“Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment’s torture.” ― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.” ― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” ― Ayn Rand
President Donald Trump must issue the appropriate executive order in compliance with the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, and direct all government agencies/entities to make public and unredacted all complete files and records pertaining to the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy as directed by this Act. This information shall be transmitted to the National Archives for full public disclosure to be included in the Archives’ Collection and made available for public inspection and copying.
There is an ever-growing scholarly consensus among presidential historians, distinguished political analysts, and JFK assassination researchers that on November 22, 1963, an insidious coup d’état by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and the highest echelons of the National Security State was accomplished with the brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy.
The official full 889-page report by the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, about the assassination of President John Kennedy on November 22, 1963, established the cover-up of this coup. Their landmark final report was presented to President Lyndon Johnson on September 24, 1964, and made public on September 27.
The “smoking gun” in the cover-up of the assassination is found in CIA Dispatch #1035-960 (available online). This was the crucial covert directive to the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird elite media assets to vigorously denounce critics of the Warren Commission Report as “conspiracy theorists.” This is when that particular derogatory term of denunciation and disinformation widely entered the national conversation in an attempt to marginalize, cut off and stifle informed debate on the president’s murder because the path of evidence would lead directly to those elements behind the sinister cover-up.
These facts are discussed in detail in Lance deHaven-Smith’s authoritative Conspiracy Theory in America (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press). Dr. Smith is a widely published scholar in peer-reviewed academic journals and is Professor in the Reubin O’ D. Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
What happened on that fateful Friday in Dallas fifty-seven years ago led to perhaps the single most important series of events affecting the subsequent history of our nation. It lies at the inner most depth, the dark clotted heart, of what observers now describe as the deep state.
Here are additional authoritative evidentiary resources to assist readers in examining this seminal event —
This is the full length uncut version of Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane. Lane, one of the early critics of the preconceived conclusions of the Warren Commission, went to Dallas to do his own investigation and interview witnesses that were ignored by the Commission and others who expanded on their knowledge of the JFK assassination. Particularly crucial were the authoritative statements of eyewitnesses S. M. Holland, Lee E. Bowers, James Tague, and Mrs. Acquila Clemons, What is portrayed in this short critique offers a different picture from the one presented by the US government to the world. This film is a brief for the defense of Lee Harvey Oswald. Mark Lane’s pioneering best-selling book, Rush to Judgment, challenged the Warren Commission Report relating to Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole assassin of President John Kennedy.
Horne is the former Chief Analyst for Military Records for the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), established by the JFK Records Act of 1992, which was tasked with defining, locating, and ensuring the declassification (to the maximum extent possible under the JFK Act) of all Federal Records considered “reasonably related” to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Horne details the numerous anomalies and interrupted chain of custody and destruction of key evidence regarding the president’s body, in the autopsy report(s), the autopsy photo collection (particularly the JFK brain photographs), the deliberate alteration and forgery of the extant Zapruder film, and the supposed “magic bullet” found at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Watch Douglas P. Horne’s definitive five part video documentary series which summarizes his exceptional research, Altered History: Exposing Deceit and Deception in the JFK, Assassination Medical Evidence. Horne has also written the concise authoritative summary volume, JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated.
While serving as chief analyst of military records at the Assassination Records Review Board in 1997, Douglas P. Horne discovered that the Zapruder Film was examined by the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center two days after the assassination of President Kennedy. In this film, Horne interviews legendary NPIC photo interpreter Dino Brugioni, who speaks for the first time about another NPIC examination of the film the day after the assassination. Brugioni didn’t know about the second examination and believes the Zapruder Film in the archives today is not the film he saw the day after the assassination. Drawing on Volume 4 of his book “Inside the ARRB”, Horne introduces the subject and presents his conclusions.
This is an excellent and invaluable resource. Comprehensive, accessible and unprecedented, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination presents vital information on each of more than 1,400 individuals related in any noteworthy way to the murders of President John F. Kennedy, Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit and alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22 and 24, 1963. Based on years of research, a wealth of sources and a long study of the Warren Commission’s twenty-six volumes, this encyclopedic book includes: A-to-Z entries on virtually all the suspects, victims, witnesses, law enforcement officials and investigators.
Quick identification of each person followed by biographical facts, testimony, evidence and more. Detailed listings of sources. Explorations of the puzzling theories and countless sides of the case. Extensive cross-referencing of entries, allowing readers to follow their own investigations and construct their own conclusions. This all-new who’s who will prove an essential companion to the many best-selling books, documentaries and feature films about the JFK assassination.
Bound to be referred to again and again, it is the complete resource for anyone who wants to know more about– or wants to keep better track of– the key players involved in one of the most infamous chapters in American history.
This is the first of several high-level political analyses motivated by a need to better understand the politics that led to both the JFK assassination and the Nixon Watergate Affair. It deploys as the primary theoretical model, C. Wright Mills “Theory of the Power Elite” and the framework in Carroll Quigleys book Tragedy and Hope. With these tools, Carl Oglesby posits an interesting thesis: that JFK’s assassination, instead of being a random act by a lone nut was in fact a carefully planned and professional executed ongoing coup d’ etat a la Americaine, a not so silent coup by the same forces responsible for the murders of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X and possibly the demise and eventual destruction of the billionaire Howard Hughes.
What all of these events had in common was that they were links in a chain designed to replace one set of power elite (members of the old moneyed “peace promoting” Northeastern Yankee Establishment) with another (the Nuevo Riche and newly arrived, “progress through war” Western Cowboys). Thus it is argued here that the events connecting Dallas, Memphis, Watergate and the demise of the Hughes empire, are but threads in a common fabric, growing and evolving directly out of the systematic corruption of American politics and out of contemporary political realities.
The late Murray N. Rothbard was particularly enamored with this pioneering book, remarking:
Carl Oglesby’s new book is not only exciting and thoroughly researched, it presents the only analytic framework — originated by himself — which makes sense of the violent events of the last decade and a half our recent political history, and puts them all into a coherent framework: the Yankee vs. Cowboy analysis.
The important question looms: why is it that Oglesby has been alone in coming up with this framework? I think the answer is that the methodologies of other writers and researchers have led them astray: the free-market economists who are critical of government actions never bother to ask who benefited from those actions and who were likely to be responsible for them; the Marxists are anxious to indict an abstract, mythical and unified ‘capitalist class’ for all evils of government, and believe that detailed research into concrete divisions and conflicts among power elites detract from such an indictment; those sociologists who have engaged in concrete power elite analysis have only examined structures (who owns corporation X, who belongs to what social club?) rather than the dynamics of concrete historical events; the one writer who has treated Yankees and Cowboys has been so blinded by particular hostility to the Cowboys that he virtually includes everyone living in the Sunbelt as part of a vast Cowboy conspiracy; and the various doughty investigators and reporters of Dallas or Watergate have struck to surface events because they lacked the overall coherent framework.
Carl Oglesby has surmounted all of these defects, and has therefore been able to make a giant breakthrough in explaining our recent history.
The death of Mary Meyer left many Americans with questions. Who really killed her? Why did CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton rush to find and confiscate her diary? Had she discovered the plan to assassinate her lover, President Kennedy, with the trail of information ending at the steps of the CIA? Was it only coincidence that she was killed less than three weeks after the release of the Warren Commission Report?
Fans of The Murder of Mary Russell, JFK: A Vision for America, and other JFK books will love Mary’s Mosaic. Building and relying on years of interviews and painstaking research, author Peter Janney follows the key events and influences in Mary Pinchot Meyer’s life—her first meeting with Jack Kennedy; her support of her secret lover, President Kennedy, as he worked towards the pursuit of world peace and away from the Cold War; and her exploration of psychedelic drugs. Fifty years after the assassinations of President Kennedy and Mary Meyer, this book helps readers understand why both took place.
Author Peter Janney fought for two years to obtain documents from the National Personnel Records Center and the US Army to complete this third edition. It includes a final chapter about the mystery man who could be the missing piece to learn the truth behind Meyer’s murder.
Dr. Cyril Wecht, for two decades the elected coroner of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (including Pittsburgh), is a nationally acclaimed forensic pathologist, and holds both a medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1956), and a law degree from the University of Maryland (1962). Forensic pathologists specialize in medically determining how and why someone died.
In criminal murder cases this function is absolutely vital in helping to determine the guilt or innocence of a suspect — in no case more so than in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Dr. Wecht, a very early critic of the Warren Commission, testified at the HSCA. At the annual JFK Lancer assassination research conference in Dallas, held in November, Dr. Wecht summarized the medical evidence against the lone-gunman hypothesis. At the center of Dr. Wecht’s examination is what has become known as the “single-bullet theory” — or the “magic bullet,” as it is known to its detractors: the theory that one bullet can account for the multiple wounds (besides the headshot) of both JFK and Governor Connally.
According to Dr. Wecht, the conclusions of the Warren Commission rest entirely on the single-bullet theory. If that theory fails, then there had to be more than one gunman. This, in turn, leads to questions about the history of the United States since 1963 that many people would rather not pursue. With both passion and meticulous attention to detail, Wecht dissects the Warren Commission’s conclusions.
Moving beyond the medical evidence, he then utters words unexpected from any former American elected official, and particularly powerful coming from a person with his credentials: “What we witnessed…my friends, in plain, plain English — was [a] coup d’état in America. The overthrow of the government. That’s what this case was all about.”
Watch this classic eight minute YouTube clip of JFK Assassination researcher John Judge from the “JFK: Cinema as History” conference (January 1992) which appeared on C-SPAN. It reveals more about “the why” of the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the coup d’état following his murder than almost anything you have probably heard.
After quoting Thomas Jefferson on the importance of a free press to a republic, John Judge makes a disparaging reference to The Washington Post and The New York Times. He then pauses for a few seconds and is shown glaring at another panel member. This person (not shown in the clip) was Walter Pincus of The Washington Post, who had viciously attacked Oliver Stone’s movie JFK. The older man who is briefly shown in one momentary scene is the late Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty who served as chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff where he was in charge of the global system designed to provide military support for covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. In Oliver Stone’s highly acclaimed film, JFK, the mysterious character ‘X’ portrayed by Donald Sutherland was in fact Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who assisted director Stone in the production and scripting of this historical epic.
Prouty had relayed the shocking information detailed in the movie to the actual New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Cosner) in a series of communiques. Fletcher Prouty was the author of two excellent books, The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World,and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy.https://www.youtube.com/embed/GZGIEDiRw-4 Narrated by Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman, “JFK: A President Betrayed” uncovers shocking evidence that reveals how President John F. Kennedy, early in his term as president in 1961, felt entrapment, that he had been misled by his military and intelligence advisors regarding the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Because of this betrayal he was determined to constantly be on guard regarding subsequent strategic advice issued to him.
After his confrontational June 1961 Vienna Summit meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, later that year in September Kennedy under took a bold initiative and introduced at the Sixteenth General Assembly of the United Nations a Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World.
Conversely the national security establishment (particularly the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA) believed, not in disarmament but in a nuclear first strike policy against the Soviet Union, and that JFK was naive and lacked determination and resolve in his opposition to this apocalyptic doomsday scenario. On March 13, 1962 the JCS submitted Operation Northwoods as a pretext for a Cuban Invasion.
This war between JFK and the military intensified following the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Pentagon leaders such as Air Force chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay believed the peaceful resolution of the Crisis was not Kennedy’s finest hour but had been appeasement of the Soviets and the worst disaster in American history.
JFK proceeded to embark on secret back channel peace efforts with Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro and was determined to get out of Vietnam despite intense opposition inside his own government.
It all came to an end on November 22, 1963, when an insidious coup d’état by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and the highest echelons of the National Security State was accomplished with the brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.
HAVING to do your taxes is always a mournful occasion. But having to do them during an election year is an even sadder experience. Not only do you struggle with forms and documentation that have no inherent reason, and have to pay an amount far beyond what reason would dictate, you are also constantly bombarded with by political candidates reminding you that the main use of those dollars will be to support policies you oppose and fund bribes to buy other people’s votes.
While paying taxes you don’t believe are justified, for purposes you don’t approve of, is painful, it is not unpredictable. Half a century ago, in The Income Tax: Root of all Evil, Frank Chodorov showed how the abrogation of citizens’ property rights by the income tax leads to the rapid expansion of that exact result, and corrupts Americans and America’s experiment in liberty in the process.
It is worth revisiting Chodorov’s insights about the consequences of the income tax to bring attention back to America’s first principles, which is the only way any substantial improvement in the situation can ever occur.
The American Revolution…[established] a government based on a new and untried principle, namely, that the government has no power except what the governed have granted it … in 1913, when the government was invested with the power to confiscate private property … this power … put into the hands of the American government a means of liquidating the sovereignty of the citizenry.
The Sixteenth Amendment, enacted to increase the government’s revenues, has spawned another police department, another means of forcing the citizen into line. The inevitable consequence … is the use of income taxation to undermine the principles of republican government and to make a mockery of our tradition of freedom.
The Internal Revenue Bureau … has the means of harassing, intimidating, and crushing the citizen who falls into its disfavor.… Therefore, whenever the Bureau has reason to “get” somebody it has ample means at its disposal.
There have been cases … where citizens who have offended the party in power were suddenly visited by agents of the Bureau and subjected to interrogation and examination. Of course … there is no proof that the citizens’ views prompted these special investigations. It cannot be proved that the purpose was to silence opposition. But the practice is so well known that men of means have scrupulously avoided involvement in movements critical of the Administration, even though privately they are in sympathy with such movements.
If individuals persist in trying to circumvent the political establishment … or if they preach doctrines inimical to the interest of the ruling group, then … freedom of thought must be suppressed.
A government is as strong as its income. Contrariwise, the independence of the people is in direct proportion to the amount of their wealth they can enjoy. We cannot restore traditional American freedom unless we limit the government’s power to tax. Trace this wholesale infringement of our rights to the power acquired by the federal government in 1913 to tax our incomes—the Sixteenth Amendment … the “evil” has reached the point where the doctrine of natural rights has been all but abrogated in fact, if not in theory.
A people who are intent on getting something-for-nothing from government cannot cavil over the infringement of their rights by that government.
The government says to the citizen: “your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide.”
The right of decision as to the disposition of your property rests in the government by virtue of the Sixteenth Amendment of the Constitution … it gives the government a prior lien on all the property produced by its subjects. When the Sixteenth Amendment became part of the Constitution, the American political order, which rested on the axiom of inalienable rights, underwent a major operation.
TOO few people know the inspirational story of Booker T. Washington, who sought “the most complete freedom compatible with the freedom of others.” Rather than promoting government coercion of others, he demonstrated the moral means to success—self-improvement, which also benefits others through voluntary arrangements.
Booker T. Washington, born a slave, was seven when the Emancipation Proclamation was announced. At 11, he got his first book and taught himself to read. He thought to “get into a schoolhouse and study … would be about the same as getting into paradise.” At 16, he went 500 miles to Hampton Institute, where he attended classes by day and worked nights to earn his room and board. After graduation, Hampton made him an instructor. In 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Institute.
Washington was a tireless advocate of self-improvement, emphasizing individual responsibility, the dignity of work, and moral character. He encouraged industry and entrepreneurship. Unlike many, he understood capitalism, recognizing that those who serve others best thereby serve themselves best. Washington recognized that for blacks’ advancement, starting from the legacy of government-enforced slavery, coercion of others was not the answer.
Instead, it would be found through self-improvement and voluntary arrangements, because, regardless of past injustices, only voluntary arrangements prevent additional injustices from being committed, and “no question is ever permanently settled until it is settled in the principles of the highest justice.”
Whenever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists. Slavery presented a problem of destruction; freedom presents one of construction. I have never had much patience with…[those] always ready to explain why one cannot succeed. I have always had high regard for the man who could tell me how to succeed. Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.
Nor shall we permit our grievances overshadow our opportunities.
There are two ways of exerting one’s strength; one is pushing down, the other is pulling up. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
Constructive action … must constitute the bedrock of all true civilization. One constructive effort in the way of progress does more to blot out discrimination than all the whinings in the world. The most complete development of each human being can come only through his being permitted to exercise the most complete freedom compatible with the freedom of others.
Freedom, in the broadest and highest sense, has never been a bequest; it has been a conquest.
Our republic is the outgrowth of the desire for liberty that is natural in every human breast … and the most complete guarantee of the safety of life and property. In a state of freedom…[man] renders the highest and most helpful form of service [to others]. It is what a man or woman is able to do that counts.
No man who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives is left long without proper reward. The individual who can do something that the world wants will, in the end, make his way regardless of race.
Booker T. Washington’s character and actions are both inspiring. His emphasis on rejecting coercion of others, relying instead on self-improvement and voluntary arrangements, is exactly what Americans need to learn to make the most of their lives. And despite the fact that self-improvement requires hard work and sacrifice, which a tide of modern influences fight against, it is as necessary today as it was for Washington.
Objectively and honestly, I believe the United States is already in a second civil war.
What does a twenty-first century version of a civil war look like? Look around you. It’s mostly technological and financial. Follow the money. And follow who has control over the information. Who has control over the companies who “count” the votes? We know who does, at least in the states that mattered the most in our Electoral College. Look how well THAT’s turning out.
In today’s civil war, Governors and mayors selectively enforce law and order. If you’re a Marxist revolutionary who decides to harass people for racial and ideological reasons, you’re not arrested. If you’re an Antifa loser who throws food or weapons at people wearing MAGA hats, you are excused. You’re even encouraged. THAT’S civil war.
If you’re a conservative independent who wants to be left alone, and demands that government enforces law and order, you’re fined or jailed for failing to wear a mask; or for letting customers into your business during a permanent, ill-defined “pandemic”. You’re forced to pay taxes for schools that possibly may never open again. You’re forced to obey a curfew, unless you’re engaged in social activity approved of by the state. THAT’S civil war.
Sure, there are resisters. And over time, especially if Joe Biden and his criminal cronies take back total control of the government, you will probably see a lot more resistance — and violence. How could you not? One side openly threatens to seize weapons from law abiding people; the other side hasn’t fought back, but the threats of the Biden gun confiscators have not been put to the test — yet. What do you think will happen when those threats are acted upon? I don’t care what you think SHOULD or SHOULD NOT happen. What do you think WILL happen?
The civil war has already started. It’s going to get worse, but we already know what it looks like.
It’s not 1861. There’s no “blue” side and “gray” side. There’s no North vs. South. It’s urban leftists versus rural individualists. Suburbanites are, I suspect, split.
Right now, the ubranites/leftists are winning. They control virtually all of education, media, entertainment, the corporate and financial worlds and (when you count the Deep State entrenched bureaucrats), they control the government. They’re only winning because (1) the individualists and ruralists still have President Donald Trump to fight for them; and (2) the individualists and ruralists have not yet fought back. Not like the leftists fight. They have little or no means to do so, culturally. The leftists won dominance of the culture years ago. It solidified during Obama. All that conservatives have left are freedom of religion (with most churches still shut down); nominal freedom of speech (with social media literally acting like government censors); and, still by and large, the actual right to own a gun.
Right now, it looks like the shadow of a real, totalitarian dictatorship descending over America. Perhaps that’s where it will end. Maybe everyone, including the millions of Trump voters out there, will simply roll over, forever. But it’s too swift, too easy and too quick. Let’s say Biden gets in power. Leftists seem confident all will be well when that happens, as they assume it will. But how can they be so confident? And let’s say President Trump pulls off a historic feat, and gets the Supreme Court to throw the election to Congress where, we’re told, he will have the advantage state-by-state. Exactly what kind of response do you expect from the leftists in that scenario?
There’s no way this can end well. It has already started. I see no peaceful, rational resolution to any of this. I’m not being negative. I’m simply being objective. The psychological state of America makes a warring married couple headed for a contentious divorce (something I’ve seen a lot of, as a therapist) seem like nothing. The objective reality presented by left-wing and right-wing media is polarzied beyond the possibility of recognition or repair. When it comes to news, Americans are TOTALLY split. They get two utterly different versions of reality.
The only way I can see of avoiding an escalation in this civil war? An amiable split. A rational divorce. But that doesn’t look too likely, either. Does anyone have a proposal for a rational divorce? Can the individualistic Constitution lovers — those vast red areas you see on the electoral map — split off from all those concentrated blue areas? Perhaps. But nobody is talking about a peaceful split. Trump supporters are talking about keeping the President around for another four years. I am all for that, of course. But the battles he faces in the coming four years will make the last four seem like absolutely nothing. Because, like I said: The civil war has already started.
Please prove me wrong. I WANT to be wrong. But objectively, how can you claim otherwise?
There is a debate between two camps I’ll charitably call Reasonable Libertarians and Educated Libertarians.* Reasonable libertarians care about being respectable. Educated libertarians are concerned with being correct.
The key differences between the two groups become more evident in a crisis. In fact, the insights described in this article were developed during past crises including 9/11, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the bank crisis/housing crash, and several mass shootings. This article was written during a global pandemic.
Reasonable libertarians believe that their ideology is a helpful guide, but they gobble up and consume reported facts to arrive at a more scientific conclusion. Educated libertarians are suspicious of first through door “facts” because experience has taught them that future information – which appears long after the drive-by media has moved on – undermines and even contradicts the earliest reported facts. To state the difference more bluntly, reasonable libertarians are reading today’s New York Times, and educated libertarians are reading history books.
The two groups also look at authority figures differently. The reasonable libertarian wants to seem, well, “reasonable,” given that all the news seems to point in a given direction. They’re worried that doctrinaire libertarianism will leave a bad taste in most people’s mouths. The educated libertarian often doesn’t enjoy going against the tide, but they’ve learned that libertarianism has predictive power to see what the media isn’t telling us. Eventually, everyone comes around. When that happens, the educated libertarian wants their friends and family to ask, “How did you know?” To sum up the difference, as news breaks, the reasonable libertarian is more likely to cite establishment authorities, while the educated libertarian is more likely to be suspicious of them.
Both reasonable libertarians and educated libertarians are capable of nuance, and they each value precision. But the reasonable libertarian is a bit more likely to cite a statistic while the educated libertarian is a bit more likely to lean on logic. And this gets directly to how they analyze a societal challenge.
The reasonable libertarian will say that facts are your friend. They are willing to accept those facts as evidence that government action is valid. But they would insist that the resulting policies be narrowly tailored to make them as libertarian as possible. Their research shapes their response. The educated libertarian will say that principles are your pal. They would instinctively reject any State interventions as fear-based power plays with damaging consequences. Their libertarian response shapes their research.
I happen to be an educated libertarian. I truly love my reasonable libertarian brothers and sisters. The reasonable libertarians tend to have advanced degrees and tremendous intellects. They are part of the expert class. They use their scholarly skills to make me think. During normal times, I spend a great deal of time absorbing their thinking because it’s so rational and sound. But in a crisis, in the dark alley of doubt, I want an educated libertarian at my side who won’t succumb to the hysterical hype of the moment.
Postscript: The Educated Libertarian is confident that the Reasonable Libertarians will find evidence that the State actually failed after the crisis has passed. As a complement to this editorial, the author recommends Socialists and their Silly Stories by Donald J. Boudreaux.
* There’s also a third libertarian group, not covered here. This group presumes Emmanuel’s Law – “never let a crisis go to waste” – is in effect. Their views often include some degree of conspiracy. ———- Jim Babka is the Editor-at-Large for Advocates for Self-Government and the co-creator of the Zero Aggression Project.
Why did the founders of our nation give us the Bill of Rights? The answer is easy. They knew Congress could not be trusted with our God-given rights. Think about it. Why in the world would they have written the First Amendment prohibiting Congress from enacting any law that abridges freedom of speech and the press? The answer is that in the absence of such a limitation Congress would abridge free speech and free press.
That same distrust of Congress explains the other amendments found in our Bill of Rights protecting rights such as our rights to property, fair trial, and to bear arms. The Bill of Rights should serve as a constant reminder of the deep distrust that our founders had of government. They knew that some government was necessary but they rightfully saw government as the enemy of the people and they sought to limit government and provide us with protections.
After the 1787 Constitutional Convention, there were intense ratification debates about the proposed Constitution. Both James Madison and Alexander Hamilton expressed grave reservations about Thomas Jefferson’s, George Mason’s, and others’ insistence that the Constitution be amended by the Bill of Rights. Those reservations weren’t the result of a lack of concern for liberty. To the contrary, they were concerned about the loss of liberties.
Alexander Hamilton expressed his reservation in Federalist Paper No. 84, “[B]ills of rights… are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous.” Hamilton asks, “For why declare that things shall not be done [by Congress] which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given [to Congress] by which restrictions may be imposed?”
Hamilton’s argument was that Congress can only do what the Constitution specifically gave it authority to do. Powers not granted belong to the people and the states. Another way of examining Hamilton’s concern: Why have an amendment prohibiting Congress from infringing on our right to picnic on our back porch when the Constitution gives Congress no authority to infringe upon that right in the first place?
Alexander Hamilton added that a Bill of Rights would “contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more [powers] than were granted.… [it] would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power.” Going back to our picnic example, those who would usurp our God-given liberties might enact a law banning our right to have a picnic. They’d justify their actions by claiming that nowhere in the Constitution is there a guaranteed right to have a picnic.
To mollify Alexander Hamilton’s and James Madison’s fears about how a Bill of Rights might be used as a pretext to infringe on human rights, the Ninth Amendment was added that reads: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” In essence, the Ninth Amendment says it’s impossible to list all of our God-given or natural rights. Just because a right is not listed doesn’t mean it can be infringed upon or disparaged by the US Congress.
The Tenth Amendment is a reinforcement of the Ninth saying, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” That means if a power is not delegated to Congress, it belongs to the states or the people.
The Ninth and Tenth Amendments mean absolutely nothing today as Americans have developed a level of naive trust for Congress, the White House, and the US Supreme Court that would have astonished the founders, a trust that will lead to our undoing as a great nation.
Walter E. Williams, excerpt from “American Contempt for Liberty”
If you want to effectively express your beliefs about this deliberately chaotic election, I urge you to contact your representatives in your state legislature and Congress. Especially if you live in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona – cesspools of fraud and lawlessness all.
I described what we’re witnessing in an interview with Stephanie Hamill on One America News Network:
Americans see an election that’s been questioned because of substantial allegations of maladministration of the election – that’s a charitable interpretation of it. And they know there’s an air of violence and censorship and suppression if they dare raise questions about it or support the president. We who are defending the rule of law are being lectured about the peaceful transfer of power by the likes of President Obama, who during his transition was actually conspiring against President Trump and spying on his team illicitly.
In her Newsmax television show Sovereign Nation, Michelle Malkin complimented Judicial Watch for our work on elections and suggested that we have earned the right to say, “I told you so.” I take no comfort in that because we have unprecedented fraud occurring across the country.
Michelle asked me what Judicial Watch doing about it. My response :
Our litigators and investigators are figuring out where we can make a stand to preserve the lawful election result. U.S. Code designates this past Tuesday as Election Day. That’s when we’re supposed to select the president. Any votes being counted that arrive after that day should be subject to challenge. And any vote counting that occurs after Election Day should be subject to challenge. When you have a pause in counting, that indicates that fraud has taken place.
This is what I said to my Twitter followers about our activity:
Americans should demand courts and state legislatures and Congress protect free and fair elections! Judicial Watch is conducting independent investigations in PA, GA, AZ, NV, MI, WI!
We don’t know how all of this will play out. The election may well end up in Congress, as I explain in this video:
The electors vote as part of the Electoral College process in the middle of December. Then on January 6, the new Congress is supposed to meet and count the votes and essentially confirm and ratify the Electoral College selection of the president and vice president. Now, if there’s a challenge, you could get a situation where the House, for instance, wants to bless the Biden electors out of Pennsylvania and the Senate wants to reject them. Frankly, I’m not sure what happens next.
We have observed and researched and litigated elections for decades, and, as you might imagine, we are following this one extremely closely. We will be deploying our weapon of choice, the Freedom of Information Act, to uncover the truth.
Judicial Watch Sues Seven Federal Agencies for Flynn Unmasking Records
It is incredible to hear Barack Obama’s minions criticize President Trump’s attitude toward a “transition” to Joe Biden, given that Obama and his lieutenants were busy spying on Trump when he entered the White House.
One of the tools they used was “unmasking,” i.e., revealing the identity of someone in a conversation monitored by our intelligence agencies abroad. We’re going to find out more about this conspiracy.
We have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the CIA, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the State Department, and the Department of the Treasury for records of former Obama Administration officials requesting to unmask Lieutenant General (Retired) Michael Flynn ( Judicial Watch v. Central Intelligence Agency et al.(No. 1:20-cv-03314)). The suit was filed on November 16, 2020.
We sued after all of these agencies failed to respond to FOIA requests sent on September 1, 2020. Additionally, the Treasury Department failed to respond to a FOIA request served on September 2, 2020.
The FOIA requests ask for unmasking requests made by the following officials:
CIA: John Brennan – December 14 and 15, 2016
Defense Intelligence Agency: Deputy Assistant Director: National Media Exploitation Center – December 15, 2016
Department of Energy: Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall – December 15, 2016
FBI: James Comey – December 15, 2016
ODNI: James Clapper – December 2, 2016 to January 7, 2017, Michael Dempsy – January 7, 2017, Stephanie O’Sullivan – January 7, 2017
State Department: Kelly Degnan – December 6, 2016, John R. Phillips – Dec. 6, 2016, John Christenson – December 15, 2016, Douglas Lute – December 15, 2016, Lee Litzenberger – December 15, 2016, Tamir Waser – December 15, 2016
Treasury: Jacob Lew – December 14 and15, 2016, Mike Neufeld – December 14, 2016, Arthur McGlynn – December 14, 2016, Nathan Sheets – December 14, 2016, Adam Szubin – December 14, 2016, Sarah Raskin – December 14, 2016, Patrick Conlon – December 14, 2016
The names of officials and dates identified in the FOIA requests were taken directly from a list declassified on May 8, 2020, by then-Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell and submitted to Senators Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson on May 13.
These are not our first efforts to uncover Obama unmasking.
In October 2020 we sued the National Security Agency (NSA) for records of requests by former Vice President Joe Biden and other top Obama administration officials, including President Obama’s chief of staff, to “unmask” Flynn.
And in June 2020 we sued the State Department for records of requests by former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power to “unmask” Flynn.
The unmasking requests during the Obama-Trump transition by high-ranking Obama officials reek of sedition. President Trump should order a full-court transparency press to expose more of the truth about this terrible corruption.
ISIS Terrorist Released by Feds after Grand Jury Indictment
Nowadays, even a terrorism-related charge may not keep you in jail – as reported in our Corruption Chronicles blog.
An ISIS terrorist indicted by a federal grand jury for providing material support to the militant Islamist group has been released by federal authorities in Oregon. Even for the famously liberal west coast, it may seem unbelievable, especially since a Republican appointee heads the Department of Justice (DOJ), the agency that made the bizarre decision.
The defendant is Hawazen Sameer Mothafar, a 31-year-old U.S. resident charged with two counts of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization and one count of providing and attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 2339B(a)(1). Mothafar has also been charged with making false statements—denying his terrorist ties—in an immigration application and one count of false statement to a government agency.
Since 2015 up until his arrest just days ago Mothafar conspired with ISIS, according to the nine-page indictment issued this month. He produced and distributed ISIS propaganda and recruiting materials created and edited in coordination with the terrorist group’s official media operatives overseas. This includes the production, editing, and distribution of many publications and articles in a pro-ISIS online media organization. Among his writings is a piece titled “Effective Stabbing Techniques,” which provides detailed guidance on the best way to kill and maim a target during a knife attack. Mothafar also published a tutorial in an Arabic publication titled “How Does a Detonator Work,” that explains in detail the use of explosive ignition devices. The same issue of the Arabic edition includes info graphics containing a picture of the Eiffel Tower in Paris and Statute of Liberty in New York on fire with a caption indicating that they will soon be attacked. Another one of Mothafar’s propagandas encourages readers to carry out attacks in their home countries if traveling overseas to fight is not possible.
Most of Mothafar’s work has appeared in a terrorist online media conglomerate known as Al Dura’a al Sunni or Sunni Shield that circulates pro-ISIS propaganda in writing, via videos and graphics. Mothafar also moderated private chat groups for the jihadist media outlet and had regular contact with ISIS leaders overseas, according to federal prosecutors. Evidently, he served as the tech troubleshooter, providing high-level jihadists with technical support that includes opening social media and electronic mail accounts for official use. A senior ISIS official in custody in Iraq told investigators that it was Mothafar’s job to provide ISIS “new accounts when we needed new accounts as soon as possible,” the indictment states. In December 2019, Mothafar tried to acquire information involving piloting a drone carrying an object for Saleck Ould Cheikh Mohamedou, an Islamic extremist convicted for trying to assassinate Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the former president of the northwest African nation of Mauritania. Mohamedou is currently incarcerated there for the failed attempt.
While Mothafar was busy furthering terrorist missions in his adopted land, he repeatedly lied in U.S. immigration documents and to federal officials by denying ties to terrorist organizations. “This defendant is a legal permanent resident of the United States who abandoned the country that took him in and instead pledged allegiance to ISIS and repeatedly and diligently promoted its violent objectives,” said Oregon’s top federal prosecutor, Billy J. Williams, in a statement released by the agency. “Our national security prosecutors and law enforcement partners will continue to ensure that those who threaten our country are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” The special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Oregon said Mothafar was a leading figure in the Islamic State’s media network who tried to incite “lone actor” operators globally. “When it comes to cases like this one, a computer and a keyboard can be powerful weapons against enemies of the Islamic State,” the special agent, Renn Cannon, added.
Mothafar pleaded not guilty during a recent court hearing and is scheduled to be tried early next year. Federal authorities released him to his home in Troutdale, a town of about 16,000 on the eastern edge of Portland, pending trial with restrictions on travel and use of electronic devices. They should have kept him in custody considering the severity of the charges. They did not because he “ has physical disabilities and is confined to a wheelchair ,” according to the DOJ, so the government did not seek detention.
Scott Atlas, the medical professional who’s been tasked under President Donald Trump to help decide best coronavirus practices and policies, called for citizens, particularly in Michigan, particularly in tyrannically-governed Michigan, to “rise up” and fight unconstitutional crackdowns from overreaching, overbearing public servants.
He’s right.
The longer this coronavirus madness goes on, the more apparent it becomes: civil disobedience and only civil disobedience will rein in the, well, madness.
Here’s what Atlas said, via Twitter: “The only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept. #FreedomMatters. #StepUp.”
He also tweeted this, an apparent clarification: “Hey, I NEVER was talking at all about violence. People vote, people peacefully protest. NEVER would I endorse or incite violence. NEVER!!”
His tweets came after Michigan’s resident-in-tyranny Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced new crackdowns on freedoms due to, sigh, sigh, once again, the coronavirus. Specifically, she announced a three-week ban on indoor dining; on in-person learning in high schools and in colleges and universities; on in-person working “when work can be done from home;” on organized sports; on theater, movie, stadium, and arena attendance; on bowling, on ice skating, on indoor water park play; on bingo-ing in bingo halls, on gambling in casinos; and on going to the gym to take group fitness classes.
I am zee law.
Happily, she didn’t ban the buying of seeds this time.
She also graciously allowed for the playing of professional sports — minus the spectators — and for the mourning at funerals, so long as not more than 25 were in attendance.
Strangely, preschools, kindergartens, elementary schools and middle schools through grade eight, along with day cares, can remain open. Because the coronavirus only infects the higher grade levels?
Anyhow, Whitmer, as expected, expressed shock and awe — shock and awe! — at Atlas’s tweets.
“It actually took my breath away, to tell you the truth,” she told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” in reference to the tweets.
But here’s the thing, America: At what point do coronavirus crackdowns on freedoms become unacceptable?
At what point is the breaking point?
Founding Fathers knew well the reluctance of a people to “rise up,” as Atlas put it, and cast off an unjust government. They wrote, in fact, in the Declaration of Independence that “all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
True.
Look around at all the face mask-wearing people, take note of all the business closings and church attendance limits, take a gander at all the kids home from school and it’s clear: “Mankind are more disposed to suffer.”
But these same Founding Fathers also wrote this: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”
Peaceably, if possibly.
Are we there yet?
If Michigan were the only state, if Whitmer were the only governor, taking this coronavirus chaos and running roughshod over personal rights, maybe America could afford to ride out the storm, wait out the virus, patiently obey all the orders.
But the nonsense is widespread, from California to Michigan to Virginia to Massachusetts.
Atlas is right. Founders were right.
Civil disobedience is the only way to reel in the madness. Americans must beat back the health bureaucrats and political opportunists now — or forever wear the face mask. Forever cede freedoms. Forever give government the right to rule, not serve.
Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You’ve wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he’s ever held a truly personal desire, he’d find the answer. He’d see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He’s not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion – prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can’t say about a single thing: ‘This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me’. Then he wonders why he’s unhappy.” ― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
