This Time, Let’s Do Something That Works

Unhappy with the direction the country has been moving, there is a large and growing constituency of voters who are in search of a solution, or remedy, if you will. Some have caught onto the fact that voting bums out only gets us more bums, but most are convinced that we just need the right bums in charge. Apparently the last 1800 senators and 10,000 representatives weren’t enough to convince these voters that perhaps there’s more to the problem than just the people in charge.

One thing is certain: They’re outraged over a corrupt and unaccountable legislature; they’ve become incensed over an executive who recognizes virtually no limit to his power; and generations of activist judges have ruled the wrong way on so many cases as to completely alter the laws of the land.

After witnessing the system of careful checks and balances crumble and collapse in front of their very eyes, one might think they’d be done asking the federal government to restraint itself. One would be wrong. Not only is there a cry to elect “the right people,” as if these saintly public servants actually exist, but an obscure constitutional provision has been bandied about.

Many seek to call a convention under the constitution’s Article V, believing this could be the instrument by which the Feds are finally put in their proper place. While this could work in theory, it has yet to play out in reality. I’m not against such a move per se, anything that gets this bus turned around before it goes over the cliff is fine by me, but consider the situation for a moment.

We’ve established that the federal government has done a terrible job limiting its own powers. So in order to effect change we’re going to use a method untried in the past 200 years, and once we get the amendment(s) we want, rely once again on a group of bums so out of touch we had to circumvent them in the first place? And keep in mind this all assumes the process won’t be co-opted or derailed altogether.

Amendments, as we’ve seen, while great on paper tend to not work so well when put up against people who have no respect for them in the first place. A perfect case in point is the 1^st Amendment. It was the first one that fell victim to despots just a few years after it was adopted, and it’s been under attack ever since.

If the original document has been so disregarded these past two hundred and twenty something years, why should all of a sudden it become important again? This just seems like a really long, hard way to be disappointed. We may as well keep doing the same old “throw the bums out” thing, and have the same result.

Or….

Or, we could say screw the Feds and their stupid Article V and just start nullifying the unconstitutional stuff. Not only do the Principles of ‘98 have a rich history from the early days of nullifying encroachments on free speech, but they’ve continued throughout the past couple of centuries, and are alive even today. The War on Individual Sovereignty (Drugs), the REAL ID Act, National Guard deployments, and a host of pending legislation in state houses across these United States have either effectively nullified unconstitutional federal laws or will seek to do so shortly.

Nullification is not a simple process however, nor is it a panacea. There is a great deal of support needed from state legislators to make it happen. The good news on this front is that the efforts to educate members of the general public and the politicians in state capitols are working. To this end a documentary will be released shortly that helps to further spread the message of freedom and hopefully reach a far broader audience.

Help spread the message of freedom and prosperity by contributing to the volume of work already existing. Write letters to your local paper, as Austin White suggests. Take the advice of Gary North and start a blog or YouTube channel. Make it impossible to ignore our “irate, tireless minority” by “[setting] brush fires in people’s minds.”

Denial Ain’t Just a River in Egypt (or Iraq)

Non-interventionists are often criticized by their opponents for inciting anger with their “anti-American” statements. The truth tends to put people off, and I get that. I rejected as preposterous the idea that America could somehow be anyway responsible for 9/11 until I saw firsthand what actually goes on in countries the U.S. government decides to “liberate.” I went through a sort of denial until it became impossible to view the military’s treatment of the Iraqi people as anything but disgusting and inhumane.

Naturally the abuse reaches a tipping point beyond which some individuals decide the only option is to retaliate. This is true of virtually every culture, but it’s especially true in Muslim culture, something about which few outsiders know the first thing. I admit to understanding very little, but I learned enough in the Middle East to know that when the head of a household is dishonored in some way, he is obligated to make a token attempt at regaining his honor.

That people get angry over hearing about blowback, or that cause and effect applies just as much to foreign policy as it does domestic policy, is a good thing. They should be upset to learn they’ve been lied to their whole lives. To finally be presented with all the evil that is being done with their money and in their names can be a painful or jarring experience.

To learn your government has exploited your fears to consolidate power and wealth ought to make anyone outright livid. That they use the soldiers you hold in such high esteem as disposable pawns in a real-life chess match to expand their control only makes matters worse. Realizing that instead of being safer we’re actually more vulnerable (and poorer) because of the intervention should be the last straw for anyone still unconvinced that things must change.

Instead of directing this outrage at those who are revealing the truth about the Empire, it should be aimed squarely at the State and those politicians who seek to perpetuate the Great Lie.

Everything Is A Mash-Up (Even This Title)

CNN featured a story on Paul Miller, perhaps better known as DJ Spooky, as part of a series on creativity. Miller uses technology to blend various media and remix seemingly disjointed work into one collaborative piece. Todd Leopold followed Miller, and explains how the creative process isn’t one of individuals working independently, but instead is a long process of derivative works from earlier ideas.

Leopold writes: “Even people who seem to come up with new ideas out of thin air are building on the discoveries and advances of others — whether they’re aware of the influences or not.” This is why the concept of IP laws can’t work alongside innovation and creativity; one is necessarily at odds with the other. And while advocates of Intellectual Property (IP) argue that measures such as SOPA/PIPA are meant to foster creativity, it simply cannot do this by restricting the creative process described above.

In the article Leopold refers to Kirby Ferguson, a filmmaker who’s produced a series on YouTube called “Everything is a Remix.” Ferguson says that “creativity isn’t magic,” and he convincingly proves this thesis. The videos, which can be seen here, here, and here, are fabulous demonstrations of the evolution of ideas. We learn that Star Wars, Avatar, and Led Zeppelin are remixes; and so too are the printing press, computer, and phonograph.

Proponents of IP have long claimed that protection is necessary to incentivize production, much in the same way that domestic producers argue for protective tariffs. But just as such intervention in the manufacturing sector hinders economic growth on net, so too does government involvement in the area of ideas. There is a moral case to be made for allowing individuals to use their own scarce property as they wish. To prohibit this necessarily requires that freedom of private property is abridged. A utilitarian case can also be made for permitting emulation.

Progress stops if copying is restricted, since everything is a remix. Civilization would literally stand still if no further derivative work is done. In fact regression would ensue if intellectual monopoly is fostered and encouraged. Imagine for a moment the state we’d be in were it not for the freedom for Thomas Edison to “[improve] electric lamps,” or if Henry Ford couldn’t combine the assembly line, interchangeable parts and the automobile. For the sake of civilization, please, copy, emulate, innovate, improve, and encourage others to do the same.

Man Attacked, Charged With Assault

This video is making its rounds on Facebook, which features the brutal assault of an elderly man suffering from dementia. The victim, who was unarmed, had been in a dispute over payments from a third party when the first assailant attacked him, unprovoked. Within mere moments a second armed attacker joined the fray and discharged a taser in the victim’s face. NB, violent content.

Despite the sociopathic behavior displayed by these “lawmen” never fear, dear citizen, they are simply bad apples. They’re outliers not reflective of the vast majority of policemen. Rest assured that the majority of policemen are upstanding exemplars of morality, and only have the best interests in mind for the people whom they are sworn to serve and protect. Why, one need only perform a quick YouTube search of “police brutality,” or some other related search term, to discover that very few videos exist.

Never mind that these policemen are paid with money coercively extracted from the citizenry. Much of the revenue collected by police forces is stolen outright, under official sanction through civil asset forfeiture laws, which provide legal cover to officers who engage in highway robbery.

Never mind that the original purpose of government police forces was to serve and protect the political class from the commoners, not defend the rights and property of the people, as we’re often told. As Wendy McElroy shows in To Serve and Protect – The State, English common law is the basis for the U.S. legal system, and many of the practices in England have been adopted here, even after the initial founding. England began establishing socialized police forces beginning in occupied Ireland before instituting them in London, in order to establish social control. She also notes that citizens aren’t guaranteed protection for themselves and their property anyway, as determined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Castle Rock v. Gonzales.

Never mind that official police doctrine places the safety of officers above all others. Never mind that policemen, many of whom are recent war veterans, are trained to view the people in their communities not as peaceful neighbors, but as hostile bands of civilians. Rather than being taught to respect the people, as they should be, police officers have been conditioned to treat citizens with suspicion.

The times when police act in benevolence or otherwise provide aid to individuals should be considered exceptions to the rule, rather than the norm, in light of what they’re being taught. As William Norman Grigg writes, police resource officers have been told “…you can no longer afford to think of yourselves as peace officers…. You must think of yourself [sic] as soldiers in a war because we’re going to ask you to act like soldiers.” If this is how officers in schools are to behave amidst unarmed children, how might they view adults?

There is little recourse in cases such as the one above. Except in extremely rare cases, police violence, even that resulting in death, is excused by “official investigations.” At best the offending officer is kept off the streets during the inquiry and thus cannot menace other peaceful individuals; albeit he is given a taxpayer funded vacation during such a time.

So often it’s found that the officer followed “proper procedures,” and therefore acted in accordance with the law. That the procedures themselves are unjust or encourage excessive force is hardly given a thought.

In a free market these cops would undoubtedly be fired post haste. That and they would be subject not only to lawsuits from the victim, but quite possibly from the firm who had hired them for such grotesque behavior. Businesses in general tend to frown upon the actions of their employees that bring about negative publicity by assaulting clients or potential customers.

Mitt Romney’s Numbers Game

So Mitt Romney has been harping on the defense budget, particularly for the navy and the air force. He says that both are so underfunded that the navy is the smallest it’s been since 1917 and the air force hasn’t been so small since 1947. Politifact ran the numbers and found that both claims are essentially true, but the statistics are absolutely meaningless given the context.

They note that while technically the navy has fewer vessels, the current inventory is far more powerful than it was ninety years ago. There are eleven nuclear powered aircraft carriers and more than a dozen submarines capable of launching nuclear warheads. Neither of these ships existed then, so it’s pointless even to bring the issue up.

The same goes for the air force, which in 1947 had rather crude technology compared with the weapon systems now in existence. Gun sights were so primitive that carpet bombing was necessary to destroy single targets. Fighter escorts were a necessity to ensure enough bombers made it to the objective. Today, precision-guided bombs are far more accurate, resulting in potentially fewer civilian deaths. Stealth aircraft can fly in and out of the target areas without the need for even defense weapons. Also, those planes have much heavier payloads.

Even if we take Romney’s claim at face value, and the implication that we just don’t spend enough on war, the numbers belie his demagoguery. The 2012 defense budget included a request for $161 billion for the navy. Contrast this with the $240 million budget of 1917 and we see that, even after adjusting for inflation, the current outlays are forty times higher.

What about the air force? In 2012 they requested $166 billion. By comparison the budget for FY 1950 called for the air force to receive $4.6 billion. Adjusted for inflation, we find that the pentagon is still spending almost four times the amount on the air force.

Such arbitrary statistics mean nothing and only serve to drum up fear in the minds of voters. While factually correct, they are nevertheless hollow figures. If journalists really did what they claim to, they would rightly ask Romney and his ilk to explain the significance of such numbers. A moderator worth his salt would make note of nuclear submarines and stealth bombers, challenging any candidate who used such tactics to defend their (obvious) attempts at manipulating viewers.

What all this means is that the American people need much less spending on the war machine and instead reduce military spending. This cannot be maintained indefinitely, as it is bankrupting us.