother-of-five-gets-fbi-visit-for-exercising-first-amendment/
The Roots of the Tea Parties
Hat tip: Cato at Liberty
By David Boaz
The sight of middle-class Americans rallying to protest overtaxing, overspending, Wall Street bailouts, and government-directed health care scares the bejeezus out of a lot of people. The elite media are full of stories declaring the Tea Partiers to be racists, John Birchers, Glenn Beck zombies, and God knows what. So it’s a relief to read a sensible discussion (subscription required) by John Judis, the decidedly leftist but serious journalist-historian at the New Republic. Once the managing editor the journal Socialist Revolution, Judis went on to write a biography of William F. Buckley Jr. and other books, so he knows something about ideological movements in the United States. Judis isn’t happy about the Tea Party movement, but he warns liberals not to dismiss it as fringe, AstroTurf, or a front group for the GOP:
But the Tea Party movement is not inauthentic, and—contrary to the impression its rallies give off—it isn’t a fringe faction either. It is a genuine popular movement, one that has managed to unite a number of ideological strains from U.S. history—some recent, some older. These strains can be described as many things, but they cannot be dismissed as passing phenomena. Much as liberals would like to believe otherwise, there is good reason to think the Tea Party movement could exercise considerable influence over our politics in the coming years.
Liberty Voice Candidates Prevail in Primary
by sherry mann
Following the announcement of candidates who met the signature requirements to run in various area races, we contacted a few of the most liberty minded candidates to offer them a unique advertising opportunity. For very little cost these candidates were invited to submit articles on the subject of their own passions, and these were included in our January print edition. Other candidates heard about the opportunity, and we did not refuse to include any candidates who contacted us.
We are pleased to share the results of “our” candidates’ efforts. (The candidates who have links are the ones who participated in the opportunity.)
U.S. Representative – District 15 (C)
Ryon, David (C) 51.26%
Macisco, Chris (C) 48.74%
Governor/Lieutenant Governor (L)
Ken Matesz, Margaret Ann Leech (L) 100.00% 4,255
U.S. Representative – District 12 (L)
Irvine, Travis (L) 60.54% 339
Florek, Eddie (L) 39.46% 221
State Representative – District 02 (R)
Brenner, Andrew (R) 24.42% 4,162
Schweitzer, Craig* (R) 22.77% 3,880
Lear, Beth (R) 22.32% 3,803
Saliba, Traci (R) 13.61% 2,319
Phillips, Mark (R) 8.60% 1,465
Mayle, Jeffery (R) 8.29% 1,413
* Although Craig Schweitzer did not win, his impressive showing is notewothy considering he is a first time candidate who beat out Traci Saliba, a 17-year political veteran in Delaware county, Mark Phillips, a Delaware area attorney, Beth Lear, who worked as a legislative aide for nearly a decade which includes her educational issue work at the Buckeye Institute and Jeffery Mayle who ran in the Republican primary against Kris Jordan in March 2008. Though Mayle was defeated in 2008 by the widely known and popular Jordan, he took 30.33 percent of the vote.
Schweitzer lost to Andrew Brenner with just a 1%+ spread. Brenner is a political veteran and won the difficult four-way 2004 County Recorder race. His wife Sara Marie serves as a Powell City Councilman.
Congratulations to these liberty-minded candidates. We wish them much continued success!
A New Face for “The Voice”
by Jason Rink
Publisher/Editor
This is a brand new experience for me. I wrote for my high-school newspaper back in Cincinnati, Ohio. I wrote for my college magazine in Rochester, New York. I have written chapters of books, blog posts, and news articles.
But, this is the first time I have ever put together an entire newspaper. Let me say that over the past week I have developed a whole new appreciation for the work that Sherry Mann has done over the last couple of years.
I know that it will be hard work to continue putting out “fiercely independent news and information.” That’s a tall order, and one that is sure to create some enemies. I know that I will print things that people won’t agree with. I will print things that make people angry. I will print things that challenge accepted paradigms.
I will also leave things on the editing table. I will choose not to print things. And that will make some people mad too.
Even so, what I really desire is for this to be a publication that truly represents the grassroots liberty movement in America. We all have issues we are passionate about. We all have truth that we feel is not getting out to the masses. We all want to do our part to preserve freedom in this country.
We all want a place to make our voices heard.
US Soldier Training: “We brainwash them…’a little bit’”?
Irony of the day: Before a soldier can stand up for America’s ideals of individual liberty, they first submit themselves to the ultimate regime dedicated to make them resign their own individuality.
Will the Next Simon Please Stand Up?
by sherry mann
If you haven’t heard, The Liberty Voice torch has been passed on to a great patriot, Jason Rink. Before I describe how that transpired, I wanted to reflect and tell you about the ride.
We published the first edition of The Liberty Voice on Veteran’s Day, 2007, and the effort was begun on little more than faith and I must admit, was fueled by the sheer anger I felt by the lies behind this “War on Terror”. I hated the thought that so many of our brave soldiers, one of whom is my dear cousin, were off “fighting for our freedoms,” risking life and limb, doing what they thought was noble, only to learn that their decision “to serve” was based upon nothing but lies. Even as many of these errors were being revealed and we learned that they were generated by “our” government as a pretext for war, people like us were called peace nuts and sometimes even worse — truthers. As if fighting for peace and truth was an insult!
We tried in vain to inform our local printing company — no, the Columbus Dispatch is not worthy of being called a newspaper — about their reporting “errors.” It quickly became apparent that they were not in the business of delivering truthful content, but rather approved propaganda. “News tips” were ignored and “This is a paid advertisement” headlined many of the most important news stories. Many other informative “ads” were flatly refused by many local and national printing companies across the country, and it seemed that the truth could not be purchased at any cost in America’s “post 9/11″ world. I finally concluded that A. J. Liebling was right and the “Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one.”
Saving Souls–Losing Freedom
One would have to be a blind man to not see that America is fast losing the fundamental principles of liberty upon which our once-great country was established. And, without a doubt, the single biggest reason for this decline is the lack of concern and effort on the part of today’s Christians and pastors to resist it.
All over America, when one approaches our pastors and church leaders with the obvious decay and ruination of constitutional government and Declaration principles taking place in our land today, the response flippantly comes back: “God hasn’t called me to do that; I’m supposed to win souls and that’s it.” (Or words to that effect.) As if the call to Gospel preaching, evangelism, and missionary endeavor negates our responsibility as citizens of a free land.
Of course, this call to “win souls” doesn’t interfere with these preachers’ golf games; it doesn’t interfere with their family vacations; it doesn’t interfere with their active membership in whatever local civic organization they happen to belong to; it doesn’t interfere with their hiring of a lawyer if they are falsely accused or defrauded; it doesn’t interfere with their invitations to celebrity politicians for special church recognition on patriotic holidays; it doesn’t interfere with them going to the polls to vote; it only seems to interfere when they are personally asked to take a stand in the gap for our country’s liberties. Then, all of a sudden, they haven’t been “called,” or “God will take care of it,” or “Jesus is coming soon,” or “Religion and politics don’t mix,” ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
