Keep in mind: While the conference is oriented toward students, it is not limited to students. Anyone can attend. The registration fee is only $50 for non-students. It’s the best deal you Continue Reading]]> I can’t begin to tell you how psyched we are about our “conference within a conference” that we are having at the 2014 Students for Liberty Conference in Washington, D.C. The entire conference goes from February 14-16 but all of FFF’s sessions occur on Saturday, February 15.

Keep in mind: While the conference is oriented toward students, it is not limited to students. Anyone can attend. The registration fee is only $50 for non-students. It’s the best deal you will ever get!

If you can make it, you will be treated to a fantastic overall libertarian conference, which includes many talks on economic issues.

FFF’s “conference within a conference” focuses on one general theme: “Civil Liberties and the National Security State.”

Why that particular theme?

I think it’s safe to say that most of us libertarians discovered libertarianism as a result of economic issues. That certainly applies to me. I discovered libertarianism in the late 1970s when I was practicing law in my hometown of Laredo, Texas. I started voraciously reading people like Leonard Read, Ludwig von Mises, Frederic Bastiat, Henry Hazlitt, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and many others. I recognized that libertarian economic principles—or Austrian economics—were the key to economic prosperity and rising standards of living, especially for the poor.

But over the years, I began to suspect that the U.S. warfare state posed a much graver threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people than the welfare state. After 9/11, those suspicions were confirmed, big time. At that point, the dark side of the U.S. warfare state rose to the surface in all its ugliness, unfortunately to the acclaim of many American warfare statists.

America, of course, was founded as a limited-government, constitutional republic. Unfortunately, however, that principle was abandoned in the 20th century (or even by intervening in the Spanish American War in 1898). Over the decades, America moved in the direction of militarism and empire, especially with World Wars I and II. The wholesale transformation of American life came with the advent of the national-security state in the aftermath of World War II.

It is impossible to overstate the fundamental change that came over America. Our nation became a militarist and imperialist nation, one based on thousands of permanent military bases here in the United States and also in more than 100 foreign countries. A vast standing army became a permanent foundation of America’s governmental structure. Draft registration became normalized. Partnerships with brutal foreign dictatorships also became normal. The CIA and NSA, with all their nefarious activities, came into existence to “keep us safe.” For all practical purposes, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA became the fourth branch of the U.S. government, and the most powerful branch at that.

The result was the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, regime change operations in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, and many others, installation or support of brutal dictatorships, foreign wars, foreign aid, foreign interventionism, and foreign alliances.

In the process came all sorts of sordid national security actions against regular citizens, such as Martin Luther King, Pete Seeger, Earnest Hemingway, and other Americans who were just doing what they believed would make America a better country. Such people were viewed as enemies of the national security state and, therefore, enemies of America, given that U.S. officials conflated our country with the national-security state apparatus that they had grafted onto our constitutional system.

There was COINTELPRO, secret surveillance of Americans, secret files on Americans, drug experiments on unsuspecting Americans, intimidation of Americans, and even assassination of Americans (e.g., Charles Horman and Frank Terrugi).

When the Cold War ended, unfortunately the sordidness did not. Once U.S. actions in the Middle East provoked terrorist retaliation, all the dark-side activities surfaced in their full national-state glory. Torture, assassination, lies, deceptions, invasions, indefinite detention, rendition, partnerships with dictatorships, and denial of trial by jury and due process of law are now established parts of America’s legal structure.

In opposing communism and terrorism, U.S. officials have effectively Sovietized America. Just like in the Soviet Union, Americans have been taught to glorify the military, CIA, and NSA. Even today, as people revel in those military “fly-overs” at big U.S. sports events, they fail to realize that they are simply a variation of the tanks that Soviet people used to go gaga-gaga over in Soviet parades.

Most important, the national security state has taken away our freedom and privacy. When a government wields the omnipotent power to take citizens into military custody, hold them indefinitely, torture them, monitor their telephone calls, emails, and Internet activity, and even assassinate them without having to answer to anyone, that’s about as far from a free society that anyone could ever get.

So, our mission at the Students for Liberty Conference is to raise the vision of the students to the critical importance of civil liberties to a free society and how the national security state had infringed upon our rights and freedom and what we must do to restore a free society to our land.

We have lined up some of the greatest proponents of civil liberties in the nation for our “conference within a conference.” Many of your will remember the all-star line-up we had at our two conferences in Reston, Virginia, in 2008 and 2009. This mini-conference is going to be just as good.

You’ll notice that our line-up of speakers includes liberals (progressives) and libertarians (just as our Reston conferences did and also our two College Civil Liberties tours we did last year with Glenn Greenwald). Needless to say, we have differences on economic issues. But on civil liberties, are on the same page.

In fact, you’ll be interested to know that we have sent promotional materials to the political science departments in most of the universities in the D.C. area, in the hopes of attracting a large number of progressive students to the conference. Wouldn’t it be great to have libertarian students, progressive students, and conservative students interacting with each other?

Our line-up: Jonathan Turley, one of the greatest lawyers in the country. Stephen Kinzer, whose book The Brothers is receiving widespread acclaim. Robert Higgs, one of the giants in the libertarian movement and one of my personal heroes in life. Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU, one of the progressive organizations that didn’t buckle when Obama was elected. John Glaser whose articles on foreign policy in the Washington Times and elsewhere are fantastic. Scott Horton, whose radio talk show has been absolutely phenomenal in terms of the guests and interviews he has conducted. Sheldon Richman, another of the giants in the libertarian movement. And me.

The featured presentation is our panel in the main ballroom. Imagine: a panel that has an academic award-winning director and a person who is nominated for an Academy Award this year. I’m referring to Oliver Stone and Jeremy Scahill. Also on the panel is Peter Kuznick, who was Oliver’s collaborator on their fantastic series “Untold History” that appeared on Showtime. Oliver and Peter are going to be at FFF’s booth after the panel to autograph copies of their book Untold History. I have a hunch that that panel presentation is going to be something that no one will ever forget.

If you can’t make it, don’t worry: We are recording all the talks and will be later posting them on our website. But there is no substitute for being around all the excitement, especially among some 1,600 young people who are infused with optimism and determination.

Can we move America in a different direction? You bet we can! That’s what ideas on liberty are all about. That’s why FFF is participating in the 2014 Students for Liberty Conference.

The latest example of concern over the trade deficit comes from Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute and former counselor to the secretary of Continue Reading]]> Do you ever wish that the federal government would stop publishing data on the so-called trade deficit? It would be one of the best things the government could ever do. At the very least, it would bring an end to the nonsensical obsessiveness over the trade deficit that characterizes so many mainstream economists.

The latest example of concern over the trade deficit comes from Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute and former counselor to the secretary of commerce in the Reagan administration. In a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, entitled “The All-Too-Real Costs of Free Trade to Average Americans,” Prestowitz argues that the trade deficit is a root cause of unemployment in America. Reflecting standard statist concern over “income inequality,” he says that the trade deficit is, in large part, responsible for that too.

Prestowitz writes that the problem is that the federal government continues to enter into “free-trade” agreements “that seem to open the U.S. market while leaving others relatively closed.” He says that President Obama should “balance” U.S. trade, which, he says, would create 5 million jobs and finally bring “full employment and greater equality” to America.
What a pile of economic nonsense! It’s really just an excuse to avoid confronting the central problem: the horrific damage that economic statism has done and continues to do to our nation.

Think about the trade deficit between my state of Virginia and your state. Are you concerned about it? Do you know which state has the favorable balance of trade and which one is on the unfavorable side? After all, the chances that trade between our respective states perfectly balances is pretty close to nil.

Do you pace the floors at night worry about that trade deficit? Do you toss and turn in your sleep wondering what you can do about it? Do you try to get more Virginians to visit your state and buy things there in order to shift the trade balance in your favor?

I’ll bet your answer to all those questions is: “Jacob, I don’t give a hoot what the trade deficit is between my state and yours. It makes no difference to me at all.”

And that’s precisely what would happen if the federal government stopped publishing data about the trade deficit between the United States and other countries. It wouldn’t make any difference whatsoever, just like it doesn’t make any difference what the trade deficit is between different states or, for that matter, different cities.

The real cause of America’s economic woes, including chronic unemployment, has nothing to do with any trade deficit. America’s woes, which economic statists will do anything to avoid confronting, are rooted in the type of economic system that modern-day Americans have chosen to embrace — one that is managed, directed, regulated, and manipulated by the federal government.

Prestowitz would undoubtedly call America’s economic system “capitalism.” That’s what statists have long called an economic system based on income taxation, welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, economic regulations, minimum-wage laws, the drug war, immigration controls, trade restrictions, a Federal Reserve System, and fiat money, along with a massive warfare state that dominates economic activity in the United States and other parts of the world.
Libertarians know better. We understand that all that junk constitutes not a free-market system but rather a statist system. We also understand that it’s all that statism — that is, the heavy role that the federal government plays in economic activity — that is the root cause of America’s economic woes.

Consider chronic unemployment. Prestowitz says it’s because of the “trade deficit.” Really? What about the trade deficits that exist between the several states? Do those trade deficits cause unemployment too? Should we amend the Constitution to require each state to have a balance of trade with every other state?

It is economic interventionism and the federal government’s heavy role in the economy that is the root cause of unemployment. There are minimum-wage laws that lock out of the labor market everyone whose labor is valued by employers at less than the mandated minimum, including black teenagers, where the unemployment rate stays between 30 and 40 percent. Moreover, heavy income taxes across society to fund the ever-burgeoning expenditures of the public sector, both welfare and warfare, destroy existing businesses and prevent new businesses from coming into existence.

Prestowitz’s notion that the trade agreements that Washington enters into are “free trade” agreements is as palpably nonsensical as his obsessive concern over the trade deficit and income inequality. These agreements are the opposite of free trade. They are managed trade, managed by the central government. Genuine free trade is trade that is entirely free of government control and intervention. That’s why it’s called “free” trade. If Washington favored free trade, it wouldn’t enter into any trade agreement. It would simply drop all federal restrictions imposed on trade, unilaterally and immediately.

What should Americans do who would like to see a society based on liberty and prosperity, especially for those at the bottom of the economic ladder? They should reject the nonsense of economic statism, which has proven to be a disaster. And things are only getting worse, both from a liberty standpoint and an economic standpoint.
Americans should instead restore the principles of economic liberty, free markets, and a limited-government republic to which our American ancestors bequeathed to us. That means a dismantling, not a reform, of the welfare-warfare state way of life, including an abolition of the federal department that publishes the data on the trade deficit.

What were the terms of that fateful trade? Continue Reading]]> When Barack Obama was elected president, the chickens came home to roost above the sordid nest that conservatives made for us after the 9/11 attacks. It was after those attacks that conservatives, quivering and quaking in their shoes over the thought that the terrorists were coming to get us, traded away the freedom of the American people to the federal government in the hope of gaining safety and security from the terrorists.

What were the terms of that fateful trade? They surrendered to President Bush omnipotent powers, powers that are inherent to any totalitarian regime and that are antithetical to the principles of freedom, due process of law, and limited government in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Such totalitarian powers included the following:

1. The power to take people into military custody as suspected terrorists, holding them for as long as the military wants, torture them, and even execute them, perhaps after some sort of kangaroo trial before a military tribunal, all without trial by jury and due process of law. While Americans were initially led to believe that such powers encompassed only foreigners, they soon learned that they also included American citizens. That’s what the Jose Padilla case was all about, a case in which the federal courts deferred to the president and upheld his new presidential powers.

2. The power to spy on people, delve into their telephone records, monitor their telephone calls, read their emails, and who knows what else. That includes not just foreigners but also Americans.  That’s what the illegal contracts that Bush and his people made with the telecoms were all about. It’s also what the Edward Snowden revelations about the NSA are all about.

3. The power to assassinate people, including American citizens. That power is confirmed by the ongoing assassinations of countless foreigners as well as the assassinations of American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman. No judicial warrants. No trials to determine guilt or innocence. No due process of law. Just plain, simple, and efficient assassination, without anyone having to answer, justify, or explain the assassinations.

There is no way to reconcile these powers with the principles of a free society. They are inherent to totalitarian regimes. They are precisely the powers that our ancestors did their best to prevent the federal government from exercising. That’s what the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments are all about.

It also doesn’t make any difference how much Americans might still consider themselves a free people. False realities are only delusions. They don’t create a new reality. People who live under any regime that wields these types of totalitarian powers are not a free people, pure and simple.

But conservatives thought that it was a good trade because their man — George W. Bush — was the president. He’s a compassionate conservative, they cried. He can be trusted with these omnipotent powers, they said. He’ll take care of us and keep us safe from the terrorists.

We libertarians kept emphasizing: Don’t relinquish these powers to anyone. Imagine the person who you would consider your worst nightmare being elected president. Would you want him to wield these powers? Don’t trade away our freedom, we libertarians said, no matter how afraid you are and no matter how much trust you have in President Bush.

But conservatives wouldn’t listen. They were too afraid. They wanted safety and security. Nothing else mattered. They traded away our freedom in the hope that Bush and his army and CIA would keep them safe from the terrorists.

And then seven years later Democrat Barack Obama was elected president. He now wielded the totalitarian powers that conservatives had relinquished to President Bush.

And that’s not the end of it. Now we are facing the distinct prospect that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be elected president in 2016. She’s leading the polls by far in the Democrat Party. The Republicans have no frontrunner and are expected to field some 15 or more candidates.

That’s what conservatives have done to us with their fateful trade back in 2001. Time will tell, but there is now a very real possibility that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be wielding the totalitarian powers that conservatives relinquished to George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. The powers to arrest Americans (and foreigners) and detain them indefinitely in military custody, to torture them, to spy on them, and to assassinate them. All very possibly wielded by Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary.

Nice job, conservatives! Thanks a lot for trading away our freedom for the sake of security. You lost us both our freedom and our security.

California Governor Jerry Brown has reached out to the federal government for help with the drought. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. Such a request is now considered an ordinary and normal part of American life. Something goes wrong, call the federal government Continue Reading]]> The drought in California and Southwestern United States remind us of the two different economic systems in U.S. history, each of which involved fundamentally different roles for the U.S. government in the economic lives of the American people.

California Governor Jerry Brown has reached out to the federal government for help with the drought. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. Such a request is now considered an ordinary and normal part of American life. Something goes wrong, call the federal government for assistance. The federal government is rich. It is powerful. It is benevolent. It loves us. It takes care of us. It watches over us. With the exception of libertarians, no one questions these bedrock principles of the modern-day federal government.

Yet, how many Americans today realize that for our American ancestors, such a mindset was considered anathema? Eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century Americans didn’t view the federal government as a god or even as a benevolent saint. They realized that the only way that the federal government could get its money was by seizing it from people in the private sector. Our ancestors believed that it was not the role of the federal government to be good with monies that had been forcibly taken from others. They believed in freedom of choice and voluntary charity.

A good example of the mindset that guided our ancestors occurred in 1889, a period in which the state of Texas was suffering a severe drought. Showing how good and caring they were, the members of Congress appropriated federal monies to the suffering farmers of Texas. This was the period of time when socialist and interventionist ideas were beginning to percolate among the American people.

President Grover Cleveland vetoed the bill. Keep in mind that Cleveland was a Democrat. He belonged to the political party that today wholeheartedly embraces socialism and interventionism as its guiding creed. Consider what Cleveland wrote in his veto message:

I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.

The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.

So, there you have it: “The government should not support the people.” That pretty much sums up the type of government that the Framers intended to bring into existence with the Constitution.

Our American ancestors believed it was morally wrong for one person to rob another person of his money even if the robber intended to be good with the loot. They also understood that an immoral act could not be converted into a moral act simply by having the government perform the dirty deed.

Thus, they brought into existence a government that didn’t have the delegated power in the Constitution to forcibly seize people’s money through taxation in order to give it to people in need. They believed that that was what voluntary charity was all about, as Cleveland noted in his veto message.

Our ancestors also understood a practical point: that once government is given the power to dole out tax monies to people, the floodgates are open and there is no way to close them. From that point on, the demands for federal money and the number of people seeking federal money grow exponentially.

Obviously, Americans today live under an opposite type of governmental system from that of our ancestors, one in which the primary purpose of the federal government, on a domestic basis, is to tax most everyone in order to have a gigantic pool of money to dole out to people in need. Interestingly, this fundamental change in our governmental structure was accomplished without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

At the same time, the federal government has become a major arena of conflict, one in which taxpayers are doing everything to protect their money from the IRS and in which dole recipients are doing everything they can to get their hands on the loot that the IRS collects.

Moreover, given that the amount that the government doles out for both welfare and warfare far exceeds the amount it collects in taxes, federal debt continues to soar, with the federal government doing what it always has done to deal with the problem—inflating the money supply to pay the difference.

Of course, federal assistance for California’s drought sufferers will be only a drop in the bucket compared to the overall massive level of federal welfare-warfare spending, all which is taking our nation down the road to economic bankruptcy and monetary crisis.

The latest example involves a massive road-building project in Afghanistan, which was detailed in Sunday’s Washington Post in an Continue Reading]]> Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman once pointed out that with the possible exception of the war on drugs, the U.S. military is the biggest socialist enterprise in the United States. Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise us that when the military embarks on a rebuilding campaign for foreign countries it invades and destroys, among the first things it does is adopt socialist programs.

The latest example involves a massive road-building project in Afghanistan, which was detailed in Sunday’s Washington Post in an article entitled “After Billions in U.S. investment, Afghan Roads are Falling Apart.”

It turns out that not only are people dying in Afghanistan from drone attacks, suicide bombs, road mines, and shootings, they’re also dying from the U.S.-built road system. According to the Post, “In many places, the roads once deemed the hallmark of America’s development effort have turned into death traps, full of cars careening into massive bomb-blast craters or sliding off crumbling pavement.”

The Post states, “The United States almost immediately made road construction a top priority after the 2001 invasion—calling an effective network of highways and rural roads the key to both security and economic stability.”

Isn’t that just what we would expect from a large socialist enterprise such as the U.S. military? Among the first things it does to “rebuild” the nation that it destroys with its bombs, missiles, tanks, etc. is adopt a classic socialist program—roads and highways. Maybe they were thinking of the U.S. Interstate Highway System, a massive socialist public-works project that was modeled on the Autobahn system constructed by National Socialist Germany. (Not surprisingly, U.S. officials also love building dams, another public works project that has long been favored by socialist regimes.)

U.S. officials blame the Afghan road problems not on socialism but rather on Afghan officials. “There’s been nothing. No maintenance,” declared one U.S. official who preferred to stay anonymous because he hadn’t gotten permission to speak publicly on the matter. The Afghans say that they need U.S. money to do the maintenance. U.S. officials refuse to provide it because they say the Afghans are too incompetent to maintain the roads. Of course, another possibility is that U.S. officials know that the road maintenance money would end up in the pockets of Afghan officials.

What’s fascinating is that U.S. military officials really believe that socialism can be made to succeed, which is why they continue to embrace these socialist monstrosities. If the 20th century taught us anything, including in the Soviet Union, it’s that socialism is an utter failure. It has brought nothing but destitution, impoverishment, and lower standards of living for every nation that has ever tried it.

Equally important, as Ludwig von Mises and other free-market economists have long shown, socialism is inherently defective, meaning that nothing can be done to make it work. Mises called it “planned chaos,” the title of one of his books. What better term to describe situation in Afghanistan (and Iraq)?

But for socialists, hope springs eternal. Despite the manifest failure of every single one of its nation-building efforts (see Iraq), U.S. military officials continue to hope that one of their socialist programs—this one being a massive public-works road-building project—will finally succeed in rebuilding one of the nations it destroys with its invasions and occupations. It will never work.

The horrible part of U.S. invasions and occupations of foreign countries, of course, is the massive death and destruction that they wreak across the victimized nation.

The second tragedy comes as part of the U.S. military’s “rebuilding” of the new government. It has the new regime adopt a large military-intelligence establishment as the foundation of the new government, with officials having the unfettered power to arrest and detain people, the omnipotent power to search people’s homes, persons, and businesses without judicial warrants, to confiscate guns, torture prisoners, establish surveillance schemes on the citizenry, and so forth. It goes without saying that all of these programs violate the limited-government, due-process principles of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The third tragedy comes with the socialist economic programs that the U.S. military imposes on the occupied nation, programs that are antithetical to the founding principles of private property, free markets, and limited government on which America was founded. Massive public works projects, such as highway-building and dam-building campaigns, are examples.

So, there you have it: The U.S. military stomps around the world showing everyone what America stands for: militarism, imperialism, and socialism rather than private property, free markets, and limited government.

Americans deserve better. So does the world.

PROGRAM Social Security Medicare Medicaid Welfare Public Housing Farm Subsidies SBA Loans Education Grants Economic Regulations Minimum Wages Price Controls Licensure Laws Immigration Controls Public Schooling Gun Control Income Taxation Federal Reserve System Fiat Money Drug Laws War on Poverty Standing Army Military Industrial Complex CIA NSA Foreign Military Bases Foreign Policing Foreign Alliances Foreign Aid Foreign Wars Foreign Interventions Regime Change Operations Sanctions and Embargoes Continue Reading]]> There have been two opposite systems in American history. Here are the two systems:

Questions for discussion: How can two opposite systems both constitute freedom? Who was right? Who had the better system? Under which system are people genuinely free? If people falsely believe they are free, does that make them free? Which system produces greater economic prosperity, especially for the poor? Are the many woes that modern-day Americans are suffering the consequence of having abandoned their founding system and adopted a different system? Which system produces greater safety and security for the citizenry? Under which system is government a greater danger to the freedom and well-being of the citizenry?

Consider, for example, that ridiculous $10,000 regulation, which requires Americans returning from a foreign country to declare to U.S. customs officials whether they’re carrying $10,000 or Continue Reading]]> Amidst all the revelations about how the American people, many of whom are absolutely convinced they live in a free society, have their telephone calls, emails, website visits, and who knows what else under surveillance by their own government, let’s not forget the massive infringements on financial privacy that have gone on for decades.

Consider, for example, that ridiculous $10,000 regulation, which requires Americans returning from a foreign country to declare to U.S. customs officials whether they’re carrying $10,000 or more on their person. What’s that all about? We are all so accustomed to it that hardly anyone gives it a second thought.

Sure, I know what you’re thinking: “Jacob, who carries $10,000 on their person when traveling overseas?” But that’s not the point. The point is: What business is it of the government how much money a person is carrying anywhere at any time? In a genuinely free society, that’s something that is none of the government’s business.

I suppose they might bring up the “war on terrorism” except for the fact that the regulation has long preceded that particular war.

Quite honestly, I don’t know what the rationale for this silly regulation is. I imagine that they defend it under their beloved war on drugs. Obviously the regulation hasn’t done much to win that war, given that it’s still going on after several decades of warfare. So, what good is it, except as a way to let people know who’s the servant and who’s the master?

By the way, I don’t think you’re required to disclose to the feds if you’re carrying $10,000 as you leave the United States. I guess they don’t care if you’re planning to do a drug deal in another country.

Ironically, it’s not illegal to carry $10,000 or more if you travel domestically. But heaven help the person who is caught doing so by some law-enforcement agent. He’ll say that you’re obviously a drug dealer, even if you’re not carrying drugs. He’ll grab your money and take it back to work, where they’ll use it to buy a new cop car or remodel the office.

There’s also that regulation that requires you disclose to the government if you have a foreign bank account. Why is that any of the government’s business? I suppose they’re afraid that you’re not paying your fair share of income taxes. Given the voracious need of the welfare-warfare state to pay for its ever-growing expenditures, the feds are getting increasingly anxious to grab as much of people’s money as possible. That’s why they’re now squeezing the Swiss to abandon their centuries-old tradition of financial privacy insofar as American customers of Swiss banks are concerned.

And now, thanks to the much-vaunted “war on terrorism,” we have what are called “national security letters.” Those enable the feds to walk into a bank and secretly spy on all your financial transactions without a judicially issued warrant and without even telling you. In fact, even the bank is prohibited from telling you what’s happening. That’s to ensure that you can’t go to the courthouse and seek an injunction from a judge enjoining what the feds are doing to you without notice and due process of law.

The bankers are also under orders to report anything they consider as “unusual.” Quivering and quaking over the very real possibility that the feds will come after them with huge fines, bankers are more than eager to snitch on their customers.

All of this, of course, is billed as a normal and everyday part of living in a free society. Americans are even encouraged to thank the military branch of the government for “keeping theme safe” and “defending their freedom,” especially when it invades, occupies, and kills and maims people in faraway lands.

Actually, however, infringements on financial privacy are as antithetical to a free society as the NSA surveillance schemes. In a genuinely free society, people are free to handle their financial affairs and their personal lives in any way they want, without concerning themselves with the prying eyes of government officials.

Thus, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that our American ancestors lived in a society in which there were no $10,000 reporting requirements, foreign bank reporting requirements, “national security letters,” and other such violations of financial privacy. But then again, they also lived in a society without income taxation, welfare state, drug war, war on terrorism, and vast national-security military-intelligence establishment.

That’s what was once considered to be freedom. That’s what it once meant to be an American. That’s what made our nation exceptional.

Not anymore. Now the United States is just like every other nation, including the totalitarian ones. Today whatever people do with their money is an open book for the prying eyes of the federal government, as much as people’s telephone calls, emails, and website visits are. Sadly, it’s all considered part and parcel of “keeping us safe and free.”

What did these two convicts do to merit their convictions? They displayed a banner in public calling on public officials to disclose their assets. They did so as part of a grassroots movement founded by Xu Zhiyong Continue Reading]]> A Beijing court has just convicted two more activists of the crime of “gathering a crowd to disturb public order.” One of them, Yuan Dong, was sentenced to one and a half years in prison. The other Hou Xin was spared any incarceration.

What did these two convicts do to merit their convictions? They displayed a banner in public calling on public officials to disclose their assets. They did so as part of a grassroots movement founded by Xu Zhiyong to promote good government in China. Xu was recently convicted of the same charge and sentenced to four years in prison.

What is it with Chinese officials? Why are they so concerned about a few pro-democracy activists in a nation of more than 1.3 billion people?

The Chinese governmental system is a gigantic racket, one that enables the Communist Party to thrive off of billions of dollars in government largess that is sucked out of the Chinese private sector.

A genuine democratic system would obviously mean competition in the political arena for the Communist Party. That could mean defeat at the polls for Communist officials. It could even bring about the dismantling of much of the public sector, enabling people in the private sector to keep a larger portion of their money for investment, spending, saving, sharing, etc.

Thus, in order to maintain its racket, the Communist Party maintains a monopoly on political control.

But the question still remains: Why go after a few political activists?

The Communist officials understand the power of ideas. They know that if they permit ideas on liberty to be freely transmitted in Chinese society, they could spread like wildfire among the Chinese people. All of a sudden, the Communist Party could be facing a large portion of those 1.3 billion people whose hearts are inflamed with liberty. That’s why they shut down the few — to protect their racket from the potential demand for change coming from the many.

The matter brings to mind our own First Amendment, which expressly prohibits Congress and, implicitly the rest of the federal government, from infringing on the exercise of rights that those Chinese activists are going to jail for. We’re talking about freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to petition government for redress of grievances.

Why did our American ancestors deem it important to expressly prohibit Congress from doing the types of things the Chinese authorities are doing? Because they knew that Congress and the rest of the federal government would end up attracting American politicians and bureaucrats who had the same mindset that guides Communist Party officials in China. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for the First Amendment.

Of course, it’s easy to look down our noses at China, but when you think about, in principle the underlying situation in China is no different here in the United States. Here we have an enormous welfare-warfare racket that enables the federal bureaucracy to get its hands on almost $4 trillion from the private sector. Just like the Chinese Communist Party, U.S. officials and everyone else on the federal dole fight tooth and nail to ensure that nothing interrupts the flow of this enormous largess.

Of course, Republicans and Democrats like to pretend that they’re different from the Communist Party because, they say, people have a choice when they go to the polls. In actuality, however, the choice is illusory. In most political races, there are no fundamental differences between the candidates. They both believe in the welfare-state, warfare-state way of life and oppose any dismantling or repeal of welfare-warfare functions of the federal government. Their arguments are always over how the welfare-warfare state should be reformed, not whether it should be dismantled.

For all practical purposes, the U.S. government is also run by one party, which is divided into two wings, the Democrats and Republicans. They take turns in various elected offices but for all practical purposes, they have monopoly control over the system. Meanwhile, the vast army of federal bureaucrats and people who receive federal largess remains permanent.

Have you ever wondered why, for example, Libertarian Party candidates are out gathering signatures to run for public office? The purpose is to impose enormous signature requirements that make it difficult and expensive for Libertarians to compete against the monopoly party while, at the same time, maintain the façade of a competitive system.

The risk that U.S. officials face that Chinese officials don’t face is that there is still free dissemination of ideas on liberty here in the United States, which have the potential for inspiring the vast majority of the American people to demand a dismantling, not a reform, of the welfare-warfare racket. Thanks to the wisdom and courage of our American ancestors, the First Amendment prohibits U.S. officials from punishing Americans who exercise freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and petitioning for redress of grievances.

To counteract that risk, U.S. officials convince people that their welfare-warfare racket constitutes “freedom” and is in their best interests.  They begin the process in the first grade, inculcating children with the notion that the society in which they have been born and raised—a society based on a welfare state and warfare state—constitutes freedom. By the time they graduate high school, the indoctrination has been successfully completed for most people. The victims honestly believe they are free and even express thanks to the warfare-state side of the government for protecting their “freedom.”

Moreover, they scare people into believing that the welfare-warfare state is necessary to their survival and well-being. Without the welfare state, people are told, there would be countless people dying in the streets. Without the drug war, everyone would quit working and just smoke dope, snort cocaine, and inject heroin all day long. Without the warfare state, America would quickly be taken over by the communists, terrorists, drug dealers, illegal aliens, exploiters, and perhaps even zombies.

So there you have it: two rackets in China and the United States that aren’t really much different in principle. It will be interesting to see whether ideas on liberty can prevail in China despite the crackdown on activists. It will be just as interesting to see if libertarian ideas will prevail over the false indoctrination and bogus fears here in the United States.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why people who resist tyranny are considered “terrorists.” After all, a “terrorist” is considered a super-bad guy, right? He’s a person that the U.S. government and the Egyptian Continue Reading]]> Echoing the official line of the U.S. government, the New York Times has referred to the “terrorist insurgency” that has developed in response to Egypt’s military regime. The Times was specifically referring to the shoot-down of an Egyptian military helicopter by militants.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why people who resist tyranny are considered “terrorists.” After all, a “terrorist” is considered a super-bad guy, right? He’s a person that the U.S. government and the Egyptian government wield the authority to take into custody, hold indefinitely under military control, torture, and even execute or assassinate, all without due process of law or trial by jury.

Okay, so why are Egyptian militants considered the bad guys in all this?

For one thing, it’s not as though the militants targeted innocent civilians with their attack. They targeted a military helicopter, one that is owned and operated by the Egyptian military dictatorship. I thought that in war, military installations, troops, and vehicles are legitimate targets. Indeed, if revolutionaries can’t attack military targets without being called “terrorists,” then that begs the question: What targets are considered legitimate in a revolutionary war?

Under the principles enunciated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, don’t the Egyptian people have the right to violently overthrow the military dictatorship under which they are suffering? After all, it would be difficult to find a better example of tyranny than the Egyptian military dictatorship. The military has ousted and incarcerated the democratically elected president of the county, is murdering peaceful demonstrators, is jailing and torturing dissenters, is shutting down any criticism of the regime, is censoring the press, has imposed a “constitution” that protects the military’s privileged position in society, and now threatens to place another military strongman as president.

What better model of tyranny than that?

I would assume that most Americans, including the people at New York Times, would acknowledge that the British government in 1776 was tyrannical. Given that the Egyptian military dictatorship is doing much worse things than the regime of King George, doesn’t that make the Egyptian government, by comparison, much more tyrannical?

If the English colonists had the right to violently resist the tyranny under which they were suffering, why don’t the Egyptian people have the same right, especially since the tyranny under which they are suffering is a thousand times worse than that under which the English colonists were suffering?

My hunch is that there is one big reason that the New York Times and the U.S. government consider opponents of Egypt’s military dictatorship to be “terrorists”: The Egyptian military dictatorship has been a longtime partner and ally of the U.S. national-security state. Over the decades, they have worked together, trained together, and socialized together. Indeed, it has been the U.S. national-security state, including its vast army of weapons producers, that, year after year, has directly provided the Egyptian military dictatorship with an annual dole of $1.3 billion in weaponry and cash, knowing full well its purpose: to enable it to maintain itself permanently in power as the foundation of Egypt’s governmental system.

The fact that there are Americans who honestly consider the Egyptian military brutes to be the good guys and the Egyptian citizens who are resisting military tyranny to be bad guys only goes to show the degree to which the U.S. national-security state has warped, corroded, and corrupted the morals and values of the American people, not to mention the fact that the Egyptian tyranny has been knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally built, fortified, and supported by the government of the American people.

Hopefully, the death and destruction in Egypt will cause the American people to engage in some serious soul-searching about the nature of their own governmental system, specifically whether the Cold War-era national-security state apparatus (i.e., the standing army, military industrial complex, foreign empire of bases, foreign aid, foreign interventionism, CIA, and NSA) should be dismantled or continue to be part of America’s governmental structure.

The real issue is the manner in which people earn their money, not the fact that some have more while others Continue Reading]]> For the life of me, I just don’t understand why leftists are so concerned with income inequality. What’s wrong with some people having more income or wealth than other people? It seems to me that the obsessive concern about income inequality might have something to do with envy and covetousness, something that God says we shouldn’t be engaged in.

The real issue is the manner in which people earn their money, not the fact that some have more while others have less. In the type of economic system in which we live — a welfare-warfare state and a regulated society — many people earn their money and get wealthy in morally illegitimate ways, e.g., through political plunder and political privilege. If people are getting wealthy that way, that’s something we should object to. But that’s a different issue from income inequality.

For example, consider all the big corporations that receive multi-million dollar grants from the federal government. Agricultural subsidies come to mind. The bailouts of big Wall Street firms or automobile companies are another example. Or big construction firms that are involved in building public-housing projects. Or big weapons manufacturers and other big companies that receive contracts from the warfare state.

Those are all people or companies who receive millions of dollars from the welfare-warfare state way of life under which we live. All that income and wealth is morally illegitimate. It necessary involves taking the money from those who produce it, including young people, the poor, the middle class, and everyone else who pays taxes, and giving it to politically privileged people.

Or consider the drug war. There are countless drug dealers and drug lords who are making millions of dollars in drug deals. If drugs were legalized, those people wouldn’t be drug-war millionaires because drugs would be reasonably priced and would be provided by reputable firms.

Or consider economic regulations, which protect wealthy, well-established firms from competition from new firms. The new firms are precluded from coming into existence because they’re unable to meet the costs of the burdensome and expensive regulations. The well-established firms are able to handle the costs of the regulations and thus are able to maintain a privileged status in the economy.

What we should do is to rid our economy of all those welfare-warfare, regulatory distortions of income and wealth by repealing them. We should ditch the enormous panoply of welfare-warfare state and regulatory programs and let a genuine free market economy reign.

In a genuine free market, people are free to engage in economic enterprise without government interference. That’s what the “free” in the term “free enterprise” means — free from government interference. Thus, people can engage in any occupation without a license or other form of government permission. People are free to enter into economic transactions with people all over the world. They are free to accumulate the fruits of their earnings and decide for themselves what to do with them.

How do people get wealthy in a genuine free-market economy? By providing goods and services that other people are willing to pay for.

Thus, in a genuine free market the consumer is sovereign. Through his buying habits, the consumer decides who is going to be wealthy. That’s why a rock and roll singer or a football player ends up earning millions of dollars while a college professor earns in the thousands. That’s the result of consumer preference.

What’s wrong with that type of system? Why shouldn’t consumers, not politicians and bureaucrats, be the determinants of who’s going to be wealthy?

There is also something important to note about a genuine free-market society: Even though there are vast disparities of wealth, the poor are better off than they would be in a society in which the government equalizes wealth by taxing and spending. History and experience have shown that the poor live better lives in societies where the government taxes and regulates less than those that tax and regulate more.

Here is a hypothetical: Which society would you prefer: (1) one in which everyone receives the same amount–$10,000 a year—by virtue of a government tax-and-spend equalization decree or (2) one in which the rich earn hundreds of millions, the middle class earn $200,000, and the bottom 10 percent earn $40,000?

For us libertarians, the answer is a no-brainer. For us (1) is the way to go, assuming that a genuine free-market is in effect. My hunch is that for leftists, however, answer (2) is their solution because they simply cannot stand the fact that someone has more when someone has less. That’s the problem with envy and covetousness, not to mention the fact that when such sins are enshrine into a nation’s legal and economic system, the amount of income to be equalized inevitably continues shrinking until starvation and death ultimately set in. Just ask the people of North Korea.

The notion is that Americans should only elect or appoint people who can Continue Reading]]> In the wake of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s traffic scandal, in which Christie’s aides were punishing a New Jersey mayor for not loyally supporting Christie’s reelection bid, critics were suggesting how dangerous it would be to have Christie in charge of the NSA. Imagine what he could do, people suggested, with all that personal information with which he could punish people who didn’t fall into line.

The notion is that Americans should only elect or appoint people who can be trusted to exercise this type of power wisely, prudently, and with the best of intentions, such as “keeping us safe.”

There are at least two big problems, however, with that sort of thinking.

One, when a system depends on trusting public officials with the exercise of totalitarian powers, that is the opposite of a free society. A free society necessarily is based on a governmental system in which the government does not wield totalitarian powers.

This is the difference between what is known as the rule of law versus the rule of men. The free society is based on the former. An unfree society is based on the latter.

For example, consider the type of system that our American ancestors devised, one based on the rule of law. Under that system, the government was prohibited from doing such things as spying on people in general, breaking into their homes and offices, and peering into their personal effects.  The only way that the government could legally target someone for searching into his personal life was by presenting evidence to a judge that indicated that the person was involved in illegal conduct. If the judge concluded that the evidence was sufficient, he would issue a warrant specifically describing the place to be searched and the items being searched for.

That’s, in fact, the system that we still have at the state level. Under the U.S. Constitution and state constitutions, the cops are prohibited from spying on and searching everyone for the sake of ferretting out the small percentage of people committing crimes. Instead, they must wait until they secure evidence establishing “probable cause,” present it to a judge, and secure a warrant before they can target a specific person.

That’s a system based on the rule of law.

The advent of the national-security state after World War II fundamentally changed America’s constitutional structure. As we all now know, the NSA wields the power to spy on everyone and search into their personal affairs without any probable cause and without a specific warrant naming the person, the place, and the specific items being searched for. The idea is that in order to “keep us safe,” the government must spy on everyone to catch the small minority of people who are committing terrorist attacks.

That’s a system based on the rule of men. It necessarily depends on trusting people with omnipotent power.

That raises the second reason why such a system is problematic. Inevitably, in a system based on trust, the power that is being exercised is going to be abused.

Most everyone, for example, is familiar with what the FBI did with the secret information that it illegally acquired about Martin Luther King. It used embarrassing aspects of his personal life to blackmail him with the hope that he would commit suicide. The message that the FBI implicitly sent King was: Kill yourself or we’ll reveal what we have learned about you through our assets in the press.

It was no different with Ernest Hemingway. During the last part of his life, Hemingway repeatedly told people that the FBI was following him, monitoring him, spying on him, and delving into his personal affairs. Suffering severe paranoia, Hemingway entered psychiatric hospitals, where he received shock treatments. Beset by severe depression and paranoia, Hemingway finally ended his life just short of his 62nd birthday with a shotgun.

All the while, the FBI sat silently by. Decades later, however, the FBI, in response to a Freedom of Information request, released long-secret files that showed that the FBI had in fact placed Hemingway under extensive surveillance. See “Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds” by A.E. Hotchner.

Why did they do that? For the same reason that they put King under surveillance. The FBI was convinced that Hemingway, like King, was a communist. Why did that matter? Because the FBI, like the rest of the national-security state, was convinced that the communists were coming to get us and, alternatively, that communism was like an infection that could infect the minds of every American, sort of like what happens to zombies.

That’s, of course, the irony of the situation. While Hemingway was suffering from a rational case of paranoia, the government’s surveillance of him was based on an even more severe case of paranoia — one in which national-security state officials were convinced that communists were everyone — in Congress, in Hollywood, in the army, and under everyone’s bed — and that they were going to take over America and end up running the IRS, the Interstate Highway System, and the public schools.

What these people did to King and Hemingway might well have been based on a sincere case of national-security paranoia, one in which they might have had the purest of intentions — to keep America safe from the communists. But it only goes to show why no one can be trusted with omnipotent power. Oftentimes people will good intentions and great zeal can be bigger threats to freedom than those who have evil motives.

Let’s reject the notion of getting “good” people into public office with the power to spy on us. Let’s reject the rule of men. Let’s restore the rule of law to our nation. Let’s achieve a free society. Let’s abolish, not reform, the NSA and, for that matter, the rest of the national-security state that has done so much damage to people and to our constitutional order.

That’s the trade that unfortunately all too many Americans have made, with respect to both the warfare state and the welfare state.

On the warfare state side of things, people are willing to let the government wield totalitarian powers, which, needless to say, infringe on freedom. They’re willing to let the government Continue Reading]]> There really isn’t anything shameful about being a serf. What is shameful is the willingness to accept one’s serfdom for the sake of being kept safe and secure.

That’s the trade that unfortunately all too many Americans have made, with respect to both the warfare state and the welfare state.

On the warfare state side of things, people are willing to let the government wield totalitarian powers, which, needless to say, infringe on freedom. They’re willing to let the government have the power to spy on them, keep track of their telephone calls, listen to and record their telephone conversations, read and copy their emails, sneak and peek into their homes, delve into theikr personal financial affairs, incarcerate them in military installations, torture them, assassinate them, and do many of the other things that totalitarian regimes do.

Why are they willing to sacrifice their freedom for democratic totalitarianism?

“I just want to be kept safe, Jacob. That’s what matters to me. If the government can keep the terrorists, communists, drug dealers, illegal aliens, and other scary people from coming to get me, I don’t care what they do. For all I care, they can install video cameras in my home if it makes me more safe and secure.”

It’s no different with respect to the welfare state. All too many people are willing to let the government wield the omnipotent power to seize their income and wealth in order to give it to the poor, the needy, the destitute, Wall Street firms, middle class farmers, giant corporations, brutal dictators, large campaign donors, and anyone who has political clout.

They’re also willing to let the government punish them, through a felony conviction, incarceration, and fine, for ingesting drugs that the government doesn’t approve of.

They’re willing to let the government punish them, both civilly and criminally, for engaging in economic trade with Cubans, North Koreans, Iranians, and others on the federal black list.

They’re willing to let the government control the most minute aspects of their economic and monetary affairs.

And why are they willing to let the government wield these omnipotent powers, which, needless to say, infringe on economic freedom?

“I just want the government to take care of me and everyone else, Jacob. I don’t want the responsibility to decide what I should do with my own money. I wouldn’t donate to the poor and the needy, the Wall Street firms, the big corporations, the middle-class farmers, and the foreign dictators, and neither would anyone else. We need the government to ensure that we are good, caring, and compassionate. Otherwise, people would be dying in the streets. We also need the government to punish us for ingesting harmful substances. Otherwise, everyone would be a drug addict. And without minimum-wage laws and other economic regulations, life would be filled with rapacious and greedy businesspeople who would grow wealthy while driving everyone else into destitution.”

Here’s how libertarians feel about all that.

We don’t want to sacrifice even one iota of freedom, not for any reason whatsoever and especially not so that the government can watch over us, take care of us, and protect us from all those scary creatures that inhabit the earth.

We believe that people in a genuinely free society and free-market system can be relied upon to produce an ever-increasing standard of living for everyone and to contribute ever-increasing amounts of donations to worthy causes. But we understand that there are no guarantees. We’re willing to take that chance. For us, freedom is what matters. That’s why we favor a total dismantling of the welfare-state, regulatory economy way of life and an end to the evil, immoral, and destructive drug war.

We also believe that many of the threats that the government supposedly protects us against, such as anti-U.S. terrorism, are produced by the imperialistic and militarist overseas policies and programs of the military and the CIA. That’s one reason we stand with the Founding Fathers in their antipathy toward standing armies and agencies like the CIA and NSA. They are antithetical to a free society and should be dismantled, not reformed.

But even given the terrorist threat (or the threat of communism, drug lords, illegal aliens, etc.), we libertarians are willing to take our chances. We don’t want to give up one single bit of our freedom, even if by doing so the government is able to keep us safe and secure (from the threats that its very own policies produce).

Moreover, as our American ancestors understood so well, the greatest threat to people’s freedom and well-being lies not with communists, terrorists, drug dealers, or illegal aliens. Instead, it lies with one’s very own government. That’s why there is a Constitution and a Bill of Rights — to protect us from the federal government. History has shown that those societies in which people surrender their freedom for the sake of security end up losing both of them. People who trade their freedom for the siren’s song of safety and security ultimately learn that they have done nothing more than put the fox in charge of watching over the chickens and keeping them safe.

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery?” Patrick Henry asked? “Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death!”

Consider Guantanamo Bay, for instance, a federal installation that the president and the Pentagon announced from the very beginning would be totally independent of the Constitution and the federal judiciary. While the Supreme Court ultimately dashed that hope, we nonetheless can Continue Reading]]> What would life be like without the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? For the answer, all we have to do is look at places where the federal government operates independently of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Consider Guantanamo Bay, for instance, a federal installation that the president and the Pentagon announced from the very beginning would be totally independent of the Constitution and the federal judiciary. While the Supreme Court ultimately dashed that hope, we nonetheless can get a fairly good idea as to the type of federal judicial system that would be operating in the United States had our ancestors not demanded passage of the Bill of Rights.

In Guantanamo, defendants have had no right to a speedy trial. There are people there who have been languishing in jail for some 13 years without a trial. Oh, sure, throughout that time they’ve been promised a trial but it’s always been just a promise. For all practical purposes, the inmates are incarcerated indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of their lives, without any chance of ever being brought to trial.

Whenever the federal government invades, conquers, and occupies a foreign country, one of the first policies it establishes is one of indefinite detention. Suspects are rounded up, especially men in their 20s and 30s, and simply locked away in jail. Oh, sure, they’re promised a trial one of these days on the charge of “terrorism,” but everyone knows that the trials never come.

Torture is another important part of federal Constitution-free zones. That’s what has happened at Guantanamo, Bagram, and other federal overseas prisons. There is also rendition, a policy in which federal officials send suspected terrorists to brutal partner dictatorships, whose job is to torture the inmates into confessing or divulging information.

Inmates at Guantanamo Bay and other federal facilities are presumed guilty and are treated as if they are guilty. There is no such thing as bail. There is no right of trial by jury by one’s peers. Guilt is determined by federal officials serving as a tribunal.

If trials are ever held, the defendants have no right to confront the witnesses against them. Hearsay is admissible, which is another way to deny defendants the right to confront their accusers. Communications between attorney and client are monitored by federal officials. Many of the legal proceedings are conducted in secret. The trial is not open to the public.

In the process of “rebuilding” a nation they have invaded and occupied, one of the most important things that federal officials do is establish and train a powerful military-intelligence establishment and make it the foundation of the nation’s governmental system, just like the ones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.

They also immediately begin confiscating weapons and make it illegal to own them. The reason? They don’t want any resistance to their orders. Their aim is to establish “order and stability,” which necessarily depends on submissiveness and obedience. The last thing they’re going to do is recognize the right to keep and bear arms by the local citizenry.

They also establish a system of unrestrained search and seizure, which involves no judiciary to interfere with operations. Everyone’s door is subject to being bashed in at any hour of the day or night, with agents having the unrestrained power to search people, homes, and businesses for weapons, contraband, and anything else. There is no such thing as judicially issued search warrants based on probable cause.

The military-intelligence establishment of the government that is being “rebuilt” is taught how to secretly monitor the activities of the citizenry, all with the purported aim of keeping people “safe” and maintaining “order and stability.”

Consider the regimes that the U.S. supports and partners with, such as the military dictatorship in Egypt. The $1.1 billion in armaments that the federal government furnishes the Egyptian military is used to shut down dissent, protests, demonstrations, and a critical press. That’s precisely why our American ancestors opposed the idea of a standing army.

In other words, when federal officials have the unfettered authority to operate without the constraints of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, they do all the things that our ancestors believed they would do here at home in the absence of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

As bad as things are with respect to NSA surveillance, torture, indefinite detention, and other aspects of the U.S. national-security state, imagine what life would be like if America were a Constitution-free and Bill of Rights-free zone. Thank goodness our American ancestors didn’t trust federal officials with unrestrained power and instead demanded passage of the Bill of the Rights as a condition for agreeing to let the Constitution call the federal government into existence.

Limited government was the original idea behind the formation of the federal government. To allay people’s concerns about the new government becoming totalitarian in nature, the Framers Continue Reading]]> One of the charades that all too many Americans, especially conservatives, continue to subscribe to is the notion that the federal government is a “limited government” — that is, one whose powers are limited in nature and scope. They like to say that this is what distinguishes the U.S. government from totalitarian regimes.

Limited government was the original idea behind the formation of the federal government. To allay people’s concerns about the new government becoming totalitarian in nature, the Framers set forth in the Constitution a small list of limited, specific, enumerated powers that the federal government was permitted to wield and exercise. If a particular power wasn’t enumerated, the federal government didn’t have it.

To make certain that federal officials got the point, the American people demanded the passage of the Bill of Rights immediately after the Constitution was ratified. It expressly guaranteed fundamental rights of the people from federal infringement as well as procedural rights and guarantees when the government targeted people for punishment.

The point is that our American ancestors didn’t trust the federal government and the type of people that government power attracts into office. That’s why they didn’t call into existence a federal government with unlimited powers to do whatever its officials believed was “right.”

Yet, consider the type of government under which we now live.

The president, the military, and the CIA wield the omnipotent power to assassinate any person anywhere in the world. That includes Americans.

One important example of this power was demonstrated in Chile in 1973. The CIA and the military participated in the assassination of two young American men, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi. To this day we don’t know if the military and the CIA did this on their own or on orders of President Nixon. It didn’t matter. There was never any official investigation by U.S. officials, including Congress and the Justice Department, into the murders. Whether President Nixon gave the order or not was obviously considered irrelevant. What mattered was that the murders were committed as part of a “national-security” operation, which provided absolute immunity to the murderers.

Those two murders were committed during the federal government’s global “war on communism.” Since the nation was at “war,” it was considered entirely legitimate to kill communists anywhere they could be found. Since Horman and Teruggi were sympathetic to the administration of Salvador Allende, a socialist-communist who had been elected president of Chile, that made them fair game for the U.S. national security state, especially since the U.S.-supported military coup that ousted Allende from power had “national security” implications for the United States.

Needless to say, the power to assassinate communists wasn’t limited to Americans. Don’t forget the repeated attempts by the CIA, especially as part of its partnership with the Mafia, to assassinate Fidel Castro, whose communist regime in Cuba never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. Since Castro held communist beliefs in his mind, that made him fair game for a “national-security” assassination.

The national-security mindset that legitimatized the murders of Horman and Teruggi and the attempted murder of Fidel Castro didn’t expire with the end of the Cold War. Instead, it was carried forth as part of the federal government’s “war on terrorism.” After 9/11, it became openly legitimate for military and CIA officials to murder any American and any foreigners labeled a “terrorist.”

The assassinations of Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman come to mind. Just as with the Horman and Teruggi murders, there have never been any official investigations into the al-Awlaki murders. Federal officials have barely even acknowledged the killings. They don’t have to. They wield the omnipotent power to assassinate anyone they want and don’t have to explain or justify their actions, so long as they relate the killings to some “national security” event.

The principle, of course, applies to all Americans and not just to Americans who happen to be living or travelling overseas. Since the war on terrorism, like the war on communism, is global in nature, they wield the omnipotent power to kill anyone they deem is a threat to “national security” wherever the threat might be found, including right here in the United States. So long as they connect the killings to a “national-security” operation, the killers are absolutely immune from civil and criminal liability.

The military also wields the omnipotent power to take American citizens into military custody and hold them indefinitely as “terrorists” in military installations. It also has the power to torture them while in custody. That’s what the Jose Padilla case was all about. It confirmed that when it comes to “national security,” the federal judiciary isn’t going to interfere with military round-ups and torture of American citizens. While it’s true that such power isn’t currently being exercised, that’s doesn’t mean that the power isn’t now wielded by U.S. officials.

They also wield the omnipotent power to kidnap people and transfer them to partner totalitarian regimes for the purpose of torture and punishment. That’s what that CIA kidnapping in Italy and the rendition of the kidnap victim to the brutal military dictatorship in Egypt was all about. Even though the CIA agents were convicted of the criminal offense of kidnapping in Italy, the U.S. position was that they were immune from liability given that the kidnapping was done as part of a “national security” event.

It’s no different with respect to spying on the citizenry. The federal government obviously now wields the power to spy on and monitor the personal lives of every American citizen and to collect and maintain all the information it acquires. It has the authority to keep track of everyone’s telephone calls, record their calls, sweep up and read their emails, watch what websites they visit, and maintain a gigantic database of everything it collects.

And let’s face it: Nothing is going to happen to federal officials who do whatever is necessary to keep the people safe in the name of “national security.” They can follow people, keep files on them, intimidate them, and blackmail them, just as they did with Martin Luther King. In fact, they can do everything they did with their secret Cointelpro program and if anyone finds out, everyone knows that no one is going to be jailed, fined, or otherwise punished for it, so long as he states that it was part of a “national security” event.

Now, I ask you: How can this type of government — a government with the omnipotent power to kill people, incarcerate them in military installations, torture them, kidnap and rendition them, and spy,  monitor, and blackmail them — genuinely be considered “limited government”? Even if every other aspect of government has limited powers, it’s quite irrelevant. All that’s needed to make a government an unlimited one is one department or agency with unlimited powers.

It goes without saying that the federal government our ancestors called into existence had none of these totalitarian powers. Our ancestors were right to be concerned about the federal government they were calling into existence ultimately ending up with totalitarian powers. That’s the fundamental change to our constitutional order wrought by the adoption of the national-security state, a change that all too many Americans, unfortunately, would rather not confront.

Why did German officials execute the Scholl siblings? They executed them because they considered them to be bad people — i.e., traitors. Hans and Sophie, who were enrolled at Continue Reading]]> Several days ago, the New York Times reported that German officials had found the guillotine that they believe was used to execute Hans and Sophie Scholl and other members of the White Rose organization. I wrote about the White Rose in my essay, “The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent.”

Why did German officials execute the Scholl siblings? They executed them because they considered them to be bad people — i.e., traitors. Hans and Sophie, who were enrolled at the University of Munich, were secretly publishing and distributing pamphlets that called on the German people to oppose the wrongdoing of their own government, the Nazi government, during the middle of World War II.

For a while the White Rose students were able to circumvent the Gestapo, the Nazi organization charged with spying on and closely monitoring the activities of the German people. Ultimately, however, they were caught, rapidly put on trial before a special tribunal that Hitler had created for terrorism and treason cases, and quickly executed by guillotine.

The White Rose story is apropos today, the day that Americans have chosen to honor civil-rights leader Martin Luther King. After all, while he was alive U.S. officials considered King to be an enemy of the U.S. national security state, just as Nazi officials considered the Scholl siblings to be enemies of the Nazi state.

U.S. officials, especially J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI cohorts believed that King was a communist, one who was helping to spearhead a communist takeover of the United States. This was during the Cold War, when official paranoia about communists and communism exceeded all sense of rationality and reason. The FBI, the military establishment, and the CIA were convinced that the communists were coming to get us, infect our minds, and conquer America.

There has long been controversy over whether the national-security state was responsible for the assassination of Martin Luther King but one thing is indisputable: They did want him dead. They considered him one of gravest threats to national security in the history of the national security state.

The FBI embarked on a surveillance scheme designed to discover secrets about King’s personal life. They justified their surveillance on grounds of “national security.” When their surveillance uncovered some embarrassing aspects of King’s personal life, Hoover used the information to blackmail King into committing suicide. The implicit message was: Kill yourself or we’ll reveal what we have uncovered about you.

What they did to Martin Luther King, of course, provides an interesting lesson with respect to the NSA’s super-secret, massive surveillance scheme on the American people. The NSA, along with other national-security state officials, says, “Trust us. Just trust us. We’re here for you. We just want to keep you safe. The information we collect about you will be used only for honorable purposes. We promise! We have changed. None of us is like J. Edgar Hoover. We would never do what he did, not even if ‘national security’ depended on it.”

But even if all that were true, a free society doesn’t turn on trust of public officials. A free society turns on a governmental structure and well-defined laws that make people certain that the government isn’t spying on them and acquiring secret information about them unless officials have secured a judicially issued warrant based on probable cause that the targeted person has, in fact, engaged in criminal wrongdoing. When people are being asked to “trust” the people in power with the personal information that is being collected on the citizenry, that is about as far from a free society as one could get.

It’s time for Americans to do some serious soul-searching by asking themselves some important questions:

1. What does it truly mean to live in a free country?

2. Can a country truly be considered free when its officials wield powers that are traditionally wielded by totalitarian dictators, including the power to spy on the citizenry and secretly collect information about their personal lives, not to mention the powers to incarcerate them indefinitely in military installations, to torture them, and even to assassinate them?

3. What would life be like without the Cold War-era national-security state apparatus — i.e., the military-industrial complex, the CIA, and the NSA — that was grafted onto our constitutional system and which has vested U.S. officials with totalitarian powers?

4. Would the American people be safer — and freer — without the national security branch of the government?

5. Given the fiascoes in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and the massive infringements on civil liberties and privacy in the names of “national security,” the “war on communism,” and the “war on terrorism,” has the time come to restore a limited-government, constitutional republic to our land?

What better time to begin such soul-searching than on a day we recall people who have paid enormous prices for having the courage to challenge and oppose the wrongdoing of their own government, a day that we honor a man who was spied on and blackmailed by U.S. officials, on grounds of “national security,” and who nonetheless persisted in challenging the wrongdoing of his own government?

U.S. officials like to point to the 1964 Civil Rights Act as evidence of how enlightened they ultimately became when it came to the mistreatment and abuse of black Americans.

But does human nature really change that Continue Reading]]> After the Civil War, Washington, D.C., became a model Jim Crow city for the United States. Having supposedly waged the war for the purpose of ending slavery, U.S. officials proceeded to keep the nation’s capital city segregated all the way through the 1950s.

U.S. officials like to point to the 1964 Civil Rights Act as evidence of how enlightened they ultimately became when it came to the mistreatment and abuse of black Americans.

But does human nature really change that rapidly?

After all, not long after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was enacted, federal officials began waging their much-vaunted war on drugs, one of the most racist federal programs in U.S. history.

Moreover, knowing full well the racist aspects and consequences of the war on drugs, federal officials living today continue to wage the drug war more fiercely than ever.

In some ways, the drug war is more brutal toward blacks than segregation was. With the drug war, bigoted cops can target blacks for abuse and mistreatment and there’s no social stigma attached to it. It’s all “legitimate” because it’s all part of “eradicating the scourge of drugs from our society.”

Moreover, what better way to remove blacks from society than by putting them in jail? With segregation, bigots still had to encounter blacks within the community. With the drug war, the bigots can remove them entirely from society by carting them off to jail to serve long sentences, where no one but prison officials and other prisoners will see them.

Moreover, the beauty of the drug war, insofar as bigots are concerned, is that it provides a means by which blacks can be denied the right to vote — you know, the same right that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was designed to protect. All they have to do is convict blacks of felony possession of drugs and voila! – no more right to vote, forever.

A felony drug conviction also enables bigots to disarm blacks, given that a felony conviction means that the felon can no longer own firearms. That’s obviously not as good as a law that expressly prohibits blacks from owning firearms but it’s a close second.

In the early years of the drug war, bigots could justify the drug war with good intentions. “We just want to end the war on drugs,” federal officials proclaimed. “We just want to eradicate drugs from our society. Our intentions are entirely honorable.”

Several decades later, however, those good intentions have been buried under a mountain of failure, death, destruction, and corruption, not only here in the United States but also within Latin America.

So, why do federal officials persist in waging the war on drugs, given its manifest failure and destructiveness and the reality that it will never succeed in attaining its goal?

Two big reasons are money and power. The drug war brings big money and big power to government officials, at the state, local, and, of course, federal levels.

But a third big reason is undoubtedly the same force that drove federal officials to embrace Jim Crow and segregation in Washington, D.C., after the end of the Civil War and to continue such racist policies well into the next century: Plain old-fashioned racial bigotry, all wrapped up in pretty drug-war rationales.

To learn more about the racism of the federal government’s war on drugs, read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

Or read this New York Times review of the book.

Or read this ACLU article: “The Drug War is the New Jim Crow” by Graham Boyd.

Why can’t we end the Postal Continue Reading]]> In perpetual financial agony, the Postal Service has announced that it no longer intends to close thousands of rural post offices, notwithstanding the fact that, according to the New York Times, such offices earn an average of $15,000 while costing $114,000 to operate. Apparently constituent political pressures in those rural areas have caused the Postal Service to change its mind and look for other ways to deal with its multibillion dollar shortfalls.

Why can’t we end the Postal Service’s misery by just terminating it? It’s time to not only end its longtime monopoly on the delivery of first-class mail but also to get the government entirely out of the mail business.

After all, let’s be blunt: The Postal Service is a government enterprise. Why would anyone expect it to perform like anything but a government enterprise? As a government enterprise, it’s going to be a mess regardless of who runs it and how it’s run.

In an era in which U.S. public officials are loath to consider themselves socialists, why in the world do they continue to support the Postal Service? Yes, I know, socialism connotes a situation in which the government owns all the businesses, not just some of them. But still, if public ownership of all businesses is bad, shouldn’t ownership and operation of some businesses be presumed to be bad?

Everyone knows that a private-property, free-market system produces the best of everything, especially compared to goods and services provided by government enterprises. Compare, for example, the quality of automobiles produced by privately owned companies and those that used to be produced by government-owned car companies in the Soviet bloc. There is no comparison. Those produced by the Soviet bloc were complete junk.

In a free market, with its competitive order, firms continuously strive to satisfy consumers by constantly improving products and service. Why do they do that? Because they know that if they don’t, customers are going to turn to a competing firm. Consumers are ruthless. They are always looking for better stuff at lower prices. Most of them will readily abandon a business they love if a better one comes along. Borders bookstore and Circuit City come to mind.

Of course, the Postal Service doesn’t have that concern because it has a government-granted monopoly. A monopoly is a special privilege that governments give selected firms, enabling them to be the only provider of a good or service. Everyone else is prohibited from offering the good or service in competition. If competitors try to do so and persist in doing so, the government takes them to jail.

So, how come Americans are supporting a monopoly? I thought America was supposed to stand for free enterprise and competition? Isn’t that what U.S. officials proclaim to the world?

In a time when fiscal responsibility is in short supply, it’s time to end, not reform, the Postal Service. It’s time to get government entirely out of the mail business and to embrace a free-market, competitive mail service. It’s time to deliver the Postal Service into the dustbin of history.

I’ll bet lots of Americans think that this idea Continue Reading]]> After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government came up with the idea of instituting military tribunals for trying suspected terrorists as a possible alternative to prosecuting them under the U.S. Code in regular federal courts. Since then, some terrorist suspects have been accorded the federal court route, others have been accorded the tribunal route, and at least one has been treated as both a criminal defendant and an “enemy combatant.”

I’ll bet lots of Americans think that this idea to establish a special tribunal to try suspected terrorists was an original one. Not so. Some 80 years ago, German chancellor Adolf Hitler did the same thing.

The German special tribunal for trying terrorists was established in 1934, the year after Hitler became chancellor. What had precipitated it was a major terrorist attack on the German Reichstag by suspected communists.

Pursuant to established German legal procedures, the government prosecuted the Reichstag Fire defendants in the regular German courts, which proceeded to acquit some of the defendants.

Hitler was outraged. How could any court acquit people who were obviously guilty of that major terrorist attack on the German government? How could any court permit terrorists to go free, enabling them to commit more acts of terrorism?

It was obvious to Hitler that the German courts could no longer be entrusted with terrorist cases or, for that matter, cases involving treason. Terrorists are terrorists, and traitors are traitors. They need to be punished, not acquitted. The regular German courts were obviously not equipped to do the job properly. It was obvious that Germany needed a special court for trying terrorists and traitors, one where the outcome would not be in doubt.

So, Hitler established a special tribunal for trying terrorism cases and treason cases. It was called the “People’s Court.” Interestingly, Hitler chose not to turn the matter over to the German military but instead kept the People’s Court under civilian control. Nonetheless, it was a special tribunal that would operate independently of the German judicial system and answer directly to Hitler.

The outcome of trials in the People’s Court was never in doubt. But German officials felt good about the process because at least people were being accorded trials before they were found guilty and punished.

The People’s Court was where German college students Hans and Sophie Scholl and the White Rose advocates were brought to trial. Why were they prosecuted in the People’s Court instead of the regular German courts? Because as German citizens, they were being charged with treason, which was encompassed within the jurisdiction of the People’s Court.

What had the Scholls and their White Rose friends done? They had published pamphlets criticizing the government’s policies, both in domestic affairs and foreign affairs. The pamphlets called on the German people to oppose their government and to restore a legitimate government to Germany.

The German authorities considered such conduct treasonous, especially since the pamphlets were published and distributed during the middle of World War II, when German citizens were being exhorted to support the troops and the war effort.

The German authorities did give the Scholl siblings a speedy trial, one that took place within a couple of days of their arrest. The trial was conducted in secret, apparently out of national-security concerns. The last thing that the authorities wanted was for Germans to hear what had been printed in the White Rose pamphlets.

In fact, the trial was so secret that when Hans’ and Sophie’s parents tried to enter the courtroom, they were refused admittance. When their mother said to a guard, “I’m the mother of two of the accused.” He responded, “You should have raised them better.”

The guard’s mindset was not unusual. It was held by the presiding judge of the People’ Court, Roland Freisler, and, in fact, by most Germans. They took the position that the Scholl siblings and their friends were bad people — traitors — for criticizing and opposing their government during time of war.

Hans and Sophie Scholl and several of their friends received the death penalty and were quickly executed by guillotine. Just before he was executed, 24-year-old Hans yelled, “Long live freedom!”

In a fascinating end to the movie Downfall, which depicted Hitler’s last days in the bunker, his secretary Traudl Junge, who had been one of the many “loyal” Germans who had failed to question their government’s policies, stated,

….I was satisfied that I wasn’t personally to blame and that I hadn’t known about those things. I wasn’t aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out.”

To learn more about how Hitler’s People’s Court operated and about the White Rose, see:

The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent” by Jacob G. Hornberger

The White Rose: The Four Leaflets

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (dvd)

Consider, for example, the right to a speedy trial. Under the Pentagon’s system, that right Continue Reading]]> If there is anything good about the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, it is that the American people will get to see how trials are conducted in totalitarian countries. One thing is for sure: The procedural protections found in the Bill of Rights that are employed in our federal court system here at home are nowhere to be found in the Pentagon’s system in Cuba.

Consider, for example, the right to a speedy trial. Under the Pentagon’s system, that right is just a joke. Some of the defendants have been sitting in the Pentagon’s jail for some 10 years without trial. It would be difficult to find a clearer violation of the right to a speedy trial than that.

But the Pentagon couldn’t care less. Just a few days ago, there was an arraignment, a step that ordinarily is taken within a few days of a person’s arrest in the federal-court system here at home. At Gitmo, it’s being done some 10 years after arrest.

And it’s not even clear when the actual trial will begin. My hunch is that it’ll start sometime after the presidential election — perhaps even a long time after the election. There really is no rush. There is absolutely no sense in the military mind that justice delayed is justice denied.

The reason that no one is in a rush to try the defendants is because they’re already in jail and because everyone is convinced that they’re guilty. Since they’re considered guilty, who cares when they get a trial or ever get a trial? The fact that they’re in jail is all that matters, unless of course the government wishes to bring an end to the matter by executing them. Simply lining them up in front of a firing squad without a trial and shooting them might not look too good. So, a trial, followed by a conviction and the imposition of a death sentence, makes the execution look legitimate.

In the Pentagon’s system, the defendant is presumed to be guilty and he is treated accordingly. The reason that the Pentagon tortures people at Guantanamo is because every prisoner at Guantanamo is considered to be a terrorist. The thought that any of the defendants is innocent doesn’t occur to anyone in the military. They are all terrorists and so there is nothing wrong with treating them as terrorists. How could they not be terrorists? They’re prisoners at Guantanamo, right?

The defendants at Guantanamo bear the burden of proving their innocence. It is virtually an insurmountable burden because a finding of innocence would mean that that the military has incarcerated, tortured, and abused an innocent man for more than 10 years, all the while denying him a trial at which he could prove his innocence. That would be highly embarrassing to the entire government, all three branches of which have been complicit in the man’s incarceration and mistreatment. Thus, the chances of a defendant’s successfully proving his innocence are virtually nil.

Here in the United States, every defendant is presumed innocent. The federal judge specifically informs the jury of that presumption. He also tells them that unless that presumption is rebutted by competent and reliable evidence that convinces the jury beyond a reasonable doubt of the defendant’s guilt, the jury must find the defendant innocent.

Thus, even though a criminal defendant is sometimes ordered to remain incarcerated until trial in our system here at home, government officials are prohibited from torturing him or mistreating him. Why? One big reason is because he is presumed to be innocent of the charges, notwithstanding the fact that he’s in jail awaiting trial. Our system here at home recognizes that it’s not a good thing to be torturing and abusing innocent people. Of course, the other big reason is that under our constitutional system of justice here at home, cruel and unusual punishments are prohibited even after a person is convicted and sentenced.

What about trial by jury, one of the most cherished rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights? It doesn’t exist at Guantanamo. The jury there consists of military officials, all of whom serve in the organization that is charged with waging the “war on terrorism,” which entails killing and capturing “enemy combatants.” As military personnel, the members of the jury at Guantanamo also ultimately answer to their commander-in-chief, the president. Finding a defendant innocent in the face of a fierce prosecution might be a courageous thing to do but it’s also a certain way to ruin one’s career in the military.

Under our constitutional system of justice, regular people from the community serve on juries. Our American ancestors wanted it that way. They figured that ordinary people would be less subject to improper influence and would be more likely to render a fair and impartial decision based only on the evidence. In federal jury trials, jurors couldn’t care less about how the president or the military feel about a particular defendant. Unlike the military members of the juries at Guantanamo, the ordinary people on the juries here at home render their decision independently of such concerns.

In the Pentagon’s system, the prosecutors will be permitted to admit hearsay into evidence in order to help secure a conviction. In our constitutional system here at home, that’s not allowed.

Why does our constitutional system prohibit hearsay? Because it denies the defendant the right to challenge the person who makes the statement. Suppose Joe Blow takes the witness stand and testifies, “John Doe told me that he saw the defendant blow up a bomb, killing dozens of innocent people.” How can the defendant’s attorney conduct an adequate cross-examination based on that testimony? Sure, he can challenge Joe Blow’s veracity by suggesting that John Doe never really told him that but he cannot challenge John Doe as to what Doe actually saw because Doe is not on the witness stand.

So, under our constitutional system, if the government wants John Doe’s testimony, it is required to bring him to court to testify, which enables the defense to cross examine him and challenge his veracity. Under the Pentagon’s system, John Doe’s version of events can be related through Joe Blow, thereby inhibiting the defense from challenging the veracity of Doe’s account.

Our system of justice also guarantees a public trial. That’s to ensure that everything is kept on the up and up. Not so with the Pentagon’s system. Whenever there is going to be evidence relating to the military’s or the CIA’s torture of the defendant or torture of prosecution witnesses appearing at trial, the judge is going to immediately close the proceedings in order to keep such wrongdoing secret from the American people. Apparently “national security” will be at stake if Americans discover how their government has been torturing people. In fact, preliminary indications are that the defendants might well be prohibited from even mentioning or describing the torture that they or witnesses have been made to undergo.

Why did the Pentagon set up a “judicial” system to compete against our federal court system? The answer is simple: Because the Pentagon doesn’t believe in the procedural principles that are enumerated in the Bill of Rights and applied in U.S. federal courts. Those principles, in the minds of the military, have the potential to let “guilty” people — that is, people the military “knows” are terrorists” — go free.

After all, juries composed of ordinary citizens are unpredictable. Oftentimes, they acquit people whom the government is convinced are guilty. Moreover, defense attorneys often expose grave government wrongdoing in the course of a trial.

Those problems, of course, don’t exist in totalitarian countries, where the judicial process is designed to create the appearance of fairness when in fact the outcome is preordained.

It’s appropriate that the Pentagon chose to establish its “judicial” system in Cuba, given that it so closely resembles the “judicial” system on the other side of the island.