There Really is No Such Thing as Communism, Socialism, Progressivism etc. Because....

Republicans are notorious for screaming that the Democrats are socialists and communists.   The Democrats scream that the Republicans are the capitalist Great Satan pigs who must be destroyed for the collective good of humanity.  The truth? Capitalism and free markets no longer exist in America but fascism runs wild as an insidious prosperity destroying disease.  If one truly examines all the 'ism's' that folks endlessly obsess about including communism, socialism, progressivism, fascism, state run capitalism, statism etc., they all boil down to essentially the same thing:  totalitarian control of all people and resources by a handful of ruling elites who grow filthy rich by concentrating all wealth and power.  Why worry over mere semantics when the end result is the same?

Interestingly, China is a case study in communism as well as the massive concentration of wealth and power, as documented by Bloomberg.

Mapping China’s Red Nobility 

Bloomberg News mapped the families of Communist China’s “Eight Immortals” to reveal the origins of princelings, an elite class that has been able to amass wealth and influence, and exploit opportunities unavailable to most Chinese. Bloomberg tracked 103 people – descendants including children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and their respective spouses. The Immortals, now all dead, are revered in communist lore as revolutionary fighters who led China’s economic opening after Mao Zedong’s death. The identities and business dealings of these families are often cloaked in secrecy because of state censorship and complex corporate webs. To document them, Bloomberg scoured thousands of pages of corporate filings, property records, official websites and archives, and conducted dozens of interviews from China to the United States, where many were educated and have at times made their homes.

Those who cling to the warm and fuzzy notion that statism and collectivism are somehow caring, paternal and compassionate are somewhere between severely uninformed or downright stupid.  Collectivism is the most failed ideology in human history, yet folks continue to aspire to it as the noblest of ideas that will satisfy every human want if only the government had enough power.  Well, communist nations had all the power any tyrant could possible hope to achieve and their only achievement in the name of humanity was the biggest pile of dead bodies in history.   It's well documented that communism killed 100 million folks during the 20th century alone, and mostly through starvation attributable to collectivization and central planning.  Life is always cheap and expendable when worship of the state is the only imperative as well as an exalted god that must be obeyed.

The Worker's Paradise in the communist Soviet Union and elsewhere turned out to be a big bust when the impoverished, suffering and hungry proletariat took a peek at their working class comrades in nations with respectable levels of economic freedom.  What a shock!  The working class dudes in those evil capitalist nations were enjoying prosperity and consumer goodies on a scale unheard of in the commie Workers Paradises.   In capitalist nations, the poor were joining the middle class and for the first time in human history the people rather than the ruling aristocracy were actually building wealth and power.

It was a monumental leap for humankind because wealth and power was finally being widely diffused and disbursed among the people for the first time in human history.  Effectively, free markets and property rights represented a transfer of wealth and power from the 1% to the 99%.  For clearly obvious reasons the ruling class panicked because they were no longer in control as their absolute power and privileges were acutely threatened.

Once upon a time the world was owned and controlled by kings and queens, princes and princesses, lords and ladies, and absolute rulers. There were the ruling elites, the upper class, the propertied class, the moneyed class, the educated class, the bureaucratic class and everybody else was a serf of sorts and expected to be compliant slaves – that’s what slaves do, they serve their masters. Such was the fate of humanity for thousands of years. The 1% and the 99% have existed for as long as humans have existed.

Then the unthinkable happened. In Europe, Western Civilization was born as folks started to clamor for political rights, property rights and natural rights. Monarchies began to topple, theocratic powers were usurped and the revolution for human liberty began. Although Europe was a bloodbath on and off for nearly a millennium, the great political theorists and intellectual challengers who conceived and fought to implement such foreign concepts as non-repressive forms of government and individual sovereignty finally succeeded. Eventually, limited personal freedoms and rights translated into much wider economic freedoms which elevated industry and trade while spawning an economically strong middle class.

Throughout the process, we all learned that the vast human potential so inherent in the minds and souls of free thinking human beings is, ultimately, the only catalyst for progress and civilization, without which there can no civilizations, at least none worth noticing or experiencing. Great societies and human liberation are soul mates.

The grand experiment worked wonders as power and wealth was shifting away from the 1% and to the 99%. Shorn of their shackles, mankind prospered for the first time in human history and at an unprecedented rate. A strong and flourishing middle class was born as free markets were delivering good and services, and prosperity for the masses (99%) was achieved. There was peace instead of war and government had limited powers.

But the 1% started screaming “holy shit, we can’t let that happen. We can’t allow the lowlife people and the unwashed masses to prosper with free markets and sound money so we will work to transfer that power back to us.”

Instead of using armies and violence to subdue the people, the ruling class hatched an extraordinarily clever ballot box scheme - democracy (unlimited majority mob rule) would be used to control and manipulate the people into peacefully transferring their power back to the ruling class by conferring voter approved legitimacy upon them.

Throughout most of human history, the people were barely tossed subsistence level crumbs while their overlords lavishly feasted on the finest of everything because they alone controlled all property, all resources and all of humanity.  Human rights, civil rights, property rights and economic liberty dramatically changed the equation.

But lo and behold, the people in America and Europe began to reject the responsibility of liberty and started voting to deliver themselves back into the bondage and shackles of the elites.  The elites of government offered them 'free everything' in exchange for relinquishing their liberty.  Of course, those promises will not be kept.  Just asked the Greeks.  But once liberty is lost and humankind is once again back in the shackles of government, the fiat central banksters and the elites, there is no saddle to mount to escape the tyranny, despotism and misery.

Yet, there are numerous folks in America and Europe who continue to vote for centralized powers, bigger government, massive taxes, income redistribution and the wholesale slaughter of civil and economic liberties. Such folks cling to a dangerous and deadly delusion.

If we think we are suffering now, we have only just begun to reap the poison harvest of a statist economy because the real misery has yet to hit us. When it does, the pinchers of the totalitarian state will really start snuffing out life ruthlessly and brutally. The totalitarian nations wallowing in Marxism/socialism/oligarchy/fascism/statism will always resort to the same tactics as Stalin and Mao who snuffed out 100,000,000 folks during the 20th century alone.

The only difference between the economies of Mao/Stalin that murdered 100 million folks and the so-called soft socialism of the West is that the former never had the luxury of a wealthy and productive economy to loot and plunder. Soon enough though, we will be fully plundered.

Meanwhile, the American people are drinking copious amounts of “Foolaid” as we cling to the delusion that government is the cornucopia of plenty. The lion’s share of the plunder generated by the governments looting machine only accrues to a few elites and insider power players because that's is precisely how statism has always worked throughout history.   The rest are lucky if they are tossed a few crumbs and those crumbs are rapidly dwindling.

Good News: Senate Fails to Ratify UN Treaty on Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities

  

The United Nations seeks to implement global totalitarian law and tyranny. I 100% endorse getting the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US. Every UN treaty that is ratified hacks away at US national sovereignty and the Constitution.

A treaty ratification requires a 2/3 senate majority. The vote on this UN treaty was too close for comfort at 61-38, just 5 votes short of passage.  All 38 NO votes were Republicans but 8 Republicans crossed over and voted with the Democrats who love sovereignty slashing UN treaties.

 Senate rejects United Nations treaty for disabled rights in a 61-38 vote

A United Nations treaty to ban discrimination against people with disabilities went down to defeat in the Senate on Tuesday in a 61-38 vote.

The treaty, backed by President Obama and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), fell five votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for confirmation as dozens of Senate Republicans objected that it would create new abortion rights and impede the ability of people to homeschool disabled children.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) argued the treaty would infringe on U.S. sovereignty, an argument echoed by other opponents. “This unelected bureaucratic body would pass recommendations that would be forced upon the United States if we were a signatory,” he said.

Supporters of the treaty argued that the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities would simply require the rest of the world to meet the standards that Americans already enjoy under the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act.

The treaty was negotiated and first signed under former President George W. Bush and signed again by Obama in 2009. At least 153 other countries have signed it.

Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), John Barrasso (Wyo.), Scott Brown (Mass.), Susan Collins (Maine), Dick Lugar (Ind.), John McCain (Ariz.), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) voted with Democrats in favor of the treaty.

As a Libertarian who is utterly contemptuous of the Republicans for their love of big government and endless wars, I do make an exception when it comes to the US Senate.

 When I Would Hold My Nose and Vote Republican

As a Libertarian and a Ron Paul Republican, I rarely vote Republican because I’ve never met an establishment Republican who wasn’t a socialist, a Marxist, a warmonger, a usurper of the Constitution, an enemy of civil liberties and a tax and spend progressive.

That said, there are circumstances where I would hold my nose and vote Republican. The US Senate. Screwed up as America is, one of the few things we have going for us is our sovereignty and while it’s constantly under attack by the UN and its treaties that are attempting to impose global totalitarian government, treaties are extremely difficult to get ratified.....

Republicans are less likely than the Dems to ratify sovereignty slashing treaties. The Dems, on the other hand, are addicted to sovereignty slashing supranational international bodies like the UN and its treaties. It doesn’t mean that all Republicans are supportive of US sovereignty, they aren’t, but Republicans are generally far less likely to cede US sovereignty to the UN.

If I lived in a swing state with a tight senate race, I’d definitely be holding my nose and voting Republican unless I knew for certain that the candidate was a UN lover (George Allen in Virginia comes to mind). While I’m a fanatical liberty activist, I’m also a fanatical US sovereignty activist.

Earth to GOP: We Can Save the Party

The Newsweek cover is vile and even overtly racist. Still, it's a bitter reminder of a big election day fail for the GOP.

The Republican base is hopping mad and, quite frankly, very disgusted with their party. Republican voters keep voting for less government, lower taxes and balanced budgets. Instead they get Democrats in elephant suits who spend, increase the debt, endorse entitlements and pursue an insane foreign policy that is bankrupting the nation.

The battle for the heart and soul of the GOP has always been the fiscal conservatives and liberty activists vs. the statist GOP elites. It wasn't just Ron Paul supporters who didn't show up to vote Republican. Many independents and very angry Republicans finally refused to vote Republican.

There's a WAR going on in the GOP and unless grassroots activists, Paulites, Libertarians, fiscal conservatives and independent voters can wrest control of the GOP from the clueless and revoltingly obnoxious elites who lord over the GOP, the Republican Party will be headed straight to the trash heap of history. Many who comprise the Republican base have been furious for a long time over what they perceive as a betrayal of conservative principles.

The independent Internet media and even mainstream media has been buzzing with tales about disgruntled Republicans.

There Is A Brutal Civil War In The GOP, And It Looks Like Karl Rove Will Be The First Casualty

Grassroots Republican operatives and Movement conservatives are quickly turning against the GOP Establishment in the wake of the party's expensive defeat this election cycle.

Republicans we spoke to this week voiced a near-universal disgust with the national Republican Party leaders and Washington political class, who are seen as having put their personal financial interest above winning the election.

What is finally happening is something that should have happened a long time ago - conservatives are finally revolting against their own damn worthless fraud of a party.

The GOP is not a unified party and never was.  The GOP has always been a fragile configuration of establishment Republicans, fiscal conservatives, paleo-conservatives, Buchananites, social conservatives, Libertarians and independents. That constituency fractured in 2006 because conservatives, diverse as they are, were thoroughly disgusted with the Republican Party and they still are.

The Republican Party didn't lose because of the Ron Paul voters and the fact that the Paulites were treated like pond scum at the RNC Convention but the Paulite vote definitely contributed to the Republican defeat because it combined with other disaffected conservative factions to deliver a decisive rejection of the GOP.

So how do we bring the cantankerous conservative factions together?  Actually, it's not that hard.  Stop spending money.  Stop building mountains of debt.  Stop the unconstitutional wars.  Balance the budget and don't spend anymore than is collected in taxes.  Stop corporate welfare and subsidies.  Stop draconian regulations that are killing entrepreneurship and driving business and capital offshore.  Endorse sound money and an end bankster bailouts.

Why is this so difficult?  It's not.  In fact, it's pretty straight forward conservatism.  But try finding one Republican who would agree and vote accordingly.  The voting records of nearly all Republicans are atrocious and an absolute affront to conservatism.

American isn't starved of conservatives or small government advocates.  America is swimming with conservatives, albeit very angry and frustrated conservatives who are delighting in extracting their pound of flesh from the GOP that betrayed them.

Conservatives need a platform of core issues that they can rally around and such a platform must be devoid of all the social conservative issues that are best handled at the state level.  Marriage has no business being a national campaign issue.

The best place for conservatives to start is with the specific enumerated federal powers stated in the Constitution.  Just stick with the Constitution and reject everything that is unconstitutional and, therefore, not authorized by the Constitution.

I suffered through the Republican debacle on a balanced budget amendment that was a total farce because it was loaded with more loopholes than Swiss cheese.  Why should a Republican need a balanced budget amendment just to balance the budget?  Just balance the damn budget.  Period.

The conservative base must fight for control of the GOP.  We need to get rid of a ton of corrupt dead weight Republican statists in Congress and at the state and local level.  The Republicans in Congress vastly contributed to the fiscal and economic nightmare we now face.  These folks need to be FIRED and replaced with true liberty candidates in the mold of Justin Amash and Rand Paul, and, of course, America's strongest constitutionalist and consistent advocate for peace, liberty and prosperity - Ron Paul..

Judge Andrew Napolitano took a swipe at the Republicans in his explanation of what 4 more years of Obama will deliver.

Four More Years for the Unwitting Authoritarian

What's going on here?.

What is going on is the present-day proof of the truism observed by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, who rarely agreed on anything in public: When the voters recognize that the public treasury has become a public trough, they will send to Washington not persons who will promote self-reliance and foster an atmosphere of prosperity, but rather those who will give away the most cash and thereby create dependency. This is an attitude that, though present in some localities in the colonial era, was created at the federal level by Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, magnified by FDR, enhanced by LBJ, and eventually joined in by all modern-day Democrats and most contemporary Republicans..

Mitt Romney is one of those Republicans. He is no opponent of federal entitlements, and he basically promised to keep them where they are. Where they are is a cost to taxpayers of about $1.7 trillion a year.....

As a practical matter, we are in for very difficult times during Obama's second term. Obamacare is now here to stay; so, no matter who you are or how you pay your medical bills, federal bureaucrats will direct your physicians in their treatment of you, and they will see your medical records. As well, Obama is committed to raising the debt of the federal government to $20 trillion. So, if the Republican-controlled House of Representatives goes along with this, as it did during Obama's first term, the cost will be close to $1 trillion in interest payments every year. As well, everyone's taxes will go up on New Year's Day, as the Bush-era tax cuts will expire then. The progressive vision of a populace dependent on a central government and a European-style welfare state is now at hand.

Judge Napolitano raises a significant issue because the biggest problem facing America and the debt ridden west in general is that they've been borrowing so much money for such a long time that they now face a most hideous fate, namely that the debt burden reaches a point where nearly all tax revenues go to debt service and nations no longer have any money to fund social programs and other government expenditures.  This is precisely what is happening in Greece.  The Greeks who supported cradle to the grave entitlement programs that were funded with massive debt are now facing forced austerity as benefits are cut to service the debt.

So long as Republicans remain focused on the social issues and the pursuit of endless wars, they will continue to lose.  Most of the Republicans that currently hold congressional seats have as much backbone as cooked spaghetti.  Moving forward, the 'business as usual' attitude won't fly for a conservative base hungry and starved for real conservatism.

Republicans need to understand that their own party played a critical role in delivering the nightmare we are facing.  Americans, meet your future neighbors:

My Two Cents on Benghazi

The right wing media is exploiting the Benghazi disaster as an opportunity to diss President Obama and personally blame him for the entire fiasco.  Fox News is especially all over the story.

EXCLUSIVE: CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack, sources say

Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to "stand down," according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to "stand down."

Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters.

I don't doubt any of the above facts. Most news reports have pretty much included the same information. But here's the problem: the military and the CIA have a long history of hating each other. The CIA is a secretive and covert organization that pretty much operates without any scrutiny whatsoever. Moreover, the CIA literally controls the US State Department and always has. Benghazi was not the US Embassy, which is in Tripoli. The CIA is notorious for creating these consulates as bases of operation for CIA missions, missions that typically include arming and funding radicals and jihadists for the purpose of destabilization of a nation and regime change.  It's been going on at least since the days of Jimmy Carter who funded and armed the Afghan Mujuhadeen, now the Sunni Islamist Taliban, to fight the Soviets.  The CIA was a key 'on the ground' player in Afghanistan during the Cold War and is directly responsible for arming some of the most dangerous folks on the planet.

Unfortunately, the US has a very long history of being in bed with radical Sunni Wahhabist Salafist Islamists and the top of this disturbing pyramid goes straight to the House of Saud, the kingpin of Wahhabist Sunni Islamist terror.  It's no coincidence that 15 of the 19  911 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia.  The foreign policy of the US is to support, fund and arm radical Sunni jihadists and we've been doing it for a long time.  The US government and the CIA backed and supported Pakistan's nuclear arms program, along with Saudi Arabia.  Pakistan used to be a nation teeming with radical Sunni Islamists but now, courtesy of the US and it's Saudi alliance, is a nuclear armed radical Sunni Islamist nation.  It's only a matter of time before some zealot Sunni nutjob seizes control of Pakistan's nukes and starts firing away.  Moreover, Pakistan was once a benign Muslim nation until Saudi and Gulf Sunni money and madrassahs started pouring into the nation to radicalize the population.

The hardcore neocon website, familysecuritymatters.org, is accusing Obama of being an ally of Al Qaeda.

Arms Flow to Syria May Be Behind Benghazi Cover-Up

Stevens was tasked with helping to coordinate U.S. assistance to the rebels, whose top military commander, Abdelhakim Belhadj, was the leader of the Al Qaeda affiliate, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). That means that Stevens was authorized by the U.S. Department of State and the Obama administration to aid and abet individuals and groups that were, at a minimum, allied ideologically with Al Qaeda, the jihadist terrorist organization that attacked the homeland on the first 9/11, the one that's not supposed to exist anymore after the killing of its leader, Osama bin Laden, on May 2, 2012.

The above assessment is erroneously ludicrous on several levels.  First, Al Qaeda isn't even an organization with the power to do anything.  Al Qaeda is, however, just one of many, many Islamist groups funded by our friends the Saudis and the CIA. Nothing, however, stops the neocons from accusing Obama of being an appeaser of radical Islamists.  In fact, it was only a few short months after 911 when President Bush entertained Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at his Crawford, TX ranch in April 2002.  Few international dignitaries got invites to the Bush ranch but the Saudis were always welcome.  The Saudi-Bush family connections date back to the days of the George Herbert Walker Bush.

If there's a concern about US presidents and government officials being all warm and cozy with 911 jihad terrorists, look no further than the Bush family affection for radical Sunni jihadists.

The Bush-Saudi Connection

The absolute favorite photo of the neocons is the photo of Obama bowing before the Saudi King according to protocol.  US presidents have bowed before many foreign leaders according to the prevailing custom.  At least Obama wasn't kissing and holding hands with King Abdullah, the King of Islamist Sunni terror.  Bush was being overtly and outwardly affectionate with King Abdullah while Obama was just being polite and respectful.  Big difference!

George Herbert Walker Bush is also a former CIA director with deep ties to the organization and its clandestine operations.  The CIA has been funneling arms and money to dissidents of all religious and political stripes for decades and such folks were probably on the CIA payroll.  This is nothing new.  Again, it's important to note that the US State Department is heavily staffed with CIA, officially, and unofficially through US Aid programs.  Even neocon Glenn Beck chirped in on the issue.

Glenn Beck Explains How Obama Used Ambassador Stevens to Funnel arms to Libya and Syria

It's probably true that Ambassador Stevens was carrying out a CIA mission under the guise of a State Department consulate but this is quite common.  Obviously, something went very wrong and what most probably went wrong is that the Islamists the CIA trusted and were doing business with turned on them when they saw an opportunity to humiliate the US by successfully attacking the Benghazi consulate.  Also, the issue of the mysterious mission of Ambassador Stevens is being raised.

How US Ambassador Chris Stevens May Have Been Linked To Jihadist Rebels In Syria 

....there was a CIA post in Benghazi , located 1.2 miles from the U.S. consulate, used as "a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles" ... and that its security features "were more advanced than those at rented villa where Stevens died."

And we know that the CIA has been funneling weapons to the rebels in southern Turkey. The question is whether the CIA has been involved in handing out the heavy weapons from Libya.

In any case, the connection between Benghazi and the rise of jihadists in Syria is stronger than has been officially acknowledged.

The entire Benghazi fiasco is covered with CIA fingerprints.  But the burning question is this:  why didn't the US military come to the rescue of the CIA?

The CIA kind of functions as its own military, much to the consternation of the US military.  The CIA is also decisive and is not gnerally hampered with too much in the way of chain of command restrains.  Conversely, the US military is heavily a top down chain of command operation.  Getting somebody to make a decision can be very difficult depending the potential blowback of the situation.

The entire attack was over within a matter of hours but during the attack urgent messages were coming out of the Benghazi consulate.  The Benghazi timeline is here.  More interesting is that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta wiggled out of the situation by proclaiming that the military didn't have enough information to warrant putting forces at risk which is the equivalent of Panetta giving a birdie to the CIA.

Panetta on Benghazi attack: 'Could not put forces at risk'

The U.S. military did not get involved during the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, last month because officials did not have enough information about what was going on before the attack was over, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Thursday.

Where was the military and why didn't it respond to CIA calls for help?  Panetta claims the military didn't have enough time.  Another critical factor that is missing in the analysis is the location of the US military presence in Libya.  Nobody seems to know if the military was anywhere on the ground in Libya, obviously something that neither the US government or the military wanted disclosed.

What is known is that the Benghazi consulate was a CIA front engaged in weapon smuggling to Syrian Jihad rebels.  President Obama knows what the CIA does, even if he doesn't know what the CIA is actually doing because that's how the secretive and unaccountable CIA has always operated.  The CIA is one of those things that nobody in government ever wants to talk about because, well, the CIA is very dangerous, it kills folks, it arranges assassinations and exactly who it reports to isn't exactly clear although formally the CIA Director reports to the president.  It's been speculated by many CIA observers that the CIA is really nothing more than the private and personal military of the New World Order, the banksters and resource seeking corporatists.  It's also widely believe that the CIA is self-funding through the drug trade.

The CIA is the Biggest Drug Dealer on the Planet

President Kennedy said he wanted to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind.  According to James Douglass who wrote JFK and the Unspeakable, Why He Died and Why it Matters, the CIA murdered JFK.  Douglass writes "We have no evidence as to who in the military-industrial complex may have given the order to assassinate President Kennedy.  That the order was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency is obvious.  The CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it."

That the CIA is feared by the political class is an understatement.  But what makes Benghazi so intriguing is that it's increasingly more difficult to cover-up dastardly CIA deeds given the explosion of non-government controlled alternative media.   The Benghazi cover-up, bungled and clumsy as it was, was solely to protect the CIA and its mission, whatever the cost.  Ambassador Stevens and those who worked with him were not victims but were active participants in the CIA's work.  Most probably, Stevens wasn't an ambassador at all, just a CIA operative masquerading as an ambassador.  Moreover, it's probably also true that the military just didn't want to get involved, assuming it could have done something, because of its natural hostility toward the CIA.

I  believe that Obama was probably horrified by what happened in Benghazi but when your lust for power is so great that you decide to bed down with the CIA spooks and spies, anything can happen.  At the end of the day, Benghazi was just another Fast and Furious gone bad.  Republican attempts to capitalize on the Benghazi fiasco are indeed shabby and reckless.  If anything, Republicans worship the CIA and its evil and secretive missions far more than the Obama and the Democrats.

The Party of No Ideas Smacks Down the Party of Bad Ideas

Looks like Clint Eastwood's empty chair skit at the RNC Convention turned into a prophecy, at least in the context of a presidential debate performance. As a liberty activist, I happily avoided the appallingly incomprehensible contest between Statist Clown A and Statist Clown B. However, I followed Twitter because that's where the laughs were, along with the agony of some apoplectic liberals and Democrats.

Mark Hemingway@Heminator That wasn't a debate so much as Mitt Romney just took Obama for a cross country drive strapped to the roof of his car. (Hemingway was quoting the Weekly Standard).

Todd Kincannon @ToddKincannon Somebody call Todd Akin. Analyzing this debate requires a rape expert.

Bill Maher @billmaher Obama made a lot of great points tonight. Unfortunately, most of them were for Romney

Bill Maher @billmaher i must say, of all the Romneys i've seen, this Debate Romney is my favorite 

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald MSNBC tonight seems like a group therapy session for the deeply depressed and people with anger issues. It's actually disturbing to watch

Todd Kincannon @ToddKincannon Right now, David Axelrod is asking a crying Barack Obama: "Show me on the doll where the bad man touched you."

Brian Sack@brian_sack MSNBC's flag at half mast.

VANITY FAIR @VanityFair Good LORD Obama wouldn't win a student council election against a chubby nerd with that closing argument.

As if the Twitter zingers weren't bad enough, there was the epic Chris Matthews meltdown.

Chris Matthews’ Epic Meltdown Over Obama Performance: ‘What Was He Doing Tonight?’

Clearly, Romney cleaned Obama's clock and he did it without even offering any solutions to any of our immense problems.  Only in America can somebody win a debate by offering no solutions to big problems, no cuts in government spending and advocating for perpetual war!

Oh well, it's America where substance is never ever on the table because it's all about packaging, party propaganda and one liners.  Still, Obama absolutely earned the thrashing he got from the left and the right.  An Obama super PAC donor may have summed it up best.

Big Super PAC Donor on Obama: 'Looks Like He Took My Million and Spent it All on Weed'

Obama even dipped on Intrade, the online gambling site, here. Still, Obama remains comfortably ahead on Intrade with a 65.2% probability of winning to Romney's 35.1.  However, polls are tightening in the critical swing states.  The general consensus of the pollsters and pundits is that the deal that was sealed for an easy Obama re-election is presently no longer a foregone conclusion.

To what extent the race is truly competitive remains unclear and will largely depend on the result of future debates.

As for America, the American people, the economy and our future, the prognosis remains quite grim because the endless wars and big bad government will prevail regardless of who wins in November.

Meanwhile, the bread and circuses continue because America really is the incarnation of the Roman Empire.   

Trillions for Endless Wars in a Busted Economy and Bankrupt Nation

Decades ago, economic professors used the analogy of 'guns and butter' to differentiate the economic systems of the Soviet Union and America. America allowed its citizens to work, keep their money and spend it however they wanted - lots of butter aka consumer choices and middle class prosperity. By contrast, the Soviet Union forced its proletariat workers 'paradise' to work in state run factories that fueled its global covert and overt military operations - the Russian people existed for the sole purpose of sustaining the 'guns' of militarism.

Fast forward to today. Has America become the Soviet Union, an evil empire and a nation that squandered the wealth and prosperity of its people for militarism gone mad? Have we sown the seeds of our own destruction? With $16 trillion in national debt and chronic trillion dollar plus deficits every year, the one thing in America that isn't out of the closet is military spending, the military empire and its gargantuan cost.

Even in warmongering America, folks of all ideological stripes are beginning to raise the issue. Over at Fox News, aka Neocon Central, the despicable Bill O'Reilly raised the issue of the War on Terror.

Bill O'Reilly:  On this 11th anniversary of the 911 attacks

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/2012/09/12/bill-oreilly-11th-anniversary-911-attack

According to the Congressional Research Service, the War on Terror has cost America $1.4 trillion. That includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and money for veterans, also a bunch of other military expenditures. It does not include... it does not include security within the USA....

Mr. Obama has added about $5.4 trillion to the debt during his time in office...

I believe most historians will look back on the Iraq war as being a mistake. We could have brought Saddam to his knees by blockading his country. We didn't have to invade it.

O'Reilly, like every other Republican socialist lover of military empire, can't resist disclosing the debt attributable to Obama and the Dems while totally ignoring the fact that Bush and Gang added $5 trillion to the debt pile.

Between the Republicans and the Democrats, the national debt increased over $10 trillion since the War on Terror began. McClatchy attempted to analyze its cost in 2011.

True cost of Afghan, Iraq wars is anyone's guess

Yes, Congress has allotted $1.3 trillion for war spending through fiscal year 2011 just to the Defense Department....

But all those numbers are incomplete. Besides what Congress appropriated, the Pentagon spent an additional unknown amount from its $5.2 trillion base budget over that same period. According to a recent Brown University study, the wars and their ripple effects have cost the United States $3.7 trillion, or more than $12,000 per American.

Defense and military analyst Chris Hellman employed a different but more accurate approach in ascertaining the true cost of military and national security spending.  As America morphs into a full fledged Nazified Police State and militarized global empire, the national security apparatus costs include far more than what is deceptively disclosed as mere defense spending.

Tomgram: Chris Hellman, $1.2 Trillion for National Security

For 2012, the White House has requested $558 billion for the Pentagon’s annual “base” budget, plus an additional $118 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. At $676 billion, that’s already nothing to sneeze at, but it’s just the barest of beginnings when it comes to what American taxpayers will actually spend on national security. Think of it as the gigantic tip of a humongous iceberg....

Missing from the Pentagon’s budget request, for example, is an additional $19.3 billion for nuclear-weapons-related activities...

And then, don’t forget an additional $7.8 billion that the Pentagon lumps into a “miscellaneous” category -- a kind of department of chump change...

$703.1 billion dollars.

For starters, that $117.8 billion war-funding request for the Department of Defense doesn’t include certain actual “war-related fighting” costs....

$711.8 billion.

The White House has also requested $71.6 billion for a post-2001 category called “homeland security” -- of which $18.1 billion is funded through the Department of Defense. The remaining $53.5 billion goes through various other federal accounts, including the Department of Homeland Security ($37 billion), the Department of Health and Human Services ($4.6 billion), and the Department of Justice ($4.6 billion). All of it is, however, national security funding which brings our total to:

$765.3 billion....

The U.S. intelligence budget was technically classified prior to 2007, although at roughly $40 billion annually, it was considered one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington....This work done by federal agencies like the CIA and the National Security Agency consists of keeping an eye on and trying to understand what other nations are doing and thinking, as well as a broad range of “covert operations” such as those being conducted in Pakistan...

$818.4 billion....

Veterans programs are an important part of the national security budget with the projected funding figure for 2012 being $129.3 billion. Of this, $59 billion is for veterans’ hospital and medical care, $70.3 billion for disability pensions and education programs...

$947.7 billion.

If you include the part of the foreign affairs budget not directly related to U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other counterterrorism operations, you have an additional $18 billion in direct security spending....

$965.7 billion.

As with all federal retirees, U.S. military retirees and former civilian Department of Defense employees receive pension benefits from the government. The 2012 figure is $48.5 billion for military personnel, $20 billion for those civilian employees, which means we’ve now hit:

$1,034.2 billion. (Yes, that’s $1.03 trillion!)

When the federal government lacks sufficient funds to pay all of its obligations, it borrows. Each year, it must pay the interest on this debt which, for FY 2012, is projected at $474.1 billion. The National Priorities Project calculates that 39% of that, or $185 billion, comes from borrowing related to past Pentagon spending.

Add it all together and the grand total for the known national security budget of the United States is:

$1,219.2 billion. (That’s more than $1.2 trillion.)

Not only is $1.2 trillion dollars a whole lot of guns and an obscene amount of military spending on an annual basis, the American military empire has stripped the people of their prosperity and liberty.  America is spending about $3.8 trillion a year on tax revenues of about $2.3 trillion.

Will the American people ever wake-up to the stone cold reality that the military empire has destroyed us and bankrupted us?

We need to kill the empire before the empire kills us.

Prosperity: A View from the Left, the Right and the Austrian Liberty Movement

With the economy in shambles and the middle class rapidly vanishing, there are 3 views on how to solved the America's increasingly critical economic problems: 1. the progressive left or Democrat view 2. the right wing or the Republican view and 3. the Austrian free market view.

While every sane American and even the political class will acknowledge that traditional American prosperity is in dire jeopardy, the views on precisely what constitutes prosperity and where prosperity comes from vary radically in the ideological camps.

The View From the Democrat/Progressive/Liberal Camp

The leftist Democrat/progressive views have been well summarized in a category captioned Austerity Hawks Want a Return to 1920's Capitalism on a progressive website that includes a series of articles on the issue.

Austerity Road to 19th Century

Deficit Hawks Continue Post-WWII Attack on Labor

Who Benefits From Austerity

High Deficits were the Objective of Right Economics

Austerity Hawks Want a Return to 1920's Capitalism

Is Obama Still on the Austerity Train?

Austerity and the GOP in Power

According to the Democrat/liberal/progressive view, there can be no prosperity for the masses without a government mandate.  Moreover, they demand absolute totalitarian powers to 1. unionize labor and give them enough power to force businesses to meet their every demand and 2. the power to tax for redistribution purposes just in case somebody has incurred their wrath and scorn by working hard and being successful in entrepreneurship.

The left automatically rejects the premise that free markets can deliver prosperity by giving the people the power to decide want they want in the way of goods and services.  Hence, the left strongly favors a top down command and control economy wherein government bureaucrats alone have the exclusive power to decide what people will get and at what price they will get it.

The progressive model is certainly nothing new and has been around since the days of Marx, Stalin and Mao.  Furthermore, the left totally ignores the fact that communism and socialism killed over 100 million folks during the 20th century alone and mostly by starvation.

Despite the incessant whining of American progressives that folks are poor because government and bureaucrats don't have enough power, there exist many nations on the planet where the progressive had all the power - Greece, Spain and Portugal to name a few - and all are suffering from profound economic decline, mountains of debt and bankruptcy.

Progressives have an intense aversion to the word austerity, although austerity is nothing more than living within your financial means and not spending yourself into personal and national bankruptcy. While progressives absolutely believe that promising and delivering the cornucopia of plenty  to humanity is their defining goal, they fall way short.  Europe's most debt ridden nations and America's most debt ridden cities are run by progressives who do nothing but lie and borrow to keep the great progressive lie alive.

Nobody summed up progressive thinking better than Michael Lewis in his book Boomerang.  What Lewis says about Greece easily applies to any progressive nation or entity dedicated to achieving the paranoid delusion of utopia through tyranny (the Marxist socialist recipe for miraculous abundance that murdered 100,000,000 folks).

As it turns out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past twelve years the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms – and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a years. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance….pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true. “We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension…..and there isn't a single private company in Greece with that kind of average pay.”

Progressives are facing the stone cold reality that reality really does bite so they are in an absolute panic.  Their solution?  Raise taxes and plunder everybody.  The recently elected French president Francois Hollande campaigned on a 75% tax rate on the rich.  He won an election and delivered on his promise.  What France will learn is that capital always seeks and finds the friendliest of abodes.  Accordingly, there will be a mass exodus of money and folks with money from France.  Nobody with resources is going to hang around and wait for the ax of the financial guillotine to fall.  As capital flees, as it always does when facing the threat of outright expropriation, the French economy that is already reeling from economic misery will only get a whole lot worse.

The View From the Conservative Republican Camp

Unlike progressives that are ideologically secure and comfortable in their statist economic and command and control government views, Republicans tend to be absolute frauds who wallow in the delusion that America already has a free market economy.  At Republican gathering, one will frequently see folks holding signs defending for capitalism.  Weirdly, Republicans and conservatives truly believe that the Republican Party is the party of free markets and capitalism.  Yet the truth tells a completely different story.  The so-called capitalism and free markets that Republicans claim to worship are really nothing but statist engineered oligarchy, plutocracy, corporatism and fascism.  It's the tyranny of the marriage of Big Government and Big Business.

Republicans are notorious for voting for corporate welfare and subsidies.  The Democrats also support corporate welfare and subsidies but generally only for their pet issues like green energy scams that are personified in scandals like Solyndra.  The Democrats love corporate welfare because state run and funded business enterprises is their goal; the Democrats don't want capitalism or free markets and would gladly outlaw all forms of private business initiatives.  The Republicans love corporate welfare because they are whores and crooks who seek to fill their campaign coffers with any special interest money.  Republicans love taking care of their rich oligarch friends and showering them with taxpayer dough, protectionism and monopoly.

Ironically, Republicans frequently accuse the Democrats of being socialists and Marxists but what the Republicans do isn't a whole lot different than what the Democrats do.  They just do it for different reasons.  Republicans consistently invoke capitalism and free markets as justification for their anti-liberty and anti-free market actions while the Democrats merely invoke "we're doing it for the people" as they sing their collectivist lyrics.

In reality, getting caught up in a game of semantics is an exercise in futility.  Is it even appropriate and relevant to debate the finer semantical points when both the Republican and Democrat solutions translate to the precise same end game, namely, the control of all resources and production by a handful of elites who have absolute power and dominion over everything?

Who benefits from such a system?  Nobody, except political party elites drunk on power and filthy rich oligarchs who buy political power to guarantee their monopolies while avoiding honest competition.

Even on the fiscal and spending side of the equation, Republicans are  notorious big spenders who are addicted to spending other peoples money just as much as the Democrats are.  Under Bush 43, the national debt increased a whopping $5 trillion but there was no backlash by Republicans.  Yet, the same Republicans who had no moral qualms whatsoever with Republican spending went into full attack mode over Democrat spending.  Even the Tea Party movement is a total fraud.

The Tea Party Republicans Spent More Than the Dems They Replaced.

If there are any differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, it's the contentious social issues that weigh heavily on each election. On the BIG issues like fiscal, monetary, economic and foreign policies, the tyrannical Republicans and Democrats are pretty much in complete agreement.

The View from the Austrians and Liberty Activists

While it can be conclusively proven that Republicans and Democrats are really two statist peas from the same tyrannical pod, the only political movements in America today that truly represents a change toward liberty is the Ron Paul liberty movement and the Libertarian Party. These folks advocate for -  gasp - peace, liberty and prosperity, three things that make Republicans and Democrats absolutely cringe. In fact, it makes them downright apoplectic. The establishment is stroking out because Americans are rising up to think the unthinkable and speak the unthinkable in a nation where thinking is verboten.

These liberty activists imagine a world without wars (murdering for defense contractor profits), a world without thieving central banksters that steal from the poor and middle class by devaluing currency (the Federal Reserve) and they also have the blazing audacity to imagine a world of free peoples voluntarily making and trading their widgets/services in peace. GASP again!

As odd as this may sound for the 132 million Americans who voted for Obama or McCain in 2008 and who will probably vote again for Obama or Romney in 2012, the views of the liberty activists are pretty much the exact same views of America's founders who envisioned a weak federal government, the wide dispersion of power, the freedom to produce and keep what you produce, and a federation of sovereign free states.

Liberty activists are ideologically anchored in the belief that government is a pox upon humanity because it murders, wages endless genocidal wars, steals from those who produce and uses the police powers of the state (the point of a gun) to impose its tyranny.  Liberty activists may be divided between the 100% Rothbardian purist anarcho-capitalists (no government) and the minarchist movement (bare minimal government to secure rights) but at this juncture the debate is hardly worth waging because America is so far removed from her founding principles that our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, are nothing more than artifacts permanently consigned to the dust heap of history.  George Bush supposedly called the Constitution nothing but a "G-d damn piece of paper" that had no authority to limit his absolute power in any way.

Unlike Republicans and Democrats, the Austrians and liberty activists understand that government cannot create wealth and prosperity.  In fact, the only thing a government can really do economically is outlaw the ability of its citizens to become prosperous while stealing what they have already produced.  In government think, a free and prosperous citizen is not only a sovereign citizen endowed with protected natural rights, but is considered a threat to government power.  Free and sovereign citizens tend not to empower governments with anything except bare minimal powers because they know full well that such a government will come after them and their wealth.

The Keynesian economic model is based on 2 defining characteristics 1. government can remain powerful by plundering its citizens and redistributing income,  and 2. when a people and nation are fully plundered, there's always the back-up game of printing money out of thin air to create the illusion of prosperity derived from government largess and its counterfeit money printing machine.

America has been in the "print fiat money out of thin air" phase ever since Republican Nixon de-tethered the dollar from gold in 1971 (via an executive order and without congressional approval) and rendered the dollar a paper fiat currency.

Paper currency always reverts to its intrinsic value of zero.

A real and enduring wealth is produced by producing something of value.  Governments cannot create wealth with gobs of paper fiat money. If they could, there would be no human misery or poverty on the planet and everybody would be oozing prosperity from every earthly crevice.

What is Wealth?

What is wealth and prosperity? We all want it because nobody wants to be poor, suffering and impoverished.

It sounds like a simple question. It is and the answer is astonishingly simple. However, it’s our deviation from the principles that accrue wealth and prosperity to the greatest majority of people that got us into deep dodo. Wealth is simply excess production. A corn farmer sows his seeds, lovingly tends to his crops and harvests the product of his labor. What he doesn’t need to feed and sustain his own life is wealth or savings. What does the corn farmer do with his wealth? He could trade his corn for meat or eggs or shoes or clothes and other things he might want. But - no matter what the corn farmer does, he absolutely must produce and must save enough seed to plant again or he will starve and suffer. That’s a law of economics that cannot be altered, modified or otherwise tampered with without negating the entire wealth building mechanism of human survival.

Human survival has always been based on the principle of working in some capacity to produce something of value to sustain life and create excess production for the purpose of exchanging it for other goods and/or to save for the future....

When property rights were secure before the age of government confiscation, crony capitalism, cartel capitalism, protectionism and fascism, capitalism was the most prosperity inducing of all human activities simply because the motivation to work and produce was extraordinarily high. Capitalism motivated sane values like self-sufficiency, thrift, savings, a strong work ethic and building communities that respected the property of others.

But what happens to the farmer when the government invades a “man’s castle” and violates his ability to produce and save by seizing his production, his property and/or limiting his capacity to produce and save?

This has been the trajectory of America for nearly 50 years. As government power grew, it stole the production of producers, it stole their wealth, it stole their seeds for future growth and it stole their savings that are plowed back into a productive economy.

And so we remain at political loggerheads as power made control freaks lock horns with the liberty loving activists who absolutely comprehend that government can not only destroy real and endurable wealth but also outlaw the wealth building mechanism itself.  It's a recipe for perpetual poverty.  The real tragedy, however, is that the American people still have a high level of trust in the ability of the government to deliver on its promises, promises of plunder at the point of a gun.

Is the GOP Old, White, Gray and Dying?

Republicans are a most peculiar species. They tend to be old, white, gray and dying. They also tend to be in photos carrying anti-Obama signs sporting slogans that scream 'NO Socialism' while they simultaneously scream for more socialism for themselves, notably Social Security and Medicare. It's all about socialism for me but not for thee.

Obama hatred is what drives the Republican base into an intense frenzy of raw and absolute hatred. Those damn liberals are spending our tax dollars, those damn liberals are killing the babies, those damn liberals are God hating atheists, those damn liberals hate the military and on and on. The Republican indictment against Obama and the Democrats makes the indictment against King George contained in the Declaration of Independence appear downright wimpy and empty.

As one who embraces classical liberalism, before liberals became murderous warmongers, progressives, statists, totalitarian thugs, Stalinists, Marxists and various shades of anti-liberty militaristic tyranny, I tried real hard to believe that the Republican Party was indeed the party of Jefferson, the Constitution, liberty and limited government. WOW! Was I ever wrong.

For a while it was very frustrating being an American without a political party and not fitting into the social clubs knows as the Republican and Democrat parties. But after a while, the liberation of not being affiliated with any political party became quite exhilarating. Political parties don't represent the people or liberty, they just represent hatred of the other party.

Meanwhile, the RNC and DNC machines are nothing more than money laundering operations as well as wholly owned subsidiaries of the banksters, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex and corporatist fascist special interests.

Except for the never ending social issues, there are no differences between the Republicans and the Democrats as both parties, when distilled to their raw and absolute essence, are nothing more than the theocrats vs. humanists who both embrace big bad government..

Natural rights or the right to be who you want to be so long as you don't trample the rights of another sovereign individual are conspicuously absent from most debates on human liberty. They don't exist according to the theocrats (Biblical theocrats) and humanists (statist theocrats). According to the theocrats and Biblical literalists, you don't have a right to be gay because it's considered a crime against God that must be severely punished. By contrast, the humanists have deified themselves and operate under the presumption that all rights are held collectively by the state and doled out according to bureaucratic whim. What kind of liberty is a choice between theocratic tyranny and collectivist tyranny?

In recent years, there's been an explosion in challenges to the left and right paradigms and those challenges are coming from both sides. The Ron Paul liberty movement that kicked off in 2008 is largely responsible for educating folks on issues of liberty that challenge both the state and the theocrats. Classical liberty and natural rights are back in vogue after a long hiatus and are being eagerly embraced and debated.

Back to the Republican Party. The Republican Party definitely exhibits a disconnect from the views of the majority of the American people but it also has a severe demographic problem. As old establishment Republicans die off, they are not being replaced in significant numbers with the young. The future of the Republican Party is indeed in jeopardy and that's larges because the GOP has failed to distinguish itself from the Democratic Party on core issues affecting peace, liberty and prosperity. The statist stripes of the Republican Party have been accelerating for decades as big spending Republicans played a crucial rule in America's fiscal nightmare and deficits.

Bush and the Republicans increased the national debt by $5 trillion,  Republican voters cheered when Bush and the Republican congress critters passed Medicare Part D, a monster multi-trillion dollar entitlement (if the Dems had passed it they would have been labeled socialists).  Under the Republicans, government just grew and grew like a runaway virus. Yet, there are no mea culpas flowing from the socialist and militarist Republicans who are fully committed to abandoning even the pretense of fiscal conservatism and constitutional governance.

To further rub salt into the GOP's open and oozing wounds, the crop of Republican Tea Party Congress Critters that got elected in 2010 turned out to be bigger spenders than the Democrats they replaced.

The Tea Party Republicans Spent More Than the Dems They Replaced.

Meanwhile, Republicans at the leadership and grassroots levels continue to march to the beat of their statist, socialist and militaristic drums, except for the occasional burst of bouncing from the sublime to the ridiculous with the raising of truly offensive issues like legitimate rape or forcible rape. Of course, all rape is violent and forcible and certainly not legitimate. It's why it's called rape and not sex.

Yet, the Republican Party continues to harbor the delusion that it will win the hearts and minds of the people with such insane rants. Such hallucinatory discourse, along with the notable absence of offering any solutions to our immense economic and fiscal problems, spell one thing - the pending death and demise of the Republican Party.

Maybe that's not such a bad thing. After all, the Republican Party that descended from Thomas Jefferson back when we had the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Hamiltonian Federalists is a very long way from its historical roots.

The GOP's Civil War - Big Government Statists vs. Liberty Activists

If you checkout out photos and film clips of Republican public gathering, you will always see tons of signs that scream "Obama is a Socialist". Well, he is. However, the glaring truth that Republicans ignore is the fact that Republicans are socialists too!

REALLY, REPUBLICANS REALLY ARE SOCIALISTS

As the Republican Party remains a fractured mess that is fiercely divided to the point where the GOP is suffering profound electability problems, establishment Republicans just do not understand why the constitutionalist, Libertarians and Ron Paul supporters no longer vote Republican. The fissures are now so pronounced that Republicans are now screaming "to hell with those Ron Paul supporters, Libertarians and constitutionalists, we don't need them, we are the Republican Party and there are enough of us to win elections". Well, that's a highly debatable assumption, especially in tight swing states that will absolutely be critical in November.

As a Libertarian and Ron Paul supporter, I understand that Republicans are very frustrated with us.  Primarily, they are frustrated because they believe the GOP lies that it's the party of liberty, free markets and minimal government.  Anybody who disagrees with their flawed logic is automatically labeled a liberal, a socialist, a Marxist and, well, a whole lot worse.

In the interest of bridging our vastly different visions of what the Republican Party should be, could be and ought to be, I'm offering Ron Paul's own explanation that verifies a truth that cannot be denied.

The Truth About Neoconservatism

It's a fascinating and instructive read.  In fact, had this article not been written by Ron Paul, Republicans and so-called conservatives would generally agree with it, especially on economic issues and America's transition to socialism.  Ron Paul explains:

Someone is responsible, and it's important that those of us who love liberty, and resent big-brother government, identify the philosophic supporters who have the most to say about the direction our country is going. If they're wrong – and I believe they are – we need to show it, alert the American people, and offer a more positive approach to government. However, this depends on whether the American people desire to live in a free society and reject the dangerous notion that we need a strong central government to take care of us from the cradle to the grave. Do the American people really believe it's the government's responsibility to make us morally better and economically equal? Do we have a responsibility to police the world, while imposing our vision of good government on everyone else in the world with some form of utopian nation building? If not, and the enemies of liberty are exposed and rejected, then it behooves us to present an alternative philosophy that is morally superior and economically sound and provides a guide to world affairs to enhance peace and commerce.

One thing is certain: conservatives who worked and voted for less government in the Reagan years and welcomed the takeover of the U.S. Congress and the presidency in the 1990s and early 2000s were deceived.

Soon they will realize that the goal of limited government has been dashed and that their views no longer matter.

Ron Paul goes into extraordinary detail in documenting how the socialists, statists, big government neocons and empire builders took over and destroyed the Republican Party.

More important than the names of people affiliated with neo-conservatism are the views they adhere to. Here is a brief summary of the general understanding of what neocons believe:

1. They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.

2. They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.

3. They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.

4. They accept the notion that the ends justify the means – that hard-ball politics is a moral necessity.

5. They express no opposition to the welfare state.

6. They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.

7. They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.

8. They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.

9. They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite and withheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.

10.They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill-advised.

11.They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.

12.They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.

13.Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force should not be limited to the defense of our country.  

14. 9-11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.

15. They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists).

16. They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.

17. They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.

If America's founding fathers were around today, they'd be Libertarians.  In fact, America's founding fathers were the original Libertarians because they advocated for decentralized government powers and a federal government with very minimal powers.

Furthermore, it is my sincere hope that Republicans will study America's history, the philosophies of our founders and our founding documents.  They would learn that the Republican Party as it is presently constituted has indeed lost its way and has drifted far from the message of 1776.

Ron Paul's article is more than a concise history lesson as well as practical knowledge, it's very much a story that is eerily reminiscent of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon.

The American Empire is an epic failure that has bankrupted us as a nation.  We as Republicans have destroyed our economy and sacrificed our liberty in pursuit of collectivism, statism, socialism and empire.  For what?  

Why Do Republicans Reject the Constitution?

As a Libertarian turned Republican turned Libertarian, one of the most frustration things I've encountered in political life is the fact that Republicans claim they revere the Constitution and liberty.  Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, Republicans are always accusing me of being a liberal and a socialist!  Republicans need to look in the mirror if they want to see socialists. The grand Republican delusion is that they truly believe that they endorse liberty and constitutional governance.

Yet, Republicans consistently vote for anti-Constitutionalists and big government statists. In fact, Republicans vote against liberty and the Constitution every chance they get. Republicans cheered the Bush era, including No Child Left Behind (written by Ted Kennedy) and Medicare Part D, the multi-trillion dollar prescription drug entitlement.

Why is it that Republican socialism is somehow good while Democrat socialism is bad?  There is no such thing as good socialism or good statism.

For reasons no sane person can fathom, Republicans are notorious for going on a rampage accusing Obama and Gang of being socialists. Republicans and their media mouth pieces have even labeled Obama the 'Food Stamp President'.

The truth?

Bush is the REAL Food Stamp President

It’s true that the most recent figures from the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (provided to Factcheck.org/USA Today) show that a record number of people—some 46.2 million—are enrolled in the program. But the same data shows that more individuals were added to the program while George W. Bush was in office than have enrolled under Obama’s presidency: Under Bush, the program grew by 14.7 million individuals; under Obama so far, it’s grown by 14.2 million, and, as of October, was declining.

So Bush wins on volume, and Obama wins on velocity: In just a few years, President Obama managed to expand the program by nearly as much as Bush. But Obama didn’t do it without some help from his Republican predecessor, who approved policy changes that set the stage for the program’s current growth.

To some extent, the food stamps expansion the country has seen under Obama is how food stamps are supposed to work: It’s a countercyclical program, meaning that as the economy declines, enrollment grows. Typically, then, the program grows in recessions and declines in economic boom times. But with the 2002 farm bill, President Bush dramatically expanded eligibility, restoring benefits to nearly a million individuals at the beginning of 2003, and paving the way for the program to expand as it did during the rest of presidency. As a result, Bush managed to oversee unprecedented growth in the program even as the economy grew. Obama then followed up on this with an eligibility expansion of his own in the 2009 stimulus package.

It’s not unreasonable to criticize Obama for the expansion of the food stamps program under his watch. But Obama's Republican critics shouldn’t forget that it was a GOP president who helped make that expansion possible.

Meanwhile, frustrated Republicans just don't understand why Libertarians and constitutionalists just won't hold their noses and vote Republican because as they see it, the Republicans are the lesser of the two evils. But unconstitutional statist evil is still unconstitutional statist evil and Libertarians and constitutionalist see no differences between the Republicans and the Democrats, except for the social issues which they don't care about anyway because they correctly perceive that the theocrats are anti-natural rights advocates who seek to criminalize every possible human behavior that they don't like.

I don't know what will happen in November but I do believe that the advantage goes to Obama simply because the Republican Party has totally wimped out and failed to distinguish itself on critically important issues. 

Meanwhile, I urge Republicans to read the Constitution, here, especially Article 1, Section 8, that lists the specific enumerated powers granted to the federal government by the states that created the Constitution.  The Federal government has no constitutional right or authority to do anything that it wasn't specifically authorized to do.  Our founders worked hard to limit Federal powers and now we've got "Fedzilla Gone Wild".  

Muppets and Mittens: Is Romney Trying to Prove that He's Brain Dead?

In an interview with Fortune Magazine, Romney claims he's going to solve our budget problems by cutting funding for PBS, the National Endowment of the Arts and and Amtrak.

Mitt Romney: Slash Amtrak, PBS Funding, But Defense Cuts And Middle Class Tax Cuts Off The Table

The federal government is spending about $3.7 TRILLION a year on tax revenues of about $2.2 trillion. If you are going to be a serious budget cutter, you start with the big ticket items first because that's where you achieve the biggest payback.

Mitt's cuts:

PBS $444 million
National Endowment of the Arts $146 million
Amtrak subsidies $1.56 billion

Now I totally agree that subsidies to PBS and the National Endowment of the Arts should be abolished and I further believe that Amtrak should just be put on the auction block for sale.  But these items are small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

Romney the Big Governrment Statist, just can't bring himself to even suggest cutting big ticket items that are the real problem.  Ron Paul boldly outlined his plan to cut $1 trillion year one as president.

RON PAUL “PLAN TO RESTORE AMERICA”

SPENDING: Cuts $1 trillion in spending during the first year of Ron Paul’s presidency, eliminating five cabinet departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education), abolishing the Transportation Security Administration and returning responsibility for security to private property owners, abolishing corporate subsidies, stopping foreign aid, ending foreign wars, and returning most other spending to 2006 levels.

Ron Paul has an plan to dig us out of our fiscal nightmares. All Romney had to do was just partially or wholly steal Ron Paul's plan. But weasel wimp Mittens opted instead to expose his lack of testicular fortitude.

Not only is Romney pathetically weak when it comes to slashing spending, he turns mega big spender when it comes to massively increasing defense spending by trillions.

Mitt Romney Proposes $8 Trillion Welfare Program for Defense Contractors; Prepare for Two Wars if Romney Wins

Yo Mitt, if you've got a pair, time is running out to show them.  Wimp talk just won't cut in an election where Republicans are already behind in critical swing states.  

Was There an American Revolution?

Having just finished reading the books 1776 and John Adams by David McCullough, it became clear that the problems we have today are nothing new. While 1776 was an agonizing year of disappointment and profound suffering with Washington's rag tag army of yeoman farmers being constantly on the run from the British, it took another 6.5 years for the Revolution to end with the Treaty of Paris, albeit with more than a little help from the French Navy that managed to sail to the right place at precisely the time.

It's been said that at the time of the Revolution, a third of the American people were British loyalists, a third just didn't care either which way who ruled them and a third were more or less supportive of severing America's ties as a British colony. Washington became America's first president because he got the credit for winning the Revolution. There were no political parties but by the time the Constitution was written, those who led the Revolution were engaged in ferocious battles with each other as two sides emerged, the Federalists and the Republicans.

The Federalists were led by Alexander Hamilton and they sought a very strong federal government with  significant centralized powers.  The Republicans were led by Thomas Jefferson who abhorred federal powers and considered America to be a union of sovereign states and that most power should be vested with the states and not the federal government.  Jefferson greatly feared federal power which he rightfully perceived as the means erode liberty.

The Federalist were also strongly attached to Britain and many considered them to be loyalist loving royalists. Post Revolution, the Federalist sought to align America with Britain at the expense of France. Meanwhile the French were embroiled in their own hideous revolution that went horribly bad and resulted in the Reign of Terror and a bloodbath.

The Federalists were screaming for WAR with France. The French did become frightfully annoying and French ships were seizing US commercial ships and imprisoning sailors. John Adams, a Federalist, totally opposed war with France. Adams was definitely a closeted Republican at heart, at least to some degree, and he dreaded entangling America in a foreign war. In fact, the Federalists were furious with Adams because he refused to ask Congress for a Declaration of War against France because he knew he'd get it. Moreover, Adams greatly feared that Congress would simply declare war anyway. Through sheer cunning and perseverance, Adams managed to keep the warmongers at bay and his brilliant tenacity won the day, much to the chagrin of the rabid Federalists.

Hamilton was dubbed the aspiring American Napoleon by the Republicans because he sought empire as well as personal glory and power.  His untimely 1804 demise in the infamous Burr-Hamilton duel did in fact weaken the Federalists for a while.

Anyway, this very recent American Conservative piece by Robert Nisbit not only caught my eye but clearly put into focus a lot of things about America that have long tortured me.

Was There an American Revolution?

Was there in fact an American Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century? By this, I mean a revolution involving sudden, decisive, and irreversible changes in social institutions, groups, and traditions, in addition to the war of liberation from England that we are more likely to celebrate.

Clearly, this is a question that generates much controversy. There are scholars whose answer to the question is strongly negative. Indeed, ever since Edmund Burke’s time there have been students to declare that revolution in any precise sense of the word did not take place—that in substance the American Revolution was no more than a group of Englishmen fighting on distant shores for traditionally English political rights against a government that had sought to exploit and tyrannize. According to this argument, it was a war of restitution and liberation, not revolution; the outcome, one set of political governors replacing another. This view is widespread in our time and is found as often among ideological conservatives as among liberals and radicals.

At the opposite extreme is the view that a full-blown revolution did indeed take place. This is clearly what John Adams believed: “The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations … This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.” And Samuel Adams, more radical in ideology and hence more demanding in defining revolution, asked rhetorically, “Was there ever a revolution brought about, especially one so important as this, without great internal tumults and violent convulsions?”

If there was a genuine revolution in America, we shall find it not in the sphere of ideological tracts—which history demonstrates may or may not yield actual revolution—but rather in the social sphere.

Nisbit plunges into a fascinating discussion of: Feudalism in America, A Land Based Class System, Laws of Inheritance, An Inevitable Revolution, Religious Freedom, The Great Contradiction, Freedom and Slavery, Dispersion and Division, A Nation of Joiners and The American Brand of Intellects.

Then, Nisbit goes on to claim that America did indeed have a real revolution and pretty much attributed it to the fact that Americans were a simple, practical and common sense people who were not susceptible to various European intellectual movements and their convoluted social and political theories.

The intellectual leaders of the American Revolution were generally businessmen or landowners; they had a stake in society. It is inconceivable that either a Jefferson or a Hamilton could have renounced what Burke called the “wisdom of expediency” in the interest of pursuing an abstract principle. No American leader could have contemplated mass executions or imprisonments with delight, as did the millennialist intellectuals of 1649, 1793, and 1917. At no point in the American Revolution, or in its aftermath, do we find any Committee of the Public Safety after the French fashion, any Council of the People’s Commissars, any Lilburnes, Robespierres, or Lenins. Nothing so completely gave the American Revolution its distinctive character as the absence of the European species of political intellectual. It is only in the present century that we have seen this species coming into prominence in America.

In conclusion, I would argue, then, that there was indeed an American Revolution in the full sense of the word–a social, moral, and institutional revolution that effected major changes in the character of American society–as well as a war of liberation from England that was political in nature.

Who in their right mind today wouldn't welcome a true Revolution for liberty? The fact that the Federalists won the day and the original Jeffersonian Republicans got squashed is indeed a most disturbing legacy of American history.

That said, the Jeffersonian Republicans never really disappeared. While a minority, they exist as Ron Paul supporters, Libertarians, Independents and folks of various political stripes who do in fact comprehend that Hamiltonian Federalism is a Big Fail.