"Here are some of the ideas that permeate the neoconservative philosophy."

"Here are some of the ideas that permeate the neoconservative philosophy.

 - The elite have a responsibility to deceive the masses.

 - Rulers are superior and have a right and obligation over those who are inferior. 

 - A cynical use of religion is important for delivering the message to a compliant society, arguing that this prevents individuals from independent thinking.

 - External threats unite the people; fear is a necessary ingredient for success.  According to Machiavelli, if an external threat does not exist, the leaders must create one. 

 - This unites the people and they become more obedient to the state.  Neoconservatives argue that this is in the best interest of the people since individualism is basically evil and the elite must meet their obligation to rule the incompetent.

 - Religion, lies, and war are the tools used by the neoconservatives to suppress individualism and fortify a ruling elite.  These views in various degrees and on certain issues are endorsed by the leaders of both political parties.  This is why individualism is under constant attack and why the philosophy of the Founders has been so severely undermined.  Neoconservatives will always deny they believe in these principles (part of their noble lying) since it would blow their cover. 

 - They actually do the opposite, claiming title to superpatriotism, and anyone who disagrees with their wars and welfare schemes is un-American, unpatriotic, nonhumanitarian, against the troops, and on and on.

Revitalizing the spirit of liberty could be achieved if the people demanded to hear the truth; that is exactly what the neoconservatives dread.  Today, most government lying, in cooperation with the main street media, is propaganda and spin.  This is recognized and accepted by those who are seeking truth.  War propaganda is a well-known phenomenon and even though many are aware of it, its incessant use by government officials and media works rather well in pushing people into a pro-war frenzy." -Pages 214 & 215 of Liberty Defined

“That is how black markets work: prohibiting something..."

“That is how black markets work: prohibiting something that is highly desired does not make the desire go away but merely ensures that the supply of that good is provided in the most dangerous and undesirable manner possible, and endows criminal sectors of society with additional wealth and power.” -Page 131 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“The failure of the federal war on drugs..."

“The failure of the federal war on drugs should be clear enough from one simple fact:  our government has been unable to keep drugs even out of prisons, which are surrounded by armed guards.” -Page 131 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Clogging our courts and prisons with cases involving..."

"Clogging our courts and prisons with cases involving people found in possession of tiny quantities of prohibited substances, and who have never done any physical harm to anyone, makes it all but impossible to devote the necessary resources to tracking down the violent criminals who really do threaten us.  Over the past two decades more people have been imprisoned on drug offenses than for all violent crimes put together.  And that is not to mention the continued erosion of our civil liberties for which the drug war has been responsible."  -Page 131 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"The resulting Marijuana Tax Act of 1937..."

"The resulting Marijuana Tax Act of 1937- yes, federal prohibition is really just seven decades old- had little to do with real science or medicine, and a lot to do with petty ethnic grudges, careerism in the Bureau of Narcotics, and disinformation and propaganda in the popular press, where yellow journalism still lived.  

Hearings on this important matter took a grand total of two hours, very little of which had anything to do with the health effects of marijuana, the alleged reason behind the proposed prohibition. * [*I am indebted for much of this discussion to Charles Whitebread and Richard Bonnie, Marihuana Conviction: The Legal History of Drugs in the United States (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1974).

A grand total of two medical experts testified on the subject.  One alleged expert was James Munch, a professor who claimed to have injected 300 dogs with the active ingredient in marijuana, and that two had died.  When asked whether he had chosen dogs for the similarity of their reactions to those of human beings, he shrugged, “I wouldn’t know; I am not a dog psychologist.”

We can be fairly certain that this professor had not injected these dogs with the active ingredient in marijuana, since that ingredient was synthesized for the first time in a laboratory in Holland years later.  But keep this gentleman in mind for a moment.

The other expert who testified was William Woodward, who represented the American Medical Association.  He denounced the legislation as medically unsound and the product of ignorance and propaganda. “The American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug,” he said.  To which one congressman replied, “Doctor, if you can’t anything good about what we are trying to do, why don’t you go home?”

In Congress, the entire debate on national marijuana prohibition took about a minute and a half.  

“Mr. Speaker, what is this bill about?” asked a congressman from New York. 

“I don’t know,” came the reply.  “It has something to do with a thing called marihuana.  I think it’s a narcotic of some kind.”

Then a second question from the congressman: “Mr. Speaker, does the American Medical Association support this bill?”

The AMA opposed the bill, as we’ve seen.  But the Speaker replied, “Their Doctor Wentworth [sic] came down here.  They support this bill 100 percent.”

And with that untruth ended the entire congressional debate on the prohibition policy.  

[....]

You can guess what happened next.  James Munch, the one person at the conference who agreed with Anslinger on marijuana, was named the Official Expert on marijuana at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.  One person agrees with the government’s position and he is appointed the Official Expert.  If that doesn’t sum up how the government operates, I don’t know what does.” -Pages 128 & 129 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

".... people's opinions on this issue are so deeply and fervently..."

".... people's opinions on this issue are so deeply and fervently held that is can be very difficult to persuade them to revisit the evidence  dispassionately. 

But revisit it we must. We seriously mistake the function of government if we think its job is to regulate bad habits or supplant the role of all those subsidiary bodies in society that have responsibility for forming our moral character. Our misplaced confidence in government has once again had exceedingly unpleasant results. 

"A barrage of research and opinion," writes economist Dan Klein, "has pounded [the drug war] for being the cause of increased street crime, gang activity, drug adulteration, police corruption, congested courts and overcrowded jails. Drug prohibition creates a black-market combat zone that society cannot control."

The drug war has wrought particular devastation in minority neighborhoods, as decent parents find themselves consistently undermined when they try to teach good values to their children. When the lucrative profits from black market in drugs make drug dealers the most ostentatiously prosperous sector of society, it is much more difficult for parents to persuade their children to shun those profits and pursue a much less remunerative, if more honorable, line of work. Putting an end to the federal drug war would immediately pull the rug out from under the drug lords who have unleashed a reign of terror over our cities. 
...
The conservative economist Thomas Sowell finds the whole thing more utopian than conservative: "What would make still more sense [than the current policy] would be to admit that we are not God, that we cannot live other people's lives or save people who don't want to be saved, and to take the profits out of drugs by decriminalizing them. That is what destroyed the bootleggers' gangs after Prohibition was repealed. 
....
What is more, the law cannot make a wicked person virtuous. The law is simply incompetent here. What the law can do is provide the peace and order within which men can conduct their affairs. We ought not to shirk our own responsibility by looking to politicians- who are not exactly known for living beyond more reproach themselves - to carry out so important a function. 

When you actually study the beginnings of the federal war on drugs, you uncover a history of lies, bigotry, and ignorance so extensive it will leave you speechless." -Pages 125-127  of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“Since terrorism will never be eliminated completely..."

“Since terrorism will never be eliminated completely, should all future presidents be able to act without regard to Congress or the Constitution simply by asserting “We’re at war”?

Toward the end of 2007, Senator Jeff Sessions declared, “Some people in this chamber love the Constitution more than they love the safety of this nation.  We should all send President Busy a letter thanking him for protecting us.” What kind of sheep must politicians take Americans for if they expect us to fall for creepy propaganda like this?” -Pages 124 & 125 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“... a piece of legislation I introduced into Congress..."

 “... a piece of legislation I introduced into Congress in late 2007 concisely reflects my views on civil liberties and executive power in light of the war on terror.  I am referring to the American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007.  Among other things, the legislation 

• repeals the Military Commissions Act of 2006 

• forbids the use of statements extracted by torture as evidence in any civilian of military tribunal; 

• subordinates the executive’s surveillance activities to the requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA); 

• gives the House of Representatives and the Senate legal standing to contest in court any presidential signing statement that indicates the executive’s intention to disregard any provision of a bill; and

• provides that nothing in the Espionage Act of 1917 prevents any journalist from publishing information received from the executive branch or Congress “unless the publication would cause direct, immediate, and irreparable harm to the national security of the United States.”

[......]

Any individual detained as an enemy combat by the United States “shall be entitled to petition for a writ of habeas corpus under section 2241 of title 28, United States Code.”

The Act also says, “No officer or agent of the United States shall kidnap, imprison, or torture any person abroad based solely on the President’s believe that the subject of the kidnapping, imprisonment, or torture is a criminal or enemy combatant; provided that kidnapping shall be permitted if undertaken with the intent of bringing the kidnapped person for prosecution or interrogation to gather intelligence before a tribunal that meets international standards of fairness and due process.”  Knowing violations of this section are to be punished as felonies.” -Pages 123 & 124 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“It is time for us to wake up..."

“It is time for us to wake up.  We have allowed the president to abduct an American citizen [Jose Padilla] on American soil, declare him an “enemy combat” (a charge the accused has no power to contest, which is rendered by the president in secret and is unreviewable), detain him indefinitely, deny him legal counsel, and subject him to inhumane treatment.  [...]  Have we been so blinded by propaganda that we have forgotten basic American principles, and legal guarantees that extend back to our British forbears eight centuries ago?  This is an outrageous offense against America and her Constitution.  Claims that these powers will be exercised only against the bad guys are not worth listening to.” -Pages 121 & 122 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“We need to come to our senses: it cannot be tolerable..."

“We need to come to our senses: it cannot be tolerable for the president to have the right to detain people indefinitely, even for life, and not even permit them to review the charges against them.  The argument is not that criminals or terrorists should be let loose.  Constitutionalists are merely saying that people are at least entitled to confront the charges against them.” -Pages 120 & 121 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“The Military Commissions Act of 2006 gives..."

“The Military Commissions Act of 2006 gives the president power to detain people indefinitely and to deny the accused any real opportunity to answer the charges against them.  It is anti-American at its core.”  -Page 120 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“A decent society never accepts or justifies torture...."

“A decent society never accepts or justifies torture.  It dehumanizes both torturer and victim, yet seldom produces reliable intelligence.  Torture by rogue American troops or agents puts all Americans at risk, especially our rank-and-file soldiers stationed in dozens of dangerous places around the globe.  It is not difficult to imagine American soldiers or travelers being taken hostage and tortured as some kind of sick retaliation for Abu Ghraib.  

Beyond that is the threat posed by unchecked executive power. [...] But the argument for extraordinary wartime executive powers has been made time and time again, always with bad results and the loss of our liberties.  That’s why it is precisely during times of relative crisis that we should adhere most closely to the Constitution, not abandon it.  The Founders were especially concerned about the consolidation of power during times of war and national emergencies.” -Pages 119 & 120 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“Much more is at stake here than privacy violations..."

“Much more is at stake here than privacy violations or unconstitutional searches, important and dangerous as those are.  For example, the president has made clear, in one of his signing statements, that he retains the power to engage in torture regardless of congressional statues to the contrary.  Defense Department memoranda say the same thing.”  -Page 119 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“For a patriotic American, there is nothing radical about..."

“For a patriotic American, there is nothing radical about this attitude at all.  This is how the Founding Fathers thought.  If our critics want to repudiate the Founding Fathers, let them go ahead and do it.  If they won’t be honest enough to do so, they should at least refrain from condemning those of us who still believe in the wisdom they left for posterity.” -Pages 118 & 119 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“The record is clear and detailed that national security..."

“The record is clear and detailed that national security cover-up has been a practice of each of the Presidents since FDR.” -Page 118 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“The Patriot Act violates the Constitution by allowing..."

“The Patriot Act violates the Constitution by allowing searches and seizures of American citizens and their property without a warrant issued by an independent court upon a finding of probably cause.  Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts [...] may issue warrants for individual records, including medical and library records.  It can do so secretly, and the person who turns over the records is muzzled and cannot ever speak of the search.  The attorney general is given the power, with no judicial oversight, to write “national security letters” ordering holders of any of your personal records to hand them over for the government to examine - a power that has already been abused.  You would have no way of knowing that this had been done.

....

In fact, a requirement that law enforcement demonstrate probable cause may help law enforcement officials focus their efforts on true threats, thereby avoiding the problem of information overload that is handicapping the government’s efforts to identify sources of terrorist financing. 

History demonstrates that the powers we give the federal government today will remain in place indefinitely.  How sure are we that future presidents won’t abuse those powers? Politically motivated IRS audits and FBI investigations have been used by past administrations to destroy political enemies.  Past abuses of executive surveillance are the reason FISA was passed in the first place.” -Page 115 & 116 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

 

“We now know that plenty of red flags..."

“We now know that plenty of red flags that should have alerted officials to the hijackers’ plot were ignored.  That was a matter of government ineptness, not a lack of surveillance power.  Our officials had the evidence.  They simply failed to act on it.  And they then turned around and exploited their own failure as an excuse to crack down on the American people, demanding new powers that would have done nothing to prevent 9/11.  Only government could get away with such a transparent sham.” -Page 115 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“The misnamed Patriot Act, presented to the public..."

“The misnamed Patriot Act, presented to the public as an antiterrorism measure, actually focuses on American citizens rather than foreign terrorists.  The definition of “terrorism” for federal criminal purposes is greatly expanded, such that legitimate protest against the government could someday place an American under federal surveillance.  Similarly, your Internet use can be monitored without your knowledge, and your Internet provider can be forced to hand over user information to law enforcement without a warrant or subpoena.

The biggest problem with these new law enforcement powers is that they bear little relationship to fighting terrorism.  Surveillance powers are greatly expanded, and checks and balances on government are greatly reduced. “Sneak and peek” and blanket searches are becoming more frequent every day.  Most of the provisions have been sought by domestic law enforcement agencies for years, not to fight terrorism but rather to increase their police power over the American people.  The federal government has not shown us that it failed to detect or prevent the September 11 attacks because it lacked the powers over our lives that it was granted under the Patriot Act.” -Pages 114 & 115 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“What was frequently overlooked amid the..."

“What was frequently overlooked amid the ensuing controversy was that the executive branch apparently carried out even more invasive activities, but we never got any answers about those.  When asked whether they had engaged in domestic wiretapping or carried out warrantless searches of people’s homes or correspondence, officials have responded with carefully worded assurances that these things were not done under the program then under discussion - i.e., the Terrorist Surveillance Program.  But were these things being done pursuant to some other program?  No answer.  

When the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2006, for example, he dealt with questions about whether the administration had engaged in warrantless wiretapping of purely domestic calls.  “Not under the program in which I’m testifying,” came the reply.  Such activity, the attorney general said, was “beyond the bound of the program which I’m testifying about today.”

We do know that for some period of time between September 11, 2001, and March 2004, the executive branch was engaged in a kind of surveillance that was so at odds with American law that then Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Deputy Attorney General James Comey threatened to resign if it continued.  What exactly was the executive branch up to that caused so much dissent even among its own loyalists? Who was victimized during this time?  Why are we not hearing the answers - or even the questions?” -Pages 113 & 114 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“If this interpretation of AUMF were correct..."

“If this interpretation of AUMF were correct, moreover, parts of the Patriot Act would have been unnecessary.  Finally, given that FISA, the existing law, deals explicitly and specifically with intelligence gathering, while AUMF [Authorization to Use Military Force] says nothing at all about foreign intelligence, FISA would automatically trump AUMP as a matter of legal principle, even if the administration’s interpretation were correct.

The administration itself didn’t seem to take this argument seriously.  When asked why, if the administration considered FISA inadequate to its purposes, it had not sought to amend it, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales frankly testified that they didn’t think they would be able to win congressional approval for amendments to FISA.  So they proceeded with the program anyway.  [....] Why did they consider amending FISA in order to give themselves a power they supposedly already had?

....

What was the real reason for the program, then?  Who was targeted and why?  No answers to these questions have been forthcoming.  Bland assurances that our leaders are trustworthy and good, and would never abuse powers they have secretly exercised in defiance of the law, can hardly be taken seriously by those who believe in a free society.  Remember Jefferson’s cautionary words about confidence in men: we should be on our guard against our government officials, binding them down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.  Government surveillance of individuals has been abused in the past, and it has targeted political opponents and the politically unpopular.  That’s why the safeguards that were flaunted here were established in the first place.” - Pages 112 & 113 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“If this interpretation of AUMF were correct..."

“If this interpretation of AUMF were correct, moreover, parts of the Patriot Act would have been unnecessary.  Finally, given that FISA, the existing law, deals explicitly and specifically with intelligence gathering, while AUMF [Authorization to Use Military Force] says nothing at all about foreign intelligence, FISA would automatically trump AUMP as a matter of legal principle, even if the administration’s interpretation were correct.

The administration itself didn’t seem to take this argument seriously.  When asked why, if the administration considered FISA inadequate to its purposes, it had not sought to amend it, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales frankly testified that they didn’t think they would be able to win congressional approval for amendments to FISA.  So they proceeded with the program anyway.  [....] Why did they consider amending FISA in order to give themselves a power they supposedly already had?
....
What was the real reason for the program, then?  Who was targeted and why?  No answers to these questions have been forthcoming.  Bland assurances that our leaders are trustworthy and good, and would never abuse powers they have secretly exercised in defiance of the law, can hardly be taken seriously by those who believe in a free society.  Remember Jefferson’s cautionary words about confidence in men: we should be on our guard against our government officials, binding them down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.  Government surveillance of individuals has been abused in the past, and it has targeted political opponents and the politically unpopular.  That’s why the safeguards that were flaunted here were established in the first place.” - Pages 112 & 113 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“...why, in a free society with a supposedly..."

“...why, in a free society with a supposedly independent media, did arguably the most influential in the United States keep Americans in the dark about a program like this?  The answer we were given involved unspecified national security concerns that the Times supposedly did not want to jeopardize.  But that explanation does not hold water at all.   We may safely assume that terrorists are clever enough to realize that our government is listening in on their conversations, even without the Times telling them so.  The very name of the Foreign Intelligence Act (FISA) of 1978 is a dead giveaway.  

As far as we have been told, the only way that this program, administered by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), diverged from previous intelligence efforts is that this one operated without FISA warrants- warrants issued in secret by special courts, in conformity with the 1978 Act.  Awareness of this aspect of the program would have done nothing to aid terrorists.  FISA warrants are issued in secret anyway, so neither under FISA nor under the NSA program would a terrorist know for sure that the government was eavesdropping on his conversations. 

It looks very much like the old story:  the government says “national security” and the natural and normal skepticism that our Founding Fathers taught us to have toward the government is promptly abandoned.  The simple and straightforward reason the executive branch wanted the program kept secret, its consistent obfuscation notwithstanding, seems to be that it violated the laws. 

The reasons we were given for why the program was necessary were at least as unconvincing as the Time’s defense of concealing it.  On the one hand, we were told that only targets of the program were people with links to terrorist organizations like al Qaeda.  At the same time, we were told that the sheer number of targets made FISA warrant applications impracticable. 

I believe that constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald has identified a fatal contradiction in these claims.  It is is true that the executive branch knew the locations of so many people with al Qaeda links, why were they seeking merely to eavesdrop on their conversations?  Why were they not arresting them instead?  This, after all, is an administration that has detained people indefinitely, without charges, on the basis of sometimes shaky evidence of an al Qaeda connection.  This time, we are supposed to believe that the administration had knowledge of countless al Qaeda figures and decided to let them remain free?  Not plausible, and that is why it seems likely that the targets of this surveillance included many Americans who had no ties to al Qaeda or terrorism at all.”  -Pages 109-111 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“Government should respect our right to privacy..."

“Government should respect our right to privacy, rather than invading it on phony pretenses.  
.... 
The war on terror has awakened more Americans than ever to the way government exploits fear, and even its own failures, to justify eroding our civil liberties.”  -Page109 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“Freedom means not only that our economic..."


“Freedom means not only that our economic activity ought to be free and voluntary, but that government should stay out of our personal affairs as well.  In fact, freedom means that we understand liberty as an indivisible whole.  Economic freedom and personal liberty are not divisible.  How do you plan to exercise your right to free speech if you’re not allowed the economic freedom to acquire the supplies necessary to disseminate your views?  Likewise, how can we expect to enjoy privacy rights if our property rights are insecure?” -Page 109 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“What moves me the most when I think about..."

“What moves me the most when I think about my supporters in my presidential campaign are the staggering efforts and creative energies- extraordinary and unprecedented, as far as I can see- that they expended on behalf of a message that promised them no special benefits, no loot taken for their fellow men.  The message promises only freedom, and no special privileges for anyone.  No one is surprised that people donate to a political campaign in the hopes of receiving some special favor if the candidate wins.  I was quite surprised, on the other hand, at how many would donate, volunteer, and vote in pursuit of nothing other than freedom, and the prosperity it naturally brings.” -Page 107 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“Campaign finance reform was the subject of..."

“Campaign finance reform was the subject of fierce debate in America not long ago.  Yet the debate missed the point.  As long as we have a government that can exploit peaceful, hardworking Americans on behalf of special interests, as long as it can make or break any American business with (for example) tax policy, politically motivated antitrust prosecutions, and ill-considered regulation, and in general as long as economic winners and losers can be determined in Washington, people will want to assure their share of the loot by influencing the political process through money.  Campaign finance reform focuses on the system rather than the cause. 

This is one reason I was so skeptical when friends urged me to run for president.  There are fore more interest groups lobbying in Washington for special benefits and privileges than most Americans can imagine.  I do not oppose just this one or that one.  I oppose the whole apparatus, the whole immoral system by which we use government to exploit our fellow citizens on behalf of our own interests.  For someone like me to win, there would have to be enough Americans who believed in freedom to be able to offset the combined power of interest groups that have grown accustomed to treating the people as a resource to be drained for private gain.  Were there really enough people for that task?” -Pages 106 & 107 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“Some people falsely believe that advocates of the free market..."

“Some people falsely believe that advocates of the free market must be opponents of the environment.  We care only about economic efficiency, the argument goes, and have no regard for the consequences of pollution and other examples of environmental degradation.  But a true supporter of private property and personal responsibility cannot be indifferent to environmental damage, and should view it as a form of unjustified aggression that must be punished or enjoined, or dealt with in some other way that is mutually satisfactory to all parties.  Private business should not have the right to socialize its costs by burdening other people with the by-products of its operations.

Economist Martin Anderson puts it this way.  Dumping garbage on your neighbor’s lawn is wrong.  But pollution is really just another form of garbage.  For that reason, proposals to charge pollution fees, which get higher the greater the pollution, neglect demand for justice.  Anderson compares it to taxing thieves as a way of giving them an economic incentive not to burglarize your home.  If the practice is wrong, the law should treat it as such.  “If a firm creates pollution without first entering into an agreement, or if the parties cannot come to an agreement fixing the cost and degree of pollution, then the court system could be used to assess damages, “say economist Walter Block and Robert W. McGee. 

In fact, that’s how American law used to treat pollution. But a series of nineteenth-century nuisance cases changed that: the courts suddenly decided that a certain level of pollution could be allowed for the sake of the greater good.  The implication was that if, for example, a few farmers had their property destroyed by passing trains, that was just the price of progress.  (Easy for them to say!) These cases allowed private industry to invade the property rights of others and deprived those others of legal recourse.  I do not see this as a free-market outcome.* [*I do not claim that pollution consisting of a few undetectable particles must be prohibited, or that no airplanes would have the right to travel high above people’s homes.  These are legitimate matters for the courts, where such matters have been properly decided in the past.] “ -Pages 105 & 106 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“Mine is an “isolationist” position only to those..."

“Mine is an “isolationist” position only to those who believe that the world’s peoples can interact with each other only through their governments, or only through the intermediary of a supranational bureaucracy.  That unspoken assumption is dangerous and dehumanizing.  There is nothing isolationist about opposing coercive government-to-government wealth transfers.  Individuals who wish to contribute directly to some worthy cause abroad- and Third World governments whose destructive policies have kept their peoples in miserable poverty are not such a cause - should be perfectly at liberty to do so.  In fact, a recent Hudson Institute study found that in 2006, American citizens voluntarily contributed three times more to help people overseas than did the United States government.  Freedom works.” -Page 102 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"If Americans knew the real story of foreign aid...."

"If Americans knew the real story of foreign aid and how it has deformed recipient economies, aided repressive regimes, and even contributed to violent strife, they would oppose it even more strongly than they already do.  If they knew about the record of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank when it comes to helping developing countries, they would be similarly appalled.  At long last, these seemingly untouchable programs need to be called into question, and then, in the name of liberty and humanity, discarded forever." -Page 101 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"....(In the United Sates, poverty declined consistently..."

"....(In the United Sates, poverty declined consistently from 1950 until 1968, when supposedly antipoverty programs first began to receive significant funding.  Since then, the poverty figures have stagnated in spite of trillions of dollars spent.)

Never before in the history of the world have so many people seen such an improvement in their living standards.  And these wonderful results have come about quite in spite of official development aid programs devised in the West.  They are, instead, the natural result of the market economy.  Forget about all the propaganda, the sloganeering, the misinformation, the willful misunderstanding of how the market works, all of which characterize fashionable opinion on the subject.  These are facts- and they should not be unexpected facts, if we understand sound economics." -Page 101 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"The ideas of liberty and a free economy have not..."

"The ideas of liberty and a free economy have not spread with equal force everywhere in the world; nor have they been implemented with consistency.  The results have been overwhelming all the same.  Between 1980 and 2000, India's real GDP per head more than doubled, and in China real income per capita rose by 400 percent.  Poverty in China went from 28 percent in 1978 to 9 percent in 1998.  In India, it fell from 51 percent in 1977-1978 to 26 percent in 1999-2000.  "Never-before," writes economist Martin Wolf, "have so many people- or so large a proportion of the world's population- enjoyed such large rises in their standards of living." " -Pages 100 & 101 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Now, while free trade should be embraced..."

"Now, while free trade should be embraced, foreign aid should be absolutely rejected.  Constitutional, moral, and practical arguments compel such a view.  Constitutional authorization for such programs is at best dubious.  Morally, I cannot justify the violent seizure of property from Americans in order to redistribute that property to a foreign government- and usually one that is responsible for the appalling material condition of its people.  Surely we can agree that Americans ought not to be doing forced labor on behalf of other regimes, and that is exactly what foreign aid is.

For people who find arguments like these abstract and remote, there is a more practical argument against foreign aid.  International welfare has not worked any better than domestic welfare, despite the trillions spent in each case.  Foreign aid, however pure the intentions that may have motivated it, has been a reactionary device by which truly loathsome leaders have been strengthened and kept in power.  Trillions of dollars later, the results of development aid programs are so bad that even the New York Times, which admits nothing, has acknowledged that the programs haven't worked.  No wonder Kenyan economist James Shikwati, when asked about development aid programs to Africa, has been telling the West, "For God's sake, please just stop." " - Page 99 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"And let us not forget that the Constitution grants Congress..."

"And let us not forget that the Constitution grants Congress, and Congress alone, the authority to regulate trade and craft tax laws.  Congress cannot cede that authority to the WTO or any other international body.  Nor can the president legally sign any treaty that purports to do so.  Our Founders never intended for America to become entangled in global trade schemes, and they certainly never intended to have our domestic laws overridden by international bureaucrats." -Pave 99 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"This outrageous affront to our national sovereignty..."

"This outrageous affront to our national sovereignty was of course predictable when we joined the WTO.  During congressional debates we were assured that entry into the organization posed no threat to our sovereignty.  A well-known libertarian think tank, where you might expect some skepticism of a supra-national bureaucracy managing trade, offered us this rosy description: "The WTO's dispute settlement mechanism helps nations resolve trade disputes without resorting to costly trade wars.  The system relies on voluntary compliance and does not compromise national sovereignty."  That was nonsense.  A Congressional Research Service report was quite clear about the consequences of our membership: "As a member of the WTO, the United States does commit to act in accordance with the rules of the multi-lateral body.  It is legally obligated to insure that national laws do not conflict with WTO rules."

The WTO has given us the worst of both worlds:  we've sacrificed national sovereignty by changing our domestic laws at the behest of an international body, yet we still face trade wars over a variety of products.  If anything, the WTO makes trade relations worse by providing our foreign competitors with a collective means to attack U.S. trade interests." -Page 98 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Congress has changed American tax laws for the...."

"Congress has changed American tax laws for the sole reason that the World Trade Organization decided that our rules unfairly impacted the European Union.  I recall a congressional session in which, with hundreds of tax bills languishing in the House Ways and Means Committee, the one bill drafted strictly to satisfy the WTO was brought to the floor and passed with great urgency.

In one case, the WTO sided with the Europeans against American tax law, which offered tax breaks to American companies doing business overseas.  According to the European Union, the Foreign Sales Corporation program, established under President Reagan in 1984, is now an "illegal subsidy," a view that a WTO appellate panel shared  The WTO's Orwellian ruling declared that allowing a company to keep more of its own money through lower taxes was a "subsidy."  As a matter of fact, the program was moreover really just compensating (and only partially at that) for unfair U.S. taxes on corporations for profits earned overseas, a disability that our foreign competitors do not have to confront from their own governments. 

What this means, in plain English, was that high-tax Europe, upset at lower-tax America, decided that the way to level the playing field was to force America to raise her taxes.  Pascal Lamy, the trade czar of the European Union, actually visited with influential members of Congress in order to determine whether a new tax bill was being crafted to his satisfaction.   If Mr. Lamy, a member of the French Socialist Party, had been unsatisfied with the changes made to our tax code, he threatened to unleash a European trade war against U.S. imports.  In effect he was a foreign bureaucrat acting as a shadow legislator by intervening in our lawmaking process.  And to no one's surprise, Congress raced to comply with the WTO ruling that American tax rules must be changed in order to bring them in to harmony with "international law." -Pages 97 & 98 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"The New American Century" Documentary 2009

Although this is not an excerpt or video from Ron Paul, I believe it is critical that everyone watch this.

Here is a description of the movie.  Please note that the first 10 or so minutes talk about the events that unfolded on 9/11.  This is NOT a documentary discussing the "conspiracy" theory of 9/11 so please do not let the first several minutes of this movie to deter you from watching the entire thing.  I personally will never be the same after watching this.

This film is astonishing, it goes in detail through the untold history of The Project for the New American Century with tons of archival footage and connects it right into the present.

This film exposes how every major war in US history was based on a complete fraud with video of insiders themselves admitting it.

This film shows how the first film theaters in the US were used over a hundred years ago to broadcast propaganda to rile the American people into the Spanish-American War.

This film shows the white papers of the oil company Unocal which called for the creation of a pipeline through Afghanistan and how their exact needs were fulfilled through the US invasion of Afghanistan.

This film shows how Halliburton under their “cost plus” exclusive contract with the US Government went on a mad dash spending spree akin to something out of the movie Brewster’s Millions, yet instead of blowing $30 million they blew through BILLIONS by literally burning millions of dollars worth of hundred thousand dollar cars and trucks if they had so much as a flat tire.

I have seen a ton of films, this film contains a massive amount of incredible footage I have never seen before anywhere, it is an historical documentary which exposes all the lies of the past so that you can understand the present.

This film is a must see. “A stunning film. It should be seen as widely as possible, in cinemas, bars, clubs, at meetings and, of course, through the internet.

I’m sure the film will continue to be a source of debate and political education for many years. Maybe until the war criminals have been brought to trial.” – Ken Loach

“In the White House, they weren’t thinking of 9/11 as an attack, but as a gift!” – Robert Steele, former CIA agent

While Massimo Mazzucco’s first political documentary, Global Deceit (2006), focused on the long list of inconsistencies in the official version of the 9/11 attacks, The New American Century explores the historical, philosophical and economic background that suggests a matrix for such events that is much closer to home than the so-called “Islamic terrorism”.

The film provides solid evidence for the true reasons behind the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, whose unfolding is described in chilling detail in a document called
“Project for the New American Century”, published in the year 2,000, that seems to have served as the actual blueprint for such dramatic events.

"The federal government will remain very much involved..."

"The federal government will remain very much involved in the abortion business either directly or indirectly by financing it.

One thing I believe for certain is that the federal government should never tax pro-life citizens to pay for abortions.  The constant effort by the pro-choice crowd to fund abortion must rank among the stupidest policies ever, even from their viewpoint.  All they accomplish is to give valiant motivation for all pro-life forces as well as the anti-tax supporters of abortion to fight against them.

A society that readily condones abortion invites attacks on personal liberty.  If all life is not precious, how can all liberty be held up as important?  It seems that if some life can be thrown away, our right to personally choose what is best for us is more difficult to defend.  I've become convinced that resolving the abortion issue is required for a healthy defense of a free society." -Pages 5 & 6 of Liberty Defined

"Another aspect of this debate needs to be resolved...."

"Another aspect of this debate needs to be resolved:  If an abortion doctor performs a third-trimester abortion for whatever reason, a handsome fee is paid and it's perfectly legal in some states.  If a frightened teenager, possibly not even knowing she was pregnant, delivers a baby and she kills it, the police are out en masse to charge her with homicide.  What really is so different between the fetus one minute before birth and a newborn one minute after birth?  Biologically and morally, nothing.  We must also answer the grim question of what should be done with a newborn that inadvertently survives an abortion.  It happens more than you might think.  Doctors have been accused of murder since the baby died after delivery, but that hardly seems just.  The real question is, how can a human infant have such relative value attached to it?
....
The difference of lack thereof between a baby one minute after birth and one minute before needs to be quantified.  The Congress or the courts are incapable of doing this.  This is a profound issue to be determined by society itself based on the moral value it espouses. 
...
My argument is that the abortion problem is more of a social and moral issue than it is a legal one."  -Pages 3-5 of Liberty Defined

"Some people believe that being pro-choice is being on the..."

"Some people believe that being pro-choice is being on the side of freedom.  I've never understood how an act of violence, killing a human being, albeit a small one in a special place, is portrayed as a precious right.  To speak only of the mother's cost in carrying a baby to term ignores all thought of any legal rights of the unborn.  I believe that the moral consequence of cavalierly accepting abortion diminishes the value of all life. 

It is now widely accepted that there's a constitutional right to abort a human fetus.  Of course, the Constitution says nothing about abortion, murder, manslaughter, or any other acts of violence.  There are only four crimes listed in the Constitution:  counterfeiting, piracy, treason, and slavery.  Criminal and civil laws were deliberately left to the states.  It's a giant leap for the federal courts to declare abortion a constitutional right and overrule all state laws regulating the procedure.  If anything, the federal government has a responsibility to protect life- not grant permission to destroy it.
....
Almost all regulations by the federal government to protect us from ourselves (laws against smoking, bans on narcotics, and mandatory seat belts, for example) are readily supported by the left/liberals who demand "choice." Of course, to the pro-choice group, the precious choice we debate is limited to the mother and not to the unborn.

The fact is that the fetus has legal rights - inheritance, a right not to be injured or aborted by unwise medical treatment, violence, or accidents.  Ignoring these rights is arbitrary and places relative rights on a small, living human being.  The only issue that should be debated is the moral one: whether or not a fetus has any right to life.  Scientifically, there's no debate over whether the fetus is alive and human - if not killed, it matures into an adult human being.  It is that simple.  So the time line of when we consider a fetus "human" is arbitrary after conception, in my mind." -Pages 1-3 of Liberty Defined

"On one occasion in the 1960s when abortion was still illegal..."

"On one occasion in the 1960s when abortion was still illegal, I witnessed, while visiting a surgical suite as an OB/GYN resident, the abortion of a fetus that weighed approximately two pounds.  It was placed in a bucket, crying and struggling to breathe, and the medical personnel pretended not to notice.  Soon the crying stopped.  This harrowing event forced me to think more seriously about this important issue. 

That same day in the OB suite, an early delivery occurred and the infant born was only slightly larger than the one that was just aborted.  But in this room everybody did everything conceivable to save this child's life.  My conclusion that day was that we were overstepping the bounds of morality by picking and choosing who should live and who should die.  These were human lives.  There was no consistent moral basis to the value of life under these circumstances."  -Page 1 of Liberty Defined

"Do our leaders in Washington believe in liberty?"

"Do our leaders in Washington believe in liberty? They sometimes say they do. I don't think they are telling the truth. The existence of the wealth-extracting leviathan state in Washington, DC, a cartoonishly massive machinery that no one can control and yet few ever seriously challenge, a monster that is a constant presence in every aspect of our lives, is proof enough that our leaders do not believe. Neither party is truly dedicated to the classical, fundamental ideals that gave rise to the American Revolution." -Page XII of Liberty Defined

"To believe in liberty is not to believe in any particular....."

"To believe in liberty is not to believe in any particular social and economic outcome. It is to trust in the spontaneous order that emerges when the state does not intervene in human violation and human cooperation. It permits people to work out their problems for themselves, build lives for themselves, take risks and accept responsibility for the results, and make their own decisions." -Page XII of Liberty Defined

"The definition of liberty I use is the same one..."

"The definition of liberty I use is the same one that was accepted by Thomas Jefferson and his generation. It is the understanding derived from the great freedom tradition... This is the agenda I embrace, and one that I believe all Americans should embrace." -Pages XI & XII of Liberty Defined

"The Israel Lobby and U.S Foreign Policy"

This book was NOT written by Ron Paul but it is directly related to Ron Paul's message.  I urge anyone wanting to understand more about this subject read this book.

You can find it on Amazon by clicking HERE.

Review from Publishers Weekly:

Expanding on their notorious 2006 article in the London Review of Books, the authors increase the megatonnage of their explosive claims about the malign influence of the pro-Israel lobby on the U.S. government. Mearsheimer and Walt, political scientists at the University of Chicago and Harvard, respectively, survey a wide coalition of pro-Israel groups and individuals, including American Jewish organizations and political donors, Christian fundamentalists, neo-con officials in the executive branch, media pundits who smear critics of Israel as anti-Semites and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, which they characterize as having an almost unchallenged hold on Congress. This lobby, they contend, has pressured the U.S. government into Middle East policies that are strategically and morally unjustifiable: lavish financial subsidies for Israel despite its occupation of Palestinian territories; needless American confrontations with Israel's foes Syria and Iran; uncritical support of Israel's 2006 bombing of Lebanon, which violated the laws of war; and the Iraq war, which almost certainly would not have occurred had [the Israel lobby] been absent. The authors disavow conspiracy mongering, noting that the lobby's activities constitute legitimate, if misguided, interest-group politics, as American as apple pie. Considering the authors' academic credentials and the careful reasoning and meticulous documentation with which they support their claims, the book is bound to rekindle the controversy.


An excerpt.....

"More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits.

As for so-called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire threat to vital US interests, except inasmuch as they are a threat to Israel. Even if these states acquire nuclear weapons – which is obviously undesirable – neither America nor Israel could be blackmailed, because the blackmailer could not carry out the threat without suffering overwhelming retaliation. The danger of a nuclear handover to terrorists is equally remote, because a rogue state could not be sure the transfer would go undetected or that it would not be blamed and punished afterwards. The relationship with Israel actually makes it harder for the US to deal with these states. Israel’s nuclear arsenal is one reason some of its neighbours want nuclear weapons, and threatening them with regime change merely increases that desire."

"To establish genuine free trade, no such transfer of power..."

"To establish genuine free trade, no such transfer of power is necessary.  True free trade does not require treaties or agreements between governments.  On the contrary, true freed trade occurs in the absence of government intervention in the free flow of goods across borders.  Organizations like the WTO and NAFTA represent government-managed trade schemes, not free trade.  The WTO, purported to exist to lower tariffs, is actually the agency that grants permission for tariffs to be applied when complaints of dumping are levied.  Government-managed trade is inherently political, meaning that politicians and bureaucrats determine who wins and loses in the marketplace. 

Granting quasi-governmental international bodies the power to make decisions about American trade rules compromises American sovereignty in dangerous and unacceptable ways."  -Pages 96 & 97 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"In my strong support for free trade, I have felt compelled to..."

"In my strong support for free trade, I have felt compelled to oppose many of the trade agreements that have appeared in recent years.  For instance, although I was not in Congress at the time, I opposed both the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, both of which were heavily favored by the political establishment.  Initial grounds for suspicion was the sheer length of the text of these agreements: no free-trade agreement need to be 20,000 pages long." -Page 95 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Frederic Bastiat once wrote a satirical petition...."

"Frederic Bastiat once wrote a satirical petition to the French parliament on behalf of candle makers and related industries.  He was seeking relief from "ruinous competition of a foreign rival who works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price."  The "foreign rival" he was speaking of was the sun, which was unfairly giving away light for free.  The relief sought was a law requiring the closing of all blinds to shut out the sunlight and thereby stimulate the domestic candle industry.  That is what so many fallacious arguments against free trade amount to." -Page 95 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Prosperity comes not just from economic freedom at home..."

"Prosperity comes not just from economic freedom at home, but also from the freedom to trade abroad.  If free trade were not beneficial, it would make sense for us to "protect jobs" by buying only those goods produced entirely in our own towns.  Or we could purchase only those goods produced on the streets where we live.  Better still, we could restrict our purchases to things we produced in our own households, buying all our products only from our own immediate family members.  When the logic of trade restriction is taken to its natural conclusion, its impoverishing effects become too obvious to miss." -Pages 94 & 95 of The Revolution, A ManifestoF

"An argument we hear even now is that a hundred years ago..."

"An argument we hear even now is that a hundred years ago, when the federal government was far smaller than it is today, people were much poorer and worked in less desirable conditions, while today, with a much larger federal government and far more regulation in place, people are much more prosperous.  This is a classic case of the post hoc, ergo proper hoc fallacy.  This fallacy is committed whenever we carelessly assume that because outcome B occurred after action A, then B was caused by A.  If people are more prosperous today, that must be because government saved them from the ravages of the free market. 

But that is nonsense.  Of course people were less prosperous a hundred years ago, but not for the reason fashionable opinion assumes.  Compared to today, the American economy was starved for capital.  The economy's productive capacity was miniscule by today's standards, and therefore very few goods per capita could be produced.  The vast bulk of the population had to make do with much less than we take for granted today because so little could be produced.  All the laws and regulations in the world cannot overcome constraints imposed by reality itself.  No matter how much we tax the rich to redistribute the wealth, in a capital-starved economy there is an extremely limited amount of wealth to redistribute. 

The only way to increase everyone's standard of living is by increasing the amount of capital per worker.  Additional capital makes workers more productive, which means they can produce more goods than before. When our economy becomes physically capable of producing vastly more goods, their abundance makes them more affordable in terms of dollars (if the Federal Reserve isn't inflating the money supply).  Soaking the rich works for only so long:  the rich eventually wise up and decide to hide their income, move away or stop working so much.  But investing in capital makes everyone better off.  It is the only way we can all become wealthier.  We are wealthier today because our economy is physically capable of producing so much more at far lower costs.  And that's why, just from a practical point of view, it is foolish to levy taxes along any step of this process, because doing so sabotages the only way wealth can be created for everyone."  -Pages 93 & 94 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"...government intervention into the economy cannot be...."

"...government intervention into the economy cannot be assumed to be good and welcome and just. 

But that is how it is portrayed in too many of our American history classrooms.  It is not unusual for American students to find their textbooks telling them that injustice was everywhere before the federal government, motivated by nothing but a deep commitment to the public good, intervened to save them from the wickedness of the free market.  Alleged "monopolies" dictated prices to hapless consumers.  Laborers were forced to accept every-lower wages.  And thanks to their superior economic position, giant corporations effortlessly parried the attempts of anyone foolish enough to try and compete with them.

Every single aspect of this story is false, though of course this version of our history continues to be peddled and believed.  I don't blame people for believing it - it's the only rendition of events they're told of, unless by some fluke they have learned where to look for the truth.  But there is an agenda behind this silly comic-book version of history: to make people terrified of the "unfettered" free market, and to condition them to accept the ever-growing burdens that the political class imposes on the private sector as an unchangeable aspect of life that exists for their own good." -Pages 92 & 93 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Americans have been given the impression that "regulation"..."

"Americans have been given the impression that "regulation" is always a good thing, and that anyone who speaks of lessening the regulatory burden is an antisocial ogre who would sacrifice safety and human well-being for the sake of economic efficiency. 
....
The real history of regulation is not so straightforward.  Businesses have often called for regulation themselves, hopeful that their smaller competitors will have a more difficult time meeting regulatory demands.  Special interests have helped to impose utterly senseless regulations that impose crushing burdens on private enterprise- far out of proportion to any benefit they are alleged to bring- but since those interests bear none of these burdens themselves, it costs them nothing to advocate them." -Page 91 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"And speaking of poor treatment, those who favor national healthcare..."

"And speaking of poor treatment, those who favor national healthcare schemes should take a good, hard look at out veterans' hospitals.  There is your national health care.  These institutions are a national disgrace.  If this is the care the government dispenses to those it honors as its most heroic and admirable citizens, why should anyone else expect to be treated any better?" -Pages 90 & 91 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"The story behind the creation of the HMOs is a classic..."

"The story behind the creation of the HMOs is a classic illustration of what economist Ludwig von Mises once said: government interventions create unintended consequences that lead to calls for further investigation, and so on into a destructive spiral of more and more government control. During the early 1970s, Congress embraced HMOs in order to address concerns about rising health care costs. But it was Congress itself that had caused health care costs to spiral by removing control over the health care dollar from so many consumers in the 1960s, and thus eliminating any incentive to pay attention to costs when selecting health care. Now, Congress wants to intervene yet again to address problems caused by HMOs, the product of still earlier interventions.

Now the HMO's are all but universally unpopular, the very politicians who brought them to us are joining the bandwagon to denounce them, hoping the American people will forget, or never be told, that the federal government itself virtually mandated HMOs in the first place.

Consumer complaints about insurers and HMOs compel politicians to draft new laws and more regulations to curry voter favor. More regulations breed more costs, limiting more choices, causing more anguish- and the cycle continues.

The most obvious way to break this cycle is to get the government out of the business of meddling in health care, which was far more affordable and accessible before government got involved. Short of that, and more politically feasible in the immediate run, is to allow consumers and their doctors to pull themselves out of the system through medical savings accounts. Under this system, consumers could save pretax dollars in special accounts. Those dollars would be used to pay for health care expenses, with patients negotiating directly with the physicians of t heir choice for the care they choose, without regard for HMO rules or a bureaucrat's decision. The incentive for the physician is that he gets paid as the service is rendered, rather than having to wait months for an HMO or insurance provider's billing cycle.

With the cash for the MSAs coming from pretax dollars, most Americans could afford deposits that would cover routine expenses that families experience in a year. Insurance would tend to return to its normal function of providing for large-scale, unanticipated occurrences, and would become far more affordable." - Pages 85-89 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"HMOs have become corporate, bureaucratic middlemen..."

"HMOs have become corporate, bureaucratic middlemen in our health care system, driving up costs while degrading the quality of medical care. In all other industries, technology has nearly always led to lower prices- except in health care, thanks to the managed-care system that has been forced upon us." -Page 87 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Just about everyone is unhappy with the health care system..."

"Just about everyone is unhappy with the health care system we now have, a system some people wrongly blame on the free market. To the contrary, our system is shot through with government intervention, regulation, mandates, and other distortions that have put us in this unenviable situation.

It is easy to forget that for decades the United States had a health care system that was the envy of the world. We had the finest doctors and hospitals, patients received high-quality, affordable medical care, and thousands of privately funded charities provided health services for the poor. I worked in an emergency room where nobody was turned away for lack of funds. People had insurance policies for serious health problems but paid cash for routine doctor visits. That makes sense: insurance is intended to protect against unforeseen and catastrophic events like fire, floods or grave illness. Insurance, in short, is suppose to measure risk. It has nothing to do with that now. Something has obviously gone wrong with the system when we need insurance for routine visits and checkups, which are entirely predictable parts of our lives. " -Page 86 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"In the days before Medicare and Medicaid...."

"In the days before Medicare and Medicaid, for instance, the poor and elderly were admitted to hospitals at about the same rate they are now, and receive good care. As a physician I never accepted Medicare and Medicaid money from the government, and instead offered cut-rate or free services to those who could not afford care. Before those programs came into existence, every physician understood that he or she had a responsibility toward the less fortunate, and free medical care for the poor was the norm. Hardly anyone is aware of this today, since it doesn't fit into the typical, by-the-script story of government rescuing us from a predatory private sector. Laws and regulations that inflated cost of medical services and imposed unreasonable liability standards on medical professionals even when they were acting in a volunteer capacity later made offering free care cost prohibitive, but free care for the poor was common at a time when America wasn't so "governmentish" (to borrow a word from William Penn). We have lost our belief that freedom works, because we no longer have the imagination to conceive of how a free people might solve its problems without introducing threats of violence- which is what government solutions ultimately amount to."  -Page 85 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Excessive government spending has done more than just..."

"Excessive government spending has done more than just put us in debt.  Charles Murray offers us a useful thought experiment that illustrates the welfare state's enervating effects on our communities and our character.  Imagine that the programs that constituted the federal "safety net" were all of a sudden abolished, and for whatever reason could not be revived.  And pretend also that the states chose not to replace them with programs of their own, which they almost certainly would.  The questions Murray wants us to focus on are these:  How would you respond?  Would be more or less likely to volunteer at a food bank?  Would you be more or less likely to volunteer at a literacy center?  If you were a lawyer or physician, would you be more or less likely to offer pro bono services? 

We would all answer yes to these questions, wouldn't we?  But then we need to ask ourselves: why aren't we doing these things already?  And the answer is that we have bought into the soul-killing logic of the welfare state: somebody else is doing it for me.  I don't need to give of myself, since a few scribbles on a tax form fulfill my responsibility toward my fellow man.  Do our responsibilities as human beings really extend no farther than this?" -Pages 84 & 85 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Our out-of-control welfare state also helps account for..."

"Our out-of-control welfare state also helps account for the scope of our illegal immigration problem.  When you subsidize something, you get more of it, and by offering free medical care and other services, as well as the prospect of amnesty, we get more illegal immigration.  Meanwhile, hospitals have begun closing as our states and localities struggle to pay the bills.
...
When, thanks to government policy, the economy is shaky, as it is now with the housing bubble bursting and inflation on the rise, it is all the easier to hold up immigrants as the scapegoats for the people's economic woes, thereby letting the incompetents and shysters who make our economic policy off the hook." -Pages 83 & 84 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"In the short run, in order to provide for those..."

"In the short run, in order to provide for those we have taught to be dependent, such programs could survive.  My own suggestion is to fund this transition period by scaling back our unsustainable overseas commitments, saving hundreds of billions from the nearly one trillion dollars our empire is costing us every year, and in the process streamlining our overstretched military and making it more efficient and effective.  That is the only place where we can easily save money, applying some of the savings to these domestic programs and the rest to debt reduction." -Page 83 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Faster economic growth can only delay the inevitable..."

"Faster economic growth can only delay the inevitable hard choices.  To close the long-term entitlement gap, the U.S. economy would have to grow by double digits every year for the next 75 years.
...
The fact is, we do not have the resources to sustain these programs in the long run.  There is no way around this simple fact, a fact politicians consistently ignore or conceal in order to tell Americans what they think their fellow countrymen want to hear." -Page 83 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"The kind of spending cuts we obviously need..."

"The kind of spending cuts we obviously need will not be easy, since our government has encouraged so many Americans to become dependent on federal programs.  These programs cannot survive much longer without a financial collapse.  Our national debt, now nine trillion dollars, does not include the unfunded liabilities to programs like Social Security and Medicare that will come due in the coming decades to the tune of another $50 trillion.  It is simply impossible to fulfill those promises.  The level of taxation necessary to fund a figure like that would destroy the American economy and dramatically shrink the productive base from which those funds could be drawn."  -Page 82 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Now, plenty of politicians talk a good game..."

"Now, plenty of politicians talk a good game about low taxes, and some even claim to want to decrease spending as well.  Few seem to mean it, if their voting records are any indication.  But if we want more economic freedom and a healthy and robust economy, serious inroads need to be made into federal spending.  Otherwise, tax cuts will simply lead to more borrowing, more inflation, and the continued decline of the dollar.  As I write [2008], we are paying about $1.4 billion every day just for the interest on the national debt.  Because our government refuses to live within its means, every single day we spend $1.4 billion and receive absolutely nothing in return." -Pages 80 & 81 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"How, by the way, did we ever let ourselves..."

"How, by the way, did we ever let ourselves be talked into such a thing?  The income tax was first proposed for several reasons.  The tariff, from which the federal government received most of its funding, was for a variety of reasons bringing in a decreased revenue.  At the same time, federal expenditures were going up, thanks in part to an increase in the military budget. 

An alternative had to be found.  At the time, many Americans viewed the tariff as an unfair tax that burdened them as consumers and benefited big business by sheltering it from foreign competition.  A tax on incomes, the argument went, would at last force the rich to pay their share.  And that's just how the income tax was pitched to the people: tax relief for you, in the form of lower tariffs, and a tax increase for the rich.  Do not worry, people were told.  Only the richest of the rich will ever pay the income tax.

That phony promise didn't last long.  Within a few years, tax rates had shot through the roof, and classes of people who had thought they would never be taxed found themselves paying as well.  And by the 1920s the tariff was raised again anyway, so the people wound up getting the worst of both worlds." -Page 80 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"What we should work toward, however, is abolishing...."

"What we should work toward, however, is abolishing the income tax and replacing it not with a national sales tax, but with nothing.  Right now the federal government is funded by excise taxes, corporate income tax, payroll taxes, the individual income tax, and miscellaneous other sources.  Abolishing the income tax on individuals would cut government revenue by about 40 percent.  I have heard the breathless claims about how radical that is - and compared to the trivial changes we are accustomed to seeing in the government, I suppose it is.  But in absolute terms, is it really so radical?  In order to imagine what it would be like to live in a country with a federal budget 40% lower than the federal budget of 2007, it would be necessary to go all the way back to.... 1997.

Would it really be so hard to imagine living in 1997 again?  In return, we would have an economy so robust and dynamic that it would doubtless shatter even my own optimistic expectations.  And we would once and for all have repudiated the totalitarian assumptions at the heart of the income tax." -Pages 79 & 80 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"With a consensus not yet established...."

"With a consensus not yet established behind the abolition of the income tax (although I have never ceased voting and speaking on behalf of such an outcome), I have done my best to eliminate income and other taxation in as many specific cases as possible, in order at least to make dents in the edifice in the meantime.  For instance, I have proposed, for all those whose income consists largely of tips, that income in the form of tips be exempt from income taxation.  I have proposed that America's teachers be granted tax credits, thereby increasing their salaries.  I have proposed that people with terminal illnesses be exempt from Social Security taxes while they struggle for their lives.  (There is surely no moral justification for taxing people who are trying to maintain their very lives.)" -Page 79 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Now, whatever its moral and philosophical attractiveness..."

"Now, whatever its moral and philosophical attractiveness, the free economy I have just proposed, in which no one is allowed to use government power to loot anyone else, is sometimes criticized as a "pro-business" philosophy that favors the well-to-do. This criticism could not be more off target.  As I have said, businessmen, too, want special favors from government and lobby energetically for all kinds of wealth transfers to themselves.  Very rarely does a business owner come to my congressional office to congratulate me on my fidelity to the Constitution.  They come by because they want something, and what they want is usually not authorized by the Constitution. 

I do not claim that businessmen as a class are underhanded or wicked, since I do not believe in making prejudicial generalizations about any group.  I am saying only that they are just as likely as anyone else to favor government intervention on their behalf.  I have nothing but respect and admiration for honest businessmen.  Their contributions to our society are indispensable and almost completely unsung.  The entrepreneur who risks everything he has in order to realize a dream- and improve our lives in the process - is engaged in a worthy and honorable pursuit that earns him precious little respect in our society." -Page 77 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Alexis de Tocqueville was very impressed..."

"Alexis de Tocqueville was very impressed, when he visited our country in the nineteenth century, to see how many voluntary associations Americans had formed in order to achieve common goals.   "The political associations which exist in the United States are only a single feature in the midst of the immense assemblage of associations in that country," he wrote.  "Wherever, at the head of some new undertaking, you see the Government in France, or man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association." De Tocqueville admired "the extreme skill with which the inhabitants of the United States succeed in proposing a common object to the exertions of a great many men, and in getting them voluntarily to pursue it."

That may be all well and good for the arts and the like, some may say, but private efforts could never substitute for gigantic government budgets for various forms of welfare.  But private assistance would not need to match these budgets dollar for dollar.  As much as 70 percent of welfare budgets has been eaten up by bureaucracy.  Moreover, government programs are far more easily abused, and the money they dispense more readily becomes a destructive habit, than with more local or private forms of assistance. 

Why would we expect a system based on legal plunder, as ours is, to be a net benefit to the poor or middle class, in whose name so many government schemes are enacted?  Every one of the special benefits, on behalf of which hundreds of millions of dollars are expended on lobbyists every year, makes goods more expensive, companies less efficient and competitive, and the economy more sluggish.  Given that the politically influential and well connected- neither of which includes the middle class or the poor- are the ones who tend to win privileges and loot from government, I do not understand why we take for granted that the net result of all this looting is good for those who are lower on the economic ladder.  And when the loot is paid for by printing more money and causing inflation, which (as I show in the chapter on money) disproportionately harms the most vulnerable, the suggestions that the least prosperous are helped by all this intervention collapses into outright farce." -Pages 75 & 76 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Take arts funding, for example."

"Take arts funding, for example. Some Americans appear to believe that there would be no arts in America if it were not for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), an institution created in 1965.  They cannot imagine things being done any other way, even though they were done another way throughout our country's existence, and throughout most of mankind's history.  While the government requested $121 million for the NEA in 2006, private donations to the arts totaled $2.5 billion that year, dwarfing the NEA budget.  The NEA represents a tiny fraction of all arts funding, a fact few Americans realize.  Freedom works after all." -Page 75 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Once our government does become involved in something...."

"Once our government does become involved in something, intellectual and institutional inertia tends to keep it there for good.  People lose their political imagination.  It becomes impossible to conceive of dealing with the matter in any other way. Repealing the new bureaucracy becomes unthinkable.  Mythology about how terrible things were in the old days becomes the conventional wisdom." -Page 74 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"If we believe in liberty, we must also remember what..."

"If we believe in liberty, we must also remember what William Graham Sumner called "the forgotten man."  The forgotten man is the one whose labor is exploited in order to benefit whatever political cause catches the government's fancy." -Page 73 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Economic freedom is based on a simple moral rule..."

"Economic freedom is based on a simple moral rule: everyone has a right to his or her life and property, and no one has the right to deprive anyone of these things.

To some extent, everyone accepts this principle. For instance, anyone going to his neighbor's home an taking his money at gunpoint, regardless of all the wonderful, selfless things he promised to do with it, would be promptly arrested as a thief.

But for some reason it is considered morally acceptable when government does that very thing. We have allowed government to operate according to its own set of moral rules. Frederic Bastiat, one of the great political and economic writers of all time, called this "legal plunder."

Bastiat identified three approaches we could take to such plunder:

1) The few plunder the many.
2) Everybody plunders everybody.
3) Nobody plunders anybody.

We presently follow option number two: everyone seeks to use government to enrich himself at his neighbor's expense. That's why Bastiat called the state "the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

Now here's a radical idea: what if we pursued option number three and decided to stop robbing one another? What if we decided that there was a better, more humane way for people to interact with each other? What if we stopped doing things we would consider morally outrageous if done by private individuals but that we consider perfectly all right when carried out by government in the name of "public policy"? -Page 69 & 70 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

Ron Paul & Gary Johnson- Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Nuke?

I think this is a great video that is right on the money.

Ron Paul speech at Palmetto Freedom Forum 9/5/2011

"To be sure, the U.S. Constitution is not perfect. "

"To be sure, the U.S. Constitution is not perfect.  Few human contrivances are.  But it is a pretty good one, I think, and it defines and limits the scope of the government.  When we get into the habit of disregarding it or - what is the same thing - interpreting certain key phrases so broadly as to allow the federal government to do whatever it wants, we do so at our own peril.  We will wind up with a situation like the one we face right now, that few Americans are happy with.

I do not believe that most Americans want to continue down this path:  undeclared wars without end, more and more police-state measures, and a Constitution that may as well not exist.  But this is not a fated existence.  We do not have to live in this kind of America.  It is not too late to rally and recall our people to the Constitution, the rule of law, and our traditional American republic."  -Page 67 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"We should not think in terms of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and other such groups...."

"We should not think in terms of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and other such groups.  That kind of thinking only divides us.  The only us-versus-them thinking in which we might indulge is the people - all the people - versus the government, which loots and lies to us all, threatens our liberties, and shreds our Constitution.  That's not a white or black issue.  That's an American issue, and it's one on which Americans of all races can unite in a spirit of goodwill."  -Page 66 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Some people claim that the doctrine of states' rights..."

"Some people claim that the doctrine of states' rights, one of Thomas Jefferson's central principles, has been responsible for racism.  But racism, a disorder of the heart, can become trenched in any political environment, whether highly centralized like Hitler's Germany or highly decentralized like our own country.  In Mein Kampf, Hitler spoke with delight of the process by which governments around the world were becoming more centralized, with states and local governments having less and less power.  It was a trend  he wanted to see continue in Germany, in order to build "a powerful national Reich" in which the central government could impose its will without having to worry about recalcitrant states.  Hitler wrote:  "National Socialism as a matter of principle, must lay claim to the right to force its principles on the whole German nation without consideration of previous federated state boundaries, and to educate in its ideas and conceptions.  Just as the churches do not feel bound and limited by political boundaries, no more does the National Socialist idea feel limited by the individual state territories of our fatherland.  The National Socialist doctrine is not the servant of individual federated states, but shall some day become the master of the German nation."

No form of political organization, therefore is immune to cruel abuses like the Jim Crow laws, whereby government sets out to legislate on how groups of human beings are allowed to interact with one another.  Peaceful civil disobedience to unjust laws, which I support with every fiber of my being, can sometimes be necessary at any level of government.  It falls upon the people, in the last resort, to stand against injustice no matter where it occurs.

In the long run, the only way racism can be overcome is through the philosophy of individualism, which I have promoted throughout my life.  Our rights come to us not because we belong to some group, but our rights come to us as individuals.  And it is as individuals that we should judge one another.  Racism is a particularly odious form of collectivism whereby individuals are treated not on their merits but on the basis of group identity.  Nothing in my political philosophy, which is the exact opposite of the racial totalitarianism of the twentieth century, gives aid or comfort to such thinking.  To the contrary, my philosophy of individualism is the most radical intellectual challenge to racism ever posed." Pages 63 & 64 of The Revolution, A Manifesto