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.

Another Imperialist War in Syria

After many months of bloodshed and waiting for the inevitable, President Obama announced over this last weekend that he will use military force against Syria. He has also stated that he will "seek" "Congressional authorization" before using military force. This at first may sound like a positive nod towards the Constitution's clear prescription that only Congress may declare war. But just by calling it a "Congressional authorization", it gives the impression that it will not be crafted like a Constitutional declaration of war. As Daniel McAdams has noted,

The administration's first draft looks a lot like the disastrously broad authorization passed after the attacks on 9/11 that Bush and then Obama have used for years to conduct global warfare. There is no reason to doubt that the draft as written would give the president all the authority he needs to attack Iran the minute the ink is dry. It has no sunset and is not restricted to the "shot across the bow" that Obama has stated he intends. 

And as Ron Paul has pointed out, the President has made it clear that any Congressional authorization is inconsequential to the fact that Presidents often act on their own authority, as Obama has done before in Libya. 

So why Syria? The U.S. government is peddling the claim that the regime of Assad has used chemical weapons against it's own people on August 21, resulting in the deaths of a few hundred civilians. But there is no concrete evidence that proves that the Assad regime is responsible for the attack. For all we know, the anti-Assad rebels or another third party could have been responsible for the attack. But desperate to bring the country into another no-win war, the U.S. government will continue to believe it's own lies. A war in Syria will not bring peace or stability to the region or stop the Assad regime from waging war against his people. It will inevitably lead to a wider war, while possibly triggering increased Russian and possibly Chinese involvement and intervention in the Middle East. A war in Syria will also lead to a further destabilization of the entire region that has already been plagued by what seems to be perpetual war. It seems that the U.S. government is gearing up for Iraq 2.0. It is astonishing that the U.S. government will attempt to justify a war on similar grounds that it did to justify a previous war (Iraq 2003) that were later found to be false. 

There is no good case or justification for any war against Syria. Syria has not directly attacked the United States homeland and does not have the military capability to invade and conquer the United States. Syria certainly does not threaten America national security. Being the policemen of the world has made the U.S. less safe, less prosperous and less free. And as stated before, the truth of the matter is that there is no concrete proof that the Assad regime even used chemical weapons. But even if it did, does that alone justify American intervention into Syria? It does not. As Doug Bandow has put it "the use of chemical weapons does not justify war. Syria is not a party to the claimed “international consensus” against chemical weapons, having never joined the Chemical Weapons Convention. Although classed as a weapon of mass destruction, chemical agents are difficult to deploy and not uniquely deadly. At least 99 percent of the battlefield deaths in World War I were caused by other means." 


Daniel McAdams puts it more succinctly:


It does not matter whether or not Obama gets Congressional approval for the strike. It does not matter whether 50 percent plus one in Congress vote in favor of an attack on Syria. It does not matter whether some form of chemical weapons were used in the war in Syria. It does not matter who used them if they were indeed used. It does not matter whether the Saudis are demanding that we overthrow Assad. It does not matter whether the Turks are demanding we overthrow Assad. It does not matter whether the Israelis demand that we overthrow Assad. 

What matters is that there is no grounds for the US to make war on Syria. It has not attacked us; it does not threaten us. On the contrary, by arming and training the jihadist rebels fighting against the Syria government, it is the US that is threatening Syria. It is the US that is the aggressor. It is the US government that through its actions opens the US to all manner of retaliation in response to its initiation of aggression in Syria and elsewhere.

A debate on weapons or a vote in Congress or the mad ravings of the neocons and humantiarian imperialists means precisely nothing in light of this simple truth.

Nonintervention and neutrality, the Jeffersonian principle of "peace, commerce and honest friendship will all nations-entangling alliances with none" should be the course that the U.S. pursues in Syria and the rest of the world. American foreign policy should be reoriented towards protecting the United States from imminent invasion or attack by another government instead of military adventurism or destabilizing other countries in a quest for empire via military and political dominance. There is no moral, economic, or constitutional justification for an empire comprised of over 800 military bases in over a 135 countries around the world. The only just wars are defensive wars and only a return to the wisdom of our Founding Fathers on foreign policy will put America on a course back towards prosperity and liberty. 

Private Property is the Essence of Liberty

The following is a reprint from the Mises Institute of a section of Chapter 10 of Ron Paul's book "A Foreign Policy of Freedom".  

By Ron Paul

Privacy is the essence of liberty. Without it, individual rights cannot exist. Privacy and property are interlocked. If both were protected, little would need to be said about other civil liberties. If one’s home, church or business is one’s castle, and the privacy of one’s person, papers and effects are rigidly protected, all rights desired in a free society will be guaranteed. Diligently protecting the right to privacy and property guarantees religious, journalistic and political experience, as well as a free market economy and sound money. Once a careless attitude emerges with respect to privacy, all other rights are jeopardized.

Today we find a systematic and pervasive attack on the privacy of American citizens, which undermines the principle of private property ownership. Understanding why the attack on privacy is rapidly expanding and recognizing a need to reverse this trend are necessary if our Republic is to survive.

Lack of respect for the privacy and property of the American colonists by the British throne was a powerful motivation for the American Revolution and resulted in the strongly-worded and crystal-clear Fourth Amendment. Emphatically, searches and seizures are prohibited except when warrants are issued upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, with details given as to place, person and things to be seized. This is a far cry from the routine seizure by the federal government and forfeiture of property which occurs today. Our papers are no longer considered personal and their confidentiality has been eliminated. Private property is searched by federal agents without announcement. Huge fines are levied when federal regulations appear to have been violated, and proof of innocence is demanded if one chooses to fight the abuse in court and avoid the heavy fines.

Eighty thousand armed federal bureaucrats and law enforcement officers now patrol our land and business establishments. Suspicious religious groups are monitored and sometimes destroyed without due process of law, with little or no evidence of wrong doing. Local and state jurisdiction is rarely recognized once the feds move in. Today, it is routine for government to illegally seize property, requiring the victims to prove their innocence in order to retrieve their property. Many times they fail due to the expense and legal roadblocks placed in the victim’s way.

Although the voters in the 1990s have cried out for a change in direction and demanded a smaller, less-intrusive government, the attack on privacy by the Congress, the administration, and the courts has, nevertheless, accelerated. Plans have now been laid or implemented for a national I.D. card, a national medical data bank, a data bank on individual MDs, deadbeat dads, intrusive programs monitoring our every financial transaction.

The Social Security number has been established as the universal identifier. The Social Security number is now commonly used for just about everything: getting a birth certificate, buying a car, seeing an MD, getting a job, opening up a bank account, getting a driver’s license, making many routine purchases, and, of course, a death certificate. Cradle-to-the-grave government surveillance is here and daily getting more pervasive. The attack on privacy is not a coincidence or an event that arises for no explainable reason. It results from a philosophy that justifies it and requires it. A government not dedicated to preserving liberty must, by its very nature, allow this precious right to erode. A political system designed as ours was to protect life, liberty, and property would vigorously protect all citizens’ rights to privacy; this cannot occur unless the property and the fruits of one’s labor, of every citizen, is protected from confiscation by thugs in the street as well as those in our legislative bodies.

The promoters of government intrusion into our privacy characteristically use worn out clichés to defend what they do. The most common argument is that if you have nothing to hide, why worry about it? This is ludicrous. We have nothing to hide in our homes or our bedrooms, but that is no reason why Big Brother should be permitted to monitor us with a surveillance camera.

The same can be argued about our churches, our businesses, or any peaceful action we may pursue. Our personal activities are no one else’s business. We may have nothing to hide, but, if we are not careful, we have plenty to lose — our right to be left alone. Others argue that to operate government programs efficiently and without fraud, close monitoring is best achieved with a universal identifier, the Social Security number. Efficiency and protection from fraud may well be enhanced with the use of a universal identifier, but this contradicts the whole notion of the proper role for government in a free society. Most of the federal programs are unconstitutional to begin with, so eliminating waste and fraud and promoting efficiency for a program that requires a violation of someone else’s rights should not be a high priority of the Congress. But the temptation is too great, even for those who question the wisdom of the government programs, and compromise of the Fourth Amendment becomes acceptable.

I have never heard of a proposal to promote the national I.D. card, or anything short of this for any reasons other than a good purpose. Essentially all those who vote to allow the continual erosion of our privacy and other Constitutional rights never do it because they consciously support a tyrannical government; it is always done with good intention.

Joe Salerno: Calculation and Socialism

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A Reader

About Sixty-Eight years ago, the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs in the course of three days. The first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. The second atomic bomb was dropped three days later on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Shortly afterwards, Japan formally surrendered to the U.S. The conventional narrative of this event was that the Japanese were not prepared to surrender to the U.S. and that had the U.S. military invaded the Japanese mainland, American casualties would have been incredibly costly. In other words, dropping the most powerful weapons in the world on two cities, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of lives was necessary to win World War 2. Those of us who love liberty must challenge this conventional account. For if people continue to believe that dropping atom bombs on a country that was ready to surrender was necessary to end World War 2, then Americans will continue to support and cheer for an aggressive and destructive foreign policy of war and empire while extolling it's "success stories". Below is a couple of articles that help to give a much more accurate account of the this historical event.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the US Terror State by Anthony Gregory

The Hiroshima Lie by John V. Denson

Terrorism by Any Reasonable Definition by Anthony Gregory

Harry Truman and the Atomic Bomb by Ralph Raico

Ron Paul's Weekly Column: Why Won’t They Tell Us the Truth About NSA Spying?

By Ron Paul

In 2001, the Patriot Act opened the door to US government monitoring of Americans without a warrant. It was unconstitutional, but most in Congress over my strong objection were so determined to do something after the attacks of 9/11 that they did not seem to give it too much thought. Civil liberties groups were concerned, and some of us in Congress warned about giving up our liberties even in the post-9/11 panic. But at the time most Americans did not seem too worried about the intrusion.

This complacency has suddenly shifted given recent revelations of the extent of government spying on Americans. Politicians and bureaucrats are faced with serious backlash from Americans outraged that their most personal communications are intercepted and stored. They had been told that only the terrorists would be monitored. In response to this anger, defenders of the program have time and again resorted to spreading lies and distortions. But these untruths are now being exposed very quickly.

In a Senate hearing this March, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Senator Ron Wyden that the NSA did not collect phone records of millions of Americans. This was just three months before the revelations of an NSA leaker made it clear that Clapper was not telling the truth. Pressed on his false testimony before Congress, Clapper apologized for giving an “erroneous” answer but claimed it was just because he “simply didn’t think of Section 215 of the Patriot Act.” Wow.

As the story broke in June of the extent of warrantless NSA spying against Americans, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers assured usthat the project was a strictly limited and not invasive. He described it as a “lockbox with only phone numbers, no names, no addresses in it, we’ve used it sparingly, it is absolutely overseen by the legislature, the judicial branch and the executive branch, has lots of protections built in...”

But we soon discovered that also was not true either. We learned in another Guardian newspaper article last week that the top secret “X-Keyscore” program allows even low-level analysts to “search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals.”

The keys to Rogers’ “lockbox” seem to have been handed out to everyone but the janitors! As Chairman of the Committee that is supposed to be most in the loop on these matters, it seems either the Intelligence Community misled him about their programs or he misled the rest of us. It sure would be nice to know which one it is.

Likewise, Rep. Rogers and many other defenders of the NSA spying program promised us that this dragnet scooping up the personal electronic communications of millions of Americans had already stopped “dozens” of terrorist plots against the United States. In June, NSA director General Keith Alexander claimed that the just-disclosed bulk collection of Americans’ phone and other electronic records had “foiled 50 terror plots.”

Opponents of the program were to be charged with being unconcerned with our security.

But none of it was true.

The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday heard dramatic testimony from NSA deputy director John C. Inglis. According to the Guardian:

“The NSA has previously claimed that 54 terrorist plots had been disrupted ‘over the lifetime’ of the bulk phone records collection and the separate program collecting the internet habits and communications of people believed to be non-Americans. On Wednesday, Inglis said that at most one plot might have been disrupted by the bulk phone records collection alone.”

From dozens to “at most one”?

Supporters of these programs are now on the defensive, with several competing pieces of legislation in the House and Senate seeking to rein in an administration and intelligence apparatus that is clearly out of control. This is to be commended. What is even more important, though, is for more and more and more Americans to educate themselves about our precious liberties and to demand that their government abide by the Constitution. We do not have to accept being lied to – or spied on -- by our government.

CIA Operatives in Benghazi

An interesting story has just been revealed yesterday by CNN concerning the Benghazi terrorist attack on 9/11/2012. CNN reports the following:

CNN has uncovered exclusive new information about what is allegedly happening at the CIA, in the wake of the deadly Benghazi terror attack.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the assault by armed militants last September 11 in eastern Libya.

Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.

CNN has learned the CIA is involved in what one source calls an unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency's Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out.

Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency's missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency's workings.

The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.

It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.

In exclusive communications obtained by CNN, one insider writes, "You don't jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well."

Ben Bernanke, the Fed, and a Legacy of Failure

The Federal Reserve, America's central bank that has the monopoly power to print money and manage our currency, has been a scourge on American economic prosperity, failing to prevent the boom-bust cycle (also known as the business cycle) while making boom-bust cycles worst. As John P. Cochran has stated,

 It [the Federal Reserve] was set up to protect the value of the dollar and to avoid boom and bust cycles. Since inception of the Fed, the dollar has, in real terms, declined over 87 percent, now having a purchasing power compared to a 1913 dollar of less than 13 cents. Just since the mid-1990s overly easy monetary policy has caused or enabled two significant boom-bust periods with accompanying bubbles in first dot.com stocks and then residential and commercial real estate.

 Not only has the Federal Reserve's policy of monetary manipulation lead to chronic economic cycles of boom and busts, it has distorted credit markets, distorted interests rates, created piles of debt upon the citizenry, created higher demand for consumer goods, leading to high prices for things like food and gasoline, and has helped facilitate a policy of perpetual war and an expansive warfare state.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against central planning via the monetary authorities, chairmen of the Federal Reserve are seen as all-knowing economic wizards who can somehow have all the knowledge and ability to steer the economy in a direction that produces a stable money supply and full employment. For example, former Federal Reserve chairmen Alan Greenspan, who was in charge of the Fed from 1987 to 2006, was seen as the monetary maestro who knew how to steer the economy in the right direction. But since the infamous Housing Bubble of 2007-2008 busted, leading to a recession, Alan Greenspan has denied any responsibility for the economic collapse. Alan Greenspan's policy of excessively and artificially low interests rates combined with a government policy of forcing mortgage lenders to make bad loans to un-creditworthy borrowers led to incredible malinvestments into the housing market, creating an economic bubble that eventually went bust. Unfortunately, Greenspan's successor has made the economy even worse off than before.

Ben Bernanke, who became chairman of the Fed shortly after Alan Greenspan, will no longer be the chairman of the Fed by the end of 2013 due to the fact that his term is about to expire by that time. Many have seen and continue to see Ben Bernanke as "the man who saved the economy". What this means to people who support monetary central planning and people who benefit greatly from this form of wealth redistribution is that Bernanke was willing to make bold interventions into the economy to steer it away from the recession when capitalism was supposedly incapable of fixing itself. But Bernanke's policies have been identical from his predecessor and have failed to move the economy towards recovery: Interests rates were and are continued to be artificially lower than what is necessary for the economy to recover, which is keeping interests rates from tracking the proper levels that the market economy sets for interest rates, which is preventing resources from being directed to their highest value uses. Bernanke's continued policy of money printing and Quantitative Easing have continued to prop up unsound and failing firms while shielding such firms from having to pay the consequences and facing necessary and justified liquidation and resource reallocation. These policies have also contributed to constant regime uncertainty, in which entrepreneurs and investors are reluctant to act on their investments due to their inability to predict how future government actions will affect their private property rights.

Even though Ben Bernanke will be leaving the Fed later this year, we should not expect his successor to be any better. Right now the battle for who will be in charge of the Fed is between Janet Yellen, the current vice chairmen of the Fed and Lawrence Summers, an economist. But such battles are somewhat irrelevant. People foolishly focus on who will occupy the office and not the office itself. That is the fundamental problem with the Fed. Instead of focusing on who will lead the Fed, people should focus on the institution itself, for it is not the leadership of the Fed that has caused our economic problems, it is the Fed itself and the fatal conceit that such an institution can effectively plan the economy that has led America and most of the world towards economic chaos and eventual political chaos. That is why instead of arguing for this chairman or that chairman, we should be debating whether or not the Federal Reserve should be doing the things that it does. The best solution to the issue of monetary manipulation by the central bank that will lead the economy to recovery is to end the Fed.

Tom Woods: The Attractiveness of Austrian Economics

John Quincy Adams: ‘She Goes Not Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy’

On July 4, 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams delivered an historic address on U.S. foreign policy. After reading the full text of the Declaration of Independence, he continued:

It is not, let me repeat, fellow citizens, it is not the long enumeration of intolerable wrongs concentrated in this declaration; it is not the melancholy catalogue of alternate oppression and entreaty, of reciprocated indignity and remonstrance, upon which, in the celebration of this anniversary, your memory delights to dwell.

Nor is it yet that the justice of your cause was vindicated by the God of battles; that in a conflict of seven years, the history of the war by which you maintained that declaration, became the history of the civilized, world; that the unanimous voice of enlightened Europe and the verdict of an after age have sanctioned your assumption of sovereign power, and that the name of your Washington is enrolled upon the records of time, first in the glorious line of heroic virtue.

It is not that the monarch himself, who had been your oppressor, was compelled to recognize you as a sovereign and independent people, and that the nation, whose feelings of fraternity for you had slumbered in the lap of pride, was awakened in the arms of humiliation to your equal and no longer contested rights.

The primary purpose of this declaration, the proclamation to the world of the causes of our revolution, is “with the years beyond the flood.” It is of no more interest to us than the chastity of Lucretia, or the apple on the head of the child of Tell. Little less than 40 years have revolved since the struggle for independence was closed; another generation has arisen; and in the assembly of nations our republic is already a matron of mature age. The cause of your independence is no longer upon trial. The final sentence upon it has long since been passed upon earth and ratified in heaven.

The interest, which in this paper has survived the occasion upon which it was issued; the interest which is of every age and every clime; the interest which quickens with the lapse of years, spreads as it grows old, and brightens as it recedes, is in the principles which it proclaims. It was the first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil government. It was the corner stone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished at a stroke the lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. It swept away all the rubbish of accumulated centuries of servitude. It announced in practical form to the world the transcendent truth of the unalienable sovereignty of the people. It proved that the social compact was no figment of the imagination; but a real, solid, and sacred bond of the social union.

From the day of this declaration, the people of North America were no longer the fragment of a distant empire, imploring justice and mercy from an inexorable master in another hemisphere. They were no longer children appealing in vain to the sympathies of a heartless mother; no longer subjects leaning upon the shattered columns of royal promises, and invoking the faith of parchment to secure their rights. They were a nation, asserting as of right, and maintaining by war, its own existence. A nation was born in a day.

“How many ages hence shall this their lofty scene be acted o’er in states unborn, and accents yet unknown?”

It will be acted o’er, fellow citizens, but it can never be repeated. It stands, and must forever stand alone, a beacon on the summit of the mountain, to which all the inhabitants of the earth may turn their eyes for a genial and saving light, till time shall be lost in eternity, and this globe itself dissolve, nor leave a wreck behind. It stands forever, a light of admonition to the rulers of men; a light of salvation and redemption to the oppressed.

So long as this planet shall be inhabited by human beings, so long as man shall be of social nature, so long as government shall be necessary to the great moral purposes of society, and so long as it shall be abused to the purposes of oppression, so long shall this declaration hold out to the sovereign and to the subject the extent and the boundaries of their respective rights and duties; founded in the laws of nature and of nature’s God.

Five and forty years have passed away since this Declaration was issued by our fathers; and here are we, fellow citizens, assembled in the full enjoyment of its fruits, to bless the Author of our being for the bounties of his providence, in casting our lot in this favored land; to remember with effusions of gratitude the sages who put forth, and the heroes who bled for the establishment of this Declaration; and, by the communion of soul in the reperusal and hearing of this instrument, to renew the genuine Holy Alliance of its principles, to recognize them as eternal truths, and to pledge ourselves and bind our posterity to a faithful and undeviating adherence to them.

Fellow citizens, our fathers have been faithful to them before us. When the little band of their Delegates, “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, for the support of this declaration, mutually pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor,” from every dwelling, street, and square of your populous cities, it was re-echoed with shouts of joy and gratulation! And if the silent language of the heart could have been heard, every hill upon the surface of this continent which had been trodden by the foot of civilized man, every valley in which the toil of your fathers had opened a paradise upon the wild, would have rung, with one accordant voice, louder than the thunders, sweeter than the harmonies of the heavens, with the solemn and responsive words, “We swear.”

The pledge has been redeemed. Through six years of devastating but heroic war, through nearly 40 years of more heroic peace, the principles of this declaration have been supported by the toils, by the vigils, by the blood of your fathers and of yourselves. The conflict of war had begun with fearful odds of apparent human power on the side of the oppressor. He wielded at will the collective force of the mightiest nation in Europe. He with more than poetic truth asserted the dominion of the waves.

The power, to whose unjust usurpation your fathers hurled the gauntlet of defiance, baffled and vanquished by them, has even since, stripped of all the energies of this continent, been found adequate to give the law to its own quarter of the globe, and to mould the destinies of the European world. It was with a sling and a stone, that your fathers went forth to encounter the massive vigor of this Goliath. They slung the heaven-directed stone, and ”With heaviest sound, the giant monster fell.”

Amid the shouts of victory your cause soon found friends and allies in the rivals of your enemies. France recognized your independence as existing in fact, and made common cause with you for its support. Spain and the Netherlands, without adopting your principles, successively flung their weight into your scale. …

The Declaration of Independence pronounced the irrevocable decree of political separation, between the United States and their people on the one part, and the British king, government, and nation on the other. It proclaimed the first principles on which civil government is founded, and derived from them the justification before earth and heaven of this act of sovereignty. But it left the people of this union, collective and individual, without organized government. In contemplating this state of things, one of the profoundest of British statesmen, in an ecstasy of astonishment exclaimed, “Anarchy is found tolerable!’ But there was no anarchy.

From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American union, and of its constituent states, were associated bodies of civilized men and christians, in a state of nature, but not of anarchy. They were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct. They were bound by the principles which they themselves had proclaimed in the declaration. They were bound by all those tender and endearing sympathies, the absence of which, in the British government and nation, towards them, was the primary cause of the distressing conflict in which they had been precipitated by the headlong rashness and unfeeling insolence of their oppressors. They were bound by all the beneficent laws and institutions, which their forefathers had brought with them from their mother country, not as servitudes but as rights. They were bound by habits of hardy industry, by frugal and hospitable manners, by the general sentiments of social equality, by pure and virtuous morals; and lastly they were bound by the grappling-hooks of common suffering under the scourge of oppression. Where then, among such a people, were the materials for anarchy! Had there been among them no other law, they would have been a law unto themselves.

They had before them in their new position, besides the maintenance of the independence which they had declared, three great objects to attain; the first, to cement and prepare for perpetuity their common union and that of their posterity; the second, to erect and organize civil and municipal governments in their respective states: and the third, to form connections of friendship and of commerce with foreign nations.

For all these objects, the same Congress which issued the Declaration, and at the same time with it, had provided. They recommended to the several states to form civil governments for themselves; with guarded and cautious deliberation they matured a confederation for the whole Union; and they prepared treaties of commerce, to be offered to the principal maritime nations of the world.

All these objects were in a great degree accomplished amid the din of arms, and while every quarter of our country was ransacked by the fury of invasion. The states organized their governments, all in republican forms, all on the principles of the Declaration. The confederation was unanimously accepted by the thirteen states: and treaties of commerce were concluded with France and the Netherlands, in which, for the first time, the same just and magnanimous principles, consigned in the Declaration of Independence, were, so far as they could be applicable to the intercourse between nation and nation, solemnly recognized.

When experience had proved that the confederation was not adequate to the national purposes of the country, the people of the United States, without tumult, without violence, by their delegates all chosen upon principles of equal right, formed a more perfect union, by the establishment of the federal constitution.

This has already passed the ordeal of one human generation. In all the changes of men and of parties through which it has passed, it has been administered on the same fundamental principles. Our manners, our habits, our feelings, are all republican; and if our principles had been, when first proclaimed, doubtful to the ear of reason or the sense of humanity, they would have been reconciled to our understanding and endeared to our hearts by their practical operation.

In the progress of 40 years since the acknowledgment of our independence, we have gone through many modifications of internal government, and through all the vicissitudes of peace and war, with other mighty nations. But never, never for a moment have the great principles, consecrated by the Declaration of this day, been renounced or abandoned.

And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the older world, the first observers of mutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to inquire, what has America done for the benefit of mankind?

Let our answer be this–America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, equal justice, and equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power, and emerging right.

Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

Stand forth, ye champions of Britannia, ruler of the waves! Stand forth, ye chivalrous knights of chartered liberties and the rotten borough! Enter the lists, ye, boasters of inventive genius! Ye mighty masters of the palette and the brush! Ye improvers upon the sculpture of the Elgin marbles! Ye spawners of fustian romance and lascivious lyrics!

Come, and inquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind! In the half century which has elapsed since the declaration of American independence, what have you done for the benefit of mankind? When Themistocles was sarcastically asked by some great musical genius of his age whether he knew how to play upon the lute, he answered, No! but he knew how to make a great city of a small one.

We shall not contend with you for the prize of music, painting, or sculpture. We shall not disturb the ecstatic trances of your chemists, nor call from the heavens the ardent gaze of your astronomers. We will not ask you who was the last president of your Royal Academy. We will not inquire by whose mechanical combinations it was, that your steamboats stem the currents of your rivers, and vanquish the opposition of the winds themselves upon your seas. We will not name the inventor of the cotton-gin, for we fear that you would ask us the meaning of the word, and pronounce it a provincial barbarism. We will not name to you him, whose graver defies the imitation of forgery, and saves the labor of your executioner, by taking from your greatest geniuses of robbery the power of committing the crime. He is now among yourselves; and since your philosophers have permitted him to prove to them the compressibility of water, you may perhaps claim him for your own. Would you soar to fame upon a rocket, or burst into glory from a shell? We shall leave you to inquire of your naval heroes their opinion of the steam-battery and the torpedo.

It is not by the contrivance of agents of destruction, that America wishes to commend her inventive genius to the admiration or the gratitude of after times; nor is it even by the detection of the secrets or the composition of new modifications of physical nature.
“Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera.” Nor even is her purpose the glory of Roman ambition; nor “tu regere imperio populosa” her memento to her sons.

Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of mind. She has a spear and a shield; but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

My countrymen, fellow-citizens, and friends; could that Spirit, which dictated the Declaration we have this day read, that Spirit, which “prefers before all temples the upright heart and pure,” at this moment descend from his habitation in the skies, and within this hall, in language audible to mortal ears, address each one of us, here assembled, our beloved country, Britannia ruler of the waves, and every individual among the sceptred lords of humankind; his words would be, “Go thou and do likewise!”

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) was the sixth president of the United States (1825-1829).

All Credits for this text go to The American Conservative Magazine

Ron Paul: US Egypt Policies Don't Pass the Laugh Test

The following is a full article from Ron Paul from his Institute for Peace a Prosperity. You can read the article here at their website and check out other great articles on their site.

A military coup in Egypt yesterday resulted in the removal and imprisonment of the elected president, Mohamed Morsi, a closure of media outlets sympathetic to him, the house arrest of his advisors, and the suspension of the constitution. The military that overthrew Morsi is the main recipient of the $1.3 billion yearly US aid package to Egypt. You could say that the US “owns” the Egyptian military that just overthrew its democratically-elected leader. 

The hypocrisy of the US administration on these events in Egypt is stunning. As the New York Times reported today:

 President Obama urged the military to move quickly to return Egypt to a democratically elected government, saying, ‘We are deeply concerned by the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to remove President Morsi and suspend the Egyptian Constitution.’ The president notably did not refer to the military’s takeover as a coup — a phrase that would have implications for the $1.3 billion a year in American military aid to Egypt.

Well, Egypt had a democratically-elected government, but it was overthrown by the US-funded Egyptian military!

Let’s review US policy toward Egypt to see the foolish hypocrisy of the government’s interventionism: First the US props up the unelected Hosni Mubarak for decades, spending tens of billions of dollars to keep him in power. Then the US provides assistance to those who in 2011 successfully overthrew Mubarak. Then the US demands an election. The Egyptians held an election that was deemed free and fair and shortly afterward the US-funded military overthrows the elected president. Then the US government warns the military that it needs to restore democracy – the very democracy that was destroyed by military coup! All the while the US government will not allow itself to utter the word “coup” when discussing what happened in Egypt yesterday because it would mean they might have to stop sending all those billions of dollars to Egypt. 

All this they do with a straight face. We are not supposed to notice the insanity of their foreign policy.

Keynesian Economics in a Nutshell

From Peter Klein of the Mises Institute:

Hayek on Keynes:

The decisive assumption on which Keynes’s original argument rested and which has since ruled policy is that it is impossible ever to reduce the money wages of a substantial group of workers without causing extensive unemployment. The conclusion which Lord Keynes drew from this, and which the whole of his theoretical system was intended to justify, was that since money wages can in practice not be lowered, the adjustment necessary, whenever wages have become too high to allow “full employment,” must be effected by the devious process of reducing the value of money. A society which accepts this is bound for a continuous process of inflation.

From Sudha Shenoy’s excellent 1972 compilation, A Tiger by the Tail: The Keynesian Legacy of Inflation (p. 68).

NEWS FLASH: Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow

The following text is a verbatim statement from famed NSA whistle blower Edward Snowder. 

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

T

his kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

Edward Joseph Snowden

Monday 1st July 2013

Full Disclosure: What the Media Isn't Telling You About War in Syria

Ron Paul: Obama Should Send Snowden a Thank You Note

Edward Snowden and the American Police State

Ever since technical contractor Edward Snowden leaked details about the massive government surveillance program that the NSA has used against American citizens, the U.S. government has been in a frantic frenzy to capture him. Since the NSA leak, the U.S. government has charged Edward Snowden with "espionage" under the the Espionage Act of 1917, the unconstitutional law passed by President Woodrow Wilson which made it a crime to be against U.S, involvement and participation in World War 1. By charging Edward Snowden with "espionage" and demanding that countries who have Edward Snowden in their borders (like Russia or China) extradite him, the U.S. government is showing the whole world it's dangerous fangs and it's blind hubris. To the Washington elites, it is okay for if the government spies on you and snoops through your emails, letters or phone conversations. But if anyone dares to challenge the American police state or reveal the massive unconstitutional violations of our civil liberties, why you are a spy!

That is what is essentially Edward Snowden's "crime": telling the truth and revealing to the American people the massive violations of civil liberties by the U.S. government in the name of "security". To the elites in Washington D.C., the private lives of private citizens are not a concern when it comes to "national security". You can't keep secrets, but the government apparently can. And if you reveal these secrets, then you are a traitor! That is how I am interpreting the behavior of the U.S. government during this whole episode with Edward Snowden. The U.S. government is behaving in a similar manner to when Bradley Manning and Julian Assange leaked "classified" information about the U.S. government and it's activities around the world. 

The revelation that the NSA has been spying on American citizens along with the revelation that the IRS has been targeting opponents of the President is further evidence of the Obama Administration's poor record when it comes to constitutionally protected civil liberties. It should be noted that the NSA program of spying has been around for over a decade, and that a failure to either wind down or dismantle such unconstitutional operations is evidence that the popular perception that leftists Democrats care about civil liberties is false. President Obama even initially promised to protect "noble" and "patriotic" whistle-blowers while guaranteeing transparency in government. But as the Obama Administration's actions towards Julian Assange of Wikileaks and Bradley Manning illustrate, the Obama Administration never really intended to protect whistle-blowers.  As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out,

Prior to Barack Obama's inauguration, there were a grand total of three prosecutions of leakers under the Espionage Act (including the prosecution of Dan Ellsberg by the Nixon DOJ). That's because the statute is so broad that even the US government has largely refrained from using it. But during the Obama presidency, there are now sevensuch prosecutions: more than double the number under all prior US presidents combined. How can anyone justify that?

Indeed, the U.S. government believes that Edward Snowden's actions constitute "espionage". How exactly is  revealing to the American people about an unjust, unconstitutional and secret government effort to spy on citizens "espionage"? It isn't. As Glenn Greenwald reminds us, espionage constitutes working at the direction of a foreign government, selling the information to a foreign intelligence service, or covertly passing the intelligence to America's "enemies". So far, Edward Snowden has done none of these things. Instead, Edward Snowden, believing that the government has become unjust and corrupt and that the law in question is a tool of injustice, took great personal risks to reveal to the America people the violations of privacy by the U.S. government. 

It is interesting to note that Edward Snowden has been pretty good at avoiding the wrath of the U.S. government. Edward Snowden's escape from the U.S. government shows how powerful an individual can be against the lumbering leviathan state and it's bloated bureaucracy. Writes Professor Butler Shaffer of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity:

What amuses me the most in the current Snowden episode, is that the American government, with all of its supposed intelligence-gathering capacities - the revelations of which are at the core of the case against Snowden - cannot locate this man's presence. "All the king's horses, and all the king's men" - even with access to all communications of all Americans - can no more find him than could they anticipate the collapse of the Soviet Union or the attacks of 9/11.  The entire affair - along with the actions of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and other whistleblowers - helps answer the pessimists who ask "but what can one person do?


So how exactly is the U.S. government's efforts to spy on American citizens, or even non-citizens, unconstitutional? Keeping tabs on the traffic of communications and content that people engage in and actually examining such content and communication violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which states the following: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” In this case, governmental spying on the phone calls, emails and other forms of communications is in essence "search and seizure" that requires a warrant that is supported by Oath of affirmation. 

As Ivan Eland explains,

The NSA evidently did obtain an order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to acquire data on phone traffic of most Americans. But we should not be under the illusion that this court can correctly read even the text of the Constitution. Granting this order either means that the court stretched the “probable cause” requirement beyond all recognition—every American with a phone cannot really be legitimately suspected of being a terrorist or committing another crime—or did not use the standard at all, the more likely case but just as unconstitutional. A provision in the 2001 PATRIOT Act made it easier to obtain a court order for the government to get business records if they are considered merely relevant to a national security investigation. Yet the aforementioned Fourth Amendment makes no exception for national security matters, and the courts should have thrown out not only the request for the order but this section of the PATRIOT Act as unconstitutional for violating the more strict “probable cause” standard. 

Many believe that government spying programs are necessary to fight terrorism. Certainly, terrorism presents a threat to the safety of the United States. But the main reason terrorism is even a threat to begin with is because of a militaristic and interventionist foreign policy of war and empire, especially in the Middle East. American foreign policy is the main motivating factor that drives people, especially young Muslim men, to commit violent acts of terrorism like 9/11. If we wish to combat terrorism, the wars of empire in the Middle East and around the world must come to an end and American military personnel must withdraw from the 800-1000 military bases in 135 countries around the world to return to a foreign policy of armed neutrality, where the military is limited to defending our country from invasion and attack, not actively going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

Also, constitutionally protected civil liberties should never be violated in the name of "national security". There should always be a bias toward liberty. Part of living in a free society (as the United States should have) means that some amount of risk must be taken if freedom is to survive and thrive. Edward Snowden's efforts demonstrate the need to defend the Constitution and it's limits on government power along with civil liberties now more than ever. Edward Snowden is a hero.