Recently, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas took to the floor of the House to talk about Wikileaks, transparency in government, and the case of Daniel Ellsberg, the 
Pentagon Papers, and the New York Times. He spoke about how the Iraq War was based on lies. He asked how the U. S. government should prosecute a citizen of Australia for publishing classified U. S. documents that he did not steal. Paul also said the following: “Revealing the real nature and goal of our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire, and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.”
Paul posed a number of questions at the end of his talk:
Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
Number 3: Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’ I yield back the balance of my time.
Source: Huffington Post
– Elaine Magliaro
Tony,
“This is circular logic on your part. You assume:
1) Any form of government will lie steal and murder”
This is no assumption, this is historical fact. It is in the DNA of the state to do such things because without engaging in those activities no government can function. It steals because it produces nothing, any resources it has, it has stolen. It murders because without the threat of violence, its edicts, laws, and taxes will not be obeyed. Every law, no matter innocuous is backed by a death threat. It lies because its actions are inherently unjustifiable. If the government has only powers delegated to it from the people it supposedly represents, than it cannot engage in any activity that an individual is not allowed to engage in. The government cannot be delegated powers that individuals do not possess. I have no right to take your property and allocate it to those I deem to need it or derserve it more than you. If noone has this right individually, how can they delegate it, no matter how many individuals agree? That is why the state must lie, because without lies its actions are not cloaked in ceremony, granduer and awe. They are laid bare as the actions of a gang of criminals. It is very hard to understand the logic of the argument that, in order to protect us from a group that might overpower us, we should support a group that has already overpowered us.
I bring up your daughter not as an extreme, but to illustrate that to someone with a family member unjustly incarcerated or murdered there are no degrees of freedom, and offering the platitude that we freer than everyone else confers no condolences.
Chan and B
Et tu chan? my loyal disciple? I have lost even your support? It is inevitable. It is a long weary path I tread and most do not wish to travel as far along it as I have to reach the conclusions I have. I harbor no resentment for your departure from this path and only hope one day your search for truth will lead you as far as it has lead me. To that end I would suggest that bickering over which party has caused more harm and started more wars and plundered more from its constituents is to miss the fact that they are symbiotic wings of the same party. The war party. Without the destitute kept in poverty by left-wing policies, the right-wing would not have the desperate cannon fodder needed to deploy across the globe to enforce american hedgemony abroad. Without the right-wing funding massive arms and military expenditures, fear mongering about social taboos, and foreign intervention, the left wing has no villian to point its finger at and justify its policies. They both have no qualms about trampling the freedom of their citizens and the citizens of other nations. The left imposes upon economic liberties and the right imposes upon individual and civil liberites. Both parties seek to expand political power for the purpose of wielding it when they are in the drivers seat. Power itself is never criticized or questioned, only the people and methods currently in control of it.
Also chan consider this, america began as a limited government and what was thought to be the most brilliantly conceived restraints on government power in history. You need only look around to see the spectacular failure of that attempt. All governments outgrow their constraints because, in the end, it is left in their hands to define and interpret what restraints they are beholden to. Eventually all governments determine that to be none.
I didn’t vote for that asshole. Most people didn’t the first time around. He was appointed President.
And the left and fascism are by definition opposites.
Leftist support for social change to create a more egalitarian society – in the case of Americans, that would put them in line with the principles of the Declaration.
Fascists are corporatists – they do whatever big business greed tells them to do. It is is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology that seeks to organize our nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy. You know. Like the right wing GOP and free market uber alles clowns such as yourself.
One cannot be for an egalitarian society and an oligarchical society at the same time. They are diametrically opposed concepts. But keep trying to pass the buck and dodge the fact that it’s people like you that got America into its current sad state of affairs.
It’s funny.
Bush wasn’t my people, he was more like your people. He had more in common with Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson than he does with my people.
He expanded government just like a liberal and got us into a 9 year long war just like a liberal (Think Viet Nam).
You know what they say about ducks and birds of a feather. Some people misidentify a Cedar Waxwing and a Bohemian Waxwing. Same with fascists and lefties since they are so similar.
But don’t let facts get in the way.
You haven’t so far.
Yeah.
It was the left that started a war for personal oil profits while letting their Saudi business partners skate for their role in 9/11.
Oops.
Actually, it was right wing venal douche bags who love war for money so much they invaded a country that hadn’t attacked us.
Bush, Cheney and PNAC. You know.
Your people. The irredeemably greedy.
ekeyra:
I hate to say it but I agree with Tony that anarchy is not a good model. We need some very limited amount of government to protect property, for the common defense and whatever else the founders thought proper. The actual founding documents are pretty good and do protect our rights if people would follow the letter instead of trying to interpret their thinking.
Most people dont search far enough for the truth (your example of Upton Sinclair’s Jungle above is proof of that fact).
But I do agree that most everything else can be acomplished by free markets.
Our government as originaly intended, prior to corruption by the progressives and others, was a pretty good model. It has been corrupted by a bunch of jack wagons on the left and right. Although personally I give a little more credit to the left since they seem to love war so much.
@ekeyra: P.S.
I want to clarify my use of the word stupid. I think (stress that qualification ***I***) that somebody is being stupid when they advocate for policies (or take actions) that will most likely produce the exact opposite of the desired outcomes they claim to want.
If somebody needs the money, using it for lottery tickets on the grounds that a win will make even more money is just stupid. If it works it is dumb luck, and 99% of the time it will produce the opposite effect.
Stupid is the charitable characterization, because if they aren’t stupid they are lying about what they want, and are therefore just evil manipulators.
You are essentially claiming that anarchic free markets will increase liberty and fairness, and that is just stupid, if that is what you want then anarchic free markets are not the way to get there. Or it is actively evil if you really don’t give a crap about liberty and fairness and are just using those as excuses to push your agenda of greed and selfishness, but even then the effect would be opposite of what you want, so you’d be both evil and stupid!
At least stupidity is correctable. I’m not that sure evil is correctable.
@ekeyra: And if your daughter is one of those innocent people? Will you just shrug and accept it as the cost of services rendered? Will you be so forgiving to the flawed human beings that lock her in a cage or take her life?
If my daughter were killed in a car accident, would I just shrug and accept it as part of the cost of efficient transportation? Of course not. An innocent being convicted of a crime is like a car accident; it can be due to irresponsibility, or a faulty part, or human error or just plain bad luck of coincidence, and it causes a tragedy that causes grief.
If this is how you think, that one horrific injustice justifies anarchy that would lead to thousands of times more injustices, then I don’t follow your logic.
Under your system of government my daughter would have probably been forcibly raped before she hit puberty.
As for the first part, I do not believe your assertion is true, like always you must go to an extreme in your thinking, you cannot process any shades of gray whatsoever. ALL governments for ALL time? Wow, the depth and breadth of your political knowledge is unparalleled. Unless you are just making shit up, and by Occam’s razor I’ll assume you are just making shit up.
This is circular logic on your part. You assume:
1) Any form of government will lie steal and murder; therefore
2) every government that every existed will lie steal and murder; therefore
3) That is an indictment of every government that ever existed, and therefore
4=1) any form of government will lie steal and murder.
First, you cannot use your assumption to prove your assumption, that is just stupidity.
Second, you cannot indict one system on its failures without indicting anarchy on its far more massive failures. I don’t like the current system either, but I’ll take it rather than condemn every innocent child in the country to the hell on earth you propose.
I think you are just really stupid. No person or government is perfect, but they do deliver varying degrees of fairness, liberty and justice to their citizens, and that is how they must be judged. The American form is better than most but clearly not the best, even now. In places where anarchy exists, life is miserable, short, and painful. Even our corrupt and broken and unfair system lets most people earn a living and live a somewhat normal (if somewhat oppressed) life. It is better than nothing, which is what you propose.
Tony,
“As I have said before, but typically you are incapable of processing, pointing at the crimes of the current government, or the Nazi government, or Saddam’s government, does not indict the idea of government.”
You seem to believe that those governments are the exception. They are not. Again, name one government in history that did not lie, steal, or murder. That is an idictment of the idea of government. All governments violate the very laws they presume to enforce on everyone else. There have been no exceptions, only differences of degree.
“Any system of punishing criminals is going to punish innocent people; it is pragmatically impossible to prevent that. Cops and detectives and judges and juries can be fooled and get it wrong, they are all just humans.”
And if your daughter is one of those innocent people? Will you just shrug and accept it as the cost of services rendered? Will you be so forgiving to the flawed human beings that lock her in a cage or take her life?
Ahem. I left out a sentence. What I meant to say was that any system of punishing crime is bound to punish some innocent people; but that does not indict the idea of punishing criminals, and punishing criminals does deter crime. Sorry. I skipped ahead a paragraph in my head.
@ekeyra: Wow, once again, an inabiity to think in anything but extremes.
I am aware the President has done this, I think he is a war criminal, like his predecessor. As I have said before, but typically you are incapable of processing, pointing at the crimes of the current government, or the Nazi government, or Saddam’s government, does not indict the idea of government.
Any system of punishing criminals is going to punish innocent people; it is pragmatically impossible to prevent that. Cops and detectives and judges and juries can be fooled and get it wrong, they are all just humans.
In my eyes, every congressman and senator in office right now is a criminal in violation of their oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States.
That does not indict the idea of government, and anarchy would be far, far worse, and would harm far, far more people. You can be whatever you want, including an idiot. It’s a free country. Ironically it wouldn’t be if you had your way.
“So when you advocate for anarchy, unless you are already a murdering thug in charge of a crime syndicate, you are advocating that you yourself be owned and ruled by a murdering thug in charge of a crime syndicate.”
Perhaps you are unaware that the president has anointed himself with the power to execute anyone, anywhere on the planet, for any reason, without due process of any kind, and any legal challenges are a moot exercise because, according to the government to even reveal why anyone was targeted would reveal state secrets.
I am already under the rule of a murderous thug in charge of a globe spanning crime syndicate. A syndicate that grants itself the power to kill anyone, anywhere in the world, without even spelling out the criteria of behavior that would lead one to be targeted for such killings. That is precisely why I am an anarchist.
“Government is not tyranny if the leadership is by popular consent. There will always be some people that disagree with any given decision; that frustration or anger is the price dissenters pay for the other benefits they gain from belonging to their group.”
You know, hitler and the nazis were pretty popular. I guess the jews being hauled off to death camps were just paying the price for having nice roads and public transportation.
Oh, and that last part applies to all sociopaths. I truly have all the regard for your kind as I do for rabid dogs.
ekeyra,
What’s repulsive is watching supposed adults go to great lengths to justify their greed. As to what you think of me, I could give a shit.
@Blouise: My best friend retired last year and I and others put up money to help him launch his retirement business. We do not need investors or employees, so I am not pitching anything; but I do love the startup phase! This is my fifth, I think. In this case I put up 25% of the capital (and we won’t borrow anything). In my spare time I did a lot of his research and company organization for him; but I won’t have any work duties there, other than my board duties (and the board has actual steering power so there will be some research and homework to do on occasion).
My favorite business organization model is the GoreTex inverted pyramid, that is some crazy voodoo they have going on there. I sometimes wonder if our country could be organized like GoreTex. Another interesting cooperative model is Whole Foods.
Both of these are interesting because they are founded by engineers and organized kind of upside down, an enormous share of real power is given to the line workers (in the GoreTex case all of it), but they are very profitable and it makes sense why they work.
Do you have any particular sort of business that interests you?
@ekeyra: I said the Afghanistan warlord model; those warlords existed long before US soldiers arrived; and that system is anarchic.
If you tell me you are indeed proposing anarchy, two things happen: I laugh at you, and then I feel bad because I realize what I should be doing is feeling pity for you. Because your understanding of people is so flawed and dysfunctional you must be miserable; and if that is the case you have my sympathy.
People are ruled no matter what. Not just people, any social animal. Wolf packs have a king, so do chimpanzee tribes. I believe in evolutionary reasons for human psychology, but for whatever reasons there may be it appears that we social animals function better (survive and reproduce better) when we have leaders.
I suspect that is because there are big advantages in cooperative action, and perhaps for that to be effective we need leaders to make decisions and organize the cooperative effort. Whether it is a wolf pack or a human tribe.
There are failed governments in various countries around the world; typically failed because of corruption and looting, sometimes by civil wars over religion, or some other failure of leadership (meaning a failure to deliver the fruits of cooperative action). But government will exist in some form because we are wired for it. We want there to be somebody with a plan.
For humans, the default method for establishing leadership is physical force and intimidation. So when you advocate for anarchy, unless you are already a murdering thug in charge of a crime syndicate, you are advocating that you yourself be owned and ruled by a murdering thug in charge of a crime syndicate. I suspect the latter.
The alternative to tryanny is to choose a government, define rules and crimes, and invest the government with the right to use force to prevent or undo or at least punish the crimes. If there is going to be a government no matter what (and there is) then the alternative to tyranny is prevent would-be tyrants from ever taking power, and that is going to require overwhelming force because some of them are murderous psychopaths.
Some of the first attempts at this were based on religion; but governments can be secular. I believe the search must continue for a form of government that reliably delivers sufficient protection with a high level of cooperative action and a minimum of tyranny.
Representative democracy is close, but has (to me) been proven a failure when confronted with overwhelming money. The tyrants just moved from politics to business, and the winners there found they could just buy the government, one way or another. That is the tragic lesson we are learning now, and I doubt it ends well.
Government is not tyranny if the leadership is by popular consent. There will always be some people that disagree with any given decision; that frustration or anger is the price dissenters pay for the other benefits they gain from belonging to their group. When those “other benefits” dry up there will be a revolution; either an orderly one through an elective process, or a violent one. (No I am not threatening anything here, I am talking about a theory of how revolutions occur.)
It is a pity you cannot comprehend this, truly. Avoiding being ruled by others is an unattainable fantasy. There’s nothing wrong with fantasizing, it can be entertaining and help you get over the pain of isolation you must feel. But I think I will leave you to your musings; at this point I am just arguing with a person too invested in their unattainable fantasy world to face reality.
Tony suggesting afghanistan as a model of a free market, tells me exactly how much you comprehend free markets. Please explain how american soldiers, funded by taxpayers, guarding the world’s largest supplier of opium, a commodity deemed illegal and violently suppressed by the same government that funds the soldiers to guard its growth, production, and distribution, is somehow an indictment of free markets? Im also curious as to what happens when i tell you I am indeed proposing anarchy? Do I get to watch one of more veins burst in your forehead in exasperation?
Blouise, why would your parents or yourself deem it neccessary or beneficial to interact with people of such low character? If you truly thought those people capable of what you accuse them of, why expose yourself to their company at all?
B, I understand very well your attempt to paint anyone who disagrees with you as having a mental disability instead of having a differing opinion and perspective. It is truly repulsive.
Tony C.,
If you ever decide to start a new company, please call me … I will either invest or try to get a job working for you.
McHomeSchooled,
And thank you for your stunning display of inability to understand text, copy pasted or not.
Not to mention your stunning ability to misuse words and inability to distinguish reason from self-rationalization.
You’re not only a cheap date. You’re easy too.
@ekeyra: As always, you can only think in extremes. It seems to be a very common malady of libertarians, I must say.
Actually I don’t believe in taxing the bottom 1/2 of income earners at all; I believe in progressive taxation, because I believe in equalizing the discomfort of taxation, not the amount or percentage. If I were permitted to implement a taxation system, I’d be in the top tax bracket.
According to your extremist thinking, no taxes could be assessed at all, ever. I think that is just ludicrous. We have a society, we have an infrastructure, we require police, we require courts, if for nothing else then to enforce those hundred thousand contracts at gunpoint you libertarians are always talking about.
Or are you proposing the Afghanistan warlord model? There’s another free market for you, that and Yemen. You can have your competitors shot in the head, if they don’t do that to you first. Now THAT’S the way earn your monopoly in the kumquat pie business!
Unless you are proposing armed anarchy there is going to be taxation, and so the only thing we are discussing is the level of taxation to support what we see as the government’s duties.
We see those duties differently, but characterizing ANY tax as theft is just stupid, and if you believe ANY tax is theft, then we are done with the (somewhat) civil exchange part of this conversation.