Free Republic

Know the difference between the State and government? Another short segments distilling down the cornerstone books from our conservative heritage Nock inspired Buckley, C.S. Lewis, Hayek, Kirk et al. with his groundbreaking 1935 book 'Our Enemy, The State'. The book launched a full-frontal intellectual assault on the perverted use of the law to advantage some at the expense of others.

The state is a collective of men. Going back to the beginning there was only one family, the family of God. There was only one government, the government of God. In the beginning it was God ruling over man. It was only after Cain’s rebellion that the division of kingdoms came into being. Cain refused to be governed by God and left to build the first city-state of man ruling over man secular government. Because man wants to be a god, determining good and evil for themselves, lawlessness in society increases as the god-man rebels against the “rule of law”....

How many Americans work in government? That’s a difficult question to answer. Officially, as of 2009, the federal government employed 2.8 million individuals out of a total U.S. workforce of 236 million — just over 1 percent of the workforce. But it’s not quite as simple as that. Add in uniformed military personnel, and the figure goes up to just under 4.4 million. There are also 66,000 people who work in the legislative branch and for federal courts. That makes the figure around 2 percent of the workforce. Yet even that doesn’t tell the full story. A lot of government...

The largest reserve of natural gas, over 16 trillion cubic feet, has been discovered off the coast of Israel, and is estimated to be worth more than $95 billion, U.S. company Noble Energy Inc. announced on Wednesday. Noble Energy owns 39.66% of the prospective discovery, alongside Israeli partners Delek Group Ltd. units Avner Oil and Gas LP and Delek Drilling LP (22.67% each), and Ratio Oil Exploration (1992) LP with 15%. The reserve, Leviathon, is the largest amount of natural gas discovered in the world in the last decade and is located in approximately 5,400 feet (1,645 meters) of water,...

Israel's offshore oil and gas fields could mean decades of self-sufficiency, and big profits for Noble Energy and its billionaire partner. All big oil and gas fields have geopolitical significance, but in recent years we haven't seen one with the potential to matter more than Leviathan--a prospect off the coast of northern Israel. Noble Energy in Houston will begin drilling a $150 million well into Leviathan in October. Noble's partners on the well, subsidiaries of billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva's Delek Group, announced in late August that Leviathan is estimated to contain 16 trillion cubic feet of easily recoverable gas, while its...

...The wave is building and when it reaches our shores, it will hit with the force of a tsunami. The wave is propelled by government spending and crested with unfunded pension obligations. The Pew Center on the States wrote in The Trillion Dollar Gap (February 2010), “A $1 trillion gap exists between the $3.35 trillion in pension, health care and other retirement benefits states have promised their current and retired workers as of fiscal year 2008 and the $2.35 trillion they have on hand to pay for them.” Like any tsunami, the wave began long ago and very far out...

Researchers have discovered the fossilised remains of an ancient whale with huge, fearsome teeth. Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists have dubbed the 12 million-year-old creature "Leviathan". It is thought to have been more than 17m long, and might have engaged in fierce battles with other giant sea creatures from the time. Leviathan was much like the modern sperm whale in terms of size and appearance. Continue reading the main story At the same time in the same waters was another monster... they might have fought each other Dr Christian de Muizon Natural History Museum, Paris But that is...

Last week the British government announced that the VAT -- a form of a sales tax -- will go  up from 17.5 percent to 20 percent. This is bad news for the Brits. It comes only two months after it was announced that the top income tax bracket would be 50 percent. That bracket includes everyone who makes more than £150,000 ($220,000) per year. This means that every British citizen who earns more than £150,000 will see a half of his income confiscated by the government straight off. From what remains, he will have to pay an additional 20...

A door has been closed. But amid the roar, the creak of an opening window was faintly audible. This window, a gigantic deposit of natural gas called Leviathan, 6.5 times the size of Tel Aviv, was found, roughly 100 nautical miles from where the flotilla fiasco took place and well within Israel's extended territorial waters. An old adage says that when God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window. To most people, last week's events off the coast of Gaza marked a sharp decline in Israel's strategic posture. The Mavi Marmara incident sparked international condemnation and delivered what may...

Glenn Harlan Reynolds: Consent of the governed - and the lack thereof By: Glenn Harlan Reynolds Sunday Reflections Contributor March 7, 2010 Our Declaration of Independence observes: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of...

The New Hampshire Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case of a Christian girl who was ordered out of homeschooling and into a public school. Attorneys for 10-year-old Amanda Kurowski argue that the lower court judge overstepped its authority when it determined that it would be in the best interest of the student to explore and examine new things, other than Christianity. "Courts can settle disputes, but they cannot legitimately order a child into a government-run school on the basis that her religious views need to be mixed with other views. That’s precisely what the lower court admitted...

Antifederalist No. 32 FEDERAL TAXATION AND THE DOCTRINE OF IMPLIED POWERS (PART I) A powerful rebuttal of Hamilton, the logic of Brutus can be found in a supreme Court decision of 1819, McCulloch v. Maryland. Taken from "Brutus" fifth essay, The New-York Journal of December 13, 1787. This constitution considers the people of the several states as one body corporate, and is intended as an original compact; it will therefore dissolve all contracts which may be inconsistent with it. This not only results from its nature, but is expressly declared in the 6th article of it. The design of the...

President Barack Obama may be remembered for permanent depression, the way that Leon Trotsky's name is linked with permanent revolution. Fiscal stimulus combined with near-zero interest rates have proven to be a toxic cocktail for the United States, the macroeconomic equivalent of barbiturates and alcohol. Keynesian spending creates a deficit that sucks all the available capital out of the grassroots economy and transfers it to the Treasury market. Easy funding terms from the Federal Reserve allow financial institutions to make money in government bonds while shutting off credit to the rest of the economy. It's classic crowding out,........(rest at link)

Hideous monsters devouring ships? Old map symbols, correctly showing storm fronts & dangerous currents I’ve always been fond of maps, from those antique ones showing sea serpents and hideous monsters devouring ships in the vast expanses of the ocean, to those showing what the world looked like in the distant, and not so distant, past. Maps have, of course, been with us in one form or another, for a long time. Jerusalem is in the center - from "Itinerarium Sacrae Scipturae", by Heinrich Bunting, 1545-1606 Here’s a world map according to Posidonius, from around 150-130 B.C. - Ptolemy's version of...

If recent trends are any guide, many Church of England parishes will have been cheered by higher attendances at Easter services. The last published statistics for 2006/7 show rises of 7 and 5 per cent in church going at Christmas and Easter. But these figures are just about the only signs of hope for the church and certainly not the first green shoots of a revival. Other statistics make for gloomy reading. Annual decline in Sunday attendance is running at around 1 per cent. At this rate it is hard to see the church surviving for more than 30 years...

The largest animals ever to have walked the face of the earth may not have been as big as previously thought, reveals a paper published June 21 in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology.

After the extinction of the dinosaurs 65m years ago, new giants evolved to terrorise life on Earth: snakes as long as a bus and as wide as a door. On Thursday an international scientific team will announce in the journal Nature the discovery of Titanoboa, the largest snake that has ever lived. Its fossils were found in the Cerrejen coal mines of Colombia. Titanoboa was a constrictor like today’s boas and anacondas, preying on crocodiles and giant turtles about 60m years ago in what was then a steamy tropical rainforest. At a conservative estimate it grew 13 metres long and...

Using tiny brushes and chisels, workers picking at a big greenish-black rock in the basement of North Dakota's state museum are meticulously uncovering something amazing: a nearly complete dinosaur, skin and all. Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota, a duckbilled dinosaur unearthed in southwestern North Dakota in 2004, is covered by fossilized skin that is hard as iron. It's among just a few mummified dinosaurs in the world, say the researchers who are slowly freeing it from a 65-million-year-old rock tomb. "This is the closest many people will ever get to seeing what large...

24% Are Both Fiscal and Socially Conservative, 9% Fiscally and Socially Liberal Saturday, November 24, 2007 Forty-one percent (41%) of American voters say they are conservative when it comes to “fiscal issues such as taxes, government spending, and business regulation.” A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 43% consider themselves fiscally moderate and 12% say liberal. At the same time, 37% say they are conservative when it comes to “social issues like abortion, public prayer, and church-state topics.” On such social issues, 30% say they are moderate while 30% say liberal. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Republicans consider themselves fiscal...

Despite the massive show of force authorities displayed last week when they seized the West Lebanon property of convicted tax evaders Edward and Elaine Brown, the avoidance of confrontation with the couple at their Plainfield home suggests law enforcement agencies have learned from mistakes made during earlier federal standoffs at Waco and Ruby Ridge, an expert who tracks militia and radical right-wing movements said. U.S. marshals in New Hampshire appear to be pursuing tactics similar to those used in Montana in 1996, when federal agents successfully negotiated the peaceful surrender of the Montana Freeman after an 81-day standoff, said Mark...

ON APRIL 2, this newspaper reported that the Los Angeles Police Department had asked Philip Morris USA for a $50,000 donation to help fund its investigation into counterfeit cigarettes. That makes a lot of sense: If TV cop shows have commercials, why shouldn't real police work have corporate sponsors too (you know, aside from the obvious reasons of favoritism, bias and perverse incentives)? For that matter, what's wrong with wealthy families in La Cañada Flintridge, San Marino and other communities holding constant fundraisers to pay for the unfunded needs of their local public schools — drama societies and marching bands...

Maybe the era of big government isn't over, after all. As Americans finish their annual tax-filing flurry to meet a Tuesday deadline, it is true that tax rates are lower than they were a few years ago. But according to a different yardstick, the federal government's reach is expanding. Slightly over half of all Americans – 52.6 percent – now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, N.J. That's up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the...

The most interesting moment on the remarkable and historic first day of the 110th Congress was the eloquent, gracious and insightful speech of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). For those who missed it, go back and watch the video. Here are some excerpts: Resident Scholar Norman J. Ornstein “Twelve years ago, some of us stood proudly in this chamber as our former colleague, [then-newly minted Minority Leader] Dick Gephardt (D) of Missouri, handed the gavel to the new Republican Speaker, Newt Gingrich of Georgia. . . . There were some great achievements during the 12 years that followed, but...

A student at a Catholic university in Pittsburgh is protesting the school's decision to punish him for opposing the formation of a homosexual student group on campus. Duquesne University recently charged sophomore Ryan Miner with discrimination based on sexual orientation. Miner says he was punished for comments he made on a private website called Facebook.com after creating a group called "Against the Gay-Straight Alliance." Miner explains what happened. "I had written a blog, and I used not the most prudent of words but words that I felt coincided within my faith in the Catholic Church," the student shares. "I said,...

This Land Is Not Your Land by Laurence M. Vance Vance Publications This land is your land, this land is my land, From California, to the New York Island, From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters, This land was made for you and me. ~ Woody Guthrie, "This Land is Your Land" My fellow Americans – this land is not your land. This land belongs to the federal government. And what it doesn’t own it can take through its power of eminent domain. The FY2004 Federal Real Property Profile has now been released. In it we see that...

Kennett Square, Pa. July 7, 2004 — The next time residents in Kennett Square pick up a can of paint for an at home paint job, they'd better pick up a permit too. Al Willard/KENNETT SQUARE, PA.: "I actually couldn't believe that it was true. It would seem too bizarre." That's the reaction from homeowners about a controversial vote in Borough Council this month, one that has put Mayor Leon Spencer in the hot seat. He broke a 3 to 3 tie over plans to enforce an 8 year old law that requires permits for paint jobs, wallpapering, carpet installation...

The new constitution is another step in the process that robs us of our rights NEVER say that Tony Blair doesn’t have a sense of history. While the treaty that establishes a new constitution for Europe was being signed, the Prime Minister’s spin-doctors were pointing out that this deal had been concluded on the 189th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. The implication was supposed to be clear. Tony Blair was a latter-day Wellington, once again beating off the French on Belgian soil, and thereby safeguarding British independence. In the words of Abba’s own anthem commemorating that battle, “the history...

Last fall, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, a federally funded agency chartered to spread liberty around the world, President George W. Bush delivered a speech holding out some "essential principles" as "common to every successful society in every culture." The first of these, the President declared, is that "successful societies limit the power of the state and the power of the military so that governments respond to the will of the people and not the will of the elite." That was what America had learned in its 200-year "journey" on the road...

[I do not contend that Lott believes what follows, and neither do I contend that by saying it, he would somehow save is neck. I offer it only as a mental experiment in truth telling. LHR] My critics say that my comments-regretting the presidential loss of the Dixiecrats in 1948-reflect a racial bias against blacks, because the States' Rights Party endorsed the rights of states to preserve segregation at the state level. In fact, the real issue is not race; it is freedom and federalism, concepts which apparently aren't understood by the national press or by my critics left and...

Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools. - Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651. ACTION Men's actions are derived from the opinions they of the good or evil, which from those actions rebound unto themselves. - Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651. AMBITION All men that are ambitious of military command, are inclined to continue the causes of war; and to stir up trouble and sedition: for there is no honor military but by war; nor any such hope to mind an ill game, as by causing a new shuffle. - Thomas...