Category Archives: The State

Dying For Nothing Day

America, Globalism, Government, Hillary Clinton, Military, Neoconservatism, The State, War

A brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can ~ ilana (2003)

It is the habit on the Memorial Day weekend to thank uniformed men for their sacrifice. My sympathies go out to Americans who fight phantoms in far-flung destinations. I’m sorry they’ve been snookered into living, dying and killing for a lie. But I cannot honor that lie, or those who give their lives for it, and take the lives of others in America’s many recreational wars. I mourn for them, as I have from day one, but I can’t honor them.

I am sorry for those who’ve enlisted thinking they’d fight for their countrymen and were subjected to one backdoor draft after another in the cause of illegal, unjust wars and assorted informal attacks. My heart hurts for you, but I won’t worship at Moloch’s feet to make you feel better.

I honor those sad, sad draftees to Vietnam and to WW II. The first valiant batch had no option; the same goes for the last, which fought a just war. I grew up in Israel, so I honor those men who stopped Arab armies from overrunning our homes. In 1973, we came especially close to annihilation.

I can legitimately claim to know of flesh-and-blood heroes who fought so that I could emerge from the bomb shelter (in the wars of 67 and 73) and proceed with my kid life. I always stood in their honor and wept when the sirens wailed once a year. Every Israeli stops on that day, wherever he is, and stands still in remembrance. We would have died or been overrun by Arabs if not for those brave men who defended the homeland, and not some far-away imperial project.

But can we Americans, in 2013, make such a claim? Can we truly claim that members of the American military killed Iraqis or Afghanis or Libyans so that we may … do what? Remind me?

“What I learned growing up in a war-torn region is that a brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can.”

Ultimately, it is “for the love of a brother-in-arms, and ‘Big Brother’ be damned,” explained Robert Glisson. This is why they of the “Patriot Guard Riders,” his band of brothers, truly fought. Men fight for one another and not for the causes imputed to them by the cowards who send them to battle.

The military is still a government job; a career path with huge risks. How fast the so-called small government types forget this immutable truth. From the appropriately titled “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program“ (which the military has become):

“When Republicans and conservatives cavil about the gargantuan growth of government, they target the state’s welfare apparatus and spare its war machine. Unbeknown to these factions, the military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small. Conservative can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while excluding the military mammoth.”—ILANA (“Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program.“)

AND, from “Classical Liberalism And State Schemes “:

We have a solemn [negative] duty not to violate the rights of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because (supposedly) upholding the negative rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens, first.
“philanthropic” wars are transfer programs—the quintessential big-government projects, if you will. The warfare state, like the welfare state, is thus inimical to the classical liberal creed. Therefore, government’s duties in the classical liberal tradition are negative, not positive; to protect freedoms, not to plan projects. As I’ve written, “In a free society, the ‘vision thing’ is left to private individuals; civil servants are kept on a tight leash, because free people understand that a ‘visionary’ bureaucrat is a voracious one and that the grander the government (‘great purposes’ in Bush Babble), the poorer and less free the people.”

*Image credit

UPDATED (4/30) On Patriotism, The Psychopath Teddy Roosevelt, And On America’s Best Presidents

America, Argument, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Founding Fathers, History, Nationalism, The State

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I just noticed how much junk appears on my LinkedIn feed. Not sure why. I’m never there.

This, Alexander Duncan’s, post is collectivism, pure and simple. Good patriotism ought to mean standing by those select individual members of a commonwealth who deserve it—certainly not all of them, within or without the State. The “little platoons” of America, as Edmund Burke described a man’s social mainstay—his family, friends, coreligionists, coworkers—would be a better object for “patriotism.”

“We are the greatest nation” nonsense is of a piece with this categorical confusion. Are our founding documents great? Yes. Were the Founding Fathers great men, especially the anti-Federalists? Yes. Are the preponderance of people currently residing on the landmass that is America great? No longer.

As to Teddy 1, Theodore Roosevelt: He was not happy unless he was killing something. Like any good psychopath, this politician began with animals, starting, I believe, with shooting a neighbor’s dog when he was 20. He kept it up at obscene levels. See here.

Ivan Eland, author of “Recarving Rushmore,” has “ranked the presidents on peace, prosperity, and liberty”:

When you get down to the brass tacks of which American presidents most embodied the values of peace, prosperity, and liberty (PP & L), you find only few—a handful really—acted wisely, avoided unnecessary wars, “demonstrated restrain in economic crisis” and foreign affairs, practiced free-market capitalism and favored hard money; opposed big government and welfare, and limited executive and federal power.

Ranked No. 1 is the stellar John Tyler. He ended “the worst Indian wars in US history,” practiced restraint in an international dispute, “opposed big government and protected states’ powers.”

Grover Cleveland is second, as an “exemplar of honesty and limited government.”

Martin van Buren excelled—especially in rejecting economic stimulus and national debt and balancing budgets. He ranks third.

Rutherford B. Hayes is fourth. Likewise, he didn’t just preach but practiced capitalism and advocated for black voting rights, while recognizing the ruthlessness of Reconstruction.

UPDATE (4/30): For those to whom Reconstruction is a new term, here: “The Radical Republicans: The Antifa Of 1865“:

…Although Republicans shared “the drive toward revolution and national unification” (the words of historian Clyde Wilson, in The Yankee Problem, 2016), the Radicals distinguished themselves in their support for sadistic military occupation of the vanquished Rebel States, following the War Between the States.

While assorted GOP teletarts may find the rhetoric of Radical Republicans sexy; overall, these characters are villains of history, for helping to sunder the federal scheme bequeathed by the Founding Fathers. In their fanatical fealty to an almighty central government, Radical Republicans were as alien to the Jeffersonian tradition of self-government as it gets.

Today’s Republicans should know that the Radical Republicans were hardly heartbroken about the assassination of Lincoln, on April 14, 1865. A mere month earlier (March 4, 1865)—and much to the chagrin of the Radicals—Lincoln had noodled, in his billowing prose, about the need to “bind up the nation’s wounds and proceed with “malice toward none … and charity for all.”

Radical Republicans were having none of that charity stuff. They promptly placed their evil aspirations in Andrew Johnson. A President Johnson, they had hoped, would be a suitable sockpuppet in socking it to the South some more. ….

… MORE.

Talking January 6 On Real America’s Voice With Jeff Crouere

Argument, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Ilana Mercer, Ilana On Radio & TV, Paleolibertarianism, Populism, Republicans, The State

Republican Rep. T. Massie: ‘More Bureaucracy To Go After Domestic Terrorism Is Probably A Good Thing’

Argument, Conservatism, Constitution, COVID-19, Individual Rights, Race, Racism, Republicans, Terrorism, The State

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‘We have a bill that’ll go after domestic terrorism, and that’s probably a good thing.’—Thomas Massie, Republican from Kentucky

Rep. Thomas Massie has found his voice on the still-extant Covid tyranny. Like all things Republican, it’s better than nothing, but nothing much at all.

The Kentucky Congressman … called for an amendment to be included in H.R. 350, a domestic terrorism bill, that would prevent the government from using funds to “monitor, analyze, investigate or prosecute” an American citizen on the bases of their refusal or opposition to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

“The fact that moms are going to be targeted as domestic terrorists because they think their 5-year-old doesn’t need a freaking vaccine because they’ve looked at the data. They’ve seen that the flu presents more of a risk to their child than COVID does — any of the variants,” said Congressman Massie.

While the “Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act” did not initially include language regarding the COVID-19 vaccine, Massie is forcing the issue to add text that provides protections to parents who oppose vaccine mandates.

Such dissembling as that of Representative Massie is deceptive. For one, he is right. Covid-19 has no place in a bill on domestic terrorism. But neither does a Bill against domestic terrorism have a place in the repertoire of a Republican legislator who considers himself hip to the infringements on liberty that such State overreach portends. Yet Massie declared,

… More bureaucracy to go after domestic terrorism is probably a good thing.

Moreover, self-ownership such as that exercised by sovereign individuals, in a free country, means that each and everyone of us has the right to reject the Pharma-State’s hemlock, no matter the reasons, scientific or not. The right to refuse the jab is not reserved for moms and their toddlers, for whom Massie exclusively advocates. What a dumb argument.

RIP, GOP.

Nowhere is a rights-based argument being made [by Republicans], or an argument based on the right to question the safety of the vaccine. Nowhere are individual sovereignty and self-ownership mentioned.

Indeed, Republicans prattle about religious exemptions (state granted!) and natural-immunity based exemptions (state granted!)—but they have not the faintest urge to defend the natural, God-given right of self-ownership.

Enough then of the cheering for the ineffectual GOP and its front men and women, who arrive in the Idiocracy’s version of Rome, only to do nothing, decade after decade. Oh, yes, they turn in appearances on TV and before congressional committees; get lucrative book deals, and consolidate political and corporate power for a lifetime.

But as the West careens toward the Covid-centered anthill society, nobody identifies and defends the individual’s dominion over his body and his right to reject the Pharma-State’s Hemlock prescription for that body. As emphasized, Republicans’ case against Covid mandates indirectly capitulates to coercion.

SOURCE: “Self-Ownership And The Right To Reject The Pharma-State’s Hemlock,” Ilana Mercer

H.R. 350, the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act was so far rejected by House Judiciary Committee Republicans.