Isilion

Long shot, 9-11 Truther, Ron Paul. Crackpot, Libertarian, Ron Paul. Long shot, Neo-Nazi, Ron Paul!

*End Transmission*

It has long been the dream of powerful men to possess Earth. Throughout history rulers of many a great empire have tried to conquer what they figured was the whole thing. These mad dogs were not raised to be content with the power that they merely inherited. No, the father to son line is always, “There are always more sheep to shepherd.” And thanks to technology, this ant world of ours is becoming a much more manageable ant farm. The State, their corporate beneficiaries and financial masters have managed to sell mercantilism and paper money to the whole world with the goal of obtaining total control.

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As Thomas Paine points out, English government (the ancestor of ours) goes back to the Norman Conquest. William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy told the English people, “submit to my rule and pay my taxes or I will hurt you.” This is classic protection racketeering.

The people pointed out that while William and his Norman Knights were good, if all the people fought they could beat him. William answered this point with four distinct answers:

A. Not everyone would fight back, you may not be able to raise enough troops to beat me. Even if you
do you will wear yourself out and then the Norse, Scots, and Irish will have their way with you. I’m bad, without me you will be stuck with a worse mess.

B. I’ll protect you from the Norse, Scots, and Irish, and local bandits. So submitting will not only keep me from hurting you, it really is buying protection.

C. OK, I’ll also provide you with roads,courts of justice, and reasonably just laws. As time passes my successors will find other ways to reinvest the extortion (I mean tax money) you are paying to increase your productivity (I mean make your lives more prosperous and pleasant).

D. In conclusion pay up and I won’t hurt you and it’s cheaper to pay than fight anyhow. I will also protect you from your enemies and toss you some goodies.

The people of England agreed and William changed his sobriquet and title to the Conqueror, King of England.

About 940 years later in America…

Putin’s real crime is that he has refused to play by the rules of globalization. In fact, he has done something rather remarkable, indeed, unheard of these days in most Western countries—he has sought to pursue policies that truly are in Russia’s interest. Putin recently commented, “Russians will never allow for the development of the country along a destructive path, the way it happened in some countries in the post-Soviet space.” In other words, Putin is uninterested in Wilsonian crusades in the Middle East, undermining his own economy with suicidal free-trade pacts, driving down wages with Third World immigration, or turning over Russia’s beloved oil and gas assets to multinational corporations. Putin is doing what he was elected to do: protect Russia.

And in doing so, Putin has proven himself a true Russian patriot.

Putin is no angel, but he is hardly the devil incarnate that many in the media make him out to be. He has sought to steer a course he feels reflects the long-term interests of the Russian people. In fact, he is pursuing a my-own-country-first policy that many Americans wish our own leaders would follow.

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I’m beginning to suspect Glenn Greenwald is among the best if not the best journalist and commentator on the Left being published today…

What they are defending — today’s U.S. — is not merely good. It’s not even great. It’s not even the greatest thing there is on the Earth right now. No — it’s much more grand than that: it’s the Greatest Country ever to exist on the Earth in all of human history. That’s what they’re defending; that’s the magnitude of the burden they bear, the incomparable importance of the crusade they lead.

Conversely, the Enemy they are facing down (from a safe distance) is not merely threatening or evil or scary or formidable. No, it’s much, much more than that. This is the greatest Enemy that exists on the planet, the most cunning and nefarious and evil force the world has ever seen — not just now, but for all of human history. There is nothing remotely like the depravity and power of this particular Enemy — and there never has been. Ever. Everything these faux-warriors face and defend is superlative; there has never, ever been a war like the one they are waging. None of the old rules apply. This is all unique, unknown, the first and most important of its kind.

What’s most confounding about all of this is that they completely evade the most basic instruments of self-evaluation. All they have to do is look back and realize that every generation, in every country, has been plagued by factions suffering from the same self-glorifying delusions — that they alone are the Brave Warriors willing to engage in the Most Important Battle for Civilization Ever. None of it’s new.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/17/steyn/index.html

But that’s what this is…

I’ve felt an "I give up" post coming on for some time, and this isn’t really it, but I am totally at a loss as to where I should be going and what I should be doing. I’ve given time, money and sweat over the past year doing everything I know to help the national campaign and the local one only to see it more or less come to nothing as far as real change.

When Ron Paul’s nomination effort began to unravel I put my hopes on working locally to get Ron Paul Republicans on the ballot for congress. I think we did as well as could be expected in Maryland, but the fact of the matter is Peter James, Collins Bailey, et al, are going to get their asses handed to them in November. One only has to look at the number of votes their Democratic rivals got in the Maryland Primary to recognize that.

Before I got involved in Ron Paul’s campaign I had come to accept that voting in national elections was a complete waste. The choice boils down to the color of your chains. The thing is Ron Paul has very much succeeded in educating me. He took my vague, unfocused, intuitive disgust with the state and gave me the analytical tools and reasoned principles to see exactly how imperial delusions, monetary flimflammery, collectivist pandering and media enabling work to prevent any real, substantive debate or political action that might threaten the status quo.

So now I see things much more clearly than ever, including my impotence. I am very angry and very frightened.

I also have no idea what I can do about any of it. I see Ron Paulers and other liberty seekers working on various projects, trying to pull together a core of interconnected activists, and I respect their efforts, but other than contributing money I don’t know what I can do. I don’t have any marketing skills, video talents or leadership ability to contribute. I’m just an aging geek with moderate IT skills and unless someone needs a help desk guy I’m not going to be a mover and shaker no matter how many pep-talks I give myself. They fact of the matter is I’ve already given more than I can afford and the cynic in me fears all our efforts are simply going to become a way of fleecing a new type of sheep: liberty junkies who work their asses off in dead end jobs throwing away their not very disposable income looking for another fix of freedom.

However, I can’t unlearn what I know, the liberty bell cannot be unrung. There is something burning inside of me. I have to do something or I’m just going to become a bitter old man who shakes his fist at everything and accomplishes nothing.

I’d like to see the way forward, but I can’t. Where do I go from here?

Glenn Greenwald sums it up better than anyone else I’ve seen:

Section 222 of the Communications Act of 1934 provides that “[e]very telecommunications carrier has a duty to protect the confidentiality of proprietary information of . . . customers.” 18 U.S.C. 2511 makes warrantless eavesdropping a felony; 18 U.S.C. 2702 requires that any “entity providing an electronic communication service to the public shall not knowingly divulge to any person or entity the contents of a communication” without a court order; 47 U.S.C. 605 states that “no person receiving, assisting in receiving, transmitting, or assisting in transmitting, any interstate or foreign communication by wire or radio shall divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning thereof, except through authorized channels of transmission or reception”; and 18 U.S.C. 2520 provides for civil damages for any violations.

Like all statutes, those are all laws democratically enacted by the American people through their Congress and signed into law by the President. They were enacted precisely in order to make it illegal for telecoms to allow government spying on our calls and written communications without court orders

The principle those laws are supposed to uphold is foundational to the Constitution.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The United States Senate has passed a bill, S.2248, and sent it to the House of Representatives which retroactively legalizes violations of the law by both the government and the telecoms and protects the telecoms from law suites specifically allowed by statute.

The are sixty-eight men and women who swore the following oath

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same…

These sixty-eight Senators violated their oath when they passed that bill. It cannot be reconciled with the Fourth Amendment. I sent a message to Barbara Mikulski, my Senator, and told her I was ashamed of the way she represented me asking her how she slept at night knowing she was undermining the foundations of or republic. Yours should hear from you, too.

[W]hat does Ron Paul do the day after he loses a congressional primary? His only firm, titanium-strength committment not to run third party came when he… was appealing to donors to save him in TX-14. If the Libertarian Party calls a defeated Rep. Ron Paul on March 5 and offers him its nomination on a silk pillow, does anyone think he tells them to go away?

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America finds herself in a situation that is more precarious than at any time since the Great Depression. We are losing two wars, our banking system is insolvent (thanks to the Feds’ reckless monetary policy) and our government is spiraling toward bankruptcy.

Despite the seriousness of our predicament, the way out is simple (though not easy). We need a leader who clearly grasps the fundamentals of market economics and who appreciates the basics of our republican form of government. We need a leader who will reduce our overseas commitments, balance our budget, and restore our constitutional liberties.

In short, America needs a president with a solid, rational plan based on fundamental principles.

Looking at the polls, it’s becoming apparent that the American people want none of this. A significant portion of our population still thirsts for imperial glory. Another healthy slice wants the government to serve as a giant teat in the sky, regardless of the financial consequences.

Very few, on the other hand, seem willing to take the hard path that an authentic American restoration would require.

So instead, it looks like our next president will be a deranged militarist, a shrill neo-Marxist, or a sloganeering lightweight steeped in cultish adulation.

And all the while, the USS Titanic churns ever closer to its rendezvous with the icebergs.

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America can be likened to a cruise ship that is taking on water faster than it can be bailed out. If the issue in your mind is whether the ship’s captain is female, or black, or is willing to offer more free services while on your cruise, or wants to mount more machine guns on the deck to deter terrorists, you are completely distracted from the imminent crisis that confronts America.

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