By Doug Newman
Is there anything that the federal government can’t do?
It is not just that the president can now have U.S. citizens assassinated upon executive order. It is not just that there is now a secret panel within the National Security Council that can arbitrarily place American citizens on a “kill list.”
USA Today now reports that California 16 marijuana dispensary or their landlords “received letters this week warning face they would face criminal charges and confiscation of their property if the dispensaries do not shut down in 45 days.”
Never mind that the majority of Californians have voted for at least some legalization of marijuana. Never mind that the Tenth Amendment expressly forbids Uncle Sam from doing this. Never mind that the medicinal benefits of marijuana have been voluminously well-documented. Never mind that God gave us the hemp plant in the eleventh verse of the Bible.
(One of the targeted dispensaries is supposedly “within a prohibited distance of a park.” Gee, I wonder if marijuana grows wild in that park, planted by God Himself.)
How much of this wanton tyranny will be a subject in the upcoming elections? None, I would guess.
Just like every other election in recent memory, it will be portrayed as a battle royale between the purportedly opposites of right and left.
The left is at least somewhat honest about their support for four-dimensionally obese government. They say they support high taxes, welfare, government schools, gun control, etc., and their actions back it up.
The right portrays itself as the polar opposite, yet in fact loves four-dimensionally obese government. Oh sure, they may give us some nominal tax cuts, but these are only temporary. Our last “conservative” president outspent Bill Klinton – aka Kim Jong-Bill – by $1 trillion per year.
If Bush was “conservative” then Obama really did deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.
When was the last time the right ever eliminated a program? The right now applauds Herman Cain for his “999 plan”. Guess who would feel the brunt of his 9 percent national sales tax proposal. As much as I hate to play the class warfare game, it will be the hoi polloi, who spend a much higher percentage of their income on retail purchases than “the 1 percent.” So go ahead and support Herman Cain and feel oh so good that you are “doing something” to counteract the anti-Christ Obama … until Cain slams you with a massive tax increase.
As Lew Rockwell once put it, the right hates the left more than it hates the state. As much as they hate to admit it, the right loves big government. Really, they do. They can’t get enough of war, which, in the words of the late, great Joseph Sobran, is a big government program.
Sobran also once wrote that, “War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results.”
War always brings with it increases in domestic state power: increased taxes, debt, inflation, spying, censorship, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, drafts, internment camps,sexual assault as a condition of travel, etc. Take some time and watch this presentation by Judge Andrew Napolitano.
And you can’t “bring freedom” to other countries when you have no respect for the lives over their inhabitants and insist on killing large numbers of them. Just like any other federal program, war is filled with doublespeak.
(It was reported this week that there are no more Christian churches in Afghanistan. This is after almost a decade of American military presence.)
The right loves war at home also in the form of the War on Drugs. Most on the right don’t really seem to care that their second favorite government program has turned “the land of the free” into the nation with the world’s highest incarceration rate. Their support for “free enterprise” does not extend to a plant that grows wild in every county. They say they unequivocally oppose federal involvement in health care, but they likewise unequivocally oppose allowing doctors to prescribe the Devil’s Lettuce.
The right has looked the other way for years when its people have expanded federal power. To paraphrase the old Toyota jingle: You asked for it, you got it: Obamacare.
As long as people insist on living in the left-right plantation, there is no hope for individual liberty in this country. There is one liberty candidate running for president this year: Ron Paul. And he is not merely talking about liberty. He has voted for it extremely consistently throughout his 12 terms in Congress. Oftentimes, Congress has voted 434-1 for some unconstitutional expansion of federal power and Ron Paul has been the lone dissenter. He relentlessly votes against intrusions on liberty no matter which direction they come from. He realizes that both the left and the right are – I wish I knew who said this first – two wings on the same bird of prey.
Ron Paul - the only true antiwar candidate for 2012 - gets more money from active duty troops than any other presidential candidate. For the troops, war is a bloody and gruesome reality. For war pansies like Cain, Romney, Obama, Santorum and Gingrich, war is a video game.
Locally, there are also many very solid liberty candidates in the Libertarian and Constitution parties. And if you will not support them because “they don’t have a chance of winning”, don’t complain to me about lost liberty. You knew you had a chance to do something, but you caved into peer pressure as if you were still in high school.
When will enough people realize this? I realized it in 1991.
If you think that getting rid of Obama is the answer, you don’t get it. Yes, he is a bad guy and a horrible president. And while he is a problem, he is not the problem. An infinitely bigger problem is that so many people buy into the left-right paradigm. Physical slavery was abolished in America in 1865. Mental slavery is alive and well. And unless and until enough people liberate themselves mentally, America will continue on a bobsled ride into slavery for all of us.
- Please give to the BLACK THIS OUT MONEY BOMB this Wednesday, October 19. Every last dollar helps. www.blackthisout.com
Another consistently good read from Mr. Newman. Thanks.
Very fond of those two Sobran quotes. I'm a big admirer of his and have used those quotes myself from time to time.
He hits upon a problem, though. How many people still vote for their liberties instead of their favorite state program or for the lesser evil? The lesser evil problem can be fixed to a degree if people started voting in primaries rather than waiting for the general elections.
Posted by: Eric Parks | 10/16/2011 at 07:51 AM