Tag: tyranny

Of Two Minds: What’s Behind the Global Erosion of Civil Liberties, Privacy and Property Rights?Of Two Minds:

Charles Hugh Smith at Of Two Minds blog writes What’s Behind the Global Erosion of Civil Liberties, Privacy and Property Rights?

Hierarchical power structures like city-states arose as problem-solving solutions, not just for the elites who benefited from the concentration of wealth and power but for the citizenry. This dynamic underpins the analysis presented in my recent book Global Crisis, National Renewal: when nation-states and global hierarchies no longer solve the key problems of their populaces, they dissolve and are replaced by some new arrangement.

It’s easy to see how hierarchies benefit the leaders / elites at the top, but there’s always a trade-off to the populace ceding power/control to elites: we will cede control over our lives in exchange for benefits we cannot gain by ourselves, starting with security from invasion and starvation, i.e. the existential threats posed by Nature and other human organizations.

Over time, as energy surpluses and knowledge increased, city-states aggregated into nation-states and empires. These larger organizations were able to solve problems on a larger scale than city-states.

When these entities could no longer solve existential problems (surpluses diminished, elites failed to provide successful leadership, etc.), they eroded and then collapsed, and were replaced with some other more successful organizational arrangement.

Over time, the citizenry of some regions began expanding the benefits nation-states and their elites were expected to provide in exchange for power: the state was expected to secure the rights to individuals’ property and various civil liberties relating to the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, freedom of worship, and having a say in national decisions.

Globally, these basic human rights are being eroded by state-elite over-reach and consolidation of power beyond what the citizenry agreed upon. For example, the citizenry ceded power to the state to protect individuals’ privacy from the surveillance and information-gathering of both the state and private interests.

As Richard Bonugli and I discuss in our podcast on Eroding Civil Liberties and Property Rights, these privacy statutes are still on the books but they are routinely disregarded by both state agencies and private-sector interests with little functional enforcement by state agencies tasked with protecting the citizens’ rights to privacy.

Big Tech routinely harvests private data for profit with little oversight, state agencies collect private data beyond their mandated scope and mobile phones gather private information which others manage to collect or access.

Property rights are also being eroded.Civil forfeiture enables local and national governments to expropriate individuals’ private property without due process, in effect declaring them guilty and effecting punishment (taking their money/property) and then forcing them to prove their innocence via a lengthy, costly, Kafkaesque process.

War by other means now includes sanctions and expropriation of individuals’ assets, not just the assets of other states or state entities (central banks, state-owned corporations, etc.)

What is driving this global erosion of the most basic civil liberties and property rights? As I describe in my book Resistance, Revolution, Liberation, all states share the same ontology, which is to respond to any threats or challenges by increasing their reach and control.

In other words, all states share the same teleological Prime Directive: always expand the state’s control and power. No state has the institutional memory or means to reduce the state’s reach, control or power.

The only limit on state expansion is the citizenry’s resistance to the loss of civil liberties, property rights and having a say in decisions which affect the entire citizenry. If the citizenry do nothing to protect their rights as individuals and communities, the state will nibble away at these until they exist only in name, not in the real world.

The first essential step is to recognize the erosion as real and consequential. Richard and I do our best to further this in our podcast Charles Hugh Smith on Eroding Civil Liberties and Property Rights (31:35 min).

The second essential step is to recognize how the spectacles of “news” and entertainment distract our attention from this erosion of basic rights. Before we know it, we’re in prisons without bars and grateful to get a questionnaire about how we like the torture (i.e. the “entertainment”)…(continues with pictures and more links)

Decentralized Legal System: War on Crypto Privacy Intensifies

The Decentralized Legal System recently wrote an article titled: The War on Crypto Privacy Intensifies. Automatic Reporting of All Trades and Transactions Soon Mandatory.

Massive overreach of international regulators to force all service providers in the industry to:

  • Record ALL crypto trades on exchanges, DEFI and DEXs;
  • Record (large) purchases from private wallets;
  • Record all transfers to cold storage and make lists with private wallet addresses;
  • Send all this info annually to the (tax) authorities;
  • And finally, force governments to pass these rules into domestic law.

The war on privacy continues. The aim: to tackle anonymous spending and exchanging of crypto.

As you’ll discover, these new regulations force upon us a system of complete surveillance and control.

This report explains exactly what to expect from the latest developments launched in October 2022…

What is Going On?

​ Last year, the crypto world was shaken to its core when the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), acting in behalf of the G20, released their guidance on virtual assets.1)

This document laid out a set of rules regarding stablecoins, distinctions between private and hosted wallets, extensive KYC requirements, the tackling of privacy tools, and more.2) FATF has also provided a final definition of the type of service provider tasked with reporting on crypto: the Virtual Asset Service Provider.

Fast forward to today, and these rules are quickly being implemented across the world.3) But as usual, it didn’t stop there. Another international regulator, the OECD, is already building on this framework in an attempt to massively increase the grip of authorities on crypo.
​

What is the OECD?

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is a Paris-based international organisation that works to “build better policies for better lives.” Its goal is to shape policies that foster prosperity, equality, opportunity and well-being for all.4)

Together with governments, policy makers and citizens, the OECD works on finding solutions to a range of social, economic and environmental challenges. From improving economic performance and creating jobs, to fostering strong education and fighting international tax evasion. The organisation provides a unique forum and knowledge hub within which to discuss and develop public policies and international standard setting.5)

This “international standard” setting is what we will look at next.

Automated Exchange of Financial Information with Authorities Since 2014

In 2014, the OECD published the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters.6) This publication created a “Common Reporting Standard” (CRS), which forces financial institutions to automatically exchange account information with the authorities of the country of residence of their account holders. The goal: to prevent persons from holding financial accounts in offshore jurisdictions and not reporting them back home.

This is why all financial service providers request utility bills: they prove where you live, and hence where they have to report to.

All financial institutions that are subjected to these regulations are forced to automatically report to the authorities the name, address, Tax Identification Number(s), date and place of birth, the account number, and the account value as of the end of the relevant calendar year (or other appropriate reporting period).7)

Now, there is no more hiding of accounts held with a foreign financial institutions. The authorities enlisted all financial institutions as involuntary (but powerful) assistants in collecting facts and evidence needed for tax compliance.

The Panama Papers; Just in Time to Boost Worldwide Implementation of Automated Reporting…

After publishing their standards in 2014, the OECD needed to get countries and their financial institutions in line. By August 2015, the OECD had released the first version of a CRS Implementation Handbook.8) It provided practical guidance to assist government officials and financial institutions in implementing CRS.

But while the standards set by the OECD came into force in 2016 in early-adopting states, by March of that year these standards were still far from being fully integrated into the global financial system.9) This was especially true in the offshore jurisdictions that were the main target. What was needed was a shift in conscience…

On April 3rd, 2016, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published a giant leak of offshore financial records, better known as the Panama Papers.10) These revelations caused public outrage.

The G5, the five largest Western European countries, were quick to jump on the bandwagon and call for more international cooperation to tackle “tax dodging and illicit finance.”11) The message did not fall on deaf ears; the next day, on April 15th, G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors met in Washington and issued the following Communiqué:

“…we call on all relevant countries including all financial centers and jurisdictions, which have not committed to implement the standard on automatic exchange of information by 2017 or 2018 to do so without delay and to sign the Multilateral Convention. We expect that by the 2017 G20 Summit all countries and jurisdictions will upgrade their Global Forum rating to a satisfactory level. We mandate the OECD working with G20 countries to establish objective criteria by our July meeting to identify non-cooperative jurisdictions with respect to tax transparency. Defensive measures will be considered by G20 members against non-cooperative jurisdictions if progress as assessed by the Global Forum is not made.”12)

Thus, within 12 days of the publication of the Panama Papers, the world’s 20 most powerful governments had collectively agreed to start pushing CRS reporting requirements aggressively, and to punish non-cooperative (offshore) jurisdictions—regardless of their local laws.

This is how offshore finance was brought into the fold, and financial privacy died.

Why Can the OECD Regulate Financial Institutions Around the World? Isn’t this a Task of Democracy?

The OECD isn’t a government agency of any individual country. As such, it cannot create law. It issues what is known as “soft laws,” or “recommendations” and “guidance.” Only when this guidance is transposed into the laws of individual countries does it becomes “hard” law, with real world power.

In theory, this process is subjected to the formal (democratic) law-making processes of the implementing countries. However, countries that don’t participate face restricted access to the financial system and ostracism from the international community. For this reason, almost all nations are compelled to implement these recommendations.

It must also be said that national governments, especially in the Western world, highly value this kind of international cooperation, and the control it gives them without the need to deal with the “inconveniences” of democracy. They simply hide behind the fact that these are “international standards” which they have to follow because “everybody” does.

Neither does it help that few of our representatives, journalists and fellow citizens seem to understand the impact of these treaties. Those in the legal industry who do understand the implications just look at it as “business as usual” and a new way to generate income. As such, most standards are passed into domestic law with little opposition or delay.

International Standards Aim to Supersede National Law

Once these treaties are accepted, they become part of a body of law called “international law,” which in many cases supersedes national laws. Unknown to the general public, international law is increasingly being used as a backdoor for passing invasive regulations such as those we are discussing here, and establishing a global bureaucracy with real power over our (financial) lives.

It is also worth noting that the people working for this Paris-based institution have not been elected, their procedures and budget are not subjected to democratic oversight, and they are almost impossible to remove from power.

Like most international organizations, their operations fall under the Vienna Conference on Diplomatic Intercourse and Immunities.13) As such, they enjoy immunity for their actions taken whilst in office, are exempt from administrative burdens (such as taxes and fines), and enjoy less stringent (COVID) travel restrictions.

AUTOMATIC Exchange of Transaction Info For Crypto

Last October 10th, the OECD published the “Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework and Amendments to the Common Reporting Standard.”14) This applies the tax reporting guidance of the existing CRS to crypto―and makes it FAR more invasive…

The OECD first published a public consultation version of the document on 22nd March 2022.15) The deadline for feedback from the public was 29th April 2022. This gave the public just over a month to analyze a 101-page document, figure out what it meant for them and their clients in multiple jurisdictions, and formulate a public statement on company letterhead.

This is not a sign that the OECD takes public input seriously. When comparing the two documents, there is no material difference between the public consultation and the final version in the section that matters most, the actual rules…16)

Public consultations give these recommendations the appearance of being widely supported by “stakeholders.” It creates the illusion that the public has a say in the matter. It doesn’t. When you read the questions carefully, they only seek feedback on details, such as which intermediaries are to be included or excluded, which type of NFTs are to be in scope, what reporting thresholds there should be, and how much time should be reserved for implementation.17)

Furthermore, if you read the commentaries submitted, which can be downloaded here, most respondents just talk their own book, trying to elicit amendments that perhaps exempt them from a specific reporting requirement, or trying to get a longer time-frame for implementation. In all fairness, there were also a number of industry insiders who highlighted the double standards created for the crypto industry, and how much of a burden the regulations would represent. In the end, none of this mattered. The regulations have been published and are now the new worldwide standard…(article continues, click here)

FEE: Why Adam Smith Said ‘Virtue Is More to Be Feared Than Vice’FEE:

Today’s article comes from the Foundation for Economic Education, Why Adam Smith Said ‘Virtue Is More to Be Feared Than Vice’. Those who seek to impose their version of virtue on others, will do so viciously and unconstrained by their conscience, because they believe they are morally correct.

The use of force in society is one of the most important issues governments must address. Unfortunately, they often get it wrong—and Smith understood why.

ally, a coworker, walked into my office one day and announced that he’d discovered the answer to the world’s problems. And it was all so simple. People just needed to act with wisdom. If everyone acted with wisdom, then crime, poverty, and war would disappear. I agreed and asked how he would achieve this miracle. I expected some elaborate plan, but it turned out that that “acting with wisdom” was the sum total of Wally’s insight. In response to every question, he only repeated that people should act with wisdom.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a world-famous astrophysicist, but his plan for solving the world’s problems is neither more scientific nor less threadbare than Wally’s. Tyson proposes the world of “Rationalia,” a virtual utopia in which everyone will act with reason.

Socialists have a similar solution to the world’s problems. In their utopia, people will all act, not with wisdom or reason, but with altruism. Unlike either Wally or Tyson, though, they have proposed various plans for bringing this about—all of which boil down to some variation of: (1) burn it all down and a perfect world will spontaneously arise from society’s ashes, (2) force everyone to act benevolently until so acting becomes natural, or (3) create a fair and equal society in which material goods are distributed uniformly, thus eliminating all greed and envy and, along with them, any motivation for violence and crime.

Each socialist scheme relies on force, or the threat of force, wielded by omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent dictators. But could such a society, which necessarily sacrifices justice for altruism, survive?

A reading of Adam Smith’s book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, suggests not.

Smith’s concept of justice was based on securing people from injury by others. That is, protecting people from assaults on their persons, property, and agreements. To Smith, acting justly consisted largely of refraining from injuring others. He believed that a society’s fundamental reason for existence was to provide this level of justice. Further, he argued, any society that fails in this basic duty will itself fail. In his book, Smith wrote: “Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it.”

Unfortunately, securing the peace often requires force. But using force is just when it is done to oppose injustice—that is, when it is used in response to the initiation of force. While governments cannot hope to establish perfect justice, they can provide sufficient security to allow people to live their lives and to flourish.

What no government is competent to do, however, is to ensure that its citizens act wisely, rationally, or altruistically. Doing so would require using force—not to prevent people from harming others, but to compel them to behave in ways that the government determines to be proper. Force so employed leads to socially destructive injustice.

First, someone’s idea of what is altruistic (or wise or rational) must be imposed on everyone. A recent example is Biden’s executive order forgiving hundreds of millions of dollars in federal student loans. Was his action altruistic? It appears so if our focus is fixed on only the students who benefit from the President’s order. It seems less so if we broaden our focus and our time horizon to include those who must pay for the loans and those who will be hurt in the future by the perverse incentives that his order will create. Universities, for example, will be emboldened to hike tuition and even more students will borrow money that they are unlikely to be able to repay.

In short, whatever policy is chosen in the name of morality, some will see it as immoral, and they will bitterly resent being forced to support it.

Second, a policy that the central authority deems altruistic must be implemented and paid for by people who may oppose it or the way it is implemented. They must be compelled—by force if necessary—to comply with the policy and they must be prevented from subverting it. If “subversion” is construed to include “fomenting social discord” by public criticism, then the central authority may limit free speech and freedom of the press. If pastors question the policy’s morality, the central authority might also limit religious freedoms.

Third, the policy may produce unintended consequences that create more injustices. How will the central authority respond? Will it suppress knowledge of the consequences to prevent discord and, potentially, loss of its legitimacy or power? Will it respond with another layer of coercive policies and, if so, how will it enforce them and what will it do if more unintended consequences result?

Finally, as Smith observed, “Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.” Those attempting to impose virtue—or, at least, their idea of it—tend to deal viciously with dissidents who, because they oppose “virtue,” are, by definition, evil.

“Hell,” Michael Novak once said, “is what happens when you pursue heaven-on-earth.”

Force used to prevent or redress assaults on persons and property is legitimate; force used to coerce “benevolence” is not. Force is, ultimately, the only hammer in a government’s toolkit and it should be used only on what is achievable and, even then, only sparingly.

Governments can reasonably aspire to deliver Adam Smith’s formula for prosperity: “Peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” In attempting to provide what it cannot, government will destroy its ability to provide what it can.

Organic Prepper: Yes, There IS a Domestic Threat in America. It’s Our Own Government

Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper talks about the disturbing things being said in the halls of government in Yes, There IS a Domestic Threat in America. It’s Our Own Government

The federal government loves labeling folks who think differently from them as domestic terrorists. We’ve seen it multiple times over the years and this name-calling has picked up recently.

The flames are being fanned.

There was Joe Biden’s speech casting Trump supporters as villains.  The attacks on dissent are nearly constant. Celebrities are being praised on outlets beloved by millions of young people for walking away from their own families over politics.

Everything is meant to be divisive, to cause even more internal strife in America before the midterm elections by painting approximately half of the country as the enemy. No longer are differing opinions a constitutionally protected right – they’re practically criminal and seen as a reason for hatred.

And now, there’s a vile comparison to 9/11.

Regardless of what you believe happened on September 11th, I think we can all agree that it wasn’t a bunch of Trump voters hijacking planes.

More recently, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, compared those who participated in the events on January 6th to the people responsible for the devastating attacks on September 11th.

On Face the Nation, Warner said:

“I remember, as most Americans do, where they were on 9/11. I was in the middle of a political campaign and suddenly, the differences with my opponent seem very small in comparison and our country came together. And in many ways, we defeated the terrorists because of the resilience of the American public because of our intelligence community, and we are safer, better prepared…

…The stunning thing to me is here we are 20 years later, and the attack on the symbol of our democracy was not coming from terrorists, but it came from literally insurgents attacking the Capitol on January 6th.”

This is deliberately orchestrated to make coming together as a nation impossible.

So who is the real threat?

Who’s actually the threat right now? Is it your neighbor with the lawn sign for an opposing candidate, out there watering her roses in the late summer drought? Is it your obnoxious uncle who makes every family get-together unpleasant by voicing opinions you’d rather not hear?

Or is it someone else? Here’s what Tulsi Gabbard had to say about it.

I think Gabbard is right. The biggest threat to our country right now is the politicians and public figures telling us how much we should hate and fear each other. In this article, Selco talks about being bombarded with fear and hate right before the Balkan War. Are we being any less manipulated by our own media today?

We need to stand up and refuse to be manipulated like this. We need to find common ground with our fellow Americans again, because divided like this, we’re sure to fall.

But what do you think?

Who are the people actually causing our country to stagger under the weight of hatred? Why can’t we all just agree to disagree like we used to? What would it take for us to unite again as a nation?

American Thinker: Biden’s Hateful Rhetoric Against Americans Presents Sterling Opportunity

The Democratic party has been engaging for many years now in a purge of conservatives in the media, the military, and in academia. Last week President Biden, in a surreal speech, expanded the purge to the citizenry who dare to have opposing viewpoints, especially calling out Republicans who want to make America great again claiming that they are an extremist threat to the foundations of the republic. In this article from American Thinker, the author says it is an opportunity for conservative voices.

Whenever political leaders lose all political capital due to their misgovernance and have no real issues to base their campaign on, they often resort to focusing on the symbolic — usually referring to “the soul of the nation.”

This happened before in the U.S., it happened in India, it happened in the U.K. and it happened again in the U.S.

This is most typical of the left.

Instead of being humble and conceding their mistakes, they attack voters for thinking of voting against them while overlooking the myriad catastrophes they presided over.

They often blame their opponents for what they are guilty of — bigotry, violence — and then end with the “soul” plea.

Biden delivered his “soul” speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The manner of delivery was unhinged; he frequently waved his fists aggressively.  His voice was hoarse, perhaps owing to recent bouts with COVID-19, giving the speech a scornful tone. 

Biden spoke flanked by uniformed Marines, while his backdrop was bathed in blood-red hues making it look ominously like a hellscape.


Twitter video screen grab.

His speech was a sequel to his recent addresses, where he claimed that he doesn’t respect MAGA Republicans and that MAGA philosophy is like “semi-fascism.”

Biden called for Americans to “unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy regardless of your ideology.”

But Biden added a caveat that this doesn’t apply to “MAGA forces” — i.e., all those scores of millions who voted for and intend to vote for MAGA candidates.

Biden said that “too much of what’s happening in our country today isn’t normal.”

Biden is right here, but the blame for this lies on him.

Never before have government institutions been hijacked and misused to target political opponents.

Never before has a virus been misused to impose lockdowns that infringe on the right to freedom of movement and the right to earn a living.

Never before have vaccines been mandated, causing people to be fired from their jobs or suffer from health issues.

Never before has the U.S. government demonized its own citizens, calling them domestic terrorists.

Never before has the U.S. government set up a “Disinformation Governance Board” that sits in judgment of the utterances of citizens.

Never before has the U.S. been subjected to prolonged disinformation campaigns, the Russian collusion hoax, the Ukraine call hoax, and now the insurrection hoax.

Never before has the U.S. had a president whose cognitive abilities are so impaired that he struggles to read off a teleprompter and causes citizens to wonder who is in charge.

Biden continues by claiming that the Republican Party is “dominated, driven, intimidated by Donald Trump” and his supporters, calling it “a threat to this country” because “they refuse to accept the results of a free election.”

Perhaps Biden forgot the Russian collusion hoax concocted by the Democrats that baselessly attempted to delegitimize the results of the 2016 presidential election.  It was the Democrats who refused to accept the results of a free election.

Perhaps Biden forgot that big media and Big Tech suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop scandal prior to the 2020 election.  A recent poll shows that nearly four of five Americans believe that “truthful” coverage would have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Perhaps Biden forgot about Mark Zuckerberg spending $419 million to infiltrate sacrosanct electoral infrastructure of the 2020 elections and push for mail-in voting.

Perhaps Biden forgot that 69% of voters nationwide cast their ballot non-traditionally — i.e., by mail and/or before Election Day for the 2020 election.  Mail votes are highly vulnerable to fraud.

Biden also alleged that the “MAGA forces” are aligned with white supremacists, violent extremists, and other undesirables.

Perhaps Biden forgot violent Democrat extremists threatening Supreme Court justices and vandalizing Catholic churches, pregnancy centers, and the offices of pro-life groups.  There was an assassination plot against Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Biden also accused “MAGA Republicans” of seeing a country consumed in “darkness.”

Perhaps Biden forgot that his misgovernance is the sole cause of darkness.

The open borders have caused an influx of illegal aliens, some of whom are violent criminals.  More than 4.9 million illegal migrants have crossed the southern border. 

The smuggling of illicit drugs across the border is a regular occurrence.  There were an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the United States during the 12-month period ending in April 2021, an increase of 28.5% during the same period the year before.

Inflation is at a very high 8.5 percent, causing the price of essential items to skyrocket.  The price of fuels continues to be high.

The crime wave is ravaging the nation, and Democrat judges refuse to prosecute misdemeanors such as drug possession, driving offenses, disturbing the peace, shoplifting, larceny, domestic violence, etc.

None of the Biden-backed initiatives such as the Inflation Reduction Act or the infrastructure bill or his climate initiative or pardoning student loans will reduce people’s suffering.  In fact, wasteful spending will make inflation worse. 

Biden’s “gun safety” red flag laws allow instant confiscation of guns on mere suspicion.  This endangers lives, especially considering the crime wave.

Thus, not only has Biden taken the nation into darkness, but his misgovernance will blacken the darkness even further.

Biden perfunctorily claimed that “not every Republican, not even a majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans; not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.”

If that were indeed the case, and the MAGA movement were just a small minority, why did Biden base his entire speech on an insignificant minority?

This was an attempt to distinguish between the Good Republicans (Lincoln Project, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and company) versus the Bad Republicans (Trump and the MAGA GOP).  The truth is the “Good Republicans” are useful idiots, who will instantly become bad if they dare to run against Democrats.

Most Americans disapprove of Biden; that number is likely to rise after his hateful rhetoric.

The purpose of the address was to demonize, dehumanize, and otherize Donald Trump and his supporters, which would justify any kind of persecution by government agencies.

This also creates grounds for the Democrats to reject the outcome of the midterms should the GOP, particularly the MAGA GOP, win by a landslide.  They could claim to stand against fascist forces.  The Democrats have broken every immutable norm in recent times; they already attempted to overthrow the 2016 election; they could very well do this for the midterms.

But there is a silver lining.

Despite claims that the speech would be apolitical, Biden delivered a campaign speech.  However, it wasn’t for the Democrats.  It was instead for the Republicans and Donald Trump.

Even personnel from Democrats’ mouthpieces such as CNN and the Daily Beast weren’t impressed…(continues)

Tenth Amendment Center: Resistance is Crucial to the Advancement of Liberty

Resistance is crucial to liberty.

In Resistance is Crucial to the Advancement of Liberty, the Tenth Amendment Center discusses the importance of resisting the consolidation of power in government. Consolidation of power is the most destructive danger to liberty. In the United States, the Constitution separated federal power into three branches – the legislative, executive, and judicial – and much power was left to the individual states. Resisting that consolidation is the most important thing a citizen can do to preserve liberty, and the government knows it. The government is so frightened of resistance that they recently declared the electrical symbol for resistance shown above a domestic terrorism symbol, because it fears any threat to the consolidation of power.

As is now obvious to the open-eyed observer, the federal government has absorbed most of the state power and the distinctions between branches are becoming more and more blurry. The various federal administrative agencies are ostensibly part of the executive branch, but watching the previous administration fight with congress over control of the agencies shows just how blurred the lines have become. Congress delegates most lawmaking to these administrative agencies in order to dodge responsibility for laws, and the executive has little control over the agencies actions or even over who heads the agencies.

Additionally, the recent talk about expanding the Supreme Court and limiting the current life tenure of justices to some shorter period, is an attempt not just to politicize the court but to bring it under the sway of both the Congress and national political parties. What better way to control the justices than to control their future job prospects? A limited term justice must find a job after leaving the bench, and it today’s environment of blacklisting, boycotting, and otherwise threatening political opponents, a former justice will have to have toed the party line or otherwise ingratiated themselves with powerful figures in order to get that coveted professorship or corporate law position.

While there are definitely cracks in the federal edifice and signs of failure and opposition, there’s no telling how powerful or destructive the federal government may become before falling apart.

Patrick Henry told us that “government is no more than a choice among evils.”

Thomas Paine held the same view. In Common Sense, he wrote, “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”

What makes government become intolerable?

Consolidation.

That was the term the founding generation used to describe a centralized government with vast power and control – the kind of government we have today.

During the Virginia Ratifying Convention, Patrick Henry warned against consolidation.

“Dangers are to be apprehended in whatever manner we proceed; but those of a consolidation are the most destructive.” [Emphasis added]

He went on to predict that consolidation would, “end in the destruction of our liberties.”

History proved Henry correct.

If consolidation ends in the destruction of our liberties, the key to regaining liberty is “un-consolidation,” or to use an actual word — decentralization.

Political decentralization devolves and distributes political power. This promotes competition in the political marketplace, with various jurisdictions opposing and checking growing power in others.

Most people intuitively understand the problems inherent in economic monopolies. With no competition, a monopolist can easily abuse its customers. It can limit selection. It can raise prices. It can get away with crappy customer service.

Now, think of the federal government as a monopoly. Because that’s exactly what it is.

We need to break the monopoly if we want to regain liberty. We need to decentralize, disperse and minimize political power in order to shrink government to, as Paine put it, “its best state … a necessary evil.”

This strategy requires letting go of centralized political power. That includes resisting the temptation to try to wrest control of the overreaching consolidated government and impose liberty from on high.

This is a difficult concept to grasp in an American political culture that operates almost exclusively through the consolidated government in Washington D.C. People always tend to think in terms of grabbing and wielding political power. This will always fail because political power is the problem.

But a lot of people argue that you need political power to force decentralization. As one person put it, “The great paradox is that in order to diffuse power, you must first acquire it.”

This is wrong.

The paradox is that forcing a diffusion of power is actually a centralization of power. In order to diffuse power, you must first resist it.

Lysander Spooner nailed it on resistance.

“The right of the people, therefore, to resist an unconstitutional law, is absolute and unqualified, from the moment the law is enacted.”

He called resistance “a constitutional right.”

“And the exercise of the right is neither rebellion against the constitution, nor revolution—it is a maintenance of the constitution itself, by keeping the government within the constitution.”

At the Tenth Amendment Center, we talk a lot about resisting overreaching federal power through state and local action. This leads people to believe they have to consolidate power at the state or local level. Having political allies in state and local government certainly helps, but it’s not necessary. And it’s certainly not the first step.

It starts with people resisting.

Think about the nullification of federal marijuana prohibition. Before California legalized medical marijuana in 1996, there were a lot of people who were willing to violate the “law” and use cannabis anyway. It was that groundswell of resistance that led to political changes at the state level. Rosa Parks offers another example. Her willingness to say, “No!” to an unjust law sparked more widespread resistance that eventually led to political change.

Necessity forced the American colonist to adopt a strategy of resistance. They had no political power – and there was no way they were ever going to gain any in faraway London. They had two choices – resist or submit.

They chose to resist.

The Sugar Act in 1764 sparked resistance and it ramped up significantly with the passage of the Stamp Act in March 1765.

The Stamp Act required all official documents in the colonies to be printed on special stamped paper. This included all commercial and legal documents, newspapers, pamphlets, and even playing cards. As historian Dave Benner explained in his article on the Stamp Act,  the standard American position held that the act violated the bounds of the British constitutional system. Objecting to the notion that Parliament was supreme, and could impose whatever binding legislation it wished upon the colonies, the colonies instead adopted the rigid stance that colonists could only be taxed by their local assemblies. They claimed this principle stretched all the way back to 1215 and the Magna Carta.

Resistance started with protests. Patrick Henry drafted a series of resolutions. In the seventh, He asserted, “the Inhabitants of this Colony, are not bound to yield Obedience to any Law or Ordinance whatever,” outside of those passed by the colonial assemblies.

John Dickinson wrote, “IF you comply with the Act by using Stamped Papers, you fix, you rivet perpetual Chains upon your unhappy Country. You unnecessarily, voluntarily establish the detestable Precedent, which those who have forged your Fetters ardently wish for, to varnish the future Exercise of this new claimed Authority.”

John Hancock was perhaps most emphatic, declaring, “The people of this country will never be made slaves of by a submission to the damned act.”

They didn’t.

Patriots throughout the 13 colonists blocked the distribution of stamped paper, forced stamp agents to resign, and effectively made that act impossible to enforce. Ultimately, mass resistance and noncompliance forced Parliament to repeal the hated law.

Historian Dave Benner summed up colonial resistance this way.

“Rather than hoping the next election will produce preferable results or waiting for the courts to weigh in on controversial law, the patriots took a fierce stand against an odious law. In doing so, they inspired tireless masses to their cause, brought about a reversal of policy without representation in Parliament, and changed the world as we know it.”

The problem is this strategy is scary, hard, and often requires sacrifice. Many people felt the heavy hand of the law in the early days of the movement to nullify marijuana prohibition. Rosa Parks went to jail. And the British ultimately drug American colonists into a war.

On the other hand, politics is relatively easy. You just gain power and then impose your will. But this is the antithesis of liberty. And at some point, the political pendulum will swing away from you as it always does and people you hate will control that power.

There is no easy path to liberty. As Thomas Paine wrote, “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”

Project Veritas: Leaked FBI Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide

Historic Gadsden Flag

Project Veritas has published an FBI memo titled Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide which purports to show the symbols of anti-government and anti-authority violent extremists. Unfortunately it shows a plethora of very common symbols, including anything referencing the Second Amendment of the US Constitution and the historic Gadsden flag.

FBI Whistleblower LEAKS Bureau’s ‘Domestic Terrorism Symbols Guide’ on ‘Militia Violent Extremists’ Citing Ashli Babbitt as MVE Martyr

Project Veritas released a newly leaked document today provided by an FBI whistleblower, which shows how the Bureau classifies American citizens it deems to be potential “Militia Violent Extremists” [MVEs].

In the document, the FBI cites symbols, images, phrases, events, and individuals that agents should look out for when identifying alleged domestic terrorists.

The “Unclassified/Law Enforcement Sensitive” document says it is for “FBI Internal Use Only.”

Of note, under the “Symbols” section, is a prominent citation of the Second Amendment, where it explains that “MVEs justify their existence with the Second Amendment, due to the mention of a ‘well regulated Militia,’ as well as the right to bear arms.”

Right below that, under the “Commonly Referenced Historical Imagery and Quotes” section, Revolutionary War images such as the Gadsden Flag and the Betsy Ross Flag are listed. Each flag displayed in the document comes with a brief description of what it means.

Under the “Common Phrases and References” section of the leaked document, Ashli Babbitt is cited as a person that MVEs consider to be a Martyr.

The same document also refers to Ruby Ridge, Waco, and even Timothy McVeigh, tying in traditional American ideas and symbols with radical and/or violent events in the past.

Rutherford Institute: Declare Your Independence from Tyranny, America

Just in time for Independence Day weekend, attorney John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute writes Declare Your Independence from Tyranny, America.

Imagine living in a country where armed soldiers crash through doors to arrest and imprison citizens merely for criticizing government officials.

Imagine that in this very same country, you’re watched all the time, and if you look even a little bit suspicious, the police stop and frisk you or pull you over to search you on the off chance you’re doing something illegal.

Keep in mind that if you have a firearm of any kind (or anything that resembled a firearm) while in this country, it may get you arrested and, in some circumstances, shot by police.

If you’re thinking this sounds like America today, you wouldn’t be far wrong.

However, the scenario described above took place more than 200 years ago, when American colonists suffered under Great Britain’s version of an early police state. It was only when the colonists finally got fed up with being silenced, censored, searched, frisked, threatened, and arrested that they finally revolted against the tyrant’s fetters.

No document better states their grievances than the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson.

A document seething with outrage over a government which had betrayed its citizens, the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, by 56 men who laid everything on the line, pledged it all—“our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor”—because they believed in a radical idea: that all people are created to be free.

Labeled traitors, these men were charged with treason, a crime punishable by death. For some, their acts of rebellion would cost them their homes and their fortunes. For others, it would be the ultimate price—their lives.

Yet even knowing the heavy price they might have to pay, these men dared to speak up when silence could not be tolerated. Even after they had won their independence from Great Britain, these new Americans worked to ensure that the rights they had risked their lives to secure would remain secure for future generations.

The result: our Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

Imagine the shock and outrage these 56 men would feel were they to discover that 246 years later, the government they had risked their lives to create has been transformed into a militaristic police state in which exercising one’s freedoms—at a minimum, merely questioning a government agent—is often viewed as a flagrant act of defiance.

In fact, had the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers extremists or terrorists, resulting in them being placed on a government watch list, targeted for surveillance of their activities and correspondence, and potentially arrested, held indefinitely, stripped of their rights and labeled enemy combatants.

Read the Declaration of Independence again, and ask yourself if the list of complaints tallied by Jefferson don’t bear a startling resemblance to the abuses “we the people” are suffering at the hands of the American police state.

Here’s what the Declaration of Independence might look and sound like if it were written in the modern vernacular:

There comes a time when a populace must stand united and say “enough is enough” to the government’s abuses, even if it means getting rid of the political parties in power.

Believing that “we the people” have a natural and divine right to direct our own lives, here are truths about the power of the people and how we arrived at the decision to sever our ties to the government:

All people are created equal.

All people possess certain innate rights that no government or agency or individual can take away from them. Among these are the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The government’s job is to protect the people’s innate rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The government’s power comes from the will of the people.

Whenever any government abuses its power, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government and replace it with a new government that will respect and protect the rights of the people.

It is not wise to get rid of a government for minor transgressions. In fact, as history has shown, people resist change and are inclined to suffer all manner of abuses to which they have become accustomed.

However, when the people have been subjected to repeated abuses and power grabs, carried out with the purpose of establishing a tyrannical government, people have a right and duty to do away with that tyrannical government and to replace it with a new government that will protect and preserve their innate rights for their future wellbeing.

This is exactly the state of affairs we are under suffering under right now, which is why it is necessary that we change this imperial system of government.

The history of the present Imperial Government is a history of repeated abuses and power grabs, carried out with the intention of establishing absolute tyranny over the country.

To prove this, consider the following:

The government has, through its own negligence and arrogance, refused to adopt urgent and necessary laws for the good of the people.

The government has threatened to hold up critical laws unless the people agree to relinquish their right to be fully represented in the Legislature.

In order to expand its power and bring about compliance with its dictates, the government has made it nearly impossible for the people to make their views and needs heard by their representatives.

The government has repeatedly suppressed protests arising in response to its actions.

The government has obstructed justice by refusing to appoint judges who respect the Constitution and has instead made the courts march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

The government has allowed its agents to harass the people, steal from them, jail them and even execute them.

The government has directed militarized government agents—a.k.a., a standing army—to police domestic affairs in peacetime.

The government has turned the country into a militarized police state.

The government has conspired to undermine the rule of law and the constitution in order to expand its own powers.

The government has allowed its militarized police to invade our homes and inflict violence on homeowners.

The government has failed to hold its agents accountable for wrongdoing and murder under the guise of “qualified immunity.”

The government has jeopardized our international trade agreements.

The government has overtaxed us without our permission.

The government has denied us due process and the right to a fair trial.

The government has engaged in extraordinary rendition.

The government has continued to expand its military empire in collusion with its corporate partners-in-crime and occupy foreign nations.

The government has eroded fundamental legal protections and destabilized the structure of government.

The government has not only declared its federal powers superior to those of the states but has also asserted its sovereign power over the rights of “we the people.”

The government has ceased to protect the people and instead waged domestic war against the people.

The government has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, and destroyed the lives of the people.

The government has employed private contractors and mercenaries to carry out acts of death, desolation and tyranny, totally unworthy of a civilized nation.

The government through its political propaganda has pitted its citizens against each other.

The government has stirred up civil unrest and laid the groundwork for martial law.

Repeatedly, we have asked the government to cease its abuses. Each time, the government has responded with more abuse.

An Imperial Ruler who acts like a tyrant is not fit to govern a free people.

We have repeatedly sounded the alarm to our fellow citizens about the government’s abuses. We have warned them about the government’s power grabs. We have appealed to their sense of justice. We have reminded them of our common bonds.

They have rejected our plea for justice and brotherhood. They are equally at fault for the injustices being carried out by the government.

Thus, for the reasons mentioned above, we the people of the united States of America declare ourselves free from the chains of an abusive government. Relying on God’s protection, we pledge to stand by this Declaration of Independence with our lives, our fortunes and our honor.

In the 246 years since early Americans first declared and eventually won their independence from Great Britain, “we the people” have managed to work ourselves right back under the tyrant’s thumb.

Only this time, the tyrant is one of our own making: the American Police State.

The abuses meted out by an imperial government and endured by the American people have not ended. They have merely evolved.

“We the people” are still being robbed blind by a government of thieves.

We are still being taken advantage of by a government of scoundrels, idiots and monsters.

We are still being locked up by a government of greedy jailers.

We are still being spied on by a government of Peeping Toms.

We are still being ravaged by a government of ruffians, rapists and killers.

We are still being forced to surrender our freedoms—and those of our children—to a government of extortionists, money launderers and corporate pirates.

And we are still being held at gunpoint by a government of soldiers: a standing army in the form of a militarized police.

Given the fact that we are a relatively young nation, it hasn’t taken very long for an authoritarian regime to creep into power.

Unfortunately, the bipartisan coup that laid siege to our nation did not happen overnight.

It snuck in under our radar, hiding behind the guise of national security, the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on immigration, political correctness, hate crimes and a host of other official-sounding programs aimed at expanding the government’s power at the expense of individual freedoms.

The building blocks for the bleak future we’re just now getting a foretaste of—police shootings of unarmed citizens, profit-driven prisons, weapons of compliance, a wall-to-wall surveillance state, pre-crime programs, a suspect society, school-to-prison pipelines, militarized police, overcriminalization, SWAT team raids, endless wars, etc.—were put in place by government officials we trusted to look out for our best interests.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the problems we are facing will not be fixed overnight: that is the grim reality with which we must contend.

Yet that does not mean we should give up or give in or tune out. What we need to do is declare our independence from the tyranny of the American police state.

Rutherford Institute: US Gov. Waging Psychological Warfare on the Nation

John and Nisha Whitehead at the Rutherford Institute writes Everything Is a Weapon: The U.S. Government Is Waging Psychological Warfare on the Nation. One note, when the author talks about cryptocurrency being used for government surveillance, not all cryptocurrencies allow for that kind of tracking. In fact, most cryptocurrencies were designed to provide privacy. On the other hand, cryptocurrencies that are sponsored by the government, banks, or large tech companies are often designed specifically to provide that kind of surveillance and tracking of money.

“Have you ever wondered who’s pulling the strings? … Anything we touch is a weapon. We can deceive, persuade, change, influence, inspire. We come in many forms. We are everywhere.”— U.S. Army Psychological Operations recruitment video

The U.S. government is waging psychological warfare on the American people.

No, this is not a conspiracy theory.

Psychological warfare, according to the Rand Corporation, “involves the planned use of propaganda and other psychological operations to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of opposition groups.”

For years now, the government has been bombarding the citizenry with propaganda campaigns and psychological operations aimed at keeping us compliant, easily controlled and supportive of the police state’s various efforts abroad and domestically.

The government is so confident in its Orwellian powers of manipulation that it’s taken to bragging about them. Just recently, for example, the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, the branch of the military responsible for psychological warfare, released a recruiting video that touts its efforts to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.

This is the danger that lurks in plain sight.

Of the many weapons in the government’s vast arsenal, psychological warfare may be the most devastating in terms of the long-term consequences.

As the military journal Task and Purpose explains, “Psychological warfare is all about influencing governments, people of power, and everyday citizens… PSYOP soldiers’ key missions are to influence ‘emotions, notices, reasoning, and behavior of foreign governments and citizens,’ ‘deliberately deceive’ enemy forces, advise governments, and provide communications for disaster relief and rescue efforts.”

Yet don’t be fooled into thinking these psyops (psychological operations) campaigns are only aimed at foreign enemies. The government has made clear in word and deed that “we the people” are domestic enemies to be targeted, tracked, manipulated, micromanaged, surveilled, viewed as suspects, and treated as if our fundamental rights are mere privileges that can be easily discarded.

Aided and abetted by technological advances and scientific experimentation, the government has been subjecting the American people to “apple-pie propaganda” for the better part of the last century.

Consider some of the ways in which the government continues to wage psychological warfare on a largely unsuspecting citizenry.

Weaponizing violence. With alarming regularity, the nation continues to be subjected to spates of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country’s ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.

Weaponizing surveillance, pre-crime and pre-thought campaigns. Surveillance, digital stalking and the data mining of the American people add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence. When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies. Add pre-crime programs into the mix with government agencies and corporations working in tandem to determine who is a potential danger and spin a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies, and you having the makings for a perfect dystopian nightmare. The government’s war on crime has now veered into the realm of social media and technological entrapment, with government agents adopting fake social media identities and AI-created profile pictures in order to surveil, target and capture potential suspects.

Weaponizing digital currencies, social media scores and censorship. Tech giants, working with the government, have been meting out their own version of social justice by way of digital tyranny and corporate censorship, muzzling whomever they want, whenever they want, on whatever pretext they want in the absence of any real due process, review or appeal. Unfortunately, digital censorship is just the beginning. Digital currencies (which can be used as “a tool for government surveillance of citizens and control over their financial transactions”), combined with social media scores and surveillance capitalism create a litmus test to determine who is worthy enough to be part of society and punish individuals for moral lapses and social transgressions (and reward them for adhering to government-sanctioned behavior). In China, millions of individuals and businesses, blacklisted as “unworthy” based on social media credit scores that grade them based on whether they are “good” citizens, have been banned from accessing financial markets, buying real estate or travelling by air or train.

Weaponizing compliance. Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on COVID-19, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

Weaponizing entertainment. For the past century, the Department of Defense’s Entertainment Media Office has provided Hollywood with equipment, personnel and technical expertise at taxpayer expense. In exchange, the military industrial complex has gotten a starring role in such blockbusters as Top Gun and its rebooted sequel Top Gun: Maverick, which translates to free advertising for the war hawks, recruitment of foot soldiers for the military empire, patriotic fervor by the taxpayers who have to foot the bill for the nation’s endless wars, and Hollywood visionaries working to churn out dystopian thrillers that make the war machine appear relevant, heroic and necessary. As Elmer Davis, a CBS broadcaster who was appointed the head of the Office of War Information, observed, “The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.”

Weaponizing behavioral science and nudging. Apart from the overt dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, there’s also the covert dangers associated with a government empowered to use these same technologies to influence behaviors en masse and control the populace. In fact, it was President Obama who issued an executive order directing federal agencies to use “behavioral science” methods to minimize bureaucracy and influence the way people respond to government programs. It’s a short hop, skip and a jump from a behavioral program that tries to influence how people respond to paperwork to a government program that tries to shape the public’s views about other, more consequential matters. Thus, increasingly, governments around the world—including in the United States—are relying on “nudge units” to steer citizens in the direction the powers-that-be want them to go, while preserving the appearance of free will.

Weaponizing desensitization campaigns aimed at lulling us into a false sense of security. The events of recent years—the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the lockdowns, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers—have conspired to acclimate the populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

Weaponizing fear and paranoia. The language of fear is spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure. Fear, as history shows, is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government and control a populace, dividing the people into factions, and persuading them to see each other as the enemy. This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology and endless wars, hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes. All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.

Weaponizing genetics. Not only does fear grease the wheels of the transition to fascism by cultivating fearful, controlled, pacified, cowed citizens, but it also embeds itself in our very DNA so that we pass on our fear and compliance to our offspring. It’s called epigenetic inheritance, the transmission through DNA of traumatic experiences. For example, neuroscientists observed that fear can travel through generations of mice DNA. As The Washington Post reports, “Studies on humans suggest that children and grandchildren may have felt the epigenetic impact of such traumatic events such as famine, the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

Weaponizing the future. With greater frequency, the government has been issuing warnings about the dire need to prepare for the dystopian future that awaits us. For instance, the Pentagon training video, “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” predicts that by 2030 (coincidentally, the same year that society begins to achieve singularity with the metaverse) the military would be called on to use armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems. What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security. The chilling five-minute training video paints an ominous picture of the future bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots. “We the people” are the have-nots.

The end goal of these mind control campaigns—packaged in the guise of the greater good—is to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in re-shaping the country in the image of a totalitarian police state.

The facts speak for themselves.

Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests, nor is it in any way a friend to freedom.

When the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution, then you no longer have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

What we have is a government of wolves.

Our backs are against the proverbial wall.

“We the people”—who think, who reason, who take a stand, who resist, who demand to be treated with dignity and care, who believe in freedom and justice for all—have become undervalued citizens of a totalitarian state that views people as expendable once they have outgrown their usefulness to the State.

Brace yourselves.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” have become enemies of the Deep State.

The Machine Gun Nest: Biden’s Ghost Gun Rule is Dead on Arrival

The Machine Gun Nest writes about the Biden administration’s latest attempt to strip rights from the American people in Biden’s Ghost Gun Rule is Dead on Arrival Thanks to the 0% Receiver. It has long been recognized in the USA that a person may manufacture a firearm for their personal use with no need for any licensing, registration, or serial numbering. Gun controllers, however, are willfully ignorant on the current laws, historical context, and even the simplest technical understanding of firearms.

Yesterday, President Biden, the Department of Justice, and the ATF announced the details of their new 364-page rule for the redefinition of “frame or receiver.” In doing so, they have decided to attempt an illegal rewrite of the 1968 Gun Control Act. 

If you’ve been paying close attention to headlines the past few weeks, you may have noticed a surge in articles pertaining to “ghost guns.”

The corporate media has been setting up Biden for an easy “win” on guns with this new rule. Likely because of Biden’s low poll numbers headed into the midterms. 

Initially announced in April of 2021, almost a full year later, we’re finally able to see what sort of egregious gun control has been put together for the law-abiding gun owner. 

The rule stems from the gun control lobby’s obsession with home-built firearms. The problem here, though, is that to regulate privately made firearms, or “PMFs” as they’re defined in the new rule, the ATF had to cast an extremely wide legal net. 

In the 364-page rule, we can see that the Biden admin intends to ban “ghost guns” by creating a new class of highly regulated items by redefining the term “firearm” to include parts and collections of parts that the ATF now considers to be “readily” convertible into functional firearms. 

The example used in the press conference was a Polymer80 kit, which quickly sold out of all available models after the announcement of the rule change. 

It’s important to note that from what we can tell from the rule change and the opinion of others in the know, this rule does not ban possession of firearms made from 80% kits. It also does not mandate the serialization of those already made firearms or 3D printed items for personal use. What it does do is require the serialization of 80% kits that are in possession of Federal Firearms Licensees (also known as FFLs) and manufacturers. It’s interesting because the expected outcome of this rule, as Biden pitched, was the complete and absolute ban of “ghost guns” altogether. 

In addition, ATF has commanded Federal Firearms Licensees to hold 4473 records on-site indefinitely. This small change may go unnoticed by many, but this is a significant step towards a legitimate registry. This action shouldn’t surprise many gun owners, who already know that these rule changes are not about saving lives; they’re only about the consolidation of power.

Firearms Policy Coalition had this to say: 

“Far from “clarifying” anything, the rulemaking tortures simple terms from law into multi-part definitions, with newly injected sub-terms like “readily” having their own lengthy definitions. This is clearly an attempt to sidestep Congress, as Biden even indicated in his remarks today.”

Here’s the irony of the situation, though. Regardless of how overly complex it is or how wide a legal net the ATF decides to cast, this rule change will have little to no effect. 

That’s because of the 0% Receiver. 

In response to the announcement of the Biden Admin’s proposed rule change, Defense Distributed decided to shift its focus to the creation of 0% receivers. 

Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed had this to say about the new rule:

“The receiver rule is an illegal attempt to rewrite the GCA outside of Congress. Nevertheless, Ghost Gunner anticipated this maneuver and is now shipping Zero Percent receivers which perfectly defeat the rule from day one. Americans will always be able to build firearms in the privacy of their homes.”

This rule change has caused a surge in demand for Defense Distributed’s Ghost Gunner 3. The Ghost Gunner is a small CNC Machine that users can insert a bar of aluminum, press a button, and after the machine mills out the metal, have a completely legal, privately made, non-serialized firearm frame ready to go. 

Because all the Ghost Gunner 3 needs is a block of aluminum to produce the firearm frame, the Biden Admin & ATF would need to regulate blocks of aluminum to stop people from producing privately made firearms. While the DOJ may be able to convince a judge that an 80% lower is likely to be made into a gun, a block of aluminum is a much harder sell. 

The same can be said for 3D printing. Are we to assume that PLA plastic is to be regulated as a firearm? 

Because gun control has a hard time passing in the legislative branch (even with all three branches of government controlled by democrats currently), the Biden admin has resorted to governing by executive fiat, using the executive branch to pass new “regulations” using existing law. 

As of right now, the rule change has 120 days to take effect after it hits the federal register. Many groups such as Gun Owners of America & Firearms Policy Coalition have already announced their intent to sue the Federal Government over these new rule changes.

Mises Wire: The State – It’s Oligarchs All the Way Down

It’s turtles all the way down.

There is an old saying about the world resting on top of a giant world tortoise, and a question about what the holds up the tortoise with the answer being “It’s turtles all the way down.” In this article from the Mises Institute, Professor Jason Morgan of Reitaku University in Kashiwa, Japan, writes about government as a hierarchy of oligarchs in The State – It’s Oligarchs All the Way Down.

The standard history of post-Soviet Russia goes something like this. During the Soviet era, there were no real prices because of the Communists’ incessant, blanket meddling in economic activity. Nobody knew what anything was really worth. Not a loaf of bread, not a mine full of uranium. It was all owned and redistributed by the state. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the state of course disappeared. Suddenly, there were no prices, and no owners. It was like a gigantic economic free-for-all. A “Wild West,” as the saying goes. Everything was up for grabs.

In a fashion that Mises readers will immediately understand as textbook Hoppean-Rothbardian, in the midst of this chaos the worst of the worst rose to the top. The hyenas moved in to tear at the Soviet carcass. Ruthless and cunning opportunists took over formerly state-run factories and extraction operations. A kind of national gang culture emerged, and the logic of this gangland mentality worked to sort out the spoils among the strongmen. Some people, those who were particularly well endowed with craftiness, came out ahead, appropriating to themselves billions upon billions of dollars’ worth of oil, gas, and mineral rights, among other commodities. Those nouveau riche from the Russian criminal class we now call “oligarchs.” And the king of all the oligarchs, the baddest dog in the junkyard, turned out to be a former KGB colonel and deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

A by-now-infamous 2009 episode in the Russian town of Pikalyovo sums the whole thing up perfectly. Prime Minister Putin (then on theatrical break from his main job of president) showed up to order a factory complex restarted so thousands of breadwinners could get back to work. One of the factories was owned and supplied by Oleg Deripaska, one of Putin’s rival oligarchs. Putin humiliated him at a public meeting, ordering Deripaska to sign an agreement which would reopen the factory complex, thereby showing the world that Putin was in charge of every operation in Russia. When Deripaska had signed the agreement, Putin twisted the knife by making Deripaska return to him his pen. Oligarchs gonna oligarch. Putin is the man, and he will show up in any town to have a shootout with anyone foolish enough to cross him. One big O.K. Corral: this is how most of us in the West understand Russia today.

But let us think a bit more carefully, going back to our Hoppe and Rothbard for help. What is a state? A state is a gang of criminals. A state is organized crime on a massive scale. A state is oligarchs everywhere. It always is, always has been. Political scientist James C. Scott’s most recent book, Against the Grain (2017), details how the “earliest states” preyed on human endeavor. States extract protection money (euphemistically called “taxes,” sometimes also called “tribute” or “war bonds”) from as many people as the criminals who sit in the state’s central chambers or on the state’s throne can reach.

Russian oligarchs post–Soviet era are hardly unique. States are just this, just as we see in the relationship between Putin and the beta oligarchs. The only thing shocking about the Russian case is that it is more transparently corrupt than usual. Most states clothe their theft behind anthems and flags and tales of heroic deeds. The Russian Federation lost its politico-mythic backing when it rose out of the ashes of the USSR. But it is trying to get it back. Stalin has been rehabilitated in Russia as a great man. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will one day be remembered as the glorious sacrifice of the brave for the motherland. All states are gravity fields for propaganda and fake news. Give Russia time, and she will look just like all the other states again. You won’t be able to see through the shop windows the smash-and-grab going on inside. Everything will look grand and state-like. The Russian state will normalize, and nobody will call its elite “oligarchs” anymore.

Thus, statists have a natural incentive to legitimate one another’s plundering schemes. Presidents and prime ministers and kings drink to one another’s health at sumptuous galas paid for with private property taken from all the rest of us (who never get invitations to the ball). I wouldn’t be surprised to find crowns and ermine capes coming back in fashion among state leaders soon. Statists think they’re gods, and they act like they own everyone else’s money. Not just Russia, not at all.

Indeed, this Hoppean-Rothbardian insight, that states are basically groups of oligarchs who give themselves titles and medals, can be expanded far beyond the Russian example. For if the current crop of Russian oligarchs are just standard statists, then the narrative about the collapse of the Soviet Union must also be called into question. It wasn’t that the Soviet Union collapsed, in this sense. It was that one form of oligarchy gave way to another, with a messy period of transition in between. The Soviet Union was “Communist,” but communism was never about the equal distribution of wealth or the alleviation of social problems. As Hoppean-Rothbardians, we must not take statist excuse making at face value. Communism was, and remains, a system for gathering total social and economic control into the hands of a very few. In other words, a cover story for oligarchy. The current Russian oligarchs aren’t doing anything new. Before them there was Stalin, of course, and Brezhnev and Khrushchev and Lenin, and the handful of other divines who took everything from the Russian people and lived in opulent palaces with servants and harems and caviar.

And it isn’t just Russia. What state does not have oligarchs running it? It’s a trick rhetorical question, because, as I’ve been saying, states and oligarchies are the same thing. Communism, democracy—it’s all from the same barrel. Unjust enrichment comes in many different flavors. But the main ingredient is always taxation and consolidation of ownership into the hands of the elite. The exclusion of the hoi polloi from the fruits of their expropriated labor is what makes the state the state. There are grand halls and massive monuments in the state’s capitals, marble utterances of the state’s political theology scattered across the land. The state has its own saints and martyrs, its own calendar of holy days. The state is a kind of religious ritual, only the tithe is not optional. And it’s a lot more than 10 percent. That’s what a state is, theft dressed up as solemn duty. People die all the time for the state. Graveyards are filled with the state’s dead. The state charges the bereaved for those cemeteries’ upkeep. More taxes. No matter what happens, the state always wins in the end.

So let’s use this knowledge to examine the current situation in Ukraine. A world-class oligarch, who relaxes in a Russian Versailles, is going up against a very minor Ukrainian oligarch to his west. This arriviste oligarch has the ambiguous backing of a massive cabal of big-time oligarchs in Western Europe and the United States. This cabal calls itself the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and it is a very exclusive club. Members have access to an impressive array of security options, including all the best equipment of some of the biggest militaries in the world. The ostensible leader is the American president, whose son has grown extraordinarily rich by conspiring with the oligarchy in Ukraine, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization oligarchs are now glaring across the borderlands at the oligarchs in the Kremlin. The Atlantic oligarchy wants to crowd in on the turf of the Russian oligarchy, and a Ukrainian oligarch is caught in the middle. The people who are normally taxed by the oligarchs are also the ones who are being shelled and who are being sent out in tanks to do the shelling. More deaths for the glory of the state—which doesn’t exist, being simply a euphemism for “oligarchy.”

There is more. An upstart oligarchy in Beijing hovers over the tense scene, appearing ready to broker “peace” among the other oligarchs when its own interests will be best served. And the Beijing oligarchy has its own coterie of beta oligarchs, including the tribute bearers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan, all of which are filled with political cronies with access to their own income streams ultimately deriving from the paychecks of lowly taxpayers. When the time comes, the taxpayers in those places will also die for the oligarchs. American Marines are on Okinawa waiting their turn to die, too. The oligarchs are going to live, though. They are going to do just fine. War and peace—the oligarchs make money either way. “L’état, c’est moi!” Yes, exactly.

The fact that the United States Department of Justice managed to slap sanctions on Russian “oligarchs” in record time after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and is now deploying a special “task force” to appropriate the property of Putin and his network of grifters, tells us everything we need to know about what is going on in Eastern Europe right now. The task force—can you believe the chutzpah?—is aimed at “Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs.” Abbreviation: REPO. The state taketh, and then the state taketh some more.

Lenin called World War I a war among the capitalists of Europe. He was wrong. It was a war among oligarchs, statists who extract wealth from legitimate economic activity at the barrel of a gun. And when some oligarchs step out of line, they are killed off and the other oligarchs take the spoils. Ditto for Ukraine. It’s not the “West” versus the Russian oligarchs there. It’s the oligarchs versus the oligarchs versus the oligarchs. It’s oligarchs all the way down. Read Hoppe and Rothbard, and don’t fall for the latest round of fake news about the always, everywhere criminal state.

The American Mind: Bitcoin Versus the Bond Villain

Alexander Leishman at The American Mind briefly writes in Bitcoin Versus the Bond Villain about government overreach, tyranny in western so-called democracies, and the power of cryptocurrencies.

The perfect tool to thwart the ambitions of modern autocrats.

If you’ve watched any spy movies lately, you’ll have noticed a new type of villain: the old-fashioned cat-scratching megalomaniac has been replaced by the power-mad government functionary or bureaucrat. Consider the character of Max Denbigh—or “C”—the head of the “Joint Security Service,” from the 2015 Bond film, Spectre. C’s vast ambition is to capture all personal data from all places, and thus build a public spying operation described as “George Orwell’s worst nightmare.”

“Take a look at the world…chaos…because people like you, paper-pushers and politicians, are too spineless to do what needs to be done,” C explains to his intelligence counterpart. “So I made an alliance to put the power where it should be, and now you want to throw it away for the sake of democracy, whatever the hell that is. How predictably moronic.” Similarly, in the Jason Bourne series, CIA officials use terrorist threats as a pretext for widespread government surveillance and black operations of questionable legality.

The anti-heroes in these blockbuster films style themselves as the good guys, “protectors” who use their power for your own good, to prevent something worse from happening. And yet, it says something that we instinctively sense and mistrust their sinister ambition when we see it on screen—and we cheer when their plans are thwarted.

These movies jumped to mind over the last week, as we’ve seen a real-life Bond villain—less over-the-top in his self-presentation but no less dangerous—usurp the rule of law in Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked emergency powers to quell anti-vaccine mandate protests. While the powers were in effect, he was able to use provisions in the Emergencies Act of 1988 to expand the rules within the Terrorist Financing Act, giving him leverage against financial institutions, cryptocurrency exchanges, and crowdfunding platforms.

Under the Emergencies Act, Trudeau was able to apply banking surveillance to payment processors and crowdfunding websites. He demanded that cryptocurrency exchanges and crowdfunding platforms report “suspicious” transactions to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC). His government could also suspend the insurance and freeze the accounts of companies that own the trucks being used in the protest.

Ten days after Trudeau first invoked the Act, it became clear that he did not have the votes in the Senate to extend his powers. So he revoked the measures. But the logic of Trudeau’s governance is all too clear: the head of state in a Western, democratic nation is prepared to treat a public protest by his own citizens as an act of terrorism. It is hugely significant that his chosen form of leverage was forcing financial institutions to do his bidding. This is a breathtaking—and frightening—abuse of government powers, and it will set a precedent for other Western leaders to delegitimize opposition using digital control of finances.

That makes Canada’s protests an essential proof point for the virtues of Bitcoin. While much is written about Bitcoin, its ability to evade the traditional financial system rarely gets much coverage. That’s deliberate: Bitcoin advocates have been fighting to gain legitimacy for so long that they tend not to focus on “avoiding surveillance” as a selling point.

But this moment calls for something different: It’s a chance to talk about Bitcoin as a safeguard against the whims of those public leaders who use finance and money as a political cudgel. Trudeau’s actions make a sterling case for why Bitcoin matters for free speech and free expression—because both speech and expression require the free movement of money. And when the government controls how money flows—and when they decide to cease that flow to suit various political goals—that leaves free speech and expression in the lurch.

By contrast, Bitcoin operates on a distributed ledger system, with no one authority able to control or access privileged information about where money does and does not go. While government regulators have been trying to curtail the work of cryptocurrency exchanges, they are finding it hard to even wrap their heads around the technology, let alone write sensible regulatory protocols for it.

And thank goodness for that delay and lack of comprehension. Because if the Canadian government’s Bond-villain-style tactics show us anything, it’s that the free movement of money needs as much protection as the free transmission of ideas, picket signs, or trucks. Bitcoin is a defense of financial independence—an ideal as vital to liberty as any other.

Rutherford Institute: Stand Up to Tyranny — How to Respond to the Evils of Our Age

Constitutional lawyer John Whitehead at the Rutherford Institute writes Stand Up to Tyranny: How to Respond to the Evils of Our Age

“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”—Martin Luther King Jr. (A Knock at Midnight, June 11, 1967)

In every age, we find ourselves wrestling with the question of how Jesus Christ—the itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist who died challenging the police state of his time, namely, the Roman Empire—would respond to the moral questions of our day.

For instance, would Jesus advocate, as so many evangelical Christian leaders have done in recent years, for congregants to “submit to your leaders and those in authority,” which in the American police state translates to complying, conforming, submitting, obeying orders, deferring to authority and generally doing whatever a government official tells you to do?

What would Jesus do? 

Study the life and teachings of Jesus, and you may be surprised at how relevant he is to our modern age.

A radical nonconformist who challenged authority at every turn, Jesus spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire, and providing a blueprint for standing up to tyranny that would be followed by those, religious and otherwise, who came after him.

Those living through this present age of government lockdowns, immunity passports, militarized police, SWAT team raids, police shootings of unarmed citizens, roadside strip searches, invasive surveillance and the like might feel as if these events are unprecedented. However, the characteristics of a police state and its reasons for being are no different today than they were in Jesus’ lifetime: control, power and money.

Much like the American Empire today, the Roman Empire of Jesus’ day was characterized by secrecy, surveillance, a widespread police presence, a citizenry treated like suspects with little recourse against the police state, perpetual wars, a military empire, martial law, and political retribution against those who dared to challenge the power of the state.

A police state extends far beyond the actions of law enforcement.  In fact, a police state “is characterized by bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread police presence, and a citizenry with little recourse against police actions.”

Indeed, the police state in which Jesus lived (and died) and its striking similarities to modern-day America are beyond troubling.

Secrecy, surveillance and rule by the elite. As the chasm between the wealthy and poor grew wider in the Roman Empire, the ruling class and the wealthy class became synonymous, while the lower classes, increasingly deprived of their political freedoms, grew disinterested in the government and easily distracted by “bread and circuses.” Much like America today, with its lack of government transparency, overt domestic surveillance, and rule by the rich, the inner workings of the Roman Empire were shrouded in secrecy, while its leaders were constantly on the watch for any potential threats to its power. The resulting state-wide surveillance was primarily carried out by the military, which acted as investigators, enforcers, torturers, policemen, executioners and jailers. Today that role is fulfilled by the NSA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the increasingly militarized police forces across the country.

Widespread police presence. The Roman Empire used its military forces to maintain the “peace,” thereby establishing a police state that reached into all aspects of a citizen’s life. In this way, these military officers, used to address a broad range of routine problems and conflicts, enforced the will of the state. Today SWAT teams, comprised of local police and federal agents, are employed to carry out routine search warrants for minor crimes such as marijuana possession and credit card fraud.

Citizenry with little recourse against the police state. As the Roman Empire expanded, personal freedom and independence nearly vanished, as did any real sense of local governance and national consciousness. Similarly, in America today, citizens largely feel powerless, voiceless and unrepresented in the face of a power-hungry federal government. As states and localities are brought under direct control by federal agencies and regulations, a sense of learned helplessness grips the nation.

Perpetual wars and a military empire. Much like America today with its practice of policing the world, war and an over-arching militarist ethos provided the framework for the Roman Empire, which extended from the Italian peninsula to all over Southern, Western, and Eastern Europe, extending into North Africa and Western Asia as well. In addition to significant foreign threats, wars were waged against inchoate, unstructured and socially inferior foes.

Martial law. Eventually, Rome established a permanent military dictatorship that left the citizens at the mercy of an unreachable and oppressive totalitarian regime. In the absence of resources to establish civic police forces, the Romans relied increasingly on the military to intervene in all matters of conflict or upheaval in provinces, from small-scale scuffles to large-scale revolts. Not unlike police forces today, with their martial law training drills on American soil, militarized weapons and “shoot first, ask questions later” mindset, the Roman soldier had “the exercise of lethal force at his fingertips” with the potential of wreaking havoc on normal citizens’ lives.

A nation of suspects. Just as the American Empire looks upon its citizens as suspects to be tracked, surveilled and controlled, the Roman Empire looked upon all potential insubordinates, from the common thief to a full-fledged insurrectionist, as threats to its power. The insurrectionist was seen as directly challenging the Emperor.  A “bandit,” or revolutionist, was seen as capable of overturning the empire, was always considered guilty and deserving of the most savage penalties, including capital punishment. Bandits were usually punished publicly and cruelly as a means of deterring others from challenging the power of the state.  Jesus’ execution was one such public punishment.

Acts of civil disobedience by insurrectionists. Starting with his act of civil disobedience at the Jewish temple, the site of the administrative headquarters of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish council, Jesus branded himself a political revolutionary. When Jesus “with the help of his disciples, blocks the entrance to the courtyard” and forbids “anyone carrying goods for sale or trade from entering the Temple,” he committed a blatantly criminal and seditious act, an act “that undoubtedly precipitated his arrest and execution.” Because the commercial events were sponsored by the religious hierarchy, which in turn was operated by consent of the Roman government, Jesus’ attack on the money chargers and traders can be seen as an attack on Rome itself, an unmistakable declaration of political and social independence from the Roman oppression.

Military-style arrests in the dead of night. Jesus’ arrest account testifies to the fact that the Romans perceived Him as a revolutionary. Eerily similar to today’s SWAT team raids, Jesus was arrested in the middle of the night, in secret, by a large, heavily armed fleet of soldiers.  Rather than merely asking for Jesus when they came to arrest him, his pursuers collaborated beforehand with Judas. Acting as a government informant, Judas concocted a kiss as a secret identification marker, hinting that a level of deception and trickery must be used to obtain this seemingly “dangerous revolutionist’s” cooperation. 

Torture and capital punishment. In Jesus’ day, religious preachers, self-proclaimed prophets and nonviolent protesters were not summarily arrested and executed. Indeed, the high priests and Roman governors normally allowed a protest, particularly a small-scale one, to run its course. However, government authorities were quick to dispose of leaders and movements that appeared to threaten the Roman Empire. The charges leveled against Jesus—that he was a threat to the stability of the nation, opposed paying Roman taxes and claimed to be the rightful King—were purely political, not religious. To the Romans, any one of these charges was enough to merit death by crucifixion, which was usually reserved for slaves, non-Romans, radicals, revolutionaries and the worst criminals.

Jesus was presented to Pontius Pilate “as a disturber of the political peace,” a leader of a rebellion, a political threat, and most gravely—a claimant to kingship, a “king of the revolutionary type.” After Jesus is formally condemned by Pilate, he is sentenced to death by crucifixion, “the Roman means of executing criminals convicted of high treason.”  The purpose of crucifixion was not so much to kill the criminal, as it was an immensely public statement intended to visually warn all those who would challenge the power of the Roman Empire. Hence, it was reserved solely for the most extreme political crimes: treason, rebellion, sedition, and banditry. After being ruthlessly whipped and mocked, Jesus was nailed to a cross.

As Professor Mark Lewis Taylor observed:

The cross within Roman politics and culture was a marker of shame, of being a criminal. If you were put to the cross, you were marked as shameful, as criminal, but especially as subversive. And there were thousands of people put to the cross. The cross was actually positioned at many crossroads, and, as New Testament scholar Paula Fredricksen has reminded us, it served as kind of a public service announcement that said, “Act like this person did, and this is how you will end up.”

Jesus—the revolutionary, the political dissident, and the nonviolent activist—lived and died in a police state. Any reflection on Jesus’ life and death within a police state must take into account several factors: Jesus spoke out strongly against such things as empires, controlling people, state violence and power politics. Jesus challenged the political and religious belief systems of his day. And worldly powers feared Jesus, not because he challenged them for control of thrones or government but because he undercut their claims of supremacy, and he dared to speak truth to power in a time when doing so could—and often did—cost a person his life.

Unfortunately, the radical Jesus, the political dissident who took aim at injustice and oppression, has been largely forgotten today, replaced by a congenial, smiling Jesus trotted out for religious holidays but otherwise rendered mute when it comes to matters of war, power and politics.

Yet for those who truly study the life and teachings of Jesus, the resounding theme is one of outright resistance to war, materialism and empire.

Ultimately, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is the contradiction that must be resolved if the radical Jesus—the one who stood up to the Roman Empire and was crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be—is to be an example for our modern age.

After all, there is so much suffering and injustice in the world, and so much good that can be done by those who truly aspire to follow Jesus Christ’s example.

We must decide whether we will follow the path of least resistance—willing to turn a blind eye to what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as the “evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men of work and food, and to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence”—or whether we will be transformed nonconformists “dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.”

As King explained in a powerful sermon delivered in 1954, “This command not to conform comes … [from] Jesus Christ, the world’s most dedicated nonconformist, whose ethical nonconformity still challenges the conscience of mankind.”

Furthermore:

We need to recapture the gospel glow of the early Christians, who were nonconformists in the truest sense of the word and refused to shape their witness according to the mundane patterns of the world.  Willingly they sacrificed fame, fortune, and life itself in behalf of a cause they knew to be right.  Quantitatively small, they were qualitatively giants.  Their powerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils as infanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests.  Finally, they captured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ… The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.  The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.  In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist!

…Honesty impels me to admit that transformed nonconformity, which is always costly and never altogether comfortable, may mean walking through the valley of the shadow of suffering, losing a job, or having a six-year-old daughter ask, “Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?”  But we are gravely mistaken to think that Christianity protects us from the pain and agony of mortal existence.  Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear.  To be a Christian, one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tragedy-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way that comes only through suffering.

In these days of worldwide confusion, there is a dire need for men and women who will courageously do battle for truth.  We must make a choice. Will we continue to march to the drumbeat of conformity and respectability, or will we, listening to the beat of a more distant drum, move to its echoing sounds?  Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soul saving music of eternity?

Charles Carroll Society: Democrats and Domestic Terrorism

Democrats and Domestic Terrorism comes from the Charles Carroll Society.

Just a reminder that the last time a Democrat ran the federal government and decided some Americans were domestic terrorists, the result was a bunch of American children burned alive in Waco, Texas. No one was ever punished for burning American Children alive. Authoritarian Democrats love to burn alive people they call “domestic enemies.”

Philadelphia Democrats burning down an entire black neighborhood and killing 11 people to get to MOVE

In 1985 Philadelphia Democrat Mayor Woodrow Goode and police commissioner Gregore J. Sambor classified MOVE as a terrorist organization. MOVE, originally called the Christian Movement for Life, was a black militant “anarcho-primitivist” group led by John Africa. In 1985 Democrat Mayor Goode ordered the firebombing of their homestead burning eleven people, including five children aged 7 to 13). Five hundred police officers participated in the assault. No one was punished.

Poor white family in the middle of nowhere murdered by Republican H.W. Bush

In 1992 Republican H.W Bush’s administration at Ruby Ridge in Boundary County, Idaho: FBI snipers surrounded and then shot a boy, and later his mother as she stood in her kitchen holding her young child. No one was punished.

In 19APR1993, in the first year of Democrat Bill Clinton’s presidency, he and his administration in Waco, Texas, surrounded and murdered 76 Americans, including children.  Many of these children were burned alive.

Poor white families burned alive by Democrat Bill Clinton

Even in the 1990s, this was a post-Christian and post-rule-of-law nation, and it’s much worse now. Chuck Schumer, who now leads the Senate and all other elected Democrats, defended what happened in Ruby Ridge and Waco Texas, calling the murderers heroes and the murdered “insurrectionists.” At the same time, the establishment Republicans did nothing as per usual.

 

The lying, legacy, liberal media covered it up, performing the function they were designed for. Defend the powerful and encourage murdering people they do not like. The American people changed the channel back to Seinfeld, and the march towards  communism continued unabated.  Any of your family, coworkers, or neighbors who support Beijing Biden supports this regime’s actions.

See your future, know your fate.

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Grandchild of one of the MOVE members murdered in 1985