The Ludwig Von Mises Institute is the world's foremost defender of proper economics, the Austrian School of thought. Throughout our nation's history, Progressives have taken the single concept of liberty and have broken it up into separate liberties, which then can be taken away one by one. It is an underhanded process, but has regardless been incredibly successful. You have a right to your own life, you have a free will and right to make your own choices (as long as they do not infringe upon the rights other persons), and you have a right to the fruits of your excercise of free will which is your property. A government attack on economics is a direct attack on your life and your liberty. Please watch this video and inform yourself, because the political-banking-industrial establishment has been lying to you.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
"Let Us Now Try Liberty!"
Excerpt from The Law, by Frédéric Bastiat, 1850.
God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! A way with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!
And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.
God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! A way with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!
And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
"Alliances as Transmission Belts of War"
by Doug Bandow, Campaignforliberty.com.
It’s been a year since Georgia and Russia went to war. Both sides deserved more than a little blame. But the U.S. and most European governments lined up behind Tbilisi. They now have been embarrassed by the release of a report from the European Union blaming Georgia for firing the first shot. That is, the West backed the aggressor in an unnecessary war. The episode should serve as a caution before Washington again ties American security to alliances, which are as likely to serve as transmission belts of war as firebreaks to war.
The U.S. once avoided making permanent alliances. The American colonies accepted French support to win their independence, but the infant nation backed away from Paris when the latter was convulsed by revolutionary terror and Napoleonic dictatorship a few years later.
On leaving office George Washington advised his fellow citizens in his famous Farewell Address: "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible"...
To read the entire article, click here.
It’s been a year since Georgia and Russia went to war. Both sides deserved more than a little blame. But the U.S. and most European governments lined up behind Tbilisi. They now have been embarrassed by the release of a report from the European Union blaming Georgia for firing the first shot. That is, the West backed the aggressor in an unnecessary war. The episode should serve as a caution before Washington again ties American security to alliances, which are as likely to serve as transmission belts of war as firebreaks to war.
The U.S. once avoided making permanent alliances. The American colonies accepted French support to win their independence, but the infant nation backed away from Paris when the latter was convulsed by revolutionary terror and Napoleonic dictatorship a few years later.
On leaving office George Washington advised his fellow citizens in his famous Farewell Address: "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible"...
To read the entire article, click here.
"Abolish the Federal Department of Education!"
by Jake Towne.
Last night with the Liberty Bell Center of Constitutional Studies, I was part of a panel answering questions on public education with the Concerned Citizens of Bethlehem Area School District. The BASD has been plagued with financial troubles stemming from OTC derivatives purchases, and previously I gave an educational presentation to this group on financial derivatives.
After the lecture from LBCCS founder Paul Fiske who related how our founding fathers viewed education, Ryan Burgett, chairman of LBCCS and I (as a member of LBCCS) took questions and there was one question I was unable to answer without a projector, which was the breakdown of spending by the federal Department of Education, which is below. I also gave a short synopsis of the history and issues I have with this Department.
For the first 177 years in American history, there was no federal Department of Education, which was reserved to the states and localities to handle as they saw fit. This was also in agreement with the Constitution of the United States, which does not provide any justification whatsoever for federal power over education; in fact, the 9th and 10th Amendments make such action both unconstitutional and illegal...
To read the entire article, click here.
Last night with the Liberty Bell Center of Constitutional Studies, I was part of a panel answering questions on public education with the Concerned Citizens of Bethlehem Area School District. The BASD has been plagued with financial troubles stemming from OTC derivatives purchases, and previously I gave an educational presentation to this group on financial derivatives.
After the lecture from LBCCS founder Paul Fiske who related how our founding fathers viewed education, Ryan Burgett, chairman of LBCCS and I (as a member of LBCCS) took questions and there was one question I was unable to answer without a projector, which was the breakdown of spending by the federal Department of Education, which is below. I also gave a short synopsis of the history and issues I have with this Department.
For the first 177 years in American history, there was no federal Department of Education, which was reserved to the states and localities to handle as they saw fit. This was also in agreement with the Constitution of the United States, which does not provide any justification whatsoever for federal power over education; in fact, the 9th and 10th Amendments make such action both unconstitutional and illegal...
To read the entire article, click here.
The Founding Father On Education
You might be surprised to know how much our founding fathers had to say on the topic of public education. They were strong believers in public education through both public schools and libraries. At LBCCS we went through all we could find that our founding fathers said on the subject and were very easily able to narrow them down into nine points. Here are the nine points and the quotes to back them up.
1. Public education is essential for the preservation of liberty.
“A native of America who cannot read and write is as rare... as a comet or an earthquake. It has been observed that we are all of us lawyers, divines, politicians, and philosophers... Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people... They have a right, and indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge—I mean, of the characters and conducts of their rulers.” John Adams, 1765
“Say... whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people. This last is the most certain and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it required no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” Thomas Jefferson, 1787
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Thomas Jefferson, 1787
2.Education improves the human condition.
“The good education of youth has been esteemed by wise men in all ages as the surest foundation of the happiness both of private families and of commonwealths. Almost all governments have therefore made it a principal object of their attention, to establish and endow with proper revenues, such seminaries of learning as might supply the succeeding age with men qualified to serve the public with honor to themselves, and to their country.” Benjamin Franklin, 1749
“The idea of what is true merit should also be often presented to youth, explained and impressed on their minds, as consisting in an inclination joined with an ability to serve mankind, one's country, friends and family; which ability is (with the blessing of God) to be acquired or greatly increased by true learning; and should indeed be the great aim and end of all learning.” Benjamin Franklin, 1749
[referencing general public education] “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness.” Thomas Jefferson, 1786
“Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. Although I do not, with some enthusiasts, believe that the human condition will ever advance to such a state of perfection as that there shall no longer be pain or vice in the world, yet I believe it susceptible of much improvement, and most of all in matters of government and religion; and that the diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is to be effected.” Thomas Jefferson, 1816
“I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue, and advancing the happiness of man.” Thomas Jefferson, 1822
3.Public education is vital to a Republic.
“Educations generally [is] one of the surest means of enlightening and giving just ways of thinking to our citizens.” George Washington, 1796
“Promote... as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” George Washington, 1796
“A primary object... should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing on its legislature than to patronize a plan for communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?” George Washington, 1796
“Education is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” Thomas Jefferson, 1820
4.Parents have final say.
“It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.” Thomas Jefferson, 1817
5.Public schools should not replace private schools.
“It [should not] be proposed to take [the] ordinary branches [of education] out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal.” Thomas Jefferson, 1806
6.Public education should include reading, writing, arithmetic, history, fine arts, virtue/morality/religion and government studies.
“I think also that general virtue is more probably expected and obtained from the education of youth than from the exhortation of adult persons; bad habits and vices of the mind being, like diseases of the body, more easily prevented than cured.” Benjamin Franklin, 1750
“In the first will be taught reading, writing, common arithmetic, and general notions of geography. In the second, ancient and modern languages, geography fully, a higher degree of numerical arithmetic, mensuration, and the elementary principles of navigation. In the third, all the useful sciences in their highest degree. To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the colleges and university.” Thomas Jefferson, 1817
7.Public school management and funding should come from the county level.
“The expense of the elementary schools for every county is proposed to be levied on the wealth of the county, and all children rich and poor to be educated at these three years gratis.” Thomas Jefferson, 1817
8.Public taxes are a legitimate means of funding public schools.
“Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [of misgovernment], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.” Thomas Jefferson, 1786
“Laws will be wisely formed and administered in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the public happiness that those persons whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue should be rendered by liberal education worth to receive, and able to guard, the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens; and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth, or other accidental condition of circumstance; but the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating, at their own expense, those of their children whom nature hath fitly formed and siposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expense of all than that the happiness of all should be confined to the weak or wicked.” Thomas Jefferson, 1790
“If the legislature would add to the literary fund a perpetual tax of a cent a head on the population of the state, it would set agoing at once, and forever maintain, a system of primary or ward schools, and a university where might be taught, in it highest degree, every branch of science useful in our time and country...” Thomas Jefferson, 1816
9.Public schools are not mentioned in the US Constitution and are therefore not a responsibility of the federal government.
Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution lists the 18 specific powers of Congress. Public education is not on that list.
The 10th Amendment clearly states that any responsibility not specifically given to the Federal government in the Constitution is left to the state and local governments.
1. Public education is essential for the preservation of liberty.
“A native of America who cannot read and write is as rare... as a comet or an earthquake. It has been observed that we are all of us lawyers, divines, politicians, and philosophers... Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people... They have a right, and indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge—I mean, of the characters and conducts of their rulers.” John Adams, 1765
“Say... whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people. This last is the most certain and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it required no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” Thomas Jefferson, 1787
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Thomas Jefferson, 1787
2.Education improves the human condition.
“The good education of youth has been esteemed by wise men in all ages as the surest foundation of the happiness both of private families and of commonwealths. Almost all governments have therefore made it a principal object of their attention, to establish and endow with proper revenues, such seminaries of learning as might supply the succeeding age with men qualified to serve the public with honor to themselves, and to their country.” Benjamin Franklin, 1749
“The idea of what is true merit should also be often presented to youth, explained and impressed on their minds, as consisting in an inclination joined with an ability to serve mankind, one's country, friends and family; which ability is (with the blessing of God) to be acquired or greatly increased by true learning; and should indeed be the great aim and end of all learning.” Benjamin Franklin, 1749
[referencing general public education] “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness.” Thomas Jefferson, 1786
“Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. Although I do not, with some enthusiasts, believe that the human condition will ever advance to such a state of perfection as that there shall no longer be pain or vice in the world, yet I believe it susceptible of much improvement, and most of all in matters of government and religion; and that the diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is to be effected.” Thomas Jefferson, 1816
“I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue, and advancing the happiness of man.” Thomas Jefferson, 1822
3.Public education is vital to a Republic.
“Educations generally [is] one of the surest means of enlightening and giving just ways of thinking to our citizens.” George Washington, 1796
“Promote... as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” George Washington, 1796
“A primary object... should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing on its legislature than to patronize a plan for communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?” George Washington, 1796
“Education is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” Thomas Jefferson, 1820
4.Parents have final say.
“It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.” Thomas Jefferson, 1817
5.Public schools should not replace private schools.
“It [should not] be proposed to take [the] ordinary branches [of education] out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal.” Thomas Jefferson, 1806
6.Public education should include reading, writing, arithmetic, history, fine arts, virtue/morality/religion and government studies.
“I think also that general virtue is more probably expected and obtained from the education of youth than from the exhortation of adult persons; bad habits and vices of the mind being, like diseases of the body, more easily prevented than cured.” Benjamin Franklin, 1750
“In the first will be taught reading, writing, common arithmetic, and general notions of geography. In the second, ancient and modern languages, geography fully, a higher degree of numerical arithmetic, mensuration, and the elementary principles of navigation. In the third, all the useful sciences in their highest degree. To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the colleges and university.” Thomas Jefferson, 1817
7.Public school management and funding should come from the county level.
“The expense of the elementary schools for every county is proposed to be levied on the wealth of the county, and all children rich and poor to be educated at these three years gratis.” Thomas Jefferson, 1817
8.Public taxes are a legitimate means of funding public schools.
“Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [of misgovernment], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.” Thomas Jefferson, 1786
“Laws will be wisely formed and administered in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the public happiness that those persons whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue should be rendered by liberal education worth to receive, and able to guard, the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens; and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth, or other accidental condition of circumstance; but the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating, at their own expense, those of their children whom nature hath fitly formed and siposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expense of all than that the happiness of all should be confined to the weak or wicked.” Thomas Jefferson, 1790
“If the legislature would add to the literary fund a perpetual tax of a cent a head on the population of the state, it would set agoing at once, and forever maintain, a system of primary or ward schools, and a university where might be taught, in it highest degree, every branch of science useful in our time and country...” Thomas Jefferson, 1816
9.Public schools are not mentioned in the US Constitution and are therefore not a responsibility of the federal government.
Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution lists the 18 specific powers of Congress. Public education is not on that list.
The 10th Amendment clearly states that any responsibility not specifically given to the Federal government in the Constitution is left to the state and local governments.
Monday, October 19, 2009
"Oath Keepers pledges to prevent dictatorship in United States"
From LVRJ.com
Launched in March by Las Vegan Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers bills itself as a nonpartisan group of current and retired law enforcement and military personnel who vow to fulfill their oaths to the Constitution.
More specifically, the group's members, which number in the thousands, pledge to disobey orders they deem unlawful, including directives to disarm the American people and to blockade American cities. By refusing the latter order, the Oath Keepers hope to prevent cities from becoming "giant concentration camps," a scenario the 44-year-old Rhodes says he can envision happening in the coming years...
To read the entire article, click here.
Visit http://www.oathkeepers.org to learn more about the Oath Keepers.
Launched in March by Las Vegan Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers bills itself as a nonpartisan group of current and retired law enforcement and military personnel who vow to fulfill their oaths to the Constitution.
More specifically, the group's members, which number in the thousands, pledge to disobey orders they deem unlawful, including directives to disarm the American people and to blockade American cities. By refusing the latter order, the Oath Keepers hope to prevent cities from becoming "giant concentration camps," a scenario the 44-year-old Rhodes says he can envision happening in the coming years...
To read the entire article, click here.
Visit http://www.oathkeepers.org to learn more about the Oath Keepers.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Special LBCCS Event Tomorrow!
Hey friends,
Just wanted to remind you that our special event hosted by the CC-BASD is tomorrow! We will be presenting and discussing the views of our founding fathers on public education (schools and libraries). They left more on the subject than you might think! We will be in Bethlehem Township for this event and hope to see you there! For all the information, visit:
http://www.lbccs.org/2009/10/special-lbccs-event.html
Please be sure and RSVP!
In liberty,
Ryan Burgett
Chairman - L.B.C.C.S.
Just wanted to remind you that our special event hosted by the CC-BASD is tomorrow! We will be presenting and discussing the views of our founding fathers on public education (schools and libraries). They left more on the subject than you might think! We will be in Bethlehem Township for this event and hope to see you there! For all the information, visit:
http://www.lbccs.org/2009/10/special-lbccs-event.html
Please be sure and RSVP!
In liberty,
Ryan Burgett
Chairman - L.B.C.C.S.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
"These Are Not Negotiable"
By Chuck Baldwin, CampaignForLiberty.com
"...I would argue that we, like our patriot forebears, have also endured "patient sufferance." For at least a half-century, we have patiently endured the erosion and abridgment of our freedoms and liberties. We have watched the federal government become an overbearing and meddlesome Nanny State that pokes its nose and sticks its fingers in virtually everything we do... Accordingly, it is incumbent upon us to very seriously and thoughtfully examine those principles that we absolutely will never cede or surrender. We have already surrendered much of the freedom that was bequeathed to us by our forefathers. We are now to the point that we must define those principles that form our "line in the sand" and that we will not surrender under any circumstance... Here, then, are those principles that, to me, must never be surrendered..."
To read the entire article, click here.
"...I would argue that we, like our patriot forebears, have also endured "patient sufferance." For at least a half-century, we have patiently endured the erosion and abridgment of our freedoms and liberties. We have watched the federal government become an overbearing and meddlesome Nanny State that pokes its nose and sticks its fingers in virtually everything we do... Accordingly, it is incumbent upon us to very seriously and thoughtfully examine those principles that we absolutely will never cede or surrender. We have already surrendered much of the freedom that was bequeathed to us by our forefathers. We are now to the point that we must define those principles that form our "line in the sand" and that we will not surrender under any circumstance... Here, then, are those principles that, to me, must never be surrendered..."
To read the entire article, click here.
Reason and Property
"As reason tells us, all are born thus naturally equal, i.e., with an equal right to their persons, so also with an equal right to their preservation . . . and every man having a property in his own person, the labour of his body and the work of his hands are properly his own, to which no one has right but himself; it will therefore follow that when he removes anything out of the state that nature has provided and left it in, he has mixed his labour with it, and joined something to it that is his own and thereby makes it his property . . . . Thus every man having a natural right to (or being proprietor of) his own person and his own actions and labour, which we call property, it certainly follows, that no man can have a right to the person or property of another: And if every man has a right to his person and property; he has also a right to defend them . . . and so has a right of punishing all insults upon his person and property."
-Rev. Elisha Williams, 1744
-Rev. Elisha Williams, 1744
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
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