United Liberty

In this video, an Iraqi mother explains why she is ambivalent about voting. Her situation sounds like that of many Americans.

Way back in July of 2003 Ron Paul wrote an article entitled “We’ve Been Neo-Conned” in which he laid out facts showing that the “Neo-Con” philosophy had taken over the foreign policy of the USA (For a quick primer on the Neo-Conservative movement please click the link above). As I was reading this article one question kept repeating in my head:

“How did it come to this?”

The only place to start I believe is with the American person (notice I didn’t use the plural “people”). I will use myself as an example since I believe my story is common to many modern-day libertarians and members of the Liberty movement.

In short, I was raised a Reagan Republican, became a Neo-Con after 9/11, converted to a Goldwater conservative after the invasion of Iraq and became a full-fledged libertarian after finding the writings of Murray Rothbard(OK, maybe every libertarian didn’t become one because of Murray but I think many have a similar story).

But here is what I believe is key in my story and the reason why there aren’t more capital “L” Libertarians: I didn’t get their foreign policy. Like many I actually referred to myself as libertarian on social and monetary issues, but not when it came to our “enemies”. I hear the same from freedom loving people over and over again, especially in the wake of 9/11.

The reason the Neo-Cons were able to seize power is FEAR. I am not putting anybody down because of it. I can certainly relate, but we still have to figure out why the American person is allowing our government todrop bombs and declare war on anybody they want to while we cheer them on. When does fear translate to lunacy?

Bob Barr was on The O’Reilly Factor last night to the debate the pompous host of the show on conservatives’ reaction to the Christmas Day attempted terrorist attack.

In his recent column, Barr wrote:

The criticism has included such childishness as blasting Obama for waiting a few days before making a national speech on the incident.  For heaven’s sake, the president was briefed on the incident from the moment it occured; he made statements almost immediately indicating his concern and that he was being regularly briefed; he took time to gather the facts and meet with his national security team; and then he appeared publicly to give a rational, measured, but hard-hitting response.  And for this, a former vice president criticizes him.

Barr blames it all on partianship, and he is right for the most part. I do think the failures of TSA need to be brought to light and fixed. However, we do not fix these problems by having a knee-jerk reaction and violating more civil liberties.

Here is video of Barr on the show:

Congressman Ron Paul, in his most recent Texas Straight Talk column, draws attention to some very important lessons from the recent terrorist attacks on the city of Mumbai in India. India happens to have very draconian laws restricting gun ownership. One of his points is that violent attacks tend to happen in places where guns are not allowed, such as schools, while such aggressive, terrorizing attacks are almost unheard of in places such as gun shows and military bases.