Friday, July 31, 2009
The New York Time’s Failure of Understanding
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In a July 29 editorial entitled “The Military Is Not the Police,” the New York Times stated, “It was disturbing to learn the other day just how close the last administration came to violating laws barring the military from engaging in law enforcement when President George W. Bush considered sending troops into a Buffalo suburb in 2002 to arrest terrorism suspects…. More needs to be done to ensure that the military is not illegally deployed in this country.”
Unfortunately, the Times fails to understand the critical point: After 9/11 the president acquired the power to treat terrorism as either an act of war or a criminal offense, at his option.
Thus, the likely reason the president ended up using law-enforcement personnel to arrest the Lackawanna Six was because in this particular case, he was opting to treat them as criminal defendants.
But what the Times obviously doesn’t get is that if the president had chosen to treat the Lackawanna Six as enemy combatants in the global war on terrorism, then he would have had the authority to send the army to attack their position, kill them, take the survivors into military custody, whisk them away to a military dungeon, and keep them incarcerated until the end of the war. That’s the way war works!
In World War II, if Japanese troops had invaded California wouldn’t the president have had the authority to send the military to fight and kill them? Of course he would have. Well, that’s precisely why President Bush claimed the legal authority to send the military to attack, kill, or seize the Lackawanna Six. Let’s not forget, after all, that in the war on terrorism, the entire world is a battlefield, including the United States.
The Times writes: “The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from law enforcement activities within the United States. If armed officers are going to knock on Americans’ doors, or arrest them in the streets, they should answer to civilian authorities.”
Again, what the Times misses is that with the adoption of the war-on-terrorism paradigm after 9/11, the Posse Comitatus Act became irrelevant insofar as terrorism cases are concerned, at least when the president opts to treat a particular act of terrorism as an act of war rather than a criminal offense.
The same holds true for the Bill of Rights. Although there has never been a constitutional amendment prohibiting its application in terrorism cases, it is no longer applicable in those terrorism cases where the president has opted to treat the suspected terrorist as an enemy combatant rather than a criminal defendant.
The discomforting fact — one that even the editorial board at the New York Times is obviously having difficulty confronting — is that the president now wields the authority to send the military into any community in America and take suspected terrorists into custody and treat them accordingly, once he opts to treat them as enemy combatants rather than criminal defendants. If the president had chosen this route for the Lackawanna Six, he would not have been violating the law, as the Times claims, but instead exercising his post-9/11 constitutional authority as commander in chief to wage war.
Of course, there is only one solution to this nonsense. The solution lies in the recognition that terrorism is a crime, not an act of war, and in the nullification of the president’s post-9/11 discretionary power to treat terrorism as either one.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
The North Carolinian Jihadist
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Neighbors of Daniel Boyd, a son of a Marine, are befuddled over his federal indictment on terrorism-related charges. Boyd, who attended a public high school here in Northern Virginia and who now lives in North Carolina, runs a dry-wall business in Raleigh.
The feds are alleging that on the side, Boyd is a terrorist. Charles Casale, a neighbor of Boyd, said, “If he’s a terrorist, he’s the nicest terrorist I ever met in my life.”
Now, mind you, they’re not claiming that Boyd has committed any terrorist attacks here in the United States or has even threatened to do so. In fact, they’re not even claiming that he has ties to al-Qaeda.
What they’re saying is that he’s a Muslim who planned to go overseas at some point in the future and fight in some Muslim cause, such as helping to overthrow the brutal, authoritarian regime in Jordan, which is an ally of the U.S. government. As part of this future plan, Boyd is alleged to have persuaded some other Americans to become Muslims. And apparently he also purchased a variety of weapons to wage his future jihadist campaign — weapons that, if I’m not mistaken, are available for purchase at any gun show in the U.S.
The feds are alleging that Boyd even practiced military tactics and target practice on private land. Even worse, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Charlotte, he allegedly accepted the sum of $500 (five hundred dollars) in cash from another defendant to help finance his future overseas jihad campaign.
One of the interesting parts of the indictment is a section that describes assistance that Boyd allegedly provided to Afghan rebels from 1989 to 1992. Apparently the feds consider that was something bad. But Boyd’s wife points out a rather discomforting truth: The U.S. government was doing the same thing at the same time. I wonder if it’s too late to add those U.S. officials to the Boyd indictment who were supplying arms and money to Osama bin Laden and other Islamic jihadists during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Heck, for that matter, maybe we can add those federal officials to the indictment who furnished those infamous WMDs to Saddam Hussein so that he could use them to kill the Iranian people. Isn’t that at least as bad as some nebulous plans to engage in an overseas jihad campaign at some undetermined time in the future?
Boyd is facing the possibility of life in prison if he is convicted. Actually, he should be counting his lucky stars. If they had treated him as an enemy combatant rather than as a criminal defendant, which the feds have had the option of doing under U.S. law since 9/11, they could have sent battle-tested U.S. troops from Ft. Bragg into Raleigh to attack Boyd’s house, take him into custody, whisk him away to a secret military detention center, torture him, and keep him incarcerated for the rest of his life.
Better yet, they could have sent a CIA hit squad to assassinate him, as they did in Yemen, thereby sparing all the hassle and expense of a trial and risking the possibility of an acquittal. Well, on second thought, the risk of an acquittal is no big deal because even if Boyd were to be acquitted, the Constitution’s bar against double jeopardy no longer prevents the military from taking him into custody as an enemy combatant.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
“Evil Eating Evil Eating Evil”
by Jacob G. Hornberger
A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times carried a fascinating article that detailed the pride that a particular torturer took in doing his job well. The man expressed “pride in the efficiency” with which he did his job. As he put it, “In my entire life, if I do something, I’ll do it properly.” As a boy, he said that was “well-disciplined” and “respected the teachers and did good deeds.”
The man is Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch. He is a former member of the Khmer Rouge, who killed some 1.7 million people in Cambodia from 1975-1979. Duch’s prison staff tortured more than 14,000 of those people and killed almost all of them.
Today, Duch is being prosecuted for the torture and killings, even though at the time the Cambodian government considered them legal and essential. As a public servant, Doik had loyally obeyed the orders of his superiors to torture and kill, especially since he “operated within a chain of command where disobedience often meant death.”
Some 40 years later, Doik is facing the possibility of a life sentence for crimes against humanity, war crimes, homicide, and torture.
Was Duch’s torture effective? He told the court: “I never believed the confessions I received told the truth. At most, they were about 40 percent true.” When prisoners were coerced into naming accomplices, Duch believed that only 20 percent of them were genuine. Nonetheless, the lists of supposed accomplices provided the authorities with new people to arrest, torture, and murder. As Duch put it so well, “The work expanded, people were arrested illegally, right or wrong. I considered it evil eating evil eating evil.”
While Duch is now expressing remorse for what he did, the article points out that over the course of the trial, the pride that he took in doing his job has gradually surfaced and effectively subsumed the remorse.
And why not? After all, wasn’t Duch simply doing what so many other people in history have done: serve their country as public servants of the state, loyally carrying out the orders of their superiors to torture and murder evildoers, afraid of their superiors and overly anxious to please them, lacking the moral fortitude to say no, and then later seeking understanding, forgiveness, and pardon when facing punishment for their crimes?
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
What about Racism in the Drug War?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Amidst all the hubbub regarding racism and the cops arising out of the arrest of Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., we should at least mention the biggest outlet for cops who happen to be racists: the war on drugs. As any black living in the poorer part of any community in America will attest, the drug war has long provided racist cops with the perfect excuse for harassing and abusing blacks. And if anyone accuses them of racist conduct in subjecting blacks to harassment, such as with abusive searches and seizures, racist cops have the perfect comeback: I’m just protecting the community with the war on drugs.
One of the best examples of how the drug war provides an outlet for racist cops occurred a few years ago in Tulia, Texas. Law-enforcement personnel busted 46 local residents for drug offenses, 40 of whom were black and the rest were Hispanics or whites who were dating blacks. The bust was based on the uncorroborated testimony of a highly decorated white law-enforcement officer.
Some of the defendants were sentenced to prison terms, one for 99 years. (Hey, who are you going to believe in a drug case — some poor blacks or a highly decorated white police officer?) Others pled guilty and received jail terms. Others got probation.
What better way to remove blacks from a community or at least deprive them of the right to vote than that?
Gradually, however, doubts about the undercover cop’s credibility began to surface. Some of the defendants were ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing. Others have been freed on bond. It is unlikely that any of them will ever go to jail, especially since the state has stipulated in open court that the undercover cop is not a credible witness after all.
What happened in Tulia, however, is just one part of a very big problem — the racism that has long been an inherent part of the war on drugs, a war that should have been ended long ago.
For more information on the racist aspects of the war on drugs, see these excellent perspectives on the website of the Drug Policy Alliance:
The Racial History of U.S. Drug Prohibition
Report Shows Racial Impact of Drug War Policies in Counties Across U.S
Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Waging the War on Terrorism on American Soil
by Jacob G. Hornberger
A logical consequence of having permitted the Bush administration to treat terrorism as either an act of war or a criminal offense, came to the forefront last week when the New York Times revealed that top administration officials were considering deploying troops here in the United States to take suspected terrorists into custody as “enemy combatants.” The suspected terrorists were part of a group that came to be known as the Lackawanna Six.
Even though Bush ultimately decided against the move, instead relying on the FBI to handle the matter, the fact that it was even being considered reveals the revolutionary change in our structure of government as a result of the so-called war on terrorism.
Terrorism is a federal criminal offense. It is denominated as such in the federal criminal code. That’s why suspected terrorists have been indicted by federal grand juries and tried in federal district court. These have included Zacharias Moussaoui, Timothy McVeigh, Ramzi Yousef, Jose Padilla, and many others.
So, how did it come to be that the Bush administration even considered using military troops to arrest people here in the United States suspected of terrorism? Isn’t that the type of thing that occurs in places like Latin America, Burma, and China? Doesn’t the United States use the cops, not the military, to enforce criminal laws?
The answer lies in the revolutionary action that Bush administration officials took in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. They simply declared that from that day forward, U.S. officials would have the option of treating this particular federal criminal offense — terrorism — as either a federal crime or as an act of war, at their option.
It is impossible to overstate the difference between how a person is treated, depending on whether federal officials decide to treat him as suspected criminal or as an enemy combatant in the war on terrorism.
If he’s treated as a criminal defendant, he is accorded all the protections of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — habeas corpus, grand jury indictment, protection from unreasonable searches and seizures and coerced confessions, right to counsel, trial by jury, due process of law, and protection from cruel and unusual punishments.
If U.S. officials, however, opt to treat him as an enemy combatant, their position has been that he is entitled to none of those protections. After all, they tell us, we are at war, where constitutional niceties don’t apply. Thus, those suspected terrorists who have the bad fortune of being sent down the enemy combatant road are subject to military custody, Guantanamo, torture, rendition, kangaroo tribunals, and indefinite detention, even in the unlikely event they are acquitted.
And it’s because of the power that George W. Bush was permitted to exercise in the environment of fear following the 9/11 attacks — the power to unilaterally declare that a federal criminal offense — terrorism — was now also an illegal act of war.
Given that declaration, how can it surprise anyone that Bush administration officials contemplated deploying U.S. troops to take suspected terrorists into custody here in the United States? Isn’t it the job of the military to wage war?
Let’s not forget, after all, that according to the war-on-terrorism paradigm, the entire world is a battlefield. Not just Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan. The entire world also includes the United States.
While the Bush administration decided against using the troops to take the Lackawanna Six people into custody, the discomforting fact is that he didn’t have to go that route. Under the war-on-terrorism paradigm that now controls the United States — a paradigm that permits U.S. officials to treat terrorism as an act of war — Bush could easily have gone the other way, and the troops would have loyally obeyed his orders.
All that is what has come with the power to treat what has historically been a federal criminal offense as an illegal act of war, at the option of federal officials. The federal power to send the military sweeping across our land to investigate and arrest suspected terrorists is now as much a part of American life as the military power to arrest, torture, and indefinitely detain American citizens as illegal enemy combatants in the war on terrorism.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, July 24, 2009
The Pledge of Allegiance to Socialism and Imperialism
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Since everyone is discussing the socialism of the Obama administration, it seems to me that this would be a good time to discuss the Pledge of Allegiance.
Why the Pledge?
Well, because the pledge was written by a socialist named Francis Bellamy. He was the cousin of Edward Bellamy, the author of the 1888 novel Looking Backward, which was a paean to socialism
Now, I know that just because something was written by a socialist doesn’t necessarily make it bad, but isn’t it enough to at least raise a red (or pink) flag?
Bellamy wrote the pledge in 1892, the period in which American “progressives” were actively supporting the socialist principles that would later come to be adopted by both the Democrat and Republican parties.
Bellamy promoted the use of the pledge in the public (i.e., government) schools. Needless to say, this is not surprising, given that the primary aim of government schools everywhere is to produce the good, little citizen — one whose mind is molded and bent to a state of conformity and submissiveness to the government.
Here are Bellamy’s instructions as to how the pledge was to be implemented in the public schools, as quoted in an excellent article entitled “What’s Conservative About the Pledge of Allegiance?” by Gene Healy, senior editor at the Cato Institute:
“At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the Flag the military salute — right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it…. At the words, ‘to my Flag,’ the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, towards the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side.”
Now, take a look at this photograph of American schoolchildren delivering the Pledge of Allegiance in an American classroom. Do you notice anything special about the manner in which they are pledging allegiance to the flag?
If not, then take a look at this photograph and see if you can’t see a similarity between the two photographs.
And if you still don’t get the point, take a look at this photograph.
The point is this: the salute that an American socialist taught American schoolchildren to deliver during the Pledge of Allegiance is the same as the salute that Germans were later taught to use in their pledge to their country’s National Socialist regime. How ironic is that?
For some reason, U.S. officials later decided to change the Pledge of Allegiance salute to having American students putting their hands on their hearts in place of stretching their arms in front of them.
The Pledge of Allegiance has become a permanent fixture in American life, not only in the public schools but also at many adult functions. The irony is that it doesn’t even accurately portray the situation in America, given that Americans, after the adoption of the pledge, abandoned a free-market economic system in favor of a socialistic welfare state and a limited-government republic in favor of an extensive overseas military empire.
To more accurately reflect reality, perhaps the Pledge of Allegiance should be amended, as follows:
“I pledge allegiance to the government of the United States and to its socialism, militarism, and imperialism, one system over God, indivisible by force, with liberty through paternalism and justice through tribunal.”
Better yet, how about a libertarian revolution in America, one in which economic liberty is restored to our land, the socialistic welfare state is repealed entirely, school and state are completely separated, the empire is dismantled and the republic is restored, and the socialist-inspired Pledge of Allegiance is cast into the dustbin of history?
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Protecting the Statist Party
by Jacob G. Hornberger
While we’re on the subject of a one-party political system in places like Iran and China, we would be remiss if we didn’t remind periodically remind ourselves that for all practical purposes, the political situation isn’t much different here in the United States.
Sure, we’re taught to believe that America is a two-party system — the Democrats and the Republicans — but that’s just a façade, given that both parties share the same statist philosophy and are simply competing against each other to determine who is going to control the system.
In other words, there is one political party — let’s call it the Statist Party — that is divided into two wings — the Democrats and the Republicans. The situation is akin to that which exists in the National Football League — one league, divided into two conferences — the NFC and the AFC.
What about third parties, such as the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party and independent candidates? Don’t people with anti-statist political views have a right to run for political office?
As a technical matter, yes. But as a practical matter, no, especially on a statewide basis. Why is this? Because the Statist Party has enacted an ingenious set of barriers that make it virtually impossible for people with anti-statist views to run effective campaigns.
Consider my state of Virginia, for example. This November we’ll have two gubernatorial candidates from which to choose — a Democrat and a Republican. The mainstream media will undoubtedly be reporting on how exciting this race is, as they usually do. What they’ll be referring to are issues like transportation, where Virginia’s gubernatorial candidates love to come up with their favorite plans and schemes for relieving congestion on the state’s (publicly owned) roads and highways.
Yawn!
While there is sometimes a third-party or independent gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, it’s rare. The reason for this is because of Virginia’s ballot-access laws, which make it extremely difficult and expensive for someone to get onto the ballot. For example, a person who runs for office must acquire 10,000 signatures of registered voters. That actually means he must acquire around 17,000 signatures, given that state officials will inevitably invalidate many of the signatures acquired.
And that’s not all. The signatures must include a minimum of 400 signatures — which means about 800 signatures — from each of the state’s 11 congressional districts. That means that a candidate or his agents must travel around the state to acquire signatures.
Why should it be necessary to spread the signatures around? Good question! After all, in an election, do we require the winner to have a statewide spread of voters? No. Most of a winning candidate’s votes can come from one area of the state, and we don’t care.
So, why make prospective candidates get signatures from all over the state rather than, say, in their particular hometown, where most of their friends and acquaintances would be likely residing? One reason: to make it difficult, if not impossible, for people to run against the Statist Party’s candidates.
Consider, for example, an African American man living in a Richmond ghetto. He happens to believe that the drug war is a moral abomination whose adverse consequences have fallen disproportionately on African Americans. He decides to run for U.S. Senate from Virginia, with his main campaign issue being to end the drug war by legalizing drugs.
What chance does such a man have in getting onto the ballot for U.S. Senate as an independent and then winning the election? He has two chances: slim and none.
First of all, he and his friends would have to travel around the state to gather those 800 signatures in each district. That takes travel, hotel, and food expense for several days, not to mention time off from work. Wealthier people might be able to pull that off, but not a guy from the ghetto and his friends.
Moreover, let’s assume that our candidate from the ghetto and his friends are somehow able to travel around the state in the attempt to secure such signatures. Where are they supposed to stand to get such signatures? How likely is it that private establishments are going to let a bunch of scruffy, badly dressed, poor-looking African Americans stand in front of their stores, asking customers to sign a petition to permit an African American candidate calling for drug legalization to run for office? How likely is it that the people in conservative areas of the state will sign such petitions from such petition-gatherers?
Not likely at all.
Let’s assume, however, that our ghetto candidate is able to somehow acquire those 17,000 signatures. Then what? He’ll never be able to wage an effective campaign against his statist opponents because of the ingenious restrictions that the Statist Party has imposed on all candidates, especially the limits on the amount of money that people can donate to political candidates.
Suppose, for example, our ghetto candidate is able to find 50 very wealthy people in the United States who strongly oppose the drug war. Each of them is willing to donate $100,000 to help him in his campaign, for a total campaign war chest of $5 million.
It won’t make any difference. Under the campaign restrictions enacted by the Statist Party, the most that each of those 50 people can donate to our ghetto candidate is $2,300, for a total campaign war chest of $115,000, hardly enough to run a statewide U.S. Senate race.
Of course, the statists would respond that the ghetto candidate can still raise $2,300 from all his friends in the ghetto. That’s not a likely possibility, however, given that people who live in ghettos don’t usually have $2,300 to give away. That’s not the case, of course, with the well-heeled candidates from the Statist Party. With their large base of support from statist members, they are easily able to raise millions of dollars to run their campaigns.
Sometimes statists argue that too many candidates on a ballot would only confuse people. But several years ago, when California ran a special election for governor, there were dozens of people on the ballot and voters didn’t seem to be confused at all. It was an exciting race in which lots of different people with different views were free to run for office. Of course, that type of wide-open political system is a threat to the Statist Party, which is why the statists will continue to oppose it at all costs.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Private Bergdahl and the Silence of the Pro-Torture Crowd
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The pro-torture crowd sure seems quiet about the plight of 23-year-old private Bowe R. Bergdahl, the American soldier being held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Why the silence?
For eight years the pro-torture crowd has been defending the propriety of subjecting prisoners and detainees to such things as waterboarding, repeated waterboarding, walling, beatings, forced nudity, involuntary sexual acts, and even actions that “inadvertently” resulted in death.
And for 8 years, the anti-torture crowd, including those of us here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, have been arguing against all of this, primarily on moral grounds.
But ever since allegations about the torture began surfacing 8 years ago, we’ve also been making another argument, a practical one involving U.S. soldiers. We have continually argued that the use of such “interrogation techniques” would inevitably subject U.S. soldiers taken captive to the same mistreatment.
Of course, even if the U.S. were treating its prisoners and detainees properly, it’s always possible that the other side would nonetheless mistreat U.S. personnel taken captive. But one thing is for sure: Once the U.S. government took the torture road, it lost all moral standing to insist on the proper treatment of American soldiers taken captive. And it virtually guaranteed that U.S. personnel would be subjected to the same or similar methods of mistreatment, or worse.
Suppose the Taliban releases videos showing Bergdahl naked, with Taliban soldiers, both male and female, standing around him and leering at him and laughing at him. Then, suppose that after that the video shows him being repeatedly waterboarded, maybe once or twice a day. Then, suppose it shows him in stress positions for long periods of time and being intentionally denied sleep over several weeks. Suppose he’s thrown up against walls and beaten. Suppose he’s “inadvertently” killed during his interrogation.
What possibly could the pro-torture crowd say? That none of this constitutes a proper interrogation technique? That it’s unfair? Wouldn’t the whole world laugh at such claims? After all, if these things constitute proper interrogation techniques for prisoners and detainees in U.S. custody, why don’t they constitute proper interrogation techniques for American soldiers and CIA personnel taken captive?
The Taliban has released a video in which Bergdahl requests the American people to bring about the withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan. Given that the pro-torture crowd has long argued that confessions that U.S. “interrogation techniques” have produced are voluntary and valid, I wonder if the pro-torture crowd would say the same about Bergdahl’s statement.
During the entire time that the anti-torture crowd was making this pragmatic argument against torture, the pro-torture crowd was pasting those “support the troops” stickers on their vehicles. I can’t help but wonder if Private Bergdahl might be saying to himself right now, “With friends like those in the pro-torture crowd, who needs enemies?”
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Update on Robert Kahre Case
by Jacob G. Hornberger
I have published three blog posts regarding the abusive grand-jury subpoena that federal prosecutors in the Robert Kahre case served on the Las Vegas Review Journal:
Kahre’s Prosecutors Are Going Nutso (June 12)
Federal Prosecutors Buckle on Abusive Subpoena in Kahre Case (June 17)
Suppressing Free Speech Here at Home (June 25)
Dozens of people had posted online comments under a news article that the Review-Journal had posted about the case, most of which were critical of the prosecution.
The subpoena initially demanded production of identifying information of all the commentators. Later, in an implicit acknowledgement that the subpoena was overbroad, federal prosecutors agreed to reduce its scope to two commentators. One commentator had suggested that if the jury returned a guilty verdict, the jurors should be hung. The other one bet fictional Star Wars money that one of the prosecutors wouldn’t reach his next birthday.
While the paper had resisted the original subpoena for being overbroad, the paper announced an intention to comply with the modified subpoena. According to the paper’s editor, Thomas Mitchell, “We want to be good citizens and do the proper thing.”
However, before the material was turned over, the ACLU intervened in the case by filing a motion to quash the subpoena. The ACLU specifically requested the paper to delay production of the information until the federal judge had ruled on the ACLU’s request.
The paper, however, apparently decided to reject the ACLU’s request and went ahead and turned over the information to the prosecutors. Of course, no doubt that’s what the prosecutors would argue is what being a “good citizen” is all about — ratting on government critics before allowing a federal judge to rule on whether it is necessary to do so.
Meanwhile, according to a press release issued by the ACLU of Nevada, the prosecutors began filing secret pleadings in the case, so secret in fact that not even the ACLU has been permitted to see them. That obviously makes it difficult for the ACLU to respond to whatever the prosecutors have told the judge in secret.
Such secrecy is extremely unusual, even bordering on the bizarre. After all, the Kahre case is one alleging tax evasion, and the subpoena issue involves matters relating to the First Amendment and privacy. It’s not like there are national-security issues involved here.
In fact, historically America has stood against secret judicial proceedings, which were the hallmark of judicial proceedings in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and still are the hallmark in communist China. The fact that federal prosecutors are being permitted to get away with such bizarre conduct in a federal proceeding in an American court is truly phenomenal.
To the ACLU’s credit, it still is litigating the matter, notwithstanding the government’s claim that the issue is now moot given that the paper has already delivered the information to the prosecutors. The ACLU is contending that the government should be prohibited from utilizing the information and should be ordered to destroy it.
Meanwhile, the trial in the Kahre case proceeds on, with the defense preparing to present its case, according to this article in the Review Journal.
Here are the two blog posts I’ve published on the Kahre case itself:
Prosecuting Robert Kahre for Embarrassing the Federal Reserve (June 3)
Federal Fraud in the Kahre Case (June 26)
Originally, the case was about Kahre’s use of gold coins and silver coins as legal tender in the payment of compensation to his workers, who reported the income to the IRS at the face value of the coins rather than the market value of the coins. In the original case, the government also threw in a criminal allegation that Kahre defrauded the IRS by treating the workers as independent contractors rather than as salaried employees.
That original case ended up with acquittals for some defendants and a hung jury for Kahre and other defendants.
According to the Review Journal, this time around the feds have thrown in an additional charge, alleging that Kahre conspired with his girlfriend to hide taxable assets “by buying shared homes in her name using falsified documents.” The government’s principal witness on this allegation is Thomas Browne, a local real estate agent whose marriage to the sister of Kahre’s girlfriend, ended in divorce. According to the Review Journal, Browne had once been Kahre’s best friend but that the “two men grew apart shortly after armed federal agents and local police” raided Kahre’s business in 2003.
No doubt Browne’s testimony against his former best friend and former sister in law is motivated by his desire to be a “good citizen” too. Never mind that the feds have promised to reduce his felony indictment to three misdemeanor counts if prosecutors conclude that his testimony has provided them with “substantial assistance” in the trial.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Shame on Conservatives
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Washington insiders are agog over what seems to be a rather dramatic flip flop of principles by conservatives at the American Conservative Union, which touts itself as America’s oldest conservative lobbying organization. Like other conservative organizations, the ACU spouts the standard free-market, limited-government mantra that conservatives have employed since at least the 1950s: “our commitment to a market economy, the doctrine of original intent of the Framers of the Constitution, traditional moral values, and a strong national defense.”
According to a story broken by Politico.com, the ACU sent a letter to FedEx offering assistance in a legislative battle over unions in return for the payment of $2 million or $3 million to the ACU. The services were to consist of letters and op-eds written by the ACU in support of FedEx’s position.
FedEx rejected the ACU’s offer.
Then, on July 15 FedEx received a letter from eight conservative leaders, including ACU president David Keene, stating that they were supporting UPS in the dispute and criticizing FedEx for “false and disingenuous” statements.
The ACU is now denying that it has flip-flopped over the issue and claims to be still standing with FedEx. It says that Keene signed the anti-FedEx letter in his personal capacity, notwithstanding the fact that the letter included the ACU’s logo at the top of it (along with the logos of the other organizations to which the signers belonged) and also included Keene’s title as president of the ACU.
There is a much larger issue involved here, however, one involving the conservative movement in general: Conservatives sold out their principles long ago, not just for money but for the sake of acceptance, credibility, influence, and political power.
Let me first say that my critique of conservatives is not intended as a defense of liberals and liberalism. With their devotion to socialism and interventionism, along with all the federal spending that socialist and interventionist programs entail, liberals are primarily responsible for our nation’s loss of economic liberty and the serious threat to people’s economic well-being.
But generally speaking, liberals make no bones about being advocates of socialism and interventionism — or, as some might put it, of “big government.”
Oh, sure, liberals will get all worked up about being labeled socialists, or interventionists, or big-government types, but when you confront them with socialist and interventionist programs, they’ll puff out their chests and proudly endorse every one of them. Examples include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public (i.e., government) schooling, welfare, economic regulations, subsidies, the drug war, trade restrictions, immigration controls, the Federal Reserve, and paper money.
In fact, the reason that liberals have always shown a natural affinity or sympathy toward people such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez is because of the ardent devotion to socialism that such rulers have. It’s not a surprise to liberals that the two socialist programs in Cuba that Castro is most proud of are national health care and public schooling.
So, at least liberals are, generally speaking, up front and straightforward with respect to their support for socialism and interventionism.
The problem with conservatives is that long ago they threw in the towel with respect to free-market principles and accepted the inevitability of the socialistic welfare state, even while continuing to spout their purported devotion to “moral principles, the free market, and limited government.” That’s why their articles, speeches, and studies inevitably end with their standard line, “The system needs reform” rather than call for the repeal of the program they’re carping about.
The conservative abandonment began taking place in the 1940s. Feeling that FDR’s New Deal revolution, which converted America into a socialistic and interventionist welfare state, was irreversible, conservatives concluded that they needed to change course. The only way to be accepted by the American electorate and the only way to be influential within the mainstream press would be, they felt, to become embracers of FDR’s socialist and interventionist revolution.
During the 1950s the conservative change picked up steam, and it became permanent with LBJ’s electoral blowout of Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential race.
Today, conservatives embrace every socialist and interventionist program that liberals do, while pretending that they remain devoted to “moral principles, free markets, and limited government.” That’s, in fact, why conservative resent libertarians. Since we, unlike them, have remained steadfastly committed to our principles, no matter what the cost, we inevitably remind people of what conservatives once were and what they have become.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, July 17, 2009
A Free Market in Health Care Is the Only Solution
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The debate over the health-care monstrosity that Congress is considering enacting raises some fundamental issues about our lives, liberty, and health.
There is one reason why there is a health-care crisis in America: socialism and interventionism, both at the federal level and the state level. On the demand side, there are Medicare and Medicaid. On the supply side, there are regulations and occupational licensure of physicians and other health-care providers.
Yet, virtually all of the discussion about how to solve the health-care crisis takes place within well-defined parameters in which Medicare, Medicaid, regulation, and licensure are the given. The discussion then focuses on how to resolve the crisis within those parameters.
Just look at any health-care editorial or op-ed in the establishment press or just listen to any news-talk program on radio or television. You will inevitably notice that hardly anyone ever calls for a total repeal of Medicare, Medicaid, health-care regulations, and medical licensure. Instead, virtually every one of the commentators has his own favorite plan for reforming the status quo.
All of this is a ridiculous waste of time and effort. Socialism and interventionism are inherently incapable of working. No matter how much time and energy are put into solving the health care crisis, it won’t matter one iota as long as the reformers are operating within the parameters of socialism and interventionism. The results will be same, no matter what the reform: chaos and crisis, which will only produce the need for more reforms down the road.
Why don’t Americans simply restore a free market to health care? Why are people so wedded to these socialist and interventionist programs? Why are they so committed to making them work instead of ditching them entirely? Indeed, why is the free-market paradigm considered beyond the pale of legitimate discourse when it comes to solving America’s health-care crisis?
One reason is that many Americans don’t even realize that these programs are socialist and interventionist in nature. Instead, they falsely think that they’re core elements of free enterprise. All their lives they’ve been taught, especially in the government schools they attended as children and in the state-supported colleges and universities they attended as adults, that America is a “free enterprise” country.
Thus, in the minds of many Americans, what has failed is not socialism and interventionism but rather free enterprise. And so the logical thing to do is to move toward the opposite — a government takeover of health care.
A second reason is a related one: all too many Americans fail to have an understanding and appreciation of the principles of a genuine free market — that is, a market that is free of all government interference. A free market produces wealth, which enables people to afford more things. It raises people’s standard of living and provides them with the means not only to sustain and improve their own lives through a myriad of choices and options, but also to use charity to help out others who are in need.
The freer an economy, the wealthier the society will be, and the better off the poor will be. Conversely, the more socialistic and interventionist an economy, the poorer society will be, and the worse off the people at the bottom of the economic ladder will be.
A third reason is that all too many modern-day Americans have a tremendous psychological fear of freedom. They have become emotionally dependent on the paternalistic welfare state. The thought that government would not be there to provide health care services to the elderly and the poor is so frightening that they won’t even let their minds go there.
By the same token, the notion that anyone should be free to offer health care services to people without the approval of the government is absolutely terrifying to many Americans. Immediately, their imaginations go wild with such fantasies that doctors without training will be performing brain surgery on them.
There is but one solution to the health care crisis — the free market, which would entail a complete separation of health care and the state, in the same way that our ancestors separated church and state. That would mean the repeal, not a reform, of Medicare, Medicaid, regulation, and occupational licensure and an end to the income taxation needed to pay for all this.
The future well-being of our country necessitates raising our vision to a higher level — one that goes beyond a reform of the status quo — one that necessitates an understanding and appreciation of free-market principles and a deep and abiding faith in ourselves and in a free society.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Zelaya, Chavez, and Roosevelt
by Jacob G. Hornberger
One of the interesting aspects of the Honduran coup debate is with respect to the economic policies of ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Those who defend Zelaya’s ouster are quick to criticize his leftist philosophy and programs, along with his ideological alliance with Hugo Chavez, the leftist ruler of Venezuela.
Why is that interesting?
Because Zelaya’s and Chavez’s economic philosophy and programs are no different, in principle, from those of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, who many Americans view as an icon and whose policies are still credited by many to have “saved America’s free enterprise system.”
The obvious question arises: If socialism and interventionism are bad for Latin America, why do so many Americans still extol and praise Roosevelt for foisting them on the American people?
In fact, I couldn’t help but be amused over reading that Zelaya had raised the minimum wage in Honduras by 60 percent. The purpose? To help the poor, of course. That’s the standard explanation that every statist gives for the minimum wage
Of course, as every libertarian knows, that’s ridiculous. If poverty could be ended through minimum-wage mandates, poverty would have disappeared eons ago. It doesn’t take much for a government to issue a minimum-wage decree. The truth is that minimum-wage laws hurt the very people they purport to help because they lock out of the labor market those people whose labor is valued in the marketplace at less than the minimum wage.
So, what happens to those unemployed people? They starve to death, unless the state puts them on welfare, which then makes them submissive, obedient, dependent wards of the state, scared to death that their dole is going to be cut off.
Let’s not forget that the minimum wage was one of Roosevelt’s principal socialist and interventionist programs too. In fact, it was during the FDR administration that one of our nation’s most important legal battles took place in the U.S. Supreme Court, a battle in which American statists prevailed over the advocates of economic liberty.
In the 1923 case of Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, the Supreme Court had declared that minimum-wage legislation was unconstitutional. The idea was that such legislation infringed upon people’s liberty of contract, an aspect of liberty that was protected by the due process clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. People have a fundamental right, the court held, to enter into mutually beneficial exchanges with one another. Liberty of contract was part of what became known as economic liberty.
Who benefited from liberty of contract? Both the employer and employee! After all, if two people voluntarily enter into an agreement, both of them benefit from it. Otherwise, they wouldn’t enter into it. Oftentimes, poorer people would work for what would seem to others to be a low rate of pay, acquire skills in the trade or business, and then go out and start their own businesses.
Then Roosevelt came into power. Like Zelaya and Chavez, Roosevelt adopted various forms of socialism and interventionism, purportedly to “help the poor.” His statist programs included Social Security, the AAA, the NIRA, agricultural subsidies, federal housing relief, mortgage moratoriums, confiscation of gold, redistribution of income, tax increases, and paper money.
Not surprisingly, Roosevelt, like Zelaya and Chavez, was also an ardent supporter of the minimum wage. In 1937 — at the height of Roosevelt’s New Deal — the Supreme Court overruled the decision in Adkins and upheld the constitutionality of the minimum wage.
What was Roosevelt’s role in this? After the Supreme Court had declared much of his socialist and interventionist programs unconstitutional, Roosevelt refused to follow the proper course of seeking a constitutional amendment for his alien plans. Instead, he came up with a notorious scheme that would enable him to pack the Court with ideological cronies who would vote to uphold the constitutionality of what he was doing to America. While the scheme failed, it might have placed sufficient pressure on one justice — Justice Owen Roberts — to cause him to shift his vote in favor of Roosevelt’s position. While Roberts later denied that he had succumbed to such pressure, his vote became known as the “switch in time that saved nine.”
West Coast Hotel was a watershed legal decision, not only because of the minimum-wage issue but also because never again would the Supreme Court declare any law unconstitutional on the ground of economic liberty. Statism became an established way of life in America, as it is in Honduras, Venezuela, and other parts of Latin America.
So, how come some people are so quick to criticize Zelaya and Chavez for their socialist and interventionist policies while extolling and praising those of Roosevelt?
That’s a good question!
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Back Door Way to Ignore the Bill of Rights
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Among the most shocking aspects of Barack Obama’s presidency so far has been his embrace of the power that George W. Bush assumed to incarcerate people suspected of terrorism for the rest of their lives, without a jury trial to determine whether they are in fact guilty of the offense. There is absolutely no reason why Obama and any future president cannot expand that power to other federal criminal offenses, including drug crimes and gun crimes.
Let’s keep in mind, after all, that terrorism is a federal criminal offense. It was a federal criminal offense before 9/11 and it continued to be one after 9/11.
Under America’s system of justice, people suspected of having committed a criminal offense are indicted by federal grand juries and tried in federal district court. Examples of criminal defendants who have been indicted and convicted of terrorism in federal court include Ramzi Yousef, Zacharias Moussaoui, and Jose Padilla.
One of the fundamental principles of a criminal trial is the presumption of innocence. In order to get a conviction, the government must overcome that presumption with sufficient competent evidence that convinces a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is, in fact, guilty of the offense.
What was so revolutionary about what George W. Bush did was that he took a federal criminal offense and simply converted it into an illegal act of war, which he said gave the government the power, at its option, to incarcerate a suspected violator of the terrorism statutes for life, without the benefit of trial by jury to determine whether he really committed the offense.
Now, consider the war on drugs. Since the president has been permitted the power to declare terrorism an illegal act of war, thereby enabling him to treat suspected terrorists as illegal enemy combatants (or criminal defendants, at his option), there is absolutely no reason why he cannot do the same in the war on drugs or the war on guns (or any other federal criminal offense), especially given that many of the terrorists are using the drug trade to finance their terrorist operations and given that drug lords are using guns to commit their murders.
Each year, the drug lords kill far more people than the number of people that the terrorists are killing in the United States. The many thousands of people being killed every year in Mexico include Mexican law-enforcement agents, judges, and other government officials.
Most of the drug-war violence is along the U.S.-Mexico border. The possibility that the drug-war violence will spill over into the United States is causing U.S. officials to consider dispatching U.S. troops to the border to help civilian law enforcement fight the war on drugs. In fact, some state and local officials are now actively requesting the president to send U.S. troops to the border.
At the same time, law-enforcement officials are claiming that the one of the principal causes of drug-war violence is the ease by which people are able to purchase guns along the border. Already there are signs of a government crackdown on gun dealers as part of the war on guns.
Now, imagine that the drug lords begin wreaking violence on the U.S. side of the border, including killing sprees in which U.S. law-enforcement agents, judges, and other public officials are the predominate victims, as they are in Mexico.
With the power the president now wields to convert federal criminal offenses into illegal acts of war, there is now nothing to prevent Barack Obama from expanding such power to the war on drugs and the war on guns. That means, of course, that the U.S. government would then have the option of treating suspected drug-law violators and gun-law violators in the same was as suspected terrorists, subject to being incarcerated for life, without the benefit of a jury trial to determine whether they truly are guilty.
Thus, those who enthusiastically supported Bush’s assumption of this omnipotent power — the power to convert a federal criminal offense into an illegal act of war — might come to rue the day they did so, especially if Obama expands the principle to drug crimes and gun crimes.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Padilla vs. Yoo: An Update
by Jacob G. Hornberger
There are two interesting developments in Jose Padilla’s lawsuit against former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who was one of the authors of the infamous torture memos.
First, the Justice Department is no longer defending Yoo in the case. He will now be represented by a private attorney, paid for by the Justice Department.
Second, Yoo is appealing the ruling of the federal district court denying his motion to dismiss Padilla’s case.
A motion to dismiss requests the court to summarily dismiss the plaintiff’s case without hearing any evidence. The motion essentially says: ”Even if you accept as true everything the plaintiff is saying in his petition, he is not entitled to win as a matter of law.“
Generally, courts are loath to summarily dismiss cases brought by litigants. The general rule is that everyone is entitled to the opportunity to prove his case.
Thus, in ruling on a motion to dismiss, the court will accept as true everything that is stated in the plaintiff’s petition. If such facts, if later proved, can support a legal case against the defendant, the court will deny the motion to dismiss.
Can a defendant appeal a motion to dismiss? The general rule is no because the courts frown on interlocutory appeals, that is, appeals that are taken before a case has been finally resolved. Since a denial of a motion to dismiss is not a final resolution of the case (because the case is allowed to continue forward), the general rule is that an appeal cannot be taken from it.
So, why would Yoo be taking an appeal at this stage? My hunch is that he, along with a lot of other people in the Bush administration, are panicked over the judge’s ruling and are now looking for every way possible to delay the continuation of the suit.
Why?
Because Padilla’s lawsuit provides the means by which Yoo and other Bush administration people can be forced to testify under oath in a federal court proceeding as to exactly what went on in the so-called war on terror.
Except for Padilla’s case, giving sworn testimony is something the Bush people could easily succeed in avoiding, given congressional apathy toward an official investigation and executive branch opposition to criminal prosecutions.
Why is Padilla’s lawsuit important? Because the ultimate ruling in the case will apply not just to him but also to all Americans. The suit alleges that the U.S. government took Padilla into custody and held him for several years without charge, until finally indicting him and convicting him in federal district court of the federal crime of terrorism. For years prior to the indictment, Padilla was held in the custody of the U.S. military, where he was denied right to counsel, the right to due process of law, the right to bail, the right to a speedy trial, the right to a jury trial, and other procedural protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. He was also subjected to torture, sensory deprivation, isolation, sleep deprivation, and many other cruel and unusual pre-trial measures.
The government takes the position that it had the legitimate authority to do these things to Padilla and that it, in fact, has the legitimate authority to do them to every other American, as part of its ”war on terrorism.“ Yoo is saying that as a government lawyer who was just delivering legal opinions, he is immune from Padilla’s suit.
The district judge disagreed. He held that the U.S. government lacks constitutional authority to subject the American people to such treatment and that any lawyer who knowingly participates in a scheme to subject Americans to such mistreatment is not immune from suit.
Given the predilection of the courts against interlocutory appeals, in my opinion the Court of Appeals will quickly rule against Yoo’s appeal, enabling Padilla to continue with his case and begin taking sworn depositions. That will be when things start to get interesting.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, July 13, 2009
McNamara and LBJ: Crooks, Liars, Murderers, and Thieves
by Jacob G. Hornberger
I can’t help but be amused by sentiments being expressed by liberals regarding Robert McNamara’s tenure at the World Bank. The notion is that, hey, McNamara wasn’t so bad. Even though he was responsible for the deaths of millions of people during the Vietnam War, he ended up helping the poor, needy, and disadvantaged around the world with World Bank loans.
What a crock.
A good example of this statist nonsense was expressed last week in an op-ed in the New York Times entitled “Calculus and Compassion by Philip Bobbitt, who is the nephew of Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson, a fact I learned back in 1972 when Bobbitt and I, coincidentally, were in the same first-year law school classes at the University of Texas. By that time, I had already figured out, while an undergraduate at Virginia Military Institute, that the Vietnam War was founded on lies and deceptions at the hands of Bobbitt’s uncle, LBJ, and McNamara, his secretary of defense.
Bobbitt recalled that Johnson had described McNamara as a compassionate man. Telling us that his uncle was a “good reader of men,” Bobbitt alleged that Johnson was right about McNamara, saying that “his tenure at the World Bank shows a man driven by a desire to help the poor.”
Like so many other liberals, Bobbitt equates service in government welfare offices as equivalent to, say, Mother Theresa’s service to the poor. Nothing could be further from the truth. With the help of resources that were being voluntarily donated to her, Mother Theresa was devoting her life to helping others. McNamara, on the other hand, was working for an institution that used money that was being forcibly extracted from others.
Suppose, for example, that I accost you with a gun, order you to go to an ATM machine and extract $10,000 from your bank account, and force you to turn it over to me. I use all of the money to help the poor. Does that make me a good, compassionate person? Of course not, as even Bobbitt would acknowledge. He would say that I was a thief, and he would be right.
But where Bobbitt, LBJ, and other liberals have a blind spot is with respect to government. According to them, if I run to government and persuade it take the $10,000 from you in the form of taxes and give it to the poor, I (and the bureaucrat distributing the money) immediately become a compassionate saint.
Of course, Bobbitt failed to mention that his uncle’s ability as a “good reader of men” wasn’t perfect. Throughout his tenure as president, LBJ was convinced that he would be able to buy off North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh with generous offers of U.S. foreign aid (i.e., welfare). Alas, his read of Ho Chi Minh turned out to be a bit faulty.
LBJ’s ability to “read men” might also be called into question given his devotion to such crooks as Bobby Baker and Billy Sol Estes. In fact, what Bobbitt also failed to mention in his op-ed was that Kennedy’s assassination saved LBJ from being dropped as JFK’s running mate in 1964 and from facing a federal grand-jury indictment for his role in the Billy Sol Estes grain scandal, which had resulted in the murder of federal investigator Henry Marshall.
In fact, no doubt Bobbitt’s relationship to his uncle is what prevented him from observing in the op-ed that the only reason that LBJ was president was because his illegal stuffing of Ballot Box 13 in Jim Wells County had enabled him to win his U.S. Senate seat from Texas some years before. Bobbitt might also have mentioned, but didn’t, that his uncle had lied about the bogus North Vietnamese attack at the Gulf of Tonkin, which garnered him the Gulf of Tonkin resolution from Congress, which in turn enabled him to expand an undeclared war that ending up taking the lives of 58,000 Americans and three million Vietnamese.
In an era in which moral principles on a severe decline, the last thing we need is praise of crooks, liars, murderers, and thieves. It would be difficult to find more apt descriptions for both Johnson and McNamara.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Why Not Permanently Cancel Aid to Honduras?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
I’ve got good news and bad news about the coup in Honduras. The good news is that the U.S. government has suspended $16.5 million in military-assistance programs to Honduras and threatened that another $180 million in aid could be at risk. The bad news is that it’s only a temporary suspension and only a threat of a cutoff, not a permanent termination of foreign aid to Honduras and its military.
That’s almost $200 million that the U.S. Empire is funneling into the coffers of Honduran officials, including those in the military. That is not a small amount of money. That large sum of money ends up in the pockets of thousands of Honduran politicians, bureaucrats, and military personnel. At the same time, it produces a deep sense of Honduran dependency on the U.S. Empire as well as a deep sense of loyalty and servitude to the Empire.
Meanwhile here at home, most everyone knows that the U.S. Empire is bankrupting America with its out-of-control spending, on both domestic and foreign programs. With the feds continuing to spend considerably more money than they bring in with taxes, the national debt continues to soar. Massive currency debasement lies on the horizon.
Yet, in the minds of many, the Empire continues to be a permanent given. No matter how bad things get at home, the Empire just continues doling out money to foreign militaries and foreign regimes with nary a concern about the adverse economic effects here at home. The Empire might suspend the payment of its military dole to Honduras and threaten a cut-off of other funds, but everyone knows that the largess will continue flowing as soon as Honduran officials do what Empire officials want.
How much economic abuse will the American people permit themselves to be subjected to at the hands of Empire officials before they finally say, “Enough is enough”? The U.S. government has no more business taxing Americans to send foreign-aid loot to Honduras than to any other foreign regime. Don’t Americans have the right to decide what to do with their own money rather than having it forcibly taken from them by the IRS so that it can be sent to politicians, bureaucrats, and military personnel in the Honduran government?
What if the Honduran government cannot afford a big and powerful military without U.S. Empire largess? Well, that’s just tough. It will mean that they will just have to do with a military they can afford, which might mean a few hundred soldiers. Of course, the primary beneficiary of that phenomenon would be the Honduran people, who would no longer be subjected to the brutality of their government’s military personnel, many of whom, by the way, have been trained in brutality and torture at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas.
Today, the American people are stuck in a very precarious economic quagmire. On the domestic side, they are dependent upon their socialistic welfare state, especially Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Thus, significant expenditure reduction is unlikely here.
Further on the domestic side, they remain committed to the war on drugs, despite its manifest 35-year-old failure. Thus, significant expenditure reduction is unlikely here.
Further on the domestic side, they continue to believe that massive federal spending will stimulate them to economic prosperity. Thus, significant expenditure reduction is unlikely here.
Further on the domestic side, the national debt, both principal and interest, continues to soar. Thus, significant expenditure reduction is unlikely here.
On the foreign side, Americans remain committed to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, significant expenditure reduction is unlikely here.
Further on the foreign side, they remain devoted to the U.S. Empire’s network of worldwide military bases, its role as the world’s international policeman, and its program of interventionism. Thus, significant expenditure reduction is unlikely here.
It would seem, however, that if there were ever an area of federal expenditures that the American people could agree should be eliminated, it is foreign aid. What better place to start than a permanent cancellation of the $200 million being sent annually to the Honduran government?
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
The War on Terrorism Began in Vietnam
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Lest anyone believe that the war on terrorism began on September 11, 2001, take a look at this article from the July 20, 1959, issue of Time magazine, one of the premier examples of the establishment press in America. The article details the facts surrounding the deaths of the first two U.S. soldiers to die in Vietnam 50 years ago, Major Dale Buis and Sgt. Chester Ovnand.
According to the article, “six Communist terrorists crept out of the darkness” and opened fire on the soldiers, who were peacefully watching a movie in the mess hall at the base camp for the South Vietnamese 7th Infantry Division in the “sleepy little town of Bien Hoa 20 miles north of Saigon.”
“When Sergeant Ovnand snapped on the lights to change the first reel, the terrorists opened fire,” the article observed. Two Vietnamese guards were also killed and two other American officers were wounded. Two U.S. officers who had “drifted off to play tennis” survived the attack.
What the Time article failed to emphasize, however, is that even though those soldiers were playing tennis and watching movies, they were not visiting Vietnam as tourists. Instead, as military advisors to the South Vietnamese army, they were meddling in a civil war in a country they had no business meddling in, a country situated thousands of miles away from the United States.
The Time article stated that the American military presence in Vietnam was helping to keep the country “independent and free and getting stronger all the time.” Time was obviously referring to the autocratic and corrupt South Vietnamese regime headed by Ngo Dinh Diem, a brutal dictator who refused to permit opponents to challenge his rule by democratic means. Time also forgot to mention that the South Vietnamese government had violated the 1954 Geneva Accords committing North Vietnam and South Vietnam to nationwide elections that would unify the country.
Ironically, it would only be a few years later that the CIA would participate in a coup — yes, a coup — that succeeded not only in ousting Diem from power but also in getting him murdered.
That’s the “free, independent, and strong” South Vietnam that Buis and Ovnand and some 58,000 other Americans ended up dying for. And it all started with “communist terrorists” refusing to permit U.S. troops to be stationed in their country.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Immigration Destruction Under Obama
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In yet another effort to continue the policies of the Bush administration, the Obama administration is targeting American companies that hire illegal immigrants. But to demonstrate that being a compassionate liberal is better than being a compassionate conservative, Obama’s immigration gendarmes aren’t conducting violent publicity-seeking raids on the businesses. Instead, they’re sending written notices to targeted companies threatening civil fines and orders to fire the illegal workers.
The latest example of the war on immigrants — or should I say the war on American businessmen? — involves a Los Angeles company, American Apparel, which makes T-Shirts. The federal immigration gendarmes recently sent the company a letter advising it that about 1,800 of its workers appeared to be illegal immigrants. The letter threatened civil fines and told the company to fire the illegal workers.
Maybe if the gendarmes are successful, they’ll succeed in accomplishing what they accomplished with Agriprocessors, Inc. That’s the Iowa meatpacking plant that the gendarmes raided last year. After they arrested and deported 389 illegal immigrants, about half of the company’s workforce, and after they secured federal criminal indictments of principals in the company, the company went bankrupt.
Now, wasn’t that a wonderful result? Think about it: Here’s a company that ostensibly is privately owned. Its money supposedly belongs to it. It decides to use its own money to hire people who are willing to work there. Both the employer and the employees benefit from the exchange. We know this to be true because otherwise they wouldn’t have both entered into the deal. The company serves consumers by providing them with meat products that they’re willing to pay for.
In other words, everyone — employers, employees, and consumers — was benefitting, which is what a free market is all about. Then, along comes the federal government and accomplishes what it is best at: destruction, misery, and suffering.
Also, let’s not forget all those crops that were left rotting in the fields across America within the past two years because crop owners weren’t able to hire the illegal immigrants to harvest them. Like I say, destruction, misery, and suffering — it ought to be imprinted as a motto on business cards carried by federal officials.
Why can’t the federal government just leave people alone? Why must it be killing people and destroying society with its wars on Iraq and Afghanistan? Why must it be ruining so many lives all over the world with its war on drugs? Why must it be kidnapping and torturing people while denying them the benefits of a fair trial and due process of law with its war on terrorism? Why must it be destroying peaceful, harmonious, beneficial, hard-working businesses here in the United States with its war on immigrants? What is it that motivates U.S. officials to be the greatest engine of death, destruction, misery, and suffering in the world? Good intentions, no doubt.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
What’s That Imperial Base in Honduras For?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Lost in all the debate over whether the coup in Honduras was a coup or not is the great big elephant sitting in the room that no one is talking about. What in the world is the U.S. government doing with a military base in Honduras on which hundreds of U.S. soldiers are residing? It seems that the U.S. Empire has become such a strongly established way of life for the American people and the people of the world that U.S. imperial bases around the world are now just the given. Presidents, both foreign and domestic, come and go, but the Empire is permanent, both here and abroad.
To understand the vital importance that overseas military bases play in the U.S. Empire, the best thing to do is read Chalmers Johnson’s analysis of the situation. Begin by reading these three articles and then proceed to Johnson’s trilogy of books.
Articles:
“America’s Empire of Bases” by Chalmers Johnson
“737 U.S. Military Bases = Global Empire” by Chalmers Johnson
“How to Deal with America’s Empire of Bases” by Chalmers Johnson
Books:
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic by Chalmers Johnson
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson
Essentially, the U.S. Empire operates as follows. Its quest is to place people into power in foreign regimes all over the world who will agree to be loyal members of the U.S. Empire. It is understood that these foreign rulers will have free rein over their own citizens. That is, they are free to do anything they want in order to maintain themselves (and their loyal successors) in power, including terrorizing, brutalizing, torturing, and killing their own people. The Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, and Pervez Musharraf are a few examples of this phenomenon.
To assist the ruler, the Empire agrees to funnel money into his state coffers, under the form of foreign aid or international loans, which are used to purchase a loyal and strong military force whose job is to maintain “law and order.”
Another means of assistance is the Empire’s training of the ruler’s military forces. This is where the U.S. military’s School of the Americas comes into play. It not only trains the military forces of loyal foreign regimes in brutal military tactics to maintain themselves in power, it also maintains close alliances with the military officers in such regimes. Honduras, in fact, along with many other Central American countries, is a good example of this phenomenon.
In return for all this support, the foreign ruler is expected to grant favors to the Empire when called upon. For example, when a vote is needed in the United Nations or troops are needed as part of a “coalition of the willing” to participate in some overseas imperial venture, the foreign ruler is expected to come through.
What happens if a foreign ruler refuses to play ball with the Empire? He is targeted for elimination. Sometimes this means assassination or coup, which is where the CIA comes into play. Sometimes it means funneling U.S. taxpayer money into groups that are seeking to oust the recalcitrant ruler through democratic means. Sometimes it means deadly sanctions and embargoes. Ostracism and the silent treatment are oftentimes employed. And of course there is the ever-present threat of invasions and occupations, which is where the Pentagon comes into play. Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and many others are good examples of these phenomena.
The more than 700 hundred U.S. military bases all over the world play an important role in all this. For one, they are a constant reminder, especially in those nations that have the bases, of the ability of the U.S. Empire to effect regime change within that nation or nearby nations. Equally important, all those bases serve as the means by which the Empire is able to project its power around the world, for everyone knows that the bases can easily serve as initiation points for the exercise of imperial military power.
A few days ago, the American people celebrated the Fourth of July, a day on which the British colonies in America rebelled against the British Empire and then established a constitutional republic. Isn’t it ironic that at the same time that Americans were celebrating the Fourth, an event in Honduras reminded them of their fateful decision to abandon their republic and embrace empire in its stead? And isn’t it ironic that Americans are now suffering many of the same ravages of empire that the British Empire was suffering: out of control government spending, ever-increasing debt and taxes, inflation and debasement of the currency, terrorist blowback, brutality, and constant attacks on the privacy and civil liberties of the citizenry?
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Confessions and Torture in Iran
by Jacob G. Hornberger
According to the New York Times, Iranian officials have announced that they have secured confessions from top reformers to a conspiracy to bring down the Iranian government. The paper stated that such confessions are “almost always extracted under duress.”
Now, take a wild guess what such “duress” consists of. The paper states: “The government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from political prisoners held without charge or legal representation, often subjected to pressure tactics like sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and torture, according to human rights groups and former political prisoners.”
Sound familiar?
You bet it does! In fact, these are precisely the “harsh interrogation techniques” employed by the CIA and the Pentagon that U.S. neocons have been consistently describing as fraternity-type hazing for the last 8 years. Of course, we’ve got to add waterboarding — i.e., forced drowning — to the U.S. interrogation techniques, something that the Iranians don’t appear to have utilized in securing their confessions.
The article also mentioned another facet of interrogation that Iranian and American officials have in common: sex abuse. Consider this account of a journalist-blogger, Omid Memarian, who was arrested in 2007 and who now lives as an exile in the United States:
“He said that his interrogator at first sought to humiliate him by forcing him to discuss details of his sex life, and that when he hesitated, the interrogator would grab his hair and smash his head against the wall. He said the interrogator asked him about prominent politicians he had interviewed, asked if they ever had affairs, and asked if he had ever slept with their wives.”
(U.S. torturers refer to the head-smashing technique as “walling,” an interrogation technique they employ too.)
Memarian stated:
“I was crying, I begged him, please do not ask me this. They said if you don’t talk now you will talk in a month, in two months, in a year. If you don’t talk now, you will talk. You will just stay here.”
Consider this account by Ali Afshari, a student leader arrested in 2001:
He said he was held in solitary confinement for 335 days and resisted confessing for the first two months. But after two mock executions and a five-day stretch where his interrogators would not let him sleep, he said he eventually caved in. “They tortured me, some beatings, sleep deprivation, insults, psychological torture, standing me for several hours in front of a wall, keeping me in solitary confinement for one year,” Mr. Afshari said in an interview from his home in Washington. “They eventually broke my resistance.”
So far, U.S. neocons have been silent over the confessions extracted by the Iranian officials. That’s not surprising. After all, what can they say?
Can they say that the confessions are invalid, after claiming for 8 years that the confessions extracted by U.S. interrogators using the same techniques (and worse) are perfectly valid?
Can they claim that the techniques employed by the Iranian interrogators are nothing worse than what takes place in American fraternity houses, when they’ve been using that description for the same techniques employed by U.S. officials (and actually much worse: e.g., waterboarding, dogs, forced nudity, and highly bizarre sexual acts)?
Can they claim that the Iranian dissidents have been tortured into giving those confessions when they have claimed for 8 years that similar (and worse) interrogation methods at the hands of the CIA and Pentagon have not constituted torture?
Did the Iranian officials simply copy their torture techniques from the United States? No. As anti-torture proponents have been pointing out for years, these are the modern-day torture techniques of professional torturers everywhere. Modern-day professional torturers don’t use the rack or hot irons or anything else that leaves physical scars. Instead, they employ what has become known as “touchless torture” — torture techniques that are just as effective but only scar the mind and that leave the torturer free to say, “I never laid a hand on him!”
What is happening in Iran, one of the most tyrannical regimes in the world, constitutes a red light for the American people. What better signal than that to tell us that our nation is off course with the U.S. government’s torture policy and its attacks on civil liberties?
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Lessons from the Fourth of July
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The true revolutionary aspect of the Fourth of July was not the military battles that the English colonists waged against the British Empire. Instead, it was the notion that was expressed in the Declaration of Independence: man’s rights do not come from government but rather from nature and God.
Throughout history, people have been taught to believe that their government is the source of their rights. The consequence of that mindset is logical — people express gratitude to their public officials for their freedom.
Along came the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence, and that notion of people’s rights was upended by a truth that would forever send shivers of fear through every statist official throughout the world. Since man’s rights are inherent, fundamental, natural, and God-given, there’s no need for people to ever be grateful to public officials for such rights.
More important, since such rights are God-given and natural, public officials have no business interfering with them, manipulating them, and infringing upon them. In fact, as the Declaration of Independence indicates, people call government into existence to protect the exercise of such rights, not to regulate or interfere with them.
Contrary to popular misconception, the American Revolution was not fought by Americans against some foreign government. Instead, it was fought by Englishmen against their own government. The signers of the Declaration were as much English citizens as you and I are American citizens.
Those Englishmen understood an important point, one that all too many modern-day Americans unfortunately have forgotten: that the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of a citizenry lie not with foreign regimes or foreign citizens (including terrorists). Instead, it lies with one’s very own government.
As the Declaration of Independence points out, whenever any government becomes destructive of the rights and liberties of the people, it is the right of the people to alter and abolish such government and to institute new government that is limited to its proper role of protecting, not destroying, the rights of the people.
That’s in fact what the Constitution is all about, which must be construed in the context of the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution called into existence a new government whose powers would be expressly limited to those enumerated in the document itself.
But even that wasn’t sufficient for our American ancestors, who held grave reservations about calling into existence a federal government, again because of the threat it posed to their fundamental rights and freedoms. That’s why they insisted on the Bill of Rights as a condition for approving the Constitution.
The First Amendment expressly acknowledges that the biggest threat to such fundamental rights as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and peaceable assembly is the U.S. Congress and, by implication, the rest of the federal government. One of the primary purposes of the First Amendment is to ensure that the citizenry can bring peaceful change in government policies through the exposition of truth and the dissemination of ideas. When people are free to criticize government actions, then there is the potential for change in a positive direction. Even totalitarian regimes — those with total power and all the guns — understand this principle well, given their propensity to shut down articles, speeches, and peaceful demonstrations.
Obviously the First Amendment is insufficient if the government has the power to seize people, lock them up without a trial, and torture them into falsely confessing their guilt to bogus crimes. That’s what the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments are all about. Again, those amendments were an express acknowledgement by our American ancestors that Americans faced a constant threat on the part of their own government to do these types of things to the citizenry.
And of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the Second Amendment, which actually should have been made the First Amendment, given its supreme importance. For when the citizens are free to keep and bear arms, would-be tyrants, for obvious reasons, think twice about depriving well-armed citizens of their fundamental, God-given rights.
On the Fourth of July, let us celebrate the courage and wisdom of our American ancestors, who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in the defense of the most radical exposition of rights and liberties in history. Let us also pledge to do all we can to build on what they began, with the aim of taking America to the highest reaches of freedom ever seen by mankind.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The Banality of Evil Applies to Everyone
by Jacob G. Hornberger
One of the aspects of the Iraq War that has fascinated me the most is how CIA agents and U.S. soldiers could actually bring themselves to kill, torture, and sexually abuse Iraqis. After all, don’t forget that neither the Iraqi people nor their government participated in the 9/11 attacks. The worst “crime” that any Iraqi committed against any American was resisting an unlawful invasion of his country.
Nonetheless, even though the Iraqi people were innocent of any attacks on the United States, many CIA agents and most U.S. soldiers have been able to bring themselves to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in an invasion and occupation of a country that never attacked the United States, and murder, torture, and sexually abuse dozens of Iraqis detainees and prisoners.
How is a government able to bring men and women to do such things to people who never did anything to harm the United States?
I’m currently reading a fascinating book entitled Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning. It’s about a police unit from Hamburg, Germany, which was assigned the task of rounding up hundreds of Jews in villages in Poland and shooting them at point-blank range.
What makes the book interesting is that the members of the unit were not hard-core SS troops or Gestapo members but rather ordinary middle-aged German men, many of whom had regular jobs at home and were simply members of a reserve police unit.
When the German unit arrived at a Polish village called Jozefow, it soon learned the nature of its mission from its battalion commander, a 53-year old German captain, Wilhelm Trapp, who was an ordinary career policeman back home.
Trapp explained to his men that they were to search targeted homes in Jozefow for Jews, round them up, march them into the forest, and kill them by shooting them at point-blank range. Elderly Jews and infants were to be killed on the spot in their homes.
Appreciating the difficult nature of this task, Trapp offered his men the opportunity to opt out of the mission, which undoubtedly was one of the reasons that two of his subordinate officers later described him as weak and unmilitary. A few men opted out of the mission.
As the round-ups and shootings proceeded, however, more men began dropping out, unable to stomach the point-blank shootings of defenseless men, women, and children. They were accused of being cowardly and weak by their fellow soldiers who continued to do the shootings.
Most of Unit 101 continued performing their assigned task. They convinced themselves that it was okay to continue following orders because Germany was at war, the Jews were part of the enemy, and the enemy was killing Germans every day.
The Iraqi people never did anything bad to the American people. In fact, many Iraqis admired and respected the United States. Yet, CIA agents and U.S. soldiers had no moral reservations whatsoever in following orders to attack and occupy Iraq and kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the process.
Moreover, the CIA agents and U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib obviously had no moral reservations about the murder, torture, and sex abuse committed against Iraqi prisoners, notwithstanding the fact that the Iraqis, again, had never attacked the United States. The thought that Iraqi prisoners should be treated with decency and respect, especially given that they were the defenders, not the attackers, obviously never even entered the minds of the CIA agents and U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib.
The rationales for the killings, murders, torture, and sex abuse varied from agent to agent and soldier to soldier. Some said, “We’re doing it because Saddam Hussein was about to attack the U.S. with WMDs.” Others said, “We’re doing it because Islam is at war against the West.” Others said, “We’re doing it to stop them from killing us here.” Others said, “We’re doing it to bring democracy to their land.” Others said, “We’re doing it because of what al-Qaeda did on 9/11.” Others said, “We’re doing it for freedom.” The more honest of them said, “We’re doing it because we’ve been ordered to do it.”
Today, many U.S. officials are cavalierly claiming that the invasion and occupation of Iraq — along with the deaths and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people — have been worth it because “democracy” has been brought to Iraq. Clearly they would not be saying the same if it had been hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and CIA agents who had been killed, maimed, and tortured instead.
Of course, this mindset of callous indifference toward Iraqi life didn’t begin with the U.S. war of aggression on Iraq. Many years ago, it was also reflected by the mindset of U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright, who announced to the world that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the U.S. and UN sanctions on Iraq had been “worth it.”
With the phrase “the banality of evil,” Hannah Arendt explained that the great evils of history are not executed by evil sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who meekly accept the rationales of their government and who participate in the evil under the belief that their actions are normal.
Arendt’s concept applies not just to Germans, but to everyone else as well.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Health Care Is Not a Right
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Amidst all the health care debate, there is one underlying assumption that hardly anyone challenges: the notion that people have a right to health care. The truth is that it’s a nonsensical notion. People no more have a right to health care than they have a right to education, food, or clothing.
After all, what does a right to health care mean? If I have a right to something, then doesn’t that mean that you have a correlative duty to provide it? If you’re a doctor, then it means that you are required to serve my needs, like it or not. If I need an operation, then you cannot say “no” because that would be denying me my right to health care.
Thus, isn’t the right to health care actually a power to force doctors to provide people with medical services?
Now, the proponent of health care as a right might say, “That’s not what I mean. Why, to force doctors to provide health care services to others would be akin to slavery, especially if it’s for free. I think that doctors deserve to be paid for their services.”
Fair enough. But then doesn’t the right to health care entail the power to force someone else to pay for it? Let’s assume, for example, that I need hip-replacement surgery that will cost $25,000 and that I don’t have the money to pay for it. Since I have a right to health care, that means that I have a right to get the money from you to pay for my operation. It also means that you can’t say no because that would be interfering with my right to health care.
Thus, the right to health care entails the power of everyone to get into the pocketbooks of everyone else. That’s not only a ridiculous notion of rights but also a highly destructive one. Since obviously people can’t go and take the money from others directly, it inevitably entails converting government into an engine of seizure and redistribution. Or to paraphrase Bastiat, such a concept of rights converts government into a fiction by which everyone is doing his best to live at the expense of everyone else.
Meanwhile, while everyone is using government to get into everyone else’s pocketbook to pay for his health care expenses, he is simultaneously doing his best to protect his own income and assets from being plundered by the government to fund everyone else’s health care bills.
Over time, it is easy to see how such a system devolves in everyone’s warring against everyone else. It is also easy to see that such a system obviously does not nurture friendly and harmonious relations between people. This is especially true when these types of “rights” expand to such areas as education, food, clothing, and housing.
The true nature of rights — the type of rights the Founding Fathers believed in — involved the right of people to pursue such things as health care, education, clothing, and food and that government cannot legitimately interfere with their ability to do so.
Thus, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as described in the Declaration of Independence, doesn’t mean that someone else is forced to provide you with the means to sustain or improve your life. It means that government cannot enact laws, rules, or regulations that interfere with or infringe upon your right to pursue such things.
When Americans began looking upon rights as some sort of positive duty on others to provide them with certain things, that was when the quality of health care in America began plummeting. That was what Medicare and Medicaid were all about — the so-called right of poor people and the elderly to health care. It is not a coincidence that what began has the finest health care system in the world has turned into a system that is now in perpetual crisis.
There is one — and only one — solution to America’s health care woes — and it lies not in a government takeover of health care. In fact, the solution is the exact opposite: It is the end of all government involvement in health care — a total separation of health care and the state. That would entail not a reform or improvement of Medicare and Medicaid but rather their total repeal.
At its core, the solution to America’s health care crisis lies in the abandonment of the notion that health care is a right. Once people reach this fundamental realization, as our American ancestors did, the nation can get back on the road toward to a healthy, prosperous, and harmonious society.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
