Townhall.com::Why Are Americans Giving Up Their Freedom?::By David Strom

David Strom writes:

Dispensing with the idea of limited government in realm of benefits has meant dispensing with the idea of any limits to government power at all. Once we accept the notion that government should ensure that our pursuit of happiness succeeds, we have accepted the notion that government has the right to define what a happy life should look like...

Can conservatives succeed in convincing Americans that government benefits, and hence power, should be limited? Perhaps. But only if they remind Americans (as Barry Goldwater did) that a government big enough to give you everything you want is one big enough to take away everything you have.

Townhall.com::Why Are Americans Giving Up Their Freedom?::By David Strom

Victory in Iraq by Vedran Vuk and Walter Block

Good arguments for getting out of Iraq.

Victory in Iraq by Vedran Vuk and Walter Block

The Libertarian in First Grade by Joshua Katz

or "Everything I Need to Know about Libertarianism I Learned in First Grade".

The Libertarian in First Grade by Joshua Katz

Code of Ethics for Government Service

More food for thought. How is everybody doing?

Code of Ethics for Government Service

'Honey… It’s President Ron Paul – and It’s For You!' by William H. Huff

Excellent food for thought for those who respect the Constitution1

'Honey… It’s President Ron Paul – and It’s For You!' by William H. Huff

A Sure-Fire Argument on the Second Amendment

Excellent analysis of the context in which the Second Amendment was written.

A Sure-Fire Argument on the Second Amendment

Our Enemy, The Presidency by Anthony Gregory

Good food for thought. Anthony Gregory writes:

The president of the United States has far more power than any office in the history of humanity. It is trite even to make the comparison. The current president claims the right to detain, torture and kill anyone on earth and to start wars and occupations in any nation of his choice. He claims the right to levy taxes on anything, prohibit anything, mandate anything, spy on anyone, and demand that all jurisdictions on the planet bend to his will. While the laws of economics limit his actual power to alter reality, the pure destructive potential of the modern presidency is beyond unspeakable...

Americans shouldn’t look to the president for their self-respect, patriotism and cultural identity. The presidency in its current form is entirely too powerful and thus an inherently corrupting and inhumanely destructive thing. The presidency as it supposedly should be, under the Constitution, is a relatively humble office overseeing the executive branch, one of three composing a radically restrained government with very limited enumerated powers. Today, the presidency overshadows the other branches, the states, and all Constitutional and statutory limits on its power. In any event, why should 300 million people, and to a great extent the rest of the world, have to live under one all-powerful law enforcement official? The whole idea seems like some kind of insanity. How did this become the American way? If we are to restore our freedom, we need our compatriots to snap out of this trance...

Our Enemy, The Presidency by Anthony Gregory

Playing the Odds by David Calderwood

Like paying taxes (extortion by any honest view), this is yet another time that self-preservation requires us to play by the contemptible rules dictated by the slaves who surround us.

Playing the Odds by David Calderwood

If You’re Going to Lock and Load, You Should Talk the Talk by Greg Perry

Some great quotes!

by Greg Perry

These Lines Are Just Pure Fun

When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

They Want Your Guns

Never say "gun control" but instead, say "victim disarmament." I've seen the visceral effect this has on our enemies in public. It's as if somebody punched them in the stomach when they realize they've lost the moral high ground. – L. Neil Smith

The victim disarmament industry is filled with people who would rather see a woman raped in an alley and strangled with her own pantyhose than see her with a gun in her hand. – L. Neil Smith

The sophisticated and subtle tyrant will unarm his people, and store up their weapons, under pretence of keeping them safe. – Sir Walter Raleigh

Why do You Carry A Gun?

Because I think it is sociopathic to outsource my self-defense to others. – Bill Buppert

Because I think my wife would rather bail me out of jail than have to identify my corpse in a morgue. – James Robert Rodgers

Those Bad Guns!

An "assault" is an action that only an animated creature can engage in; inanimate objects, by definition, can't. – Peter W. Wickham, Jr.

In General

An armed society is a polite society. – Robert A. Heinlein

You can have freedom or you can have peace. – Robert A. Heinlein

The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. – Alexander Hamilton

The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun. – Patrick Henry

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own fall." – Sarah Brady (Correction: Hillary Clinton.) (Correction: Adolph Hitler in his Edict of March 18, 1938)

If You’re Going to Lock and Load, You Should Talk the Talk by Greg Perry

Progressive Recycling

Thomas E. Brewton writes, "Recycling is a modern-day liberal-progressive idol that is, like the idols of old, both ineffective and harmful."

Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy » Progressive Recycling

McCain sings 'bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran'

Source material for previous post.

The Raw Story | Unplugged McCain sings 'bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran'

GOP, R.I.P?

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation. He writes:

The conservatives are on firmer ground when they criticize McCain for his so-called campaign-finance reform. Every aspect of McCain-Feingold is without doubt a violation of freedom of speech, among other liberties. McCain has sanctimoniously insisted he’s only trying to take corruption out of politics — as though that were possible — but in fact he and his allies in this cause are mainly concerned with protecting incumbents from “negative” advertising. The floor debate in the Senate made that abundantly clear...

I wish the conservatives disagreed with McCain on more things. In my mind, one incident with McCain is enough to rule out supporting him, regardless of who his opponent is. When he stood in front of an audience and laughingly sang the old Beach Boys hit as “Bomb, bomb bomb/bomb, bomb Iran,” McCain should have been regarded as disqualified from holding any office in the land. If the United States attacks Iran, many innocent men, women, and children will be killed or maimed, just as they were in Iraq. Is that a laughing matter, Mr. McCain? ...

The same for when he called for increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq and said it would be fine if the troops stayed there for a hundred years or more...

GOP, R.I.P?

68 Senators Violate Their Oaths of Office

Jim Babka writes:

In keeping with the ideas expressed in our Declaration of Independence, our government was instituted with highly limited powers. The instrument that imposed these limitations was the Constitution, and it is this document that members of Congress swear an oath to defend.

One of the consequences of Constitutional limits on government power is that bad people are often permitted to get away with doing bad things. The government is categorically denied many of the powers that might aid it in the apprehension of criminals. For example . . .

There are hundreds of murderers running lose in America, and thousands of murders committed each year, that the government might be able to stop. The Constitution specifically prohibits government from doing all that it could do to save lives by catching murderers.

Were the Founders crazy? Were they stupid? No, they were not. The Founders knew that any government that has all the power it might need to optimize its apprehension of murderers, would also have all the power it needed to become a mass murderer.

The Founders knew, even in their time, that governments were, historically, the greatest killers of all. The history of the last century has only added to the evidence. Tens of millions of people were murdered in the 20th Century by governments that had too much power. Our Constitution protects us from this; so far...

But now, because criminals murdered thousands of people on September 11, 2001, many are eager to abandon their Constitutional protections...

Yesterday, 68 Senators violated their oaths of office. They voted to pass S. 2248, a new law designed to replace the so-called "Protect America Act." This bill violates the Bill of Rights . . .

DownsizeDC.org Blog | 68 Senators Violate Their Oaths of Office

Making Pot Legal -- the argument

Marijuana law reform is often presented by the activist community as a broad political concept (e.g., "Hemp can save the planet!"). It is not. At its core level, it is an effort to bring civil justice to millions of Americans who have been targeted, persecuted, and in many cases, have had their lives ruined for no other reason than the fact that they chose cannabis rather than alcohol to relax.

Making Pot Legal: We Can Do It – Here's How by Paul Armentano

Huckabee Takes Unfair Shots at Ron Paul - Markets - Market Features

Huckabee Takes Unfair Shots at Ron Paul

Banging Your Head Against a Wall by A.D Lelong

Excellent commentary on the Virginia Tech shooting.

Banging Your Head Against a Wall by A.D Lelong

Conservative Republicans Have Only One Choice in 2008 by Chuck Baldwin

Chuck Baldwin writes:

Let's cut to the chase: conservative Republicans have only one choice for President in 2008: Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. Unlike the GOP frontrunners, Paul is the real deal...

He has a twenty-year record as a conservative congressman that is virtually unblemished. Unlike the vast majority of congressmen and senators in Washington, D.C., Paul consistently honors his oath of office to support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States...

Ron Paul's commitment to the sanctity of human life goes beyond rhetoric...

In addition to being willing to stop the illegal alien invasion, Ron Paul is one of only a handful of congressmen that dares speak out against the emerging North American Union, NAFTA superhighway, and the Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement, all of which are being promoted by the White House in concert with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)...

Because Paul truly supports the Constitution, he truly supports "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." Period...

Not ignorant of military matters (he is an Air Force veteran), Paul subscribes to a historical American approach of no entanglements with foreign nations. In fact, in the area of foreign policy, Ron Paul stands alone as a traditional, constitutional, American statesman...

Unlike his neocon counterparts, Ron Paul believes in an independent America. He believes that it is not America's responsibility to police the world. He believes America's political leaders are duty-bound to protect the interests of the United States, not the interests of internationalists. Accordingly, he opposed the unprovoked and preemptive invasion of Iraq. Time has certainly vindicated Dr. Paul's principled position...

If the United States government had listened to Ron Paul, we would not have lost nearly 3,500 American soldiers and Marines, spent over $1 trillion, and gotten bogged down in an endless civil war from which there is no equitable extraction. Furthermore, had we listened to Dr. Paul, Osama bin Laden would no doubt be dead, as would most of his al-Qaeda operatives, and we would be less vulnerable to future terrorist attacks, instead of being more vulnerable, which is the case today...

Should Ron Paul win the Republican nomination, he would almost certainly win the general election. His constitutional, common-sense ideals would be attractive to such a broad range of voters, I dare say that he would win a landslide victory, no matter who the Democrats nominated. Conservatives, independents, libertarians, union members, and even some liberals...

Face it: the big money interests, the Chamber of Commerce crowd, the international bankers and GOP hierarchy will never support Dr. Paul. He is too honest, too ethical, too constitutional, and too independent for their liking. Therefore, the only chance Ron Paul has of winning the Republican nomination is for every Christian, every conservative, and every constitutionalist within the GOP to get behind him.

Conservative Republicans have only one choice for President in 2008: Ron Paul.

Conservative Republicans Have Only One Choice in 2008 by Chuck Baldwin

Ten Reasons Why Ron Paul Can’t Win by Thomas Eddlem

Ten Reasons Why Ron Paul Can’t Win by Thomas Eddlem

Padilla Jury Opens Pandora’s Box by Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts writes, "There is little doubt that Padilla’s conviction, and probably also the convictions of the two co-defendants, is a terrible injustice. But the damage done goes far beyond the damage to the defendants. What the red, white, and blue "Padilla Jury" has done is to overthrow the US Constitution and give us the rule of men..."

"when law becomes a weapon, liberty dies regardless of the form of government..."

"The incompetent 'Padilla Jury' has done Americans and their liberty far more damage than will ever be done by terrorists, other than those in our criminal justice (sic) system..."

"The Padilla case was the way the Bush Justice (sic) Department implemented its strategy for taking away the legal principles that protect American citizens. Padilla is an American citizen. He was denied habeas corpus and his rights to an attorney and due process. He was tortured in an attempt to coerce him into self-incrimination. In treating Padilla in these ways, the US Department of Justice (sic) violated both the US Constitution and federal law. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Justice (sic) Department committed far more crimes than did Padilla..."

"The 'Padilla Jury' has opened Pandora’s box. Unless the conviction is overturned on appeal, American liberty died in the 'Padilla Jury’s' verdict."

Padilla Jury Opens Pandora’s Box by Paul Craig Roberts

Ron Paul: The Unoriginal Candidate by Rick Fisk

Rick Fisk writes:

Ron Paul would turn back the clock on many original ideas put forth by past Presidents. Wilson's income tax? Gone. The Iraq war and pre-emptive war, the two Bush additions to original Presidential thought gone as well. The department of Education? Homeland Security? Welfare? All Gone. No original idea would be spared from the boring veto pen of a Paul presidency

Ron Paul: The Unoriginal Candidate by Rick Fisk