Lew Rockwell: Who Commissioned the US To Remake the World?

Pat Buchanan writes that...

If America wishes to lead the world, let us do it by example, as we once did, not by hectoring every nation on earth to adopt the American way, which as of now, does not seem to be working all that well for Americans.

 Jefferson had it right, "We wish not to meddle with the internal affairs of any country."

The State of the Union: Just Another Reality Show by Charles Goyette

Charles Goyette, on Lew Rockwell's #1 Libertarian websites, states that...

India and Iran have agreed to end-run the U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran.

They will use gold to do so.

Those sanctions, which have now been agreed to by the European Union as well, will ratchet up in July. Their enforcement means that banks and financial institutions involved in oil transactions with Iran will be barred from doing any business with financial institutions in the United States and Europe.

According DEBKAfile, a news source based in Israel, Iran has taken steps to bypass American and European banks and their currency desks altogether, agreeing instead to sell its oil to India for gold. China is expected to soon agree to use gold in buying oil from Iran as well. It's a move that would leave the long-standing global dollar pricing of petroleum in tatters.

The gold-for-oil agreement means three things:

1. It hastens the unwinding of the U.S. dollar's global reserve currency status.
The rest of the world is actively developing alternatives to the U.S. dollar. Although it will mean a falling standard of living for the American people, U.S. policies and secretaries of state, like Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, have spurred what will become a stampede away from the dollar. DEBKAfile also reports that both China and Russia have secret mechanisms already in place to pay Iran in non-dollar currencies for its oil. And only a month ago, China and Japan, the world's second- and third-largest economies, agreed to develop direct yen/yuan trading, forgoing the dollar as the reserve currency intermediary.

2. It accelerates the global monetization of gold.
Both China and India have been aggressively adding to their gold reserves. Other countries are following suit. The Keynesians, who have been in charge of American monetary policy, having destroyed the value of the dollar and enabled our ruinous debt, may actually believe that gold is a "barbarous relic." But it is clear that their opinions have little functional value in the real world. The world is turning to gold more and more as U.S. debt continues to mount. Indeed, is there a better alternative monetary unit to be found? Certainly, it's not the euro. Jim Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer says gold is the only answer to the question, "if not the dollar, then what?"

3. It reveals the growing global impotence of the U.S.

Long able to enforce reluctant countries to adhere in its missions and embargoes around the world, the U.S. is finding its will frustrated. Nations that once had to weigh the favor of the U.S. against their own commercial and domestic political interests are increasingly ignoring the global dictates of the U.S. State Department. In 2003, Turkey, where the prospect of a U.S. invasion of Iraq was wildly unpopular, refused even bribes to allow the U.S. to stage the invasion from its soil. Today, the threat of a U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran is meeting with growing disapproval, especially from countries like China and India rely heavily on Iranian oil.

I'm having an identity crisis...

For the past two decades, I identified myself as a Republican. I have voted Republican my entire political life. I even showed up in 2008 (holding my nose mind you) and voted for John McCain.

I was introduced to Ron Paul during the 2008 election, and for any of you who check this blog on a daily basis, you can easily see I am still a huge fan. I am drawn to a foreign policy of non-intervention, the idea that we have responsibility for our own freedom in this country, and the philosophy of fair taxation to all Americans.

During this GOP election process, I have seen a paradigm shift inside of me. I am still a huge supporter of Ron Paul. But watching how he has been treated by not only the media, but by his "fellow" party members,  my eyes have been opened.  My eyes see a GOP establishment that wants power by any means.  Power through a flip-flopping moderate such as Romney (aka, Ken doll).  Power through a lobbying, moral hypocrite and chicken hawk such as Newt (not to mention the fact that he's just plain mean). Power through a denying former lobbyist and war-monger such as Santorum (he looks like an 8 year old trying to wear his daddy's suit). The GOP is willing to run over anyone that gets in their way, including Ron Paulites and even their own base.  I don't want another hypocritical, neo-con who keeps raising the debt.  Bush was scary, scary indeed.

I'm seeing reruns of the 2000 elections:  anyone but that lying, cheating Clinton.  But as I look back, the Clinton years don't look so bad.  Taxes were high, but we could afford it. Other countries looked to us in admiration (but not in fear), debt was down, and a booming economy surrounded us. Maybe I'm having an identity crisis.  I don't know who I am any more.  Am I a Republican?  Am I a Democrat?  Maybe I'm an Independent, trying to see the good in each party, wishing to see more options to my political views.  Heck, I have more options with my cell phone coverage, than I do in the "most democratic country in the world". Maybe a word for me is "disenfranchised".  A small part, being part of a larger group, but then that large group leaves me with a message I don't agree with. I'm harkened back to that old Ronald Reagan saying..."I didn't leave the Democrat party, it left me".

Maybe the Republican party has left me.

I realize that Ron Paul will not become president. I'm a realist, and I've accepted this. But my other options for the presidential GOP nominations are deplorable.  Newt?  Romney?  Santorum?  No way to all of the above. These are the best candidates the Republican party has to offer up?

What all of this has caused me to do is take a closer look at my only other option (besides not voting, of course):  Obama.  Who is this quiet President we have? Andrew Sullivan most recently pointed out in a Newsweek article that the Right calls him a socialist, the Left says he sucks up to Wall Street, and the Independents think he's a wimp. Prior to reading Andrew's article "The Long Game",  I would have agreed with all of the above. Maybe my greatest hesitation is that I do see Obama as the "other side of the fence".

But dear GOP, what option have you left me? 

Ron Paul Highlights in 1/19/2012 Presidential Debate

SOPA and PIPA

What is it about Ron Paul?

Youth for Ron Paul

Confession of a Former Rush Fan

What Happened to You, Rush?

Raising the Debt Limit

Ron Paul - War Propaganda

The Indefinite Detention Dishonor Roll

"Hope" Redefined

Uncovering the Costs of U.S. Troop Deployment

What a Big Government Conservative Looks Like

Erickson runs through Santorum’s voting record.  Here's some of it...

NEA

Voted for taxpayer funding of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Defense and Foreign Policy

Voted to require that Federal bureaucrats get the same payraises as uniformed military.
Voted against requiring Congressional authorization for military action in Bosnia.
Voted to give $25 million in foreign aid to North Korea

Nominations
Voted for Sonia Sotomayor, Circuit Judge

Labor
Voted against National Right to Work Act
Voted twice in support of Fedex Unionization

Guns

Voted to require pawn shops to do background checks on people who pawn a gun.

Reform

Voted twice for a Congressional payraise.
Voted for the Specter “backup plan” to allow campaign finance reform to survive if portions of the bill were found unconstitutional.

Immigration

Voted to give SSI benefits to legal aliens.
Voted to give welfare benefits to naturalized citizens without regard to to the earnings of their sponsors.

Taxes
Voted twice for internet taxes.

Waste
Voted to increase spending on social programs by $7 billion

Voted to make Medicare part B premium subsidies an new entitlement.
Voted against paying off the debt ($5.6 trillion at the time) within 30 years.
Voted to give $18 billion to the IMF.
Voted to raid Social Security instead of using surpluses to pay down the debt.

Education
Voted to increase spending for the Department of Education by $3.1 billion.

Fed Secretly Bailing Out Europe

Ron Paul, The Prophet

The Romney Con

CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief Endorses Rep. Ron Paul

Scheuer supports “founders’ foreign policy wisdom,” notes Revolution PAC.

 

Top Republican presidential contender U.S. Rep. Ron Paul has been endorsed by former head of the CIA’s “Bin Laden Unit” Michael Scheuer, reports Revolution PAC. In his endorsement, Scheuer backs Paul’s longstanding non-interventionist foreign policy views and warns of bankruptcy and increased hostility toward Americans both at home and abroad should current bipartisan foreign adventurism continue.

Scheuer writes, “Any other Republican candidate or a reelected Obama will keep lying to Americans by claiming that we are being attacked because of our liberties, gender-equality laws, and elections rather than because of Washington’s constant intervention in the Islamic world. This now two-decade-old lie – which is abetted by most of the media – has hidden from Americans the fact that all of the would-be Islamist attackers who have been captured in this country were motivated by the invasion of Iraq, U.S. support for Israel, or some other U.S. government action in the Muslim world.”

How Congress is Signing its own Arrest Warrants in the NDAA Citizen Arrest Bill

Naomi Wolf comments in her blog post, saying:

I never thought I would have to write this: but—incredibly—Congress has now passed the National Defense Appropriations Act, with Amendment 1031, which allows for the military detention of American citizens. The amendment is so loosely worded that any American citizen could be held without due process. The language of this bill can be read to assure Americans that they can challenge their detention — but most people do not realize what this means: at Guantanamo and in other military prisons, one’s lawyer’s calls are monitored, witnesses for one’s defense are not allowed to testify, and one can be forced into nudity and isolation. Incredibly, ninety-three Senators voted to support this bill and now most of Congress: a roster of names that will live in infamy in the history of our nation, and never be expunged from the dark column of the history books. 

Our leaders appear to be supporting this bill thinking that they will always be what they are now, in the fading light of a once-great democracy — those civilian leaders who safely and securely sit in freedom and DIRECT the military. In inhabiting this bubble, which their own actions are about to destroy, they are cocooned by an arrogance of power, placing their own security in jeopardy by their own hands, and ignoring history and its inevitable laws. 

Perhaps Congress assumes that it will always only be ‘they’ who are targeted for arrest and military detention: but sadly, Parliamentary leaders are the first to face pressure, threats, arrest and even violence when the military obtains to power to make civilian arrests and hold civilians in military facilities without due process. There is no exception to this rule. Just as I traveled the country four years ago warning against the introduction of torture and secret prisons – and confidently offering a hundred thousand dollar reward to anyone who could name a nation that allowed torture of the ‘other’ that did not eventually turn this abuse on its own citizens — (confident because I knew there was no such place) — so today I warn that one cannot name a nation that gave the military the power to make civilian arrests and hold citizens in military detention, that did not almost at once turn that power almost against members of that nation’s own political ruling class. This makes sense — the obverse sense of a democracy, in which power protects you; political power endangers you in a militarized police state: the more powerful a political leader is, the more can be gained in a militarized police state by pressuring, threatening or even arresting him or her.

What Americans Worry About the Most...

The EcoHealth Alliance's NATIONAL SURVEY ON PANDEMIC AWARENESS AND ATTITUDES shows that:

Americans are most worried about an economic collapse – which ranked first among a prelist of 12 catastrophic events. More than 3 out of five adults (63%) rated economic collapse as one of their top three most worrisome catastrophic events.

Natural disaster was a distant second worry among 46% of adults.

This demonstrates why the US needs leadership from Presidential Candidate Ron Paul to maneuver through this economic disaster.

Can a Christian be a libertarian?

Norman Horn writes:

Christians in American politics have argued for years that God endorses the political agenda of Republicans or Democrats, but is there a third way to think about the relationship between God and government? 

Christians from the left and the right are increasingly turning to libertarianism not because it is a “middle ground,” but because it is an entirely different way of thinking about government and power. 

It is truly unfortunate that modern American churches seem to think the state’s means of “spreading democracy” through aggressive war is more important than spreading the peaceful message of the Gospel of Christ. Jesus came to bring “peace on earth, good will to men,” and by extension the Christian’s goal ought to be the same. 

Rep. Paul wrote in Liberty Defined : “It’s a far stretch and a great distortion to use Christianity in any way to justify aggression and violence.” War kills the innocent, destroys property, and bankrupts nations. Christian libertarians believe that a non-interventionist foreign policy of peace, commerce, and honest friendship is more consistent with how God expects us to interact with world neighbors.

Was Iraq war worth costs?

After almost nine years the U.S. war in Iraq is over. With 4,485 U.S. military deaths, more than 32,000 injured and a financial cost expected to exceed one trillion dollars we wanted to know if you thought the conflict was worth it. In a Poll Position national scientific telephone survey we asked, do you believe that the U.S. war in Iraq was worth the costs in lives and expense? A majority of Americans, 58% said no, they do not believe it was worth the costs, 27% said they believe it was, 15% did not have an opinion.

Romney foreign policy: Bush 2.0

The GOP frontrunner is putting the band back together, tapping the team that brought us two wars says Joan Wash of Salon.com

Mitt Romney is proving he’s the establishment Republican in the race by doing what establishment leaders do — recruiting the shadow government in waiting, the stars of the last GOP administration, to return to their rightful place of power. In Romney’s case, that means calling on the old, failed foreign policy hands of the George W. Bush administration. 

Yes, Romney’s putting the band back together, tapping a foreign policy team known for its failures in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as its inability to track down the al Qaida leaders responsible for 9/11. That was just another job they left for President Obama, and one that he in fact completed. On Friday, in a major foreign policy speech scheduled for the 10th anniversary of the start of the Afghanistan war, Romney likewise sounded Bush-Cheney themes. It was long on saber-rattling, short on details – and wrong about the few details he deigned to share.
Romney promised to reverse President Obama’s “massive defense cuts,” except the president didn’t make cuts, massive or otherwise. The defense budget jumped from $661 billion in 2009 to $768 billion in 2011. Defense is the area, in fact, where Obama followed the Bush team lead most closely. 

The GOP frontrunner pledged a “full review” of our options in Afghanistan, which seems a strangely passive response to a much-analyzed 10 year old war. By contrast, he was happy to war-monger about Iran, calling the possibility of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon “unacceptable” and “nothing less than an existential threat to Israel. Iran’s suicidal fanatics,” he added, “could blackmail the world.”

Beware of Mitt, say Bay State conservatives

by EDWARD MASON AND TOM MASHBERG of Salon.com

Mitt Romney’s Iowa surge coincides with a new Iowa TV spot in which he touts himself as a genuinely conservative businessman who will shrink and streamline the federal government.
But some Massachusetts tax watchdogs and small government advocates who remember Romney’s days in the governor’s chair say: Iowa buyer beware. They note that Romney promised leaner government when he sat atop Beacon Hill from 2003 to 2007, only to leave the state largely unchanged. Rather, they say his legacy is thick with tax and fee hikes that should make conservatives do a double-take, a big-government proposal for what amounted to a “revenue czar,” and, of course, Romney-care, which bears no small resemblance to President Obama’s Afford Healthcare Act.

Mitt Flop Romney vs Mitt Flop Romney