Coming Soon to Venezuela?

This, I submit, is the Panama Model for overthrowing a foreign regime. It’s pretty simple; Step 1) change the law to suit your purpose, 2) charge a leader with a drug crime, step 3) demand he removes himself from power, (it’s understood that they won’t) 4) create a terror/security incident, 5) send in the troops to seize the criminal, 6) murder civilians or military (does not matter), 7) install your guy and viola there you have it – overthrow Panama style.

This is the strategy that Attorney General William Barr used in 1988-89 against former CIA asset and Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega. The Noriega indictment resulted in a US invasion of Panama that left hundreds – possibly thousands dead Panamanian civilians in its wake. We are watching the Venezuelan version, of the Panama Model, unfold before our eyes.

Last week, the US Justice Department unsealed an indictment on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other government officials, accusing him of a drug crime. (step 2) The charge, Narco-Terrorism, Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Criminal Charges. That puts us in a holding pattern, waiting for Step 4, a terror/security incident.

Washington has tried, unsuccessfully, to create the spark needed to start an incident. However, Maduro has remained peaceful during Washington’s provocative actions like; recognizing Juan Guaidó as president, attempts to break thru the Tienditas Bridge blockade, calling for the Venezuelan military to defect and demonstrations like “Operation Freedom.”

Up-Close – The Panama Model

Chess players have favorite opening moves. Bobby Fischer’s favorite opening strategy was the Ruy Lopez. Regime change advocates also have their favorite strategies. Attorney General William Barr appears to have found his favorite overthrow strategy, the Panama Model.

Is it a coincidence that Barr just happens to be the same person who gave the first Bush administration the legal justification to invade Panama just over 30 years ago?

Step 1) Change the Law

in 1980, President Carter’s head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) ruled the FBI does not have international authority to arrest a person in another nation if that nation does not consent. The opinion written under Carter said, “US agents have no law enforcement authority in another nation unless it is the product of that nation’s consent.”

When Bush came into the White House in January 1989, he appointed William Barr the head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Barr asked then-Attorney General Dick Thornburgh to author a legal opinion memo on the 1980 Carter Administration’s decision.

June 21st, 1989, the response was, “At the direction of the President or the Attorney General, the FBI may use its statutory authority to investigate and arrest individuals for violating United States law, even if the FBI’s actions contravene customary international law.”

This was a game-changer, it said that the FBI could carry out arrests in other nations, even if it violates international law. Barr wrote, “the 1980 (Carter) Opinion was clearly wrong in asserting that the United States is legally powerless to carry out actions that violate international law by impinging on the sovereignty of other countries. It is well established that both political branches — the Congress and the Executive — have, within their respective spheres, the authority to override customary international law.” How convenient!

2) Charge a Leader With a Drug Crime

In February 1988, under the Reagan administration, the US indicted Noriega on charges of Drug trafficking and racketeering, and he was taken off the CIA’s payroll. Over the next year, the US placed economic sanctions on Panama in an effort to pressure Noriega to step down.

3) Demand He Removes Himself From Power

On June 21st of 1989, the plot to sell the Panama Model and mobilize for the invasion began. The U.S. government had already entered into negotiations with Noriega seeking his resignation. The talks proved lengthy and inconclusive and the negotiations collapsed. It was clear that Noriega had no intention of ever resigning. That was the final attempt for a “diplomatic” removal of Noriega.   

4) Create a Terror/Security Incident

The only thing missing for a full-out invasion was a spark to ignite the invasion phase. The spark came with a December 16, 1989 incident, when four U.S. personnel were stopped at a roadblock outside Noriega’s Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) headquarters in the El Chorrillo neighborhood of Panama City.

The United States Department of Defense said that the servicemen were traveling unarmed in a private vehicle and that they attempted to flee the scene only after their vehicle was surrounded by a crowd of civilians and PDF troops. Robert Paz of the United States Marine Corps was shot and killed in the incident.

5) Send in the Troops to Seize the Criminal

Four days later, on December 20, 1989, the U.S. launched its invasion of Panama. Although the killing of the Marine was the stated reason for the invasion, the operation had been planned for months before his death. The move was the largest military action by the U.S. since the  Vietnam War and included more than 27,000 soldiers, as well as 300 aircraft.

6) Murder Civilians or Military

The number dead from this model is widely disputed. Some human rights groups say the number of the civilian death toll is in the thousands. Victims claim many bodies were buried in mass graves and never counted, and to this day, families of the dead are still searching for the bodies of their loved ones. In 2019, Panama made December 20th an official day of mourning.

7) Install Your Guy

Operation Just Cause was initiated with a US Justice Department indictment. Back then it took about 20 months from the indictment to invasion. This mobilization should take less time this thanks to the nefarious work of Eliot Abrams, ex-National Security Advisor John Bolton and the money that the US has funneled to fraud leader Juan Guaidó.

Update Venezuela – Waiting for Step 4

On March 24, Colombian authorities seized a truck full of weapons and military equipment, including 26 assault rifles, worth $500,000. Venezuelan intelligence services linked the weapons to three camps in Colombia where paramilitary groups of Venezuelans and U.S. mercenaries are training to carry out attacks against Venezuela.

According to Venezuela’s Communication Minister Jorge Rodríguez, these groups were planning to take advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to attack military units and plant bombs. These groups are linked to Alcalá Cordones, a former General in the Venezuelan armed forces.

Alcalá retired in 2013 when Maduro was elected after Hugo Chávez had died. Alcalá Cordones fled to Colombia from where he supported the U.S. chosen clown Juan Guaidó as self-proclaimed president of Venezuela.

Another *Elliott Abrams Moment

Part of the Maduro charges included a $10 million reward on the head of Clíver Antonio Alcalá Cordones. Yes, the one man that was willing to help Guaidó and join the U.S. in their plot. By the way, it appears that the Justice Department did not inform him about indictment because he freaked out and blew the whistle on the operation.

On Friday Alcalá Cordones decided it was unsafe for him to stay in Colombia. He ‘called up’ the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and gave himself up. He was extradited to New York and will now become a ‘witness’ against Maduro who he has publicly opposed in the first place. 

Alcalá Cordones admitted that the weapons were under his command. This may threaten the plan that the U.S. concocted with Guaidó and the men behind him. Alcalá further admitted that the weapons were purchased with funds given to him by Juan Guaidó, with whom he allegedly signed a contract.  Alcala claimed that the operation was planned by U.S. advisors, with whom he had met with at least seven times.

Most of us with “non-essential jobs” get to stay at home, blinded by “The Weapon of Mass Distraction” as men like Elliot Abrams and William Barr roam free and are allowed to go to work. Does that make regime change, in the United States, an essential job? 

 

*Elliot Abrams – On January 25, 2019, he was appointed as Special Representative for Venezuela. He is best known for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, which led to his conviction in 1991 on two misdemeanor counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress. He was later pardoned by George H.W. Bush.  In the George W. Bush administration, as Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy, in charge of promoting Bush’s strategy of “advancing democracy abroad.” Abrams was a key architect behind the 2003 Iraq War.

Is It A Knowledge Problem?

If you can drown out the fear-inducing noise spewing from the TV, (yeah team) “keep your eyes peeled,” you might see how more liberty creates more problem solvers. Studying pre-progressive history, before Wilson, of the United State you realize that it was open markets that made America great, not restrictions, licenses, certificates, and any other bureaucratic special interest legislation. 

In this COVID-19 crisis, it is interesting to witness the political elites using their executive power to actually waive laws and bypass regulations. The lesson learned should be, when the market place becomes more free and open, problems get solved. It is a simple supply and demand issue.

Take the problem of moving goods quicker and more efficiently to the public consumer. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott waived oversize and overweight restrictions for commercial trucks. He also suspended requirements to register commercial trucks under the International Registration Plan or to obtain temporary registration. The only stipulation attached to his actions is that the truck must be registered in another US state.

To make prepared food more available for the self-imposed, quarantined or sequestered people, Boston’s Mayor Marty Walsh, lifted the permitting process for restaurants to have a take-out service. Now every restaurant can offer carry-out service. New York City suspended its enforcement of illegal e-bikes during the crisis to accommodate for the influx of delivery orders.

Grocery demands have made it essential for supermarket companies like H-E-B, Kroger, and Randall’s to hire thousands of additional staff. Some states have stopped enforcement of expired Resident and Driveway Parking permits, enabling the supply chains for these supermarkets to meet their need. Grocers like H-E-B have reach levels of 1,300 trucks a day to supply their stores.

Communities have suspended required building permits for “minor work,” like plumbing, electrical, mechanical, fire, and building as long as contractors alert the city of the work they intend to do. It has clear, that lifting regulations do not put public health or safety in jeopardy. So, why do the regulatory burdens exist?

Non-essential Roadblock

What bureaucrat or authority has the knowledge to determines what is “nonessential” or “essential” production? When hand sanitizer ran short, distilleries started making it. Hanes turned from making underwear to making masks. There are many examples of creative solutions that can be found. What if the whiskey and underwear industries had been shut down because they were deemed nonessential?

Keep your eyes peeled for liberty breaking out!

A Plague?

Regardless of what you may think about the origins of COVID-19, bio-weapon, ‘just the flu’ or the new plague, it’s here. The response is real, the global economy has been damaged. The speed with which those seeking power is astounding. It has become a race to tyranny, openly embracing a Fascistic control. Any alternative, the media has informed us, would be a heartless do-nothing response.

Trump, to his credit, didn’t order a national top-down approach to COVID-19 he left it up to the states to handle. Nor has he yet nationalized every manufacturing plant to make N-95 masks and PPE. Some states are being put on lockdown to stem the spread of a disease whose biggest threat is overwhelming an ill-prepared medical infrastructure.

Congress is paralyzed by partisan bickering seeing this as a publicity opportunity. The Republicans are wrapping themselves in the moral high ground of sending out UBI checks and the Democrats decry lack of Congressional control over corporate handouts while $1.8 trillion in new spending will be coming from the Federal government. Not one bit of this spending is prudent nor necessary. It’s just more of our socialist destruction of wealth through debt issuance.

Media and leaders have turned the fear level to full blast. This biblical plague, COVID-19, appears to be a tough virus to beat but isn’t world ending. Hospitals and the medical community will be overworked and will probably need help but we cannot help when ordered to stay at home. Many of us would donate time, money and energy to help our community get through this. For the sake of the economy, others would even be brave enough to show up for their work.

Authority Flu?

However, we continue to allow power-hungry maniacs to run roughshod over us because we’re fearful of this plague. They have succeeded in selling fear in hopes to save themselves. They keep telling us that open markets don’t work and that individuals cannot be trusted and that only the State can coordinate such a monumental task such as saving humanity from nature. They’re wrong.

The reality is that the State is grabbing an insane level of power. Martial Law in the U.S. appears to be right around the corner. While we have yet to realize that the more power governments grab the less capable they are of protecting us, our family and our communities. The non-compliant are viewed as a threat and hiding is considered heroic.

With every crisis comes opportunity. Opportunities in change, new beginnings and ending bad habits. If we are entering into a survival situation, let’s eliminate the issues we’ve been fighting over for the past years, like identity politics. Fights over gender, race, sex and color look have always been dangerous and stupid. Does it really matter if the guy behind the meat counter at your local supermarket is a MAGA guy or a Bernie Bro, hates gay people or is a closet tranny?

Let us be brave enough to let commerce flow again. The healthy, low-risk people should be allowed to take necessary risks to keep the lights on, the sewers functioning and the food supply from collapsing. Instead, they are forced to cower in a government-enforced lock-down. “Release us,” should be our demand.

Some people will make the wrong choice, but most won’t. Stop using the people as your straw men to grind your political ax. Zero tolerance is a dangerous solution and will maximize costs at marginal benefits. Our communities must become alive again to fight back against the threats of the government’s overreach or the virus itself.

To deny people, capable of making millions of decisions in the course of a day, the freedom to decide their own level of safety is criminal. Competent leaders need the decency and humility to get out of our way so we can thrive.

Top-down authority is separating us from our greatest strength, our ability to try new things and solve problems. More governmental directives are not what we need. They don’t have all the answers but are pretending too. The way to restore confidence in people is to not inspire panic. The one-size-fits-all mandates are incapable of solving problems and will only prolong the misery.

What is lacking is humble leadership to provide more encouragement and to dictate less. Leaders need to have faith in their citizens to accept that bad people may do good things and good people may do bad things. They need to be flexible enough to know that decisions made today may need to be reversed tomorrow.

Cure

We’ve been given a huge wake-up call, our leaders have built us a house of cards. Executive power, corporatism, and socialism have been exposed. The major flaw with central planning is the lack of specific knowledge. Problems are usually an aggregate of complex things spread over many different and diverse systems. The idea that ‘wise and verified smart” people can centrally plan for all individuals is absolutely ridiculous. 

The decisions we allow our governments to take now will determine what that world will look like tomorrow. Panic and coercion will not restore confidence in a currency, a people and a government. The cure for the authority that plagues us is; freedom, good leadership, and trust.

 

https://tomluongo.me

 

 

The U.S. economy is plunging toward a recession/depression. Unemployment has soared and businesses are struggling to pay their bills. State authorities are coercing Americans to stay at home as business profits are lost, the economy is tanking.

When the authorities initiate a “shelter in place” directive do they even care about the ramification? The hardest hit by these directives are services. The service industry accounts for about 70% of this country’s economy. Shutting down “non-essential services” is shutting down a huge sector of the economy. In other words, for many, no work means no money.  No money translates to default on loans, mortgages, rent and car payments not to mention food and utilities.

I am bewildered by both the moves of the State and the response of the public. In a time of crisis, authority is allowed and encouraged to expand. Authority, when served up to the public as “protecting our citizens”, is dangerous and is often the greatest usurper of freedom because what is enforced today becomes palatable in the future.

Our welfare-warfare state has created a Nanny society where we look for our next directive from the central planners. Anson Dorrance, the legendary women’s soccer coach at UNC says, “athletics do not build character, it exposes character.” Well, crisis exposes character too. This would explain the narrative shift going from impeachment, for the abuse of authority, to not using enough authority (combating COVID-19) in just a few short months.

My bewilderment has been tweaked by Washington’s moves to help the economy. Congress released an economic stimulus bill that includes $50 billion in “loans and loan guarantees” for passenger airlines; $8 billion for “cargo air carriers”; and $150 billion for other “eligible businesses.” The legislation will give the Treasury Department the authority in determining which businesses qualify for this $150 billion fund.

The media and Washington can call it a stimulus package but call it what it is, a bailout with helicopter money attached to ensure inflation. A program that targets specific chosen industries is a stimulus for those specific industries only. In reality, they have picked the winners and the losers will fend for themselves. In 2009 they choose the banks as the winners and determined that the homeowners would be the losers. Bank executives got cash bonuses while the homeowners lost their homes.

Congress tells us that legislation stimulus is based on four “pillars”

1) direct cash payments to individuals

2) funding to the health-care industry

3) loans to target industries (bailouts)

4) payments to small businesses

Number 1 – Direct Cash Payments to Individuals

Direct cash payments to Americans is like giving $100 to an addict and saying “go get straight.” The legislation would provide checks of $1,200 per adult, as well as $500 for every child in those families. It’s more complicated than that and will probably take a whole new department of bureaucrats to figure out and administration and eligibility of payments. But what will $1,200 dollars provide: one month’s rent, one payment of a mortgage, a couple months utility bills, one car payment or maybe a week’s supply of heroin.

If Washington really had concern for the lower and middle class and wanted to help them get through this recession/depression they would immediately cut spending and cut taxes. Especially defense spending, bring all the troops home and return to the workers all the taxes they took in 2019 and stop collecting (withholding tax) the 2020 taxes immediately.

Number 2 – Funding to the Health-care Industry

It was America’s health care central planning system that delayed many of the proactive responses to the virus due to the rigid top-down rules and procedures imposed by the Pure Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in hamstringing local and decentralized development and use of Coronavirus testing tools since nothing could be done without approval and permission of the American government’s health and drug planners.

The easing of these pains starts with letting the market prosper, not more authoritative directives. Did anyone take note that in order to get more research on the testing for COVID-19 and vaccination research the government had to remove regulations? Amazon and other goods delivery companies are prospering because the open market will adjust to meet the market demands of consumers.

Number 3 – Loans to Target Industries (bailouts)

Turn the money spigot off. No more bailouts! These target companies will not learn anything from a bailout. History shows that it will make even riskier business decisions when the government establishes a precedent of bailing out. A “too big to fail” becomes a huge chip on their shoulder because they know that no matter how reckless their finical endeavor is big brother will be there to bail them out. Enough is enough.

Bailouts will just accelerate our false capitalism. I call it false because it is saturated with an excessive level of corporation-government predator relationships. This is called corporatism also known as fascism.  And socialism is not the answer. The government should not be collecting authority they need to distribute it back to the community as the US Constitution instructed. Authoritative governance does not work. Central planners can not pick winners and losers. The market with its supply and demand is too much of a fickle environment.   

Number 4 – Payments to Small Businesses

Local supply chains must be allowed to recover and new start-up companies must be encouraged. Enterpenures will grow their businesses if left unmolested by imposed licenses, certification, quotas and yes minimum wage requirements. The stimulus package should be focused, at the grass-roots and local community. Community banks need to make loans available for the local service vendors and entrepreneur that have an invested interest in community development.

The market is saturated with too much cheap money. The Federal Reserve’s strategy of keeping the interest rates low has failed and negative rates will make it worse. The rates must be release to seek a level that promotes savings. Adding more cheap money into the market will spike inflation thus lowering purchase power. Life after this crisis will change, people should have an incentive to save and spend prudently. 

Socialism and fascism have no heart they work contrary to community, family, spirituality and religion because their first loyalty is to the state, not the individual or local community. Please Mister bureaucrat let us Capitalize on this crisis and let the marketplace lead.

Natural law 

Natural law recognizes that the law and morality are deeply connected. Morality relates to what is right and what is wrong. Natural law theorists believe that human laws are defined by morality, and not by an authority figure, like a king or a government, any government, even a democratically elected one.

Beginning last week Massachusetts drivers will face consequences if caught using their cellphone while behind the wheel. The concept makes sense, the fewer drivers are distracted the less chance of an accident. I agree with this assumption.

Many drivers have voluntarily been following the hands-free initiative because they know it is right. But to create a law that prohibits drivers from texting, talking or using the phone unless they use the hands-free mode is an abuse of the political system. 

When I object to something being done by the government, the “indoctrinated” concludes that I object to the activity that is being regulated. If I disapprove of state education, then I am opposed to any education. If I object to state-enforced equality, then I am against equality. If I object to my taxes being budgeted toward war, then I am un-patriotic. No, it’s the force that I object to!

Philanthropic Law

I have not been in an accident involving a cell phone. Once I hit a car in the rear end while looking down to change the radio station. A thirsty friend once had an accident while picking up his water bottle to quench his thirst. Does our benevolent Commonwealth have the duty to create legislation requiring hands-free radios or hands-free water bottles?

Laws to help keep me safe are sold as benevolent laws but in reality, are just an expansion of government control. The function of law is not to regulate our conscience, our ideas, our wills, our education, our opinions, our work, our trade, our talents, or our pleasures. The function of law is to protect the free exercise of our inalienable rights.

Laws are not to prevent people from interfering with other’s free exercise of their rights. A philanthropic law is contradictory when it has an ill effect upon persons and property. If the law acts in any manner other than to protect rights, it violates our liberty.

Force of Law

With law comes the use of force, usually used for coercive compliance. When does force become necessary? Individuals use force in defense of person or property. It then stands to reason that a collective force (police) should only be allowed to use it for the same two purposes. Therefore, any other use of force would be illegitimate. Force used to support laws made for religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, literary, or artistic are not eligible for the use of force.

Frédéric Bastiat

In, The Law, by Frédéric Bastiat, he addresses the misconceptions of the law. Bastiat’s work examines, in great depth, the law as it relates to government and society. He insists that the government assumes people are inert, passive matter, a kind of vegetation indifferent to its own existence.

Bastiat believes that the state’s mission is to mold people into a society, by law. They look upon people in the same manner that the gardener views his trees. Their mission is to shape human beings into groups, series, centers, sub-centers, honeycombs, labor-corps, and other variations.

Bastiat suggests that just as the gardener needs axes, pruning shears and saws to shape his trees, the government needs the force that can only be found in law to shape human beings. For this purpose, he devises tariff laws, tax laws, relief laws, and school laws.

The consequences of passing laws such as this are that the people no longer need to discuss, compare or plan ahead; the government is doing it for us. Intelligence becomes a useless prop, we cease to be critical thinkers; we lose our personality, our liberty, our property.

Law Makers

The makers of the law, the legislators, have lost their understanding of what law should be. Law is to guarantee the safety and property of the individual and not to oppress persons or steal their property. They arrogantly assume that people must be shaped, by the hand of their authority, into an infinite variety of forms, more or less symmetrical, artistic, and perfected.

Legislative leaders portray themselves as having the inclinations that their constituents may not have. They tell us that mankind tends toward evil, the legislators yearn for good; while mankind advances toward darkness, the legislators aspire for enlightenment; while mankind is drawn toward vice, the legislators are attracted toward virtue.

They justify that the law, along with its force, is necessary in order to improve the human race. Too many legislators make a career of organizing it, patronizing it, ruling it and place themselves above mankind. They assume that in the heart of a man lies fatal traits that will ruin them if not checked.

They assume that without law people would be free to follow their own inclinations and would arrive at ignorance instead of knowledge, poverty instead of production, slavery instead of freedom and peace instead of war. Their justification for making a law to protect me from myself is laughable.

Bastiat wondered, “If the natural tendencies of men are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”

Indoctrination

Public education is their indoctrination program, much like a sign pointing in the direction to the road of servitude. Its teachings come from books on philosophy, politics, or history, rooted in the idea that mankind receives life, organization, morality, and prosperity from the power of the state.

Their textbooks promote the idea that mankind tends toward degeneration, and is stopped from this downward course only by the hand of the legislator. They claim that the law gives the authority to enforce, control, benefit, and improve mankind.

They teach that men like Hamilton, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson and FDR were saviors for the “indispensable nation’s” democracy. Their teachings ignore the facts that depict them as power intoxicated tyrants. They are our icons because they were able to further the centralization of governmental authority at the expense of freedom and justice. 

Injustice – A Reality

The state will claim that the law and force will keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing but mere abstinence from harming others. They claim the law violates neither personality, liberty, or property and that they safeguard all of these. They defend laws as being the rights of all and that justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.

Legislation cannot correct the reality of injustice. I am not as handsome as Brad Pitt, I am not as intelligent as Einstein, I do not possess the oratory and literary skill of Patrick Henry or Thoreau. Injustice is not a curse it a challenge. It only becomes unjust when it violates freedom, justice and Natural Law.

When the law and its agent for force impose regulation of labor, method, education or selection it is abusive. It substitutes the will of the legislator for the will of the people; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives. The results of their laws becom; the “New Jim Crow” prison system, homelessness, addiction, war, violence and immorality.

The “Law” Is Our Shepherd

Individuals, not the state, are solely responsible for their choice between right and wrong, vice and virtue where the result leads to punishment or reward. We can no longer remain passive and consider ourselves incapable of bettering our prosperity and happiness by our own intelligence. For if we continue to play sheep to their shepherd, society will unwittingly be pushed toward the cliff of compliance.   

When society gives up its personal responsibilities to the government it gives up its freedom. Therefore, good fortune and bad fortune, wealth and destitution, equality and inequality, virtue and vice we are told depend upon the political administration. The state is then burdened with everything, it undertakes everything, it does everything; therefore it is responsible for everything.

The law becomes omnipotent. The government’s responsibility is enormous with its undertaking control of wages, the care for all who may be in want, the support all unemployed workers, the interest rate of loans. The state’s purpose is then to enlighten, to develop, to enlarge, to strengthen, to spiritualize, and to sanctify the soul of the people. The reality is that the government should not and cannot do all of these things.

The Declaration

Today we stand a crossroads. In 1776, Jefferson described it,

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

The “event” today is the same as it was in 1776, the State’s usurpation of citizen power. The State is a monopoly of coercion led by people seeking to maximize their power and wealth at others’ expense. The leaders use both natural and stage calamities to exploit their advancement of power. From Pearl Harbor to 9/11, from hands-free cell phones to the real ID we continue to give away our power to control our lives as they grab more power.

Calamities give the state an excuse to make law or regulation to protect us from future incidences harming us. The laws and legislation that protect “me” are only justifications to gain more power. The Declaration of Independence provides a blueprint for what justifies governmental power. 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Murray Rothbard once described the limited constitutional “State” as: “a noble experiment that failed …  the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, “Limit yourself”; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.”

Of Independence

The great myth of central planning is that injustice can be eliminated, it cannot. History has proven that a centralized government fails and usually ends with some degree of revolution. “Central Authority” is not going to magically produce the right outcomes for society. It only produces huge deficits, both financial and moral. 

The happiest, most moral, and most peaceful people are those who follow a liberty principle. Mankind is not perfect but all hope rests upon the free and voluntary actions of people. Revolution accomplished peacefully is preferable. A peaceful solution lies within the human relationships founded upon liberty and not authority. How about a hands-free government!