Joe Salerno Discusses Income Inequality

Peace Officers.....What Happened to them?

The following text is a selection from a speech given by Jeff Deist, the new President of the Mises Institute during their 2014 Mises Circle event in Houston, Texas

Whatever Happened to Peace Officers?

By Jeff Deist

Today when we use the term peace officer, it sounds antiquated and outdated. I’m sure most people in the room under 40 have never heard the term actually used by anyone; we might as well be talking about buggy whips or floppy disks. But in the 1800s and really through the 1960s, the term was used widely in America to refer generally to lawmen, whether sheriffs, constables, troopers, or marshals. Today the old moniker of peace officer has been almost eliminated in popular usage, replaced by “police officer” or the more in vogue “law enforcement officer.”

The terminology has certain legal differences in different settings; in some places peace officers and police officers are indeed different individuals with different functions, jurisdictions, or powers to execute warrants. But nobody says peace officer anymore, and it’s not just a coincidence.

The archetype of a peace officer is mostly fictitious — sheriffs in westerns often come to mind, stern lawmen carrying Colt revolvers called “Peacemakers.” But the Wyatt Earps of western myth weren’t always so peaceful, and often, at least in movies, used their Peacemakers to shoot up the place.

Outside the Old West archetype, Sheriff Andy Taylor of the Andy Griffith Show is perhaps the best and most facile example of what it once meant, at least in the American psyche, to be a peace officer. Now of course the Andy Griffith show was fictional. And there’s no doubt that many, many small town sheriffs in America over the decades have been anything but peace officers. Yet it’s fascinating that just a few decades ago Americans could identify with the character of Sheriff Taylor as a recognizable ideal.

Obviously the situation today is very different, and we all know how far things have fallen. Police have suffered a very serious decline over the last several decades, both in terms of their public image and the degree to which average citizens now often fear police officers rather than trust them. We can note also that poor and minority communities have long been less trusting, or perhaps less naïve, about the real nature of police. But today that jaundiced view has found its way into middle-class consciousness.

Now the subject of police misconduct and the growing militarization and lawlessness of police departments could fill many hours, and several libertarian writers are doing a great job of documenting police malfeasance, as in the excellent work of investigative journalist William Norman Grigg.

But allow me to mention some particularly egregious recent examples of police action escalating and harming, rather than protecting and serving.

As just one example, we can point to the case in which a 90-pound, mentally-ill young man very recently was killed by three so-called law enforcement officers from three different agencies in Southport, North Carolina. He was apparently having a schizophrenic episode and brandishing a screwdriver when police arrived in answer to his family’s 911 call asking for “help.” The first two officers managed to calm the young man down, but the third escalated the situation, demanding that the other officers use a taser to subdue him. Once his body hit the ground the young man was brutally shot at close range by the third officer, for reasons that remain unclear.

As another example, we could note the beating death of Kelly Thomas by police in Fullerton, California. The beating was seen as so brutal and unjustified by many members of the community that it led to the recall of three members of the Fullerton City Council who defended the police department in the wake of the beating.

So here we see modern police at work. Escalation. Aggression. A lack of common sense, making a bad situation worse. Overriding concern for the safety of police officers, regardless of the consequences for those being “protected.” These are not the hallmarks of peace officers, to put it mildly.

Another troubling development that demonstrates how far we’ve strayed from the peace officer ideal can be seen in the increasing militarization of local police departments. The Florida city of Ft. Pierce (population 42,000) recently acquired an MRAP vehicle, which stands for “mine response ambush protection” for the bargain price of $2,000. The U.S. military is unloading hundreds of armored tank-like vehicles as Operation Enduring Freedom winds down — and it’s also unloading thousands of Afghanistan and Iraq combat vets into the ranks of local police and sheriffs. The Ft. Pierce police chief states, “The military was pretty much handing them out. ... You know, it is overkill, until we need it.”

So how did we go from “peace” officers to “police” officers to “law enforcement” officers anyway? How did we go from “protect and serve” to “escalate and harm”? And what is behind the militarization of police departments and the rise of the warrior cop, as one writer terms it?

Well, as Austrians and libertarians we should hardly be surprised, and we certainly don’t need a sociological study to understand what’s happening. The deterioration in police conduct, and the militarization of local police forces, quite simply and quite predictably mirrors the rise of the total state itself.

We know that state monopolies invariably provide worse and worse services for more and more money. Police services are no exception. When it comes to your local police, there is no shopping around, there is no customer service, and there is no choice. Without market competition, market price signals, and market discipline, government has no ability or incentive to provide what people really want, which is peaceful and effective security for themselves, their families, their homes, and their property. As with everything government purports to provide, the public wants Andy Griffith but ends up with the Terminator.

There is no lack of Austrian scholarship in this area, the intersection between security services, state monopolies, public goods, and private alternatives. I would initially direct you toward two excellent primary sources to learn more about how markets could provide security services that no only produce less crime at a lower cost, but also provide those services in a peaceful manner.

My first recommendation is Murray Rothbard’s Power and Market, which opens with a chapter entitled “Defense Services on the Free Market.” Right off the bat Rothbard points out the inherent contradiction between property rights and the argument that state-provided police services are a necessary precondition to securing such property rights:

Economists have almost invariably and paradoxically assumed that the market must be kept free by the use of invasive and unfree actions — in short, by governmental institutions outside the market nexus.

In other words, we’re told that state-provided police are a necessary precondition to market activity. But Rothbard points out that many goods and services are indispensable to functioning markets, such as land, food, clothing, and shelter for market participants. Rothbard asks, “… must all these goods and services therefore be supplied by the State and the State only?”

No, he answers:

Defense in the free society (including police protection) would therefore have to be supplied by people or firms who (a) gained their revenue voluntarily rather than by coercion and (b) did not — as the State does — arrogate to themselves a compulsory monopoly of police or judicial protection.

Another excellent starting point is Hans Hoppe’s The Private Production of Defense. Hoppe makes the case that our long-held belief in collective security is nothing more than a myth, and that in fact state protection of private property — our system of police, courts, and jails — is incompatible with property rights and economic reality.

Motivated, as everyone is, by self-interest and the disutility of labor, but equipped with the unique power to tax, state agents will invariably strive to maximize expenditures on protection — and almost all of a nation’s wealth can conceivably be consumed by the cost of protection — and at the same time to minimize the actual production of protection. The more money one can spend and the less one must work for it, the better off one will be.

Both Rothbard and Hoppe discuss an “insurance” model for preventing crime and aggression, which makes sense from a market perspective. Rothbard posits that private police services likely would be provided by insurance companies which already insure lives and property, for the commonsense reason that “... it would be to their direct advantage to reduce the amount of crime as much as possible.”

Hoppe takes the insurance concept further, arguing that:

The better the protection of insured property, the lower are the damage claims and hence an insurer’s loss. Thus, to provide efficient protection appears to be in every insurer’s own financial interest. ... Obviously, anyone offering protection services must appear able to deliver on his promises in order to find clients.

Compare this to the “growth” model of most local police departments, which continuously lobby their city councils for more money and more officers!

Now admittedly the private provision of police and security services is a complex and controversial subject, and we’re only touching on it today. But rest assured that if you read further, both Rothbard and Hoppe address many common objections raised when discussing private police: attendant issues like political borders; differing legal systems; physical jurisdiction and violence among competing firms; the actuarial problems behind insuring against physical aggression; free riders; and so forth.

But increasingly society is moving in the direction of private security regardless: consider for example, complex insurance networks and indemnification arrangements across borders; private arbitration of disputes; the rise of gated communities and neighborhoods utilizing private security agencies; and fraud prevention mechanisms provided by private businesses like eBay and Paypal.

These trends can only intensify as governments, whether federal, state, or local, increasingly must spend more and more of their budgets to service entitlement, pension, and debt promises.

If we want our police to act more like Sheriff Andy Taylor and less like militarized aggressors, we must look to private models — models where our interests are aligned with security providers. Only then can we bring back true “peace” officers, private security providers focused on preventing crime and defusing conflicts in cost effective and peaceful ways.

Lew Rockwell on American Fascism

The follow text is a transcript of a talk Lew Rockwell gave at the 2014 Mises Circle in Houston Texas. 

American Fascism

By Lew Rockwell

We know about the transformation of the American police, with their paramilitary equipment, their SWAT team raids, and incentive to terrorize people over drug offenses rather than pursue crimes against person and property. We know about the National Security Agency, which can access every American’s e-mails, phone calls, or text messages. And yet too many average Americans have greeted all this with indifference.

This indifference, I suggest, derives from the widespread public acceptance of the myth of the state that Americans are taught from the moment they step into a government classroom. The myth is this: the state is a public-service institution established to provide you with security, both personal and economic. And after years of indoctrination into this myth, it is little wonder that so many Americans are prepared to give the state the benefit of the doubt, and to look upon dissidents as incorrigible troublemakers. The police and the military, the most celebrated public faces of the state, are to be questioned least of all.

All social theory can be reduced to two categories: those that conceive of society as the result of peace, and those for which the indispensable ingredient is violence. This is the fundamental distinction between liberalism and fascism, a point I discuss further in a book I released earlier this year called Fascism vs. Capitalism.

There is some confusion surrounding terms here. When Ludwig von Mises published his book Liberalism in English translation, he changed the title to The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth. He did so because by the latter half of the twentieth century, the word “liberal” no longer carried the meaning it once had. It had come to mean centralization, the welfare state, and a substantial government presence in economic and social life.

The liberalism I have in mind, of course, is not the modern liberalism of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but the classical liberalism of Thomas Jefferson and Frederic Bastiat. Classical liberalism, by contrast, believed in free markets, free trade, toleration, and civil liberties.

It represented a movement toward a theory of society in which human cooperation emerged spontaneously and without coercion, by means of the natural processes of the market economy. It recognized that society seemed to manage itself without the involvement of extraneous forces like kings, aristocracies, or parliaments, and that the intervention of those forces was more likely aimed at the enrichment of a favored group or of the state itself than of at the well-being of society at large.

The price system, a spontaneous product of the free-market economy, helped entrepreneurs arrange the factors of production in such a way as to produce those outputs most highly valued by society, and to produce them in a way that was least costly in terms of opportunities foregone. Individuals specialized in those areas in which they had the greatest skill or knowledge, and the resulting division of labor meant a vastly greater output of consumer goods for everyone to enjoy. None of this required the intervention of the state. To the contrary, the state could interject only white noise into this naturally occurring process: production and consumption, profit and loss, changing consumer demands and entrepreneurial adjustment to those demands.

For the classical liberal, the state was almost an afterthought. Some would have it provide a few basic services, while others conceived of it as nothing more than a night watchman. Beginning with Gustave de Molinari, the classical liberal tradition even groped toward the possibility that the state was a dangerous, parasitical, and ultimately unnecessary monopoly.

And, of course, it was against a backdrop of peace that the classical liberal described the progress of mankind.

Fascists looked at society and the state quite differently. The prosaic bourgeois virtues of commerce, of producing, trading, and earning profit, are viewed with contempt next to the code of the warrior, which is what the fascist truly respects. Greatness comes not through the ordinary pursuits of the market or the obedience to the duties of one’s state in life, but through struggle.

It is Benito Mussolini’s famous remark – “Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state” – that truly sums up the essence of fascism. The good of the Nation, as defined by the fascist leader, surpasses all other concerns and allegiances. The fascist speaks of the Nation with a religious reverence. An Italian fascist youth movement in the 1920s composed the following creed:

I believe in Rome the Eternal, the mother of my country, and in Italy her eldest Daughter, who was born in her virginal bosom by the grace of God; who suffered through the barbarian invasions, was crucified and buried; who descended to the grave and was raised from the dead in the nineteenth century; who ascended into Heaven in her glory in 1918 and 1922; who is seated on the right hand of her mother Rome; and who for this reason shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the genius of Mussolini, in our Holy Father Fascism, in the communion of its martyrs, in the conversion of Italians, and in the resurrection of the Empire.

This devotion to the Nation is concentrated in allegiance to the charismatic leader. The untrammeled exercise of the leader’s will is a central ingredient in the realization of the Nation’s destiny. Moreover, the leader’s will must trump the array of activities that comprise the free market. The various companies, professions, unions, and government must work together with a conscious plan to ensure the best outcome for the Nation. This is why it is so preposterous to hear opponents of the market economy describe libertarians as “fascists.” No one could be more anti-fascist than a libertarian.

Political centralization was also central to fascism, for if the Nation is the embodiment of the people, and if it is through the Nation that every individual realizes his destiny, we cannot tolerate resistance by lesser jurisdictions within the Nation. As Adolf Hitler himself said:

National Socialism as a matter of principle, must lay claim to the right to force its principles on the whole German nation without consideration of previous federated state boundaries… Certainly all the states in the world are moving toward a certain unification in their inner organization. And in this Germany will be no exception. Today it is an absurdity to speak of a “state sovereignty”‘ of individual provinces…. In particular we cannot grant to any individual state within the nation and the state representing it state sovereignty and sovereignty in point of political power.

To say that there are fascist trends and features in the United States of today is not to say that this country is just like interwar Italy or Germany. There are some features of fascism as traditionally understood that can be found only faintly in American society today, and others than can be found not at all.

But it would be foolish to pretend that America is the very opposite of the fascist dystopias. Whether it’s the emphasis on centralization, the glorification of the police and the military, the yearning for a “third way” between capitalism and socialism, the elevation of “public service” above the services we freely provide one another on the market, the creepy and incessant references to “my president” or “our president,” or the depiction of the state as a quasi-divine instrument, the commonalities are neither trivial nor few.

Americans no doubt recoil from or laugh at that passage from the Italian fascists I shared with you a few moments ago. But few Americans are in a position to render such a judgement. Most have absorbed the idea that their government, far from a merely utilitarian contrivance established to provide them with some basic services, as many early Americans doubtless conceived of it, is a redemptive force in the world.

John Winthrop appropriated a biblical image of the church when he spoke of his settlement of Puritans as resembling a “city on a hill.” By the time Ronald Reagan made that phrase a rhetorical commonplace in American politics, it had been fully secularized. Not the church but the American state would transform mankind as God’s instrument.

Americans, even (or perhaps especially) American Christians, are for that reason not scandalized at politicians’ appropriation of religious language to describe their government. It bothers them not at all to learn that the iconic Abraham Lincoln said “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” America government ideals, or that when George W. Bush said “the light shined in darkness and the darkness did not overcome it,” by “light” he meant American government ideals.

In US history, presidents who avoided war, or who viewed the presidential office modestly and without messianic overtones, are neglected or even denounced by our official historians. You can guess at the views and activities of the presidents favored by the opinion molders. “Beware any politician who is ‘beloved,’” historian Ralph Raico once warned.

The bipartisan adulation of Theodore Roosevelt, the man Bill Clinton called his favorite Republican president, speaks volumes about the values of the regime. Roosevelt once told a friend that it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the US got into a military conflict with Germany, because if New York and other cities on the East Coast were burned to the ground, it would remind Americans how badly they need a system of coastal defenses, and it would force German-Americans to make an ostentatious patriotic display against Germany.

The philosopher William James said of Roosevelt that “he gushes over war as the ideal condition of human society, for the manly strenuousness which it involves, and treats peace as a condition of blubberlike and swollen ignobility, fit only for huckstering weaklings.”

After leaving office, Roosevelt became an advocate of “universal obligatory military training,” and thought every young man neededto spend time in a US Army camp. Roosevelt said, “I believe that for every young man … to have six months in such a camp … [with] some field service, would be of incalculable benefit to him, and … to the nation…. [M]aking these camps permanent would be the greatest boon this nation could receive.”

In how many schools can a benign portrait of Theodore Roosevelt be found looking down at students from the wall? Meanwhile, Ron Paul – the man of peace and civil liberties – was ignored and mocked by the American media. This tells us something about the present regime and what it holds dear.

The cult of personality surrounding the US president has only grown since the age of TR, culminating in the creepy videos of schoolchildren pledging allegiance to Barack Obama and the YouTubes of Hollywood actors promising their eternal loyalty. But some of those who ridiculed these ridiculous displays had themselves been part of the cult of George W. Bush. During the Bush years, Christian neocons made a video about the president set to the tune of Johnny Cash’s classic “When the Man Comes Around.” That song had been written about Jesus Christ. Here are some of the words they set to a video about George W. Bush:

There’s a man goin’ ‘round takin’ names. An’ he decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody won’t be treated all the same. There’ll be a golden ladder reaching down. When the man comes around.

The hairs on your arm will stand up. At the terror in each sip and in each sup. For you partake of that last offered cup, Or disappear into the potter’s ground. When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers. One hundred million angels singin’. Multitudes are marching to the big kettle drum. Voices callin’, voices cryin’. Some are born an’ some are dyin’. It’s Alpha’s and Omega’s Kingdom come….

Till Armageddon, no Shalam, no Shalom. Then the father hen will call his chickens home. The wise men will bow down before the throne. And at his feet they’ll cast their golden crown. When the man comes around.

That man, remember, was George W. Bush.

Americans are taught that they owe their freedoms to their government’s military. Whether it’s a country music concert, a sporting event, or even a restaurant chain, Americans are subjected to a ceaseless stream of reminders of what they allegedly owe to this particular class of government employees. (Let’s not forget the popular bumper sticker: “Only two defining forces have ever died for you: Jesus the Christ and the American soldier.”) How exactly their freedoms were threatened in any of the military conflicts in question is one of those impertinent questions one does not ask in polite society.

Even people who oppose the wars, and who know they’re animated by propaganda, cheer on airplanes for the returning troops who, the airline staff assures them, are “protecting our freedom.” Americans are taught to say “thank you for your service” only to government employees, and just to the regime’s military branch. They are not taught to ask questions of authority.

The propaganda has worked, to some extent at least. When Edward Snowden revealed the extent to which their government was spying on and lying to them, many listeners of right-wing radio demanded not that these activities cease, but that the leaker himself be silenced. The man who had embarrassed their rulers should be tried for treason and executed. I have heard this phenomenon described as a case of society-wide Stockholm Syndrome, and I don’t think that’s far from the mark.

Americans today give the police the benefit of the doubt, consenting to searches and tolerating behavior that would have elicited revolt in centuries past. For the fascist regime as for our own, the public must be overawed by the state’s shows of force. And although more people are beginning to stand up against police abuse, those who speak up for the rights of individuals against the tactics of a police state are widely thought of as the blameworthy parties. We must be united as one against the Enemy, we are told, for he lurks everywhere. Those who insist too strongly on their individual rights in times of danger do not properly appreciate the righteous cause on which their righteous government is embarked.

If some of the superstitions of fascism have made their way into American life, it could be because both fascism and whatever it is thatAmerica has become share a superstition in common – namely, the state itself. The state has been cloaked in all manner of flattering but obfuscating rhetoric. The state looks after the general welfare, provides economic stability, protects us from the bad guys, prevents inequality, and binds us together in a common cause greater than ourselves.

It’s time we viewed the state for what it really is: a mechanism by which rulers enrich themselves at the expense of the ruled. Everything else is a smokescreen.
For the proof of that statement, I refer you to the library of books and articles we make available for free at Mises.org. I might also refer you to the daily headlines.

To be sure, the state continues to extend its reach, as the topics we’re covering at this event today make abundantly clear, but the intellectual opposition, spearheaded by the Mises Institute, is growing, and stronger than ever. Inspired by Ron Paul, throngs of students and young people understand the true nature of the state, and indeed the true nature of the police state. A group called Cop Block, started just a few years ago and consisting mostly of young people, sums up the libertarian response to the police state in the pithy maxim: “Badges don’t grant extra rights.”

The fascists, and the rest of the state’s adepts, manipulate the crowd with irrational appeals. Speaking of the political rivals to liberalism, Mises wrote: “Rhetorical bombast, music and song resound, banners wave, flowers and colors serve as symbols, and the leaders seek to attach their followers to their own person. Liberalism has nothing to do with all this. It has no party flower and no party color, no party song and no party idols, no symbols and no slogans. It has the substance and the arguments. These must lead it to victory.”

Support the Mises Institute as we strive to do exactly that.

Some Political Observations to Think About for the New Year

“What has made the State a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven."- Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin


Another year has come and gone. A new year is upon us, giving those of us who love liberty new opportunities to advance the cause of freedom in America and around the world. A new year also gives the State and its cronies new opportunities to assault our liberties and to expand it's scope and power over our lives. After spending some time in a hiatus (and will probably return to such until the next semester of college is over for me), I believe that now is a good time to catalog some political observations that I have made over the course of last year up to this point. Many of these points are my personal opinion that don't necessarily have sources or references. But regardless, I do believe that many of these observations are well founded and need to be brought to the attention of the American people. 

• The mainstream news media serves as mouth-pieces for the government.  Whenever I watch the major news networks like Fox News or CNN, they always seem to report major stories from the perspective of the government as if the government's word is truth. For example, the mainstream media assumes too much from the Obama administration when it says that it is withdrawing all troops from Afghanistan or even Iraq when the reality is the opposite. The mainstream media also serves to distract the public from the most pressing issues facing society as a whole. Instead of hearing more about failures of the Federal Reserve or the dangerous pivot of American interventionism and power towards Asia, we hear more about Miley Cyrus' crazy public acts and Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty getting into trouble with A&E over some anti-homosexual comments he made. Why should Americans or anyone else care about Miley Cyrus' obscene acts or Phil Robertson's comments about homosexuals when Federal Reserve's continual money printing and manipulation of interest rates continue to wreck the economy and the U.S. government is becoming more aggressive towards China and Russia? The mainstream media often tends to ignore the most important elephants in the room, like former Secretary of Defense Robert Gate's most important comments about foreign policy in his new book. 
• The Iraq War was and is a disaster. Violence from tribal fighters, Al Qaeda, and other Islamic militants against the US-installed government has increased despite claims from the neoconservatives such as Jennifer Rubin that the US "won" the Iraq War. Al Qaeda has even set up shop in the notorious Fallujah which was perviously pacified by U.S. Marines in 2004 as Al Qaeda is besieging Anbar Province. Last year was perhaps Iraq's most violent and deadliest year as the lives of 7,818 civilians and 1,050 members of Iraqi security forces were claimed in fighting and bombings in the country. These developing events are a further testament that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has been one of the greatest foreign policy blunders in US history.Yet many people may draw the wrong conclusions about the increasing violence in the country. Since the US government has "officially" withdrawn most US combat troops, the neoconservatives are criticizing the president for the "withdrawal", believing that the US cannot leave lest Al Qaeda fill the void. This ignores the glaring obvious facts: Al Qaeda was not in Iraq until the US invaded and occupied the country; it was the US invasion and occupation of Iraq that has brought about the violence we have seen the last several years and today, not the result of some "power vacuum" according to the neoconservatives. 
• The so-called "Afghan pull-out" is phony. The US government and its' media allies would have the public believe that the US government is withdrawing all US military forces from the country by 2014. But as Eric Margolis explains in an article, one should "read the fine print. As of now, 14,000-16,000 US troops will remain on so-called “anti-terrorism” missions and for “training” – though Washington admits there are not more than 50 al-Qaida members in Afghanistan. In other words, the old British system of white officers commanding native troops. A good $4-5 billion annually from the US and allies will go to hiring up to 400,000 pro-government troops (under US command)." He also notes that the CIA will maintain a "mercenary force of  about 2000, and a fleet of killer drones. Add commandos from the shadowy US Special Ops Joint Command (JSOC), a copy of Her Majesty’s assassins, Britain’s famed SAS." In other words, the occupation of Afghanistan by the US will continue, it will just become more "stealthy". 
• US interventionism and the drive for hegemony is hurtling the world towards war. After 12 years of failed forays into the Middles East, U.S. imperialism continues unabated. In fact, U.S. interventionism and imperialism is taking a dangerous pivot towards Africa, Asia and Russia. In Africa, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) has expanded US military presence on the continent of Africa. According to Nick Turse, this has taken the form of "Base construction, security cooperation engagements, training exercises, advisory deployments, special operations missions, and a growing logistics network,". Despite the evidence showing a greatly expanding US military presence on the whole continent, AFRICOM claims that the military footprint of the US is minuscule. Regardless, an expanding US military presence on the African continent still has the potential to produce blowback against the US and more unnecessary wars, which will further bankrupt our country and empower the government over our lives. As part of Washington's pivot towards Asia, the US government along with the puppet states of NATO and allied Asian states are becoming more aggressive against China and Russia. Since the end of the infamous Cold War against the Soviet Union, the US government has expanded NATO into Eastern Europe and the Baltic states while also constructing multiple military bases on Russia's borders. The US government also insists on expanding NATO into former states of the Soviet Union such as Georgia and Ukraine. As part of a plan of creating a "pre-emptive" edge over Russia, the US government has also constructed multiple anti-ballistic missile bases on Russia's borders. The US is also making an enemy out of China. The Asia pivot by the US has entailed the redeployment of about 60% of the US fleet towards China's sphere of influence while securing new naval and air bases in Vietnam, Australia, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines. During a dispute between China and Japan over a group of islands in the South China Sea, the US sent two B-52 strategic bombers over the zone in order to taunt and test China's resolve over the issue. Some time later, the Chinese harassed a US missile cruiser in the South China Sea. These unjustifiable expansions of US interventionism and imperialism is setting the stage for a major and destructive conflict. 
• Government "shutdowns" and "sequester cuts" are always over-exaggerated. This last year, the American public was threatened with a "government shutdown" and "sequester cuts". These events were portrayed by the mainstream media and the government as catastrophic events that needed correcting. If we don't allow the government to continue to live beyond it's means and close down key agencies and functions of the government, the whole earth would descend into chaos causing the earth to fall of it's axis and spiral towards the sun, so said the government. But alas, the chaos never came because these events were overblown. During the so-called "shutdown", the only service that the government can realistically shutdown is national parks according to John Keller. Other agencies like the NSA, CIA, EPA, TSA and so on that directly affect Americans were not shutdown. Their operations continued despite the lack of money from the taxpayers. When the "sequester cuts" became news, the government and the media began to hype up the fear that essential services such as the armed forces would see cuts to their budget in real dollars. But this is simply not true when one examines what exactly a sequester entails. Sequester cuts are really cuts in projected increases of spending over time. For example, Say the government projected and desired a 10% increase per year in military spending and then a sequester cut of about 1% per year kicks in. That means that there is a net increase each year in spending since only the rate of spending increases is cut. This is called base-line budgeting. 
• Governments use "shutdowns" and "sequester cuts" to punish the citizenry. When the American public was threatened with a shutdown, the government only really closed down the nationals parks, one of the most popular government "services", since the government didn't immediately get to raise the debt ceiling and thus continue to live beyond its means. It did not cut a single penny of spending. During the "sequester crisis", President Obama attempted to scare the American people into demanding an end to the phony sequester "cuts", otherwise, according to President, prisoners would be released from federal prison, people on government medicine would be thrown into the streets, and the troops would not have adequate equipment in their wars of interventionism. 
• Governments uses crisis to expand the size and scope of it's power. As history has shone, governments use crisis to centralize and expand their powers than would have otherwise been permissible in times of tranquility. Wars and economic downturns and the most typical times when governments try to seize more power unto itself from the citizenry. The government and it's media arm whip up the American people into a frightened frenzy during crisis in order to gain support for some government action to deal with the crisis. From the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the the Great Recession in 2008, the federal government has been in crisis mode for over a decade, seizing great swaths of power and rewarding it's cronies at the expense of the taxpayers. Governments live and thrive on crisis. 
• We are NOT the government. Whenever we discussed government policies and the market in my micro-economics class this past semester, my professor would insist that"it is not us vs. them" and that "we are the government". Watch the following two videos that explain better than I can why we are not the government. 
• No matter who is in charge of the Federal Reserve, the central bank will continue to manipulate interest rates and print more money, devaluing the dollar even further. The infamous tenure of Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve is over. His successor, Janet Yellen, doesn't appear to be any better. It is in the very nature of central banks to continually expand the money supply and thus devalue the currency, no matter who is in charge at the helm of monetary policy. So don't expect the next Fed chairman (or in this case, chairwoman) to reverse the policies of previous central bankers or to challenge the very nature and purpose of central banks. 
• Crony Capitalism and Socialism have the been the norm of economic systems for much of human history. Since the emergence of the State and it's ability to dispense favors, there have been two major economic systems that countries around the world have gravitated two: the outright government control or ownership of the economy as seen in socialism or socialistic policies, or the rent-seeking of crony capitalism. Throughout history, governments have owned and controlled many industries, nationalized those that were not under their control and have at times gained control over entire economies. But major socialist central-planning did not come into full fruition until the rise of the Soviet Union after 1917. That being said, the more common economic system that has been around for centuries is crony capitalism. Once called mercantilism, the system remains almost the same: some measure of private property exists in such a system but in-name-only since the state does not nationalize private property; the economy is run for the benefit of the state and the crony businesses who are politically connected to the state; the favors the State dispenses ultimately go to the most politically-connected businesses who seek profits from the wealth-transfers of the state instead of being innovative and providing goods and services that people actually want. As Dom Armentano has pointed out, not only is it in current fashion to "dump" on capitalism, crony capitalism is not real capitalism. The errors of the current economic system and the mess the economies of the world are in are not the fault of free markets.The truth is, the American economy is not a free-market economy. What little aspects of free-market capitalism that are left are under the heavy hand of government regulation, regimentation and wealth transfers that benefit both the State and the cronies that are connected to the State. Even then in the long run, the crony capitalists who benefit from a system of rent-seeking wealth transfers will ultimately fail once the government eats up the capital stock of the economy. What little wealth we enjoy today has been precisely the product of what little real capitalism we have left. The voluntary and peaceful interactions of producers and consumers that still exists today still produce great wealth and raise our standards of living.
• The current economic/political system of the United States is a unique form of fascism. While many on the political Left like to throw the term "fascist" around when criticizing opponents of their programs, as Lew Rockwell has stated in his latest book "Fascism vs. Capitalism", "fascism is a real concept, not a stick with which to beat opponents arbitrarily." In one of the articles found in the book, Lew Rockwell describes fascism as "the system of government that cartelizes the private sector, centrally plans the economy to subsidize producers, exalts the police state as the source of order, denies fundamental rights and liberties to individuals, and makes the executive state the unlimited master of society." There are other aspects of American fascism that make it unique. 
• Mainstream economics is plagued by the overuse of mathematics and graphs. Most people think economics is boring or too complex because most mainstream economists insist on the liberal use of mathematics and graphs in explaining economic phenomena or events. Such use of mathematics and graphs in explaining economic phenomena actually do a disservice to the science of economics itself. The graphs and mathematics that make up mainstream economics gives laymen and politicians the impression that the economy is a machine that needs tinkering from time to time. But this is not true. The economy is people like you and me. We are the economy. In other words, economics and the study of such is really the study "human action" That is why Ludwig von Mises, the great dean of the Austrian School of Economics went on to say the following about the use of mathematics and graphs in economics: "Those economists who want to substitute "quantitative economics" for what they call "qualitative economics" are utterly mistaken. There are, in the field of economics, no constant relations, and consequently no measurement is possible. If a statistician determines that a rise of 10 per cent in the supply of potatoes in Atlantis at a definite time was followed by a fall of 8 per cent in the price, he does not establish anything about what happened or may happen with a change in the supply of potatoes in another country or at another time. He has not "measured" the "elasticity of demand" of potatoes. He has established a unique and individual historical fact. No intelligent man can doubt that the behavior of men with regard to potatoes, and every other commodity is variable. Different individuals value the same things in a different way, and valuations change with the same individuals with changing conditions...The predilection with which mathematical economists almost exclusively deal with the conditions of imaginary constructions and with the state of "equilibrium" implied in them, has made people oblivious of the fact that these are unreal, self-contradictory and imaginary expedients of thought and nothing else. They are certainly not models  for the construction of  living society of acting men." 
• The minimum wage myth is still alive and kicking. One of the biggest economic and political issues recently is raising the minimum wage to $15. Many people still support the minimum wage (despite the bad effects of such a law) and believe that raising the minimum wage to $15 dollars is doing all those fast-food workers a favor. To such proponents, if you oppose raising the minimum wage (and consequently, if you don't support the minimum wage period), then you must hate workers and want them to suffer. But there are good economic reasons for opposing the minimum wage since it contributes to unemployment. If such a law raising the minimum wage were to come into effect, don't be surprised when fast-food workers are replaced with automated machines and robots. The do-gooders and their schemes will fail again. 
• The Liberty Movement is growing, but growth and reception of the message will take some time. As I have observed the last couple of years, more and more people are coming to accept the message of liberty and have been challenging the injustices of government. From spying and war to Obamacare to the Federal Reserve, thanks to Ron Paul and the many other giants in the liberty movement, the government's rationales and propaganda no longer hold as much sway on citizens as it once did. But there is still much work to be done since a clear majority of people still believe the lies of the government can continue to back and support disastrous policies. That is why the efforts of the Mises Institute and the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity are so important and need continual support if the ideas of liberty are to gain traction in America and the whole world. Those of use who love liberty have much to be hopeful for, but we must also be extremely vigilant because there is much that the government can still do to assault our freedoms. 

The Mises View on the Looming "Government Shutdown"

Ron Paul on Fox News Discussing the Fed

David Stockman: The American Imperium is Coming to an End

Hail to the Spanker-in-Chief: The American Imperium is Finally Over

By David Stockman

Next week Congress can do far more than stop a feckless Tomahawk barrage on a small country which is already a graveyard of civil war and sectarian slaughter. By voting “no” it can trigger the end of the American Imperium—-five decades of incessant meddling, bullying and subversion around the globe which has added precious little to national security, but left America fiscally exhausted and morally diminished.

Indeed, the tragedy of this vast string of misbegotten interventions—from the 1953 coup against Mossedegh in Iran through the recent bombing campaign in Libya —-is that virtually none of them involved defending the homeland or any tangible, steely-eyed linkages to national security. They were all rooted in ideology—that is, anti-communism, anti-terrorism, humanitarianism, R2Pism, nation-building, American exceptionalism. These were the historic building blocks of a failed Pax Americana. Now the White House wants authorization for the last straw: Namely, to deliver from the firing tubes of U.S. naval destroyers a dose of righteous “punishment” that has no plausible military or strategic purpose. By the President’s own statements the proposed attack is merely designed to censure the Syrian regime for allegedly visiting one particularly horrific form of violence on its own citizens.

Well, really? After having rained napalm, white phosphorous, bunker-busters, drone missiles and the most violent machinery of conventional warfare ever assembled upon millions of innocent Vietnamese, Cambodians, Serbs, Somalis, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Yemeni, Libyans and countless more, Washington now presupposes to be in the moral sanctions business?  That’s downright farcical.  Nevertheless, by declaring himself the world’s spanker-in-chief, President Obama has unwittingly precipitated the mother of all clarifying moments.

The screaming strategic truth is that America no longer has any industrial state enemies capable of delivering military harm to its shores: Russia has become a feeble kleptocracy run by a loud-mouthed thief and the communist party oligarchs in China would face a devastating economic collapse within months were it to attack its American markets for sneakers and Apples. So the real question now before Congress recurs: how is it possible that the peace-loving citizens of America, facing no industrial-scale military threat from anywhere on the planet, find themselves in a constant state of war?  The answer is that they have been betrayed by the beltway political class which is in thrall to a vast warfare state apparatus that endlessly invents specious reasons for meddling, spying, intervention and occupation.

In pursuit of nothing more ennobling than raw self-perpetuation, the propaganda machinery of the warfare state—along with its media affiliates such as the War Channel (CNN) and the War Press (Washington Post) —- have over recent decades churned out a stream of vastly exaggerated “threats”, falsely transforming tin-pot dictators and tyrants like Ho Chi Minh, Daniel Ortega, Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein and now Bashar Assad into dangerous enemies. At length, triggering incidents are concocted such as the phony gulf of Tonkin episode, the Madison Avenue based fabrications about Iraqi soldiers stealing babies from incubators in Kuwait, the vastly exaggerated claims of ethnic cleaning in Kosovo, and Saddam’s reputed WMDs.  Eventually, the drumbeat for military intervention is cranked to a fever pitch, and cable TV drives it home with non-stop telestrators and talking heads. Only after the fact, when billions in taxpayer resources have been squandered and thousands of American servicemen have been killed and maimed, do we learn that it was all a mistake; that the collateral destruction vastly exceeded the ostensible threat;  and that there remains not a trace of long-term security benefit to the American people.

Setting aside the self-evident catastrophes in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, even the alleged “good” interventions are simply not what they are cracked up to be by warfare state apologists. The 1991 Persian Gulf War, for instance, only insured that Saddam Hussein would not get the oilfield revenues from what he claimed to be Iraq’s “19th province” so that he could fund projects to placate his 30 million deprived, abused and restless citizens. Instead, the loot was retained for the benefit of the despicable Emir Al- Sabah IV and a few hundred gluttonous Kuwaiti princes.

Yet in the long-run, “saving” the Kuwaiti regime and its unspeakably decadent opulence did not lower the world price of oil by a dime (Iraq would have produced every barrel it could). And it most surely subtracted from national security because it resulted in the permanent basing of 10,000 U.S. troops on Saudi soil. This utterly stupid and unnecessary provocation was the very proof that “infidels” were occupying Islamic holy lands—the principal leitmotif used by Osama bin Laden to recruit a few hundred fanatical jihadists and pull off the flukish scheme that became 9/11.

Likewise, the “triumph” of Kosovo is pure gist from the national security propaganda mill. The true essence of the episode was a mere swap-out among the ethnic cleansers:  The brutal Serbian army was expelled from Kosovo so that the Albanian thugs of the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army which was on the terrorist list until it was mysteriously dropped in 1998) could liquidate minority Serbs and confiscate their property—–a tragic routine that has been going on in the Balkans for centuries.

The recurrent phony narratives that generate these war drum campaigns and then rationalize their disastrous aftermath are rooted in a common structural cause: a vastly bloated war machine and national spying apparatus, the Imperial Presidency and the house-trained lap-dogs which occupy the congressional intelligence, foreign affairs and defense committees. This triangle of deception keeps the American public bamboozled with superficial propaganda and the media supplied with short bursts of reality TV when the Tomahawks periodically let fly.

But it is the backbone of the permanent warfare state bureaucracy that keeps the gambit going. Presidents come and go but it is now obvious that virtually any ideological script—left or right—can be co-opted into service of the Imperium. The Obama White House’s preposterous drive to intervene in the Syrian tinderbox with its inherent potential for fractures and blowback across the entire Middle East is being ram-roded by the dogma of “responsibility to protect”. In that context, its chief protagonists—Susan Rice and Samantha Power—-are the moral equivalent of Bush’s neo-con hit-men, Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. In both cases, ideological agendas which have absolutely nothing to do with the safety of the American people were enabled to activate the awful violence of the American war machine mainly because it was there, marching in place waiting for an assignment.

And that truth encapsulates the inflection point now upon us. There should be no $650 billion war machine with carrier battle groups and cruise missile batteries at the ready to tempt Presidents to heed the advice of ideological fanatics like Power and Wolfowitz.  The cold war ended 25 years back, and like in 1919 and 1946 the American war machine should have been drastically demobilized and dismantled long ago; it should be funded at under $300 billion, not over $600 billion. The five destroyers today menacing the coast of Syria should have been mothballed, if not consigned to the scrap yard. No President need have worried about choosing sides among ethnic cleansers in Kosovo or Islamic sectarians and tribalists in Syria because his available tool-kit would have been to call for a peace conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, not a Tomahawk strike from warships in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In this context, Barack Obama may yet earn his Nobel Peace prize, owing to the Syria debate he has now unleashed. It will finally show that there is no threat to America’s security lurking behind the curtain in the Middle East—only a cacophony of internal religious, ethnic, tribal and nationalist conflicts that will eventually burn themselves out. Rather than the “new caliphate” of Fox News’ demented imagination, the truth on the ground is that the Islamic world is enmeshed in a vicious conflict pitting the Shia axis of Iran, Syria, Southern Iraq and the Hezbollah-Lebanon corridor against the surrounding Sunni circle which is nominally aligned with the Syrian rebels. Yet even the Sunni world is noisily fracturing, with Turkey and Qatar lined-up with the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf State aligned with the Egyptian generals. Meanwhile, Jordan cowers in the shadows.

The cowardly hypocrisy of the Arab League should tell the Congressional rank-and-file all they need to know about why we should stay out of Syria and shut down the CIA-sponsored rebel training camp in Jordan through which Saudi arms, including chemical weapons according to some reports, are being interjected into the slaughter in Syria.  If the Assad regime is truly an existential threat to regional peace and stability, let Saudi Arabia and Turkey take it out. After all, during the last several decades they have received a combined $100 billion in advanced aircraft, missiles, electronic warfare gear and other weaponry from American arms merchants financed by the US government.

Needless to say, the spineless Arab League/Saudi potentates who are now demanding “deterrence” never intend to do the job themselves, preferring to stealthily hold the coats of American mercenary forces instead.  The truth is that at the end of the day, they find the threat of Iranian retaliation far more compelling than ending Assad’s brutality or building a pipeline through a prospective Sunni-controlled Syria to supply Qatar’s natural gas to European markets.

That leaves the need to dispatch the final and most insidious myth of the warfare state: namely, the lie that Iran is hell-bent on obtaining and using nuclear weapons. Even the CIA’s own intelligence estimates refute that hoary canard. And whatever the proper share of blame ascribable to each side for failed nuclear negotiations in the past, the Iranian people have once again freely elected a President who wishes to normalize relationships with the US and its allies—notwithstanding the cruel and mindless suffering visited upon them by the West’s misbegotten economic “sanctions”. Indeed, if Obama had the wisdom and astuteness President Eisenhower demonstrated going to Korea, he would be now headed for a peace conference table in Tehran, not the war room in the White House.

So let the sun shine in. Perhaps the unruly backbenchers on Capitol Hill will now learn that they have been sold out by their betters on the jurisdictional committees, such as knee-jerk hawks like Senators Feinstein and Melendez, who chair the key Senate committees, and Mike Rogers who chairs the House (alleged) Intelligence Committee. If they do, they will understand that the US has no dog in the Middle East hunt, and that the wise course of action would be a thorough-going retreat and disengagement from the internecine conflicts of the Levant, North Africa and the Persian Gulf, just as Ronald Reagan discovered after his nose was bloodied in Lebanon.  But however the current debate specifically unfolds, the good news is that the world greatest deliberative body is now back in charge of American foreign policy. By long standing historical demonstration, the US Congress specializes in paralysis, indecision and dysfunction. In the end, that is how the American warfare state will be finally brought to heel and why the American Imperium will come to an end—at last.