The media says “right wingers” want a civil war after Mar-a-Lago.

Not true.

Authentic, patriotic, freedom-loving Americans want a politicized, dangerous DOJ/FBI stripped of its power. They want the restoration of a rights-respecting republic.

To a Big Government leftist type, anything less than 100 percent control of everything by them is “anarchy” and “lawlessness.” When we had a President who favored a few tax cuts, a little relaxing of regulations and a slightly less expansive government than the near-totalitarian one we have now, they shrieked like insurrectionists. The moment they got what they wanted — unlimited and likely permanent power, effectively repealing our Bill of Rights — they shriek “insurrectionists” in the direction of anyone who so much as hints at dissension.

That’s what the DOJ and FBI are now for: Persecution of dissension.

Soon we’ll see how the IRS has taken that role on now, too.

Don’t kid yourself. If President Donald Trump can wind up in jail — and I’m predicting he will — then it can happen to any of us, at any time the government feels like it. Everything I have been writing for over a year now has come to pass. Only I’ve been understating it a bit, as we can see.

Libertarian types were warning us a century ago that the establishment of agencies like the FBI, the IRS, the FDA, the CDC, the FCC, the FEC the DEA and all the rest would, ultimately, lead to the enslavement of the people.

They were ignored and ridiculed.

What do you say to their objections now?

We’re the lucky generation who got to see that they were right.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin recently claimed the 15 percent corporate minimum tax contained in the Inflation Reduction Act, which should be called the Inflation Creation Act, is not a tax increase. Instead, he claimed, the bill simply closes a loophole that allows corporations to avoid paying all the taxes they owe. Despite what Senator Manchin says, the fact is the new minimum tax increases the amount of money some corporations must hand over to the government; in other words, it increases their taxes.

It is common for politicians, policy wonks, and even some libertarians to demonize loopholes for making the tax system too complex, but loopholes are simply ways that individuals can keep more of their money. Loopholes are thus pro-liberty and pro-sound economics.

In addition to raising taxes, the Inflation Reduction Act provides 80 billion dollars to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Some of the money will go to improving taxpayer services so, for example, taxpayers may actually talk to a real person who can provide information about the tax law when they call the agency. But, over 50 percent will be spent on enforcement.

The IRS is expected to hire approximately 87,000 new agents. Supporters of the expansion say the IRS will use the enhanced enforcement capacity to target only “the rich.” However, it is not necessary to massively increase the IRS’s enforcement capacity just to go after “rich tax cheats.”

Furthermore, rich people and big corporations can hire attorneys and accountants to make sure they limit their tax liability while staying within the legal limits. They can also fight any attempt by the IRS to make them pay more. Middle- and working-class Americans are unable to afford legions of attorneys and accountants to limit their tax liability or fight the IRS, so they are more likely to pay whatever the IRS demands.

The IRS has a history of disrespecting due process rights of Americans, so creating a new army of IRS agents with a mission to extract more money will lead to massive liberties violations. Given the IRS’s shameful history of harassing the political enemies of whoever holds power at the moment, we should expect the new agents to target opponents of US foreign policy, gun control, government promotion of green energy, and other policies of the current administration.

The IRS recently ran an ad seeking agents who are willing to carry a firearm and use deadly force. This comes after the tax agency’s purchase this year of 700,000 dollars worth of ammunition. Perhaps the agency is worried that the latest attempt to get more taxes from Americans already suffering from the inflation tax will lead to violence, or perhaps the IRS wants its agents to carry firearms to remind taxpayers that the tax laws are backed by the threat of government violence.

The premise behind the income tax is that the government is the true owner of all property and thus has the right to take as much from the people as it desires. Therefore, the income tax, like the other monstrosity created in 1913 — the Federal Reserve, is incompatible with a free society but necessary for an authoritarian welfare-warfare state. To avoid 1984, repeal 1913.

Ron Paul

From Daniel Jupp:

“Not content with stealing an election, gaslighting the whole world, siphoning off billions with one massive and massively corrupt and untraceable spending package after another, the most evil political party in the western world have taken the final step.

If the sudden impossible vote spikes didn’t tell you, this does.

If the late night ballot deliveries and the mules didn’t tell you, this does.

If an inauguration with 30,000 troops didn’t tell you, this does.

If the witch hunt trials and Stalinist show trials and false impeachments and the murder of Ashli Babbitt didn’t tell you, this does.

If going after every Trump associate and every Trump loyalist didn’t tell you, this does.

The FBI are beyond redemption. The media are beyond redemption. An FBI raid on Trump’s home is beyond redemption.

This isn’t a federal Republic, it’s a banana republic. This isn’t a democracy, it’s a travesty.

The Free World isn’t free. What Stalin couldn’t do, what Hitler couldn’t do, the Democratic Party, tech billionaires and the most corrupt media in all of human history have done.

CIA sponsored coups take place on American soil now. The FBI are indistinguishable from the East German Stasi. Protestors are held without trial for over a year and tortured. Dissident leaders to the level of the man who won the election and is the legitimate President are raided by the not so secret police of a third world dictatorship.

Make no mistake when they go this far you don’t return to normality by winning the midterms or winning the Presidential race two years after that. When they go this far you are basically right before the point where they disappear and kill whoever they like, where the mysterious Clinton fatality list looks like a small preliminary sketch of the forty foot canvas to come.

An overblown response? Seriously, if Trump was murdered by them tomorrow would one TV station or one news outlet or one mainstream journalist report it? Would one line deviate from whatever lie was decided on to pretend the murder was not a murder? Why? Why would they suddenly find honesty for that? The only reason they haven’t killed him is because they don’t need to. They can disappear him in other ways, like FBI raids, like the whole apparatus of power ignoring him the way they did when he called out the steal.

If anyone gets past this level of corruption, if sanity is restored, it’s going to take a fundamental root and branch purge of the entire federal government, of every branch of government, and especially of the FBI and the CIA. You’re going to have to sack thousands, close the doors or better burn down the buildings, maybe salt the ground too. You’re going to have to cut off ten thousand lines of credit at the public spending teat, create a replacement for the FBI and have it just as partisan in your direction as the old thing was in theirs.

This raid is the final proof if any more proof were needed.

It’s war, and if you find your heart softened with the need for restraint, your civilised soul terrified of excessive response, your faith in the fundamental mechanisms that prevent tyranny only shaken, not broken, your chief desire that of peace, and compromise, and moderation….then you are no fucking use to anyone.”

By calling criticism “attacks” and then immediately warning the country of the danger “violence and threats” against the FBI pose, [FBI Director] Wray deceitfully framed legitimate speech as violence or, at a minimum, the threat of violence. The object of this framing is obvious: to silence Americans who have finally found their voice following the FBI’s raid of Trump’s private residence at Mar-a-Lago.

In a country founded on first freedoms — foremost of which is free speech — Wray’s statement proves shocking.

–Margot Cleveland, The Federalist

Abraham Lincoln, in his Lyceum address, speaking (unknowingly) of the Mar-a-Lago raid of 2022:

“By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained. — Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose…

By such things, the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it; and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak, to make their friendship effectual. At such a time and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric, which for the last half century, has been the fondest hope, of the lovers of freedom, throughout the world.”

The arbitrary, political attack on former President Trump’s home yesterday is, some people say, like another 9/11.

In a way, it’s worse. 9/11 was an attack on the United States by outside forces — by religious fanatics and the governments who supported them (mostly covertly).

Yesterday’s attack was from OUR OWN GOVERNMENT. It proves what some of us have been claiming for months — that the United States government, including the core of the federal authority at the Department of Justice, now operates on politics and politics alone.

In such an environment, nobody is safe.

Not once you’re on the government’s radar as politically incorrect. Once you are, they can make up any legal charges they want. They’re doing it to President Trump, and they are not going to stop — because, so long as we accept the moral and even legal legitmacy of this occupation government using its immense power to act against anyone who criticizes them, there’s no defending yourself within that corrupt system. Once the system is itself run by amoral, immoral outlaws, there’s no recourse any longer to the rule of law itself.

Constitutionally, legally and existentially … we are all adrift, all alone. Unless you pledge total allegiance and totalitarian devotion to the regime in power. That’s how most of the world already works, and how most of the world always did work. America was different. Now we know: America no longer is any different. Not in principle and, increasingly, not in practice. As for the “in practice” part — they’re just getting started. Watch what they do to Trump next, and watch what happens when they go after the citizenry itself, starting with these 90,000 new IRS agents.

9/11 showed Americans how vulnerable their republic, their system and their way of life were. The events of that day did not destroy individual rights, the United States Constitution and our freedom, but those events did show how we could lose those things more easily than we realized.

The events of yesterday brought to a climax and showed, beyond any doubt now, that our republic and our Constitution are already gone. We are not in a position of having to defend them. We are in a position of having to bring them back.

Michael J. Hurd