Flipper cleared! Dolphins are not gay or bisexual rapists after all But they keep looking at me in a gay sort of way…………

How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing ‘Terrorists’ – and Letting Bad Guys Off the Hook The Cleveland anarchists were held without bond whereas American Front, a white-supremacist group, had bail of $500.

President Obama executive order gives Treasury authority to freeze Yemeni assets in U.S. And yours too if you say anything bad about the Yemeni government.

Erasing the Nakba

Whites Account for Under Half of Births in U.S. Goodbye white people, it’s been fun but not real fun.

Federal court enjoins NDAA Wow, the good guys win one for a change. For now.

On the Eve of the NATO Summit, Is Phone Jamming Coming to Chicago? Standard Operating Procedure 303 gives “state homeland security advisors” the power to call for the “the termination of private wireless network connections.” Thanks, King George!

12% of Moms Using Phones– During Sex! There partners aren’t doing their jobs right.

Microsoft Kinect’s NUads is what the TV industry needs to survive the future What if your ads watched you while you were watching them? 1984?

Are You Facing a $10,000+ Medical-Hospital Procedure? Fly to Bangkok Plane fares are cheaper than American medicine.

Commander: Undercover Israeli Soldiers Threw Stones During Demos Who are the real terrorists out here?

Why it’s time to shut up about your rights (in one minute)

If Cops Can’t Taze a Pregnant Woman, The Terrorists Will Win The terrorists will win too if they can’t permanently blind some drunken woman who resisted arrest.

Linnet feeding on Tajinaste — José Miguel Rodríguez

But one must wonder why Ron Paul has not received as many votes as he should have during this election campaign.

Well, one of the unfortunate consequences of democracy and especially government’s seizure of education has been the decline in critical thinking and common sense in America.

In the mainstream of America, the people love the State, and they demonize those who challenge the State’s authority, legitimacy and policies. It seems that some of those most maligned are the libertarians, particularly the Austrian economists, historical revisionists, anarcho-capitalists or market anarchists, and voluntaryists.

Remarkably, it is these libertarians whose views are closer to those of the American Founders than the modern mainstream statists. Yet it is the libertarians – advocating individual freedom, the non-aggression principle, private property rights, freedom of trade and voluntary exchange, and equality under the rule of law – who are dismissed as “Tinfoil Hat” wearers.

Our society has become an Orwellian, Bizarro World in which dependence, irresponsibility, recklessness and aggression are good – and peace, independence, responsibility and prudence are bad.

Only in Amerika does advocating independence, responsibility and the rule of law give one a “Tinfoil Hat” status.

Here, I will set the record straight, that the opposite of all that is actually the case, in government spending and monetary policy, and in foreign policy.

Government Spending and Monetary Policy

In a recent debate between Ron Paul and Paul Krugman, Ron Paul summarized the differences between him and Krugman: “(Paul Krugman) believes in big government … and I believe in very small government. I emphasize personal liberties. I don’t like a managed economy, whether it’s through central economic planning or monetary policy, or even Congress doing it.”

There Ron Paul described the true fiscally conservative and responsible approach that Krugman in the past declared to be of the “Tinfoil Hat” crowd.

Krugman and his fellow Keynesians support increasing government debts and deficit spending, and believe that more people should be dependent on the government, such as “the poor,” students and the elderly. And they advocate greater tax-thefts of the workers and producers of society to involuntarily finance such dependence and serfdom.

The Keynesians and statists continue to fantasize that corporatism, militarism, tax-thefts, debts and deficit-spending are helpful to Americans.

But when crashing back down to Earth, we learn that those who are most helped by stimulus, government social programs and war profiteering are the government bureaucrats themselves and corporate special interests. (e.g. ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, Solyndra, body scanners, etc.)

Can you get any more “Tinfoil Hat” than the elitist daydreamers wanting more of such government activism and intrusions?

In reality, the State is the true “1%,” as evidenced by the wealthiest districts of America surrounding Washington, D.C.

But we must no longer allow these elitist daydreamers to continue forcing their delusions onto the rest of us! The people have a right to know the truth!

Government deficit-spending and the National Debt force future generations to have to involuntarily pay for current and past generations’ self-indulgence and irresponsible spending habits.

Philosophically, Ron Paul believes that if it’s wrong for your neighbors to take your earnings from you (that is, to force you to do extra labor to serve others involuntarily), then it’s just as immoral for government bureaucrats and their armed police to do that.

No one should be above the law.

And Ron Paul understands that when you rely on funding the government through borrowing, you are creating a moral hazard.

There’s no “Tinfoil Hat” there – only a sound, rational belief in protecting the rights of the individual, protecting private property from theft and intrusion, and a belief that no one should be above the law.

Another moral hazard is the printing of money out of nothing. For a government to just spend money that doesn’t exist, or that has nothing of value backing it, is extremely irresponsible. It ought to be considered a crime, as it is equal to actual theft and fraud.

This fiat money printing causes inflation. It is a sneaky, backdoor way of government bureaucrats and their “private” banking cartel associates to get easy money right away to spend – while causing price inflation of everyday necessities, which makes it more difficult for those in the lower and middle classes to afford to provide their daily needs, especially in food and energy.

Through this backdoor inflation-tax, the Primary Dealer Big Banks are virtually stealing from the poor and middle class. This is not just a real moral hazard, but it also should be considered a crime.

So the truth is, those who advocate these schemes of debts robbing future generations and fiat-money printing robbing the current population are really the true “Tinfoil Hat” wearers of our time.

For more on these issues, see Murray Rothbard in Taking Money Back and Repudiate the National Debt, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe in Why the State Demands Control of Money. (And more information here [.pdf], here, here, here, and here.)

And here is an important interview of Ron Paul covering monetary policy, the business cycle, government-stimulated artificial inflation and bubbles, and the role of government in private economic matters.

By the way, unlike clueless Krugman and Bernanke et al., Ron Paul predicted the housing bubble and economic downturn of 2007-2008, as did many amongst the Austrian school of economic thought. That was based on their knowledge of history, and understanding of cause and effect, as well as the moral hazard that results from excusing people from personal responsibility and the rule of law.

In economic matters and monetary policy, Ron Paul wants to bring the government’s budget back down to only funding that which the Constitution authorizes, and eliminate the tyrannical IRS (and most of the other dirty three-letter words in Washington).

Ron Paul also wants to repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, repeal legal tender laws and allow for competing currencies.

Unthinkingly, many people believe that those proposals are of a Tinfoil Hat variety, whereas it really is the status quo of monetary serfdom that only real Tinfoil Hatters would support.

Forcing the entire population to only use the one government-issued, government-debased currency is very authoritarian and dictatorial, and it violates the people’s right to freedom of exchange.

People have a God-given right to choose any medium of exchange they want, and, unlike the chaos that the current central planning monetary dictatorship causes, a natural order would result from a society of monetary freedom.

And regarding the government’s control over the nation’s banks and the people’s wealth and savings, why can’t an individual or group who wants to serve one’s community own and operate a bank? In a society of freedom, there would be no central government bank (and thus no revolving door between a “Federal Reserve” and the dreaded private sector), banks would compete for the people’s business, and the currently legalized fraud of fractional reserve banking would not be allowed under the rule of law.

More important, in such a society of freedom, those bankers who engage in risky and irresponsible investment and lending practices would be held accountable and would not be bailed out by taxpayers involuntarily. Those local banks with the best reputation would attract more customers, while the irresponsible ones would be forced out of business or be sent to jail. A system of freedom would also reward consumers who take responsibility for their own banking choices, too.

As Jacob Hornberger noted just recently, we need to separate banking and state.

Only real Tinfoil Hat wearers would support an authoritarian, top-down central banking authority and a cartel of government-controlled “private” banks who can get away with crimes of theft, fraud, and “bailout” extortion-looting.

Foreign Policy

On foreign policy, I still can’t believe the number of people who actually “boo” Ron Paul’s suggestion that we apply the Golden Rule to foreign policy.

Now, a lot of people have this false “Tinfoil Hat” view of Ron Paul and libertarians in foreign policy mainly out of ignorance of actual history, as well as lacking skills in critical thinking.

Unfortunately, too many Americans simply believe the propaganda that government bureaucrats tell them, as repeated to them by the State’s lapdog media stenographers.

Besides ignorance, a problem with many Americans is their belief in American exceptionalism – that the U.S. government may trespass on foreign lands with military bases and occupations against the will and approval of the actual inhabitants of those lands, but foreign governments may NOT trespass and occupy OUR lands. This long-ingrained moral relativism has reinforced many Americans’ narcissistic, communistic self-appointed role as rulers of the world, as owners of the entire world’s territories.

It is this attitude of American covetousness that has contributed to so many people viewing as absurd Ron Paul’s asking how we would like it if a foreign government invaded our territory and occupied our lands. The question is not so absurd, when you consider all the aggressions and provocations committed by the U.S. government against foreigners.

And when I refer to most Americans as ignorant, many of them actually don’t know such facts of history as our government having started a war against Iraq a first time (even though Iraq was of no threat to us), in 1991, and intentionally destroyed Iraq’s civilian water and sewage treatment centers. Those actions, along with the sanctions and no-fly zones on Iraq, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis throughout the 1990s. And all this led to widespread anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East.

Prior to that during the 1950s, on behalf of the British Empire and its covetous craving for Iran’s oil, the U.S. government and its CIA staged a coup and overthrew the Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddegh, and installed the Shah of Iran for the next 25 years. The U.S. government supported the Shah’s tyranny, and that led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Iranian population knew damn well that the U.S. government was the main supporter of their tyrant leaders.

Just look at this description of the Shah’s notorious torture and spy regime, and how it compares to America’s current police state of NDAA, NSA spying, torture regime, the DHS and the TSA.

Unlike the Tinfoil Hat wearers, Ron Paul understands that when you go across the street and provoke your neighbors, trespass on their property and steal their stuff (and murder their family members), they will try to retaliate against you.

Dr. Paul wants to dismantle the Leviathan militarist and police state apparatus that are turning us into the Soviet Union.

The real Tinfoil Hat wearers support keeping or even expanding the current Leviathan nightmare.

Now, do people really believe that if we close down the foreign U.S. military bases and bring the troops home, stop initiating wars against others who were of no threat to us, and shut down the Nazi-like, Soviet-like police state at home, that we would make ourselves even more vulnerable to terrorism?

Sorry, the opposite is true. Our government’s aggressions, intrusions, and provocations are what really have compromised our security and made us vulnerable to terrorism.

After all, during the 1990s Ron Paul actually foresaw the increased probability of terrorist attacks on our soil, based on the U.S. government’s provocations overseas.

Only Tinfoil Hat wearers would think that you can provoke your neighbors but think they wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) fight back.

The truth is, the main purpose of post-Cold War militarism and the “terrorism” charade has been for certain special interests to profit from the labor and savings of the American workers and producers. (For more on that, see this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.)

Conclusion

While the Ron Paul campaign will probably be accused of “stealing” Republican national Convention delegates, it is really the Ron Paul campaign who are following the rules of primaries and state conventions in their accumulation of delegates.

But it is the Romney people who have been committing the shenanigans, and are the true alleged cheaters and alleged vote-stealing fraudsters.

Some people just crave political power and artificial financial advantages over the people, while Ron Paul wants the opposite: Freedom!

There is a reason why so many people are enthusiastic about Ron Paul: Because they believe in freedom, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who has said that he wants us all to have our freedom.

The younger crowd amongst the Ron Paul supporters have a very good understanding of the dwindling freedom and prosperity we have in America, and it is they who will have to suffer many, many years in the future of the kind of Total State-controlled, impoverished society that the Obama and Romney statists are giving us, and the young people know it.

But the Tinfoil Hatters want it all to continue, and at these young people’s expense, to which the young people reply, “Up your nose with a rubber hose!”

For those whose only real familiarity with Ron Paul is from the propagandist mainstream media and the neocon talk radio blabbermouths, here are some of Dr. Paul’s own writings and speeches:

Hundreds of articles by Ron Paul (Three of my favorites: Paper Money and Tyranny, The End of Dollar Hegemony and What Really Divides Us) and Ron Paul’s many books promoting freedom, peace and free markets

Here are some of Ron Paul’s books that are available for free online:

• A Foreign Policy of Freedom [.pdf]
• The Case for Gold [.pdf]
• Freedom Under Siege: The U.S. Constitution After 200-Plus Years [.pdf]
• Gold, Peace, and Prosperity [.pdf]
• Pillars of Prosperity: Free Markets, Honest Money, Private Property[.pdf]

And there are these more recent books:

• Liberty Defined (Intro, with links to buy the book)
• End the Fed
• The Revolution: A Manifesto

Scott Lazarowitz — LewRockwell.com

Brazil is a marvelous and massive country where private wealth thrives without embarrassment, where well-protected and healthy familial dynasties form the infrastructure of social and economic life, where technology is popular and beloved by everyone, where the police leave you alone and where Americans can feel right at home.

The world is changing fast. Freedom in America is slipping away so quickly that we are already seeing a wave of young people leaving in search of new opportunities, just as people from the around the world once came to America to live the dream. Brazil is one of many countries benefiting from the generational emigration from the U.S.

Discovering this rattled me more than I might have expected. But the young people themselves are not unhappy, and I can see why. They are valued. They are earning good money doing interesting things. They have access to one of the most beautiful and exotic and friendly places on Earth. They eat well, live well and have rich social lives.

More than anything else, they have the sense of freedom.

Now, you might wonder how it is that people have to leave the “home of the free” to find freedom. Over the last 10 years, something horrible has happened to the United States. The police state has cracked down hard, not so much on “terrorists” or real criminals, but on regular citizens. The news items spill out of my feed on an hourly basis, things that just shock and alarm those who are paying attention.

Maybe it is not so surprising. The U.S. military is larger than most of the world’s militaries combined. We have the largest prison population on the planet, and most are locked up for nonviolent crimes. The political culture focuses more on the need for security than for freedom. Add it all up and you have the perfect recipe for the emergence of a police state.

But most Americans are not entirely conscious of the change. It has been fast, but slow enough not to cause alarm. It hits you only once you leave. This happened to me two years ago when I went to Spain. I could move about and do what I wanted without bumping into authority at every turn. I felt it again in Austria last year. It is not something you can quite put your finger on, just a sense that you are not under constant surveillance in suspicion. You can breathe easily.

It was the same in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a happy and prosperous land of exotic fruits, thriving markets, consumer products that actually work and are not depreciated by regulatory mandates, and polite and warm people.

I received a very generous invitation to be a main speaker at the third conference on Austrian economics sponsored by Mises Brasil, a young organization with a very bright future. It was founded only four years ago. Yet today, it has a gigantic presence in Brazilian intellectual life. The hunger for the intellectual basis of freedom is palpable.

Three hundred or more people were here to listen to lectures and engage in debates on ideas. The audience was a sea of young people, most everyone under 30. They were students, professionals, traders and workers of all sorts, all passionate about freedom and the economic answers provided by the Austrian tradition of Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek and Murray Rothbard.

What most excited them was the classic idea of laissez faire — that is, the idea that society can thrive on its own in the absence of central management and that the government operates as a drain on society. The culture of the group was certainly more intellectual and educational than political. They were invigorated by ideas and given hope by the idea of freedom. Apparently, nothing like this organization existed in Brazil until recently. Now the group’s website is one of the most heavily trafficked in the country.

My hosts were enormously generous with their time, and they knew exactly what I really wanted to do on the first day: see the delights of the open-air markets. I was told they are in the center of town. If you had seen a map of Sao Paulo, you would know just how odd it is even to imagine such a thing. The city seems to be everywhere in sight, everywhere you turn, going on forever. It is like 100 New Yorks.

Driving here is not for the faint of heart. The street layout makes no rational sense at all. I could have been driven the short distance between the hotel and the conference center a hundred times and still not have had the slightest clue about the layout. I was told that it would take at least two years of living here to gain a sense that you really know the place.

Go to a high spot in the center of town and look around on all sides. Everywhere you see a beautiful thing, a world built by millions of human hands. No central plan could have made this. No single mind could have conceived of it. To anyone who is intellectually curious, the obvious questions are how does this place work? How is order achieved? The answer is one that few people in the United States seem to care about today. The miracle is obtained through the coordinating forces of the market itself, of millions of free people interacting in small ways toward their mutual self-betterment. This is the answer that inspires a lifetime of intellectual curiosity.

On the first lunch on my first day, my hosts took me to a place like I had never seen, and they are as unconscious of its significance as Americans would be startled by its very existence. Again, it seemed to be in the center of town. To obtain entry requires extensive security checks. But once you are in, a new world emerges: restaurants, soccer fields, gigantic swimming pools of many varieties and delights as far as the eye can see.

This is a city within a city. But it is entirely private, what Americans would call a “country club,” but of a particularly elaborate type. It is not hidden away in some alcove on the outskirts of town. It is right there in the city for everyone to see — something nonmembers can also take pride in. It is marvelous in every way, a living monument to the possibility of orderly, privately owned anarchist communities.

One thing kept gnawing at me during my entire visit. I kept coming across people who were members of large and extended families with roots very far back in Brazilian history. They were impressive entrepreneurs, but the wealth was more robust than you would find in a place like Silicon Valley. It reminded more of Gilded Age families in the United States, people who carried themselves with grace and confidence born of excellent breeding and material security.

As I thought about it more, the ingredients were unusual by American standards: large and extended families, protected wealth, well-bred youths, a predominantly young population. What was the reason for this? I developed a quick, back-of-the-napkin theory. It had something to do with the inheritance tax. So I asked my hosts, “What are estate taxes like in this country?” The answer came fast: There are none. Some areas charge 3%, maybe 6%, but it is rather easy to escape even those minimal charges.

This contrasts with the United States, where estate taxes can be as high as 35%. We’ve been looting our best families for 100 years. We’ve gouged and smashed the richest generations of American capitalists upon death ever since the Progressive Era. We’ve been living one generation at a time. Time horizons have fallen. Large-scale, privately held capital accumulation has been discouraged, even made illegal. Families have shrunk in size. The population has become ever more aged.

This tax policy has eaten the heart out of the desire of a free people to create dynasties. So our wealthy have to hide. They are encouraged to give their money away to causes, rather than to children. We live one generation to the next. Children are perceived as an economic burden, rather than a path to immortalizing a legacy.

In Brazil, the time horizon extends beyond the single lifetime. And this is what has given rise to the dramatic cultural, social and economic differences between our countries. These dynasties serve as robust intermediating institutions between the individual and the state. We have ever fewer such things in the United States. Maybe this is what accounts for the incoherent sense that this is a freer country than the U.S.

There are other factors, too. The military consumes only a tiny percentage of wealth, and Brazilians dread wars because they know that they will be roped into supporting whatever wacky war the U.S. starts. What’s more, the police are well-known to be as likely to commit as prevent or punish crime, so they are not trusted.. Security is extremely important in Brazil, but everyone knows that it is a private function and not anything anyone would entrust to the state.

The beautiful thing about Mises Brasil as an organization is that it is working to further encourage these instincts and spread an intellectual culture that openly embraces liberty as a model of life itself. They publish books and monographs, hold conferences and spread the liberal tradition far and wide among an idea-hungry generation. This is all about the future, and Mises Brasil is right to have confidence in it.

As I waited in the customs line to enter the U.S. again, we were all shown a film designed to introduce America to new visitors. The film featured kids in ballet class, people riding horses, barn raisings, people water surfing, dances from coast to coast, smiling people of all ages, all against the backdrop of an exciting Coplandesque musical score.. It ended with the Statue of Liberty. It was wholly inspiring, but there was something missing: The government was nowhere to be seen.

How I wish this film were the whole truth about our country. It once was. But the American dream is not about geography; the American dream is an idea that moves like a spirit around the world, landing wherever people are willing to embrace it and confess it as creed. That spirit has landed in Brazil, and it was a great honor to be witness to it.

Jeffrey Tucker — Laissez-Faire Bookstore

People’s justice.

If course it’s a girl, she has a nut in her mouth.

Republican Party suckles at the breast of Big Business Business interests hold inordinate sway over the legislation that affects them (Heck, their lobbyists write most of the bills).

Protesting NATO: What to Know About the Secret Service and H.R. 347 This could be the first public test of H.R. 347, the recently passed law that expanded the ability of the Secret Service to suppress protests.

Why is there so little accountability in foreign policymaking? Part of the problem is institutionalized amnesia.

Sex, Money and Largesse – The Hidden Depression The problem for American families today, despite media commentary to the contrary, is simply the inability to maintain their current standard of living.

Brave Blogger Confronts Evil Newspaper Editor Who Plagiarized His Post You know, the media folks get all self-righteous about copyright, but I’ve noticed that they’re quite willing to lift copy, and even photos, from blogs without permission.

The Peril of “Hate Crimes” It did not take long for the corrupting notion of hate crimes to degenerate into thought crime.

Sunk Costs: $1 Million in Federal Highway Money to Exhibit Shipwreck Sites in Lake Michigan Wasted tax money.

Obama’s Wall Street hypocritical adjective 1. of the nature of hypocrisy, or pretense of having virtues, beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually possess: The parent who has a “do what I say and not what I do” attitude can appear hypocritical to a child.

You Paid for It! Stimulus Dollars Fund Studies into Sexual History and Erectile Dysfunction Even more tax dollars wasted.

Israel Shuts Down School To Replace It With Military Training Base Who are the real terrorists out here?

The Empire Strikes Back: Attack of the Drones

Fox News Analyst: First American To Shoot Down A Domestic Spy Drone ‘Will Become A Folk Hero’ I will buy him a beer if he doesn’t get DISAPPEARED.

The practice of beheading is alive and well in modern times Few things make a greater impression on the public than seeing a severed head. That shock value is used to strike fear in enemies and ensure obedience.

Joaquin Tornel

Wow! How exciting is that!

At least one thing’s for sure: these people aren’t going to be celebrating the brave efforts of libertarians here in the United States in our fight to be free. They wish that we libertarians would just go home and keep our mouths shut about what the federal government is doing to people not only abroad but also here at home.

The big problem is the statist mindset, the mindset held by George W. Bush and by so many Americans — a mindset that holds that that the United States is still a free country.

I’m willing to bet that at that celebration today, after the Pledge of Allegiance is recited, everyone will be singing, “Thank God I’m an American because at least I know I’m free.” And I have no doubt that most every one of them will honestly believe what he is singing. And then they’ll thank the troops in Afghanistan and other foreign nations for “defending our freedoms here at home.”

For these people, freedom for Americans is a society in which the president wields the power to:

(1) Take anyone, including American citizens, into military or CIA custody and torture him, incarcerate him for life without trial, and execute him after a kangaroo trial by military tribunal.

(2). Assassinate anyone anywhere in the world whom the state deems a threat to the “national security” of the United States, including American citizens.

(3) Ignore jury verdicts of acquittal in federal jury trials and let the military or the CIA take the acquitted person into custody, incarcerate him for life without trial, torture him, or execute him after a kangaroo military tribunal.

(4) Attack and invade countries whose governments have not attacked or invaded the United States (i.e., wage wars of aggression against other nation-states).

(5) Initiate wars against any other nation state without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war.

(6) Establish an empire of military bases all over the world.

(7) Wage the war on drugs all over the world through the military, the CIA, and other federal agents and punish Americans with incarceration and fines for ingesting harmful substances.

(8) Tax people’s income and redistribute the money to other people — that is, enforce a massive welfare state on society that keeps people soft and dependent.

(9) Maintain a massive military-industrial complex that places an enormous tax burden on the American people.

(10) Maintain a strict, detailed regimen of taxation and regulation in society, in order to ensure that people behave correctly and remain silent about what the government is doing.

(11) Secretly search people’s homes, businesses, and banks without warrants, on grounds of “national security.”

(12) Grant full immunity to the military, the CIA, and other federal officials who torture, assassinate, execute, or incarcerate people in the name of protecting “national security.”

Of course, we libertarians reject all that statist claptrap that goes for “freedom” in the mind of the statist. We don’t live in the statist world of delusion and failure to confront reality.

The reality is that these types of powers are antithetical to a free society and inherent to totalitarian regimes.

Don’t believe me?

Check out Hitler’s regime. He and his military and Gestapo wielded all those powers.

Check out the military regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whom the U.S. military and the CIA adored and helped install into power. Like Hitler, whom he greatly admired, Pinochet wielded all those powers.

Check out the communist regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba. Castro wields all those powers.

Check out the military dictatorship in Egypt, which the U.S. military and the CIA have long supported and partnered with, not only with cash, armaments, and training, but also with a rendition-torture partnership. It wields all those powers.

Check out the military dictatorship in Burma. It wields all those powers.

For us libertarians, it’s bad enough that the statists have turned America toward the dark side, a side that characterizes totalitarian regimes. But the fact that these people promote all this as “American freedom” makes the situation that much worse.

It’s one thing to know you’re not free. It’s quite another to believe you’re free when you’re not. Or as the German thinker Johann von Goethe put it, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

We libertarians know that people who live under a government that wields totalitarian powers cannot honestly be considered a free people. We’re fighting hard to restore freedom to our land. Needless to say, the George W. Bush Presidential Center will not be featuring American libertarians at its celebration today.

Jacob G. Hornberger — The Future of Freedom Foundation

[Torture] “is not the norm.”
— Mike Pannek, Abu Ghraib prison warden.

“This is not who we are.”
— Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the US massacre of 16 Afghan villagers.

“This is not who we are.”
— General John Allen, commander of forces in Afghanistan, on Koran burning

“This is not who we are.”

— Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on troops posing with enemy body parts

“This is not who we are.”
— Secretary of State Clinton, also on troops posing with enemy body parts

Spying by the New York Police on Muslims in Newark, NJ, which the Newark Police Chief was alerted to, is “not who we are”
— Newark Mayor Cory Booker

“I can tell you something all of you know already – that using pepper spray on peaceful protesters runs counter to our values. It does not reflect well on this university and it absolutely is not who we are.”
— UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, who ordered campus police to use force to clear peaceful student occupiers from the campus, leading to pepper spraying of students

Ripping families apart by deporting the undocumented parents of American-born children is “not who we are.”
— President Barack Obama

“This larger notion that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everybody’s money, and let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own — that’s not who we are.”
— President Barack Obama

“You can’t say, well, we developed trade and the economic relations first and the disregard of human rights. That’s not who we are. We are the United States of America.”
— Sasha Gong, director of the China branch of Voice of America
 

The latest PR catch phrase from business, administration, military, state and local officials after some atrocity or other is that whatever happened, it is certainly “not who we are,” a phrase appropriately initially uttered by the Vietnam War commander, Gen. William Westmoreland, with reference to the My Lai slaughter of 400 women, children and old men, all civilians, by a group of US soldiers.

Yet if all these abominations are not “who we are,” then why do our business, police and military and government institutions generate so many examples of obscene, horrific or criminal behavior?

If we examine the culture that guides our young men and women in battle, our public safety employees in their duties, or our business class in its pursuit of profit, it’s easy to see how shameful and reprehensible episodes such as these have become as routine as they have.

Take the military. The Pentagon achieves its ends by through war. Troops must be obedient and willing to kill. This doesn’t come naturally, so the military branches have to reprogram civilian recruits raised to believe killing is wrong so that they can be part of a murderous enterprise. After breaking down an enlistee’s individuality, trainers then teach them to despise “the other,” whomever it may be — kraut, gook, rag-head depending on the generation and the particular war. Only after sufficiently dehumanizing both the recruit and the future enemy can they mold a soldier who will do the dirty work demanded by an imperial nation. Then they build these soldiers into super-fit, adrenaline-charged fighters, surround them with propaganda that demonizes the enemy of the moment, and set them loose to “get the job done.”

The troops who are sent to Afghanistan find themselves in a conflict with no clear objective, let alone an achievable one. They face an able and motivated foe with a very simple objective: to drive the occupier out of their country. As U.S. losses mount, frustrations grow and pressure increases. It is an unfortunate commonplace that armed troops vent their anger with lethal force upon local civilian populations. Their ability to do that is part and parcel of their training that worked so hard to dehumanize these same people.

It is a sick hypocrisy for Obama, Clinton, Panetta, or Allen to claim that these actions are not a direct result of U.S. military and foreign policy. If Dick Cheney and John Yoo were torturing language and logic to advocate the torture of humans, why wouldn’t guards at Abu Ghraib fall into the same debased state of mind? (For example, years after he claimed it was “not who we are,” documents proved that, ahead of the My Lai massacre, Westmoreland himself had issued rules-of-engagement orders that any civilians found in Communist-held territory like My Lai, a “free-fire” zone, were to be considered enemy combatants, and treated the same as Viet Cong.)

Those in power attempt to frame the issue within the “one bad apple in the barrel” rubric. As long as they can pretend that war crimes and atrocities aren’t a logical outcome of official policy, they can shift blame to those without power and keep the odious policies in place. The cabinet secretary sanctimoniously intones platitudes about morality at the same time as one of his underlings is screaming “KILL!” into a fresh recruit’s trembling face.

The same kind of thing happens in the case of police and federal law enforcement officials. Increasingly militarized themselves, they are trained to believe not that their duty is to “protect and serve” or to uphold the nation’s freedoms and liberty, but rather that they are centurions tasked with enforcing “order” and protecting property–generally government property and the property of the wealthy. The general public then becomes a kind of “enemy” to be subdued with whatever force is necessary. Those who stand up for their rights under the law are perceived as threats to the authority of the enforcers, and are dealt with as enemies, to be beaten, pepper-sprayed in the face, spied upon and locked up.

Meanwhile, a farce of morals plays itself out in an endless cycle in the business world. Siemens, Boeing, Wal-Mart are just three prominent recent examples of corporations which have been exposed for using bribery as a standard business practice. Sam Walton may have started his company with some notion of honest (if ruthless) business practices, but the current business culture promotes success at any cost. Coming in second is for losers, and bribery of foreign (and domestic) officials is just another tool in the toolbox, as they like to say.

Just because these shameful acts may indeed indicate who or what our Empire’s institutions are, it does not mean that it is who we are as well. Most Americans, as well as most Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians etc., would not commit the types of acts that have made our nation infamous over the years. But if we are truly better than that, if this is not who we are, then we had better do something about the fact we are being represented to the world by the very actions that we find so heinous.

Even as countries are being abused by U.S. foreign policy, their people are often slow to blame or hate the American people. They often show a remarkable understanding that governments rarely represent their peoples’ wishes.

But we are the nation that is burdened by an impassioned rhetoric that asserts that we are the beacon of democracy, that we are captains of our own destiny. Our supposed innocence of the crimes of Empire and rapacious capitalism can be accepted for only so long. Eventually, we too must share the blame for the actions of our government and our economic culture. It is essential that we do hold every level of business and government accountable for every action that betrays America’s promise, both at home and abroad.

It is time to stop pretending that we are not also accountable. It is time to end militarism at home and abroad and to put people before profits. It won’t be the militarists and the profiteers who make such changes, though. It can only be us.

Otherwise, maybe former Dallas Cowboys coach Bill Parcells had it right, when he said, “You are what your record says you are.”

Dan DeWalt — This Can’t Be Happening

The Truth About JP Morgan’s $2 Billion Loss Is the creator of credit default swaps – which caused the 2008 financial crisis, and is the asset class which blew up and caused the loss.

Horrific Injuries Linked to BP Dispersant Corexit Exposure to chemical dispersants BP used in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill left a commercial diver with seizures, unable to walk and going blind – and two members of his dive team committed suicide.

Visualizing Occupation: Freedom of movement Whereas West Bank settlers can travel freely between Israel and the West Bank, Palestinian movement is governed by the Israeli security establishment. (infographic)

If Same-Sex Marriage Is so Popular, Why Does It Always Lose at the Ballot Box?

Brick & Mortar vs. Internet: Bricks Fight Back So we never know who’s going to win. As the cliché goes, that’s why we play the game.

$700 Million Bridge to the Suburbs of Nowhere Haven’t we done this before?

People just want governments to keep spending money Inter-generational child abuse.

Federal Workers’ 2011 Salary Data Exposed Online When was the last time you got a bonus in excess of $40,000?

Settlers Abduct Palestinians, Summon Them to Israeli Soldiers Who are the real terrorists out here?

Ten tax tricks (non-rich need not apply) The very very wealthy at the top of the income distribution have made out extraordinarily well in the last decade as to amount of taxes paid. And they don’t even necessarily have to cheat to do it.

A pro-fossil industrial policy? Already, the cost of algae-based biofuel purchased by the U.S. Navy has fallen by a factor of 16 in two years!

The PC Gods Must Be Crazy In 2011, this ESPN announcer said goodbye to 25 years of announcing football games for the crime of calling an asshole an asshole.

UN Openly Giving Al-Qaeda Cover In Syria To Identify Targets Al-Qaeda is the American Foreign Legion.

At 106, she doesn’t need to say cheese “I’ll box your ears,” she said to TV chef Jon Ashton.

Green Tree Python — Thor E Hakonsen

Dave Lawrence (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has become the inevitable Republican Party presidential nominee. Despite the weak economy, he faces an uphill race. It’s never easy to defeat an incumbent president. Moreover, Romney can’t rely on the GOP’s traditional foreign-policy advantage.

Throughout the Cold War Republicans posed as the party of national defense. That stance served the GOP well until the wreck of George W. Bush’s presidency. The public rallied around President Bush when he ordered the invasion of Iraq but soured when it became clear that the war was an unnecessary disaster begun on a lie.

Republican politicians continue to beat the war drums. All of this cycle’s GOP presidential contenders, save Rep. Ron Paul, charged President Barack Obama with weakness, indeed, almost treason. But the public isn’t convinced. The president who increased military spending, twice upped troop levels in Afghanistan, started his own war with Libya, talked tough to North Korea, loudly threatened Iran and Syria, and oversaw the hit on Osama bin Laden just doesn’t look like a wimp.

In fact, a recent Washington Post-ABC poll found that Americans prefer Barack Obama to Mitt Romney on international issues by 53 percent to 36 percent. Republican apparatchiks Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie nevertheless claim, “the president is strikingly vulnerable in this area,” but so far Romney is convincing only as a blowhard with a know-nothing foreign policy. Noted Jacob Heilbrunn of the National Interest, the GOP is “returning to a prescription that led to trillion-dollar wars in the Middle East that the public loathes.”

Romney’s overall theme is American exceptionalism and greatness, slogans that win public applause but offer no guidance for a bankrupt superpower that has squandered its international credibility. “This century must be an American century,” Romney proclaimed. “In an American century, America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world.” He has chosen a mix of advisers, including the usual neocons and uber-hawks — Robert Kagan, Eliot Cohen, Jim Talent, Walid Phares, Kim Holmes, and Daniel Senor, for instance — that gives little reason for comfort. Their involvement suggests Romney’s general commitment to an imperial foreign policy and force structure.

Romney is no fool, but he has never demonstrated much interest in international affairs. He brings to mind George W. Bush, who appeared to be largely ignorant of the nations he was invading. Romney may be temperamentally less likely to combine recklessness with hubris, but he would have just as strong an incentive to use foreign aggression to win conservative acquiescence to domestic compromise. This tactic worked well for Bush, whose spendthrift policies received surprisingly little criticism on the right from activists busy defending his war-happy foreign policy.

The former Massachusetts governor has criticized President Obama for “a naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude” in following George W. Bush’s withdrawal timetable in Iraq and for not overriding the decision of a government whose independence Washington claims to respect. But why would any American policymaker want to keep troops in a nation that is becoming ever more authoritarian, corrupt, and sectarian? It is precisely the sort of place U.S. forces should not be tied down.

In contrast, Romney has effectively taken no position on Afghanistan. At times he appears to support the Obama timetable for reducing troop levels, but he has also proclaimed that “Withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan under a Romney administration will be based on conditions on the ground as assessed by our military commanders.” Indeed, he insisted: “To defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan, the United States will need the cooperation of both the Afghan and Pakistani governments — we will only persuade Afghanistan and Pakistan to be resolute if they are convinced that the United States will itself be resolute,” and added, “We should not negotiate with the Taliban. We should defeat the Taliban.”

Yet it’s the job of the president, not the military, to decide the basic policy question: why is the U.S. spending blood and treasure trying to create a Western-style nation state in Central Asia a decade after 9/11? And how long is he prepared to stay — forever? On my two trips to Afghanistan I found little support among Afghans for their own government, which is characterized by gross incompetence and corruption. Even if the Western allies succeed in creating a large local security force, will it fight for the thieves in Kabul?

Pakistan is already resolute — in opposing U.S. policy on the ground. Afghans forthrightly view Islamabad as an enemy. Unfortunately, continuing the war probably is the most effective way to destabilize nuclear-armed Pakistan. What will Romney do if the U.S. military tells him that American combat forces must remain in Afghanistan for another decade or two in order to “win”?

The ongoing AfPak conflict is not enough; Romney appears to desire war with Iran as well. No one wants a nuclear Iran, but Persian nuclear ambitiions began under America’s ally the Shah, and there is no reason to believe that the U.S. (and Israel) cannot deter Tehran. True, Richard Grenell, who briefly served as Romney’s foreign-policy spokesman, once made the astonishing claim that the Iranians “will surely use” nuclear weapons. Alas, he never shared his apparently secret intelligence about the leadership in Tehran’s suicidal tendencies. The Iranian government’s behavior has been rational even if brutal, and officials busy maneuvering for power and wealth do not seem eager to enter the great beyond. Washington uneasily but effectively deterred Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, the two most prolific mass murderers in history. Iran is no substitute for them.

Romney has engaged in almost infantile ridicule of the Obama administration’s attempt to engage Tehran. Yet the U.S. had diplomatic relations with Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia. Washington came to regret not having similar contact with Mao’s China. Even the Bush administration eventually decided that ignoring Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea only encouraged it to build more nuclear weapons faster.

Regarding Iran, Romney asserted, “a military option to deal with their nuclear program remains on the table.” Building up U.S. military forces “will send an unequivocal signal to Iran that the United States, acting in concert with allies, will never permit Iran to obtain nuclear weapons… . Only when the ayatollahs no longer have doubts about America’s resolve will they abandon their nuclear ambitions.” Indeed, “if all else fails … then of course you take military action,” even though, American and Iranian military analysts warn, such strikes might only delay development of nuclear weapons. “Elect me as the next president,” he declared, and Iran “will not have a nuclear weapon.”

Actually, if Tehran becomes convinced that an attack and attempted regime change are likely, it will have no choice but to develop nuclear weapons. How else to defend itself? The misguided war in Libya, which Romney supported, sent a clear signal to both North Korea and Iran never to trust the West.

Iran’s fears likely are exacerbated by Romney’s promise to subcontract Middle East policy to Israel. The ties between the U.S. and Israel are many, but their interests often diverge. The current Israeli government wants Washington to attack Iran irrespective of the cost to America. Moreover, successive Israeli governments have decided to effectively colonize the West Bank, turning injustice into state policy and making a separate Palestinian state practically impossible. Perceived American support for this creates enormous hostility toward the U.S. across the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Yet Romney promises that his first foreign trip would be to Israel “to show the world that we care about that country and that region” — as if anyone anywhere, least of all Israel’s neighbors, doesn’t realize that. He asserted that “you don’t allow an inch of space to exist between you and your friends and allies,” notably Israel. The U.S. should “let the entire world know that we will stay with them and that we will support them and defend them.” Indeed, Romney has known Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for nearly four decades and has said that he would request Netanyahu’s approval for U.S. policies: “I’d get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say, ‘Would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do?’” Americans would be better served by a president committed to making policy in the interests of the U.S. instead.

Romney’s myopic vision is just as evident when he looks elsewhere. For instance, he offered the singular judgment that Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe.” Romney complained that “across the board, it has been a thorn in our side on questions vital to America’s national security.”

The Cold War ended more than two decades ago. Apparently Romney is locked in a time warp. Moscow manifestly does not threaten vital U.S. interests. Romney claimed that Vladimir “Putin dreams of ‘rebuilding the Russian empire’.” Even if Putin has such dreams, they don’t animate Russian foreign policy. No longer an ideologically aggressive power active around the world, Moscow has retreated to the status of a pre-1914 great power, concerned about border security and international respect. Russia has no interest in conflict with America and is not even much involved in most regions where the U.S. is active: Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

Moscow has been helpful in Afghanistan, refused to provide advanced air defense weapons to Iran, supported some sanctions against Tehran, used its limited influence in North Korea to encourage nuclear disarmament, and opposes jihadist terrorism. This is curious behavior for America’s “number one geopolitical foe.”

Romney’s website explains that he will “implement a strategy that will seek to discourage aggressive or expansionist behavior on the part of Russia,” but other than Georgia where is it so acting? And even if Georgia fell into a Russian trap, Tbilisi started the shooting in 2008. In any event, absent an American security guarantee, which would be madness, the U.S. cannot stop Moscow from acting to protect what it sees as vital interests in a region of historic influence.

Where else is Russia threatening America? Moscow does oppose NATO expansion, which actually is foolish from a U.S. standpoint as well, adding strategic liabilities rather than military strengths. Russia strongly opposes missile defense bases in Central and Eastern Europe, but why should Washington subsidize the security of others? Moscow opposes an attack on Iran, and so should Americans. Russia backs the Assad regime in Syria, but the U.S. government once declared the same government to be “reformist.” Violent misadventures in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya demonstrate that America has little to gain and much to lose from another attempt at social engineering through war. If anything, the Putin government has done Washington a favor keeping the U.S. out of Syria.

This doesn’t mean America should not confront Moscow when important differences arise. But treating Russia as an adversary risks encouraging it to act like one. Doing so especially will make Moscow more suspicious of America’s relationships with former members of the Warsaw Pact and republics of the Soviet Union. Naturally, Romney wants to “encourage democratic political and economic reform” in Russia — a fine idea in theory, but meddling in another country’s politics rarely works in practice. Just look at the Arab Spring.

Not content with attempting to start a mini-Cold War, Mitt Romney dropped his nominal free-market stance to demonize Chinese currency practices. He complained about currency manipulation and forced technology transfers: “China seeks advantage through systematic exploitation of other economies.”

On day one as president he promises to designate “China as the currency manipulator it is.” Moreover, he added, he would “take a holistic approach to addressing all of China’s abuses. That includes unilateral actions such as increased enforcement of U.S. trade laws, punitive measures targeting products and industries that rely on misappropriations of our intellectual property, reciprocity in government procurement, and countervailing duties against currency manipulation. It also includes multilateral actions to block technology transfers into China and to create a trading bloc open only for nations genuinely committed to free trade.”

Romney’s apparent belief that Washington is “genuinely committed to free trade” is charming nonsense. The U.S. has practiced a weak dollar policy to increase exports. Washington long has subsidized American exports: the Export-Import Bank is known as “Boeing’s Bank” and U.S. agricultural export subsidies helped torpedo the Doha round of trade liberalization through the World Trade Organization.

Of course, Beijing still does much to offend Washington. However, the U.S. must accommodate the rising power across the Pacific. Trying to keep China out of a new Asia-Pacific trade pact isn’t likely to work. America’s Asian allies want us to protect them — no surprise! — but are not interested in offending their nearby neighbor with a long memory. The best hope for moderating Chinese behavior is to tie it into a web of international institutions that provide substantial economic, political, and security benefits.

Beijing already has good reason to be paranoid of the superpower which patrols bordering waters, engages in a policy that looks like containment, and talks of the possibility of war. Trying to isolate China economically would be taken as a direct challenge. Romney would prove Henry Kissinger’s dictum that even paranoids have enemies.

Naturally, Romney also wants to “maintain appropriate military capabilities to discourage any aggressive or coercive behavior by China against its neighbors.” However, 67 years after the end of World War II, it is time for Beijing’s neighbors to arm themselves and cooperate with each other. Japan long had the second largest economy on earth. India is another rising power with reason to constrain China. South Korea has become a major power. Australia has initiated a significant military build-up. Many Southeast Asian nations are constructing submarines to help deter Chinese adventurism. Even Russia has much to fear from China, given the paucity of population in its vast eastern territory. But America’s foreign-defense dole discourages independence and self-help. The U.S. should step back as an off-shore balancer, encouraging its friends to do more and work together. It is not America’s job to risk Los Angeles for Tokyo, Seoul, or Taipei.

Romney similarly insists on keeping the U.S. on the front lines against North Korea, even though all of its neighbors have far more at stake in a peaceful peninsula and are able to contain that impoverished wreck of a country. The Romney campaign proclaims: “Mitt Romney will commit to eliminating North Korea’s nuclear weapons and its nuclear-weapons infrastructure.” Alas, everything he proposes has been tried before, from tougher sanctions to tighter interdiction and pressure on China to isolate the North. What does he plan on doing when Pyongyang continues to develop nuclear weapons as it has done for the last 20 years?

The American military should come home from Korea. Romney complained that the North’s nuclear capability “poses a direct threat to U.S. forces on the Korean Peninsula and elsewhere in East Asia.” Then withdraw them. Manpower-rich South Korea doesn’t need U.S. conventional support, and ground units do nothing to contain North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Pull out American troops and eliminate North Korea’s primary threat to the U.S. Then support continuing non-proliferation efforts led by those nations with the most to fear from the North. That strategy, more than lobbying by Washington, is likely to bring China around.

Romney confuses dreams with reality when criticizing President Obama over the administration’s response to the Arab Spring. “We’re facing an Arab Spring which is out of control in some respects,” he said, “because the president was not as strong as he needed to be in encouraging our friends to move toward representative forms of government.” Romney asked: “How can we try and improve the odds so what happens in Libya and what happens in Egypt and what happens in other places where the Arab Spring is in full bloom so that the developments are toward democracy, modernity and more representative forms of government? This we simply don’t know.”

True, the president doesn’t know. But neither does Mitt Romney. The latter suffers from the delusion that bright Washington policymakers can remake the world. Invade another country, turn it into a Western-style democracy allied with America, and everyone will live happily every after. But George W. Bush, a member of Mitt Romney’s own party, failed miserably trying to do that in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The Arab Spring did not happen because of Washington policy but in spite of Washington policy. And Arabs demanding political freedom — which, unfortunately, is not the same as a liberal society — have not the slightest interest in what Barack Obama or Mitt Romney thinks.

Yet the latter wants “convene a summit that brings together world leaders, donor organizations, and young leaders of groups that espouse” all the wonderful things that Americans do. Alas, does he really believe that such a gathering will stop, say, jihadist radicals from slaughtering Coptic Christians? Iraq’s large Christian community was destroyed even as the U.S. military occupied that country. His summit isn’t likely to be any more effective. Not everything in the world is about Washington.

Which is why Romney’s demand to do something in Syria is so foolish. Until recently he wanted to work with the UN, call on the Syrian military to be nice, impose more sanctions, and “increase the possibility that the ruling minority Alawites will be able to reconcile with the majority Sunni population in a post-Assad Syria.” Snapping his fingers would be no less effective.

Most recently he advocated arming the rebels. But he should be more cautious before advocating American intervention in another conflict in another land. Such efforts rarely have desirable results. Iraq was a catastrophe. Afghanistan looks to be a disaster once American troops come home. After more than a decade Bosnia and Kosovo are failures, still under allied supervision. Libya is looking bad.

Even without U.S. “help,” a full-blown civil war already threatens in Syria. We only look through the glass darkly, observed the Apostle Paul. It might be best for Washington not to intervene in another Muslim land with so many others aflame.

Despite his support for restoring America’s economic health, Romney wants to increase dramatically Washington’s already outsize military spending. Rather than make a case on what the U.S. needs, he has taken the typical liberal approach of setting an arbitrary number: 4 percent of GDP. It’s a dumb idea, since America already accounts for roughly half the globe’s military spending — far more if you include Washington’s wealthy allies — and spends more in real terms than at any time during the Cold War, Korean War, or Vietnam War, and real outlays have nearly doubled since 2000. By any normal measure, the U.S. possesses far more military resources than it needs to confront genuine threats.

What Romney clearly wants is a military to fight multiple wars and garrison endless occupations, irrespective of cost. My Cato colleague Chris Preble figured that

Romney’s 4 percent gimmick would result in taxpayers spending more than twice as much on the Pentagon as in 2000 (111 percent higher, to be precise) and 45 percent more than in 1985, the height of the Reagan buildup. Over the next ten years, Romney’s annual spending (in constant dollars) for the Pentagon would average 64 percent higher than annual post-Cold War budgets (1990-2012), and 42 percent more than the average during the Reagan era (1981-1989).

If Mitt Romney really believes that the world today is so much more dangerous than during the Cold War, he should spell out the threat. He calls Islamic fundamentalism, the Arab Spring, the impact of failed states, the anti-American regimes of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, rising China, and resurgent Russia “powerful forces.” It’s actually a pitiful list — Islamic terrorists have been weakened and don’t pose an existential threat, the Arab Spring threatens instability with little impact on America, it is easier to strike terrorists in failed states than in nominal allies like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, one nuclear-armed submarine could vaporize all four hostile states, and Russia’s modest “resurgence” may threaten Georgia but not Europe or America. Only China deserves to be called “powerful,” but it remains a developing country surrounded by potential enemies with a military far behind that of the U.S.

In fact, the greatest danger to America is the blowback that results from promiscuous intervention in conflicts not our own. Romney imagines a massive bootstrap operation: he wants a big military to engage in social engineering abroad which would require an even larger military to handle the violence and chaos that would result from his failed attempts at social engineering. Better not to start this vicious cycle.

America faces international challenges but nevertheless enjoys unparalleled dominance. U.S. power is buttressed by the fact that Washington is allied with every industrialized nation except China and Russia. America shares significant interests with India, the second major emerging power; is seen as a counterweight by a gaggle of Asian states worried about Chinese expansion; remains the dominant player in Latin America; and is closely linked to most of the Middle East’s most important countries, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq. If Mitt Romney really believes that America is at greater risk today than during the Cold War, he is not qualified to be president.

In this world the U.S. need not confront every threat, subsidize every ally, rebuild every failed state, and resolve every problem. Being a superpower means having many interests but few vital ones warranting war. Being a bankrupt superpower means exhibiting judgment and exercising discretion.

President Barack Obama has been a disappointment, amounting in foreign policy to George W. Bush-lite. But Mitt Romney sounds even worse. His rhetoric suggests a return to the worst of the Bush administration. The 2012 election likely will be decided on economics, but foreign policy will prove to be equally important in the long-term. America can ill afford another know-nothing president.

Doug Bandow — The American Conservative

Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet. And rightfully so, since he often says ridiculous things that demand a response from those who understand basic economics better than he does, despite his having won a Nobel Prize. His January 26 column, “Jobs, Jobs and Cars,” has him once again making such an argument. This time it’s on the subject of job creation.

Krugman claims that the Republican argument for the importance of job creation relies too heavily on the “heroic entrepreneur” rather than recognizing that “successful companies—or, at any rate, companies that make a large contribution to a nation’s economy—don’t exist in isolation.” For Krugman this means there’s plenty of help from government. Although I can’t speak for all Republican politicians, I can say that Krugman’s view of the argument for free markets is utterly mistaken.

The argument for the market is based precisely on the fact that the entrepreneur exists in a social context that helps to determine how effective her actions will be. The most heroic entrepreneur imaginable cannot be very productive if she is shackled by government regulations or is trying to operate in a society with ill-defined or poorly enforced property rights. As Ludwig von Mises recognized as far back as 1920, this is the same reason that successful entrepreneurs fail miserably when they try to run government agencies like businesses: What gives the entrepreneur the ability to succeed are market signals, which are necessary to determine what people might want and how well it was provided. Even the smartest person can’t learn if a teacher uses black chalk on a blackboard in a dark room. No entrepreneur can succeed in isolation.

More important, though, is that both Krugman and politicians from both parties are much too concerned about job creation when they should be concerned about value creation. Creating jobs is easy; it’s creating value that’s hard. We could create millions of jobs quite easily by destroying every piece of machinery on U.S. farms. The question is whether we are actually better off by creating those jobs—and the answer is a definite no. We want labor-saving, job-destroying technology because it creates value by enabling us to produce things at lower cost and thereby free up labor for more urgent uses.

A century ago 40 percent of Americans worked in agriculture; today it’s less than 2 percent. The former farm workers didn’t all go unemployed. The wealth created by higher farm productivity and lower prices enabled us to demand all kinds of new products that in turn created many more jobs than were lost in agriculture. This is the story of innovation everywhere.

So rather than talking about job creation, let’s focus on value creation. The case for freeing markets is that such freedom best enables individuals to find ways to use their knowledge and skills to create value for others and thereby create wealth for themselves. The more wealth that value creators can keep, the more likely they are to continue to create it. Even if a value-creating innovation destroys jobs in the short run, the increased wealth will bring a great deal of job creation in its wake.

Krugman tries to criticize Apple by pointing out that the “heroic” Steve Jobs has only created about 43,000 Apple jobs in the United States (though he created around 700,000 overseas). But this misses the point: The real job-creation number that matters here is all the ancillary jobs created through the invention of the Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Those inventions, along with every other technological innovation, have created tens of millions of jobs in programming, web design, app design, hardware maintenance, accessories, and more.

Krugman also takes a swipe at fans of Ayn Rand by referring to “the John Galt, I mean Steve Jobs-type ‘job creator.’” But Krugman is blind to the error of his own joke: John Galt’s innovative motor took static electricity out of the air and turned it into useful energy, which would have been a huge job destroyer! Again, the triumph of entrepreneurial innovation is not in creating jobs, but in creating value. Galt’s motor would have freed up a lot of labor to be devoted to new wants made possible by the cheap source of energy. Krugman can’t even see that his own example undermines his argument.

The next time anyone starts talking about job creation, stop listening. Jobs come into existence when entrepreneurs are free to create value. Aiming directly at job creation is a recipe for waste and poverty. Set people free to use their talents to create value for others and the jobs will follow.

Steven Horwitz — The Freeman