By Dr. Jack Wheeler

It’s starting to look like 1948 all over again.

Mark Twain observed that while history doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes. The 2012 presidential campaign is now rhyming with that of 1948 in iambic trimeter – the poetic form tragedians of Ancient Greece such as Aeschylus and Sophocles used to best express portending doom.

So let’s revisit that extraordinary yesteryear of 1948, resulting in the most famous upset in American politics – Democrat Harry Truman defeating Republican Tom Dewey – and see how we can avoid a similar outcome by using it to our advantage.

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By Dr. Jack Wheeler

It’s time to choose. There’s only one thing that can extricate the world from the calamity descending upon it.

Jefferson is warning us right now about “the impious presumption of legislators and rulers…setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others.” Because Jefferson’s and Madison’s solution to preventing religious wars – Religious Liberty – is the solution to preventing the economic wars about to descend upon us.

That solution is Economic Liberty. That solution is the Separation of Economy and State – for precisely the same reasons for the Separation of Church and State. Such a separation – capitalism for real – is the only thing that will save the world from plunging into economic darkness. Violently.

With Obama’s Osawatomie Speech, we have reached the fork in the road of America’s future. The critical moment has arrived. If you can stomach it, read the whole thing. It is diabolically dishonest. He is actually claiming his Marxist-Fascist values are those of America’s. He has the mind-boggling demagogic chutzpah to claim that free market capitalism “doesn’t work – it has never worked.”

Free market capitalism – economic liberty – is the only thing that ever has worked to create widespread prosperity. What has never worked in history is what Obama advocates: socialism, fascism, and the destruction of economic liberty by government rules, hamstrings, restrictions, taxes, and subsidies.

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By Ron Holland

Just following Congress, the 2012 presidential campaign and the inability of citizens to influence government policy makes it clear to every American how broken the US political system has become. A few powerful interests run the entire show and the American people are being forced down a dark road to economic destruction. History shows us that Washington is immune to conventional national political action under the present system. What can freedom loving Americans do?

So do freedom advocates just give up or wait for the eventual collapse of the economy and the US political system?

There is only one effective, democratic and peaceful tool left to Americans to defend their liberties and restore the original republic of our founding fathers. It is the right of state sovereignty and nullification.

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By Dr. Jack Wheeler

On Thanksgiving Day, Americans gather with their family and friends to celebrate the blessings that Providence has bestowed on their beloved country.

A deep appreciation of these blessings involves understanding that they were earned. It is to understand the awesome truth of how “God helps those who help themselves” applies to the Mayflower Pilgrims and their First Thanksgiving at America’s birth.

This is an appreciation and understanding of which those on the Left are incapable – for it would mean celebrating the capitalist freedom that made that original Thanksgiving possible. This no liberal, no Democrat, no leftie can do. Thus they must distort history instead.

The distortion starts in Kindergarten, with the childish make-believe of your kid’s school play portraying the noble Squanto teaching the helpless Pilgrims how to feed themselves. So let’s drop the curtain on the distortion and watch the real thing. Here it is.

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By Wendy McElroy

“Your papers!” In old movies, the demand is barked at trembling travelers by a Nazi with a guttural accent. If the demand is made in the opening scene, then the audience knows immediately that they watching a totalitarian state in which travelers are in danger.

“Your papers!” now rings out at every American airport and border crossing. The accent is different but travelers need to recognize with equal immediacy that a totalitarian state is playing out in front of their eyes, and they must be careful.

A passport is where the security theater begins. Indeed, without a passport those who wish to fly or cross a border are not “allowed” to be scanned, searched, interrogated, or undergo a plethora of other indignities imposed by uniformed thugs. The hoops through which passport carriers jump are all prelude to “permitting” them to exercise a right belonging to every freeborn person: the right to travel.

Things were not always this way.

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By John Whitehead

The transition to a police state will not come about with a dramatic coup d’etat, with battering rams and marauding militia. As we have experienced first-hand in recent years, it will creep in softly, one violation at a time, until suddenly you find yourself being subjected to random patdowns and security sweeps during your morning commute to work or quick trip to the shopping mall.

Perhaps you have yet to experience the particular thrill, and I use that word loosely, of being manhandled by government agents, having your personal possessions pawed through, and your activities and associations scrutinized. If so, not to worry. It’s only a matter of time before more and more Americans will experience such a military task force knocking at their door. Only, chances are that it won’t be a knock, and they might not even be at home when government agents decide to “investigate” them. Indeed, as increasing numbers of Americans are discovering, these so-called “soft target” security inspections are taking place whenever and wherever the government deems appropriate, at random times and places, and without needing the justification of a particular threat. Worse, not only is this happening with the blessing of the Obama administration but at its urging.

What I’m describing–something that was once limited to authoritarian regimes–is only possible thanks to an unofficial rewriting of the Fourth Amendment by the courts that essentially does away with any distinctions over what is “reasonable” when it comes to searches and seizures by government agents. The rationale, of course, is that anything is “reasonable” in the war on terrorism. What the powers-that-be understand–and Americans remain oblivious to–is the fact that by constantly pushing the envelope and testing the limits of what Americans will tolerate, the government is thus able to ratchet up the level of intrusiveness that Americans consider reasonable.

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By Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI)

We must address the clear and present threat to our economy.

Our prosperity stands on the precipice. Concerned Americans demand an explanation of how this happened and leadership that will walk us back from the cliff. But in the White House and along the campaign trail, the purported leaders fail to recognize or refuse to acknowledge the clear and present threat to our economy: the Great Deflation.

The failure to differentiate between an economic recession and this Great Deflation will cause an economically doomed generation.

But this need not happen. The strength of our economy — its capacity to generate employment, opportunity, and growth — is determined by the quality of its factories and its technology and innovation; by the depth and freedom of its marketplace; and by the ingenuity and efforts of its people. By these measures, we Americans should continue to have the strongest economy in history, and one which continues to grow.

So while our economic challenges are daunting, they can be surmounted. It is only a question of our will to take action.

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By Robert Agostinelli

The sad tale of profligate spending is clear. With an abandon and reckless disregard for common-sense economics, we have mortgaged our future. This has been the fault of both sides of the political aisle. Seemingly benign acts of largesse and the application of pork-barrel spending have numbed our national sense of responsibility and left us detached from the full implications.

This has been greatly exacerbated by the equally cowardly seduction of “entitlement.” This term embodies the height of all false utopian ideals that socialism has used to seduce its wards.

Long before our current president embarked on his course of ruin, his intellectual compatriots, Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, charted the course of our demise. They were the forerunners who, in the name of good intentions, sowed the seeds of ruin whose harvest we are reaping.

The expectation that the government has a duty and an obligation to provide entitlements is and always has been a flawed proposition. Simply put, it is a grand illusion with a vengeful ending if not corrected.

Enter President Obama, the supreme narcissistic leader of the realm, never one to “let a crisis go to waste.” His is an artful blend of Keynesian voodoo economics, increased imposition of government control, and the largest expansion of the entitlement state in our history.

The financing of Mr. Obama’s spending and expansion of government can only be sustained by way of subterfuge.

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By Anthony Gregory

As Obama demonizes the wealthy and pitches a dozen plans to restructure the economy, opponents of this program need a reminder of what exactly we’re fighting for. We are resisting bureaucracy, central planning, and encroachments on our freedom and communities. Yet this does not get to the heart of the matter. We are not only an opposition movement, countering the president and his partisans’ agenda. More fundamentally, we stand in defense of the greatest engine of material prosperity in human history, the fount of civilization, peace, and modernity: Capitalism.

Many regard it a dirty word and it is tarnished most of all by its supposed guardians. Wall Street giants fancy themselves capitalists even as they live off the taxpayer and thrive on the state’s gifts of privilege, inflation, and barriers to entry. In the military-industrial complex they champion it by name as they produce devices of murder for the state. In the Republican Party and every conservative institution they talk it up while making such vast exceptions to the principle as to swallow it whole. When many think of capitalism, they think of the corporatist status quo, leading even some who favor economic freedom to abandon the term.

But we should not abandon it.

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By Dr. Joel Wade

We’ve been losing the fight for freedom in America for the past hundred or so years.

From Teddy Roosevelt’s progressive Republicanism, to Woodrow Wilson’s fascist visions, to FDR’s New Deal liberalism, to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, to Richard Nixon’s wage and price controls, Jimmy Carter’s incompetence, George Bush I’s tax increases, Bill Clinton’s expansion of regulations and taxes, George Bush II’s spending spree and Medicare expansion, and Hussein Obama’s hyper-ballooning of government power and spending, everything has been a compromise with tyranny – which means that tyranny always wins.

Of course tyranny is insidious. We’ve had a struggle against it from the inception. In 1798,our second president, John Adams enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, allowing him to imprison anybody who spoke out against him. Abraham Lincoln had a similar policy during the Civil War. Liberty has always required, and will always require, courageous men and women to speak up for her, stand up for her, and fearlessly champion her cause.

The problem is that we haven’t been championing liberty very effectively for quite a long time.

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By David MacGregor

One definition of the word “incubator” is: a place or situation that permits or encourages the formation and development of new ideas.

If you consider the “old” ideas we have all grown up with, then it’s obvious that our family, our society and our culture were the incubator for such ideas. In fact, you could say that one of the most important evolutionary purposes of a family, a tribe, or a society is precisely to ensure the shared values and ideas of the group are effectively passed on to the children – in order to guarantee continuance of the group.

It also brings to mind the famous Jesuit saying: “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man.” In other words, if one can influence the mind of a young person, up until he is seven years old, then those ideas will become a permanent part of the identity of that person throughout his life.

That can be either a comforting or frightening thought, depending on what sort of ideas one is talking about. No doubt Christians, for example, would see the passing on of their faith as a very positive thing. But I doubt much popular support, if the ideas in question were of the Nazi/fascist variety!

And this is the conundrum. What ideas are worthy of being passed on in this manner?

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By David MacGregor

One of the major problems one has, in challenging the status quo, is that people are wedded to the way things are, and have great difficulty in seeing past accepted norms to “what could be”. Taxation is one of these accepted norms.

We were all born into a world where people pay tax. No one fundamentally challenges the system because that’s the way it has always been. Sometimes people put forward various reforms, but no one seriously puts the whole taxation issue under a clear spotlight.

Let me first make my own position crystal clear. I consider taxation to be immoral. Taxation is the forced appropriation of another’s rightful property – as money earned is a result of one’s personal effort.

Taxation cannot be likened to payment for goods and services, which is the result of a voluntary transaction. No, taxation is compulsory and you have no say as to how your money is to be used.

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By Tara Servatius

Americans must to decide if, in the name of homeland security, they are willing to allow TSA operatives to storm public places in their communities with no warning, pat them down, and search their bags. And they better decide quickly.

Bus travelers were shocked when jackbooted TSA officers in black SWAT-style uniforms descended unannounced upon the Tampa Greyhound bus station in April with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and federal bureaucrats in tow.

A news report by ABC Action News in Tampa showed passengers being given the signature pat downs Americans are used to watching the Transportation Security Administration screeners perform at our airports. Canine teams sniffed their bags and the buses they rode. Immigration officials hunted for large sums of cash as part of an anti-smuggling initiative.

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By Rob Rojas

Nobody really likes paying their taxes. But, as the old adage about “death and taxes” conveys, there is a sense that taxes are as legitimate and as inevitable as death itself. In their acceptance of taxation, many well-meaning people forget that taxation violates our most basic moral principles.

If you have ever been to a kindergarten or a playground where very young children play, you might have realized that, although the kids are too young to understand many things, they already have a surprising sense of justice.

Take a toy away from a toddler who cannot yet speak a word, and you will often be met with a very clear protest. As far as the toddler is concerned, you have stolen her toy, you have initiated violence, and therefore it’s time to cry. The toddler’s reasoning probably isn’t this sophisticated, but the understanding is there.

Slightly older children are even more amazing. They understand that there is illegitimate violence (when a toy gets stolen), but they also understand that there is such a thing as legitimate violence as well, which is when the victimized child goes to the thieving child and takes her toy back. The astonishing thing is that the usual focus is on getting the toy back rather than punishing the aggressor. Punishment is a concept that they learn later, probably from us.

The initiation of violence is the act of an aggressor against you or against your property. This can be done through actual violence or through intimidation, because the mere threat of violence is an act of violence in itself. A good example would be a thief that points a gun at you to get your wallet without actually pulling the trigger. Another less obvious example is the way the government takes our money. To say that taxes are a form of theft may seem a bit over the top, but refuse to pay your taxes and you will be thrown in jail. Refuse to pay your property taxes and you will see who really owns your house.

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By J. Patrick Rhamey, Jr.

“Atlas Shrugged” is compelling, not for its heroes, but for its villains. Published in 1957, Rand’s description of politicians and lobbyists in a time of economic crisis is almost prophetic. These Washington insiders scheme behind closed doors to retain and expand their power. In elaborate press conferences, they attempt to convince the unsuspecting populace of their legislation’s necessity by vilifying productive companies and portraying their own destructive, self-serving designs as being in the interests of the advancement of equality, stability, and progress.

For instance, in Atlas Shrugged, the lobbyist Wesley Mouch decries the capitalist Hank Rearden’s invention of a wonderful alloy that is stronger than steel. And last week, in the real world, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. took to the house floor to declare that Steve Jobs’s iPad was killing jobs. Congress must, according to Jackson, recognize that Apple is driving companies such as Barnes & Noble and Borders out of business, and the company should be stopped in the interests of fairness.

Jackson decried Congress for failing to foster “protection for jobs here in America to ensure that the American people are being put to work.” It’s as if he wanted us to believe the printing press was harmful to the economy because it decreased the demand for scribes. Such a condemnation of a successful business and a demand for protection of failing industries could easily have been lifted directly from Rand’s novel.

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By Dr. Joel Wade

“I just don’t trust that people are smart enough to make the right choices. Do you really think that there are enough intelligent people to have this kind of freedom?”

This is a sentiment that I’ve heard many times from seemingly good hearted people on the left. It’s a very telling window into a very troubling belief system.

Most arguments for the expansion of government power boil down to distrust. Distrust that poor people will be taken care of; distrust that businesses will run without corruption and abuse; distrust that people will take care of their own retirement, health care, and safety needs, etc.

The list is endless, and so long as enough people remain convinced that (other) people are basically not trustworthy, they will continue to support the illusion that the government can somehow correct for this shortcoming and make it all okay.

Note that “other” qualifier. Oddly, leftists always talk about other people and never themselves.

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By Rep. Steve King

As the government edged closer and closer to a shutdown last week, administrators in congressional offices and federal agencies were tasked with determining whether they and their employees provided “essential” or “nonessential” services.

Those employees deemed to be essential are allowed to continue working during a shutdown; those deemed to be nonessential are sent home.

This determination of essential versus nonessential probably sent a ripple of fear through employees of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). In my opinion, the IRS is one of the least essential agencies in the federal government. If I had my way, we would shut down the non-essential IRS forever.

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By Marc Stevens

I’ve mentioned on the radio show a few times about sending the IRS and other tax agencies affidavits. The affidavits state we are terrified of the IRS and only file returns and report financial transactions out of terror of being attacked, put in jail and having all our property stolen. I’m encouraging everyone, if you file or report to the IRS and other tax agencies, send an affidavit of fear with the return. Let them know you are only complying out of a sense of terror, not because you think there is a legitimate obligation. You may comply, but you will not conceal the threats and coercion they used to get compliance. We will not help them make it look legitimate.

There are several reasons for this, and you’ll see it’s another tool to help bring about a voluntary society, building the free market.

It makes the bureaucrats aware of the violence.

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By William H. Gross

That adorable skunk, Pepé Le Pew, is one of my wife Sue’s favorite cartoon characters. There’s something affable, even romantic about him as he seeks to woo his female companions with a French accent and promises of a skunk bungalow and bedrooms full of little Pepés in future years. It’s easy to love a skunk – but only on the silver screen, and if in real life – at a considerable distance.

I think of Congress that way.

Every two or six years, they dress up in full makeup, pretending to be the change, vowing to correct what hasn’t been corrected, promising discipline as opposed to profligate overspending and undertaxation, and striving to balance the budget when all others have failed. Oooh Pepé – Mon Chéri! But don’t believe them – hold your nose instead! Oh, I kid the Congress. Perhaps they don’t have black and white stripes with bushy tails. Perhaps there’s just a stink bomb that the Congressional sergeant-at-arms sets off every time they convene and the gavel falls to signify the beginning of the “people’s business.” Perhaps.

But, in all cases, citizens of America – hold your noses. You ain’t smelled nothin’ yet.

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By Dr. Chuck Baldwin

On March 14, 2011, federal police agencies raided scores of marijuana-related businesses in a number of states–including my home State of Montana. Hundreds of people were detained, put in handcuffs, and their property seized. To my knowledge, however, only a handful has actually been arrested (at least in Montana).

Montana is one of several states in the union that has legalized marijuana for medical purposes. This was accomplished with overwhelming support from the Montana citizenry via a ballot initiative back in 2004. However, the feds view marijuana as an illegal drug, and seem hell-bent in forcing states such as Montana to submit to its dictation–regardless of what the will of the people within the states might be.

Ever since Appomattox Court House, states have been bullied into believing that their authority is subordinate, and, yes, inferior, to federal law. Big Government lawyers cite the US Constitution, Article. VI. Paragraph. 2. to justify their despotism. It reads, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

This paragraph of the Constitution has been construed to mean that the federal government may dictate any law to the states and the states have no right to resist. THIS IS NOT TRUE! Notice carefully what the Constitution says: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States WHICH SHALL BE MADE IN PURSUANCE THEREOF . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” (Emphasis added)

This means that any federal law that is NOT “made in Pursuance thereof” or otherwise does not comport with the Constitution is NOT the “supreme Law of the Land.” Furthermore, it is the states that are the final authority over what is and is not lawful within their respective borders!

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