Did The Meek Already Inherit The Earth?

Michigan just got a little less free. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the Michigan Liquor Control Commission has banned dozens of alcoholic beverages that combined caffeine and alcohol. One such beverage, the Four Loko, contained the equivalent of three or four cups of coffee and four beers. The reason for banning it? “Experts” have warned that the caffeine masks the effect of the alcohol, which according to them makes it difficult for young people to realize just how intoxicated they are.

This is just another example of the nanny State wanting to tell us what's good for us and what's not. And if we don't listen to their suggestions – legislate. Just a few days ago we saw the same thing in San Francisco, where the Board of Supervisors voted to prohibit fast food restaurants offering free toys with high-calorie, high fat meals. Fast food restaurants will only be allowed to give away toys with meals that contain fewer than 600 calories (including the drink) and has a fat content less than 35%.

No-one wants young adults to drink too much or kids to become obese from eating too much, but what happened to personal responsibility? If you're old enough to legally drink in the United States you've been old enough to die for your country for about three years. Is the Michigan Liquor Control Commission saying that a person who is deemed mature enough to join the army is too immature to decide for himself if he wants to drink an alcoholic beverage that contains caffeine? Is the San Francisco Board of Supervisors saying that parents are too stupid to know what's good for their kids?

It sure seems that way. Whatever happened to “Don't Tread On Me” and “Live Free Or Die”? Something tells me that if Benjamin Franklin had been told he couldn't smoke because it was bad for him, he would have told the law-makers where they could shove his pipe.

Queen of Covert Surveillance Upset Over Covert Surveillance

Following the revelation earlier this week that the U.S. had for more than a decade systematically monitored Norwegian citizens they considered to be potential security risks, it has now been revealed that they have also spied on Swedish residents. Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle and pictured left, said the U.S. activities in Sweden and Norway "seem to be similar" and that "it seems as though we haven't been fully informed and that's not good."

You're quite right, Minister Ask. But whatever the U.S. did or did not do, they limited their monitoring to specific persons of interest. Ask and her cronies fully supported the FRA law, a Swedish law that authorizes the State to wiretap – without a warrant, mind you – all telephone and Internet traffic that crosses the borders of Sweden.

Every single person that lives in Sweden and uses the Internet is being monitored, all the time. Every time you do a search on Google or buy something from Amazon or watch a video on YouTube, or make another blogpost on Blogger, you are being treated by the Swedish government the way the U.S. government treated people they deemed to be threats to national security. To me, that speaks volumes of how little respect Minister Ask and her friends really have for our civil liberties.

Small Scale Counterfeiting: Bad - Big Scale Counterfeiting: Good

When federal agents busted a counterfeiting operation in Detroit recently, they found that the counterfeiters weren't using any sophisticated equipment at all, just a standard Lexmark printer and plain paper. According to the article on the Detroit Free Press website, new technology has made counterfeiting easier than ever. "If you're able to put a piece of paper in a copy machine and push a button, that's pretty much all it takes," Special Agent Scott Vogel said.

I can't help but think that people are now only doing what the Federal Reserve has been doing since the dollar was taken off the gold standard. The only difference is that when the Fed floods the market with billions or trillions of dollars that aren't even worth the paper they're printed on, no one goes to prison. They become Time Magazine's Person of the Year.

Rand Paul: Dr. Maybe

Following Rand Paul's election to Senator for Kentucky I have seen libertarians and anarcho-capitalists alike rejoice over the fact that someone who is devoted to true liberty gets elected. I can not join the celebration, since I don't see Dr. Paul in that light. I fear that he not only lacks the ideological backbone that has made his father, congressman Dr. Ron Paul, such a beacon of hope in these dark times, but also that in many ways his views are impossible to reconcile with a true love of liberty.

Take his views on abortion. A controversial issue, and I can understand the position of those who are opposed to abortion in general. Paul, however, is opposed to abortion in all cases, including when the woman – or child – is the victim of rape or incest. He has stated that he will support “any and all legislation that would end abortion or lead us in the direction of ending abortion,” including “a Human Life Amendment and a Life at Conception Act as federal solutions to the abortion issue.”

This would make abortion murder under federal law and no state could pass legislation saying that abortion is legal in that particular state. Not only is this a tremendous expansion of the federal government's power over the states but it also says that a woman's body is the property of the federal government from the point of fertilization until she gives birth.

If this legislation would be passed, a woman saying that she is going to abort the fetus growing inside her would be guilty of threatening murder just as much as she would be if she told someone she was going to shoot them in the head, and the police would be forced to arrest her and keep her locked up and either restrained or drugged until she gives birth.

Paul's position becomes even more illogical when he says that he supports the use of the morning-after pill – a pill that irritates the lining of the uterus so the fertilized egg is rejected after passing through the fallopian tube to the uterus. If Paul truly believes that life begins at conception, and that the termination of any human life is murder, then he advocates murder.

But Paul's views are incompatible with the libertarian or anarcho-capitalist view on many more issues.

Paul supports the indefinite detention of "enemy combatants" on the Guantanamo military base and thinks that “terrorists” should be prosecuted in military tribunals instead of regular courts. He doesn't want to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. He claims to be against the PATRIOT Act, but also says he won't do anything to repeal it, and he is against gay marriage.

Believing that the federal government has the right to reward or punish someone with tax or other benefits depending on the gender of the person they have chosen to spend their life with is not compatible with a love for liberty. Rand Paul is a deeply religious Conservative, not a libertarian.

Even more disturbing is Rand's flip-flopping. In 2009 he pledged not to accept contributions from any politician who voted for a federal bailout of the banking industry. He said this in response to Secretary of State Trey Grayson attending a fund-raiser hosted by a senator who voted to save bankrupt banks with the taxpayers' money. Yet in June 2010 Paul himself attended a $1,000-a-person fundraiser hosted by the very same senator, attended by senators who voted for the federal bailout.

If he can so easily flip-flop on an issue that he claims was the one issue that made him decide to run for senate, then how can we expect him to be principled on any other issue? How long will it take before the lure of power becomes stronger than his principles on other issues as well?

The Terrorism of the State

It has been said that the greatest threat to our liberty is that of global terrorism. I would agree, but with a serious reservation. When we think of terrorism, we usually think of Muslim fanatics, Central-American death squads or maybe radical animal-rights activists. However, groups like these can never be a threat to our liberty as a whole, since they only have the support of a very small part of the population, a minority that is unlikely to grow so large as to pose a serious threat.

These groups are of course a serious threat to the individual, and should be treated as such, but for a terrorist group to ever pose a serious threat to liberty itself, they have to gain the support of a large portion of the population – although it could be argued that the actions of al-Qaeda on 9/11 caused panicking American politicians, lacking a serious devotion to liberty, to do more harm to liberty in the United States than any terrorist organization could ever do on its own.

What then is terrorism? For an act to be an act of terror, there are four criteria that must all be fulfilled – the act must be violent, it must be designed to cause fear, it must be perpetrated for an ideological purpose and it must deliberately and willfully target civilians.

Keeping this definition in mind, let us examine the State. In order to do that, we must first make sure there are no misconceptions. The State is not the same as society. Society is a social network of individuals freely associating with each other; the State is, in the words of leftist anarchist Murray Bookchin, the professional apparatus of people who are set aside to manage society, and to preempt the control of society from the people.

Remembering the definitions of terrorism and the State, let us examine one act that all States perpetrate – the collection of taxes from its citizens. Could this act fulfill the criteria of a terrorist act?

Is it a violent act? Yes, it is. By definition, when something is taken from you without your permission, that is an act of violence.

Is it designed to cause fear? Yes, it is. If you refuse to pay taxes, the IRS will confiscate your property and/or put you in prison.

Is it perpetrated for an ideological purpose? Yes, it is. Taxes are most often collected under the guise of providing us with some service that the State thinks we need, and which they believe we are unable to provide for ourselves. More often than not taxes are also collected to bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots by taking money from one group and giving to another.

Does is deliberately and willfully target civilians? Yes, it does.

In this light, what is the State if not a terrorist organization, and the most dangerous of all, since its terror is accepted by virtually everyone as being not only just, but virtuous?