Category Archives: Liberty

Barack Obama — All American Boy

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, Liberty

By Myron Robert Pauli

In scientific research and on Jeopardy, it is essential to ask the right question. However the American media consistently ask the dumbest questions. Hence, we are treated to discussions of, “Are the 9/11 hijacker-murderers ‘brave’ or ‘cowards’”? Another idiotic debate is: “Are the millions of Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Sufis, Salafis, and Wahabbis who hate our guts ‘real Moslems’”? Alternatively, “Is Barack Obama a Christian?” (Should I care?).

Now, the latest stupidity of the week, thanks to Rudi Giuliani, is “Is Barack Obama Anti-American”? Well, let’s look which American Presidents received over 51% of the popular vote in TWO Presidential elections – in order of popularity (envelope please): Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Andy Jackson, Ulysses Grant, and rounding up the top 5 is Barack Obama! Are American voters “Anti-American”?

How about our government – all the civilian employees and contractors working for TSA, BATF, INS, Education, Agriculture, State, Commerce, Labor, Post Office, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Federal Reserve, HUD, EPA, IRS, GSA, GAO … – they work for him and carry out his executive orders. Are they “Anti-American”? How about the taxpayers who support the government – “Anti-American”?

How about “the troops”? Don’t they wipe out 13 year old foreigners and 16 year old Americans on the say-so of prosecutor, judge, jury, and Chief Executioner Obama? Don’t they drop bombs on Syria, Yemen, Libya, Pakistan, etc. on his say so without a declaration of war? Don’t they snap their heels and salute when HE walks into the room? Are the troops “Anti-American”?

Of course, Giuliani and McCain think that Obama is “Anti-American” because he hasn’t bombed, sent troops, and messed around in enough countries – Iran, China, Russia, and Ukraine – maybe one day Liechtenstein? Presumably, George Washington who said “Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.” would be American-hater number.”

Now one might ask instead whether Obama is Anti-Liberty? After all, America was founded in 1776 “to secure our rights” and it is difficult to point out how our liberties have improved under Obama. As Franklin noted in 1787, the Constitution “ .. can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” As for presidential powers, Washington noted: “But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”

Dead white Protestant slaveowners don’t count.

Well, folks, the solar system has traveled 2 light-months around the galaxy since 1776 – that is a long distance. In 2015, Americans who advocate for the 2nd Amendment or the 10th Amendment are put on watch lists. Fight with the TSA over the agency’s “right” to “touch [your] junk”, and you’ll land in jail. Expose NSA spying on Americans and you are Edward Snowden, traitor exiled in Russia.

And what of the “Tea Party Patriots” who wave their flags, support the troops, and denounce Obama? They (correctly in my opinion) denounce “unelected judges” who want to impose gay marriage but then insist on a “Balanced Budget America” which would remove budgetary authority from the (corrupt Republican) Congress and hand it over to Sonia Sotomayor! If the police SWAT team force an Orthodox Rabbi to perform a transgendered wedding and a sniper shoots a Catholic nun who refuses to perform an abortion, will the Tea Party Patriots applaud the SWAT team and the sniper? If there is a disconnect between America 1776 and America 2015, you’d better make up your mind! It is as if Sam Adams paraded around with a King George T-Shirt, waving the British flag, and shouting “Support the Redcoats”! You cannot serve both G-d and Mammon, folks!

In 2012, 99% of Americans chose Gruber-inspired-Romneycare or Gruber-inspired-Obamacare, Leave No Child Behind, bailouts, Patriot Act, student loans, etc. Only 1% voted Libertarian. Barry Goldwater talked about making Social Security optional and he was considered an “extremist nutcase”. The Senators who opposed the (phony) Gulf of Tonkin resolution were promptly defeated. Dissent is allowed but the voters will ignore or denounce you. A Grover Cleveland stating that “The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their Government its functions do not include the support of the people.” would flop in 2015.

America loves its Welfare-Welfare State and in 2015, Obama is the quintessential American.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

Rest In Peace, Dennis O’Keeffe

Family, Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, Liberty

I met Dennis O’Keeffe, of blessed memory, at a Liberty Fund colloquium entitled “History, Citizenship and Patriotism in Liberal Democracy,” where Dennis—a professor of sociology at the University of Buckingham and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs—was in his element.

David Conway, a mutual friend and a stellar scholar too, had invited me to partake in an exchange of ideas with some of the finest minds in Britain. With his twinkling blue eyes, sonorous voice, and beautiful mind, Dennis was the star. Not only was he a beautiful mind; Dennis was a beautiful person to know and be around. A patrician, the dashing Dennis was also kind, sweet, humble; with an uncanny ability to engage intellectually and personally with interlocutors.

Needless to say, that the idyllic and breathtaking setting of the Ockenden Manor in Cuckfield, West Sussex, England, and the intimate quorum—only fifteen people partook—was conducive not only to the exploration of ideas, but to the forging of an enduring friendship.

Dennis and I were in epistolary contact until That Fateful Day, also the beginning of the end. From May 2006, until Dennis’ last missive to me, on November 11, 2010—we exchanged close to 100 emails. In his last letter, Dennis wrote:

Dear Ilana

I will happily write a foreword to your book, “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.” You can send me the text electronically I guess. … I suspect you are up against a mix of fear and sentimentality. This is much the same in the British case. The issues are of vast importance, both philosophically and practically. If South Africa goes down the toilet, down the Zimbabwe road, the outlook for Africa will be even grimmer than it is already.

Love
Dennis

Upon the publication of his last book, “Edmund Burke,” also in 2010, I introduced Dennis to my readers, via a two-part conversation. The titles should give you an idea of what fun Dennis and I had:

* “Thomas Paine: 18th Century Che Guevara” (10/22/2010)

* “The ‘Moronizing’ Of Modern Culture” (10/29/2010)

I love you, Dennis O’Keeffe.
Preach It in Heaven.

UPDATE III: Eric Garner 100% Innocent Under Libertarian Law (Natural Law)

Justice, Law, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Private Property, The State

“Eric Garner 100% Innocent Under Libertarian Law” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

… Not to be conflated are the cases of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, of Ferguson fame. While the evidence of police wrongdoing in Garner’s death is incontrovertible, the reverse is true in Brown versus Officer Darren Wilson.

As the evidence shows, Michael Brown initiated aggression. He had aggressed against the store keeper and the policeman, who protected himself from this rushing mountain of flesh. In libertarian law, the individual may defends himself against initiated aggression. He may not initiate aggression against a non-aggressor.

Eric Garner, on the other hand, had aggressed against nobody. Whereas Brown was stealing cigarillos; Garner was selling his own cigarettes. The “law” he violated was one that violated Garner’s individual, natural right to dispose of his own property—“loosies”—at will.

In libertarian law, Garner is thus 100 percent innocent. For the good libertarian abides by the axiom of non-aggression. When enforcers of the shakedown syndicate came around to bust him, Garner raised his voice, gestured and turned to walk away from his harassers. He did not aggress against or hurt anyone of the goons.

To plagiarize myself in “Tasers ‘R’ Us,” “Liberty is a simple thing. It’s the unassailable right to shout, flail your arms, even verbally provoke a politician [or policeman] unmolested. Tyranny is when those small things can get you assaulted, incarcerated, injured, even killed.”

Again: Garner had obeyed the libertarian, natural law absolutely. He was trading peacefully. In the same spirit, he turned to walk away from a confrontation. Befitting this pacific pattern, Garner had broken up a street fight prior to his murder.

The government has a monopoly over making and enforcing law— it decides what is legal and what isn’t. Thus it behooves thinking people to question the monopolist and his laws. After all, cautioned the great Southern constitutional scholar James McClellan, “What is legally just, may not be what is naturally just.” “Statutory man-made law” is not necessarily just law. …

Read the rest. “Eric Garner 100% Innocent Under Libertarian Law” is the current column, now on WND.

UPDATE I: “FOX NEWS POLL: Voters agree with Brown grand jury, disagree with Garner decision.”

UPDATE II (12/12): One despairs when, on a site that is faith and freedom-oriented—and to which this writer has been contributing for so many years with articles similar to “Eric Garner: 100% innocent under libertarian law”—most readers still have no feel for the supreme law of God, if you will, and show an overriding concern with validating state oppression and unjust state laws.
One wonders how a people can ever regain true freedom when they are so beholden to the sovereign’s perverted laws and cannot tell just- from unjust law. The feel for and understanding of freedom is exactly zero unless you know that the natural law—call it the law of G-d, if you like—is incontrovertibly supreme. Any state law that violates it is unjust. (An why are individuals arguing the merits of taxes and obedience to all manner of tax, when taxes are tantamount to theft? For that is what a government-imposed tax is: private property stolen at the point of a gun.) Moreover, the natural law is not some libertarian ideal. People who habitually talk about western civilization should know that the natural law is one of its greatest philosophical expressions, beginning with the Decalogue (The Ten Commandments), the ancient Greeks, Aristotelian philosophers, the Stoics and Cicero, Scholastics and St. Thomas Aquinas through to Thomas Jefferson and Declaration of Independence.
Natural law has always been a bulwark against tyranny; that of monarch and mob alike. When the people forget that; they are as good as slaves.

UPDATE III (12/13):

Hugh Mcgarity • 2 days ago:

I think that I read somewhere that the officers involved in the Garner case were called there by a shop owner who was concerned by the presence of Garner causing loss of business. This would seem a valid concern as most small businesses struggle in the highly taxed and regulated environment of NYC. As far as the level of force, it would appear to be excessive. Ask yourself this though, if you were being assaulted by a huge man and were wanting intervention by police: would you want the officer/s to apply a little too much force or not quite enough. If not quite enough and you were further injured, what would your reaction be? I know, it’s not a perfect analogy but it does have some parallel. If Mr Garner had complied with the legitimate first request of police then he would still be selling loosies somewhere else.

ILANA MERCER replies:

The column addresses this bit of statism in the last paragraph. Please read it:

Eric Garner was not violating anyone’s rights or harming anyone by standing on a street corner and peddling his wares – that is unless the malevolent competition that sicced the cops on him has a property right in their prior profits. They don’t.”
A shopkeeper has the right to pursue profits, he does not have the right to the profits he had before the competition arrived on the scene. Not in a free-market.

Those State-Manufactured Millennials

Education, Liberty, Political Correctness, Propaganda, The State

Comedian Chris Rock avoids doing his routine in front of Millennial audiences—although he dissembles by identifying them as excessively “conservative,” when in fact he means to say Millennials are politically correct to a fault.

I’ve long said that of the segment of readers who’ve contacted me over the years—and with a few wonderful exceptions—the Millennials are the most ignorant, arrogant, politically correct, mindless, monolithic and brainwashed cohort. In their suitability to conformity, Millennials are probably the first state-manufactured generation; a product of government indoctrination K-12 and beyond. From Kindergarten through 12th Grade, on to tertiary and graduate schools, they’re groomed as obedient left-liberals bereft of a funny bone in their bodies, much less an original thought.

Millennials have acquired an education but are profoundly uneducated: they don’t know history, literature, great music, etc. And they seem to think that piercing their noses and bellybuttons and preaching global warming is tantamount to individualism, when in fact they run with the herd.

As readers of this space, Millennials don’t linger for long.

Likewise, Robby Soave at Reason.com finds “Rock’s remarks about why he no longer performs at college campuses most illuminating”:

What do you make of the attempt to bar Bill Maher from speaking at Berkeley for his riff on Muslims?

Well, I love Bill, but I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they’re way too conservative.

In their political views?

Not in their political views — not like they’re voting Republican — but in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody. Kids raised on a culture of “We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.” Or just ignoring race to a fault. You can’t say “the black kid over there.” No, it’s “the guy with the red shoes.” You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.

When did you start to notice this?

About eight years ago. Probably a couple of tours ago. It was just like, This is not as much fun as it used to be. I remember talking to George Carlin before he died and him saying the exact same thing.

Provocative comedians avoiding the college scene? …

MORE.