A Libertarian H-Bomb on May 23rd: The Brexit Party and the EU Parliamentary Elections

Brexit (definition) – A type of British hardtack biscuit much favored by the English peasantry which the EU broke its tooth on in 2019.

On May 23rd, 2019, we may see the second, and most potent, stage of the quasi-Libertarian Revolution being staged in Britain by those Old World Liberal Englishmen who wanted Mankind’s Liberation from the tyrannies of governments. The Libertarian wants, first and foremost, the Liberty of the Individual to do whatever he wants as long as he doesn’t assault someone else’s Property Rights. But he also wants that not only for himself, but for all the other Humans.

Part of that Liberty concerns self-government — the people ruling themselves through Parliament, which they choose in democratic-majority elections. This is what is generally known as British Democracy.

It took hundreds of years of bloody British history for the people to throw off the double-yolks of a monarchy with omnipotent power, and a state church. But they finally did it and developed an unwritten Constitution, unlike America, that had certain traditions and established certain boundaries. And the first boundary was that Parliament ruled and was the voice of the people, not any other force like the monarch or the church.

And because a Prime Minister was chosen by his fellow party members in Parliament, and ruled for no fixed terms, he was indirectly chosen by the people who, by voting for a party, knew the general policies that whomever became Prime Minister would surely follow and promote. But unlike in America, if the Prime Minister lost the confidence of his party or the nation, he could be out of office at any time if he proved corrupt or incompetent. In America the Citizens are stuck with whatever clown is voted into the Presidency for four years, and squawk though they may, they cannot easily remove the clown before his sell-by date, no matter how putrid he or she is. Look at the War Criminal Johnson and the War Criminal Nixon, both of whom it took years to remove from office, and only when their fellow politicians finally wanted it.

But in England, the only checks on Parliament were a certain unspoken pressure from the monarch, and the secondary influence of the House of Lords. Otherwise, Parliament ruled supreme and Parliament was the voice of the people who could be called on to vote at any time. In that sense, British Democracy was and is more immediate than American democratically-elected Republicanism.

Britain’s joining the EU changed all that, a change which the masses and most of the politicians failed to comprehend. For it has led to EU rules being imposed on the UK, and for the first time in history UK courts have overruled acts of Parliament because they did not comply with EU laws. This, in effect, gave the unelected EU bureaucrats, who propose EU legislation, which is then passed by the EU Parliament, power over and above Parliament, which could find its decisions being rescinded by UK courts that were being forced to follow EU rules (as has occurred). In effect, for the first time in its history, the UK had a constitutional court that could invalidate an act of Parliament. Or, to put it simply, Parliament no longer ruled the UK.

That is, the Cromwellian Revolution of the 17th century, which overthrew the rule of an absolute Monarchy, had been overturned by the EU bureaucrats without the British public having any say in the decision. Indeed, the Remainers in the UK call the Brexiteers all kinds of names, and predict dire disaster if England does not abjectly lie down and subject herself to the EU bureaucrats. After centuries of war, France and Germany have finally conquered England.

But the recent local council elections in Britain changed all that. The Tory Party, led by the pathetic Theresa May, kept flying in the face of the Tory rank and file, and huge numbers of Labourites and Independents, who wanted a Brexit. The dilatory tactics of May finally exasperated the public to such an extent that the Tories lost over 1300 council seats while Labour lost 82. The Greens gained 145, the Liberal Democrats, who are like milquetoast Democrats in the US, gained many seats, but the largest number of seats gained, over 400, went to Independents unaffiliated with any party, and the minor parties.

The fact that Independents and fringe parties won the greatest number of seats was in itself an indication of a libertarian upsurge in public cynicism towards the corrupt major parties in the UK.

But feeding on that has been the amazing growth of the Brexit Party, which, formed only a month ago by Nigel Farage, is way ahead in the polling, leaving the Parties that have dominated British Politics for several centuries in the dust. That a libertarian Party, libertarian in the sense of wishing to devolve power from a huge Leviathan state to a smaller democratic state, could leap in 30 days from non-existence to leading the British polls at 64% is an amazing political phenomenon. After years of constipation, it looks like the public is tired of eating white bread and junk food.

Whether May 23rd, 2019 will prove to be the beginnings of a great British Libertarianism, so well articulated in the old British Liberal Party and its shining lights like Lord Acton, or merely another descent into the dark, castrating bureaucratic rule of the unelected EU Councils, we cannot as yet know.

On May 23rd, we will see if Britons, once again, will never never never be slaves.

— Paul Grad, vegan-libertarian

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Socialism: The Anti-Masculine Ideology

Socialism is a profoundly anti-masculine ideology, substituting the tyranny of the old, pre-Revolutionary European monarchies for the moral and independent ideology of the Jeffersonian Libertarians of the Revolution. And here we use the term “masculine” to characterize the qualities of independence, moral consciousness, and insight, in opposition to the action of acquiescence in the face of fascistic tyranny.

When the new Left in America, now firmly ensconced in the Democrat Party, promotes the values of a fanatical religion as being “peaceful” in the face of facts, and supports Theocratic Fascist regimes like Iran which practice Capital Punishment on a grand scale, while remaining mum on China’s herding a million Uighers into concentration camps, we know we are back in the Dark Ages long before Jefferson.

Those Leftists must have no knowledge of the long, bloody history of Europe where those Men who saw that Liberty and the Inalienable Rights of the Individual were the highest political good were burned at the stake, as was anyone who disagreed vocally with the prevalent religion of the realm. Nationalism and the marriage of church and state meant havoc for Europeans for almost a millenium. But in America was born the idea that a man owned himself, and had no allegiance to any monarch, any flag, or any pre-formulated ideology of religion.

Yet this new generation of Leftists and Liberal Democrats seems to have no knowledge of the dangers illustrated by the past, and this must be due to not teaching European history in the government schools, combined with a tragic non-interest in reading history, philosophy, and many other mind-stretching subjects. This must be due to a vast uninterest in the younger generation in complex mental subjects, which is well illustrated by the meager number of downloads of many important books on free-share websites like archive.org and gutenberg.org.

And this uninterest is primarily due to the conditioning of the new media on the brains of the upcoming generation. By now, those brains have been heavily worked on for decades, and the government-school teachers of today are so mediocre because they were the Reagan-babies of yesteryear. And, as the actor Richard Dreyfus pointed out in a recent interview, since 1970 Civics have ceased to be taught in the government schools, so the children grow up with no exposure as to why our Jeffersonian government is the only one to be consistent with Human Dignity, but also with no exposure to the millennium of failures of European monarchies and the countless wars to which they led. It is thus understandable why Leftists are so easily gulled in their thinking. Their brains are on the level of medieval religious fanatics who could easily be incited into a howling mob. They have no idea of the significance of Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan Revolution, nor of Napoleon, nor are they aware of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of the Huguenots in France.

There are four anti-Masculine qualities implied in Socialism.

First is the authority of the State, and the Individual’s submission to that authority. This is a problem with any State government, but least so with the Government as envisioned in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution, whose anti-Majoritarian provisions were designed to protect the Inalienable Rights of the Individual against the assault of the democratic mob.

Such submission to authority is most retrograde to Masculinity.

Secondly is Fear in the face of the State. It is obvious that the Socialist State has vast resources with which to harass any Individual who sticks in its craw, even if he stays within the limits of the law. Whether it’s immorally high income and estate taxes that steal over half of the Fruits of Ones’ Labour over the course of a lifetime, or submission to minimum wage laws designed to crucify Black youth and youth in general, the State uses the threat of imprisonment or bankruptcy to cow the Individual into submission. (Bankruptcy or penury in the situation of someone having to bankrupt themselves to hire legal representation to prove themselves innocent in the face of IRS accusations or investigations, as happened to various Conservative political organizations during the Obama Administration.)

Thirdly is conformity, the pressure to go along with the mob. Communists have faced this pressure in America, as their ideology was almost always out of tune with the people they interacted with on a daily basis, and, like the gays of those times, they had to either stay “in the closet”, or earn a dossier with the FBI if they got rowdy. A Capitalist in the Soviet Union or Mao’s China or Castro’s Cuba would have been in the same predicament.

So since it is far more comfortable to share the basic political ideology of the State in which one lives rather than to abrade against it, the modern Socialist State (and what country on the face of the Earth can honestly say that it is not socialist?) subconsciously encourages the Individual to accept the prevailing political and economic ideology. How many times have you heard a Democrat proudly say “We are the Government”?

Finally, there is a subtle pleasure of belonging to and identifying with a group, which goes against the total Independence of the Individual. (And here we are referring to psychological Independence, not the physical dependence we all have on the supermarket, the auto mechanic, the doctor, the airplane repair technician, etc). Technologically we cannot avoid dependence, but we are talking here of the Independence of the psyche acting within the political and economic realms. Organized religions, political parties, generational and sexual-identification groups, national and cultural identities — all these urge the individual to identify with them, and by doing so it automatically creates a division between the individual and members of all other groups.

These harrowing and obviously pernicious qualities are all implied in living in a Socialist State, and it seems that the only protest against this degradation comes from a few Libertarians braying in the wilderness.

So the real question is: Can Masculinity be preserved in a World that prostrates itself before the throne of the Socialist State?

For that to happen will require a total Revolution in the Human Psyche.

— Paul Grad, Enviro-vegan Libetarian

The Democratic Party Goes Nazi

The failure of the Democrat Party to condemn and ostracize Rep. Omar for her Jew-hatred, and their castrated hate resolution which not only didn’t name the perpetrator, but included anti-Semitism way down the list in a long list of hatreds, even though, in this current case, the problem is solely about anti-Semitism, illustrates what a morally bankrupt organization they are.

The Democrats have shown themselves to be a contemptible, racist mob, just like they were in the 1950s, when they tolerated the Dixiecrats, those lovers of racial segregation. They were lily-livered then, and they’re lily-livered now. But this is just what you’d expect from Socialists, who want to gain commodities and comforts through coercion, instead of through the non-coercive Free Market. The fact that these Jew-hating Socialists only target Israel, a democratic, secular State that has secular law as its legal basis, not religious law, as in most Islamic countries, but then stay completely mum when it comes to the world’s worst Totalitarian Regimes, like theocratic Iran, or Red China, show that this is all about Jew-hatred, not merely criticizing Israel for its own socialist programs and taxes. You’ll never hear these bigots criticize Iran, where women are forced to wear headscarfs, and men are told by the religious police to cut their hair, or trim their beards if unruly. Kinda reminds me of the Fascists we had over us in high school, who wouldn’t let boys grow their hair long. Iran judicially murders, i.e. executes, over 1100 human beings a year; Israel executes zero, because it does not have the Death Penalty, which is one of the four cornerstones of Fascism. And what about Red China? Over 3,000 executed there annually, but that seems to have slipped off the radar of Rep. Omar and her fellow Jew-haters. Howzabout the over 1 million Uighers who have been rounded up by the Chinese Commies and confined in camps, or their continued occupation and religious rape of the Tibetan Buddhists, and Tibet, a country bigger than Texas? No pyorrhea of hate against those Fascist nations from Rep. Omar, AOC, or Lord Bernie Sanders. Nothing said about Islamic Indonesia, and Islamic Malaysia, raping the forests of Borneo. And you won’t hear it from the Greens also, who have now joined in in the Brownshirts Festival of Jew-hatred, while they have no BDS movement against Japan for murdering whales and dolphins, or whale-butchering Norway, that socialist paradise. No boycotts of Spain and Mexico for the barbaric practice of bull-fighting. And, of course, none of these Saints of the Democrat Party mention Female Gential Mutilation, widely practiced in Islamic Africa.

The Democrat Party in America can now proudly join the ranks of the Nazi Party in Germany, the current Labour Party in the UK, and the wimpy Greens, who have not stopped the destruction of the Earth with their passive, namby-pamby protests in the face of environmental destruction. Is the entire Green Party vegan? If not, they’re hypocrites. Have they called for a 40-year logging moratorium on live trees like I did when I ran in 2014?

Israel is the historical tribal lands of an Indigenous People who have had their land stolen from them for thousands of years, much like the American Indian Tribes have had. The fact that they managed to finally get it back from the Turkish Occupation, sticks in the craws of the Nazis.

All anti-Fascists and anti-Racists must withdraw and desist from any contact with the Democrat Party. If you can’t stomach the Republicans, you can always register Non-Affiliated, and write yourself or a friend in on the ballot. When the Libertarian National Party let what was clearly, in my opinion, a group of Nazis take over a County Committee in Florida, I read an article by an Antifa group that said that Libertarians should withdraw from the Party if this group in Florida were left in power. I agreed, and when the National Committee said, in effect, that the problem was not worth doing anything about, I dropped out of the Party, re-registered NAV, and have remained thus since.

It should be noted that Rep. Omar’s three anti-Semitic tropes had absolutely nothing to do with specific criticisms of Israel. Criticizing Israeli domestic policy is perfectly valid. But her tropes were all aimed at Jews: that Israel has “hypnotized the world”, that Jewish and other Congressmen are bought off by AIPAC, and that American Jews have dual loyalty. She wasn’t criticizing Israel’s high taxes, or its socialist programs, which are very similar to the Democrat’s love of taxes and socialist programs. She was specifically trying to whip up hatred against Jews, and the puerile defenses that other Democrats threw out to defend her are further proof of the tolerance for Jew-hatred in the new Democrat Party.

The appellation “Nazi” should not be thrown about lightly. Of course, the Democrats aren’t bombarding civilian cities, dive-bombing columns of refugees, or gassing Jews, Romas, and the mentally handicapped. But the first step in Weimar Germany towards the takeover by the Nazis was a tolerance for Jew-hatred and its rhetoric. That same tolerance is now found in the Democrat Party.

There must be a political price to pay for tolerating racists in a political party, and staying silent in the face of totalitarian regimes like Iran, the Gulf Emirates, and Red China. A Cordon Sanitaire must be placed around this infection in the American body-politic. The Democrat Party must pay for their Racism and toleration of Jew-hatred, which President Trump, much to his credit, forcefully denounced.

As Winston Churchill said, “Have no contact with the Nazi.”

— Paul Grad, Enviro-vegan Libertarian

The Yellow Jackets Protests: Socialist Demands, Libertarian Rage

It seems the socialist crumbs that President Macron has thrown to “les canailles” to keep them from ripping him apart are not sufficient to abate their canine rage, as the “Yellow Jacketa” protests in France continued today for a fifth-straight weekend.

The promises to raise the minimum wage — an anti-individualist tyranny designed to make it virtually impossible for low-skilled workers to get any kind of income except welfare, and a dart specifically aimed at the young and minorities, — and to reduce taxes on pensioners have not stopped the rage that is evident on the streets of Paris, and throughout France.

The fact that people are making socialist demands is not surprising in a socialist country. The French are economically uneducated, and have been brainwashed, in a hugely bureaucratic society, to renounce individualism and to subject themselves to the diktats of the State. This is a profoundly anti-masculine, totalitarian subjection which the average Frenchman seems to accept with a shrug of the shoulders. Or, at least, up until now.

While I believe these demonstrators are largely socialists who are being pinched by the big-brother Obamaism that Americans had to suffer under for eight years, and don’t seem to realize that fact if they are just asking for more socialistic programs, their anger seems to me to be solidly in the economic tradition of the Founding Fathers,and Congressman Ron Paul and those who share his economic views.

It sounds like the French have had it with the encroaching Leviathan State, constantly restricting and demanding, turning them into a subject rather akin to what they were under the French Monarchy, rather than an Individual who has the Freedom to determine his own life according to how he best sees fit, as under the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, or the unwritten Constitutional tradition of Great Britain.

So in France it’s Socialist demands, but Libertarian anger. Perhaps one day they will realize that and make another and better French Revolution.

— Paul Grad, Enviro-vegan Libertarian

Is a Libertarian Revolution Beginning in France? The Yellow Jacket Protests

It looks like a Libertarian Revolution against Socialism is breaking out in France, as the common people are taxed to death by the Socialist Democrat politicians who run the French Government.

President Macron has condemned the violence, but he doesn’t seem to condemn the violence of his own taxation that sparked the ructions.

I doubt that many of the protesters are Libertarians, but they are reacting as Libertarians react to taxation, the difference being that the masses are firm believers in the State and the socialist set-up that rules in the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia, and the United States. It’s just that those masses are now being pushed to the brink of destitution by the Social Democrat politicians, like Macron, and in America by people like former Governor Jerry Brown, and current Oregon Governor, Kate Brown. If the protestors weren’t being pinched severely in the wallet, they’d be quietly at home, watching their videos.

It looks like the People of France are finally learning the lessons that Frederick Hayek discussed in his seminal work, “The Road to Serfdom”. Only, Hayek realized these truths in 1943; the French masses seem only now, in 2018, to be comprehending what he meant when he said that, under Socialism, the worst rise to the top, both of the government and of its numerous bureaucracies.

On the demonstrators side,they don’t seem to realize that the destruction of police vehicles and government property will only mean that the government will have to raise taxes even more to replace the equipment, and it will be big corporate capitalist companies who will get the contracts and the profits. Moreover, attacking the police is both stupid and immoral. The people they should be attacking are the actual government officials and the heads of the bureaucracies, and those attacks must always be non-violent. In a Libertarian society, those attacks would come in the form of boycotts, and non-violent political agitation. These people are also free to run for office or to form a political party that rescinds taxation.

It is about 50 years since the Student Demonstrations in Paris that rocked the World in the 1960s, led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit. After 50 years of Big Brother Socialism in France, and ridiculous taxation, it looks like the People have finally cottoned on to how destructive the Socialist system is.

Hopefully, the “gilets jaunes” or Yellow Jacket protestors will become Libertarians.

— Paul Grad, Enviro-Vegan Libertarian

Cave Junction Measure 17-86, The Fascist’s Cannabis Tax

Once again the Fascists of the Democrat and Republican Parties are attempting to rob the Young Poor and the Old Sick to feed the Government Wealthy. This time it’s another heinous cannabis tax of 3% on the sale of “recreational marijuana” within the City of Cave Junction, Oregon.

This tax will obviously hit the young and the unemployed much harder than it will the middle-aged employee who does not use cannabis. It is another measure designed to keep the young poor, much like the restrictionist and racist minimum wage laws, whose targets are the young Black and the Youth in general, the social security rip if the young do manage to find work, and, until recently, the Obamacare mandate, which usually took any disposable income left to the young worker after paying his food-clothes-shelter — all three designed to sterilize the young person against being able to accumulate any Capital so they might buy a house for their family or start a business.

And what will this 3% go towards? While the funds will go to the City of Cave Junction, mostly for salaries of city employees, ultimately it will go towards PERS pensions which the State of Oregon is legally obligated to pay, since the PERS contribution is usually about 20% of any given salary. There are over 129,000 people collecting Oregon PERS pensions. The top ten pension recipients as of Jan. 01, 2018 received, in descending order and rounded down to the nearest thousand, the following sums: $913k, $684k, $558k, $503k, $425k, $419k,$360k, $324k,$321k, and $309k respectively. The ten final salaries of these recipients were, $1.563million, $1.804million, $1.320million, $1.074million, $786k, $826k, $168k, $443k, $413k, $338k.

Can you think of any State function that is so valuable that it is worth over $1million/yr? Can you think of any that is worth $300,000/yr? Yet the Brown Admistration, and the corrupt Kitzhaber Administration before her, have paid out such immoral and heinous salaries to State employees while first degree rapists are released after 5 years, and aut0-thieves are plea-bargained down and released the next day, instead of getting the 5-10 years in State Prison that would deter this despicable Crime and which used to be the law in California in the 1950s. In the old West they used hang horse thieves because stealing a man’s horse in the desert was akin to condemning him to a slow death by thirst. Now Governor Kate Brown pushes the crime onto County Tax Payers so she doesn’t have to tamper with her precious PERS pensions, and the Counties release the Criminals because they don’t have the tax revenue to jail these thieves for years. The result is anarchy under the Oregon Democrats.

And, of course, since PERS pensions compromise about 20% (17-21% varying annually) of all State, County, and City salaries, it means that the People could have 20% more police and jailing costs would be 20% lower if PERS, that wonderful socialist program, did not exist. And undoubtedly the crime rate would be far lower in Oregon.

So, if the State of Oregon can afford to pay salaries of $1.8million/yr, and annual pensions of $913k/yr, then the greedy Fascists of the Democrat and Republican Parties can well do without the 3% extortion that the young and the sick and you will pay to keep a hundred-thousand on cushy pensions that on average are far greater than the per capita income of Cave Junction residents.

(Incidentally, I believe if Oregon Measure 103 passed, which outlaws taxing groceries, that that would probably negate passage of the Cave Junction Measure, since so-called recreational cannabis could well be construed as a “grocery”.)

On November 6th, Cave Junction residents should say no to the Fascists at the ballot box by voting No on Cave Junction Measure 17-86, The Marijuana Tax.

— Paul Grad, Enviro-Vegan Libertarian

The Degeneration of American Society, Circa 2018

America has really degenerated over the last 60 years, and lost many of the qualities that people of that time were capable of. People of that day were just coming out of eons of Mankind living in the most primitive, violent ways because of lack of technology. When Mechanism took Command, it enabled man to live on a level, and in an orderly way, as he had never been able to in all human history. This was exemplified for a while in the 1920s, when, for the first time, a man could live an orderly life, with clean surroundings, new clothes, a modern house, and conveniences and amusements like cars and radios, if he could secure a living. The possibility of Order came into humanity, which had never, ever existed before. Imagine living in the world of Henry VIII; even the wealthy could not live an orderly life then, because of the insecurities of disease, of impoverishment through government fiat, or else having your head cut off.

As the 30s progressed, despite the Depression, the technologies just became more refined, a progress that has gone on uninterruptedly since those days. Compare the cinematography of the 1930s to that of 1963, and you will see a huge improvement in image quality. And now, unfortunately, films look like commercials, having lost that documentary realism one got from the black and white dramas of the 1960s.

This artistic degeneration also eclipsed Jazz. Jazz from the late 1950s to around 1970 was quite a popular genre, though not the major one of Rock, which also had a huge creative explosion during the same period. Both of them started to change in the early 70s, and by 1980 you had disco and jazz was using synthesizers, and sounding a bit like Soul music. The drive and elegance of Basie and Ellington, and the many, many talented trios and quartets, was really amazing, even to this lover of Rock. College kids back then would listen to Jazz in addition to Rock. Do they do that now?

So the breakdown of Art in Film, Jazz, and Rock seemed to parallel the breakdown of American Society that started to set in under Nixon, and really took off under Jimmy Carter. Since then every President has made it worse. Hopefully the current one might reverse that trend, although it is too far gone already.

In the 1960s, people were still in touch with that long past wisdom and humanism of man. People in Britain were generally very courteous and civil, and despite a hard life, alleviated only by beer, cigarettes, and football, they seemed to remain cheerful, and displayed a sharp sense of humour, based on plays, puns, and double meanings of English words. Literature was prized. In a famous, or infamous, speech of War Criminal Lyndon Johnson, in the early 1960s,on gun control, he mentions that in the US there were over 40,000 homicides in the previous year, compared to 38 in England. A murder in England would be in the national papers, and the police didn’t carry guns. In fact, if anyone attacked or shot a policeman in a robbery, the other thieves would help the police catch the criminals.

Of course, there were many very bad aspects to British society, but in general it was a civil, courteous, fairly cheerful, one.

One reason for this was Capitalism. Not the Capitalism of the behemoth corporations like GE and the major banks. But Capitalism in the form of the shop, Individually-owned. England used to be known as a “Nation of Shopkeepers”. A person would open a store dealing in something he liked, or was interested in, or knew much about. The fruitier who loved fruit and seeing people eat, the bookseller with his regulars whose favorite subjects he’d memorized, the three-chair barbershop, the antique junk shop, the cigarette card and stamp shops,— all these enabled their owners to earn a living in an age when many were virtually forced down the coal mines, or to be a dull bank or insurance clerk, scribbling away all day, while the boss rode you. To shop-ownership you probably owe the Capitalist, libertarian strains in English history, the low murder rate in a country where drinking was de rigueur for the working man and everybody else, despite alcohol’s lowering of inhibitions. Blows they’d come to, but rarely murder. And if done on alcohol, murder was rarely premeditated. The Dr. Cribbin who poisoned his wives was a figure of horrible fascination for the public, frequently referred to for decades afterwards. I doubt if many American millenials would now know who Dr. Cribbin was.

And Capitalism in England, as in Holland, forced or encouraged people to get along with each other, so that toleration of other people’s views was necessary if you wanted their custom, and custom meant money now and money in the future. As I put it, imagine two Armenians who go into business together, and after a few years, one finds that the other is defrauding him through the business. He breaks the partnership, and takes on a Korean partner. Not only is the Korean scrupulously honest, but he’s pleasant to work with, having an excellent sense of humor. And both partners are making a good living through the business. Is the Armenian likely to hate Koreans, or does the partnership humanize what was an Ethnic identity into an Individual? Modern people have forgotten that up to 1960, Americans thought all Japanese and Chinese looked alike. But decades of frequently seeing Asian faces have now led people to see them as individually as they see Western faces. This is what made America unique; it was a place where people from many lands came to create a society where Capitalism and the law created the conditions for an orderly life (as compared to anywhere else on the earth), and its basic law was the most Classically Liberal and Libertarian in the long history of Mankind. Jefferson in 1776 was light-years ahead of most of the current leaders in the world in his Libertarian understanding of political science, Natural Rights, and the composition of a Minarchist, or minimal government, Republic, as well as being far ahead of almost all current American politicians. (President Kennedy, the last great President, once invited Pablo Casals to perform at the White House. After the performance he said, “There has never been this much culture in the West Wing since Jefferson dined alone.”) That Capitalism, combined with the radical Freedom of Conscience which some of the Christian Radicals like Roger Williams displayed, along with those other colonies that propounded a radical tolerance for different religious sects and religions, — that I think is what made America so unique in the history of Human civilizations, although there were those anti-libertarian colonies that persecuted sects mercilessly, like the terrible persecutions of the Quakers. You also see this radical Libertarianism in the later efforts of Christian radicals like William Lloyd Garrison who, in the 1830s, was speaking out against “the Peculiar Institution” of slavery, as it was so euphemistically referred to, the worst anti-libertarian Crime next to murder.

You can see this collaboration of many ethnic strains coming together in the making of Hollywood films. If you look at the names of the technicians and actors, you will find names typical of virtually every country excluding the Third World of Asia and Africa (except for cameraman James Wong Howe). Somehow all these people of different backgrounds came together to make the steady stream of excellent films that came out of Hollywood for 30 years after sound came in. And what caused all this energy to be expended was Capitalism, the desire of all these people to make a profit in order to live. As one person aptly put it, the films were written by Communists, they were directed by Social Democrats, and they starred Right-wing Republicans.

But now that Socialism has so long depleted the wealth of Americans, and the constant printing of money and piling of government debt has further weakened the currency, American society is reaching the limits where social groups start fighting for the limited resources. And that is the underlying cause of the increased social friction between the two competing large political camps in America, the Left and the Right. Like Camus, the libertarian is neither one nor the other.

The Libertarian economists Hayek and Mises both predicted this degeneration late in the socialist cycle, and now that 51% of Americans receive government benefits, and 49% don’t and pay into the system, we have crossed into a democratic-majority socialist entity that is no longer the old Jeffersonian Republic of pre-1964, when the US ended silver coinage.

I recall financial analyst Robert Prechter predicting this increase in conflict in 2009. He said that you didn’t want to be in office during that time because you would be blamed for the collapse, no matter what you did. But he recommended getting elected during the depths of the late depression because, when the economy naturally rebounded as markets always do when they’re not interfered with, you would reap the Political credit, even if you did nothing. (Re-elect Harrigan! He did nothing! (Cheers are heard from the crowd.)).

So the heated political rhetoric goes on, with very few having any idea of the libertarian political and economic Principles on which the Republic was founded.

The U.S. – A great Society that reached its peak 55 years ago, and began to die with the twin murders of President Kennedy and silver coinage.

— Paul Grad, Enviro-Vegan Libertarian

My Positions on Oregon Measures 7-65, 14-62, 18-111, 20-290, 22-174, 22-176, For The November 6, 2018 General Election

As promised in my previous post, these are my views on the Oregon non-statewide Measures that are specific to certain Counties in the upcoming election. As usual, I take a strict libertarian approach to these measures which may differ markedly from the positions of the political party that goes by that name.

Measure 7-65 concerns the looting of Crook County property tax payers to support the Bowman Museum in Prineville. It is pretty obvious that local taxpayers have absolutely no responsibility to fund cultural or educational museums. If this museum is that important to the State and its historical heritage, and it probably is, then it should be funded at the State or Federal level, by the State either cutting its salaries and PERS pensions, or by taxing multinational corporations doing business in the State, who currently pay no income tax whatsoever.

Moreover, if the levy fails, the Museum will not close, but will cut hours and staff. It would still be open to the public.

Crook County Government. A fitting name.

On Principle, Crook County property owners and residents should vote NO on Measure 7-65.

Measure 14-62 is another attempt to loot the public in order that the government can swill at your trough. It concerns a heinous attempt to impose a cannabis tax on retail sales of marijuana items in Hood River County. The tax is an outrageous 3%. I believe there should never be a tax on any drug less addictive than caffeine on the Benowitz Scale of addictive substances, and cannabis is less addictive that caffeine on that scale. Therefore it should not be taxed. And, while I would oppose any tax on any drug in a libertarian, laissez-faire society, if the taxpayers are going to be forced at gunpoint to pay for other people’s medical costs, as they are under Medicaid and other schemes, then I would not oppose a tax on substances more addictive than caffeine.

Don’t let them financially exploit you while they pay out State PERS pensions of $913,000/yr. If the State can pay that, they can do without your 3% looted contribution. Give ’em the financial finger on November 6th, and vote NO on Measure 14-62.

Measure 18-111 is another boondoggle that will suck approximately $230,000/yr from the wealth of local property taxpayers for 5 years running to fund the Klamath County Museum System. Like Measure 7-65, such educational and historical museums should be funded at the Federal level or by voluntary private organizations. If the State thinks it is that important, let them cut State salaries by $0.05/$1000 and fund it that way.

Vote NO on Measure 18-111 if you live in Klamath County.

Measure 20-290 is a Lane County attempt to get around the first-past-the-post
method of deciding democratic elections in Oregon, by substituting a very complicated point system which is actually an attempt to insert proportional representation, a terrible system, into the US electoral system. It applies only to non-partisan county elections. Each candidate will receive points from the voter, which will then be added up, the two highest point-receivers are then placed in an “automatic runoff”, and the person with the most points wins the election. In other words, not only won’t candidates have to compete in a primary, so the public can get to know their positions long before the final election, but a candidate who ran second could beat a candidate who was the first choice of the public through democratic majority.

Such measures favor socialist and mixed economy candidates at the expense of Libertarian candidates, because libertarians can usually only vote for a libertarian candidate, but would not tolerate anyone who was a partial or complete socialist, as are almost all non-libertarian candidates. Socialists or social democrats can vote for several candidates depending on the extent of the candidate’s socialism. So Libertarians are at a clear disadvantage under this so-called STAR voting system.

Don’t tinker with our first-past-the-post, democratic majority, system of deciding elections. Vote NO on Measure 20-290 if you live in Lane County.

Measure 22-174 may be quite popular with some libertarians, but not with this one. What it does, in effect, is have the local Sheriff, in this case the Linn County Sheriff, decide which firearms laws are Constitutional and which are not, and to not spend money enforcing those laws which he decides are unconstitutional. Any Individual or organization that happens to follow the Supreme Court or State Supreme Court’s decisions, can be fined $2k for an individual or $4k for a corporation if the Linn County Sheriff happens to think those laws, which have been declared Constitutional by the Courts, are unconstitutional. Which obviously means, in effect, that the local Sheriff has replaced the Courts, and the Supreme Court, in deciding Constitutional Law, a risible attempt at overthrowing our judicial system. Given the lack of legal training as to the Constitutionality of gun laws that the typical Sheriff suffers from, it is obviously absurd to have them decide by themselves which laws are Constitutional, and which aren’t, and to be able to fine people thousands of dollars if their view of gun laws (and the Court’s view) differs from the Sheriff’s. This is a real invitation to vigilante law, and is obviously an unConstitutional Measure. The Sheriff’s function is to enforce the current laws on the books, not to create new law out of whole cloth.

Defend the Constitution, and the separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of our government. Vote NO on Measure 22-174.

Finally, we have Measure 22-176 in Linn County, which changes the office of County Surveyor from an elected to an appointed position. Obviously, this is an aggrandizement of government power at the expense of the democratic choice of the People. County Government already has far too much power in that many county positions from dog catcher to patrolman are assigned by appointment rather than election. The office of Surveyor is too important a position to let it be filled by appointment. Let the voters decide at a general election who is the best to be surveyor.

Vote NO on Measure 22-176 in Linn County.

That concludes my positions on the non-Statewide Measures that will only be on the ballot in specific Counties. Readers interested in my positions on Oregon Statewide Measures 102 through 106 should consult my previous blog post.

— Paul Grad, enviro-vegan Libertarian.

My Positions on Oregon Measures 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, for the November 6, 2018 General Election

These are my views and positions on the Oregon Statewide Measures being decided in the general election of November 2018. I was the Libertarian Party of Oregon Gubernatorial Nominee for 2014, winning 21,903 votes. I have been a NAV (non-affiliated voter) for the past year approximately. I approach these issues from my own libertarian perspective, which can differ markedly from the positions of the political party that sports that name, and from an Austrian School of Economics approach to fiscal issues. Libertarian Philosophy’s clear basic core principles make deciding most political issues decidedly easy.

Oregon Measure 102 – This heinous and blatantly Fascist measure in the truest sense of the word, aims to get you, the taxpayer, to subsidize private capitalists so they can risk your money, and if they succeed, make a fortune for themselves. If they fail and go bankrupt, you the taxpayer are the proud possessors of some worthless bonds and more State-owned and owed debt.

The bonds in this case go towards the construction of “affordable housing”. Now what does that term mean in an age where the inflationist Obama and his Republican collaborators in the wicked TARP bailout, which caused massive printing of money by the FED central bank, and led to a tripling and quadrupling of the cost of living in America for the poor and middle class — what does that mean in terms of today’s rents? The reason for the outrageous rents now charged in cities in the US (a two-bedroom old apartment in Brooklyn NY goes for around $3500/mo.) is this TARP print-money bailout, which has also led to the super rich getting richer in the stock market.

So what we need instead of passing the burden of the TARP atrocity onto you, is a deflation in food, clothes, and shelter costs for the American consumer, which is something the Democrats and Republicans won’t permit, although they may not be able to control it as they think they can if it does occur.

One can argue that you might have a tax imposed to operate a Law Enforcement and Court system (I don’t, but I see it as an interim measure in a Minarchist State). But there can never be a justification for the public taxpayer to be burdened with debt that is aiding private capitalists. It is an assault on your capitalism by the State to aid their favored capitalists — not much different from the Mercantilist System used by the British Kings that helped lead to the American Revolution.

Or, in other words, vote No on Measure 102.

Measure 103 – This measure prohibits taxation of “groceries”. Pretty easy for Libertarians, who oppose taxation as violence and a violation of the Non-Aggression Principle, to decide on this measure. And a tax on food, one of the most basic necessities, to subsidize the huge financial waste of Oregon’s Government, is one of the most immoral and heinous Crimes of which one can think. This measure will serve as a prophylactic against such an outrage, a condom against Crime, and one where libertarians are probably in agreement with most Socialists.

Ergo, a resounding Yes vote on Measure 103.

State Measure 104 is a strong, libertarian measure, designed to thwart the depredations on individual’s capital by the State without the approval of 3/5th of the Legislature. This 3/5ths majority is currently required to pass any taxing measure, but does not apply to the raising of fees, and other revenue raising measures designed to loot the Individual in order to expand the power of Leviathan Government. This measure would extend that protection to any increase in fees, and other costs to the taxpayer that are not currently subject to 3/5ths legislative approval. Two years ago it cost $80-odd to register your car in Oregon; only two years later, under the Democrat Brown Administration, it costs $112. About a 30% increase in two years, while at the same time the Obama Administration, and the FED were telling us not only was there no inflation, but there wasn’t even enough inflation, and it had to be induced. Yet a Democrat rips off the little guy for about a 15% a year increase on a near necessity.

Don’t let the corporate Fascisti of the Democrat Party continue to rip you off without a supermajority to protect your Inalienable Property Rights. Vote to increase the checks and balances which are the only rein in for a democratic government that violates the Rights protected in Jefferson’s beautiful Bill of Rights — a Bill of Rights for the whole Human Race!

I urge a Yes vote on Measure 104.

Measure 105 is a tough one to call, and I find myself on both sides of the fence on this one, with one brain hemisphere arguing with the other, and both spheres unconvincing in their arguments.

This Measure concerns whether State Law Enforcement Personnel should enforce Federal Immigration Law if they come across a violation that pertains solely to immigration. In other words, should the County or City Policeman inform Federal Authorities if he comes across an immigration- or likely immigration-law violation during the course of his local duties? This is sometimes called the “sanctuary city” problem, and it is similar to the question raised during my campaign about whether to grant driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. I changed my position on that issue from feeling that “The Laws must always be obeyed”, so that a State Police officer would report an illegal resident to the Feds, to one where I felt it was solely the duty of the Federal Government to enforce these laws, since they are supposed to handle immigration, whereas if State Employees were taking their time away from their normal duties to help enforce Federal Law, that would be a theft of Oregon Taxpayer’s monies which were intended solely to enforce Oregon Law, and my Oregon Constitutional duty was to enforce Article 1 Section 1 which includes the “safety” of Oregon Residents, which in turn meant I had a sworn duty to test drivers and issue them with licenses to protect safety on the roads.

This measure only deals with immigration law violations. If a County cop discovers an illegal alien bankrobber wanted on Federal charges, he can still inform the Feds.

So my Law and Order desire clashes here with fiscal responsibility to the Oregon Taxpayers.

In other words, I don’t know on Measure 105 which is the correct position, so I will leave it up to the Individual voter to decide which side is right. It is a matter between the voter’s Conscience and the Ballot Box.

Finally, there is Measure 106, which bans Oregon Taxpayer monies being used for abortion, including rape and incest except according to Federal Law. This is another one that I will leave up to the Consciences of the voters, although a clear libertarian position would be that it would oppose any tax or use of public monies for any costs that could be funded by private voluntary organizations. A contrary Minarchist-libertarian argument might be that the implantation of a foetus through rape was an invasion of the woman’s property rights in her person that was no different from the same invasion of her body if she had been shot in a bankrobbery, and the State had rushed her to a hospital and removed the bullet at State taxpayer cost. However, Federal Law apparently does cover the cost of abortion in cases of rape and incest, so the concern that one is denying a destitute rape victim an abortion if this Measure does not pass is probably not a valid concern.

Also there is the moral argument that people who are strongly and morally opposed to abortion should not be forced to pay taxes for something they regard as murder. I agree with that position, just as I, as a vegan, object to my tax money being used to buy meat and pay for the murder and inspection by the State of millions of animals a day, which people on food stamps can then get for free. It is a very comparable situation to the abortion issue.

Therefore, I again leave it up to the voter’s Conscience what he will do when he marks his ballot, now that the mail box has become the new ballot box.

I shall presently present my positions on the six State non-statewide Measures specific to certain counties. The principles involved in some of these measures are singularly interesting.

— Paul Grad, 2014 Libertarian Party of Oregon Gubernatorial Nominee

Governor Kate Brown’s Reign of Terror Over Southern Oregon

A state of terror and anarchy rules over Southern Oregon, where car thieves and methamphetamine addicts are released after a day, to continue to wreak havoc on the local communities. Nor do the locals point the finger at the guilty party, the Governor, whose primary solemn State Constitutional duty under Article 1 Section 1 is the peace and safety of the inhabitants. Wolf-butcher Brown’s crime against the People of Oregon is to let anarchy rule while the citizens are taxed to the death to provide for bloated state salaries, and incredibly obscene public employee pensions (the current highest recipient receives $913,000/yr). The remuneration of the bureaucrats, and of the teachers in this incredibly lousy school system, come well in advance of the safety of the People to wolf-butcher Brown.

Unfortunately most of the locals who complain about the anarchic crime that has turned a quiet retirement community in the Illinois Valley of Southern Oregon into a Compton,and transformed the Grants Pass area of Josephine County into a urban war zone, don’t point their fingers at the Governor. In the late 1980s the only crimes in the police blotter were the usual and habitually-reoccurring drunken brawls of several well-known local imbibers, as well as some cannabis arrests. And murders were as scarce as hen’s teeth.

Now there is a nightly car theft or two, and Grants Pass has become the car theft capital of Oregon. Cars scream around the town in the early hours of the morning, unstopped by any police force, and pillaging by meth addicts has become a daily ritual. But does the State intervene by jailing car thieves in State Prison for years? Are meth addicts placed in rehabilitation camps for the environmental crimes that have committed by fueling the polluting meth-lab cooks’ distribution businesses?

No. The State leaves that up to the county taxpayers and the County Sheriffs Department, who are overloaded and have to arrest and re-arrest over and over the same scoff-laws who never show up for their court dates, but who are then re-released by the County District Attorney as not being a “threat” to the community. A candidate for County Sheriff recently explained, at a public forum, how, if the D.A. told them not to hold someone because they were not a threat, they had to let them go. What he didn’t explain was that, under such a system, why would it much matter who was sheriff if the D.A. was going to release the same people over and over, to save money on jail costs (though the salaries, car insurance, and danger to the officers when re-arresting would probably be far in excess of what it would cost to keep these suspects in the county jail)?.

But the economically and politically uneducated public, instead of blaming the Governor, argue back and forth that we need yet another property tax increase (last year the taxes were raised about 10% for the Sheriff and the jail and the public was told that this would control the crime situation,and that those who oppose it are wicked and irresponsible, while those who are on the brink of being taxed out of their properties have no voice in the public debate). Now the residents of Cave Junction are talking about another “taxing district” to fund a city police force — this in a community of poor retirees and scarce jobs where the average income is about $21k, mostly from pensions and welfare. There is no way such a poor community could fund such an expensive police force — made expensive in large part by the PERS requirement that sucks up about 21% of all County (and State)salaries. In other words, a city police force might be economically feasible were it not for the PERS contribution requirement.

Thus does Socialism, in the form of huge government bureaucracies and huge government pensions, destroy a once peaceful and civil society.

Wolf-Butcher Brown has the responsibility for the misery of thousands of Southern Oregon crime victims on her conscience, those who have had their lives turned into chaos by her passivity and utter neglect of her Constitutional responsibility under Article One Section One.

Hopefully the voting public will soon remove this political carcinoma from the Oregonian body-politic.

— Paul Grad, 2014 Libertarian Party of Oregon Nominee for Governor