The Cult of "National Security"

Yesterday I commented on "The Cult of Social Security," America's blind faith in the government's ability to take care of us when we're old, despite overwhelming evidence that it can't and probably wouldn't if it could.

I have also compared the Republican Party to a cult, and the Democrats show similar symptoms.

One of the marks of a cult is the willingness of cult members to accept the teachings of the cult leader without question, without analysis.

This report from BBC News highlights "the cult of national security." The cult leader merely has to suggest something, not even come right out and declare it explicitly, and cult members will believe it. As many as 70% of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9-11, though there is no evidence for this. Fifteen of the 19 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia. The remaining four came from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon. According to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, this distribution reflects the proportions of trainees at al-Qaeda camps and the relative ease of obtaining U.S. visas for Saudi citizens.

North Korea, China, and even Pakistan, with approximately 50 nuclear warheads, are and were greater threats to U.S. security than Iraq.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are pathologically anti-Christian, while Saddam allowed greater freedom for Christian missionaries. Saddam Hussein was a dictator, but he was also more secular than Muslim, and Christians had freedom in Iraq, which is now being lost in in the new Islamic Theocracy created by Bush’s Global War on Christians. See also, The other Iraq war - The Washington Times: Commentary - March 29, 2005 and The End of Christianity in Iraq by Glen Chancy.

So why did the U.S. invade Iraq rather than Saudi Arabia? Why did the U.S. invade Iraq rather than North Korea, a dictatorial regime more lethal against its own people than Saddam's? (North Koreans live in bitter poverty; Iraq was one of the more modernized nations in the Middle East.)

Members of the Cult of National Defense never ask these questions.

The Cult of Social Security

Imagine that your son or daughter ran off and joined a wacko religious cult.

The charismatic leader of the cult convinced your kid -- under intense social pressure from other cult members -- to give half of all income earned to the cult, and the cult promised to take care of all your kid's needs when your kid got old.

An independent audit would disclose that none of the money "contributed" by your kid to the cult was actually being saved or invested for your kid's future, but was being spent by the cult on other things.

You want your kid to leave this cult, but the leaders have convinced your kid that it would be "apostasy," and your kid would be "disloyal," "unsubmissive," "rebellious," and a host of other words. You don't want your kid to turn over everything earned to the cult, but the cult says your kind of thinking is "selfish." "You need to trust the lord and think about the needs of others," the cult tells your kid. "We're a community," the cult members chant; "We're a family." "Besides," the cult says, "look at all the older members of our cult that we're taking care of."

Sure enough, the cult has several retirees who haven't died of starvation. But there's no doubt that if those older members of the cult had invested in the stock market or in private annuities rather than the cult's system, they would be enjoying a much higher standard of living than the cult provides.

Surveys of cult members reveal that more than 50% of the cult members are suspicious of the cult leader's claims about financial trustworthiness, but they "contribute" their earnings anyway, in an effort not to appear to "lack faith" in the eyes of others. When asked if they believe that they will be taken care of when they're old, more than 80% said they were "somewhat sure" they would, but that same number indicated that they were "somewhat sure" other members of the cult might be denied benefits due to "budgetary constraints." These cult members believe they should be free to invest their money in higher-paying investments, but that same freedom should not be extended to other cult members, because others cannot be trusted with such freedom.

One of the marks of a "cult" is unquestioning belief in the cult leader or authority system. By this standard, Americans are more than members of a cult; they are zombies. Unthinking, uncritical acceptance of government propaganda has become the American way of life.

The "Social Security" program is an unethical, unChristian pyramid scheme. It is financially bankrupt by all accepted accounting systems. Any corporation that managed its employee pension fund the same way the cult in Washington D.C. manages your Social Security "contributions" would find its CEO in prison. It is a very, very, bad system -- a bad idea immorally managed -- and yet Americans believe what they are told about it: that it is "one of the great moral successes of the 20th century."

It was an immoral system from the beginning.

The cult in Washington D.C. has increased its power and control in ways America's Founding Fathers could never have imagined: every area of life has come under the jurisdiction of this cult.

The Libertarian Party's "Statement of Principles" opens with this bold declaration:

We, the members of the Libertarian Party, challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual.

If your kid fell under the domination and control of a fraudulent, misleading, coercive, manipulative, degrading wacko cult, you would not want to agitate for "reform" of the cult. You would want your kid OUT of that cult immediately. If you discovered that a hacker was draining your bank account of a few dollars every day, you would not want him to gradually stop robbing you.

We reached a point decades ago when it came time to free Americans from their zombie-like devotion to the Cult of the Omnipotent State.

http://KevinCraig.US/social_security.htm

Christianity and Capitalism

Click here for a conversation between D. James Kennedy and Baylor Univ. Prof. Rodney Stark on the myth of "the Dark Ages."

The Roman Empire, like any "good" empire, was a despotic totalitarian regime, with a huge percentage of the population enslaved, and the rest engaged in or championing sexual perversion.

Modern secularists want us to believe that when the Roman Empire fell under its own depraved weight, the world was plunged into centuries of intellectual stagnation and the eclipse of civilization.

Civilization is Liberty Under God, and this is what was developing after the fall of the Empire. During the so-called "Dark Ages," capitalism, representative democracy, science, and philosophy developed as a result of the triumph of Christianity over Greco-Roman humanism.

"Humanism" is not "humanitarianism." "Humanism" is the worship of Man rather than God. The worship of man as god inevitably takes the form of the worship of the State or the Emperor.

The Middle Ages could be called "the Frontier Age," because Europe broke away from Roman Imperialism just as America broke away from mercantilism, and began expanding the frontiers of human learning and civilization.

Click here for more on the connection between Christianity and Liberty.

Christianity is the greatest enemy of imperialism. Therefore, the federal government has been suppressing Christianity in an effort to expand its own power and crush liberty at home and around the world.

Apple Pie and Torture

"It's as American as apple pie."

Torture?

Do good Americans support torture?

James Bovard notes that "the Bush administration is desperately scrambling to get Congress to pass a law to retroactively legalize torture."

"Retroactively legalize" means to legalize torture that the U.S. has already committed.

Bovard notes that "Congress effectively incorporated the Geneva Convention on treating detainees into the U.S. statute book [through] the War Crimes Act of 1996." "The Supreme Court’s decision last month declaring that the Bush order on enemy combatants was illegal means that the Bush team also did not have the right to torture detainees."

Bovard quotes a Washington Post article which says,

The law initially criminalized grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions but was amended without a hearing the following year to include violations of Common Article 3, the minimum standard requiring that all detainees be treated “humanely.” The article bars murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, torture and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degradingtreatment.” It applies to any abuse involving U.S. military personnel or “nationals.”

It is astonishing that many supporters of "the War on Terrah" -- many claiming to be Christians -- believe the Geneva Convention should not apply to U.S. government treatment of prisoners. It is equally astonishing that they will go to the polls in November and vote for those who will be seen by history to be war criminals.

Bovard says, "Attorney General Gonzales is sweating that even top government officials (like himself) could face charges if the law is vigorously enforced. However, since it would be up to the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute, he probably has little to fear."

Congress should not amend the law to exclude high-ranking government officials, despite Bush Administration desires to be excused from minimal standards of human decency, to say nothing of the higher law of Christ.

Abolishing "Vital Government Services"

Capitalists of a pure libertarian stripe believe that the Free Market provides groceries, computers, automobiles and refrigerators better than the government could. Higher quality, lower prices, to more people.

What about Courts, police, firefighters, and national defense? Don't these vital social services prove we need some socialism?

Murray Rothbard answers:

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PEOPLE TEND TO FALL into habits and into unquestioned ruts, especially in the field of government. On the market, in society in general, we expect and accommodate rapidly to change, to the unending marvels and improvements of our civilization. New products, new life styles, new ideas are often embraced eagerly. But in the area of government we follow blindly in the path of centuries, content to believe that what­ever has been must be right.

In particular, government, in the United States and elsewhere, for centuries and seemingly from time immemorial, has been supplying us with certain essential and necessary services, services which nearly everyone concedes are important: defense (includ­ing army, police, judicial, and legal), firefighting, streets and roads, water, sewage and garbage disposal, postal service, etc. So identified has the State become in the public mind with the provision of these services that an attack on State financing appears to many people as an attack on the service itself. Thus if one maintains that the State should not supply court services, and that private enterprise on the market could supply such service more efficiently as well as more morally, people tend to think of this as denying the importance of courts themselves.

The libertarian who wants to replace government by private enterprises in the above areas is thus treated in the same way as he would be if the government had, for various reasons, been supplying shoes as a tax-financed monopoly from time immemorial. If the government and only the government had had a monopoly of the shoe manufacturing and retailing business, how would most of the public treat the libertarian who now came along to advocate that the government get out of the shoe business and throw it open to private enterprise? He would undoubtedly be treated as follows: people would cry,

"How could you? You are opposed to the public, and to poor people, wearing shoes! And who would supply shoes to the public if the government got out of the business? Tell us that! Be constructive! It's easy to be negative and smart-alecky about government; but tell us who would supply shoes? Which people? How many shoe stores would be available in each city and town? How would the shoe firms be capitalized? How many brands would there be? What material would they use? What lasts? What would be the pricing arrangements for shoes? Wouldn't regulation of the shoe industry be needed to see to it that the product is sound? And who would supply the poor with shoes? Suppose a poor person didn't have the money to buy a pair?"

These questions, ridiculous as they seem to be -- and are -- with regard to the shoe business, are just as absurd when applied to the libertarian who advocates a free market in fire, police, postal service, or any other government operation.

The point is that the advocate of a free market in anything cannot provide a "constructive" blueprint of such a market in advance. The essence and the glory of the free market is that individual firms and businesses, competing on the market, provide an ever-changing orchestration of efficient and progressive goods and services: continually improving products and markets, advancing technology, cutting costs, and meeting changing consumer demands as swiftly and as efficiently as possible.

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The words "as possible" are important. It is not possible for the government to provide any goods or services at a lower price or with higher quality to more people than the Free Market. The iron laws of economics will not yield to the wishes of politicians.

www.STOPtheSPP.us

I have created a new website, www.STOPtheSPP.US for my campaign. The dot-com and dot-org domains were already taken by an anti-immigration extremist who isn't even using them. I also picked up the dot-net domain, which I'll use for a more general, non-campaign use. Last night at the "Families for Change" Candidate Forum, there was strong interest in the SPP. Even some of the other candidates grabbed my SPP handouts.

Flight 800 - July 17, 1996

"Today marks the 10th anniversary of the destruction of TWA Flight 800, the investigation of which represented the most conspicuous and consequential misdirection of justice in American history."

The CIA admits 270 competent eyewitnesses, many with military backgrounds, saw what looked like a missile down a 747 off Long Island with 230 people on board. More than 700 actually saw the event. The government has destroyed evidence and pressured media not to recount the testimony of the eyewitnesses.

The obvious question is: who shot down the plane? The next question is, why doesn't the government want America to know the truth?

Jack Cashill has a series of articles on WorldNetDaily:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51090

There has never been a Congressional hearing on TWA Flight 800.

Who Creates Your Vote?

When I lived in California I drafted a lawsuit against the California Secretary of State asking the Court to require a voter-verifiable paper trail in all elections. A Press Release regarding that litigation is here:

http://KevinCraig.US/vote-pr.htm

If you're not familiar with the controversy over "touch-screen" voting, start with that press release.

As a result of pressure created by this lawsuit, touch-screen voting machines were de-certified by the Secretary of State. Then, after pressure let up, they were re-certified again. Over the last 5 years I've lost track of the progress (or regress) in California.

I confess I don't know what kind of voting machines will be used in November by those who will be choosing between me and the incumbent, Roy Blunt.

James Bovard, one of my favorite writers, has an article on voting that explains why Roy Blunt is not concerned about voting irregularities. Bovard starts off:

Politicians strive to make Americans view elections as sacrosanct. Challenges to election results are portrayed as heresies that threaten to destroy the entire republic. After the 2004 presidential election, many Democrats went on the warpath over alleged voter fraud and manipulation in Ohio and elsewhere. The Constitution requires Congress to certify the Electoral College voters for each state before a president is officially elected. A handful of Democratic members of Congress formally challenged the seating of the Ohio electors when Congress reconvened in early January 2005. Though the debate in the House of Representatives lasted barely two hours, many Republicans feared that raising the topic had derailed the nation and the march of history….

Bovard quotes a few Republicans who denounced the Democratic efforts to question Ohio's election results, on the grounds that merely asking questions subverts the entire process. Bovard says this about my opponent:

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the House majority whip, declared, “We also need to understand that every time we attack the process, we cast that doubt on that fabric of democracy that is so important.” Blunt did not specify if the “fabric” was a cover sheet. He sought to put the entire government above questioning:

It is the greatest democracy in the history of the world and it is run by people who step forward and make a system work in ways that nobody would believe until they see it produce the result of what people want to have happen on Election Day.

And anyone who doubted the result was an enemy of democracy.

Such blather should not be dismissed as merely self-serving emissions. These comments go to the heart of how politicians think about government and their own power — and about citizens’ duty to accept unquestioningly whatever election results the politicians proclaim. Citizens are supposed to believe in that magical moment of uplift that occurs when election results are officially certified — expunging all the verbal flim-flams of the campaign itself. The Republicans’ comments sounded as if there is a grave danger in letting people even start to think about how the whole process works — as if Republicans were terrified of any questions or challenges that would decrease people’s submissiveness to the government.

The “debate” in Congress illustrated how elections are now about consecration, rather than representation. Elections have become something for rulers to shroud themselves in, rather than leashes used by the people. Politicians are obsessed with maintaining the imagined dignity of their class, not in resolving doubts about honest vote counting.

The Fraudulent Meaning of Elections

Congress gave special interests $3.5 billion to dress-up American voting, a nearly complete waste of money. Voting which is verified by the People -- rather than the politicians -- is certainly not the goal of the politicians. Perpetual re-election is their goal.

There are exceptions, of course. Congressman Ron Paul is one of them.

Since 1982 I have only voted twice, and never for myself. I don't believe voting changes much of anything (letters to elected representatives are far more effective), and now with computer voting, there's no way to know if your vote is even heard at all. As a candidate, I run into more people who don't vote than those who do. When I meet a non-voter, I'm almost embarrassed to admit "I'm a candidate." I sympathize with those who do not take the election process seriously. But deep-down I'm the "True Believer" type, and I respect those who are patriotic and believe their vote counts. That's the way they have been conditioned. Obviously I would like voters to vote for me, and non-voters to get registered and vote for me. But only if this represents a token, a symbol of commitment to do much, much more than just vote every four years.

In 2002 I did not vote -- even though I was the Libertarian Party Candidate for Congress in California's 41st District! They say "Bad Publicity is Better than No Publicity At All." My little protest got me some reasonably good publicity, which is, of course, even better than bad publicity. I don't know if I'll make a similar protest this year. Any comments?

16 Tuesdays

I began this blog 16 Tuesdays ago. There are now 16 Tuesdays left until the 2006 election. I haven't even undertaken -- much less accomplished -- half of what I imagined doing, and now half the time I had 16 Tuesdays ago is gone.

I have to admit that fear is a major obstacle. I hate confronting the possibility that the person I'm about to talk to will think I'm either presumptuous ("Who does this guy think he is, running for the high and lofty office of U.S. Congressman?") or a nut ("Does this guy actually think he's going to win?").

Of course I have no illusions about winning. My goal is to educate as many voters (and non-voters) as I can. But the ideas I bring are strange-sounding to those who were raised on the two-party monopoly mainstream. Nobody likes to be rejected.

Publicly admitting this fear encourages me to step up the pace and contact more people (even though "publicly" in this case really means only a handful of people).

The LP website has a blog entry on "You Tube" and what impact it may have on electoral politics. Accordingly, I have added videos to my "War on Drugs" page, my Iraq page, and my police page.

16 weeks ago I had delusions of updating the links on at least on webpage per day. Any volunteers? Find a broken link, find the new URL to that page (if it still exists somewhere), and send it to me.

The real task is not getting an under-funded third party candidate elected in place of the third most powerful Republican in Congress, but in meeting people who actually have some respect for the Constitution and the idea of "Liberty Under God," and turning them into cell-leaders in their own sphere of influence.

Thanks to those of you who read and comment.

Nobody Believes in the 4th of July Anymore.

Today millions of Americans will take a day off work, watch a parade, light up the Bar-B-Q, or shoot off fireworks, but virtually none of them knows why.

In theory, America commemorates the unveiling of the Declaration of Independence, but in reality, nobody believes what that document stands for.

"The Spirit of '76" signifies a belief that any government which becomes as powerful as the British government under King George III (1738-1820) is a "tyranny," and we have a duty to abolish it.

There can be no debate or doubt that government under George W. the 43rd is more oppressive than the government indicted in the Declaration of Independence. It takes ten times as much in taxes, and uses that money to fund institutions and policies which would appall and horrify the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Yet only a handful of Americans consider it a "tyranny," and only a fraction of those who complain about it take any practical steps to abolish it.

The 4th of July, then, is a day of Great National Hypocrisy.

But then, a number of legal scholars have pointed out that the government created by America's Founding Fathers was abolished decades ago, and replaced with an "Administrative State."

And the United States of America is being abolished anyway, as we speak, and merged with Mexico to form a "North American Community," or "United States of North America." Most voters love the great national hymn, "America the Beautiful." The architects of the "North American Community" want us to sing "North America the Beautiful" instead, to quote the title of an op-ed piece from the Wall Street Journal in support of the plan.

For those who love the ideal of "Liberty Under God," the 4th of July turns out to be a day of mourning rather than celebration.

http://KevinCraig.us/July4th1776.htm