Ron Paul on Piers Morgan: The Government Hates Truth

Ron Paul appears on the Piers Morgan Show, along with CIA Director James Woolsey. Butler Shaffer at the Lew Rockwell blog comments that he has "all the demeanor of a statist villain from 1984, V For Vendetta, or Fahrenheit 451." Ron Paul defends Edward Snowden brilliantly and forcefully argues for the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law, while Woolsey defends the spying. I agree with Ron Paul on this issue.

I would like to note that as much I dislike Piers Morgan, he rightly notices (at the 10:35 mark) that most Second Amendment advocates who brilliantly argue for gun rights fail in regards to supporting the Fourth Amendment. Lew Rockwell noted a similar problem among most gun rights people in a blog post three months ago. Rockwell said that "most of them endorse the empire and its mountain of skulls. This is especially true of the pro-gun organizations, who support a neocon foreign policy." 

Here is the interview. I hope you enjoy it.

Great Debate on Conservative-Libertarian "Fusionism" at Cato Unbound Blog

At the Cato Unbound Blog, there is a great debate between several libertarian and conservative writers on the issue of a "fusionism" between libertarianism and conservatism. The writers include Jacqueline Otto, Jordan Bailor, Clark Ruper, and Jeremy Kolassa.

I will review each writer and analyze whether their analyses succeeded or failed:

Jacqueline Otto of Values and Capitalism: In the opening article "The State of the Debate", Otto rightly argues that "the differences between libertarians and conservatives are already well defined" and that we should not redefine them. She also rightly argues that Christianity and libertarianism are compatible as both are based on voluntarism. She warns us that there should be social responsibility with freedom, in opposition to the world of Aldous Huxley, where government gives the people everything they want. However, in her article "A Strategy for the Brand Management of Libertarianism", she argues that "our goal should be to create as many drops as possible to make a brand for libertarianism that will permeate society so effectively that we see massive political change in the direction of freedom." Then she argues that libertarian purism will hinder this cause. However, I differ from her in this aspect. I will point out that "Mr. Libertarian" Murray Rothbard, one of the purest libertarians (he was an anarcho-capitalist) in the history of liberty, was willing to make alliances with certain political sects even when he disagreed with them. Later in his life, he planned his "outreach to the rednecks" and termed it "right wing populism." He did so because the right was on the opposition and was forming a "paleo" movement that harkened back to the old forms of conservatism and libertarianism. Purism doesn't necessarily distract from alliances, and it certainly didn't distract Rothbard from making alliances with the paleo right. However, despite these flaws, Jacqueline Otto argues her points brilliantly, and makes a convincing case for fusionism.

Clark Ruper, Vice President of Students for Liberty (SFL) International: Clark Ruper brilliantly argues in his opening article "The Death of Fusionism" that "fusionism is dead, and conservaties killed it" because of such neoconservatives as George W. Bush, Karl Rove, and Rick Santorum. 

"Where once libertarians and conservatives could debate intelligently on the pages of National Review, now the traditionalists are all but forgotten, replaced by pandering to social conservatives who see heroes in the likes of Rick Santorum. Once we could unite behind Barry Goldwater, but for years now those on the right have taken their marching orders from the imperialist big government neoconservatives under George W. Bush and the puppet master Karl Rove. The fusionist stool is irreparably broken. Fusionism is dead, and conservatives killed it." 

In his next article "Liberalism and the Individualist Worldview," Ruper argues that libertarianism is in a sense closer to liberalism than conservatism. He is right in that libertarianism was originally known as classical liberalism. The fine libertarian scholar Murray Rothbard argued in his classic essay "Left and Right" that "Liberalism had indeed brought to the Western world not only liberty, the prospect of peace, and the rising living standards of an industrial society, but above all, perhaps, it brought hope, a hope in ever-greater progress that lifted the mass of mankind out of its age-old sinkhole of stagnation and despair." However, liberalism shifted from the classical liberalism of John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and other great liberals of the 18th and 19th centuries when it lost its original radicalism and began to compromise with statism, and because of this, it eventually birthed itself into socialism. Rothbard argued:

"Socialism, like liberalism and against conservatism, accepted the industrial system and the liberal goals of freedom, reason, mobility, progress, higher living standards for the masses, and an end to theocracy and war; but it tried to achieve these ends by the use of incompatible, conservative means: statism, central planning, communitarianism, etc. Or rather, to be more precise, there were from the beginning two different strands within socialism: one was the right-wing, authoritarian strand, from Saint-Simon down, which glorified statism, hierarchy, and collectivism and which was thus a projection of conservatism trying to accept and dominate the new industrial civilization. The other was the left-wing, relatively libertarian strand, exemplified in their different ways by Marx and Bakunin, revolutionary and far more interested in achieving the libertarian goals of liberalism and socialism; but especially the smashing of the state apparatus to achieve the “withering away of the State” and the “end of the exploitation of man by man.” 

So today, in many ways do modern liberals agree with libertarians, in that they mostly stand for civil liberties, oppose slavery, support freedom of speech, religious toleration, and other things. However, they contradict themselves when they oppose states' rights and secession, support universal healthcare, support marriage licenses, support progressive taxation, support drivers'    licenses, support gun control and assault-weapons bans, support central planning, and humanitarian interventionism. Only libertarianism can be considered to be genuine liberalism, and while we may take advantage of certain agreements with modern liberals, ultimately we are the true liberals, not the progressives. Ruper also brilliantly argues, along with Rothbard in his 1956 letter to Frank Meyer, that conservatism was the original enemy of classical liberalism and libertarianism. It was originally against the laissez-faire capitalism that it now ostensibly supports. Clark Ruper also stands up in defense of Ron Paul as an example of libertarians transcending the bounds of fusionism. "He was not afraid to stand up to conservatives on social issues and foreign policy. He became famous for challenging Rudy Giuliani on the issue of Blowback during the 2008 presidential debates. He gained legions of young followers by consistently championing libertarian issues like the drug war, civil liberties, and privacy. He proved that libertarian issues beyond markets are popular, that we do not have to narrow our focus to markets or kowtow to conservatives." I agree with Ruper that Ron Paul is a shining example of a libertarian that is willing to work with both conservatives and liberals, and yet ultimately transcends these two groups. I would also like to note that in his article on Ron Paul, Ruper gives a fitting criticism of the Koch orbit: "Many affiliates under the Koch umbrella focused their attention narrowly on the area of economic freedom, such as their educational project of that name. While the project is valuable in its narrow scope, it is an example of libertarians avoiding social issues to work with conservatives on market issues." Read all his articles here, here, here, and here.

Jordan Bailor, research fellow at the Acton Institute and executive editor for Journal of Markets & Morality: Jordan Bailor brings the conservative viewpoint to all this. He is right in arguing, along with Otto, that religion, specifically Christianity, and liberty are compatible and connected. However, I take issue with his conservative view on several issues. For example, in his opening article "Avoiding Confusionism," he argues that "a core principle for many libertarians, the view that there is nothing between the individual and the state, has arguably done more to permit, if not promote, tyranny, and to undermine true liberty, than pragmatic reliance on state power in pursuit of a particular social agenda." While I would agree that many libertarians neglect to mention family, church and other mediating organizations in the context of libertarianism, libertarianism itself does not neglect family, church, or other institutions. Many libertarians are willing to accept them, even as they remain hardcore individualists. I doubt that this is a core principle in libertarianism per se. He seems to hold that atomistic or even "rugged" individualism and tyranny are two sides of the same coin. However, as Murray Rothbard argues, "what libertarians are opposed to is not voluntary persuasion, but the 

coercive imposition of values by the use of force and police power. Libertarians are in no way opposed to the voluntary cooperation and collaboration between individuals: only to the compulsory pseudo-”cooperation” imposed by the state." Bailor argues that the best way to limit government is not through individualism, but through cooperation with each other. However, individualism is fully compatible in my view with cooperation and voluntary organizations such as the family, the church, and other institutions; they form something like "cooperative individualism." Next, I would like to comment on his second article "In Search of Augustinian Fusionism," where Bailor argues for a fusion, however temporary, between the conservative and the libertarian. However, he goes on to critique the libertarian scholar Gerard Casey on the conclusion that liberty is “most fundamental, a sine qua non of a human action’s being susceptible to moral evaluation at all.” I will come to Casey's defense. He did not say that liberty was the most fundamental of human values. Rather, he said that "liberty is the lowest of social values, lowest in the sense of being most fundamental, a sine qua non of a human action's being susceptible to moral evaluation in any way at all." He merely claimed that the libertarian 

believes that human action is impossible unless there is freedom. In his article "Distinguishing Morality from Legality," Bailor rightfully argues, along with the great theologian Thomas Aquinas that government's duty is not to repress all human vice, and that there is indeed a distinction between the legal status of an action and its moral status. He excellently states that "to permit something legally is not the same as acknowledging it as morally permissible. Legal toleration is not the same as moral approbation." However, he seems to imply that libertarians fail to recognize that government has no warrant for actively promoting or subsidizing vice. I will answer this claim and argue that while indeed some libertarians might support some subsidization of vice (such as marriage equality for same-sex couples), I know of no libertarian who would actively support such things. This characteristic is more common in the progressive liberal circles. I will also answer his claim in his first article that "one views liberty as the freedom to do what we ought, while the other views liberty as the freedom to do what we want." I will answer this objection with the claim that while libertarianism does view freedom as doing what we want, it views liberty more specifically as freedom from coercion. This is the traditional libertarian understanding of freedom, as was accepted by John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Murray Rothbard, and the entire classical liberal and libertarian tradition. Freedom from coercion allows us to do both what we ought and what we want. He slightly criticizes the opinion of those libertarians such as I who support the government getting out of marriage, referring to people such as Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, and Ryan T. Anderson, who argue that privatizing marriage would be "a catastrophe for limited government." I will respond to this criticism from a libertarian viewpoint. Laurence Vance, a Christian libertarian columnist, says that "marriage predates the nation-state, the community, society, states and counties, cities and towns, governmental bodies of any kind, and even the church." It has survived throughout the ages. The conservative who worries that marriage will be redefined are overreacting. Marriage will still remain marriage; it will only be redefined in the eyes of society, but it will not be redefined in its original form. The libertarian Catholic political scientist Ryan McMaken, in his excellent article "Privatize Marriage" argues that "marriage was traditionally governed by religious law and was a religious matter. The Church recognized that with marriage being a sacrament, the state had no more right to regulate marriage than it had the right to regulate who could be baptized or who could be ordained a priest." He argues that the power to define marriage should not be entrusted to the state, as the State will devalue marriage. Daniel A. Crane, in his magnificent article "The 'Judeo-Christian' Case for Privatizing Marriage" at the Cardoza Law Review, argues that "marriage is an inherently spiritual activity whose legitimacy depends on the sanction of the Church and whose regulation requires the involvement of a Christian magistracy." Thomas Woods, the Catholic libertarian historian and scholar, argues that privatizing marriage is truly conservative in his interview with Steve Deace where he makes the Christian case for Ron Paul (he mentions marriage at the 21:00 mark). Woods states that:

"until the French Revolution, which was the most anti-Christian event until Communism,...if you had asked a Christian that [to give up the role of the marriage to the state] in 1500 or 1200 or 300, they would have thought that this was crazy. This in area for civil society and churches, not for the state. The state shouldn't regulate everything, especially an institution as sacred as marriage."

Woods made a strong case from history against the government getting into marriage. I will write more on the issue of marriage in the future from both the libertarian and Christian perpsectives. However, one thing I would like to note; in his first article, Bailor seems to argue that libertarianism diminishes freedom when he argues that a certain aspect of libertarianism seems to lean more to tyranny than to liberty. However, I will close with this argument from Laurence Vance in his great article on libertarianism and freedom. "For the libertarian, freedom is not the absence of morality, the rule of law, or tradition; it is the absence of government paternalism. Libertarianism is the absence of the ability of puritanical busybodies, nanny-statists, and government bureaucrats to make it their business to mind everyone else’s business." Libertarianism embraces freedom, not tyranny. 

Jeremy Kolassa, freelance writer and communications specialist within the liberty movement: Jeremy Kolassa's "An Unequal Treaty" forcefully argues that "this fusion can best be described as an unequal treaty, with conservatives in control, while libertarians are told to sit down, be quiet, and just support whatever conservatives are pushing at the moment." This supposed alliance has wrought a watered-down version of libertarianism. Murray Rothbard, in his 1969 open letter to YAF , warned that "the only liberty they [the fusionists and conservatives] are willing to grant is a liberty within "tradition," within "order," in other words a weak and puny false imitation of liberty within a framework dictated by the State apparatus." The fusionists make a big mistake in mixing two incompatible worldviews, for "you [the libertarian] can see for yourselves that you have nothing in common with the frank theocrats, the worshippers of monarchy, the hawkers after a New Inquisition, the Bozells and the Wilhelmsens." Jeremy Kolassa is right in asserting that libertarianism is about liberty, while conservatism is about conserving as much as possible. However, he makes a fatal error when he states that libertarians love freedom and conservatives love tradition, nearly implying that a love for tradition is only a hallmark of conservatism. This is not exactly true, as Rothbard reminded us that "we libertarians have our traditions too, and they are glorious ones. It all depends on which traditions: the libertarian ones of Paine and Price, of Cobden and Thoreau, or the authoritarian ones of Torquemada and Burke and Metternich." We libertarians are not against all forms of tradition, as the conservative scholar Ernest van den Haag asserted long ago. We respect traditions that are in line with liberty, such as those of the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Leonard E. Read, Murray Rothbard, the Austrian school of economics, the Scholastics, John Locke, Lord Acton, Henry David Thoreau, Richard Cobden, William Lloyd Garrison, the Jacksonians, the abolitionists, and a host of other classical-liberal/libertarian traditions of the past. As Murray Rothbard said in his classic 1974 Libertarian Forum article "How to Destatize," "Liberty is profoundly American; we come to fulfill the best of the American tradition, from Ann Hutchinson and Roger Williams to the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Jeffersonian movement, and beyond. As Benjamin R. Tucker put it, we are 'unterrified Jeffersonian democrats', and we come not to destroy the American dream but to fulfill it." Kolassa reminds us that "because of this unequal treaty, the American people commonly don’t realize that libertarians were against the war in Iraq, against the USA-PATRIOT Act, against the Department of Homeland Security, against the bailouts, and against the big-government big-spending ways of the conservative administration of George W. Bush. Only lately, with the rise of libertarians such as Ron and Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Jeff Flake, have we been able to reach out and actually talk to people." Only by forming an independent and consistent view of liberty can we reclaim the American heritage of freedom; while there may be a place for the occasional alliance between libertarians and liberals or between libertarians and conservatives, they are only temporary. In response to Jordan Bailor's assertion that freedom to do what we ought rather than what we want, Kolassa argues that we don't agree on what we ought to do. He reminds us that politics exists because of different conceptions of the good life. Kolassa also reminds Bailor and us that "most libertarians recognize the power of civil society and hope to strengthen it as a bulwark against government excess." Indeed, we are not atomists as some assume; rather we are individualists who believe in voluntary groups and organizations. Kolassa reminds us that the conflict isn't between liberty and civil society, but rather liberty and coercion.

Conclusion

In my opinion, this was a much needed debate on the issue of fusionism, and it has been enlightening for me. Clark Ruper was the best of the writers in my opinion. He clearly distinguished between libertarianism and conservatism and how ultimately they are two different ideologies. I hope it will be so for both libertarians and conservatives alike. I will be working on a post on libertarian and conservatism to explore the similarities and differences between them. For more information on fusionism from a libertarian perspective, see these wonderful resources:

• "Frank S. Meyer: The Fusionist as Libertarian Manque" by Murray Rothbard; Modern Age (Summer 1981); republished as "The Trouble with Conservatives" in Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative/Libertarian Debate by George W. Carey, ed.
• "The Return of Fusionism" by Ryan McMaken; LewRockwell.com, May 28, 2003
• "The Two Frank Meyers" by Ryan McMaken; LewRockwell.com, October 24, 2002
• "The Fusionists on Liberalism and Tradition" by Ralph Raico; New Individualist Review, Volume 3, No. 3, Autumn 1964, pp. 29-36, republished at Mises.org as "Is Libertarianism Amoral?" on April 04, 2005
• "What Libertarians and Conservatives Say About Each Other: An Annotated Bibliography" by Jude Blanchette; LewRockwell.com, October 27, 2004
• "What Libertarianism Isn't" by Edward Feser; LewRockwell.com, December 22, 2001
• "Listen, YAF" by Murray Rothbard; The Libertarian Forum (August 15, 1969)
• "Jonah Goldberg's Long, Unhappy Relationship with Libertarianism" by Ryan McMaken; LewRockwell.com, April 18, 2013

Token Libertarian Girl on NSA Surveillance

Julie Borowski, otherwise known as Token Libertarian Girl, is a great liberty activist who makes wonderful videos that engage you. Today, she has released another excellent video, as usual. She speaks on the NSA surveillance scandal.

Julie reminds us that privacy is not for the terrorist, but for the decent human being who wants to keep some of his thoughts private. She reminds us that we might not want someone to know certain things about our lives.

Here is the video. I hope you enjoy it.

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.

Anarchteacher Exposes Anti-Catholics Origins of AU

Charles Burris, also known as Anarchteacher, on Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU):

Americans United was originally chartered in 1947 as Protestants and Others United for Separation of Church and State. Yet from its foundation it was widely recognized as an anti-Roman Catholic organization. As Philip Hamburger, Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at the Columbia Law School brilliantly pointed out, the issue of “separation of church and state” has often been used to mask a more covert agenda by nativists, Freemasons, Klansmen, and secularists against parochial schools and Roman Catholicism. Murray N. Rothbard documented this ethnoreligious struggle in his "The Progressive Era and the Family." The landmark Supreme Court case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters dramatically illustrates this conflict. 

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