Posted on 03/08/2003 9:29:27 AM PST by forest
[NOTE: This text was first published in the March 7, 1997 newsletter. It was an important message in 1997, but seems even more important today.]
Last week we gave Rep. Ron Paul's toll-free Legislative Update number (1-888-322-1414) and suggested that readers listen to his message "The Coming Police State." We were told by a lot of people that they missed it.
Originally, that message was part of a one hour speech Rep. Paul made on the floor of the House. And, thanks to Jeff in Michigan, we have the complete text. Below is the shortened version of Rep. Paul's speech recorded as the "Legislative Update:"
Centralizing power and consistently expanding the role of the Government requires an army of bureaucrats and a taxing authority upon which a police state thrives. There are over 100 laws on the books permitting private property seizure without due process of law. We have made it easy to seize any property by absurdly claiming the property itself committed the crime. The RICO mentality relating to law enforcement permits even the casual bystander to suffer severely from the police state mentality.
The drug war hysteria and the war on gun ownership started by Roosevelt in 1934 have expanded Federal police power to the point that more than 10 percent of all of our police are Federal. The Constitution names but three Federal crimes, so where is the justification? Talk about swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. We have hovering over us daily the Federal police from the EPA, OSHA, FBI, CIA, DEA, EEOC, ADA, F&WL, INS, BATF, and worst of all, the IRS. Even criticizing the IRS makes me cringe that it might precipitate an audit. It seems that all administrations, to some degree, used the power of the agencies to reward or punish financial backers or political enemies.
So much [of] that had its origin in the 1930's, it was then that the FBI's role changed from friendly investigator helping local authorities to that of national police force.
We live in an age where the fear of an IRS registered letter bearing news of an audit surpasses the fear of a street mugging. The police are supposed to be our friend and the Federal Government the guarantor of our liberties. Ask the blacks in the inner city of Los Angeles if they trust the police and revere the FBI and the CIA. We should not have to cringe when a Federal agent appears at the door of our business. We should not even see them there.
A Congress sworn to uphold the Constitution ought to be protecting our right to our property, not confiscating it. Congress ought to protect our right to own a weapon of self-defense, not systematically and viciously attacking that right.
Congress ought to guarantee all voluntary association, not regulate and dictate every economic transaction. We should not allow Congress to give credence to inane politically correct rules generated by egalitarian misfits. Setting quotas ought to insult each of us.
We need no more centralized police efforts. We need no more wiretaps that have become epidemic in this last decade. We have had enough Wacos and Ruby Ridges.
You're right that morals matter. And in many cases, those morals must be imposed.
What does the word "fascism" mean?
Really? What has he accomplished?
Ball's in your court . . .
The reason for the centralization of the federal government was not legislative; it was economic. It was a byproduct of the Industrial Revolution.
The IR centralized power in the hands of a few industrialists and bankers (yes, I know that sounds left-wing, but hear me out) because the kind of technology that enabled the kind of productivity gains that scale-economies crate were extraordinarily expensive. I mean here, massive factories, coal mines, coke mines, etc. Only a few people could afford to finance them. However, the economies of scale that they produced forced everyone with inferior cost structures out of business. Right? So most everyone was more or less working for a small number of people.
So, to counter the natural centralization that the IR brought, people had to organize and use the only instrument they had available--the Federal Government--to counter the centralizing power of industry. Modern day libertarians seem to have this weird idea that FDR took over in a putsch; he was elected four times, three times overwhelmingly. Why? Because people finally got a breakthrough, a way to control their lives which before had been more or less at the whim of industrialists.
Now, what does this matter? Well, guess what...the Information Revolution is unwinding the Industrial Revolution. The computer you're typing into has a massive amount of scale economic power. You have exactly as much scale-economic power in a computer to publish something that everyone in the world with a computer to see as the New York Times does. That's an awesome amount of power. Another example--fuel cells. Once fuel cells become widely available, people will need the public-energy structure less and less...because they'll have a private source of energy right in their homes.
The entire story of the 20th Century was the centralization of scale-economic power; the story of the 21st Century is the democratization of scale-economic power.
So, I'm not really worried about the "coming tyranny". The inexorable effect of the scale-economic revolution will be more federalism, lower taxes, etc. Individualizing technology will drive it in the same way as collectivizing technology drove the 20th Century.
What's the main danger? In the same way that collectivism united with industrial-revolution type technology to create all the atrocities of the 20th Century (the Holocaust, etc.), libertarian personalism will unite with individualizing scale-economic policies (think biotechnology) to create new kinds of horrors.
Evil and good start in the human soul; technology just amplifies which one we as a people choose.
Your premises are false.
In fact, I think that you intentionally misrepesent libertarian ideas of morality for the purpose of promoting your religeous view.
Lying for the cross is still lying.
This is why I think that you are intellectually dishonest.
1. the initiation of force and fraud are widely agreed upon by libertarians and most others as immoral- you know that, you've been around here long enough.
2.If humans are so depraved, how is it that the species still exists. Would'nt we have followed our natural inclinations to our doom by now?
Maybe people are neither all good nor all evil but have the capacity for each. If we need restraint imposed on us, why is the church or the state any more moral than a tyrant?
In my view, we should be pretty much left alone until and unless we do harm others through the initiation of force and fraud. Then and only then it is the duty of the state to intervene.
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