The Philosophy of Liberty

Very succinct. Pretty impressive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ3NsLr1al0&feature=share

Mitt Romney and 3 Ne 16:10

And thus commandeth the Father that I should say unto you: At that day when the Gentiles shall sin against my gospel, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, and shall be lifted up in the pride of their hearts above all nations, and above all the people of the whole earth, and shall be filled with all manner of lyings, and of deceits, and of mischiefs, and all manner of hypocrisy, and murders, and priestcrafts, and whoredoms, and of secret abominations; and if they shall do all those things, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, behold, saith the Father, I will bring the fulness of my gospel from among them.

- That we know what is best for other nations to do.
- That we should force everyone what we think they should be doing.
- That we send mercenaries around the world to get countries to bend to our desires.
- That the murders will be done in secret. The sanctions will be done in secret without the will of those who wish to trade.
- That we reject the teachings of Christ found in D&C 98.

See the video starting at 4:30

Don't get me wrong. I am not nearly perfect, but neither would I support something like this.

There is a better way.

Alternative Pledge (First Draft)

As a child of God,
I seek for the well being of my fellow countrymen.
I seek to uphold the eternal truths found in the constitution.
I pray to God for His guidance and blessings.

Pledge of Allegiance

This article is on why I know longer will recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

Let's work through the pledge to try and understand its meaning.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

This should get you thinking of the ten commandments. What do they say? In regards to this?

 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
If that is not enough let us remember our roots as a country, ...a democratic republic built on freedom of dissent should not require its citizens to pledge allegiance to it.

Also, should we not remember why the pledge was instituted? Was is not in direct conflict of the above statement?

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855–1931), who was a Baptist minister, a Christian socialist, and the cousin of socialist utopian novelist Edward Bellamy (1850–1898). Bellamy "viewed his Pledge as an 'inoculation' that would protect immigrants and native-born but insufficiently patriotic Americans from the 'virus' of radicalism and subversion."

Was not our country founded on "radicalism and subversion" of the British government? Do we truly want our citizens to be obeisance to the government? Which is in direct conflict to the scripture quoted above?

Let's move on to the next part of the pledge.

to the republic for which it stands

Do I want to pledge allegiance to the crooks in D.C.? Allegiance to the ungodly wars, mass slaughter of people around the world? To the oppression of people's wills in other countries, forcing them off the gold standard, and to oppress other nations through the drug war?

I agree, that a republic of freedom is good. But for which the US currently stands, I cannot and will not agree.

one nation under God

We should be a nation under God but currently we are a nation of sabbath breakers. Do the scriptures not say:

Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the Lord your God.

Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.

If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; Then I will give you brain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land. And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.

Let's move on to the next part.

indivisible

Is this not directly contradictory to what the founders believed in?

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Is this not contrary to a people that are believe in freedom?

with liberty and justice for all.

I do desire liberty for all. I do desire justice and mercy for all. Is a highly centralized government the way to achieve this? No, and the founders were not keen on this either. Our current political system does not reflect this, and saying the pledge detracts from this important message.

Finally, having children recite the pledge is not a form of brain washing our children into believing that our current government is benevolent? Does it detract the individual from seeing the truth and create a false patriotism?

The next post I will create a new pledge to God and country.

New Boss Same as the Old Boss

Hard Drugs for Little Kids

If you are still debating why drugs should or should not be legalized here's a good argument for the former.

Christianity & War

Christianity & Preemptive War


Christianity & War

Medical Marijuana Legalization May Pass

Medical marijuana initiative heads toward passage

See the AZ results here and here.

Happy Armistice Day!

Or not so happy since we are involved in so many wars right now.

Here's to peace.

Election Results

From AZ Government Results

US Results

Statewide Results

Local Results

We Are Not Free: The Porno Scanners

Michael Chertoff says:

“I don’t know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747. That’s why we haven’t put them in our airport.” — Rafi Sela, leading Israeli airport security expert, referring to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, which has some of the toughest security in the world.

Proof the Porno Scanners Are for Humiliation and Control

TSA Introduces New Pat-Down at Airport

 Pat downs just got worse!

2010 General Election Resources

From the AZ Secretary of State Website
General Election Info
Propositions
General Election People -->  A more useful list with links to candidates websites: The Green Papers

The Freedom Index for National Politics (Look up Kirkpatrick & McCain, it's useful to look up McCain when he was working during Bush Era)

The Financial Scorecard.  This is also for national politics.

The Report Card for local politics.  For Bennett see this old report card from 2006.  The 2005 was better but not by much.

Anti-war: War, Peace, and the State

Murray Rothbard on war, peace, and the state.

Marijuana

As Arizona votes to legalize medical marijuana it necessitates understanding how we can become free by making drugs freer.

Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies

On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not "legalized." Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense.

While other states in the European Union have developed various forms of de facto decriminalization — whereby substances perceived to be less serious (such as cannabis) rarely lead to criminal prosecution — Portugal remains the only EU member state with a law explicitly declaring drugs to be "decriminalized." Because more than seven years have now elapsed since enactment of Portugal's decriminalization system, there are ample data enabling its effects to be assessed...

Anarchy = Practicality = Liberty?

 Jesus the Anarcho-capitalist?

James Redford makes an interesting case. 

The Stateless Society: An Examination of Alternatives

The practicality of anarchy.

We Are Not Free: The War On Ourselves

In the news we often see how the government is using scare tactics against its own citizens.  You know the end of a great nation is coming when the government starts attacking its own citizens.  We saw how the FBI has created "terrorists" groups in our own country and charge them with crimes and sometimes the people, if they're lucky, are acquitted.  (See stories found in LewRockwell.com and http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/).

The latest of these incidents was the witch hunt on anti-war protesters.

We Are Not Free: The System

One of my arguments against government is the system within it works.  It operates in a monopoly of force and hence enables people do that which they might otherwise not do.

When people become cogs in a wheel they tend to do things they otherwise wouldn't, like not use force on others to get them to do something that doesn't even have any consequence.  Or hurt someone because they are in a position of power.

A great example of this is a recent fire fighting incident where the firemen refused to put out a fire because the person didn't pay the annual fee (the firefighters were city employees and the house was on county land, so if the person would have liked the service they could have paid the city $75/year).  People blamed this incident on the free market.  But they don't understand that this incident had nothing to do with the free market.  The firefighters were city employees taking instruction from bureaucrats with no customer satisfaction incentive for them to put the fire out.  Instead of acting with compassion or offering to put the fire out for a certain amount of money or having the customer pay full price they just let the house burn down.  This is not an example against the free market but against government and bureaucracy.  Just as we see this incident we will see similar incidents in the new universal health care as more and more people just follow orders and have no incentive (as found in the free market) to go above and beyond their station in life.

 Power Corrupts
 It's useful to keep this in mind because, while the overwhelming lesson of the last half century of social psychology is that situational influences can easily swamp the effect of individual differences in character, our political rhetoric takes scant account of this. Political campaigns focus heavily on questions of “character”—which especially in the case of “outsider” campaigns should be of limited predictive value. Republican candidates and officials try to portray Democrats as arrogant and out of touch, while Democrats cast Republicans as callous and greedy. In each case, the message is that these are bad people, and their character flaws are somehow related to their specific ideologies. The remedy is, invariably, to replace them in positions of power with better people from the other team. These social science results suggest that this is unlikely to work: The problem is power itself.

We Are Not Free: Why We Fight

Watch at least the first segment!

We Are Not Free: Injustice Everywhere Update

From Injustice Everywhere

• 
  Flagstaff Police Officer To Be Fired After Fleeing Wreck
• Sheriff Joe Arpaio closes anti-corruption squad
• Pinalcchio: Forensics experts say a deputy's tale about getting shot by drug smugglers doesn't add up
• Joe Arpaio's office misused up to $64 million, Maricopa County says

We Are Not Free: The Secret Government - The Constitution in Crisis

The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis, by Bill Moyers






History is so incredibly important to understand the world we live in.  It let's us know the pattern of the world and how it repeats itself.  In this video we see the recent history of the United States during the Iran Contra scandal.  We see how the CIA and FBI are organizations that are counter to a free society.  We see how war is truly the health of the state.  We see how we are repeating ourselves.

The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad. - James Madison

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. . . . [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and . . . degeneracy of manners and of morals. . . . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. . . .

[It should be well understood] that the powers proposed to be surrendered [by the Third Congress] to the Executive were those which the Constitution has most jealously appropriated to the Legislature. . . .

The Constitution expressly and exclusively vests in the Legislature the power of declaring a state of war . . . the power of raising armies . . . the power of creating offices. . . .

A delegation of such powers [to the President] would have struck, not only at the fabric of our Constitution, but at the foundation of all well organized and well checked governments.

The separation of the power of declaring war from that of conducting it, is wisely contrived to exclude the danger of its being declared for the sake of its being conducted.

The separation of the power of raising armies from the power of commanding them, is intended to prevent the raising of armies for the sake of commanding them.

The separation of the power of creating offices from that of filling them, is an essential guard against the temptation to create offices for the sake of gratifying favourites or multiplying dependents. - James Madison from Letters and Other Writings of James Madison.

  Excerpts from the film:

I wouldn't be here if my father and my brothers were involved in the secret war.  I am here because I have no choice of being here...[The] CIA goofed up because they weren't willing to carry through with their goals.  They think it's so simple that people are like pawns in a game like a chess game.  In a game you can move them wherever you want but you have to understand that human life is very different from playing a game because a game once you lose there's nothing at stake, but when you lose a person's life or devastate a whole country, as they did to my country. - Hmong man from Laos

Can we have perpetual war and democracy? - Bill Moyers

If we continue these policies to rob ourselves in order to feed this national security monster we're going to continue to degrade American life.  That's real national security.  National security for the United States is making the United States a good place to live where people want to be active, intelligent, involved citizens.  For people at the top to say this world is so complicated and so dangerous, just a few of us need to govern it and hold the secrets in, and we will tell you what's good for you.  That is moving down the road to dictatorship. - Roger Wilkins

Oliver North was the Colonel who was spot lighted in the video.  He believed in obeying orders of the president (king) regardless if they were legal or ethical.

The person that posted this video had the following commentary.  Not all his beliefs are necessarily mine.

This is the full length 90 min. version of Bill Moyer's 1987 scathing critique of the criminal subterfuge carried out by the Executive Branch of the United States Government to carry out operations which are clearly contrary to the wishes and values of the American people. The ability to exercise this power with impunity is facilitated by the National Security Act of 1947. The thrust of the exposé is the Iran-Contra arms and drug-running operations which flooded the streets of our nation with crack cocaine. The significance of the documentary is probably greater today in 2007 than it was when it was made. We now have a situation in which these same forces have committed the most egregious terrorist attack on US soil and have declared a fraudulent so-called "War on Terror". The ruling regime in the US who have conducted the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, are now banging the war drum against Iran. We have the PATRIOT act which has stripped us of many of our basic civil rights justified by the terror of 9/11 which is their own doing.