Support the Troops: Bring them Home

I received a video from a friend today that has supposedly had over 3,000,000 hits as of whatever morning the original email had been sent. It was made by a young lady, purportedly fifteen years old, and shows a series of stills of U.S. troops in various situations while somber music plays in the background. In between each image is a line of text that asks various quesions and makes various statements about the troops, the war, and so forth. Questions that seem to be aimed at making those in the anti-war movement feel bad for criticizing the interventionist policies of the U.S. government. I sent a response back to my friend that I felt was worthy of this blog.

That is a good video, but I don't see how regular people like you and me can watch that and not wonder why so many more will have to die over there. I don't know anyone in the anti-war movement who hates the troops or who wishes them some kind of harm, but I do know that it is the dangerous, interventionist policies of our government that have put the troops needlessly in harms way. I wish that the invasion of Iraq had something to do with 911, or even that it (Iraq) was some kind of threat to our nation, but that just is not the case. Even Colin Powell now feels like we went to war for the wrong reasons (the non-existence of WMD in Iraq), and that given what we know now he would not have supported invading Iraq in the first place.

Why are we still there?

Here is the link
if you like to see the video.

Post–Constitutional America

Vache Folle at St. George Blog recently commented on my previouse post about the people who do not see the state for what it is. He stated that, "To problematize the state is to call into question their basic assumptions about social reality. They have to be reprogrammed." I think by using the word reprogrammed, he meant what Harry Browne used to mean by saying that people need to un-learn certain things about history in order to have a clear view of the current state of things.

That being said, Joe Sobran has written a piece titled How Tyranny Came to America that I think does a fine job of explaining how we got from a society with a relatively small and insignicant central government to one of massive size and scope. While I'm sure most of the readers of this blog have already un-learned most of their American history, this article makes for a good refresher course in constitutional chaos.



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Why Aren't Your Views Mainstream?

I recently forwarded a link containing clips of Ron Paul from the first Republican debate to a friend of mine. He in turn forwarded the same email on to his step father with a bit of his own words in the body. He stated that the ideas that Ron Paul put forth were simple, logical, and made about as much sense as anything that he had heard coming out of a politician’s mouth.

My friends step father responded to the email with one point. The response simply stated that if Ron Paul's ideas made so much sense, then why do the majority of our fellow Americans not agree?

I have been thinking about this response for the better part of the day, and I have come up with only one conclusion about it. My conclusion is simply this: how can someone respond to such a position with such a weak and hollow remark? It is exactly this type of thinking that advances the mindlessness of the American citizenry today. Rather than rationally and coherently respond with rebuttals and ideas of their own, those who come to the table with the statist point of view have no real coherent thoughts when it comes to thinking outside the statist box. My friend's father used the same hollow logic that Rudy Giulliani used when he labeled Ron Paul’s views about possible reasons why we were attacked on 9-11 as absurd. Ron Paul listed several sources, including the 9-11 Commission report, as backing for his rationale, but all the apologists of the welfare-warfare state can come up with is, "That is absurd, not in the mainstream!"

Where is the intelligent debate on the statist side? It seems that most of the time someone challenges their conventional way of thinking, all they can do is dismiss that persons views as “outside the mainstream.”

I wonder if these same people would have responded with these same hollow words towards people of pro-abolitionist views during the early 19th century. I can only imagine someone trying to persuade another that slavery is morally wrong and must be abolished, and the other person’s only line of reason for the continuance of slavery being, “If you are so right, why doesn’t the mainstream agree with you?”