Thought and Freedom

Nothing says endorsement like a good youtube video.  And this is an extremely well produced one at that. Molotov Mitchel lays it on the line as to why Republicans should have no problem endorsing Dr Ron Paul for president in 2012.

Thanks to Brad Brandon for the find on this video.

The website, Run Ron Paul, has a wonderful documentary on how the Ron Paul movement has watered the withered tree of liberty. If you, like me, are concerned with the lack of understanding of freedom in our nation, this video will give you encouragement…

Here is my brief analysis and commentary on the current state of the Republican nomination process.

Current trends show Herman Cain polling in first among GOP presidential nomination contenders. Before him, it was Rick Perry. Before that, it was Michelle Bachmann. On the other hand, Romney has always been one of the favorites among Republican elite.

My prediction is that Herman Cain will soon fall out of favor and will be replaced by Newt Gingrich. Then, just before caucuses, Gingrich will also fall out of favor, paving the way for a Romney victory at caucuses. This game has always been about Romney. Notice that no one in the mainstream GOP attacks him (even thought there is a lot to attack).

My suggestion to those who oppose Romney in the GOP: Quit listening to those running the matrix. They’ve led you on a Christmas light tour from one candidate to another in hopes that you eventually end the day on Romney. Don’t give in to their sentiments. Read a book by Ron Paul, see if you like what you find.

Don’t just settle for the Republican annointed choice of the day.  If you do, Romney will be what’s left at the table when the dust settles.

Today, we have a guest post from a man by the name of Henry Braddock. Henry has served in advancing libertarian political causes in the southwest Twin Cities area for a long time. He is an outspoken Ron Paul supporter, and a very intelligent individual whom I have great respect for.

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Ron Paul’s plan to rein in the out-of-control federal spending and curb the debt crisis [Attention Other Candidates:  THERE IS A DEBT CRISIS!} calls for the abolition of five of the 15 federal departments (Commerce, Education, Energy, Interior, Housing & Urban Development).  There are over 800 federal agencies not including 70 independent agencies, 68 special commissions, hundreds of committees, boards, and “quasi-official” agencies, besides the government corporations. Paul’s plan doesn’t eliminate any of these.

Tennessee is the first state to have TSA agents on the highway system. They are now working with the Tennessee department of transportation to perform road inspections in the name of “public saftey.”

They term the inspections the VIPR program (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response).

In perhaps the scariest line in the article, Rudy Gonzales, a early participant in the program said this is “Not only truck drivers, but cars, everybody should be aware of what’s going on, on the road.”

The days of being innocent until proven guilty are over. You are now a subject who has “privileges” and not “rights.” Welcome to the police state.

Our patent system was originally designed to encourage innovation. Therefore, we gave people legal protection against their works being copied for a short period while they recouped their investment.

The thinking behind it was that this would allow the inventor a time period to open up his distribution channels and establish himself as the market leader before the more established companies came in and copied his idea.

Since communication and transportation systems were in their infancy, governments granted longer durations of patents and copyrights. After all, your new widgets might take months to just make it over to the other side of the country. But today we have the internet, we have airplanes, we mass ship merchandise in shipping crates. The fact is that distribution channels are much faster and more efficient than they were a couple hundred years ago.

Unfortunately, the patent system has not kept up. In fact, it has turned into a method to force out the little guys. There are entire patent trolling law firms (when malpractice laws went into place, many lawyers chose to move to “greener” pastures like frivolous patent suits). There are even very large companies that make most of their money by enforcing frivolous patents.

Almost every tech firm in Silicon Valley gets sued for some type of patent infringement. Companies are sued for simple things like using a double click, or creating an easy to use interface on a digital music device. The fact is, the IP system (intellectual property) has morphed into something it was never meant to be.

There are a few things that can be done to reform intellectual property laws. Here are a few:

Patents

• Shorten Patent Length – 3 year term from filing date (10 year term on medicine due to FDA approval process)
• Limit standing to sue to companies who actually have a product fulfilling their patent (No real product? Then you cannot sue).

Copyright

• Shorten term to 10 years since modern printing and digital distribution methods are faster.
• Cannot sue for more than the market price of distributed material.
• No renewals. After term, it goes to the public domain.
• Derivative works are considered unique.
• Repeal DMCA and exit the World Trade Organization (since they require U.S. laws to comply with their regulations)

Trademarks

• Should be limited in nature.
• Very specific, not general. (i.e. A white swoosh looking exactly like this)

Another option

Of course, companies could choose not to copyright or patent at all. Instead they could hide the “trade secret,” making it impossible for other companies to copy their idea without reverse engineering.

Conclusion

These reforms would give inventors that initial edge without being too restrictive on innovation. We need an IP system that accounts for reality. People will only respect a system as long as the demands are reasonable. Perpetual copyrights and  patents on general ideas are not reasonable. This is a better way that will not only encourage innovation, but will cause it to flourish.

For all the flack I give the mainstream media (and they deserve a lot), I really appreciate the tough questions that some are asking.

Jake Tapper grilled Jay Carney (White house press secretary) about the illegal kill list that the Obama Administration has used. See the video below for the complete exchange.

Of course, Obama (and by proxy, Jay Carney) has no way to defend these actions. This was a U.S. citizen and there are pretty clear laws on the books that say the U.S. must give due process for all citizens. (See here for information on the president’s “Kill List”)

Mr. Carney has a very difficult job. How can you be the spokesman for an administration that is indefensibly violating the constitution in the name of expediency? How do you reverse hundreds of years of acceptable standards on due process?

Before the year 1300, the British Magna Carta contained language (originally clause 39, but now listed as clause 29) that required due process for the accused:

NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.

With such a long-standing tradition of due process, why would we allow any elected official to override such an established common right?

Several Democrat and Republican politicians alike have just started calling for the impeachment of President Obama over his use of a “kill list.” If congress allows such actions to go unanswered (through impeachment proceedings) they are complicit in creating Obama’s Kremlin style monster.

Note: This is a speech I gave to the 39b Republicans of Northern Dakota County on October 6, 2011.

I want to start by expressing my deepest gratitude to the many of you that worked so hard with my campaign last election. I also think special thanks need to go out to Mark Westpfahl for his efforts. He is a good friend and a great organizer. I would like to hope that while politics brought this great group of individuals together, it is friendship and neighborhood that binds us.

I have been pondering my role in this amazing process over the last several months. My mission, as a candidate, was threefold:

1. Give hope to a local party that seemed to have given up on the possibility of an electoral win in the legislature.
2. Aid in the defeat of the anti-freedom agenda of the current state representative.
3. Reform our party from within. Restore the party to once again embrace the freedoms that our founders recognized as God given and inalienable.

I think we as a group went a long way in accomplishing the first goal. We came closer with the second goal, and the jury is still out on the third. It is this third goal that has so concerned me of late. For if we give hope for electoral victory, but those victories are marred by individuals, who, for good or evil reasons, reject the freedoms we sought to uphold, what real good did we accomplish?

For years, I have told myself that I must accept the occasional missteps of members of our party who vote to steal my freedoms through tax increases and the like. But should I just accept this? My contention is that I should not. Therefore, I thought it prudent to pour my efforts into teaching members of our party why they should vote in support of freedom. I toiled to teach my fellow party members about the nature of freedom and the nature of economics. It is only with a solid footing that one will not be swayed.

Despite efforts by many like minded people, the third goal has been the most difficult to achieve.

With a supposed majority on the city school board, we managed to vote to put a tax increase on the ballot. The one officially endorsed school board member who currently sits on the board, ironically chose not vote. The other endorsed candidate that is running formally endorsed the tax increase last month.

What happened to living within our means? The promoters of such a tax increase stated that this will save the district money. Then I question the need for a ten year increase in taxes.

What happened to standing up for the rights of the individual? Do homeschoolers or private-schoolers enjoy the same luxuries of a state sponsored tablet computer? Or are their families going to be unnecessarily robbed to give to the public school child that is somehow deemed more valuable to society?

The inconvenient truth is that most residents of this town cannot afford such amenities for themselves, yet the school board deems it fit that they request to take from those who have not money or power in order to benefit those who have power.

Then I look to our city council.  Sometimes I feel that our endorsed candidates on the council vote less in favor of freedom than those on the other side do. We own a golf course and a fitness center, which both combined bleed in excess of one million dollars a year. (I do thank Tom Bartholomew for being a strong advocate against such government overreach.)

But that is not even the core of the issue. The issue is whether government should own such institutions. Our founding fathers did not think so. I don’t think so. Yet many of our duly endorsed candidates have chosen that very path; and for what reason? It has been for convenience and for reputation sake.

We subsidize multimillion dollar private businesses so that they can expand on the city residents’ paychecks. Yet we say we stand for liberty. When did liberty mean we take from those who earn their income and give to that which seduces those in power?

One need not search hard to find members of this very political party serving special interests, rejecting state and individual sovereignty and reducing the definition of freedom to mean “support of the state.”  There were corporate handouts, laws restricting freedom of speech, laws manipulating the private markets, and even laws that are so intrusive that compliance has caused small businesses to fail around our country. These were all passed with overwhelming support by members of our very own party who said they must compromise their values for our own good.

Our national representatives have been difficult to communicate with. Their staffers often filter messages as to not “upset the congressman.” Well, if the congressman is voting badly, I don’t think we should worry about upsetting the congressman. Our freedoms were paid for with the blood of our ancestors, yet are given away with an “aye” vote and the stroke of a pen. I want our congressman to agonize over every intrusion of freedom before his “aye” vote.

We do have a good deal of promising figures rising up and a few that have been with us a long time. I eagerly wait for them to increase in number and restore freedom to our nation.

From the examples above, I have serious concerns over the state of our movement. Those who understand freedom lightly have no place being endorsed by the liberty loving residents of this community. It is the elected officials who are tasked with protecting liberty. They are not tasked with creating it, nor organizing it, nor distributing it, just protecting it. That is all; just protecting it.

C.S. Lewis, a brilliant man from the twentieth century once said:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. “

One might say that I am making a big deal out of little votes. But may I remind you that our entire world was damaged by the small act of taking a bite of fruit. The corruption that comes when power is exercised wrongly is costly to extinguish, once ignited.

I want my children to have a good education, good places to grow and be nurtured, and good places to buy food and clothing. But more importantly, I want them to grow up in a nation that is free. I want them to experience a community that is free. I want them to understand that their rights and their responsibilities come from God and are not dictated to them by any man or institution.

The endorsements given by this body and the actions of certain endorsed candidates have caused me to second guess the nature of my relationship with the local party.  There are times when the bonds of a good and well meaning association need to be thrown off, in order to secure that which is more precious than the institution itself.

For me, the time is now. It is with much consideration and with a heavy heart that I announce my resignation from duties to the local party. Never have I believed more strongly in the rights that God alone has given us, but my efforts are only given to the party as long as the party remains the instrument for protecting such freedoms.

It may be for a time, or it may be longer, but until there is evidence that the cause of freedom can be advanced through this broken apparatus, I will choose to withhold and limit my dealings with this body.

I would remind you that the party is simply a means to an end. As a nation is a means to an end. The end of this party, the end of this nation, is the protection of our inalienable rights and freedoms. There is no addendum on this. I pledge to work for causes which support this end, but hold allegiance to no body; only to God, to my family, and to the inalienable freedoms that our founders gave their lives to uphold.

With that, I hope that our friendship continues. The people of this institution are the part that I cherish, not the institution itself. I wish you all the best and thank you for the time that I could work with each of you in advancing our cause.

In liberty and friendship and at peace with all,

Terry Pearson

Here is something, umm, funny in a Weird Al sense of funny, for your Tuesday!

Unfortunately, the best humor is made from things that are mostly true.

Judge Napolitano had some closing arguments on his show today. He asked some hypothetical questions about what you would do if America was no longer free…

Does the government work for us or do we work for the government? Is freedom in America a myth or a reality? Tonight, what if we didn’t live in a free country?

What if the Constitution were written not to limit government, but to expand it? What if the Constitution didn’t fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence, but betrayed it? What if the Constitution actually permitted the government to limit and constrict freedom? What if the Bill of Rights was just a paper promise, that the government could avoid whenever it claimed the need to do so? What if the same generation – in some cases the same people – that drafted the U.S. Constitution enacted laws that violated it? What if the merchants and bankers who financed the American Revolution bought their way into the new government and got it to enact laws that stifled their competition? What if the civil war that was fought in the name of freedom actually advanced the cause of tyranny?

What if the federal government were the product of 150 years of stealing power and liberty and property from the people and the states? What if our political elites spent the 20th century importing the socialist ideas of big government Statism from Europe? What if our political class was adopting the European political culture from which our founding fathers fought so hard to break free?

What if our political leaders no longer acknowledged that our rights come from our humanity, but insisted instead that they come from the government? What if you had to produce your papers to get out of or into our once-free country? What if you couldn’t board a plane, a train, or a long-distance bus without providing documentation telling the government who you are and where you’re going, without paying the government, and without risking sexual assault? What if your local police department could shoot down a plane? What if government agents could write their own search warrants, declare their own enemies, and seize whatever property they want? What if the feds could detain you indefinitely, with no visitors, no lawyer, no judge, and no jury? What if they could make you just disappear? What if the government broke its own laws in order to enforce them? What if the government broke down your front door in the middle of the night and shot your dog, and claimed it was a mistake?

What if you were required to purchase a product that you didn’t need, didn’t want, and couldn’t afford, from a company you never heard of, just as a condition of living in the United States? What if the government told you what not to put in your body as well as what to put into it; and how much? What if the government claimed that since it will be paying your medical bills, it can tell you what to eat, when to sleep, and how to live? What if the government tried to cajole and coax and compel you into behaviors and attitudes it considered socially acceptable? What if the government spent your tax money to advertise to you how great the services are that it provides? What if the government kept promising to make you safe while it kept stripping you of your liberties and committing crimes in your name that made you a target of more violence?

What if you didn’t have a right to every dollar you earned? What if the government decided how much of your earnings it will keep and how much it will permit you to have? What if the government took money from you and gave it away to its rich banking and corporate friends whose businesses were failing? What if the government thought it knew better than you did how to lead your life and had no problem telling you so? What if the government took the credit for every success your own human actions helped you achieve? What if the government told you that only it could build roads, run schools, keep you safe, and collect trash even though it’s never been able to do so efficiently before? What if the government spent nearly twice as much as it took in? What if it couldn’t pass a budget on a timely basis and funded itself just weeks at a time? And what if the government kept borrowing money against the wealth of future generations to pay for wasteful programs today?

What if you worked for the government and the government didn’t work for you? What if freedom were a myth? What if we don’t live in a free country? What do we do about it?

From New York, defending freedom; so-long America.