Reblogged from The Jeffersonian:

Brooks and Shields have an interesting discussion about trust in government on PBS NewsHour tonight. I won't try to summarize it here. It's not long and it holds your attention, so go ahead and listen to it.

Here's the interesting thing: for all their perceptive comments about why our national government has lost people's trust, these two analysts still believe that we would be better off if people trusted government more.

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In spite of the abysmal unemployment problem in the United States, President Obama was in Texas last week touting his plan to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour.  Recently, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit have seen fast food workers walk off the job and strike demanding higher wages.  Specifically, in Detroit, the Michigan Workers Organizing Committee, a coalition of labor, religious and community organizers is calling for a national minimum wage of $15 an hour.

The common denominator for everyone who wants to raise the minimum wage is the claim that the current government mandated floor price for hourly workers is too low for them to make a decent living.  Then there are the recipients of low wages, who claim their value, after years of faithful service to an employer, is much higher than the wages they receive.  For them, raising the minimum wage is the only way they can potentially get what should be coming to them – a higher rate of pay.  At the end of the day, proponents of raising the minimum wage assert that it is simply a matter of fairness to give those at the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder a little more.

Well, there are a lot of problems with the above reasoning.  In the first place, only two percent of wage earners in America work for minimum wage.  While workers under 25 years of age account for just 20 percent of hourly paid workers, they make up close to 50 percent of those earning the federal minimum wage or less.  In other words, very few workers are affected by the minimum wage and those that are tend to be young, first time wage earners.  You know, the teenager working at McDonald’s after school.  Naturally, older folks with familial responsibilities should find it hard to live making the current minimum wage.  The system is not really set up for them.

Then there is the economic problem caused by the minimum wage, namely unemployment.  Now, I know that there have been studies on both sides of the issue.  But, it is an economic fallacy to believe that the minimum wage does not cause unemployment.  Basic supply and demand tells us that as the price for a good or service increases, demand decreases.  Conversely, as price falls, demand increases.  By its very definition, the minimum wage is a price fix for labor above the market rate.  Thus, as the minimum wage level is greater than the equilibrium wage or wage level where demand equals supply, fewer workers will be demanded and a consequent surplus of workers will result.  Put another way, unemployment caused by the minimum wage is the difference between the amount of workers demanded and the amount supplied at the minimum wage level.  To decrease unemployment (surplus of workers) wages have to drop, just like the price of a good, to reach the clearing equilibrium price.  Naturally, this is impossible under federal and state laws, so unemployment persists until the minimum wage is overtaken by the market wage rate.

Instead of raising the minimum wage to help the working poor make ends meet, the focus should be on the cause of price inflation – the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed).  Since 1971, when President Nixon ended the convertibility of the dollar to gold that foreign creditors enjoyed, the Fed has monetized over $16 trillion in U.S. government debt and created trillions more dollars out of thin air helping the American banking cartel increase its profits.  The result has been an 82 percent loss in the value of the dollar and consequent general price inflation.  For instance, in 1971, a basket of groceries that cost $30 would cost $173 today.  It’s no wonder minimum wage workers are hard pressed to make ends meet.

In the final analysis, only a return to sound money will ultimately help those currently working for minimum wage.  It wasn’t perfect, but a return to the pre-1971 gold exchange standard would eliminate the need to constantly raise the minimum wage, cure our chronic youth unemployment problem, and be a “matter of fairness” for all wage earners.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

Reblogged from The Jeffersonian:

Alright, folks, since I don't read other people writing on this subject, I have to raise it myself. Does anyone else see a connection between the war in Syria and the war in Iraq? The Iraqi war started ten years ago, and continues now. The Syrian war started two years ago. Do we not want to think about this question, because of our complicity?

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Reblogged from The Jeffersonian:

Revolution on the Ground argues that the states should take the lead in resisting the federal government. Which states are in the best position to do that? Right now, states with Republican governors are well positioned to resist federal overreach, in health care and elsewhere. Of the states with Republican governors, which ones can act most effectively to resist the feds?

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The biggest problem for free market advocates has always been that the policies we espouse do not play well with the peoples’ emotions.  After all, what sounds better to you?  “Recessions are economic downtowns made necessary by the mal-investment of the preceding phony Fed induced boom” or “We are going to put people back to work by spending money on public works projects building badly needed infrastructure”.

Now, if you or someone you love is unemployed, the last thing you want to hear is that the government is not going to do anything to get the economy rolling again.  But, as all proponents of the free market know, that is precisely what is required to liquidate the bad investments caused by government policy in the preceding boom and get our economy moving again.

So it is with President Obama’s proposal to raise the minimum wage from its current $7.25 level to $9.00 an hour.  It is all emotion over reality.  For his part, the President touts his plan as helping the working class achieve a livable wage.  And who isn’t for that?

But the reality is that the minimum wage will actually cause more unemployment among the very people Obama claims he wants to help.  Studies have proven that, but really all one needs to know is how supply and demand works – as the price of a good or service rises the demand for that good or service diminishes.  Thus, by raising the price of the introductory wage an employer can offer, demand for wage earners at that new higher level will be less than at the old lower level.  Employers will hire fewer employees and require existing employees to do more.

But, I suppose when raising the minimum wage causes more unemployment, the anti-free market types will be there to provide unemployment benefits to the jobless.  They will use emotion to tell us that needed medications will not be had, children will starve, and families will be in the streets without it.  Anyone who stands in the way of extending benefits hates the poor, the workers, minorities, women, and children.  Forget that it was the policies of the anti-free market types which destroyed the economy in the first place and produced high unemployment.

At the end of the day, economic policy should have nothing to do with emotional pleas for government to do something.  When government does something it ends in harming those it was meant to help.  Has government involvement in the health care industry provided a system that is accessible to all?  Has the Community Reinvestment Act, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae served homeowners well?  Do we have first rate schools because of the Department of Education, energy independence because of the Department of Energy, or an abundance of jobs in America despite heavy regulation to protect workers from Washington?

Washington’s record in managing the economy is abysmal.  Economics is a logic based science.  The sooner Americans realize that the sooner we can rid ourselves of anti-free market schemes and heal our economy.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

Politicians and the media have done a great job of convincing ordinary Americans that they know what they are doing when it comes to managing the economy.  Even though they are the ones who got us into our current mess, the electorate continues to send the same pols back to Washington and they continue to watch financial news networks that act more like cheerleaders for government policy than objective analysts.

Take President Obama’s proposal to increase the current minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9.00 an hour for instance.  When polled, huge majorities of Americans support the proposal.

But, it is an economic fallacy to believe that even having a minimum wage will not cause unemployment.  Basic supply and demand tells us that as the price for a good or service increases, demand is diminished.  Conversely, as price falls, demand increases.  That is why when I go to see my hometown minor league baseball team, I and many other patrons wait until the ninth inning of the game to buy pizza because by then it has been marked down to increase demand preventing leftover unsalable pies.  Depending on the attendance remaining at the end of the game, I often have to rush down to the concession stand to get my pizza before the lower price produces the desired effect – no more pizzas.

Now, I understand that pizza is a good to be consumed at a baseball game and labor is a service provided by workers to employers.  But, in terms of the pricing mechanism, labor is no different than pizza.  A government mandated price floor (minimum wage) does not give the worker the opportunity to negotiate a wage with the employer below that price floor.  In many cases workers are willing to accept lower wages but are legally not able to.  Thus, because labor is priced above its market value there will be less demand for it.  In other words, less workers will be hired until the wage rate floor is allowed to adjust down.  Of course, unlike the pizza, that will never happen because that would be political suicide for politicians.

With regards to Obama’s proposal to increase the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9.00 an hour, most jobs that currently pay between those wage rates will be eliminated in the future.  Why would an employer pay $9.00 an hour for an employee who is worth, either through skill or job requirements, only $7.50 an hour?  In most cases they wouldn’t.  Thus jobs will be eliminated and current employees will be expected to do more.  Any way you slice it, minimum wage laws limit employment and therefore cause unemployment.

In the final analysis, it is incumbent on citizens to understand basic economic principles and how government’s violation of those principles will affect the economy.  Simply believing that those who gave us the current economic mess are also the ones to get us out of it is asinine.  Believing minimum wage laws don’t increase unemployment because the President proposes increasing the current minimum wage is irresponsible.

Article first published as Economic Fallacy: Minimum Wage Doesn’t Cause Unemployment on Blogcritics.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

Reblogged from The Jeffersonian:

Proponents of the Austrian School of Economics have been predicting that Obama’s lavish spending and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s money printing through his various quantitative easing schemes would cause price inflation in our economy.  For their part, Keynesians have been highly critical of Austrians for this prediction claiming that current government fiscal and monetary policy will not lead to price inflation.  They claim we have had 4 years of stimulus spending (however not enough for their liking) and quantitative easing, yet if you look at the government numbers on price inflation prices are not rising.

Well, I suppose if you trust in government like Keynesians do, you will follow its rigged statistics without asking questions.  Over time the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has changed how its price inflation number is calculated.  For a full review of how it has changed consult statistician John Williams’ site Shadow Government Statistics.  Consistently, the BLS’s current calculating method has yielded a price inflation number averaging between two and three percent.  However, if price inflation were still calculated the way it was before 1980, the price inflation average would be closer to ten percent.  If it was calculated the way it was between 1980 and 1990 the number would be closer to six percent.

Comparing price inflation numbers of the 1970s with today is like comparing apples and oranges.  Washington has changed the parameters of the measure making a comparison useless unless, like John Williams, you calculate the number using the old formulas.

The same is true about the current euphoria over the Dow’s breaking of its all-time high.  In nominal dollars the Dow is at an all-time high.  But, what good is it if the value of the Dow has lost its purchasing power?

Let’s look at USDA retail price data for beef for example.  Currently, the value of the Dow will buy 3,332 pounds of beef at the retail level.  But at 14,500 points that is about 20 percent less beef than the Dow could buy in January 2000 when its level was at 10,600 points.

But, what’s that, you are a vegetarian so the increased price of beef doesn’t matter to you?

Okay, well, the Dow’s value could currently purchase 15.35 tons of bananas.  That sum would keep any troop of monkeys occupied for a while.  But, it is the same amount of bananas the Dow could have purchased in February 2008 when it was only at 12,266 points and 60 percent less in 1999 when the Dow was around 10,000 points.

And who could argue against the fact that the price of gasoline affects the prices of all other goods and an increase thereof is the most harmful to the working class.  Once again, price inflation can be seen by comparing the Dow’s current high with its previous value.  At today’s current high value, the Dow could purchase 3,812 gallons of unleaded gasoline in the U.S.  This is about the same amount it could have bought in January 2012 when the Dow was only worth 12,633 points.  The short window of time, 15 months, is indicative of how price inflation does exist in a big way in our economy.

In the final analysis, Austrians are right and Keynesians are wrong.  There is significant price inflation in our economy that has been caused by Obama’s prolific spending and Bernanke’s reckless money printing.  In fact, the numbers are indicative that price inflation has been with us for a lot longer time.  When will Keynesians realize this? Perhaps they will when the BLS publishes a true price inflation statistic.

Article first published as The Dow Is an Indicator of Price Inflation on Blogcritics.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

I have this cousin, let’s call him Giovanni.  He is a great guy – industrious, hospitable, great family man.  He is my go to source when it comes to information and analysis about sports in general and baseball in particular.

It is an entirely different story when it comes to economics.  Oh, he is financially successful, but like most Americans he doesn’t understand how the market works.

Now, I am not talking about the “free” market, just the market, which exists everywhere and in every place.  The market is the arena of commerce and whether it is free or not depends on government allowances in the various geographic areas of the world.

So, technology has made it possible for Giovanni and me to rekindle our familial relationship that was forged many years ago through the trading of Matchbox cars.  Well, actually, he is so much older than I am that he made and brought them to me when his family visited ours.  I told you he was a great guy.

He is also good at chasing me through cyberspace by email, facebook, and on open threads of sites where I post my blog to argue economics with me.

Last Friday, he emailed me an article titled “A Breakthrough Speech on Monetary Policy”.  The author, Anatole Kaletsky, is an award-winning journalist.  The “Breakthrough Speech” in question was delivered by Adair Turner, Chairman of Britain’s Financial Services Authority and one of the most influential financial policymakers on the planet.

Clearly both men are dyed-in-the-wool Keynesians because Turner’s speech and Kaletsky’s article both recommended that politicians and central bankers print up lots of money and dole it out to consumers in order to stimulate the economy to end the economic stagnation that the West currently finds itself in.  Specifically, Kaletsky believes the Fed should take the $85 billion it is currently spending to buy government bonds from banks and instead distribute it to every man, woman, and child in America.  He believes, “There can be little doubt that this deluge of free money would stimulate consumer spending and revive employment,” thus ending the West’s economic doldrums.  Further, Kaletsky believes this proposal would not cause price inflation because, “links between monetary financing and hyperinflation are theoretically dubious and historically unjustified”.

So, after digesting this economically nonsensical article, I owed Giovanni a response.

Firstly, I indicated to him that monetary inflation does lead to price inflation unless perhaps productivity keeps up with increased money supply.  Just in the 20^th Century, one could look to the Weimar Republic and many Latin American countries from time to time.   Zimbabwe is the most recent example.  In fact, all of history is littered with societies that attempted to inflate their way out of depression and instead brought about hyperinflation.

Secondly, I told him that personally I would gain greatly from Kaletsky’s proposal, but that it would harm the economy in the long-run and further destroy an already disappearing middle class.  Given many Americans spendthrift mentality, could you imagine what would happen if they received “free” money each month from the government?  First off, Uncle Sam would never be able to rescind the policy.  It would be like trying to cut Social Security benefits.

Beyond that, there is no doubt, that unlike the banks, leveraged to the hilt American consumers would spend all of their new found riches on a plethora of consumer goods.  The economy would experience another phony boom based on monetary inflation.  Employment would improve for a while.  The new money would bid up the price of goods and services thereby causing domestic price inflation.

Personally, my real estate investments would increase in value allowing me to sell them to some economically naïve person with free government money in his pockets.  The value of my gold holdings would increase exponentially.  I would be sitting pretty, protected from the impending economic bust that was made inevitable by the phony inflationary boom.

As prices rise, so would interest rates.  All the investments begun at lower interest rates would become more expensive.  Many would not be sustainable at the higher cost of money.  Sound familiar?  It should because this is what happen in the 1990s with the dot.com bubble and what also happened in the 2000s with the housing bubble.

As defaults on loans increase, unemployment picks up and the market is thrust into another downturn.   I am sure at that point Giovanni and other Keynesians will blame the free market.  But, of course, the only thing that was free in all this was the money the Fed gave to consumers.

Predictably, his response to my response was that I am living in a fantasy world.  Unfortunately, he is wrong.  The devastation that millions of hard-working Americans would experience if the above plan is enacted wouldn’t be a fantasy. It would be a tragedy.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.”  These are the simple, yet exceedingly relevant for our times, words of the famous English writer Aldous Huxley.

If only Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke would acquaint himself with this quote.

For three years, between 2001 and 2004, in an effort to boost the economy after the 911 terrorist attacks, his predecessor at the Fed, Alan Greenspan, kept the Federal Funds Interest Rate under two percent.  As a result, cheap money and low introductory teaser rates fueled the largest housing boom in American history.  Then, like all fake boom phases, when interest rates rose it came to an end.  The necessary correction phase started and all the mal-investment of the boom phase was no longer sustainable under higher rates.  Foreclosures increased.  As housing prices fell back to earth, underwater mortgages and abandoned homes were everywhere.  Many still find themselves unemployed and destitute.

Now, instead of letting the market go through a much needed correction after the crisis began, new Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke pursued a policy bent on “stabilizing” the value of assets.  Since 2008, Bernanke’s Fed has kept the Federal Funds Interest Rate close to zero percent and it has increased its balance sheet by just under three trillion dollars by purchasing Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities from member banks.

Some economists believe Chairman Bernanke’s policies have created a housing recovery.  These economists believe this because they haven’t learned from history, especially recent history.

But, according to David Stockman, the former head of the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan, what Bernanke’s policies have created is simply another housing bubble.  He sees a similar combination of artificially low interest rates and speculation producing the current housing boom just like the boom during Greenspan’s tenure.

Nationally, the median price for existing single-family homes was $178,900 in the fourth quarter of 2012, up 10 percent over the same period in 2011.  This marked the greatest year-over-year price increase since the fourth quarter of 2005.

And there are local pockets of even greater price increases in real estate going on.  There is a farmland bubble taking place in the Midwest and Mountain states with non-irrigated cropland prices increasing on average by about 18 percent.  Southern California, Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., and New York City are all experiencing huge real estate booms with prices for pre-construction condos in Manhattan increasing on a bimonthly basis.

It is ridiculous to believe that what we are seeing is anything other than another housing bubble.  Unemployment and underemployment are still very high.  Many employed middle income buyers are still reeling from the last bust.  The huge price increases we are seeing is the work of speculators fueled by Bernanke’s easy money policies.

The bust will come when rates rise, the mal-investments of the boom become unsustainable at the higher rates, and the speculators liquidate their positions leaving small investors holding the bag.  It will be 2008 all over again for many, except this time it will be Ben Bernanke’s Housing Bubble.

Article first published as This Time it’s Bernanke’s Housing Bubble on Blogcritics.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

If there ever was a situation tailor made for Second Amendment rights it is the ongoing manhunt drama in California following the killing of three people and the injuring of another by former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner.  Dorner (33) has promised in notes he left behind to perpetrate “warfare” on police officers and their families.  Desperate and heavily armed, authorities are not certain what he is capable of.  One report says residents of rural southern California towns are barricading themselves in their homes, some armed to the teeth, in the event Dorner attempts to break into their homes.

Now, you would think that the mainstream media in an effort to provide “fair and balanced” reporting would seize the opportunity and report at least this one time that this is what James Madison had in mind when he wrote the Second Amendment.  That is that people have a natural right to self-defense when a madman is on the loose.  But, this lack of reporting, as well as other examples of outright chicanery in reporting, is indicative of the MSM’s agenda when it comes to guns.

For instance, there was this headline in the Huffington Post on January 27, 2013, “Ronnie Chambers Death:  Mother Loses Fourth Child to Gun Violence…”  What followed was a video of the grieving mother (Shirley Chambers) and an article explaining how her fourth child was gunned down “while sitting in a car”.  The author of the piece gave no other details about the circumstances surrounding any of the shootings of her four children.  In fact, readers were left with the impression that each one was an innocent bystander.  What was inferred was that something must be done to stop wanton gun violence before more innocent children are killed – i.e. gun control.

The purpose of the piece was clearly to horrify readers’ sensibilities toward the mother’s loss, get them caught up emotionally, and bring them around to the belief that if only guns could be banned the violence on our streets would disappear.

But, upon further investigation, this observer found that Ms. Chamber’s children were anything but innocent bystanders.  Two of her children died as a result of arguments with individuals they knew.  One seemed to be a targeted killing by, perhaps, a rival gang.   And the last of her children to be gunned down, had been arrested in the past a remarkable 29 times and had four felony convictions!  This refutes the Huff Post’s inference that the victims were innocent and merely at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Also from the Huffington Post was the blog by Josh Horwitz, the Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, entitled “LaPierre Reveals True Purpose Behind Assault Weapons”.  In the piece, Horwitz takes exception to NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre’s Senate testimony that the purpose of the Second Amendment was to ultimately provide Americans with the means to protect themselves from their own government.  Horwitz went so far as to label LaPierre’s position “insurrectionist”.  He accused LaPierre and others who hold the same belief that they were “ready to wage war on our government”.

Once again, emotional scare tactics were employed by a Huff Post columnist to drive home the point that guns should be banned.  The insinuation is that LaPierre and others who hold the view that Americans need guns to protect themselves from their own government are on the far fringes of society.  In fact, they are the loony tunes to be feared.

What Horwitz intentionally ignores are those that came before us, who were revered, and who held the same belief that an armed citizenry is the greatest defense against tyranny.  Thomas Jefferson said, “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”  In the Federalist Papers #46, James Madison proclaimed, “Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

Lastly, there is this quote from 20^th Century liberal Democrat and former Vice President of the United States, Hubert H. Humphrey:  “Certainly, one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. … The right of the citizen to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.”

By ignoring history, Horwitz seeks to taint his readers’ understanding of the gun issue.  But he is not alone in this endeavor.  The government run schools and most of Hollywood employ the same tactics.  Their goal is to convince the public that we need more gun control.

But, for those of us that understand the true meaning of the Second Amendment, we can take solace knowing that the disingenuousness of the gun grabbers is not working because Americans have responded by setting back to back monthly records for arms sales.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

As a libertarian I believe that you have a right to live your life as you see fit as long as you don’t violate somebody else’s right to do the same.  Libertarianism represents the only non-coercion political/economic philosophy in the universe.  All other political/economic philosophies, democracy, republicanism, monarchy, dictatorship, socialism, and communism employ the brute force (violence) of government to enforce compliance of one group’s wishes on another group.
Many Americans believe that libertarianism is an unworkable framework because without government to provide and enforce laws society would be in chaos.  Additionally, opponents of greater freedom question how the services currently provided by government would be handled in a free market environment.

It is understandable that many Americans hold these doubts about libertarianism.  As a society, we are socialized through the government dependent schools, universities, and mass media to accept that we need big government to protect us from the excesses of capitalism and freedom in general.  If that doesn’t get the job done, those members of society that have for a long time held statist views, and are therefore closed to thinking for themselves, ridicule those of us for believing such “nonsense” in an effort to get us to conform.  After all, normal human behavior requires that we want to be liked or at the very least not thought to be a weirdo.

One of the biggest questions raised against a totally free society is, who would build roads and regulate their use?  Where would we be without government provided speed limits, traffic signals, and road construction?

Well, in the early 1800s, America actually had a huge network of private roads and highways.  According to Thomas J. DiLorenzo, hundreds of private road building companies invested over $11 million in turnpikes in New York, $6.5 million in New England, and over $4.5 million in Pennsylvania.  By 1840, this resulted in the private production and operation of about 3,750 miles of road in New England, 4000 miles in New York, and 2400 miles in Pennsylvania.  In fact, in real dollar terms, this production exceeded the interstate highway program financed and run by the federal government after World War II.

And we still have private roads in America today.  Besides examples like the Reedy Creek Improvement District and Dulles Greenway, the National Bridge Inventory, which is a database compiled by the Federal Highway Administration lists approximately 2200 privately owned highway bridges in forty-one states!  Many of these thruways charge tolls which are fairer because they are user fees.  All are proof that government is not necessarily needed to build and maintain roadways in America.

Okay, well, what about local roads in residential and business districts?  In a libertarian society all land would be owned privately.  Thus, roads would no longer be public, but private property with certain deed restrictions for easements and right of way privileges.  The land would be owned by business proprietors and homeowners.  They would have an incentive to maintain it as a right of way because otherwise the value of their property would decrease or in the case of a business, sales would plummet.  Freeing property owners from paying property taxes eliminates the middleman (inefficient bureaucracy), and frees up more money to go directly into road repair.  If you don’t think property owners would maintain their right of ways, think of the endless number of them who pave their own driveways and then seal them each year.

In my own case, my house is located in a rural part of North Carolina on the side of a mountain.  The properties of my neighbors and me extend into our street. Consequently, I own a portion of street which is allocated as a right of way.  Even though I pay property tax to the county, it does not maintain this right of way.  Instead, the property owners on our street must maintain it.  Every year, I spend about $300 as my contribution to maintaining the road.  That’s a small price to pay if I didn’t have to pay the larger county tax amount.  Now, it is true that some folks on the street do not contribute anything to road maintenance.  But I am no worse off with that than I am with paying taxes for public schools in the county that I will never use.

As to what would happen if we didn’t have government provided speed limits, stop signs, and traffic signals?  There is a misconception that a libertarian society would be devoid of rules.  Of course, you could still have speed limits, stop signs, and traffic signals on your road, otherwise for safety reasons motorists might not traverse it.  Again, if you were a homeowner this would decrease your property value and also provide an unsafe circumstance for your own property including your house and vehicles.  Unsafe business districts would be littered with the shattered dreams of bankrupt enterprises.

In the last century how many Americans have attended local city council meetings to petition their local municipality to install stop signs or traffic signals at busy intersections?  How many homeowners with children or pets have requested that speed limits in their neighborhoods be reduced?  When there is a need people react.  It is naive to believe that people who have a stake in their communities and a financial interest thereof would not fill the void left by government relinquishing its responsibility over roads.

Lastly, we have built the roads and instituted rules for the same.  How would those rules be enforced?  I suppose local police agencies could still have jurisdiction.  But what is more likely is for homeowner and business associations to hire private security companies to handle patrolling and enforcement of the property rights of land owners.  After all, if someone litters on my property it is a violation of my property rights not a crime against society.  Thus, violators could be apprehended either physically or through identifying perpetrators to a local magistrate for the administration of justice.

At the end of the day, no libertarian believes their ideas for society would be perfect.  But we do believe they would be possible and better than what we have now.  Private ownership of all material things is always better.  It has been proven that the freer a society is the more prosperous it is.  One need only to look at the history of America.  We have more government restrictions on our freedom now than ever before and our decline is imminent.  What is needed is an intellectual awakening in America.  This awakening must open our minds and seek to question the tired mantras of statist institutions like schools and the mass media.

Article first published as Highways and Roads in a Free Society on Blogcritics.

For instance, since 2008 15 million more Americans rely on food stamps.  According to the Census Bureau, 146 million of us, nearly half of the U.S. population, are poor or low-income.  The Civilian Employment/Population ratio, which is the broadest measure of employment in the country, is the lowest it has been since the early 1980s.  Median household income has retreated to its 1995 level.  Lastly, the economy is not producing jobs for U.S. college graduates as 53 percent of them under the age of 25 are either unemployed or underemployed.  Given that many graduated with huge college debt, what could the future hold for these folks?

But, don’t despair.  Some in our society are doing quite well because of the federal largess thrown their way.  Most of them just happen to be located around New York City and the District of Columbia.  You see, the U.S. stock and bond markets are at, or near all-time highs.  Real estate in Manhattan and Washington, D.C. has bounced back nicely and are both at all-time highs.  Even the Contemporary Art market in the Big Apple has seen sales skyrocket in spite of higher prices.

But, this is predictable given that New York and the nation’s capital is where the Wall Street/Washington Axis of Financial Evil is headquartered.  It is where that axis prints the new money and injects it into the economy through its well-connected surrogates – i.e the “too big to fails”.

And it is all done in the name of stabilizing prices so the rest of us don’t suffer so much.  How nice it is that the powers that be are looking out for us working folk!

Don’t be fooled for a moment.

The financial establishment in this country, which includes the Federal Reserve and its “too big to fail” cronies, knew exactly what it was doing.  Through monetizing federal debt, a series of quantitative easing schemes and holding interest rates below market prices the banking establishment has succeeded at stabilizing the cost of living above market levels.  Put another way, if left to its own devices with no monetary easing from the Fed, the market would have rid itself of all the mal-investment built up from the previous Fed induced false boom period (housing boom).

Consequently, housing prices would be lower, commodity prices would be lower; in fact general price inflation would be lower.  The cost of hiring new workers would be lower causing an employment recovery.  Savers would have gotten a decent return on their money.  In short, working class Americans would have seen an enhancement in their standard of living.

On the flip side, many rich folks would have been devastated.  Their stock and bond portfolios would have been decimated.  Many would have lost their jobs through bankruptcy and restructuring.  The value of their homes wouldn’t have been restored on the backs of working men and women.

This is what should have happened.  After all, they caused the crisis along with their accomplices in government.  Didn’t they deserve the consequences of their actions?  That is capitalism.  That is the American way.

Article first published as Gap Between Rich and Poor Rooted in Government Policy on Blogcritics.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

As someone who has lived in four different countries and traveled to several others over the last eleven years, I can tell you that no people who I have encountered continually demand that their government institutions solve every problem imaginable like Americans do.  From the dangers of electric garage doors to the eradication of bed bugs, there seems to be nothing that Washington isn’t charged with fixing.

Then, there are those horrific incidents of violence perpetrated by a mentally unstable person that sends many Americans into a tizzy and raises their collective voices for Washington to do something urgently.  Cries of, “this can never happen again”, call out for new laws and measures to prevent future tragedies.

And so, we have the latest episode of hysterics over the tragedy that was the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings.

To be sure, whenever any young children lose their lives it is a tragedy.  Whether they are in the classrooms of America’s schools, in cars on America’s streets, or collateral damage from an American drone strike over Pakistan, the loss of the young and innocent hits each of us where we live.

But, in the case of the reaction to the latest tragedy, the last thing Washington should do is pass any new gun control legislation including legislation banning so-called “assault rifles”

A little perspective is needed to understand why.  Less than 400 people a year are killed with rifles of all kinds.  According to FBI numbers from 2005 to 2011, hammers and clubs killed more people than rifles in America.  Logically then, shouldn’t hammers and clubs be banned before rifles?  At the very least, shouldn’t a license be required to own one?  Furthermore, why would anyone but construction contractors need to own sledge hammers? Are they not the hammer equivalent to an assault rifle?  Could you imagine going to Lowes to purchase a hammer and having to undergo a background check and a seven day waiting period?  Yet, this is the conversation our leaders are having about rifles, which again, kill fewer people than hammers and clubs each year.

But there is more.  America has not experienced a direct danger from a foreign adversary since the War of 1812 (One could argue that Pearl Harbor was about the Japanese only wanting to cripple our Pacific fleet to allow Her free rein over the islands of the Pacific Ocean).  Yet we have sent millions of young people into harm’s way to “defend” our freedom and have lost hundreds of thousands doing so.  Were the lives of those young people less worthy than the youth lost at Sandy Hook? – Of course not.  But, our leaders tell us that freedom has costs and the hundreds of thousands of young men and women that gave their lives “defending” our freedom is a large part of that cost.

So, I submit to you that those twenty children who lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary are also a part of the cost of defending freedom.  At the end of the day, individuals have a natural right to self-defense.  They have a right to defend themselves against criminals, foreign invaders, and their own government if it becomes tyrannical enough.  Why should law-abiding citizens be asked to unilaterally disarm because a deranged individual used a gun to murder children? It is nonsensical.

Besides, we have tried prohibition before, first with booze in the 1920s and currently with drugs.  It did not prevent people from getting a drink or a joint.  Why would we think it would be different with guns?

Lastly, children die in car accidents, drown in bathtubs, and are poisoned by ingesting prescription drugs all the time.  Does this warrant the banning of these items?  Of course not, because they are vitally important to modern life just like the means to protect oneself is.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

Senseless killings always sting the worst.  Last week, when news had spread that deranged gunman Adam Lanza opened fire at a Newtown, Connecticut elementary school killing 20 children, horror, shock and then outrage were experienced by untold numbers of Americans.  Those of us in education especially reflected upon how such a vicious act could be perpetrated on the most innocent of innocence?
Of course, within hours of the carnage in Newtown, profiteering politicians were making statements and gearing up to impose new attacks on Second Amendment rights.  New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Meet the Press proclaimed that President Obama should make gun control his number one priority for 2013.  Forget about the economy which is slowly and silently slipping into another huge economic downturn.  Then there was California Senator Dianne Feinstein who has promised that she will introduce legislation banning assault weapons on the very first day the Senate is back in session.  Never mind that studies on the same ban in effect between 1994 and 2004 have been inconclusive on whether it reduced violent crime during that time period.

But this piece is not about engaging in the never ending debate over gun rights in our country.  It is about the hypocrisy of Americans who mourn the young victims in Connecticut while totally disregarding the child victims of our government’s war machine overseas.

In the last seven years, first the Bush and then the Obama Administration, has conducted a lethal undeclared drone war over the skies of Pakistan near the Afghanistan border.  Its purpose is to seek and destroy al Qaeda targets in the now open ended War on Terror.  However, those same American drones have killed at least 168 children in the raids including 69 in a single attack in Madrassah in 2006.   Where is the horror, shock, and outrage over these deaths?

Beyond the innocent children killed, the drone war has disrupted the family lives of many other kids in Pakistan.  Strikes that have killed one or both parents have left many kids orphaned and unable to provide for themselves.  Many parents have stopped sending their children to school for fear they will end up at the wrong place at the wrong time and because there are reports that American drone strikes have damaged or destroyed local schools.  Then there are the mental effects of the constant aerial assault.  In a poor country like Pakistan, with virtually no psychological resources families are left to themselves to cope with loss and the traumatic stress of always living in danger of being blown up.

Now, we are told that these attacks on civilian populations are necessary to kill the bad guys and keep us safe.  Have we gotten to the point in America where only “us” count? Are our children’s lives more important than others?  Americans claim the moral high ground in world affairs yet ignore the atrocities committed by our government in the name of national security.

Yes, we are dismayed and outraged that 20 innocent children were taken from their parents last week in Newtown, Connecticut.  And we have a right to be.  But, let’s not forget that on the other side of the world Pakistani parents are suffering because they too have lost children to senseless violence – senseless violence at the hands of our government.

So while we mourn the tragic end of young lives, let’s rededicate ourselves to peaceful coexistence.  We could provide no greater memorial to the 20 innocent children lost in Connecticut than to pressure the Congress and the President to stop at once the drone war over Pakistan and other countries.  We owe it to parents in those countries.  We owe it to ourselves.

Article first published as Thoughts About the Connecticut Killings on Blogcritics.

Washington is full of drama.  Americans are constantly being treated to high political suspense.  Whether it’s the scandal ridden death of an ambassador, an outrageous gun dealing policy gone wrong on our southern border, or the spectacle of politicians scurrying frantically at the eleventh hour to raise the federal debt ceiling to keep Uncle Sam running, there is usually no shortage of political theater emanating from the nation’s capital.

At present, the drama centers around the so-called “fiscal cliff” negotiations taking place between the President and congressional leaders.  According to the main stream media, the big question is, can Congress and the President thwart economic catastrophe by agreeing on tax increases on the rich and some spending cuts before a January deadline would automatically terminate Bush era tax cuts and cut military spending deeply thereby causing an economic crisis.

It’s no secret that the fiscal condition of the United States is apocalyptic.  With $16 trillion of current debt and 10s of trillions of dollars more in future unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare, there is no possible way for the United States to ever meet these obligations short of its current strategy of printing money out of thin air.  And, of course, that is a financially suicidal option.

The big problem is that the federal budget is inflexible.  In Fiscal Year 2011, $2.303 trillion in tax revenue was collected by the federal government.  In that same year, the government spent $454.4 billion on interest payments and $2.025 trillion on mandatory spending like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Thus, money that Uncle Sam was forced to pay out exceeded all revenue collected by $176.4 billion.  This doesn’t include discretionary spending like defense appropriations.  Mandatory spending and interest payments will only grow as more baby boomers retire and the Treasury goes deeper into debt.

Of course, many progressives believe that all we have to do is raise taxes on the rich to fix our fiscal mess.  They argue that tax cuts since the 1980s which lowered marginal tax rates on the rich from 91 percent to the current 35 percent are responsible for the national debt.  But this is simply not true.  A Congressional Research Study  found that the 91% marginal tax rate on high earners in the 1950s and 1960s produced an effective income tax rate on the top 0.01 percent of only about 45%.  Consequently, high rates on the rich did not produce the windfall for the U.S. Treasury that progressives claim.  In fact, whether the top rate was 91 percent or 35 percent, federal tax receipts for the last 67 years have changed little, averaging about 17 percent of GDP for the time period.

What proponents of soaking the rich like to ignore about the 1950s and 1960s is the real check on government spending which was the gold exchange standard. They ignore it because they know that if a gold standard were reinstituted in the U.S. it would put a real crimp in their plans to maintain the welfare/warfare state they have built since LBJ.

At the end of the day, the current drama over the approaching fiscal cliff in January is utter nonsense.  The fact is we have already gone over the fiscal cliff.  Washington is either in denial, won’t admit it, or doesn’t realize it because we haven’t had the hard landing at the bottom of the canyon yet.  That will come when interest rates begin to rise and the Fed prints even more money to meet obligations.  Then the real drama will begin.

Article first published as The Fiscal Cliff is in Our Rearview Mirror on Blogcritics.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

Mr. O’Neill and fellow officers who served on Swift Boats in the war in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta torpedoed Mr. Kerry’s campaign for president in 2004. The Swift Vets exposed his libels against American GIs and debunked his claims to heroism in the Mekong Delta.

Then Lipsky quotes from Kerry’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. Kerry reported what veterans confessed about their actions in Vietnam, where they

had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

Lipsky then suggests that because no one prosecuted the veterans for these crimes, they did not happen. That is, the veterans had confessed to crimes they had not committed. Ask yourself how likely that is: your country drafts you to fight a nasty land war in the villages, rice paddies, and jungles of Vietnam. You witness what we know happens during a war. When you return home, you testify to atrocious acts you committed while you were overseas, and you lie about it! These soldiers were not bragging. Like John Kerry, they were angry their country had put them in a hellish place where atrocious activity had become commonplace, with little to distinguish among normal ravages of war, war crimes, and memories of things they had done.

Lipsky concedes that a few bad apples, as we call them now, may have committed war crimes. In fact, he generously places Kerry in that group, citing Kerry’s own testimony:

There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages.”

“All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.”

When Kerry refers to a free fire zone, he means the rules of engagement permit you to shoot anything that moves, including women and children. A military court prosecuted Lt. Calley for the massacre at My Lai not because his actions there had a different result from military actions in innumerable other villages. It prosecuted him because his company was more deliberate than most, and because he and his men murdered so many people. After Seymour Hersh reported the massacre in the States, the military had to prosecute him.

Imagine what Vietnam veterans encountered when they returned home. On one side were anti-war protesters who actually did vilify returning vets as war criminals – behavior that disgraced the peace movement, not the returning soldiers. On the other side, returning vets encountered so many people who did not even want do know what happened in Vietnam. They couldn’t comprehend it. Along comes John Kerry, a decorated officer, angry that his government, in a paroxysm of brutality and stupidity, sends thousands of his generation to die in a place they don’t care about. He tries to tell people, in government and out, what is happening over there. He vilifies the war, not the people forced to fight in it. He honestly confesses that he participated in the same hell as everyone else.

When John Kerry reports in 1971 that destroying villages and their civilian inhabitants was U. S. policy, he tells the truth. These ravages of war were not the result of a few bad apples. Lipsky neither acknowledges nor cares that history supports John Kerry. The evidence did not support John O’Neill when he campaigned to discredit Kerry in 1971; the evidence had not changed when O’Neill mounted the same campaign in 2004. The Swift Boat Veterans demonstrated their hatred for Kerry when they launched a twisted campaign of falsehood against him. The Republicans would have disavowed the campaign in a second if they had an ounce of honor. They did not – George W. Bush and his corrupt propagandists stood by silently. At least John McCain, a fellow veteran, disavowed the swift boat veterans.

The swift boat veterans hated Kerry for his testimony, all the more because it was true. They hated him because they felt he made them look bad. Kerry’s goal was not to level accusations at his fellow soldiers. His goal when he returned from Vietnam was to end the war by telling people what was actually happening over there. The swift boat veterans never accused Kerry of lying in his testimony during the anti-war movement. They know he told the truth. Instead they denigrated his heroism, saying he did not deserve his medals. Somehow that stuck. I don’t know why, but it did.

The Vietnam war was born in lies, it matured in lies, and it ended in lies. We have still not acknowledged what we did there. When he returned from the war, Kerry told the truth about U. S. activities in Vietnam. We saw what happened to him in 2004 as a result. Eight years ago, too many people listened to John O’Neill and his dirty organization before they listened to John Kerry. This week, we still see Seth Lipsky use space in the Wall Street Journal to dishonor John Kerry for his testimony, more than forty years after Kerry’s honorable and heroic service to his country.

We’ve all heard someone say at one time or another, “We have to put the Vietnam war and its divisions behind us. Otherwise its wounds will never heal.” It’s a platitude. First acknowledge the truth. Reconciliation follows.

The idea of the United States of America was born during the Age of Enlightenment (17^th and 18^th centuries).  The great philosophers of that time challenged the divine right of kings by enunciating a new theory for the social order.  Their theory was articulated by the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), who claimed that man originally was born in a state of nature where he had the absolute rights of life, liberty, and property.  Thus, when Thomas Jefferson presented the Continental Congress with the document that would lay the foundation for our government and society, the Declaration of Independence, he included one of the most eloquent and oft quoted statements in the English language:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”

In essence, this one profound statement gives all Americans rights that cannot be taken away by any legal authority.  The greatest of these rights is the right to property, which includes an individual’s body as well as possessions he/she has toiled to produce.

So, where is this treatise headed you might ask?

This Friday is Black Friday in the United States and to protest the labor practices of mega-retailer Wal-Mart, some of its employees are planning nationwide walkouts.  On the busiest shopping day of the year in the U.S. supposedly 1000 picket lines are expected at Wal-Mart stores across the country.  Specifically, the activism is meant to draw attention to what strike organizers call Wal-Mart’s “retaliation against employees who speak out for better pay, fair schedules and affordable health care”.

Now, there is no question that Wal-Mart employees are entitled to freedom of speech, guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, just like all other Americans.  And they have enjoyed that right by virtue of the fact that none have been imprisoned or worse for speaking out against their employer.  But, this action by disgruntled Wal-Mart employees has really nothing to do with freedom of speech; it has everything to do with property rights.

In the employer-employee relationship, the employer has property rights to the business which includes, the buildings, inventory, and all other aspects of the enterprise (i.e. good will) not seeded to another entity.  This also includes the paid positions made available to the public by the company.  In this same relationship, the worker has property rights to his/her labor.

This arrangement is consistent with the right to property proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.  A right which includes an individual’s body as well as possessions he has toiled to produce (in this case the business enterprise) and is the reason why the hiring process includes the worker filling out an application, meeting to be interviewed, and negotiating an employment contract.  Consequently, the right to one’s labor is an indispensable property of the individual.  But the job that he sells his labor to perform is the property of the business.  Thus, the right to a job doesn’t exist because that would be a violation of the property rights of business owners.

Now, I realize there are such things as anti-discrimination laws, collective bargaining laws, and other acts of government which grant workers the right to employment and job security.  But, they violate the unalienable right to property guaranteed first in the Declaration of Independence and then in the U.S. Constitution.  They are also egregious representations of how far we have strayed as a nation from our original ideals of liberty.

If Wal-Mart employees are unhappy with their working conditions, they have a right to petition their employer within the confines of their labor contract.  If their grievances are not met, the choice before them is to either continue to honor their labor contract or resign.  The founding principle which gave birth to American liberty requires this.

Here are some examples of fingerspitzengefuhl that stay pretty close to the literal meaning:

• Improvisation or performance of a complicated piece on the piano
• A similar performance on any musical instrument
• Skiing
• Soaring
• Chess
• Military operations on a battlefield
• Dogfighting
• Swordfighting
• Seduction
• Handling a complex negotiation

You have the idea now. A general definition that fits all these examples would be fine sensitivity, sure instinct or great situational awareness.

John Boyd tied this idea to the so-called OODA loop. The letters in this acronym stand for:

• Observe
• Orient
• Decide
• Act

Think of the OODA loop as a process, one that applies especially well to situations of conflict. We can discuss this loop in greater detail later, especially in connection with Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and Miyamoto Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings.

I’ve wanted to think about how fingerspitzengefuhl and the OODA loop might apply to civil conflict. You know from past posts that I have advocated planned, non-violent resistance to our government. I believe this resistance must come from the states. They are the political actors best equipped to secure freedom. Citizens acting together within their own states have the best chance of success. We need a handbook to guide state resistance to the federal government.

Since I started with a reference to John Boyd’s work, we’ll end this post the same way. Ten years ago, I bought Robert Coram’s biography of John Boyd for my dad, who like Boyd was a fighter pilot. My dad fought in World War II; Boyd fought in the Korean War. If you like to read biographies of leaders, pick up Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. If you hear an echo of Sun Tzu in that title, that’s not an accident.

Boyd developed a theory of warfare – and of conflict more generally – that emphasizes psychological elements of conflict. We can’t briefly summarize his fairly complex theories here. Instead, download this well edited version of his comprehensive slide deck, Patterns of Conflict. It is worth your time.

In connection with a handbook for civil resistance, useful for states as they interact with the federal government, we should keep some big questions in mind. How do republics fail or fall? Why does the government that husbands the republic lose its authority and effectiveness? Lastly, why do leaders fail so spectacularly, and others succeed? We want to keep these questions in the background as we consider effective means to save ourselves.

We do not have much experience with tax revolts in our country. California’s Proposition 2.5 to limit property tax increases had success, and the movement spread to other states. We have a number of organizations that lobby for tax reform in Washington, but by and large Americans have paid a great deal in taxes without much public protest either about high rates or about how it is spent.

Not until the Tea Party, that is. This spontaneous movement, named Taxed Enough Already, came out to catch people’s attention on April 15, 2009. No amount of ridicule, skepticism, mockery and deceit could tamp down its central aim. We have to lower taxes. To do that, we have to lower spending. To to that, we have to reduce government’s reach. Smaller government means less spending means lower taxes. Why this message was met with such mockery is something of a mystery.

Whether the movement achieves success, or whether we can call the movement a revolt, we can’t know yet. We can say the movement has been somewhat inchoate so far, rising as it has from frustrations that have developed in so many places, over such a long time.

To organize a tax revolt across so vast a land, when the institutions of tax collection are so well established, is a hard task. Would a tax revolt require that everyone quit heir W-2 jobs and go to work off the books, as so many people do already because they have no choice about the matter? Would it require that people stop filing tax returns? Who would be the first person willing to go to jail for tax avoidance?

During revolutionary periods in Europe, workers’ movements have called for a general strike. A strike counts as a temporary albeit radical pressure tactic, but no general strike has ever reestablished liberty, reduced the size of government, or lowered taxes. Besides, the purpose of a revolt in the American case is not to bring down our government, but to replace it with new institutions located elsewhere. If that distinction isn’t clear, think of the difference between the Russian revolution in 1917, and the division of Czechoslovakia into two states after the Cold War. Recall the breakup of the Soviet Union itself. In both the Czechoslovakian and the Soviet cases, locally based governmental institutions replaced much larger, more distant power centers.

How would you organize a broad-based, radical tax revolt in the United States? It could come from citizens groups like the Tea party, but it would probably require leadership from the states’ governors, and from other leaders within each state. Meantime, the states have other, less fraught ways to make themselves more independent of the national government. In a tax revolt, citizens need support from their state governments. For alternate methods of resistance, state governments need their citizens’ support. Either way, citizens and state governments must be united to make resistance work. The national government can readily interfere with piecemeal, unorganized resistance. Therefore we want measures that bring citizens and state governments together in a common cause to dismantle federal authority over individuals and states.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Originally published in Revolution on the Ground. For an interesting article on state resistance to federal policy, see Why ObamaCare Is Still No Sure Thing.

Let’s face it, the Obama Administration has pretty much been a continuation of the Bush years.  In Obama’s first four years in office, Americans continued to give up constitutional rights with renewal of the Patriot Act, enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act, and the institution of a presidential “kill” list.  Our foreign policy was just as interventionist if not more under Obama as he increased troop levels (the “surge”) in Afghanistan, increased drone bombings in Pakistan and Yemen, and invaded Libya under the pretext of imposing a “no-fly zone” to protect Libyan civilians from Qaddafi’s air force.  Lastly, the corporate bailouts, economic stimulus boondoggles, and the Ben Bernanke regime at the Federal Reserve all continued under Obama.  And to think in 2008 that candidate Obama promised Americans “Hope and Change”.

With the recent “referendum” on Obama’s performance, also known as the 2012 Presidential Election, now behind us, the American people have spoken, well sort of, and have granted Barack Obama four more years as president.  Of course, in that election, like all presidential elections since at least 1960, the two publicized choices for the American people were Establishment Frontman A versus Establishment Frontman B.

The point is that Romney would be no better than Obama at being president.  Neither man respects constitutional rights, has a foreign policy that puts Americans first, or has any clue about economics.  Both became the nominees of their respective parties because they represent the status quo – a status quo which has made several influential players and industries a lot of money over the years.

But, I am trying to look on the bright side of things.  Granted that “side” is a sliver and any brightness in it is shadowed by a federal government that under Obama has gotten huge to the point of absurdity

So here goes – three hopes that I have for Obama’s second term that I think have a reasonable chance of happening because he doesn’t have to run for reelection and as president he can do them without congressional support:

Direct the Justice Department to Nullify Federal Marijuana Laws

In a memo sent out in 2009 from the Obama Justice Department to federal prosecutors, the Administration was giving prosecutors wide discretion in determining which medical marijuana cases to pursue and which to ignore based on their interpretation of state not federal laws.  This gave many hope as it appeared that violators of federal drug laws would not be prosecuted as long as they stayed within the bounds of their own state’s law.  As reelection time rolled around, the Administration tightened its stance against pot distributors.

Given Obama’s initial leniency on pot, the fact that he will never run in another election again, and with Colorado and Washington legalizing recreational marijuana, could the time be ripe for the Administration to direct federal prosecutors to ignore federal marijuana laws and not prosecute violators? 

Close the Guantanamo Bay Prisoner of War Camp

Indefinite detention is not only illegal in our system of justice, it causes more harm than good.  As Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh has indicated, if prisoners at Gitmo weren’t terrorists when they entered, they are now.

By closing Gitmo, Obama could save lots of money and improve America’s image in the world.  This was an unfulfilled promise of his first term.  Now, with no possibility that neo-conservatives will use the issue to scare Americans into preventing his re-election, there is no reason this can’t become a reality.

Meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

In Obama’s second term, he should fulfill his offer made in 2007 to meet with Ahmadinejad.  He should meet with him to chart a way forward away from what would be a destructive war for both sides.  Concessions would have to be made on both sides.  It’s hard to say what Iran would ask for in exchange for discontinuing its nuclear program, but Obama does have more than 40 U.S. military bases surrounding Iran to negotiate with.

So there you have it.  Three hopes for a second Obama term for a libertarian.  It’s not much, but just these three things would protect rights, go a long ways toward the promise of America, and make us safer.  Given that, I probably just put the kiss of death on any possibility of these things happening.

I wanted to write today about something I thought as I was half asleep one morning. Don’t you often have your best thoughts when you are dreaming, or half awake? Then you try to formulate them in the full light of day, and it doesn’t come out right. It’s the same when you have beautiful music in your head, but you can’t sing it. My daughter’s eighth-grade English teacher compared written language to music. I thought, that’s right. We want to make our words beautiful, profound, light, sober, as moving as we can. Or, we can make music just for the joy of it.

Rumi said, “Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah. It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”

Now that we’re warmed up, let’s consider thoughts that seemed clear as I reached consciousness a few mornings ago. The night before, right around election day, I read some comments on the software we use to record and count votes. A couple of analysts said the software they assessed is terrible. It is poorly constructed and easy to tamper with. Therefore you can’t have confidence in the results it gives you. One analyst said that the only way to make the software trustworthy is to make it open source. So long as it is proprietary, current problems will persist.

At first that doesn’t seem exactly right. Why would making software open source make it more secure? After all, open source is accessible to everyone. Then you realize that security and transparency are not the same thing. No one has said Linux is insecure because it is open source. No one has ever praised Microsoft’s browser or operating system as especially secure because they are proprietary. Security and transparency are not contradictory attributes.

The developers who created Linux had good reasons to build security into their product from the start. Otherwise people simply would not use it. Microsoft’s developers, given the company’s position in the market, did not have much reason to improve their product’s security until customers began to complain about it. Even then, it took years to see improvements. Even after all that, which software do you trust more: Microsoft or Linux?

Now for the interesting thought: why can’t we apply this insight to national security? Why do we think that transparency compromises security in this field? Can’t we conduct foreign policy as an open source affair, and have better security as a result, not worse?

At the highest level of policy and interaction, transparency creates trust, and opacity creates distrust. People who distrust you become your enemies, whereas people who trust you become your friends. The more enemies you have, the more insecure you become. The more friends you have, the more you can rest secure. A reasonable foreign policy will cultivate friends and minimize enemies. Friendly relations with other countries enhances confidence, security, and safety.

No, no, no you say, if you’re an old foreign policy hand. We don’t have friends, we have only interests. Everyone is a potential adversary: rivalry and enmity come with competition, and the wide world is nothing if not an arena for competitive activity. Let’s be realistic about the use of our power, and about the reasons for our success. Success comes with secrecy, because knowledge is power. When we hold key knowledge close, we will always have an advantage.

That’s the thinking that gives you browsers that infect your systems with malware, or vote-counting software susceptible to fraud. That kind of thinking gives you assassinations, false flag attacks, coups, and propaganda. If people can’t see inside, all manner of corruption ensues. In fact, it doesn’t even matter if actual corruption exists. If people can’t see inside, they can’t tell whether corruption exists or not. Given past behavior of power holders, people can assume safely that it does exist. Power holders do not receive benefit of the doubt here.

So now we come to the matter of intelligence sources and methods. The Central Intelligence Agency says it cannot disclose any information that would reveal intelligence sources and methods. That covers just about everything. With this argument, it keeps its budget secret, as well as everything else it does. Interestingly, similar arguments now apply to everything the government does, not only its intelligence agencies. If you ask government for information about its activities, it has multiple reasons not to reveal the truth about what it does. It adapts arguments about the need for secrecy to any situation.

Now ask yourself why government would do that. A nut job conspiracy theorist would say that it keeps information secret because it has something to hide. Lots of reasons exist for hiding information. Having something to hide is one of them. No matter what the reason, the consequence of keeping secrets is always the same: loss of trust. You can count on it, whether the secrets hide actual corruption or not.

Ask yourself as well whether keeping secrets makes us more or less secure. This question has two forms. One is whether government’s opacity in foreign and domestic affairs makes us feel more or less safe. Perhaps we can only try for perceptions of security, where actual safety ebbs and flows depending on current circumstances, fortune, and plans we make for ourselves and each other. Second is whether government secrecy actually results in more safety for the people it claims to protect. Here history’s judgment unequivocally comes down for transparency. Secrecy hides corruption, folly and incompetence, both ordinary and extraordinary, with nothing from outside to correct these human shortcomings. Secrecy is the hidden worm that brings down the edifice.

So if you distrust the claims of government when it keeps secrets, and people call you a kook or a nut job as a result, wear the title with pride. You have several millennia of human history on your side. The name caller, who likes to imply that you are delusional, weakly appeals to conformity, normalcy, and your desire not to be ostracized. At bottom is a desire we often have to overlook the unpleasant. I tell you, the prophet would say: truth is not normal, it is pleasant only occasionally, and it almost never conforms to what you expect.

We are committed to all people. We do believe you could use government in a good way. Government’s the only thing that we all belong to. We have different churches, different clubs, but we’re together as a part of our city, or our county, or our state and our nation.

I don’t think Governor Hunt regarded these words as extraordinary or controversial. After all, you don’t pick fights in a film that amounts to an infomercial for your state’s capital city. It wasn’t an attack ad or a propaganda piece in the usual sense.

Nevertheless and not surprisingly, the remark didn’t agree with Republicans or with anyone else who regards government as something that’s necessary but not benign. It’s not something they would ever want to belong to. Governor Chris Christie’s response gives you a sense of how the other side feels about this kind of comment:

I’m never the smartest person in the room. It’s a great relief, not only to me, but to all of you as well. I’m never the smartest person in the room, and I never got the best grades in school. But this much I understood from my history lessons, that we didn’t belong to the government. The government belongs to us.

If you’ve read The Jeffersonian long enough, you know I agree with Governor Christie. In satisfying social relationships that bring people together in groups, belonging runs in two directions. Spouses belong to each other, family members belong to each other. We belong to our country, and our country belongs to us. In a business contract, the parties do not belong to each other. You do not belong to your boss, nor does your boss belong to you. The government’s relationship to the people it serves is like a business relationship. The people hire public servants to do certain jobs. You might say with Governor Christie that the institutions of government belong to us, because we have developed these institutions over such a period of time.

What’s significant here is that Governor Hunt saw these words as entirely non-controversial, whereas his opponents are horrified by them. Totalitarian governments worked hard through propaganda and public displays of unity to persuade people to identify themselves with the state, to align the state’s interests with their own. Ein volk, ein reich, ein fuhrer: one people, one nation, one leader. Interestingly, the word reich rolls state, nation, empire, and government into one comprehensive concept of public power. If you belong to a reich, you belong to everything.

You might say comparisons between America’s movement away from democracy and Germany’s movement toward hell are overdrawn and tiresome, but the changes occurring here in America are too numerous to overlook. America’s movement toward statism – that is, growth in and faith in state power –  has become so obvious that even those who help bring this growth about have noted it. Eisenhower’s and Truman’s warnings about the national security state in the early 1960s come to mind. Think of what has happened to our country since then.

People say that America is still the greatest nation on earth. If they mean it, their indictment of the rest of the world could not be worse. Other nations in our league do not torture their prisoners, assassinate their own citizens, or assassinate nationals in other countries based on specially drawn hit lists. Other countries that call themselves democracies do not invade, threaten, coerce or occupy weaker rivals as a matter of policy. If America is still the greatest nation on earth, the world has undergone a huge degradation in political morals under our leadership and oversight. Does great power actually bring extra responsibilities? If so, has our country acquitted those responsibilities honorably? Is ruthlessness the sign of an exceptionally capable empire builder, or an exceptionally corrupt one?

Governor Hunt’s eight words – “Government’s the only thing we all belong to” – became one more internet flap in a long campaign. Add it to “You didn’t build that,” and “the 47 percent.” Each side pounces on the flap that helps it recruit voters. Now we’ve counted the votes. We can analyze the campaign’s words with a bit more detachment. Analysis of Jim Hunt’s words, especially if we include the context quoted above, largely supports Republican criticisms of the way Democrats often think about government. Governor Christie’s conclusion is in fact consistent with our history: we have not traditionally thought of government as something we all belong to.

Let’s look at Jim Hunt’s words another way, though. Let’s take them as a description of where we are now as a nation. The authoritarian, activist and ultimately totalitarian impulse has progressed so far that government actually is the only thing that unites us. Our churches don’t, our clubs don’t, but our governments do. Governor Hunt highlighted something so obvious and pervasive we could not see it. We citizens have become one people, not under God, but under the state’s care and oversight. In doing so, we have become people of the government, by the government, and for the government, and we shall perish from the earth.

Almost all actions of politicians have unintended consequences.  In times of tragedies their mistakes are amplified.  Last week, before during, and after “Super Storm” Sandy hit the northeastern United States, governors and attorneys general in that part of the country put out blanket warnings that violators of so-called anti-price gouging laws (laws meant to protect consumers from “excessive” pricing of essential goods and services during emergencies) would be thoroughly investigated and brought to justice for violations.  While these actions may be reasonable to the emotional observer, when one applies economic logic to the circumstance it is easy to understand how anti-price gouging laws have actually caused the current gasoline shortages in the Northeast.

In essence, anti-price gouging laws are price controls.  That is to say, they prevent suppliers of goods from charging market prices if those prices are deemed excessive by government.  Needless to say, since suppliers are not in the business of losing money, when the price of any good exceeds a government mandated maximum price, suppliers will stop supplying that good.  They obviously are not going to sell an item at a loss as that is a sure recipe to put yourself out of business.  Consequently, a shortage of that good develops.  We have seen this happen time and again most notably with beef during the Nixon price controls in the early 1970s and rental properties in New York City under rent controls.

So how does this apply to the current gasoline shortages experienced by motorists in the Northeast?

Faced with threats by state officials including reductions in profits, fines, directives to set up reimbursement funds, and other penalties, merchants were intimidated to comply with the anti-price gouging laws.  Consequently, a critically important market mechanism was prevented from kicking in – namely rising prices in the face of potential shortages caused by disruptions to market flow.

You see, in the free market, something valued that is in short supply will always cost more than it does under regular market conditions.  That is why the price of meat rises when there is a drought.   Instead of a drought, the supply of gasoline to the Northeast has been disrupted by a storm.  Although they are different climatic events, the effect is the same.  Yet, governors and attorneys general prevented gas suppliers from raising gas prices to meet market conditions.  Because of anti-price gouging laws consumers were able to purchase gasoline before Sandy at below market prices.  It’s no wonder this temporary price control on gasoline has caused shortages in their states.  Demand was allowed to exceed supply.  If the market were left to its own devices, prices would have been allowed to rise and there would be gasoline in New York City right now for emergency use.  But instead, state officials imposed a cap so every Tom, Dick, and Harry could fill up their tanks unnecessarily before the storm.

At the end of the day, anti-price gouging laws are indicative of how we have been running our economy for decades.  All sorts of schemes have been implemented to help the poor, homeowners, consumers, students, the sick, the handicapped, etc, etc, etc…  They all come with unintended consequences because they are based on emotions not logic.  During normal times their consequences are bad enough.  In times of tragedy they simply make things worse.

Article first published as Another Unintended Consequence on Blogcritics.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

In 2008, I most certainly would not vote for the Republican candidate, as much as I liked McCain as an individual. He has served his country as well as any man. I did not like the Libertarian candidate, Bob Barr. That left the golden tongued Obama, the One, man of the hour. I knew that sheen would be off six months after his inauguration, and I knew he would be highly progressive in his policy orientation. No matter. I wanted to be a part of history, and I figured institutional constraints would hold his progressive leanings in check.

Then he passed the health care bill in the most bizarre, corrupt and dishonest process one can imagine in a democracy. I wasn’t there, but from appearances the president sat down with Nancy Pelosi and they decided they were going to do this thing. Harry Reid gave his blessing. The three of them decided to have their way with the country. They learned what the country thought in the 2010 midterm elections. I wish the anti-Democratic sentiment in 2012 were as strong as the anger one could feel in 2010. Perhaps it is, but we can’t see it because Mitt Romney isn’t in such a good position to lead voters in this matter. After all, he sponsored the model for the Affordable Care Act in Massachusetts.

Now we enter the last five days. Obama deserves to be voted out of office for the Affordable Care Act, and for that legislation alone. He is responsible for other policies and political results that warrant retiring him, but the health care legislation is enough. When you vote on November 6, vote against coercive health insurance, whether it originates with a Republican in Massachusetts, or with Democrats Washington. Vote for Gary Johnson. We have a good, capable Libertarian candidate this year. Give him your support. As Johnson says, “The only wasted vote is a vote for someone you don’t believe in.”

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Steven Greffenius authored Revolution on the Ground and Revolution in the Air, both available at Amazon.

Yet we seem to have an in-built instinct to regard government as a replacement parent. When we leave home, who will take care of us? When we’re on our own, don’t we need someone to watch over us and help us out when trouble comes? The world is dangerous, and we don’t want to be alone.

If you’ve read The Jeffersonian long enough, you know this way of thinking is dangerous in the extreme. The state as it has developed is not your friend. Of all the threats you will face in your life – from nature, from criminals, from financial uncertainty, from people who act like your friend but turn out to be otherwise – an over-powerful, out of control state is the biggest threat of all. Little Red Riding Hood, acting by herself, could not escape the wolf – no matter how the wolf dressed up.

Consider other stories to see how deeply we crave and appreciate protection, both as children and as adults. Hansel and Gretel is a particularly scary tale, as an evil stepmother conspires to force the poor woodcutter to take his children out into the woods to abandon them there. Only the children’s ingenuity, courage, and perseverance save them: no one else will do it. Children love this story, frightening as it is, because brother and sister defeat the wicked witch on their own. They stick together and find a way out.

Hansel and Gretel had no guardian angel – not even their father would protect them under pressure. Cinderella was equally miserable, except her stepmother kept her close by. As Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters exploited her, abused her and ostracized her, she kept a cheerful outlook and hoped for better times to come. Her fairy godmother, equipped with all kinds of supernatural powers, arranged for her to meet the prince, so that one day she should be queen. Cinderella did have someone to look after her, and her guardian spirit came through.

The more we look for this theme of protection from harm, the more we find it in our stories. Lassie was so popular with children and families because its theme so consistently told this story. The heroic collie would brave anything to protect Timmy. Lassie rescued the vulnerable little boy from fire, flash floods, kidnappers, or whatever else might bring ruin. The dog looked out for Timmy and brought him through every danger.

One of the most compelling stories for young people in American literature, To Kill a Mockingbird, relies on this theme. “Hey Boo,” says Scout as she recognizes Boo Radley standing in the corner. He has just rescued Scout and her brother Jem from Bob Ewell, who aimed to kill them as they walked home from a Halloween party. “Heck, someone’s been after my children,” says Atticus when he calls the sheriff. Shortly afterward, Atticus thanks Boo: “Thank you for my children.” Mr. Radley – the amazing guardian angel, the mysterious neighbor who stayed inside until he heard the children cry for help – responds in silence.

Dumbledore and Harry’s parents through all seven Harry Potter books, Odysseus when he returns home to Penelope in the Odyssey, Moses’ leadership of his people in Exodus: we can find this theme of protection and bravery everywhere. Our favorite stories show the theme’s power to compel our hearts and our attention.

Let’s return to government and the kind of protection it offers. You won’t find stories on that theme in our literature. I recently completed Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, a book that – like her others – has a lot of wisdom in it. By her account, the French serfs in the fourteenth century wanted so much to see their king as their protector. They knew the king and his nobles exploited them. Taxes, warfare, robbery, all kinds of injustice flowed from society’s top ranks down upon the poor. The underclass resisted and revolted, several times. Even so, they hoped the king would come through to protect them. The king even dramatized his protective role at public festivals. Despite all contrary evidence, the people perceived the king, ordained by God, as the sovereign power who could redeem them from apparently inescapable misery.

Here’s the last instance I want to mention, a story filled with so much horror for grown-ups they cannot stand to face it. Some months ago I watched a film titled Explosive Evidence, which investigates why two steel framed skyscrapers in the World Trade Center exploded on September 11, 2001, and why one skyscraper imploded. A segment toward the film’s end explores why people resist the conclusion that gravity did not bring these buildings down. “It can’t be true,” they say. One woman, when she realized how the buildings fell, took a long walk outside her office building. She said she could not stop sobbing as she walked block after block.

She became so upset because until then, she had thought of government as her protector. The idea that it could be anything else wrenched her world view, forced her to see that it did not necessarily act as a replacement parent. She felt as Hansel and Gretel felt when they overheard their stepmother persuade their father to take them into the wilderness to let them starve. But for that bit of eavesdropping Hansel would not have brought bread crumbs with him. From beginning to end, Hansel and Gretel managed to save themselves because they learned the truth, about their own home and about the witch’s home. Like the woman in Explosive Evidence, we must recognize the truth about where we live, and use our wits to save ourselves.

As students of the Austrian School of Economics understand, financial bubbles are caused by central bank monetary policy and government intervention in the economy.  The housing boom and subsequent crash in the first decade of this century is an excellent example of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (the Austrian School’s explanation for booms and busts in the economy).

For more than 4 years between June of 2001 and September of 2005 the Federal Reserve kept its Federal Funds interest rate under 4 percent.  Artificially low mortgage rates resulted.  This coupled with large investments by the Bush Administration for low income homebuyers created the largest housing boom in American history.  As interest rates were gradually increased by the Fed, reaching a decade high of 5.25 percent in June 2006, investments in housing that were made at lower interest rates became unsustainable at higher rates.  As adjustable rate mortgage rates rose, defaults increased eventually causing home prices to plummet.  The housing bubble had burst.

Of course, pundits, politicians, mainstream economists, and others dependent on big government for their sustenance blamed the free market and deregulation for the housing boom and bust.  Yet, time and again in the Twentieth Century, from the stock market crash of 1929 to the dot com bubble of the late 1990s, the fingerprints of Fed manipulation and monetary price fixing have been all over every economic downturn and crisis.

Now, there are other bubbles in our economy that have yet to burst.  These are the bubbles that are insulated from bursting by politics.  They include higher education and defense spending.

In terms of defense spending, the political forces that protect it are currently working overtime to maintain that bubble.  In January, under provisions of the Budget Control Act of 2011, defense budget cuts totaling about $50 billion a year for the next 10 years go into effect.  Opponents of the cuts, like Senator Lindsey Graham are claiming “It would be like shooting yourself in the head. It would be the most destructive thing in the world.”  John McCain has even warned that the cuts would leave us unable to defend the country!

Then there are the threats of wide spread layoffs by defense contractors and the devastation to local communities like Newport News, Virginia that defense budget cuts would bring.  Corporate officials and community leaders have teamed up to decry the cuts based solely on the harm they would do to their bottom lines and tax bases without any regard for whether as a nation we should spend the money on more armaments.

After all, defense spending accounts for close to 20 percent of all federal spending.  The U.S. spends more on defense than the next 13 highest spending countries combined!

This enormous government bubble has been financed for years by deficit federal spending monetized by the Federal Reserve – in other words debt.  Since at least Reagan, military spending has been erroneously used as a fiscal stimulus to the economy, financing millions of jobs in the military-industrial complex.  And it has been used to launch several seemingly endless wars and other lethal adventures worldwide.

The country doesn’t need that much military and can no longer afford it.  As the real fiscal cliff approaches, political defenders of the military-industrial complex are going to find it more and more difficult to protect their bubble.  With hundreds of trillion of dollars in future unfunded liabilities on the books of the federal government, the only answer for Washington is to continue to print more money.  Eventually interest rates will rise increasing the interest payments on the debt.  More printing will occur perpetuating a financial spiral which will destroy what’s left of our economic system.  Cutting a measly $50 billion a year from military spending now should be a no-brainer.  But it probably won’t happen because anymore politics takes precedence over reason in Washington.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

First of all, when did voting for president become comparable to a poker game? That’s the only circumstance I can think of for the phrase, “Are you in?” It doesn’t apply to swimming, or shopping, or even travelling. It means, “Are you ready to put up some money to play?” It’s nice the Obamas ask you to donate money right after they ask if you’re in.

As I think about it, the phrase asks, directly or indirectly, “Do you want to give me money?” This from a campaign that does not have any good ideas about how to remove us from the crisis we are in. As our foot hovers over the quicksand of revolutionary violence, our leader and his wife ask with smiling internet faces, “Are you in?” Click the Donate icon now to show us you care, because we care about you. Join with others who are happy and don’t know why.

I keep saying in these articles that we don’t have much time. Our time of turmoil has already begun, but big changes usually take generations to play out. Barbara Tuchman, in A Distant Mirror, writes about the Hundred Years War. It actually did last a century. Rome’s empire underwent construction for longer than a day – for many generations, in fact. Neither did it fall in a day, as Gibbon reminds us. Similarly, our great civilization will not fall in one generation, but it will end eventually. Nothing is permanent. We as citizens have to manage this transition the best we can.

So we have to ask, how should we deal with a state that has become sclerotic, self-serving, and corrupt? Think of Jabba the Hutt, who ran a criminal empire through his toadies and assassins, who entertained himself with slave girls and ate anything in sight. When Luke Skywalker returns from his training with Yoda, he confronts the gangster with cool confidence and insight: “This is your last chance, Jabba.” The gangster laughs and sends him through a trap door to fight his pet monster. Not long afterward, Leia strangles him.

The insight we need is that this government is vulnerable. Its parts don’t trust each other. Its parts don’t communicate well with each other, partly because they don’t want to. They don’t want to partly because they don’t trust each other. Its parts engage in conflicts and self-protective activities that weaken the whole. The government – including the parts intended to strong-arm people – is not as strong as it appears to be. Like so many corrupt, vain leaders, it has no moral core, and its weakness becomes apparent only after it disintegrates.

The problem with so many theories of revolutionary change – theories from communist movements in particular – is you must use force to achieve your goals. Look at the long-term success of communist movements and ask yourself if they got it right. The movements failed, either before or after they acquired power. Reasons for failure vary. The key reason movements that use force fail is that they do not have legitimacy. When you acquire power by force, you wield it illegitimately.

Machiavelli wrote at length about how criminals like Stalin dressed up as rulers use power. In Italian politics at the time, you could not turn your back for a minute. Think of how the Corleones in The Godfather lived. Remember the security at the wedding in the opening scene? Machiavelli stated the first law of Italian politics in The Prince: In a world where people are cruel and untrustworthy, you likewise must use cruelty and force to achieve your object. If your object is to hold power until someone stronger and more ruthless knocks you off, it’s not bad advice. If your object is to wield legitimate power, to lead because others want to follow you, Machiavelli’s recommendations about use of cruelty and force could not be worse.

At the moment, our government and its leaders do not understand this point about Machiavelli. They do not grasp that their government is illegitimate, nor do they grasp that people perceive it that way. Not everyone perceives it as illegitimate, but enough do. Others are going to. The government’s pattern of behavior will force them to see it. That’s what happened to me. When it tortured people in the open – not once but all over the world – then defended the practice as legitimate, I asked, “What else is this government doing, in secret?” The answers to that question reveal a state more immoral and self-serving than you might imagine.

We have to prepare for the day when more people see that our government works for itself, not for us. That’s the definition of corruption: taking people’s money and using it to enrich yourself, pretending to serve other people when you actually serve yourself. That’s what people in China mean when they say communist party officials are corrupt. That’s what we mean when we say our government is corrupt.

So many people do understand how corrupt our government has become, but in general our country seems resigned to it. Certain groups, like the Tea Party and Occupy movements, display a sense of urgency about the problem, but given the reception these groups have witnessed, we might conclude that others don’t see what they see. Or we might conclude they see corruption, but don’t feel they can do much about it. That sense of resignation won’t last.

Yesterday on the radio I heard a gentleman named Thomas Cleary speak about Chinese history. Through millennia the cycle has been the same: complacency and corruption follow a period of stability and order. During periods of order, public officials try to honor Confucian principles of virtue and service. Corruption makes the rulers’ authority illegitimate, until stresses from within the kingdom and without bring a period of anarchy, confusion and suffering. At last a new ruler, often a military one, establishes a new dynasty, and the cycle begins again. Cleary noted that this cycle marks almost all societies.

We are a relatively new society, with less history than the Chinese. If Cleary is right, corruption is well advanced in our cycle. We see signs of weakness due to corruption, signs of resistance to authority, confusion about the future, and of course suffering. If you doubt the last point about suffering, think of the millions of unemployed men and women who sit at home today waiting for a phone call that will never come. Think of families who have lost their homes. Think of thousands of servicemen who come home from war to families who don’t know how to receive them or care for them, who after they escape death in battle crave it at home.

So our president asks me if I’m in. No, I’m not in. I’m an active opponent because you and the state you represent don’t deserve my loyalty. You and all the power you have gathered into the executive branch are going to fail. That is, the government you represent won’t persist in its current state. Don’t ask me for my money anymore. Meantime, citizens, let’s think about how we can hasten this period of transition to reestablish legitimate authority. We have better communications now than the Romans did. The pace of societal evolution has picked up.

Actually, I wondered if they would dwell on it, so I googled Arlen Specter Warren Commission. Specter had a long career, and his tenure on the Warren Commission lasted only about nine months. What a significant nine month, though. During that time, Specter authored and supported the Commission’s single bullet theory. It became the lynch pin for everything else in the Commission’s controversial report.

In a way, it’s not fair to hold Specter to account for this theory. If he had not developed it, someone else would have. That is, someone else would have had to do it. The charge from the president, Lyndon Johnson, was clear: give me a report that validates the FBI’s conclusions and evidence. Specter’s theory accomplished that. It’s the only theory that would validate the FBI’s conclusions. The FBI decided within twenty-four hours of Kennedy’s death that Lee Oswald shot the president, and that he acted alone.

The single bullet theory holds that a bullet from Oswald’s rifle hit Kennedy in the back, emerged from his throat, then tumbled so as to cause multiple wounds to John Connally, who sat in front of Kennedy. If the Commission did not put forth this theory, it could not conclude that Oswald was the only shooter. Given the FBI’s initial investigation of what happened in Dallas, the single bullet theory, and only this theory, ruled out multiple shooters.

A good deal of evidence indicates that Specter’s theory is incorrect. Connally is not hit until after Kennedy is shot in the back: at least three seconds later, in fact. The film JFK, in a scene with courtroom graphics and drama, memorably refutes the Commission’s single bullet theory in Jim Garrison’s penultimate courtroom presentation.

I imagine LBJ and others were grateful for Specter’s ability to construct a halfway plausible theory, and his willingness to stand by such an implausible one. That is, if you wanted to believe the Commission’s report, you could hang your holster on the single bullet theory. If you found the entire report implausible, you would find little to admire in Specter’s theory, too. The single bullet theory became the kernel at the heart of the Commission’s report, the keystone of the FBI’s packet of conclusions and evidence.

Today Arlen Specter dies at 82, forty-eight years and a month after the Commission released its report. Specter was 34 at the time. I wonder if he proposed his theory as an act opportunism – please the boss to see where that will take you – or if he actually believed what he wrote. If he’s like most of us, necessity convinced him of its truth. You could ask why a smart guy like Specter would have bought a hare brained theory about an implausible single bullet, but another question presses even more urgently. Who could have redirected the Commission’s report? The answer to that is simple: no one. LBJ would get what he wanted. The Commission would give it to him.

The economic woes of California are back in the news yet again.  This time it is high gas prices.  Of course, the Golden State usually has the highest prices in the country, but recently prices at the pump have skyrocketed – increasing on average by 50 cents in the last week and reaching almost $6 a gallon in some areas of the state.

The senior senator from the state, Dianne Feinstein has predictably called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the possibility of price gouging.  She, like all statist politicians, doesn’t understand the workings of the free market. When their statist schemes backfire, they immediately blame the usual faceless enemies – unscrupulous suppliers, manipulators, and speculators.  Once again the public is being subjected to this tirade when as always the fault lies with Feinstein and her ilk.

You see, California, as this commentator has written before, has a crippling regulatory environment.  The environmental fringe has hijacked state government and squashed all reason and economic sense.   Gasoline suppliers outside the state are unable to ease the burden of short supplies in the state because they are not equipped to produce the cleaner-burning gasoline required by bureaucrats in Sacramento.

And there is a shortage of gasoline right now in California because the state has just enough refining capacity to fill its demand due to stiff environmental regulations.  When Exxon Mobil’s refinery near Los Angeles experienced a power failure which cut production and Chevron’s plant near San Francisco suffered a crude-processing unit shut down due to fire, supply was curtailed and prices rose drastically.

Thus, Feinstein’s faceless, nameless perpetrators of higher gasoline prices are non-existent.  The cause of higher gas prices in California is a lack of supply produced by the policies of statist politicians like her.

In fact, to increase supply the first thing Governor Jerry Brown did was order regulators to relax smog controls and allow refiners to begin, earlier than usual, producing cheaper winter-blend gasoline.  His actions are an acknowledgement of where the real problem lies – with government policy, not fictitious bogey men.

The free market, like nature, is an all-powerful force.  Human manipulation of either spells trouble.  Politicians will always blame someone else when their manipulations go astray.  Whether it is higher gas prices, housing market busts, or a drop in the value of the dollar, they point the finger at unscrupulous suppliers, manipulators, and speculators.  Instead they should look in a mirror and then point their fingers.

Article first published as It’s Not Nice to Fool the Free Market on Blogcritics.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

Like most Americans, I didn’t watch the staged media spectacle better known as the Presidential Debate.  It is not just because I didn’t have a dog in that fight; it is because to me the quadrennial political mini-series is nothing more than a rigged, wasteful use of an hour and a half of prime time television.

First of all, it is not really a debate but a glorified press conference.  Journalists hurl softball questions at the candidates giving each the opportunity to regurgitate their perfectly rehearsed sound bites.  Wouldn’t it be more worthwhile if Obama and Romney were allowed to go toe to toe by stating their positions, asking each other questions, and arguing the merits of their positions without any filtering from an aloof journalist moderator?  Better yet, wouldn’t it be more worthwhile if other candidates were allowed to participate and give Americans a chance to hear views other than the sanctioned Establishment line.

Then there is the fact that once again the major parties have nominated two candidates for president who are quite similar.  Whether it’s Social Security, corporate bailouts, endless wars, or government spending, Obama and Romney agree more than disagree on most issues.  Isn’t it time that other views besides the one that has gotten us into our economic mess, endless wars, and erosion of constitutional liberties be allowed to be heard?

Lastly, as is always the case in the debates, several important issues were totally avoided.  What about our military’s continued drone war that has left hundreds of civilians dead in Pakistan?  What about the failed War on Drugs that has made America the number one jailor in the world?  Okay, the first debate’s focus was domestic policy, so killing innocent foreigners was outside that realm, but the violence engendered, the lives ruined, and the constitutional liberties destroyed by Washington’s decades’ long insane drug policy could have been broached.

Then there was the avoidance of the gravest issue currently facing our country – namely the role the Federal Reserve plays in our economy.

“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.”

Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founding father of international finance

And yet, in an hour and a half debate on domestic policy, the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, and quantitative easing were not mentioned a single time.  The Federal Reserve, the institution whose job it has been to protect the value of the dollar, has been responsible for the greenback losing 95 percent of its value since 1914.  Ben Bernanke, who has perhaps more influence over the economy than anyone else in Washington, doesn’t seem to have a clue about how the economy works.  He has a history of totally missing the mark with predictions.  This includes everything from, “At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained”, on March 28, 2007 to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, “…will make it through the storm” to his stating that “The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession” on January 10, 2008 as the economy was spiraling into a massive downturn.  These were not little misses.

But perhaps the greatest dereliction of presidential debate moderator Jim Lehrer in the debate was not asking the candidates anything about the Fed’s failed quantitative easing programs.  How can that be since Bernanke just announced that QE3 will last in perpetuity?

The Fed has already expanded the size of its balance sheet by 223 percent so far by buying financial assets from banks.  In so doing, it has injected trillions of dollars into the reserve accounts of those banks.  But, these purchases have not produced a healthy economy like Bernanke predicted.  In fact, Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser expressed a negative view of Bernanke policy recently when he indicated that, “Inflation is going to occur when excess reserves of this huge balance sheet begin to flow outside into the real economy”.  For his part, Bernanke has always maintained that he possesses the know-how and tools to siphon out excess liquidity to prevent inflation when the time comes.  But, Plosser doubts the Fed will be able to act boldly enough since it has “absolutely zero experience” unwinding what has been put in place.

Given the state of continuous quantitative easing that our economy has been subject to, its utter failure to accomplish its stated goal, and the dour forecast by the Philly Fed Chairman as to what will result, how was this not an important area of inquiry for Lehrer to pursue with Obama and Romney?

At the end of the day, the so-called presidential debates are a waste of time.  Run by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, no candidates other than their own Republican and Democratic nominees are permitted to participate.  Given that both are usually quite similar in their positions, the American people are provided with little choice.  Finally, because many critically important issues are avoided, the debates contribute very little to the national dialogue on what needs to happen to turn our country around.  For that hour and a half we would be better off if the networks had aired reruns of the most popular mini-series instead.

Article first published as The So-Called Presidential Debates Are a Waste of Time on Blogcritics.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

More recently we want to ask, why did Pakistan harbor Osama bin Laden? We all saw how miffed Washington was about that. The journalists commented how this discovery put a new strain on our relationship with Pakistan. That was about it. We make a hugely significant discovery, and no journalist tries to get to the bottom of it. How fishy is that?

The fishiness affects two levels, of course: the discovery itself and our reaction to it. We watched Ruby assassinate Oswald, but we didn’t dig into why he did it. We find bin Laden in a Pakistani compound, work up some indignation about that, but seem oddly incurious about why we should find him there.

Unlike Hussein, harbored by a farmer in a hole near Hussein’s hometown, Osama bin Laden lived rather openly in a large house with a wall around it, in Abbottabad. As Asra Nomani describes the place:

He wasn’t found in a cave in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, but rather in a comfortable home in a hill station that could be a mini-Colorado Springs, Colorado, of Pakistan, complete with a military academy, numerous military installations, a St. Luke’s church and the Taj Majal Cinema.

To back to 1963 again, we didn’t seem that curious to know why Oswald went to the Soviet Union, or what he did as a Marine while stationed in Japan. We seemed equally incurious about Jack Ruby’s connections with organized crime or the Central Intelligence Agency. When we learn years later that Oswald worked with both the FBI and the CIA, and that his killer had a similarly complicated background, you say, “Really, I didn’t know that. That makes you wonder.”

We don’t want to wait that long before we find out why Osama bin Laden rested so comfortably in Abbottabad. How long was he there? Who protected him? How did he get the house? Who betrayed him, and why? These basics shouldn’t be that hard to discover. Why would I even ask questions like that, a year and a half after his death? In our open system, wouldn’t we know those basic facts about our quarry?

Actually, we know a little about bin Laden’s betrayal. It’s an interesting story about familial jealousy, but you won’t find details in follow-up reports. You won’t learn how information travelled from bin Laden’s household to either his protectors or his assassins.

We know these basics. Osama bin Laden worked for the Central Intelligence Agency back when Afghanistan’s mujahideen fought the Soviets. That’s not so surprising, as bin Laden was a prominent member of the mujahideen. On the other side, Pakistan’s military intelligence service, the ISI, has worked closely with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Taliban, you’ll remember, won power in Afghanistan after the Soviets left. The Taliban hosted bin Laden and his training camps in Afghanistan in the years before 9/11. That’s why we fight the Taliban now.

Throw in one more factor, and you can see we should wonder why we found bin Laden in that compound, near one of Pakistan’s best known military academies. The CIA and the ISI have worked together for a long time. Our military intelligence found bin Laden living under the protection of Pakistan’s military intelligence, in a place where all the principals go way back. The CIA, ISI, and al Qaeda could just as well have had a reunion at bin Laden’s compound. I don’t know if the Taliban would have accepted an invitation to attend – perhaps the ISI could have convinced them it wasn’t a trap. Instead, Navy Seals and the White House planned an assassination. That produced a lot of blood rather than the more pleasant beer and champagne.

Let’s get curious, folks. When we smell a fish, let’s unwrap the newspaper to see what’s inside. We may want to bury those packages to fertilize our garden, but in fact our republic doesn’t thrive on crimes and secrecy. It needs more openness than it has received recently. We have the tools to publish what we find out. Wikileaks was one of those tools. The whole internet gives us an advantage in the fight for openness. We have to use it.

Look what happens instead. LBJ puts out the Warren report. People look at its size and its authors and say, case closed. Wikileaks publishes outstanding source material, including documents about our back channel dealings with Pakistan. The government shuts Wikileaks down, charging it with espionage. Instead of mounting a vigorous defense of Wikileaks, we citizens seem to agree that Julian Assange should be tried for espionage and treason. We have to be aggressive when we defend our freedom. Wikileaks is not the enemy here. Our own government means to destroy us.

Here’s the big question no one wants to think about that much. Students who receive this institutional treatment spend their entire adolescence and then some in schools that train them to be passive and compliant. They are supposed to be ready for adulthood when they leave those schools. Whether they depart for college, a job, or some other destination after commencement, many eighteen year olds leave home at this point. If we want them to be compliant citizens – in fact, so compliant we could hardly call them citizens, what would we do? We would create high schools like the ones we have now.

A lot of high school students would not even question the emphasis on obedience, monitoring, and control in their high schools. It’s all they know. From age eleven or so – when they enter middle school – through their high school years, the institutionalization becomes habitual, part of the daily routine. The only substantial difference between high school and middle school is that high school is bigger.

Another scary thing is that a lot of parents seem to like schools that operate like quasi-prisons. They like the lockdowns, police officers in the hallways, the locked doors and the check-in procedures. All these measures seem to keep the students safe. Parents like that. Keep people scared, and you can do anything to them. Keep them on edge, and they’ll accept anything. When you create a secure environment, you create an environment that is easy to control. When you create a controlled environment, you can give people the illusion of safety. Meantime, the balance of authority tips strongly toward rule-based behavior and away from unpredictable, freer modes of action.

If you wonder why adolescents seem to be under so much stress, look at the unnatural environment they encounter every day. It ain’t Summerhill. It’s not a place where they can grow towards freedom. It is a place that cultivates the qualities they’ll want to have as they adapt to a country that used to honor freedom and wide participation in public affairs. Now it encourages compliance, resignation, and keeping your mouth shut. Ask the people who joined the Occupy movement. Try to give voice to your discontent, and you’ll feel a police baton come down hard on your back. If you didn’t learn to keep your mouth shut in high school, well, we’ll teach you now.

In Afghanistan, cultural cluelessness can be deadly

The range of culturally insensitive actions seems pretty broad in this account: speaking rudely, ridiculing Afghan soldiers, home invasion, disrespect toward women, dropping bombs on civilians from the air, shooting people. Not surprisingly, Afghans have come to resent these insensitive actions during the ten years we have tried to wrap up our war against the Taliban. They say they don’t want us there anymore. Even Karzai says it. He indicates he’d rather deal with China or India, even Russia, though he knows that once we leave he’ll probably have to depart, too.

So that’s what we’ve come to after ten years. The soldiers we’re supposed to train keep shooting us. Honestly. The instructor says, “Here, take this rifle and point it at the target. Take aim and squeeze off the round.” A few hours later, the Afghan recruit takes aim at the instructor’s buddy, who is relaxing with friends, and blows him up at close range. That’s some training program. We give you the gun. We give you the ammunition. You load up the weapon and shoot us.

So many articles repeat facilely that these green-on-blue killings occur because of misunderstandings, arguments, grudges, personal vendettas, and the like. That doesn’t sound right to me. First of all, the reporters who write these reasons don’t seem to know any more about individual cases of murder than I do. They seem to be writing down what other people have written down.

More importantly, the reason for shooting an American or any NATO soldier has to be more consequential than some personal dispute or other. The hatred must run so deep. The shooter knows that just a few seconds after he fires, he’ll be dead on the ground, too. Most green-on-blue attacks are suicide attacks. The killer takes multiple bullets to his body almost before his victim hits the ground.

No Afghan soldier will say to himself, “I don’t like that guy. He dissed me this morning. I have a new gun here and I’m gonna finish him off.” It can’t be that simple. The Afghan soldier doesn’t know American culture any more than Americans know his. He expects some difficulties when he works with foreign soldiers. Moreover, the Afghan soldier is homesick, just like the American soldiers. He wants to return to his family, too. When an Afghan soldier makes a decision to pull the trigger, when he decides when and where he’ll shoot an American, he knows he’s going to die. He knows he won’t ever go home again.

Would you make a decision like that over some dispute in the mess hall? Would you give up your life because some American soldier jerked you around and made you angry? Give the Afghan soldiers some credit. They are not that impulsive. When they decide to trade their own life for an American life, they make that decision in their heart. No one can force them to it. They draw pay from the Americans, not the Taliban. If an Afghan soldier pulls the trigger – knowing that a coffin is his next stop – antipathy, anger, enmity and hatred for Americans run to his core.

Here’s a story of how palpable this hatred is. One American soldier had guard duty with an Afghan soldier. All night, at their post, the Afghan soldier shouted at the American, “Get out of here! We don’t want you here! Go home!” He shouted the words over and over and over, in his ear, all night. The American tried to ignore him, but it’s hard to remove your mind from abuse like that. You certainly can’t do your job as a guard when all you can hear is invective from the soldier on duty with youo. At last, toward morning, the American told his Afghan counterpart to shut up. A dispute followed. How predictable is that? Somebody probably noted the incident as cultural insensitivity.

This incident left the American soldier so shaken he wrote to his father about it. That’s how we know it happened. He said he could feel the Afghan soldier’s hate as his counterpart harangued him. He could feel it radiate, hear it in the Afghan soldier’s voice, until it entered his heart and made him afraid. He wrote that he was afraid he would not come home, that one of the Afghan soldiers he was serving with would shoot him. Shortly after he wrote the letter, an Afghan soldier murdered him. Think how this soldier’s father felt, holding the letter and a photograph of his son.

One can hardly say this American soldier, who sensed how he would die, was blameworthy. He just wanted to stand guard duty and go back to his bunk. He tried to get the soldier on duty with him to stop shouting in his ear, but he couldn’t. I imagine he could hear the Afghan’s rage building. The American had become a focal point for the Afghan’s deep anger for – who knows what? For all the bad things Americans have done during this war.

You see references to Americans’ cultural cluelessness so often, you’d almost think that if we got clued in, the murders would stop. If we got clued in, we would stop killing Afghans. If we stopped killing Afghans, the green-on-blue murders would eventually stop. What’s significant is that right now, nearly everyone in the country hates us. Even the corrupt political operators in Kabul, who skim American dollars like cream, dislike us. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Pashtun or otherwise, you want the Americans gone. It may be the only thing the tribes in this riven country agree about: get rid of the Americans. Leave us alone, let us settle things ourselves – just get out of here.

The treachery of these murders remains. The Afghans have a deep tradition of hospitality – they take good care of their guests. For Afghans to murder soldiers who came over to help them tells you something. The shooters don’t regard us as helpers, let alone guests. They regard us as enemies. The shooters believe their families and friends will honor them for their sacrifice. They do not regard their act as treachery at all. They regard it as a small victory in a fight to rid their country of occupiers.

Two thousand lost servicemen is a lot of deaths. Twenty-seven months until we leave in December 2014 is a long time. I saw an article by Frederick and Kimberly Kagan in the Wall Street Journal that argued, “Don’t leave Afghanistan after we have made so much progress. We can still win the war, finish the work we started there.” As I scanned the article, I wanted to know what that work was, where we would be at the end of 2014 that is different from where we are now. The best the Kagans could offer was, we have to run down the Taliban. We have to clear them out! We have to disarm them, defeat them, destroy them. The argument didn’t say why we should do that. It didn’t say why that goal was worth the trouble, why it was worth the blood of one soldier whose father waits back home.

We want to ask why a goal that seemed such a good idea ten years ago remains a goal we want to accomplish now. Yes, the standard line is that we have to get rid of the Taliban to deny al Qaeda a safe haven in Afghanistan. Given what we’ve learned since 9/11, given what has changed, this argument is absurd. Our soldiers in Afghanistan know it, yet they continue their work the best they can. When will the soldiers’ military and civilian leaders acknowledge the game is up?

Read Steven Greffenius’s recent book, Revolution on the Ground, second in a pair that began with Revolution in the Air. Download to your Kindle or Kindle app at Amazon.com.

I mention Tocqueville because he was the first to write about American exceptionalism at length. In fact, we had 175 years to become exceptional before he wrote about it. Back then, exceptional meant different from Europeans. Europeans came over to this side of the Atlantic and became different. In fact, that’s the reason many came to America: here was a place you could change.

Now we try to keep people out. We’ve tried to do that before, but we seem more determined about it now. We never erected a high fence before. We didn’t round people up and deport them in such great numbers. Nativism has always been ugly, but people kept coming here in large numbers nevertheless. That’s why you saw nativism in the first place: people were coming here in such high numbers. Now we want to take people who are already here and get rid if them.

When people say immigration reform, I’m not sure what they mean, but I don’t think it’s something good. When people use the word illegal as a noun, as in, “We don’t like illegals around here,” I know what they mean. They know what they mean, too.

So, does American exceptionalism just come down to our thinking we’re better than other people? Is that all it means? Honestly, Tocqueville might have said as much, but he could have saved himself a lot of words if that’s all he had to say. It appears to be the limit of our thinking now. The critics say, “Obama doesn’t think we’re better than other people. We don’t want a leader who thinks we’re just like everyone else.” Perhaps when a country has come down as far as we have, people have to swagger a bit to compensate.

Here’s where a belief in American exceptionalism truly gets us into trouble: when we think bad things can’t happen here. If you believe that, then people with power can commit crimes and tell you they didn’t. If you give liars the benefit of the doubt, they will take advantage of you. They will get you to participate in their lies, to endorse them, prop them up and make them appear real. Ask Earl Warren. Ask Colin Powell. Some people cannot decline to participate. Ask the taxpayers who paid for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the families who lost a son or a daughter over there.

Theologian James Douglass title his book about Kennedy’s assassination, JFK and the Unspeakable. Some acts are so evil, we cannot speak of them. What if 9/11 were a false flag operation? Would we have the will to speak of it? How many people would want to place a truth like that in front of their eyes?

When I read Jesus’ words in the New Testament, “the truth will make you free,” I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant. It could be another general statement about the means of redemption: believe that I am the Son of God, and I will free you from death. The saying means more than that, though. At the least, it means that falsehood will make you a slave. If we believe the things that powerful people tell us, they will enslave us. They won’t control us they do other private property, but they’ll control us sufficiently that they won’t suffer constraints on their own freedom of action.

That should be enough for tonight. I won’t try to bring everything I’ve said in this post together. I will say that if our concept of American exceptionalism prevents us from discerning the truth, if it makes us believe liars and disbelieve truth tellers, we have descended a long way from the days of Jacksonian Democracy. Of course liars existed then, as did corruption in high places. The question is whether we would give liars and criminals the benefit of the doubt, or how much we would tolerate them. If we want to save our freedom now, we have to track down the truth with no partiality about what we find.

Ambassador Christopher Steven’s assassination on September 11^th in Benghazi, Libya, needless to say, stirred a wide array of reactions from different sources.  There were those that instantly called for war against Libya.  Others, realizing that the deed was a planned attack by a smaller subgroup in that country were more conciliatory by eulogizing the ambassador as a man who gave his very life to make the lives of others better.  And then there was the clumsy and irresponsible reaction of the leader of the Republican party and its current presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.  For his part, the former Massachusetts’ governor reacted by blasting the Obama Administration for “sympathizing with those who waged the attack” because its U.S. embassy in Cairo issued a statement during the attacks meant to quell any potential violence.

Whatever the case, the death of Christopher Stevens was needless and wasteful.  He died in vain for two reasons: his inappropriate involvement in the affairs of a country not his own and the fact that he should not have been in Benghazi on September 11.

Last year when President Obama decided unilaterally to intervene in the Libyan Civil War, he appointed Stevens to work closely with anti-Gadhafi fighters on the ground in Benghazi and serve as a conduit between them and the U.S. military.  At first, NATO involvement was just supposed to include imposing a U.N. sanctioned “no-fly zone” over Libya so Gadhafi could not use his air force to brutalize Libyans on the ground.  However, in very short order, the mission morphed into an all-out air invasion complete with bombings of Gadhafi’s fighters on the ground.

What was lacking of course was any congressional debate whether or not American forces should be employed in Libya and ultimately a declaration of war from Congress as required in the Constitution.  After all, U.S. forces were engaged in direct combat in the Libyan Civil War for months.  Just because no Americans died in the conflict until Ambassador Stevens is beside the point.  Congressional debate could have resulted in a vote not to declare war on a country that posed no national security to us.

So, in essence, the Obama Administration used the pretext of saving lives to commit regime change.  Chris Stevens was the point man on the ground in Benghazi that helped to make that happen.  The regime was Gadhafi’s and chances are good Stevens was killed either by a pro-Gadhafi militia or a fringe militia looking to gain support from pro-Gadhafi forces.  Either way, this is what is called blowback.  Stevens paid for his deeds directly in Libya.  The bottom line is that Americans will continue to experience this phenomenon as long as their government continues to meddle in the affairs of other countries, even if the goal is noble.

The second reason Chris Stevens died in vain was because he shouldn’t have been in Libya on September 11^th.  No American should have been.  Since the end of the civil war, Libya has been reduced to a Somalia like haven.  Without a legitimate centralized authority, heavily armed militias operate freely on the streets of Libya’s major cities.  Assassination attempts, shootouts, car bombings, arson, and threats against foreign diplomats are commonplace.  In August, in Tripoli, armed men tried to commandeer a U.S. Embassy vehicle carrying American diplomatic personnel.  Stevens and the American diplomatic corps should have been evacuated out of Libya a long time ago.  It was and is simply too dangerous a place for them.

Shortly after Ambassador Stevens was assassinated, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quoted asking, “How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?”  The answer is easy – American intervention in other countries makes all Americans unsafe.  When Washington picks sides in a conflict there are other sides that are slighted.  When America attempts to militarily or politically dominate another country folks in that country become resentful.  Clearly, these are lessons that Secretary Clinton needs to learn.  If Ambassador Stevens understood them, he would still be alive today.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

Mitt Romney’s behavior in the last 24 hours has been repulsive.  Faced with an attack from a crowd of angry protestors in Cairo over the release of an anti-Muhammad film in the United States, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo released the following statement in an attempt to appease the mob and prevent violence:

“The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

Romney apparently sensing a political opening attacked the Obama Administration over the statement claiming it was “sympathizing with those who waged the attack”.  Back on the offensive the next morning, Romney reiterated his criticism of the Administration’s handling of the attack and stated, “It’s never too early for the United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values.”

That Mitt Romney would play politics while an attack on an American Embassy was in progress is more than disgusting; it is indicative of his unfitness to hold the office of the presidency.  It shows impulsiveness and a readiness to shoot first and ask questions later that we can ill afford in a president.

But, Romney’s actions frankly did not surprise this commentator.  Those advising him on his national security team are basically retreads from the George W. Bush years – renowned neoconservatives, and Zionists.  All are itching to reacquire the reins of power in order to involve America in more foreign military adventures, namely Syria and Iran.  So, when Romney went on the offensive, it became clear that the same gang that gave us the “axis of evil”, and the “you are either for us or against us” campaigns and over a decade of continuous war was at it again.  Apparently they are willing to stoop to any depth in an effort to score political points to win this election so as to recommence their murderous rampage specifically through the Islamic World.

There is no question that Governor Romney has surrounded himself with dangerous advisors on national security.  But, through his recent actions he has proven himself to be a hypocrite as well.

On Wednesday morning, he went to great lengths to claim that the Obama Administration had failed to defend our values with the Embassy’s statement.  Specifically, he accused them of “effectively apologizing for the right of free speech”.

This is outrageous coming from a man whose campaign just conducted a party gathering in Tampa described by one political commentator as a “Brownshirt Convention”.  At the Republican National Convention, Brown shirted guards and police cordoned off a large section of downtown Tampa to keep protestors out of sight.  Anything not specifically approved by the Romney people, including signs of rival factions within the party, were confiscated on the streets inside the cordoned off area and on the floor of the RNC.  Lastly, leaving nothing to chance, all speakers were censored by the Romney campaign and those that refused were denied a platform to speak.  This all makes Romney’s criticism that the Administration did not defend the right to free speech hypocritical given his personal squashing of the same in Tampa.

At the end of the day, Governor Romney’s political attack on the Obama Administration while Americans were in harm’s way shows a lack of judgment on his part.  His criticism of the Administration that it did not defend the right of Americans to freedom of speech was pure hypocrisy in light of his campaign’s abuses at the RNC.   It is these traits that make him unfit to be our president.

Article first published as A Lack of Judgment and Hypocrisy on Blogcritics.

Kenn Jacobine teaches internationally and maintains a summer residence in North Carolina

Here’s the current state of the argument, based on David Ray Griffin’s books as well as Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.  They would agree on these points: (1) the evidence we have demonstrates that government’s account of 9/11 is false; (2) current evidence is insufficient to give a full account of what actually did happen on 9/11; (3) therefore, we need a new investigation. Not one of these points is particularly controversial. Even the first one becomes matter of fact after you become acquainted with Griffin’s work.

Read one chapter in one of Griffin’s books. You will think, “He has a sure grasp of his logical and evidentiary tools, like a skilled attorney. I would not want to face this gentleman in a courtroom!” He handles evidence so well, so methodically and with such intelligence, that defenders of the official account appear careless, thoughtless, feckless or malicious – take your pick. By comparison with Griffin’s own thoroughness, his opponents have neither intelligence nor skill to accomplish the fraud he uncovers, but accomplish it they do. They radiate such self-assurance about their excuses and evasions that their lies seem reasonable until Griffin picks them apart. Honestly, it’s one of the best illustrations of Socratic inquiry I’ve seen. Griffin is a philosopher as well as a theologian, and his training shows.

Griffin doesn’t go against only weak opponents, either. Cass Sunstein is a capable legal philosopher out of the University of Chicago, and Griffin makes him look foolish. To his credit, Griffin doesn’t try to make Sunstein look that way, but what do you do when you encounter a weak, even reprehensible argument that deserves rebuttal? Socrates’ opponents charged him with making the stronger argument look weak, and the weaker argument look strong. His skill in argumentation so exasperated his opponents that they cooked up an additional charge about corrupting youth, convicted him, and put him to death: all because Socrates made them look foolish. I wonder how Sunstein felt when he read Griffin’s rebuttal? 

I don’t want to take this post in that direction, though. For now, let me point to Griffin’s book on Sunstein and leave off the discussion for now. The title is Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee’s Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory.

My main object in this post is to consider the implications of point three: the need for a new investigation. Griffin, architects and engineers who agree with him, and many others have advocated research that accounts for all evidence related to 9/11. That would include what happened before that day, an account of the day itself, as well as what happened after the towers and WTC 7 fell. In short, they want an impartial examination of evidence that tries to uncover what actually happened on 9/11. How did nearly three thousand citizens die that day?

Griffin is clear as well about who should conduct the investigation: Congress or the press. The executive branch had its chance with the 9/11 Commission and failed. The Commission’s report felt like its infamous predecessor, the Warren Commission report: long, laughably inaccurate and incomplete, and insufficient. The 9/11 truth movement wants a report that does justice both to the evidence and to the truth. A board of inquiry appointed by Congress would have the independence, resources, skills, and motives to investigate 9/11 properly. In good faith, professional journalists would bring the same qualities to investigations they conduct. Either institution – or the two working along parallel tracks and in their own ways – could produce work superior to the report the 9/11 Commission produced.

That is the reasoning behind the appeal, I believe. I disagree with the reasoning, but I have to explain why another time. For now let me say, the only people who can produce good research about 9/11 are independent researchers who have already undertaken it. They need encouragement, support, and new recruits to continue this essential work. Just as important, we ought to keep demanding that government release information about 9/11 that it guards so closely. Government officials know instinctively that their authority will evaporate if they resist these demands indefinitely. Meantime, independent researchers have to keep at their work. They’re the only ones with integrity, skill, and motivation to succeed.

Ronald Reagan offered an explanation of his own, one that showed his understanding of the way people and groups interact when they fight. He said that we could never trust the Soviet Union while they maintained a closed society. How can we have confidence in what they say, he asked, if they do almost everything in secret? Reagan pointed out that was true not only for the Soviets’ international behavior – the government kept almost everything secret from its own citizens as well.

Not so long after Reagan’s observation, glasnost – openness – became the leading edge of Mikhail Gorbachev’s initiatives for change. He apparently agreed with Reagan: no one would trust the Soviet regime without openness on its part. No adversaries within or without the Soviet Union could make peace with its leaders unless the leaders could create some degree of trust. Trust begets good will; good will begets peace. Distrust fosters conflict because it’s the deepest form of alienation.

I wanted to record these thoughts because our government has become more and more like the Soviet government in matters of secrecy. Governments, including our own, have always guarded information carefully for various reasons. Our government, however, has moved strongly away from openness and toward secrecy during the last decade. The evidence for this change is everywhere, most recently in the government’s atrocious war on whistleblowers.

This move toward secrecy is 9/11′s clearest effect. 9/11 destroyed our democracy – it did so by making our government a closed organization. As a result government has alienated citizens from itself. Alienation always results in conflict, and that is just what we find in the relationiship between citizens and government in our country. We cannot trust our government when most of its acts occur in secret, when it lies to cover its crimes, and when it acts in multiple ways to conceal its motives. Secret organizations with power cannot coexist in peace with other groups. They must be at war.

The Cold War ended, and this war between our government and the rest of the country can end, too. It can only end with openness on the government’s part.

Definition one for fishy: arousing feelings of doubt or suspicion.

Definition two for sound: based on reason, sense, or judgment.

When you hear an explanation of a public event, how do you tell the difference between the two? That’s an important attribute of good citizenship, right? You have to be able to tell whether or not someone is being straight with you. Out there in the wide world, some people are more honest than others. One of the basic skills you have to develop as you grow up is how to distinguish people who are honest from people who are not.

You could respond, “No, I just mind my own business. I don’t care that much whether or not someone is honest. They go their way and I go mine.”

That’s true to an extent, but what if your boyfriend or girlfriend cheats on you, and lies to you about it? Or what if you charge your mate with infidelity when he or she has been true to you? You’d want to make accurate judgments about honesty in cases like that, wouldn’t you?

The same need for good judgment holds for assessments of honesty in the public sphere. If you charge honest public officials with lying or fraud, you’ll eventually have nothing but liars and cheats in office. If you trust public officials who are liars and cheats, you’ll never get them out of office.

The worst case occurs when criminals acquire a lot of power. Hitler and Stalin are especially sobering examples in this respect. A lot of people – millions – die in wars, death camps, pogroms and massacres when evil leaders win other people’s trust. A lot rides on our ability to trust the right people.

I would say that generally, we’re sharper about making these judgments in personal relationships than we are about judging our leaders. Experience and observation indicate we process a lot of information about other people in real time. We use the information we have to make judgments about them, and to regulate our interactions with them. Without a steady flow of first-hand information about public leaders, we have to find other ways to make judgments about them.

Because more distance separates us from our leaders, our information about them is less immediate. That raises two possibilities. First, accurate judgments about our leaders may take longer to form. Second, accustomed to reaching fairly accurate conclusions in our personal dealings, we may jump to inaccurate conclusions in our public affairs. To avoid those mistakes, we would want to gather extra information, and deliberate more extensively about the judgments we reach. Research and deliberation do not come easily to people in a hurry.

Now let’s turn to our fishiness postulate. The postulate says that when something feels fishy, don’t believe it. When Jack Ruby shoots Lee Oswald in the basement of a Dallas police station during lunchtime, with policemen all around, that feels fishy. When World Trade Center 7 comes down in a controlled demolition at the end of a long afternoon, in seven seconds, that feels fishy. These are events where your spidey sense kicks in – you wonder what could be going on. You wonder what other people must be thinking. You don’t want to step out of line – no one wants to look weird.

The deep lesson of The Emperor’s New Clothes is that no one wanted to step out of line. No one wanted to call attention to the obvious. The tailors who pulled off that fraud could rely on people’s disinclination to stand out in a situation where something bad might come of it. “But Mom, he hasn’t got anything on!” said the young boy. The boy probably didn’t even care if the emperor was naked, but he couldn’t figure out why everyone was complimenting him on his new suit of clothes.

Public frauds are especially damaging. They force complicity from all who don’t want to stand out. Everyone has an opportunity to participate in a big lie, and all but a few stubborn misfits think of a good reason to do so. Who are misfits in times like ours? Theologians. Can you think of a more arcane and necessary vocation in this time and place? We have two theologians in our midst who deserve our recognition and gratitude: David Ray Griffin and James Douglass. If you don’t know who they are, you can find their books easily on the internet. I’ll say this about them: they care about the truth.

Today’s the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. One year past the tenth anniversary, some say we ought to move on: let’s put this memorable event behind us. Don’t say it! We don’t even know what happened that day. We can say only one thing for sure: that public officials have been dishonest in the stories they’ve told. Public officials spent seven billion dollars of our money to keep victims’ family members from asking questions about what happened September 11, 2001. Our leaders did not want any citizen to ask questions about their crimes. They published numerous reports about the event, each one with a sheen of truth, to overlay a rotten core of fraud. Don’t forget what they did.

When you feel something is fishy, trust yourself.

When your instinct is sound, speak up.