Libertarian @dcjogger@gameliberty.club

Some Americans say a revolution needs to start right now, but most Americans seem to think that they should just enjoy the fake booming economy and tolerate living in a police state, the risk of being arrested by the Gestapo at random, and being used as an example instead of attacking the government today and being arrested or killed for certain.

Americans seem to be saying that they will wait to rebel against tyranny, debt, and wars when the economy implodes and Americans are starving in the streets.

The guy who mows your lawn might be smart and notice the US decay, but he's probably too busy and would rather not think about it.

Your wife might be angry at you for spending so much time trying to wake people up and ridicule you by asking how many people you saved today, but someone has to speak up.

Are we just supposed to wait to go to the concentration camps?

How much evidence do you need?

You can feel the collapse in the air and you can be damn sure tomorrow won't be better.

https://news.yahoo.com/two-us-soldiers-killed-afghanistan-nato-055754580.html

https://www.brainerddispatch.com/news/crime-and-courts/4359936-aclu-sues-minnesota-police-department-excessive-force-claims-following

Conservatism: time was when that word, in a political sense, meant something. It meant protecting respected national institutions and established norms; being fiscally responsible; preserving and maintaining valuable resources; limiting government intrusion into personal lives; maximizing American influence abroad for promotion of American values and shared international advantage. It was an approach marked by moderation, stability and trusted leadership.

Not any more!

No longer a coherent political philosophy, “conservatism” seems to have degenerated into a vague word for the far right to conjure with. If they shout it loud and often enough (surrounded by a great number of American flags), it’s enough to evoke a knee-jerk response from the hard-right base, enough to drive moderate Republicans from office or push them to extreme positions—or simply silence them.

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And now that the Republican Party has sold its soul to Donald Trump, whose modus operandi, whatever it is, masquerades as “conservatism,” the GOP is mired in a confused identity crisis.

In short, contemporary conservatism is little more than a convenient, shifting label — it all depends on the issue of the moment and the prospects for party advantage.

Here’s a summary of some of its contradictions:

Fiscal responsibility? With control of the legislative and executive branches of government, the Republicans passed a tax reform bill that amounts to a wild, irresponsible gamble.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts the new law will help propel Federal budget deficits to over a trillion dollars annually for the next ten years, resulting in a 15.5 trillion dollar increase in our already scary national debt. This highly probable outcome will result from cutting tax rates too dramatically for already-prospering corporations, from unnecessarily dropping—instead of raising—rates for the excessively wealthy among us —oh, and, uh, giving a token income tax break to the middle class just to distract us. Our deficit-ridden federal budgets exist because neither Republicans nor Democrats know how to live within our means. The prospect of nearly doubling the national debt over the next decade is more than worrisome to those of us who have personal, fiscally-conservative instincts.

Preserving our established institutions, public, private, and international? To the contrary, the Trump administration is vigorously attacking foundational pillars of our democracy. With support from his minions in and out of Congress, Trump is attempting, for the most obvious of self-defensive reasons, to destroy public faith in our judicial system generally, more particularly the non-partisan status of the DOJ, the FBI, and Robert Mueller’s special investigation into Russian meddling. (If Trump and his campaign have broken no laws, why does he, instead of cooperating fully, act as if he has something to hide? It’s bizarre that his lawyers are desperate to keep him from testifying, fearful that he is not capable of telling the truth and would perjure himself. Dishonest at the core, or simply incompetent to testify accurately, this is the man to whom we have entrusted the conduct of our crucial national affairs, foreign and domestic?)

At the same time, our President’s apparent intent, with strong “conservative” Senate support, is to exacerbate the politicization of an already ideologically divided Supreme Court. Given the paramount importance of public confidence in this institution, a truly conservative President (and Senate majority leader) would wish to strengthen perception of the Court as an unbiased arbiter of our laws by avoiding an appointment that smacks of extreme political bias.

Meanwhile, Trump (echoed by his “conservative” toadies) shamelessly attacks almost daily responsible journalists and established institutions of the fourth estate, who historically have been—and now more than ever are— indispensable for the preservation of our democracy.

On the world scene, for seventy years America under both Republican and Democratic leadership has championed the establishment of international institutions and treaties to promote American values and expand our influence and our economic interests. But from his first day in office, our President, with his confrontational manner, has rashly alienated our allies while strangely praising our enemies. Notably he has withdrawn from the Iran nuclear agreement entered into with solid international support, has withdrawn from the Trans Pacific Partnership, designed to outflank China on trade. This is not even to mention his dubious, undiplomatic undercutting of NATO and the UN. In short, America’s standing as acknowledged leader among world nations has declined in the past year and a half. Those who have long looked to us as a reliable bulwark of strength are now wondering whether we can be depended on. Talk about squandering American resources.

As for conserving our natural environment, preserving clean air and water, and combating the catastrophic effects of global warming, Republicans should look for example to past conservation initiatives by their own Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. Instead, under the guise of deregulation, this administration is boastfully dismantling progress made previously, trading it cavalierly for a mess of temporary polluting and earth-warming pottage. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords seems the total antithesis of responsible environmental conservatism. Ditto for his de-emphasis on clean energy, while pandering to an anachronistic coal industry. Conservatives need long term environmental vision; Trump demonstrates a startling lack of it.

And now, in an increasingly global economy which generates overall (if unevenly) more jobs and more wealth for America, Trump has chosen to unleash multi-pronged tariffs. This populist, un-Republican strategy is leading, it seems, to trade wars with enemies and friends alike. The predictable general outcome will be reduced income for producers and higher prices for consumers. If the goal is to improve the lot of those left behind in the current economy, tariff wars are a benighted strategy. The ground has shifted in the 21st century. Old fashioned protectionism will not reverse the impact of pervasive technological advancements.

As for immigration, legal and otherwise? Well, it’s complicated, isn’t it. When asked about illegal immigrants, Ronald Reagan, that idolized conservative, replied that where others see undocumented aliens as lawbreakers, he looks at them and sees “willing workers.” His attitude was typical for many conservatives, business owners, and well-to-do white suburbanites who liked the idea of available cheap labor—farm workers, gardeners, housekeepers, nannies. Then at some point the GOP conservatives saw that the country’s demographic “complexion” was changing, and they figured out that children of those underpaid foreign workers would likely become future Democratic voters. Throw in a big dose of xenophobia from the “whites only” crowd, and conservatives, “so-called,” have adopted another set of optics.

Over the years, conservatives generally have favored maximizing personal freedoms by restricting government intervention in private lives. But the libertarian-leaning Republicans have struck a devil’s bargain with an unlikely ally, evangelical religionists. The latter passionately want government to impose their views on everyone. They want to restrict reproductive rights of women; they want to reverse the law allowing gay marriage; they want their religious observations promoted in schools and public displays. It’s an odd, and scary, contradiction politically speaking.

Has the Trump “conservative” agenda benefitted his base, the left-behind Americans? Not so much as it’s benefitting those at the top.

There’s an old cynical notion from Juvenal, the ancient Roman satirist, that a government can get away with just about anything so long as it gives the commoners “bread and circuses.” Allow the plebians a little money, food and fun, and they’ll ignore even egregious affronts to their true interests. That may describe about where we are at this moment in America.

The recent pittance of a middle-class tax cut fits in this picture, though to be sure the Democrats have done more than their share in handing out “bread” (benefits) to ordinary people. The difference is that welfare from the Republicans tends more often to go to corporations and the wealthy, whose lobbyists and lawyers know how effectively to game the system.

But when it comes to the distracting political “circuses” Juvenal spoke of, the GOP has now Trumped anything we living Americans have ever seen. With our President as ringmaster in chief, we can’t take our eyes off the spectacle. What shocking thing will he do next? His base is enthralled by his outrageous behavior (truly there’s no accounting for taste in entertainment, as his rallies demonstrate). The rest of us stand agape, often outraged, but we too give him our frustrated attention.

If this is the measure of contemporary “conservatism,” we have it in spades.

The media, newspapers, magazines, and movies are constantly brainwashing Americans to accept Communism.

Can't patriots start websites, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and make films praising morality, freedom, balanced budgets, and peace?

https://www.bizbuysell.com/magazines-and-newspapers-for-sale/?q=%2fwEFDmJmc19zb3J0PTYwOjIw

What's the alternative? Surrender? Are Americans just supposed to go to the concentration camps quietly?

WTF?

https://gameliberty.club/@dcjogger

Dark times are coming.

Americans seem to be dealing with the US collapse by having cognitive dissonance. Watching Americans use mental gymnastics to explain their hypocrisy and narratives is difficult to watch.

The very same Americans who scream Obama was an evil monster for embracing wars, debt, and tyranny then turn around and insist Trump is a holy god for supporting wars, debt, and the police state.

Nazis who insist they love freedom then swear unconstitutional NSA wiretapping is just fine.

Americans say that they love free speech, but then become batshit insane when anyone suggests flag burning and protests should legal.

Americans who scream that they love the free market say the US needs a trade war.

Fascists who insist that they love gun rights say they would immediately surrender their firearms when Trump bans guns because Muslims are dangerous.

Nazis love when the Gestapo arrests niggers for wearing baggy pants, but Fascists are shocked when the Gestapo arrests racists for using hate speech.

Americans also seem to be dealing with the collapse by changing history to meet their point of view.

Americans either say the USA was always a police state or is the most free country in the world. No one says the US used to have freedom, but lost it.

Americans insist that the US always had seatbelt checkpoints and food stamps.

Racists scream that the US never had negroes before today.

Nazis and Commies scream no one died during WWII.

Nazis say that the Jews started the Revolutionary War to divide up white people, but even if the UK and the US were united now the USA and the UK would still be Socialist shitholes with fags and illegal immigrants.

As the US declines, Americans will need to chose what roles they will play.

Will you be one of the enemy globalists who is destroying the USA?

Will you be a traitor who is trying to become of the elites by giving campaign donations to politicians so you can get a bailout, subsidy, or grant to start a business?

Will you be a traitor who becomes a puppet for the elites as a politician, reporter, actor, government worker, soldier, or joins the Gestapo?

Will you be a coward who keeps your head down, works, and pays taxes that fund wars, debt, and tyranny?

Will you dropout and become dependent on government welfare?

Will you be a hero and risk being arrested or killed to become a dissident educating others on freedom and how to resist or fight the elites by firing on checkpoints and flying planes into government buildings?

Will you dropout and buy a sailboat or travel the world as a nameless and stateless nomad?

Will you dropout and start a commune or join a monastery?

Those who are able, do what they can.

Those who can't, do what they must.

Former President Barack Obama, former presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were not the first presidential candidates to introduce socialism into mainstream America. Previous presidents did so, and it has been in the nation’s diet for most of a hundred years. All 20 presidential candidates from the Democratic Party for 2020, as per their recent debates, would make militant socialist Eugene V. Debbs, founder of the Socialist Party of America in 1901 and five-time presidential candidate, look like today’s conservative Republican. Why are many Americans accepting socialism? Because socialism promises everything for free.

Athenian democracy, the “great idea,” profoundly changed the world that was formerly ruled by monarchies; a king stayed in power and passed it on to posterity until removed. It gave ever-larger portions of vote power to the masses but democracy had no brakes. Should everyone have an equal vote? Are they equally informed, equally intelligent, equally gifted? No, but as it expands the next level wants everything as well. Once tasted, it enlarges until all have equal participation despite their differences, gifts or ignorance.

Nearly 300 years after democracy was first introduced in Athens, Aristotle who lived from 384 B.C. to 322 B.C., wrote of democracy’s inherent weakness. He said that when every man is allowed to rise to the level that his talent and industry permit him, some will become rich and others poor. The rich will always despise the poor, and the poor will always envy the rich. When the poor obtain the same voting power as the rich under a democracy, as they always will given their greater numbers, they will use that power to take from the rich.

It may take time for this shift to happen because democracy does initially encourage the profit motive, which stimulates everyone’s desire to get rich. This motivation is good for society because to do so they invest, creating additional businesses, employing more people and developing an ever-larger middle class. The middle class, Aristotle said, should be the ruling class as it is closer to the poor and better understands its legitimate needs and, at the same time, it has enough of the world’s goods not to covet, thus destroy, the rich class. Still, in time the less productive will grow and become more politically powerful, especially as they learn to attach their vote to politicians who, to get elected, promise freebies.

Democracy self-destructed in both Athens and Rome because it had no brakes. Every western civilization history textbook speaks to the “bread and circuses,” or the free food and entertainment, of Rome.

Thus the Founding Fathers rejected democracy as our form of government in favor of a republic inserting, in their Constitution, the brakes democracy lacked. Today’s enemies of a republic intentionally favor the word democracy over republic because they despise the brakes.

At what moment is society democratized or socialistic enough? As things become freer for the non-productive part of society, more money must be confiscated from the productive middle and upper classes, and it is the rich class and entrepreneurial middle class that risk their money to create the jobs making the republic successful. When has a poor man ever created a job for anyone?

In time the productive classes cannot provide the money that is demanded of them to feed and otherwise subsidize the less productive class. They are disincentivized and destroyed by ever-higher taxes. All too soon the definition of rich is lowered until socialism devours the middle class as well – even until all are poor. Despite unrealistic promises, socialism gives only slavery and shared poverty.

Aristotle recognized this when he wrote, “Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.”

The force to democratize more increases as voting becomes more universal which is what democracies encourage. Shouldn’t everyone have an equal vote? Those in Athens came to believe so.

Aristotle said, “Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”

As voting becomes more universal vote power favors those who seek government favors as they, in time, become the majority. This process is accelerated and corrupted when politicians link government gift-giving with their election. As the less productive, as a class, always tend to favor financial favors from government to their benefit, and since all government money comes from the middle and upper classes through ever increasing taxes, they eventually destroy the productive base of society as government takes over more of the economy by confiscation or regulation. Presently 47% of the adult population pay no federal income tax and a good share of these make up the less-productive class. The overriding principle is, the more socialism the higher the taxes and burden on the producing class. Why? Because in exchange for the vote the socialist politician advocates that everything be free. This temptation is his most powerful lure and works well on the idealistic youth and already dependent.

As government controls more portions of the economy, democracy transcends to socialism. Sometime in this transition democracy ceases to be democracy although the term continues to be used, hence Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s warning in 2009 to Fidel Castro, both devout socialists, “We have to be careful lest we become right of Obama.” It needs noting that all 20 of the 2020 democratic presidential contenders are far left of Obama, thus decidedly socialists.

https://www.godlikeproductions.com

https://www.journaltribune.com/articles/opinion/harold-pease-please-dont-call-me-conservative-or-liberal/

Four years ago I awoke on a Sunday morning where I was visiting family, a ray of light coming through the window. The window view showed side-by-side symbols; one of liberty, as represented by a small community of multi-colored and multi-shaped living structures with residents going about their business oblivious to the second symbol, represented by large, gray, ugly, windowless government buildings spying on and recording everyone’s communication. The contrast of liberty and totalitarian intent was startling and breathtaking. I was in Bluffdale, Utah viewing the NSA’s top spy facility in the world named the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center.

To the far left of the window view was a new housing development intruding into largely undeveloped land, like an extending finger, with brown hills above it and a large hay farm in front and below stretching far forward and to the right of my view. Here residents made choices that enhanced the quality and comfort of their lives largely free from total government spying and restriction – or so they thought.

The number of churches to the population seemed unusually high, five church steeples reaching skyward, as if begging for the influence of God in their community, in what looked to be no more than 300 structures, mostly apartments, as seen from my window – all within a mile of where I was. I attended one of the churches and was greeted with the opening song “America the Beautiful,” the classic patriotic tune words written by Katherine Lee Bates and music by Samuel A. Ward. It housed the favorite words “America! America!” followed by four phrases in four verses “God shed his grace on thee,” and, “God mend thine every flaw,” and, “May God thy gold refine,” and again, “God shed his grace on thee.” Obviously, these Christians loved their liberty. A similar tune representing a relationship between God, country and liberty could have been found throughout most of the country the Sunday before the 4th of July.

In stark contrast, off in the distance about two miles but still clearly visible from the left side of the same window, was the most profound symbol of big government ever – the new NSA spy center, the largest in the world, capable of holding a yottabyte of information collected from every person on earth, with space enough for generations to come. These enormous, ugly, gray, windowless, buildings perched on a hill with intimidating guard-houses restricting entrance, represented potential total control of the actions and thoughts of every human.

Much was published on NSA government spying of its own people including LibertyUnderFire.org columns, so nothing new is found in this one. A project began under George W. Bush and accelerated under Barack Obama, Bluffdale “is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade and a half. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks… Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter” (”The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center. Watch What You Say.”) The project was code named “Stellar Wind.”

Monday morning the same light flooded the room. The same symbols of liberty and oppression lay in stark contrast below. The same five church steeples reach for the sky as though to appeal to God for His influence. The same residents drive by, perhaps the greatest symbol of totalitarianism of all time, on their way to work, as though it does not exist. Some may even work at this place to help give the government details on their neighbor. Everything about these ugly, windowless, gray structures violates the Constitution. Chances are those of the community next door that sing of freedom will reelect the same Democrats and Republicans that authorized and funded their surveillance. I closed the window. If I too ignore what it shows, it will go away. Right?