Free Republic

"…The more terrifying the occasion for defense, the closer will become the organization and the more coercive the influence upon each member of the herd. War sends the current of purpose and activity flowing down to the lowest level of the herd, and to its most remote branches. All the activities of society are linked together as fast as possible to this central purpose of making a military offensive or a military defense, and the State becomes what in peacetimes it has vainly struggled to become—the inexorable arbiter and determinant of men’s business and attitudes and opinions…" -Randolph Bourne Dear...

Go Judge! His new show Freedom Watch now goes daily on Foxnews.com. Watch the 3 segments now

Does anyone know why LewRockwell.Com articles can no longer be posted here?

Libertarian movement veterans, and a Paul campaign staffer, say it was "paleolibertarian" strategist Lew RockwellJulian Sanchez and David Weigel | January 16, 2008 Ron Paul doesn't seem to know much about his own newsletters. The libertarian-leaning presidential candidate says he was unaware, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, of the bigoted rhetoric about African Americans and gays that was appearing under his name. He told CNN last week that he still has "no idea" who might have written inflammatory comments such as "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their...

%-John McCain, Sam Brownback, Alan Keyes, John Cox >1%-Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter 12%-Fred Thompson 73%-Ron Paul

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, an old-fashioned conservative with a strong libertarian streak, inspires a small but growing base of fervent admirers with his strict interpretation of Congress' powers No matter who shows up at this week's Republican presidential debate in Baltimore, it's a good bet the biggest applause will go to the most conservative man onstage. He's Rep. Ron Paul, a perfect protest candidate for 2008. Trained as a physician, he's "Dr. Paul" to a small but growing base of fervent admirers - more than a few of whom could fairly be called zealots. Around the Capitol, the Texas...

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPTS FROM: "AMERICAN MOURNING" CINDY WAS in Crawford, trying to flush President Bush out, when a process server found her and handed over the lawsuit that would end her marriage. Casey’s father filed for divorce on August 12, 2005, at 2:47 p.m. Pacific time. He cited irreconcilable differences. Court papers show that Cindy and Pat separated on June 1, 2005, after twenty-eight years and two months together. Cindy wasn’t surprised when she received the divorce papers. She had a boyfriend and decided not to reconcile with Pat, even though he wanted to forgive her and fix their relationship. Pat...

Thomas Jefferson was a rebel, as so many of his comments demonstrated. He also was a gun enthusiast, and not the bird-shooting kind. His gang of insurgents fought the British with the eighteenth century equivalents of assault rifles, RPGs, and roadside bombs — and that is why they are worth recalling when our conversation turns to Iraq. Before going further, I should declare that I am a patriot, but a qualified one. My loyalty is to the kinds of ideas Jefferson put in the Declaration: the sanctity of property, suspicion of power, and extra suspicion of the state. I am...

MOTHER SHEEHAN'S MARRIED LOVER Activist breaks camp in Crawford to do 'damage control' Cindy Sheehan packed her bags and left Crawford ,Texas, Tuesday afternoon and arrived home in Berkeley, Ca. late Tuesday evening. Sheehan rushed back to do damage control after explosive information became public today about an alleged affair that began while she was still married to her husband Patrick, and after her son Casey Sheehan died in Sadr City, Iraq attempting to rescue members of his trapped squad. Sources are telling authors Melanie Morgan and Catherine Moy, (American Mourning, Cumberland Press) that Sheehan is furious that the news...

-snip- The president moves about like Caesar Augustus, with a vast, graded court of civil and military aides, doctors, secretaries, valets, hairdressers, makeup artists, bodyguards, drivers, baggage handlers, cooks, food tasters, Praetorian guards, snipers, centurions, bulletproof limos, a portable hospital, and an armored rostrum. And that’s when he travels in the U.S. -snip- After all, the long-term mean value of paper currency is zero. Is the dollar magic, so that it is permanently immune from the norm? For the last 100 years, it has lost value more quickly than the Roman denarius after Nero. -snip-

Paul Craig Roberts and the Certifiable Right By Ben Johnson FrontPageMagazine.com | March 17, 2006 Quick – what columnist alleged in an article Thursday that President “Bush intends to attack Iran and that he will use every means to bring war about?” That Bush has used “bribery and coercion” to block “every effort to bring the dispute to a peaceful end”? That “in order to gain a pretext for attacking Iran,” he and a “’black opts’ [sic.] group will orchestrate [an] attack” on U.S. soil? One would never expect to hear the author is “chairman of the Institute for Political...

The Right’s Left TurnBy Jacob LaksinFrontPageMagazine.com | October 5, 2005 In late September, as throngs of placard-wielding protestors were descending on the nation’s capital, Lew Rockwell, the nominally libertarian proprietor of the website LewRockwell.com, was holding forth at an anti-war rally convened by the far-left Alabama Peace and Justice Coalition (APJC).  That the APJC’s rallying cry – “Spend money for human needs, not war!” – was of questionable accordance with principled libertarianism’s aversion to government largesse, didn’t seem to phase Rockwell, who joined a roster of speakers with an altogether different view about the proper role of the federal government....

A former chief economist in the Labor Department during President Bush's first term now believes the official story about the collapse of the WTC is 'bogus,' saying it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7. 'If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling,' said Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D, a former member of the Bush team who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy...

The second anniversary of America's expedition into Iraq passed with relatively scant fanfare. Since hostilities in Mesopotamia commenced, thousands of American and Iraqi casualties have been tallied. Every month Washington spends billion of dollars on counterinsurgency and rebuilding efforts in Iraq and further afield, which swells the nation's largest budget and budget deficit in its history[i]. As vast quantities of blood and treasure are expended abroad, Washington politicians win plaudits domestically for their warmongering, and government contracting at home and abroad burgeon, on what basis is this imperial project—financed by foreign lenders and American taxpayers—justified?... ...Democracy deconstructed As Hans Hermann-Hoppe...

I think that it has been well established that "conservatives" or whatever it is they call themselves these days (e.g., storm troopers) in matters concerning politics value little more than the state's power in which they imagine themselves to participate and the supposed glory that war and domestic national securitism brings to them. Now strictly speaking this is a delusion, because their only access to power lies in the accidental agreement of their opinions with those of the managers of the state. This access will evaporate as soon as the state does something that displeases our conservatives. It is always...

Notice: Whoever's posting stories written by Bob wallace please cease and desist at once! I have no idea who this guy is or who is posting his stories, but whoever is doing it, please stop. He's demanding it be stopped or he will call his lawyer. He's also prohibiting me from posting his email message to me (or, you guessed it, he will call his lawyer). So, rather than post his email message, I'm posting this message: Do not post stories written by BOB WALLACE! Thank you. That is all.

Why Be Proud of Government Work? by Christopher Westley Recently, when walking home from work, I was passed by one of those red monster pick-up trucks with an oversized bumper sticker on the back window that announced: FORMER MARINE. It made me wonder why it is that Marines are the only federal employees who feel the urge to proclaim that they once were paid with taxpayer loot. You never see Volkswagens buzzing around town with a sign that says FORMER POSTAL WORKER, or Lexuses chugging down the street with a sticker proclaiming FORMER FEDERAL FISHERIES STAFF ACCOUNTANT. So, what's with...

If you have been watching what passes for television "news," you have undoubtedly become aware that a sociopath is loose in Washington, D.C. He has been moving from one location to another, attacking and killing innocent victims. Whether he is possessed of a perverted sense of self-righteousness, or simply enjoys the feelings of power that come from terrorizing others, is as difficult to determine as is his agenda for future attacks. He apparently has a personal list of target areas for his deadly assaults, but just what his purposes are remain as unclear as trying to fathom when and where...

Our leaders are hopelessly inept; that so far the terrorists have been able to achieve little has been due to the fact that they too are fumblers. What successes they’ve had, such as turning Iraq into a terrorist hot spot, have been handed to them by Señor Bush and his merry band of crazed neo-conservatives and their liberal enablers.

<p>Far be it from me to hush my mouth concerning just about anything. So, I'll mention the fact I hardly watch TV anymore, especially the news. Dan Rather's a twitchy mental case, and Peter Jennings used to wear an earring. What did he think he was, a pirate? I don't need to absorb such things into my brain. I'd rather watch South Park, a much more effective news source. The last time I watched the news was 9-11. I don't waste my money on newspapers, either. I can get my Dilbert off of the Internet.</p>