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.