Unfortunately, Ron Paul and the Libertarian solution to fighting terrorism has been falsified by conservative commentators and the media. We have been accused of being "cut and runners" just because we don't support the war in Iraq. Unfortunately, that is not true. We realize that terrorism is a threat to our country. However, we believe that there are better ways of dealing with it than preemptive wars. Iraq was not a threat to our security nor did it support the terrorists involved in 9/11. If we wanted to go to war with a country due to its links with the attacks of 9/11, it would have made more sense to attack Saudi Arabia, but unfortunately, they are our "friend." Not that I support attacking Saudi Arabia.

But just because we do not support this war with Iraq, which has made our country less secure by giving the terrorists more motivation to recruit members against us, does not mean we did not or do not support a counter-attack on the terrorists cells who committed the brutal acts on 9/11.

Many neo-conservatives and members of the media would like you to believe that Ron Paul and his supporters believe in disbanding the military and not doing anything against the threat of terrorism. This is completely false. We believe in removing our military from unnecessary places in the world, where there is no threat. We believe in bringing our troops home, focusing on defense rather than offense, while at the same time rooting out the terrorists that are threats to our country. We also believe in focusing on securing our borders so that attacks like 9/11 could be made almost impossible. We realize that our presence in the Middle-East over the past couple decades has led to the rise in the terrorist organizations. When the Soviet Union invaded the region, we gave them weapons and called them freedom fighters. Now these same groups we once called freedom fighters are the ones that attacked or inspired the attacks of 9/11 because, just as they didn't like the Soviet occupation, they didn't like us being there either. Especially setting up bases so close to the Islamic holy land in Saudi Arabia. Hints how Bin Laden was able to recruit his hijackers.

Conservatives don't like (and I don't mean Republicans) big government at home, so why should they be so eager to get involved around the world?

Libertarians believe in respecting the sovereignty of nations to take care of their own problems, just as we should do domestically. We had a revolution, we had a Civil War, (which was unnecessary), we had a lot of changes to go through in our development as a nation, and we shouldn't try to choose sides in their independant endeavors. If we are attacked or face the threat of attack from another country, then it is our duty to use military action with the declaration by Congress, not resolutions by the United Nations.

I'll let Dr. Paul take it from here.

Dr. Paul:

It has been over 6 years since the atrocities of September 11 were committed and there are still some very basic measures that need to be taken to bring the perpetrators to justice and make America safer. I have proposed legislation to help with these efforts and will continue to fight in Congress for the safety and security of the American people.

My legislation entitled The Marque and Reprisal Act of 2007 (HR 3216) makes the surgical strike option available to the President in our mission to capture Bin Laden. Our military has been pursuing him without result for far too long now, and it is high time ALL constitutional tools were utilized in the hunt for this dangerous madman. As an American it sickens me to know that Bin Laden and top leaders of al Qaeda remain at large and thumbing their noses at us, while we unravel the sacred fabric of our constitution out of fear. It is Osama Bin Laden and the perpetrators of terrorist attacks that ought to be afraid of us, not the other way around. The answers are found in the Constitution. We should boldly root out the perpetrators and not let them get away with their crimes against us. As the home of the brave we should use Letters of Marque and Reprisal to bring Bin Laden to justice.

Also, we need to take serious steps to prevent terrorists from gaining easy access to targets on our soil. Quite alarmingly, even with the knowledge that the 19 terrorist hijackers entered our country legally, and that 15 of them were from Saudi Arabia , student visas from terrorist sponsoring countries are still far too easily obtained. In a baffling move President Bush struck a deal with Saudi King Abdullah in 2005 to allow 21,000 more Saudi young men into the US on student Visas. Of course, not all students from terror sponsoring countries are terrorists, but I place a higher premium on the security of the American people than the convenience of citizens of hostile countries. We should not be making the goals of would-be terrorists easier to accomplish, but rather should be vigilant about defending against enemies at every turn. They should not be slipping through our doors so easily, using our immigration laws against us, and that is why I proposed the Terror Immigration Elimination Act (HR 3217) to toughen standards for VISAS from countries on the State Department's list of terrorist sponsoring countries in addition to Saudi Arabia . Just as you decide who to invite to a dinner party in your home, we should be in charge of who we allow in this country, without apology.

A lot has been done to fight the War on Terror and much of it has been misdirected, but there are some tools still needed and more progress to be made. My bills The Marque and Reprisal Act of 2007 and The Terror Immigration Elimination Act are logical steps in the right direction.

 

 

I have an online blog where I discuss a whole range of issues.

You can find the episodes at:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=22006DB84C28E614

OR on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12926221797&ref=ts

I'd also like to thank Matt for letting me join his blog.

“The Congress shall have Power To […] coin Money.”
– Constitution of the United States of America

    The Constitution gave the federal government the power to coin money and create the currency of the United States. Throughout history, the United States government has tried to find the best solution and strategy to complete this action through the First and Second Banks of the United States as well as a national banking system put in place after the Civil War (Rothbard 5).  Many times in our nation’s history, there was no centralized banking entity or system. Today, however, and since the early 20th century, we have had a central banking system known as the Federal Reserve System. The interesting aspect of this system is that the government has little control over it. The Federal Reserve is a privately owned agency with little oversight by the federal government (Meltzer 147). It is also interesting that the Constitution did not explicitly give Congress authorization to give the power to coin money to a central bank. In discussing this Giant, I will examine the creation of the Federal Reserve, its powers, and why I believe it is unnecessary and harmful to our economy.

    On December 23rd, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act (The Federal Reserve System). Over the years it would gain additional powers and become more active in our market. How and why did it come to be in the first place? Due to the inefficiency of the national banking period, developed after the Civil War, major economic panics arose in 1873, 1884 , 1890, 1893 , and 1907 (Broz 44). The pro-central bank reformers used these crises as an opportunity to sway public opinion and justify their beliefs in the need for a central banking system (Livingston 172). The crisis provided evidence to the pro-central bankers that even though there were natural cycles in the market, where businesses fail, there was no central entity or authority in the banking system that could predict or influence these events (Livingston 172). They knew that Americans were troubled over the instability of the banking system and used this as an opportunity to put their plan into action.

    One of the pro-central bank pushers was Paul Moritz Warburg who called openly for a central bank, having spent time in European banking (Rothbard 38). He was a fan of the German Reichsbank and gave conferences on the idea of a central bank, making sure to note that the nation’s bankers were welcoming the idea of a central bank as long as it was “not controlled by ‘Wall Street’ or any monopolistic interest” (45). Warburg even touched on the structure of the bank saying that the Reserve would not be called a central bank and its governing board would be chosen by government officials, which became the actual system in use today (45). Warburg believed that the money market could not be free and self-regulating but had to be determined by “the best judgment of the best experts” (45). His sentiments toward a central banking system reflected those of many other economists and bankers at the time who attempted and were successful at influencing businessmen and the public to the advantages of a central bank. If the central bank was such a savior to the marketplace, why did it take so much convincing to get it put in place?

    Once the idea of a central bank became popular, it required many trial and error plans before a central banking system could finally be passed through Congress. The financial tycoons, Morgan, Rockefeller, and Kuhn, Loeb or people linked with them were the men behind the curtain pushing for this legislation (Rothbard 50). On November 22, 1910, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, Henry P. Davison, Paul Warburg, Frank A. Vanderlip, and A. Piatt Andrew met in a secretive meeting on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia, using facilities arranged and co-owned by J.P. Morgan (46). Each of these men, who were connected to the financial tycoons previously mentioned, began work on the draft of the Federal Reserve Act (46-47). In the Federal Reserve System, they wanted to create a private banking cartel sanctioned by government that could be used to inflate the nation’s currency without consequence, and were successful (50). Three years later, the Act passed through Congress, and was signed by the President. The private bankers finally had control of our money supply. Their next goal was to increase the Fed’s influence on the market.

    In 1971, the elasticity of the dollar increased once it was not backed up gold or any other precious metal (Field 70). Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, writes, “Since the end of the gold standard of the Bretton Woods age — the last institutional check on out-of-control government that existed — we have lived under a fiat money regime.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary’s definition of fiat money is “money (as paper currency) not convertible into coin or specie of equivalent value.” Rockwell goes on to say that since the Federal Reserve has a monopoly over the money supply given to them by the US government, the government can spend as much as it wants, and the Fed will guarantee that it can print the money in order to pay the debt. Economist and Author, Hans F. Sennholz says, “The deficits force the Fed to generate ever more money and credit which in turn weaken and erode the dollar's trustworthiness in the eyes of the world.” This creation of more money to pay these debts causes inflation, and eats away at the value of the dollar.

    This has been the case in the past and in the present. In the 1960’s and 70’s, we went through a period of large inflation. Donald R. Wells, author of The Federal Reserve System: A History, argues that the Fed helped cause the inflation of this period by doubling the money supply (Hyser). The American dollar has lost almost 70 percent of its value since 1971 and does not show signs of slowing down any time soon (Sennholz). Even the current Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke admits that the Fed can cause inflation (Rockwell).¹ We constantly hear the words inflation and recession  in the news and it is for the most part due to the actions of the Federal Reserve generating more money and manipulating interest rates (Polleit). What is even more frightening is that recently, Secretary of Treasury, Henry M. Paulson Jr. created a plan to give the Fed even more power by making it a "market stability regulator" rather than just the head bank (Shiller BU.5). I believe that this will have even more serious effects on the economy, instead of fixing any problems.

    Is the Federal Reserve System moral? I will dare to conjecture that it is not. History suggests that it has created more problems than it was designed to fix, and now its powers are being expanded. It has barely any oversight by the Federal Government and can really do what it pleases without regulation, which puts the value of our currency into the possession of a handful of private bankers. The authority of Congress to create such a system was never outlined in the Constitution. The founders of the Federal Reserve System manipulated the public by putting Federal in the name, giving it the illusion of a government agency. The Federal Reserve could not be a moral institution because it was formed by the interest of business elites, rather than in the interest of the American people. I am not an economist and do not know the best replacement for such a system, but I would agree that having money backed by something sound such as gold would nearly eliminate inflation and make our government more wise about its spending choices. The Federal Reserve is a giant that our government depends on to loan them money, which it has the power to create out of thin air. The system, in turn, inflates our currency, brings economic turmoil, while at the same time expanding its powers every year.

^1. “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.” – Ben Bernanke (Rockwell)



Broz, J. Lawrence. "Origins of the Federal Reserve System: International Incentives and the Domestic Free-rider Problem." International Organization 53(1999): 39–70.

Federal Reserve System: Purposes and Functions, The. Washington, D.C.: Board of Governors, 1974.

Field, Stanford. "The Weakening of the U.S. Dollar." Futures Apr 2008: 70.

Hyser, Raymond M. “The Federal Reserve System: A History.” Rev of The Federal Reserve System: A History. History: Reviews of New Books. Winter 2005. 56.

Livingston, James. Origins of the Federal Reserve System: Money Class and Corporate Capitalism 1890-1913. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986.

Meltzer, Allan H. "Origins of the Great Inflation." Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review 87(2005): 145-175.

Polleit, Thorsten. “Manipulating the Interest Rate: a Recipe for Disaster” Ludwig von Mises Institute. 13 December 2007.     Ludwig von Mises Institute. 15 April 2008. <http://www.mises.org/story/2810> 

Rockwell, Llewellyn H., Jr. “The Case for the Barbarous Relic.” Ludwig von Mises Institute. 21 March 2006. Ludwig Von Mises Institute. 15 April 2008. <http://www.mises.org/story/2263> 

Rothbard, Murray N. "The Origins of the Federal Reserve." The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 2(1999): 3-51.

Sennholz, Hans F. “Why Gold?.” Ludwig Von Mises Institute. 3 March 2003. Ludwig von Mises Institute. 14 April 2008.     <http://www.mises.org/story/1175>

Shiller, Robert J. The Fed Gets a New Job Description." New York Times 06 Apr 2008, late ed.: BU.5.

It's been a while since my last post. I intend to start a discussion on the philosphy governing the Republican Party. I was originally going to replace "Republican" with "conservative", but then I remembered that the Republican Party is no longer conservative. There once was a time when this party was a party of distinguished intellectuals, such as Barry Goldwater and Robert Taft. Even as late as the 1980s, there were real conservative intellectuals such as Thomas Sowell who held great sway with the party. Even Reagan made some sense in his moments of sanity. These kind of people used to be welcome in the party, and the ideology of the Republican Party was the counterweight to the populism of the left. This was back in the day when the book "Conscience of a Conservative" used to be influential. The ideas of small government and fiscal responsibility were once taken seriously.

Now the party has taken a radically different turn. The Republican Party now actively encourages anti-intellectualism. Higher education is looked upon with disdain. The ideas that once used to define the party are now rejected by it. A party that used to encourage individualism and self-reliance now encourages a statist jingoism. The party has been hijacked by the evangelical Israel lobby, big business, and neo-con warhawks. The person I blame most for this is George W. Bush, since he deceived the American people into thinking that he was a conservative, only to betray us after getting elected. A McCain presidency will only worsen this condition. As much as the idea of an Obama presidency scares me, I cannot bring myself to support McCain. The lesser of two evils is still evil. The few conservatives left may be tempted to vote for McCain in order to keep a Democrat out of office, but I hope that they will decide to just stay home or to vote third-party (Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party for example). Is it better for the party to win an election if it means that they lose the principles that used to define them?

I am tired of hearing Obama's inexperience contrasted with McCain's "honorable service" to this country. He got shot down in Vietnam a long time ago. So what? His actions since then do not demonstrate the qualities of a good president. He never shuts up about being "a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution" or the fact that he supported the troop surge in Iraq five minutes before Mitt Romney did. So let's look at McCain frightful resume.


He voted to allow Clinton to bomb Yugoslavia, which never attacked the United States, so McCain is obviously a warmonger who has no problem bombing civilians who did nothing to us.


Last year there was a bill before the Senate that would prevent illegal aliens who have been convicted of aggravated felonies, domestic violence, stalking, violation of protection orders, crimes against children, or crimes relating to the illegal purchase or sale of firearms, from gaining legal status. McCain voted NO to this common sense bill. Illegal aliens have already broken the law once by coming here illegally, so if they commit a violent felony after that, it only makes sense that they shouldn't stay in the country. I guess this kind of vote can be expected from the guy who co-sponsored the McCain-Kennedy bill on immigration reform, that McCain has now reversed his position on.

He voted against investigating corporate contracts in Iraq. Is this his idea of oversight and transparency in the business of war profiteering?

He also voted against a bill expressing the opinion of Congress that simply says that Congress reaffirms their support for the men and women serving in the armed forces and condemns attacks on their honor.


He also voted against lobbying and donation regulations in 2005.

He voted against judicial review for detainees.

He voted for the No Child Left Behind Act.

He voted for affirmative action provisions in awarding federal contracts with the DOT so that minorities get preferential treatment instead of having to compete fairly for these contracts, so that individuals who happen to have been born with a politically unfavorable skin pigmentation would face discrimination from the government.

He didn't even vote on whether or not to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General. He has missed alot of votes, but this is one vote that is really important.

He voted to confirm the nominations of the following idiots: Condoleeza Rice, Michael Chertoff, Alberto Gonzales, and John Ashcroft.

He voted to give the president line-item veto power so he obviously doesn't care about the constitution.

He voted against progress reports on Iraq so we can keep track of what progress we are making, if that's what this disaster can be called.

Since our intelligence bureacracy failed to effectively utilize information to prevent 9/11, McCain voted to expand this bureacratic mess even more by voting to create the DHS.

He voted for CAFTA, as if NAFTA weren't bad enough. He supports NAFTA too.

He can't make up his mind on the Bush tax cuts.



Just what part of this nightmare of a resume qualifies him to be president?


The only way I would ever consider voting for McCain is if he were to choose someone really awesome to be his running mate. Then I might vote for McCain in the hopes that the psychotic old guy drops dead shortly after taking office, leaving us with a president that doesn't make me sick to my stomach.