We Are All Seduced (part 2)

I have never been more angry at President Bush than I am right now. There. I said it. I have thought some awful things about him, have tried to hold those opinions at bay, and have had all of them reinforced and confirmed to me through the current crisis.

What an arrogant fool. What a loser. This man, who up until a week ago, only had things to say about the economy like, "our economy is healthy," and baloney like, "we only have five percent unemployment," and "people are just focusing on the negative." What an idiot. And now he expects me to trust him with 700 billion dollars more, after he's lied, and lied, and lied, about the state of the nation, for seven and a half years.

If you can vote republican again after having this man as president, you are a special person. I don't want to touch a republican with a 100-foot pole.

Except for one: here's what he has to say about Mr. President's bailout plan.

- Expletives were self-deleted -
___________________________________________________________________
Dear Friends:

The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.

Still, at least a few observations are necessary. The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?

We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.

Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).
Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."

Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?

Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.

It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.

The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.

F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.

The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question? Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.

H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.

In liberty, Ron Paul

We Are All Seduced (part 1)

The other day I got an email forward with a picture of a pick-up truck that had the words, "I'm a REPUBLICAN, because EVERYONE can't be on WELFARE," on the back. I don't know why, but terse bloviations like that just really make my blood boil a smidgen. Once I got over it, and turned on the news for the day, I just had to laugh. Bailouts, bailouts, bailouts.

Here's the short of the story: if you are a democrat or a republican, you are part of the problem. Grant it, we all are seduced to various degrees, but if you are a democrat or a republican, you are likely going to vote for Barack Obama or John McCain. So, you're supposedly not for welfare, but your candidate is for the biggest bailout ever in the history of the United States, since the Great Depression.

Here's what Ron Paul has to say about it. He's telling the truth, something you aren't getting from the media, from Obama, or from McCain or President Bush. If you support them, you may say you oppose welfare; welfare for the poor "lazy" people. But you are voting for corporate welfare, make no doubt about it. It's lamentable, and it's the truth. ___________________________________________________________________

Dear Friends,

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.

The events of the past week are no exception. The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress' throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder.

Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! "This is welfare for the rich," he said. "This is socialism for the rich. It's bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters." That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we're being told it's unavoidable.

The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences - predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics - are being let off the hook.

The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!

• The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.• Financial institutions are "designated as financial agents of the Government." This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.

• Then there's this: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.There goes your country.

Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this "sadly necessary." Sad, yes. Necessary? Don't make me laugh. Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people.

The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind - another example of the big choice we're supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they're not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.

Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we'll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care? When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media? Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.

In liberty, Ron Paul

Ron Paul Speaks, McCain: the Lipstick-Wearing Pig

Texas representative and former presidential candidate Ron Paul held a press conference today, detailing how he rejected an invitation from the John McCain campaign to back the senator. He urged people to vote for one of the four candidates running on third-party tickets: Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney, Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, independent candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin.

He also called the current two-party election system a charade. The vast majority of people realize this, but they continue voting for the "lesser of two evils."

Really, the candidates talk about how different they are, when they are not really different at all. They both talk about change, but neither one stands for anything but the status quo.




In related news, the 'charade' continued, and this writer concluded he will not vote for John McCain.

Speaking of McCain's economic policy, Barack Obama used the phrase, 'you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig,' alluding to the congruences between McCain's economic plan and George W. Bush's plan. McCain's camp latched onto the statement, calling Obama a sexist, because apparently Sarah Palin wears lipstick. Good for you, McCain. Way to raise the level of debate. I am glad to have one choice eliminated. If only Ron Paul would run!



P.S. I don't see what the big deal is, even if Obama was calling Palin a pig. Palin called herself a pit bull at the Republican National Convention. I think pigs are much more cuddly and cute. I guess Palin is the pit bull, and McCain is the pig (but one of the uncuddly, uncute types).

Mitt Romney: The Sellout I Thought He Was

I was never a Mitt Romney supporter, but for some reason when I learned today that the expected happened: he will endorse John McCain for president, I felt my blood boiling a little more than usual.

While I never "endorsed" Romney, I was at the point of actually believing he might be our best presidential candidate who had a shot at winning. I liked his ideas and his background and leadership skills. Literally, the next day or so, he dropped out of the race. Now, just a week later, he is endorsing McCain.

It upsets me that I even came close to supporting this sellout candidate. The reason why it took me so long to warm up to him - his convenient changing from a liberal Massachusetts politician to a republican presidential candidate - ends up being the reason why he lost the race, and why I couldn't support him whole-heartedly. Put succinctly, you can't trust what Romney says.

He talked all the talk - Washington is broken, McCain is a liberal, we won't solve our problems by sending people who already work in Washington back to Washington, and so on. All of them sounded like reasonably sound and reasoned arguments. So what does the sellout do one week after he betrayed his entire support base? He tosses out all of his "principles" and supports a man who has none.

Just like he did to become a nominee.

I thought he was different, but unfortunately, Mitt Romney is no different, no better, than any of the other hypocritical, self-serving, special-interest-protecting Washington politicians. They have no principles, and neither does he. If he does, he values them as much as the average politician, only as much as it benefits him popularly and politically.

Recall the South Carolina Presidential Debate, if I am not mistaken, when there was a conversation between Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul about fixing what one has broken. Well, Romney has said time and time again that Washington was broken, and yet one week after he bailed on his principles, he turned against them completely and fell in line with the "broken" establishment. Nice job, buddy. Turns out he's just another one of talking heads that really has not the slightest intention of turning things around for our great nation.

I can only sympathize with his supporters. They must feel stabbed in the back. But many of them will still follow Romney blindly, just like they did before. Who cares what he said in the past, he's Mitt Romney, and if McCain is good enough for him, he's good enough for us.

Not that we can be surprised. Another flop for flipping Mitt. Another sellout endorsing the sellout candidate.

Why would he do this so readily? The answer is simple: another victory for the failed "war on terror." We will have to visit this subject later, but it seems any principles you might have should be suspended in order to win against "the bad guys." This is no surprise - the current administration has continually eroded our freedoms to "protect us." So the final lesson is, no sellout is too costly when you can use terrorism and terrorists to help your party's chances of winning the White House in the election. And in the world of Romney, death by terrorists is synonymous with Democrat in the White House.

Thank goodness for the conservatives, the principled ones, the republicans, who sacrifice so much so that we can live a life free of say....the hell that people live through in a place like Iraq.

Freedom: Drawing the Line in the Sand

Texas Congressman and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has shed light on a lot of issues facing the American people today. Of all the pressing matters in front of the people, the starkest is the fact that many Americans do not really understand or know what the meaning of freedom really actually is.

This can be attributed to a number of factors, including our lack of knowledge about our own history, our mental amnesia in connection with any world events preceding 9/11/2001, and our stubborn (arrogant) claim that we are the greatest nation in the world - not arrogant, just the greatest - and think the rest of the world should follow and be replicas of our government and system.

As stated, there are many other factors, but simple observation shows that those in control of the information and power channels in this country have gone out of their way to make sure our brains tend to function along the lines of the person or people just described above. If anyone criticizes America or its policies, they are "anti-American," "far left," etc., etc.

Author Naomi Klein puts it this way:

that shock came after "September 11, which, for millions of people, exploded 'the world that is familiar' and opened up a period of deep disorientation and regression that the Bush administration expertly exploited. Suddenly we found ourselves living in a kind of Year Zero, in which everything we knew of the world before could now be dismissed as 'pre-9/11 thinking.' Never strong in our knowledge of history, North Americans had become a blank slate - 'a clean sheet of paper' on which 'the newest and most beautiful words can be written' as Mao said of his people. A new army of experts instantly materialized to write new and beautiful words on the receptive canvas of our posttrauma consciousness: 'clash of civilizations,' they inscribed. 'Axis of evil,' 'Islamo-fascim,' 'homeland security.' With everyone preoccupied by the deadly new culture wars, the Bush administration was able to pull off what it could only have dreamed of doing before 9/11: wage privatized wars abroad and build a corporate security complex at home."
The Shock Doctrine (2007), p. 16

Repeated: we do not understand freedom. Thus the media continue to puzzle over the campaign of Ron Paul. He has no lobbyists breaking down his office door. He does not agree with most of the Republican party agenda. He does not have billion-dollar corporate donors padding his pockets. He has little chance to participate in the debates, and gets relatively little news coverage compared to the "legitimate" presidential candidates.

And yet the fact remains: supporters continue to flock to him by the thousands and dollars by the millions continue to amass without any real mechanism to drive the fundraising except Paul's followers at the grassroots level.

While they can't explain it, Ron Paul's opponents generally find ways to demean and mock his messengers. This obvious notion reinforces the greater truth: they do not understand freedom.

They do not understand the blessing of being free to read and learn without worrying about being eavesdropped upon. They do not understand the meaning of freedom as pertaining to talking on the phone without being spied upon. They do not understand the freedom, privilege and honor very few other people in the world have to be suspicious and fearful of large government and excesses of power. They do not understand the importance to citizens of the whole world to be free from torture. They do not understand that freedom is not expecting our president to "fix Washington" or "fix the country." They do not understand that freedom is getting out of the way to the greatest extent possible and letting the people participate in the remediation.

They just do not understand.

This is not really written to help them understand. For that which might have been incredible to the founders of our great nation is too common today: we don't understand, we don't know, and we don't care that we don't understand and don't know. After all, we have the freedom to be arrogant, and pride doesn't really walk hand-in-hand with seeing things from a different perspective.

Some of the "mainstream" say they agree with just about everything Ron Paul is saying. They know in their hearts that the "legitimate" candidates are nothing more than what continues to emerge in election after election as picking the lesser of two evils because we don't believe most of what any of them say. Yet they say they will not support Ron Paul because he has no chance of winning. Still just another show of the of the lack of appreciation they feel for the freedoms they enjoy.

This election could turn out to be one of the most important and historical elections in a long, long time. The line is being drawn, and more than ever those who love and embrace freedom are coming out in support of Ron Paul and his message. They are not anti-American. They do not despise freedom or our troops. In fact, it is more likely the other way around. Those who oppose Ron Paul, his message, and his followers, are simply (whether inadvertently or knowingly) displaying their lack of understanding of what freedom is.

Freedom is having a say in what government does. Freedom is speaking out, asking questions, reading, learning, protesting, fighting for the rights of not only men and women of this country, but those in the wide world, our brothers and sisters. Freedom is letting our counterparts in other countries live under the form of government of their choosing. Just as a civil war was necessary to free men from slavery, so it may take another war to tell government leaders to back off and give return our freedom to us. For much of the reason we don't know what freedom really is is due to the fact that we didn't really have as much freedom as we previously assumed. Fortunately, it is our gift and obligation to stand up and defend that which only God can give. It is time the government stepped back and realized that it does not give us our freedom; rather it exists simply to protect our freedom.

Ron Paul and his followers represent the hopes of all men to have freedom and liberty, not just promises and wishful blindness. God willing, the Ron Paul "miracle" may not be as inconceivable as his detractors seem to think. Keep loving America and what it really stands for, and keep cherishing your freedom to fight for what's most important. If you haven't joined the revolution, think about it. Freedom is the most contagious idea around.

Freedom: the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints.

Freedom: Liberty of the person from slavery, detention, or oppression.

a. Political independence.

b. Exemption from the arbitrary exercise of authority in the performance of a specific action; civil liberty: freedom of assembly.

Ron Paul: Fundamental Questions

It is time to return to the basics for a moment. What is the appeal of Ron Paul, and why does this scare the mainstream to death?

I will only speak for myself, but I imagine there are many out there like me, republican, democrat, libertarian, and so on, who are drawn to the campaign for similar reasons.

The main "problem" with Ron Paul's campaign is he got me asking important questions. I had wondered about some of them before, but he gave a voice and a confirmation to those doubts and concerns. These are questions such as: why do we threaten Iran not to develop nuclear weapons when we refuse to follow non-proliferation ourselves? Is it acceptable to torture a person, no matter how "evil" they may be? Is it acceptable to arrest people without a cause and to hold them in prison indefinitely without formal charges, no matter who the person may be?

Knowing what we know now, why do our leaders not shoulder any responsibility for inadvertently if not purposely leading us into a war in Iraq on cherry-picked intelligence and false claims?

The questions could go on. I will stay away from the ones I've asked about the handling of the 9/11 tragedy. Whether you think it's obvious what happened that day, I do not think we have ever gotten the whole story. One thing is certain: our politicians have very successfully exploited our fear following the tragedy to make cheap political points. So it then follows: did the world really experience marked change on 9/11?

I will not be able to answer all of the questions I have already pronounced, especially since there are hardly easy answers to many of them. The point is more about actually asking the question in the first place, and then looking into the matter further yourself. This is the simple explanation for why the media are frightened by Ron Paul. He is bringing up issues that the mainstream media (MSM) do not want us to think about. These corporate-run institutions along with our paid-for-and-sold politicians want us to accept their words at face value and not question their motives, their intent, or least of all their character. Most if not all of these questions will never be asked to the "legitimate" presidential candidates, and if they were, the candidates would not be able to give a straight answer. This blatant exhibition of mind control has gone on too long, and Ron Paul is jarring people loose of these shackles one by one.

Once you start to awake, you can then ask even more important questions: are we really safer after 9/11? Does killing terrorists (along with an occasional ten or hundred or thousand innocents) abroad stop terrorists from trying to kill us on the domestic front? Is the MSM really slanted by a liberal bias? Are terrorists really born evil and inherently hate freedom and liberty?

If any of these concern you, you are heading in the right direction. I suggest you go to your local library and start looking into these matters. That is unless you are worried about who is looking at your library records, in the which case you may want to go to your nearest Barnes and Noble and buy some of these books with cold hard cash. While I am not that frightened by our monstrous government, I can understand why you might feel that way.

I have been particularly surprised at the amount of information that can be found that actually points to the U.S. being involved in, directly or indirectly, terrorist plots and activities. Not plotting with al-Qaeda of course, but with repressive governments in order to help them limit the amount of national/popular activity in certain countries and regions of the world. This will lead us to the last and probably most fundamental question of all: when you are "good" and they are "evil," is it okay for you to resort to terrorism when it is wrong for them?

To those who will continue to question and learn. The world elite fear you even more than bin Laden.

The Book of Mormon on Riches, Terror, Secret Combinations

The prophet Joseph Smith said "the Book of Mormon [is] the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book."

I would not be surprised if many libertarians and Ron Paul supporters are not Latter-Day Saints or affiliated with offshoot religions that still use the Book of Mormon. Among the most common themes addressed by the book's prophets are the issues of love of riches, pride, and secret combinations. I will try to put our current "war on terror" in a Book of Mormon perspective and try to argue why conventional thinking about the current political system in our country may be extremely misguided.

While the current prosperity in the United States can be arguably God-given because we are a God-fearing and righteous nation, I think this argument has been the excuse to allow starvation and suffering inexplicably among our own people, but even more among the peoples of the world. To buttress my claims, I will use as a source The Book of Mormon Reference Companion by Largey, as well as the book itself, and other words of modern LDS prophets.

First, the Reference Companion says "in addition to being a source of pride (2 Ne. 28:15; Alma 4:6; Hel. 3:36, 7:26; 3 Ne. 6:10,12), riches are also used to support wickedness (Mosiah 11:13-14);...they can divide societies into classes and ranks (3 Ne. 6:12, 4 Ne. 1:24-26); they are the foundation of materialism (Alma 31:24, 27-28; Hel. 7:21); and they lead to secret combinations (Hel. 6:17). It is obvious that these signs of riches are seen all over our society today. Meanwhile one must understand that secret combinations go unperceived simply because secret combinations are just that: secret. However, they are also all over our society today; even among our highest government officials.

2 Ne. 28:14 says: "They wear stiff necks and high heads; yea, and because of pride, and wickedness, and abominations, and whoredoms, they have all gone astray save it be a few, who are the humble followers of Christ; nevertheless, they are led, that in many instances they do err because they are taught by the precepts of men."

Simply put, we are compelled to change our ways of viewing and worshiping God from all sides. From elimination of prayer in public, to elimination of the Bible in any public affairs, to the fight to strip the Pledge of Allegiance of the words "one nation under God," the government has become a sort of "false God." The government has been set up to take care of us, thus becoming a substitute for the true Father of our country.

But looking into verse 14 more deeply, is it not accurate to say that our views on our society and the government currently are shaped almost exclusively by the government and the educational system set up by said institution? Therefore, many are ignorant, either outright or willingly, and even the few are caused to stumble because of the "precepts of men." One precept of men that is becoming more prominent is the idea that our founding fathers were not inspired men - rather they were no better than terrorists today. The peddlers of this believe explain that the tactics used by the founders in their warfare against England were similar to the tactics terrorists use today. Therefore, the Constitution has little use in these different, more sophisticated times. If this is not an evil position, I don't know what is. In truth, I am not as put off by the comparison as I may sound. With today's ever more broad definition of terrorist, just about anyone who challenges the status-quo in any way might be labeled a terrorist. The founders definitely challenges the top-down government emanating out of London, the policies of which were similar to those of our current government in too many ways.

Such talk immediately demonstrates that our ways of thinking are skewed not only by our indoctrination by the powerful, but also by the pride and ease that have come as a result of our riches.

Hel. 6:17 says "the Lord had blessed them so long with the riches of the world that they had not been stirred up to anger, to wars, nor to bloodshed; therefore they began to set their hearts upon their riches; yea, they began to seek to get gain that they might be lifted up one above another..."

Despite the current political climate and various wars on multiple fronts taking place today, most of us have not had to worry about fighting or even thinking war, and we have enjoyed several years if not decades of ease enjoying the riches of the world. Complete with million-dollar homes, fancy cars, HDTV's, fine clothes, we see examples of this all around us. Meanwhile people are starving left and right and we are told that we deserve our wealth, that we earned it, that the poor are poor because the government welfare state made them that way, or because they are lazy.

Here again we see "precepts of men" creeping in. How is it not an outrage that the U.S. - five percent of the world's total population - consumes 25% of the world's goods and commodities? Yet thousands of people die every day from starvation around the world, and this suffering is compounded by the policies of western states, especially the United States today. The idea that this is an inspired nation was not meant to be a pretext to make us feel we are better than everyone else.

While we go around after the riches of the world, families are torn apart, children's lives are severely harmed, if not destroyed. Yet returning to God and family is yet another "extremist" idea. Yes, the presidential candidates, particularly on the republican side will say we need to return to family, but the evidence shows that these same individuals when placed in power will continue to increase the grip of the federal government and will do anything in their means to assure that the U.S. still controls a disproportionate amount of the world's goods as the planet's only super power.

Since we see all around us the effects of the love of riches, and of pride, it is then easy to expect to have present many forms of secret combinations, even among our most "pious" government officials. Hel. 7:4-6 says: "Seeing the people in a state of such awful wickedness, and those Gadianton robbers filling the judgment-seats - having usurped the power and authority of the land; laying aside the commandments of God, and not in the least aright before him; doing no justice unto the children of men;

"Condemning the righteous because of their righteousness; letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money; and moreover to be held in office at the head of government, to rule and do according to their wills, that they might get gain and glory of the world, and moreover, that they might more easily commit adultery, to steal, and kill, and do according to their own wills-

"Now this great iniquity had come upon the Nephites, in the space of not many years."

These symptoms of secret combinations are all around us. We have seen our country go to war against an unknown foe for an unknown stretch of time. Thousands of our brave men and women have been killed along with tens of thousands of the innocent. While soldiers are often prosecuted for missteps and crimes they performed, the leaders of the military have walked away blameless. Yes, some like Donald Rumsfeld have lost their jobs, but they have not taken any responsibility for the ugly scene they've helped to create among the people in Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of corporate welfare and "capitalistic" seizing of more of the world's resources.

Look at who President Bush appoints as his leaders: almost without exception they are old elite friends who got rich as leaders of large corporations. When they leave their assignments in the government, they will still be rich, but the world will suffer more because of their actions.

All of these arguments seem inappropriate since the real threat is the one to which we have surrendered ourselves which the government has used to cunningly scare us into submission of our God-given rights and privileges. Yes, another "precept of men" that is looming over us. God gives us our freedom, and government is charged to protect those rights.

But there are the real secret combinations out there: the modern form of Gadianton Robbers - the al-Quaeda's, the Hamas's, the Hezbollah's. What does the Book of Mormon say about them?

We read these words in Hel. 7:23-25: "...it shall be better for the Lamanites than for you except ye shall repent. For behold, they are more righteous than you, for they have not sinned against that great knowledge which ye have received...and ye have united yourselves unto it, yea, to that secret band which was established by Gadianton."

This prophet is speaking to the people of Nephi - the Christians of their day. The Lamanites, of whom he refers were the "non-believers." The entire theme of the Book of Mormon is that the people would be blessed if they turned to God, and they would be punished if they turned away. The Lamanites also had interaction with the secret combination of Gadianton, who was the first leader of the band in that time. However, the Nephites seemed to unite themselves more freely to this secret group, and it led to their destruction, as well as the destruction of the people of Ether, who lived in this land before the Nephites.

The message is clear, and it has been repeated to us in contemporary times by leaders of the church, as well as leaders of the United States: that the country would not falter unless it was defeated from within.

While I do not diminish the fact that there are certain individuals in the world who would kill themselves and others to send a message to the world, I am coming to see more and more that the supposed "war on terror" is a scheme of deflection. This way we focus our attention to some unknown, outside threat, and thus remain oblivious to the widespread takeover of our government by members of secret societies, or puppets (our politicians) of the aforementioned. It is clear that this fact threatens the very existence of our nation more than any amount of damage a bin Laden or Ahmadinejad could inflict upon us.

We are the ones who have been blessed of God. We are the ones who are turning from Him after he has bestowed so much on our heads. But because of the precepts of men, we are largely unaware of the current danger surrounding us. We are told that "we" are good and "they" are evil. Meanwhile, our leaders commit sometimes horrendous acts for which they will never answer. Just like in secret combinations, they are above the law.

President Ezra Taft Benson, the thirteenth president of the Church said these chilling words in one of his final testimonies: "I testify that wickedness is rapidly expanding in every segment of our society. (See D&C 1:14–16; D&C 84:49–53.) It is more highly organized, more cleverly disguised, and more powerfully promoted than ever before. Secret combinations lusting for power, gain, and glory are flourishing. A secret combination that seeks to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries is increasing its evil influence and control over America and the entire world. (See Ether 8:18–25.)"

That address was given nearly twenty years ago. If the Nephites were able to degenerate in a matter of not many years, and President Benson said a secret combination was increasing its hold over the world, how could we be so self-satisfied to think that it is not there, right in front of us, but we are unaware.

We are unaware because of imagined enemies. We are unaware because of meaningless issues being debated on the corporate-owned media outlets. We are unaware because of the false left-right paradigm. We are unaware because we are watching football and American Idol and Survivor all day long. We are unaware because although we are skeptical of the worthiness of our public servants, we are still a "pretty good country" so things can't be that bad.

Ron Paul is giving an outlet to people who have not had a voice among Democrats or Republicans for many elections. He is bringing up issues that the mainstream do not want us to be aware of. After all, if the most sinister plot of all was made common knowledge, that we are told we are a democratic free people while our rights are being torn right from our outstretched arms, the powerful might lose their power and dominion over us. That is something that they will do anything to avoid; even murder, plunder, commit adultery, declare war, etc.

May we open our eyes and start learning about the real issues that are being avoided by our very politicians, media, and presidential candidates today. Find out that change is a must, and change will not come by walking down the same millionaire democrat/republican one-way dead-end street.

Blowback: Unintended Consequences of Empire

I have been voraciously reading Chalmers Johnson's Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. I originally came to an awareness of the term Blowback while listening to Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul talk about why we need to get our troops out of Iraq, as well as why we were attacked on 9/11/2001. His comments came during a debate on Fox News several months ago, and was widely publicized due to former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani taking umbrage to Paul's stance.

Immediately following the debate, Fox News spun Paul's words into him blaming Americans for the attacks. Over and over again, the representative from Texas had his words misrepresented. The noise machine had done its job well: instead of American people actually listening and questioning whether our foreign policy over the years has had or could have any negative unintended repercussions, they simply branded Paul as a "loon." Name calling is quite often a preferred alternative to actually discussing real issues.

However, my interest was piqued; I proceeded to look into the matter further. What could the United States have possibly done in the past that would incite such hatred that people might actually fight back? Before Paul brought up the issue I thought, much like many in this country undoubtedly have, that if our nation had committed any serious atrocities, we would have heard about it. After all, Abu Ghraib was splattered all over the mainstream news media for quite awhile while admittedly some of us thought those crimes were not nearly as egregious as some of the horrific acts perpetrated by dictators like Saddam Hussein.

Not surprisingly, examples were not in short supply. In fact, I would proffer that they are so abundant that making the argument that our policies do not impact foreign relations has about as much utility as arguing that Phoenix is not in the desert. For some reason we expect these facts to be out in the open when they in fact must be kept secret as much as possible - for if they were made public knowledge, many might actually be concerned. Just slightly less startling is the amount that has been published while a good number of "great Americans" turn a blind eye, either because they couldn't care less, or due to the fact that they will not believe America could ever be in the wrong no matter where the information comes from. Understandably, it is difficult to separate the fact that this nation, which I believe was divinely organized, has done so much good in the world while concurrently being capable of doing so much evil.

Regardless, I also believe that we cannot move forward unless we acknowledge the error of our ways and correct them. Denying a doctor's diagnosis will not help the patient heal his ailment.

Enter Chalmer's contribution, which foreshadowed 9/11 by little over year. This text examines the United States' often secret involvement with so many of the world's power players since World War II ended as well as U.S. foreign policy toward these countries following the end of the Cold War. Needless to say, Johnson offers much that makes one sit and wonder. Generally, the United States has been involved with staging uprisings in various nations against leaders whom the U.S. opposed in order to create instability that would lead to installing a political figure that could pull in the reins and whom the U.S. supported. Often these involvements take place behind the scenes, but large scale destruction and serious human rights violations are the norm.

One of the most glaringly awful incidents that we seem to ignore is that Iraq sanctions imposed by the United Nations (due mainly to US pressure) from 1991-98 likely caused the deaths of close to half a million Iraqis due to "disease, malnutrition, and inadequate health care (p. 9)." While the U.S. government will justify these deaths and say Saddam deserves responsibility, it is doubtful the Iraqi people will see it that way. Causing the deaths of tens of thousands of the innocent while failing to take Saddam down is a pretty serious offense. And while we may forget and diminish the fact that we (the U.S. government) placed Saddam in power initially, no doubt Iraqis still remember painfully. To maintain that only al-Qaeda terrorists are fighting our troops in Iraq is asinine. No doubt many of the "insurgents" are those who are seeking vengeance for the harsh consequences suffered by them and their families while the U.S. tinkered with them during decades of despicable foreign policy toward the Middle East.

While this example may be on the extreme end of the spectrum, similar findings are available in countries on every continent of the globe. From Okinawa, Japan, to Chile, to Guatemala, to Turkey, to the Sudan, the United States has organized countless operations that to us may have seemed in our best interest, while not even considering the impact on the country in question or its citizens.

What is the bottom line here? Secret societies which were formed to increase security have actually made the world less safe.

Another issue for another time: why is the mainstream media, as well as government leaders, republican and democrat, so scared of Dr. Paul?