E Verify is designed to assist the DHS in tracking whether people are eligible to work? What could possibly cause someone to support this program? Or at least, what could possibly cause a conservative or libertarian minded person, someone on the right, to support this nonsense?
Is it really a stretch to think these E Verify IDs will not contain medical data? Let’s say, C19 bioweapon injection status?
Creating and enhancing the police state apparatus is not the way to stop illegal immigration. Securing the borders is.
The systemic attack and unrestricted warfare designed to abolish the United States and diminish the human population has many facets. Biological warfare, computer elections, supply chain attacks, dismantling energy supplies, food shortages, inflation, the surveillance police state, and a centralized digital bank currency, are just a few aspects of this all out assault. A virtual invasion via unfettered illegal immigration is also an important element to this campaign of asymmetrical warfare.
Let’s hone in on the illegal immigration issue. Of course, this issue can simply be addressed by protecting our borders. Red flags went off shortly after the 911 attacks because instead of policing the borders of the country, an effort was made to create a police state instead.
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This included creating the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), which is a perverted institution designed to instill fear and dehumanize the public. This also included the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) whose title came right out of the NAZI Germany playbook. The DHS is an enemy of the people and should be disbanded immediately. The DHS has collaborated with media and big tech companies to censor medical information about potential harms from C19 injections. These are violations of the Nuremberg Code and clear crimes against humanity. These actions by DHS also of course violate basic First Amendment rights and are a criminal enterprise.
E-Verify is an Internet-based system that compares information entered by an employer from an employee’s Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to records available to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to confirm employment eligibility.
E Verify is designed to assist the DHS in tracking whether people are eligible to work? What could possibly cause someone to support this program? Or at least, what could possibly cause a conservative or libertarian minded person, someone on the right, to support this nonsense?
The government should have nothing to do with your business operations. The conservative position (I am using the term conservative loosely to include libertarians and anybody on the ‘right’ too) is to limit government and protect freedom. The conservative view point should be to dismantle the police state, not enhance it.
It is painfully obvious that the problem of unfettered illegal immigration is deliberately created so as to herd unthinking conservatives into the knee jerk reaction of going along with E Verify. Creating and enhancing the police state apparatus is not the way to stop illegal immigration. Securing the borders is.
There are reports that the CIA and FBI “already want to leverage TSA checkpoints for law enforcement and intelligence purposes…pressure will build to expand it further and try to identify everyone from parole violators to deadbeat dads,” according to an ACLU White Paper.
The ACLU tested facial recognition systems in 2018 by running photos of members of Congress through a massive data of police mug shots, and 28 lawmakers “were incorrectly matched to people charged with a crime.” Actually, the number of congressmen who have committed criminal offenses is probably far higher but the matches to those specific mug shots were erroneous.
The Transportation Security Administration is running a pilot program in which travelers stand in photo kiosks that compare their face with a federal database of photos from passport applications, drivers’ licenses and other sources. TSA promises that its new airport regime, which could vastly expand next year, will respect Americans’ privacy.
What could possibly go wrong? Aside from everything? Will Americans tolerate an out-of-control agency intruding ever further into their lives? TheWashington Post warned in 2019 that airport facial recognition systems are “America’s biggest step yet to normalize treating our faces as data that can be stored, tracked and, inevitably, stolen.” (Federal records of citizens’ photos were already filched in a 2019 “malicious cyberattack.”)
“Trust us” is the TSA mantra for its new Credential Authentication Technology program. TSA is one of the most secretive domestic agencies and is notoriously non-compliant with the Freedom of Information Act.
“TSA hasn’t actually released hard data about how often its system falsely identifies people, through incorrect positive or negative matches,” TheWashington Post recently noted. TSA will be relying on photo identification systems that have a misidentification error rate up to 100 times higher for Blacks and Hispanics. The ACLU tested facial recognition systems in 2018 by running photos of members of Congress through a massive data of police mug shots, and 28 lawmakers “were incorrectly matched to people charged with a crime.” Actually, the number of congressmen who have committed criminal offenses is probably far higher but the matches to those specific mug shots were erroneous.
TSA is already partnering with the Customs and Border Patrol agency to compel any American entering or leaving the nation to submit to being photographed for their database. That initiative was launched by the Trump administration and spurred plenty of Republican cheering on Capitol Hill. That program is named “Biometric Entry/Exit.” A better name would be: Nobody Leaves Without Uncle Sam’s Permission. But since the program will rely on computer databases instead of a Berlin Wall, nobody should worry. “Biometric Entry/Exit” sets a precedent for federal controls over Americans’ movement inside the U.S.
TSA will be capitalizing on vast federal poaching of state and local records, as well as online records. As Techdirt reported, “Federal investigators have turned state Department of Motor Vehicles databases into the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure.” The FBI is regularly tapping into databases with more than 600 million facial photos. As Mike Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center noted, “A 2019 report revealed that the federal government has turned state drivers’ license photos into a giant facial recognition database, putting virtually every driver in America in a perpetual electronic police lineup.”
“Mission creep” will likely follow the rollout of TSA’s facial round-up. The ACLU warns that “there will be enormous pressure to turn those [TSA facial] checkpoints into broader law enforcement checkpoints where people are subject to watchlist, criminal, and immigration checks.” There are reports that the CIA and FBI “already want to leverage TSA checkpoints for law enforcement and intelligence purposes…pressure will build to expand it further and try to identify everyone from parole violators to deadbeat dads,” according to an ACLU White Paper.
Never forget that TSA also promised to protect privacy a dozen years ago when it rolled out the Whole Body Scanners, often derided as “nudie scanners.”
But what harm could there be in permitting TSA to scrutinize people’s faces? TSA already spent a billion dollars on behavior detection officers who furtively circulated in airports to detect travelers who were sweating, hand-wringing, yawning, staring too intently, or avoiding eye contact. The inspector general said the program was a complete waste of money and never caught any terrorists.
Why would any law-abiding American balk at permitting the feds to vacuum up his biometric data at the airport? The Transportation Security Administration is running a pilot program in which travelers stand in photo kiosks that compare their faces with a federal database of photos from passport applications, driver’s licenses, and other sources. TSA promises its new airport regime, which could vastly expand next year, will respect Americans’ privacy.
If you believe that, I can sell you a bridge in Brooklyn really cheap.
TSA has long been one of the most intrusive and inept federal agencies. For 20 years, every TSA boondoggle has been shielded by a bodyguard of bureaucratic lies.
“Trust us” is the TSA mantra for the new program. “TSA hasn’t actually released hard data about how often its system falsely identifies people, through incorrect positive or negative matches,” the Washington Post notes. TSA will be relying on photo-identification systems that have a misidentification error rate up to 100 times higher for blacks and Hispanics.
Some view TSA as being the most intrusive federal agency as it has been in service for over 20 years.“TSA hasn’t actually released hard data about how often its system falsely identifies people, through incorrect positive or negative matches,” according to the Washington Post.
TSA has had plenty of profiling debacles, including targeting black males with backward baseball caps in Boston. At Newark Liberty Airport, TSA agents fabricated false charges against Hispanics to boost the program’s arrest numbers.
The TSA scanning system could be a big step toward a Chinese-style “social credit” system that could restrict travel by people the government doesn’t like. Actually, TSA has already been caught doing that. In 2018, the New York Times exposed a secret watchlist for anyone TSA labels “publicly notorious.” TSA critics to the end of the line — forever?
The real issue here is the existence of the TSA in the first place. The nation’s airports are either owned by local government entities or are privately owned. They are not owned by the federal government. Therefore, the federal government has no more authority to provide airport security than it has to provide security at hotels and convenience stores.
The TSA was established by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (S.1447) that was passed by the 107th Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 19, 2001. No Republicans in the Senate voted against the bill, and only nine Republicans in the House (including the heroic Ron Paul) voted no. Originally part of the Department of Transportation (DOT), the TSA was moved to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when that department was created in 2003. The TSA is headquartered in Springfield, Virginia.
The official mission of the TSA is to “protect the nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.” Although this mainly concerns security in airports, the TSA, with industry partners, also “safeguards all four general modes of land-based transportation: mass transit, freight rail, highway motor carrier and pipeline.” The TSA has about 65,000 employees, most of whom are transportation security officers, inspectors, specialists, administrators, or other security professionals. Its approximately $8 billion budget is partially funded by a $5.60 per-passenger fee for each one-way airplane flight originating in the United States. Although airports are allowed to opt-out of TSA screening and hire private companies, those companies must be approved by the TSA and follow TSA procedures.
For years, the TSA has been known for its ineptitude, baggage theft and other criminal activity, inefficiency, waste, sexual harassments and assaults, and abuses of airline passengers. At various times, the TSA has failed to detect explosives, knives, and guns, all the while treating Americans like—in the words of James Bovard—“cattle being chuted to a civil liberties slaughterhouse.”
The latest outrage perpetrated by the TSA is the spending of more than $18.6 million of taxpayer money “to update airport screening protocols and technology to be more inclusive of transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming passengers.” The TSA “hopes the new technology will help reduce the pat-downs and other invasive screen procedures that are required when transgender individuals trigger body scanners ‘in a sensitive area.’”
The TSA issued a press release timed to coincide with the so-called Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31):
On this internationally recognized day for the transgender community, TSA is proud to announce significant initiatives as a direct result of close partnership with community stakeholders,” said TSA Administrator David Pekoske. “Over the coming months, TSA will move swiftly to implement more secure and efficient screening processes that are gender neutral, as well as technological updates that will enhance security and make TSA PreCheck® enrollment more inclusive. These combined efforts will greatly enhance airport security and screening procedures for all.”
“To transgender Americans of all ages, I want you to know that you are so brave,” President Biden said. “You belong. I have your back.”
Republicans charged the president with politicizing the TSA to appease the Democratic Party’s base. This is “outrageous” and “wokeness over national security,” said Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana).
Why is it that Republicans only seem to criticize the TSA when the agency or one of its security screeners does something outrageous?
Probably for the same reason that Republicans criticize NPR, but only because it has a liberal bias. Probably for the same reason that Republicans criticize the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), but only when it funds pornographic art. Probably for the same reason that Republicans criticize Medicare, but only for waste, fraud, and abuse. Probably for the same reason that Republicans criticize federal funding of Planned Parenthood, but only because the organization performs abortions. Probably for the same reason that Republicans criticize federal regulations for being excessive, burdensome, or costly, but not because they should not be issued in the first place. And probably for the same reason that Republicans criticize the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but only when it awards grants for ridiculous things like the $33,037 grant to the University of South Florida “to study factors that can increase vaccination among gay men for the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) to prevent them from developing anal cancer.”
The real issue here is the existence of the TSA in the first place. The nation’s airports are either owned by local government entities or are privately owned. They are not owned by the federal government. Therefore, the federal government has no more authority to provide airport security than it has to provide security at hotels and convenience stores. The only security business the federal government should be in is national security. There is no reason why airports and airlines cannot use private screening services, just like many other countries do.
As law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds has well said: “When, as was the case before 9/11, security screeners were contractors employed by airlines, they had every incentive to do a good job: Airlines don’t want their planes hijacked or blown up. And they also had every incentive to be speedy and pleasant: Airlines don’t want to irritate their customers, or to make flying an unpleasant experience in general.”
The TSA shouldn’t have more inclusive scanners; it shouldn’t have any scanners at all. The agency should not exist in the first place.
It looks as though President Biden’s immigration crisis isn’t just on the ground anymore. That’s because it was reported this week that the Biden administration is allowing illegal migrants to board commercial flights across the United States without ID – all in the name of not being “racist”.Rep. Lance Gooden from Texas, who has been in the midst of investigation the TSA, made the relevation. His investigation was prompted by “whistleblower documents alleging an operation to move migrants across the country without standard documentation.”
Gooden’s correspondence with the TSA was reported by PJ Media this week. Gooden wrote to TSA Administrator David Pekoske this week, stating: “We request clarification on the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) policies and procedures to protect the nation’s transportation systems and mitigate national security risks. I have serious concerns TSA is actively assisting illegal immigrants without proper identification travel throughout the country. Therefore, we are requesting TSA provide assistance in identifying and preventing the unprecedented flow of illegal immigrants into and throughout the United States and the role TSA has played in facilitating this influx of migrants.”He then asked the TSA: “What policies and procedures are in place to identify and screen Non-US/Canadian citizens who do not have documents issued by the U.S. government or passports?”Gooden’s office has only received an email response from the TSA so far, which reportedly states that “it accepts alternate forms of identification including a Notice to Appear (NTA) in court” as documentation. An NTA is reportedly only issued after agents have “processed a migrant’s biometrics, taken photos of them, and run their fingerprints through immigration and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) databases,” the PJ Media report says. But Gooden says agents inform him that an NTA isn’t adequate ID, writing: “When I asked a border patrol officer about TSA allowing migrants to fly with no identification, they told me a Notice to Appear is not sufficient identification and they often have to take migrants at their word that they are who they say they are. TSA and non-profit groups are putting millions of Americans travelling for Christmas at risk by allowing these unknown and unvetted migrants to board planes and fly across the country.”The TSA fired back, saying that: “in coordination with its DHS counterparts, TSA has also identified alternate forms of ID for use in special circumstances at the checkpoint, circumstances such as non-U.S. citizens or non-nationals who do not have an acceptable form of ID. For travelers in normal circumstances who lack acceptable or alternate forms of ID, TSA calls the National Transportation Vetting Center (NTVC), which attempts to verify a traveler’s identity by using the individual’s information along with information from various government and commercial databases.”
The increasing use of scientific jargon has permitted the State’s intellectuals to weave obscurantist apologia for State rule that would have only met with derision by the populace of a simpler age. A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really helped his victims, by his spending giving a boost to retail trade, would find few converts; but when this theory is clothed in Keynesian equations and impressive references to the “multiplier effect,” it unfortunately carries more conviction. And so the assault on common sense proceeds, each age performing the task in its own ways.
The security walls around the U.S. Capitol may be removed, but the federal response to the January 6 protests has only just begun. The Democrats in Washington are determined to treat the incident as on par with the events of September 11, which may explain a troubling report about the potential use of the famed No Fly List.
Yesterday Nick Fuentes, a right-wing social media pundit who attended the January 6 protests in the capital, alleged that he has been placed on the federal no-fly list, preventing him from traveling to Florida for a political rally. While Mr. Fuentes shared on social media audio of an airline employee suggesting that his flying restriction did come from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), later that night Tucker Carlson informed his audience that his staff could neither confirm nor deny the report. While critics pointed to previous social media posts which documented his being removed from a plane for failing to comply with mask policies, Fuentes has noted that he had no problem flying to Washington in January.
It is unclear whether federal authorities will be in any rush to clarify the situation, but there is no reason not to assume that federal authorities would attempt to use this war on terror tool against political opponents. From its inception, what originally began as sixteen names federal authorities had connected to potential future terrorist attacks quickly grew to over 1 million. As is the case with other surveillance tools handed over to the deep state, there is very little oversight or due process involved in how federal authorities handle potential “terrorist threats.”
Since January there has been a concerted effort by Democrat leaders, former deep state officials, and America’s most despicable neoconservatives to push the Biden administration to utilize the power of the federal government against the supporters of Donald Trump. While the incidents at the Capitol on January 6 are used to justify these calls, the weaponization of federal power against political opponents goes back almost as long as the federal government itself. In more recent years, President Biden’s previous service in the White House saw a Democrat administration that used both the IRS and Department of Homeland Security to target conservatives.
Another reason to expect escalation from the Biden administration against vocal figures like Fuentes is the unique critique of the current regime from the right. The majority of Republican voters do not simply oppose President Biden due to politics, but flatly reject his democratic legitimacy.
The increasing use of scientific jargon has permitted the State’s intellectuals to weave obscurantist apologia for State rule that would have only met with derision by the populace of a simpler age. A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really helped his victims, by his spending giving a boost to retail trade, would find few converts; but when this theory is clothed in Keynesian equations and impressive references to the “multiplier effect,” it unfortunately carries more conviction. And so the assault on common sense proceeds, each age performing the task in its own ways.
Thus, ideological support being vital to the State, it must unceasingly try to impress the public with its “legitimacy,” to distinguish its activities from those of mere brigands….
The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax. Or compare the degree of zeal devoted to pursuing the man who assaults a policeman, with the attention that the State pays to the assault of an ordinary citizen. Yet, curiously, the State’s openly assigned priority to its own defense against the public strikes few people as inconsistent with its presumed raison d’être.
This perspective explains the disproportionate treatment that mostly peaceful protesters at the Capitol in January have received in contrast to those arrested during riots in American cities throughout the past year. The state will always treat those who seriously threaten its perceived legitimacy with greater zeal than those guilty of simply destroying the livelihoods of its citizens.
For decades now, the same political party that often gives lip service to “federalism” has often been the party directly responsible for the growth of federal power. As noted earlier, it took exactly one administration before the Department of Homeland Security, created by the Bush administration, began to target the very voters who elected him to office. It was just two election cycles before the PATRIOT Act was used to target a Republican presidential campaign.
The biggest question that now lies in American politics is whether conservatives are capable of learning from these examples. If the American right is capable of fully absorbing the reality that the greatest threat to their lives, liberty, and prosperity lies domestically—and not abroad—perhaps there is potential for a political rollback of the American empire.
If not, American conservatives will come to understand how little constitutional rights truly mean in the face of a hostile state.
Now, I believe, it’s out of control. The U.S. is already in a truly major depression and on the edge of financial chaos and a currency meltdown. The sociopaths in government will react by redoubling the pace toward a police state domestically and starting a major war abroad. To me, this is completely predictable. It’s what sociopaths do.
An International Man lives and does business wherever he finds conditions most advantageous, regardless of arbitrary borders. He’s diversified globally, with passports from multiple countries, assets in several jurisdictions, and his residence in yet another. He doesn’t depend absolutely on any country and regards all of them as competitors for his capital and expertise.
Living as an international man has always been an interesting possibility. But few Americans opted for it, since the U.S. used to reward those who settled in and put down roots. In fact, it rewarded them better than any other country in the world, so there was no pressing reason to become an international man.
Things change, however, and being rooted like a plant – at least if you have a choice – is a suboptimal strategy if you wish to not only survive, but prosper. Throughout history, almost every place has at some point become dangerous for those who were stuck there. It may be America’s turn.
For those who can take up the life of an international man, it’s no longer just an interesting lifestyle decision. It has become, at a minimum, an asset saver, and it could be a lifesaver. That said, I understand the hesitation you may feel about taking action; pulling up one’s roots (or at least grafting some of them to a new location) can be almost as traumatic to a man as to a vegetable.
As any intelligent observer surveys the world’s economic and political landscape, he has to be disturbed – even dismayed and a bit frightened – by the gravity and number of problems that mark the horizon. We’re confronted by economic depression, looming financial chaos, serious currency inflation, onerous taxation, crippling regulation, a developing police state, and, worst of all, the prospect of a major war. It seems almost unbelievable that all these things could affect the U.S., which historically has been the land of the free.
How did we get here? An argument can be made that things went bad because of miscalculation, accident, inattention, and the like. Those elements have had a role, but it is minor. Potential catastrophe across the board can’t be the result of happenstance. When things go wrong on a grand scale, it’s not just bad luck or inadvertence. It’s because of serious character flaws in one or many – or even all – of the players.
So is there a root cause of all the problems I’ve cited? If we can find it, it may tell us how we personally can best respond to the problems.
In this article, I’m going to argue that the U.S. government, in particular, has been overrun by the wrong kind of person. It’s a trend that’s been in motion for many years but has now reached a point of no return. In other words, a type of moral rot has become so prevalent that it’s institutional in nature. There is not going to be, therefore, any serious change in the direction in which the U.S. is headed until a genuine crisis topples the existing order. Until then, the trend will accelerate.
The reason is that a certain class of people – sociopaths – are now fully in control of major American institutions. Their beliefs and attitudes are insinuated throughout the economic, political, intellectual, and psychological/spiritual fabric of the U.S.
What does this mean to you, as an individual? It depends on your character. Are you the kind of person who supports “my country, right or wrong,” as did most Germans in the 1930s and 1940s? Or the kind who dodges the duty to be a helpmate to murderers? The type of passenger who goes down with the ship? Or the type who puts on his vest and looks for a lifeboat? The type of individual who supports the merchants who offer the fairest deal? Or the type who is gulled by splashy TV commercials?
What the ascendancy of sociopaths means isn’t an academic question. Throughout history, the question has been a matter of life and death. That’s one reason America grew; every American (or any ex-colonial) has forebears who confronted the issue and decided to uproot themselves to go somewhere with better prospects. The losers were those who delayed thinking about the question until the last minute.
I have often described myself, and those I prefer to associate with, as gamma rats. You may recall the ethologist’s characterization of the social interaction of rats as being between a few alpha rats and many beta rats, the alpha rats being dominant and the beta rats submissive. In addition, a small percentage are gamma rats that stake out prime territory and mates, like the alphas, but are not interested in dominating the betas. The people most inclined to leave for the wide world outside and seek fortune elsewhere are typically gamma personalities.
You may be thinking that what happened in places like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and scores of other countries in recent history could not, for some reason, happen in the U.S. Actually, there’s no reason it won’t at this point. All the institutions that made America exceptional – including a belief in capitalism, individualism, self-reliance, and the restraints of the Constitution – are now only historical artifacts.
On the other hand, the distribution of sociopaths is completely uniform across both space and time. Per capita, there were no more evil people in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, Amin’s Uganda, Ceausescu’s Romania, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia than there are today in the U.S. All you need is favorable conditions for them to bloom, much as mushrooms do after a rainstorm.
Conditions for them in the U.S. are becoming quite favorable. Have you ever wondered where the 50,000 people employed by the TSA to inspect and degrade you came from? Most of them are middle-aged. Did they have jobs before they started doing something that any normal person would consider demeaning? Most did, but they were attracted to – not repelled by – a job where they wear a costume and abuse their fellow citizens all day.
Few of them can imagine that they’re shepherding in a police state as they play their roles in security theater. (A reinforced door on the pilots’ cabin is probably all that’s actually needed, although the most effective solution would be to hold each airline responsible for its own security and for the harm done if it fails to protect passengers and third parties.) But the 50,000 newly employed are exactly the same type of people who joined the Gestapo – eager to help in the project of controlling everyone. Nobody was drafted into the Gestapo.
What’s going on here is an instance of Pareto’s Law. That’s the 80-20 rule that tells us, for example, that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your salesmen or that 20% of the population are responsible for 80% of the crime.
As I see it, 80% of people are basically decent; their basic instincts are to live by the Boy Scout virtues. 20% of people, however, are what you might call potential trouble sources, inclined toward doing the wrong thing when the opportunity presents itself. They might now be shoe clerks, mailmen, or waitresses – they seem perfectly benign in normal times. They play baseball on weekends and pet the family dog. However, given the chance, they will sign up for the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB, the TSA, Homeland Security, or whatever. Many seem well intentioned, but are likely to favor force as the solution to any problem.
But it doesn’t end there, because 20% of that 20% are really bad actors. They are drawn to government and other positions where they can work their will on other people and, because they’re enthusiastic about government, they rise to leadership positions. They remake the culture of the organizations they run in their own image. Gradually, non-sociopaths can no longer stand being there. They leave. Soon the whole barrel is full of bad apples. That’s what’s happening today in the U.S.
It’s a pity that Bush, when he was in office, made such a big deal of evil. He discredited the concept. He made Boobus americanus think it only existed in a distant axis, in places like North Korea, Iraq and Iran, which were and still are irrelevant backwaters and arbitrarily chosen enemies. Bush trivialized the concept of evil and made it seem banal because he was such a fool. All the while, real evil, very immediate and powerful, was growing right around him, and he lacked the awareness to see he was fertilizing it by turning the U.S. into a national security state after 9/11.
Now, I believe, it’s out of control. The U.S. is already in a truly major depression and on the edge of financial chaos and a currency meltdown. The sociopaths in government will react by redoubling the pace toward a police state domestically and starting a major war abroad. To me, this is completely predictable. It’s what sociopaths do.
Editor’s Note: A big part of any strategy to reduce your political risk is to place some of your savings outside the immediate reach of the thieving bureaucrats in your home country. Obtaining a foreign bank account is a convenient way to do just that.
That way, your savings cannot be easily confiscated, frozen, or devalued at the drop of a hat or with a couple of taps on the keyboard. In the event capital controls are imposed, a foreign bank account will help ensure that you have access to your money when you need it the most.
In short, your savings in a foreign bank will largely be safe from any madness in your home country.
Despite what you may hear, having a foreign bank account is completely legal and is not about tax evasion or other illegal activities. It’s simply about legally diversifying your political risk by putting your liquid savings in sound, well-capitalized institutions where they’re treated best.
We recently released a comprehensive free guide where we discuss our favorite foreign banks and jurisdictions, including, crucially, those that still accept Americans as clients and allow them to open accounts remotely for small minimums.
New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team describe how you can do it all from home. And there’s still time to get it done without extraordinary cost or effort. Click here to download the PDF now.
Election Day can be the longest day of the year. Especially if the presidential race remains undecided late into the evening, neither Xanax nor vodka may be enough to kill the pain. In lieu of other sedatives, following are some cheerful lines which might blunt the impact of the prattling on CNN or MSNBC, though there is no known antidote to PBS’s piety.
Voting
The most dangerous political illusion is that votes limit politicians’ power.
Nowadays, we have elections in lieu of freedom.
The defects in any system of choosing rulers outweigh the risks of letting people run their own lives.
People are entitled to far more information when testing baldness cures than when casting votes that could lead to war.
What’s the point of voting if “government under the law” is not a choice on Election Day?
Having a vote does nothing to prevent a person from being molested by the TSA, spied on by the NSA, or harassed by the IRS.
Politicians are increasingly dividing Americans into two classes—those who work for a living and those who vote for a living.
Voting for lesser evils makes Washington no less odious.
Politicians have mandated warning labels for almost everything except voting booths.
On Election Day, Americans are more likely to be deluded by their own government than by foreigners.
Politicians talk as if voting magically protects the rights of everyone within a fifty-mile radius of the polling booth.
Political consent is defined these days as rape was defined a generation or two ago: people consent to anything which they do not forcibly resist.
Democracy
Modern democracy pretends that people can control what they do not understand.
We have a drive-by democracy where politicians wave to voters every few years and otherwise do as they please.
The more power politicians capture, the more illusory democracy becomes.
A democratic government that respects no limits on its own power is a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy the rights it was created to protect.
The surest effect of exalting democracy is to make it easier for politicians to drag everyone else down.
The Washington Post’s motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” But democracy also dies from too many Iron Fists.
The phrases which consecrate democracy seep into Americans’ minds like buried hazardous waste.
Rather than a democracy, we increasingly have an elective dictatorship. Voters merely designate who will violate the laws and the Constitution.
Democracy unleashes the State in the name of the people.
The more that democracy is presumed to be inevitable, the more likely it will self-destruct.
America is now an Attention Deficit Democracy where citizens’ ignorance and apathy entitle politicians to do as they damn well please.
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
Americans now embrace the same myths about democracy that downtrodden European peasants formerly swallowed about monarchy.
Instead of revealing the “will of the people,” election results are often only a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions.
Nothing happens after Election Day to make politicians less venal.
Lying
A lie that is accepted by a sufficient number of ignorant voters becomes a political truth.
America is increasingly a “Garbage In, Garbage Out” democracy. Politicians dupe citizens and then invoke deluded votes to stretch their power.
Promising to “speak truth to power” is the favorite vow in the most deceitful city in America.
Truth delayed is truth defused.
A successful politician is often merely someone who bamboozled more voters than the other liar running for office.
The biggest election frauds usually occur before the voting booths open.
Politicians nowadays treat Americans like medical orderlies treat Alzheimer’s patients, telling them anything that will keep them subdued. It doesn’t matter what untruths the people are fed because they will quickly forget.
When people blindly trust politicians, the biggest liars win.
Secrecy and lying are often two sides of the same political coin.
The more powerful government becomes, the more abuses it commits, and the more lies it must tell.
Government et Cetera
America is rapidly becoming a two-tier society: those whom the law fails to restrain, and those whom the law fails to protect.
Idealism these days is often only positive thinking about growing servitude.
It is naïve to expect governments to descend step-by-step into barbarism—as if there is a train schedule to political hell with easy exits along the way.
The first duty of today’s citizen is to assume the best of government, while federal agents assume the worst of him.
America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.
Every recent American commander in chief has expanded and exploited the dictatorial potential of the presidency.
Many people reason about political power like sheep who ignore the wolf until they feel its teeth.
Political saviors almost always cost more than they deliver.
There is no such thing as retroactive self-government.
The arrogance of power is the best hope for the survival of freedom.
Washingtonians view individual freedom like an ancient superstition they must pretend to respect.
Paternalism is a desperate gamble that lying politicians will honestly care for those who fall under their sway.
Citizens should distrust politicians who distrust freedom.
The Night Watchman State has been replaced by Highway Robber States in which no asset or right is safe from marauding politicians.
P.T. Barnum may have been thinking of Washington journalists when he said there’s a sucker born every minute.
Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and other publications. His articles have been publicly denounced by the chief of the FBI, the Postmaster General, the Secretary of HUD, and the heads of the DEA, FEMA, and EEOC and numerous federal agencies.
“Achieving legislative power and political influence,” he said,
should not be our goal. Most of the change, if it is to come, will not come from the politicians, but rather from individuals, family, friends, intellectual leaders, and our religious institutions. The solution can only come from rejecting the use of coercion, compulsion, government commands, and aggressive force, to mold social and economic behavior.
America today confronts an unprecedented crisis. Our economy is collapsing, and the fake coronavirus ”epidemic,” with its Draconian restrictions, is destroying our liberty. What can we do? We’re fortunate that Dr. Ron Paul, our greatest living American, has provided a masterful diagnosis and offers us hope for a cure—if only we will listen.
The End of Unearned Opulence sums up and extends Ron’s message that he has given us in his many years of devoted service. In the book, he speaks of the “Faustian bargain” that Nixon imposed on the American people when he abandoned convertibility of the dollar into gold in 1971. He offered us fifty years of fake prosperity, but inevitably, the bill from the devil came due. In telling us about this, Ron talks about the great German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe and how he modified the Faust legend. As I read this, I thought about Goethe’s finishing his great play Faust in the wisdom of his later years. Ron has in like fashion offered us in this book his mature wisdom.
What is Ron’s message for us? He says, “The opulence of unearned wealth has been exposed. The grave danger we now face can no longer be denied. What we are witnessing today is what happens to a society when counterfeit wealth dissipates. . .A Ponzi scheme mentality which has existed for decades allows for constant pyramiding of debt as part of our fiat monetary system. This policy is a predictable event and is instrumental in the creation of financial bubbles. Fractional reserve banking is a major contributing factor in creating money out of thin air, which inflates the debt bubble. Much of the malinvestment that results appears as wealth, but is in reality an illusion that disappears with the bursting of the bubble.”
The Austrian business cycle theory of Mises and Rothbard shows irrefutably that this policy won’t work. Why then has it been imposed on us? Ron gives us the answer. It benefits the crony capitalists—the opposite of genuine free market entrepreneurs—who are in bed with the government. He says, “The humanitarian claim of the welfare/ warfare proponents is that their efforts have always been designed to care for the poor. The only problem is that as financial bubbles develop, the already wealthy receive most of the benefits. . .The huge bailouts in the 2008 recession saw the banks and mortgage companies benefitting while individuals lost their homes. With today’s lockdowns we see the large corporations avoiding the worst regulations and permitted to operate, while the mom and pop businesses go broke.”
Why do people allow that mad and evil policy to continue? Ron answers that the government deludes people with crusades against imaginary enemies, in order to gain more control over us. First and foremost, Ron is a critic of the warfare state. Ron is not a pacifist – an ancient charge against those who oppose constant war. He believes in the right to self-defense, but he does not believe in the initiation of violence, whether by private criminals or the state.
Still, this is the issue strategists would have had him avoid. Just talk about the budget, talk about the greatness of America, talk about whatever everyone else was talking about, and you’ll be fine. And, they neglected to add, forgotten.
But had Ron shied away from this issue, there would have been no Ron Paul Revolution. It was his courageous refusal to back down from certain unspeakable truths about the American role in the world that caused Americans, and especially students, to sit up and take notice.
Worried about the budget? You can’t run an empire on the cheap. Concerned about TSA groping, or government eavesdropping, or cameras trained on you? These are the inevitable policies of a hegemon. In case after case, Ron pointed to the connection between an imperial policy abroad and abuses and outrages at home.While still in his thirties, Murray Rothbard wrote privately that he was beginning to view war as “the key to the whole libertarian business.” Here is a key way Ron Paul has been faithful to the Rothbardian tradition. Time after time, in interviews and public appearances, Ron has brought the questions posed to him back to the central issues of war and foreign policy.
Inspired by Ron, libertarians began to challenge conservatives by reminding them that war, after all, is the ultimate government program. War has it all: propaganda, censorship, spying, crony contracts, money printing, skyrocketing spending, debt creation, central planning, hubris – everything we associate with the worst interventions into the economy.
But Ron Paul permanently changed the nature of the discussion on war and foreign policy. The word “nonintervention” rarely appeared in foreign-policy discussions before 2007. Opposition to war was associated with anti-capitalist causes. That is no longer the case.
In our present crisis, Ron brilliantly extends his point. The fake coronavirus menace has become the means by which the state criminals can distract the public from its disastrous economic policies and put us under their control. As Ron says, “The goal of the hysterical reaction to the coronavirus, from both local and national politicians, has been to distract from the much bigger crisis we face dealing with: the Fed’s responsibility for the economic collapse and its hunger for unlimited power. The fact that responding to the exaggerated coronavirus crisis made the economic downturn much worse was not a disappointment to those individuals who see economic turmoil as an opportunity to promote radical Marxist ideas.”
Ron is of course a medical doctor, and he speaks with authority when he tells us that the health crisis is phony. “The coronavirus epidemic is not the bubonic plague. . . It’s now recognized that much of the data reported on the severity and extent of the disease was seriously flawed and misleading. The reports inevitably made it appear that the epidemic was much worse than it was. To many observers, this was more than just careless mistakes but rather a concerted effort to spread fear and panic. This effort amazingly led to a delusional and extreme reaction by the media, politicians, public health fanatics, drug companies, national and global governments, supporters of socialism, fascism, and Marxism, all promoting the infamous lockdown.”
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the Marxist BLM and antifa are rioting and looting while leftwing elements in government aid and abet their revolutionary tactics. “Antifa, BLM, and cultural Marxism’s concerted efforts to topple the remainder of the American Republic means, ‘they smell blood!’”
We thus face a dire situation, but Ron inspires us to change things. I had the rare honor of serving as Ron Paul’s congressional chief of staff, and observed him in many proud moments in those days, and in his presidential campaigns. People today sometimes compare Ron Paul with Bernie Sanders. The comparison of Bernie to Ron goes like this: both launched insurgent, anti-establishment presidential campaigns while in their 70s, shook up their respective party establishments, and attracted large youth followings. But Bernie is no Ron.
Just on the surface: Bernie is a grump and difficult to work with; Ron is a kindhearted gentleman who always showed his appreciation for the people in his office.
More importantly, Ron urged his followers to read and learn. Countless high school and college students began reading dense and difficult treatises in economics and political philosophy because Ron encouraged them to. Ron’s followers, meanwhile, were curious enough to dig beneath the surface. Is the state really a benign institution that can costlessly provide us whatever we might demand? Or might there be moral, economic, and political factors standing in the way of these utopian dreams?
It’s not hard to cultivate a raving band of people demanding other people’s things, as Bernie Sanders does. Such appeals arouse the basest aspects of our nature, and will always attract a crowd. It’s very hard, on the other hand, to build up an army of young people intellectually curious enough to read serious books and consider ideas that go beyond the conventional wisdom they learned in school about government and market. It’s hard to build up a movement of people whose moral sense is developed enough to recognize that barking demands and enforcing them with the state’s gun is the behavior of a thug, not a civilized person. And it’s hard to persuade people of the counter-intuitive idea that society runs better and individuals are more prosperous when no one is “in charge” at all.
Yet Ron accomplished all these things. Ron knew that the philosophy of liberty, when explained persuasively and with conviction, had a universal appeal. Every group he spoke to heard a slightly different presentation of that message, as Ron showed how their particular concerns were addressed most effectively by a policy of freedom.
Before leaving Washington and electoral politics, Ron delivered an extraordinary farewell address to Congress. The very fact that Ron could deliver a wise and learned address only goes to show he was no run-of-the-mill congressman, whose intellectual life is fulfilled by talking points and focus-group results.When Ron first spoke to the so-called values voters, for example, he was booed for saying he worshipped the Prince of Peace. The second time, when he again made a moral case for freedom, he brought the house down. But he did not pander to them nor to anyone else, and he never abandoned the philosophy that brought him into public life in the first place. No one had the sense that there was more than one Ron Paul, that he was trying to satisfy irreconcilable groups. There was one Ron Paul.
That a farewell address seemed so appropriate for Ron in the first place, while it would have been risible for virtually any of his colleagues, reflected Ron’s substance and seriousness as a thinker and as a man.
In that address Ron did many things. He surveyed his many years in Congress. He made a reckoning of the advance of the state and the retreat of liberty. He explained the moral ideas at the root of the libertarian message: nonaggression and freedom. He posed a series of questions about the US government and American society that are hardly ever asked, much less answered. And he gave his supporters advice on spreading the message in the coming years.
“Achieving legislative power and political influence,” he said,
should not be our goal. Most of the change, if it is to come, will not come from the politicians, but rather from individuals, family, friends, intellectual leaders, and our religious institutions. The solution can only come from rejecting the use of coercion, compulsion, government commands, and aggressive force, to mold social and economic behavior.
I am convinced that historians, whether or not they agree with him, will continue to marvel at Ron Paul for many, many years to come. Libertarians a century from now will be in disbelief at the very notion that such a man actually served in the US Congress of our time. America 2020 the Survi… Stansberry Research Best Price: $26.98 Buy New $31.86 (as of 05:20 EDT – Details)
One of the most thrilling memories of the 2012 campaign was the sight of those huge crowds who came out to see Ron. His competitors, meanwhile, couldn’t fill half a Starbucks. When I worked as Ron’s chief of staff in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I could only dream of such a day.
Now what was it that attracted all these people to Ron Paul? He didn’t offer his followers a spot on the federal gravy train. He didn’t pass some phony bill. In fact, he didn’t do any of the things we associate with politicians. What his supporters love about him has nothing to do with politics at all.
Ron is the anti-politician. He tells unfashionable truths, educates rather than flatters the public, and stands up for principle even when the whole world is arrayed against him.
Of course, Ron Paul deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. In a just world, he would also win the Medal of Freedom, and all the honors for which a man in his position is eligible.
Young people are reading major treatises in economics and philosophy because Ron Paul recommended them. Who else in public life can come close to saying that?
No politician is going to trick the public into embracing liberty, even if liberty were his true goal and not just a word he uses in fundraising letters. For liberty to advance, a critical mass of the public has to understand and support it. That doesn’t have to mean a majority, or even anywhere near it. But some baseline of support has to exist.
That is why Ron Paul’s work is so important and so lasting.
Ron concludes The End of Unearned Opulence with these challenging words: “Ideas whose times have come cannot be stopped by armies or political chicanery. Considering the intelligence and character of our enemies, it should never be said that us not resisting we capitulated to their evil nonsense. We are indeed in unchartered waters surrounded by blood-thirsty sharks.” With Ron’s wisdom and courage, we can escape those waters.
by Tyler Durden
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