Pens for Hire, Cheap
No one traveling in hostile country should ever be without reliable protection. When the territory in question is intellectual, it always helps to have the aid of fighters who've been there before. In fact, two of the most seasoned pros are yours for only the cost of the effort required to understand their arguments. Fortunately, these straight-shooting writers have made that cost minimal.

I'm speaking of Thomas Paine (1737–1809) and Frederic Bastiat (1801–1850).

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Hamilton's Counterfeit Capitalism
When history confirms that hands-off is the only effective and humane approach to a bust, and to prosperity generally, while hands-on brings ruination, why do governments today consider every option but free markets? Look back to the founding and the baneful influence of Alexander Hamilton. His influence has been highly detrimental to the majority who live outside the rarefied reality of national politics.
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When Is a Voter Truly Sovereign?
There may be as many different preferences for president as there are voters, but only one person will win.  Voters who prefer someone else or non-voters who prefer no one at all must endure the election results -- for years.  If the political methodology were imported to the market, everyone in the country would end up wearing one size, style, and brand of shoes, even if their choice was to go without them.    Full Article

Not to Worry, They're on Our Side
Less than three months from now either Obama or McCain will be the president-elect.  Should we be concerned?  Not whatsoever.  Here’s why: Full Article  

Are You a Deathbed Libertarian?
From what I can gather, Hackworth and Paine had this much in common: They saw the world with their own eyes. They were surely wrong about some things, perhaps many things, but their loyalty to reality was seldom breached.  Their gods were facts and logical argument, not authority.    Full Article

Ron Paul's Revolution
Ron Paul not only believes in the power of freedom, he is the only candidate I’ve heard explicitly oppose the philosophy of statism.  And if we can go by a man’s record, we have to believe he means it.  To get us moving in the right direction, he offers a few recommendations...Full Review

The Root of Financial Panics
"Money had been removed from the people and placed in the care of politicians. And political money didn't require the expense and labor of mining ore. It required only ink and the will to print. Thereafter, there would be no such thing as a scarcity of money."

The State Drops Its Mask
“Sometime during your school years, you were told the State’s basic function is to protect you from domestic and foreign aggression.  Therefore, it was only logical that we needed complete control of the military, police, and courts.  What saints do you know personally who could be trusted with such power?  And how do you think the people who have this power are going to fund these policing functions?  Through voluntary trade on the market?  Why should they mess with production and exchange when all they have to do is nudge you with a gun?  No matter how you package it, taxation is theft – it’s the systematic predation of private property – and theft is a crime.  But since we’re the State, we’re more than mere criminals.  We’re a monopoly of crime.”

Crisis Is the Health of the State
 The attitude of turning our worries over to government prevailed, and now, as bodies are collected, we witness federal officials playing their hand, giving us spinning press conferences, bureaucratic stonewalling, a growing military occupation, and a craven Congress writing fat checks without cutting spending, starting with a $50 billion appropriation to FEMA for what President Bush considers the 'heck of a job' it’s doing." 

It Has Happened Here
When England under their George III tried to muscle the American colonies into servitude we threw off our overseas masters and attempted to institute a government with enough checks on its power that we would always be able to say, 'It can’t happen here.'  Yet, it has.  We now have the debt-ridden, corrupt, wasteful, elitist, special-interest-driven empire that we repudiated in 1776.

Congress Runs the Gauntlet
Being ready to kill is not the same as killing, though.  And here’s where our testing gets a little sticky.  Phase II calls for splitting you into two groups.  We’ll scribble down a dozen or so pious reasons and toss them in a helmet, then pull one to serve as a cause so you’ll feel like the killing you do is more than murder.

Think Outside the Booth
Yet, your vote is very important to the government.  The more votes it has, the easier it can claim legitimacy. Voting is your way of blessing the institution of government itself.

Where's the Outrage?
The president of the country lies and no one seems to care.  They don’t even care that he pokes fun at himself about the lies.  He and his comrades lied before, during, and after the war, which so far has killed over 600 Americans.  Impeach him?  Not a chance.  He’ll probably get re-elected.

Slackers, Arise!  Support the Anti-Party!
At the very least, the Anti-Party would get people to think about the coercive nature of the state and how the act of voting sanctions legal aggression.  If the party attracts enough members, it would also deny legitimacy to election winners

Don't Vote, Not Even for Martha
Stay home during the primaries.  Study monetary theory and American history instead of watching the political conventions.  Avoid the polls in November.  Don’t give your next masters legitimacy.

State Cons
As cons go, withholding ranks as one of the greatest, but it’s not in the same league with central banking. Withholding can’t hide from the fact that it’s a form of plunder. Not so with central banking. It has the reputation of being the backbone of our economy, the engine of our prosperity.

Libertarians and the S Words
Individuals are to the state what cattle are to the slaughterhouse – by moral design.  The sacrifice isn’t an unfortunate necessity, it’s an expression of our 'noblest' virtue.  If there aren’t enough wars to keep American youth busy, then send them to clean up the parks or police the ghettos – send them anywhere, but make them serve the State.

Come to the State as a Child and be Saved
Americans need to accept the full horror of government betrayal or pay the consequences.

States Watch Prosperity as Their Prey
Markets produce jobs, wealth, and rising standards of living. Governments undercut market processes; they produce nothing.  Most government today is organized crime elevated to a position of social respectability.  Heavy taxation, along with central bank inflation, provides the sweetener that attracts the flies to politics.

Can Government Be Run Like a Real Business?
I have a proposal. Why don't we stay within constitutional limits for a change and let each of us take ownership of the wealth we produce? Instead of giving us nominal tax cuts, government will be obliged to sell its services on the market. We'll voluntarily fund it to do what we want it to do, and no more. Otherwise, the pack of thieves inside the Beltway will continue their orgy until we're flat on our backs.

Spitting on Our Founders' Graves
Government is too big, bureaucratic, and turf-conscious to protect us.  We’ve seen it fail too many times, most shockingly on Black Tuesday.  If we’re truly interested in security and honoring the 9-11 dead, we need to bring it back under constitutional control – or get rid of it altogether and have the market provide its vital functions.

History Remembered
As long as we tolerate any government at all, the state has no business promoting any religion.  Nor should the state be involved with education.  If enough people want schools to include a particular slant on history, Christian or otherwise, the market will fill the need.  The free market lets us choose; the state chooses for us.

I, Politician
I, Politician, run a huge wealth-transfer and war-making operation. I achieve legitimacy through controlled elections and the systematic corruption of culture. Take away my revenue and my power goes with it, as well as my incentive to mess in politics.

Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax
There’s nothing like crisis to expand state power, and there’s no crisis like war.  Thus, it is no surprise that an income tax was first proposed during the War of 1812, and then not one, but six income tax bills passed during Lincoln’s war.

Violent Intervention in the Economy
Clearly, without the ability to tax and inflate, the State would either cease to exist or be forced to rely on voluntary funding. People opposed to State policies should take this simple truth to heart.

Thomas Paine on War and Taxes
Paine’s reply was Rights of Man, which eventually earned him an absentia conviction of seditious libel in England. Though parts of it delve into welfare and social security proposals, there is much in it that libertarians can treasure.

A Guru's Advice to a Presidential Hopeful
And lastly, your greatest reward -- the military’s glowing performance will raise the esteem for government in general.  If you can pound the stuffing out of some hapless Third Worlders, the sky’s the limit -- you can do anything.  The economy’s lagging?  Send in the Marines, ha-ha.  A war winner can do no wrong.

Freedom Begins at Home
When the war was over, Washington surrendered his commission to a feeble Congress and retired for a short while to private life. A different man would have taken over the government. While we listen to the Iraq war reports and hear the word "freedom" spilled forth, let's remember that we once knew that freedom begins at home.

Our Anti-Laissez-Faire Society
Laissez-faire is based on the premise that a man’s life and property belong to him unconditionally, that he is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others.

Is Lady Liberty a Terrorist?
At the Statue of Liberty dedication ceremony on October 28th, 1886, President Grover Cleveland said: "We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected."
It was, and we're paying for it.

How to Pull the Plug on Big Government
The Administration expects war protesters, but imagine how they'd react if a million people marched on Washington to demand an end to the Fed and a return to the gold standard.

Thomas Paine on Government and War
"[War] serves to keep up deceitful expectations which prevent people from looking into the defects and abuses of government." [Rights of Man, Part Two]

What Killed the Four Horsemen?
"With a new Court and printing press money to fund a compassionate government, the people received countless benefits, except for another world war, a succession of lesser wars, unfathomable debt, devalued currency, deplorable education, and so on.  The new Court blessed the Social Security Act.  The new Court said the National Labor Relations Act was just fine.  In fact, the new Court said just about anything the government did was fine.  The government was no longer restrained by archaic laws.  The people had won." 

The Triumph of Equality
We were no longer the target of envy. Mediocrity, like the state, was everywhere. Government had finally realized mankind's ultimate dream: equality.

Big Brother Wants YOU
The brilliant among us see slavery as the solution to security. All they ask is the state threaten us sufficiently to adopt their ideas.

A 9-11 Report Card
Government seems to deserve a failing grade for its 9-11 response, until we look more closely at what it's doing to us. If it's true we were attacked for our prosperity and freedom, then government's strengthening our security every day it's on the job.

Farrakhan and the Founders
In most countries slavery died with little or no violence. But when a new American president took office in 1860, rather than fight for peaceful emancipation, he baited the South into a long and devastating war in what could be described as an anti-American Revolution. When the war ended, states rights and the Constitution were among the seriously injured

Capitalism's Pillar: Self-Responsibility
Our welfare system tells us we are not responsible for our lives. Our legal system tells us we are not responsible for our actions — getting away with murder has never been easier.

Big Business: Number One Enemy of Capitalism
Business gave us the beginning of the leviathan state of today. The government they wanted to shake hands with now has them paying A-list lobbyists to stave off their extinction.

Nullifying Civil Disobedience
Americans today should give thanks we don't live in colonial times.  Back then we would be surrounded by traitors who had serious grievances with the law, especially the part that taxed them. 

Government — Please Give Us More!
We pay a price by not studying history more critically. Our founders caged government because they knew how dangerous it could be. The horrors of today and the century just ended have proved them right, but not enough of us are getting their message.

A Memo to Aspiring Politicians
It cannot be overstressed: In a political system where legislation is bought and sold, money rules.

The Two Political Labels that Matter
As Ludwig von Mises observed over a half-century ago, we have essentially two choices in politics, and need only two labels: freedom or slavery, laissez faire or dictatorship

Free Trade: the Enemy of Special Interests
Free trade is the enemy of special interests that run to the government for protection. These groups throttle us with harmful legislation because of largely unchallenged propaganda.

Encarta Capitalism: Why Bill Gates Needs Help,
No doubt the Encarta article would receive high marks from Mr. Gates' antitrust tormentor, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. But if the founder of the Redmond giant wants to present capitalism without the standard falsehoods and omissions, he should consider hiring someone who understands the subject.

Paying the Piper
When two people cheat, the guilt falls on them. When 28 people cheat, no one's really to blame

The Infidel's Ultimate Weapon
Such [an immense tutelary] power stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."  -- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

What Oath of Office? Kerns' Tribute to Congress
"It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
— Thomas Jefferson

The Public Be Damned: Altruism Feeds on Freedom
Compassion is an emotion--sympathy for the suffering of others, often including a desire to help.  Altruism, by contrast, is a creed, a moral code, in which service to others is considered a duty.

America's Worst Enemy
People will eventually learn that in allowing the government to run their lives, it's ruining them instead...They will see that their abnegation has become America's worst enemy by making government an unaccountable brute that threatens their very existence.

Campaign Finance Reform: Liberty's Latest Cure?
While government has the power to run our lives, there will always be favor-seekers and mounting abuse. We need to take away that power. We need to restore the Tenth Amendment and return our lives to their rightful owners.

Why Stop Signs In D.C. Need Ten Sides
We could take up a collection to swap out the octagonal stop signs in Washington, D.C. and replace them with decagonal signs--to remind Congress they have very little to do in their capacity as lawmakers, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment.

Birth of Big Brother: How the Court Deep-Sixed the Tenth
If we let sacrifice be our moral ideal, we've given government the means of enslaving us, and liberty, to the extent it exists, will be by permission, rather than right.

A Demagogue's Survival Guide
The trick is to destroy capitalism while keeping the slaves rowing.  If you don't do it, your opponent will.

Liberty's Latest Triumph
Many Christians acknowledge the destructiveness of government intervention in business but somehow believe all will be rosy if the state uses its gun to back their religious preferences.

Washington, Our No-Spine Zone
Pols who lead by polls, who cold-shoulder friends and glad hand the enemy, who discourage criticism and curtail our liberty, surrender their right to be trusted.  Instead of Cipro, they should look into getting a spine.

The Con of Conscription
No organization has done more for the federal government than al Qaeda.  What other group could free it of so much restraint?

Who are We?
If we want a moral society we have to kick government out of our lives.  The heart of moral behavior is the acceptance of self-responsibility and the absence of compulsion in human relations.  Our government today violates both these conditions.  

Modern Moralists Condemn Terrorism But Don't Ask Them Why  
They condemn the terrorists on the grounds of extremism, a euphemism for acting in accordance with beliefs.  Our founders were extremists¾they were willing to die for their liberty.  Though some of them were Christians, it was the shining light of rational individualism that served their moral purpose¾that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Smile, It's Patriot's Day!
How to stop worrying and love April 15th.

Snub the Tyrants and Grow Your Own
And what it doesn't involve is the government, at least not in the meddling, bleeding sense.

Speaking Safely on Political Issues - A Guide for the Confused
I offer the following guide for those Americans who may be asked to speak on political issues, but are confused about what to say.

Close Enough for Government Work
But bin Laden might take martyrdom further than we imagine.  In leading us to believe he commanded the attack, he may be feeding us one last lie.  Give us what we'll take as a confession -- just in time for the holidays.  Let the unbelievers perish in their delusions, we don't deserve the truth.  And look at the boost it will give his jihad, by helping to conceal the ones responsible.  May Allah be blessed.

Outlawing Cause and Effect: Big Brother Running Amok
A citizenry demanding to be pulled from the brine by the ones who dumped them there will never be rescue

Support the Liberty Bill Act - And Put the Constitution on Our Dollars
We won't have restraint in government until more people understand the Constitution.  Having it on our dollar bills is a good way to remind us of its message.
 

The Virtue of Profit - We Won't Survive Without It
Most people want more laws enacted to keep businesses from influencing politics.  What we need, though, is to repeal laws -- keep anyone from securing special favors from our elected officials. 

Doing Battle with a Hydra
One can hope a private management firm will resolve the charity debacle soon, but the issues of government eavesdropping and Islamic political ascendancy require our individual vigilance. 

The Buck Stops With Us  
We, as citizens, are responsible for protecting our way of life.  We can't delegate that job to anyone, least of all the government.

 

Varying Verity

America's Voices "A" is "A"

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