Sign of the times, I suppose: there’s a new gold rush in Californee. Sorry to burst your bubbles, guys, but Gus Chiggins already beat you to it.

The founder of the airline passenger advocacy group FlyersRights.org had her computer and email account hacked by Delta Airlines. How despicable. A woman wants to prevent airlines from endangering people’s health by imprisoning them on cramped airplanes for hours on end, so instead of getting off of their fat, lazy asses to serve their fucking customers for a change, Delta instead resorts to hacking into her account to…to what? Extort her? Blackmail her? Scare her? Currently I am presuming Delta guilty until proven innocent. As a reminder, there is no way in hell most of the large airlines would exist in their current form without State interference on their behalf. Corporate-State socialism FAIL.

The Canadian copyright-advocacy group Access Copyright wants the Canadian government to ban free format-shifting and time-shifting. As far as I can tell, format-shifting means burning, ripping, or copying anything from one location, medium, or file type to another, and time-shifting means fast-forwarding through commercials with your DVR. This group wants to threaten murder against people for format-shifting or time-shifting without paying for permission to do so. As Voltaire said, “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”

Absent from most commentary on the strength of the American (and world) economy and especially from the reassurances that the American economy is recovering is an analysis of whether the trends that harmed the economy in the first place are continuing or ceasing. They are continuing, says Peter Schiff, and it’s only making the inevitable correction (depression) worse.

Target gave in to political-correctness hysteria and agreed to stop selling a pair of “illegal alien” Halloween costumes which consisted of a green extraterrestrial alien mask and an orange prison jumpsuit with “illegal alien” stamped on the front. If Target had any sense, guts, or character, it would have taken advantage of the free publicity and stood up to these crybabies. It was a nice surprise to read that several other stores have not and will not give in to the political correctness bellowing blowhard bully brigade. The costume was a complete non-issue, until some PC-obsessed morans made it into one. It’s a hilarious pun! Now I have a good Halloween costume idea for the future!

The latest from the “It IS happening here” files: Cops take DNA sample from boy for throwing ketchup at McDonald’s. (Actually, it’s happening there, as it’s the UK, but that doesn’t make it any better.)

10/19/09: Never forget.

Contradicting the trend observed by Randall Munroe and millions of others on YouTube and lots of other sites, the comments by readers at Reason‘s blag are intelligent, informed, and quite funny. The vast majority of the comments on Sullum’s post address the question of whether the Cult of Scientology is a religion or a cult. You might as well read the post and the comments because there aren’t a ton of them, but here’s a sampling:

“In one of his books (“Expanded Universe” I believe), Heinlein thanks L. Sprague de Camp for providing the best definition he’s seen. Basically, a “cult” is a faith that has gotten most of its followers as adult converts, while a “religion” is a faith that most of its followers were born into.”

“Scientology calling itself a religion is insulting. Where’s their summons?”

“Stop attending your local Lutheran church, and compare that with trying to leave Scientology. You’ll get a pretty good idea of what a cult is.”

“Religion, cult, who cares? All I care about is that Scientologists believe in this, which is fucking hilarious.”

“I stopped attending my local Lutheran church for a couple weeks, but then they sucked me back in with their Oktoberfest party featuring Schnitzel, Bratwurst, Sauerkraut and a delicious Hefeweizen. Now that’s my kind of cult!”

“These British hate crime laws seem to be applied very oddly.

Channel 4 in England recently did an expose called Undercover Mosque (the whole thing’s on youtube) in which they filmed British imams spewing hate and threatening violence on every imaginable group of people.

Not only was not one imam procecuted, but they tried to prosecute Channel 4.”

“You do know the basic underpinnings of Scientology, right? I mean, Christianity is crazy but Scientology is CRAZY, like, totally Gollum crazy.”

“Stupid England. Sometimes insults are appropriate and factual. If you meet a douchebag in the street and call him a douchebag, it doesn’t really matter if he suffers emotional distress or not. Fuck him.”

“England is known for its free speech traditions?”

“But how long after L. Ron Hubbard’s death until it graduates into a religion? I have no idea.

Maybe when they stop acting like a totalitarian state: sending problem cases to squalid re-education labor camps (the RPF), pressuring members of their paramilitary organization to have abortions (Sea Org), routine polygraph examinations to detect doubt and disloyalty (E-Meter ‘sec checks’), forced confessions with the threat of blackmail (‘overts’ and ‘withholds’ kept in ‘Ethics folders’), encouraging members to inform on each other (‘Knowledge Reports’), screening incoming and outgoing mail and blocking Internet sites (‘Scieno Sitter’), using KGB-style dirty tricks and plain old thug violence to silence critics and dissidents (Paulette Cooper, Keith Henson, Mark Bunker, …), full-scale espionage operations (Operation Snow White), hostility to the press involving litigiousness and physical intimidation (Richard Behar and Time Magazine, John Sweeney and the BBC, …), a cult of personality centering around Hubbard which has transitioned into Stalin-style hagiography since his death (L. Ron the Poet, the Philosopher, the Artist, the Music Maker, the Humanitarian, the Adventurer, the Freedom Fighter, the Yachtsman), and in general an attempt to control all information about the Church by any means necessary.

Maybe then they won’t be a cult anymore.”

“Nah, Co$ is legit.” [I don't know why I found that one so funny, but I laughed out loud at it.]

“Scientology is a pyramid scheme masquerading as a cult masquerading as a religion.”

“To me, the main thing that sets Scientologists apart from all real religions is the fact that they hide their beliefs from outsiders, and indeed even from low-level Scientologists.”

Note that all of those comments are copied and pasted with no editing—Reason‘s readers actually know how to write with proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling.

I was going to add a comment that would have said, “Two words: Tom Cruise.” But some people already brought up Tom Cruise and his image and stuff, so I didn’t. Nobody would have read it anyway.

As a final side note, in this one discussion thread at Fark.com that I read, back in my darker days when I hadn’t sworn off Fark.com threads in the interest of my blood pressure, my faith in humanity, and my sanity, a Farker recounted the story that L. Ron Hubbard founded Scientology on a bet with Robert Heinlein. Heinlein had bet Hubbard, who was his friend, that Heinlein could found a successful religion before Hubbard could. (Maybe success was measured in revenue or followers…I’m guessing revenue. I think the bet might have included a dollar figure, namely, $1 million.) I never heard any evidence that Heinlein attempted or even intended to carry through on his own bet, but Hubbard certainly took it seriously and ruined the lives of millions of people. Well, at least thousands.

This post is about a comment made on William Norman Grigg’s blag post, which I linked to three posts ago. The commenter, anonymous, said,

are you serious?

as a former member of a cult in which i had NO choice to be in, i applaud the removal of people from this forced abuse.

A cult you had no choice to be in, eh? Hmmm, I’ve written about those before… What is the largest, most intrusive, most intolerant, most destructive cult ever known to man? Why, it’s the Cult of the State! And believe it or not, anonymous, you’re still a member and always have been. I am not exactly a member, I’m only a victim of its crazed system. I am not a willful participant. Neither is any libertarian.

Would you applaud the removal of people from this forced abuse? (Maybe abuse is a harsh word…extortion? Restriction of liberty? Millions of people certainly are abused, though, by any standard.) If you applaud the removal of some people from forced abuse but not others, why not the others? If you applaud the removal of people from any forcible system they disapprove of, then welcome to the light of libertarianism! You must agree with our assertions of our right to secede from any monopolistic State and form voluntary governing jurisdictions—jurisdictions of one, if need be. You must also, therefore, vehemently support the abolition of the state of Texas and its police force, as vehemently as you support the removal of the FLDS children from their families.

Somehow, I don’t think he would see it that way. That’s why Statism is such a pernicious cult and why it seems impossible to break free from its tyrannical grasp.

The particular woman who prompted me to write this today is Trudi Daniels, the news lady on the Drew & Mike show on WRIF-Detroit in the morning. It is easy to tell she is a pretty big State lover when they talk about news and politics, because the guys on the show are Ron Paul fans and they absolutely loathe Hillary Clinton, which they bring up every time they can. And they aren’t big fans of Barack Obama, either. One thing Mike Clark mentions probably more than any other political issue is socialized medicine, which frightens and worries him as much as it does me. The guys agree, and they all occasionally drop a Paulian opinion about the government or the candidates. But she’s always trying to interject her mitigating comments, or explain what Hillary or Obama meant by this or that statement, or tell one of the guys, “That’s not exactly true” or “There’s more to it than that” or something along those lines. What results is that the guys who actually run the show keep her more in check than she does them. If she were the news reporter for a show hosted by liberal wingnuts, she would probably go to town with her Hillary (or Obama) adulation and nanny-state socialism all the time.

I had her pegged as a typical wishy-washy liberal bed-wetter, but today I found out she is an ignorant and dim-witted Statolatrist. (Maybe there’s a difference, I don’t know. If there is, it’s only in degree.) In their discussion of the FLDS ranch raid in Eldorado, Texas, she said something to the effect of, “What I don’t understand is if their informant, ‘Sarah,’ was in Colorado, why wouldn’t they follow up on that? Aren’t they able to do that? Trace her number, find her address, or something? Why would they follow through with the raid if they knew or might have known the caller was far away, wasn’t making substantial accusations, and was probably pulling a prank?”

Are you fucking kidding me? Are you that naïve and gullible? Are you that brainwashed by the boobs in the MSM (you are one!) and the crooks and liars in the professional criminal class that you think neither local nor state nor federal cops would raid the compound of a cult, with tanks and full body armor and all kinds of extremely destructive (not defensive) weapons, on a pretense that was shaky at best? Why wouldn’t they go ahead with it even if the probable cause was not, in fact, all that probable? Have you lived this long in the 20th and 21st centuries without ever having the slightest inkling that maybe the types of people who are attracted to the higher levels of government, especially the law-enforcement branches, are the ones who enjoy and seek the exercise of power over others, especially by force—the more violent, the better?

The reason they raided the compound, kidnapped the children, and accused the adults of various violent crimes, without any real evidence, is because the cops and politicians will suffer little or none if they are wrong. What are the victims going to do? Sue them? Get money from them? No—get money from the taxpayers. What else could they do? Secede from that law-enforcement body and subscribe to a different service from a different entity? That’s what they sort of tried to do already, unofficially; that didn’t work!

But the adults were the ones who ran the cult and wanted to separate (hide?) themselves from Texas state law; this is about the children. The main legal justification for raiding a compound where hundreds of adults lived and kidnapping hundreds of children was that underage marriages and pregnancies may have been taking place, which is a violation of the children’s rights. The children are rightfully considered largely helpless by the State, and officials all think their rightful public duty is to protect children from crimes.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that most libertarians and other people who care about reducing State power (Constitutionally or revolutionarily) do not and would not justify the brainwashing, confinement, underage marrying, or underage impregnating that may or may not go on in this or any other cult. We do, however, have a very practical and utilitarian side to our moral and ethical reasonings—contrary to popular belief—and we assert loudly and confidently: MOST PARENTS KNOW BETTER HOW TO RAISE THEIR CHILDREN THAN ANYONE WHO WORKS FOR THE STATE DOES. We realize that whatever wrongs some neglectful, fundamentalist, evil, or stupid parents might inflict upon their children, the quantity and degree of such injustices pale in comparison to the injustices that will be inflicted upon child and adult alike by a state that is given enough power to combat such injustices. We realize that if you give a state the jurisdiction and power to decide unilaterally what is appropriate and inappropriate for a parent to do, that state’s power will grow such that the crimes it commits against the citizens at large will outweigh the crimes that would be committed by evil parents in both degree and number. If you are skeptical of that assertion, ask yourself: How many compounds did the FLDS cult members raid, with tanks and other destructive weapons, to kidnap other people’s children for the children’s own good? How many Branch Davidians did the polygamists in Eldorado murder? How many innocent drug users have the FLDS polygamists kidnapped, beaten, and enslaved in cages with serial murderers and rapists? How many 18-to-22-year-olds have the FLDS polygamists forced into military slavery and sent to die in a non-threatening country halfway across the world? How many other Eldorados and Wacos are there going to be, after the Imperial Federal Government and the state of Texas have broken their Constitutional limitations so many times and committed such injustices for the good of the people? You can’t give the State any power without it taking too much power. This is the utilitarian argument for libertarianism.

I try to keep in mind, as should you, Frederic Bastiat’s complaint, “[E]very time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.” I don’t know what, if anything, would be a good or right thing to do for the children who are born into the FLDS compound and remain there for all their lives; I know I would hate living there and would curse fate for giving me such a life (then again, if I were born into it, I might not know any better…). I don’t know what could have been done to help those children, those wives, or any other children and women in similar situations, in a free society; my guess is next to nothing. Certainly nothing forceful. Maybe there is no right answer for many of them. They’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Their lives will obviously be worse if they are forced into Texas’s foster-child system; there should be no argument over that. The only clear thing that emerges from this debacle is what should already be clear: State solutions are absolutely, positively always worse than the problems they purport to solve, and the governments of this country have too much power, and are too eager to exceed even that.

I never planned on writing three posts, much less three consecutive ones, on the FLDS compound raid, but I think I’m done with it, unless and until, of course, more State injustices occur in this case, which actually seems pretty likely.

Also, Willian Norman Grigg is much, much more forgiving and non-judgmental of the FLDS adults, much more eager to give them the benefit of the doubt, than I ever would be, but his column on the matter is a compelling read, especially for my non-libertarian friends.

The topic at hand, however, is equally entertaining but in a much more humorous way. While I was browsing his humor category I came across this: The Dukes of Hazzard as an allegory for Jesus Christ. Read for yourself.

UPDATE: Uh, so apparently Dr. Long’s trackback/pingback thing works kinda like ours does (annoyingly) and posts pingbacks in the comments section, or else his comments don’t require his approval, because an excerpt from this blag post appears as a comment to his post that I linked to. I hate that because it looks so much like blag prostitution, or something. Or “pimping out,” as David Shuster might harmlessly and inoffensively call it… I didn’t intend or try to do that, and didn’t insert a trackback URL because his blag doesn’t have them.

This morning, I stumbled upon a very popular blog (judging by the number of comments per post) titled Vox Popoli. The author, who calls himself Vox Day (bonus points for the pseudonym), refers to himself as “Christian Libertarian”.

I lol’d.

How can you be a Christian apologetic and a libertarian? Libertarianism is all about the non-aggression principle. Live and let live. Christianity, on the other hand, is all about telling people what to do and what not to do.

As any frequenter of LewRockwell.com knows, quite a number of true (anarchist) libertarians are devout Christians, and furthermore, they have enumerated many times the reasons that libertarianism is the only truly Christian political philosophy. As the great Christian libertarian Frank Chodorov said, he could see how a libertarian might not be Christian, but he didn’t see how a Christian could not be a libertarian.

In response, Vox Day says something very puzzling. He seems to make a gigantic error, either semantic or material:

First, libertarianism incorporates a non-aggression principle, but it is by no means all about non-aggression. In fact, it may actually require aggression because what it is actually all about is limiting government power to the bare minimum required by a society.

Now, I know Vox Day is a minarchist, but that doesn’t detract from his supremacy as a writer and spreader of the libertarian message, especially to Christians. But how can he confuse aggression and self-defense?! I sincerely hope this is just a semantic difference, that he just refers to different types of force all as “aggression,” and that he does understand the fundamental difference between State aggression (for instance…taxation, or…its existence) and self-defense against such aggression. Libertarians use “aggression” and “coercion” interchangeably, and “self-defense” very, very differently.

Libertarianism is all about non-aggression because it is directly implied by the self-ownership principle, which I know he subscribes to and puts at or near the top of his list of human truths.

One of Day’s central theses in his writing is that belief in Christianity, or, perhaps, just belief in something higher than humans and this universe, is essential for widespread human liberty. His main piece of evidence for this, as far as I have been able to gather so far, is that atheists do not believe in any final, higher, absolute morality—they are moral relativists—so they try to implement moral relativism into State policy, leading, basically, to the enforcement of the belief that there is no right and wrong. Which means the State determines what is right and wrong. Communist governments, which outlawed religion and even the basic family structure because nothing could be held higher than the State and the Communist Party, are probably his primary examples of this. Other examples, not necessarily of atheism in government but of the harm done by the notion that the State should determine what is right, would be every other government in the history of the world.

But, as far as I can tell, Vox Day completely ignores the glaring record of human history that shows us how murderous, intolerant, and immoral believers in a One True Faith can be. If atheists have a bad record with government, Christians and Muslims have a worse one.

Belief in a higher moral authority seems quite often to lead directly to the belief that you have the correct morality and dissenters don’t, and it is your place to force the correct morality on everyone. It’s for the higher good, after all. This isn’t required of Christians, Muslims, Jews, or Miscellaneous, but it sure seems common. Which leads one to the fairly obvious realization that government is at the center of the problem, not faith. Vox Day, Lew Rockwell, and millions of other libertarians would say that belief in the true teachings of Christianity will lead one to endorse the non-aggression principle and oppose the existence of (most of) the State. Well, be that as it may, the Bible, clergymen, politicians, philosophers, writers, and activists certainly haven’t done a very good job of infusing this true Christianity into the minds of Christians or non-Christians. What seems to be wildly successful, on the other hand, is the self-righteous assertion that everyone has the right to use the police power of the State to force their morality, religious or otherwise, onto everyone in the State’s geographic domain. We have even seen how adherents to the most popular form of “Christianity” in the United States today, neoconservative-evangelical crusaderism, perceive perfect right in the expansion of their State’s geographic domain to the entire world!

The origin of this problem and its solution both lie in ourselves, in human intellect, reason, and philosophy, not in an external force or authority. Something about our minds is the problem with government and coercion, and widespread belief in monotheistic religions sure hasn’t done anything to cure it, but rather has, unfortunately, exacerbated the problem, if anything. Self-righteous assertions of atheism have also exacerbated the problem. A lot of things humans do exacerbate our own problems.

Christian libertarians believe that the Golden Rule, love of thy neighbor, and the Sixth and Eighth Commandments should govern our behavior, and therefore vehemently oppose everything about the State. Christian Statists think it is their God-given duty on this Earth to use government coercion to force various other concocted aspects of their morality onto everyone, and furthermore that they can—no, must—violate the Sixth and Eighth Commandments and the Golden Rule to carry out this work. Atheist libertarians think nothing is higher than humans—the most important aspect of humanity, the individual—and therefore every individual has equal rights, so no one may do to another what may not be done to him. Atheist Statists think nothing is higher than humans—or the most important aspect of humanity, the State—so the wielders of State power should force their ideas on everyone.

Atheism is not required for totalitarianism. Belief in a higher morality is not required for liberty. Belief in a god or gods is not the cure for atheist Statism. I will reiterate again, widespread belief in a One True Religion has almost always led to the belief that its adherents must enforce their beliefs on others, violently if (when) necessary.

Clearly, the belief that a higher, final moral authority exists has led to a multitude of human moral codes, all of which can’t be right and most of which are appallingly wrong to even the most casual objective observer. Day says, and I can’t disagree, that atheism usually leads to the belief that there isn’t a higher, final moral authority humans must abide by. Both extremes of these beliefs and everything in between seem to have led us no closer to widespread human liberty. And, I think history shows us these beliefs haven’t led us closer to the discovery of what a correct, true, universal human moral code would look like.

The problem isn’t with the source, this higher force or judge, if it exists. The problem isn’t with the possibility that one doesn’t exist. The problem is with humanity, with the people who do the interpreting and enforcing. We are the only common factor. Regardless of whether you believe a true, universal human morality comes from the Creator of the universe or has to come from humanity, we have to determine what that morality entails. We have to determine, enunciate, and spread the correct morality with our own minds and words. We have to explain why Islamic jihaadism and neoconservative crusaderism are wrong, and how they have either misinterpreted their faith or chosen the wrong faith altogether. Day insists, at the very least, that belief in an extra-universal authority is necessary for any true morality and not moral relativism to reign. He never seems to address the fact that the discovery of the contents of that moral code have nothing to do with faith or religion. It must come from human observation, reason, and philosophy.

He continues refuting this ridiculous German:

Christianity most definitely is NOT about telling people what to do or not do, quite the opposite, in fact.

I’m sure all Christian libertarians say this. I’m also sure a hell of a lot of Christian leftists (for instance, Republocrats) believe Christianity is about telling people what to do and not do. Who’s right? Who correctly interprets the teachings of Jesus and the Bible? Who are the true Christians and who believe in a corrupted Christianity? How are we to determine this? By observing, reasoning, and philosophizing. There is zealous belief on both sides, so belief per se has nothing to do with it. As humans striving for a just and moral world, we must explain why one aspect of their moral code is wrong or one aspect of our moral code is right.

Even though Day spends what little time he doesn’t devote to the promotion of his new book doing exactly this—arguing for his moral-political philosophy, minarchist libertarianism—I haven’t noticed him acknowledge the fact that this endeavor has nothing to do with faith, religion, or a lack thereof. It comes from his mind. He is appealing to other people’s minds. It is most certainly inspired by his belief in Christianity, but so is a lot of neoconservatism. He came to his beliefs by his reason and his experiences, which were guided by his faith, but so did many State-worshipping socialists. Are they actually different faiths, one being true Christianity and one masquerading as Christianity? Which one is correct? Which one is better? We can only know by reasoning and discussing, if at all. Telling them that a higher moral authority exists, outside of this universe, and even agreeing on that point, does nothing to change their minds about what that moral code consists of. Facts, history, experience, intelligence, reasoning, and discussion can enunciate this morality, but religion apparently cannot.

Maybe Day would say that since it is wrong for the State to determine what is moral and immoral, and “the State” simply means the people in control of the State at a given time, then it is equally wrong for people to claim they have determined what is moral and immoral.

Then where does our morality come from? I don’t hear any voice from heaven giving us any hints or help. If there is any extra-universal force or being that knows the correct human moral code, how are we supposed to deduce it? So far, religious belief (i.e., the belief that heavenly forces have given us hints and help) has a pretty dismal record at this endeavor, as believers in the same religion can drastically disagree on their own religion’s message and have all too often embraced State coercion and warfare to enforce their “correct” morality, thereby proving their morality to be incorrect. Belief in a higher, ultimate moral authority most decidedly does not lead to the discovery or implementation of a true and universal human morality; obviously, it tends to lead in the opposite direction. Then again, you could argue that almost any society of humans doing, saying, and believing almost anything has led in the opposite direction from freedom. Which just furthers my point that people’s minds, our psychology, our reasoning, our understanding of ourselves is the deficiency, and this is what must be improved for any large number of people to embrace liberty and shun coercion. Belief in God, while it certainly can become more widespread, cannot become more absolute for some people, and even when this belief was both widespread and absolute, it didn’t succeed in promoting liberty for very long. In some times and some places, it did, as Lord Acton and other Christian libertarians are quick to point out, but what failed was not their faith but rather the moral code that their faith led them to. Witness, for instance, New England busybody-Puritanism that gave us government schooling, income taxation, and military interventionism, the three greatest evils in the world today.

I think if he wants to spread libertarianism, his focus should be not on whether people believe in a supernatural moral authority, but on what they actually believe about human society. He’ll say that the reasons behind people’s moral beliefs will provide insight into how we differ and how to change them, to which I would respond that that brings us back to each individual’s reason, psychology, and philosophy, and not belief in god or belief in the absence of a god, both of which are faiths and both of which lead in myriad directions. These many moralities come from our minds and our constitutions, our view of the world and the universe and the extra-universal, our interpretation of our faith, not from having a particular faith.

Since many people’s morality is guided by their faith, and they will use their belief in a certain type of god or religion to direct (or justify) their adherence to a set of moral values, many Christian and non-Christian scholars will return to one of the deepest and most important questions of history: Who is right? Who correctly interprets the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Bible? Not being Christian, I’m going to have to let my political bias take over and go with the libertarian Christians.

To summarize my point, I am not addressing Vox Day’s assertion that the belief in an ultimate, extra-universal judge or authority leads to the belief that one true, universal human moral code exists. I am saying that this belief has been very harmful more often than not because of our many shortcomings. I also know that belief in this extra-universal authority is not necessary for the belief in a single universal moral code. Furthermore, I contend that discovering and enunciating what that moral code is has nothing to do with faith or non-faith, but can only come from our observations, intellect, reason, and internal moral compass.

Saying that humans are going to have to discover, understand, and implement a true, universal human morality on our own does not make the problem any easier; I think it just gives us a better place to start. I’ll offer my position, the promotion of which is the raison d’être of this website. I submit that the axiom of self-ownership and its corollary, the non-aggression principle, make up the entirety of the true, universal human moral code because it is the only morality that not only can but must apply equally to every human in every time, place, and circumstance.

Like Wes Baker, I too am sickened and embarrassed at Christian opposition to Ron Paul. The Protestant church is not only no friend of freedom, it is evil and stupid. Evil for rejecting Ron Paul because they love war, the military and the warfare state, and stupid for rejecting Ron Paul because they don’t know the difference between libertarianism and libertinism. Christians, please read my “Open Letter to the Protestant Community in Behalf of Ron Paul” and tell me where and why I am wrong about Ron Paul.