The State of the Police: Part 3

In the first two parts of this series (here and here), I examined the relationship between the War on Terror and the War on Drugs and how that plays into police militarization and episodes like those seen at Ferguson. With renewed and intense scrutiny being directed at the police in light of these recent events, the final part of this series will explore if there are other options available to us that could do a better job of  "protecting and serving" everyone, since more and more people are recognizing the current (in)justice system clearly doesn't. 

I finished part 2 by introducing the Oath Keepers who, when the rioting was the most intense in Ferguson, were the only ones protecting private property while the police and National Guard were busy antagonizing protesters and protecting their own headquarters. For those who are unfamiliar, Oath Keepers is a national organization comprised of current and former law enforcement officers and military personnel who will uphold their oaths to the Constitution and defend her against all enemies foreign and domestic. More importantly, they have a list of 10 commandments that they will not obey, things like disarm the American citizenry, force Americans into any kind of internment camp, or infringe on the rights of Americans to free speech or to peaceably assemble and petition their government.

Obviously, everyone who goes into national service takes this oath, but given the encroachments on civil liberties we've seen from the vast expansion of the federal government since 9/11, founder Stewart Rhodes thought it was necessary to create this organization to remind these personnel that their oath was to the Constitution, not to any political figure. Oath Keepers draw a line in the sand and vow to not just "follow orders" as many soldiers and public servants in the past have done while committing great atrocities to some of their own people.

Interestingly, although perhaps not surprisingly, the St. Louis county police chief tried to oust the Oath Keepers for providing security "without a license". So the whole town is burning and the only people you're actually trying to hassle is one of the only groups of people who are doing anything at all to protect people and property from arsonists and looters? It's no wonder so many people have such a poor opinion of the police right now.

Yet despite sinking approval ratings of the police and Congressional approval ratings that have been near rock bottom for some time now, most people are at a loss for what to do to change things. Their best hope is that somebody somewhere will propose some minor changes to the law and then hope that enough people get behind the proposed changes that their legislators will vote for it.

Herein lies the problem with "public goods" is that nobody has ownership over them. Therefore, nobody can really enact any meaningful changes without a lengthy, drawn out political process and then they just have to hope for the best that the changes will be effectively implemented. Contrast this with private enterprise that can respond to market forces with relative speed and ease, especially with the threat of competition always looming over their heads. Government services have no such worries and this is nowhere more evident than within the law enforcement sector. If we generally recognize monopolies in business as bad can we at least, in light of the recent tragedies in Ferguson and New York as just two very recent examples, begin to recognize that government monopolies are equally bad if not more so because their monopoly is on force and violence?

This is why real life examples like the Detroit-based Threat Management Center are so important. The indispensable Will Grigg wrote a detailed piece on their security practices. In it, the TMC spokesperson explains,

"...[their] approach to public safety is “precisely the opposite of what police are trained and expected to do,” says the 44-year-old entrepreneur.  The TMC eschews the “prosecutorial philosophy of applied violence” and the officer safety uber alles mindset that characterize government law enforcement agencies. This is because his very successful private security company has an entirely different mission – the protection of persons and property, rather than enforcing the will of the political class."

He continues,

“Unlike the police, we don’t respond after a crime has been committed to conduct an investigation and – some of the time, at least – arrest a suspect,” Brown elaborates. “Our approach is based on deterrence and prevention. Where prevention fails, our personnel are trained in a variety of skills – both psychological and physical – to dominate aggressors without killing them.”

How novel. So if they see someone standing on the street looking suspicious you mean they won't just automatically put them in a chokehold and take them down for refusing to comply?

Naturally, law enforcement agencies see organizations like Oath Keepers and Threat Management Center as competition, hence why they were so quick to try and shut down the Oath Keepers in Ferguson. But it is because of the increasingly clear failure of the government agencies to do their job that grassroots groups and private security agencies need to exist in the first place. If private businesses, neighborhoods, and citizens already utilize private security for myriad security needs, is it really such a far cry for us to start transitioning over to such methods on a wider scale?

One of the things the Oath Keepers were trying to do while in Ferguson was educate the people there on the need for community preparedness and urged them to study the Oath Keepers' model to use themselves should the need ever arise in the future. They also advocate for neighborhood watches and for communities themselves to have more of a role in security and prevention warning that the federal government, even with all its military equipment and grants, can't keep everyone safe all the time.

There have also been numerous scholarly and more academic looks at how a society would function under an entirely private defense system. Most notable in this endeavor is the great economist Hans Herman Hoppe who has dedicated many pages to articulating just how such a society would work. His short book, The Private Production of Defense goes through a multitude of common counterarguments with scientific precision and logic and utterly refutes them.

Another book written in the same vein is that of Austrian economist Robert Murphy and his short treatise called Chaos Theory. Using Hoppe's work as a jumping off point, Murphy expands upon Hoppe's call for using market insurance in property security and extends the argument to naturally include security of person as well. Since no such society currently exists, many of the arguments rest on speculation but are no less thoughtful and carefully crafted. His book offers an intriguing thought experiment in taking the first step of envisioning how such societies might feasibly work some time in the distant future when another century of statism has completely and utterly failed yet again with even more untold tens of millions of people being murdered at the hands of state actors.

If you believe that monopolies are bad as you were taught in school regarding big, bad businesses then it is time to start doing some serious thinking about what it means to give a monopoly on force and violence to a single agency. It is because of our complete lack of imagination in this area that we accept and even defend the practices of the police no matter how many incidents of police violence against citizens we see on a daily basis. We think there are no better options out there so this is the best we've got and they're nobly putting their lives on the line to protect us daily so it's okay if there's some collateral damage along the way. That's like a battered woman defending her abuser because she thinks nobody else will love her and besides, he puts food on the table and a roof over her head and he only hits her every once in awhile so it's not that bad.

If you've been disgusted at the recent events in Ferguson, with Eric Garner, or with any of the other myriad cases we've been hearing about lately, it's incumbent upon you to start thinking outside the box for solutions. It is only because we think there are no other solutions and that this is the best we've got that the status quo prevails. Unfortunately, counting on the government to rein itself in has a pretty lousy track record. We must take the examples of the Oath Keepers and Threat Management Center and make options like that available in every major city. We must gradually start crowding out the police with private and/or community based non-coercive efforts until we ultimately render the police a non-factor in most situations. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." There will be no change until we first change our thinking. It starts with you. It starts by you not advocating for silly laws that give police an excuse to harass generally harmless citizens (like cigarette taxes). It starts with exploring ideas outside of your current paradigm.  And then it will take you acting on it even if it's something as simple as sharing this post or one of the articles I linked to in this piece. If we wait on the government to change itself, we will be waiting a very long time indeed. How many more people will have to be murdered by state agents at home or abroad before we start seriously considering there might be better ways?

The State of the Police: Part 2

In part one of this series, I started off talking about the long road we've taken where recent situations like the death of Eric Garner have become more and more prevalent. One of the major factors playing into instances like this is the "Rise of the Warrior Cop", the title of Radley Balko's best-selling book, where cops are becoming increasingly militarized in their efforts to double down on the failed War and Drugs. The outcome of this has been multiple generations of blacks and minorities being unfairly targeted and affected, a factor likely at play in the anger witnessed at protests resulting from the Mike Brown and Eric Garner decisions. In this part I'll discuss the role the War on Terror and our wars abroad have had in the militarization of our police here at home.

America as a Battlefield
Ever since 9/11, we have seen a massive growth in federal, state, and local law enforcement operations. After the failure to prevent 9/11, George W. Bush saw fit to create an overarching Department of Homeland Security that would supposedly streamline intelligence bureaus so that the interdepartmental communications failures leading up to those tragic events could be avoided in the future.

While this sounded heroic and noble at the time, what this has created is a national security apparatus that has put into irreversible motion the Big Brother state that George Orwell so presciently wrote about in his book 1984. It became the first step in a series of steps that might be akin to the "boiling frogs" analogy. This is the one where, if you put a frog in boiling water, of course it will jump out. But if you put a frog in cold water and gradually increase the heat, it will stay in the pot and not even realize that it's slowly becoming cooked to death. As we keep taking steps away from liberty and towards authoritarianism, our fate might soon reach the same outcome as the proverbial frog in boiling water.

If the creation of the DHS was the first big log in the fire, the next big increase in the water temperature would be the creation of the TSA, the Transportation Security Administration, another federal expansion brought to us by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11. This is the department that now treats everyone as guilty until proven innocent, is allowed to physically molest your person, has been accused of hundreds of instances of theft, and generally makes airline travel miserable for everyone but still has yet to foil a single terrorist plot since its inception. While the TSA has mainly been confined to airport travel, since 2005 it has been expanded via the VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) program that allows the TSA to operate at sports stadiums, rodeos, music festivals, and other transportation hubs like bus depots and subway stations.

 The TSA and DHS are prime examples of what happens when you begin to paint America itself as a battlefield. While the politicians want you to believe that all the wars are being fought overseas, their rhetoric and their policies have predictably spilled over into domestic programs. Why is this? Because when people are fearful, they will happily trade in their liberties for promises of security. When they do this, it emboldens and enriches those tasked with providing our security, namely the federal, state, and local governments and they yet again ratchet up the heat on unsuspecting Americans who think the confines of the pot will keep them safe from any danger.

We are now commonly seeing local law enforcement agencies using federal grants from the DHS to purchase leftover battle equipment from our foreign wars to use here at home. Also, returning veterans from our wars abroad are now being recruited when their duty is over to serve on the police force. Why do tiny towns with populations of 50,000 or less people need military style mine resistant tanks to enforce the law? Why do the cops of Main Street, USA need full body armor, especially when the data shows that it's never been safer to be a cop?  What happens when you take people from one literal battlefield and transport them to a metaphorical one instead?

Combine this with the disturbing news article from several months back about the company providing law enforcement agencies with a line of "No More Hesitation" targets utilizing lifelike images of pregnant women, children, and elderly people for officers to use for target practice. The explicit purpose of the targets was to desensitize and accustom law enforcement officers to use deadly force to subdue non-traditional, threatening entities that might otherwise cause them to hesitate to shoot. This, of course, begs the question, who is the real enemy now? Have our politicians succeeded in transforming America into a battlefield and conditioning us, through privacy violating institutions like the TSA, to meekly submit to authority for our own safety's sake?

Putting It All Together
But how does this relate to the events in Ferguson? Well as I highlighted in my previous article, a heavy portion of this over-militarization of the police is going towards the enforcement of the War on Drugs with the SWAT style no-knock, flash grenade raids supplanting the traditional knock, we have a warrant to search your place, less violent and confrontational approach used once upon a time. All these tools and resources going to expand the War on Drugs further continues the cycle started awhile ago of the racial disparities that are readily apparent in the enforcement and application of the drug war. This has resulted in a long simmering anger in the black community of feeling unfairly targeted and punished by police for crimes committed equally as much by whites.

The simmer came to a boil after the non-indictment of Darren Wilson in the shooting of Mike Brown. While many people agree with the non-indictment and don't believe there should have been any protest or discontent associated with it, I made the point that perhaps these protests transcend just one case and are indicative of the latent feelings of a community as a whole sick of constantly being victimized while the victimizers are never brought to justice.

Enter the riot police. Of course looting shouldn't happen and it was the wrong response for those who were disenchanted with the Mike Brown verdict, but it was expected and so the riot police was called in. The role of law and law enforcement should be to protect persons and property. Instead, they seemed to be more playing the role of antagonizers than protectors. Their liberal use of tear gas at the Ferguson protests was directed more towards peaceful bystanders and on journalists than it was on any looters. It was also confirmed, after much speculation, that the no-fly zone enacted over the Ferguson airspace was indeed meant solely to keep news helicopters from flying around and not for the purported safety reasons they claimed. While nobody was condoning the tactics used by the looters in Ferguson, many people, including Senator Rand Paul, were equally as concerned about the militaristic and heavy-handed response from the police in trying to quell the violence.

Of course, when you arm your local police force to look like a standing army, what sort of affect do you think that has on the psyche of the police force? When you provide police agencies with targets designed to look like everyday Americans, what do you think that does to the psyche of a police officer? When potential violence is about to descend on an area, in light of all this hypermilitaristic outfitting and preparation, who do you think these police officers think the enemy is? It appears to be all of us, because in the post-9/11 era, America has indeed become the battlefield and we ordinary citizens have indeed been labelled the enemy. They are not here to serve and protect us but to keep us from getting in the way of carrying out the agenda set forth by the true people they serve and protect: their political masters.

While much of the narrative that has played out in Ferguson and the Eric Garner cases has focused on the black/white narrative, and to be sure there is certainly a great deal of that at play, what is getting missed in the meantime is that this does transcend race relations in that our police forces are directing their violence increasingly towards people of all ages, genders, races, and ethnicities. This is not so much about black vs. white as it is them vs. us and tyranny vs. freedom. We are all in danger when we allow our local police officers to take on the dual role of standing army, a predicament we were warned about by our Founding Fathers.

There is a small beacon of light in all of this. While the National Guard was busy protecting the police headquarters in Ferguson and the riot police were busy teargassing journalists and innocent bystanders, there were some other brave souls who stood up for the people and businesses of Ferguson against the would-be looters: the Oathkeepers.

In the third and final part in this series about the state of the police, we'll look at the role the Oathkeepers played in Ferguson and explore other alternatives to the government goon squad, also known as the police force, and see whether there is a role for private security in the future to possibly provide competition to the government monopoly system currently in place.  

 

The State of the Police: Part 1

Another day, another non-indictment of a murdering cop. This is sadly becoming* the norm in our political system. Despite clear video evidence showing Eric Garner non-violently resisting arrest with his hands up, the cops forcibly took him down with a headlock/chokehold and then continued to hold his face smashed into the pavement despite several pleas that can all be heard on the video, "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!", he managed to choke out.
*Becoming or has it been this way for awhile and we're only just becoming aware of it due to advances in technology and the internet?

After a series of high profile cases of cops being accused of using excessive force to subdue alleged criminals, the public is getting weary of this "shoot now, ask questions later" mentality that seems to never hold anyone behind the badge accountable.

The good news is, this has finally brought to the forefront conversations about police militarization, racial profiling, and a dire lack of accountability in the system that have long dwelled in the shadows. People are finally sitting up and taking notice that there is something very, very wrong with how the police do business. The veneer of your friendly, neighborhood Andy Griffith type police officer humbly abiding by the motto "To Serve and Protect" is crumbling day by day as more of these Cops Gone Wild videos surface on social media sites like Cop Block and Photography Is Not a Crime.

How did we get here?

Journalist Radley Balko documents in his blockbuster book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, the startling transition of our police force, from early arbiters of justice trying to capture real criminals, to warriors, perhaps even the standing army our Founders warned us about, that have become increasingly aggressive and militarized in the wake of the War on Drugs, War on Poverty, and War on Terror with each of these domestic "wars" bringing more power to the police while simultaneously eroding our civil liberties in the name of "security".

Balko documents that the number of SWAT team raids conducted has dramatically risen from just a few hundred a year nationwide in 1975 to 3,000 a year in the early 80's to 50,000 per year as of 2005. Not coincidentally, these SWAT team raids have increased ever since Richard Nixon introduced the War on Drugs, which in turn introduced the concept of no-knock raids (at one point deemed unlawful), which have become a main feature of SWAT team style tactics today.

The War on Drugs has been a boon to police departments. There is no shortage of grants and funding to make sure these departments have all the resources available to them to carry on the wasteful and failed War on Drugs. Combine this with the extremely immoral (but not illegal) practice of civil asset forfeiture, in which law enforcement agencies are allowed to seize the assets of a person who has not even been charged with a crime. More often than not, these searches stem from suspected drug crimes and are frequently later determined to be completely without merit but for which the victim still must sue the police department at their own personal expense to get their assets back.

This creates a perverse incentive for police to seize as much property as possible, as they often get to keep the seized assets for themselves to use or auction off for cash for the department. Naturally, this is particularly harmful to the poor and minorities, who cannot afford to fight the system to get their wrongfully seized assets back. This is but one of many byproducts of the war on drugs that has created a rift between minorities and law enforcement.

Of course, a larger problem of the war on drugs is the rate at which it disproportionately targets and incarcerates minorities. Blacks are nearly 4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites despite the fact that marijuana use for both groups is virtually identical. Mandatory minimum sentences for mere possession of drugs make blacks, who are much more likely to be arrested in the first place, a permanent fixture of the prison system, often requiring them to serve more time than people put in prison for real crimes with real victims like rapists, robbers, and batterers.

And many of us are all too familiar with the sentencing disparities between people caught with crack cocaine, primarily associated with poor minorities, and powder cocaine, much more expensive and frequently used by more well-to-do white people, including certain presidents of ours. After suffering through these injustices for decades, decimating generation after generation of black families in particular, it is not hard to understand why blacks have a natural inclination to be distrustful of the police, to feel victimized, and to feel targeted rather than protected through the perverse incentive system offered by civil asset forfeiture laws and the war on drugs.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the recent high profile cases of black men being killed by police officers, for reasons justified or unjustified, have ignited a slow burning fury within their community. The outrage that has emanated from the failure to hold anyone accountable for even more black lives lost has reached a tipping point.

Although the focus has been on Mike Brown, and certainly there are many who disagree with the grand jury's failure to indict, perhaps what the community is really protesting about is not simply a young man who was gunned down by a police officer, but decades of systemic targeting and destruction of their communities. This is not to confuse the issue with Darren Wilson's guilt or innocence or the actions that led up to Mike Brown's demise, but to say that there are much larger, long simmering issues at play here than just the death of one more black man.

The heavily militarized response from the police in trying to quell the demonstrations arising from Mike Brown's case brings to light yet another troubling trend in modern day policing and one in which I intend to shed more light on in Part 2 of 3 of this mini-series examining the state of policing today.

In part 2 I will take a look at how the Global War on Terror has led to the militarization of our police and painted America as a battleground and how that relates to the violence that happened in Ferguson. In part 3, we'll look at ways to move forward and possible alternatives to the government monopolized police system. Stay tuned for more good stuff to come!

I Shopped on Thanksgiving Day and Don't Feel One Bit Guilty

Yeah, I shopped today. My husband found some extra money tucked away, long forgotten about and wanted to buy me an early Christmas present from Bass Pro Shops. It was actually a pleasant experience. Much more pleasant, I presume, than being forced to wait until Black Friday to go shopping.

 We didn't have any family obligations until later in the afternoon so we went over late in the morning. We didn't have to fight our way through horrible holiday bottlenecks near the retail centers as traffic was light. While there were a number of shoppers there, it was not packed and I didn't have to push and shove my way around. We got service right away. I even asked a few associates who worked there how they felt about having to work on Thanksgiving Day. Most of them just shrugged. Nobody seemed particularly excited by it but then again, they all said that no matter what job they had, in their line of work they would have to work the holiday regardless. They all balked when I suggested they could quit and find another job that didn't "force" them to work the holiday.

I've seen just about as many posts as I can take from people decrying all these evil big box stores for opening up on Thanksgiving Day and "forcing" their workers to come into work to earn shitty wages rather than be able to spend time at home with loved ones.

I hate to say it, but I'm primarily seeing this from the liberal busybody do-gooders who seem to know what's best for everyone. This ire seems to be only directed at the perceived "evil", corporate, big box stores like Walmart, Target, Best Buy, JC Penney, and so forth. Apparently, these inherently evil corporations are even more evil for pushing consumerism to boost their profits on a day that should be dedicated to family for the celebration of a holiday that is also very racist and shouldn't be worshiped, according to some of the same people.

I think what irks me the most about this is how these people just automatically seem to know that these retailers are acting greedily and that every single person who was "forced" to work on a holiday hates it, is somehow being forced to act against her will, and would much rather be spending a whole day with their family carving turkeys and making polite conversation with relatives they see but once or twice a year.

My first job in high school was at a local supermarket. We were open for half the day on Thanksgiving days for those shoppers who needed last minute items. We closed early at around 2pm and it was always known that either my brother or I (we worked at the same place) would be working that day. I wanted to work on Thanksgiving because it was always very busy and I might make a few extra dollars in tips. At that age, I always appreciated the opportunity to make more money. We typically planned Thanksgiving around those shifts and didn't start dinner until 3pm or later. No harm, no foul. My mother never got mad at the supermarket for "forcing" me to work rather than allow me to spend the day at home. In fact, she liked it because it allowed me to make that much more money to be able to pay for gas for my car or insurance and take some of the burden off of her. And, at the end of the day, we still got to have a lovely meal together and quality time with one another. Win-win for all!

I was never "forced" to work. I was never threatened with my job if I refused to work due to family obligations. I was not kidnapped from my home in an unmarked van and ferried to work by my employers. Any of the employees who requested the time off got the time off and judging from the number of people who shopped there that day (we were always slammed) there was clearly some perceived value in our being open to accommodate these last minute shoppers. Was my employer, a regional chain supermarket, greedy and profiting off of consumerism? Was it tearing the family unit apart by trying to make a buck off of people's forgetfulness or procrastination? Hardly.

Not only did I go shopping today, I also went to a restaurant to eat Thanksgiving dinner. None of us have a permanent home in the area so nobody was equipped to prepare a large Thanksgiving dinner. I was thankful that there was a restaurant in the area offering a nice Thanksgiving buffet with all the traditional dishes one would expect in order to serve those of us who, for whatever reason, couldn't do a home cooked meal. Does that make me greedy for "forcing" those servers to work to satisfy my desire for a nice, traditional meal with family? I should think not.

I asked one of the staff at the carving station how he felt about working on Thanksgiving and he said he didn't mind at all. He said he'd been in the business for 40 years and it was expected and that there was plenty of time later in the day to spend time with family. Our server informed us she only started working there a few days ago. While I didn't ask her directly how she felt about working that day, presumably she would not have chosen to start work there if she was too terribly upset about having to work on a holiday.

These same arguments don't seem to apply to the numerous other professions that are required to work on holidays. Healthcare professionals, civil servants, soldiers, and other people whose work is seen as "necessary" are exempt whereas retail shops are not. The arguments also don't seem to apply to small businesses. I saw many small businesses open today but apparently it's okay for a small surf shop on the beach to be open and make someone come in to work to sell beachwear but not okay for Target to do the same? It's okay to go to the movie theater and make someone pop my popcorn so I can sit mindlessly in front of a huge screen filling my head with pretty pictures that make already rich people richer but it's not okay for Walmart to be open and selling products to people who might not even be celebrating Thanksgiving? It's okay for bars to be open for people to get drunk at but not okay for Best Buy to be open to sell a camera to a guy who forgot his so he could document his day with family? It's ok for concession workers and ticket takers to have to work football games but it's not okay for Sears to be open? I hope you're boycotting watching those football games as well in solidarity with the poor staff that are forced to work on a holiday.

By this same token, shouldn't we decry businesses for being open at odd hours on non-holidays? We should boycott every business that's open past 7pm because people should be at home with their family at that time, not having to work a shitty job at shitty hours. We should never frequent a fast food joint at 3am to get some drunk food because that is demeaning to the workers who have to stay up late to make it for us instead of spend quality time at home. We also shouldn't go shopping on Sundays because that's the Lord's day and we're supposed to be at rest, not forcing the rest of the world into godlessness by our endless consumer greed and making them work on the Sabbath.

The point is, we can't know for sure that we know what's best for these people. We cannot make a value judgement on the situation as a whole and apply it to every individual who is in that situation. We cannot substitute our judgement for theirs. Some people choose to work this day. Some people prefer the option of being able to make more money than not being able to. Some people don't have family around and are lonely and work keeps their mind occupied. We can't know, we don't know, and we shouldn't presume to know what's best for these people who are being "forced" to work on a holiday. And if you're going to get uppity about it, at least be consistent in how you direct your anger.

Just remember, none of these "evil corporations" held a gun to their employees' heads and kidnapped them from their homes kicking and screaming to "force" them to work today. Government is the only entity that's legally allowed to force people at the barrel of a gun to do things they wouldn't otherwise do (like purchase health insurance they don't want or need). No matter how much you hate corporations, even they can't do that, not even on Thanksgiving. 

Who's Afraid of a Little Competition?

More people than you think. In a recent article in Forbes magazine, Art Carden explains the difference between being pro-business and pro- free market. There are many businesses large and small along with just as many politicians who may take a pro-business stance but who are decidedly anti- free market.

Carden goes on to illustrate the difference between the two notions:

"A private company wants a patch of ground on which to build a hotel, a grocery store, a shopping center, or an office building. The “pro-business” solution is to seize the land via eminent domain and claim that the increased tax revenue is a public benefit (if increased tax revenue is going to be our standard, why don’t we compel labor force participation and make everyone sell their property to special interests?). The free market solution says “if the owner will sell to you, it’s yours, but don’t expect to be able to get government officials with guns to go get it for you.”

Pro-business essentially means making laws or implementing regulations that will benefit one business or industry at the expense of another. This is also known as picking winners and losers in the marketplace. Rather than not providing any government favors or assistance whatsoever and letting the market i.e. consumers, decide which products and services are worthwhile, governments instead substitute their judgement for the judgement of the consumers.

Businesses themselves often try and work counter to the free market by lobbying the government to write laws or regulations that will benefit them at the expense of some of their competitors. If one wonders how we get money out of politics, one must look to the source of why there is money in politics in the first place. In his succinctly classic book, The Law, French philosopher Frederic Bastiat put his thumb on the problem two and a half centuries ago.

"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve… But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn’t belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish that law without delay - No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic.”

When we turn the law from an instrument of merely protecting property into an instrument of plunder, "...then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder.”

We see this today in modern examples. I've mentioned  before the plight of new ride sharing apps like Uber and Lyft who are being prohibited from operating in certain states and jurisdictions. In many cases this is due to the taxi cab industry lobbying the government to erect laws preventing any competition from entering into the market. This benefits the taxi cabs at the expense of these new start-ups and at the expense of the consumers yet nonetheless it could still be construed as a "pro-business" maneuver by legislators.

Similarly, the popular accommodations provider, Airbnb, has come under fire in many large cities. There are certainly some legal fig leaves that give complaints about such businesses an air of credibility, but at the heart of it you can be sure to find the powerful hotel lobby amongst many others behind the scenes creating a stink trying to get legislators to "do something" about this pesky new business model that is causing them to lose business.

One will often hear liberals and progressives cry for tougher regulations on corporations and industries that have come under fire for one reason or another. They often call for these regulations in a misguided attempt to try and diminish the power of these corporations (who run our lives, dontchyaknow?) without realizing that many regulations actually benefit the largest corporations at the expense of smaller businesses.

Think about it, if you're Walmart or Amazon, industry giants, and the government slaps another regulation on that industry, closing a tax loophole, for instance, which will increase the cost of compliance and cause a monumental increase in paperwork to be filed for the regulatory agencies, who do you think is going to feel the brunt of this regulation the most? Will it be Walmart with billions of dollars in sales or will it be a smaller competitor, perhaps a local chain trying to go national that is still operating under thin margins while trying to gain a foothold in the industry? In the end, sure Walmart might have to pay extra to file their paperwork but it will hardly be a dent in their bottom line whereas the same regulation might be acutely felt and even completely stifle any growth of a potential competitor. In trying to diminish the power of a corporate giant, some of these regulations have the complete opposite effect which is to make competition imminently more expensive and cost prohibitive for smaller businesses thereby stifling competition.

It is no accident that after the passage of Dodd-Frank in the wake of the financial crisis, a leviathan of a bill with over 2,000 pages of legalese, that the Too Big To Fail banks the bill was intended to regulate are now even bigger than they were five years ago and the number of banks in America is at an all time record low.

Industry giants are very aware of this regulatory phenomenon and, believe it or not, are actually often the source of government lobbying for increased regulations. A very clever way of increasing market share while giving the appearance of trying to be responsible corporate entities.

It is important we remember these differences and allow the free market to let new businesses freely enter and exit the business arena. We all benefit from this by increased consumer choice, more job/income opportunities, a better allocation of tax dollars, and better uses of resources. Who's afraid of a little competition? It turns out, quite a lot of people. Competition is cutthroat, as anyone who pays attention to sports knows, but it is also the vehicle through which improvements, innovations, and advancements are made. Rather than fear it and try and regulate and legislate competition out of existence, we should embrace it and welcome the advancements that emerge when businesses are forced to legitimately compete in the marketplace of ideas. 

American Foreign Policy: Clear as Mud

Once again, I apologize for my lack of posts. I've been on vacation in Alaska, Montana, and a few other places for the past month with limited time and internet capabilities. I have, nonetheless, been more or less keeping abreast of current events even though I haven't had the opportunity to write more than a paragraph on Facebook every once in awhile about the #facepalm inducing news bit du jour.

The one topic that I keep coming back to is the idiocy of our foreign policy. I don't know how much clearer it could be about how muddy and confused our actions abroad actually are. A year ago we were talking about arming and funding some so-called "moderate" rebels in their fight against Assad, supposedly the next Hitler in the making and the Emmanuel Goldstein of the day that our dear leaders wanted us to direct our 2 minutes of hate toward at that time.

 Of course, we knew then that it was folly to arm these people despite the screeches from the Usual Suspects in Congress and our news media. Independent journalist Ben Swann did an in-depth look at who these rebels are that have supposedly been vetted and approved to receive US arms. He documented before any other major news network the arming of the "moderate" FSA rebels who then would take their US supplied arms and defect to the even more radical Al-Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria, who were also fighting to oust Assad. In other words, we were on the same side as al-Qaeda, the same people who we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting in Afghanistan and elsewhere, in their fight to oust Syrian leader Assad. I documented this unfortunate turn of events as it was happening when I first started this blog. To say that this whole quagmire in Syria was entirely predictable is an understatement.

Now we're trying to fight a multi-front war against ISIS and the Assad regime, who is and has been fighting these uber-radicals while we were trying to take him down last year. To be clear, we're trying to partner with the same guy who was last year's Hitler to take out this year's Hitler before we eventually get back to ousting last year's Hitler again. Clear as mud, right?

But, but, ISIS is an existential threat to the US so we have to go to war this time or face being obliterated! Really? Let's put the emotion, propaganda, and hyperbole aside for a minute and get rational about this. Bruce Fein came out with an excellent piece not too long ago spelling out exactly what kind of threat ISIS is to the US.

"From President Obama on the left to Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham on the right, we are absurdly told that ISIS is a clear and present danger to Americans at home, including the installation of a caliphate to cram sharia law down our throats. Any high school student who made such an hallucinogenic assertion would receive a flunking grade. ISIS‘ military capability is at most an ink blot compared to the United States.

 We have approximately 300 deployable battlefield ships — including aircraft carriers and submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, complemented by 3,700 naval aircraft. ISIS has none. The U.S. Air Force can field approximately 6,000 aircraft with a capability of dropping nuclear bombs. ISIS has no aircraft. The United States possesses approximately 4,800 nuclear warheads. ISIS has none. The number of military personnel in the U.S. armed forces approximates 1.4 million. ISIS adherents approximate 15,000, although the number is soft. There is no agreed understanding of the earmarks of an ISIS member. The United States sports 450 active ballistic missiles. ISIS has none. The annual budget for the U.S. Department of Defense approximates $640 billion. ISIS‘ annual revenues approximate $2 billion. The U.S. population approximates 320 million. The number of persons under ISIS control approximates 2.8 million. The United States occupies 3,717, 813 square miles. ISIS controls 13,000 square miles. The United States has been engaged in perpetual global warfare since 9/11, or 13 years. ISIS is 3 years old."

 Are we really terrified of being wiped out and our political system overtaken by a group of ragtag cave dwellers who have no air force, no navy, and little funding to speak of in comparison to the US? We have enough nuclear fire power to destroy the world three times over and yet we claim to be threatened by these guys? Are they brutal and inhumane in their tactics? Unequivocally, yes. But are they an existential threat to the US that demands we take immediate action in defiance of US and international law? Absolutely not.

But, but, 9/11! Oh yes. How could we forget The Incident That Justifies the Shredding of the Constitution and All Foreign Policy Actions Everywhere Abroad For Ever and Ever Amen? A commonly heard defense of our foreign policy for the last 13 years and even now for our current undertaking is that they attacked us first so we have every justification to go after them for what they did to us.

Yes, the loss of 3,000 lives on American soil is and was a national tragedy. We set out to get the perpetrators of that tragedy, who we were told was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. We were then lied into another war with Iraq. We killed Saddam Hussein and finally nailed bin Laden. After funding and training the Iraqi army for several years, we were told "Mission Accomplished" for a second time. In the meantime, we killed several hundred thousand Iraqis (estimates wildly vary with upper estimates above a million but I think we can safely split the difference between a million and only a couple hundred thousand).

Please explain to me how their killing of 3000 of our citizens is an atrocity but our killing several hundred thousand people spread out over several countries is somehow ok? Given the level of anger still evidenced by many over the senseless murder of 3000 Americans over 13 years ago, can you not imagine the anger these Middle Easterners feel towards us over the murder of millions of their brothers, sisters, fathers, daughters, and sons over the past few decades? Can you imagine if these radicals went on air and said that the death of 500,000 Americans was "worth it" to advance their cause like Madeleine Albright so cavalierly declared back in the 90s after US sanctions were found to have been responsible for the deaths of almost 500,000 Iraqi children? If we are still incensed over the deaths of 3000 innocent Americans 13 years ago, can we not take a moment to imagine the depths of their anger and grief over the deaths of over 100 times as many people? And yet our only solution to improve the situation and assuage the anger of a bunch of backward ass radicals with barely a pot to piss in let alone a substantial army that can do any sort of significant damage to the US homeland is to keep dropping more bombs on them? How in the world do we think that is going to solve anything? Violence begets violence. It works on a macro level every bit as much as it does on a micro level. In the eyes of our overlords, though, if it didn't work the first two times and 24 years we tried it, we just need to go on trying it again. Kind of like QE, but I digress...

Which brings me to my final point. Let us recall, and I know this is extremely unfashionable but I must point it out, that our Constitution places war-making powers explicitly in the hands of the US Congress. In other words, the president, despite being Commander-In-Chief cannot unilaterally decide to send us into battle based on his say-so alone.

However, we find ourselves in a situation, yet again, where our president, this time a Nobel Peace Prize winning Democrat, is unilaterally launching bombing attacks on sovereign nations without any sort of debate or authorization from Congress (of course, he did this with Libya as well but that was humanitarian, you see, and the Constitution has an exception for war-making powers if done for humanitarian reasons. It's right there next to the "muskets and hunting" clause of the 2nd amendment).

Oh the president believes he has authorization. He has brazenly asserted that the 2001 AUMF that authorized George W. Bush to go after those who perpetrated the attacks on 9/11 somehow also gives authorization to bomb ISIS in Syria and Iraq (again) for beheading some American journalists. This is flimsy because it's been well documented that ISIS was kicked out of al-Qaeda for being even too extreme for them. Additionally, with OBL dead and most of the other leaders of the al-Qaeda branches responsible for planning 9/11 dead or behind bars, trying to somehow tie ISIS into being perpetrators or associated forces of those responsible for 9/11 is nothing more than wishful thinking on the Obama administration's part.

Fortunately for Obama and his law-bending minions, the United States Congress is nothing but a bunch of spineless windbags who are more concerned about getting re-elected than, you know, upholding their oath to support and defend the US Constitution where it clearly states that it is up to them to give authority for the president to go to war, not vice versa. But getting re-elected in November is way more important than reconvening Congress to do the right thing and debate this supposed ISIS threat and decide on a plausible plan of action, if any, and allocate what funds they might want to defeating this threat. Blank checks and blanket authorizations all the way!

The hypocrisy of people on both sides of the aisle is as thick as mud. On the left, you have the same people who were marching in the streets by the thousands against Bush's illegal wars who are now cheerleading Obama's same antics. This, of course, could have been said for his equally illegal intervention in Libya but somehow when you bundle a war in the fuzzy blanket of "responsibility to protect" then liberals don't seem to mind. They chastised Bush for the debt incurred based on his illegal wars and yet won't utter a peep about the tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars a prolonged war against the shadowy enemy ISIS might incur. Interestingly, anytime I try and point these things out to liberals all I hear back is silence or a changing of the subject. I even had a friend bring up the tired and debunked "racist" epithet in response to an article I posted from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. I swiftly replied, "Yet strangely he's the only game in town that doesn't want to keep bombing brown people. Get a new argument." Yes, off in liberal la-la-land, the man who has bombed 7 countries, all of them in the Middle East and Africa, is a savior and the one who has decried every one of the bombings is somehow a racist.

Not to be one-sided about things, the right is rife with hypocrisy in this matter too, of course. They're the ones who scream and rant every time Obama takes unilateral action in domestic matters, bypassing Congress to write executive orders, or just ignoring the laws he doesn't want to enforce. They liken his presidency to a monarchy by referring to him as "King Obama". They like to think they're taking the high road by occasionally paying lip service to the Constitution every once in awhile, like in the case of Obamacare, but boy, when it comes to foreign policy, they have no problem with Obama, like his predecessor, playing judge, jury, and executioner. Naturally, they still criticize Obama, but not on Constitutional matters. No, for them he hasn't acted soon enough or decisively enough. He's "leading from behind". He's showing weakness to our enemies. All of a sudden, the Constitution goes out the window. Constitution? What Constitution? "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!", John McCain jokingly sung to the tune of the popular Beach Boys tune, Barbara Ann.

When this newest war blows up in our face down the road as it inevitably will, you'll get to watch the grand charade of our elected officials flood the airwaves and talk about the dodgy intelligence, the weak legal basis for going to war, how expensive the war has gotten, and feign anger at the administration's handling of the war. But just remember that when it mattered most, right now at the genesis of Iraq 3.0, they were all too happy to sit on the sidelines like it was a spectator sport and avoid their Constitutional responsibility to debate and authorize any action the president could or should take in response to this regional threat. That's our foreign policy in a nutshell: clear as mud.

In Defense of Capitalism

I made the mistake of commenting on an article I saw on Facebook the other day. For the most part, I've more or less learned to refrain from getting into arguments with strangers over Facebook or through the comment sections of articles I read. You have about as good a chance of convincing these people of the righteousness of your argument as you do in convincing Liberace that sequins and gold don't have to be wardrobe staples.

Alas, I have a fatal flaw, though, in that if I see stupid in the world, I feel the need to try and correct it. Hence this blog. Hence my futile efforts at trying to convince some avowed socialists that capitalism, far from being the cause of world poverty and hunger, has actually done more than any other system known to man to lift people and countries out of poverty.

The title of the article was Capitalism and Global Poverty: Two Billion Poor, One Billion Hungry and the little preview snippet of the article read, "The report describes the conditions produced by capitalism—mass poverty, deprivation, social injustice, inequality, oppression—but makes no reference to capitalism. There is simply no mention of the economic system under which the world’s population lives, and thus no discussion of any alternative." Oy vey.

Enter Haley, stage left: "Sorry, wrong. Capitalism has brought more people out of poverty than any other system. Bread lines don't happen under capitalism. Food shortages don't happen under capitalism. Millions and millions of people starved and died under the communist and socialist regimes of China and Russia. Venezuela is lacking basic necessities under their socialist regime. Sorry, you can't blame capitalism for hunger and poverty unless you bastardize the definition of capitalism."

Then the stupid comes: "I believe that polls show that majorities in 'liberated' Warsaw Pact countries miss communism. They thought it was bad - until they experienced predatory capitalism..." I'd like to see these polls and talk to some of those Chinese and Russians who lived under Mao and Stalin and see if they really did enjoy living under those regimes more than current ones. 

This guy here really lets me have it: "Why is that always ignorant people defend capitalism with a counter argument of communism? have you personally ever lived in a real communist country? I gusse not, I am sure you have not even been across the state line." Yeah, sure, as I write this from the Bahamas. And fortunately, no, I haven't ever lived in a real communist country as there are hardly any left in existence anymore because people have figured out that it doesn't work!

Not only does it not work, if only it were as simple as "Oops, this didn't work. Let's try something else." No, when socialism and communism fail, they take millions and millions of people down with it. In fact, apart from WWI and WWII, deaths due to communism and socialism were the greatest cause of death than any other cause in the 20th century. It's estimated that 85-100 million people died under these regimes. How are we even debating this? How are people still even thinking that socialism might be more ideal than capitalism? When capitalism fails (and of course these failures are due to government intervention) mass deaths do not happen. Worst case scenario: greedy companies run shady businesses that bilk people out of their life savings. Irrefutably immoral and reprehensible, but millions of people do not die as a consequence. Moderate case scenario: You can't afford an iPhone 5 and instead have to get the Sprint smart phone instead. Oh the horrors of capitalism.

People aren't literally starving to death in countries where they have a relatively free market. People aren't risking their lives on makeshift rafts trying to get away from their oppressive capitalist country for the shores of their communist neighbor. No! People are seeking out freedom, which is what capitalism, in its pure form at least, represents. Even in its bastardized, corporatist form that we experience today, the results are still better than they ever were under socialism. 

I know there are tomes of economic texts out there and you can find any multitude of economists to support your chosen economic system, but let's put this as simply as possible. Capitalism is referred to as the free market, with "free" being the operative word here. You have a boat. I wish to buy a boat. We trade your boat for my money and bingo! That's the free market. There's no force or coercion involved to complete the transaction. We are both better off because of the transaction or else the transaction never would have occurred. I would have kept my money and spent it on something else and you would have sold your boat to someone else if one of us were unhappy with the terms of the sale. Multiply millions of transactions like this everyday and you have the flourishing of a system where people mutually benefit by acting on behalf of their own self interests. This is how our fledgling country developed from nothing to a world superpower in just over a century.

The problems arise when government starts trying to interfere with these freely entered into arrangements. Take the current example of Uber, for instance. Uber is a popular ride sharing enterprise that is starting to displace taxicabs because of its convenience and affordability. Here you have a person or enterprise trying to bring a service to the market, to fulfill a need or a void in the marketplace that they thought the taxicabs weren't filling. On the other hand, you have tens of thousands of willing customers who have found their business model to be much more appealing than the traditional taxicab and have chosen to spend their money freely with Uber. Everyone wins, right? Wrong. Despite this freely entered into business transaction, the government in some states and cities has felt the need to try and ban Uber or severely limit their business. This is a lose-lose. The entrepreneur loses out on potential income and the consumer loses out on a cheaper, more efficient mode of transportation. The only winner in this equation is the taxi cab cabal who has successfully lobbied the government to drive out their competition. Innovation and ingenuity has been stifled. The government flashed the gun hidden underneath its cloak using the implied threat of violence in order to quash this business venture and bestow favor upon another business or industry. 

Therein lies the problem with systems that rely on an excessive amount of government control. The government's only tool is its monopoly on violence and its implied threats thereof. That's why the communist and socialist regimes of the 20th century had such catastrophic results. Not only because these governments presumed to be above the laws of economics, as if they could avoid those laws anymore than they could avoid the laws of gravity, which had disastrous effects on supply and demand causing shortages of daily necessities resulting in mass famine amongst other things, but because their massive overreach into their economies and the free market required violence to subvert the free will of its citizens. 

It was because of these -what should be obvious- facts that I felt the need to go drop some truth bombs on these severely misguided people. As expected, I'm quite certain I failed to persuade anyone to step into the light. That won't keep me from trying, however. As Ron Paul has famously said, "Speak up, speak often and don't worry about those that at this point cannot understand as they can never un-hear what we tell them." 

As for those who are open to learning more about the free market, capitalism, economics, and history, I have a few recommendations all brought to you by the indispensable Tom Woods who, apart from Ron Paul, is by far my favorite figure in the liberty movement. 

For an introductory tidbit that requires minimal time commitment, I offer a brilliant speech that Tom Woods gave in defense of capitalism called "Why Economic Freedom? Here's Why": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnS2OtzSTq0

If you want to delve a little deeper, any of Tom Woods's books are worth reading but in particular regarding this topic I would recommend Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse.  

And lastly, for an invaluable resource at a phenomenal price, there is the Tom Woods's Liberty Classroom: The History and Economics They Didn't Teach You. This gives you a high school or beginning college level introduction to many topics taught by actual university professors. Some of the classes include: The American Revolution, History of Political Thought, Austrian Economics Step-By-Step, U.S. History, and Introduction to Logic. Additionally, each course has a corresponding forum where you can ask the professors questions and get clarification on some of the lectures being taught. They also do a monthly webinar with the professors where you can ask your questions and have them answered live on the spot. How much would you pay to get similar courses and access in college? $5000/year? Would you believe that Liberty Classroom will only cost you 1% of that amount? For the mathematically challenged like me, that's 50 bucks. Fifty dollars gets you an awesome introductory education on topics that are more relevant than ever so you can go into a Facebook debate armed with information, for whatever good it will do you ;) A superb value if I ever saw one. 



 





 

How Foolish Will We Be?

I'm baaack!

Sorry for the long hiatus, folks. Work gets in the way of what I really want to do and to be honest, I've been a tad apathetic recently towards politics. I'm a bit scandaled out, if you know what I'm saying.

Nonetheless, if there is one issue that will bring me out of the woodwork, it is the war issue. As it stands, somehow it seems we are now poised to enter into Iraq War 2.0 (or 3.0 if we go all the way back to the 90s). Why can we not just leave this country alone? What is so dang important over there that we've dedicated two and a half decades, over $2 trillion dollars, thousands of American lives, and over a million dead or displaced Iraqis, 500,000 of whom were children under the age of 5 that, we cannot remind you too often, Madeleine Albright once so cavalierly proclaimed were "worth it"?

Yet these architects of destruction, the ones who went out and either told bald-faced lies or were just grossly misguided, are back on the stump trying to get us to go back in and finish the job. Here's a novel idea, if you're in politics and you get something wrong, like way wrong, you don't get to still consider yourself an expert or any sort of authority on the subject which you completely screwed up. Republicans always like to compare government to the private sector by saying things like, "If a private enterprise ever went 50% over budget and didn't produce results, someone would be fired." Well what about if a private company went over budget by $1.9 trillion dollars and about 8 years? Someone would be fired, sued, and maybe even in jail. But, Washington being Washington, the more wrong you are about something the more of the spotlight they tend to give you (Paul Krugman and Ben Bernanke, I'm looking at you).

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show did an epic segment highlighting just how wrong Dick Cheney and his ilk have been on this whole Iraq situation. I hardly pay any attention to The Daily Show anymore but he nails it in this piece, "Now That's What I Call Being Completely F*cking Wrong About Iraq!"

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

What gives me a glimmer of hope now is how many right wing commentators who previously supported the Iraq war as sold to us in the Bush years are now calling Cheney and his cronies out for being wrong about Iraq. They recognize the war as a folly and realize that despite our supposed good intentions, the cost is too great. Megyn Kelly of Fox News took Dick Cheney to task for his role of promoting the Iraq War admonishing him that "...time and time again history has proven that you got it wrong in Iraq as well, sir".

Glenn Beck has also come out in opposition of the Iraq war. In a lengthy monologue on his radio show, Beck had this to say:

Now, in spite of the things I felt at the time when we went into war, liberals said: We shouldn’t get involved. We shouldn’t nation-build. And there was no indication the people of Iraq had the will to be free. I thought that was insulting at the time. Everybody wants to be free. They said we couldn’t force freedom on people. Let me lead with my mistakes. You are right. Liberals, you were right. We shouldn’t have.

Now, if you believed those things, let me say: You were right. If you were just using it for political purposes, well, we don’t have anything in common, But if you really believe those things, I would like to have a conversation with you now to find out exactly how you came to terms with that – especially being a progressive. If you know the history of the progressive movement, it was Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson that started imposing democracy in South America. The reason why South America is just loaded with communists is because we put a lot of them in. That’s the progressive ideal.

But I agree with you: You cannot force democracy on the Iraqis or anybody else. It doesn’t work. They don’t understand it or even really want it. They may be too immersed in their own belief of Sharia Law to embrace liberty or at least at this time. If people vote for Sharia Law, they vote for Sharia Law. We tried. What can we do? We have lost thousands of American lives. We have lost thousands of lives on the Iraqi side and tens of thousands have been wounded. We have spent $2 trillion – say that again – $2 trillion, and upwards of 200,000 Iraqi citizens, aid workers, insurgents have been killed. That’s the conservative number. Liberals will tell you it’s almost 1 million people. I don’t know what the number is, but after all of that, hundreds of thousands of lives, $2 trillion, the best minds in the world trying to do it, it’s about to fall apart...

But, anyway, all of that is gone. And yet, this is something I think that we can come together with, on the right and the left. And it’s this – I have more of a chance of hacking off my loyal listeners and audience by saying this, but so be it: Not one more life. Not one more life. Not one more dollar, not one more airplane, not one more bullet, not one more Marine, not one more arm or leg or eye. Not one more.

The people of Iraq have got to work this out themselves. Our days of being the world’s policemen, our days of interventionists is over. If we are directly attacked, so be it. But this must end now.

Bam! What a change of tune from the Glenn Beck of old. The cherry on top, however, is the conservative standard himself, Ronald Reagan's son, Michael, coming out and apologizing for his support of the Iraq war in the early days, “As a conservative who supported the war in Iraq and my president, I apologize to all of the families of those killed or wounded in Iraq. Going to war in Iraq seemed so right at the time. But I didn’t think it through and neither did Washington. Next time, I promise I’ll know better.”

So what's wrong with the rest of the world? I've had many conversations with people who still don't see what the hubabaloo is, who don't believe that the Bush/Cheney administration lied, who believe that there were WMDs but that they were moved to Syria or we just didn't have enough time to find them, that Iraq was harboring terrorists, that they were training al-Qaeda, and pretty much every other lie trotted out to sell us the Iraq war.

Let me tell you something, even as a young, naive 20 year old college student I could see through the bullshit a mile away. When your president can't give you one good reason and instead has to sell you on 4 mediocre (read: BS) ones, that's not a good enough reason to waste lives or money to go to war. Clearly that does not represent an imminent threat.

Will we make the same mistake again by further immersing ourselves in a region that has been in conflict for a millennium? Do we have the hubris to believe that we can swoop in and magically solve a problem that they haven't been able to solve themselves in almost their entire history? Does "finishing the job" mean we leave troops there always and forever until there is peace in the Middle East, even if that doesn't look likely within this century? Does any of this have anything to do with national security or is it just in our national interests (they are not one and the same)?

Fortunately, there are some in the Republican party, like Rand Paul, who are trying to wrest control of the party away from neocon and uber hawk stalwarts like John McCain and Lindsey Graham and return it to the conservative principles upon which it was founded, not the bloated, multi-tentacled monster wreaking havoc abroad and squeezing us at home but which we're still told represents GOP-style "small government". Rand has been doing the rounds urging a more sensible foreign policy based on Constitutional principles and Congressional oversight. Will we see the return of the anti-war left, missing since 2008, finally stepping up again and allying with their libertarian counterparts to prevent further folly? Will sounder minds prevail or will we be once again bamboozled by our dear leaders into wasting another few hundred billion dollars and putting lives at risk for a region that has no desire to fight for freedom on their own? Like the saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." How foolish will we be?