Category Archives: Liberty

Liberty Is Worth the Fight, by J.B. Shurk

Those who won’t fight for it don’t deserve it. From J.B. Shurk at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • Aside from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to create an official “Disinformation Governance Board” to “combat” free speech antithetical to the government’s point of view, reports show that DHS employees have regularly met with Facebook and Twitter to suppress and censor certain facts and opinions in online discussion of numerous issues dominating public debate — including such broad topics as the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Covid-19, and “racial justice.”
  • To censor dissenting views on experimental, yet coerced, medical treatments, two-tiered economic shutdowns (during which “Big Box” stores are inexplicably “allowed” to operate while economically vulnerable neighborhood shops are not), is mass censorship in the name of public health, shielding from scrutiny monstrous tyranny draped in the false cloak of the “greater” or “common good.”
  • Many politicians cavalierly embrace totalitarianism once again. Citizens, once aware of the attendant dangers to peace when large corporations and national governments work hand in glove to push “politically correct” ideas upon society, are apparently so far removed from the twentieth century’s vivid lessons in fascist, communist, and Nazi propaganda that they fail to see the harm in bureaucrats and officeholders dictating to the public what it may believe.
  • Many Westerners have forgotten that freedom of speech and personal liberty — far from menacing “microaggressions” deserving of sanction — are the surest safety valves for mediating animosities inherent within any society before outright violence is unleashed in their stead.

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The Real Solution to the Coming Economic Crisis, by Mark Thornton

We may have to wait for Laissez-Faire until after economic collapse, but after such a collapse, what else can you try? From Mark Thornton at mises.org:

My previous article demonstrated how the free market solves a boom-bust crisis and is the only solution, its effectiveness depending upon the magnitude of the crisis and, more importantly, how much the government intervenes in response. The bigger the problem created by the Fed, the greater the crisis and the more government intervenes, and the slower the economy recovers.

Here we consider how the market works most effectively, with the efficiency of the process maximized by policy restraint. Like most illnesses, recessions can be “cured” with rest, hydration, nutrition, and fresh air, rather than major surgeries and dangerous medications.

The solution begins with getting rid of the initial monetary causes and allowing market participants, especially entrepreneurs, to adjust to the new conditions. Entrepreneurs will reallocate resources according to current consumer preferences and away from the previous policy allocations. There is no easy, straightforward market playbook for an individual entrepreneur to consult. Should a pizza restaurant stay open one hour later or use in-house delivery drivers? The owner could figure it out, but policy makers would have no idea of where to even begin to answer such questions.

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war on everything, by el gato malo

The goal is endless, profitable war, not victory, From el gato malo at boriquagato.substack.com:

including and especially you

The case against cats: Why Australia has declared war on feral felines | CNN

we live in the age of the war machine.

the purpose of the war machine is not to produce victory.

the purpose of the war machine is to produce war.

war unending.

war on everything.

permission to think the unthinkable and excuse to do that which is inexcusable.

it is the triumph of the terrible and the tyrannical.

the war on covid, poverty, injustice, drugs, terrorism:

it’s all the same.

war is the worst of humanity. it is the end of cooperation, the end of rationality, the abrogation of ethics.

war is permission to “do what it takes to win”

this cannot be the way.

war is the end of good choices and the embrace of conflict, the end of citizenship and the pursuit of subjugation.

it is the end of humanity and the beginning of amoral destruction of the enemy.

perfect for politicians.

anathema to the free breath of we the people.

this is jingo as justification.

and this war machine will roll right over you and if it does its job well you will never even guess at the real reasons why.

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Techno-Authoritarianism Is Here to Stay: China and the Deep State Have Joined Forces, by John and Nisha Whitehead

If you want to know where the world’s civil liberties are going, watch China. From John and Nisha Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.”—Senator Frank Church

The votes are in.

No matter who runs for office, no matter who controls the White House, Senate or the House of Representatives now or in the future, “we the people” have already lost.

We have lost because the future of this nation is being forged beyond the reach of our laws, elections and borders by techno-authoritarian powers with no regard for individuality, privacy or freedom.

The fate of America is being made in China, our role model for all things dystopian.

An economic and political powerhouse that owns more of America’s debt than any other country and is buying up American businesses across the spectrum, China is a vicious totalitarian regime that routinely employs censorship, surveillance, and brutal police state tactics to intimidate its populace, maintain its power, and expand the largesse of its corporate elite.

Where China goes, the United States eventually follows. This way lies outright tyranny.

Censorship. China’s censorship machine is straight out of Orwell’s 1984 with government agencies and corporations working together to limit the populace’s freedom of expression. Just a few years ago, in fact, China banned the use of the word “disagree,” as well as references to George Orwell’s novels Animal Farm and 1984. Government agencies routinely harass and intimidate anyone seen as non-compliant. Activists are frequently penalized for gathering in public places and charged criminally with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” China has also gone to great lengths to muzzle journalists reporting on corruption or human rights abuses.

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One Veteran’s story: An Orange-Pilled Green Beret

He thought he was fighting for freedom as a Green Beret. Now’s he fighting for freedom with Bitcoin. From Adam R. Gebner at bitcoinmagazine.com:

This is an opinion editorial by Adam R. Gebner, a Green Beret and West Point graduate.

The opinions expressed throughout this piece are mine alone, and in no way reflect official policy or opinions of the U.S. Army or the U.S. Department of Defense. Though I am by no means a writer, I hope that by publishing this, more service members consider working in the Bitcoin industry and Bitcoin companies consider expanding their efforts to hire Veterans. Additionally, I am always learning more about Bitcoin, how it works, and the potential value it may bring to our world. Please let me know where I am off base, thanks!

Early in my life, I knew I wanted to be a Green Beret officer. Fighting to liberate oppressed people by working by, with, and through local populations was at the core of my motivations to choose this path. I saw the Special Forces’ mission as a cost and risk-efficient way to prevent large-scale conflict while enabling people to defend themselves and secure their own freedom. After graduating from West Point in 2014 and serving with the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) for three years, I ultimately earned my Green Beret and an opportunity to lead a detachment of America’s Chosen Soldiers. Now that I’ve accomplished what I set out to do with my military career by commanding an “A-team” for two years, I am looking forward to the next mission in my professional life: contributing to the adoption and integration of the best freedom-protecting innovation in modern history — Bitcoin.

Like so many others, I had a few touch points with Bitcoin before seriously considering the validity of the technology. In 2010, during my first year at West Point, I overheard a few Computer Science majors discussing this “internet money” and I foolishly dismissed it without trying to learn anything else. Then in 2013, when I started learning about investing and economics, I stumbled across bitcoin again. I read a little bit more into it, but not enough to understand how it could replace gold as a sound money system (thanks Peter Schiff…).

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Balkanized future: midterms deliver victories for both Free State Americans and Security State Americans, by Jordan Schachtel

The midterm elections make the massive division in American clear. There are a lot of Americans that value “security” over everything else. There are a lot of Americans who still value freedom. Unfortunately, the former group insists that it’s “security” trumps the latter group’s freedom. From Jordan Schachtel at dossier.substack.com:

The tyrants of Covid Mania won the day, but so did the freedom fighters.

The expected “red wave” anticipated by many conservative pundits turned out to be nothing but a mirage.

So what the heck happened last night, and where does the country go from here?

I have three major observations that I hope will make some macro sense of the midterm elections:

  1. Many Americans no longer value freedom

This is going to be a hard pill to swallow for all of the flag waving “Top Gun Americans” out there, but it’s a reality that is now too obvious to ignore.

Benjamin Franklin famously once said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Many Americans, if not most Americans, no longer value the foundational principle of liberty.

If the last three years of Covid tyranny didn’t showcase this enough, the midterm elections proved beyond a doubt that a significant chunk of Americans prefer statist tyranny over individual sovereignty. Across the nation, voters gave their stamp of approval for the forces of the biomedical security state, re-electing a Safety Regime that promises to protect them from the sniffles in exchange for their fundamental liberties.

Virtually all of the worst tyrants of Covid Mania were reelected with ease. Gavin Newsom won by 18 points. Gretchen Whitmer defeated a fantastic GOP candidate in Tudor Dixon by 10 points. Kathy Hochul handily defeated Lee Zeldin. J.B. Pritzker won by 11 points. And the list goes on.

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What Does Liberation Mean in the Real World? By Charles Hugh Smith

There are many ways to be liberated, and perhaps we should strive for all of them. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Liberation in the real world is the result of self-reliance and investing in our own well-being.

Liberation has many contexts. It can mean being freed from imprisonment or servitude, freedom from gnawing want or oppression, or being liberated from prisons of the mind.

Note that the first form of liberation is external / material, the second is internal / psychological / spiritual. Many confuse the two, blaming an oppressive system for their unhappiness rather than their internal acquiescence to the system’s narratives and values.

For many, liberation depends on the actions of others. If only we had different leaders, a different financial financial system, a different energy system, a different constellation of media, and so on–if only the powers that control our world were liberating rather than extractive.

The other approach is to accept responsibility for our own liberation within the system as it is. Demanding those benefiting so handsomely from the system as it is currently configured relinquish their wealth and power is not going to re-order the system when those benefiting from the system 1) have every incentive to devote all available resources to maintaining it as it is and 2) have an unshakeable belief that the system is so powerful (the state, the party, the central bank, etc.) that nothing could possibly destabilize their comforts, conveniences, wealth and power.

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Australian Bank Begins Linking Customer Transactions to Carbon Footprint, by Paul Joseph Watson

This is surely a preview of coming attractions. From Paul Joseph Watson at summit.news:

Green social credit score scheme accelerates.

In another foretaste of potential future ‘carbon allowance’ limits, a major bank in Australia has introduced a new feature that links purchases to a customer’s carbon footprint and warns them when they are going over the average.

Australia’s Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has partnered with Cogo, a “carbon management solutions” company, to launch the new feature, which is part of CBA’s online banking platform.

The bank gives the customer the option to “pay a fee” to offset their carbon footprint, with the average listed as 1,280 kilograms, a long way from the ‘sustainable’ figure of 200 kilograms.

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A person’s carbon footprint is calculated and then an ‘equivalent’ metric is show to make the customer feel guilty about it, such as “8 trees being cut”.

“By combining our rich customer data and CoGo’s industry-leading capability in measuring carbon outputs, we will be able to provide greater transparency for customers so that they can take actionable steps to reduce their environmental footprint,” CommBank Group executive Angus Sullivan said in a statement.

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The “Free World” isn’t looking so free these days, by Jordan Schachtel

The West moves relentlessly towards totalitarianism. From Jordan Schachtel at dossier.substack.com:

The Anglosphere is completely captured by globalist interests.

The world’s English-speaking nations that share historical and ideological ties — commonly referred to as the Anglosphere — were once understood as the world’s most powerful beacons for the tenets of freedom. Through our elected politicians in 2022, however, this social contract has vanished, and its ideas are completely absent within the halls of political power. In today’s Anglosphere, it’s difficult to find a politician or policymaker, on either side of the dominant political factions of government, who genuinely defends the enlightenment principles that sparked the incredible and unprecedented human flourishing of past decades and centuries.

This morning, British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced her resignation after only 6 weeks in office.

Much of the legacy media cited a “Tory revolt,” leading the Free World normies to believe that perhaps some kind of freedom rebellion has occurred.

In fact, just the opposite is true. Truss, they say, stepped out of line by proposing a “risky plan” to cut taxes.

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The Forbidden Thought, by Paul Rosenberg

“What a piece of work is man!” So wrote William Shakespeare. It’s a sentiment very few people would utter these days. Why? From Paul Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:

The dominating systems of our world require us to feel weak, afraid, and insufficient. They couldn’t continue if most of us didn’t feel that way. And so the friends and operators of these systems must oppose the opposite assumption: That we are not inadequate.

I’ve watched popular culture for a lot of years, and I can tell you that since the 1970s, one concept, above all, has been forbidden in intellectual circles: Man as a glorious creature.

If you’d like to prove that to yourself, say a few things like these at a cocktail party:

    • Western civilization has accomplished so many good things that it’s mind-blowing.
    • Most people are basically decent and don’t need to be controlled.
    • I see so much goodness in humanity.
    • Humanity is ascending toward the gods (or heaven, or whatever).

Then, if you’d really like to see a reaction:

    • The human race is magnificent.

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