I will give LRC readers a taste of John’s thinking. I will provide some of John’s responses to a recent speech by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands.

The 17-minute speech of the king is in Dutch. It was written by the Prime Minister of the government, Mark Rutte.

There is no complete translation yet, but we know of one important theme. The government can no longer support the welfare state:

“The shift to a ‘participation society’ is especially visible in social security and long-term care. The classic welfare state of the second half of the 20th century in these areas in particular brought forth arrangements that are unsustainable in their current form.”

For anyone who cares to read the entire speech, “google translate” provides an excellent approximation. The national government has been cutting back on the welfare state for some time, and now it’s going to decentralize it to municipalities.

The details are of no great interest, because there is and can be no recognition of the failure of the domestically hegemonic state in a speech written by a government official who proposes only to alter the form of the state. There can be no philosophical recognition in such a speech of the inherent opposition of the state to the natural right of freedom.

A correspondent of John’s informed him of this speech by sending him an e-mail with the news article linked above. Here is John’s e-mail response.

I’ve corresponded with John for 8 years, and I can say that what you will read is typical of his unwavering spirit and clarity of purpose.

Dear Peter,

Thanks for pointing out that declaration but there seems to be no sense behind it but merely ignorance and despair and a condition close to bankruptcy.

Neither the king nor his advisors or the ministry under him and the parliament know what they ought to do.

They only know that they cannot endlessly raise and increase taxes, borrow money and inflate the currency and then spend, spend, spend.

But they do not have to know and act rightfully and sensibly themselves and immediately.

It would suffice if they simply got out of the way of those, relatively few, who do know what needs to be done or believe that they do.

Leonard E. Read said it in all too general and few words, without setting out all the practical implications: “Release all creative energies!”

That would mean allowing all kinds of dissenters to secede and do their own things, under full exterritorial autonomy or personal law, ignoring especially all interventionist and anti-economic laws.

Conceding their former subjects full freedom of contract, association and experimentation.

Including e.g. full monetary and financial freedom and free trade.

No more central banking monopoly and regulations.

No more taxation, not for any of the secessionists.

Full laissez faire options for them in economics, politics and social arrangements.

Then at least some of the Dutch people would know what to do and would do it fast, honestly and profitably.

Tax abolition alone would do a lot for them.

So would an end of inflation, through full monetary freedom.

So would fully free trade for those, who desire it.

Sure, some flawed and even crackpot experiments would also be tried – by their believers and at their expense and risk.

But they would tend to fail, mostly rather fast.

The few, who would immediately do the right things among themselves, would be rapidly successful and then their successful methods would be widely copied by more and more people, until almost all have adopted them.

The only thing to remain forbidden are interferences with the voluntary and self-responsible actions of any group, under any pretence.

The right to succeed through one’s own honest and productive efforts should be completely unrestricted.

So should be the right to fail through flawed actions, always at one’s own expense and risk.

Thus not only would the members of the first kind of groups become better off but the members of the second group would become even poorer.

That should start them to rethink their actions and choices, their ideas, beliefs and convictions rather fast.

That thinking would be greatly helped by merely observing how the successful groups managed to become successful.

I believe that under these conditions most Dutch people would change over to better and even the best systems on offer and also already practically demonstrated – rather fast.

Even now, most Australians and working people in other countries do frequently change their suppliers, if they see better offers and also their jobs, if they see better jobs or better paid once.

No great intelligence and knowledge is required to make these changes. They are done daily, by many.

The “lawless” and suddenly legalised and self-chosen changes can come rather fast, as they did e.g with the end of the Berlin Wall and also, before that, with the ending of price controls, delivery quotas and rationing and a new and better currency in Germany back in 1948.

Money was still a governmental monopoly but for at least for a few years it was no longer fast inflated and for some years not at all.

Before that change the shop windows were rather empty. After it, they were suddenly  full with displays of goods offered at market prices.

The improvement would have been as fast but would have gone further with the ending of compulsory taxation and of monetary despotism and of xyz other wrongful economic restrictions, which did remain.

Yes, those who wished to drop out of the constitutional monarchy should also be free to do so.

The various state socialist and communist sects should also have been allowed to do their things – to themselves, at their own expense and risk. They would thus make themselves rapidly ridiculous.

The only “sacrifices” required would be wrongful and irrational laws and institutions and flawed opinions on economic, political and social matters.

All would get their maximum chance under optimal conditions, with unanimous voluntary support in the beginning.

But with secession from these experiments also being quite free, the number of volunteers for the flawed systems would tend to shrink fast.

What works well or well enough would be rapidly demonstrated.

So would everything that does not work well enough or even badly.

Even dumb people can recognise bargains and can copy successful systems which they have under close observation, almost next door.

“Spying” on the successful neighbours would be helpful to all. It would even be invited.

The volunteers in the xyz experiments would wish maximum publicity for their efforts, at least as long as they still believe that they will be successful.

Productivity, employment and exchange would rapidly rise.

My younger granddaughter understood at least one of the libertarian slogans from my collection, printed it out in large fat letters and encased it in plastic and made a present of it to me:

“Can a people tax themselves into prosperity? Can a man standing in a bucket lift himself up by the handle?”

She has certainly not yet studied economics but has common sense and is a good observer.

All that is needed is setting people free to do their things for or to themselves.

That will force them to make quickly many choices and among them more and more correct ones, those, which do pay them sufficiently or much for their offers – and this untaxed and in competing sound currencies or clearing certificates or clearing account credits.

Let all of them be set free to practise sound freedom principles immediately or to learn about them by their own experiences and by observing the free and successful actions of the first freedom pioneers.

The whole could be advanced as “fools’ liberty” or as a new game, adventure or competition for volunteers freely acting out their own notions and ideas, together with likeminded people and without any compulsory participation, subjugation or tribute levies or subsidies.

This new “game” could be played in good humour, tolerantly, pleasantly and without any heated arguments.

But it could also lead to extensive betting on which system would be most successful and this soonest.

Until the successes are understood, widely copied and finally taken for granted, it would be a new and adventurous as well as challenging game, perhaps more attractive for a while than soccer, tennis or cricket games.

For the failures there would still be some charitable actions required and, most likely also offered.

That would be more assured if all these aids were given only as personal loans, to be repaid, gradually, with interest, once the failures have adopted one of the successful systems.

Any continued failures should certainly not be subsidised by anyone but the remaining believers in the failing systems.

A whole population will not learn a new lesson or be ready to undertake a new experiment. But individuals and small groups can and will, especially if it merely means applying what they do already believe in. Let them act as scouts for the masses to follow, sooner or later, at their own speed.

How does nature gradually change whole species? By single mutations being given their chance.

PIOT, John

That ends this particular e-mail of John’s. PIOT means panarchy in our time. That is what John calls for when he writes “That would mean allowing all kinds of dissenters to secede and do their own things, under full exterritorial autonomy or personal law, ignoring especially all interventionist and anti-economic laws.”

If there is a rule or a legal proclamation that states have made against chemical weapons, that is one thing. Such a rule if disobeyed is subject to punishments. That is how states ordinarily behave within their own notions of legality (to be distinguished sharply, I might add, from the natural law and justice advocated by libertarians). Obama is going way beyond this state-devised legal framework when he advocates punishments based on norms, not legal rules or what is called “international law”. A norm has no sanctions attached to it. Breaking it may be thought wrong by those who believe in the norm. The norm is a moral, not a legal, standard. If Syria is bombed by other states because it has broken a moral, not a legal standard, then this means that these bombing states have assumed a moral authority that they will enforce with arms. This is totalitarian. It means that they do not even have to pass one of their so-called “laws”, which are already from the libertarian standpoint not justified and not real laws anyway. It means an even flimsier excuse for applying force, and an excuse that can be spun in any number of directions and alter with the peculiar moral fashions of the times, the places and the rulers. What state cannot easily generate many such moral excuses for intervening in the affairs of others states and nations?

Obama said that he was anxious to preserve this norm as a protection of U.S. national security and would intervene unilaterally. I am saying that his posture and the like posture of any state or organization that is advocating violence on the basis of a norm-violation is that of a totalitarian. It goes beyond even the legal frameworks within which states currently operate. The men and women of power who operate states have already sought to bury natural law in the deepest of pits, never to hear from it again. Impossible as it is to bury the natural law that applies to human beings, this attempted burial has succeeded only in bringing chaos and destruction to the world, as the 20th century demonstrates. Now Obama, the head of the most powerful government of this unfree country, threatens to exercise power based not even on legal rules, but on norms. Is not the totalitarian character of this claim of his clearly evident? Establishing such a precedent can only generate even more chaos than is already present among states that claim powers to make just about any legal ruling they please.

To withdraw consent is far-reaching. It means a divorce from the state insofar as this is possible. It means having no loyalty to the state, seeing the state as fundamentally unfair and a source of continual injustices, being unwilling to help the state in any way, assuming and feeling no responsibility for the state’s actions, and seeing the state as hostile to peace and society. It means not participating in its rituals and having no appreciation of its symbols or myths. It means a psychological divorce from feeling positive about or approving of its victories. It means working toward the state’s opposite, that is, living together in freedom, friendship, comity and peace, i.e., in society. It means no longer thinking of oneself as a citizen, and not believing that as a citizen one has obligations toward the state or other citizens.

Withdrawing consent from the state means not looking upon oneself as owning the state or influencing its activities or doing a sort of duty for the state. It means viewing the state as a nuisance. It means abandoning all forms of patriotism directed at the state and adherence to its symbols, parades, flags, pledges, songs, anthems and monuments. It means no veneration of any political figure, past, present or future. It means no veneration of the Constitution. It means as much as possible avoiding all interactions with government.

Withdrawing consent does not mean being anti-social. Just the opposite. Going toward a natural order and society of life, freedom and property is the natural law alternative to the state and its artificial legalistic order.

Withdrawing consent can go much deeper than these changes. It can mean seeking out the underground economy, homeschooling, leaving the country, and avoiding the mainstream media interpretations.

Withdrawing consent is actually a creative challenge, to be met by many and varied individual techniques. It might be that a person boycotts movies that glorify the military. It surely means not supporting the troops and not pasting decals to that effect on one’s car. It might mean educating others or counseling young men and women not to join the military and not to seek government jobs. The scope for withdrawing consent is broad. I cannot possibly say what all it involves. What works for me is surely very different from what works for others, and what I am saying here is no blueprint for sure. Just because I don’t organize or attend protests or go on hunger strikes doesn’t mean that others shouldn’t do this or that I disapprove. I don’t participate in any political parties or vote, but neither do I get bent out of shape if others do. To the contrary, God moves in mysterious ways and we never know what series of events may trigger important changes. I am only suggesting that withdrawing consent is actually a much more important thing than what it sounds on the surface.

For me personally, withdrawing consent does not mean being angry at the state, hating it or turning to violence. I have never liked feeling either anger or hatred, and I try to eliminate them. I do not go around confronting state people intentionally or showing hostility to them. I feel that the state is winning if it “gets” to me. I pay my taxes and register my car. I have no inclinations to use violence whatsoever to the state or state people.

I have the faith that the natural order of life, freedom and property is going to prevail eventually without using violence and that the state will some day be viewed as a perverse aberration based on false ideas. I believe that as time goes on, even if takes a few hundred years, the falsity of the basic ideas underlying the state will become so clear to most people that they will look upon this era as mad and uncivilized. The ways by which freedom will win are way beyond my powers to know. The important thing is to get the tide flowing toward justice and away from the state, and that people have a clear understanding of what this means and why they should move in that direction.

Not one of the arguments that attempts to show that the U.S. has a right to bomb Syria holds up upon examination. The preemptive or preventive idea has reappeared. This idea is that if there is a threat to U.S. national security (or interests), the U.S. has a right to remove that threat before it becomes a reality. That argument is an argument for self-defense. It is valid only if the threat is tangible and imminent. In this case, there is no tangible or imminent threat that the Syria government can or will unleash chemical weapons on America, American embassies or American forces. There is no intelligence to that effect. Moreover, the Syrian government has made no such threats.

The pro-bombing advocates argue that they do not want chemical weapons to fall into the hands of anti-American forces other than Syrians. There is also no direct, tangible and imminent threat of an attack from this source. This possibility is a threat of a threat. Only if the weapons first fell into hostile hands might they then possibly become a threat. This argument is twice-removed from being an actual threat and being an actual candidate for a rightful self-defense.

An argument is being made that the credibility of the U.S. government is at stake, and that it needs to follow through on the red line threats issued by the government. But if the U.S. has been so foolish as to make threats that might diminish its credibility and harm its capacity for self-defense, it does not follow that it has now gained the privilege or right of making good on its threats. One’s mistakes or threats do not generate rights and privileges. If man U threatens to kill man S if man S flirts with man U’s wife, man U doesn’t gain the right to kill man S if man S calls man U’s bluff and winks at man U’s wife.

A second explanation is the hypothesis of Paul Craig Roberts: “Perhaps the purpose of the wars is to radicalize Muslims and, thereby, destabilize Russia and even China.”

A third reason is held by many, including both Greaves and Roberts, which is that destabilizing Syria allows Israel to achieve its aims.

Fourth, for both the U.S. and Israel, this is a means to undercut Hezbollah, which is sponsored by Iran.

Fifth, the neocon agenda long ago was to roll up the “axis of evil”, including Iran and its ally Syria. Their agenda is world domination by the sole surviving superpower.

Sixth, the military-industrial complex and its lobbies on the Hill thrive on the profits, the work of war, the advancements, and the demand for their services that instability brings. The DHS thrives on an atmopshere of war and fear. Members of Congress thrive on making speeches about promoting rights and democracy, even though they are promoting war, instability, refugees and death. The State Department appears to have abandoned diplomacy and become subservient to the neocon influences.

Seventh, the U.S. has a ready-made pro-war interest group in many churches.

Eighth, important leaders and politicians believe their own rhetoric about spreading democracy, being anti-dictators, building progressive states, and eliminating certain kinds of weapons. These beliefs accord with being anti-Second Amendment. They are parts of the ideology of “liberalism”, which arose as classical liberalism faded out and was replaced by its opposite of nationalism, expansionism and progressivism.

How can the U.S. and its NATO allies can get away with these policies? What are the long-term effects of these policies? Those are separate and important questions too.

One sign is that the GWOT is 12 years old. The U.S. hasn’t licked terror yet.

What else?

Iraq is a total fiasco for the U.S. and a disaster for Iraqis. The U.S. invasion produced a civil war, then a weak government, new insurgencies and a base for al Qaeda operations. Today and every day, dozens and dozens of Iraqis are still being killed and wounded

The U.S. still hasn’t “won” in Afghanistan, no matter how you define winning. Another weak and corrupt government was put in. The Taliban is alive and kicking. So is al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda affiliates have appeared. Affiliates are new recruits in a network of sub-organizations.

Jihadist insurgents moved into Pakistan, destabilizing that country.

Al Qaeda remains in Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Spain, Germany, China, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Al Qaeda has grown in Yemen where the U.S. now has operations.

The U.S. and NATO attacked Libya and removed Gaddafi. Libya became unstable. Militias proliferated and al Qaeda’s presence multiplied.

Al Qaeda (affiliates included) is pushing into new areas in North and West Africa. They operate from Somalia, Kenya, Libya and Algeria. Al Qaeda has affiliates in Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.

The U.S. and its allies decided to remove Syria’s president and support rebels against him. They stoked a war that is ongoing. Al Qaeda and affiliates have benefited. They have infiltrated Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, as they have in Lebanon.

The Syrian war has destabilized the neighboring countries of Lebanon and Iraq, and also affected Turkey and Jordan.

Fearful of attacks by al Qaeda, the U.S. recently closed 21 embassies and consulates for a period. They are in some countries already mentioned (Mauritania, Algeria, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.) In addition, they include Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, U.A.E., Bahrain, Oman, Djibouti and Bangladesh.

The U.S. attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan helped al Qaeda operations and recruiting, more than offsetting the killing of al Qaeda members. U.S. operations and policies in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Syria have done the same.

The U.S. military and the CIA are good at deposing dictators and wrecking countries. They are bad at defeating an operation like al Qaeda. Their incompetence is matched only by that of the government that has set the war policies and determined grand strategy.

How’s the GWOT going in America? Americans are the losers. The cost of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $4 trillion.

Civil liberties have been curtailed. Police have been militarized. Privacy has deteriorated. A police state apparatus has been installed. Economic progress has vanished.

Meanwhile the government continues to look for new fields of conquest, such as Iran.

Obama has said “…we know a price must be paid for freedom.” Americans have paid the price for the GWOT and gotten less freedom. If there is a positive connection between the GWOT and freedom of Americans, it remains to be demonstrated. The connection appears to be inverse or perverse, if you will.

Obama said “Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror,’ but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.”

Obama has retired the phrase “global war on terror” (GWOT). He has replaced it with a “series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists”.

The GWOT goes on. The methods are changing. Obama is moving away from conventional war. He favors surgical drone strikes, only they are not so surgical.

The global aspect is not changing. Just the opposite. The U.S. is involved with counterterrorism in more countries than ever.

The two main reasons why al Qaeda formed are (1) the U.S. support of Israel and Israel’s anti-Palestinian policies, and (2) the introduction of U.S. military forces in Islamic countries.

The U.S. has confirmed and strengthened those reasons during the GWOT, under both Bush and Obama. The GWOT itself has helped al Qaeda affiliates form and spread.

America’s terrorism problem will remain chronic unless these two basic issues are addressed.

Being pro-liberty, I am pro-free speech. I think that liberty and being able to speak freely are part of what being a human being means. In addition, I think that free speech enhances human life. Favoring the human being, human life and its development, I favor free speech. This does not mean that I like or approve of everything that anyone says. I don’t, most assuredly. It doesn’t mean that groups of people may not voluntarily suppress free speech among themselves. Favoring free speech implies that I do not believe in forcibly curtailing speech.

If we wish, we can discuss free speech without reference to the U.S. constitution. The idea of free speech doesn’t depend on a constitution, but because the government is suppressing free speech and claiming that it is doing so legally, I am going to discuss some specific court cases that reference the Constitution.

Being pro-liberty, I am not in favor of a system that centralizes law-making in one man or a few men as the U.S. system under the Constitution does. What if they make bad laws? What if the system provides no effective means to alter those laws? What if the system actively suppresses and undermines the available means to alter those laws? What if great distress has to be endured for many years before laws are altered?

But in this article, I postpone speaking with my Spoonerite anti-Constitution hat on until the end. I mainly wish to explore how it is that the Supreme Court is undermining free speech under the cover of its claim to be the final arbiter of what U.S. law says. However, implicitly I am raising the question of what good a Constitution is under which rights written down in black and white can be effectively destroyed by the Supreme Court.

After the U.S. constitution went into effect in 1789, it was amended in 1791. The First Amendment concerned certain freedoms, including free speech.

Has the U.S. government subverted the First Amendment? It has and it is.

What does this amendment state? It reads in full:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The amendment is clearly, unambiguously and strongly expressed. Justice Hugo Black has written of its “emphatic command”. It leaves no room for doubt. Congress does not have the power to make a law that abridges freedom of speech. This means in any way. It means under any circumstances. In addition, the amendment says that Congress has no power under the Constitution to make a law abridging freedom of the press. There is to be free speech for any person whom the Constitution claims to subject to its law and this includes members of the press. This article doesn’t deal with the recent attacks on freedom of the press.

Supreme Court decisions sometimes contain pro-free speech language. At other times, the decisions are anti-free speech. There is a history of First Amendment decisions. Reviewing them all is beyond the scope of this article. I propose to look at a few cases in order to show that in recent years the Supreme Court is undermining free speech.

As an example of a pro-free speech opinion, we have Justice Black in 1971 (New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713). This is the Pentagon Papers case. The U.S. government classifies documents. Among them was a study of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, 1945 to 1967. Daniel Ellsberg photocopied the study and gave 43 volumes of it to the New York Times, which began publishing it in 1971. According to the linked Wikipedia article:

“Later, Ellsberg said the documents ‘demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates’. He added that he leaked the Papers to end what he perceived to be ‘a wrongful war.’”

Although the Nixon administration might have decided to prosecute Ellsberg and the Times under the Espionage Act of 1917, it chose not to. Instead it “obtained a federal court injunction forcing the Times to cease publication after three articles.” The case ended up in the Supreme Court, which ruled 6-3 in favor of the Times. Black defended the First Amendment vigorously:

“In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.”

Then, as now, the government argued that other parts of the Constitution allowed the government to suppress free speech. The Solicitor General of the U.S. said the following:

“Now, Mr. Justice [BLACK], your construction of . . . [the First Amendment] is well known, and I certainly respect it. You say that no law means no law, and that should be obvious. I can only say, Mr. Justice, that to me it is equally obvious that ‘no law’ does not mean ‘no law,’ and I would seek to persuade the Court that that is true. . . . [T]here are other parts of the Constitution that grant powers and responsibilities to the Executive, and . . . the First Amendment was not intended to make it impossible for the Executive to function or to protect the security of the United States.”

The government’s brief contained this language:

“[t]he authority of the Executive Department to protect the nation against publication of information whose disclosure would endanger the national security stems from two interrelated sources: the constitutional power of the President over the conduct of foreign affairs and his authority as Commander-in-Chief.”

This is the “inherent power” doctrine. What it amounts to is saying that just as Congress can enact any law that is “necessary and proper” to pursuing its powers, so the Executive can take any action necessary and proper to carrying out his constitutional duties. Black demolished this argument as follows:

“In other words, we are asked to hold that, despite the First Amendment’s emphatic command, the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws enjoining publication of current news and abridging freedom of the press in the name of ‘national security.’ The Government does not even attempt to rely on any act of Congress. Instead, it makes the bold and dangerously far-reaching contention that the courts should take it upon themselves to ‘make’ a law abridging freedom of the press in the name of equity, presidential power and national security, even when the representatives of the people in Congress have adhered to the command of the First Amendment and refused to make such a law.”

He added

“To find that the President has ‘inherent power’ to halt the publication of news by resort to the courts would wipe out the First Amendment and destroy the fundamental liberty and security of the very people the Government hopes to make ‘secure.’”

He criticized the government’s reliance on “national security” as well as the government’s keeping of “military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government”:

“The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic.”

Justice Black cited an earlier case (De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U. S. 353) in which “the Court held a man could not be punished for attending a meeting run by Communists.” I will shortly cite a case decided in 2010 in which the Court reached the opposite conclusion, thereby subverting the First Amendment. Black cited the language of Chief Justice Hughes in that case:

“The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government.”

If the current U.S. government believed in and supported the First Amendment, if Obama, Holder, and various senators and congressmen actually believed in free speech and freedom of the press, and if they believed in what Black and Hughes wrote, they would be leaving Assange, Manning, Snowden and other whistleblowers alone, not accusing them, pursuing them, trying to or actually imprisoning them, while threatening and pressuring other governments over them. These men would not be in fear of their lives. Instead, important and leading men and women in the U.S. government are busy attacking the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court in recent years is issuing decisions that are destroying free speech. In 2006, the Court handed down Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410. The decision was a close one, 5-4. The Wikipedia article on this case is a helpful summary.

Ceballos was a deputy district attorney who was a kind of whistleblower. He found “serious misrepresentations” in a deputy sheriff’s sworn affidavit. Ceballos remonstrated with his superiors and sent them a memorandum. Later, Ceballos alleged that he became the subject of retaliatory actions by his superiors. They denied this, but they also claimed that he had no First Amendment right of free speech in his memo. The first result was against Ceballos:

“The District Court granted their [the superiors’] motion for summary judgment, concluding that because Ceballos wrote his memo pursuant to the duties of his employment, he was not entitled to First Amendment protection for the memo’s contents.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the District Court decision “holding that his criticism of the warrant in the memo constituted protected speech under the First Amendment.” Its reasoning was not that of Justice Black. Had they followed Black, they would simply have said that as a citizen Ceballos had a First Amendment right to free speech. No abridgment of it was possible for any reason, and that’s the supreme law of the land. Instead, the Court of Appeals relied upon a series of First Amendment cases decided by the Supreme Court concerning the speech rights of public employees. In these cases, we witness already Supreme Court decisions that undermine the First Amendment, i.e., destroy the right of free speech. The cases begin with Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968). Another one is Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138. The Wikipedia article on Connick v. Myers is informative.

The manner in which the Court destroys free speech in these cases is to subject the speech of public employees to tests. These tests “balance” speech against other matters of “public concern”. They qualify speech. They restrict speech. Unless it passes certain criteria, the speech of public employees can be suppressed by the government and become of no account. The public employees are denied their rights as citizens. Since the First Amendment makes no such division of the citizenry according to their employers, the Court’s constitutional reasoning is evidently flawed at the root.

The Ceballos case then went to the Supreme Court. It held

“When public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, they are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.”

I quote the Wikipedia article on the impact of this case:

“The outcry among whistle-blower advocates and First Amendment advocates was particularly extensive. Whistleblower lawyer Stephen M. Kohn called the ruling ‘the single biggest setback for whistleblowers in the courts in the past 25 years.’ Under the ruling, Kohn says, public employees—all 22 million of them—have no First Amendment rights when they are acting in an official capacity, and in many cases are not protected against retaliation. Kohn estimates that ‘no less than 90 percent of all whistleblowers will lose their cases on the basis of this decision.’”

The second case I bring up that is even more clearly anti-free speech is Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 130 S. Ct. 2705 (2010). This was a 6-3 decision. The Wikipedia article contains some interesting reactions from a range of persons who are critical of the decision, from Jimmy Carter to Noam Chomsky..

Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. brought this case against Humanitarian Law Project. Counsel for Humanitarian Law Project was David Cole, a Professor at Georgetown Law School. He explains his side of the case in an article.

The law at issue is that portion of the Patriot Act in which a crime is created consisting of providing “material support” to organizations that the government has designated as “foreign terrorist organizations.” According to Cole,

“The particular speech in question in Humanitarian Law Project advocated only nonviolent, lawful ends; the plaintiffs principally sought to advocate for human rights and peace to and with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish organization in Turkey that the Secretary of State had designated as a ‘foreign terrorist organization.’ They did not intend to further the organization’s illegal ends; indeed, they sought to dissuade it from violence, and to urge it to pursue lawful ends through peaceful means. Yet the Court held, by a vote of 6-3, that the First Amendment permitted criminal prosecution of such speech.”

He wrote that “For the first time in its history, the Court upheld the criminalization of speech advocating only nonviolent, lawful ends on the ground that such speech might unintentionally assist a third party in criminal wrongdoing.”

The opinion written by Justice Roberts for the majority confirms Cole. Roberts writes

“Most of the activities in which plaintiffs seek to engage readily fall within the scope of the terms ‘training’ and ‘expert advice or assistance.’ Plaintiffs want to ‘train members of [the] PKK on how to use humanitarian and international law to peacefully resolve disputes,’ and ‘teach PKK members how to petition various representative bodies such as the United Nations for relief.’”

Roberts openly writes about the free speech prohibition:

“Plaintiffs want to speak to the PKK and the LTTE, and whether they may do so under § 2339B depends on what they say. If plaintiffs’ speech to those groups imparts a ‘specific skill’ or communicates advice derived from ‘specialized knowledge’—for example, training on the use of international law or advice on petitioning the United Nations—then it is barred.”

In other words, Congress can constitutionally pass a law that abridges free speech and the Patriot Act is such a law.

Cole points out the “grave repercussions” of this decision:

“Most immediately, nongovernmental organizations working to resolve conflict or to provide humanitarian assistance may well be unable to operate where designated ‘terrorist organizations’ are involved, because any advice or assistance they provide could be criminally prohibited. Under this law, for example, when the Carter Center, run by former President Jimmy Carter, monitored elections in Lebanon in 2009, and met with Hezbollah, one of the parties to the contest, to explain what the monitors would look for in a free and fair election, it committed a crime by providing ‘expert advice,’ a form of ‘material support,’ to a designated terrorist organization. And when former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Homeland Security advisor Fran Townsend, and former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge recently advocated for de-listing a designated terrorist group from Iran in coordination with a leader of the group, they too committed the federal felony of providing ‘material support’ in the form of ‘services’ to the organization.”

Let me now put on my anti-government and anti-Constitution Spoonerite hat. We are seeing tyranny and usurpation under the Constitution. Word by word, case by case, law by law, the Congress and the Supreme Court are overthrowing the First Amendment (and others).

There is no stability of law as the government now operates. Any freedom can be attacked.

The idea that there has to be a final arbiter of law, such as the Supreme Court, is flawed. There is now such an arbiter and the result is a government monopoly on law and instability. The government’s monopoly on law is the father of tyranny.

The Constitution has provided no barrier to the anti-liberty movement. In 1870 in No Treason, Lysander Spooner put it succinctly:

“The Constitution has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it.”

This is as true today as it was then.

Spooner was thinking of the Civil War immediately past in which the federal government had gone way out of bounds, inflicting much misery on Americans. This record of improper government growth accompanied by immiseration has been repeated and amplified in
the intervening 143 years.

We are seeing free speech and freedom of the press under attack. I have not discussed the latter in this article.

Either the Constitution did not place in the hands of the people the means to prevent these and other attacks, or it did not construct a government whose internal arrangements prevented this; or else the Constitution authorized these attacks. These three possibilities are not mutually exclusive. All can be and are operative.

They all lead to the same conclusion, which is that the Constitution and the State that it created have failed to secure the peace, keep the People free and encourage the growth of their prosperity.

I speak specifically of Biagio Bossone and Richard Wood. They have penned an article that more than amply wins them the prize of monetary crank of the year. Unlike lay populist-inflationists who are commoners lacking in economics education, these two gentlemen have no such excuse. Both are professional economists who have been and still are very deeply involved with governments and government institutions.

Bossone and Wood are very dangerous men. Their ruinously inflationary ideas, if adopted, will destroy the economies that they think will be saved. The lofty positions they have held in such institutions as the World Bank, the IMF, the OECD, the Paris Club, and the Australian Treasury make them all the more dangerous. But what makes them most dangerous is their ability to make their proposals sound logical, necessary and effective. They are persuasive to the kinds of officials and politicians who respect statist credentials and who are looking for a magical solution to what they view as “problems”. We are living in such a topsy-turvy world of ignorance married to power that the most incredibly stupid policies can be recommended and adopted. Shallow, impatient and ignorant politicians possessed of an agenda and biases listen to a brain trust, as in the classic case of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They then proceed to inflict terrible policies upon a nation.

Bossone and Wood have a ready recipe for ruining the market economy of any country. The name of it is – MONETARY INFLATION. But they do not call it by that name. We already have one new name for inflation of the monetary base, and that is QE (quantitative easing), and now we have another, thanks to them. It’s OMF or overt money financing. There is an important institutional difference in QE and OMF, the result of which is that the price inflation under OMF is worse than under QE.

The word inflation appears once in the cited article, and it is to assure readers that the QE policies so far have not triggered something called “demand-pull inflation”. Forget the adjective demand-pull. They are wrong about inflation, in the monetary aggregates (like the monetary base and  money supply), in asset prices, in commodity prices and in retail goods and services.

In the U.S., for example, food prices are rising at over a 4 percent rate. Salmon prices are up 40 percent. Many prescription drug prices are rising 7-10 percent. U.S. home prices are up over 12 percent this year. In 2007, gasoline made a record high of $3.18. Crude oil was $65 a barrel. In 2008, gas fell to $2 and crude to the $40 area where it remained in 2009 until the FED launched its inflation known as QE. Gasoline in 2013 averages $3.55, above its previous record while crude oil is now about $105 a barrel. Bar soap, tuna fish, sardines and potato chips have all been downsized. Palm oil, a major component in commercial soaps, was $382.83 a metric ton in July of 2003. It has doubled to $763.04 as of June, 2013. That’s 7 percent a year, on average.

The government constantly adjusts consumer price indexes downwards, under the presumption that when prices rise, people substitute away from their preferred goods to cheaper goods. Yes, one can now read on forums that people decide to make their own soap and do their own auto repairs. This doesn’t negate the fact that prices have risen! It only means that the price index doesn’t measure the fact that prices have risen. The government can get away with murder in more ways than one.

It is misleading and outright wrong for Bossone and Wood to use technical jargon like “demand-pull” in describing inflation. A continuing rise in prices over many years, which is how inflation manifests itself, has its origin in one cause only and that is excessive money-printing. It is absolutely no accident that Americans are experiencing inflation right now at a high rate, once we observe that the FED’s policy has doubled a money supply measure like M1 in just 4 years. That’s a rate of 18 percent a year. Bossone and Wood want even more money growth than this. They think the central bank has been too stingy.

Bossone and Wood begin their effort in persuasion by observing “that current monetary and fiscal policies are misplaced and are largely impotent” at stimulating economic growth. I would say they are totally impotent. I would say that they are not only totally impotent, they cause the opposite to happen. They degrade economic growth. There are good reasons for this impotence, which is why their recommendation to change QE to OMF will fail and produce a result opposed to their hopes.

Bossone and Wood think that monetary and fiscal actions by the central bank and government can stimulate economic growth. They are wrong. There is no way in the world that monetary policy can stimulate growth because such growth comes not from “money”. There is more than an ample supply of money to conduct economic exchanges. As long as there are market prices, any supply will suffice; and certainly decades of rising prices attest to the fact that money growth has more than sufficed for the purpose of market transactions.

Growth comes from businesses that invest in profitable projects financed by real savings. It comes from capital accumulation, and that requires saving in an expectation of earning a return. To the extent that central bank and government policies are manipulating interest rates and influencing asset prices, they are discouraging saving and increasing the uncertainty of future returns. There is certainly no way that government can stimulate economic growth if, as it is doing, it borrows from banks, the central bank and the public, thereby either inflating the money supply or diverting savings from business enterprises, and then plows the money into non-productive projects like foreign wars and pseudo-education. Calling these “investments” doesn’t make them investments.

The delusion that central banks and governments can stimulate economic growth is at the heart of the Bossone and Wood argument. They think an economy is like a patient with a heart attack who requires stimulation or heart massage. In fact, an economy is more like a basically healthy person who has been battered and shackled by police.

Bossone and Wood drag in the canard of government austerity. To them there is government “austerity”. In April of this year, federal government expenditures are running at an annual rate of $3.82 trillion, just below a record $3.84 trillion one year earlier. Six years earlier, the rate was $2.92 trillion. An increase of 31 percent in 6 years or just over 5 percent a year can hardly be termed austerity.

Bossone and Wood think of the economy in misleading metaphorical terms that make the economy sound like a person who is a sick patient subject to inexorable diseases that require the interventions of physicians. They say that “recovery is failing to take hold” in the same way that a patient fails to recover after being given doses of medicine. Here the medicine is monetary and fiscal medicine or government doctoring. Some countries are “sliding deeper into depression.” This is like a patient sliding into a coma. What’s the disease? They say it’s “deflationary tendencies”. How wrong can these doctors of economics be when their thermometers cannot even measure prices? How wrong can they be when they assume that the patient’s temperature is the cause of the purported disease? How wrong can they be to think that a falling price level, if ever we were to observe such a phenomenon which we are not now observing and haven’t observed for decades, is a bad thing? Have consumers not benefitted tremendously from lower prices for information storage and manipulation?

Bossone and Wood are clueless men who nevertheless possess the power of intellectualizing their false ideas. This would not be a bad thing in a stateless world. In this world where governments have powers to enact their destructive policies, we get invasions of Iraq and invasions of market economies.

At least, the two do not hide what they want. They endorse an article by two other inflationists with the title “Helicopter money: or how I stopped worrying and love fiscal-monetary cooperation”. What Bossone and Wood advocate and dub OMF is the age-old fiat money inflation in which the government directly prints and distributes money. The central bank is bypassed. This is the same idea proposed by lawyer Ellen Hodgson Brown. What Bossone and Wood want is “for governments to legislate to enable the Ministry of Finance (not the independent central bank) to create new local legal tender currency to be used to finance budget deficits.” In the U.S., the Ministry of Finance is the Treasury Department.

At present, the central bank has a degree of separation from Congress in the control over the monetary base. This prevents Congress from issue after issue after issue of fiat money. Instead Congress has to borrow money, and borrowing entails subsequent taxation. This stems the money creation. Bossone and Wood propose to remove this institutional barrier. QE policies have already crossed this barrier to a large extent, but Congress built a new one by allowing the central bank to pay interest on bank reserves so as to prevent the conversion of the monetary base into money via bank loans to the public. OMF enables direct fiat money inflation.

Direct control over money has been tried before in this country, in fact, direct government issuance was tried many times by colonial governments. The money issues were called “bills of credit”. Unless the system had built in constraints, not usually the case, the issues far outran the capacities of the governments to collect taxes and to redeem the issues in gold coin, if they so promised. The result was ruinous inflation.

The U.S. Constitution closed the door on bills of credit and mandated silver and gold to be used by the governments, state and federal, as money. This mandate was breached during the Civil War but later repaired. However, the mandate for metallic money was fully erased in stages in the twentieth century, replacing metallic money with central bank money. Now Bossone and Wood are recommending another major step backwards, which is that the central bank money be replaced by government fiat money. It would be obtained by issuing non-marketable bonds to the central bank, which becomes a passive and empty player that ships the dollars or euros to the Treasury.

Bossone and Wood are politically naive. They mention constraints on fiat money issue. Using Italy as an example, they say that the fiat currency would be issued “to directly finance a budget deficit of predetermined magnitude.” The constraint is supposed to be that the budget deficit is “predetermined”. But how? What legislature operating in a democratic political system will not enlarge the budget indefinitely? How could such a predetermination ever occur except by constitutional amendment? How likely is that? What guarantee is there that such an amendment, even if adopted, would not later be altered or ignored?

Bossone and Wood also naively write of the government returning dollars or euros to the central bank to redeem these bonds: “At a later date, if and when appropriate, and after economic growth has provided a revenue dividend, these bonds could be redeemed.” How likely is that to happen? Even now, five years since the panic of 2008, the FED continues to buy $85 billion of mortgage and government bonds a month and constantly devises new excuses for doing so. What government would not have even more excuses not to redeem its modern bills of credit being dubbed OMF?

Bossone and Wood act as if markets do not exist. They act as if the government controls the economic decisions of billions of people, when the reality is that people have substantial power to make their own decisions. Faced with the proposed monetary system, their incentive is to insure themselves against the expected greater depreciation in the currency, which will be caused by even greater fiat money issues than is now the case. They will bid up prices as they attempt to rid themselves of the new money issues circulating in the economy. Price inflation will worsen. Asset price bubbles will occur. Uncertainty over monetary calculation will rise steeply, inhibiting economic growth. It is absolutely astonishing that Bossone and Woods never once mention these consequences of their recommendations even though they have been the ruinous results of such policies many times in the past and even in the recent past.

Every country should only be Zimbabwe, according to Bossone and Wood. Good luck with that.

Ending the Union will certainly not cure all of America’s ills, because they trace back to wrong and false ideas. These are like bad habits, genetic and environmental factors that cause cancer. If they are not changed, the cancer will come back. The search for non-destructive politics is as never-ending as the search for health and longevity.

The main reason why Americans should dissolve the Union is that it is a failed state. For those who believe in the efficacy and goodness of states, their most essential, central and important task is to keep the peace within their domain. This goal entails protecting the lives and property of the citizens under its protection, the people of the United States.

Perfection of the government at keeping the peace is not to be expected. A certain amount of failure of a state to keep the peace is normal and tolerable, but at some point when war becomes the norm or becomes so extensive, permanent and destructive that keeping the peace is all but forgotten or impossible to attain, we can safely declare that the state has failed. This has happened with the U.S.

It diverts us too greatly to recount in detail the history of the repeated failures of the U.S. government to keep the peace. The Civil War (1861-1865) was a notable failure, the end result of which was a Union no longer operating under any pretense of consent but instead at the point of a gun.

The Spanish-American War followed by the Philippine-American War set the U.S. on a path of empire, which necessarily could not be peaceful because it would involve Americans in global conflicts.

The next step was to abandon neutrality altogether, and that occurred when the U.S. entered World War I. The U.S. even invaded Russia in 1918.

In the early twentieth century, the U.S. began operating under the deeply flawed idea that keeping the peace within America could be and had to be accomplished by violent interventions in other countries. Peace through war, anywhere and everywhere that it seemed necessary and feasible, became U.S. doctrine. Making the world safe for democracy became the doctrine, with the emphasis being on the word “making”.

The American empire rested on a firm belief that good results could arise from high-level and centralized control. This control mentality saw nothing wrong with using force to achieve and maintain that control. The erroneous belief, held deeply by the U.S. government, was that power and control could mold societies, peoples, economies and governments into peaceful forms.

World War I plus the U.S. push into the Pacific and the Pacific Rim were major factors leading to U.S. participation in World War II, a huge failure to keep the peace. The Korean War was closely related.

The American war machine, the military-industrial complex, that was built up required oil, and the U.S. began to intervene in the Middle East.

Eventually the U.S. began to invade countries outright, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya.. It began to have military, training, arms and support operations in dozens of trouble spots, like Yemen and Syria.  Keeping the peace came to mean perpetual war.

One of the most signal failures of the U.S. to keep the peace by protecting the lives and property of its citizens was 9/11. The huge might of the U.S. military, police and intelligence agencies operating worldwide had led to a retaliation by terrorists that this same might failed to prevent.

The highest officials of the U.S. began forecasting that eventually a nuclear attack by terrorists would occur on American soil. They were mongering fear but in the same breath they were admitting that the U.S. government had failed at its most basic mission.

Consequently, the people now became subjected to disturbances of the peace instituted by the U.S. government. Far from keeping the peace, the government instituted unnecessary and intrusive invasions of lives and property in the name of protecting its citizens. What stronger marks of a failed state could there be than the DHS, the TSA, the growing brutality and militarization of police, and the wholesale surveillance of the NSA?

But there is more, far more.

I do not limit the term keeping the peace to consideration of needless foreign wars. Like most terms, the word “state” has changed meaning over time. The term “state” in the medieval tradition at one point referred to the state of the commonwealth, the state of the public thing. The Romans called it the public affair or res publica, which is the root of republic. Today, the government has drawn the economy into its sphere of influence. Whole sectors and industries have been made into a public affair or thing. Here too there is a signal failure to keep the peace. Peace in the economic realm means smoothly functioning free markets, not widespread unemployment, large social welfare programs, controlled health care, controlled education, cities going bankrupt, bubble markets, wealth transfers to an oligarchy, an unstable currency, and huge interventions in mortgage markets.

Keeping the peace in an economy cannot be done by expanding the mentality of control to economic regulations, controls, licensing, taxes and subsidies of industries. All of this is the very opposite of keeping the economic peace. All of it is the violent intervention so ably brought to our attention by Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard.

In the area of the Bill of Rights, the U.S. government is mounting attack after attack. These abridgements in rights are further evidence of a failed state. They are direct attacks on the peace. So are war crimes, the use of torture, the use of kidnappings, arbitrary imprisonments, and denials of rights.

Courageous individuals, such as Assange, Manning and Snowden, have been attempting to awaken the American people to the failure of their government to keep the peace. This is because other institutions that might possibly have held the government to some sort of account have utterly failed to do so, at least so far. Social institutions like the church and the media, have failed to pressure the U.S. to change. They have, in fact, largely supported the government. The lower courts have proven to be an inadequate barrier against government’s failures in keeping the peace. The two-party system has failed to produce a peace party with influence. Intellectuals, journalists and opinion-makers have failed to set peace as their objective and rally the public around a peace movement. Instead, we see success of warmongers, fear mongers, and those who benefit from war.

The major purpose of government, according to its supporters, is to keep the peace, which means protecting rights, freedoms, lives and property. It cannot be done by invasions of these. The U.S. government has failed so badly that today we wonder what bad thing it will do next. We wonder if there are any institutional limits to what laws the U.S.A. can enact. We wonder what powers the Executive will claim next. We wonder what the government will do next to its citizens. Since the Supreme Court, which is part of the U.S.A., claims the power to decide what is lawful and what is not, we wonder how there can be any legal limits to government usurpations and tyranny.

When there are failures in any activity, we look to find out their causes so that we can remedy them. This is not being done with respect to the failure of the U.S. government. There is failure in the feedback cycle, a break in it that prevents error correction. The system is not under proper control, not that it ever has been or can be. The government doesn’t even admit failure, even when it is far larger and worse than Watergate. Partisanship is not enough to produce feedback and correction as in the Watergate case, not when both parties are war parties. The utter failures to keep economic peace go uncorrected because both parties believe in and benefit from economic control.

The average person is thwarted. He or she can criticize the people occupying the positions of power and attempt to elect others, but it’s fruitless. Americans can change administrations, but if the laws remain intact, this is to no effect. The government operates under the theory that the laws it makes stem from the people via their representatives and their government. Hence, no matter what laws they pass, they are a-ok. Once elected, they are empowered to do as they please and feel it’s the will of the people. The people who believe in this system cannot recognize insidious usurpations and tyrannies. They cannot identify the seat and root of the usurpations and tyrannies, much less remove them. They are caught in the snares of their own democracy. If the government is not keeping the peace, they hardly see it, much less understand that the form of government – the system itself – is at fault.

The U.S. is a failed state. It doesn’t keep the peace. This has been the case for a long time, but the productivity of the American people papered it over. Each in his own way, Assange, Manning, Snowden and other whistleblowers are telling us that the U.S. has not been keeping the peace. Just the opposite.

The U.S. government has gone into denial mode, attempting to paint these messengers and men of conscience as enemies of the people, spies and traitors. What have they actually done except to reveal information that is a necessary but not sufficient condition for recognizing and correcting government failure? Under the dominant theory of government that now is widely held, no people can control its government unless they know what that government is doing. The traditional Fourth Estate has not been up to the task. That is why these men have come forward.

Dissolve the Union. Dissolve the U.S. government. Do it in steps, if need be, but do it. Do it constitutionally or by actions deemed constitutional by the individual states. America is one big pressure cooker and the U.S. government is keeping the lid on. There is no need for an explosion. Remove the U.S. control and the natural energies of a free people will be released productively.

I submit that the people or peoples that inhabit a certain portion of North America known as America did not overthrow the government of Iran in 1953. They did not direct themselves into the Vietnam War. They did not decide to bomb Serbia, starve the people of Iraq, and later invade Iraq. They didn’t decide to debase the dollar. They did not devise or pass Obamacare. They did not decide to bail out Wall Street investment bankers or hedge funds. They did not decide to militarize America’s police. They did not decide to have a war on drugs with stiff prison sentences. They didn’t decide to have a war on poverty. They didn’t decide to have a massive NSA program of surveillance and spying on themselves and the rest of the world and then to keep it secret from themselves. A certain number of Americans may have been polled and their positive, negative and ambiguous opinions sounded out on some of these actions, but the People certainly didn’t make these decisions and many other important decisions.

Obama’s agenda has been his own. The same goes for his predecessors. The People have never written a State of the Union address that contained the president’s favorite causes and agenda. What the people have done is to supply the bodies and the resources to the State and to obey its laws and directives, and all of that under the threats that if they did not obey, they would be punished.

The People simply do not have decision rights on what the State does. In the normal course of events, what the State does is out of the People’s hands. Occasional mass protests, polls or votes have influence on the State, but only temporarily so and not to any substantial degree. The People are not running the ship of State.

In a masterpiece of political propaganda, the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln penned one of the most famous slogans in American history: “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Lincoln was referring to the U.S. government, but U.S. government has never fit such a description. A government of that description with its seat in Washington could not have perished from the earth in 1863 because no such government existed in the first place. What existed was a State, one that Lincoln wanted to be large, permanent and growing.

This slogan has been fabulously successful at getting people to identify with, acquiesce in and support the State and its administrative apparatus. Schoolchildren are encouraged to memorize the Address or at least that clause.

“Of the people” makes people think that the State’s officials and bureaucrats are drawn from “us” and are “of us”. Physically, they are. Morally and behaviorally, they are not. Their intentions and actions differ drastically from us. It is the difference between rulers and the ruled, between sovereigns and subjects, and between masters and slaves.

The rulers, who are apart from us, over us, and wield powers unavailable to us, would have us believe that they are “one with us”. Obama is still saying the same thing as Lincoln almost 150 years later when he tells us: “The government is us [sic].”

The phrase “by the people” fools people into thinking that American government is being accomplished by everyone in a team effort and by team decisions. A democratic consensus is supposed to be at work, or else in republican fashion, the people are not construed to have rulers but representatives who are agents. We are supposed to believe that they sense and read our collective will and then translate it into laws and regulations, taxes and wars, programs and debts, for our own good, for the general welfare. These are the illusions fostered by those who enter the ruling elite.

These illusions are designed to make people think that they are governing themselves. The State’s apparatus of potentially unlimited despotism is substituted for self-government and for limited government that protects rights.

Does voting mean that government is by the people? Ask yourself what influence you have on any legislation by your vote or by your vote in conjunction with others. Many members of Congress frequently do not even have an influence, neither reading the massive bills nor knowing what is in them. A few members and lobbyists are writing laws in the dead of night. Hearings are rigged.

What influence do you have on what a president decides? What influence do you have on what a Supreme Court says is or is not law? What influence do you have on what a Congress legislates?

What influence do you have on who is elected to office and who your representatives are? In 1789, there were less than 30,000 constituents for each representative in the House. Today that number is about 700,000.

Most of those who are elected to national office are candidates of the two major parties, which themselves are entrenched by behind-the-scenes rules and laws. These parties vet the candidates using criteria and processes of politics and finance that are not constructed by the people but by the party’s leaders and suppliers of money. The resulting representatives do not represent issues and priorities of the people, and they are not beholden to them but to their backers and financiers. Furthermore, if they wish to remain in Congress and gain power, they must accede to the priorities of the more powerful politicians that they must work with inside the State’s system.

If the apparatus of the State, commonly called government as by Lincoln or “the” government as by Obama, is not of or by the people, is it “for the people”? This is hardly possible given the ways in which the offices and bureaus of government are filled and the ways that priorities are established, taxes imposed and decisions made. It is impossible to think that an organization with the powers of the State, that can instill fear of punishment and can actually punish anyone who does not pay their taxes or do exactly as they’re told to do, is making decisions “for” us and not for their own interests and those who control the organization.

Obama follows the well-worn path of apologists for the State when he says “The government is us”.  The government is not We the People – not us –  when the ruling apparatus is that of a State, as is the case in America and many other nations.

A State is an organization that always is manned by an elite bent on domination for its own purposes. Its powers are not unlimited, but their expansion can become exceedingly uncomfortable for those forced to submit to them or who mistakenly support them. When the elite poses as a popular movement or the democratic voice of the people or the leadership of the general will or the vanguard of the people, it is at its most dangerous for then it possesses a rationale that may result in the acquiescence of large numbers of its subjects who tie their own nooses.

A State always has a government, but not all government is of a State. Government refers to the governing body of such groups as a nation, State, tribe, aggregation of people, federation, association or community. A nation and a people need not have a State, but they still can have a system by which they govern themselves. Members of a church may govern themselves. A corporate organization can govern its own behavior. A clan can develop its own government. So can a commune, a scientific community or an industry.

The State is peculiar in its claim to be the final word in government in a territory. It is ironic that as the form of government has become more democratic over the past few centuries, that is, supposedly of the people, by the people and for the people, the government has in reality become more all-encompassing and more oligarchic. The form does not accord with the substance. This is in part because the State has had the power of being the final word and the democratic form has reinforced the legitimacy of its sovereignty. The mythical “of the people, by the people, for the people” has reinforced the actual “not of the people, not by the people, not for the people”.

The myth of self-rule in the face of very real elite rule has not acted alone in enlarging the State. Certain ideas that previously limited the scope of the State and its government have been greatly reduced in importance, sometimes perverted, or even have fallen by the wayside; and the democratic form provides no resistance to their absence, in fact, it supports the degradation of these ideas and the expansion of government under the State’s power. Certain other ideas have risen greatly in esteem and importance in supposedly providing support to enlarging the State. A few examples follow. Natural law has fallen in esteem and positive law has risen. Common law has fallen and civil codes have risen. Self-reliance has fallen and expert rule has risen. Individual responsibility has fallen and social causation risen. Neutrality has fallen and expansionism risen. Negative rights have fallen and positive rights risen. Moral codes have fallen and pragmatism risen. Distrust of the State has fallen and trust in the State has risen. God has fallen and the State has risen.

Throughout these alterations in ideas, the statists have continually promoted Lincoln’s slogan “of the people, by the people, for the people”, Obama’s pronouncement being a recent prominent example. The statists want a pliant and acquiescent people, not an active thinking people that questions the State or its constantly increasing encroachments. Witness the State’s reactions to the Occupy movement and to Assange, Manning and Snowden. These are further evidence of Government of the People, by the People, for the People. NOT.

My intent in what follows is to present a few of Nock’s important ideas in brief statements. All occasional observations of my own are placed in brackets.

Every increase in State power necessarily accompanies a decrease in social power.

[Social power means voluntary and private social relations, including associations and economic exchange.]

Increases in State power reduce the disposition among people to use social power and indoctrinate the idea that social power is no longer called for.

As State power increases, private enterprise decreases.

The State uses contingencies of crisis and misfortune to increase its power, which in turn develops the habit of acquiescence in the people.

The centralization of power in Washington and in the hands of the Executive are signs of the increase in State power in America, as are the expansion of State bureaucracies and the erection of poverty into a permanent political asset to politicians.

When the State enacts “progressive” social legislation, this increases State power and reduces social power.

The State in America was brought into being in 1789 by a coup d’état.

The American system is nominally republican but actually imperial. The power of the ballot is empty. Parties compete for control of State power. They do not compete on grounds of actually reducing State power.

The differences between Communism, Fascism and National Socialism are superficial in that they all involve an advanced degree of State power with correspondingly low degree of social power.

State power advanced greatly (to totalitarian degree) in Communist Russia, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The conversion of social power into State power has not yet advanced as far as these countries in America. The accumulation of State power in America has been relatively noiseless, unalarming to the people and unspectacular as opposed to violent and spectacular.

As long as American politicians intone phrases (“poetic litanies”) about freedom, democracy and rights, State power can grow and Americans “remain indifferent to their correspondence with truth and fact.”

The average individual is incurious toward the State, accepting it as he does the atmosphere or as he accepted the Church in 1500 when it was very strong and the State very weak.

The great advance in State power should lead us to question the nature of the State itself and not merely to investigate changes in its form (as from colonial to monarchical, monarchical to republican, republican to democratic, republican to national socialist, monocratic to collectivist, etc.). Otherwise, we simply exhibit an unquestioned acceptance of the State on its own terms.

Government conceptually is not the same as the State.

Government, as Thomas Paine explained, arises from society, its design and end being freedom and security. In this view, government has but two laws “the first being, Hurt no man, and the second, Then do as you please; and that the whole business of government should be the purely negative one of seeing that this code is carried out.”

The Declaration of Independence has the same understanding as Paine, which is that to secure rights, governments are instituted among men and derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Government does not arise from conquest and confiscation. The State does.

“The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner…Moreover, the sole invariable characteristic of the State is the economic exploitation of one class by another…every State known to history is a class-State.” Conversely, where conquest and confiscation were possible but would have brought no economic gain, the State did not arise.

Whereas government’s nature is to secure rights to the individual by “strictly negative intervention”, the State “both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him.” [The coup d’état brought about with the U.S. Constitution was incomplete, involving, among other things, the Bill of Rights as a compromise. The subsequent gradual emasculation of the Bill of Rights is consistent with the growth of State power and Nock’s statements that the State is anti-social and not based on natural rights.]

“Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.”

“Republicanism permits the individual to persuade himself that the State is his creation, that State action is his action, that when it expresses itself it expresses him, and when it is glorified he is glorified.”

“There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man’s needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.”

The State, in any form, is “the organization of the political means”. Every State engages in exploitation using power. [The feudal-State, the church-State, the collectivist-State, the landlord-State, the merchant-State, the proletarian-State, the democratic-State, the banker-State, the intellectual-State, the financier-State, the technocrat-State, the military-State, the elite-State, the corporate-State, etc. all involve a minority exploiting a majority, with the means and incidence of exploitation differing among them.]

The State’s organization for exploitation necessarily involves corruption and a gulf between private ethics and State-ethics.

Beyond a certain point, the depletion of social power by the State cannot be checked and leads to disintegration of society and civilization.

In America, the Puritan influence gave rise to a merchant-State. Its rationale had to accommodate individualism, and it did this through the Declaration’s doctrines of natural rights and popular sovereignty. These, however, came into conflict with the desire of the merchant-enterpriser for a State that would benefit him, and not for a minimal rights-protecting government:

“He was not for an organization that should do no more than maintain freedom and security; he was for one that should redistribute access to the political means, and concern itself with freedom and security only so far as would be consistent with keeping this access open. That is to say, he was thoroughly indisposed to the idea of government; he was quite as strong for the idea of the State as the hierarchy and nobility were. He was not for any essential transformation in the State’s character, but merely for a repartition of the economic advantages that the State confers.”

The earliest settlers in America, whatever attachment they may have had to local government or to civil democracy, could not indulge it because “they were in bondage to the will of an English trading-company”. It “was actually an autonomous State.” Nock quotes historian Charles Beard “…every essential element long afterward found in the government of the American State appeared in the chartered corporation that started English civilization in America.”

Nock writes “The State in New England, Virginia, Maryland, the Jerseys, New York, Connecticut, everywhere, was purely a class-State, with control of the political means reposing in the hands of what we now style, in a general way, the ‘businessman’”

“One examines the American merchant-State in vain for any suggestion of the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty.”

“By way of summing up, it is enough to say that nowhere in the American colonial civil order was there ever the trace of a democracy. The political structure was always that of the merchant-State; Americans have never known any other. Furthermore, the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty was never once exhibited anywhere in American political practice during the colonial period, from the first settlement in 1607 down to the revolution of 1776.”

American enterprisers focused heavily on land and land speculation from the outset. The causes of the colonial revolution of 1776 that are assigned in schoolbooks are trivial. The main causes were, first, “the attempt of the British State to limit the exercise of the political means in respect of rental-values.” It did this in 1763 by forbidding “the colonists to take up lands lying westward of the source of any river flowing through the Atlantic seaboard.”

Most land speculation was done through companies who secured a land grant from the State and then sold it off to settlers. Many of the founding fathers were land speculators, including George Washington, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, Timothy Pickering, Robert Morris, James Wilson and Samuel Adams.

The second cause is simply that colonists wanted to have for themselves the exploitation benefits that were accruing to the British State in such areas as ship-building, freight transport and many trades. What better way than to erect their own State?

Whatever noble government protective of rights that the Declaration suggested, the influential and leading colonists were after a State, that is, “an instrument whereby one might help oneself and hurt others; that is to say, first and foremost they regarded it as the organization of the political means.”

“There was no idea of setting up government, the purely social institution which should have no other object than, as the Declaration put it, to secure the natural rights of the individual…”

Jefferson’s idea of popular sovereignty, local government and self-government played no part in the State that was set up in 1789.

The U.S. Constitution did not place the principles of Paine and the Declaration concerning government into practice. To the contrary, instead and intentionally, it set up a State, and a State that could become more and more powerful over time.

The Constitutional Convention which was supposed to revise the Articles of Confederation, which did not provide for a State, met in secret and devised a strong central State. Instead of requiring unanimous approval of all 13 states, as it was supposed to, the Convention called for the approval of 9 of the 13.

In this way, a small group more or less suddenly deposed the existing establishment under the Articles and managed to get it replaced with another, the State still in existence to this day, the one that the Constitution calls the “United States of America”.

The “government” set up under this Constitution to do the work of the State, that is, to bring into effect the political means and exercise political power, was not from its birth a government consistent with the Declaration.

“Of all the legislative measures enacted to implement the new constitution, the one best calculated to ensure a rapid and steady progress in the centralization of political power was the Judiciary Act of 1789.”

John Marshall was appointed in order to assure control over law-interpretation and law-making by a small and centralized body so that the exploiters could control the exploited. “Since 1800, therefore, the actual mode of the State in America is normally that of a small and irresponsible oligarchy!”

Between 1781 and 1789, after the Revolutionary War, the 13 provinces became 13 States. Under the Articles of Confederation, “administration of the political means was not centralized in the federation, but in the several units of which the federation was composed. The federal assembly, or congress, was hardly more than a deliberative body of delegates appointed by the autonomous units. It had no taxing-power, and no coercive power. It could not command funds for any enterprise common to the federation, even for war; all it could do was to apportion the sum needed, in the hope that each unit would meet its quota. There was no coercive federal authority over these matters, or over any matters; the sovereignty of each of the thirteen federated units was complete.”

Within each State, a scramble for the political means began, the objective being to rob the consumer. There was an “insensate scuffle for State-created economic advantage…”

“All that interests us is to observe that during the eight years of federation, the principles of government set forth by Paine and by the Declaration continued in utter abeyance. Not only did the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty remain as completely out of consideration as when Mr. Jefferson first lamented its disappearance, but the idea of government as a social institution based on this philosophy was likewise unconsidered. No one thought of a political organization as instituted ‘to secure these rights’ by processes of purely negative intervention – instituted, that is, with no other end in view than the maintenance of ‘freedom and security.’ The history of the eight-year period of federation shows no trace whatever of any idea of political organization other than the State-idea.”

I end the summary here.

The picture presented by Nock runs something like this. To whatever extent the American Revolution stood for rights, a government that protected these rights and consent of the governed, these did not result from the Revolution. Americans had been used to the notion of the merchant-State prior to the Revolution, indeed from the earliest colonial times. A small clique of men who were themselves often merchants and engaged in land speculation brought about a central State in 1789, along the lines of what had been the practice up to 1781 and also between 1781 and 1789. They did so by a coup.

The Constitution made some concessions in the Bill of Rights to gain acceptance. However, the groundwork had been laid for a State. A State is the organization of the political means, that is, an unproductive system by which one class, usually a minority, has the power and means to exploit other classes, usually in the majority.

Going back to the Constitution is a non-starter for anyone who is serious about such ideas as self-rule, self-government, the protection of rights, consent of the governed, voluntarism, local democracy, libertarian law, a watchman government, popular sovereignty or other such related ideas that eschew the State. The Constitution sets up a State. The Constitution has many provisions that work toward the centralization and augmentation of State power, in opposition to rights, liberty and social power.

Americans cannot possibly go back to the original Constitution, nor should they even consider doing so.

Going back is out of the question because the Constitution was never devised in the first place to promote rights and self-rule. It promoted oligarchic rule.

One may seek out ideas from the past that eschew the State and promote rights, but the only ways to proceed are toward their implementation and into the future. This requires, among other things, to see clearly what our history has been, to stop glorifying the State and political means, to see the State history of violent exploitation for what it is, and to stop listening to the ministers and propagandists of the State. And, along with Nock, we need to see clearly that the Constitution cannot be regarded as a document to guide us politically if we want progress.

This crisis is caused by the state’s being taken over by interest groups to such a degree that government is now isolated from the influence and control of ordinary Americans. The electoral system is owned and operated by these interest groups. Candidates are bought and sold routinely. Consequently, policies are enacted that favor the private interests of these groups, not the public interest.

The crisis has a deeper cause which is broad government interventions that are based on a flawed social theory of property.

Signs of the crisis include a rising degree of institutionalized violence against ordinary Americans who are largely uninvolved in political matters. The term “police state” and all it comprises is one example. The “surveillance state” is another example. The bailout of Wall Street is a third instance. The drastic monetary policy of the Federal Reserve is a more subtle example. Further cases are the pharmaceutic state, the foreign policy state, the medical regulatory state, the military-industrial state, the penal state, the education state, the agriculture state, the welfare state, the environmental control state, and now the border-control state. In all these cases and more, Americans find themselves both participating in and subjected to the machinations of interest groups whose goals are feathering their own nests at the expense of everyone else.

The American state not only doesn’t curb this violence, its power is at the heart of the competition to extend this violence. The violence is pervasive and deep. It goes unrecognized because it doesn’t involve roving bands of armed forces or daily killings, except in the case of rising police brutality. Instead the violence shows up in crony capitalism, bailouts, heavy taxation, stagnant incomes, inflation, worsening health care, economic insecurity, worsening education, poorer food, travel restrictions, loss of privacy, unresponsive government, poor economic growth, large numbers of dysfunctional regulations, unresponsive bureaucracies, permanent wars, terror attacks, and a slow, expensive and unjust justice system.

The political crisis is evidenced by an immensely corrupt and powerfully centralized federal government that engages in interventionism at home and abroad.

Entry into the higher levels of this government is exclusionary, based on various qualifications that are designed to filter out people who might wish to clean up the system. The members of this system wish to protect it and themselves. Whistleblowers who have the public interest at heart are treated as criminals and pariahs.

Americans are experiencing profound injustices, without recognizing them for what they are. Their inception has been gradual. The government and media have papered them over with a variety of excuses and propaganda. Americans, being largely loyal and being in possession of a relatively stable system of property rights, have grudgingly accepted their deteriorating property rights situation. There has been no obvious way to change it, since they themselves usually belong to one or more of the interest groups that are seeking advantages over the rest. How does one change such a situation without changes so large that one might end up worse off than at present? Hence, although the country is going through a long and drawn out crisis, nothing is being done about it. Almost no one, with the exception of a minority of liberty-minded people and critics of government, recognizes it and discusses it.

The crisis is unusual in being slow and pervasive, rather than being quick and limited in scope. This is occurring because the heart and soul of the crisis has been institutionalized and legalized.

That heart is the income tax, passed in 1913 by constitutional amendment (although the legal ratification has been disputed). Human wealth embodied in the human being is what generates income, in conjunction with non-human capital. One has property not only in objects but in one’s own person and body. The taxation of this by society, government or state is a taking of one’s property. It is a form of slavery, a degree of slavery, in which the state co-owns the person and body of those subject to the income tax. Regulations that determine how one may generate or use wealth amount to roundabout forms of taxes.

These taxes and regulations could only be enacted as laws under the notion that older ideas of individual property ownership, even in one’s person, were inadequate or unjust, and that they needed to be modified or replaced by the newer ideas of property being a social matter. It is extraordinarily ironic that after a bloody war that ended slavery, a short 48 years later, the country would end up with an income tax that enslaved everyone subject to it.

America seriously modified its property rights regime in 1913 without abandoning it. It now had two contradictory ways of thinking about property. In the 1930s, the social function or social necessity or social welfare way of thinking about property rose in importance. Government intervention into property, by way of both taxation and regulation, became an accepted feature of American politics.

But the contradiction remains. Is property private or not? The extension of government power and violence into a long list of “states” like the welfare state, warfare state, penal state, big pharma state, etc. is a manifestation of interventionism. Even though these interventions serve only private interest groups, they all are rationalized by the idea that the intervention policy is overcoming problems with private property by assuring that property’s social side is tended to. This basic idea, however, crowds out and destroys private property. Every state intervention that transfers wealth to military-industrial businesses, or to banks or to surveillance firms or to large farmers or to prison builders and prison operators, takes that wealth from those who own private property.

Both Left and Right adhere to the idea that property is social. Both support interventions, but each with its own favored recipients of the resulting confiscated wealth.

The long-running crisis in America cannot be ended without resolving the question of property rights. The crisis will continue and deepen as long as government interventionism continues. The latter depends on the theory that the government can legitimately and justly tax and regulate for the sake of society because all property, including all persons and their wealth, lie at the government’s disposal. This theory of property being social and the institutionalization of this theory are the causes of America’s silent and unrecognized crisis.

If a person does not own what he or she produces, then who does? If other people do, which is the social or collective answer, then we get constant crisis as an outcome. If everyone owns everything and everyone’s wealth collectively, then there will be continual conflicts about who gets what. The incentive to produce and preserve wealth will deteriorate. Income production and job opportunities will decline. Economic crisis results from a political determination that property is social, not individual.

The alternative is that each and every person has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, understanding that this comprises each person’s property rights in the wealth and income that he or she generates, recognizing that each person justly owns what he or she produces, not other people, not society, not the government and not the state.

Mises was on to something essential when he wrote “When we call a capitalist society a consumers’ democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers’ ballot, held daily in the marketplace.”

The late William H. Peterson, with whom I had the good fortune to communicate, expanded upon this idea in a number of articles.

But this idea of market democracy or consumers’ democracy or dollar democracy is still too limited. It needs to be taken out of the economic realm and into the social-political-legal realm. To do that, we need only extract the essence of the concept. The underlying feature of market democracy is that each person makes his or her own choices of goods daily, and this is a “check and balance” on what entrepreneurs produce and capital markets fund to be produced. Then we need to consider that there are goods associated with social-political-legal systems. I purposely do not say what these might be because personal democracy views them as objects of choice that can vary among individuals. But one might think of them as arrangements having to do with rules, laws, and adjudication covering a range of interpersonal behaviors, or one might also think of them as involving specific goods having to do with such matters as security, protection, and defense.

Now think of extending this kind of personal choice into the personal choice of legal system, social system and governance system. Imagine a personal power to choose one’s operating systems in the realm of social-political-legal system. Such a power is the ultimate political check and balance, orders of magnitude more effective than the machinery of government arranged by the Framers, which we know today to be seriously defective.

If each person has the right to enter and leave a social-political-legal system, then a system that is not satisfying its clients or subscribers will lose them. One that satisfies its clients will retain them and possibly attract more. Power and territorial limits will stop being the criteria by which the people supplying the services of a system gain and number its adherents. Instead, the individual decisions of each person will contribute to shaping the observed systems that result. Each person will have social-political-legal systems from which to choose.

Our thinking is constrained by the terms appropriate to today’s monopolistic governments. Using that limited vocabulary, the closest we can come to the right to enter and leave a social-political-legal system of living with others is the term “personal secession”. Monopolistic states typically take a firm stance against subdividing into smaller political units, resulting in civil wars, but there are conditions and circumstances where such break-ups occur peacefully. The world has formally and informally recognized in some ways the right of a people to secede under certain conditions that the states impose.

The idea of personal secession goes much further. It goes as far as the concept of secession can possibly go. It acknowledges the right of each and every person to select a society, a system of law, and a political arrangement individually and not necessarily by being in a collective known as a “people”, although that is always a possibility.

Personal democracy can be defined by rewriting what Mises wrote. “When we call a society a personal democracy we mean that the power to supply legal, social and political systems, which belong to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the free personal choice of clients or subscribers, made at agreed-upon intervals.”

The immediate motivation for once again expressing this panarchy idea, this time in a different way that connects it with past ideas, is the stiff laws against terrorism passed by governments in America. These are being imposed on everyone, and they appear to be draconian, costly, senseless, cruel and discriminatory.

The terrorism laws are a sample – one instance – of the typical process by which elected representatives make and impose laws. A citizen has a right to speak out on issues and another right to vote or not vote on a series of candidates. A citizen has a right to run for office. A citizen has a right to move to another state or country. These are all not insignificant rights, won over the centuries. These comprise a portion of what is today meant by democracy. But they are far, far from personal democracy.

Again, we are constrained in our thought by the vocabulary. Today’s democracy is a qualified democracy. Let us call it “state democracy”. It is a democracy entirely linked to and emanating from the concept of a single state as the sole sovereign political unit. All the rights just mentioned have to do with the “citizen” of a state and a political system equated with that state and its machinery. A citizen is not a person with free choice of a social-political-legal system. A citizen is a designation of a state-limited and state-defined set of rights that each person finds he has, whether he likes it or not.

All the fancy speeches about freedom, democracy and spreading democracy throughout the world and all the high-toned rhetoric about the superiority of the American system are talking about state democracy. It is a conceptual error to equate state democracy with democracy. To see this, we need only note that state democracy is the polar opposite of personal democracy. State democracy is a monopoly imposed within territorial bounds by numbering persons as citizens and allowing no or very limited choice of social-political-legal system. It is democracy through individual voting and some rules about determining voting outcomes that each person takes as given by and large. Personal democracy is defined by a right of each person to choose a social-political-legal system without territorial bounds. Again there is individual choice but it is not constrained to a vote within a political system or to the other rights that come with state democracy. The choice is a decision to participate and join, and it may involve spending resources and accepting obligations voluntarily. The only common element in these two democracy concepts is that of individual choice. In state democracy, that choice is highly constrained and within bounds that lie beyond individual choice. In personal democracy, the choice is much wider, like that one has in free markets.

The shape and content of the resulting social landscape, political landscape and legal landscape are results of each person’s acting as a client or subscriber or buyer or demander, as in a market. These are neither pre-determined nor imposed as in a state democracy. No system of political voting is imposed. No constitution is imposed. No borders are imposed. No citizenship is imposed. A person chooses to join or not join, and that is the essential in personal democracy.

If a set of people wished to live under laws that imposed 50-year sentences for shooting bullets into a car, they could do that with personal democracy. They would have to live with the costs and benefits of such laws. They would not be imposing them on their non-subscribers. By the same token, if a set of people wished to live under laws that required restoration of damaged property as the result of such actions, they could do that, and they too would have to live with the costs and benefits of such laws.

With communications being what they are and with the right to subscribe and unsubscribe from a system, there will be competition among systems. There will be checks and balances arising from personal democracy. There will be trials and errors. There will be mistakes. But if people can subscribe and unsubscribe, they can benefit from the competition by learning.

State democracy is based on the principle of state sovereignty. The state’s power prevails. The citizens as a group and linked by particular political arrangements are associated with this sovereignty. Whatever the basis of this sovereignty is, nothing can stand in its way when a law or rule is formulated, passed and enforced. There is no check and balance from outside the system. One can only exercise the limited rights of protest, voting, moving and running for office that the state allows. State democracy is a limited democracy. It is a monopolistic democracy.

The incentive for individuals living in state democracy is to gain control over the machinery of government and to use it to one’s personal advantage by forming coalitions that pass laws that one wants. This in a nutshell is the history of American government and of all similar state democracies and it is the reason why their defects become worse and worse over time generally, until they perhaps experience some catastrophe and people start out fresh.

Personal democracy opens up the closed system that is state democracy. The incentive is for each person to choose what he or she regards as good. There is no means of capturing a government to the mass detriment of subscribers. They will simply unsubscribe.

The system or systems that produce happiness are unknown. Some elements may remain the same. Others change. Human life and happiness has not reached a culmination or finality in today’s system of state democracies. The time is coming when we will jettison state democracy with all of its glaring defects. We will be looking for alternatives that are better. Resurrecting the monopoly state democracy with a new constitution is one alternative. But why bother? The result could only be a mish-mash of compromises satisfying no one and placing a strait jacket on everyone.

Personal democracy is the goal we should bear in mind and for which we should strive.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

I’ve emphasized in my last two articles that foreign expansionism has nurtured terrorism, which in turn contributes to a host of associated factors like the surveillance state and the police state. Now I want to go deeper.

It is my belief that evils that we are seeing do not come about unless the public not only tolerates them but wants them. Economists would say that there is a demand for them. Behind these demands is a demand for Law and Order, and behind that demand is the even more basic DEMAND FOR FORCE.

Start with the fact that the amorphous “public” demands Law and Order. The political system supplies it, even if it means tearing up the Bill of Rights, even if it means sending people to prison for victimless crimes, and even if it means massive injustice. The “War on Drugs” is a strong example. This has met with public support ever since it began. The prevalence of the entertainment industry’s tv police shows that glorify police is a second example. The “War on Terror” and its results on civil liberties are a third example.

I am saying politely that the American public is brutish at heart, prone to resort to force, not freedom-loving at heart and not justice-loving at heart. I am not one who blames government for being the sole cause of the evils that we are seeing. I think social-political causation is more complex. It is a two-way street running between public and government; it is a dance with two partners. First one takes the lead, then the other. There is an interaction.

We make a basic error if we ignore the brutishness of the public. It is not that they are sheeple or ignorant, but they have some basic beliefs that libertarians do not share. These need to be identified. One of them is a belief in FORCE, POWER or COERCION as a tool to do good.

This might possibly trace back to a theology in which the WILL of God rules and it’s because God exercises his will that he makes divine laws. In this theology, it is because God wills something that makes it good or right or just. When the public becomes sovereign and has a government that is sovereign, it transfers this way of thinking to itself. The public’s exercise of its will, which means the use of POWER, is what makes things right. Whatever law the public and its government make is right, in this way of thinking.

The opposing theological idea is that before anything is willed, there is a mind and reason at work. These are inherently just in God. Justice and good are inherent attributes of God and his mind, which embody truth and reason. God’s divine laws are good and right by virtue of being of God’s mind and reason. They are not right because he put his will to work. The divine goodness of divine laws is inherent to them. God does not will himself or anything else to be good. He is good in and of himself.

If this idea is transferred to the secular domain, it means right is right irrespective of what the public and the government will or what they make into a law. The force of law is not what makes something right. There are right laws and wrong laws outside of force and outside of will. Man’s laws must be assessed against standards that exist outside any law-making sovereign.

There are going to be many exceptions to this general picture of American worship of power. There are going to be many variations in public attitudes over time. The public is not homogeneous. Surely there are all kinds of voices that speak up for this or that right. As in many things, there exists a distribution of opinions and attitudes covering a large range. But I am speaking of the central tendency, because it’s that center that swings elections and influences political outcomes. I’m not saying it’s the sole influence, but it’s an important influence. I am speaking of the general trend that persists over many years, and we can see what that trend is. It involves continual applications of force in human life. There is a need to understand this and trace it back to its roots. I’ve suggested that the roots involve a theological difference that has been transferred into the secular realm. The route by which it got there has no doubt been concealed, lengthy, circuitous and surreptitious. People need not even be aware of it. It may have entered their belief systems via philosophers and sages, or by schooling, or via the media, propaganda, or sermons. But it is a deep and firm belief, not easily dislodged or replaced by the main alternative, which is a belief in peaceful, non-coercive freedom.

Those who believe in the will making right believe in might makes right. Those who believe in right existing in and of itself have no such faith in might or might makes right.

There is such a thing as too much Law and Order and too much suppression being used in order to reduce crime. An unalloyed focus on reducing crime by any means invariably ropes in many innocent people and it invariably augments the police power so greatly that the police and justice system abuse innocent people for all sorts of evil reasons. It has to be understood that the human being has an evil side and will exercise it more greatly if given the opportunities to do so while getting away with it or even being rewarded for doing so. Part of the problem here is in the public’s not understanding that reducing crime too greatly by oppressive laws creates new evils. Might starts to make wrong because might is violating that which is right without knowing it, because it believes itself to be right.

The American public’s demand for law and order has gone too far because its demand for the use of force has gone too far. The public is far too supportive of oppressive rules, searches, tearing up rights, invading privacy, and jailing people. Even if we do not know for sure why this has happened, I feel we can be sure that it has.

The public largely believes in might makes right. The public has adopted and become used to the idea that all ills can be overcome by government laws and force. A basic misapprehension is at work in this belief. The people leading the government think that FORCE works to alleviate various ills and problems both domestically and overseas. The public shares this belief.

This belief is an error in thought that views life mechanistically and assumes that human beings can be forced into patterns of behavior that overcome problems. For those who think in theological terms, the error is to think that God is just because of his will and that will is what makes good, as opposed to the idea that God’s mind and reason are inherently good and precede his will.

Government people think wrongly that whole economies can be manipulated by force to a good end, by turning spigots on an off of debt, money, rules, projects and taxation. The public thinks that one can pass a law to resolve any problem, and that somehow if it has negative effects, they can be overcome by passing yet another law and then another. The public believes in FORCE. It does not believe in letting nature take its course, i.e., a more free situation in which the individual assessments of situations, costs and benefits lead to beneficial social outcomes.

Holding to this mechanistic view of human beings and the prominent role of FORCE and the force of law, the public and its government have shunted aside the idea of freedom and rights. Some rights are there traditionally to protect the innocent and the accused from being exploited, suppressed and oppressed by other people and by those who have power. But if the public assumes that force alleviates all evils and thinks that the government is a useful and appropriate means of applying such force, then it throws rights out the window. Freedom becomes narrower and narrower, while social and political oppression become broader.

When the American public worships government’s use of power, it worships the brutishness in itself. The two go hand in hand. To the degree that a people is uncivilized, it will produce an uncivilized society and an uncivilized government. But government, consisting of men and women elected to use force, is not a mere tool of the public. Causation works in both directions. The government actively promotes the use of force, educates and propagandizes on its behalf and extends its use in the lives of the society and overseas. The people and the government people they elect are at one and the same time independent and dependent. What they share is a demand for the use of force, as opposed to a demand for freedom.

The American public’s typical eagerness for war and in support of war exemplifies its demand for the use of force. In these situations, the public readily embraces regimentation, suppresses dissent and glorifies the military. The most popular and revered presidents are those who have been associated with wars.

If the American public, that amorphous central tendency, were peace-loving, we would see it tending to support neutrality, not expansionism. It would support the republic, not empire. It would support all those ideas associated with neutrality that I listed in my previous article. This is not the case. Expansionism is the expression of a demand for the use of force. Neutrality is the expression of a peace-loving people.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

America stands at a critical foreign policy juncture. America must decide between two opposing courses. She can continue along the road of foreign intervention and expansionism, or she can turn onto the road she once traveled – neutrality.

Expansionism vs. Neutrality. This is the big issue that embraces many related issues whose scope is so broad as to affect every one of us. Their scope is so large and all-embracing that most Americans cannot see the big issue. Inside a huge valley of death, one hardly knows that there is a promised land beyond the surrounding peaks. Our vision is woefully obscure.

The number of important concerns grouped around these two poles, Expansionism and Neutrality, is astonishing. To mention a few:

• War vs. Peace
• Empire vs. Republic
• Inherent Executive Power vs. Constitutional Limits
• Police State vs. Free Country
• Surveillance State vs. Right to Privacy
• Foreign Invasions vs. Respect for International Law
• Interference in Foreign Domestic Affairs vs. Non-Interference
• Superpower vs. Multipolar World
• Utopian Spreading of Democracy vs. Minding One’s Own Business
• Fiat Money vs. Sound Money
• High Taxes vs. Low Taxes
• Unpayable Public Debt vs. Sound Finances
• Stagnant Income vs. Growing Income
• Military-Industrial Complex vs. The Public Good
• Crony Capitalism vs. Free Market Capitalism
• Standing Military Forces vs. Small Military Establishment
• Militarism vs. Business
• Jingoistic Patriotism vs. Healthy Scepticism of Government
• Government Secrecy vs. Open Government
• Government-Controlled Media vs. Free Press
• Government Propaganda vs. Truth
• Unlimited Government Power vs. Limited Government Power
• A Scrap of Paper vs. The Constitution

Expansionism vs. Neutrality is not a Democratic or Republican or Independent issue. It will warp one’s values to think of it in partisan political terms. Between the major parties, there is no Expansionism party and no Neutrality party. There is no War party and no Peace party. There is no Empire vs. Republic party. There is no Executive Power vs. Checks and Balances party. Between the major parties, there is no Anti-Constitution vs. Constitution party.

Between the doctrines of the major parties, there is no difference that counts on Expansionism vs. Neutrality. Only one doctrine is prevalent and has been officially prevalent for over 100 years: Expansionism. This is a policy of expansion of control, the aim being domination, be it by means of gaining territory, economic control or political control. The current aspect of it is a worldwide war on terror, slated to last forever. This is the doctrine by which America attacked Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and by which it engages in drone warfare in Pakistan and Yemen. Manifest Destiny was Expansionism, and now it is the official policy of the U.S. to go beyond the continent of North America to the entire world.

Expansionism is the policy by which Obama is now arming rebel factions in Syria and by which the CIA overthrew Iran’s leader in 1953. It is the reason for U.S. sanctions on Iran and for concocting frictions with China and Russia. It is the reason why American warmongers want war with Iran. It is the underlying reason why whistleblowers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are demonized. U.S. leaders do not want any challenges to their Expansionism doctrine.

Expansionism is entrenched U.S. doctrine, defended by those who believe in it as good, just and progressive when it is none of those things. It has come to be what rules American thought, and its ramifications more and more are ruling American life. How good is it to have abandoned neutrality? Look at the fruits of expansionism listed above such as large scale war, empire, enormous executive power, a growing police state, a growing surveillance state, and stagnant income. Foreign Expansionism has encouraged Domestic Expansionism and the idea that there is no ill uncurable by government. Crony capitalism produces the 1% vs. the 99%.

Expansionism was not always the prevailing doctrine. In 1914, President Wilson, following a tradition that began in 1787, could issue a Declaration of Neutrality. He could write

“Every man who really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of impartiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned.”

He could publicly proclaim

“…our duty as the one great nation at peace, the one people holding itself ready to play a part of impartial mediation and speak the counsels of peace and accommodation, not as a partisan, but as a friend.”

He could conclude with an appeal not to take sides for Great Britain or France or Germany or any of the powers in Europe:

“I venture, therefore, my fellow countrymen, to speak a solemn word of warning to you against that deepest, most subtle, most essential breach of neutrality which may spring out of partisanship, out of passionately taking sides. The United States must be neutral in fact, as well as in name, during these days that are to try men’s souls. We must be impartial in thought, as well as action, must put a curb upon our sentiments, as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another.”

Wilson did not live up to his own words. He took America into World War I in 1917. Many presidents have not lived up to the ideal of Neutrality and have instead embraced Expansionism. A timeline of American military operations shows continual injection of U.S. forces into foreign regions. Most were minor and did not undermine the neutrality principle. The major exceptions in the nineteenth century that heralded the eventual abandonment of neutrality were the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War.

Despite these two wars, the period of America’s greatest peace, most extended liberty and fastest progress under the Constitution ran from 1787 to 1917. This was the period when the official policy of the U.S. government was neutrality to foreign powers.

The Spanish-American War in 1898 followed by the Philippine-American War (1899-1902) toppled the neutrality policy. It was buried when America entered World War I in 1917. Foreign intervention and expansionism, frequently involving military power, replaced neutrality. In the almost 100 years since America abandoned neutrality (1917-2013), she has been engaged in very large wars. American leadership shifted from being impartial, peaceful and mediatory to choosing favorites, intruding into the affairs of other nations and using large doses of force. One of the consequences is terror attacks against America and Americans. These can be expected to continue as long as Americans continue to butt into foreign nations, often killing and maiming civilians in large numbers.

The Vietnam War turned Americans against war for awhile, but America soon renewed its interventions, what with episodes in Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Serbia. From 2010 to now, the U.S. has also deployed forces in Uganda, Jordan, Turkey, Chad, and Mali.

Expansionism is the order of the day, but it is not producing either a better world or a better America. It has reached a point where retaliation against American expansionism has taken the form of terror attacks. Former Vice-President Cheney, one of the foremost advocates of expansionism, has recently warned of very serious possible attacks:

“‘Sooner or later, there’s going to be another attack,’ Cheney said, one that could include biological agents or even a nuclear devices.”

Neutrality is the only other option.

Americans are backed up into a corner. Obama is an expansionist who has surrounded himself with hawkish expansionists. McCain is an expansionist. Both parties have expansionists at their helms. Only if one of the parties sees political advantage in advocating a move toward neutrality and peaceful foreign relations with all nations will Americans have a voting choice. This cannot happen unless polls show that Americans want a new direction in foreign policy, namely, neutrality. This requires that Americans recognize neutrality as an option, realize that expansionism is bad for them and see that neutrality will be better.

The business of America has always been essentially business, invention and progress, operating in a free environment. We have not achieved that goal, and there has been no golden age in American history when it has been achieved. Yet it is a sound social goal. America’s business has not traditionally been to remake the world politically or by warfare or by domination. One hundred years of the latter is enough. These are crowding out business, freedom and peace. Neutrality reinforces the traditional goals of peace, liberty and free markets. Expansionism thwarts them, replacing them with war, force, militarism and controls. It’s time to call it quits with Expansionism and get back to business.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

“Governments, like married couples, are entitled to their secrets” has written Richard Cohen a few years back. Which secrets? Lines have to be drawn. A government shouldn’t cover up crimes under the mantle of secrecy. It shouldn’t conceal wrongful seizures and exercises of power. This government and the preceding one under Bush have concealed the fact that they were collecting information wrongfully, namely, information on private communications. The term “national security” cannot reasonably be invoked as an excuse for doing this because it’s too vague, and almost anything can be construed as affecting “national security”. The quest for catching terrorists cannot be offered as a reason because there are bounds on searches and invasions of privacy that have long standing and that specifically apply to government and policing activities. These governments have gone way beyond these bounds and then compounded their trespasses by attempting to keep them secret.

The government has kept secret or tried to keep secret its collecting and storing information on everyone’s secret and private communications. Thanks to Edward Snowden and his predecessors, this wrongful secret has been revealed publicly. There is no crime in revealing the wrongdoing of the government by revealing a secret program of massive invasions of privacy.

If every word one speaks or writes in an e-mail is stored where it can possibly be turned against you by some very costly legal imposition and accusation, if every movement and gesture one makes can be recorded by cameras, a climate of fear, caution, distrust, suspicion and persecution will become established. Human beings must have privacy. Diaries are private. Much of what we say and think we limit to people whom we trust. We do not want our letters steamed open or our e-mails available for reading in government data banks. We don’t want records kept by the government of whom we have called. We do not want police snooping into our homes and private effects with the excuse that they are looking for criminals or terrorists. We do not want the government to have powers like this that invade privacy and that can be used to squelch political dissent. It is very easy for government to become oppressive and totalitarian, and getting at everyone’s communications is one way to become oppressive and keep that oppression in place. We have to have lines we draw that prevent government from doing what the Bush-Obama governments have been doing. All of this is common sense. There are the strongest reasons for stopping this NSA activity. The government officials and the corps of commentators calling for Snowden’s head and supporting the surveillance state are dead wrong.

The spurt in the surveillance state is in part an outgrowth of the Bush-Obama war on terror, which in reality is a convenient propaganda device to conceal a basic agenda of expansionism of the American empire. Overseas expansionism is driving the creation of terrorism which in turn is driving the surveillance state and the police state domestically.

The foreign policy of expansion of control, taking down foreign governments, invasions and wars, fomenting revolutions, and attempting to rebuild states has dire domestic effects. How? The country is on a continual war basis. Occasional terror incidents strengthen the hands of government so that it can institute wholesale violations of civil procedures that were once considered inviolable. Police become militarized. Surveillance of Americans rises steeply. The government invokes national security at every turn. The government proposes that it can torture and assassinate. Phoney justifications for excessive and inherent executive powers are put forward by lawyers like John Yoo. The Justice Department loses whatever independence it had from the chief executive. War becomes almost habitual. The president goes into wars by his own say so. Executive power increases. Continual war and/or the expansion of empire has important ramifications domestically.

The president is expanding the U.S. involvement in Syria. This has briefly and temporarily taken the spotlight off of Edward Snowden’s revelations. More lie ahead. But Syria, the AUMF, terrorism, foreign expansionism and the surveillance state are actually all joined into one big issue. They are not separable. This “one big issue” is not yet widely recognized or seen for what it is. These matters are being treated as different things by the MSM, albeit related.

One big issue is rising to the surface. Because of this one issue, Americans will increasingly question continual warfare, government secrecy, the police state, the surveillance state, the war on terror, executive power, the role of the mass media, and government propaganda. They are all linked. What is this issue and how will it be named?

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

There are so, so many very fine westerns. I picked out 23 whose content sticks in my memory and/or that I watch again and again. This list excludes spaghetti westerns. The ordering here has no significance. I think you can’t go wrong with these choices. I did not look at the list of 17 best westerns on the other web site, until after I posted this. I see rather low overlap. Their choices tend to be more of those conventionally chosen. Mine are more ones I really like.

1. Devil’s Doorway (1950)

2. The Last Hunt (1956)

3. The Law and Jake Wade (1958)

4. 3:10 to Yuma (1957)

5. One-Eyed Jacks (1966)

6. Yellow Sky (1948)

7. The Furies (1950)

8. Pursued (1947)

9. A Man Called Horse (1970)

10. Dark Command (1940)

11. Day of the Outlaw (1959)

12. The Hanging Tree (1959)

13. High Noon (1952)

14. Johnny Guitar (1954)

15. Mackenna’s Gold (1969)

16. The Man from Laramie (1955)

17. The Violent Men (1955)

18. My Darling Clementine (1946)

19. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

20. The Return of Frank James (1940)

21. Roughshod (1949)

22. Stagecoach (1939)

23. Lonely Are the Brave (1962)

Tom DiLorenzo adds: American Outlaws.

Butler Shafer give a big thumbs-up to Open Range. See his comments.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

Verizon is being forced by the government to disclose telephone records of all of its customers. Those of us who want our call records to be private are being forced to reveal them to the government. We can’t keep them private even if we want to. What is wrong with the government spying on us in this way?

Murray Rothbard has made a clear and correct libertarian case against any compulsory speech. As I understand this, our thoughts are our own. They are private. Our imaginings are our own. Our fantasies are our own. We can imagine the most heinous crimes and plan them out in our minds if we wish. We can have any sexual fantasies we wish to have. We can indulge in as many hateful, malevolent and spiteful thoughts as we wish. We can have private saintly wishes, fond hopes, mistaken views, ill-formed ideas, flashes of genius, communications with God or with the devil, atheistic thoughts, artistic ideas, or superstitions. I hardly scratch the range of what we can think. It is that vast. If it is illegitimate, in the libertarian world explained by Rothbard, to use force against a non-aggressor, then no one has a right to make us talk or to make us reveal our thoughts because our thoughts are not aggressions. That’s one argument.

Here’s a second argument. If force is allowable to be used on people’s thoughts, two kinds of results will rise in frequency. First, people will be forced to reveal thoughts that they don’t want revealed because they consider them damaging to themselves or others. People simply could not get along with one another if what people thought of each other or knew about each other were revealed or could be revealed or were made to be revealed. Society would break down. Second, people will be forced not to reveal thoughts that they want to be revealed, such as new ideas that go against conventional wisdom. Think of the suppression and persecution of Galileo. Both kinds of results cause costs to the person and society. The right to think and speak and the concomitant right to think and not speak limit these two costs.

Free speech extends to related activities. If you have a right to speak or not to speak, then you have a right to commit your thoughts to paper and keep the paper private. You have a right to communicate your thoughts to others and keep that contact private. Speech extends to joint communications with others and to the making of joint plans. It extends to using various means of communication, such as paper and electronic devices. These actions are natural extensions of free speech and the same libertarian-law reasoning applies.

You can privately conspire by yourself or with others (plan) to build the most marvelous energy-saving device, or you can privately conspire (plan) to dope a horse in a horse race. The latter cannot be a crime because you haven’t actually doped the horse. Furthermore, you can change your mind and not dope that horse. Neither one of these private plans, for good or ill, invades the rights of others. Both are exercises of one’s rights. Yes, it is no crime to plan a crime, by this reasoning. To say otherwise opens up the Pandora’s Box of controlling all speech (and associated behavior) in the name of preventing crime and of finding people guilty of thought crimes, as opposed to actual crimes. This is rank totalitarianism. The government engages in this via conspiracy laws.

Verizon is an intermediary. The government is essentially making you and me send them a record of our calls. I’ve made three arguments against this, all of them viewing this as going against free speech and as an invasion of privacy.

First, under libertarian law reasoning, making you reveal your records when you have committed no crime is an aggression and illegitimate. Second, if such aggression is permitted, it results in two serious costs, which are associated with revealing speech that people want kept private and suppressing speech that people want made widely known. Third, such aggression is part and parcel of a totalitarian mindset that, by extension, attempts to control speech as a preventive measure and find people guilty of thought crimes that have aggressed against nobody.

What the government is doing to Verizon’s customers is wrong for these reasons.

The government argues that it’s going to use the data to catch terrorists or potential terrorists who intend to violate rights of innocent people. The government is for sure invading our free speech rights against the slim possibility that terrorists will invade our lives. Which of these is a greater threat to us? Our own government’s totalitarian moves in the past 10 years or potential terrorists who are being encouraged by our own government’s activities overseas?

Can any rights ever be secured by a government that believes it is proper for it to invade some or many rights in order to secure others? Isn’t this yet another Pandora’s Box? Isn’t a government with this kind of power wide open to invading any rights it pleases?

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

Recently by Michael S. Rozeff: Distortion of Dorner Manifesto by MainstreamMedia

On Sept. 14, 2001, the U.S. Congress in effect declared war when it passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) as a joint resolution. The vote was overwhelmingly one-sided. In the House, the vote was 420 Ayes, 1 Nay, and 10 Not Voting. In the Senate, the vote was 98 Ayes, 0 Nays, and 2 Present/Not Voting. Rep. Barbara Lee was the nay vote in the House.

One may argue about the wisdom of this measure and the logic of this measure. One may evaluate the quality of the measure as law. One may argue about the conduct of the military operations under the Executive that has been enabled by this measure. One may evaluate the ramifications for the U.S. government, for the world, and for Americans. Indeed, one may form innumerable opinions from many perspectives about this measure. But one cannot deny that this AUMF set in motion the ongoing war on terror that is being conducted by the U.S. government.

The Obama administration has made an effort to change the terminology describing the war. For example, it doesn't like the words "war on terror", and it has used substitutes. This effort is not central to the conduct of the military operations enabled under this resolution. As long as the resolution remains in place, its existence is what is central.

The Obama administration was critical of how the Bush administration was conducting military operations. After it took power, it changed the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also began to use more drone attacks and to use them in countries that Bush had not. These changes in military operations are also not central to their existence. What matters is that the resolution authorizes military operations of broad scope, in ways to be determined by the President. What matters is that this resolution exists at all.

The existence of the war on terror is prior to the conduct of the war. The conduct is malleable and can take many forms. As long as the resolution exists, the war will be conducted somehow. The conduct is important primarily as it may influence the public's opinion and the opinion of the Congress that such a war should exist at all, for there is no way to end this war without passing a resolution that ends it. In other words, if the conduct is such that the costs are seen to be vastly outweighing the benefits, then the chances of ending the resolution rise.

One may argue about the constitutionality of the resolution, but if it were ever tested the odds are overwhelming that the resolution's constitutionality would be upheld. It is inconceivable that a Supreme Court would overturn the power to declare war that is vested in the Congress.

The American public is stuck with this war or even approves of it until large numbers of voters decide that the results don't justify the costs.

Congress funds the war. It exercises oversight of the operations. At its discretion, it or any of its members can mount an effort to alter the course of the war or even end it altogether. The American people elect representatives every 2 years. If candidates who want to end the war can get party nominations and get elected, voters will be able to influence the existence of this war.

This resolution exists legally because Congress has the power to declare war. There may be no manual that describes what a war declaration should look like or that defines what a war is, but those uncertainties are also not central to the existence of this resolution. Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress has the power to declare war, however ill-defined it may be and however ill-defined the enemy is. That's the fact that will not go away, no matter what debates concerning the war's conduct occur. Specifically, the substitution of drones for ground forces is not disallowed under the AUMF. If the President identifies Americans as terrorists, the AUMF suspends their rights. They can be assassinated.

Let's explore that further. The AUMF states

"That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

The President has been given a free hand in identifying the "enemy" or "enemies". All he has to do his tie a person to an "organization" such as al-Qaeda. There is no exception made for American citizens. There is no distinction between persons on American soil or in other countries.

The phrase "necessary and appropriate force" does not constrain the President. There is nothing in the AUMF that suggests that killing an American on American soil cannot be regarded by the President as "necessary and appropriate". In this situation, any President will use his discretion, conditioned on how he thinks such a killing will affect public opinion about his conduct of the war.

There is nothing unusual in Eric Holder or other administration spokespersons trying to keep their death-dealing options open. They have been authorized by the Congress to use lethal force if they so choose.

The point I am making is that the AUMF itself is what needs to be questioned, but behind that is the even more basic provision in the Constitution that gives a Congress the power to declare war, and of course the power to tax in order to fund a war.

In a condition of war, civil liberties tend to get overridden. The current war on terror, now over 11 years old, shows this. For any number of reasons, this war shows no signs of ending. It is actually spreading to more lands. The connection to an "organization" or "persons" that are in any way linked to 9/11 is now exceedingly remote, but the use of military force continues. This is not logical. It is not legal. It's happening nonetheless because the pro-war forces are driving it. There is no apparent political force that is stopping it. Under these conditions, the prognosis for civil liberties is anything but good.

The power to tax that Congress was given in the Constitution was certainly a very bad idea, and it is not unrelated to the power to declare war. Has Congress ever seen a war that it didn't like? American history is one long catalog of war after war after war. Congress has now foisted upon us a never-ending war.

It is all well and good to debate drone warfare and the killing of Americans overseas or on American soil. However, it's my opinion that these debates are not searching enough. They do not go to the heart of the matter, which is that Congress has the power to declare war and did it on Sept. 14, 2001. That power needs to be questioned in the most serious and searching way. The misuse of that power has been endemic in American history. That is but one facet of what should be a broad public debate and examination of the even more fundamental issue, which is making citizenship or membership under the Federal government an optional matter.

Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York. He is the author of the free e-book Essays on American Empire: Liberty vs. Domination and the free e-book The U.S. Constitution and Money: Corruption and Decline.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

“The Report of The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment“, recently released, took two years to research and write. The team that produced it made every effort to be unbiased and thorough. This report will become an important benchmark for subsequent events concerning the use of torture by the U.S. government even though reports, critical commentary and entire academic articles on the U.S. use of torture have been circulating for over 10 years, including on LRC.

This is a long period of government crime and abuse during which ample public debate occurred, but nothing was done through the justice system to stop it. Even today, nothing has been done officially to bring the perpetrators and law-breakers to justice. The regime of torture and the failure to clean it up after it became known indicate a double failure of government. First government abrogated rights, and then it failed to clean house. There is a third failure, which is the non-existence of institutions to prevent the recurrence of torture. There is a fourth failure, which is the inception of the even worse practice of targeted assassinations, even of American citizens.

After September 11, 2001, President Bush authorized torture. The first finding of the report is unequivocal that the U.S. used torture:

“U.S. forces, in many instances used interrogation techniques on detainees that constitute torture. American personnel conducted an even larger number of interrogations that involved ‘cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment. Both categories of actions violate U.S. laws and international treaties. Such conduct was directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation.”

Even more tersely,

“Perhaps the most important or notable finding of this panel is that it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.”

Within days after taking office, President Obama issued executive orders stopping torture. He declined to bring to justice those responsible for torture during the Bush regime. Undoubtedly, that would have meant building a case against Bush and other high officials in the Bush administration.

The Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions outlaw torture, but the U.S. Office of Legal Counsel in 2007 found that the CIA’s torture techniques complied with these conventions. These memos and rulings have been suspended under Obama. However, the report notes (p. 334)

“Obama’s executive orders…could be rescinded on the first day of any new president’s term – and this could be done without public notice.”

Referring to the 2007 memos and rulings, it adds

“But there is no institutional barrier to future OLC attorneys adopting their legal reasoning.”

In other words, the government’s officials can start up a torture program or end one at their will, without being subject to any lawful sanctions and control mechanisms that are in place as part and parcel of the relations between society and its government.

The torture policy of President Bush was ended by President Obama, but he decided not to investigate and prosecute Bush and the other officials who were responsible for that policy. He doesn’t have to because there is no institutional mechanism steering him to do so. Congress has not acted either. There is a great reluctance to use impeachment proceedings, which would paralyze the executive branch if they were used every time that executive officials break laws.

There is no institutional mechanism that stopped Bush from starting up a torture policy, and there is, in addition, no institutional mechanism to make Obama investigate and prosecute Bush et al for starting up a torture policy that broke U.S. laws. It should be mentioned, as does the Report, that the Clinton administration, well before September 11, began the practice of capturing detainees and imprisoning them with “foreign governments known to abuse people in their custody.”

The existing U.S. government fails in numerous respects. The torture episode illustrates a central failure, which is an incapacity to control the actions of the executive branch. If a president can order torture and no one can stop him or hold him accountable, he is eliminating the rights of detainees. Kidnapping detainees and isolating them for indeterminate periods does the same thing. Obama has taken these rights violations to the extreme. He has made it a policy to kill (assassinate) selected Americans whom he deems enemies of the people.

These developments must be accounted as extremely serious blows to the idea of human rights and to the idea that any government has an obligation to protect human rights. To destroy rights as a matter of the highest policy shows a government that has failed to meet its most basic obligation. In addition, when there is no corrective mechanism in place to rectify these violations and attempt justice, this shows another government failure.

Why has this happened? I believe that the basic reason is a deterioration in the moral or ethical idea of law, a switch from natural to positive law (explained below) that has eroded and undermined the idea of constrained and limited government. The result has been an expansion in the power of government, but not in its legitimate authority based in natural law.

This situation has been a long time in the making. The U.S. government began to exhibit failures a long time ago. The so-called American Civil War (1861-1865) is the largest instance in the 19^th century. In that case, the southern states exercised the right to declare their independence. The northern states suppressed them by force. This was a clear case of government failure, and it meant that government thereafter rested on force, not on an adherence to protecting rights. A government resting on force rather than right reason and rights protection could then in subsequent decades alter the nation’s currency unconstitutionally and pass any number of laws that invade property rights.

Let’s explore this a bit more.

Morally, modern government is based on a simple proposition, which is that what the government makes and calls “law” is law. This proposition entails that when government makes law, this law is right and just by virtue of the government making it a law. The term used to describe this idea of law is positive law. Under this idea, government confers rights upon its citizens. Government decides what rights are or are not. It decides on their extent. The North decided what the rights of the South would be to form their own government. It decided the South didn’t have such a right.

The opposing idea is that law rests on a moral and ethical basis that describes in general terms what is good and just objectively. This law exists prior to and independently of any government. Its origins are elsewhere. The associated ideas of government are that every person in the society, including the government officials, should obey this law; and, what is more, among the government’s purposes is to administer justice under this law. The term used to describe this idea of law is natural law. Under this idea, rights pre-exist government, their basis being something other than government, like God, or right reason, or the inherent nature of man and society. The natural law is stable and durable, not subject to fashions, whims, emotions, interests, and factions. It is not based, as is positive law, on pragmatism or utilitarian calculations and expectations, but its adoption and use may still result in a healthier and progressive society than the latter.

In modern societies, positive law is ascendant. Natural law is down but not out. In some ways, natural law constrains positive law-making and keeps it within bounds of right reason. Man-made laws, when the lawmakers find it convenient, are justified in moral natural law terms. For example, Obama has recently spoken out against chemical weapons being used in Syria:

“Obviously, horrific as it is when mortars are being fired on civilians and people are being indiscriminately killed, to use potential weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations crosses another line with respect to international norms and international law. And that is going to be a game-changer.”

In this statement, there is a mixture of appeals to positive law and natural law and they overlap to some extent. The natural law says that in war it is not right to target and kill civilians not directly involved in the war. Obama uses the term “indiscriminately” to indicate that this is wrong by natural law, and the same reference to natural law is indicated by the term “weapons of mass destruction”. He refers to international norms, and this too has the ring of natural law. International law may refer to either positive law or natural law or a mix.

Obama’s statement on Syria is mainly an appeal to natural law, but he is inconsistent in his adherence to natural law within his province, which is America. In the case of torture, he has failed to move against Bush. He has failed to enforce either the natural law or the laws and treaties that Bush broke.

I quote from the report on torture referenced earlier:

“The events examined in this report are unprecedented in U.S. history. In the course of the nation’s many previous conflicts, there is little doubt that some U.S. personnel committed brutal acts against captives, as have armies and governments throughout history.

“But there is no evidence there had ever before been the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after September 11, directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.

“Despite this extraordinary aspect, the Obama administration declined, as a matter of policy, to undertake or commission an official study of what happened, saying it was unproductive to ‘look backwards’ rather than forward.”

In passing I should mention that the Task Force refers several times to its adherence to the “rule of law”. Do the members mean the rule of positive law or the rule of natural law? This is unclear, and this to some extent weakens the impact of their report. In my opinion, if going back to natural law and understanding why this is a good idea is what is called for, then the phrase should be “rule of natural law”.

“The second notable conclusion of the Task Force is that the nation’s highest officials bear some responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of torture.”

Actually, the nation’s highest officials have committed war crimes over the course of the last three presidents at least. There is no institutional mechanism that has brought them to justice because the Congress has been complicit in the government’s crimes. The role of Congress cannot be over-emphasized. This indicates another whole level of government failure.

Another government failure raised in the Task Force report, and it too has been circulating for years in the alternative media, is the harsh treatment of whistle-blowers (p. 349):

“The Obama administration has also criminally prosecuted more individuals under the Espionage Act for providing classified information to the press than all other presidential administrations combined.”

The failure here comes under the heading of secrecy in government. Government withholds information on its activities. It suppresses photographs that might galvanize the public. It releases information selectively so as to control public opinion.

The government is now largely a creature of positive law, of very large scope whose limits are hazy and easily pierced depending on “exigent circumstances”. Words such as “emergency” are now the basis of law, rather than what is right and just. This means that the law can become almost anything. This means that government has become an institution whose laws and controls spread uncertainty, disorder, injustice, rights violations and insecurity.

The failures of government that are pointed to by examining the use of torture by the U.S. government are longstanding and endemic. They are failures of accountability and control. They are failures of institutions that function to make government uphold natural law. In the final analysis, they are failures of Americans to understand and hold dear liberty and justice.

Modern, as distinguished from classical, liberalism has been harming and continues to harm the well-being of Americans whenever its ideas are imposed on them, in any form, whether that of progressives, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Baines Johnson, cultural Marxists, or those who promote political correctness and unqualified equality. Modern liberalism creates one disaster area after another in human affairs, and it will keep on doing this as long as its ideas gain adherents and are implemented. The reason why liberalism screws things up is that its ideas are screwy. They typically involve invasions of rights.

Washington is dominated by the ideas of modern liberals and so are the individual state governments. Right and left no longer make a difference. The two major parties no longer make a difference. Modern conservatism has endorsed the ideas of modern liberalism to such a great extent that it is not a viable alternative to modern liberalism.

The only alternatives to choose from are those that have a strong and consistent understanding of rights, liberty, markets, property, contracts, the State, and government.

Let’s take a look at FDR’s contribution to liberal ideas in his 1944 State of the Union address in order to see why certain of his ideas were and still are screwy. We need to do this because the U.S. government has imposed these ideas on Americans for 70 years.

Roosevelt has a section on a “second Bill of Rights.” He starts with a portion of the classical liberal narrative, but then veers sharply away from it. Here’s the start:

“This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights – among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.”

This is all right as far as it goes, but it doesn’t reference property rights directly. It doesn’t reference the Amendment V: “…nor shall any person…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

FDR could not possibly emphasize property rights when almost everything he was about to propose involved invasions of property rights.

He immediately denigrates and shelves his abbreviated version of the factors that facilitated the growth of the Republic with this putdown:

“As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however – as our industrial economy expanded – these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.”

He not only dismisses these political rights as inadequate, when there is no justification for doing so, he points to a new goal. It is not “the pursuit of happiness” but “equality in the pursuit of happiness” (my emphasis). This unqualified goal of equality is totally wrong and leads to all sorts of mischief and unhappiness. If he had said “equal rights”, the meaning would have been entirely justified and different, but he instead opens a Pandora’s Box. He is suggesting, it seems, the impossible-to-attain goal of equal opportunity. He is opening the door to broader interpretations pushed by later liberals, like equality of outcomes, equality by quota, numerically proportional equality, equality by gender, equality by sexual preference, and income equality.

FDR presents his justification for his new ideas:

“We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

Here FDR expresses more screwy ideas in defense of replacing traditional rights with his Second Bill of Rights. The first and more important assertion is that a man is not a free man unless he has economic security. The classical idea is that a man is free as long as his rights are not being invaded by others. He can be poor and free. This definition of freedom is unambiguous, and it also means that poor and rich can co-exist, each having his or her rights intact. FDR says that a poor man cannot be a free man, but we do not know what he means by “free”. He doesn’t mean the classical definition, so what does he mean? He means that unless a man has economic security, he doesn’t have freedom of action. FDR equates freedom with power orcommand over resources. Why is this idea screwy? It’s because FDR believes that freedom can be increased by increasing a man’s goods. This idea is not troublesome if each man does not invade the rights of other men while attempting to increase his goods. This is not what FDR has in mind, however.

As a direct introduction to his economic proposals, he states that his idea of freedom is true and self-evident, which it is not:

“In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.”

We now see what FDR has in store for Americans, and it is invasion of property rights under the guise of being rights! FDR lists 7 so-called “rights”. The first is

“The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;”

There is no such right. There cannot be such a right, because it trenches on the rights of others. A right is a term signifying that which is due you, and this means without impairing the rights of others. If you had a “right” (an FDR right) to a “useful and remunerative job”, it would mean that someone or some people owe it to you, and that’s why it is due you. But no one owes you a job simply by virtue of your being an American or a person. If people owed you a job, for no other reason than who you are, then this would trench on their true (classical) right to their belongings. It would impair their freedom.

FDR doesn’t make clear who is going to supply these useful and remunerative jobs. If he thinks the government is to do it, this hides the rights violations behind the government’s taxing power. In addition, it makes the government the controller of jobs and pay. This replaces rights, markets, freedom, contracts and private property by government control.

FDR’s second “right” is similar, and it’s the father of the minimum wage:

“The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;”

The same criticisms apply.

The next “right” leads to government control and subsidies for the agricultural sector:

“The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;”

Exactly the same criticisms apply. There is no such classical right and there cannot possibly be such a right. FDR is completely subverting the term “right”. No one owes a farmer a particular price for his product or payment such that he and his family have a decent living. If that were so, everyone’s classical rights and freedoms would have to be curtailed and their own product diverted to support the farmer.

FDR’s program says that everyone owes everyone else a job and a living. This is a logical impossibility. It is also a nightmare to implement, which is why modern liberalism pragmatically screws up whatever industry, market or sector it touches. A flaming modern liberal who seeks a distribution of incomes that he considers “just” will find that he is constantly expanding the sectors under control, due to their complex interrelations. He will become a complete regulatory socialist. The more “practical” modern liberal will stop short of total control. He or she will mess up some particular industry or sector and leave it at that, creating economic distortions that are ignored.

FDR’s next “right” has led to nothing but grief because “unfair competition” is impossible to define. In practice, implementing this policy penalizes price-cutting, innovations and success.

“The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;”

The next “right” has most recently given rise to a housing boom and bust. It has led to an unstable banking sector. It has encouraged urban sprawl and messed with the kinds and locations of both businesses and housing that might have occurred if housing markets had not been subsidized:

“The right of every family to a decent home;”

As with earlier “rights”, there is no such right. No one owes anyone a job, a price for their goods, much less a home or a “decent” home. FDR’s program meant that the government would control economic activity in such a way as to create these results or try to. This could only impair rights and impair economic activity.

Further examples of this impairment occur in each of the sectors associated with the next three “rights”:

“The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;”

“The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;”

“The right to a good education.”

Modern liberals do not admit that liberalism has seriously undermined the medical sector. People going overseas for medical care recognize it. Modern liberals do not admit that liberalism’s signal programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, have all sorts of serious negative effects, that these programs have serious problems, and that these problems are growing. “The right to a good education” is still a goal of modern liberalism, despite the huge failures of public education.

Roosevelt asked for legislation on these “rights”:

“I ask the Congress to explore the means for implementing this economic bill of rights- for it is definitely the responsibility of the Congress so to do. Many of these problems are already before committees of the Congress in the form of proposed legislation.”

He got his legislation. More came later. America is living with these laws and so-called “rights” to this day. They are a drag on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Second Bill of Rights of Franklin Roosevelt was a complete fraud, mired in goals that distort and undermine the classic concept of rights. No person could get an “FDR right” without losing a “classical right”.

Every part of his program has been implemented and every part has led to negative effects and failures.

Americans turned away from growth, progress, invention and the creation of greater wealth. They instead focused more on wealth redistribution, regulation, government controls and regulations, all financed by higher taxes. The overall results are showing up more and more after 70 years of this punishment.

As far back as May 8, 2009, Tom Englehardt (in an LRC article) mentioned reports that drones in Pakistan had killed “hundreds of bystanders”. (I haven’t searched for the earliest such reports.) By October, 2012, a 36-page study appeared out of Columbia Law School, and I believe it was not the first. Analysts for quite some time had begun saying that drone strikes created more terrorists than they killed, and that the people being targeted were not “high” terrorist figures. There was also a great deal of criticism of second strikes on funerals for the people killed. But drone policy was Obama’s baby, and he favored it. Despite the counter-productiveness of drone strikes to achieve the empire’s aims, now channeled through Obama, he continued these strikes. If he felt he could not back down, retreat, or show softness in his goal of dominating the politics of the regions being droned, and if he had nothing to put in its place to achieve this aim, then he decided to accept the accompanying costs of creating terrorists. The Boston Marathon bombing is one of those acceptable costs, although I am certain he wishes the FBI had not messed this one up royally.

The adminstration of Obama wants the maximum capacity to use drones without accountability. It doesn’t want anyone second-guessing its policies, and that includes Congress. Congress is a flabby and slow contender in the making and control over policy anyway.

The Columbia report complains about the “limited public debate on drones”. That’s because academics ignore most everything except what other academics say. They’re not reading press accounts, or LRC, or Englehardt, or they’re not giving much weight, say, even to a former CIA employee who criticizes the drone policy. Most academics don’t get ahead except by massaging lots of data, and so we find them complaining that “hard facts” and “information that ought to be provided by the U.S. government” are not being provided. This is called “stonewalling” or “secrecy”. It’s any government’s method of doing what it wishes to do without being constrained by widespread public knowledge of its base activities.

The U.S. government can stand LRC critics and quite a few others because so few Americans are paying attention, and when they do pay attention, they literally do not know whether they should believe what they are reading because their firmly-anchored belief is that the government is not only the authority but also “good” authority. This belief is part of a belief and value system that has been inculcated in them for years. Adults have to go through a period of years to root out such a system, and most people don’t do this.

The U.S. government even welcomes a certain amount of criticism as evidence that the government is open, that there is public debate, that this is a viable free-speech democracy, and that the government’s policies have been legitimized via this “open” debate. But since the government controls the flow of information to most of a big corporate media that cannot and does not put up any serious criticism, the government need not worry about critics. In addition, it can find and pay off, albeit indirectly, countless academics, columnists and commentators, who have no personal interest in being radical and a great interest in being loyal Americans who spout the ever-shifting party lines. More accurately, the standard analyses that never doubt the goodness of the State and Empire are like a river of Empire flowing between two banks, which are Left and Right. Almost everything that the public hears from first grade onwards is channeled between these two banks. This provides an illusion of a free country, just as the banks provide an illusion of a freely-flowing river.

Now, at least 5 years after drone criticism has begun, the Senate Judiciary Committee has a hearing in which a man from Yemen tells them face to face what the effects of the drone policy are on making Yemenis anti-American. This slowness in responding to events on the ground is intentional on the part of Congressional leaders. They only address an issue when, for whatever reasons that are in their interest, they calculate the time is right. Then they schedule hearings and then they invite hand-picked witnesses. Any concern about the loss of innocent lives of foreigners or the retaliation on American soil only enters their calculations indirectly. Power and position are #1, and lives factor in secondarily only insofar as they affect power and position. An extreme cynicism, if you will, is called for in assessing these matters, if only to counteract the programming that most Americans have undergone. However, one need only ask why it has taken so long to address this drone issue, even to the limited extent of holding a hearing? And what does Senator Dick Durbin, who chairs the committee, stand to gain from having this hearing at this time?

It may be that Durbin’s political antenna has picked up some possible gains to his power and position by gingerly moving toward a position that, while not anti-drone, advocates more, as he put it in May, “checks and balances”. He also seems carefully to be stepping toward a more anti-war position. He said in May

“From a constitutional viewpoint, it goes to this authorization for the use of military force. I don’t believe many, if any, of us believed when we voted for that – and I did vote for it – that we were voting for the longest war in the history of the United States and putting a stamp of approval on a war policy against terrorism that, 10 years plus later, we’re still using.”

I will venture to say that Durbin will remain solidly within the river banks. He may tack his boat a little more in an anti-war direction, but since both the left and right banks have for decades now been heavily mired in a pro-war fog, that direction may be beneath the river’s surface. Perhaps he should capsize his boat. In the end, he will if he succeeds gain some points for himself while not altering the Empire by any significant amount.

The Empire flows on.

Unless the search passes certain legal criteria, it is illegal.

The search in Boston set a precedent, which means that such searches can be generalized to other places in America and to other situations, unless whoever authorized the Boston search is reprimanded and sanctioned for having ordered it. That seems to be Governor Deval Patrick, at a minimum.

Unless this search is clearly labeled and understood as being illegal and wrong, it creates a precedent. This changes the law de facto, even if not de jure. A de facto change will become a de jure change if only by interpretation

But what’s bad about such a precedent? What’s bad about the police having the power to make house-to-house searches routinely?

Consider what sorts of searches were common in totalitarian countries. This provides an inkling of the results of such police power.

First of all, America is in some respects following a path that Nazi Germany followed. I quote from one account:

“Police manpower was even extended by the incorporation of Nazi paramilitary organizations as auxiliary policemen. The Nazis centralized and fully funded the police to better combat criminal gangs and promote state security. The Nazi state increased staff and training, and modernized police equipment.”

This has been happening in America for some time now. These are initial steps in creating a police state. The centralization is done through building authoritative organizations that control local deviations in behavior and through funding. The funding brings in militarization and central coordination, training, and routines.

From the same source, we next read

“The Nazis offered the police the broadest latitude in arrests, incarceration, and the treatment of prisoners. The police moved to take ‘preventive action’ that is, to make arrests without the evidence required for a conviction in court and indeed without court supervision at all.”

We are seeing in America a broad latitude given to police in making charges against civilians, in mistreating them and getting off the hook, in killing civilians in some cases rather than arresting them, in bringing false evidence into courts, in lying under oath and having their words accepted, and in seizing property. We also see prosecutors suppressing evidence and bringing false charges. Add to these misbehaviors and others the fact that almost anyone can be guilty of one or more felonies. When all is said and done, police are subjecting a significant fraction of America’s population to a police state.

Highway and transportation searches are already common. Here’s a photo dated Feb. 27, 1933 of German police searching a car for arms:

America is not going to follow what Nazi Germany did in any kind of lockstep fashion. There is too much variation in situations and events and laws for any two societies to mimic one another precisely. The American police state already has some unique features such as the LOCKDOWN. The spectacle of Americans being routed from their homes with raised arms and herded down the street is not too far, however, from German soldiers arresting Jews in Warsaw in 1943:

In a house-to-house search, police can find evidence of many wrongdoings. This depends on other laws that are passed and what items may be searched. Police could find a copyright violation on most everyone’s computer, for example. They could find drugs. They could find out-of-date prescription drugs. They could find weapons. They could find cash and seize it. It is the search power combined with other laws that become a powerful tool of repression.

“The Nazis took control and transformed the traditional police forces of the Weimar Republic into an instrument of state repression and, eventually, of genocide.”

Even without other law, the mere interaction of common people with police in house-to-house searches can result in arguments, altercations, arrests, injuries and deaths. The police expect obedience and deference. In Watertown, they demanded that people leave their homes and raise their arms over their heads. There are many situations where people don’t want to leave, or cannot due to illness, or who do not understand what’s going on, or refuse to kowtow, or who naturally resist intimidation. Arrests and charges lead to criminal records and subsequently affect everything from employment to getting a loan to traveling to having a firearm.

In an article on one of the Russian police agencies while under Communist rule, we read

“Leonid Brezhnev reverted the State and KGB to actively harsh suppression – routine house searches to seize documents and the continual monitoring of dissidents.”

Once searches become routine, i.e., without warrants or under very loose conditions, then police can intrude for any number of activities that the authorities have deemed illegal or a threat to the authority of the State itself. In Russia, this included political speech against the State. In America, all sorts of records of money transactions might be monitored or seized in order to detect “suspicious” political contributions or other activities, for example.

House-to-house searches, of course, make hash out of privacy.

So, in short, what is bad about these house-to-house searches that we have just witnessed?

They set a bad precedent in which Americans allow measures that significantly raise the likelihood of further repressive measures in the future. Why does the threat of further repression go up? It’s because these searches are illegal. Undermining rights and respect for rights helps set the stage for further measures that repress liberty. It’s because these searches follow closely upon the heels of other measures that have already laid the foundation of an American police state.

This is the direction in which America is headed.

The reason for this direction is terrorism directed at America. The reason for the terrorism is the conclusion among the men engaging in it that Islam is under attack and/or that the lands in which Islam is prominent are under attack.

Washington will continue to go into places like Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan, Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq, and therefore retaliation can be expected. The empire will continue to use drones that kill innocents. It will continue to pressure Iran. It will continue undermining Syria. It will continue to try to change the politics of these lands. It will continue with its benighted Israel policy. It will continue to support the military-industrial complex, which is one major source of all of this unnecessary expansion.

Consequently, at home, it will continue to turn America into a target for jihadist attacks, and it will continue police measures that can easily turn the whole country into a police state.

On February 28, 2013, Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced Senate Resolution 65, which is currently referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I hope it dies. If it passes, it becomes an important step on the road to war with Iran, as Pat Buchanan explains:

“SR 65 radically alters U.S. policy by declaring it to be ‘the policy of the United States … to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability and to take such action as may be necessary to implement this policy.’

“Obama’s policy – no nuclear weapons in Iran – is tossed out. Substituted for it in SR 65 is Bibi Netanyahu’s policy – ‘no nuclear weapons capability’ in Iran.”

“Now, as Iran already has that ‘capability’ – as does Germany, Japan, South Korea and other nations who have forsworn nuclear weapons – what SR 65 does is authorize the United States to attack Iran – to stop her from what she is doing now. Yet, according to all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, Iran does not have a nuclear bomb program.”

Senators have many reasons for signing on to bills and resolutions as co-sponsors, because they constantly make deals with one another. A signature does not always imply a supportive vote on a bill. But since war with Iran has such large implications for all Americans, on all fronts – such as moral, political, and economic – I think that a single-issue focus is called for.

Graham is a warmonger. A senator who signs on to Graham’s warmongering resolution identifies himself or herself as a warmonger. Co-sponsoring SR 65 identifies a senator clearly as making one of the most serious possible misjudgments that a legislator can make. Very few matters rise to the importance of launching an aggressive war against another nation without justification.

Americans should remove these warmongers from office, no matter what the other votes of these senators may be and no matter what other contradictory statements they may mouth about peace and threats. As signers, they know what this resolution says. They are fully responsible for signing it. After all, these signers are supposed to be Senators. They are supposed to be wise, mature, seasoned men and women who understand what the Public Good requires and who support it. They are supposed to be immune to factions, interest groups, temporary emotions, biases and political dealing. They are supposed to understand that the business of America is primarily its own business, not butting into the politics of other states, not creating and extending an Empire, not being the world’s self-appointed policeman, not making aggressive wars, not acting on behalf of factions in America, and not linking the fortunes of Americans to selected governments or peoples overseas.

No senator worthy of the title should ever have signed such a resolution.

Removing these warmongers from office is easier said than done since the two major political parties own and control the nominating processes. It is a measure of how far off the path of any conceivable Public Good this nation has strayed that a resolution like this could attract so many signatures.

Let us at least identify who these bad apples are, even if the whole barrel is rotten. Let us at least point them out for what they stand for and tell them in whatever ways we can think of “No”, “No”, and again “No”. “No more wars. No more aggressions. No more lies. No more propaganda. No more exaggerations. No more kowtowing to Israel or to certain subsets of American voters. No more capital siphoned off from productive ventures into phony wars, military spending and bureaucracies ginned up by the war and terrorism complex.”

Who are these 76 senate warmongers? They are

• Sen Ayotte, Kelly [NH] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Barrasso, John [WY] – 3/6/2013
• Sen Baucus, Max [MT] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Begich, Mark [AK] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Bennet, Michael F. [CO] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Blumenthal, Richard [CT] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Blunt, Roy [MO] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Boozman, John [AR] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Boxer, Barbara [CA] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Brown, Sherrod [OH] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Burr, Richard [NC] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Cantwell, Maria [WA] – 3/18/2013
• Sen Cardin, Benjamin L. [MD] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Casey, Robert P., Jr. [PA] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Chambliss, Saxby [GA] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Coats, Daniel [IN] – 3/18/2013
• Sen Coburn, Tom [OK] – 3/12/2013
• Sen Cochran, Thad [MS] – 3/18/2013
• Sen Collins, Susan M. [ME] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Coons, Christopher A. [DE] – 3/6/2013
• Sen Cornyn, John [TX] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Crapo, Mike [ID] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Cruz, Ted [TX] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Donnelly, Joe [IN] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Durbin, Richard [IL] – 3/13/2013
• Sen Enzi, Michael B. [WY] – 3/22/2013
• Sen Feinstein, Dianne [CA] – 3/12/2013
• Sen Fischer, Deb [NE] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Flake, Jeff [AZ] – 3/11/2013
• Sen Gillibrand, Kirsten E. [NY] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Grassley, Chuck [IA] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Hagan, Kay [NC] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Hatch, Orrin G. [UT] – 3/14/2013
• Sen Heitkamp, Heidi [ND] – 3/11/2013
• Sen Heller, Dean [NV] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Hirono, Mazie K. [HI] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Hoeven, John [ND] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Inhofe, James M. [OK] – 3/6/2013
• Sen Isakson, Johnny [GA] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Johanns, Mike [NE] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Johnson, Ron [WI] – 3/20/2013
• Sen Johnson, Tim [SD] – 3/11/2013
• Sen Kaine, Tim [VA] – 3/11/2013
• Sen Kirk, Mark Steven [IL] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Klobuchar, Amy [MN] – 3/11/2013
• Sen Landrieu, Mary L. [LA] – 3/19/2013
• Sen Lautenberg, Frank R. [NJ] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Lee, Mike [UT] – 3/12/2013
• Sen Manchin, Joe, III [WV] – 2/28/2013
• Sen McCain, John [AZ] – 3/13/2013
• Sen McCaskill, Claire [MO] – 3/5/2013
• Sen McConnell, Mitch [KY] – 3/18/2013
• Sen Menendez, Robert [NJ] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Mikulski, Barbara A. [MD] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Moran, Jerry [KS] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Murkowski, Lisa [AK] – 3/12/2013
• Sen Murray, Patty [WA] – 3/11/2013
• Sen Nelson, Bill [FL] – 3/14/2013
• Sen Portman, Rob [OH] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Pryor, Mark L. [AR] – 3/13/2013
• Sen Risch, James E. [ID] – 3/18/2013
• Sen Roberts, Pat [KS] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Rubio, Marco [FL] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY] – 2/28/2013
• Sen Scott, Tim [SC] – 3/11/2013
• Sen Shaheen, Jeanne [NH] – 3/19/2013
• Sen Shelby, Richard C. [AL] – 3/18/2013
• Sen Stabenow, Debbie [MI] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Tester, Jon [MT] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Thune, John [SD] – 3/19/2013
• Sen Toomey, Pat [PA] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Vitter, David [LA] – 3/13/2013
• Sen Warner, Mark R. [VA] – 3/11/2013
• Sen Whitehouse, Sheldon [RI] – 3/11/2013
• Sen Wicker, Roger F. [MS] – 3/5/2013
• Sen Wyden, Ron [OR] – 2/28/2013

How can any U.S. senator who has a sworn responsibility for the well-being of Americans declare

“…that the United States has a vital national interest in, and unbreakable commitment to, ensuring the existence, survival, and security of the State of Israel, and reaffirms United States support for Israel’s right to self-defense…”

Such a declaration is the height of irresponsibility! The U.S. has no vital and inflexible interest whatsoever in the State of Israel. The U.S. is supposed to have a vital interest, not in any given State anywhere, but in JUSTICE for Americans. It is in the interest of every American to get what is his or her due. For the government of the U.S. to provide justice domestically is a huge and ongoing challenge that it has not been meeting for decades. There are many reasons for this failure, and one of them is the misbegotten attempt to link that justice to the fortunes of a foreign state like Israel. Israel has its own politics, its own foreign relations, its own religious basis, its own conflicts, and its own ideas of justice. Israel is not a state of the Union. There is no good reason to single out the State of Israel either for preferential treatment or for a special relationship, anymore than there is to single out any other of the many States, peoples, nations and factions in this world. There are no clear and known connections between justice for Americans and assuring that the State of Israel exists, survives and is secure.

It is singularly imprudent for the U.S. government inflexibly to commit to this or any other such foreign political configuration. It not only does not guarantee justice, but it easily involves the U.S. and Americans in endorsing and supporting injustices in foreign lands over which it has little or no control.

I dare say that if 76 Americans were chosen at random who did not face voting blocs and did not receive campaign contributions from them, they would not judge it to be in their interests or those of the American public to link up to Israel in such a way that Israel, by its own actions, could get Americans into a war with Iranians. The likelihood is small that they would urge, as does SR 65

“…that, if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence.”

Should a member of the U.S. Senate who signs on to such a proposition be allowed to remain a U.S. senator?

The same document says in so many words that Israel is justified in attacking Iran in self-defense. It asserts that Congress

“deplores and condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the reprehensible statements and policies of the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran threatening the security and existence of Israel;

“recognizes the tremendous threat posed to the United States, the West, and Israel by the Government of Iran’s continuing pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability;”

Have these 76 senators not clearly identified themselves in SR 65 as ready and willing to commit Americans to a war against Iran if Israel initiates it and calls it self-defense? Indeed, they have – unambiguously.

Is such a judgment even remotely sensible? Not at all!

The 76 senators who have so far signed on to SR 65 are warmongers. A warmonger is “someone who is eager to encourage people or a nation to go to war.” Their supposed reasons and motivations, and a number of them are listed in SR 65, are either faulty or beside the point. I will not go into them. Instead, I point out that the main points are simple.

Iran has no nuclear weapons and has no nuclear program to build them. Even if it had them, they pose no necessary or imminent threat of attack on America. Certainly right now Iran is in no position to attack either Israel or America. It not only has no nuclear weapons, it has no way to deliver them if it did have them. Israel and the U.S. possess both nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. These two states pose far more of an imminent threat to Iran than the opposite.

The U.S. has been organizing as much of the world as it can to strangle Iran with sanctions. This evil policy is having some success in harming Iran and Iranians. The U.S. and Israel have engaged in both computer sabotage and assassinations. To all of this, Iran has actually responded with restraint. It has even made offers that the U.S. has rejected.

However, the U.S. and Israeli actions and threats have not dislodged the Iranian government, have not overturned its mode of government, and have not created another revolution in Iran.

This is the background reason why these 76 warmongers want to move right up to the war-making line and then cross it. They have not got their way by these other means, so they are eager for an outright war.

Recently by Michael S. Rozeff: The Movie Margin Call (2011)

On February 28, 2013, Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced Senate Resolution 65, which is currently referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I hope it dies. If it passes, it becomes an important step on the road to war with Iran, as Pat Buchanan explains:

"SR 65 radically alters U.S. policy by declaring it to be u2018the policy of the United States … to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability and to take such action as may be necessary to implement this policy.'

"Obama's policy — no nuclear weapons in Iran — is tossed out. Substituted for it in SR 65 is Bibi Netanyahu's policy — u2018no nuclear weapons capability' in Iran."

"Now, as Iran already has that u2018capability' — as does Germany, Japan, South Korea and other nations who have forsworn nuclear weapons — what SR 65 does is authorize the United States to attack Iran — to stop her from what she is doing now. Yet, according to all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, Iran does not have a nuclear bomb program."

Senators have many reasons for signing on to bills and resolutions as co-sponsors, because they constantly make deals with one another. A signature does not always imply a supportive vote on a bill. But since war with Iran has such large implications for all Americans, on all fronts — such as moral, political, and economic — I think that a single-issue focus is called for.

Graham is a warmonger. A senator who signs on to Graham's warmongering resolution identifies himself or herself as a warmonger. Co-sponsoring SR 65 identifies a senator clearly as making one of the most serious possible misjudgments that a legislator can make. Very few matters rise to the importance of launching an aggressive war against another nation without justification.

Americans should remove these warmongers from office, no matter what the other votes of these senators may be and no matter what other contradictory statements they may mouth about peace and threats. As signers, they know what this resolution says. They are fully responsible for signing it. After all, these signers are supposed to be Senators. They are supposed to be wise, mature, seasoned men and women who understand what the Public Good requires and who support it. They are supposed to be immune to factions, interest groups, temporary emotions, biases and political dealing. They are supposed to understand that the business of America is primarily its own business, not butting into the politics of other states, not creating and extending an Empire, not being the world's self-appointed policeman, not making aggressive wars, not acting on behalf of factions in America, and not linking the fortunes of Americans to selected governments or peoples overseas.

No senator worthy of the title should ever have signed such a resolution.

Removing these warmongers from office is easier said than done since the two major political parties own and control the nominating processes. It is a measure of how far off the path of any conceivable Public Good this nation has strayed that a resolution like this could attract so many signatures.

Let us at least identify who these bad apples are, even if the whole barrel is rotten. Let us at least point them out for what they stand for and tell them in whatever ways we can think of "No", "No", and again "No". "No more wars. No more aggressions. No more lies. No more propaganda. No more exaggerations. No more kowtowing to Israel or to certain subsets of American voters. No more capital siphoned off from productive ventures into phony wars, military spending and bureaucracies ginned up by the war and terrorism complex."

Who are these 76 senate warmongers? They are

• Sen Ayotte, Kelly [NH] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Barrasso, John [WY] — 3/6/2013
• Sen Baucus, Max [MT] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Begich, Mark [AK] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Bennet, Michael F. [CO] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Blumenthal, Richard [CT] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Blunt, Roy [MO] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Boozman, John [AR] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Boxer, Barbara [CA] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Brown, Sherrod [OH] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Burr, Richard [NC] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Cantwell, Maria [WA] — 3/18/2013
• Sen Cardin, Benjamin L. [MD] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Casey, Robert P., Jr. [PA] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Chambliss, Saxby [GA] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Coats, Daniel [IN] — 3/18/2013
• Sen Coburn, Tom [OK] — 3/12/2013
• Sen Cochran, Thad [MS] — 3/18/2013
• Sen Collins, Susan M. [ME] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Coons, Christopher A. [DE] — 3/6/2013
• Sen Cornyn, John [TX] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Crapo, Mike [ID] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Cruz, Ted [TX] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Donnelly, Joe [IN] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Durbin, Richard [IL] — 3/13/2013
• Sen Enzi, Michael B. [WY] — 3/22/2013
• Sen Feinstein, Dianne [CA] — 3/12/2013
• Sen Fischer, Deb [NE] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Flake, Jeff [AZ] — 3/11/2013
• Sen Gillibrand, Kirsten E. [NY] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Grassley, Chuck [IA] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Hagan, Kay [NC] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Hatch, Orrin G. [UT] — 3/14/2013
• Sen Heitkamp, Heidi [ND] — 3/11/2013
• Sen Heller, Dean [NV] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Hirono, Mazie K. [HI] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Hoeven, John [ND] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Inhofe, James M. [OK] — 3/6/2013
• Sen Isakson, Johnny [GA] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Johanns, Mike [NE] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Johnson, Ron [WI] — 3/20/2013
• Sen Johnson, Tim [SD] — 3/11/2013
• Sen Kaine, Tim [VA] — 3/11/2013
• Sen Kirk, Mark Steven [IL] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Klobuchar, Amy [MN] — 3/11/2013
• Sen Landrieu, Mary L. [LA] — 3/19/2013
• Sen Lautenberg, Frank R. [NJ] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Lee, Mike [UT] — 3/12/2013
• Sen Manchin, Joe, III [WV] — 2/28/2013
• Sen McCain, John [AZ] — 3/13/2013
• Sen McCaskill, Claire [MO] — 3/5/2013
• Sen McConnell, Mitch [KY] — 3/18/2013
• Sen Menendez, Robert [NJ] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Mikulski, Barbara A. [MD] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Moran, Jerry [KS] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Murkowski, Lisa [AK] — 3/12/2013
• Sen Murray, Patty [WA] — 3/11/2013
• Sen Nelson, Bill [FL] — 3/14/2013
• Sen Portman, Rob [OH] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Pryor, Mark L. [AR] — 3/13/2013
• Sen Risch, James E. [ID] — 3/18/2013
• Sen Roberts, Pat [KS] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Rubio, Marco [FL] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY] — 2/28/2013
• Sen Scott, Tim [SC] — 3/11/2013
• Sen Shaheen, Jeanne [NH] — 3/19/2013
• Sen Shelby, Richard C. [AL] — 3/18/2013
• Sen Stabenow, Debbie [MI] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Tester, Jon [MT] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Thune, John [SD] — 3/19/2013
• Sen Toomey, Pat [PA] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Vitter, David [LA] — 3/13/2013
• Sen Warner, Mark R. [VA] — 3/11/2013
• Sen Whitehouse, Sheldon [RI] — 3/11/2013
• Sen Wicker, Roger F. [MS] — 3/5/2013
• Sen Wyden, Ron [OR] — 2/28/2013

How can any U.S. senator who has a sworn responsibility for the well-being of Americans declare

"…that the United States has a vital national interest in, and unbreakable commitment to, ensuring the existence, survival, and security of the State of Israel, and reaffirms United States support for Israel’s right to self-defense…"

Such a declaration is the height of irresponsibility! The U.S. has no vital and inflexible interest whatsoever in the State of Israel. The U.S. is supposed to have a vital interest, not in any given State anywhere, but in JUSTICE for Americans. It is in the interest of every American to get what is his or her due. For the government of the U.S. to provide justice domestically is a huge and ongoing challenge that it has not been meeting for decades. There are many reasons for this failure, and one of them is the misbegotten attempt to link that justice to the fortunes of a foreign state like Israel. Israel has its own politics, its own foreign relations, its own religious basis, its own conflicts, and its own ideas of justice. Israel is not a state of the Union. There is no good reason to single out the State of Israel either for preferential treatment or for a special relationship, anymore than there is to single out any other of the many States, peoples, nations and factions in this world. There are no clear and known connections between justice for Americans and assuring that the State of Israel exists, survives and is secure.

It is singularly imprudent for the U.S. government inflexibly to commit to this or any other such foreign political configuration. It not only does not guarantee justice, but it easily involves the U.S. and Americans in endorsing and supporting injustices in foreign lands over which it has little or no control.

I dare say that if 76 Americans were chosen at random who did not face voting blocs and did not receive campaign contributions from them, they would not judge it to be in their interests or those of the American public to link up to Israel in such a way that Israel, by its own actions, could get Americans into a war with Iranians. The likelihood is small that they would urge, as does SR 65

"…that, if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence."

No one of the 50 states of the Union can drag Americans into a war by an attack of its own, but it can happen that an attack on one state by a foreign power causes Congress to declare war against an aggressor. But if Israel should happen to make a case, as it already has, that it is necessary to its self-defense to attack Iran if Iran has a "nuclear capability", then SR 65 commits the U.S. to joining in a war on Iran as an ally and partner with military and economic support. No state of the Union can push the war button on its own for the United States, but SR 65 says that Israel can push that button.

Should a member of the U.S. Senate who signs on to such a proposition be allowed to remain a U.S. senator?

The same document says in so many words that Israel is justified in attacking Iran in self-defense. It asserts that Congress

"deplores and condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the reprehensible statements and policies of the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran threatening the security and existence of Israel;

"recognizes the tremendous threat posed to the United States, the West, and Israel by the Government of Iran’s continuing pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability;"

Have these 76 senators not clearly identified themselves in SR 65 as ready and willing to commit Americans to a war against Iran if Israel initiates it and calls it self-defense? Indeed, they have — unambiguously.

Is such a judgment even remotely sensible? Not at all!

The 76 senators who have so far signed on to SR 65 are warmongers. A warmonger is "someone who is eager to encourage people or a nation to go to war." Their supposed reasons and motivations, and a number of them are listed in SR 65, are either faulty or beside the point. I will not go into them. Instead, I point out that the main points are simple.

Iran has no nuclear weapons and has no nuclear program to build them. Even if it had them, they pose no necessary or imminent threat of attack on America. Certainly right now Iran is in no position to attack either Israel or America. It not only has no nuclear weapons, it has no way to deliver them if it did have them. Israel and the U.S. possess both nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. These two states pose far more of an imminent threat to Iran than the opposite.

The U.S. has been organizing as much of the world as it can to strangle Iran with sanctions. This evil policy is having some success in harming Iran and Iranians. The U.S. and Israel have engaged in both computer sabotage and assassinations. To all of this, Iran has actually responded with restraint. It has even made offers that the U.S. has rejected.

However, the U.S. and Israeli actions and threats have not dislodged the Iranian government, have not overturned its mode of government, and have not created another revolution in Iran.

This is the background reason why these 76 warmongers want to move right up to the war-making line and then cross it. They have not got their way by these other means, so they are eager for an outright war.

Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York. He is the author of the free e-book Essays on American Empire: Liberty vs. Domination and the free e-book The U.S. Constitution and Money: Corruption and Decline.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

Margin Call takes us into the world of an investment bank that has taken on too much risk. Consequently, it is skirting insolvency. The bank doesn’t know this, until a sharp analyst discovers it, because its risk model doesn’t allow for the kind of volatility that the assets actually can experience.

The analyst who is in the process of finding this out has been fired. His successor finds it out. He warns his superiors. The problem then makes its way up the chain of command in one evening and all-nighter. This leads on the following day to the liquidation at fire sale prices of a large portfolio of mortgage-backed securities. The firm survives but the traders lose their stock-in-trade, which is the capacity of the firm to make a market in these securities. The traders lose their jobs, but get bonuses for having liquidated the securities.

The movie focuses on the reactions of many of those involved in this scenario. In so doing, we get a glimpse into how they feel about their high earnings in the bubble years, because this event signals the end of the game when the music stops.

Jeremy Irons almost steals the picture, playing the top man in the company who makes the decision to liquidate and then must motivate his subordinates to deliver this effectively. Kevin Spacey holds his own as the head of the trading floor who has been with the firm 34 years. He comes across as a man “in between” conscience and necessity, who opts to survive. Paul Bettany makes a mark as a middle manager of trading who works with Spacey. Simon Baker scores as an administrator whose knowledge of the trading models and realities is doubtful. Demi Moore plays the “go-along to get-along” risk manager who adopted the risk model that doesn’t work and then failed to heed earlier warnings.

Most all these players in the firm and the market do not have a full grasp of why they have become so highly paid. They doubt their value added. They doubt that finance has a positive payoff for society. Irons has the largest view. He realizes the risk involved, the market uncertainties, and the tendency of markets to lose their liquidity at times. But he also does not fully comprehend why the markets tend to go to extremes at times, or how the real world can suddenly change its capacity to deliver positive returns.

As a study of character, Margin Call to me didn’t seem anything out of the ordinary, but I rate it as somewhat above average for its portrayal of this specialized world. It did this accurately, as far as it went. There was another way out for the firm than liquidation, which was not explored in the screenplay, and that was the BAILOUT. The picture never mentioned going to the Federal Reserve and getting its support for the securities that needed disposal. This is what actually occurred as the crisis of 2007-2008 eventuated. Lehman Bros. was let fail, but only it. After that, the Federal Reserve intervened.

At the end, Irons contemplates making money out of the crash and attempts of other firms to survive, he having steered his firm to be first at liquidating and surviving. He can pick up the pieces. This is true to life. Goldman Sachs did this, with the aid of the Federal Reserve.

Also not explored are two important causes of the speculative market in mortgage-backed securities. These include the government’s push, through Fannie Mae, for below-par housing loans, and the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies. The screenplay didn’t go deep enough in these respects. It would have had to reduce some of the peripheral scenes with so many characters. This was certainly possible. The entire sub-plot with Stanley Tucci getting fired and then replaced by Zachary Quinto was not really necessary to the story, other than to show that the firm had a history of cutting back on positions at times.

If the film had depicted the firm’s survival as depending, not on being first to liquidate, but on making use of the Fed and the too big to fail notion, that would have made the film far more realistic and hard-hitting. As it stands, the movie’s messages about the place of investment banking and the housing boom are at best ambiguous and at worst non-existent. The screenplay focuses instead on the effects of the fall of this investment bank on those working for it. That drama was not particularly gripping because the character arcs were so limited.

Another possible screenplay direction would have been to live up to the title Margin Call, which was not done in the movie. That possibility arises from the real-world case in which JP Morgan initiated contested margin calls on Lehman Bros. That case is discussed at length here.

Recently by Michael S. Rozeff: Distortion of Dorner Manifesto by MainstreamMedia

Margin Call takes us into the world of an investment bank that has taken on too much risk. Consequently, it is skirting insolvency. The bank doesn’t know this, until a sharp analyst discovers it, because its risk model doesn’t allow for the kind of volatility that the assets actually can experience.

The analyst who is in the process of finding this out has been fired. His successor finds it out. He warns his superiors. The problem then makes its way up the chain of command in one evening and all-nighter. This leads on the following day to the liquidation at fire sale prices of a large portfolio of mortgage-backed securities. The firm survives but the traders lose their stock-in-trade, which is the capacity of the firm to make a market in these securities. The traders lose their jobs, but get bonuses for having liquidated the securities.

The movie focuses on the reactions of many of those involved in this scenario. In so doing, we get a glimpse into how they feel about their high earnings in the bubble years, because this event signals the end of the game when the music stops.

Jeremy Irons almost steals the picture, playing the top man in the company who makes the decision to liquidate and then must motivate his subordinates to deliver this effectively. Kevin Spacey holds his own as the head of the trading floor who has been with the firm 34 years. He comes across as a man "in between" conscience and necessity, who opts to survive. Paul Bettany makes a mark as a middle manager of trading who works with Spacey. Simon Baker scores as an administrator whose knowledge of the trading models and realities is doubtful. Demi Moore plays the "go-along to get-along" risk manager who adopted the risk model that doesn’t work and then failed to heed earlier warnings.

Most all these players in the firm and the market do not have a full grasp of why they have become so highly paid. They doubt their value added. They doubt that finance has a positive payoff for society. Irons has the largest view. He realizes the risk involved, the market uncertainties, and the tendency of markets to lose their liquidity at times. But he also does not fully comprehend why the markets tend to go to extremes at times, or how the real world can suddenly change its capacity to deliver positive returns.

As a study of character, Margin Call to me didn’t seem anything out of the ordinary, but I rate it as somewhat above average for its portrayal of this specialized world. It did this accurately, as far as it went. There was another way out for the firm than liquidation, which was not explored in the screenplay, and that was the BAILOUT. The picture never mentioned going to the Federal Reserve and getting its support for the securities that needed disposal. This is what actually occurred as the crisis of 2007-2008 eventuated. Lehman Bros. was let fail, but only it. After that, the Federal Reserve intervened.

At the end, Irons contemplates making money out of the crash and attempts of other firms to survive, he having steered his firm to be first at liquidating and surviving. He can pick up the pieces. This is true to life. Goldman Sachs did this, with the aid of the Federal Reserve.

Also not explored are two important causes of the speculative market in mortgage-backed securities. These include the government’s push, through Fannie Mae, for below-par housing loans, and the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies. The screenplay didn’t go deep enough in these respects. It would have had to reduce some of the peripheral scenes with so many characters. This was certainly possible. The entire sub-plot with Stanley Tucci getting fired and then replaced by Zachary Quinto was not really necessary to the story, other than to show that the firm had a history of cutting back on positions at times.

If the film had depicted the firm’s survival as depending, not on being first to liquidate, but on making use of the Fed and the too big to fail notion, that would have made the film far more realistic and hard-hitting. As it stands, the movie’s messages about the place of investment banking and the housing boom are at best ambiguous and at worst non-existent. The screenplay focuses instead on the effects of the fall of this investment bank on those working for it. That drama was not particularly gripping because the character arcs were so limited.

Another possible screenplay direction would have been to live up to the title Margin Call, which was not done in the movie. That possibility arises from the real-world case in which JP Morgan initiated contested margin calls on Lehman Bros. That case is discussed at length here.

Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York. He is the author of the free e-book Essays on American Empire: Liberty vs. Domination and the free e-book The U.S. Constitution and Money: Corruption and Decline.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff

On Sept. 14, 2001, the U.S. Congress in effect declared war when it passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) as a joint resolution. The vote was overwhelmingly one-sided. In the House, the vote was 420 Ayes, 1 Nay, and 10 Not Voting. In the Senate, the vote was 98 Ayes, 0 Nays, and 2 Present/Not Voting. Rep. Barbara Lee was the nay vote in the House.

One may argue about the wisdom of this measure and the logic of this measure. One may evaluate the quality of the measure as law. One may argue about the conduct of the military operations under the Executive that has been enabled by this measure. One may evaluate the ramifications for the U.S. government, for the world, and for Americans. Indeed, one may form innumerable opinions from many perspectives about this measure. But one cannot deny that this AUMF set in motion the ongoing war on terror that is being conducted by the U.S. government.

The Obama administration has made an effort to change the terminology describing the war. For example, it doesn’t like the words “war on terror”, and it has used substitutes. This effort is not central to the conduct of the military operations enabled under this resolution. As long as the resolution remains in place, its existence is what is central.

The Obama administration was critical of how the Bush administration was conducting military operations. After it took power, it changed the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also began to use more drone attacks and to use them in countries that Bush had not. These changes in military operations are also not central to their existence. What matters is that the resolution authorizes military operations of broad scope, in ways to be determined by the President. What matters is that this resolution exists at all.

The existence of the war on terror is prior to the conduct of the war. The conduct is malleable and can take many forms. As long as the resolution exists, the war will be conducted somehow. The conduct is important primarily as it may influence the public’s opinion and the opinion of the Congress that such a war should exist at all, for there is no way to end this war without passing a resolution that ends it. In other words, if the conduct is such that the costs are seen to be vastly outweighing the benefits, then the chances of ending the resolution rise.

One may argue about the constitutionality of the resolution, but if it were ever tested the odds are overwhelming that the resolution’s constitutionality would be upheld. It is inconceivable that a Supreme Court would overturn the power to declare war that is vested in the Congress.

The American public is stuck with this war or even approves of it until large numbers of voters decide that the results don’t justify the costs.

Congress funds the war. It exercises oversight of the operations. At its discretion, it or any of its members can mount an effort to alter the course of the war or even end it altogether. The American people elect representatives every 2 years. If candidates who want to end the war can get party nominations and get elected, voters will be able to influence the existence of this war.

This resolution exists legally because Congress has the power to declare war. There may be no manual that describes what a war declaration should look like or that defines what a war is, but those uncertainties are also not central to the existence of this resolution. Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress has the power to declare war, however ill-defined it may be and however ill-defined the enemy is. That’s the fact that will not go away, no matter what debates concerning the war’s conduct occur. Specifically, the substitution of drones for ground forces is not disallowed under the AUMF. If the President identifies Americans as terrorists, the AUMF suspends their rights. They can be assassinated.

Let’s explore that further. The AUMF states

“That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

The phrase “necessary and appropriate force” does not constrain the President. There is nothing in the AUMF that suggests that killing an American on American soil cannot be regarded by the President as “necessary and appropriate”. In this situation, any President will use his discretion, conditioned on how he thinks such a killing will affect public opinion about his conduct of the war.

There is nothing unusual in Eric Holder or other administration spokespersons trying to keep their death-dealing options open. They have been authorized by the Congress to use lethal force if they so choose.

The point I am making is that the AUMF itself is what needs to be questioned, but behind that is the even more basic provision in the Constitution that gives a Congress the power to declare war, and of course the power to tax in order to fund a war.

In a condition of war, civil liberties tend to get overridden. The current war on terror, now over 11 years old, shows this. For any number of reasons, this war shows no signs of ending. It is actually spreading to more lands. The connection to an “organization” or “persons” that are in any way linked to 9/11 is now exceedingly remote, but the use of military force continues. This is not logical. It is not legal. It’s happening nonetheless because the pro-war forces are driving it. There is no apparent political force that is stopping it. Under these conditions, the prognosis for civil liberties is anything but good.

The power to tax that Congress was given in the Constitution was certainly a very bad idea, and it is not unrelated to the power to declare war. Has Congress ever seen a war that it didn’t like? American history is one long catalog of war after war after war. Congress has now foisted upon us a never-ending war.

It is all well and good to debate drone warfare and the killing of Americans overseas or on American soil. However, it’s my opinion that these debates are not searching enough. They do not go to the heart of the matter, which is that Congress has the power to declare war and did it on Sept. 14, 2001. That power needs to be questioned in the most serious and searching way. The misuse of that power has been endemic in American history. That is but one facet of what should be a broad public debate and examination of the even more fundamental issue, which is making citizenship or membership under the Federal government an optional matter.

Expect severe distortion of the Dorner Manifesto by the MSM. You cannot simply read headlines and expect to know anything. You have to do more research than that to understand any issue. You also cannot read only the news articles of one or a few sources, especially the established or mainstream media. These routinely editorialize within so-called news accounts. They selectively choose and distort material.

A case in point is an article popping up in Google news that is here. It is written by Sharon Bernstein and it’s under an NBC affiliate (4NBC Southern California). I have also already seen and read a CNN article that interspersed misleading editorial statements with quotes from the Dorner Manifesto. Bernstein’s article is totally irresponsible journalism.

Ms. Bernstein msinterpets Dorner as choosing victims on the basis of race and sex bias. This is completely false!! In each case where race and sex are mentioned, he focuses on their behavior and what he charges them with doing. More on that below.

Her headline reads “Manifesto: Alleged Cop Revenge Shooter Named Targets, Blamed Asians, Hispanics and Lesbians.”

Dorner DOES NOT BLAME Asians, Hispanics and Lesbians per se. In each case, he blames them for specific reasons. These reasons are lousy reasons for murder, to be sure. But it is clear that he is not targeting various members of the LAPD for their race or sexual preference alone, but for their BEHAVIOR as he sees it.

I will first provide three quotes that show that he has nothing at all against the LGBT community:

“Ellen Degeneres, continue your excellent contribution to entertaining America and bringing the human factor to entertainment. You changed the perception of your gay community and how we as Americans view the LGBT community. I congratulate you on your success and opening my eyes as a young adult, and my generation to the fact that you are know different from us other than who you choose to love.”

“It’s time to allow gay service member’s spouses to utilize the same benefits that all heterosexual dependents are eligible for. Medical, Dental, Tricare, Deers, SGLI, BX, Commissary, Milstar, MWR, etc. Flag officers, lets be honest. You can’t really give a valid argument to as why gays shouldn’t be eligible as every month a new state enacts laws that allow same sex marriage.”

“LGBT community and supporters, the same way you have the right to voice your opinion on acceptance of gay marriage, Chick Fil-A has a right to voice their beliefs as well. That’s what makes America so great. Freedom of expression. Don’t be assholes and boycott/degrade their business and customers who patronize the locations. They make some damn good chicken! Vandalizing (graffiti) their locations does not help any cause.”

What does he say about lesbian officers in general, as a class? Nothing. He singles out certain ones that he thinks are treating males unfairly who are under their supervision:

“Those lesbian officers in supervising positions who go to work, day in day out, with the sole intent of attempting to prove your misandrist authority (not feminism) to degrade male officers. You are a high value target.”

Dorner says that he is making certain LAPD police, characterized by race, as his targets, each because of a different reason. It is the reasons that are important to him, not the race per se. In each case, race comes in because it is linked to a particular injustice that he perceives and dislikes.

Take the case of Hispanics:

“Those Hispanic officers who victimize their own ethnicity because they are new immigrants to this country and are unaware of their civil rights. You call them wetbacks to their face and demean them in front of fellow officers of different ethnicities so that you will receive some sort of acceptance from your colleagues. I’m not impressed. Most likely, your parents or grandparents were immigrants at one time, but you have forgotten that. You are a high value target.”

Dorner sees an injustice in Hispanic police who mistreat other Hispanics in order to get ahead in the LAPD.

Ms. Bernstein failed to mention that Dorner, who is black, also targets certain Black officers and certain Caucasian officers, again, not for their race per se but because of a perceived injustice.

In the case of Black supervisors, he is concerned with those who demean white officers under their authority:

“Those Black officers in supervisory ranks and pay grades who stay in south bureau (even though you live in the valley or OC) for the sole intent of getting retribution toward subordinate caucasians officers for the pain and hostile work environment their elders inflicted on you as probationers (P-1′s) and novice P-2’s. You are a high value target. You perpetuated the cycle of racism in the department as well. You breed a new generation of bigoted caucasian officer when you belittle them and treat them unfairly.”

In the case of white officers, he is concerned with those who are intent on victimizing minorities:

“Those Caucasian officers who join South Bureau divisions (77th,SW,SE, an Harbor) with the sole intent to victimize minorities who are uneducated, and unaware of criminal law, civil law, and civil rights. You prefer the South bureau because a use of force/deadly force is likely and the individual you use UOF on will likely not report it. You are a high value target.”

Dorner does indeed categorize his targets by race, as Ms. Bernstein’s article partially reports. This is not central to his thought or action. Mistreatment of subordinates is central to his thinking, and this includes his personal case and his personal frustrations with getting the LAPD to change. Dorner’s case should not be transformed by irresponsible reporting into the acts of a person motivated by racial hatreds. Neither should he be dismissed as one who is “mentally ill”.

He has made himself judge, jury and executioner. That’s for sure. In this respect, he echoes President Obama with his targeted killings. He even uses the same term, target. Both have their reasons for their killing. Both are wrong.

Recently by Michael S. Rozeff: Why Pick on Targeted Killing? IndicttheState

Expect severe distortion of the Dorner Manifesto by the MSM. You cannot simply read headlines and expect to know anything. You have to do more research than that to understand any issue. You also cannot read only the news articles of one or a few sources, especially the established or mainstream media. These routinely editorialize within so-called news accounts. They selectively choose and distort material.

A case in point is an article popping up in Google news that is here. It is written by Sharon Bernstein and it’s under an NBC affiliate (4NBC Southern California). I have also already seen and read a CNN article that interspersed misleading editorial statements with quotes from the Dorner Manifesto. Bernstein’s article is totally irresponsible journalism.

Ms. Bernstein msinterpets Dorner as choosing victims on the basis of race and sex bias. This is completely false!! In each case where race and sex are mentioned, he focuses on their behavior and what he charges them with doing. More on that below.

Her headline reads "Manifesto: Alleged Cop Revenge Shooter Named Targets, Blamed Asians, Hispanics and Lesbians."

Dorner DOES NOT BLAME Asians, Hispanics and Lesbians per se. In each case, he blames them for specific reasons. These reasons are lousy reasons for murder, to be sure. But it is clear that he is not targeting various members of the LAPD for their race or sexual preference alone, but for their BEHAVIOR as he sees it.

I will first provide three quotes that show that he has nothing at all against the LGBT community:

"Ellen Degeneres, continue your excellent contribution to entertaining America and bringing the human factor to entertainment. You changed the perception of your gay community and how we as Americans view the LGBT community. I congratulate you on your success and opening my eyes as a young adult, and my generation to the fact that you are know different from us other than who you choose to love."

"It’s time to allow gay service member’s spouses to utilize the same benefits that all heterosexual dependents are eligible for. Medical, Dental, Tricare, Deers, SGLI, BX, Commissary, Milstar, MWR, etc. Flag officers, lets be honest. You can’t really give a valid argument to as why gays shouldn’t be eligible as every month a new state enacts laws that allow same sex marriage."

"LGBT community and supporters, the same way you have the right to voice your opinion on acceptance of gay marriage, Chick Fil-A has a right to voice their beliefs as well. That’s what makes America so great. Freedom of expression. Don’t be assholes and boycott/degrade their business and customers who patronize the locations. They make some damn good chicken! Vandalizing (graffiti) their locations does not help any cause."

What does he say about lesbian officers in general, as a class? Nothing. He singles out certain ones that he thinks are treating males unfairly who are under their supervision:

"Those lesbian officers in supervising positions who go to work, day in day out, with the sole intent of attempting to prove your misandrist authority (not feminism) to degrade male officers. You are a high value target."

Dorner says that he is making certain LAPD police, characterized by race, as his targets, each because of a different reason. It is the reasons that are important to him, not the race per se. In each case, race comes in because it is linked to a particular injustice that he perceives and dislikes.

Take the case of Hispanics:

"Those Hispanic officers who victimize their own ethnicity because they are new immigrants to this country and are unaware of their civil rights. You call them wetbacks to their face and demean them in front of fellow officers of different ethnicities so that you will receive some sort of acceptance from your colleagues. I’m not impressed. Most likely, your parents or grandparents were immigrants at one time, but you have forgotten that. You are a high value target."

Dorner sees an injustice in Hispanic police who mistreat other Hispanics in order to get ahead in the LAPD.

Ms. Bernstein failed to mention that Dorner, who is black, also targets certain Black officers and certain Caucasian officers, again, not for their race per se but because of a perceived injustice.

In the case of Black supervisors, he is concerned with those who demean white officers under their authority:

"Those Black officers in supervisory ranks and pay grades who stay in south bureau (even though you live in the valley or OC) for the sole intent of getting retribution toward subordinate caucasians officers for the pain and hostile work environment their elders inflicted on you as probationers (P-1′s) and novice P-2’s. You are a high value target. You perpetuated the cycle of racism in the department as well. You breed a new generation of bigoted caucasian officer when you belittle them and treat them unfairly."

In the case of white officers, he is concerned with those who are intent on victimizing minorities:

"Those Caucasian officers who join South Bureau divisions (77th,SW,SE, an Harbor) with the sole intent to victimize minorities who are uneducated, and unaware of criminal law, civil law, and civil rights. You prefer the South bureau because a use of force/deadly force is likely and the individual you use UOF on will likely not report it. You are a high value target."

Dorner does indeed categorize his targets by race, as Ms. Bernstein’s article partially reports. This is not central to his thought or action. Mistreatment of subordinates is central to his thinking, and this includes his personal case and his personal frustrations with getting the LAPD to change. Dorner’s case should not be transformed by irresponsible reporting into the acts of a person motivated by racial hatreds. Neither should he be dismissed as one who is "mentally ill".

He has made himself judge, jury and executioner. That’s for sure. In this respect, he echoes President Obama with his targeted killings. He even uses the same term, target. Both have their reasons for their killing. Both are wrong.

Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York. He is the author of the free e-book Essays on American Empire: Liberty vs. Domination and the free e-book The U.S. Constitution and Money: Corruption and Decline.

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