Tom Woods

In a discussion of the show The Walking Dead, fiction writer Steven Lloyd Wilson says:

All of these events are the slow stripping away of the vestiges of the state, deriving step by step the hell that waits at the logical end of the libertarian impulse, a counterpoint to every argument against state power. From a certain perspective, the state is our greatest invention, for all the horrors it has wrought when wielded darkly. It is the sine qua non of everything else we normally consider to be the triumphs of civilization. Writing, electricity, science, art. None of it is more than dust in the wind without the state to jealously guard it, without a hand shielding the guttering flame from the maelstrom.

(Thanks to Artur.)

Here’s a nice reply by Michael Boldin of the Tenth Amendment Center.

See also:

NullificationFAQ.com
StateNullification.com
Is Nullification Unconstitutional?

Some of the faces are out of date (the 2012 GOP presidential contenders seem rather unlikely to be remembered by history), but in light of the viciousness toward Ron Paul over the past several weeks, I thought this was appropriate.

by Eamonn Butler

“What austerity?” asks the super-sound UK economic commentator Liam Halligan in the Telegraph.  GDP is down to be sure (6.2% below its pre-crisis peak), and we members of the public are indeed tightening our belts. Not so government. It’s belt-tightening amounts to just 2.7% “cuts” over six years. That’s after previous Chancellor/PM Gordon Brown expanded government spending by half, from 35% to 50% of GDP. Some “austerity” from our politicians!

The present government aimed to reduce its annual deficit to zero by 2015. In the wake of disappointing growth figures, that has now been expanded to 2018. Will it even be achieved? Most of the “cuts” were end-loaded, so the real complaints haven’t even started yet.

Meanwhile, annual borrowing continues to add to the national debt. Even if that 2018 balanced-budget target is achieved, says Halligan, it still means that the national debt in 2017/18, at around £1.7 trillion, will be three times that in 2008. And the interest payments on that expanded debt all have to be met. It is money we could have used on something more useful, had we not been so profligate in the boom years.

Read the whole thing.

Ron Unz, who publishes The American Conservative, writes to say:

Thanks so much for the great plug this morning on your website. And you’d had an excellent column a couple of days ago about that Weinstein fellow denouncing Eric Margolis and various other “fringe cranks” grouped around Ron Paul.

As I’ve been telling people for years, what defines a “fringe theorist” or a “conspiracy nut” is that they’re not regularly on television. People on TV can endlessly spout off the craziest, most ridiculous theories of an Iranian-Al Qaeda-Saddam alliance to destroy American freedom, and never be labeled a believer in “conspiracies.” Since the MSM mostly refused to cover Ron Paul during his campaigns, regardless of his fund-raising or polling benchmarks, he was a “fringe kook”—Q.E.D.

Basically, television defines our reality and especially what constitutes respectable opinion. If the people on TV did a U-turn, respectable beliefs would do the same within 72 hours.

Bob Murphy answered a viral Robert Reich video, which was filled with one fallacy after another, back in 2011. Now he’s back with a video claiming that the two positions on the economy are his own Keynesian one, and Paul Ryan’s. Oh, and he also says World War II got us out of the Great Depression. (Thanks to Joe.)

For the truth about that one, here is your host:

Over on my Facebook page, Bob Murphy writes: “You guys know that Tom and I are incredibly modest, so believe me when I say this event will be epic.”

We’ll bring back the zombie, have a mock Krugman debate, some singing, some learnin’, some book signing, and lots of laughs. New York City, June 8.

Tickets only $10 until midnight tonight. And if you’re on Facebook, please RSVP at our Facebook page.

by Lew Rockwell

The recent opening of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity was a watershed moment in American history. There has never been anything quite like it. Ideologically diverse, the Ron Paul Institute reaches out to all Americans, and indeed to people all over the world, who find the spectrum of foreign-policy opinion in the United States to be unreasonably narrow. Until Ron Paul and his new institute, there was no resolutely anti-interventionist foreign-policy organization to be found.

Neoconservatives have not responded warmly to the announcement of Ron’s new institute. Whatever their particular gripes, we can be absolutely certain of the real reason for their unhappiness: they have never faced systematic, organized opposition before.

The Democrats would see Lincoln pried out of his temple before supporting nonintervention abroad, so they pose no fundamental problem for the neocons. Ron Paul, on the other hand, is real opposition, and he can mobilize an army. The neocons know it. What’s Tim Pawlenty up to these days? Where are his legions of well-read young fans who seek to carry on his philosophy? You see the point.

For the first time, strict nonintervention will have a permanent voice in American life. It is another nail in the neocon coffin….

Read the whole thing (which becomes a manifesto for peace).

Ron Unz has a good article on the American media: what it covers, what it doesn’t cover, and how it covers what it does cover. This juicy passage on the Iraq War — “among the strangest military conflicts of modern times,” he says — gives you a sense of his argument:

The 2001 attacks in America were quickly ascribed to the radical Islamists of al-Qaeda, whose bitterest enemy in the Middle East had always been Saddam Hussein’s secular Baathist regime in Iraq. Yet through misleading public statements, false press leaks, and even forged evidence such as the “yellowcake” documents, the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies utilized the compliant American media to persuade our citizens that Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs posed a deadly national threat and required elimination by war and invasion. Indeed, for several years national polls showed that a large majority of conservatives and Republicans actually believed that Saddam was the mastermind behind 9/11 and the Iraq War was being fought as retribution. Consider how bizarre the history of the 1940s would seem if America had attacked China in retaliation for Pearl Harbor.

True facts were easily available to anyone paying attention in the years after 2001, but most Americans do not bother and simply draw their understanding of the world from what they are told by the major media, which overwhelmingly—almost uniformly—backed the case for war with Iraq; the talking heads on TV created our reality. Prominent journalists across the liberal and conservative spectrum eagerly published the most ridiculous lies and distortions passed on to them by anonymous sources, and stampeded Congress down the path to war.

The result was what my late friend Lt. Gen. Bill Odom rightly called the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history.” American forces suffered tens of thousands of needless deaths and injuries, while our country took a huge step toward national bankruptcy. Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and others have estimated that with interest the total long-term cost of our two recent wars may reach as high as $5 or $6 trillion, or as much as $50,000 per American household, mostly still unpaid. Meanwhile, economist Edward Wolff has calculated that the Great Recession and its aftermath cut the personal net worth of the median American household to $57,000 in 2010 from a figure nearly twice as high three years earlier. Comparing these assets and liabilities, we see that the American middle class now hovers on the brink of insolvency, with the cost of our foreign wars being a leading cause.

But no one involved in the debacle ultimately suffered any serious consequences, and most of the same prominent politicians and highly paid media figures who were responsible remain just as prominent and highly paid today. For most Americans, reality is whatever our media organs tell us, and since these have largely ignored the facts and adverse consequences of our wars in recent years, the American people have similarly forgotten. Recent polls show that only half the public today believes that the Iraq War was a mistake.

Read the whole thing.

An odd choice, but it’s what’s in my head this morning. “End Transmission, Part 1,” by The Decoration.

End Transmission Part 1