I’m Not The Only One

Yeah, I know I should’ve pounded this one out sooner, and I didn’t take this long to publish this entry because the questions were hard, because they weren’t.  The following are questions asked of Judge Andrew Napolitano by moderate comedian/fake news anchor Jon Stewart when the former appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  Other libertarian sites and bloggers have attempted to answer these questions in their own way, and I thought it would be entertaining for me and informative for the reader if I attempted to answers these questions before peeking at the answers of others and actually watching the Daily Show episode.  Here goes.

1.  Is government the antithesis of liberty?

Yes and no.  Government by itself is not the antithesis of liberty.  It is the initiation of force and the implied threat of such initiation of force that is a threat of liberty.  The use of force and the implied threat of force, both lethal and non-lethal, is the only real power government has and is the sole purpose for its existence. (more…)

In the last week I’ve seen many people with the following status on their Facebook page.

 “NYPD FDNY AND EMS OFFICERS WERE NOT INVITED TO THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY CEREMONY OF 9/11… MAYOR BLOOMBERG CLAIMS THERE IS NO ROOM FOR THEM… 10 YEARS AGO, THEY WEREN’T INVITED BUT THEY SHOWED UP!!! REPOST IF YOU AGREE THEY SHOULD BE THERE….”

Technically I am re-posting this, but not on Facebook, which was the intenti0n of this post, so I definitely don’t agree with it.

In fact, I don’t think any employee or representative from any government agency should attend the 9/11 memorial ceremony at Ground Zero.  Those within the e 9/11 Truth Movement suggest that the federal government either knew about the attacks in advance and deliberately did nothing or orchestrated the attacks to trick Americans into supporting the Patriot Act and the invasion and conquest of Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya.

This is not unlike the conspiracy theory in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt allegedly ignored intelligence reports suggesting the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor, and that the Roosevelt administration deliberately failed to prevent the attack in order to convince Americans to abandon their isolationist sentiments, support the declaration of war on the Axis powers and bring the United States into World War II. (more…)

Today is the last day of Black History Month, an empty gesture by mainstream America to acknowledge the aspects of the African-American experience that makes them the most comfortable. (more…)

Although my shoulder is still in some pain, I felt I should do some blogging.

If you’re like me, who believes the private sector serves people better than government, you’ve probably ran into at least one statist sheep who reminds you that we all rely on public roads and highways to get around.  I’ve even heard smarmy remarks like “But you use public roads to get around while you rail against the government, right?”  This of course is a cheap shot and a poor excuse for an argument, since the government enjoys a monopoly on road building, ownership and maintenance. (more…)

In my last blog entry, I explained how the Free Market almost ended slavery, if it weren’t government keeping that gruesome institution alive and well until Lincoln was ready to slaughter scores of Southerners when the federal government was ready to stop supporting slavery.

Today, I’m going to explain how the Free Market  eliminated widespread discrimination in the private sector and would’ve done so even if the Civil Rights Act had never banned private sector discrimination. (more…)

Okay, it ALMOST ended slavery in the U.S., but I figured a title like that would be more eye-catching.

I know the whole Rand Paul story is old news, but the unfortunate byproduct of that story is that many people are claiming that only government could’ve killed Jim Crow and ended slavery and that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, private businesses would still be excluding minorities today.  This conclusion couldn’t be more moronic and requires a profound ignorance in both history and economics. (more…)

In this day and age where news commentary often dwarfs actual news reporting, it’s hard to not see union spokespeople on television grinning ear to ear as Toyota launches a massive worldwide recall of over four million Camrys and Corollas.  United Auto Workers reps have been more than happy to appear on all major networks and news channels to suggest that Toyota’s failure to catch their defective parts before the cars left the factories because the company’s nonunion workers were “not committed to the product” because the company was “not committed to them”.

These union flunkies are capitalizing on the collective short-term memory of the American public.  Say what you want about Toyota, but they never received a bailout from Congress because for the last 30 years they have been manufacturing automobiles that Americans actually want to drive.  While car makers around the world have seen a loss in sales in the last few years, it was the Big Three that have been hemorrhaging red ink since the 70s. (more…)

For those who wonder why Americans are seen as ignorant and Christians are viewed as narrow-minded bigots, one only has to consider the recent remarks made by televangelist Pat Robertson about the earthquake in Haiti.

Robertson’s remarks prove that he is duly ignorant of geography, (Haiti only occupies one-third, not half of the island of Hispaniola)

Unfortunately, this aging mental midget is half right.  Haiti is cursed, but not by God or the Devil, and certainly not because the Founding Fathers of Haiti drew a pact with Satan.  Looking at history, it appears that Haiti has been cursed by first Western Europe then later by the United States. and for the unthinkable sin of being black. (more…)

Sorry I haven’t been blogging the last 30 days or so.  I’ve actually been swamped with freelance work and in this economy, you have to take wherever you can find it!

But in the spirit of the holiday season,  I’ve been bombarded with “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”.  I’ve received mail from my creditors, my health insurance providers and all manners of junk mail wishing me a happy holiday.  I do support the separation of church and state (as does the U.S. Constitution) so I can understand the public sector communicating in this way, but when the private sector does it (like a customer service rep or a supermarket or store employee) it just comes off as a politically correct, neutered move.  And since I have a Hispanic surname, I get bilingual correspondence wishing me the equally lame “felices fiestas”.  And yes, when I am told happy holidays, I do respond with Merry Christmas.

I know that social conservatives who use God as an excuse to rob us of our civil liberties see the prevalence of “happy holidays” as a sure sign that the atheists, pagans, Jews and other hell-bound liberals have declared a war on Christmas.  I just don’t see it.  I’ve even received political propaganda from local Republicans accusing incumbent Democrats of “hating Christmas” simply because these elected officials wish the constituents happy holidays in their correspondence.

But let’s get back to the separation of church and state.  After all, freedom of religion also means freedom from religion.  Just making Christmas a legal holiday is a violation of the Constitution.  No one is proposing we make Hanukkah or Ramadan a national holiday.  And Christmas’ legal status is not even an American tradition as it was not only not a Federal holiday until 1870, but in colonial times, was outlawed.

So if I could make a proposition to the rest of America…

How about the private sector not censor itself and say Merry Christmas and in exchange, Christmas will no longer be a legal holiday?  No doubt Lou Dobbs will consider this the final blow in the war against Christmas.

Last week or so a murderer was put to death.  Not by the criminal justice system but by brain cancer.  All the endearing coverage of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy’s death by the liberal (and strangely enough, right-leaning as well) media cannot cover up the fact that he is directly responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.

For those unfamiliar with the subject, Mary Jo was a secretary for Robert Kennedy in the 1960s who became close with Ted, a married man.  She worked on RFK’s Presidential campaign in 1968.  A year later, July 18, 1969, she attended a party thrown for RFK’s campaign workers on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha’s Vineyard, where she ran into Robert’s brother, then-freshman U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.  Mary Jo left the party around 11 pm, according to Ted, because he offered her a ride back to the ferry to go back to her hotel.  Oddly, Mary Jo didn’t tell anyone else that she was leaving and left her hotel keys and purse at the party.

Ted did not ask his chauffeur to drive and inexplicably left him at the party.  Ted drove his Oldsmobile off Dyke bridge a narrow, unlit crossing that was not on the way to the ferry dock and they landed into the water below.  Ted escaped the sinking car and swam to safety but Mary Jo remained in the car and died.  He claimed he dove into the water seven times in attempts to rescue Mary Jo, but ultimately gave up and walked back to the party, passing several houses along the way and inexplicably failing to ask the residents to use their phone to call the police.  Instead of enlisting the help of the police, Ted got two of his friends to drive back to the bridge and they all reportedly tried to rescue Mary Jo.  Teddy didn’t report the accident and Mary Jo’s demise to the police until the submerged car and Mary Jo’s body was discovered the following morning.  The local Fire Rescue squad pulled out the car to find Mary Jo in the back seat.  Strangely enough, no autopsy was ordered and cause of death was stated as “drowning”. But later that month the District Attorney ordered her body exhumed and an autopsy performed based on police records reporting blood found on Mary Jo’s skirt and in her mouth and nose “which may or may not be consistent with death by drowning”.  But the DA’s request was turned down. (more…)

By now everyone must be aware of the recent editorial cartoon which ran in the New York Post.  In the cartoon a chimpanzee has been shot dead by police officers who say to each other, “Now they will have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill.”

Is the cartoon inherently racist?  Not really, if you consider the New York Post is a publication with a conservative slant and highly critical of any Democrat, especially our new Democrat President.  The cartoon was drawn as a reference to the recent shooting by police of a chimpanzee who mauled a woman in Connecticut.  But the cartoon’s message (my interpretation of it) was that the stimulus bill was so stupid, a primate could have written it.

In all fairness, liberals have repeatedly and viciously compared former President George W. Bush to a monkey for the last eight years when they weren’t comparing him to Adolf Hitler.  Obviously there are some people who think Obama is as big an idiot as some people regard his predecessor, as demonstrated in the recent HBO documentary “Right America Feeling Wronged.” Perhaps liberals have set a dangerous precedent in comparing a President to a monkey over and over.  But President Obama’s partial black ancestry makes the comparison extremely taboo as black people have historically been compared to monkeys, ape and other primates, especially in the U.S. (more…)

You’d probably call me crazy if I told you a book written eight years ago focusing on the flaws of the Clinton Presidency would have a greater wealth of relevance for Americans today than it did when it was written.  But Rob Nelson’s Last Call: 10 Commonsense Solutions to America’s Biggest Problems conveys serious issues facing our country (ironically, issues that have gone unresolved since 2000) and unintentionally puts the last eight years with George W. Bush in context.  The author draws examples from his own life, his experience working with the Clinton administration and being the co-founder of a Gen-X grassroots organization that was once 30,000 strong to illustrate then ten most pressing issues (which are actually far worse than they were when Clinton left office) to which he offers radical yet sensible solutions.

It’s almost impossible to not hear many Americans these days, especially liberals, look at the turmoil of the Bush Administration and long for the days when Bubba was in office. Bill Clinton’s Presidency as a result has become romanticized, with Bill’s less noble moments vanishing from public memory.  Written way back in 2000, Nelson frowns on what he considered to be the lame duck Presidency of Bill Clinton (needless to say, this book was published before George W. Bush became President) that failed to serve the Americans of the future.  This eight-year old critique offers a refreshing view of the Clinton Presidency, debunking the existence of the so-called “budget surpluses” of the Clinton years, Clinton’s signing of the Defense of Marriage Act which basically refused to acknowledge gay marriage, and continued air strikes in the Middle East and Africa.

The book focuses on the U.S. national debt, something that is often ignored in the discourse of national politics because it isn’t very well understood.  Most Americans don’t understand why it exists and understand even less how it will absolutely cripple the economy 10, maybe even 20 or 30 years in the future.  The U.S has borrowed trillions of dollars from banks around the world and pay about $300 million a year in interest payments alone.  At the end of the day, all debts must be repaid, Nelson argues, and the leaders of the present have decided America can gleefully live beyond its means, doling out funds to as many special interest groups as possible, and stick future generations with the tab.  As the then-twenty-something Nelson says, he was born at the beginning of the end of the American Dream. (more…)

Never in my lifetime did I imagine I’d ever see a U.S. President of color.  Though I voted for Barack, my sense of cynicism kept whispering to me that the powers that be would never allow such a thing to happen.  I reminded myself constantly of the fiasco of the 2000 Presidential election and braced myself for a repeat in this election, but was shocked to see that Obama was far in the lead in both electoral and popular votes.

In this multiracial, multicultural nation which treats its minorities better than any other nation I could think of (and the Obama Presidency is proof!), I cannot think of a better representative for the United States than this biracial son of a white American woman and a Kenyan man.  It does annoy me a bit when Obama is referred to in the media as “African-American” because I do agree with Debra J. Dickerson’s claim that Barack Obama is not African-American or black.  As a person of mixed race myself, I look up to Obama, who is by no means the stereotypical “tragic mulatto” but rather an American who rarely considers himself anything beyond that. His genetic makeup alone is an inspiration for Americans to acknowledge our nation’s original motto, “E Pluribus Unum” (Latin for “Out of Many, One) and put our differences aside as we pick up the pieces of our divided nation shattered by partisan squabbling. (more…)