Mindless Insanity Rears Its Ugly Head Once Again

Ender

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Mindless Insanity Rears Its Ugly Head Once Again as All Those Picking a Side Have Already Lost
By Gary D. Barnett

November 7, 2020

“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.


The largest number of Americans in history just did the same thing over again for the 59th time, all expecting a different outcome. The state chosen clowns were sent in to take their place on a preset ballot, and half the people took one side and the other half took the opposite side. Insanity is forever evident, but every four years, that insanity is placed on a pedestal for all to see, and that spectacle is once again proven to be a supreme example of the stupidity of man. It is very difficult to imagine that such a repetitive act so absurd as a presidential election of a controlled tyrant could stir the thoughtless emotion that it does, knowing that in four years these same drones will once again lose their collective minds and play the same game over again.

If Trump wins, we are all doomed! If Biden wins we are all doomed! This is the entirety of the thinking that is taking center stage today. The bottom line is that both sides of this asinine argument are exactly correct, which leaves anyone with even a modicum of intelligence scratching his head to the point of causing blood loss.

It seems obvious that none from the most ignorant to the most ‘educated’ among us are exempt from a temporary, or not so temporary, loss of intellect when it comes time for them to choose their already chosen master. Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, libertarians and independents all think it mandatory this time around to once again participate in this circus in order to fix the ills of a population that today have to be told to not drink the contents of their car’s battery because it may be harmful to their health. What in the world has happened to individual sanity and responsibility? What has happened to cause division to be so rampant as to be the controlling impetus of all human thought? And why does the near entirety of this population not see that they have been indoctrinated and guided, tricked into voluntarily destroying their own lives, so that the ruling class has an easy time using the people’s cognitive dissonance to bring about their own slavery? Every election is the epitome of this scheme.

While all this voting absurdity is consuming the minds of brain-dead citizens, the top headlines behind the selection process are those that state that the U.S. Covid-19 peak is here, with the most daily cases, and that the killer vaccine rollout will feature app tracking of vulnerable groups. These are very serious matters, but until the current consuming craziness is finished, other important corruption will be ignored, allowing for the advancement of more tyranny behind the cloak of election politics. It seems the general public can only concentrate on one thing at a time, because the capability to think is seemingly lost, while individual intellect has been damaged beyond repair.

After the last election fiasco in 2016, the Democrats were crushed, and became completely insane with hate. The Republicans were ecstatic, as they were confident that their guy Trump would save us all, and so they thought to themselves that they had won! Four years later, government spending at levels never considered in history has been the result. U.S. wars continued around the world, threats of war were constant, brutalizing people around the globe continued; all while the economy was being purposely destroyed and blamed on a scam. Protectionism became rampant, causing mass suffering of innocents, and a national emergency was declared, leaving open the door for all governors to become tyrannical cretins on a mission from hell. Businesses were closed nationwide, lockdowns were enforced, unemployment skyrocketed, travel ceased, deadly mask wearing and social distancing became normal, and deployment of national troops with threats to use the military to distribute killer vaccines was set in place. Stock markets were constantly manipulated, while the Federal Reserve printed many trillions of dollars to enrich the ‘elites,’ allowing for more control over the populace. This is only a small sampling of all the totalitarian measures that happened under a Trump presidency. But Republicans forgot all that as they clamored for more and more of this type of ‘leadership,’ promoting another four years so that all of us could be saved from the evil Democrats.

Now, if the Biden camp instead of the Trump camp wins the election manipulation contest, the Democrats will think and say the exact same things as Republicans did four years ago. The stage would be set for more tyranny at the hands of politicians, but this time, the left hand of the political partnership called the party system would be in control. The fake pandemic would continue, the spending would expand, wars and brutality would remain in place, and socialistic legislation would go forward with similar goals that existed over the past four years. More business closings will be imminent, while continued destruction of the economy will occur. Unemployment, mandated behavior, lockdowns, travel bans, masks, and deadly vaccine promotion will not only continue but be more enforced. Another national emergency declaration will be forthcoming, and troops will be forever on alert to squelch any resistance by the thinking few. Terror in the streets will continue and become commonplace, as the state will allow this behavior, no different than has taken place over this past year while the other side was in charge.

This common dictatorial pattern carried out by the ruling oligarchy, an oligarchy made up of the banking and corporate systems, the tax exempt foundations, the claimed ruling elite individuals, and both sides of the political class, regardless of which party claims power, will not cease, but will only get worse. There is no difference in these evil monsters that desire to rule over the world and all its inhabitants. There is no difference in the Republican and Democrat Party. There is no difference in the left and the right except at the extreme margin, so all on both sides continually lose without even understanding that they have lost. The blame is always placed on the other side, just as has been purposely instilled in the mindless robots called American citizens since the two-party system was designed. The concentration of power never changes, and the parties only change in that they take turns pretending to be for their side, and the people fall for this deception every time, as they wallow in divisiveness and ignorance.

Understand that this planned deception was intentionally created, and that as long as infighting continues among us, they win and we lose. Until the false paradigm of Democrat versus Republican is understood for what it really is, which is a conspiracy of self-created division due to indoctrinatory manipulation, we will all suffer under a system of power and control where the few control the many.

We either become individuals working together for the advancement of freedom, which benefits all, or we remain slaves to the state apparatus that is now in the process of gaining total control over society. It is okay to think differently, it is okay to act differently, but it is always detrimental to hate one another based on the idea that others have to believe and act as you do. Any attempt to force compliance against the will of another leads only to divisiveness, and that is why we are all being deliberately exploited today by the very political system supported by the majority.

Secession is a better option.

“Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?”

Link:https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/11...s-all-those-picking-a-side-have-already-lost/
 
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Political theater is for the idiot who wants to feel smarter than the idiots around them. It’s WWE for intellectual teenagers wanting to mentally masturbate their way to moral superiority over their brother.

Government IS the monopoly on force and violence. Voting isn’t just consent to this force and violence, it’s begging for it. It’s asking for your side to inflict it’s will on not just the other side, but those who never consented. Consider that voting itself is force and violence upon others, as all laws your (we didn’t consent) politicians create are enforced at the barrel of a gun. We can all be killed by a cop for jaywalking no matter how hard you participate in the sacred right of sticking it to The Others.

I would gladly participate in a system of government that respects individual liberty and didn’t steal my labor by force. Until then it all can fuck all. Yes, I understand that they are going to do what they do. It’s the voters who don’t understand that. It says right there that we have the right to alter or abolish. Voting ain’t that. It’s the polar opposite.

Crying over Orange Man or Plugs won’t bring you more liberty. Setting brush fires of liberty in the minds of others is much more impactful and better for the soul. Get out of the moral depravity of partisan politics.

The emperor has no clothes. Open your eyes and laugh at him with us. For a lot of us liberty is a way of living, not a political ideology to be manipulated by carnival barkers and snake oil salesmen.

Keep setting those fires, Ender.
 
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WTH, I just tried to send this thread to a friend on their FB page and was greeted with this:
You can't post this
This URL goes against our Community Standards on spam:
ronpaulforums.com
Trying to do an end round I used the Rockwell link and was able to get it posted.
Nice find Ender, I'd rep you for it but I have to spread some around first.
 
WTH, I just tried to send this thread to a friend on their FB page and was greeted with this:
You can't post this
This URL goes against our Community Standards on spam:
ronpaulforums.com
Trying to do an end round I used the Rockwell link and was able to get it posted.
Nice find Ender, I'd rep you for it but I have to spread some around first.

Fedbook would not let me share for 3-4 days. I'm guessing something I shared from GW Pundit.
 
What has happened to cause division to be so rampant as to be the controlling impetus of all human thought?

I've answered this a hundred times or more.

I could, with equal frustration, ask: "What has caused blindness to approaching danger to become so rampant as to render a society self suicidal?"

Yet another self righteous screed from an unknown internet pundit telling me how stupid I am for choosing a side in what I see as a life or death struggle is hardly helping.
 
WTH, I just tried to send this thread to a friend on their FB page and was greeted with this:
You can't post this
This URL goes against our Community Standards on spam:
ronpaulforums.com
Trying to do an end round I used the Rockwell link and was able to get it posted.
Nice find Ender, I'd rep you for it but I have to spread some around first.


Covered.

Thanks for adding reputation to this user. May you be lucky enough to receive the same Reputation back in turn.
 
Secession is a better option.

“Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?”

I've answered this a hundred times or more.

I could, with equal frustration, ask: "What has caused blindness to approaching danger to become so rampant as to render a society self suicidal?"

Yet another self righteous screed from an unknown internet pundit telling me how stupid I am for choosing a side in what I see as a life or death struggle is hardly helping.

LOL. At the end of the "self righteous screed" he said what you have said over and over again. "Secession is the better option." But collectivist secession is doomed to failure. The state isn't going to let you "vote" yourself a new territory. And trying to carve out a new territory with a group of your buddies was first tried by Mr. Shay and put down by a freaking militia. (And we all know how the civil war turned out. I wonder why I wasn't about Shay's rebellion in U.S. History class? They taught me about the ill fated "Whiskey Rebellion." I guess they thought I'd have less sympathy for someone making the devils brew than I would a revolutionary war vet who got stiffed on his pay but still had to pay his taxes and debts.)

But there's another option. So brilliant I am surprised it didn't sink in. And I finally figured it out in the "Join or die" thread. Just....don't comply. Just seriously don't comply. The final weapon that those who want to fight against the stealing of the 2020 election is the primary weapon of the agorist. Don't comply. If you live in an area where compliance will be mandated, move to an area where it won't be and....don't comply. Convince other people not to comply as well. Wasn't that the who point of the Atlas Shrugged novel? (I have not read the novel nor have I watched the movie.) The "Who is Ron Paul" meme was based on "Who is John Galt" and everyone wanted to get to "Galt's Gulch." He didn't fight a war to gain the territory. He didn't win some political contest where he got congress and a state legislature to "vote" him a territory. He just bought it and invited others.

The same thing is even easier to do at the cyber level. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are only near monopolies because we allow them to be! I have pointed this out to [MENTION=1]JoshLowry[/MENTION] and [MENTION=1874]Brian4Liberty[/MENTION] and posted multiple threads about the fact that it makes no freaking sense to complain about censorship on Twitter and YouTube, meanwhile this forum only allows you to embed Twitter and YouTube. We're greasing the skids of the very tyranny we oppose. There is very little discussion on building the social and economic platforms that could be used to get around the technocrats and instead we keep looking to the same government we don't trust to fix the problems. People don't like the power of Amazon? Jeff Bezos only has the power that people give him. At the start of the pandemic when Dr. Faucistein said you shouldn't wear masks and you couldn't find them in stores, I found boxes of 50 being sold on Craigslist. I didn't realize it but I was practicing agorism. I made the exchanges in cash with a "supplier" in the back woods of Tennessee several hours away from any major city. I didn't know where he got his supply and I didn't ask. Later I ordered straight from China at a time people said you couldn't do that. "Oh you're doing business with the Chicoms?" Yes. When others buy from Walmart or Amazon they are typically buying from someone who bought from the Chicoms. Eventually I bought a sewing machine. By the time I really got the mask making down.....they started selling masks in stores again. (I started to by a 3D printer instead and I should have. I would have had more uses for that. Anybody want to buy a sewing machine?) Anyway, my point is, I got around the red tape and did what Fauci said don't do. Screw him! The other point is, why don't we have our own Amazon? It's because we A) haven't built it (it's just software) and B) it's hard to get people to change habits. I took a while to personally get out of the habit of always using Google for web searches. Yeah there are liberty friendly / non censoring alternatives to Facebook and Twitter and YouTube but you have to get a critical mass of people willing to USE it.

Now imagine what would have happened in 2008 if we had realized the enormous power we had with respect to the internet and did something OTHER than just spam online polls and raise money for an ill fated presidential race! We could have built the libertarian alternative to Twitter. Trump has the power still, though it's waning, to lead a "Twixit." Maybe he will. (I doubt it.) But why wait on him?

Anyhow, the way you feel towards the "self righteous screeds" of "quit wasting your time and do something productive" posts, others feel towards the "self righteous screeds" of "it you don't fall in line behind MAGA it's all over" posts. And this is from someone who grudgingly gave into "MAGA madness" in the last months of the campaign. If the election was stolen then there's nothing to do but wait and see if the army of Guiliani zombie lawyers fueled by the Lindsey Graham penance money can get that overturned. And then all hell will break loose. Either way there are far more productive things to do with our time, talent and treasure.
 
WTH, I just tried to send this thread to a friend on their FB page and was greeted with this:
You can't post this
This URL goes against our Community Standards on spam:
ronpaulforums.com
Trying to do an end round I used the Rockwell link and was able to get it posted.
Nice find Ender, I'd rep you for it but I have to spread some around first.

Fedbook would not let me share for 3-4 days. I'm guessing something I shared from GW Pundit.

Facebook stopped me from direct messaging a C-Span clip that shows Dr. Fauci is a Jesuit agent. We give those bastards too much power.
 
. There is no difference in the Republican and Democrat Party. There is no difference in the left and the right except at the extreme margin, so all on both sides continually lose without even understanding that they have lost.

Jimmy Carter put price controls and windfall profits taxes on oil companies and ended up with gas lines. Jimmy Carter didn't think inflation was a big deal until Reagan forced the issue near the end of his term. Jimmy Carter cut off all communication with the Soviets and escalated tensions with the Soviet Union.

Ronald Reagan did the opposite of those things and ended inflation, shortages, and the Cold War. The foundation he laid led to 20 years of peace and prosperity. He put Antonin Scalia on the courts and not Ruth Bader Ginsburg. There is a big difference in the parties.
 
Jimmy Carter put price controls and windfall profits taxes on oil companies and ended up with gas lines. Jimmy Carter didn't think inflation was a big deal until Reagan forced the issue near the end of his term. Jimmy Carter cut off all communication with the Soviets and escalated tensions with the Soviet Union.

Ronald Reagan did the opposite of those things and ended inflation, shortages, and the Cold War. The foundation he laid led to 20 years of peace and prosperity. He put Antonin Scalia on the courts and not Ruth Bader Ginsburg. There is a big difference in the parties.

Uh, NO.

The Reagan Record
By Laurence M. Vance

February 27, 2018

(Oakland: Independent Institute, 2017), xi + 370 pgs, hardcover.

Republicans claim to be the party of the Constitution. They have since the early 20th century cultivated the image that they and their presidents are in favor of limited government while the Democrats and their presidents are in favor of big government.

Ivan Eland, senior fellow and director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute, in his new book Eleven Presidents: Promises vs. Results in Achieving Limited Government, shows, conclusively, that this is not the case.

Eland concludes that “Republican presidents in the last hundred years have often failed to limit government.” Only three Republican presidents — Harding, Coolidge, and Eisenhower — “had much of a record of doing so.” And surprisingly, the Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton “actually have not received enough credit for their efforts to limit government.” Eland maintains that Reagan, whose “championing of limited government was mostly rhetorical,” converted the Republican Party “into a more statist political organization.”

In my review of Eleven Presidents (“Hey There, Big Spender,” New American, Feb. 5, 2018), I wrote this about the chapter on Reagan:

The longest chapter in the book (double or triple the length of every other chapter but the one on George W. Bush) is the chapter on Reagan. And rightly so, since he has been beatified by conservatives for much too long. Reagan was “the king of ‘small government’ hot air.” The chapter title says it all: “Busting the Myths.” This chapter is certainly the most important one in the book, and by itself is worth the price of the book.

I wrote just this because I knew it would take a whole article to cover what Eland writes about Reagan.

This is that article.

The “mythology that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War and was a small government conservative has nothing to do with his policy record while president and everything to do with his legacy being used as a weapon by conservatives against a subsequent Democratic president.” In fact, just as Carter “had some policies that were more conservative than Reagan,” so Clinton “turned out to be more conservative on some issues than the Gipper.” Subsequent to Reagan leaving office, conservatives “made an arduous effort to sanitize Reagan’s record.”

The Reagan myths that Eland destroys are found under four heads:

Winning the Cold War
Image and interventionism
The administration’s scandals were not severe
A smaller federal government?

Reagan gets too much credit for winning the Cold War. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union did not occur until the end of 1989 and 1991—when George H. W. Bush was president. The Soviet economy “had already started to decline during the late 1960s, years before Reagan took office.” It was Gorbachev who decided “to give up supporting East European Communist dictatorships with the Soviet Red Army, thus ending the forty-plus-year-old Cold War.

Iran-Contra “was a more severe breach constitutionally than Watergate.” The Reagan administration “violated a criminal law and its own international arms embargo by selling heavy weapons at elevated prices to a terrorist-sponsoring nation, Iran, to attempt to ransom hostages held in Lebanon by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group.” The proceeds were then used to fund the Nicaraguan Contras in their attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government.

Reagan pioneered “the ramp-up of US military intervention from the more restrained immediate post-Vietnam War era” of Ford and Carter. He got involved on both sides of the Iran-Iraq War. Reagan created future foreign policy problems by “helping to create bin Laden’s al Qaeda and the Taliban.” He “created the tools used for a future ramp-up of US military intervention in the region.” Reagan’s image of using direct military intervention sparingly was a lie. He made three major direct military interventions that were “unprovoked, aggressive, unnecessary, and against small, feeble countries.”

In spite of Reagan’s rhetoric, he did not believe in a smaller federal government. According to Eland:

Over the Reagan years, despite a huge and unnecessary military buildup, federal spending on social programs increased in real terms and as a percentage of the federal budget.

Entitlement spending continued to increase from 1980 to 1987, with the three largest programs—Social Security, Medicare, and other healthcare spending—increasing 84 percent.

Reagan traded increases in defense spending for even larger increases in nondefense spending.

Reagan’s defense budget bought systems that were technologically infeasible, were unneeded, were white elephants, or had no viable strategic rationale.

Despite his small government rhetoric, Reagan seemed to have little sustained desire to cut nondefense spending, actually added a cabinet department (the Department of Veterans Affairs), and increased the number of federal employees from 2.8 million to 3 million.

During Reagan’s first term, the yearly federal budget deficit grew from 2.7 percent to a then record of 6.3 percent of GDP. By 1989, at the end of his second term, the national debt stood at $2 trillion, making him one of the worst peacetime spendthrifts in US presidential history.

Reagan was a welfare/warfare statist. True, he was a tax cutter. But he was also a tax raiser. Reagan’s tax hikes in 1982 and 1984 “then constituted the biggest tax increase ever in peacetime.” Reagan raised taxes in six out of the eight years of his presidency, thirteen times in all. He increased payroll taxes and had “the largest increase ever in corporate taxes.” Reagan’s net tax reduction “was the smallest per capita of any Republican president during the post-World War era.”

Reagan also launched a vigorous attack against pornography and obscenity, expanded Nixon’s war on drugs, approved laws to jail many nonviolent offenders with mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, vastly expanded the federal prison population, signed into law the King holiday, approved protectionist measures, expanded Medicare, and signed an immigration bill that legalized almost 3 million undocumented aliens.

As I said at the end of my review of , I cannot recommend the book highly enough. Not only does it demolish the myth that the Republican Party is the party of the Constitution and limited government, it especially destroys the Reagan myth. I also highly recommended Eland’s first book on the U.S. presidents: (Independent Institute, 2009, updated 2014).
 
Secession is a better option.

“Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?”

At the end of the "self righteous screed" he said what you have said over and over again. "Secession is the better option."

Also, just as an FYI for everyone, I'd like to point out that the final paragraph is a quote from Murray Rothbard. The author put quote marks around it, but didn't cite the source, and there are no links in the article as it was posted in the OP.
 
Anyhow, the way you feel towards the "self righteous screeds" of "quit wasting your time and do something productive" posts, others feel towards the "self righteous screeds" of "it you don't fall in line behind MAGA it's all over" posts. And this is from someone who grudgingly gave into "MAGA madness" in the last months of the campaign. If the election was stolen then there's nothing to do but wait and see if the army of Guiliani zombie lawyers fueled by the Lindsey Graham penance money can get that overturned. And then all hell will break loose. Either way there are far more productive things to do with our time, talent and treasure

Things are happening quickly, both here and in MRL, so I can't answer all or every point right now.

But quickly: agreed. Steal the "Become Ungovernable" concept back from the Marxists. I'm all for it.

Second quick point: This is far beyond Trump and yet another corrupt US election (wow, what a shocker there, huh?)

The things I see coming down the pike very rapidly now, are what I was, very gently and mildly prompting voting for Trump for, trying to buy a little time to get better organized against.

OK...times up.

You have sitting members of Congress now working up "retribution" lists to punish people for holding "incorrect" political views.

The Speaker of the House has made it clear the first order of business is passing legislation that includes criminal sanctions against people for making "incorrect" statements about political figures.

That just the tip of the iceberg.

We've joked for years about all getting tossed into FEMA camps for re-education.

Well, this is that time now...for real.

If anything is going to be done, it better happen now.
 
Things are happening quickly, both here and in MRL, so I can't answer all or every point right now.

But quickly: agreed. Steal the "Become Ungovernable" concept back from the Marxists. I'm all for it.

Second quick point: This is far beyond Trump and yet another corrupt US election (wow, what a shocker there, huh?)

The things I see coming down the pike very rapidly now, are what I was, very gently and mildly prompting voting for Trump for, trying to buy a little time to get better organized against.

OK...times up.

You have sitting members of Congress now working up "retribution" lists to punish people for holding "incorrect" political views.

The Speaker of the House has made it clear the first order of business is passing legislation that includes criminal sanctions against people for making "incorrect" statements about political figures.

That just the tip of the iceberg.

We've joked for years about all getting tossed into FEMA camps for re-education.

Well, this is that time now...for real.

If anything is going to be done, it better happen now.

Live Free or Die Trying. This fight comes down to Good v Evil. Stand with Good and have No Fear. This life is only Transitory.
 

Didn't mention end of out of control inflation. Didn't mention the deregulatory framework that helped bring about a 20 year boom. No mention of oil shortages ending because of ending price controls and windfall taxes And to think it was just a coincidence that the strongest Cold Warrior president who dealt with the Soviets head on had little do with the Cold War ending is pretty daft. To claim he was interventionist because he got involved in Grenada (a very small and very effective intervention that cost little and stopped a Soviet outpost). Lebanaon (very small scale and withdrew when 200 troops died) And to say bombing Gaddafi was unprovoked is a lie. Opposing a retaliatory attack after he killed US soldiers isn't libertarianism. It's evil pacifism.
 
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Fedbook would not let me share for 3-4 days. I'm guessing something I shared from GW Pundit.

The chink in the armor of algorithms is their inability to identify content hidden in allegory and colloquialisms. In many ways, the all mighty algorithm of is even less capable than the PanAsian intelligence apparatus of Heinlein's Sixth Column.

For example, if I refer to an item as gedunk then pretty much every Coastie, Sailor, and Marine knows what I'm referring to. The algorithm can easily identify the word as slang and understand its literal meaning through a word search. It can't understand the colloquial meaning, and even once that discovered the only thing an algorithm can do is black list the word. But what if I use ghee dunk? Do they black list ghee and dunk? What if I emoji the same? ������. I can place the three emojis in any order any my particular subgroup of veterans would immediately identify the meaning. I can also use any candy emoji or image thumbnail and convey the same.

20-somethings in Si Valley think way too much of themselves. IMO

XNN
 
Apparently those emojis were not on the forums standard list. they were a stick of butter, a basket ball and a basket.

XNN
 
Didn't mention end of out of control inflation. Didn't mention the deregulatory framework that helped bring about a 20 year boom. No mention of oil shortages ending because of ending price controls and windfall taxes And to think it was just a coincidence that the strongest Cold Warrior president who dealt with the Soviets head on had little do with the Cold War ending is pretty daft. To claim he was interventionist because he got involved in Grenada (a very small and very effective intervention that cost little and stopped a Soviet outpost). Lebanaon (very small scale and withdrew when 200 troops died) And to say bombing Gaddafi was unprovoked is a lie. Opposing a retaliatory attack after he killed US soldiers isn't libertarianism. It's evil pacifism.

NOPE.
Romanticizing Reagan

09/25/2018Chris Calton

Among conservatives, Ronald Reagan is held in deific esteem. Find any Republican debate Bingo or drinking game, and his name is certain to be one of the triggers to take a drink. Even among many libertarians, Reagan is still viewed as one of our greatest presidents, if not the greatest outright.

The reasons for the romanticization of Reagan are difficult to understand. But Ronald Reagan did have some of the best rhetoric when it came to conservative and libertarian issues, and perhaps this is a good explanation for his appeal. But when you look at his policies as president, it seems like he stands for everything conservatives, and especially libertarians, are against. So let’s compare rhetoric to policy.

Spending and Taxation
In one State of the Union address, Reagan offered a rousing condemnation of the problem with the federal deficit. He gave the pithy insight that “we can’t spend ourselves rich,” which is one of the more popularly quoted phrases among conservatives and libertarians.

In their own hypocrisy, Democrats love to point out the massive increases in spending that took place under Reagan. But even if it is for the wrong reasons, they are correct in this observation. Reagan may not have been trying to spend Americans rich, but he was certainly spending.

Between Fiscal Years 1982 and 1989 (the years for which Reagan would have signed the budget), federal expenditures grew by more than 60%, increasing from 1.179 trillion to 1.904 trillion dollars.

The common excuse for this, of course, is the arms race of the Cold War. Even if you accept this as a reasonable reason to massively increase the federal deficit (while hypocritically condemning such actions in your predecessors), the increase in military spending only accounts for a portion of the total growth.

Spending on education grew by 68%, despite Reagan’s unfulfilled campaign promise to shut down the Department of Education. Healthcare spending grew by 71%. Reagan also increased government subsidies, such as the one mentioned in my sugar article, as well as myriad other domestic spending categories.

The common excuse here is that once we accept the “need” for the massive increases to military spending (which set the destructive precedent that any suggestion of budget cuts to the financial black hole that is the Department of Defense will cost a Republican an election), then it was a Democratic Congress that forced the compromise of domestic spending in exchange for the increase in military spending.

Even if there is some truth to that — and I’m sure there is — we are now accepting a great deal of compromise on conservative principles and making excuses for Reagan’s hypocritical proselytizing about federal deficits. This doesn’t even mention the common praise by Reaganites that his military spending was a strategy to help collapse the Soviet Union by essentially duplicating socialist spending logic (pumping money into government agencies — in this case, the military). It almost seems to be a harbinger of George W. Bush’s eyebrow-raiser: “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”

But whatever shortcomings Reagan may have had when it came to government spending, he made up for in tax cuts, right?

This claim seems to be even more mythologized by conservatives. Where conservatives will make excuses for Reagan-era spending, they tend to be outright misinformed regarding Reagan’s tax policies.

In August of his first year in office, Reagan did sign into law the Economic Recovery Tax Act. This is something in the Reagan legacy that I can actually get behind. Although I agree with Ron Paul that the proper rate of income tax is 0%, I’m going to support, to paraphrase Milton Friedman, any cuts in taxes at any time for any reason. This piece of legislation did that.

What conservatives tend to forget (or omit) are Reagan’s other pieces of tax legislation. The very next year, Reagan signed the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA). This increased numerous taxes as well as eliminating certain deductions. It is important to keep in mind here that conservatives don’t have the excuse of a Democratic congress. The tax increases in this bill were added in Senate revisions when the Senate was still controlled by Republicans. This flies directly in the face of another popular piece of Reagan rhetoric, made ten years later when speaking to the National Association of Realtors, that “We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion dollar debt because we spend too much.”

Still in the Republican-dominated year of 1982, Reagan also increased taxes on the trucking industry and gasoline, which he actually cited as being an economic stimulant to create 320,000 jobs. This type of tax-and-spend policy is straight out of Keynes’s playbook, but conservatives prefer to remember Reagan’s quote about reading the great Austrian economists: “I’ve always been a voracious reader — I have read the economic views of von Mises and Hayek, and Bastiat.” He may have read them; Mises Institute is even home to President Reagan’s thank-you letter to Margit von Mises for sending him a copy of Human Action — but if he did read them, it seems he ignored them.

Likewise, the payroll tax increase of the following year was also not forced on Reagan. In fact, he requested it. He also passed the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, which was another contradictory attempt to reduce deficits by raising taxes.

Along with the tax cuts of 1981, Conservatives are inclined to tout Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986. This is the oft-hailed piece of legislation that lowered the top marginal tax rate on personal income from 50% to 28%. But this bill wasn’t as much of a tax cut as it was a reorganization of tax obligations. In addition to cutting personal income tax rates, it also closed a great deal of significant tax deductions (which is effectively a tax hike in itself), increased restrictions on retirement accounts, and expanded the criteria for the Alternative Minimum Tax which extended the umbrella of this tax burden to affect many middle-class taxpayers.

As long as conservatism and especially libertarianism claim to be the ideologies opposed to high levels of spending and taxation, Reagan seems like an unlikely hero. The excuses that so-called “Reagan Republicans” make for him on these issues seem flimsy and misinformed. In comparing his words to his deeds, Reagan seems no different than any other politician: outright hypocritical.

Regulations and Free Trade
During Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, the third of his four pillars of Reaganomics was regulatory reform. Namely, he was on a mission to reduce federal regulations (an applaudable goal). This is, in fact, one of the chief reasons why democrats criticize his presidency; he supposedly spent his tenure recklessly deregulating.

In a speech given by Art Laffer, Reagan’s economic advisor, Dr. Laffer mentions a story of Reagan dropping the Code of Federal Regulations on a table to demonstrate its massive size. “Do you remember that?” Laffer asked the audience, “Do you remember when he dropped it, the thump that went on the table? I mean, it was a phenomenally impressive thing, not only for him to have lifted it, but also for him to have reduced it” (emphasis mine).

The problem here is that Reagan didn’t reduce the code. It is true that Reagan oversaw a few years of very minor deregulation (in the first half of his first term, the Code of Federal Regulations decreased by about 1% of its total length). One of his first acts in office was to sign Executive Order 12291 which required an additional degree of bureaucratic oversight before a federal department could pass a regulation. This did allow for the delay and revision of certain regulations (if a regulation was rejected — and many were — the department was able to modify and resubmit it for approval). But the decade of the 1980s saw a roughly 20% increase (this brought the Code of Federal Regulations from a total of just over 100,000 to just over 120,000 pages, if we focus on only the regulatory pages).

In fairness, some level of deregulation did occur under the Reagan administration. But in fact, the same could be said of Jimmy Carter. As William A. Niskanen, who served on the Council of Economic Advisors to Reagan and is the namesake of the Niskanen Center that was formed after his death, writes: “The reduction in economic regulation that started in the Carter administration continues, but at a slower rate.” Both Presidents contributed to some degree of deregulation. But as a counter to these positive policies, he also contributed a “substantial increase in import barriers.” Niskanen concludes that “deregulation was clearly the lowest priority among the major elements of the Reagan economic program.”

Like his tax policies, Reagan’s approach to regulation was a mixed bag. There is some good in there, and I believe in giving credit where due, but it is important to keep in mind that Reagan’s deregulatory policies are grossly overstated by both parties. Even if we are to applaud his positive contributions here, intellectual and philosophical consistency would demand that we offer similar deference to Jimmy Carter’s regulatory record. Nonetheless, what deregulation did occur arguably accounts for some of Reagan’s most positive policies (such as the elimination of certain price controls and anti-trust law reduction).

It is still difficult to refer to Reagan as a “pro-capitalism” president, though. His rhetoric, of course, makes Reagan sound like the most capitalistic president since Calvin Coolidge (this, actually, could still be true, but only because all of the interim presidents demonstrate such a poor performance in this category as well). But Reagan was a protectionist, and a hypocritical one.

In his 1988 State of the Union address , Ronald Reagan said, “We should always remember: Protectionism is destructionism. America's jobs, America's growth, America's future depend on trade — trade that is free, open, and fair.” The hypocrisy is apparent when Reagan’s policies on trade in the preceding years are examined.

Not only did Reagan expand the New Deal-style agricultural subsidies that have persisted for nearly a century now, but he reinstated import quotas on certain crops. The purpose of import quotas, of course, are to artificially limit the supply of goods to protect domestic producers. Naturally, this comes at the expense not only of foreign producers but also of domestic manufacturers who have to now purchase more expensive supplies.

Additionally, Reagan pressured various other countries to accept reductions in American imports of the commodities they produce, such as steel. Such tactics were used to convince countries to restrict their own production and export of goods imported by the United States, including textiles, lumber, machine tools, and computer chips while simultaneously requiring Japanese automobile manufacturers to order more American-made parts. This doesn’t touch on the tariffs imposed on other goods as well as strengthening the unquestionably cronyist Export-Import Bank.

Even Milton Friedman, who often spoke very highly of Ronald Reagan, wrote a condemnation of Reagan’s protectionist policies entitled “Outdoing Smoot-Hawley” (a reference to a massive tariff bill signed into law under the Hoover administration that is generally considered to have contributed to the severity of the Great Depression). In it, Friedman takes the Reagan administration to task for the so-called “voluntary” restraints imposed on other countries and calls Reagan out for not using his veto power to prevent these bills (which, again, removes the “Democrat controlled Congress” excuse that Republicans love to fall back on when defending Reagan’s shortcomings). Friedman accuses William Brock and Clayton Yeutter, Reagan’s trade negotiators, of “making Smoot-Hawley look positively benign.”

In an effort not to misrepresent Dr. Friedman’s position, I'll note he calls Reagan “a strong supporter of the principle of free trade” (though he cites his “admirable rhetoric” as being a part of this perspective), but condemns his protectionism as “offsetting some of the good effects of President Reagan’s domestic policies.”

It is, of course, common for many conservatives to praise protectionist economic policies. In this, it is plausible that between Reagan’s exaggerated, albeit mixed, performance on regulations and his anti-free trade protectionism, these are categories that may only reinforce the Republican love of Reagan.

But one thing remains clear: Reagan was not the free-enterprise supporting capitalist he claimed to be.

Civil Liberties and Foreign Affairs
Perhaps Reagan’s most egregious hypocrisies were his actions in the name of the “War on Drugs” while espousing the common bromides about liberty. “Government’s first duty,” a common Reagan quote from a 1981 speech begins, “is to protect the people, not run their lives.” But when it came to what people put into their bodies — even for medicinal purposes — Reagan was energetically devoted to running the lives of United States citizens.

In 1982, the National Academy of Sciences published a six-year study that concluded with a recommendation for the decriminalizing of marijuana which, the study said, had “as yet no clear evidence on the possible long-term effects” on potential health consequence. Reagan chose to ignore this study and, in the same year, picked up the Nixon mantle and raised “the battle flag . . . to win the war on drugs.” California marijuana was one of his primary targets.

Under this small-government, liberty-loving president, government spending on law enforcement, prisons, and the Drug War skyrocketed, along with incarceration rates. By 1989, the number of prisoners had doubled, and the majority of those added under Reagan’s tenure were non-violent marijuana offenders.

On top of his expansion of government for the purpose of curtailing civil liberties, Reagan convinced Congress to suspend the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which was passed to prevent the government from deploying the military against US citizens. The president then used the military and law enforcement (which itself was now becoming militarized) to move through California to destroy marijuana plants.

His offenses didn’t stop there, either. In 1984, Reagan signed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act into law. Among other things, this is the law that reinstated the legality of “civil asset forfeiture” by law enforcement officials. According to this policy, police can seize property from somebody regardless of the owner’s innocence in the eyes of the law; it is effectively charging the property with the crime, and regaining your seized assets is nearly impossible. When James Burton was arrested in 1987 for growing marijuana to treat his glaucoma, his entire 90-acre farm was seized, and both he and his wife were given ten days to leave the property. Burton was not allowed to give any testimony in defense of this property seizure because, in the words of the District Judge Ronald Meredith who ordered the confiscation, “there is no defense against forfeiture.” This created a major avenue for corruption and police revenue that is still abused today. By 1987, police were sizing more than $1 billion a year from US citizens, 80% of whom were never charged with a crime.

In 1986, Reagan signed into law The Anti-Drug Abuse Act. In this bill, mandatory minimum sentences for drug related arrests were not only reinstated, but they were made more severe. This removes a judge’s right to use his or her own discretion when applying a sentence to a drug offender. Under this law, people have spent decades in prison for peacefully smoking marijuana, something that Reagan’s own daughter admitted to doing in her autobiography. This, of course, begs the question if he would have put his own daughter through the same severe punishments that he made hundreds of thousands of other people go through.

And if conservatives believe Reagan’s pro-Constitution rhetoric, his actions in the Drug War only serve to disappoint. While enforcing the Reagan drug laws, the military and law enforcement agents regularly violated the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, which was intended to protect citizens against “unreasonable searches and seizers.” In a dissenting opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall argued that “ There is no drug exception to the Constitution.” Reagan, of course, thought otherwise.

And while Conservatives will continue to praise Reagan for his Cold War policies, they should at least acknowledge his hypocrisies in his Drug War/Cold War contradictions. After Congress passed the Boland Amendment, the US military was explicitly prohibited from providing military aid to Manuel Noriega’s “contras” who were fighting against Communists in Nicaragua. To continue secretly funding the contras, the Reagan Administration — headed by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North — illegally sold weapons to Iran (a country whose potential dangers conservatives continue to bluster about) to funnel money under the table to Noriega. While this was taking place, Noriega was directly aiding the smuggling of cocaine into the US from Colombia. This was not a secret to the administration . While the Reagan administration had no issues with jailing medical marijuana patients domestically, they turned a blind eye to Cold War allies who were smuggling drugs into the US.

If these affronts to civil liberties aren’t enough, Reagan was also terrible on the issue of the conservative sacred cow: gun rights. Not only did Reagan ban open-carry handguns in California in 1967 , he also signed a Federal automatic weapons ban in 1986 . This bill, the Firearms Owner Protection Act, is praised as a pro-gun act for its repeals of previous regulations, but one can’t ignore the restrictions that were added. Reagan’s support of gun control continued after his presidency, when he supported both the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act and the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban (conservatives like to criticize Clinton for this law, but it likely could never have passed without Reagan’s support, passing the House of Representatives by only two votes).

https://mises.org/wire/romanticizing-reagan
 
I've answered this a hundred times or more.

I could, with equal frustration, ask: "What has caused blindness to approaching danger to become so rampant as to render a society self suicidal?"

Yet another self righteous screed from an unknown internet pundit telling me how stupid I am for choosing a side in what I see as a life or death struggle is hardly helping.

I am with you.
 
OK...times up.

You have sitting members of Congress now working up "retribution" lists to punish people for holding "incorrect" political views.

It's absolutely insane that a member of Congress would encourage this. I know we all saw this coming years ago, but having it at your doorstep is another matter. While I don't think anything drastic will come of it, this time, it is a huge step closer into the abyss.

Now that the left has won, they will be emboldened to send in their cavalry to route the broken infantry line. The all-out assault against the 1A, 2A, and 4A during the next few years will be unprecedented. We'll eventually long for the glory days of Bush and Obama at this rate.
 
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