Friday, June 7, 2013

Thoughts on the NSA Spying Scandal

Glenn Greenwald, one of the few good progressives out there, has released an explosive report on The Guardian (UK) website that details the NSA's collecting of phone records from Verizon and AT&T. I recommend that you read this. It will explore how bad this spying is. Here is a great quote from the article: "For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on "secret legal interpretations" to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be "stunned" to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted." Also, "the document [the order] shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing."

My thoughts on this is that these are the consequences of domestic spying powers. I am disappointed that Verizon and AT&T would approve of this. The worst part is that this is happening daily. We are forced to reveal these phone records to the government, even when we don't want to. 

As Mike Snyder at the Economic Collapse Blog warns: "Unfortunately, our leaders have totally abandoned the Constitution.  They seem to believe that they have the right to look through our electronic communications any time they want and that we should not complain about it.  As you will see below, workers at the NSA have even eavesdropped on very intimate conversations between soldiers serving in Iraq and their female loved ones back home.  What kind of sick person would do such a thing?"

The Washington Post also has a report about U.S. and British intelligence forming PRISM to target nine Internet companies. Here they are: "The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war. Dropbox , the cloud storage and synchronization service, is described as 'coming soon.'"

According to Fox News, the center could have 5 billion zettabytes ("Just one zettabyte is the equivalent of about 62 billion stacked iPhones 5's-- that stretches past the moon."), which would probably contain target addresses, phone numbers, emails, keywords, phrases in emails, blogposts, and almost anything. Why do they need this?

Now, having given all this information, what would be the libertarian's response to this? Mike Rozeff at LewRockwell.com has three arguments against this spying in his great article today: "First, under libertarian law reasoning, making you reveal your records when you have committed no crime is an aggression and illegitimate. Second, if such aggression is permitted, it results in two serious costs, which are associated with revealing speech that people want kept private and suppressing speech that people want made widely known. Third, such aggression is part and parcel of a totalitarian mindset that, by extension, attempts to control speech as a preventive measure and find people guilty of thought crimes that have aggressed against nobody." Rozeff argues that "our thoughts are not aggressions" and that "if force is allowable to be used on people's thoughts, two kinds of results will rise in frequency." Those results would be that people would be forced to reveal thoughts that they don't want to and should not reveal because that could be potentially damaging to themselves and to other people, as well as keeping people from revealing thoughts that should be revealed for the welfare of society because the State may take it as ill will.

Murray Rothbard, in his great article "Free or Compulsory Speech" argued that "the right to speak implies the right not to speak, the right to remain silent." That means that Verizon and AT&T should not be compelled to release phone records, even in the name of "security." 

Where does the Fourth Amendment come into this? The president is trying to argue that the spying is valid because there will not be an actual listening of the conservations and the reading of emails. However, as Mike Rozeff argues in another blog post of his, "his honeyed assurances did not say that the U.S. government, Supreme Court included, has gutted the Fourth Amendment. He didn't say that this spying is the latest in a pattern that goes back years, and that this pattern shows a one-sided increase in government's capacity to monitor every American's communications, financial transactions and movements, and that all of this is about as strong a totalitarian marker as one could ask for. He didn't say that he has tightened the screws on leaks and whistleblowers so as to heighten government secrecy, another totalitarian marker." 

Now, having brought the libertarian solution to the problem, what is the Christian solution to the problem?

First, we should watch our tongue, as it could be as a spark setting off a fire (James 3:5). We should be careful in some of the things we say, as the State could take it as offensive. Telling the truth about something is not wrong, but we should do it in a biblical way so that, even if the State does try to punish us for it, we will not have been reckless.

Second, we should pray and watch for the signs of the times. The end is near. Christ is coming for His church to take her up before the "hour of testing" (Revelation 3:10). We should read our Scripture, get in touch with Christ, have continual fellowship with one another regardless of political philosophy, learn about Bible prophecy and the end times, and other things that are related to Scripture.

Third, get informed. Some ways that you can get informed is through alternative news sites such as WND.com, InfoWars.com, PrisonPlanet.com, LewRockwell.com, Antiwar.com and others. While not everyone will agree with everything in these websites, they serve valuable insight into today's world. Learn about the economics and philosophy of liberty at such organizations as the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the Future of Freedom Foundation, the Foundation for Economic Education, and others, as well as websites such as LibertarianChristians.com, the Reformed Libertarian, Food for the Thinkers, The Fountain of Truth, and many others that I can recommend (for more information, see my previous post, Libertarian and Christian Resources).

And finally, preach the Gospel to others. Pray for your country that it may come back to the Lord and return to its Judeo-Christian and libertarian/classical-liberal roots. Pray for our leaders, that they may see the error of their ways and come back to the Lord.

Note: I forgot to mention another great article out there on this subject. It is entitled "Police-State 'Progressivism'" by Justin Raimondo. It is at AntiWar.com and I recommend that you read it and be enlightened by it. It contains much valuable information about the police state, growing fascism, the hypocrisy of "progressives" as they still worship Obama despite his continuation of the Bush doctrine that has its roots in FDR and Woodrow Wilson.

6/10/13: There are those who work against this scandal, such as the ex-CIA agent Edward Snowden. Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian has an excellent report on the American hero, Lew Rockwell has commended him, and Justin Raimondo wrote a great article at AntiWar.com on him. We must keep him  in our prayers and hope he is successful in exposing this scandal. The Daily Mail reports that intelligence officials are joking about "disappearing" Snowden (read: murdering or kidnapping him).

6/13/13: It turns out that indeed all phone calls are being recorded. These revelations are only the tip of the iceberg.

IRS Spent $50 Million of Taxpayers' Money on Hotels, Star Trek Videos, Squirting Toys

So reports Stoyan Zamov at the Christian Post:

"The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is apologizing today after lawmakers tore into the organization for spending $50 million in taxpayer money on lavish conferences, hotel rooms, spoof videos and trinkets like squirting fish toys."

So this is where our tax dollars are going; politicians enjoy luxury, all at our own expense, when we are plagued with growing statism, trillions of dollars in debt, a massive welfare state, and other things that will encroach upon our liberties!

Ron Paul was correct in asserting that the IRS's job is to violate our liberties. The libertarian solution, which Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell hold, is this: abolish the IRS and the income tax, and replace it with nothing.

UPDATE (6/19/2013): In the post, I forgot to mention this crucial aspect: why did they do this? Because they don't want to lose their money, they feel the need to spend it on themselves. My solution to this is that while we definitely need to end the IRS and abolish the income tax, we also need to change hearts and minds. We need to remind them that spending should not be done to get or keep something. If we forget to do this crucial step, all our efforts will have been for nothing.

Mike Rozeff and Tom DiLorenzo Take Down Rich Lowry and Some Libertarian Resources on Secession, Nullification, and the Confederacy

The libertarians Tom DiLorenzo and Mike Rozeff have taken down neoconservative Rich Lowry for his NRO article "Lincoln Defended".

Here is a quote from Tom DiLorenzo's post:

The way to become politically relevant and win over America's youth, says Rich Lowry (who apparently will always look like he just started shaving last week) is to continue to libel and smear Ron Paul and "the fever swamp of LewRockwell.com" while composing boring, poorly-written, long-winded apologies for the abolition of civil liberties, crackdowns on free speech, the imprisoning of dissenters, pervasive spying by the state, the deportation of political opponents, massive taxation and debt to pay for it all, centralized, monopolistic government, crony capitalism,  and above all, never-ending aggressive wars all around the world in the name of "making all men free."

Here is a quote from Mike Rozeff's post:

Lowry writes of  "a species of libertarians — 'people-owning libertarians,' as one of my colleagues archly calls them — who apparently hate federal power more than they abhor slavery." Totally asinine and totally wrong. I have to inform the analytically-challenged Lowry that federal power and slavery are not necessarily opposites. One can be against both federal power and slavery, when both violate rights and self-ownership. Slavery is not something either that necessarily has to be eliminated by the exercise of federal power or a national power or by a terrible civil war or by gross violations of rights or by destroying a Constitution. Other nations ended slavery without these necessarily happening.

Here are the links to Tom DiLorenzo's post, Mike Rozeff's post, and the Lowry article. Read these three and send me your opinions.

I will close with thoughts on Lincoln from the great Murray Rothbard himself from his great speech, "Two Just Wars: 1776 and 1861":  "Abraham Lincoln’s conciliatory words on slavery cannot be taken at face value. Lincoln was a master politician, which means that he was a consummate conniver, manipulator, and liar. The federal forts were the key to his successful prosecution of the war. Lying to South Carolina, Abraham Lincoln managed to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt and Henry Stimson did at Pearl Harbor 80 years later – maneuvered the Southerners into firing the first shot. In this way, by manipulating the South into firing first against a federal fort, Lincoln made the South appear to be "aggressors" in the eyes of the numerous waverers and moderates in the North." Abe Lincoln was, in the words of Isabel Paterson, "a humanitarian with a guillotine."

Note: I would like to make a comment on the Lowry article. On the second page, Lowry tries to rebut DiLorenzo's claim that America was birthed in secession by claiming it was a revolution. I will comment that both Lowry and DiLorenzo were right. The revolution was a secession in that it withdrew from the British Empire and declared their independence, and it was a revolution in that it blended libertarian and republican thought, as well as the traditional rights of Englishmen, and broke with the past by applying it in such a revolutionary way as has never been seen. 

For more information on Lincoln, secession, nullification, and the Confederacy from a libertarian perspective, see these resources:

"Lincoln's Greatest Failure (Or, How a Real Statesman Would Have Ended Slavery)" by Tom DiLorenzo, LewRockwell.com, November 15, 2012

"Judge Napolitano on Lincoln" by Tom DiLorenzo, LewRockwell.com, January 8, 2008

"Is Secession a Right?" by David Gordon, LewRockwell.com, December 7, 2012

"Be Patriotic: Become A Secessionist" by Tom DiLorenzo, LewRockwell.com, December 6, 2012

"Parting Company" by Walter Williams, LewRockwell.com, November 27, 2012

"3 Myths About Secession" by Ryan McMaken, LewRockwell.com, November 15, 2012

"Nullification: Answering the Objections" by Thomas E. Woods, Liberty Classroom

"Secession and Liberty" by Tom DiLorenzo, LewRockwell.com, November 28, 2000

"Abraham Lincoln" by Walter Williams, LewRockwell.com, February 28, 2013

"Lincoln the Racist" by Tom DiLorenzo, LewRockwell.com, November 10, 2012

"The Real Lincoln In His Own Words" by Tom DiLorenzo, LewRockwell.com, June 5, 2013

"An Abolitionist Defends the South" by Tom DiLorenzo, LewRockwell.com, October 20, 2004

"Virginia's Black Confederates" by Walter Williams, LewRockwell.com, November 2, 2010

"Libertarians and the Confederate Battle Flag" by Tom DiLorenzo, LewRockwell.com, April 19, 2001

"A Libertarian Theory of Secession and Slavery" by Walter Block, LewRockwell.com, June 10, 2012

"Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State" by Murray Rothbard, Journal of Libertarian Studies 11:1, Fall 1994

"A Jeffersonian View of the Civil War" by Donald W. Miller, Jr., LewRockwell.com, September 7, 2001

"Genesis of the Civil War" by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., LewRockwell.com, May 11, 2000

"The Great Struggle: Republic or Empire?" by Steven Yates, LewRockwell.com, February 3, 2001

"Lincoln and His Legacy" by Joseph Sobran, Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, February 19, 2008

"The Right to Secede" by Joseph Sobran, LewRockwell.com, September 30, 1999

For more information about Lincoln, see the King Lincoln Archive at LewRockwell.com and Tom DiLorenzo's archive of articles.

I might revise this post in the future; however, these are the best resources I can find.