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American Memory
February 28, 2005
The Fight for Freedom Begins in the States
Wendell Phillips said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” And it is important to note that such vigilance begins at home. That means state and local governments deserve the same scrutiny that we apply to the federal government. Everything the federal government does, state governments do, too: taxes, regulations, property rights, and judicial reform are all important issues at the state level.
February 27, 2005
Bush and Camus on Freedom by Gary Leupp
What an insult to Camus, whose notion of freedom was very different from that of the president! His was the radical freedom that comes from abandoning myth and dogma, and questioning the existence of any meaning in the universe other than that which the human mind creates.
February 25, 2005
Liberals Don't Tolerate Campus Conservatives Forget Free Speech by John T. Plecnik
Regardless of age, we have all heard the phrase, "First Amendment Rights," bandied about. Free speech has been the rallying cry of the liberal elite since the 60s, and every time violent protesters are beaten back by police or cordoned off from a rally, the ACLU comes a calling. However, the same team of trial lawyers, rebel billionaires and Deaniacs turn a blind eye toward the abuses of their academic brethren. America's colleges and universities are anything but free speech zones. Contrary to their mantra of universal tolerance, Stalinist professors and administrators see intellectual diversity as a disease. Unpopular viewpoints, like a belief in absolute truth or the Republican Party, are actively discouraged.
February 24, 2005
Terri Schiavo Counts: Now Give Her Equal Protection by Terence P. Jeffrey
All along, the Declaration of Independence had stated the truth: God endows all men with certain inalienable rights, including life and liberty.
Florida lawmakers must protect Terri Schiavo and all other persons from death by starvation and dehydration. It is their constitutional duty.
Brits, Yanks, Asleep as Ancient Liberties Fade by William Hughes
"The British and American people have a long history of standing up for their liberties. Lately, they have both been asleep at the wheel. Since 9/11, the Yanks have been saddled with the Patriot Act and a DHS, headed by “Commissar” Michael Chertoff. The Brits, like the Irish before them, are now living under the draconian “Prevention of Terrorism” law. Only an awakened citizenry, conscious of their power, is capable of restoring their rights."
Voting for Brutality by Harry Browne
Apparently, at least 100,000 Iraqis have died in this war. And at a minimum, half those who died must be civilians – men, women, and children killed by cluster bombs, missile attacks, the flattening of Fallujah, misguided attacks, misunderstandings at check points, and all the other ways that civilians inevitably die for no reason other than that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
To bring "democracy" to Iraq, how many people must die, how many prisoners must be tortured, how many freedoms must Americans give up, how much bigger must government be?
February 23, 2005
Freedoms Lost Under G.W. Bush by Chuck Baldwin
Supporters and apologists for President G.W. Bush will often assail my assertion that the Bush administration has done more to dismantle constitutional protections of our liberties than any president in modern memory. It seems that these people believe that until federal Storm Troopers knock down the doors of their homes and drag them off to the gulags, they have lost no freedoms. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Limits of Democratization: Will promoting democracy bolster national security? by Julian Sanchez
George W. Bush may cite Jesus as his favorite political philosopher, but his ideas on foreign policy bear a distinctly Kantian imprimatur.
Democracy's chief virtue is that it gives the people what they want—often "good and hard," as H. L. Mencken famously added. In much of the world, alas, "what they want" does not, in the near term, include our safety or happiness. We assume that it does at our peril.
America the Frightful by Sobran Column
Whatever you think of the war, but there have been few American expressions of regret. The world notices these things, just as it notices our soldiers having “fun” killing wife-beaters and tormenting prisoners. And when the world gets a bad impression of us, we complain about “anti-Americanism.”
February 22, 2005
Stealing the Dream by Jim Kirwan
At his last news conference Bush mentioned that what we have in common with Europe is our “shared values.” What he meant by values was his version of freedom and democracy. In reality, what any nation means by “values” are what each state chooses to enact into law: and therein lies the duplicity. Bush has turned this country into a rogue state where the law is only something to be avoided or ignored. The USA pays lip service to freedom and democracy for all those nations where Bush is calling for regime change: Why then is he working so hard to simultaneously eliminate those same “values” in every area of American society?
February 21, 2005
Congress Mulls Scaling Back of USA Patriot Act by Greg Szymanski
A Senate bill to limit the draconian powers of the Patriot Act is expected to be introduced this current congressional session, but supporters say it will be “an uphill battle” since it doesn’t have the support of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).
Hail, Hail The Gang's All Here by Ray McGovern
The liberties that Gonzales, Chertoff and Negroponte have taken with human rights are warning signs enough. The increased power that will be Negroponte's under the recent intelligence reform legislation makes the situation still more worrisome.
February 20, 2005
MULTICULTURAL MADNESS
Multiculturalism – the reigning philosophy of American culture, where Satanists and witches are equal to Christians and Jews, where a rat is equal to a boy, where ruthless, repressive, backward cultures are equal to Western Civilization – is explored as never before in the groundbreaking February edition of WorldNetDaily's monthly Whistleblower magazine.
Experts see military draft as inevitable by MIKE BILLINGTON
There is no groundswell for national service legislation now, Pena said, but it is being discussed by lawmakers and at policy seminars throughout the nation's capital.
"It's lurking right below the surface. There are enough people willing to get behind it on Capitol Hill that it's something that could be done. Right now no one's pushing for it, but just as importantly, no one's pushing against it," he said.
February 18, 2005
Attacking Our Memory by John Pilger
Historical amnesia can spread quickly. Only ten years after the Vietnam war, which I reported, an opinion poll in the United States found that a third of Americans could not remember which side their government had supported. This demonstrated the insidious power of the dominant propaganda, that the war was essentially a conflict of 'good' Vietnamese against 'bad' Vietnamese, in which the Americans became 'involved,' bringing democracy to the people of southern Vietnam faced with a 'communist threat.' Such a false and dishonest assumption permeated the media coverage, with honourable exceptions.
February 17, 2005
Stretching the Definition of "Terrorism" to New Limits by ELAINE CASSEL
The larger issue here is not whether Stewart "stepped over the line" from lawyer to criminal co-conspirator, as the jury verdict implies. Nor is it whether terrorism fears caused the jury to reach an irrational verdict - as may well be the case. The larger issue is that those who face terrorism-related charges will now be entitled to a government-crippled defense.
February 16, 2005
Block new world order
I hope we Americans are not ready to chuck our Constitution and Bill of Rights in favor of a new world government. This could happen if we allow Congress to approve the FTAA, the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas.
Absorbed By the State by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
If you have read the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, you know that the Devil is an expert in turning good impulses toward evil ends, and in leading people to misapply virtues in ways that serve the cause of evil.
Well, so it is with the state. In every age, it takes the intellectual and political fashions alive in the culture, and turns them toward power for itself, money for itself, authority and affection for itself. The end is always and everywhere the same and as predictable as the tides. However, the means the state uses to achieve this end are forever changing in ways that surprise us.
February 15, 2005
Refuse the National I.D. Card by Charlotte Iserbyt
The drivers license (semantic deception for internal passport) legislation (H.R. 418), which passed the Congress and is on its way for passage in the Senate, is more serious than one may think due to the fact it was designed by two ex-KGB Chiefs, one of whom,Yvgeny Primakov, was the President of totalitarian Russia in the late nineties. (The merger of the KGB and the FBI has been in the works since 1985 when President Reagan signed numerous agreements with Gorbachev, one of which was the infamous education agreement which merged our two education systems. Another agreement was signed between the Soviet Police and New York City Police which allowed Soviet policmen to assist in the arrest of fare beaters in the New York City subway system.These activities, unknown to most Americans, represent just the tip of the U.S.-Soviet exchange agreements iceberg. )
White House may make NSA the 'traffic cop' by Ted Bridis
The Bush administration is considering making the National Security Agency -- famous for eavesdropping and code breaking -- its "traffic cop" for ambitious plans to share homeland security information across government computer networks, a senior NSA official says.
February 14, 2005
'Justice' Blasted Over Patriot Act Prosecutions by Greg Szymanski
The horror stories surrounding the Patriot Act continue to mount, and civil liberties may be a thing of the past if the Bush administration continues to have its way. A recent report to Congress by the Justice Department’s judicial watchdog office illustrates just how far out of control the FBI conducts business in respect to constitutional protections like proper arrest procedures, search and seizure methods and detainment interrogation policies.
Freedom Fragile by Charley Reese
Because I am a conservative, I have made it a practice to read liberal and progressive magazines. There is not much point in reading only people you agree with. You will learn nothing that way. We should always be willing to challenge our own assumptions and beliefs, because, as I said, none of us has all the answers to all the questions. None of us knows everything there is to know about anything.
February 13, 2005
A National ID Bill Masquerading as Immigration Reform by Rep. Ron Paul
H.R. 418 does nothing to solve the growing threat to national security posed by people who are already in the U.S. illegally. Instead, H.R. 418 states what we already know: that certain people here illegally are "deportable." But it does nothing to mandate deportation.
February 11, 2005
The Evolution of Revolution by Manuel Valenzuela
The human animal is us, never stopped, never contained, never understood and forever destined to control the lives we lead and the course we choose to take. The human animal is the catalyst that makes the inevitability that is human self-destruction a reality. From our long evolution as a species the human animal was born. Only in humankind’s enlightenment and rebirth will we be able to celebrate its death.
'Public' Holidays: The State vs. the People by Sudha R. Shenoy
First, the blatant Jacobinism expressed in American ‘public’ holidays. Second, that all British holidays were ‘customary’. Even the one invented holiday – August Bank Holiday – is statutory but apolitical: simply decreed as a holiday, with no political links.
February 10, 2005
A More Powerful President Is the Last Thing We Need by Anthony Gregory
Vice President Richard Cheney recently credited George W. Bush with restoring the presidency to its proper station of authority and power. According to Cheney, the American presidency declined in its prestige and status in recent years, especially during the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, and has only been fully recovered with the current chief executive.
February 9, 2005
The Bush Administration: Globalist Jacobins by William Norman Grigg
Rice also insisted that the forces of international terrorism are united in a loathing of democracy. "The face of terrorism in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, called democracy `an evil principle,’" she asserted. "To our enemies, Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite are also evil principles."
In fact, as even a cursory study of America’s founding documents reveals, America’s Founding Fathers explicitly rejected democracy, understanding that it is the midwife of tyranny. The French Revolution was based on radically different premises than those upon which America’s constitutional republic was built. The American Founders sought to create a system of liberty under law in which government’s powers were strictly limited to protecting the rights and property of citizens.
February 8, 2005
Real Freedom by Charley Reese
The point is, the more ignorant we are, the easier it is for others to manipulate, dupe and cheat us. Whether your life and your labor accrue benefits to you and your loved ones depends in large part on how successful you are in frustrating manipulators and cheats. Our society is full of both – commercial, religious and political. They spend vast sums to control our senses in order to ensure that our lives and labors benefit them instead of ourselves and our families.
February 7, 2005
The Creeping Police State by Charles Shaw
"The term 'terrorism' is taking on the same kind of characteristics as the term 'communism' did in the 1950s" said ACLU president Nadine Strossen. "It stops people in their tracks, and they're willing to give up their freedoms. People are too quickly panicked. They are too willing to give up their rights and to scapegoat people, especially immigrants and people who criticize the war."
Hunger for Dictatorship by Scott McConnell
The invasion of Iraq has put the possibility of the end to American democracy on the table and has empowered groups on the Right that would acquiesce to and in some cases welcome the suppression of core American freedoms. That would be the titanic irony of course, the mother of them all—that a war initiated under the pretense of spreading democracy would lead to its destruction in one of its very birthplaces. But as historians know, history is full of ironies.
Democracy Is Not Freedom by Rep. Ron Paul
The political right equates freedom with national greatness brought about through military strength. Like the left, modern conservatives favor an all-powerful central state – but for militarism, corporatism, and faith-based welfarism. Unlike the Taft-Goldwater conservatives of yesteryear, today’s Republicans are eager to expand government spending, increase the federal police apparatus, and intervene militarily around the world. The last tenuous links between conservatives and support for smaller government have been severed. “Conservatism,” which once meant respect for tradition and distrust of active government, has transformed into big-government utopian grandiosity.
February 6, 2005
DOOMSDAY' LEGISLATION by Greg Szymanski
No longer do Capitol Hill legislators need a quorum to do the people’s business. Now under a piece of hotly contested legislation passed without media attention on Jan. 5, only a few members of Congress are needed to do official business in the event of a catastrophe instead of the usual 218.
Critics claim H. Res. 5 paves the way for tyranny, allowing “only a few to decide for so many.
Can the South Survive? by Charley Reese
It was often said that the South would rise again, but a more appropriate question for today is, "Can the South survive as a distinct region and culture?" I'm not sure it can because of the vast migration of Yankees.
February 3, 2005
Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy by Murray N. Rothbard
Murray Rothbard's 1984 analysis of modern American history as a great power struggle between economic elites, between the House of Morgan and the Rockefeller interests, culminates in the following conclusion: "the financial power elite can sleep well at night regardless of who wins in 1984."
It is a portrait that remains unchanged, in its essentials, to this day. Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy was written and published in 1984, during the Reagan years.
Reagan started out by denouncing the power elite and specifically the CFR and the Trilateralists, but wound up with that epitome of the Establishment, Skull-&-Bonesman George Bush as his vice president and successor.
The Emergence of the Homeland Security State by Nick Turse
Today, freedom -- to be spread abroad by force of arms -- is increasingly a privilege that can be rescinded at home when anyone acts a little too free. Today, America is just another area of operations for the Pentagon; while those who say the wrong things; congregate in the wrong places; wear the wrong t-shirts; display the wrong stickers; or just look the wrong way find themselves recast as 'enemies' and put under the eye of, if not the care of, the state. Today, a growing Homeland Security complex of federal, local, and private partners is hard at work establishing turf rights, garnering budgetary increases, and ramping up a new security culture nationwide.
Artificial Distinctions . . . To Make The Rich Richer - Andrew Jackson On Immigration? by Donald A. Collins
These immigrants are basically slaves to a system gone terribly corrupt, a country in decline, and a nation whose leaders have usurped our basic freedoms. These include dilution of our voting rights, earning power, and the future patrimony we should be handing on to our children.
Liberty and Order, Home and Abroad by Robert P. Murphy
Not only does a widespread respect for property rights appeal to one's intuitive sense of fairness, but it also is indispensable for modern society. That is, if people generally did not refrain from theft and murder, then the division of labor and hence civilization would be impossible. To the extent that a monopoly government infringes on people's property rights (for example in its claimed right to tax), then it necessarily hampers the development of the social bonds and prosperity lauded by pro-Western thinkers.
February 2, 2005
ROUND-UP: STATE OF THE UNION
Following are experts who can comment on President Bush's State of the Union Address on Feb. 2. Issues expected to be addressed: developments in Iraq and Afghanistan; national security; continued economic reform, including tax cuts and proposed income tax reform; Medicare reform with prescription drug coverage and private insurers; immigration reform, including a 'guest worker' program; Social Security reform and private investment accounts; tort reform; energy bill; education reform:
The First Amendment: Too Much of a Good Thing? by Michael Tennant
Fortunately, while the rest of the Constitution has been shredded, we still have most of our First Amendment rights intact. The best way to win the battle and restore the fire of liberty to the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens is simply to exercise those rights, for the pen truly is mightier than the sword.
February 1, 2005
Lessons In Totalitarianism by William Norman Grigg
Children who are raised by the State, warned Aristotle in his Politics, 'will be equally neglected by all alike.' That neglect breeds violence, which in turn provides a rationale for tyranny. As alarming as it is to see Taser-equipped police officers prowling the halls of public schools, it is downright terrifying to imagine what will happen when the lessons taught by this display of pitiless State power take root and flourish.
Abandoning Liberty, Gaining Insecurity by Paul Craig Roberts
Should Americans have to give up the Bill of Rights in order to be "safe" from terrorists? Actually, it doesn’t matter what Americans think. The trade has already been made – and without any input from the people. The "democracy" that America is exporting is in fact a Homeland Security State with more surveillance powers than Saddam Hussein.
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