TDV Week in Review February 24th, 2013

February 24, 2013 / Redmond W /

Three Prophets of the Anti-Christ

The word "prophet" in popular modern usage means someone who can divine the future. But the word comes from the Greek word profetes which literally means "advocate" or someone who speaks for someone else. In legend and myth, prophets spoke for a god or a group of gods. Gods tend to have the best access to information, including things that are definitely going to happen. So prophets usually end up providing a line on the future as the gods use the prophet to warn humanity about things to come. Humanity usually doesn't listen, but that's beside the point. In the stories prophets are always right.

But in some traditions there's another kind of prophet. These prophets serve humanity's enemies. And they gleefully lead humanity toward its destruction. In the Christian tradition, Satan is mankind's great adversary. He just hates the little wingless monkeys. And he has false prophets lined up for use in the end times to help usher mankind into Hell. This week we might have heard from three of these people: Senator Lindsey Graham, Ann Coulter, and Vice-President Joe Biden.

Lindsey Graham

We start with Lindsey "Shut up! You don't get a lawyer! You're an enemy combatant!" Graham. Here is a man who would gleefully make sure the federal government has the ability to toss anyone in jail forever without a trial. This is a man ripped from another time, a time of iron-fisted kings and a booming industry in dungeon expansion. Every time I watch Lindsey Graham speak, I can't help but think he looks a little off in his Senator suit, like an alien lizard in fake human skin. Maybe it's the heavy, droopy flesh around those too-blue eyes…or the way his formidable teeth are framed by those jowels, especially when he exposes them in that smile that fails to reach his eyes. The man has the crocodile sincerity of a grand inquisitor. He exudes the air of someone who takes pride in doing horrible things for the sake of the unjust status quo.

What else could you say of a man who stoically dips his hands in the blood of thousands of men, women and children and feels a sense of accomplishment?

"We've killed 4700," Graham told the Easley Rotary Club in South Carolina when giving a tally of those reduced to blood and atoms by US drones. "Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we're at war, and we've taken out some very senior members of al Qaeda."

I worry about seeming too hard on Graham. After all he's in essence no different than any jingoist citizen who nods in approval when their Air Force bombs an enemy city full of innocents. But men like Graham really are something special. He is the worst of the state congealed into one doughy man in a nice suit. He doesn't just want the state to have absolute power to detain and to kill for his personal benefit. He believes it is his right.

"I can't imagine in World War II for Roosevelt to have gone to a bunch of judges and said, 'I need your permission before we can attack the enemy.'" Of course you can't, Lindsey. To you the state is much better off without these annoying checks and balances to prevent it from fully wielding its awful power to destroy.

Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter, who apparently makes a living saying insulting and incorrect things, has recently called libertarians "pussies" about drug legalization and about war. She's "for" Iraq because, according to her, "There's one thing the federal government should be doing, maybe two –regulate interstate commerce and protect us from enemies. And the Republican Party tradition is that we should intervene, go to war, do whatever it is foreign policy-related when it makes America safer." That's typical neocon thinking, going looking for dragons to slay, starting fights, creating enemies, and killing as many foreigners as possible whenever possible.

When she was asked why she was against drug legalization. Coulter said: "[The drug war] is why people think libertarians are pussies…We're living in a country that is 70 percent socialist. The government takes 60 percent of your money. They are taking care of your health care, of your pensions. They're telling you who you can hire, what the regulations will be. And you want to suck up to your little liberal friends and say, 'Oh, but we want to legalize pot.' You know, if you're a little more manly, you would tell the liberals what your position on employment discrimination is. How about that? …It's always 'We want to legalize pot.'"

Of course, Coulter is attacking a straw man of her own design. Every person I've met in the liberty movement has no problem telling anyone anything when it comes to liberty. We're willing to say that any and every government action is criminal because it violates the non-aggresion principle (NAP). That includes forcing people to hire people they don't want to hire, no matter how offensive some may find the reason. It's not just about the freedom to buy whatever you want and put whatever you want into your own body. Drug use is just a manifestation of self-ownership…no matter how disagreeable others may find it. Though that sort of self-ownership is foreign to Ann. She continues:

"[Drug use] is my business when we are living in a welfare state. You get rid of the welfare state, then we'll talk about drug legalization, but right now I have to pay for — oh, it turns out coming down the pike, your health care. I've got to pay your unemployment when you can't hold the job. I have to pay for your food, for your housing. Yeah, it's my business."

Ah, the welfare state. Making everyone into everyone else's property. When other people are paying for you, expect those other people to want to have a say in how you live and what you're allowed to do. But there's a simple math to the drug war. It runs at enormous cost on stolen money. It turns non-crimes into crimes, fills prisons with people for the silly reason that they got high on something other than alcohol and it puts the police state on steroids.

I dare you to watch the entire segment. If you can, you have a stronger stomach than I.

Click here or on thumbnail

Not that Ann really would want drugs legalized even if there weren't a welfare state. No, people like Ann love shoving their version of proper living down everyone else's throat. People like Ann get off on having the power of the state to force everyone to have sex with the right partner in the right manner, to avoid that which Ann calls sin, and to keep the fun no dirtier than what could be seen on a PG-rated movie or perhaps at a church picnic. Ann Coulter is the very picture of a moralizing, zealous, war-hungry fascist. Funny that she feels as she does about drugs. Her own neocon Republicanism is a drug of sorts, a gateway one to facism.

Joe Biden

Lastly we come to the comic relief among this week's batch of false prophets: reality TV show-worthy Joe Biden.

"No law-abiding citizen in the United States of America has any fear that their constitutional rights will be infringed [upon] in any way!" Joe Biden recently thundered at a sympathetic audience.

Ignore history, recommends Joe. Give the state a monopoly on gun use and then trust them not to trample further on the agreements upon which they've already trampled.

And the false prophets join in refrain: Let the state have the power to put you in jail forever on little more than a whim. Let it go to war and bathe in as much innocent blood as it can draw. Let it tell you what you can put in your body. Let it have your guns because it only wants the best for you and — scout's honor — you can trust them not to take more advantage of you after they've disarmed you.

These are lies of the state dripping from the mouths of Leviathan's advocates. Perhaps "lies" isn't the right word, though. After all, the people saying them probably do believe them deep in what passes for their souls. But they are wrong. It is my great hope that more and more people are catching on to that.

Regards,

Gary Gibson
Editor, The Dollar Vigilante

P.S. Here at TDV we do everything we can to spread the word. But while we wait for the peaceful world for which we long, we also understand that there is plenty of opportunity to capitaize on the distortiions caused by the interference and violence of people like Biden, Graham, Pelosi, Bernanke, and all the rest. And in the pages of our weekly TDV Dispatch we give our best actionable advice for subscribers to protect their assets and grow their wealth in this government-riddled world. Click here to find out more.

What happened this week? Well, we discovered that the Pistorius family likes to murder, the Vatican is still accepting CVs, and tonight left-wing Hollywood will pat themselves on the back for another year of socialist films! Huzzah!

Here’s what we wrote about this week, topics and issues that matter to you and yours…

MONDAY, February 18

Will Obama Confiscate Guns and Gold

Wendy McElroy uses the precedent of Obama’s hero, FDR, to consider whether the President will come for your guns and gold.

“Barack Obama often compares himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt. When he does, gold owners reach for a gun, of which they usually have several. Gold and guns are becoming politically entangled, and a connecting word is often “confiscation.”

The prospect of gun confiscation is fueling discussion of FDR's 1933 nationalization of gold ownership, which resembled Hugo Chavez's nationalization of Venezuelan gold mines in 2011. FDR did so by executive order; Chavez did so by decree. If guns in America are also 'nationalized', then the 1933 gold grab may have insights on how the state could proceed and how American public may react. ”

TUESDAY, February 19

For the Children: Save Yourself, Get Expelled

Justin O’Connell has an alternative plan for freeing children from their indoctrination camps: Expulsion!

"Do you find yourself locked down at your local dangerous public school between the hours of 7am and 3pm five days a week (six if you have Saturday school) for nine months a year (ten if you have Summer school)? Do you find it a waste of time? Well, there’s no need to worry anymore, because The Dollar Vigilante is here to give you the lowdown on how to handle your plight. Be sure to share this information with a friend in the same situation!"

WEDNESDAY, February 20

When the Insane Run the Asylum

Jeff Berwick on the insanity of our economic system.

“Nietzsche was right. If you sat beside Ben Bernanke in his Washington Nationals box seats while he slurped on his ice cream cone and you had a general conversation with him, he probably wouldn’t come across as being insane. 'That was a nice home run,' he’d say. You’d nod.

"But it is people like Bernanke who believe in collectivist systems and top-down economics who are insane.”

THURSDAY, February 21

Better Your Life End at Your Hand Then at Theirs: R.I.P. Hunter

Jim Karger celebrates the life, and death, of Hunter S. Thompson.

"No one wanted to hear about someone else's Constitutional rights when they were fear-pissing down their own legs."

FRIDAY, February 22

Feedback Friday – February 22, 2013

In this week’s Feedback Friday: gold storage, Latin America, passports, and much more.