By Tim Dunkin
STATESMAN SENTINEL
December 8, 2011

If nothing else, Carlos Rafael of New Bedford, Massachusetts will always have a whopper of a fish story to tell his grandkids, as he regales them with tales of the 881 lb. tuna that got away from him.  Or rather, was taken away from him, as the truth of the matter really is.  As the recent story in the news goes, back on November 12, a fishing boat owned by Mr. Rafael landed quite a catch when it brought in its nets after doing some deep sea trawling – the aforementioned tuna, a huge fish that would likely be worth close to half a million dollars.  However, when Mr. Rafael’s boat came back to dock, federal agents seized the fish, taking it away from Mr. Rafael without any compensation whatsoever other than the threat of a large fine.  The reason?  The tuna had been caught in a net, rather than by a hook or harpoon, illegal per some subparagraph buried deep in the bowels of the official book of rules and regulations governing American fisheries.  The fish, reportedly, will be sold overseas and the proceeds being given to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, presumably so that that bureaucratic morass masquerading as a scientific research organization can fund more studies purportedly discovering reasons why stricter and stricter regulations need to be further imposed on hard-working citizens like Mr. Rafael for…well, for reasons that nobody really knows.

Now, to most people – including Mr. Rafael himself who is an experienced deep sea fisherman – the arcana of federal regulations form an impenetrable and unfathomable fog that masks all common sense and reason with respect to why government makes many of the rules that it does.  Why is it legal (with a license, of course) to catch tuna with a hook, but it is illegal to do with a net, even accidentally?  Why do people like Mr. Rafael get robbed by bureaucrats with guns, and smacked with fines for catching a fish?  The answer to that question, even if known, probably makes little sense to anyone outside of the small circle of environmentalist busybodies, inside and outside of government, who have made it their life’s mission to destroy any and all human activity that might in any way, shape, or form impinge upon the natural world (i.e. pretty much all human activity).

And therein lies the problem.  The arcane and ridiculous little regulation that Mr. Rafael’s catch ran afoul of doesn’t exist because of government acting within any of its proper roles, such as keeping one citizen from harming another.  Mr. Rafael catching an 881 lb. tuna doesn’t harm anyone else, after all.  No, such regulations exist because of the lobbying efforts of very narrowly focused special interest groups who use their influence and money to craft government policy, both through legislatures and executive regulators, that benefits them or advances their agendas, while detrimentally affecting everybody else who might be a player in that particular realm of economic activity.  Hence, in this case, because animal rights activists and others who are concerned about “biodiversity” and whatnot seek to limit the ability of fishermen to harvest tuna and other types of fish that are deemed “borderline endangered” or otherwise worthy of regulatory protection, these same fishermen end up being hooked and reeled in by federal regulators, being trapped in a net of rules and regulations that they were never even told about, and which exist only for the purpose of destroying their livelihoods so that some eco-terrorists can pat themselves on the back for “protecting” Mother Earth.

If we lived in a perfect world, this is the sort of thing that would get some federal regulators hauled up in front of a judge and tossed into the clink for violating Mr. Rafael’s 5^th amendment rights.  Or better yet, such a corrupt and special-interest driven regulation wouldn’t even exist in the first place.

This is the sort of thing that helps to starkly clarify the distinction between “the rule of law” and “the rule of rules.”

Now, many people tend to assume that these two concepts are the same.  If the government makes some rules, then they should be obeyed unquestioningly, since these rules are laws and if you support the rule of law, then you have to obey any and all government rules without challenging them, right?  Well, no.  Actually, there is quite a large difference between these two ideas.

The “rule of law” – note that the term is singular – presupposes that there are one or more fundamental, underlying bases for the legal system in which the participants are dealing or by which they are affected.  In our system, this underlying basis is the Constitution, though I think there is a good case to be made for broadening this out to understand that our laws and civic practices should be predicated upon the liberty ideology that underlay the formation of our Constitution and the revolution for liberty that the American colonists originally waged.  To give an example of what I mean by this, just take the Interstate Commerce Clause.  This clause in the Constitution does exist, and it is there for a purpose.  Congress is given the power by our founding law to regulate trade between the states.  Nevertheless, the extent to which this clause has been stretched to allow the government to horn its way into basically any and all economic activity (or, in the case of mandating citizens to buy overpriced health insurance, even economic non-activity) goes far beyond anything the Founders ever intended when they included this clause in the Constitution, if their actual words in the Federalist Papers and other primary sources of commentary mean anything.  If the wording of the Constitution on this point were interpreted through the lenses of what the Founders who wrote the document actually meant with it and through the standpoint of maximizing, rather than minimizing, liberty, then about 95% of what the government does that is justified under the “technically” plain wording of the ICC would end, and the clause would be restored to its pristine meaning and intention (which was to prevent states from levying protectionistic tariffs and other duties against each other, or otherwise interrupting free citizen commerce within the several States – believe it or not, the original purpose of the clause was to promote, rather than restrict, economic liberty).

What this all means is that our government should not be free to simply make up rules and regulations, or even properly legislated laws (from a “technical” standpoint), willy nilly as it sees fit.  Laws, rules, and regulations that are not in accord with the Constitution and which do not advance the cause of liberty should be granted no respect or diligence whatsoever.

The “rule of rules” is just the opposite.  It presupposes that the government – legislators, regulators, and other perpetrators – should be able to have carte blanché power to enact whatever sanctions upon the people and their livelihoods that are deemed necessary, for whatever reason.  If a bureaucrat thinks we shouldn’t use a certain type of light bulb because it uses too much power and contributes to their mythological global warming, then Congress should pass a law, despite having no Constitutional authority to do so, and in fact, having the 9^th amendment as a positive block against such undue meddling in the affairs of free citizens acting freely.  If, to the case at hand, some environmentalist ninny thinks that evil, stinky ol’ fishermen shouldn’t be able to take whatever fish they can catch on some spurious greenie concern, then simply lobby various federal agencies to enact regulations that will throw up so many roadblocks to their livelihood that they simply give up and find something else to do.

In short, the rule of law is designed to protect the liberties of the people because each of us would operate on the same playing field, is protected by the same laws that adhere to the underlying liberty framework upon which we were founded, and each has the same expectation as to what the law will or will not, should or should not, say.

The rule of rules, on the other hand, is capricious, depending on the whims of whatever bureaucrat can get into a certain position of power, and what their particular agenda is that they can use their position to advance.

In a rule of law framework, the power of government operates only as far as the foundational law allows it.  In a rule of rules system, it operates as far as bureaucrats with nasty temperaments feel like going in their efforts to craft whatever administrative rules they like.

In a rule of law system, the police follow the Constitution and respect the 4^th amendment right of the people to be secure in their homes and effects.  In a rule of rules system, the police get to bust down peoples’ doors in the middle of the night, like a bunch of Nazi stormtroopers, just to serve a warrant in prosecution of a “War on Drugs” that has no Constitutional authority.

In a rule of law system, the government is forced to respect the fact that a free people can arm themselves however they like.  In a rule of rules system, the government gets to ban whatever weapons it can get away with politically, and place any number of undue burdens, taxes, license requirements, and other restrictions on private firearm ownership.

In a rule of law system, the government has to respect your 5^th amendment right to enjoy and be secure in your property and to require that due process be followed.  In a rule of rules systems, federal agents with the EPA get to arbitrarily declare your property a wetland – without your knowledge – and prohibit you from using it in any way, shape, or form, without any sort of due process.

In a rule of law system, you can’t be imprisoned for a crime unless found guilty of it by a jury of your peers.  In a rule of rules system, government agencies get to label you a “terrorist” and can direct the military to arrest you and hold you in detention indefinitely without ever charging you or bringing you to trial.

In a rule of law system, you are free to travel unhindered.  In a rule of rules system, the government requires you to be sexually assaulted by its agents before you can board an airplane.

In a rule of law system, free people are free to conduct business with each other so long as they’re not hurting someone else.  In a rule of rules system, you are not free to engage in consensual capitalism without any number of licenses, fees, and prohibitions.

So, the rule of law versus the rule of rules.  Guess which sort of system we have now in America?

The question is, what are we as free people going to do about it?  Are we going to sit idly by and watch our liberties go off into the sunset?  Or are we going to fight for our liberties?  Are we going to get serious about standing up and making our own government respect our Constitution and the liberty basis upon which it rests?  Are we going to continue to vote for the same old set of establishment losers – under whichever Party label, it doesn’t really matter much anymore – or are we willing to support those candidates who will actually challenge the system?  It all depends on whether we’re content to continue to be ruled by rules, or whether we’re going to stand up for the rule of law.  The choice, ultimately, really is ours, regardless of how much the media tries to delude us and the government tries to suppress us.

Tim Dunkin is a pharmaceutical chemist by day, and a freelance author by night, writing about a wide range of topics on religion and politics. He is the author of an online book about Islam entitled Ten Myths About Islam, and is the founder and editor of Conservative Underground, a bi-weekly email newsletter focusing on foundational conservative worldview and philosophy. He is a born-again Christian, and a member of a local, New Testament Baptist church in North Carolina. He can be contacted at tqcincinnatus@yahoo.com

The One That Got Away is an article from: STATESMAN SENTINEL

By Tim Dunkin
STATESMAN SENTINEL
December 8, 2011

As many astute, and perhaps many not so astute, observers have witnessed over the past few years, the Right – as a broad coalition of compatible movements and ideological subsets – has been floundering in its efforts to make any sort of substantial impact on our political system.  This, despite the fact that polling year after year continues to show that self-described “conservatives” (and who knows how many more libertarians, a position that doesn’t get polled typically) make up a fairly substantial plurality among the electorate.  We’ve seen popular movements like the Tea Parties explode onto the scene, representing the spontaneous will of the productive people of this nation, and we have seen them have a great deal of success in getting their candidates nominated and elected. Supposedly conservative Republicans regained the Congress which they had lost just four short years before, and appear poised to make further gains in 2012, especially against a widely distrusted and disliked President leading a broken and corrupt Party.

Yet, the Right – Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, liberty-minded individuals of all stripes – just can’t seem to get it together.  They can’t seem to find the traction needed to actually start making a difference in our public policies, even when receiving majorities.  While at the state level, liberty lovers have managed to make a lot of positive changes, at the national level it seems that the Right is just thrashing around in a rut, unable to get the grip needed to start getting things done.  We’ve held the Congress for two years with a whole slate of fresh-faced Tea Party outsiders who promised to “shake up” the system and start rolling back the fiscal irresponsibility we’ve seen for too long in this country.  Yet, it hasn’t happened.  This Congress has seen its budgets and its shortfalls increase as much as those previous.  The Republican slate of candidates is likewise hopeless – filled either with RINOs of various sorts or with conservative candidates who nevertheless seem determined to shoot themselves in the foot every time they turn around.  Our leaders are completely dropping the ball when it comes to actually making the case for our ideology and policies.  It almost seems like no liberty-oriented candidate or elected official out there has either the knowledge or the courage to speak out loudly against the lies of the Left and to clearly articulate the merits and rightness of our cause.  The Right in America – a giant filled with so much potential ability to roll back government excess and to restore liberty – is not living up to its potential in any way, shape, or form.

So what is missing?  Why does it seem like the Right – conservatives, libertarians, liberty-lovers all – reached the pinnacle of success, only to fail so miserably at making a lasting impact?  Why do we find our country, in many ways, back where it was in the 1970s – broke, socialistic, and looking to the government for the solution?

I would say that a lot of the reason is because the Right has lost the spirit of Reagan – that animating drive to really see this country become a better place for all Americans, even if it meant taking often unpopular steps that went against the short-sighted impulses of his opponents and their constituencies.  As many have remarked, and surely it is true, Ronald Reagan was not perfect.  There were times when he didn’t follow a strictly “pure” line on some issue or another.  There were points at which his policy choices pleased one part of the Reagan coalition, but not the others.  He couldn’t make everyone happy all the time, so he had to make hard choices about what he felt was right.  Yes, Reagan gave us the amnesty of 1986.  Yes, he prosecuted the War on (Some) Drugs vigorously.  Nevertheless, Reagan was an oak of a man and a President who helped to bring prosperity at home and freedom abroad.  We on the Right today profess to hold the same set of ideological and political beliefs as Reagan, yet we do not see the power and force of Reagan at work for us today.  What was it that Reagan understood and embodied that we have failed to emulate today?

I believe we can see four areas where contemporary liberty-lovers have failed to follow in the footsteps of the Gipper.

Reagan understood that government was the problem, not the solution:  At the core of Ronald Reagan’s mature ideology of liberty was the conviction that the citizens of the United States would be their best, happiest, and most free when they were liberated to the greatest extent practicable from the intrusions and regulations of the government.  When Reagan spoke famous sound bites like, “Government is the not the solution to our problems. It IS the problem,” or “Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty,” he was not just angling for a five minute lead-in on the nightly news.  He said these because he actually believed them.  He meant them.  This understanding was what guided his decision-making, his attitudes, his political being.

Unfortunately, too many so-called conservatives seem to have gotten to the point where they look to the government to solve their problems almost as much as those who have been befuddled by the Left do.  Further, too many have gotten into the habit of wanting everything in the budget to be cut…except for the program that benefits them personally.  It’s disheartening to hear even Tea Partiers rail against debt and government spending, but then turn around and in the next breath warn politicians that they dare not even think about touching their Social Security or Medicare.  Which is it, folks?  Do we really want the government smaller, less intrusive, and less expensive, or not?  It’s to the point where we don’t have the “luxury” of economic hypocrisy anymore.

Likewise, there are a lot of conservatives who say they want liberty, but then continue to support government intervention into all kinds of areas in our personal lives where it doesn’t belong.  They never consider that the damage being done to the Constitution and to the framework of liberty by their desire to codify their personal moralities in areas where the participant is not harming someone else is greater than supposed harm caused by the “problem” they’re wanting the government to fix.

Further, too many of our “conservative” politicians are really technocrats whose main goal is to simply “streamline” government to make it more efficient and cost-effective.  They’d rather work to make the EPA more proficient at what it does, rather than restraining it from what it shouldn’t be doing, or better, eliminating it completely.  Too many Republicans and professed conservatives are of the Newt Gingrich mold, more committed to government efficiency than they are government reduction.

Until conservatives and other liberty-lovers internalize the idea that government is not your friend, but is a fearful master and a dangerous servant, nothing will ever really get changed in our system.  Until we decide to take the hit and stop being part of the socialist beneficiary network, we won’t see that network go away.  The problem with government is not that it’s inefficient, but that it’s almost always incompatible with natural human liberty.

Reagan clearly articulated the rationale and rightness of the cause: One of the nicknames for Ronald Reagan that almost everyone is familiar with is “the Great Communicator.”  The reason for this is that he was, in fact, a great communicator.  Reagan had a gift for being able to convey complex or controversial ideas to his audiences so that they would be understandable and acceptable.  There’s a reason Reagan is one of the most quotable Presidents in modern history – he had a way with words that put the lie to the accusations of mental disacuity with which his detractors tried to slander him.  Reagan was able to speak well, and could speak and reason persuasively.  This is much of the reason why he won two landslide elections in 1980 and 1984 – he brought into his sphere of influence and support working class and unionized voters, broadly known as “Reagan Democrats,” who were convinced by his explanations and presentation that conservatism was better for them than the economic socialism and continually expanding government that had prevailed for so many decades previous.

This, however, is one of the great failures of the contemporary Right in America.  Too many of us no longer feel like we need to educate our fellow Americans about liberty.  We seem to assume that they should know about it – that the rationale for liberty and the means by which to attain and retain it are self-evident – and we get frustrated, angry, and even insulting with them when they don’t.  We also tend to confuse political victories in elections with real, long-term changes in the culture, hearts, and minds of our fellow Americans. When we win a few elections, like we did in 1994 or in 2000, we sit back on our laurels and go back to sleep – which is when the wolves in sheep’s clothing within our own side of aisle come to the fore and take us right back into the mire of socialism-lite.  We forget what Reagan said,

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

We on the Right know how sorely lacking the education system in America really is.  We know that our children are not learning about what made America great.  They aren’t learning civics, or economics, or history, in such a way as to actually square with reality.  And yet, we somehow assume that the up-and-coming generations should be able to understand the Constitution and the liberty ideology that cradled it.  This is a grave and dangerous error on our part.  If we do not fight the propaganda from the government schools and the news media, the cause of liberty will be lost.  If we don’t get back the Reaganesque desire and capacity to articulate our beliefs to the undecided and the educable, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.  Education is the fight we face – so let us grab our Locke and Federalist Papers and Bastiat and Hayek and make the case for liberty.

Liberty-lovers must be willing to have patience and engage our fellow Americans who don’t have the understanding about liberty that we have.  They have been served poorly by the teachers’ unions and ABCNNBCBS, and it is our duty to help them.  Sitting back smugly and looking down our noses at people for not being as “wise” or as “pure” as we are will do nothing but end liberty with our generation.

Reagan had the courage of his convictions to stand firm against his opponents, instead of an instinct to “find common ground” with the enemy:  One of the patterns of Ronald Reagan’s leadership during his administration was that he never lost sight of the “big picture.”  While there were times when he might have to make concessions to the Democrats who controlled Congress to get some component of the liberty agenda advanced, he nevertheless kept in view the overall goal of trying to reduce the size and scope of government.  Was Reagan successful?  I believe he was, to the extent that the actual powers and scope of his office allowed.  After all, under Reagan (and with the opposition of a strongly Democrat-controlled Congress throughout) we saw the tax burden on productive Americans reduced by two-thirds, he began the process of breaking the power of government unions, and many regulations that were strangling the American business climate were rolled back or eliminated.  Reagan ended the price controls on petroleum that the Nixon administration had put into place.  He opposed efforts by Democrats in Congress to impose even more politically-correct regulations on private organizations while hiding these regulations behind the façade of “civil rights.” He worked to reduce fraud and waste by those who were misusing the Social Security and other “safety net” programs.  He also affected real cuts in many government agencies, including a 22% cut in funding for the EPA.  He was able to effect across the board cuts in various welfare programs.

The result of all of this was one of the longest sustained periods of economic growth in modern American history.  Businesses grew, more businesses were started, millions of jobs were added to the economy, and the middle class expanded.  The economy expanded at a tremendous rate, and the policies which Ronald Reagan enacted to remove shackles from the American economy and American entrepreneurship resulted in sustained economic prosperity that weathered the tiny recession in 1992 and fueled prosperity throughout the 1990s as well.

Reagan was able to do these because he knew the difference between tactics and strategy.  Making concessions for the sake of obtaining some of what he wanted was a tactic.  Consistently pushing forward on a liberty agenda of deregulation, economic freedom, and smaller government was a strategy.  A lot of folks on the Right today fail to make the distinction.

Granted, there are some who can’t seem to understand the need for tactics.  They want our agenda passed, they want it passed right now, and if they can’t have it, then they’re going to tune out and drop out – never mind all that “incrementalism” nonsense.  Even more problematic, however, are those, such as the large portion of the Republican “leadership” and establishment, who are great at giving concessions to the Marxists, but not so great at pushing for greater freedom and less government.  They have no grand vision of a strategy for restoring greater freedom to the people of this country.  Their first instinct is always and in all circumstances to “reach across the aisle” and “find common ground” with the haters of liberty.  Further, they’re embarrassed by those who do want to keep pressing for greater freedom and less government.  We’re “radical,” we’re “dangerous,” we’re fanatics.”  Liberty lovers threaten to overturn their apple cart of government goodies and power, and they don’t like it.  So while these folks may, ostensibly, be “on the Right,” they most definitely are not fellow travelers.  Instead, like termites, they try to weaken and destroy the efforts of liberty lovers to make real changes in this country.

Reagan had to deal with them too, of course.  He had a Republican establishment, inherited from two decades of Rockefeller Republicans like Nixon and Ford, who were embarrassed by him as well.  He dealt with it by simply persevering and pressing forward.  He was not wrapped up in caring what other politicians thought about him.  He knew what needed to be done, and he tried to do it.  This is what we need to do – even if it means taking drastic steps to depose our current “conservative” ruling class, and replacing them with leaders who will lead in the cause of liberty.

Reagan understood that the broad Right needed to be united, not divided:  Ronald Reagan wisely understood the benefits of true coalition building, when he formalized the growing “fusionist” movement that sought to bond three broadly related strands of American conservatism together into a stable alliance of those on the Right.  These three strands, the “three legs of the stool of conservatism,” were the Goldwaterite economic libertarians, the growing social conservative movement known colloquially as “the religious Right,” and the “strong America” defense hawks.  This was Reagan’s idea of the “big tent” approach, not the later perversion of this approach where liberty-lovers “reach across the aisle” to those who are often diametrically opposed to the general tenets of pro-liberty, small-government fusionism.  Using his powers of persuasion and communication, he was able to bring all three of these movements together in such a way that they ended up complementing each other and forming an integrated message of American liberty and strength.  He realized that if we wanted to have a free America, then we needed to listen to those who wanted a prosperous America, to those who wanted a strong America, and to those who wanted a good America.

At the same time, Reagan didn’t tip too far one way or the other toward any of the three corners.  He exemplified the type of “movement” conservatism that balanced the concerns of all three “legs” without ignoring any one or more of them.  Yes, this meant that each movement had to be willing to compromise, at least tactically, or at least temporarily, on some of its particular aims and desires.  Nevertheless, he blended these three movements in his own governing character and personal ideology.  The same Ronald Reagan who was libertarian enough to say,

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”

Was yet enough of a Religious Righter to also say,

“Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.”

And he did not find anything at all contradictory in those statements.  This is because he knew that liberty depends on self-control, and cannot exist where this is lacking and where “other-control” takes its place.  He was also wise enough to avoid some of the excesses of rhetoric and caricature that others on the Right never were able to get over.  He knew enough to know that the “Religious Right” wasn’t really trying to install a morality policeman in every bedroom.  He understood that libertarians weren’t pot-smoking hippies trying to destroy traditional American civilization.  He didn’t agree that defense hawks just wanted to invade everybody who didn’t swear allegiance to the American flag.  His temperance in dealing with people helped to cool down a lot of hotter heads and bring them to the table.

Contrast this with the state of America’s Right today.  Everybody wants to push their agenda to the exclusion of the rest of the broad rightist coalition, and condemns everyone else as “RINOs” (a term which doesn’t even make sense when used against those who aren’t registered Republicans) for not lining up 100% with their particular group’s program.  In short, we’re seeing a fragmentation of the Right at just the time when we need to be emphasizing our common ground and working together on that 80% or so of issues where we’re all in perfect accord.  Libertarians think “the time is right” to finally push out of the picture the social conservatives with whom they personally disagree, and social conservatives say that if this happens, they’re going to sit out elections from now on.  Everybody thumps their chests, but nobody seems willing to figure out how to actually start winning elections with leaders who want to advance liberty on all fronts.

All this can do is continue to ensure that hard-core socialists keep getting elected, laughing all the way to Congress or the Oval Office while we cut each other off at the knees with infantile caricatures and adolescent behavior.  The Right needs to exhibit some political maturity; we don’t need to pitch a fit and go home because our favored agenda items aren’t being addressed right this minute.  This applies across the board – social conservatives, don’t stomp off in a huff because abortion isn’t the topic du jour; and libertarians, don’t stomp off because somebody mentions abortion.  It’s that simple.  We can multitask.

In conclusion, we see many on the Right today who long for a second Reagan, someone who will take his mantle, pick up the standard, and press forward in the struggle for liberty that we seem to be losing so sorely at the present time.  Yet, while there are politicians out there who could fit the bill, and perhaps would if they had the chance, we do not see them rising to the occasion.  Why?  I would judge that it is because of the systematic flaws within the liberty movement itself, as outlined above.  Many potential leaders are dismissed because one faction or another isn’t willing to accept an 80% friend against a 100% enemy.  Others perhaps despair at the seeming incapacity for conservatives and libertarians to ever get it back on track.  Ultimately, however, the responsibility lies with us – liberty lovers ourselves – to make it happen.  WE need to take the mantle of leadership and start guiding this country back to where it should be.  WE need to make the case for our cause, WE need to work smarter and harder to get every advancement of our agenda that we can get, WE need to unite instead of fragmenting into mutually recriminating factions.

When we do this, we’ll have recaptured the spirit of Reagan, and may well recapture the success of Reagan as well, and go beyond them.

Tim Dunkin is a pharmaceutical chemist by day, and a freelance author by night, writing about a wide range of topics on religion and politics. He is the author of an online book about Islam entitled Ten Myths About Islam, and is the founder and editor of Conservative Underground, a bi-weekly email newsletter focusing on foundational conservative worldview and philosophy. He is a born-again Christian, and a member of a local, New Testament Baptist church in North Carolina. He can be contacted at tqcincinnatus@yahoo.com

Recovering the Spirit of Reagan is an article from: STATESMAN SENTINEL

It has become more and more apparent to seemingly everyone of late, that the American economic system is not based on capitalism, but a twisted hierarchical system of special interests and government favors commonly known as “crony capitalism.”

The distinction is very important, because crony capitalism in America – especially during the last century – created a toxic environment that has only recently spilled over into the mainstream understanding of the economy, but has long been under the surface, guiding the tides of public policy.

Crony capitalism grows out of an environment where policymakers focus so much on striving to make their country “productive” and they listen so intently to the pleas of special interests, that legislation is nothing more than government sanctioned monopolization, subsidization, or wealth redistribution to “encourage” a productive economy, or to make the economy more “fair.”

Take a piece of legislation from recent history: Obamacare.  Under this health care overhaul, the American people are forced by threat of fees and taxation, to buy health insurance from private companies.

Another example can be clearly seen in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which gave large sums of taxpayer money to companies that politicians hoped would have a positive impact on employment and economic growth.

Agriculture, the military-industrial complex, the financial industry, energy firms… These are all areas of the economy that are under heavy regulation and supervision, and they are – unsurprisingly – all industries that are rife with crony capitalism, special interest lobbying, and government favoritism.

The common complaint is that crony capitalism is unfair because it involves the government picking winners and losers.  This gets to the core issue of why crony capitalism is a bad model, but the problems run deeper.  Cronyism complicates the market as a whole, because it undermines free market rationality, creating a dependency on government help to merely stay relevant and competitive in the market place.

Koch Industries has become the villain to the progressive American left because its owners, Charles and David Koch, helped start Americans for Prosperity, and are now seen as the “funders” of the Tea Party movement.

After Koch Industries was accused of benefiting from ethanol subsidies, which the brothers have spent millions lobbying against over the years, Charles Koch wrote a very effective piece discussing their reasoning for accepting subsidies.

“Because every other company in a given industry is accepting market-distorting programs, Koch companies have had little option but to do so as well… our refining business is essentially obligated to be in the ethanol business.”

The key subtext here is: rationality.  The government skews the market by undermining free and equal competition, by engineering the economy to be productive in an “acceptable” way.  If one hopes to make it in the energy business, they must embrace subsidies and regulation in order to survive.

As more and more regulations pile on, it becomes harder and harder for new companies to become involved in these industries.  It becomes even harder for those companies whose leaders are hesitant to accept success at the cost of the taxpayer.

Even people whose political views keep them skeptical of cronyism cannot and – in their mind – should not, keep themselves from taking a piece of the pie.

Robert Lutz, the former Vice-Chairman of General Motors Company, exemplified this perfectly in his recent interview with Charlie Rose.

“To a very large extent a lot of government regulation we had and the exchange rate that the US granted Japan after the war which gave Japan a $4,000 cost advantage, the fact that corporate average fuel economy was enacted… I tell myself, the government caused a lot of the problem, I don’t mind accepting government assistance as repayment.”

He explicitly said earlier in the interview that he does not believe in the government intervention beyond basic regulation, but he emphasizes that government interference in the car industry made it legitimate for the government to bail out General Motors.  Regulation and cronyism creates such a twisted environment that bailouts are not only seem acceptable and necessary, but are actually deserved.

Crony capitalism is so rampant and blatant – as can be seen with all of Bush’s and Obama’s major initiatives – that a truly free market economy seems impossible to grasp.  It has become almost a dream, an illusion of what America could have been in a perfect world.

But this dream is attainable as long as people appreciate the power they have over their own lives, and become more skeptical of the desires of politicians, corporate heads, and bankers, who try to perfect the world using central planning and government coercion.

Christopher is a graduate from George Mason University, where he received his BA in Economics. He has worked in financial and broadcast journalism. He currently lives in northern Virginia.

The Rationality of Cronyism is an article from: STATESMAN SENTINEL

Scott Lazarowitz reports at LewRockwell.com:

“On Wednesday, November 9^th at 2 PM Eastern, the Obama Administration will seize control over all radio and TV broadcast communications, to conduct a “test” of the Emergency Broadcast System. For the first time, however, there will be nothing any individual station can do to prevent it, and, unlike past tests which lasted for only roughly 30 seconds, this unusual test will last approximately 3½ minutes.

But, even though the government is supposed to announce that it is “only a test,” and, given that it is to occur during the middle of a weekday, such a “test” still has potential to cause panic. Could the Obama Administration be subtly planning to incite anxiety and panic amongst the population? The evidence includes Obama flunkies such as ACORN having been intentionally inciting agitation at Wall Street protests, and Obama himself having been accused of incitement. It is therefore valid to suggest that the Administration is up to no good, such as testing a plan for something illicit, such as martial law.

Continue reading

Federal Government To Seize Control Of All Airwaves This Week is an article from: STATESMAN SENTINEL

Gun Owners of America

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) sent a scathing rebuke to Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday and called on him to resign his post at the Justice Department.

Noting that Holder needed to “take responsibility” for implicating the United States as an accessory to violent crimes committed by the Mexican drug cartels, Walsh blasted the Attorney General for the role he played in the “subsequent cover-up” of the failed Fast and Furious operation.

As detailed by Gun Owners of America on many occasions, Operation Fast and Furious is the gun-running scheme where the Justice Department has approved — and in some cases, helped fund — the purchase and smuggling of firearms into Mexico.

The apparent purpose of this gun running scandal was to use the increased violence south of the border as a pretext for more gun control in this country. Sadly, two U.S. federal agents — and hundreds of Mexican citizens — have died as a result of these illegal sales which the FBI approved under the direction of the Obama Administration.

Rep. Walsh takes Holder to task for “knowingly [forcing] licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to violent criminals” and for claiming that he was “not aware” this happening. As Walsh notes, Holder “received no less than seven memos” detailing the creation and progress of Fast and Furious.

“The American people deserve to know the truth regarding Attorney General Eric Holder’s knowledge and role in the Fast and Furious operation,” Walsh said in a statement. “This program was deliberately designed to attack law-abiding American gun-owners and gun-dealers. Why else would an anti-gun Administration force licensed firearms dealers to sell guns to violent criminals?”

Rep. Walsh told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto that Holder “needs to be held accountable.”

Rep Walsh Calls for Attorney General Holder to Resign is an article from: STATESMAN SENTINEL

Economic Policy Journal

During the online portion of the “Center Seat” segment of Fox News’ “Special Report with Brett Baier,” Ron Paul said that he would “probably” pick economist Jim Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, for the position, reports The Daily Caller.

The question was posed by Stephen F. Hayes of The Weekly Standard, who noted that Paul would be unable to immediately abolish the Federal Reserve.

“He’s an Austrian economist, he has experience on Wall Street, he’s brilliant, he’s a good historian,” Paul said of Grant. “He would quit printing money.”

Grant has previously said that Paul should be named the “executor” of the Fed’s “living will.”

Continue reading

Ron Paul Names His Choice for Fed Chairman is an article from: STATESMAN SENTINEL

By Robert F. Beaudine
STATESMAN SENTINEL
October 26, 2011

The “occupying” protests here in America have been characterized as spontaneous and leaderless. Protesters, politicians, and the mass media have compared it to the so-called spontaneous uprisings of the Arab Spring. In reality, neither has been spontaneous nor leaderless. The Arab Spring was planned years ago and then executed by the forces of oppression that the people thought they were attempting to overthrow.

In an AFP article last April, Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State, admitted that the US trained 5000 activists last February from Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and Lebanon. The goal was to provide the technology to circumvent government obstruction and help activists create a ripple effect by training their colleagues in the arts of government destabilization. Posner said our Federal government budgeted $50 million to develop new technologies to protect activists from arrest by authoritarian governments.

This assistance did not create the Arab Spring, but it helped perpetuate it. The campaign to destabilize the Middle East began much earlier, as geopolitical analyst Tony Cartalucci has repeatedly demonstrated.

Last May, Cartalucci wrote an article America’s Arab Deception. He stated, “The Arab Spring was entirely engineered, prepared for, activists trained, funded, and equipped by the United States, years in advance, based on successes and experience garnered from decades of extraterritorial meddling. In particular, a coalition between the US State Department, NGO’s, corporations, and organizations entirely contrived for the sole purpose of fomenting unrest in foreign nations, began as early as 2008 preparing for what is now unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Much of this can be corroborated in Ron Nixon’s April 14^th New York Times article, “US Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings.” Nixon spinned past Cartalucci’s logical assessment when he wrote, “No one doubts that the Arab uprisings are home grown, rather than resulting from ‘foreign influence,’ as alleged by some Middle Eastern leaders.”

Good writers always avoid categorical statements, but Nixon’s statement is also illogical. He claimed there were no doubters, which he refuted when he mentioned the allegations of Middle Eastern leaders. And no one doubts the New York Times is intolerant of logic.

To reinforce his position, Nixon quoted Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), “We didn’t fund them to start protests, but we did help support their development of skills and networking. That training did play a role in what ultimately happened, but it was their revolution. We didn’t start it.”

On April 15^th, Cartalucci wrote in LandDestroyer, “Also conceding involvement is the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), chaired by various Council on Foreign Relations and Brookings Institute alumni. POMED claims that they helped protestors develop skills and to network. Such training has taken place annually under Movements.org starting in 2008 where Egypt’s April 6 movement among many others, learned techniques to subvert their government. Movements.org of course is sponsored by a conglomerate of corporations and government agencies including the US State Department, Google, MTV, the Edelman public relations firm, Facebook, CBS News, MSNBC, and others. Despite the claim that such meddling is ‘promoting democracy,’ looking at the sponsors and war mongering interests involved in this operation, it appears to be more about promoting global military and economic hegemony.”

Despite his extreme message, Cartalucci’s analysis is supported by facts.

Big Brother’s Clenched Fist Leads the Clueless

In America, our protests appear leaderless, ill-defined, and uncoordinated. To mask the central planning, the protests began small in a few cities before the national rollout proceeded, a common tactic of most marketing schemes. These protests are not leaderless. And their well-defined agenda can be derived from those manipulating the leaderless mobs behind the scenes.

Last July, Adbusters Media Foundation announced they were organizing a street protest to occupy Wall Street. Founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz, this Canadian firm describes itself as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators, and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.” They are anti- Capitalism, anti-consumerism, pro-environment, and pro-violence.

Adbusters is financed through its magazine subscriptions, but it also received grants the last ten years totaling $185,000 from the Tides Foundation, which is partly financed by the mastermind of financial destabilization, George Soros. Soros announced his sympathy for the protestors and has committed his organizational and financial resources.

Soros’ MoveOn.org has organized liberal protest movements in the past and urged its members to join the “occupying” protests. MoveOn.org has also promoted an Internet-based demonstration in conjunction with Rebuild the Dream, another radical group financed by Soros and led by Van Jones. Van Jones was President Obama’s former Green Jobs Czar, who resigned when his past extremism was exposed.

In an e-mail to its supporters, MoveOn predicted, “Together, we’ll add hundreds of thousands of voices of solidarity from the American Dream Movement for the protests across the country and show just how widespread outrage at the Wall Street banks really is.”

Van Jones is a central planner using his front group Rebuild the Dream among others. In a speech to the Soros funded Center for American Progress, he compared our protests to the Arab Spring. “They had the Arab spring, which was a people-powered, non-violent opportunity to change the conversation in those countries. We should have an American Autumn, people-powered, non-violent.”

David DeGraw of AmpedStatus is another central player who spent the last three years trying to organize protests in America against the international bankers. As his website was attacked and knocked offline, the loosely led hacker group, Anonymous, approached him covertly and helped salvage his work and website. DeGraw organized a protest to begin against Wall Street on Flag Day, June 14^th. Anonymous also announced “Operation Empire State Rebellion” to begin June 14^th. When that fizzled, DeGraw teamed with Adbusters to coordinate the September attack.

DeGraw has a comprehensive world view. His claim that the global rebellions are decentralized and leaderless is a liberal lie. He expects these revolts to eventually destroy the power of the global elite, but this Utopian posture is a common ploy.

In August, Anonymous announced they were joining the September protests. Anonymous destabilizes government agencies, corporations, and affiliated associations by hacking into their computer networks. They revile the central bankers and have demanded Bernanke’s resignation. They’ve also encouraged the Wall Street protesters and declared victory in a video message with a “checkmate.”

Anonymous was also involved in the Arab Spring. During the height of the protests, they waged cyber-attacks on Egyptian government websites. In August, they did the same to Syria’s Ministry of Defense.

Julian Assange of WikiLeaks has been discredited by astute observers as a pawn of the globalists he seemingly exposes. On October 15^th, Assange addressed an adoring crowd of protesters in London. As he champions greater transparency through leaked documents, regimes have crumbled. Last May, Amnesty International praised WikiLeaks and the newspapers that published their released confidential files as a catalyst behind the Arab Spring.

Tony Cartalluci has described the central planning of Movements.org behind the Arab Spring. These consultants of revolution have recently developed a series of educational resources for the protesters. On October 7^th, Rachel Silver posted on their website, “In response to the widespread protests and demonstrations happening across the USA we’ve compiled a series of guides that will help organizers to sustain their movement nationally and locally and make the most of online and digital tools.” These how-to guides for activists and organizers were allegedly developed “in response” to the protests, not prior, but sometimes the truth is inconvenient.

For years, both ACORN and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have organized campaigns against Capitalism. On a video last March, Steve Lerner of SEIU spoke of a scheme to destroy the stock market, destabilize our nation, and redistribute its wealth. About the same time, ACORN’s founder Wade Rathke also called for massive “Day of Rage” protests that would target bankers. Both men are allied and close to President Obama.

ACORN filed for bankruptcy after it was exposed for a variety of criminal activities, but over the years, it has spawned front groups across our nation, most notably the Working Families Party, which helped organize “Occupy Wall Street.” WFP’s Nelini Stamp has been a regular at the site since day one.

Anthropologist David Graeber leads the global justice movement and promotes direct democracy to replace representative democracy. He’s provided the intellectual groundwork that justifies these protests, their embrace of direct democracy, and consensus building through group manipulation.

Garret LoPorto adds a valuable skill to the central planning. LoPorto learned his craft as a media consultant for Skull and Bones member, John Kerry, when Kerry ran for President. He helped organize “Occupy Boston.”

The radical street organizer Lisa Fithian has been involved since the beginning of the protests. For decades she has fought alongside anti-war advocates, anti-globalists, labor unions, and anarchists. She’s been a regular at “Occupy Chicago” Her specialty is the creation of a crisis, because as she explained, “Crisis is that edge where change is possible.”

Legendary Socialist professor, Frances Fox Piven, is another central planner who has fought Capitalism all her life. Last January in an interview with Amy Goodman, she said, “I think it’s also crazy to call me a commie, a socialist, a revolutionary or whatever.” As an academic, she’s been taught that the truth is relative. In 2003, Piven was elected Honorary Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Countless labor unions and leftwing community groups have swelled the ranks. Other leftwing organizations supporting the protests include the Socialist Party USA, Planned Parenthood, Democracy For America, Campaign for America’s Future, People for the American Way, Public Campaign, Code Pink, Common Cause, Action United, Organize Now, and on and on.

In a development similar to the 1950’s, when Congressional investigations exposed the interlocking network of hundreds of Communist front groups with the nonprofit foundations, which was quickly covered up, many of these organizations are interlocked, working together, and financed by the powerful nonprofit foundations.

The protests appear to be the culmination of much prior work nationally and globally, perhaps decades of work. The leaders comprise a Who’s Who of anti-American radicals. There is nothing spontaneous or leaderless about these protests.

Days of Rage

The protests are parroted as nonviolent, but every now and then, undercurrents arise that gush with revolution and its necessary violence. This is more consistent with its initial theme as “Days of Rage,” which is reminiscent of the violent Days of Rage riots orchestrated by the Weather Underground in Chicago in 1969.

Frances Fox Piven doesn’t seem averse to the rhetoric of nonviolence, because she sees its true intent, as a marketing ploy. In a recent speech at Messiah College, she indicated her only problem with violence is the negative publicity that would result. She also said, “Riots are what poor people do when they get together.”

In a January article in The Nation, Mobilizing the Jobless, Piven wrote “Local protests have to accumulate and spread — and become more disruptive — to create serious pressures on national politicians. An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.”

Due to public outrage at her position, The Nation defended her in a February editorial. They also added, “Recognizing the leverage that oppressed groups have – and working with them to use it – is her special genius.” This special genius is the hallmark of all good revolutionaries, who then exploit the powerless for their own aims.

On October 2^nd after Piven addressed the OWS crowd, she concluded, “This is going to be the fight of our lives.”

In his book Culture Jam, Kalle Lasn predicted, “We will wreck this world.” He’s also said, “Rage drives revolutions.”

Van Jones no longer wants reforms or incremental changes. “We’re not going to put a new battery in a broken system. We want a new system.”

In interviews, Lisa Fithian promotes peaceful protests, but she’s also stated, “I have no issue with property destruction.” She helped instigate the violent Seattle riots in 1999 when the WTO was in town.

For years, these anti-American activists have sown seeds among our youth awaiting the harvest. They are the catalysts, and they expect an inferno.

Manipulating the Masses

By design, the protesters have been unclear about their central demands and agenda. On Oct 5^th, Garret LoPorto was interviewed by radio host Michael Graham. He said, “It’s a process of reclaiming democracy. We all know there’s something wrong with the system. How are we going to fix it? How can we make it better?” He offered no solutions – specific goals will come later.

On Aug 12^th, Adbusters posted an update prior to the protests that explains their approach. “Strategically speaking, there is a very real  danger that if we naively put our cards on the table and rally around the ‘overthrow of capitalism’ or some equally outworn utopian slogan, then our Tahrir moment will quickly fizzle into another inconsequential ultra-lefty spectacle soon forgotten.”

Adbusters prefers stealth at the beginning. A consensus can be engineered at any time using the Delphi technique, which relies on mass psychology to manipulate the group toward a predetermined consensus. It uses Hegel’s dialectic to reconcile opposing forces and create a new synthesis. The successful “change agent” or facilitator must be an astute observer of human behavior and trained in psychology. This process has been mastered by the Progressives, who used it across our nation to transform our schools into rubbish.

The Delphi technique is a sophisticated process, but on its simplest level, the facilitator uses peer pressure and other group dynamics to isolate or marginalize dissenting voices, while rallying those sympathetic to the “correct” position. The group is not only led to the preconceived consensus, but they are also led to believe they arrived at it independently. This process has been fine-tuned over the decades “awaiting the time when it would be implemented extensively in the interests of transforming America.” (This quote was posted anonymously last July.)

To prevent any political or moneyed interest from hijacking the movement, the protesters convene a General Assembly every day in every city, so that everyone has a voice – although, not everyone is granted that right as Congressman John Lewis found out. The group engages in direct democracy which leads to a consensus on a variety of topics from when and where to march to trash pick-up. Hand signals either arouse the group’s favor or incite disapproval. Consensus is engineered daily, while the crowd is indoctrinated in direct democracy.

Perhaps more sinister, as Dr. Webster Tarpley reported weeks ago, the general assembly may be a simple diversion. Tarpley said eyewitnesses have identified about twenty mysterious individuals who seem to comprise a secret steering committee that supersedes the General Assembly. They’re much older than the average protester and appear to have a military orientation. Recently, thousands of leaked e-mails have confirmed the existence of two secret committees, a Demands Committee and a Constitution Committee. These leaders prefer to remain behind the scenes. When their work is done, they will present it to the General Assembly for approval.

For decades, psychology has been mined for better methods to manipulate the masses. Today, the methods are more sophisticated, more brazen, and more effective. The protest organizers are manufacturing dissent within society, while creating consensus within the movement.

Garret LoPorto is a depth psychologist who understands how to manipulate unconscious urges. To promote his marketing firm TotalConvert, LoPorto wrote, “If you want people to believe in your brand, (and share that belief with others), your brand must be evolved into a cult brand. If you want buzz; if you want viral marketing; if you want sky-high conversion rates and you want customers to not just be customers, but total converts, then you’ve come to the right consulting firm.”

Creating a cult brand is his specialty. To accomplish this, he uses psychographics marketing, which divides people into groups based on their psychological profile. Psychographics relies on surveys, interviews, and focus groups, but now marketers also mine the social networks for psychological data. Using the Internet and its social networks, psychographics enables viral marketing.

LoPorto is a rarity. He’s also creating a cult following called the Wayseers. The Wayseers Manifesto is a slick video production that reveals LoPorto’s understanding of human behavior. Many viewers were reduced to tears, as if their eyes were suddenly opened and they found their long lost home. It is powerful propaganda that uses trance music, which shifts consciousness from a beta state to an alpha state. This renders the viewer more susceptible to its message. It begins:

“Attention: All you rule-breakers, you misfits and troublemakers – all you free spirits and pioneers – all you visionaries and non-conformists … Everything that the establishment has told you is wrong with you – is actually what’s right with you. You see things others don’t. You are hardwired to change the world. Unlike nine out of ten people – your mind is irrepressible – and this threatens authority. You were born to be a revolutionary. You can’t stand rules because in your heart you know there’s a better way. You have strengths dangerous to the establishment – and it wants them eliminated, So your whole life you’ve been told your strengths were weaknesses – Now I’m telling you otherwise.”

The video is ten minutes of New Age mystical Gnosticism that promotes revolutionary thinking and action. It ends:

“Wayseers reveal this divine truth by devoting themselves to the birth of some creative or disruptive act expressed through art or philosophy, innovations to shake up industry, revolutions for democracy, coups that topple hypocrisy, movements of solidarity, changes that leave a legacy, rebellions against policy, spirit infused technology, moments of clarity, things that challenge barbarity, watersheds of sincerity, momentous drives for charity.” (LoPorto isn’t your ordinary “high priest” – he’s also a poet.) “This is your calling, Wayseer. You’ve found your tribe. Welcome home.”

LoPorto reassures the disenfranchised viewer that they are special, needed, and welcome. They don’t need to follow rules that have been rigged against them. They must destroy the rule-makers and revolt against the established order. The video is a recruiting device to build a network of mindless revolutionaries who will blindly follow their self-proclaimed enlightened leader.

Soros is the most dangerous of the central planners because of his wealth, organizational skills, and diabolical ambition, but LoPorto is dangerous because of his creative genius.

New Agers Have the Answers

Pure Energy Systems News announced a new documentary that will be released on 11/11/11: “An upcoming documentary named, ‘Thrive – What on Earth will it take?’ will seek to explain the sources of human suffering, expose the elite power structures (such as big oil) that have contributed to it, and provide an answer including free energy, explaining what it will take to improve the human condition on this planet.”

Supposedly, an ancient code embedded by extraterrestrials in ancient ruins, crop circles, and art has been suppressed by the global elite. Unlocking its secret is the key to free energy which will save our distressed planet from imminent destruction. The documentary has been plugged by prominent New Agers who hope the Thrive Movement goes viral.

The PESN article also posed an ominous question: “Could this documentary be a trigger that sparks a revolution?”

Triggers

There are many triggers that might spark the fuse. A manufactured crisis is the standard approach. An epic economic meltdown cannot be avoided for long and would trigger widescale rioting.

Another trigger is foreshadowed by an Anonymous slogan. They issued a conditional demand that was featured in LoPorto’s Manifesto, has its own facebook page, and was displayed on posters during the Arab Spring. “If your government shuts down the Internet, shut down your government.” This crisis also seems inevitable.

The clamor for a Constitutional Convention is growing which could also cause chaos because it would certainly be co-opted by a predetermined consensus that would overthrow our Constitutional liberties. This crisis must be avoided.

Villains

The protesters are supplied with enough villains to keep the blame game running like an endless marathon: greedy bankers, crony capitalists, corrupt politicians, and selfish rich people.

President Obama is sympathetic. He cannot run for re-election on his record, so he’s been blaming everyone and everything else from the prior administration to his opponents, natural disasters, the Arab Spring, etc. But he’s recently focused on a common villain that the protesters revile – the bankers and other rich people, especially those of the Wall Street variety. His slogan “the rich must pay their fair share” gets shriller as he stokes class warfare.

Charles Krauthammer warned in a recent column, “Popular resentment, easily stoked, is less easily controlled.”

Our President’s sympathy for the Wall Street protesters is disingenuous but consistent with his administration’s widespread deception and complicit lack of transparency. Wall Street enriched Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign and helped him get elected. Objective observers include mainstream journalists on the list of villains because only the alternative media mentions this.

This was illustrated a few weeks ago as Van Jones mixed with the Wall Street protesters. Luke Rudowski of We Are Change questioned him on camera about Wall Street’s generosity during Obama’s 2008 campaign. Van Jones promptly fled the area.

If Mitt Romney wins the Republican nomination, the villains of Wall Street could derail his Presidential bid. Wall Street has reversed its support of Democratic candidates and is backing Romney with a steady flow of campaign dollars. More likely, this is another phony opposition campaign to taint his campaign. The globalists who own Wall Street would love to see President Obama re-elected.

The International Agenda

On October 15^th, the protest movement held events in over 900 cities in 82 countries. In America, hundreds of organizations are engaged in the destruction of old fashioned American liberty based on our Constitution. Across the globe, there are thousands of groups rallying for regime changes in the form of democratic socialism.

Common themes include a false spontaneity in the face of manufactured dissent. The clenched fist is the universal symbol, a staple of socialist and communist groups worldwide. The protests are youth-led, who bring high energy, have no negative political baggage, and are more pliable than their elders. They are also more indoctrinated, as the techniques of propaganda have evolved in step with technology. Their primary needs are organizational skills, positive media exposure, and money, needs easily exploited.

The US State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) both have mandates to promote democracy internationally. Direct involvement in the internal affairs of other countries can compromise their support, so they contract with non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute, National Democractic Institute, Asia Foundation, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), the Democracy Council, and previously mentioned POMED, among many others.

Sometimes financing is misdirected through front groups. WikiLeaks released diplomatic cables from Damascus that showed one channel to finance Syrian opposition groups. Our State Department granted $6.3 million to the Democracy Council who then financed MEPI who financed Syrian exiles.

In Egypt and Tunisia, as the US government publicly supported the puppet regime, it also privately financed the opposition. Dictators can become inconvenient for a variety of reasons including massive public unrest, which sometimes is manufactured for other reasons. To control the outcome, the US must co-opt the dissent. This explains our President’s behavior during the Egyptian revolt. Initially, out of instinct, he supported our old ally Mubarak, but he finally caught on.

The Egyptian uprising provides a case study of how revolutions are US-engineered. The conventional mainstream media myth portrayed the revolutionaries as spontaneous freedom fighters. To retain their prestige, mainstream journalists do not investigate or expose the lies in the State Department handouts they parrot, but the alternative media does. Tony Cartalucci exposed the myriad groups that were involved long before the moment became ripe.

Cartalucci also showed how Movements.org, a subsidiary of the Alliance for Youth Movements, sponsored by Google and staffed by former executives, helped the young Egyptians develop the technological skills for communication and social networking. But the real revolution required bodies in the streets not digitalized avatars or Facebook friends. In 2009, Egyptian activist Mohamed Adel went to Belgrade, Serbia for guidance, home of the Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), which was spawned by OPTOR, the resistance group that ousted Slobodan Milosevic.

CANVAS provided the necessary training. According to Tina Rosenberg’s February article in Foreign Policy Revolution U, “They have worked with democracy advocates from more than 50 countries. They have advised groups of young people on how to take on some of the worst governments in the world – and in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria-occupied Lebanon, the Maldives, and now Egypt, those young people won.”

Perhaps winning is a relative term like the truth. Eight months after her article appeared, it doesn’t look like the Egyptian people have won anything except a sorry economy.

Another media myth has portrayed young Serbian Ivan Marovic as the heroic visionary who helped topple Milosevic using a brilliant grass roots strategy. He was instrumental, but NATO bombs also helped. Not reported was that Marovic’s vision and strategy came from an American, Harvard professor Gene Sharp. Hundreds of copies of his handbook From Dictatorship to Democracy were translated into the Serbian language and distributed by the Albert Einstein Institute, which specializes in methods of non-violent resistance.

An award winning documentary, How to start a Revolution, was recently released last month and reveals Sharp’s global influence.

In addition to Sharp’s assistance, the OPTOR revolutionaries also received CIA training and were partly financed by the US government through Freedom House and NED. Despite OPTOR’s lies to the contrary, this financing was confirmed after the Serbian coup, and many members quit.

On September 22^nd, Marovic addressed the sympathetic OWS crowd in New York.

OPTOR and CANVAS adopted the clenched fist symbol over a decade ago, so it was not surprising to see it prominently displayed in the streets of Cairo during their uprising. It’s become the official logo of OWS and all the global protests and revolutions. Perhaps this universal symbol will unite us all in one-world government after the destabilization campaigns accomplish their global destruction through economic ruin and the resulting riots.

A Populist Revolution

The protests are portrayed as a populist movement by the 99% have-nots against the elite. In an Oct 7^th article, the Activist Post wrote, “The elite are specialists at divide-and-conquer techniques, but that becomes exceedingly difficult when the melting pot of America truly spills over.”

The elite are also experts at false-flag operations and phony opposition campaigns that appear to undermine their interests, while it consolidates their power. History illustrates the success of this tactic. In 1913, a phony opposition campaign enabled the approval of the Federal Reserve Act.

The Activist Post called for its readers to “participate in what looks like the genuine start of the Second American Revolution.” A revolution against the controlling elite that thrusts off the tyranny of their central banking, the indoctrination in their schools, the lies of their media, and the brainwashing of their entertainment, would be a welcome development. But a revolution that appears to free the oppressed masses from the ultra-rich, while it is manipulated behind the scenes by the globalist elite will only lead to more enslavement.

The Doom of Liberty

Kalle Lasn of Adbusters is correct when he says that mega-corporations promote mass-consumerism through the brainwashing of television commercials. He was correct when he called television viewing “a major mental health problem.” Public opinion is now mass manufactured, and behaviors are created to keep the public distracted from the real issues in life. Television, movies, and computer games are not only addictive forms of vicarious living, rather than real living, but the audio-visual images are also powerful propaganda.

The protesters are correct when they condemn our mega-corporations, because they practice a crony Capitalism that inhibits free enterprise through government regulations, lobbyists who rig the rules, trade associations, campaign donations, and the swinging door between business and government. Crony Capitalism must be abolished.

The protestors are correct about the ills of Wall Street. Wall Street enriches itself, but only as a facilitator for big business and the Federal Reserve, which are the real culprits behind our economic woes and injustices.

Our young college graduates are justifiably angry when they can’t find a job or are forced to take a low paying job that will not pay down the enormous debt they incurred to get a worthless degree. But their anger is misdirected at the corporations that don’t want or need them. They should blame the real villains – the universities who swindled them with outrageous tuitions that had to be borrowed. In the past thirty years, college tuition has risen over 400%, while the quality of education has declined inversely.

Anger is becoming epidemic, but we will see the relationship between the protesters and our President get cozier. We will see demands clarified and leaders emboldened. We will probably see the harsh winter disperse the crowds to warmer climes. But networks are being established, and protesters are being indoctrinated.

The socialist cancer has invaded our vital organs: our government, our public and higher education, our mass media, our arts and sciences. Our language has changed, and our dialogue has been misdirected. The cancer might go away for a moment, but it will return more virulent, and it will eventually get violent.

As a nation, we waste our leisure time in pursuits of excitement, idleness, or pleasure. In the old days, leisure time was a valuable gift. Leisure and liberty were both hard earned by our great forebears, which many have taken for granted. We are living on borrowed time, a debt that must be repaid.

A time of reckoning is now upon us. It is time to turn off the insidious TV, the dehumanizing music, a time to tune out the deceptive media. It is time to replace our trivial pursuits with fasting, fervent prayer, and the study of the Scriptures. It is time to turn to our Lord with full purpose of heart. If we follow His lead, our concerns will be eased, our burdens will be lighter, and our spirituality will be strengthened.

Robert Beaudine is the author of the novel Based Upon a Lie, which you can purchase as an ebook. Visit his website, facebook page or email him at: robert@baseduponalie.com.

Copyright 2011 – Robert F. Beaudine. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

The Covert Agenda Behind the Occupy Wall Street Protests is an article from: STATESMAN SENTINEL

Congressman Ron Paul proposed a new budget plan that would cut $1 trillion from the federal government his first year in office, if he becomes president.  It would include immediately cutting funding to five agencies: the Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy, Interior, and Housing and Urban Development.

Critics have jumped on the plan because it would mean over 200,000 federal employees would lose their jobs.  Unemployment is a very sad thing, and it is unfortunate for all of those who would experience it, but President Paul would not be to blame.

The federal government has created a false sense of security for all of its employees.  Through labor contracts, union lobbying, and a sense of limitless funds, federal employees have amazing benefits, including the option to work only 4 days every week, and very little risk of losing their jobs.

How can this be?  Are the services that federal employees provide so exceptional?

Federal employment conditions exemplify what Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek referred to as the Knowledge Problem, also known as the Calculation Problem.

The Knowledge Problem emerges from the fact that central planners lack the knowledge granted by the price system to efficiently allocate resources.  This uniquely Austrian observation is insightful and effective, because it drills to the core reason why central planning is inherently flawed, and why – no matter what form it takes – it will always fail over time.

When a private business hires employees, they must measure the costs of the employees against the income they will make by providing services to the consumer.  The consumer plays a critical role in private employment, because a business must be productive in a way that pleases them in order to grow.

Governmental bureaucracy works the opposite way.  The government hires based on budgetary policies that come from politicians allocating the taxpayers’ money.  The taxpayers have no say in the budgetary process, and even when they try to make their voices heard, such as in the rise of the Tea Party, the process is so political and convoluted that few cuts ever actually happen.

Due to the lack of any market guide, such as a consumer, bureaucracies instead rely on political necessity.  They propagate the idea of “market failure,” which leads them to self-righteously ignore basic economic laws, such as productivity.

A key aspect of federal employment that exemplifies this, is the pay grade level, what is called in government lingo “General Schedule” or “GS.”  This is the general pay scale for all federal employees, and is based on seniority.  Each year a federal employee works, they increase one “step,” which entitles them to higher pay.  When they increase ten steps, they reach a new GS “level.”

The only catch to these increases is that the employee’s performance must be an “acceptable level of competence.”  There is no measurement of whether their job is actually worthwhile; no one to say they don’t want to pay more for the employee’s services; no one to answer to.

When paired with the fact that federal employees make an average of $81,258 excluding benefits, while private employees make an average of $50,464 excluding benefits, the system seems even more misguided.

For years, the federal employment system has been growing into a bubble. But like any bubble, the growth is unsustainable.  The government has made far too many promises than it can ever keep, and federal employees are just some of the people who will suffer because of it.

If studying economics proves anything, it proves that people are not in this world to merely exist comfortably and wait to achieve the next pay grade, without providing any truly productive service.  We are in this world to interact with each other, to use our own skills, desires, and abilities in a way that adds value to others’ lives.  We are here to trade and cooperate to make life on this imperfect world tolerable.

The ruling class has, throughout history, made their living at others’ expense, but there is no place for it in a free society, and Ron Paul is the only one standing up against them.

Christopher is a graduate from George Mason University, where he received his BA in Economics. He has worked in financial and broadcast journalism. He currently lives in northern Virginia.

Ron Paul’s Budget Plan and Federal Employment is an article from: STATESMAN SENTINEL

Elizabeth Warren is running in the 2012 US Senate race in Massachusetts.  Her campaign announcement video that came out last week emphasizes the importance of defending middle class American families who are being exploited by big corporations and their Washington lobbyists.  It sounds like enticing rhetoric.

For those who don’t know, Elizabeth Warren served as Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the bailouts in 2008.

Since that time, she has been adored by the left and the media as a principled “Sheriff of Wall Street” and her campaign sounds like a progressive dream come true: anti-war, anti-corporation, and pro-taxes on the wealthy.

If you could describe her political stances in one word, it would be: Fairness.

Fairness is a good thing, and I agree with Warren on some key issues, but her emphasis on enforcing fairness over defending freedom and equality, ultimately leads to hidden costs on the very people she hopes to protect.

A Youtube video of Warren speaking to a small group of supporters has received a lot of attention this week.  In it, she discusses her views on taxing the rich.

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody… You built a factory out there—good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate… Part of the underlying social contract [for profitable business] is that you take a hunk of [your profits] and pay it forward for the next kid who comes along.

Her points sound appealing, and have some truth to them, but she has achieved the moral high ground by ignoring the externalities of tax policy that would complicate her message of fairness.

Taxes on businesses tend to be offset by higher prices for consumers.  Taxes are also discouraging to growth and employment, and are wasted once they reach the US Treasury.  How is any of that fair?  Why should consumers/taxpayers lose out because the wealthy aren’t “pulling their own weight”?

Russ Roberts, an economist at George Mason University, wrote a pretty damning commentary in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday in response to her comments.

At the end, he reminds us of another reason why increasing taxes on the rich may also increase the cronyism that Warren so steadfastly opposes. Central planners need the rich to keep the economy booming and if they increase taxes on them, it is very reasonable to assume that those costs will be offset in other ways, such as subsidies, trade restrictions, or special privileges, leading to an even cozier relationship between government and big business.

In her interview with Charlie Rose last year, Charlie asked for her reaction to the bank bailouts and the TARP program.  She answered honestly, saying that: “given [Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulsen’s] worldview, they did a good job.”  She then said that the bailouts “pulled us back from the abyss,” but that they could have done it by focusing on helping families and the larger economy rather than helping to maintain Wall Street companies and their investors.

She believed that the bailouts helped the wrong people, but how should the bailouts have worked?  Wouldn’t a decision to save homeowners rather than bankers amount to a similar end?

In both cases, the government would be bailing out an interest group who made a bad investment.  In both cases, the government would be inflating the currency, at the cost of those who were wise and frugal enough to save their money.  Based on a “fair” policy, who should benefit?

Warren’s emphasis on fairness is well meaning, but the act of enforcing it through government coercion creates so many externalities that it is an untenable policy goal. In a world that cannot be made perfect by even the smartest central planners, the only fair policy is one that ensures every individual has the freedom to decide how to live their own lives and interact in the marketplace.

Christopher is a graduate from George Mason University, where he received his BA in Economics. He has worked in financial and broadcast journalism. He currently lives in northern Virginia.

Elizabeth Warren and Progressive Fairness is an article from: STATESMAN SENTINEL

By Tim Dunkin
STATESMAN SENTINEL
September 22, 2011

One of the fundamental premises upon which any truly free society must be based is the notion that the government is open, transparent, and accountable to the citizens.  To the extent that this is not the case, a society cannot be called “free,” and it is a notable, and lamentable, fact of modern America that our government at all levels has been growing more and more secretive, less and less accountable for blatant wrongdoing on the part of its officers and employees.  Instead of government activity being exposed to the disinfecting light of an informed citizenry, we are routinely kept in the dark about most of what our government does, as it tries to hide the corruption and injustices that would bring the system crashing down around the ears of our “betters” if we the people were to find out about them.

At the federal level, many laws – in the form of “administrative regulations,” and lacking wholly in legislative sanction – are created by an executive branch run amuck, something true regardless of which Party holds the White House.  Whether by executive orders that the public rarely if ever knows about, or by the myriad of rules generated by an alphabet soup of unelected bureaucrats in unaccountable agencies, our lives are impacted detrimentally by the coercive powers of the state through means that have completely bypassed the legislature elected (supposedly) to be the close representatives of the people directly in government.  Law and regulation are often made at our expense for the good of the favored few who constitute an incestuous circle of lobbyists and influence-peddlers, corporate donors, politicians, public unions, and career bureaucrats.

Just look at the current Solyndra scandal that has finally started to see the light of day (despite the best efforts of the leftist MSM to squelch the story): a “green” company, which just so happened to be an investment opportunity for a certain President and his associates, which received hundreds of millions of taxpayer “stimulus” dollars and ended up collapsing because there was nothing ever really there – it was just a cash funnel for corrupt corporate executives and corrupt politicians working hand in hand.  Or what about the LightSquared scandal: revelations that another company (which just happens to be a major donor to high profile Democrats) was to have its open broadband product fast-tracked through the FCC’s approval process, allowing it to bypass the maze of regulations that hinder and afflict its less-favored competitors, despite concerns that said product almost certainly would interfere with civilian and military GPS applications.  We all get to suffer degraded GPS performance and military protection so that a corporate Friend of Barack can save some bucks.

At the state level, the same applies.  Corporate and union corruptions drive much of the closed-door decision-making, and have worked to strangle much of the economic recovery that could have been seen in many of the states across this land.  Take, for example, Texas Governor Rick Perry’s executive order a few years ago in which he mandated the vaccination of all pre-teen girls in his state with the anti-HPV (human papillomavirus) drug Gardasil. Thus, just as with all those people who would rather continue to fight the failed War on (Some) Drugs than accept that it’s a catastrophe that does nothing but shred our Constitution, the liberty to decide what goes or doesn’t go into your body takes a back seat to “safety.”  As it turns out, Perry had just received thousands in campaign donations from Gardasil’s manufacturer, Merck.

State governments routinely bypass legislatures, create unelected bureaucracies, encourage empire-building, give free reign to its agents to “enforce laws,” and discourage too close inspection by interested and concerned citizens.  It is especially at the state and local levels that government agents – police, judges, and so forth – have been actively trying to discourage citizen oversight of their behavior.  One or the major means in which this is done is by misusing existing wiretapping laws to criminalize the taping of police and court officials in the performance of their public duties.  These laws were most often originally intended to protect citizens against secret taping of private conversations on phones in places (like their homes and businesses) where there was the reasonable expectation of privacy.  In other words, some third party, say a business competitor or nosy neighbor, couldn’t install a tap on your phone line without your knowledge and subsequently record your conversations.  However, the incidence of police officers arresting (and prosecutors prosecuting) citizens for videotaping the police in their public duties is increasing, relying upon these anti-wiretapping laws as a buttress.

Before exploring the nuts-and-bolts of this issue, the question any citizen should ask his or herself is why a police officer would feel threatened by someone videotaping them.  Why do many police officers get so bent out of shape that they will smash cell phones and cameras, arrest, and beat up people taping them, and threaten them with decades in prison?  This pattern of behavior suggests that many police officers believe they have something to hide, something they don’t want going onto a camera that they can’t control and alter at a later date.  All too often, that something is some form of official misconduct, often revolving around violence or intimidation done under color of authority.  In short, cops don’t want citizens recording them when they harass people, rough them up, or otherwise do things they shouldn’t.  And even when police are not doing these things in any particular encounter between officers and citizens, they don’t want the precedent to be set that private citizens could videotape them, hence the many times where police will escalate otherwise peaceful encounters once they realize they are being taped or filmed.

And let’s face it – there are a lot of times when police overstep their lawful authority and abuse their positions.  Such as when six officers beat and taser an unarmed homeless man to death in an ordeal lasting 10 minutes.  What about when they strip, handcuff, beat, and taser an unarmed suspect after he’s already been “immobilized”? Or when they’re shaking down out-of-state travelers and stealing their cash and other property?  How about when they’re pointing guns at and pepper spraying the family of a scared teenage driver who ran from a minor traffic stop and hid out at his parents’ home, after forcibly busting into the home without a warrant?  And of course, nobody likes to be videoed when they’re pulling over random vehicles and threatening to kill the passengers.  Then there’s the case where Massachusetts cops handcuffed and then beat up a pro-life activist for handing out fliers at a public fair.  What about the cop in Ohio who threatened to beat and execute a motorist who informed him of his concealed weapon, like concealed carriers are supposed to do by law?  How about when they shoot a Marine in his own home, admitting later that they found nothing illegal going on?

And these are really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to stories of police brutality, excessive force, and official misconduct.

One thing that several of the stories above have in common is that by one means or another they were caught on tape, and therefore saw the light of day.  The police couldn’t cover them up.  In several cases, the official police testimony of the events was radically contradicted by the actual video evidence, indicating that the officers involved were lying to investigators.  It’s no wonder that police officers, especially those involved in shootings, will go to great lengths to prevent uncontrolled citizen recording of their behavior.  For instance, there’s the case of a man in Miami Beach, Florida, who recorded the shooting of a suspect by police on his cell phone.  When the police figured out what he was doing, one of them pointed a pistol at his head, smashed his cell phone, and handcuffed him (video here).  Fortunately, the owner of the phone had the foresight to hide the memory card in his mouth.

Not an isolated case, of course.  A woman in Rochester, New York was arrested for videotaping police officers making a traffic stop in front of her house, while she was doing so from her own front yard.  In Concord, New Hampshire, a lemonade stand operator was assaulted and threatened with arrest (for wiretapping) for videotaping a police officer at a farmer’s market.  In Maryland, police arrested and charged Anthony Graber with violating state wiretapping laws because his helmet camera captured a state trooper pulling a gun on him and ordering him off his motorcycle.  The charge carries with it the possibility of a 16-year prison sentence, while the speeding and pop-a-wheelie that got him pulled over originally only merited a ticket.  Police in Suffolk County, New York even arrested a news cameraman for videotaping the tail end of a police chase.

Do the police have such a bugaboo about “civilians” recording them because they know that they may often have something to hide?  After all, the police tell people whose vehicles and homes they want to search without a warrant that “if you don’t have anything to hide, then you don’t have anything to worry about.”  Why go to such lengths to keep people from recording you in public, unless you think you might be doing something you don’t want people to find out about?

Fortunately, recent rulings are showing this to be one area where the courts, surprisingly enough, are getting it right.  Last month, the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a man who had recorded police during an arrest of a suspect (which included an officer punching the arrestee) had a constitutional right to do so, and in fact, that the police should have known this (PDF of the decision here).  In Illinois, a state judge ruled as unconstitutional a state eavesdropping law that was used to prosecute a man who had recorded his interactions with police and with a judge in a closed session, saving him from 75 years in jail.  Earlier this year, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the public has the right to record police in the performance of their public duties.  Back in 2005, the U.S. District Court in eastern Pennsylvania ruled that a citizen who was arrested for videotaping Pennsylvania state police as they performed truck inspections had his 1^st amendment rights violated.  This case was later used by the 3^rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to decide a case in favor of a man who had been arrested on wiretapping charges for videotaping an encounter with state police as a passenger in the detainee’s vehicle.

As such, there does seem to be a good deal of broad-based precedent being built for affirming the constitutionality of videotaping or otherwise recording police as they perform their official duties.  This has led at least one state (Connecticut) to consider a bill before its state legislature that would make it illegal for police officers to hinder or harass citizens who videotape them, provided the citizen isn’t directly obstructing the officer’s performance of his or her duties.

As much as liberty lovers criticize our elected officials, we should at least give credit to our legislators when they do the right thing and work to restrict the ability of out-of-control police and other executive agencies to take away our rights and to hide their activities in the shadows.  While lovers of liberty have a lot of work to do across the board as far as fighting to regain lost freedom and to keep what little we still have, codifying the right of citizens to “keep tabs” on public officials, including (or perhaps especially) police officers, is a lynchpin in gaining and keeping liberty.  With greater authority and the ability to exercise the raw power of state-sanctioned violence necessarily come the need for greater oversight and control by the group who really form the basis of all legitimacy for government – the people themselves.  If government agencies and their officers cannot bring themselves to accept citizen oversight and accountability, then those agencies and officers lose their claims to delegated legitimacy, and should rightly be removed.  It’s time for lovers of liberty to make this point explicitly clear.

Tim Dunkin is a pharmaceutical chemist by day, and a freelance author by night, writing about a wide range of topics on religion and politics. He is the author of an online book about Islam entitled Ten Myths About Islam, and is the founder and editor of Conservative Underground, a bi-weekly email newsletter focusing on foundational conservative worldview and philosophy. He is a born-again Christian, and a member of a local, New Testament Baptist church in North Carolina. He can be contacted at tqcincinnatus@yahoo.com

The Right to Keep and Bear Cameras is an article from: STATESMAN SENTINEL