Monday, March 7, 2011
Who is John Galt?
I predict: Liberals & conservatives are going to go ape, in a negative way, when Atlas Shrugged comes out on April 15. -- Jacob Hornberger
http://ow.ly/49kLs
Defending the Constitution means not enforcing unconstitutional laws
"Marriage is a contract between two individuals and possibly, depending on your personal belief system, God Almighty. Government has no place in the mix. What would you say if someone told you that your husband or wife was ill-suited for you and therefore your marriage was illegal? You would probably tell them, "It ain't none of your damned business who I marry and I will thank you to keep your big fat nose out of my affairs." You would also be one step closer to understanding the true foundation of libertarianism … the absolute superiority of individual rights."
Defending the Constitution means not enforcing unconstitutional laws
by R Lee Wrights on March 6th, 2011
Most decisions in life are matters of individual choice. When faced with a decision you may ask a trusted friend or beloved family member for their advice or guidance, but most people have no need or desire to have someone else make the decision for them. They certainly don't want someone from the government to make the decision for them. In fact, I agree completely with Thomas Sowell who wrote, "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
Yet everyday pandering politicians and Big Brother bureaucrats conjure up new ways to insert their collective noses into every individual, personal decision Americans make. Government rules and regulations dictate what color you can paint your house, what substances you can ingest into your body and how you run your business or how much you get paid for your work. Policymakers forget their pledge of "public service" as soon as they are elected and become bureaucratic busybodies determine to insure we live sober and moral lives… each and every one of us.
Government intrudes into even the most intimate and personal decisions a person can make -- who they can love and who they must hate. Government tells us whom we must hate when it sends our young men and women to war. Government even assumes they have the right to decide for us whom we can love by making criminal certain types of sexual relations and tell us whom we can marry by mandating that we purchase a permission slip.
Marriage is a contract between two individuals and possibly, depending on your personal belief system, God Almighty. Government has no place in the mix. What would you say if someone told you that your husband or wife was ill-suited for you and therefore your marriage was illegal? You would probably tell them, "It ain't none of your damned business who I marry and I will thank you to keep your big fat nose out of my affairs." You would also be one step closer to understanding the true foundation of libertarianism … the absolute superiority of individual rights.
The very idea of a marriage license was concocted specifically for the purpose of barring people of color from marrying white people. These laws were eventually recognized as clearly unconstitutional and unenforceable and are no longer on the books. Yet today we hear arguments very similar to those used to justify these Jim Crow laws employed to justify banning same-sex marriages.
What is even more bizarre is that President Obama, whose parents would have been labeled criminals in an earlier time and place in America, takes the misguided view that he must enforce what he himself says is a clearly unconstitutional law, the inappropriately named Defense of Marriage Act.
The issue of gay marriage is not about marriage at all. It is a civil rights issue. It is an issue of the rights of the individual being considered paramount in all legal matters. Marriage is an individual choice to be someone's mate. It is another area of personal human endeavor that is none of the government's business.
Let me be clear: in the Lee Wrights Administration no unconstitutional law will be enforced. Should I be elected, the oath I will take as president, nearly the same oath I swore to when I enlisted in the United States Air Force, will bind me to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States …" I intend to live up to that oath. As president, I will not enforce any unconstitutional law, nor will I allow anyone in my administration to enforce unconstitutional laws.
The goal of the Wrights Administration will be to stop all war not only on other nations but also on the rights of individuals to make their own decisions. In order to live in peace, we must allow others to be at peace. We must remain vigilant in our insistence that the rights of each individual should be safeguarded, rather than disregarded, by government bureaucrats.
R. Lee Wrights is a writer and political activist living in Texas. He is the co-founder and editor of the free speech online magazine Liberty For All. Lee is considering a run for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination. Contact Lee at rleewrights@gmail.com.
http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=5623
Defending the Constitution means not enforcing unconstitutional laws
by R Lee Wrights on March 6th, 2011
Most decisions in life are matters of individual choice. When faced with a decision you may ask a trusted friend or beloved family member for their advice or guidance, but most people have no need or desire to have someone else make the decision for them. They certainly don't want someone from the government to make the decision for them. In fact, I agree completely with Thomas Sowell who wrote, "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
Yet everyday pandering politicians and Big Brother bureaucrats conjure up new ways to insert their collective noses into every individual, personal decision Americans make. Government rules and regulations dictate what color you can paint your house, what substances you can ingest into your body and how you run your business or how much you get paid for your work. Policymakers forget their pledge of "public service" as soon as they are elected and become bureaucratic busybodies determine to insure we live sober and moral lives… each and every one of us.
Government intrudes into even the most intimate and personal decisions a person can make -- who they can love and who they must hate. Government tells us whom we must hate when it sends our young men and women to war. Government even assumes they have the right to decide for us whom we can love by making criminal certain types of sexual relations and tell us whom we can marry by mandating that we purchase a permission slip.
Marriage is a contract between two individuals and possibly, depending on your personal belief system, God Almighty. Government has no place in the mix. What would you say if someone told you that your husband or wife was ill-suited for you and therefore your marriage was illegal? You would probably tell them, "It ain't none of your damned business who I marry and I will thank you to keep your big fat nose out of my affairs." You would also be one step closer to understanding the true foundation of libertarianism … the absolute superiority of individual rights.
The very idea of a marriage license was concocted specifically for the purpose of barring people of color from marrying white people. These laws were eventually recognized as clearly unconstitutional and unenforceable and are no longer on the books. Yet today we hear arguments very similar to those used to justify these Jim Crow laws employed to justify banning same-sex marriages.
What is even more bizarre is that President Obama, whose parents would have been labeled criminals in an earlier time and place in America, takes the misguided view that he must enforce what he himself says is a clearly unconstitutional law, the inappropriately named Defense of Marriage Act.
The issue of gay marriage is not about marriage at all. It is a civil rights issue. It is an issue of the rights of the individual being considered paramount in all legal matters. Marriage is an individual choice to be someone's mate. It is another area of personal human endeavor that is none of the government's business.
Let me be clear: in the Lee Wrights Administration no unconstitutional law will be enforced. Should I be elected, the oath I will take as president, nearly the same oath I swore to when I enlisted in the United States Air Force, will bind me to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States …" I intend to live up to that oath. As president, I will not enforce any unconstitutional law, nor will I allow anyone in my administration to enforce unconstitutional laws.
The goal of the Wrights Administration will be to stop all war not only on other nations but also on the rights of individuals to make their own decisions. In order to live in peace, we must allow others to be at peace. We must remain vigilant in our insistence that the rights of each individual should be safeguarded, rather than disregarded, by government bureaucrats.
R. Lee Wrights is a writer and political activist living in Texas. He is the co-founder and editor of the free speech online magazine Liberty For All. Lee is considering a run for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination. Contact Lee at rleewrights@gmail.com.
http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=5623
The Constitution and the Zero Aggression Principle
The Constitution and the Zero Aggression Principle
by L. Neil Smith
lneil@netzero.com
Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise
The Zero Aggression Principle holds that nobody has a right (that is, no such right exists) to initiate physical force against anybody else for any reason whatever. Neither is it ethically acceptable to advocate or to delegate the initiation of force. Observe the central importance of the word "initiate". What libertarians call the "ZAP" is not a call for pacifism. It does not prohibit the legitimate act of self-defense.
Although I've always understood perfectly that it won't solve all human problems, I've been known, from time to time, to defend the ZAP -- which is the very heart and soul of libertarianism -- by pointing out that, if an individual absolutely refuses to take or live by the non-aggression pledge, I have no other choice than to believe that he's reserving some right he mistakenly believes he has to initiate force against me whenever he finds it convenient, or the mood strikes him.
Let me repeat that, so there can be no misunderstanding whatever. Anyone who rejects the Zero Aggression Principle has to be regarded as reserving some right that he mistakenly believes he has to initiate force against me whenever he finds it convenient, or the mood strikes him.
Precautions will be taken accordingly.
Believe me, after 49 years in the freedom movement, I'm quite adamant about this. If you aren't willing, formally, to forego the initiation of force, then you're not a libertarian no matter what you claim.
Recently, it occurred to me that a similar relationship exists between the Constitution -- especially the Bill of Rights= -- and politicians. Every office holder is required to take a formal oath, one hand on a Holy Book (make mine Atlas Shrugged), the other hand in the air, to uphold and defend the Constitution against "all enemies foreign and domestic". Sometimes these oaths even add "without mental reservation".
And yet, every office holder violates that oath within the first half hour of his term -- giving or accepting paper money, for example -- and keeps violating it until he dies, quits, or the voters turn him out.
Some politicians have the decency, at least, to pretend to be apologetic about this. We can probably forgive Ron Paul, for example. He's done his absolute damnedest to get our battered country back on a Constitutional basis, including shutting down the Fed and making real money legal once again. Others are considerably less so. One, asked about the constitutionality of her behavior, infamously snapped back, "Are you kidding?" Another, known widely as a buckethead, snarled that the Constitution is "just a piece of paper", which, in point of fact, is inaccurate. It's vellum, the prepared skin of some unspecified mammal.
Some politicians claim the Constitution is a "living document" -- that it somehow mysteriously morphs all by itself to fit the political correctness of the times. It's extremely common to hear members of the parasitic class blather that, because the document in question is so old, it's clearly obsolete and therefore, somehow, no longer the highest law of the land. One particularly bean-brained chair-warmer asserted recently that because it's more than 100 years old -- it's 222 years old at the moment -- nobody can possibly understand what it means.
Somebody should point out to this clown that Shakespeare's works are twice as old as the Constitution, and plenty of people still seem to enjoy them. Beowulf is probably a thousand years old and remains perfectly understandable to those who expend the minimal effort required to learn the almost-English it's written in. And would this guy claim that nobody understands the five thousand year old Ten Commandments?
If a politician denies the historical validity and the ultimate legal authority of the Constitution -- particularly the first ten amendments -- it isn't any different than with the Zero Aggression Principle. He's reserving some right he mistakenly believes he has to violate the law whenever he finds it convenient, or the mood strikes him.
Let me repeat that, too, so there can be no misunderstanding. Any politician who denies the Constitution has to be regarded as reserving some right that he mistakenly believes he has to violate the highest law of the land whenever he finds it convenient, or the mood strikes him.
As with the ZAP, precautions should be taken accordingly.
Understand clearly that nobody is ever forced to take the Zero Aggression Pledge. As the great Roger Price observed many years ago, that would be like all of us who believe the Earth is round, gathering up all those who believe the Earth is flat -- and shoving them off the edge. As it is, and like it or not, the pledge/no pledge dichotomy has established two tiers within the libertarian movement, those who can be trusted to be left in a room with your baby daughter, and those who cannot.
But I digress.
All public officeholders, on the other hand, are required by law to take an oath with regard to the Constitution. If they do so with the immediate intention of disregarding it, then they have committed perjury, a felony. If they violate it at any time while in office, that is a crime, as well, for which they must be made to pay the price.
The price that I have long suggested is that they be transported to a little town in Pennsylvania called Nuremberg where, with money donated voluntarily, a great hall will be erected, in order that these criminals be indicted and tried -- as conspicuously as possible in our age of technology -- for their many and heinous crimes against the Constitution.
We will call these the "Nuremberg II Tribunals".
Upon conviction, they will be transported to a brand new 100-story prison, black and windowless, built atop the ruins of the old federal prison on the island of Alcatraz, exclusively designed for government miscreants. Prisoners will be allowed out once a day on its unrailed rooftop. Tourists on excursion boats will pay happily for meat past its expiration date to chum the shark-infested waters of San Francisco Bay.
Life in solitary confinement might be appropriate for those who have abused Bradley Manning and wish to abuse Julian Assange the same way.
It's a small dream, but my own.
Feel free to dream it with me.
It's no coincidence at all that "Constitutionalists" are just one of dozens of perfectly respectable American groups against whom Sisty Step-ugler Janet Napolitano has repeatedly tried to arouse local law enforcement. Such folks must be dealt with; they understand that she's a criminal. Happily, Napolitano couldn't arouse anything but another warthog.
Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics of self-defense. He is the author of more than 25 books, including The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website "The Webley Page" at lneilsmith.org.
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2011/tle609-20110306-05.html
Re: Eric Holder Rejects GOP Framing of Black Panther Voting Incident
I've seen this video of this so-called "voter intimidation". There was
none.
none.
HILARIOUS!
Guys in military garb with weapons, at the front door of a polling
place, yelling, "You are about to be ruled by the black man,
cracker!"
Nah. Nothing there at all.
But a Bush/Cheney sign at a Pizza joint across the street from the DNC
in Boston.
Shut it down!
LOL
On Mar 4, 7:55 pm, Sage2 <wisdom...@gmail.com> wrote:
> They were already convicted when they defaulted on their court
> appearance. The Government had already won the case. Eric ( the
> racist ) Holder dropped the charges simply because they were brothas !
>
> ********************************************************************************************************************************
>
> On Mar 4, 2:02 pm, the daily search <thedailysea...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > *Attorney General Eric Holder rightly rejected
> > <http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0311/Eric_Holder_Black_Pan...>
> > *the accusation of a GOP House Appropriations committee member that:
>
> > *"There's clearly evidence, overwhelming evidence, that your Department of
> > Justice refuses to protect the rights of anybody other than African
> > Americans to vote". *Video of "incident<http://www.thedailysearch.com/2011/03/eric-holder-rejects-gop-framing...>
> > "**
>
> > * *
>
> > I've seen this video of this so-called "voter intimidation". There was none.
> > People just presumed that because they were black and with wood clubs they
> > were there to stop white people from voting, instead of just ensuring no one
> > was stopped from voting, black or white. The error is in attributing or
> > projecting intent based on their looks - in this case African American -
> > without there being any actual attempt to suppress votes. It basically
> > reveals...*Read the rest*<http://www.thedailysearch.com/2011/03/eric-holder-rejects-gop-framing...>- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
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Re: Just in Case You Are Taking the Republicans Seriously
Larry Vance again?
There's a reason I don't quote Glenn Beck, ya know.
On Mar 5, 3:00 am, Keith In Köln <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Geesh Studio, you begin to post the most ludicrous crap these days.
>
> Social Security Medicare and Medicaid were all started by socialists within
> the Democrat Party, and were opposed by conservatives who were within the
> Republican Party. All are dismal failures, and all are going to have to be
> reformed, of course by conservatives who are within the Republican Party.
>
> What does a kid who violates the law have to do with anything that's within
> the political spectrum?
>
> Wake up and smell the coffee Studio!
>
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 7:30 AM, studio <tl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > On Feb 28, 7:00 pm, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> > > Just in Case You Are Taking the Republicans SeriouslyPosted byLaurence
> > Vanceon February 28, 2011 04:31 PM
> > > . . . like, when they say we need to repeal Obamacare because it is
> > socialism. Remember that Social Security, Medicare, and public education are
> > three of the greatest socialist schemes on the planet. When Republicans say
> > that they too need to be eliminated because they are socialism then we can
> > begin to take them seriously.
>
> > Not many people are taking Republicans seriously.
> > Their party is in divisive shreds at the moment, and isn't likely to
> > get better anytime soon.
>
> > Even stalwart Conservatives like George Will are saying he wouldn't
> > trust them with a lemonade stand much less nuclear bombs.
>
> > No the 4th social program is the military industrial complex and para-
> > military police state.
> > You know, the people who will send 3 cops who spend 2 hours apiece in
> > paperwork arresting a kid smoking a joint (app. $600. retail value),
> > who then goes in front of a judge for 15 minutes (app. $250 retail
> > value) and who is then found guilty and fined $50. ... those people.
>
> > --
> > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
> > For options & help seehttp://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
>
> > * Visit our other community athttp://www.PoliticalForum.com/<http://www.politicalforum.com/>
> > * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
> > * Read the latest breaking news, and more.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
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