Showing posts with label Lew Rockwell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lew Rockwell. Show all posts

Sunday, August 12, 2012

A real Oathkeeper...

According to Lawrence Vance, a regular contributor to LewRockwell.com, this is from a Marine sergeant who have served three tours in the Middle East.

When I first joined the military I was a good, George Bush conservative who wanted to serve my country. But after three deployments to the Middle East as an infantryman I came to several realizations.

First, how can I petition or demonstrate against the U.S. government for violating my freedoms here while I take those same freedoms from the people of Iraq and Afghanistan? I cannot without being a hypocrite. Regretfully, I have confiscated firearms from non-hostile Iraqis, detained Iraqis and Afghans because of baseless, unfounded suspicion, and quartered in civilian towns and, in some cases, the homes of Iraqis and Afghans. These are all human rights violations that the Founders would have resisted by force and, although neither Afghanistan nor Iraq has accepted the U.S. Constitution, we still have no business committing acts in foreign countries that are contrary to the spirit and intent of our Bill of Rights.

Second, if the Founders would have resisted these egregious acts by force then how can I blame Iraqi and Afghan insurgent forces for their resistance? That leads to the question of why we are still fighting over there. Bin Laden is dead. We are literally traveling thousands of miles now to assume a defensive posture against people who are upset (and rightfully so) that their children, wives, and mothers cannot go to the market without being frisked. They are understandably angry that we are willing to accept their families as "collateral damage" when we target them or some other alleged America-hating aggressor. The Afghan people are tired of the world trying to shove democracy—a foreign concept of freedom that they consider to be illegitimate—down their throats.

Third, I see daily evidence in the news that the U.S. government does not hold its citizens in any higher esteem than it holds the citizens of Iraq or Afghanistan. SWAT raids on non-hostiles, warrantless searches & seizures, and TSA checkpoints & grope-downs are the norm for U.S. citizens just as they are for our victims in foreign countries. The only difference being that Americans think they have more to lose if they resist. In the book of Matthew, chapter 7 Christ said, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." How can I as a follower of Christ take part in acts of which I do not want to be on the receiving end? As I said earlier, I cannot without being a hypocrite.

Fourth, as a member of the U.S. Armed Forces I took an oath upon enlistment to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States" and to "obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me." I no longer feel that I can uphold my oath to support and defend the Constitution while obeying the orders of the President and some of my appointed leaders, so I know that it is time for me to get out.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Quote of the Day August 7, 2012

"What is the Republican Party? Why, it's the Party of Lincoln. That is, it's the party of presidential dictatorship, war, inflation, protectionism, central planning, income and estate taxation, secret arrests, secret trials, secret prisons, secret executions. Sound familiar? Add empire, and you've got the Party of Romney." ~Lew Rockwell

Friday, July 27, 2012

Right and Wrong

Half of all U.S. wage-earners pay no income tax. Yet that half and their families receive free education K-12, Medicaid, rent supplements, food stamps, earned income tax credits, Pell grants, welfare payments, unemployment checks and other benefits.
Pat Buchanan get's it exactly right in this observation.  The thing is he is myopically focusing on Hispanics, not realizing he has identified the economic class, comprising every ethnic group, which stands between free people and the society they yearn for.  If he weren't so obsessed with his Hamiltonian dreams of national greatness...

http://lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan255.html

Thursday, October 8, 2009

This Deserves Quoting...

It's odd to watch the ethos of public affairs these days. Everyone seems to agree that mistakes were made in the past. People lived beyond their means. The boom created nutty financial arrangements in which people with no money and no jobs and no prospect of paying were able to enter into massive credit obligations lasting decades. Everyone seems to understand that there is something wrong here.

Where the split occurs is what to do about it. The party in power is under the belief that the way to fix a problem is to continue the practices that caused the problem in the first place, and delay for as long as possible the correction that must take place. On the other side are people who believe that reality needs to reassert itself, and the sooner the better.

Take note that I'm not talking about the need for blood in the streets or for lives to be shattered. I'm talking about moving to a different neighborhood, possibly renting rather than "owning," and generally downscaling. Is that really too much to ask? Not really, so the question appears: why is the government not insisting on this? I think the answer comes down to the banks and institutions that continue to hold bad assets. They don't want them repriced because that would be liquidation, and they are powerful enough to concoct policies that prevent that, for now.

Read it all here

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Things I Found September 11, 2008


September 11: Today In History.

News
Russian bombers will return in days from Venezuela: Two Russian long-range bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons will return to base from Venezuela in four days, the Air Force was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying on Thursday.

US expels Bolivian ambassador: The US has ordered the expulsion of the Bolivian ambassador in an escalating diplomatic row after Washington's envoy to Bolivia was expelled by Evo Morales, the president.

Venezuela expels US ambassador: Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has ordered the US ambassador to leave the country amid a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions between Bolivia and the US.

Weather
Hurricane Ike takes aim at Texas coast, Houston: GALVESTON, Texas (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of people fled coastal areas in the path of Hurricane Ike on Thursday as the storm gathered strength on a collision course with the Texas Gulf Coast, threatening to swamp populous areas around Houston under a massive wave of water.

Economy
Small Fannie, Freddie Holders Take Issue With Washington: Adam Freid, a general contractor in Thousand Oaks, Calif., says he was through day-trading stocks and instead looking for a promising long-term investment when he read some of Henry Paulson's recent comments about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Lehman in sale talks as survival questioned-sources: NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc was forced into talks about a possible sale after the Wall Street investment bank's shares plunged more than 40 percent on Thursday, raising questions about its survival.


Commentary
The American secessionist streak: In a recent poll, one in five agreed that states have the right to peacefully secede from the Union.

Stop the Bailout: It was the singular achievement of Murray Rothbard's America's Great Depression to have demonstrated that the Great Depression was a crisis manufactured and prolonged by the attempts to stop an inevitable downturn. The policy response – creating more money, propping up prices, ginning up employment, and a host of other devices – took a stock-market price collapse and a banking liquidation and spread the mess throughout every sector of the economy. What might have lasted a year to 18 months instead lasted 16 years.


More to come...