I have friends who are against war and psychiatric abuses and other evil things enabled by governments. I have had discussions wherein I am told that we pay taxes because we agree to pay taxes. There is often more truth to that than the speaker is aware of. I found this out when I asked if they agreed to finance wars and such with their "contributions". They all said they didn't.

I have also seen great anti war demonstrations where placards proclaim "Not in my name" as if this is somehow an important negative for the state.

I posit that we pay taxes because the alternative of being threatened with violence and going to jail is less preferable than paying up. I'm sure the victims of war and psychiatric abuse understand this.

I said something about this a while back but I want to simplify it even further and get to what I currently believe to be the root, or at least a major part of the root, of the problem.

At the root is a problem. It is an uninspected problem for most of us but it is simply stated and hard not to see once pointed out. It is this; Most of us are in agreement, or at least consent to, two totally opposed political philosophies.

The first philosophy is that it is wrong to initiate the use of force against an otherwise peaceful person in order to get him to do your bidding. As an example you would probably object to someone threatening you with a gun and demanding your wallet. We all agree this would be a bad thing and would regard the person with the gun to be a criminal. So ask someone if they agree with this philosophy and the chances are pretty good they will say yes. But....

The second philosophy is consensus = truth and rightness. Democracy we are told is rule by majority vote. If an apparent majority vote for something then we all have to go along with it. I think this is workable for a small group when the subject of the vote is what movie to see or where to eat but applying it to an entire society and having no limit to what it can be applied to is somewhat extreme to say the least in my opinion.

If a group of your friends announced to you they had taken a vote and it had come out that a majority consider it necessary for you to give them half of your income to spend on whatever they pleased I suspect you would object to this. But on what grounds? Would you object because you weren't given a chance to contribute to the making of the proposition? Would it be because you don't agree with what the money will be spent on? Would it be because you consider only you should be able to decide how your money should be spent? Whatever your reason it would be in opposition to the idea of democracy as defined above.

Now maybe you would favour a democratically made decision when you are not part of the group whose wealth will be exploited. Maybe you'd be perfectly happy to take the earnings of another group of people you don't belong to. Maybe you consider it only right and fair to take what others have that you don't have. Here's the thing; In order for you to benefit from what others have put together that they aren't willing to just give away force has to be employed to get them to do it. Democracy allows you to feel no guilt about this for two reasons; First it isn't you who will be employing the force, and second, the majority agrees it is right and proper. But is it right and proper? How does a consensus amongst an apparent majority become right? If the only tool they can use to make it happen is the threat of violence against those who do not agree isn't this just another case of might making right. Does might make right? Personally I don't think so. Call me an extremist.

So how to solve this. Here is my suggestion for electoral reform that would be meaningful to all.

1. Government shall have no right under any circumstances to create fiat* money from thin air either through a central bank or by any other means. *Fiat money is anything (paper or coins or electronic entries) that only has value because the government says it has value and because there is confidence amongst the users that it will be exchanged for goods and services.

2. Government shall have no right to borrow money under any circumstances.

3. Government can raise money for any purpose it chooses as long as that money is given completely voluntarily.

4. Government may not keep records for any reason of who contributes or who does not contribute.

5. Anyone shall have the right to contribute or not contribute to anything he chooses and he can stop contributing or start contributing whenever he sees fit.

 6. Anyone can call himself a member of the government by his own election alone.

A couple of additional considerations on the above.

It really doesn't matter who makes up the government. What matters is the consent of the people to any proposal that is made by that government. We do not live in a world where the active consent of each of us is sought or needed. But wouldn't it be a better world if it were?

It might seem that some people would not want to contribute to very much. This may well be the case. If that is their will then what justification could there be for overriding it?

Those government proposals that do meet with enough funding would truly be what the people want.

So please let's get on with it.

Yes I'm still alive. Been very busy with other sites but this post just had to be made. So imagine the following picture by an East Grinstead photographer as a poster all over the UK. Would it find broad agreement?

Even the BBC today admitted our current weather to be the longest lasting spell of cold for 30 years. I think we should campaign hard to help the government save the world from global warming. If we don't we may freeze to death.

Hat tip to Lewrockwell.com for having posted this first. This is a very short video showing how we've been lied to with statistical data on global warming.

This is G. Edward Griffin at his best in a talk he gave more than 10 years ago on the "Creature from Jekyll Island" - the Federal Reserve Bank. Don't think that the Bank of England is any different. The fed was modelled on the BoE.

I received an email telling me about the government's latest plan to suppress children and families.  I got mad and went to the government's pettition site and started to create a pettition of my own. The purpose? Get out of office. Just go. Now. I completed the first part of the five step process and was asked for a short name for the pettition I was creating. I wrote "Get out". I was then given the line that appears as title of this post. It cracked me up so I thought I'd post here about it.

This is probably not suitable for work but is very funny nonetheless.

'nuff said

I stared in disbelief last night as right there in front of me on the BBC's Question Time we were subjected to the sight of Jack Straw still in office. I don't think he did well for himself claiming to be a member of a party of principles since none of the principles have pointed out to him that the only possible honourable act for any member of his party would be to resign forthwith.

Even compared to the fairly bonkers Nick Griffin he came off the loser. The hand in your pocket will never belong to Nick Griffin.

It is obvious, right now, that Labour will not win the next election. It is unfortunate that in order to throw one lot of scoundrels out we have no other mechanism than electing another bunch of scoundrels with fresher faces and more enthusiasm for power and pillaging.
Sean Gabb is by far the most outstanding and least thanked political commentator in England at this time in my opinion. This is a link to a speech he made to a Conservative Association somewhere in the south of England recently. It would have been, I fancy, a fascinating thing to have been a fly on the wall at that meeting.

I know quite a few who aren't so bad. But Duncan Bannatyne isn't one of them.

If we define fascism as the political class wants us to understand it (the mass murder of millions of jews or a similar policy intention) then it would not be possible for later generations than those who lived or died in WW2 to "learn the lessons of history". For this was not Hitler's stated intention prior to being elected. It was not the case that the German people put him in power to murder the jews. He adopted the policy of facism after reading Musolini's book on the subject and he was a fascist from the start.

Fascism is a branch of socialism. Where the socialists took over the ownership of the means of production the fascists took over control of the means of production. The effect is the same only the name of the shop is different. There is nationalisation in both cases. The stated aim is to make the country "Great".

Today in the UK the power elite are not satisfied with regulating every aspect of business. They want to nationalise the people too.

Both Musolini and Hitler held that the individual should live for the state and that sacrificing the individual for the "good of all" was a legitimate policy. And so when Duncan Banatyne says "This isn't nanny statism, Big Brother, or wrongful interference in people's personal freedoms – it's the right thing to do to protect the health of the vast majority of us who don't smoke from the declining minority who do" he is speaking from a tradition with some history.

And his statement begs the question what would he consider "nanny statism, Big Brother, or wrongful interference in people's (sic) personal freedoms"?

About the Tories that is. During the Labour party conference we heard that the public sector was safe in the hands of the Labour party but that the Tories would make huge cuts. Unfortunately that is not so and the latest Tory proposals merely increase government spending more slowly than they would have. George Osborne proposed a pay freeze on those public sector workers earning more than £18k a year.

If the Tories were a valid opposition party instead of a set of new faces there would be no need for any pay freezes. At a minimum huge chunks of the public sector would just be abolished thus enabling the ex-employees to get real jobs where they can receive what they are worth in a true and honest fashion through voluntary exchange with customers just like the rest of us. Doctors and nurses would still have value in the private sector, perhaps more than they do now. Teachers would have at least some skills that many parents would still be willing to exchange for. Police would still be needed to catch people who injure persons or property. Many other government employees might have to retrain to learn skills that are actually wanted by those who would pay for them.

The full value of such a move would be enormous beyond the imagination of many. Those ex tax eaters would instead be productive members of society, producing wealth instead of stealing from the rest of us.

Might it be that the picture being painted of the Tories as being radically different from the Labour party is merely to encourage us to vote for the Tories who will in fact turn out to be so close as to make no real deviation from the road to complete authoritarianism?

I've been a supporter of Ron Paul for years and have watched and supported his rise in influence over the last three years with optimism. Early this year he introduced a bill called HR1207 to have Congress audit the Federal Reserve Bank. This might not seem like a big deal but it is. The fed is the most secretive quasi government organisation in the US. Far more so than the CIA, FBI and any other "security" service. That fact alone is enough to make one suspicious if one ever gets to wondering about it.

So the news I'm on about here is that there was a Congressional hearing a few days ago regarding this bill. Click on that link to read a first hand report that greatly expands on why this is great news.

I caught the last part of a report on BBC Radio 4 tonight that "explored" the reasons why Obama isn't getting the love they think he deserves.

Apparently there have been some deomonstrations and anger at Mr Obama.

How can this be? What is there about Mr Change not to like?

There was no mention of his continuation of Bush policy with regard to;

the prisoners still held in Cuba,

the war still going on in Afghanistan,

the continuing occupation of Iraq,

the bailing out of failing businesses,

the unimaginable amount of debt,

the increasing unemployment,

his plans to increase the state's involvement in healthcare,

etc.

No the last line of the report went something like this. In a country where race relations have been bad from the civil war to the civil rights movement it is unreasonable to believe race hatred would have gone away.

In other words don't listen (and we won't report anyway) to those on "the right" as they are just racist bigots.

Our own MPs haven't been getting much respect lately either.

The BBC needs to work a lot harder. Respect and trust of the "right honourables" just isn't what it used to be.

I just read an article that I think is the best explanation of statist arrogance I've come across. It's background is two essays; one by Mises on why socialists can't calculate and the other by Hayek on the pretense of knowledge. This article is short and easy to understand. It uses Obama as the example but it applies to all who would know best.

It also contains a great Rothbard quote, "It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."

I've put this under the category of "economics" but could just as relevantly put it under "politics" or "bottom feeders".

Why? Because "bottom feeders" is a good description of those who deliberately push the myths of the Great Depression - "Hoover believed in laissez-faire" "It was a failure of the free market and FDR saved the day" etc. And "politics" because well it is a synonym for "bottom feeders".

It isn't just dry economic analysis but includes some great quotes from people like HL Mencken.

Here is a link to one of the best books (free pdf download) on the myths of the Great Depression.

And here is a link to a page that has the whole thing as an audio book.

It is written by Lawrence W. Reed who is now with FEE

This is a talk on a subject seldom addressed but obviously crucial. It is about personal character. Don't let that put you off. It is not a sermon. Or to put that another way, if sermons were more like this there wouldn't be a decline in church membership.

Liberty and Character from FEE on Vimeo.