As an add-on to Tom's remarks, we must remember that statism depends upon an elaborate system of lies. George Carlin has made a wonderful response to the idea that we need more "honesty" in government, saying that truthfulness would bring down all political systems. Those who insist upon debunking establishment lies with (gasp!) evidence, are denounced as "revisionists." But all learning is "revisionist" in nature. What was once believed to be true gets replaced by a more factual model which, in time, succumbs to an even sounder truth. Even the processes by which we evaluate claims to truth continue to evolve, as Thomas Kuhn has ably demonstrated.
Thus, when I saw some self-styled expert berating Ron Paul on cable TV for his "revisionist" views of the Civil War, I could not help but wonder if this commentator also rejects the Copernican "revisionism" that rejects the previously established geocentric model of the universe? I recall my own painful experiences with "revisionism": it was the Christmas season in my early youth, when someone informed me that there was no Santa Claus, a revelation that shocked me at the time, but from which I eventually recovered. In time, I even gave up on the wintertime presence of Jack Frost!
