Archive for the ‘Fascism’ Category
Quote of the day
Saturday, February 4th, 2012The very same faction that pretended for years to be so distraught by Bush’s mere eavesdropping on and detention of accused Terrorists without due process is now perfectly content to have their own President kill accused Terrorists without due process, even when those targeted are their fellow citizens. —Glenn Greenwald, on ...
Maybe free speech is less popular than I thought
Friday, February 3rd, 2012I had a bizarre experience yesterday: I encountered two people who were wrong on the internet who asserted that words can harm people and so their (mis)use should be punishable by law. I don't mean using libel or slander to harm someone's reputation, which should not be considered crimes anyway. ...
PCIPA: another internet-censoring, privacy-violating bill that goes overboard
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012I was impressed by this article in The Atlantic by Conor Friedersdorf about the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (PCIPA), The Legislation That Could Kill Internet Privacy for Good. This article was written on August 1, 2011, and apparently the bill, H.R. 1981, is almost a year ...
Links for an ending week
Friday, January 20th, 2012President Obama deserves praise for opposing the SOPA/PIPA bills in the House and Senate, respectively, but, of course, in true Republocrat fashion, deserves further criticism for qualifying that with, "That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors ...
Hypocrites silent as Obama authorizes military detention of American citizens
Monday, January 2nd, 2012One of the most unfortunate aspects of America's democratic process and its current state here at the beginning of 2012 is the nearly compete absence of discussion of some central issues by most people, along with their failure to acknowledge that those issues even exist and their complete hypocrisy regarding ...
Stop the Stop Online Piracy Act!
Saturday, November 12th, 2011The latest attempt from the parasites in Washington to limit the freedom of the internet and all of the benefits that stem from it is called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Its more official, full name is Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation ...
The existence of the TSA is the point
Monday, July 4th, 2011You might have read or heard about this story from Florida in which a 95-year-old wheelchair-bound woman was required to remove her adult diaper to be inspected by the Transportation Security Administration last month. You might not have heard that the 95-year-old woman was actually calm and acquiescent during the ...
Government-enforced net neutrality
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011The only part of the phrase "government-enforced net neutrality" that is relevant is the "government-enforced" part. There are so many arguments against the position that the Imperial Federal Government should enforce net neutrality that I had a hard time knowing where to begin. They include: Most problems with cable companies ...
Two totalitarian laws closer to being enacted
Friday, November 19th, 2010You might have heard about two awful, totalitarian, Orwellian laws that the Senate is close to passing, which would unquestionably make our lives worse and cement this Democratic Congress as one of the worst in our history. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently approved the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act ...
Links for an ending week
Friday, November 5th, 2010The Fraud Started at the Very Top: With Government Leaders, from Washington's Blag. See their numerous examples of how rating agencies, the Treasury Department, the SEC, the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and others committed fraud and helped banks commit fraud. This is truly a devastating list of criminality ...
It’s not your fucking business
Friday, August 20th, 2010Roger Clemens has been indicted for "obstruction of Congress" because he lied to them in 2008 when he told them, "Let me be clear. I have never taken steroids or hGH." The Imperial Federal Government has decided it can take people's lives, liberty, and property for putting certain substances into ...
H.R. 5741: Universal National Service Act
Friday, August 6th, 2010Perhaps you have seen the text of this House bill introduced by Chuck Rangel: the Universal National Service Act. Yes, a draft: military (or some other form of) slavery. Here is the summary sentence of the bill: To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and ...
Internet uprising overturns Australian censorship law
Friday, February 5th, 2010I don't think this news story got enough attention: from Ars Technica I read that an internet uprising led to the overturning of a very Orwellian censorship law in Australia. The law, which had taken effect just weeks prior, banned anonymous political commenting online. Can you imagine the twisted set ...
Campaign finance reform is pretty simple
Monday, January 25th, 2010Many of my friends and millions of people in the blogosphere/social-mediasphere have expressed their outrage and indignation at the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations can spend as much as they want to promote or oppose whatever political candidates or causes that they want. One of my friends said she was ...
Obama-bashing quote of the day
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009In reality, the quote of the day is Chris Floyd's entire post about Tony Blair's warmongering glorification of the Iraq War and Obama's warmongering glorification of any war the Imperial Federal Government embarks on—in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, no less! But since I know you all read Chris Floyd's ...
Fish in a barrel 5
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009A Texas jury decided to sentence a murderer to death after consulting their Bibles during deliberation. People who lack a solid grasp of important socio-political issues (Statists) will use this revelation to distract from the real issue. The issue they will harp on is whether this represents some violation of ...
An “up-or-down vote on health care”?!
Saturday, October 10th, 2009Sadly, we have yet another example of liberal short-sightedness and overall inability to understand the key part of an issue: this petition that the political action committee Progressive Change Campaign Committee is going to submit to Harry Reid. It reads, "Any Democratic senators who support a Republican attempt to block ...
Anarchist Elliot Madison wrongfully arrested, robbed
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009In a continuation of law-enforcement agencies' general disdain for and dismissal of our civil liberties, Elliot Madison, a self-described anarchist, was arrested for using Twitter and a police scanner to help G20 protesters coordinate their efforts and avoid police officers. The charges on which he was held don't indicate any ...
Rahm Emanuel: we can cancel your right to bear arms at any time
Sunday, July 12th, 2009One of the most telling, and disturbing, facts about Barack Obama was his choice of Joe Biden as VP and Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff. Both are creeps, both are criminals, both are frightening warmongers who are terrible on civil liberties. Here's the latest appalling example from Rahm Emanuel. ...
Obama Defense Dept. advocates post-acquittal detentions
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009We'll see if this actually happens: Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson moved the Obama administration into new territory from a civil liberties perspective. Asked by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) the politically difficult but entirely fair question about whether terrorism detainees acquitted in courts could be released in the United States, ...
Quote of the day
Thursday, June 11th, 2009From Chris Floyd, as incisive and unforgiving as usual, RE: the Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009: What kind of country passes such a law? Why, a cheap, corrupt, third-rate junta state, which has elevated war and militarism into its supreme value, its "ultimate concern," its divinity—that's what kind of ...
The Chrysler takeover and the rule of law
Monday, May 25th, 2009Joshua Claybourn summarizes why the Obama regime's management of the Chrysler bankruptcy is worse than just more government intervention. It violates the most important aspects of a sound legal system: the sanctity of contracts and the rule of law. Under these long standing bankruptcy laws—enacted and enforced by the federal government ...
Toy guns aren’t weapons
Saturday, May 16th, 2009I have difficulty believing anyone actually supports zero-tolerance policies and extreme political correctness anymore—anyone, that is, except government bureaucrats. By "extreme" I mean atrocities such as this, which any sensible person would be outraged at: NEWTON COUNTY, Ga. -- The latest case of zero-tolerance at the public schools has a 10-year-old ...
Obama DOJ: Government officials are above the law
Friday, April 10th, 2009Literally. This is the legal doctrine the Obama regime's Department of Justice [sic] is invoking in its recommendation that Jewell v. National Security Agency be dismissed. Kevin Carson, in his column National Security: The Last Refuge of Scoundrels is incisive: If the Obama Justice Department’s legal doctrine is allowed to stand, ...
Facebook “thoughts” of the day
Saturday, April 4th, 2009A friend's Facebook status: "...says its about time the government passes some serious gun control laws. to hell with the right to bear arms." Her friends' responses: "hear hear!" "No guns and arms? That settles it, no more gym." (admittedly, kind of funny) "But then what the hell am I going ...
My bank gives bailout money back
Saturday, March 7th, 2009Well, it's trying to. The bank I put my non-shiny currency in, TCF Bank, has filed paperwork to give its $361 million of bailout money back to the Imperial Federal Government. It's hard to imagine a libertarian advocating giving money to the government, but the executives at TCF know it ...
Quote of the day
Thursday, February 19th, 2009Writes Robert Higgs: These [public–private] partnerships, which epitomize economic fascism, promise to waste resources on a wide front. The idea that politicians and politically appointed “experts,” in league with rent-seeking businessmen, can allocate resources more effectively than the private capital markets is a characteristic form of the folly that is leading ...
Overeating makes you the property of the State
Sunday, February 15th, 2009Not surprisingly, now the nanny-state fascists want to take obese children away from their parents. Certainly many people who procreate are bad parents and some are even entirely unfit to be parents. You know what I think makes people even less qualified to be parents than the parents of obese ...
Obama’s nationalism and socialism
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009Partly because I like quotations so much and partly because I haven't perused many blags recently, my favorite blag post of the last several days was this one by Michael Rozeff. He compares the unifying, nationalistic theme of Obama's four-year presidential campaign to the ideas and slogans of the Nazis. ...
Freedom-hating “nudger” appointed to regulatory post
Thursday, January 8th, 2009Skip Oliva writes about the appointment of Harvard law school professor Cass R. Sunstein as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. This is one of the most important "regulatory" (murder/slavery-mongering) bureaucracies in the federal government. There isn't much I could add to Oliva's post. Except to link ...
Oh, but it isn’t a draft
Saturday, November 8th, 2008I've become quite fixated on two themes of our current political-economic climate in the last two or three months, since the recession seemed to be accelerating and a Democratic sweep on election day seemed nearly certain: making correct economic predictions and explanations (which the Austrians seemed to do pretty well) ...
“Libertarian paternalism” is idiotic
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008This concept of "libertarian paternalism" is possibly the stupidest thing I've heard since some self-described libertarians suggested that Rudy Giuliani had a libertarian molecule in his body. It is so stupid because it is a metaphysical impossibility. Tim Harford of the Financial Times seems to be largely amenable to the ...
Children, forward to the Glorious Green Future!
Saturday, August 16th, 2008Unsurprisingly, quite a few radical environmentalists are escalating their alarmist/propagandist efforts and trying to turn children into snitches on their parents and blind servants of the Glorious State. I'm pretty sure most people who call themselves "environmentalists" and embrace the term would find this brand of brainwashing and family-destruction very ...
Staggering ignorance 2
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008Unfortunately, the greater the humanitarian outreach, the greater the violence required to achieve it.—Ron PaulAt lunch today I overheard people talking about the ridiculous sums of wealth that athletes and entertainers accumulate, and they wondered what in the world those hundred-millionaires and billionaires do with all that money, and why ...
Paul Craig Roberts on the “terrorist watch list”
Sunday, July 20th, 2008Paul Craig Roberts violates Godwin's Rule but still manages to make excellent points in a good column about the ludicrous terrorist watch list and no-fly list maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. That's real talent. Money quote: The ACLU says that "putting a million names on a watch list is ...
Lynch mobs, stones, and glass houses
Friday, July 4th, 2008I urge you to read this column published at Wendy McElroy's website ifeminists.net, written by one WolfmanMac, about the increasing criminalization of being male: Lynch mobs, stones, and glass houses. The nuanced insight and analysis of one man's child-porn charges in particular and society's attitude about sexual predators in general ...
Inside the Statolatrist mind
Saturday, June 21st, 2008In New Scientist magazine, Owen Flanagan reviews the book The Political Mind by George Lakoff. Flanagan provides a surprising and refreshing non-Statolatrist perspective on science and politics in this review, but that might be typical in New Scientist—it certainly isn't in primary scientific journals. Flanagan is especially skeptical of this ...
Gonzalo Guizan: another death by drug war
Friday, June 13th, 2008Radley Balko writes of another victim of the paramilitary-style drug raids that Republocrats and their myrmidon voters continue to support in the name of protecting our liberties or our morals or some such. On May 18, police in Easton, Connecticut conducted a heavily-armed drug raid on the home of Ronald Terebesi, ...
Child faces prosecution for calling the Cult of Scientology a cult
Saturday, May 24th, 2008Jacob Sullum reports at Reason's Hit and Run that a British teenager has been summoned to court and faces a fine (and, presumably, a mark on his criminal record) for holding a sign outside of the Cult of Scientology London headquarters with the word "cult" on it. I don't understand ...
To the Home Office, everyone is a terrorist suspect
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008It's a shame George Orwell didn't foresee the advent of computers and the computer age because if he had, 1984 would have been so much more frightening. The Home Office of Great Britain plans to create "Big brother" database for phones calls, emails and web use. This fascism hasn't been ...
Protest = Terrorism
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008That's the point we're coming to under this national-security state in 21st-century America. Republicans and Democrats and the people who continue to support them like a battered wife who won't leave her abusive husband are to blame. Karen De Coster on the LRC blag: If you are going to St. ...
Defeating their own arguments
Saturday, May 10th, 2008I'm surprised I haven't blagged about any of the posts on one of my new favorite libertarian sites, Rad Geek People's Daily, Charles Johnson's blag. He wrote a long and entertaining post about three rural-Minnesota 8th-graders who were suspended for sitting during the Pledge of Allegiance. My favorite part of ...
“But the State has to protect the children!”
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008"Or else stupid and negligent parents would cause all sorts of harm to them!" It is an understandable position, one I used to take in my darker, minarchist days. However, it is hard to deny the reality that often, the harm that a parent does to a child is not even ...
Orwellian Real ID tyranny
Sunday, April 6th, 2008After Anthony Gregory's announcements on the LRC blag and Mises blag introducing the Independent Institute's new blag, The Beacon, I realized that my recent lament that Gregory has only recently resumed regular blagging was misinformed; he has apparently been writing for that blag since October and was, in fact, its ...
Libertarians and Godwin’s Law
Friday, March 14th, 2008Libertarian writers need to learn Godwin's Law. It states that as a discussion on an internet forum grows longer, the probability of someone comparing another group or ideology to Hitler or the Nazis approaches 1. It might be more appropriately called Godwin's Rule nowadays, because the rule is that you ...
Smoking ban prediction
Monday, March 10th, 2008As far as I am aware, the only friend or semi-close acquaintance of mine who opposes bans on smoking in "public" (i.e., private) businesses is Kelly. I wouldn't be surprised if some of my family did, because they are pretty libertarian, but it's never come up. Then there's the college ...
California criminalizes home-schooling
Monday, March 10th, 2008I keep telling you, it IS happening here. Charles Johnson has some excellent commentary, as usual, on this.
Flu shots: “recommended” to “mandatory”?
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Karen De Coster made a prediction that I made to myself when I read this announcement this morning: The Imperial Federal Government is now recommending that all children between the ages of 6 months and 18 years get a flu shot once a year. I predict that within our lifetimes, ...
Fatal asthma attacks and smoking bans
Monday, February 25th, 2008Recently I blagged about a poor girl who suffered a fatal asthma attack induced by the cigarette smoke at the restaurant she worked at, and that this would surely lead to a state-wide smoking ban in "public" (i.e., private) businesses. While I haven't heard any news about such fascist legislation ...
It IS happening here
Friday, February 1st, 2008Republocrats currently use fear-mongering on two big issues to garner support for their various State interventions into our lives—terrorism for some, global warming for others. Perhaps it can be said that libertarians also use something akin to fear-mongering in our debate and discussion, though of course I think it is ...