Ron Paul: The Personal Is Political

Political Immorality and Personal Immorality

Many Americans have been shocked by recent revelations of the extent of sexual harassment in Congress. However, no one should be too surprised that those who spend their lives defending and expanding the welfare-warfare state engage in immoral personal conduct. It is only natural that an immoral system, like the welfare-warfare state, tends to attract individuals likely to practice personal immorality.

The welfare-warfare state is built on a foundation of taxation and fiat currency controlled by a secretive central bank. While some type of taxation may be necessary to fund the few legitimate functions of government, taking people’s money to fund a redistributive welfare state at home and a global empire abroad is nothing more than theft. The Federal Reserve’s erosion of purchasing power is also a form of theft.

The welfare-warfare state relies on violence. Every law preventing us from living our lives as we choose — whether forbidding us from working for below minimum wage, preventing us from smoking marijuana or drinking raw milk, telling private business owners who can and cannot use what restroom, or requiring us to purchase government-approved health insurance — rests on the threat of force being used against those who refuse to obey.

The warfare side of the welfare-warfare state is obviously rooted in violence. War inevitably leads to deaths, including the deaths of innocents. A permanent warfare state is also the quickest way to lose our liberties. This is why the Founding Fathers counseled against standing armies and foreign entanglements.

The neocons and “humanitarian interventionists” who control our foreign policy have disregarded the wisdom of the Founders. They actually promote endless wars not to protect our security but to promote “democracy” and “universal human rights.” They are impervious to evidence of the failure of military interventions to achieve these goals and indifferent to the human and fiscal costs of endless war. They dismiss the loss of innocent lives — including the deaths of children — as unavoidable “collateral damage,” while using their influence in the media to spread pro-war propaganda. They also smear their opponents as aiding America’s enemies and sympathizing with terrorists.

No one holding political power wants to admit the system he supports is immoral and a failure. Therefore, defenders of the welfare-warfare state rely on lies and deceptions. They ignore all evidence of the failure of big government to accomplish its ends, instead pretending they can fix the system with a few reforms. They also work with allies in the media to promulgate the lie that without the welfare state the masses would remain poor and uneducated, and without the warfare state, we would be overwhelmed by those who hate us for our freedoms. They never mention that many foreigners hate America because of the suffering caused by our hyper-interventionist foreign policy.

The welfare-warfare state is built on violence and deceit. It is thus inevitable that many of those participating in this immoral system will combine their immoral politics with immoral personal conduct. Hopefully, the revelations of sexual misconduct among the welfare-warfare state’s Capitol Hill and media defenders will lead more Americans to question the morality and the wisdom of allowing the federal government to run the world, run the economy, and run our lives.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

Ron Paul on the Bitcoin Bubble

Ron Paul: “Cryptocurrency Is a Reflection of the Disaster of the Monetary Dollar System”

Ron Paul appeared on CNBC to warn viewers that cryptocurrencies had become an asset that rivals the bubble he sees in stocks…

“I think it’s going to continue to do exactly what it’s doing. It’s going higher and it’s going lower,” he said Tuesday on CNBC’s ‘Futures Now’.

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“We can look at what’s happening now, which to me is a climactic end of QEs.”

CNBC reports that Pauls sees the cryptocurrency craze as a side effect of central banks doing several rounds of quantitative easing to cope with the last financial crisis.

I look at the problems we face. I think they’re gigantic and people are desperate and looking everywhere. Why would they buy bonds that pay negative interest rates? Why would they buy stocks, and say well this time it’s different? ” asked Paul.

“Cryptocurrency is a reflection of the disaster of the monetary dollar system.”

Continue reading…

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

Feiglin on the Real Reason to Throw out Bibi

Not Because of Corruption: By Moshe Feiglin

When a famous rabbi joins the agenda dictated by Netanyahu nemesis Eldad Yaniv, he doesn’t turn himself into a soldier in the service of morality. Just the opposite. He and those who follow him turn themselves into soldiers in the service of the disgusting manipulations of the most filthy, despicable creatures in our midst.

The same rabbi supported executing the orders to drive the residents of Gush Katif from their homes. In other words, he indirectly enabled the moral abomination that no corruption can equal. In my eyes, this rabbi’s moral compass is completely off course.

Rightist Yoaz Hendel, who is heading an anti-corruption demonstration scheduled for Saturday night, is right when he talks about the danger of corruption, but he is mixing the important with the unimportant. Corruption and dishonesty have always been here. They are always serious problems, they must always be fought – and I did so without fear when I was an MK.

It is good that the corruption in Netanyahu’s back yard is being investigated and it is good that the public doesn’t like it. However, the level of corruption is currently much lower than it was in the days of Sharon, Barak and Peres. I do not remember demonstrations against corruption then, featuring rabbis, journalist and MKs.

In Israel, corruption is a geographical matter. When it is in the Right’s territory, it is a national agenda. When it is in the Left’s… the offenders are pampered.

Netanyahu’s personal conduct is objectionable. He has to go home, but not because of corruption. He has to go home because the strategy of “Let’s just make it to twelve o’clock tonight and we’ll see what happens tomorrow” – or in other words, the total lack of any strategy other than personal survival, has turned the man into a strategic catastrophe for the State of Israel.

The man who explained years ago that his main objective was to neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat, passed the responsibility for that to Obama – and destroyed the Iranian nuclear reactor with his speeches. Netanyahu is responsible for the fact that not only will Iran have nuclear capabilities, but they will be sitting on our border, a short distance from Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu is the man who removed the metal detectors so that the Arabs would return to the Temple Mount. He is the man who prevented the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem (no – it did not move) and VP Pence’s speech at the Western Wall (did you really think that Pence didn’t come because of Rabbi Rabinovitz?). He is the man who neutralized any effective bills limiting the power of the High Court. He is a man with no vision – and he must go home.

 Because when a nation has no vision, it becomes corrupt. The time has come for leadership with vision. If the demonstrations against Netanyahu will ultimately depose him, I will not be sorry. But I cannot lie to myself and participate in them.

From Jewish Israel, here.