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Goering Quotation Explains the Current ISIS Crisis

Jacob Hornberger in his Future of Freedom Blog quotes Goering at his Nurenberg Trial

Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Then goes on to make the point:
“Isn’t that what the latest scare, this one relating to ISIS, is all about? Oh sure, ISIS hasn’t actually attacked the United States but it did behead two Americans in retaliation for U.S. bombing raids against ISIS in Iraq, and that has been more than sufficient to get the American people are stirred up.

Look at how many Americans are going bananas, just as Goering suggested they would. As he pointed out, it’s just not hard for government officials to bring people around to the support of the government. Right now, many people’s knees are knocking and many of them are quivering in their boots. ISIS is the scariest thing they have ever faced—scarier even then Hitler, Stalin, the Soviet Union, communists, North Korea, North Vietnam, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Iran, drug dealers, illegal aliens, and all the other things that have scared the heck out of the American people ever since U.S. officials grafted the national-security state apparatus onto our governmental structure. They are all convinced that ISIS is coming to get them, kidnap them, cart them back to Arabia, waterboard, and behead them.

And if anyone questions any of this, he is derided for failing to appreciate the grave danger America is in, or for not being brave, or for not being a patriot, or for not being willing to come to support of the nation, or for not supporting the troops.

The entire situation is about as ridiculous as could be. ISIS is not coming to invade, conquer, and occupy the United States. It does not have hundreds of thousands of transport ships and planes. It does not have millions of troops. It does not have billions of dollars.

Oh sure, they might take over Iraq, just as Saddam Hussein did or just as the military dictatorship in Egypt has. There are brutal dictatorships all over the world, some of which the U.S. government even partners with. That doesn’t mean an invasion, conquest, or occupation of the United States.

Or some of them might commit a terrorist attack on a building or a mall here in the United States. But that’s not exactly an invasion, conquest, and occupation of the nation. That’s the murder of a limited number of people.

Is that bad? Of course it is. But that’s the price of empire and intervention. Such attacks, if they come, will be in retaliation for the U.S. government’s bombing raids in Iraq. When you have a governmental apparatus that consists of a standing army and an all-powerful president, you have to accept that terrorist retaliation is one of the prices that must be paid for maintaining that type of governmental apparatus. If you don’t want terrorist strikes against Americans, then there is a simple solution, the one that Madison and the other Founding Fathers favored: Dismantle the standing army, the CIA, and America’s foreign empire of military bases, and end America’s foreign policy of interventionism and support of dictatorships. Absent that, just prepare yourself for the inevitable cost.

The irony is that so many of these frightened Americans are calling on the president to use his military and CIA to do the same things that generated ISIS  in the first place—that is, more bombs and more killing of people in Iraq. This time, such Americans are apparently expecting different results. When ISIS lies destroyed three years from now, only to be replaced with ISISGodzilla, Americans will once again be confronted with the definition of insanity, the same definition, by the way, they are confronted with each time the feds destroy some drug lord or drug cartel.”

John Tamny on ISIS

In a Forbes Article John Tamny explains:

Why Ludwig von Mises Wouldn’t Have Feared Islamic State

Reference:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2014/09/07/isis-and-austrian-school-economics-why-ludwig-von-mises-would-not-have-feared-islamic-state/

Poking the Hornets Nest

In 2001, Jacob Hornberger provided sage advise on how to react to the 9/11 attacks.  His approach might have worked better than what our government did.

A FOREIGN-POLICY PRIMER FOR CHILDREN: THE FABLE OF THE HORNETS
Here is is the full text

“Once upon a time in a faraway land there was a happy and prosperous village filled with industrious and fun-loving people. To protect the villagers from occasional thieves and marauders, the village council had hired a policeman named Oscar.

One day Oscar got bored and took a long walk into the woods, where he discovered some of the biggest hornets’ nests he had ever seen. The next day and every day thereafter, Oscar returned to the nests and took to poking at them with a big stick. That angered the hornets and caused them to attack Oscar, but their stingers could not penetrate the brand new suit of armor that he was now wearing.

A few days later, however, a terrible thing happened. Several hornets flew into the village and stung some of the villagers, who were understandably outraged. The village council immediately called an emergency meeting. “The hornets have attacked us,” one man cried. “We must destroy them all!” After several hours of discussion, everyone agreed that the village had no choice but to wage war on the hornets.

At that point, however, a young boy arose and said, “Maybe if Oscar stops poking the hornets’ nests, the hornets will no longer attack the village.”

A gasp and a hush immediately swept across the room. Suddenly, one man screamed, “The boy is supporting the hornets!” Another yelled, “He’s saying that they were justified in attacking the village.” A woman weighed in: “He’s suggesting that we got what we deserved!” “Unpatriotic!” “Treason!”

The boy slunk down into his seat and did not say another word, and the villagers turned their attention back to the upcoming war on hornets.

The next day, Oscar and several big deputies, all fully suited in brand new suits of armor, headed into the woods. With several big sticks, they began hitting and beating the big hornets’ nests. The hornets were furious, and immediately attacked Oscar and his men, but to no avail because their stingers could not penetrate the brand new suits of armor. After several hours, all the hornets’ nests had come crashing down.

When the news reached the village, everyone roared his approval and began celebrating. All of a sudden, however, hundreds of hornets swarmed around the villagers and went on the attack. Later, when Oscar returned to the woods, he noticed something foreboding — dozens of new, smaller hornets’ nests were now under construction throughout the woods.

Under siege, the village council enacted the Anti-Hornet Patriot Act, which established the new Anti-Hornet Security Police, whose job it was to peer into everyone’s windows day and night for the purpose of searching for hornets. When one villager expressed misgivings, the village council responded, “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t care.”

One year later, the village council called a meeting to give a report on the war on the hornets. Everyone wore a suit of armor, which had become normal attire. The council advised the villagers that the war was not going well: that it seems that each dead hornet had been replaced by five new ones, which continued attacking the village.

At that point, the young boy again arose and said, “Maybe if Oscar stops poking the hornets’ nests, the hornets will no longer attack the village.” A gasp and a hush again swept across the room. But this time, one man said, “Maybe the boy’s got a point!” Another joined in: “Yes, what do we have to lose?”

Oscar exclaimed, “If we stop poking the hornets’ nests, hornets everywhere will think we’re weak. Anyway, they hate us so much by now that they’ll attack the village anyway. We’ve got to continue waging the war on the hornets until we kill them all.”

But under pressure from the villagers, the village council voted to end the war on the hornets and ordered Oscar to stop poking their nests and to limit himself to protecting the village from thieves and marauders.

After a time, a remarkable thing happened: the hornets stopped attacking the village, and they never again returned. And so it was that the village in that faraway land once again became happy and prosperous, filled with industrious and fun-loving people who lived happily ever after.”

Here is a follow-up
REVISITING THE FABLE OF THE HORNETS
by Jacob G. Hornberger
September 5, 2014

Martin Brock on Parent License

In response to Cohen’s argument for Parent Licenses summarized in Adam Gurri essay
click for article
as:
“Because children don’t have the power to pick who their parents are, and there’s no similar competitive mechanism to make sure they’re more likely to end up with good parents, he argues that parenting should be licensed for the sake of children’s safety.”

Martin Brock replied:
“A state is a monopoly definitively; therefore, no competitive mechanism makes sure that a child ends up with a good state either, and every child subject to a bad state suffers the bad state while only the child subject to a bad parent suffers the parent.

So a consequentialist must ask, “What’s more likely? That a randomly selected child is subject to bad parents or that the child is subject to a bad state?”

Adam Guri Defines 3 Libertarian Perspectives

As an introduction to his blog post
The Organic Body Politics and Parental Licensure Adam Gurri defines 3 libertarian perspectives

  • Natural Rights libertarian
  • Consequentialist libertarian
  • Organic libertarian

While most libertarians probably consider aspects of all three types, the philosophical purists general stick with one “school” at a time when making arguments for or against public policy.

Natural Rights libertarians, perhaps the most popular branch, start with the Non-Aggression Principle as a natural right.

The Consequentialist starts with attempting  to minimize harm, a form of utilitarianism.

Organic libertarian is a more Hayekian approach, which emphasizes civil and political relations that are grown rather than designed. They are discovered not as axiomatic or universal truths but as casuistically discerned approaches which are stable over generations, an approach generally followed by conservatives.

Israel Sets an Example for Obama

On Thursday, July 17, 2014 Israeli ground forces invaded Gaza, on Tuesday, August 5, 2014 they withdrew. How come after more than 10 years the US still has troops in Afganistan. (no question mark – rhetorical question)

Today Brian Wright sent a link to:
http://www.alternet.org/belief/mourning-judaism-being-murdered-israel

I replied:
To borrow some words and ideas from Sam Harris, http://www.samharris.org/, and extend with my own remarks:
“I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state.” I think it is irrational to have a state organized around a religion. So I don’t celebrate the idea that there is a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. I certainly don’t support any Jewish claims to real estate based on the Bible. However, the fact that the rest of the world has shown itself eager to murder the Jews at almost every opportunity, if there were going to be a state organized around protecting members of a single religion, there should be one for Jews. Israel is not a theocracy, and one could argue that its Jewish identity is more cultural than religious. Their laws guarantee freedom of religion to all its citizens. Some claim Arab citizens are treated as second class, others claim those who have become citizens have equal rights. “However, if we ask why the Jews wouldn’t move to British Columbia if offered a home there, we can see the role that religion still plays in their thinking.”

A Jewish state in the middle east is ultimately untenable. Mistakes by Westerners were made starting in about 1870, and especially by the British around 1917-22, and then in 1947-48 by the UN. If they were going to create a Jewish state it should have been in Nevada, Montana, middle of Australia, or Galt’s Gulch, some place that was mostly uninhabited.

Contrary to current myths, the Jews and the Arabs were not always enemies. The Moors and the Jews flourished in Spain and north Africa before the Spanish Inquisition. There was less persecution of Jews in Arab countries than in so called Christian counties of Europe.

The first friction came when the Zionist immigrants in Palestine in 1880-1917 period bought deeds to land from Ottoman Turk absentee landlords. Because of the Ottoman empire, the deeds were recognized by the government, but not by the people who were living on the land.

That said, the only thing the US government should do is open our borders to any peaceful Arabs or Jews that want to settle here. We should not be supporting financially or militarily the lunacy that is going on.