Time For Economic Restoration Now Climate Change Deception Exposed

by Dr. Tim Ball

Recently by Dr. Tim Ball: There Is No Water Shortage

Problems are only problems if you are unaware of them. Once identified you’re over halfway to resolution. American voters rejected the Obama administration’s policies of increasing government control through energy, environment and economic policies. They voted for cessation and reversal. Now the new politicians and chastened survivors must act accordingly. Debt and deficit are serious problems and the solution depends partly on reduced government spending, but mostly on a vigorous growing economy and that depends on energy. Maurice Strong’s plan to collapse the industrial economies recognized this with his focus on fossil fuels and CO2, so that’s where the solution must begin.

Keynote speaker Vaclav Klaus, elected President of the Czech Republic in 2003 made a memorable comment for me at the first Heartland Conference on Climate Change in New York. He said we’ve just emerged from 70 years of communism and asked, incredulously, why anyone would go back. He was referring to the US and Europe and identified environmentalism and climate change as the vehicles for the transit. He made his case effectively in his book Blue Planet in Green Shackles where he writes, “The themes in the contemporary dispute (or perhaps clash) are clearly about human freedom – not about the environment.” His warnings are not surprising given his personal experiences, but they’re supported by similar comments and actions by Russia and China. The contradiction is not surprising and parallels evolution of human, social, economic and political systems.

Evolution

We’ve really only tried two socio-economic systems, capitalism and communism. They evolved from two major 19th century works published just 8 years apart. Darwin’s Origin of The Species published in 1859 is the essence of capitalism with its theme of survival of the fittest. Karl Marx’s Das Kapital published in 1867 denounced capitalism and became the basis of communism. Now capitalist countries move toward communism in the form of total government control.

Some foolishly suggest a compromise is the oxymoron of State Capitalism. Trouble is capitalism requires free markets with little or no government interference. Ironically, one of the few places where free markets succeeded was the black market in the Soviet Union. One development that paralleled growth of capitalism was increasing government intervention in the market place. Malfeasance in the market place made people realize unbridled capitalism was not the answer. The problem is, once you start controls, how are they limited? This is where limits to growth really apply.

Maurice Strong engineered the attack on capitalism and industrialism, its engine of growth, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He focused on energy, particularly fossil fuels, and that marks the biggest difference currently between former capitalist and communist countries. Phony environmentalists with political agendas and those milking government for climate research funding, blame skeptics for the failures of climate conferences and the collapse of global climate policies. In fact, it was India and China who consistently blocked the plans as they moved to expand their economies. Russia sits cynically on the side doing only what benefits them. All three continue with extensive development of fossil fuels by ensuring access to supply and building energy facilities, especially coal and nuclear. Energy from these facilities is used to produce alternate energy products for nations who foolishly pursue an already proven unsustainable green agenda.

India, China and Russia did not reject IPCC findings simply to advance their economies. They did it because they knew the science was false. Consider the presentations made by Putin’s economic advisor Andrei Ilarianov clearly with approval.

Putin only changed when they threatened to deny access to the World Trade Organization (WTO) if he didn’t sign Kyoto.

Ilarianov resigned. All three paid lip service to Kyoto, but did not become enslaved to the carbon footprint that is stomping out economies of the so-called capitalist economies.

What To Do? Some Simple Inexpensive Solutions

There are simple steps essential to the US rebuilding energy sources and resources.

1. Put Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma in charge of a Commission to get climate and energy policies back from the edge of disaster. He is the only politician who understood the climate corruption and spoke out about it despite ridicule and nasty attacks.
2. Immediately cancel all plans for Cap and Trade or similar strategies.
3. Withdraw from the IPCC and cancel all research on climate carried out by government agencies. Reassign employees to extensive and better data collection on a multitude of environmental factors. This must include accurate information on all energy resources to avoid the exploitation of the argument we are exhausting resources, a fundamental tenet of the Club of Rome.
4. Produce reliable, fully documented, material that explains why CO2, especially human production, is not the cause of global warming or climate change. Launch a vigorous campaign to educate people about the science in ways they can understand.
5. Cancel all climate research funding and redirect it to identifying real problems with workable solutions. Academics have shown they’ll sell integrity for funding so have them produce really relevant rather than contrived work.
6. Produce reliable, fully documented, material that explains how the climate issue was manipulated. This must include the motive and the mechanism.
7. Cancel all subsidies to alternate energies. There are some uses for alternate energies, but they are very limited and very expensive, a problem completely masked by the subsidies.
   
8. Review and reduce all unnecessary restrictions on expansion of oil, coal and gas reserves established to reduce CO2.
9. Review and reduce all unnecessary restrictions on nuclear power development established after environmentalists, following Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, exploited public fears. It is no longer necessary with new technologies.
10. Reverse the Supreme Court decision that CO2 is a toxic substance. It was based on the falsified work of the IPCC. This will remove control of CO2 from the EPA.
11. Remove all energy subsidies and allow market forces to determine development. This will likely result, in nuclear and coal producing electricity; natural gas powering vehicles; and oil sustaining petrochemical industries.
12. Cancel legislation and funding introduced to deal with CO2, carbon footprints or any other extension of the idea.
13. Reduce taxes on all fuels as a direct benefit to the entire society. They’ve become a “sin” tax to punish us for causing climate change.
14. Review all environmental policies evolved from the false climate science.
15. Government can offer significant prizes for private citizens, the source of American exceptionalism, to influence innovation that solves basic energy problems. These include efficient large-scale storage of electricity and superconductivity.

Rejection of the Obama agenda includes exploitation of climate as a vehicle for total government control. The White House appointment of John Holdren, member of the Club of Rome, as Science Czar confirmed the commitment. It’s time for the newly elected politicians to team up with Senator Inhofe and roll back the policies. Beyond the increased debt, the climate basis for the energy policy has done much to destroy the economy and will do more unless quickly reversed. It then becomes the solution rather than the problem.

November 30, 2010

Dr. Tim Ball [send him mail] is a renowned environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. Dr. Ball employs his extensive background in climatology and other fields as an advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition, Friends of Science, and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Copyright © 2010 Tim Ball

Leak of State Dept Cables Could Impact Friends and Allies Around the World, White House Says

Monday, November 29, 2010
By Patrick Goodenough

(CNSNews.com) – Sunday’s release by WikiLeaks of classified U.S. State Department cables provides a glimpse into the world where views are delivered directly and sometimes bluntly, far removed from bland diplomatic statements reserved for the cameras.

The controversial whistleblower Web site on Sunday released the first batch of what it says will eventually total 251,287 cables, originating from 274 U.S. embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions. Most of the several hundred documents released so far are dated between 2005 and as recently as last February.

Earlier in the day news outlets used in the past by WikiLeaks – the New York Times, the Guardian of London, Germany’s Der Spiegel, France’s Le Monde and El Pais of Spain – began running stories prepared after getting an advance look at the documents.

The cables reveal frank evaluations of a range of issues and political leaders, offered not just by American officials but also by their foreign interlocutors speaking on the assumption of confidentiality.

With that assumption now having been proven wrong, the diplomatic fallout is likely to be widespread, and lasting. Not only are U.S. interactions with foreign governments compromised, but also exposed are foreign governments’ assessments of other foreign governments.

Pakistan’s government, army and at least some of its people may react strongly, for instance, to learning that Saudi King Abdullah views President Asif Ali Zardari as “rotten” and the greatest obstacle to Pakistan making progress in ending terrorist safe havens there.

In this Nov. 17, 2007 file photo, Saudi King Abdullah shakes hands with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was visiting the kingdom for an OPEC summit in Riyadh.. According to U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, several Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, urged the U.S. to use force to end the Iranian nuclear threat. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian, File) 

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are two of the most important countries in the Islamic world, both with close security ties to the U.S.

Possibly more dangerous could be an unpredictable Iran’s response to the forthright views of Gulf state leaders about how best to deal with their powerful Shi’ite neighbor and its nuclear ambitions:

— Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed asked a U.S. general in 2005 whether it would be possible to use air power to “take out” all of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Told this was unlikely as they were widely dispersed, the prince was reported to have responded, “Then it will take ground forces!”

— A Saudi envoy told a U.S. diplomat in April 2008 that King Abdullah had frequently exhorted “the U.S. to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program,” a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh said. “He told you to cut off the head of the snake,” the ambassador recalled.

— Bahrain’s King Hamad’s warned Gen. David  Petraeus in 2009 that “the danger of letting it [Iran’s nuclear program] go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.”

— King Abdullah, during a visit by then National Security Adviser Gen James Jones early this year, reportedly encouraged the use of covert ways to weaken the regime in Tehran by exploiting the opportunity provided by the post-election turmoil.

— Kuwaiti Interior Minister Jaber Al-Khaled Al Sabah’s told a U.S. envoy last February that Iran “will only be deterred from achieving its objectives – including a nuclear weapons capability – by force.”

Humint collection

Potentially damaging for the Obama administration’s engagement with the United Nations is a July 2009 request to U.S. missions to collect information ranging from government stances on “priority issues” to personal data of senior U.N. officials (including credit card numbers, online passwords and Internet “handles).

Sent under the name of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the “national HUMINT collection directive” was addressed to U.S. missions to the U.N. in New York, Geneva, Vienna and Rome, as well as to 32 embassies and consuls around the world. (Humint refers to “human intelligence.)

Among the information sought was the view of U.N. member states – especially those on the Security Council – on everything from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s “management and decision-making style” to attempts by countries to block U.S. initiatives or “plans by developing countries to stymie criticism of their human rights records through procedural motions or influencing votes” at the U.N. Human Rights Council.

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley last week decried the looming dump of the data, calling it “harmful to the United States and our interests. They are going to create tension in our relationships between our diplomats and our friends around the world.”

On Friday, Crowley in a Twitter message said Clinton had been in touch with Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, France and Afghanistan, and that other “senior officials are reaching out to countries and warning them about a possible release of documents.”

The White House in a statement Sunday condemned the release, saying that “such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government.”

“By its very nature, field reporting to Washington is candid and often incomplete information. It is not an expression of policy, nor does it always shape final policy decisions,” the statement said.

“Nevertheless, these cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders, and when the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only U.S. foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends around the world.”

WikiLeaks in July released more than 90,000 documents relating to the conflict  in Afghanistan and in October dumped some 400,000 documents dealing with the Iraq war.

A U.S. Army intelligence analyst based in Baghdad, Bradley Manning, is in custody on suspicion of leaking documents to the Web site.

After the latest reports began appearing on Sunday, the Pentagon released a statement saying that following the earlier leaks over the summer, Defense Secretary Robert Gates had ordered two reviews of information and intelligence sharing.

As a result of steps put into place following those reviews, said spokesman Bryan Whitman, “it is now much more difficult for a determined actor to get access to and move information outside of authorized channels.”

ICLEI is a Conspiracy and That’s No Theory

By Stacy Lynne

Friday, 20 August 2010 14:06

Conspiracy: An illegal, treasonable, or treacherous plan to harm or destroy another person, group or entity; an agreement manifesting itself in words or deeds and made by two or more persons confederating to do an unlawful act or use unlawful means to do an act which is lawful; a combination of persons banded together and resolved to accomplish an evil or unlawful end. (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary)

Theory: Imaginative contemplation of reality.

Fact: Something that has actual existence; an actual happening in time or space; physical actuality or practical experience as distinguished from imagination, speculation or theory.

Congested Laurel Street in front of Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado. This four lane road was reduced to two lanes in August 2010. Vehicle driving lanes were removed so that bicycle lanes could be added in the center of the road. Bike lanes were already present on each side of the road.

Arapahoe County, Colorado and ICLEI

Arapahoe County, including, but not limited to, the cities of Aurora, Englewood and Littleton, are participating members of the foreign organization called the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI). Taxpayer money is used for annual dues, to pay city employees who work for ICLEI’s programs, and for programs such as government-owned bicycle businesses.

Bicycles are a Big Deal

ICLEI Charter 1.7, Principle 14 says, “Integrate into formal education and lifelong learning the knowledge, values, and skills needed for a sustainable way of life.”

ICLEI member cities focus their efforts on ecomobility, multimodal transportation, transit oriented design and multiple other ways of changing your ability to travel by use of personal vehicle. This is accomplished by making driving more expensive and difficult while simultaneously spending millions of taxpayer dollars on government-owned walking, biking and mass transit projects. Emissions from vehicles are blamed by ICLEI as being a primary source of man-made global warming.

Scientific studies show that global warming is a natural and cyclical occurrence and man-made emissions are miniscule in proportion to natural sources.

ICLEI uses a “precautionary approach” to decision-making: if knowledge, facts and science do not support or show justification for an idea or action then the best course is to act radically and rapidly to prevent something which could or might occur.

The City of Fort Collins pays a “bicycle coordinator” a yearly salary equivalent to a police officer. The duties of the city bike employee are to teach people of all ages how to ride bicycles. He has a focused partnership with the school district (Principle 14).

The City of Denver, under the direction of ICLEI’s 2009 Cool Mayor, John Hickenlooper, is enacting foreign mandates and spending taxpayer money on bicycles. Denver’s bike sharing program received $210,000 of taxpayer money in 2009. This money was given to the City of Denver through a federal block grant. ICLEI requires member cities to adopt multi-modal transportation policies and bicycle programs meet those requirements.

Greenprint Denver is a document produced by ICLEI. Two of ICLEI’s goals include eliminating personal vehicle use and reducing private ownership of property. These two goals are being accomplished through city-owned and operated bicycle programs and by claiming private property through eminent domain. Transit oriented design is ICLEI’s policy of building high density multi-use building on property which is sometimes claimed through eminent domain. These buildings are designed in areas which make vehicle travel difficult. Walking, biking and mass transit become top priority budget items. High density housing communities are typically too small and cost-prohibitive for families.

ICLEI cities systematically and methodically make owning and driving a personal vehicle more difficult and expensive. They accomplish this by removing parking spaces and driving lanes, increasing parking fees and car ownership taxes. Privately owned automobile dealers and bicycle shops are adversely affected by this government interference.

Media Coverage of ICLEI

ICLEI is successful in part because they operate largely out of public view. ICLEI is highly organized and when exposed, calls on its associates to conduct focused campaigns in an attempt to ridicule and silence the people who are reporting facts.

The Fort Collins Coloradoan belongs to ICLEI’s Climate Wise program.

The Denver Post is owned by Media News Group. The Santa Cruz Sentinel, also a long-time ICLEI member city is owned by Media News Group. Media News Group is ranked high on the Carbon Capture Report.

What is Wrong with ICLEI?

ICLEI is a foreign organization on a mission to transform local governments. Each ICLEI mandate, policy and agenda is based on the principle that the collective good is more important than individual rights; this is in direct opposition to the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

http://www.freedomadvocates.org/articles/illegitimate_government/iclei_is_a_conspiracy_and_that%27s_no_theory_20100820423/

Patriot Act for Food: A close look at bizarre propaganda for S.510

Posted on November 27, 2010 by Rady

By Rady Ananda
Food Freedom

Need a good laugh? Check out the bizarre reasoning offered in support of the Patriot Act for Food (S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act), which the U.S. Senate will vote on shortly.  From a need to stop food smuggling, to the law is too old, to the terrorists are gonna get us, elites sure are shy on brains when it comes to credible propaganda. They must be drinking the fluoridated water and smoking Monsanto marijuana, or hoping you are.

A couple weeks ago, we reported that Senator Bob Casey informed his Pennsylvania constituents that S.510 will stop food smuggling in the United States. Never heard of the problem?  That might be because the “biggest food smuggling case in the history of the U.S.” amounted to $40 million worth of commercial grade honey over a five-year period.  Food smuggling is clearly not a problem – nor is it a fiscally sound reason for giving the Food and Drug Administration an extra $1.6 billion.

Admittedly, no one is accusing U.S.. elites of being fiscally sound – just look at our rising unemployment, hunger, and home foreclosure rates. Clearly, food smuggling is just bizarre bunk that lazy propagandists invented out of thin air.

Next, the well-regarded Christian Science Monitor listed as the “strongest argument for the bill” – get this – because the law in place is too old.  Nothing about whether or not the old law is effective, nothing about the tens of thousands of deaths the FDA causes each year by the drugs it allows on the market. No – that very agency needs more power, more money, more authority over what’s on your table, according to S.510 supporters.

Here’s some more penetrating analysis by CSM:

Would SB 510 put America’s cornucopia under the control of a “globalist mafia” led by the World Trade Organization?
No. Some people have been concerned that the bill would give international groups more power over food matters in the US. The bill does state that the US will not knowingly break any existing agreements with the World Trade Organization, but it doesn’t cede any inspection or enforcement powers to international agencies.

Merely because the bill does not cede inspection or enforcement powers to foreign agents does not preclude domestic ones from inspection and enforcement authority. CSM’s response is absurd, as well as deceptive. The correct answer is YES, SB 510 puts US food under the control of the WTO. Read the section and decide for yourself:

SEC. 404. COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS.
Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.

Black is white; war is peace; and who are you going to believe? Corporate media or your own ability to read plain English?

And, who is the enforcement agency for these agreements? Why, the DHS, otherwise known as the:

• Dept. of Homeland Stupidity – you know, those folks who want to build a bioterrorism lab in the middle of Tornado Alley, where a huge bulk of the nation’s food is grown and raised (map here);
• Dept. of Heck-of-a-Job Security that miserably failed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina;
• Dept. of Homeland Perversity that sexually molests children and adults who travel by air, that is collecting naked images of those who pass thru their carcinogenic body scanners, and which has not prevented a single terrorist from boarding a plane.

That’s who’s going to be in charge of protecting the US food supply.  Feel safer?

This leads us to the latest absurdity emanating from the federal government: The terrorists are going to try to poison us.  Like the “red menace” that was so effective a bogeyman in the last century, the Muslim “terrorist” is this century’s bogeyman. It’s just as overblown.

How are terrorists going to poison the food supply?  Seriously, that might be accomplished in a centralized food system that is forced to adulterate natural foods because laws and rules have decreed it or allowed it – like the FDA allowing BPA, fluoride, chlorine, pesticides – all known poisons. Notice how sick Americans are compared to the rest of the world? You can thank the alphabet soup of federal agencies that allows our skies, lands and waters, and thus our food, to be poisoned by industrial processes.

It’s nearly impossible to poison the food supply under a decentralized scenario with tens of millions of producers and distributors. Food safety is enhanced by decentralization and localization, not by allowing monopoly production as we have now in the U.S.  Centralizing control in the hands of a few people who used to work for Monsanto, the company that brought us PCBs, DDT, rBST, Agent Orange, aspartame, and glyphosate, amounts to a clear and present danger to our health, and certainly to our food safety. But that’s what S.510 intends to do.

How likely is a terrorist attack on the US food supply? About as likely as 19 Muslims destroying four significant structures without a defensive response from the world’s largest and most technologically advanced military. The threat to our food safety lies within, from a corrupt and bloated federal government owned and controlled by pharmaceutical, chemical and biotech corporations, not from outside our borders.

The entire food “safety” legislative scheme at the federal level is really a “food control” scheme backed by corporate monopolies. It is part and parcel of the Full Spectrum Dominance plan to control every aspect of human life.. “Control the food and you control the people,” planned Henry Kissinger back in the 1970s.

We might expect more effective propaganda when going for complete control over our natural born right to sustain ourselves as we deem fit, but we’d be expecting too much from this crop of elites. Rather than intelligence, they rely on brute force and hyper-regulation in destroying small producers and distributors of natural, unadulterated food.

To view a list of articles that detail the dangers of such legislation, click here.

Welcome to the food wars.

Pentagon Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg on Upcoming Iraq War Wikileaks Docs

The Usurper has dozens of social security numbers: there’s far more to this story than we thought

http://theghostfighters.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php

By Suzanne Eovaldi

According to a search done by former British police detective Neil Sankey, now a U.S. citizen and a licensed private investigator in Los Angeles, Barack Obama reportedly has 27 different social security numbers under 21 different personal and/or familial name variations in 22 different states plus the District of Columbia.

Along with PI Susan Daniels, Sankey generated a large social security public data base in his lengthy research project, titled “List of Properties associated with Barack Obama and his family.”

Sankey’s research is featured in a web video entitled Dossier2MP4 produced by Jim Przybowski. The Sankey/ Daniels social security investigation segment alleges Obama currently is using a social security number of someone born in Connecticut in l890.

When asked, “How long does a social security number have to be set aside after a [death] . . when can it be used again after someone dies?” a Social Security agent named “Kathy” said “it can’t be used again. . once it’s been assigned, it can’t be used again. . .”

Sankey and Daniels report that Social Security numbers connected to Barack Obama and the addresses they trace to are as follows.

363 Notlem St., 34982-7358 Fort Pierce Florida non existent address.

A Social Security number beginning with zero is connected to “White House, Irvine, CA.”

A number starting with 282 connects to “713 Hart Senate, D.C.”

There was one connected to “White House, Baltimore, MD.”

Six more social security numbers beginning in the 400s show up with addresses in Washington, Colorado, Georgia, New Jersey, Tennessee and Maryland.

Another five beginning with 500 connect to more cities in California, Washington, Maryland, and Georgia.

Two starting with 600, trace to Florida and Texas. Of the three numbers beginning in the 700s one is listed as “Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, Utah.”

Still more….

Three 900s connect to addresses in California and Utah postal box numbers.

Fifteen Social Security numbers connect to addresses in Illinois.

The same number appears twice for addresses in Sommerville, Massachusetts. One goes to 300 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. Washington, D. C., the other traces to a postal box in Chicago.

Two odd entries have this same number, but no street address is mentioned. Three different social security numbers for the spelling “Barak” Obama appear in addresses on Happy Street in Covington, Washington, on Digital Highway and Video Drive in Los Angles, California.

In the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail a news story by David Jones, 27th November, 2009, said Neil Sankey is trying to prove that “Barack Obama is guilty of the most audacious act of fraud in the U.S. political history, having become President when he was not eligible to run for office. Sankey is a former detective sergeant who served Hampshire police for 26 years and left with an exemplary record.”

The story continues, “As a highly regarded young detective, Neil Sankey was once seconded to elite Scotland Yard units hunting down IRA bombers, dangerous anarchists, and organized crime barons.”

Reporters note:
Several calls to Sankey’s CA office were not returned. Because the data base may not be downloaded, this appears to be protected research, It also appears the author apparently does not want to answer further questions. No copyright statement is attached to any of this research.

The danger is real. Do something yourself because the Democrats won’t and the Republicans don’t have the power.

What did you do to support and defend American freedoms yesterday? What will you do today and tomorrow?

Use this site to contact your Congressional Representative: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

THE RESTORED REALITY: INDIVIDUAL SOVEREIGNTY AND RESPONSIBILITY

By Attorney Jonathan Emord
Author of “The Rise of Tyranny” and,
“Global Censorship of Health Information”
November 22, 2010
NewsWithViews.com

The overaching objective of the American Revolution was to throw off the shackles of a government that viewed itself, rather than the people, as sovereign and to erect in its place a government of limited powers where ultimate sovereignty lay with the people. Reflecting on this concept in January of 1800 in his Report on the Virginia Resolutions James Madison observed that “the People, not the Government, possess the absolute sovereignty. The Legislature, no less than the Executive, is under limitations of power.”

The Tea Party movement is based on this Madisonian principle—that the people, not the government, must be sovereign. Of late, the intoxication of unbridled government power gave many in elected office the sense that they could do virtually anything they wanted and not account for it. The electorate has caused a sober sensibility to replace that fantasy, at least for a time. The lust for power and personal aggrandizement, however, is at the core of most politicians and compels an eternally vigilant electorate perennially to remove the head strong at the ballot box.

Inherent in the concept of sovereignty is that of responsibility. Responsibility is often portrayed by modern politicians as a burden to be dispensed with by government and at others’ expense. It is by assuring people that they need not be responsible that those who favor ever larger government succeed in seducing voters. Now, however, there appears to be a reawakening in the public to truths from the American Revolution: If we give up freedom on the notion that we may be relieved of responsibilities associated with it, we end up enslaved with neither choice nor opportunity. We then must live off the unwholesome scraps that elected officials care to pitch our way from their own sumptuous tables (paid for at our expense).

While it is sometimes hard to exercise freedom because it comes with costs, it is nevertheless essential if we are to remain sovereign, and it is far preferable to the enslavement that comes from looking to government as a solution for every problem.

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The American mind set differs fundamentally from that of Europe. There, many, but certainly not all, view individual sovereignty and freedom as non-essential. They do not recoil from government takeover of industry but view it as a means to an assured outcome (employment, social security, retirement). We, on the other hand, have a long history of distrust for government, born from origins in which we learned through difficult struggle that those who would function as our governmental parents all too often leave us impoverished, under constraints, and without opportunity to achieve self-fulfillment and advancement.

Americans have again asserted their revulsion for tyranny. We will not give up our sovereignty in exchange for false promises of security. We will not give up our freedom of choice in exchange for false promises of safety. We will not give up our private sector opportunities in exchange for false promises of assured outcomes. We will not sacrifice our hopes and dreams for an America unparalleled in its greatness worldwide on the false supposition that our best days are behind us, that we must reconcile ourselves to viewing the United States as a superpower in an inevitable state of decline, and that we must accept an ever expanding welfare state as the best way to minimize the pain associated with our fall from supremacy.

We remain a people born of freedom whose history of achievement surpassed all others precisely because we protected freedom and opportunity. There is no power on earth capable of restraining the survival and success of our great bastion of liberty so long as we ourselves keep the door to markets open, the people sovereign, and the rights to life, liberty, and property protected.

The astute American eye perceives the hypocrisy that dwells in governors. When we are told that government will eliminate poverty, we know that no power in government can eliminate poverty because government can only do so by taxing heavily the most productive and thereby reducing productivity and increasing poverty. When we are told that every American will receive quality health care, we know that no power in government can assure quality equal or superior to that achievable through the workings of a free market that fosters innovation. When we are told that employment opportunities will be expanded, we know that no power in government can create sustainable private sector employment and that any jobs created by government spending and planning ultimately come from taxation of those who would with those dollars create true employment producing goods and services that aim precisely at satisfying consumer wants and needs.

We may be fast approaching a new awakening in which traditional American concepts of individual sovereignty, individual responsibility, hard work, self-reliance, and revulsion for welfare and big government reappear. Indeed, the puffed up idea that we may create an ever expanding government without sacrificing the private sector clearly appears to many as mythical. The American people once again appreciate that government is a corrupt institution, filled with false promises, and is never able to do either as well or as fully what the private sector can do if only freed from regulatory constraints and tax burdens.

We are benefiting enormously from a restored reality, where once again we appreciate that Americans are nothing unless they are free; that this nation must always be a bastion of liberty, must lead in liberty, and must show the world how a free people can achieve heights unattainable by those less free. We have taken the correct turn at a pivotal moment in a time of crisis. We could have continued on into the abyss of state control and mediocrity, but the American people have rejected that course and have listened to the teachings of the nation’s founders. If we can but hold onto that restored reality, we may yet see, as Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, that “America’s best days are yet to come.”

© 2010 Jonathan W. Emord – All Rights Reserved

Jonathan W. Emord is an attorney who practices constitutional and administrative law before the federal courts and agencies. Congressman Ron Paul calls Jonathan “a hero of the health freedom revolution” and says “all freedom-loving Americans are in [his] debt . . . for his courtroom [victories] on behalf of health freedom.” He has defeated the FDA in federal court a remarkable seven times, six on First Amendment grounds, and is the author of Amazon bestsellers The Rise of Tyranny, and Global Censorship of Health Information. For more info visit Emord.com.

Website: Emord.com

E-Mail: jwemord@gmail.com

When Jesus’ Nativity is a myth and Obama’s is gospel

Company censors campaign on eligibility, but posts sign discrediting Bible

 

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Posted: November 26, 2010
11:45 pm Eastern

© 2010 WorldNetDaily

A billboard company that earlier rejected requests to purchase sign space for the message “Where’s The Birth Certificate?” now has erected a message slamming Christianity.

The Lamar Outdoor billboard near New York shows silhouettes of the traditional images of three wise men approaching a Nativity scene.

It’s message, “You KNOW it’s a Myth/This Season, Celebrete REASON!” caught the attention of Fox News, which reported that some passers-by at its location on Route 495 near the Lincoln Tunnel in North Bergen, N.J., thought it was inappropriate.

The space was paid for by officials with American Atheists, who said it cost $20,000, and Fox reported that Lamar tried to solicit business from Christian organizations it wanted to pay for a competing message nearby. Atheists’ spokesman Dave Silverman told Fox that they wanted to encourage atheists who are “going through the motions” of being religious to come out of the closet.

On the organization’s website was the message, “Millions of atheists are closeted, choosing to go along to get along, and feigning religion to their friends, family, and coworkers. American Atheists understands the pressure to fit in, but we maintain that for people to love you, they must know the real you.

“We also assure you that, like every other person in this country, you know FAR more atheists than you think.”

The organization calls the biblical account in Genesis of Adam and Eve a “fable,” and argues since that story was made up, “then Original Sin is also a myth, right?”

“All we are asking is that you take what you know into serious consideration, even if it means taking a hard look at all you’ve been taught for your whole life. No Adam and Eve means no need for a savior. It also means that the Bible cannot be trusted as a source of unambiguous, literal truth It (sic) is completely unreliable, because it all begins with a myth, and builds on that as a basis. No Fall of Man means no need for atonement and no need for a redeemer. You know it.”

Further, the group claims, “Christians don’t own this holiday, and never did. Christianity is neither the first, nor the 5th, nor the 10th mythology to adopt the Winter Solstice as their major day. Mythra, Bel, Krishna, Horus, and even the Mayan Qetzalcoatl were all born on the Winter Solstice.”

It was the second time, at least, Lamar has slammed Christianity.

Previously, it posted the message “Are you good without God?.”

But when the “birth certificate” billboard campaign was launched by WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah, Lamar spokesman Hal Kilshaw told WND his company was “just not going to accept that copy.”

“We think it’s a settled matter,” he told WND at the time. “We think it’s misleading to indicate there’s any question about the president’s birth certificate. We looked at it and we made the call.”

Lamar officials were not at their offices today, as repeated calls by WND reached only a message that it was “after hours” for the company.

But Kilshaw had told WND earlier he based his decision to prevent posting the “Where’s The Birth Certificate?” billboards on his company locations because of “independent media reports” and unidentified “newspaper articles.”

A Lamar sign in West Virginia rented to the campaign to suggest there’s no need for God

Kilshaw told WND at the time the “state official in Hawaii” reported seeing a birth certificate for Obama.

“We don’t have any reason to distrust,” he said.

The slam against God, however, is “not a question of a fact; just a point of view from people,” he said.

Clear Channel also rejected the “birth certificate” question.

The “code of industry principles as a guide for content” from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America includes the industry’s support for the First Amendment, and calls on companies to “Observe Highest Free Speech Standards.”

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen.” The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

Some of the lawsuits, including those reaching the Supreme Court, question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born. Others argue one cannot be a “natural born” citizen without two citizen parents.

Farah says the billboard campaign is at last part of the reason early in 2009 only half the nation even was aware of a controversy over Obama’s billboards, but recent polls indicate  six in 10 Americans no longer fully believe Obama’s birth narrative. He’s also devised a way for everyone to get into the act – with your own car or your own yard.

There are magnetized bumper stickers with the now-famous message and design – “Where’s the birth certificate?”

And there are yard and rally signs you can either take to your next tea party or turn your own property into a mini-billboard location.

WND previously launched a petition campaign that has collected nearly half a million names demanding Obama’s eligibility be verified and demonstrated publicly. That campaign continues. That list has been shared with members of the Electoral College and the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

You can support the billboard campaign right now by making a donation online.

Farah has confirmed, too, that there is no shortage of locations at which to post the question, whether Lamar and Clear Channel are involved or not, only donations to pay the costs.

The most recent sign to be erected came in Kansas:

Billboard along I-35 near the Highway 59 exit near Ottawa, Kan.

“If it seems like we are posting more billboards than ever, the perception is correct,” said Farah, editor and chief executive officers of WND, and the mastermind behind the campaign.

“With a new Congress coming to power and more Americans realizing every day that lingering questions about Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibility have not been answered, we are making a concerted effort to step up the pressure. Of course, we need continued financial support for this campaign from the American people to keep it up,” he said.

Dozens of signs already have been posted, including some to coincide with the Obamas’ vacation along the Gulf Coast, and a long list of sites are being tracked down and developed.

Supremes challenged to put Constitution above Twitter

Case questioning eligibility says facts don’t support Obama story

 

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Posted: November 26, 2010
11:45 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether the Constitution will trump Twitter on issues of national importance, including the eligibility of a president, which could determine the very future of the American form of government.

The request is being made in a petition for writ of certiori, or a request for the Supreme Court to review the decision of a lower appellate court, in a case brought on behalf of Col. Gregory S. Hollister, a retired Air Force officer.

He is among the many who have brought court challenges to Obama’s tenure in the Oval Office based on doubts about whether Obama qualifies for the position under the U.S. Constitution’s demand that presidents be a “natural born citizen,” a qualification not imposed on other many other federal officers.

Get the free, in-depth special report on eligibility that could bring an end to Obama’s presidency

The pleadings submitted to the court, compiled by longtime attorney John D. Hemenway, cite the incredible importance of the claims that Obama, in fact, failed to qualify for the office.

“If proven true, those allegations mean that every command by the respondent Obama and indeed every appointment by respondent Obama, including the appointment of members [Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor] of this and every other court, may be only de facto but not de jure [by right of law],” states the pleading.

“Further, his signature on every law passed while he occupies the Oval Office is not valid if he is not constitutionally eligible to occupy that office de jure,” it continued.

“Thus, it is not hyperbole to state that the entire rule of law based on the Constitution is at issue. Moreover, it would indicate that the respondent Obama ran for the office of president knowing that his eligibility was at the very least in question,” it continued.

The case made headlines at the district court level because of the ruling from District Judge James Robertson of Washington.

Judge James Robertson

In refusing to hear evidence about whether Obama is eligible, Robertson wrote in his notice dismissing the case, “The issue of the president’s citizenship was raised, vetted, blogged, texted, twittered, and otherwise massaged by America’s vigilant citizenry during Mr. Obama’s two-year-campaign for the presidency, but this plaintiff wants it resolved by a court.”

Besides the sarcasm involved, the pleading states, the very evidence pertinent to the dispute at issues was ignored.

The pleading outlines that information, which challenges Obama’s claim to eligibility and his campaign’s citation of a computer-generated Certification of Live Birth from the state of Hawaii, a document also made available to those not necessarily born in the state, as proof of Obama’s eligibility.

It suggests there are “sufficient allegations” that Obama was not born inside the United States, and outlines the law and regulations in force at the time of Obama’s birth, in 1961.

“At the time of the birth of the respondent Obama in 1961 as alleged, Congress had … the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952. Under the applicable provision of that act … for the respondent Obama to have been a naturalized citizen of the United States at birth, were he born of one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent, as he has alleged throughout his political career he was, his mother would have had to have been continuously resident in the United States for a period of 10 years preceding the date of his birth and, most importantly, she would have had to have resided continuously for five years preceding his birth in the United State after she had turned 14 years old. Since she was only 18 when Obama was born, this condition was clearly not fulfilled,” the arguments said.

It also raised the suggestion that there are sound arguments to the effect that a “natural born citizen” is someone born to two citizen parents, and Obama himself has documented that his father never was a citizen of the U.S.

The fact that the evidence never was reviewed and the judge based a “biased” decision on “a completely extrajudicial factor” [twittering], prevented Hollister from having the constitutional rule of law applied, the petition states. .

“A further example of this bias based on extrajudicial factors by the district court was its observation that a lawyer associated with the initiation of petitioner Hollister’s case, a prominent Democrat in Pennsylvania who backed Hillary Clinton in her successful primary there against respondent Obama, though never admitted in the case, was ‘probably’ the ‘real plaintiff’ in the case and that he and another lawyer who signed filings but was also never admitted … were ‘agents provocateur’ whose efforts to raise the issue of the respondent Obama’s constitutional eligibility in lawsuits were a crusade in which the petitioner Hollister was a dupe,” the petition says.

The questions suggested by the petition are weighty:

• “Did the district court examine the complaint, as required by the decisions of this and every other federal court, to see if it alleged facts to support its claims?”
• “By refusing to consider the issue of defendant Obama not being a ‘natural born citizen’ as set out in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution, did the district court violate its obligations to consider the issues raised by the complaint?”
• “In … relying on extrajudicial criteria such as an assertion that ‘the issue of the president’s citizenship was raised, vetted, blogged, texted, twittered and otherwise massaged by America’s vigilant citizenry during Mr. Obama’s two-year-campaign for the presidency’ combined with an attack on petitioner … did the district court not engage in such obvious political bias and upon extrajudicial factors as to render its opinion void?”
• “Did the … bias engaged in lead to a decision which ignored the law as set out above and as a result place the respondent-defendant Obama above that law and the rule of law in this country generally and threaten the constitutional basis and very existence of our rule of law?”
• “Did the courts below not completely ignore the decisions of this court and the clear language of Rule 15 of the federal Rules of Civil Procedure concerning amendments so as to compound its biased elevation of the defendant Obama above the rule of constitutional law?”

While the district judge dismissed the case because it had been “twittered,” the appeals court simply adopted his reasoning, but wouldn’t even allow its opinion affirming the decision to be published, the petition explains.

Hollister’s concern rests with the fact that as a retired Air Force officer in the Individual Ready Reserve, it is possible that he at some point could be subject to Obama’s orders.

“If Congress called up the Air Force Individual Ready Reserve the respondent Obama would have to give the order … If, as it appears, those orders would not be lawful, Col. Hollister would be bound … to question them and look to the respondent [Vice President Joe] Biden as constitutionally next in succession for lawful orders,” the pleading said.

This case doesn’t have the “standing” dispute that has brought failure to so many other challenges to Obama’s eligibility, the pleading explains, because Robertson “found that it had jurisdiction of the case, and therefore that petitioner Hollister had standing.”

Courts in other case have ruled that the plaintiffs suffered no injury themselves that was not general to the population, so they weren’t allowed to sue. However, because of Robertson’s handling of the case, standing here has been established, the pleading states, allowing the appeal actually to argue the merits of the case, and note how Supreme Court precedents have been contradicted in the handling of the challenge to Obama.

Officials told WND that this case is an opportunity for the Supreme Court to re-establish that its precedents are binding.

The district judge also remarked “sarcastically” that there may be as many as a “couple of dozen” people concerned about the dispute. In fact, polls done by CNN and others indicate almost 6 in 10 in American don’t believe Obama’s birth narrative, which would give those doubting the president a total in the range of 180 million or more.

“In fact, reliable polls have shown the number of such people to be in the tens of millions and growing,” the pleading explains.

“The combination of bias and ridicule of a person like the plaintiff wanting his concerns resolved by a court as being, essentially, an ‘unthinkable’ notion, is an expressed denial of a citizen’s right to access to the courts,” the case pleading continues.

The document also explains that both Robertson and Obama have “held management positions on boards of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, and thus are acquainted with each other. There is every appearance of bias here,” it said.

John Eidsmoe, an expert on the U.S. Constitution now working with the Foundation on Moral Law, has told WND a demand for verification of Obama’s eligibility appears to be legitimate.

Eidsmoe said it’s clear that Obama has something in the documentation of his history, including his birth certificate, college records and other documents that “he does not want the public to know.”

WND reported just days ago on another case, Kerchner v. Obama, that was before the Supreme Court with a request for review, on the same subject.

The case focuses on the “Vattel theory,” which argues that the writers of the Constitution believed the term “natural-born citizen” to mean a person born in the United States to parents who were both American citizens.

“This case is unprecedented,” said Mario Apuzzo, the attorney bringing the suit. “I believe we presented an ironclad case. We’ve shown standing, and we’ve shown the importance of the issue for the Supreme Court. There’s nothing standing in their way to grant us a writ of certiorari.”

WND has reported on dozens of legal and other challenges to Obama’s eligibility. Some suggest he was not born in Hawaii has he claims; others say his birth location makes no difference because a “natural born citizen” was understand at the time to be a child of two citizen parents, and Obama’s father was subject to the British crown when Barack Obama was born.

How and Why the State Destroys Society

by Frank Chodorov

From The Rise and Fall of Society

It is not incumbent on a diagnostician to prescribe a remedy, and it would be quackery for him to do so when he has misgivings as to its curative value. It may be that the struggle between Society and the State is inevitable; it may be in the nature of things for the struggle to continue until mutual destruction clears the ground for the emergence of a new Society, to which a new political establishment attaches itself to effect a new doom.

Perhaps the malignancy is inherent in man. It would be silly to suggest that four-footed males, driven by the reproductive urge, ought to know better than engage in deathly battles over possession of females, and it is possible that the historical struggle between the social organization and the political organization is likewise meant to be.

Support for this conclusion is found in the ground we have covered.

Beginning with man – where else can we begin? – we find him impelled by an inner urge to improve his circumstances and widen his horizon; a self-generating capacity for wanting drives him from one gratification to another. Each gratification represents an expenditure of labor, which, because it produces a feeling of weariness, he finds distasteful. His inclination is to bypass labor as much as possible, but without sacrificing his betterment.

He brings to bear on this natural modus operandi a peculiarly human gift: the faculty of reason. (It is this faculty that suggests a possible solution of the Society-State conflict, which we will discuss later.) His reason tells him that the business of multiplying satisfactions is best pursued by cooperation with his fellow man.

Thus arises Society and its techniques: specialization and exchange, capital accumulations, competition. Society is a labor-saving device, instinctively invented; it is not a contractual arrangement any more than the family is, but like the family it germinates in the composition of man.

The marketplace method yields more for less labor than individual self-sufficiency does, yet the price it always demands is labor. There is no getting away from that. Still, it is a price paid with reluctance, and out of this inner conflict between cost and desires comes the drama of organized man.

The impossibility of getting something for nothing, the summum bonum, does not banish hope or intimidate the imagination, and in his effort to realize the dream, man frequently turns to predation: the transference of possession and enjoyment of satisfactions from producer to nonproducer. Since men work only to satisfy their desires, this transference induces a feeling of hurt, and in response to that feeling the producer sets up a protective mechanism.

Under primitive conditions, he relies on his own powers of resistance to robbery, his personal strength plus such weapons as he has at his disposal. That is his Government. Since this protective occupation interferes with his primary business of producing satisfactions, and is frequently ineffective, he is quite willing to turn it over to a specialist when the size and opulence of Society call for such a service. Government provides the specialized social service of safeguarding the marketplace.

The distinctive feature of this service is that it enjoys a monopoly of coercion. That is the necessary condition for the conduct of the business; any division of authority would defeat the purpose for which Government is set up.

Yet, the fact remains that Government is a human organization, consisting of men who are exactly like the men they serve. That is, they too seek to satisfy their desires with the minimum of exertion, and they too are insatiable in their appetites. In addition to the run-of-the-mill desires that possess all men, Government personnel acquire one peculiar to their occupation: the adulation showered on them because they alone exercise coercion. They are people apart.

The honorifics that stem from the exercise of power arouse a passion for power, particularly with men whose capacities would go quite unnoticed in the marketplace, and the temptation is strong to expand the area of power; the negative function of protection is too confining for men of ambition. The tendency then in the world of officialdom is to assume a capacity for positive functions, to invade the marketplace, to undertake to regulate, control, manage, and manipulate its techniques.

In point of fact, it does nothing of the kind, since the techniques are self-operating, and all that political power can accomplish by its interventions is to control human behavior; it effects compliance by the threat of physical punishment. That, indeed, is the be-all and end-all of political power. Yet, such is the makeup of the human that he looks up to, and sometimes worships, the fellow human who dominates his will, and it is this acquired sense of superiority that is the principal profit of officialdom.

The transition from negative Government to positive State is marked by the use of political power for predatory purposes. In its pursuit of power, officialdom takes into consideration the ineluctable something-for-nothing passion, and proceeds to win the support of segments of Society bent on feathering their nests without picking feathers.

It is a quid pro quo arrangement, by which the power of compulsion is sublet to favored individuals or groups in return for their acquiescence to the acquisition of power. The State sells privilege, which is nothing but an economic advantage gained by some at the expense of others.

In olden times, the privileged group were a land-owning class, who furnished military support for political power, or a mercantilist group, who contributed to the imperial coffers out of their politically generated monopoly profits; with the advent of popular suffrage, making political preferment dependent on wider favor, the business of bribery had to be extended, and so came the subsidization of farmers, tenants, the aged, users of electric power, and so on. Their vested interest in the State makes them amenable to its purposes.

It is this partnership in predation that characterizes the State. Without the support of privileged groups the State would collapse. Without the State the privileged groups would disappear. The contract is rooted in the law of parsimony.

The instrument that puts the State into a bargaining position with its favorites is taxation. In the beginning, when the simple community sets up Government, it is admitted that its operatives cannot be productive and therefore have to be supported by the marketplace. Services must be paid for.

But the manner of paying for Government service poses a problem: taxes are compulsory charges, not voluntary payments, and their collection has to be entrusted to the very people who live by them; the compulsory power entrusted to them is used in the collection of their own wages.

That this function should be pursued with vigor is understandable. Yet, where political power is under the constant surveillance of Society, the urgency to increase taxes for the purpose of enlarging political power can be held in leash. But this restraint loses potency as Society grows in size and in complexity of interests; the preoccupation of its members with productive enterprise dims their interest in public affairs, which tend to become the private concern of officials.

Centralization of political power, which is merely its release from the restraint of social sanctions, ensues, and tax levies grow apace. The political establishment – the court of Louis XIV or the equally nonproductive bureaucracy of the modern “welfare” state – thus acquires self-sufficiency; it has the wherewithal to meet its enforcement payroll and to invest in power-accumulating enterprises.

There is always good and sufficient reason for more and more taxes. Solomon’s temple, the roads of Rome, the rearing of “infant industries,” military preparedness, the regulation of morals, the improvement of the “general welfare” – all call for drafts on the marketplace, and the end product of each draft is an increase in the power of the State.

Some of the appropriations seep through to some members of Society, thus satisfying the something-for-nothing urge, at least temporarily, and so stimulate a disposition to tolerate the institution and to obliterate understanding of its predatory character. Until the State reaches its ultimate objective, absolutism, its answer to tax-grumbling is that the “other fellow” pays all the levies and that seems to satisfy.

Pushing on fast through the biography of political institutions, the practice of buying the support of privileged and subsidized groups sloughs off when the State becomes self-sufficient; that is, when the marketplace is completely under its domination. The State then becomes the only privileged class. Custom and necessity reduce Society to a condition of subservience to the bureaucracy and the police, the components of the State.

This condition is currently known as totalitarianism, but it is in fact nothing but conquest, the conquest of Society by the State. So that, whether or not the State originated in conquest, as some historians hold, the end result of unchecked political institutions is the same: Society is enslaved.

The end is not yet. The stature of the State grows by predation, the stature of Society shrinks in proportion. For an explanation for this antithesis we return to the composition of man. We find that he works only to satisfy his desires, of which he has a plenitude, and that his output of effort is in proportion to his intake of satisfactions.

If his investment of labor yields no profit, or if experience tells him none can be expected, his interest in laboring flags. That is, production declines by the amount of expropriation he must endure; if expropriation is severe enough and evasion becomes impossible, so that he learns to accept it as a way of life and forgets what it actually is, his output tends to the minimum of mere existence.

But, since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production that it induces by its avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus, in pulling Society down it pulls itself down. Its ultimate collapse is usually occasioned by a disastrous war, but preceding that event is a history of increasing and discouraging levies on the marketplace, causing a decline in the aspirations, hopes, and self-esteem of its victims.

When we speak of the disappearance of a civilization we do not mean that a people has been extinguished. Every holocaust leaves survivors. What is implied by the fall of a civilization is the disappearance from memory of an accumulation of knowledge and of values that once obtained among a people.

The prevailing arts and sciences, the religion and manners, the ways of living and of making a living have been forgotten. They have been obliterated not by a pile of dust but by a general lack of interest in marginal satisfactions, in the things men strive to achieve when the struggle for existence is won. One can manage to get along without knives and forks when the getting of food is trouble enough, and the first business of raiment is to provide warmth, not adornment.

Contrariwise, as the primary necessaries accumulate, the human begins to dream of new worlds to conquer, including the world of the mind – culture, ideas, values. The accumulating conquests become the indicia of a civilization. The loss of a civilization is the reverse of that process of cultural accumulation. It is the giving up, as a matter of necessity, of those satisfactions that are not essential to existence. It is a process of forgetting through force of circumstance; it is abstinence imposed by environment.

Sometimes nature will for a while impose abstinence, but the record shows that man is quite capable of overcoming such obstacles to his ambitions. The obstacle he does not seem able to overcome is his inclination to predation, which gives rise to the institution of the State; it is this institution that ultimately induces a climate of uselessness, of lack of interest in striving, and thus destroys the civilization it feeds upon. Or so the record shows: every civilization that declined or was lost carried an all-powerful State on its back.

Collapse of a State means a weakening of the instruments of coercion by means of which property in the fruits of one’s labors was transferred to nonproducing rulership or its supporting accomplices. Thereafter, maybe for centuries, freedom prevails, men learn to dream and hope again, and the realization of each dream through effort encourages further fantasy and generates more effort; thus wealth multiplies, knowledge accumulates, manners take shape, and the nonmaterial values attain importance in man’s hierarchy. A new civilization is born.

Although something of the lost civilization is recaptured by accident, what is dug up has to be relearned; the new civilization does not grow out of its predecessor, but emerges from the efforts of the living. At any rate, history tells us, a civilization no more than gets started when a political institution attaches itself to it, feeds on it, and in the end devours it. And the roundelay starts all over again.

Reprinted from Mises.org.

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966), one of the great libertarians of the Old Right, was the founder of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists and author of such books as The Income Tax: Root of All Evil. Here he is on “Taxation Is Robbery.” And here is Rothbard’s obituary of Chodorov.

Thankless in Obamaland

By Daniel Greenfield  Saturday, November 27, 2010

This is one Thanksgiving weekend which finds Americans with little to be thankful for. The economy is sliding badly and the dollar is endangered, which could potentially wreck the nation’s economy long after Obama is gone. Flying was a more unpleasant experience due to the TSA’s aggressive insistence on harassing American fliers, rather than Muslim terrorists. Then there’s the worldwide chaos, which now threatens to open up a whole new war in Asia.

With a political beating in the midterm elections and a confused administration, even liberals seem to have little to be politically thankful for. But even mentions of Thanksgiving seem inevitably accompanied by historical revisionism which reduces the contact between specific groups of European settlers and certain Indian tribes to a one-sided narrative whose goal is to delegitimize the very existence of the United States. Everyone from PETA to indigenous activists to Michelle Obama’s fat insanity has tried to have a go at it.

Thanksgiving is problematic for many on the left because it provides a positive view of American settlement and the interaction between European settlers and Native Americans. Which is why liberals will try to subvert the story of Thanksgiving by depicting the settlers negatively. This is almost universally common on television nowadays. And for those activists obsessed with what people eat, Thanksgiving with its obligatory heavy turkey dinner, is also a major target. So we get HRH Michelle Obama telling Americans what they can and can’t eat for dinner. The difference is that Americans eat their own food. Unlike Michelle and her husband who eat at taxpayer expense.

The protests over the TSA have also failed to lead to a serious dialogue about what we should be doing to fight terrorism. Instead junk catchphrases and people stripping to their underwear while flying have turned media coverage of the situation into a series of running gags. Drudge forced media coverage of the backlash, but he steered it into freakshow areas. The media responded by running stories to pick up some of the traffic, but the stories they ran were more about the publicity stunts, while their above board coverage defended the Obama Administration and the TSA. It’s a ridiculous situation when people can Tweet that they’re going to fly in their underwear and get major news organizations to go and film them, that does nothing to address the problem. Instead it quickly leads to viewer fatigue and disinterest. And that means the policies will stay in place.

Too much of the backlash has focused on what people don’t want, rather than what they do want. That has allowed the Obama Administration to frame it as a choice between security and privacy. When it’s actually a choice between good security and bad security. That isn’t entirely accidental. Too much of the coverage was led by sources who don’t think that there even is such a thing as terrorism. Drudge and other blogs linked to content from 9/11 Truther Alex Jones and Prison Planet. This was Jones’ most successful effort to embed himself among conservatives to date. For those such as Jones or Ron Paul, there is no terrorism. The whole thing is a government conspiracy. The way they fed the story, was the way it got told. And an opportunity to actually reform airline security was missed.

And so what should have been an upbeat time, a harvest festival and a reunion with friends and family, instead is tinted in haze. And that seems par for the course under Obama.

In the UK there’s controversy over radical left faux artist Banksy’s gallery promoting a picture of the 7/7 bombing by Mark Sinckler, a Muslim who moved from metro vandalism to poorly done collages. All the attention paid to this just means mission accomplished for Banksy, who has successfully ridden and ridiculed an art world, where the only coin that matters is notoriety, not talent.

The entire thing is hopelessly cynical. Sinckler’s Age of Shiva is a cynical parody of British sensibilities over the 7/7 massacre. Cynically marketed by Banksy’s Marks and Stencils gallery, which was also set up to mock art galleries and public sensibilities, it’s the work of emotionally dead people who believe that by mocking everything that other people value, they remain above it. As always the joke is on the average person, the bourgeois, the same type of person who was riding a bus when it was blown up.

The controversy will move up Banksy and Sinckler further up the ladder. The careers of both derive from vandalism and end there. First vandalism of public spaces and then vandalism of public faith and public values.
Meanwhile in Israel, Netanyahu once again finds himself in another Wye situation, caught between signing on to what Obama wants and betraying his country, or resisting and standing up to Obama. It’s not a pleasant situation to be in. Last time around Netanyahu failed the test when he gave in to Clinton. It seems as if he may be failing it again this time. (Latma has their usual scathing take on it.)

Meanwhile Turkey’s Islamist thug Erdogan “the minarets are our bayonets” is at it again, amping up the rhetoric and threatening war. This after the latest document releases suggest that Erdogan’s Turkey helped Al Qaeda. This shouldn’t be too much of a shock as Erdogan’s AKP party has Al Qaeda ties. Which shouldn’t be shocking either, as it’s funded by Saudi money.

Erdogan’s “Support Hezbollah” visit to Lebanon was met with Armenian riots. In the past Erdogan had threatened to ethnically cleanse Armenians from Turkey. (hap tip Joshua Ivens)
Erdogan is now making common cause with Islamic terrorists and he’s sabotaging Turkey’s ties to Israel and America, in order to fulfill his goal of integrating it with the Muslim world. In particularly those Middle Eastern countries which have funded his takeover of the media by his business partners and political allies. Ranting about standing up to Israel with “Allah’s Grace” shows how low Turkey has fallen from a formerly secular country that understood that the greatest threat to Turkish nationalism came from Islam.

His trip to Lebanon was full of that kind of Caliphate prep work, for example

“although we are talking different languages in this vast geography, we should not forget that we have one history, one culture and similar values. We have given a shape the history together. Be sure that we will give a shape to the future altogether.

Erdogan said Turkey mutually removed visa requirements with Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Jordan. “We have not lost anything or met any problem. On the contrary, when we removed the visa requirements, we clearly saw that they were meaningless. We have not removed the visa requirements; we have removed a century old yearning among our people.”

Whether Turks are actually yearning to import crime and unskilled labor from the Arab world is debatable, but that doesn’t really matter. What it means is that if Turkey joins the EU, Muslim terrorists and criminals from across the Arab world will have no trouble getting in.

Erdogan then proposed an Islamic EU, a Schengen, to bridge the gap to the Caliphate.
Via Desert Conservative, an interesting piece on a forgotten massive pre 9/11 terrorist plot in Canada.

Toronto’s terror plot of 1991 (pre September 11) has been forgotten and become a lost memory to Canadians.

The terror plot was planned by five black Muslims who were followers of Jamaat Al Fuqra, a Pakistani movement. They were acquitted of planning to kill 4,500 people within two buildings in Toronto.  The attacks were to be done one after the other.

At the time of the attack, it was seen as an isolated case but now after a series of planned attacks in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto it has been associated with a series of attacks by Islamist terrorists.
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Just two years before the first World Trade Centre bombing, and a decade before the 9/11 attacks Toronto was the potential terror plot destination of North America where thousands of people would have died had the terrorists not been on the radar beforehand.

The terror plot was set to blow out during the Hindu festival of Diwali at two separate locations one after the other.  The first spot was the India Centre cinema on Gerrard Street with a 500 people capacity (most commonly occupied by Sikhs and Hindus) and the second spot was the Vishnu Hindu Temple, which has a capacity of 4000 (occupied by Hindus) in Richmond Hill.

What is disturbing about this is not just the scale of the planned attacks, but a reminder that Muslim ethnic cleansing and racism is being exported by Muslim immigrants and converts. The Muslim world has committed genocide against non-Muslims numerous times. And it’s at it again in Europe and in Canada.

In the roundup, Phyllis Chesler tackles the PA’s latest attempt to Islamize the world’s holiest Jewish site

The Muslims (not the Islamists, but the Muslims) mean to take over every Jewish site in Jewish Israel. And the United Nations means to assist them.
Long before a sovereign Jewish state ever existed, Muslims massacred the Jews of Hevron in 1929. Surviving Jews returned, but were then forced to flee again during the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939. This burial chamber of our Jewish ancestors is a cave whose purchase is carefully and exhaustively reported in the fifth parasha (portion) of the Torah. According to Jewish religious sources, this purchase took place in approximately 1677 BCE.

Please remember: In 1929, when the Muslims massacred the Jews of Hevron, there were no Jewish “settlements” in “occupied Palestinian land.” There was no Muslim “Palestine” and no sovereign Jewish state. In 1996, under the Wye Accords, Jewish Israel surrendered most Jewish access to this Cave to the Waqf.

Today, Jews can pray there in an outer, small chamber only under heavy guard and only a few times a year in the main prayer chamber. Muslims took the lion’s share of the main prayer hall because, as they claim, Abraham is also their forefather.

Of course if Abraham were around today, he’d be boycotted in London and beheaded in Gaza.

The whole thing still reminds me of my old post, “Muslims announce 5 New Holy Sites”. Considering that this was written in Feb of 2007, a day after Obama announced he was running, one section proved to be unfortunately prescient.

The White House

Mohammed HTFBUH (High Tax Fees Be Upon Him) reportedly visited the White House as a guest of President Millard Fillmore, slept in the Lincoln Bedroom (which was then called, the ‘Give Me A Bribe and You Can Spend the Night Bedroom) and tried to molest some of the President’s carriage horses.

As such the highest authorities in Islam (three blind clerics who live in Cairo and still think it’s 1922 and want an end to British colonial rule) have announced that the White House from now is to be off-limits to non-Muslims unless they’re there to serve incoming President, Barack Hussein Obama.

Elder of Ziyon does some fact checking of the language being used about the Temple Mount.

Israel Matzav asks about the Tea Party position regarding Israel. Using a New York Times article as a starting point is always a bad idea. Since we’re talking about a grass roots movement composed of different organizations, there’s no official position. But demographically most of the Tea Party people are conservative and opposed to Muslim terrorism. Its focus is on domestic, not international politics.
The Times uses Rand Paul as a prototype of a Tea Party candidate, which is a terrible idea, because he doesn’t have all that much in common on many issues with actual TP candidates. Paul, like his father, is basically a secessionist and conspiracy theorist, who shares the left’s view on national security issues. It’s doubtful that he could have won under a Republican President. But under Obama, enough people have been willing to overlook the things he’s said, like comparing the US Army to Hitler.

Compare Paul to Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman, Mark Rubio, etc and you see the huge gap opening up.

The American Thinker has an interesting piece by James Lewis, who views the entire TSA mess as part of a racist revenge fantasy by Obama. I don’t know that I agree with him. I don’t believe that this is a plan, but the disdain with which complaints have been met, may be. That makes it more of a Shirley Sherrod situation, in which the situation itself is not created out of racism, but the neglect of those who are suffering and the favorable treatment meted out on the basis of race is. This has been a too common pattern in government. But it’s been practiced more commonly by white liberals, than by black people. But Obama may arguably fall into the former category, as much as into the latter one.

Finally on the Thanksgiving theme, the Daily Beast has some interesting historical background for the origins of the holiday.

We can also restore the meaning of early Thanksgivings in New England by coming at it from another angle, equally authentic. We find it in Judaism and the Hebrew scriptures.

If you were English, and you wished to express gratitude to God, you would turn to one majestic Biblical text before any other. It speaks about the wilderness of the Sinai, about danger and deliverance, about the journey of the Israelites across the Red Sea, and about the duty to give thanks when the exodus is complete. The text is Psalm 107. In the reign of Elizabeth I, when the realm survived a plot, a plague, or the Spanish Armada, her subjects went to church and gave thanks to the Almighty, using the same psalm: “We will offer unto him the sacrifice of Thanksgiving: and tell out his works with gladness.”

So at Provincetown, when the Mayflower first dropped anchor in 1620, the Pilgrims did likewise. For them, the psalm possessed a still deeper resonance. Keen scholars of Hebrew, which they saw as the original language of God, the Pilgrims knew that Psalm 107 was the source of the Jewish thanksgiving prayer, the birkat ha-gomel. They owned books by an English scholar, Henry Ainsworth, who used the Jewish philosopher Maimonides to show that this was so. The birkat ha-gomel was the prayer that every devout Jew should say, upon safe arrival after a dangerous voyage. The Pilgrims said it too.

And so in New England the Pilgrims took a variety of sources, and over time they blended them together to create their early Thanksgivings. Their successors did the same. They said Thanksgiving psalms like Jews, sometimes they fasted and sometimes they ate and drank, and like their British cousins they puffed themselves up with national pride. Centuries later, Americans ended up with a hybrid of Elizabethan patriotism, Algonquian fun, and a dash of non-denominational piety. In other words: the modern Thanksgiving. All you need add is Psalm 107, to make the event sublime.

Thank God for the outrage

Posted: November 26, 2010
1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

Today I thank God for the outrage many Americans have expressed against the assault on personal dignity the Obama faction has launched against air travelers in the United States on the specious pretext of forestalling terrorism. It’s tragically laughable that, in the name of the fight against terrorism, they say we must all be treated as suspected terrorists who are guilty as charged until, by the surrender of our personal dignity, we prove that we are not.

Obama faction kingpins claim that this is a justifiable and necessary evolution of our anti-terrorism efforts. In fact, it has itself involved the deployment of psychological terror tactics. The furor over the physically degrading pat-down procedures is calculated to goad people into accepting the moral degradation of the pornographic full-body scanners. In the name of security, travelers are literally reduced to the status of herd animals. They will be left with no more dignity than slaves on the auction block. My slave ancestors were routinely forced to strip down, routinely poked and prodded like meat on the hoof, routinely leered at and pawed over as objects of sexual abuse.

There is a slyly manipulative aspect to the manipulative media presentation of all this that leaves me more than a little uneasy, however. As usual, the media frenzy encourages people to get caught up in the moment, to focus on and obsess over this particularly egregious episode in the governing elite’s general assault on the dignity of the human person in America. As steps are taken to allay public outrage, the resulting catharsis will create the false impression that the governing elite staging the assault has backed away from its calculated intention to routinize the dehumanization of what, in their obnoxiously elitist thinking, they reflexively refer to as “the masses.”

A bunch of identical physical cells is a mass. A group of human individuals is a multitude. The mass is a gathering of interchangeable elements. The multitude is a congregation of irreplaceably unique members. Each unit of a mass has no particular intrinsic significance beyond its identical contribution to the weight of the whole. Each individual in a multitude represents a special assertion of intrinsic worth that in itself goes beyond the measurable quantity of the whole. Units add up to a measurable quantity. Individuals represent an immeasurable worth.

As articulated in the American Declaration of Independence, America’s founding principles support the conclusion that right and justice demand that every human being be accorded the respect that is owed to their God endowed individual worth. On this account, government must be based upon consent and operate within constraints imposed out of respect for the special characteristics of human nature that reflect and constitute this God endowed worth.

I give thanks that many Americans still retain the sense of God-given dignity that arises from these principles. But as they react against the Obama faction’s implementation of airport security measures that contemptuously disregard that dignity, I pray that they will see them for what they are: one aspect of the general assault the anti-American elements of the American elite have launched against the whole concept of the God-endowed natural worth of our humanity.

We see this assault in their legislative attempt (as part of Obamacare) to treat life and death decisions about health care for older Americans as banal matters of budgetary efficiency.

We see it in so-called “sex education,” their educational scheme to teach our children that human sexual relations are nothing more than the banal performance of a bodily function.

We see it in the promotion of exclusively fiscal “conservatism,” their hackneyed insistence that the threatening economic crisis we endure is simply a matter of dollars and cents. It has no relation to the abandonment of moral sense by elite bureaucrats, politicians and money makers with no concern but for the advancement and consolidation of their own power.

We see it above all in their promotion of, or indifference to, the twin issues of abortion and the assault on the God-ordained natural family. Both these issue involve turning the streams of natural passion, specifically intended to preserve humanity, into channels of selfish preoccupation with personal pleasures and pains. This diverts human caring and compassion from our life-affirming responsibility to God for our posterity.

Yes, the passionate outrage against invasive airport security measures is something for which we can be thankful. But will we let our expression of outrage be perversely manipulated? Will we allow it to become just another episode in the calculated barrage of spurs and goads with which ruthlessly self-serving elites psychologically herd the American people further along the path away from liberty? That’s what will happen if we fail to see this episode in its larger context. But seen together with such other elements as we have mentioned, it makes up a tragic miniseries of events intended to sever our emotional attachment to the principles that make us free. Those principles nurture and justify the sense that we are, all of us, entitled by our nature to be treated as agents of God’s authority on earth. Out of respect for God’s authority both others, including especially our government officials, are obliged to treat us with respect. They must do so until, by some proven act of our own, it is shown that we deserve to be bound, constrained and penalized as wrongdoers. That’s the American way. The aim of efforts inspired by our present outrage must be, on every front, to restore our government’s consistent respect for it.

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For more from Alan Keyes visit http://loyaltoliberty.com. Once a high-level Reagan-era diplomat, Alan Keyes is a long-time leader in the conservative movement, well-known as a staunch pro-life champion and an eloquent advocate of the Constitutional Republic, including respect for the moral basis of liberty and self-government. He staunchly resists the destruction of the American people’s sovereignty by fighting to secure our borders, abolish the federal income tax, end the insurrectionary practices of the federal Judiciary, and build a banking and financial system that halts elite looting of America’s wealth and income. He formally severed his Republican Party affiliation in April of 2008 and has since then worked with America’s Independent Party to build an effective vehicle for citizen-led grass-roots political action.