End the War on Freedom

# L. Neil Smith At The Libertarian Enterprise - The Nightmare After Halloween - why Neil votes and how he'll be voting tomorrow. [tle]

George W. Bush, on the other hand, is a known initiator of force, from a long, ugly line of initiators of force. Given the political opportunity represented by the horrifying attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, he chose not to pursue the real perpetrators, but only to give that idea lip service, and invade Afghanistan, instead, where his oil-company sponsors had wanted to put a pipeline for at least a decade.

While the iron was still hot, to gain control of Earth's second largest pool of oil, Bush and his petropals exaggerated the threat represented by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, lied about that nation's weaponry, invaded and occupied it, destroying the civilization they found there, while claiming to be rebuilding a thing that wouldn't have needed any rebuilding if they hadn't destroyed it in the first place.

All the while, the real perpetrators of 911 were sitting in their hideyhole in the Pakistani mountains, laughing at America and taunting it like that French guy in the castle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

In the process, the lives of thousands of young Americans and tens of thousands of Afghanis and Iraquis--ten-year-old goatherds and pregnant women who never did anything to us--have been ruined or ended.

Standing on a foundation of greed for somebody else's property and lies to justify taking it by force, George Bush is a mass-murderering monster. The idea--put forth by the e-mail I started this with--that Bush's opponent John Kerry can be any worse, is utter nonsense. Kerry will almost certainly continue the War-on-Everything madness, but ...

# Michael Bradshaw at The Libertarian Enterprise - Election and Revolution - Mr. Bradshaw says that it's time to re-read Unintended Consequences and Assassination Politics and, when Michael Badnarik doesn't win the presidential election tomorrow, start carrying out their advice. [tle]

On Tuesday, November 2, 2004 I will go to the polling place and cast a ballot for Michael Badnarik for the office of President of the United States. It will be counted for John Kerry.

After the politician's "erection" on Tuesday I intend to withdraw my registration to vote. I do not intend to vote again unless I can find some other folks to work with me on my initiative to enforce the second amendment--to be found at www.usrepeals.com--or to vote on a similar one from someone else.

Instead I will spend political time at the shooting range, practicing casting "ballots" downrange; and at the loading bench, making liberty's teeth. I'm sure I will need them.

It's not the People who are revolting against the Government. It's the Government that's revolting.

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The four basic functions of all government are robbery, rape, slavery and murder. All else is mere window-dressing and excuses. The fact that some governments are less bad than others, or perform some useful functions--means nothing. Anything they do that is wanted by the victims--is at an average cost at least four times what it is worth in the free market. They all violate the Zero Aggression Principle in everything they do. They all do the four basic functions. They are all gangs of criminals who get their living, sex and sport by victimizing the people around them. There can never be any excuse for any government or politician to exist.

It's not the People who are revolting against the Government. It's the Government that's revolting.

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The method is Fifth-Generation War. And it has two parts.

It requires not the traditional bottom-up war that the politicians and kings have always fought against each other, with soldiers killing soldiers until one side runs out of soldiers--and the sacred Leaders remain, unharmed. It requires the top-down war the politicians have always feared that we would learn. It requires the decapitation of the hierarchical organization of government by the systematic removal of the leaders.

From the top down.

# Anthony Gregory at The Libertarian Enterprise - Government Growth, the Party of Lincoln, and George W. Bush - a little history of the party begun by The American Lenin. According to Mr. Gregory, they've basically always been as they are now: lip service to liberty, fascism in practice. [tle]

Teddy Roosevelt also continued US intervention in the Philippines, which the US had likewise "liberated" from Spanish control. The "Christianizing" US occupation burned down churches, treated the population brutally, and, following orders to shoot resisters as young as eleven, slaughtered 200,000 Philippine civilians--or, in today's Republican lingo, Philippine "anti-freedom insurgents." Republican Teddy was America's first neocon.

Roosevelt also expanded government at home. He signed the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, broke up dozens of companies, doubled the number of national parks, strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission, spoke out in favor of labor regulations and a graduated income tax, and even used his influence in the Bully Pulpit to try to change the rules of college football. Republican Teddy was America's first Progressive.

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With Nixon's election, the Republicans once again shed themselves of their small-government veneer. Nixon created the EPA and OSHA and implemented the Philadelphia Plan, the first significant federal program of affirmative action, complete with racial quotas. He secretly carpet bombed Cambodia, continued the Great Society, started to give real life to federal drug policy, advocated draconian gun control, obliterated the last remnants of the gold standard, used the IRS to harass political enemies, and even implemented wage and price controls--one of the most significant assaults a social democratic state is capable of inflicting on the free market. The welfare state is bad enough; imposing standards on what people can charge customers and pay employees is economic fascism.

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Most small-government conservatives and libertarians feel betrayed by Bush, and yet are thinking of lending him their helping hands on election day. They hope the Republican Party will return to its supposed roots in small government and liberty. They hope that Bush will improve in his second term.

Give it up. The Republican Party--the Party of Lincoln, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Hoover, Nixon, Reagan and both of the Georges Bush--is not, will never be, and has in fact never really been a party of smaller government. There were aberrations in history where they appeared to be the clear lesser of two evils, but it was usually illusory and always short lived. If anything, the Republican Party is the "Party of Bigger Government That Once In A While Gives Small Government A Bad Name." This has definitely been true since Nixon, and, indeed, aside from the historical anomalies, the Republican Party has never strayed from the founding principles it inherited from the Federalist movement of the early American republic and the Whig Party of the Antebellum Era. The party has never done injustice to the legacy of Lincoln, McKinley and Reagan.

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Republicans might like to think or say otherwise, but there are no authentic small-government roots to which the Republican Party can return. All there is in the fertilized soil from which the GOP has grown are seeds of Caesarian imperialism, corporate socialism, and power lust. Whereas the Democrats often resembled a party of liberty until Wilson and FDR permanently led them astray, the Republicans have always been a corrupt gang of conniving government-worshipping crooks.

Of course, they love the word "freedom." But Republican freedom is never the genuine liberty of limited government, low taxes, personal sovereignty and peace. It is always the false liberty of nationalism, state-business partnerships, centralized police statism and war. Operation Iraqi Freedom, like all Republican wars in history, gives a good glimpse into the militarism and despotism Republicans really mean when they speak of freedom and liberation.

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