Freedom is singular and it means liberty, freedoms are a list of government authorized prerogatives

I have had the advantage of spending most of twenty years outside the USA from 1987 until the end of 2005. I still spend half of the year outside of the States, but during the 90s and the first half of the 00s, I only came to the States for a week or two each year. So I saw the transformations that the USA has undergone like a disjointed slide show rather than a continuous movie. Perhaps that is why so many things that the rest of my countrymen accept without question seem alien to me.

For instance, when I left the States to live in South America, most of the cars on the road were used. Shiny new cars made up a small percentage of the vehicles that one saw around town or on the freeway, and then in stagger steps, due to my periodic trips north, I saw the mix of vehicles change. It was very noticeable from my perspective. In steps I saw old cars disappear and ever bigger, ever shinier and more expensive and newer cars outnumbered older, used cars. After a couple more stagger steps there were almost no older, used cars at all.

I thought, what does this mean? Are people really making that much more money? Is this really the age of prosperity for everyone? But I noticed another trend in stagger steps on my periodic short trips back to the land where I was born. My slide show view of America revealed that credit scores had become almost a definition of net worth, or even a definition of personal merit. How and why did credit scores get to be so important all of a sudden? Well, given that the importance of credit scores and the percentage of new cars dovetailed perfectly, the conclusion was pretty obvious: people were not necessarily making any more money, they were just all going into debt, and what mattered to them was their ability to take on even more debt.

From my viewpoint, a number of transformations to the American panorama look very surprising, but the Americans haven’t had my slide show view and don’t seem to notice the changes. One transformation that drives me crazy is the change in number of that essential American word: Freedom. Throughout the history of America, freedom has always been expressed in the singular.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Mr. Lincoln did not speak of freedoms. He spoke of freedom.

Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle, which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK

Mr. Hayek, who certainly understood the topic, did not speak of freedoms. He used the singular.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
RONALD REAGAN

Perhaps, Mr. Reagan, we didn’t manage to pass freedom on to the next generation because over the last twenty years, freedom has been replaced with freedoms. Freedoms imply something very different than freedom. George Dubya Bush spoke of freedoms almost daily, although he couldn’t pronounce the word very well. When he said it, it came out sounding like freedomsh. So what’s the difference between freedom and freedoms?

Freedom is an overarching state of being. It is a natural God-given right to owe no homage to any man or to any government. Under freedom every man is a king and no man is a king. Under freedom the government fears and obeys the voters, when freedom is in wane, the voters learn to fear and obey the government. Freedom touches and encompasses everything. It applies to our ability to move about the city, state and country. It informs our ability to do business as we wish, where we wish and with whom we wish. Freedom gives us the right to live as we will without having to comply with any codes of conduct. The only caveat to our freedom is that our actions cannot impinge on the freedom of others. As a free man I can do what I will, as long as it does not harm or restrain any of my fellows.

Freedoms, on the other hand, are enumerated rights. Freedoms are granted by the government and each is limited in scope and easily revoked upon the whim of the government. When the President speaks of defending our freedoms, what does he mean? Does he want to defend my natural right to do what I will as long as it doesn’t harm others? Apparently not, because if what I want to do is to smoke a marijuana cigarette, the presidents laws will threaten me with violence and lock me up. If I care to build a restaurant on a second floor balcony over looking the street that does not have an elevator, than the government will close it because I have violated the freedoms of a person who cannot walk up the stairs. Apparently the freedoms of that person trump mine, and the state uses violence or its threat to take away my freedom so that another may decide what I do with my property. That’s not freedom. Its freedoms.

As a country we now exercise one of our freedoms to go and kill people on the other side of the world who never did anything to us and never could. And we are told that defends our freedoms. In order for our freedoms to be properly defended we do have to give up the right to habeus corpus, we also have to give up the right to have private conversations, we have to give up the right to have our property inviolate without a court order. It seems to me that while I was in Chile, Americans traded in their freedom for a short list of freedoms.

The Biggest Threat To Freedom is War

"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. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

James Madison


Stop the wars! Close the foreign bases!

The threats to America are not solved by the wars and the overseas military presence, they are caused by the wars and the overseas military presence.

What did Smedley Butler, America's greatest war hero, have to say about war? He said "War is a racket"

If you value freedom, if you want government to stop the fraud and live within its means, then this election cycle vote for an antiwar candidate. So far only two antiwar candidates have announced: Gary Johnson, ex-governor of New Mexico and Ron Paul, the champion of the Constitution.

Donate to one of these men. Get off your butt and volunteer to work in their campaigns. Get the word out that our freedom depends on ending the Endless War.

And God bless you all.

Ron Paul 2012: In Defense of Liberty

Doctor Paul needs to be careful. As he gets closer to winning the election I fear for his safety and for the future of our Republic.

Tom Woods says at 2:50 of this video "This is just going to shake the establishment. They do not want this guy running for President". Its funny now, but honestly if it looks like Dr. Paul is going to win the Republican Primary, I think that his life will be in danger. And the assassin will not be a nutcase like John Hinkley, but rather a CIA or contract murderer.

Maybe that sounds paranoid, but think about this, will the defense contractors, the generals waiting to retire to big bucks in Washington think tanks, the CIA and NSA just quietly let Dr. Paul disassemble the Empire?

Watch your back old man. May God protect you from all harm. May His mantle cover you and keep you safe from the enemies of freedom.

War Is Nothing But Hate And Death And Suffering.

God Damn the war makers.

Jack Hunter and Judge Napolitano: The similarity between neocons like Bill Kristol and liberal internationalists like Obama and Hillary Clinton

Here's what I think. A lot of America's conservatives aren't very bright. They are easily led around by anyone who can use the right symbols and key words. I mean politicians like the team of McCain/Palin that ran for the White House against the Peace Laureate, and their followers. They have good intentions. They know that they want small government and individual liberty but they have been sold the patently absurd notion that America faces multiple existential dangers from around the world that require half of all the world's expenditure on war and intelligence. Its absurd. Ridiculous. Suicide terrorists do not and could not ever pose an existential danger to the USA even if they were armed with an atomic weapon, which could never happen anyway.

The USA also faces no existential danger from any organized military in the world and could not even if American expenditures dropped to $100 Billion a year on defense/intelligence. We have an ocean to the east and the west, Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. We have aircraft, missiles, ships, submarines and satellites that can see any incursion into our territory and blow it out of the sky or the water long before it reaches our country. (Not our Homeland. We are not Nazis for goodness sakes).

So the conservatives have been snowed into a militaristic orthodoxy against their best interests. Who has done this? Two parties have done this. From the practical, financial side it has been the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us about. But the MIC was missing something important, and that was the intellectual angle. There needed to be intellectual support for the Permanent War State. And that was provided by the Straussian neocons.

The neoconservative movement was initiated by men who purposely and consciously abandoned leftist, socialist policies to convince America's conservatives that had already been softened up by the pro-CIA Bill Buckley, that what was needed was a big military and a worldwide presence. They invented the dangers posed by the collapsing Soviet Empire in the '80s that convinced the US to support and arm the mujehaddin that then became the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Now they continue to point out terrible existential dangers posed by bearded men in turbans. Bill Kristol is the dean of this group and he continues to convince conservatives to support unlimited war and unlimited war spending.

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So what does this rant have to do with the video that I hope you watched? It is this: no one should be surprised that Bill Kristol, Hillary and Barack are all on the same page. They come from the same place. All three are statists. All three believe in big government. Bill Kristol has identified himself as a big-government conservative, which is an oxymoron. Anyone who thinks Kristol is any kind of conservative is just a regular moron without the oxy.




It is natural for people who believe that the state is a force for good to desire to apply the force of the state to any and all problems. The progressive pragmatists in this administration want to solve problems, and not just our own problems. They want to solve everybody's problems and that leads them to use force. It leads them to kill people for their own good. And, not surprisingly, it leads them into perfect alignment with Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and Dick Cheney. They have the same world-view and they are natural allies.

The real right, that is what intellectuals are still left after the pogroms of the last twenty years, needs to use this budding alliance between Kristol and the administration - between neocons and progressives - to show that the Permanent War State is NOT conservative and must be abandoned.

Mensaje de Bienvenido a Obama

Bienvenido asesino

Snatched From The Jaws Of The Mighty Puelo - Update

Following is a link to an update of the post about saving our cabin from the fury of the mighty Puelo. Before going on I would like to mention with great sadness that the Puelo River recently killed another two people in December. Víctor Alegría and Patricio Vera left Puerto Urrutía on the Puelo to return home to Segundo Corral in early December. There are no roads for motor vehicles, so these experienced cowboys headed home to Segundo Corral on horseback, but something happened when they crossed the Ventisquero branch of the Puelo and they were lost. The crossing is only about two miles from our cabin. Alegría and Vera's horses showed up at a neighbor's house later that day and people began to search for the two men. The police arrived the next day and then the Navy, both with divers. Mr. Vera's body was found the next day in the Ventisquero, but Mr. Alegría's body wasn't found for another two weeks. By that time the government had given up and private divers found Mr. Alegría. Please say a prayer for these two fine, innocent men.

I personally know eleven people that have died in the Puelo River. The river and its valley are beautiful beyond description. At least in part that is because the river and valley are untamed. They are as free as the people who live in its valley. Freedom is not without danger. The reaction of the "civilized" is to tame that which is dangerous, but that leaves us without freedom. Freedom requires us to take care of ourselves and sometimes we fail to do so. The consequences can be fatal. I'll take freedom anyway, and so did Alegría and Vera, may they rest in peace.

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Here is La Salavada with my family, a cousin, a neighbor and the workmen that helped us rebuild. Here's the link to the update.

War - Edwin Starr

Where are the protests against war today? What has happened to our musicians and artists?

The Only Threats Have Come From International Travel, So What Is DHS Doing?

Grandmas do not get frisked outside the USA


I’m an American...still. I live part of the year in the USA but most of the year in Chile. I travel a lot on business, throughout the US when I’m there and throughout Latin America when I’m home. I have to go through airport security between thirty and forty times a year, divided more or less evenly between Latin America and US security procedures. The comparison between the two is interesting. The comparison between the two shows that all the American security theatre is a waste of time and money and a completely useless imposition on American travelers.

Before continuing on, I need to make an important point that is ignored by American mainstream media. The hijacking of 4 airliners on 9/11 was a perfect failure of American intelligence. It was not a failure of airport security, it was an astronomical lack of foresight and communication between different branches of the government. The intelligence agencies knew that there was a plot to hijack airliners and use them as bombs against important American buildings, including the World Trade Center. But the CIA and the FBI never communicated with the FAA in order to change airline crew procedures in the case of hijacking. The airline crews on 9/11 did what they were trained to do. They put up no resistance to the hijackers and gave them control of the airplanes. 9/11 would not have happened if it were not for the ponderous size and culture of secrecy in the US government. If the FBI and CIA had published the Yousef plan of using airliners as bombs, 9/11 would not have, could not have happened. If they had talked to the FAA it could not have happened. Our stupid rules and stupid inter-agency secrecy were used against us.

The crimes of 9/11 were planned by Ramsey Yousef, the planner of the first World Trade Center bombing, in the early 1990s. The CIA and FBI had those plans as early as 1994. They knew that Khalid Sheik Mohammed was associated with Yousef and that he was involved in the planning to hijack airliners and use them as bombs to destroy targets in America. They knew that Osama bin Laden was associated with Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Given that Yousef was involved in the first World Trade Center bombing, it would make sense that the airliner plan was going to target the WTC again. Take a look at Peter Lance’s very complete “Terror Time Line” scroll down to 16 September 1994. Also read James Bamford’s “The Shadow Factory” that shows how totally pathetic the American Intelligence operations were in the run-up to 9/11. Here’s an interview with Bamford in which he details some of the criminally pathetic failings of American intelligence that made 9/11 possible. Security procedures were not the problem. The problem was airline crew procedures and the lack of a stout door on airliners. Given the intelligence that the government had and the money that they spend, those errors are almost unexplainable.

So 9/11 was NOT caused by faulty security procedures, it was caused by perfectly incompetent intelligence, communication and FAA mandated procedures. And since 9/11, every single terrorist threat involving airliners has come from a flight that originated outside the USA. Richard Reed, the shoe bomber, boarded American Airlines flight 63 in Paris with destination in Miami. The underwear bomber boarded Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam destined for Detroit. The 2006 liquid bomb plot was planned to board ten airliners in the UK, destined for the USA. The recent toner bomb attempt was an air cargo placed onboard an airliner in Yemen with destination in the USA. None of the incidents of possible airliner terrorism since 9/11 have been attempted on flights that originated in the USA.

So if 9/11 was an intelligence and governmental communications failure, and if all subsequent airline terrorism attempts were initiated outside the USA, why has the DHS spent so much money irritating so many Americans in American airports? Is that same level of scrutiny being applied to travelers that initiate their flights outside the USA? Here I will speak from my own experience. In the last twelve months I have flown internationally out of Lima, Peru - Santiago de Chile - Buenos Aires, Argentina - Santa Cruz, Bolivia - La Paz, Bolivia - Quito, Ecuador - Bogotá, Colombia - San José, Costa Rica - Panama City, Panama - Tegucigalpa, Honduras - Ciudad de México, México and Punta Cana, República Dominicana. I have flown out of many of these airports multiple times.

In the twenty-five or thirty international flights out of these airports I have had to remove my shoes once. That was in Punta Cana, which is a tourist town where 95% of the travelers are American or European tourists. I have been asked to take my computer out of my briefcase twice: once in Punta Cana and another time in Lima, although on many other flights out of Lima, I was not requested to remove my computer. I do not remove my belt with its big buckle in Latin American airports, except in Punta Cana, which is basically an extension of the USA. The buckle almost never sets off the metal detector alarm, but on the three occasions that it has (Santiago and Lima) I was cursorily wanded and waved along. At no time did anyone every touch my body. There are no porno scanners in Latin American airports. At no time except in Punta Cana and Ciudad de México did anyone ever look in any of my carry-ons after they were scanned. A travelers tip: watch very closely what the “security agents” in México do with your carry-ons. Briefcases often have the contents checked in México. If they contain anything small and valuable, that may just magically disappear.

Bottom line, I could have carried anything that I wanted on a plane bound for the USA, and the danger to airliners comes from flights that originate outside the USA. The DHS has tried to coerce Latin American countries to apply tougher screening procedures, but they don’t do it. And why should they? The danger is almost non-existent. It is all theatre and the latinos have decided that don’t have any desire to star in those performances. God bless them.

All the airline terrorism incidents have occurred in flights originating outside the USA and security procedures have hardly changed outside the USA, at least in Latin America. So all that the DHS is doing is to feed a pointless, humiliating bureaucracy that violates everyone's Constitutional rights at the cost of the US traveler and taxpayer. DHS security theatre is a performance that is waiting for the final curtain to come down.

Truth Is Treason

We are blessed to live in interesting times. The most interesting aspect of the multiple crises that we are suffering around the world is the blindness of Americans to the terrible transformation of the USA. Truth has become treason. Please click the link and read the one paragraph entry on Lew Rockwell's blog. Truth Is Treason

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