The Latest Winter Edition of The Liberty Voice is Released!
The latest edition of The Liberty Voice is in the mail to all of our faithful subscribers and in your favorite restaurants, taverns, bookstores and street newsboxes.
This is our first edition that we accepted paid advertisements, and the response has been (frankly, surprisingly) favorable! Let us know what you think! Send an e-mail to sherry@thelibertyvoice.com and share your valued insights and comments.
This winter issue features many local writers which are new to The Liberty Voice as well as our more seasoned columnists like Ellen Brown and Paul Craig Roberts.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this issue, including some outstanding liberty candidates who are launching their campaigns in our paper. I hope the intelligent readers of The Liberty Voice will find at least one candidate that they can and will support in these important races.
This edition’s stories include:
LET THEM EAT CAKE: THE ANOMALY OF COMPULSORY PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE
Excerpts of Legal Plunder & “THE LAW” by Bastiat*
- (Sponsored by “Families for Schweitzer,” Craig Schweitzer for Ohio State Representative– 2nd District. )
How to Take Back Your Constitution by Holding Local Politicians Accountable
- (Sponsored by “Irvine for Congress”. Travis Irvine is the Libertarian candidate for Ohio’s 12th US Congressional district)
U.S. Constitution: Article I, Section 8*
- (Sponsored by “Ryon for Congress”. Dave Ryon is the Constitutional party candidate for Ohio’s U.S. Congress, 15th district seat.)
Americans Are Hell-Bent on Tyranny
Iraq War Veteran: “Our enemy is not 5,000 miles away, it is right here at home”
The US & China: One Side is Losing, the Other is Winning
CE-Cold Grim Reapers “Defend Homeland”
Kiss Your Safety & Liberty Goodbye
Candidate for Ohio Governor, Ken Matesz says, “Do Away with State Income Tax!”*
- (Sponsored by “Ken Matesz for Governor” committee. Ken Matesz is running as a Libertarian for Governor of Ohio in 2010. This article was written by Ken Matesz.)
What Really Is A Conspiracy Theory?
December 17, 2009
By Rand Clifford
hat tip: Countercurrents.org
Imagine saying to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, “My, you’re very tall.”
Imagine denigrating anything not hailed as truth by institutions such as government, or mainstream media, as “conspiracy theory.”
What’s the connection? Much deeper than at first it might seem, much deeper than the absence of critical thinking—it’s a pattern of apathy. Both instances lack wit and subtlety…no thinking, whether stating the obvious, or scoffing at any truth not “official.” So why has conspiracy theory become such a knee-jerk label? First, let’s look at what “conspiracy theory” means, institutionally and officially.
Conspiracy theory is most often used to identify secret military, banking, or political actions aimed at stealing power, money, or freedom from the people. “Wikipedia” even adds the zest, or invitation for the absurd (more on this in a moment), of secret plots by conspirators of “…almost superhuman power and cunning.”
America’s plague of conspiracy-theory labeling subverts critical thinking; one of our least popular endeavors—critical thinking that is, has much to do with protecting one’s comfort zone and avoiding cognitive dissonance…much to do with choosing what to believe, regardless of evidence. A fine example is Americans’ attitude regarding official confessions that the anthrax attacks soon after 9/11 were false flag. (1)
So many obvious lies marched out as official truths have made 9/11 the ultimate mother lode of so-called conspiracy theories; one of which portrays the anthrax attacks as false flag terror, an inside job. Despite the government finally admitting that of course the anthrax attacks were an inside job, a shocking number of people still believe anything that strays from the anthrax attacks being Muslim terror is, of course, conspiracy theory. For those comfortable in their comfort zone, will truth ever be enough for them to give up the reassuring lies?
What is “false flag terror?” Essentially, false flag terrorism occurs when elements within a government stage a secret operation whereby government forces attack their own forces or people. The attack is then falsely blamed on an enemy in order to justify going to war against that enemy.
Sound familiar? It’s a trick as old as war.
Read more.
Happy Bill of Rights Day
By Anthony Gregory
Published 12/15/09
hat tip: Campaign for Liberty
December 15 is neglected by most Americans for its historical significance as the anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Even worse, American politicians neglect the actual Bill of Rights on a day-to-day basis.
Whether or not the Bill of Rights can ever be an effective means of limiting the government is open to debate. However, the Bill of Rights does offer a fairly good outline of a free society, and it shows how far our country has strayed.
In an America with a full respect for the Bill of Rights, there would be no Federal Communications Commission regulating the airwaves and forbidding certain speech, no Federal Election Commission limiting how much Americans can donate to political candidates or what they can say in independent political ads, no Food and Drug Administration harassment of pharmaceutical and wine producers regarding their commercial speech, no federal laws that have anything to do with religion whatsoever, and no federally established “free-speech zones.”
There would be no federal laws disarming Americans, prohibiting airlines from allowing pilots or passengers to carry guns on planes, or limiting how much ammo or what kind of firearms people can buy and own.
There would be no Patriot Act, no secret searches, no spying on telecommunications without a warrant.
There would be no civil asset forfeiture, no horrendous eminent domain abuses, no kangaroo courts, star chambers and phony hearings for the accused.
There would be no torture in America’s “terrorist” dungeons.
There would be no federal laws against starting a business without a license, buying and selling drugs, competing with the government to provide its “services” at a better cost and higher quality, or seceding from the central state.
There would be no federal programs not authorized by the Constitution: no Departments of Energy or Education, no Medicare or Social Security, no Federal Reserve or Selective Service, no farm subsidies or corporate welfare.
We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?
Future Prospects for Economic Liberty
by Walter Williams
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered on August 2, 2009, during a Hillsdale College cruise from Venice to Athens aboard the Crystal Serenity.
One of the justifications for the massive growth of government in the 20th and now the 21st centuries, far beyond the narrow limits envisioned by the founders of our nation, is the need to promote what the government defines as fair and just. But this begs the prior and more fundamental question: What is the legitimate role of government in a free society? To understand how America’s Founders answered this question, we have only to look at the rule book they gave us—the Constitution.
Most of what they understood as legitimate powers of the federal government are enumerated in Article 1, Section 8. Congress is authorized there to do 21 things, and as much as three-quarters of what Congress taxes us and spends our money for today is nowhere to be found on that list. To cite just a few examples, there is no constitutional authority for Congress to subsidize farms, bail out banks, or manage car companies. In this sense, I think we can safely say that America has departed from the constitutional principle of limited government that made us great and prosperous.
On the other side of the coin from limited government is individual liberty. The Founders understood private property as the bulwark of freedom for all Americans, rich and poor alike. But following a series of successful attacks on private property and free enterprise — beginning in the early 20th century and picking up steam during the New Deal, the Great Society, and then again recently — the government designed by our Founders and outlined in the Constitution has all but disappeared. Thomas Jefferson anticipated this when he said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
Marriage License & Registration Please
By Steve Bierfeldt
A Necessary Question
At some point in your life you asked the government’s permission for something you should never need approval for in the first place. Though you have a God given right protected by the Constitution, you swallowed your pride, took your marching orders and got in lock step with the government. Don’t be embarrassed, you’re not alone.
Today the government has its hand in every taxpayer’s pocket. From starting a business to building a house, to going fishing with a family member, people obtain licenses for almost everything. The idea of government “licensing” us has become so commonplace most fail to give it a second thought. It is not pertaining to fishing or starting a business that the most curious aspect of licensing arises however. Instead it is the practice which the vast majority of Americans take part in at some point in their lives, the institution of marriage.
The idea of submitting yourself to your spouse, pledging your faithfulness and planning for a future together is about as old a custom as exists today. And yet curiously so many individuals have never considered the implications behind granting the state jurisdiction over their marriage. Without a hunting license you are not permitted to legally hunt. Without a fishing license you may not go fishing. And without a driver’s license you cannot legally drive a car. Should it then seem that foreign the same logic applies to a license declaring marriage? What if you applied for a marriage license, and the government said, “No”?
Give me Liberty or Give me Death!
The (condensed) speech delivered by Patrick Henry on March 23, 1775.
This is no time for ceremony. The questing before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away
by Chris Hedges
Truthdig
June 22, 2009
Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.
The fundamental problem in the Middle East is not a degenerate and corrupt Islam. The fundamental problem is a degenerate and corrupt Christendom. We have not brought freedom and democracy and enlightenment to the Muslim world. We have brought the opposite. We have used the iron fist of the American military to implant our oil companies in Iraq, occupy Afghanistan and ensure that the region is submissive and cowed. We have supported a government in Israel that has carried out egregious war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza and is daily stealing ever greater portions of Palestinian land. We have established a network of military bases, some the size of small cities, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait, and we have secured basing rights in the Gulf states of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. We have expanded our military operations to Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Egypt, Algeria and Yemen. And no one naively believes, except perhaps us, that we have any intention of leaving.
We are the biggest problem in the Middle East. We have through our cruelty and violence created and legitimized the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads and the Osama bin Ladens. The longer we lurch around the region dropping iron fragmentation bombs and seizing Muslim land the more these monsters, reflections of our own distorted image, will proliferate. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that “the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.” But our hypocrisy no longer fools anyone but ourselves. It will ensure our imperial and economic collapse.
Secession Is in Our Future
Hat tip: Mises Daily
by Clifford F. Thies
Posted on 4/28/2009
Can states secede? There are three levels on which this question can be answered:
1. the inalienable right of secession,
2. the international law of secession, and
3. the US law of secession.
All three say yes.
The Inalienable Right of Secession
The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America invokes the self-evident truths that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that governments are formed to protect these rights and gain their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that when a government becomes abusive of these rights, it is the right — no, it is the duty — of the people to alter or abolish that government.
To say governments were formed to protect the rights of men would be historically incorrect. Almost all governments were formed by ruthless men exerting their will over others through the use of force. Some governments, over time, evolved toward the rule of law, perhaps only because their rulers saw that this would sanction their own continued enjoyment of the wealth that they possessed. In some instances, this evolution involved one or more “revolutions” in which those who were governed were able to better establish the rule of law.
The language of the Declaration should not be construed as an argument about the historical origins of government but, rather, as what would be true and just to an enlightened person, namely, that as persons and as communities of persons, we have the right and the duty to alter or abolish governments that become abusive of our rights. As Benjamin Franklin once put it, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
The concept of an inalienable right of secession was not original to the American Revolution. It can be traced to the scholastics, to Reformation politics, and to the most ancient Greek and Hebrew writings. Without going into a dissertation on the subject, let me simply point to the flag of the state of Virginia, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson. It depicts a female warrior (Athena) standing atop a slain tyrant (Zeus).
According to legend, Zeus, the greatest and most terrible of the gods, was supposed to be the god of law, yet he was himself lawless. When he heard that he would sire a child who would destroy him, he swallowed his wife whole to prevent it. But the child grew within him and then burst from him fully grown. This child was Athena, the goddess of victory, liberty, and peace. And, she did indeed slay her father. It should be easy to see, in this legend, how the rule of law might be established from a government formed through the use of force.
OBAMA POSITIONING FOR BACK DOOR GUN CONTROL
By Chuck Baldwin
April 24, 2009
Hat tip: NewsWithViews.com
On his recent trip to Central America, President Barack Obama signed onto an international treaty that could, in effect, be used as backdoor gun control. It appears that Obama wants to use international treaties to do what congressional legislation is not able to do: further restrict the right of the American people to keep and bear arms.
Obama is using the oft-disproved contention that “90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States” as the stated basis of his support for the international treaty he is promoting. The treaty is formally known as the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials (CIFTA) treaty. The Bill Clinton administration signed the treaty back in 1997, but the U.S. Senate has never ratified the treaty. Obama intends to change that.
To date, 33 nations in the western hemisphere have signed the treaty. The U.S. is one of four nations that have yet to ratify it. According to one senior Obama administration official, passing the treaty is a “high priority” for the President.
If ratified, the treaty would require the United States to adopt “strict licensing requirements, mark firearms when they are made and imported to make them easier to trace, and establish a process for sharing information between national law enforcement agencies investigating [gun] smuggling.”
Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee promises to “work for its [the CIFTA treaty's] approval by the Senate.”
Should the Senate ratify CIFTA, Americans who reload ammunition would be required to get a license from the government, and factory guns and ammunition would be priced almost out of existence due to governmental requirements to “mark” each one manufactured. Even the simple act of adding an after-market piece of equipment to a firearm, such as a scope or bipod, or reassembling a gun after cleaning it could fall into the category of “illicit manufacturing” of firearms and require government license and oversight.
New bill may give president ability to shut down Internet
Hat tip: Venture Beat
Ed Oswald
April 15th, 2009
Legislation is now passing through the U.S. Senate that could give the president unprecedented powers over the Internet, including the ability to ’shut down’ portions of it when a cybersecurity emergency is declared. The bill was introduced at the beginning of the month, but concerns have since been raised over its vague wording.
At issue is Section 18(2) of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, which reads as follows:
“The president … may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network.”
At face value, the legislation, introduced by West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller, seems aimed at protecting sensitive government data and infrastructure, such as electrical grids and the like. Rockefeller makes his case by presenting a litany of findings indicating how vulnerable we are to cyber threats. Among them, Congressional studies that found an attack on a major financial institution could severely impact the economy, and attacks on systems controlling our power grid could “have the potential to disrupt services for hours or weeks.”
However, the bill offers no definition for what may be considered “United States critical infrastructure.”
