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C.M. Hernert reads Rand and discusses individual rights, moral law, capitalism, and the State.

“All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals. All previous systems had held that man’s life belongs to society; that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases; and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favor, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at any time.”

“The United States held that man’s life is his by right, which means, by moral principal and by his nature; that a right is the property of an individual; that society, as such, has no rights; and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights.”

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[There is no way to properly introduce this post, but it bears reading nonetheless. The parallels between where the U.S. is headed and where Russia is are truly remarkable. I hope my fellow Americans will continue to wake up to the evil that is statism. -Ed.]

By The Viscount

I am feeling very ¨ dissident ¨ today as I sip my tea just down the road from where Tsar Nicholas met his final end. This is my third trip to this city that truly marks where east meets west. Each time I visit, I am overwhelmed by the potential of the Russia and saddened by how that potential will never be realized.

I am here to say goodbye to my old friend Evgeny: the warrior poet. A veteran fighter, having seen action first in Afghanistan and then on the front lines of the so called Mafia Wars in the early 1990s, he is now losing the final battle with lung cancer. He has almost finished a book on Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union and has asked me to help find him a publisher in the UK. I will do my best. I have the manuscript in my carry on.

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The United States by every measure is hanging on by a thread to its First World status. Saddled by debt, engaged in wars on multiple fronts with a rising police state at home, declining economic productivity, and wild currency fluctuations all threaten America’s future.

The general designations of the ranking system for world status date back to the 1950s, and have included countries at various stages of economic development. Since the Cold War, the definition has come to be synonymous with repressive countries where a wealthy class of ruling elites segment society into the haves and have-nots, many times capitalizing on the conditions that follow an economic crisis or war.

While much of the world is still mired in poverty, the reduced cost of innovative tools such as computing and connectivity ironically puts traditional Third World countries at the forefront of a new lean-and-mean economy that is based on ideas of empowerment for the disenfranchised. For better or worse, the world is leveling due to Globalism. However, America and other over-leveraged countries face this re-balancing of the globe at a time when they have dwindling resources. We can speculate about who and what is to blame for America’s fantastic fall, but for the purposes of this article we shall focus on the obvious signs that the United States is beginning to resemble a Third World country.

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By Ron Holland

Tradition says when Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown back in 1781 the British played this tune as they marched out of the fortifications in surrender to the American army. Whether this actually happened is open to debate but the loss suffered by the great British Empire to ragtag American forces certainly seemed to the British like the world had indeed turned upside down.

Today another great empire is getting ready to bite the dust because the power of its media, military, political and financial establishments are perceived to be in the process of collapse. Our brave new world of instant communications, decentralized resistance, an open Internet media, political corruption and worldwide recession/depression is causing Americans and our enemies to rethink the benefits and fear of a broken empire that may well be in the death throes of its existence just like the Soviet Union in 1991.

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