Open Carry Meet and Eat - Ridley Township, PA

At a dinner organized by Mark Fiorino he was interviewed by the Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky . Mark became the target of the Philadelphia Police Department last year when he was arrested for legally open carrying his handgun in the city:

Fortunately, things went without incident at the dinner. No arrests where made but, hopefully, new friendships were.

Tea Party Visits Occupy Philadelphia (video)

Must see video of the press conference:

On November 27, 2011 the Liberate Philadelphia Tea Partiers held a press conference at the Occupy Philadelphia site. It didn't go well for them. They were joined by the local, conservative radio talk show host, and advocate of torture, Dom Giordano. (He's the man interviewed in the second half of the video linked above. He can be seen defending torture in this video from earlier this year: http://youtu.be/_XNSGzt87Xw?t=1m39s )

Local news coverage of the event: http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/video?id=8446372

James Madison’s Warning: The Enemies to Public Liberty

It’s Veteran’s Day once again. A time to reflect on the fact that if I’d known years ago what I know now I wouldn’t have joined the US Army. Back then I too thought I was doing my part for freedom. “We’ve got to stop the communists,” they said. Now Jihadists supposedly threaten us.  These poor people living so far away aren’t the threat to our liberties. The real threat, the US government, resides here among us. Despite the fact that many in our military think they’re defending freedom by fighting they are in fact doing the opposite. Let’s look at Madison’s words on this subject.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

The fighting may be overseas but the many effects of the war are felt at home too.  It brings out the worst in the government and the people.

War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

It’s bad enough that the economy is in shambles under the crushing weight of the government’s spending, taxes, and debt. The fact that these three things give the government control of the economy and, therefore, blunt the people’s ability to oppose their evil is even worse. Liberty is lost as the government grows and it grows most during war.

 In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people.

Wartime propaganda whipping people into a state of fear leaves them often unable to see the truth behind the government’s power grabs. The meek acceptance of income tax withholding, the Transportation Security Administration’s groping, the Orwellian USA PATRIOT Act’s destruction of the Constitution’s protections, and the turning of the press into the government’s propaganda arm all occurred during war.

…the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war...and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

During the twenty-first century the US has been at war virtually one hundred percent of the time. The cold hearted morality of war becomes ever more entrenched in the people. “Solutions” imposed by force are the norm while voluntary ones are shunned. Civil society shrinks.

All veterans and active duty military I ask you to take another look at what you’re doing or have done. Fighting the wars that enable the government’s repression is not serving the cause of liberty. You serve or served an empire, the antithesis of it. Stop being an enemy of public liberty. Put down your weapons and take up the cause of peace, this is the only way to start to resurrect our long lost liberties.

Patrick Henry's Warning: The Tax-gatherers on the Rampage

This excerpt is from Patrick Henry's greatest speech, "Shall Liberty or Empire Be Sought?"  where he argued against adoption of the Constitution:

In this scheme of energetic government, the people will find two sets of tax-gatherers — the state and the federal sheriffs. This, it seems to me, will produce such dreadful oppression as the people cannot possibly bear. The federal sheriff may commit what oppression, make what distresses, he pleases, and ruin you with impunity; for how are you to tie his hands? Have you any sufficiently decided means of preventing him from sucking your blood by speculations, commissions, and fees? Thus thousands of your people will be most shamefully robbed: our state sheriffs, those unfeeling blood-suckers, have, under the watchful eye of our legislature, committed the most horrid and barbarous ravages on our people. It has required the most constant vigilance of the legislature to keep them from totally ruining the people; a repeated succession of laws has been made to suppress their iniquitous speculations and cruel extortions; and as often has their nefarious ingenuity devised methods of evading the force of those laws: in the struggle they have generally triumphed over the legislature.

It is a fact that lands have been sold for five shillings, which were worth one hundred pounds: if sheriffs, thus immediately under the eye of our state legislature and judiciary, have dared to commit these outrages, what would they not have done if their masters had been at Philadelphia or New York? If they perpetrate the most unwarrantable outrage on your person or property, you cannot get redress on this side of Philadelphia or New York; and how can you get it there? If your domestic avocations could permit you to go thither, there you must appeal to judges sworn to support this Constitution, in opposition to that of any state, and who may also be inclined to favor their own officers. When these harpies are aided by excisemen, who may search, at any time, your houses, and most secret recesses, will the people bear it? If you think so, you differ from me. Where I thought there was a possibility of such mischiefs, I would grant power with a niggardly hand; and here there is a strong probability that these oppressions shall actually happen. I may be told that it is safe to err on that side, because such regulations may be made by Congress as shall restrain these officers, and because laws are made by our representatives, and judged by righteous judges: but, sir, as these regulations may be made, so they may not; and many reasons there are to induce a belief that they will not. I shall therefore be an infidel on that point till the day of my death.

Absolutely prophetic, Patrick Henry knew what a strong national government would do. It is past time for this to end.

Occupy Philadelphia: The Kick That the Left Really Needed

“The kick that the left really needed “ are the words of one of the protesters. These are high hopes that will not be realized. Who are these Occupy Philly people? What do they stand for? Who do they represent? Let’s take a look. In the video below there are two interviews with participants in the Occupy Philadelphia movement and a Karl Marx impersonator that performed there. These are the first three parts of the video after the brief introduction. I recommend watching them before reading on. The second half of the video isn’t as relevant to this article as the first half is and can be viewed later.

For the most part what one sees in these interviews is a complete lack of understanding (deliberate misrepresentation?) of what capitalism is and what it has achieved. Every time it, capitalism, is criticized the criticism is that the government intervenes on behalf of the corporate elite. While this is true it also misses the essential point that capitalism is about markets free from government interference. What they are criticizing is actually the corporatist system that we have today, a system that more closely resembles fascism than anything else.

In the first interview Brandon of Philly Socialists talks about how our economic system is the same capitalist system now as it was two hundred years ago, a rather strange point of view. How can one miss the fact that the vast majority of the alphabet soup of regulatory agencies that we suffer under now was created in the twentieth century? How can one not see the vastly larger share of Gross Domestic Product that the government now absorbs? There were very few regulatory agencies in the early days of the republic, often no central bank, and very low levels of taxation. There were also no Robber Barons and a growing economy based much more on local businesses than today. While not perfect it was better than, and a far cry from, our present corporatism.

Rich, a registered nurse, is in the second interview. He advocates protectionism, an idea long ago debunked. (See “Protectionism and Communism”) More importantly Rich claims that the regulation of the medical profession is an illusion. That it is really the corporate elite that writes the rules for their own benefit and controls the regulators through the political process. Up to that point he’s right, but to claim that this means that there is no regulation and that this represents too little government involvement in health care is way off base. Pro business regulation is still regulation. The government is heavily involved, it’s just not doing what it is supposed to do. This is not a problem that is fixable, this is the nature of the beast. The ruling elites will always control the regulators. The only solution is a free market in health care. That means no government regulation or licensing.

Lastly, we come to the Karl Marx impersonator. He repeated the canard that the problem with the free market is the government intervening on behalf of the elites. In a conversation after his performance he acknowledged that that is not actually a free market but what the crowd thinks it is, therefore, his use of the term free market. An interesting admission. Very enlightening was his praise of the Paris Commune of 1871.  My impression is that this is the model they’re trying to emulate in the Occupy Movement.

All of this leads to a few conclusions about Occupy Philadelphia. Since, fortunately, 99% of the people aren’t socialists what we really have here is the .01% claiming to be the representatives of the majority when in reality they are only helping the 1% that rule over us. They are completely ignorant of economics and, therefore, don’t understand why things are going wrong. They cling to the view that government can be made to work if only…whatever, but it’s not that way. In advocating empowering the government so that it will become the “dictatorship of the proletariat” they only play into the hands of the 1% they claim to oppose. Why is the left always so willing to allow itself to be played? They should know by now that the elites will always control the government.

In the end Occupy Philadelphia only manages to discredit itself by presenting stale old statist ideas that have been proved time and again not to work. I ask them to step aside and let those with real solutions, the advocates of liberty, take the lead.