Spreading Democracy in Afghanistan

I have long railed against our War in Afghanistan… indeed, railed against our practice  of Perpetual War…. What we are doing there is simply wrong.

The neo-con idea of spreading democracy through the use of force, an idea taken up and run with by our current Nobel Peace Prize winning Democratic President, and condoned by the boy’s and girl’s club in Washington, is quite simply, ridiculous.

Destroying the homes, the lives, the possessions of the Afghani citizens that lived in this village does not promote their friendship, does not promote the idea of America as a peaceful, democratic society that deserves emulation.

Read this article.  Look at the photographs.

How Short-Term Thinking is Causing Long-Term Failure in Afghanistan – Joshua Foust – International – The Atlantic.

A Brief Discourse on Gibbon

I have recently taken up Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Written nearly two and a half centuries ago, it is a massive book, and remains an astonishing, insightful, quite relevant, and sometimes humorous work.  Over the next year, I intend to write a series of posts that will, I hope, enlighten for myself and the few that read this, both the history of Rome and its parallels with America today.

As we move into the new year, one wonders what it will bring.  Will it be a year of peace and good will among men?…   I doubt it.

The American Eagle soars across the globe, as did the Roman Eagle across the Mediterranean 2,000 years ago.  America’s  propensity for war, and perceived national gain by war, is to me an astonishing hallmark of the United States, this nation of  “Free People.”

Gibbon writes “…as long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.”

On this past New Years Eve, gathered with a few friends and family in front of the wide-screen to watch the ball drop in Times Square, a young female news announcer announced to several marines at her side and the world at large, “Thank you guys for “kicking butt” over there.”  “Kicking butt?” Like war is some sort of an athletic game?   What an idiot.  No journalist, her.  Just another popinjay  spouting jingoism’s for America’s  war machine.

Ah, me!  Perhaps I am just getting old, but the sheer idiocy of the majority of the media in this country both frightens and enrages me.  Perhaps I should heed Gibbons’ Persian prince who  “…never departed from the Sultan’s presence without satisfying himself whether his head was still on his shoulders,” and so employ the philosophy that it was the “part of the wise man to forget the inevitable calamities of human life in enjoyment of the fleeting hour.”

I just may give that a go this year.

 

America: The Land of the Free or A Nation of Slaves?

My people, my family, or at least lines of my family, have resided in America since the early colonial days.   They came for the promise of a better life, free from the political entanglements and intrigues , from European politics, and the shackles of class.  They came seeking, in a word, liberty, and here they found it, albeit at the expense of the eastern Native American tribes.  They understood at a deep, near subliminal level what freedom and liberty meant.

American’s today know the words liberty and freedom.  Indeed, our national anthem extols “the land of the free.”  Our politicians mouth the words liberty and freedom ad nauseum, but do Americans truly have a clear understanding of these words.  I think not.  We have liberty and freedom in this country only in so much as the government permits us.

If one has liberty, one has a right to one’s person and ones property, and along with that, the right to protect ones person and ones  property.  This is the fundamental libertarian or classical liberal principle of  self-ownership, and it is from this single fundamental principle from which libertarian ideology proceeds.   Another term for this state of liberty is individualism.  To better understand this idea of self-ownership, let us look at what it means to be a slave.  First, a slave has no right to his person.  A slave is property.  Before the civil war, many slave owners spoke of abolition (in a convoluted and disingenuous fashion, mind you) as an attack on property rights.  As property, as a slave, you have no self-ownership, you are owned by a “master.”  Your entire life is lived at your master’s bidding.  You work, you eat, you sleep when told, and the produce of your labor belongs to the master.  Even the children of the unions which the master might demand in order to create more beautiful or stronger slaves belong to the master.

In opposition to this, if one has liberty, one chooses where and when to work, where and when to sleep, with whom they sleep, and the produce of your labor is yours, and yours alone to do with as you please.  Given these two distinct states of being, where on the scale from absolute slavery to absolute liberty are Americans today, or can be no admixture of the two?  Is it possible for one tobe partly free or partly a slave?

I tend to conceive of liberty as a positive term, as an absolute term because it encompasses the simple and singular right of self-ownership.   Slavery, however, may have numerous states in which it more nearly approaches liberty, or is further removed from liberty.

I am told that it takes the average American about four months of their labor to work of their debt to pay their income taxes.  This is simply an indenture, a form of slavery.  The government decides how much of my hard earned money they want to take, and they take it under threat of  my punishment, of my imprisonment.

Now, some would say, the government does good things with that money… they build roads and ports, they protect our shores from invasion, they feed the poor…, but let me ask a question.  If your neighbor came into your home, put a gun to your head, and told you to give him one third of all your money, but not to worry, that he was going to go out and do good things in the community with it.  What would you do?   After writing the check to avoid being shot in the head, and after your neighbors departure, you would go to the phone, call the police, and have him arrested.  Theft is theft, no matter how it is carried out.

A gentleman by the name of Frederick Bastiat called this “legalized plunder,” and that is precisely what it is.  There is no moral coherency between the government and the people.  The government operates under a different set of rules.  They are the master, and we the slaves.

America… a nation of slaves

Airport Security: Let’s Profile Muslims

It is refreshing to see a Muslim American propose the utilization of profiling as a methodology to combat domestic terrorism.  One does not have to be a rocket scientist to recognize that the majority of attacks on airliners have been perpetrated by Muslims, some American born, some not.  The article below is by an American Muslim that has been judged an “Uncle Tom” by some in her community.

Airport Security: Let’s Profile Muslims – The Daily Beast.

America’s Great Divide… The Wealthy and Everybody Else

Is America still the “Land of Opportunity” or is it quickly becoming the land of the Super Wealthy and everyone else?  The statistics quoted in this article argue for the former.

Big government and big business are not our friends.  Read the article below.

30 Statistics That Prove The Elite Are Getting Richer, The Poor Are Getting Poorer And The Middle Class Is Being Destroyed.

Ground Zero mosque debate is about common sense, sensitivity to 9/11 vics, not religious freedom

Religious freedom is enshrined in our constitution.  I believe that all may believe what they would believe and should worship as they please.

This being said, however, it is a bad idea to put a Mosque near ground zero. After all, it was Jihadist Islamists that committed the horrendous act of plowing airplanes into the twin towers, destroying them and in the process killing themselves and nearly three thousand others.   To build a mosque on this site would be seen by many in the Arab world as a victory for the terrorists.

To build this mosque is a slap in the face of the victims families.

Let the mosque be built, but not at ground zero.

Ground Zero mosque debate is about common sense, sensitivity to 9/11 vics, not religious freedom.

War, War, and More War a.k.a. A Crumbling America

As our recent and continuing “too big to fail” crisis continues, many in the financial industry are recording record profits while twenty-plus percent of Americans are out of work, and our infrastructure crumbles.

The American Society of Civil Engineers figures that about 1.6 Trillion dollars is needed to repair our long ignored bridges and roads. Without roads and bridges, our economy suffers.

Meanwhile our Men and Women of Power, the Republicrats in Washington DC, spend our blood and treasure on far shores, following “our interests” and “spreading democracy” to the tribal societies of Afghanistan.   Our “Defense Budget”  (read Offense Budget) is over one trillion dollars a year.  Our wars are both impoverishing us  and increasing the stranglehold of the Government/Big Business axis over our lives.

Come November, I would ask that all Americans follow the sage advice of the great American humorist, Will Rogers, and “Kick the bums out!

There is Hope for America!

Browsing the Mises website, there was an brief article on Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. I have slowly been working my way through a mountain of Libertarian books, and just happen to currently be reading this classic work, so I took a look at the article.

Having lived nearly six decades, I admit to seldom being surprised, but by golly a single sentence in this piece astonished me.  After getting a plug on the Glenn Beck Show, The Road to Serfdom is currently the number one selling book on Amazon.com.

There is little doubt that this book is a very worthy read, but the fact that it is the highest selling book on Amazon was, well, shocking to me.  This one sentence gives me more hope for my country than I have had in years.

For those of you that don’t know, this book is perhaps the greatest defense for classical liberalism (the political philosophy of our founding fathers), and argument against socialism that has ever been written, and along with Glenn Beck, I encourage you to read it.

The  Road to Serfdom: Despotism Then and Now – Thomas J. DiLorenzo – Mises Daily.

America Loves War or Where Have all the Doves Gone?

When the New York Times, one of the more liberal newspapers in the country, seems to have little more to say about our war in Afghanistan than “General McChrystal is going to have to do a much better job in Kandahar,” then the end of the world must certainly be near.

When I was a young man  in the US Navy (1970-1974), there was a movement called the “Peace Movement”.  What the hell happened?  Has America Entire (that means everybody) bought into the idea of US Global Military Hegemony preached and supported  by the Republicrats in DC?  This much to the Economic detriment of our country.

As a  serviceman during the last “necessary war” that proved so unnecessary, I watched in dismay as helicopters removed the last of our people from the roof of our embassy in Saigon.

I’m wondering if this is the same exit strategy we have for Afghanistan.

Editorial – Taking Stock in Afghanistan – NYTimes.com.

The U.S. Is Not Too Big To Fail

If you were to ask most any of the big government hacks (republicrats) in Washington the definition of “Fiscal Responsibility”, I am quite certain that all you would get would be a vacuous stare.  For decades, politicians have been assured by our central bank that it doesn’t matter how much money they spend, the bank can handle it…  Right…  They create paper to pay off the debts that they created with other paper, to pay off the debts that they created with other paper to pay off the debts…  ad infinitum.  This is a very sophisticated ponzi scheme that doesn’t even require other investors to pay off previous investors.  They just create more digital dollars…  a house of cards, and trust me folks, eventually it will fall.

The U.S. Is Not Too Big To Fail | The New Republic.