Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 3, 2010

Near the end of Shakespeare?s two-part play King Henry IV, the dying monarch offers some advice to his son Prince Hal, the future King Henry V: ?Be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out, may waste the memory of the former days.?

Dismissed by many as a bumbling light-weight, Hal would be wreathed in majesty by leading his country in a contrived war.

This is exactly the same advice given to President Obama by neo-conservative commentator Daniel Pipes. Bombing Iran ? that is, waging an aggressive war against a country that has neither harmed nor threatened us -- would ?salvage his tottering administration? and ?re-set his presidency,? in the same way that ?9-11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush?s meandering early months.?

Oh, by the way: In a twist Shakespeare couldn?t have imagined but George Orwell could appreciate, Pipes was appointed by George W. Bush to the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 2, 2010

According to the New York Times, the Obama administration?s budget projections present ?a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.?

The budget envisions $5 trillion in tax increases and a $1.6 trillion deficit. This year, federal spending will devour nearly 11 percent of our nation?s entire economic output. Under the most optimistic projections, by the end of the decade that figure will climb to more than twenty percent. Given the destructive impact of government intervention in the economy, that percentage will likely be much greater as productivity shrinks while the government?s appetite continues to expand.

The Times points out that the grim fiscal forecast makes it unlikely that money will be found for new domestic initiatives, and suggests that America?s world influence ? as manifest in the ability to protect military power ? will wane.

Unless the government ruling us is brought to heel immediately, the USA will soon join the roster of nations ruined by the imperial ambitions of their rulers.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 1, 2010

As is the case with many other unsuccessful terrorist plots, the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit is looking like an incident co-produced by the government that supposedly protects us.

For weeks prior to the incident, the CIA and State Department were aware that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who smuggled an explosive aboard the plane in his underwear, had been meeting with Islamic militants in Yemen.

State Department official Patrick F. Kennedy has admitted that Abdulmutallab was permitted to keep his visa at the request of unidentified intelligence officials.

Revoking the visa, Kennedy claimed, would have compromised the investigation. Allowing the bomber to use his visa supposedly permitted intelligence operatives to target the entire terrorist network, ?rather than simply knocking out one soldier in that effort.?

The bomber was known to U.S. officials, and permitted to board a U.S.-bound plane. And now the government is seeking to capitalize on an intelligence ?failure? that put hundreds of lives at risk.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 29, 2010

Professor Cass Sunstein, the Obama regime?s unofficial minister of information and a likely future nominee for the Supreme Court, recently stated that the federal government could criminalize discussion of conspiracy theories.

?Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law,? insisted Sunstein.

Shortly after Sunstein?s views were made public, a congressional committee pried loose details of the criminal conspiracy by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pay off the bad debts of politically favored banks using taxpayer money.

Bloomberg News columnist David Reilly describes this as a plot by ?a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks ? while trying to end-run Congress.? This cabal spent at least $8 trillion in money extorted from taxpayers, Reilly observes. If Sustein and his ilk prevail, discussing such outrages would be a criminal offense.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 28 2010

Without a declaration of war or even overt congressional approval, U.S. troops are now involved in yet another military conflict, this one in Yemen.

According to the January 27 Washington Post , this latest military venture began in mid-December, when President Obama unilaterally approved a plan for the clandestine Joint Special Operations Command (or JSOC) to join government forces in tracking down and killing suspected terrorists.

The campaign included a missile strike by an unmanned drone against an installation containing a U.S. citizen suspected of ties to al-Qaeda. That individual, Anwar al-Aulaqi, wasn?t killed; however, notes the Post, ?he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture?.?

We?ve heard a great deal about the federal government?s ?no-fly? list. Now we learn that the government maintains what could be called a roster of U.S. citizens subject to summary execution on presidential order.

When the president can kill citizens at whim, in what sense could it be said that we?re free citizens governed by law?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 27 2010

In a 2007 intrerview with ABC news, CIA interrogator John Kiriakou claimed that terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah was broken by a brief application of water torture ? commonly called waterboarding. He then supposedly provided information that prevented ?maybe dozens of attacks.?

Advocates of torture, including Rush Limbaugh and other prominent conservative media figures ? seized on Kiriakou?s statement with a sense of triumphant validation.

This attitude persisted after it was revealed that Zubaydah had been subjected to water torture not once, but 83 times , as well as being beaten, stripped naked and suspended from ceiling hooks, and subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation.

In his new memoir The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA?s War on Terror, Kiriakou now confesses that there is no truth to what he said.

?I wasn?t there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I?d heard and read inside the agency at the time,? writes the former CIA operative.

Why should we expect the truth from torturers?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 26, 2010

Many people who are commendably hostile toward Washington?s increasing role in our lives surrender to uncritical admiration of the immensely wasteful and ever-metastasizing federal bureaucracy called the Department of Defense.

The Pentagon is the largest and most costly federal bureaucracy, devouring unfathomable quantities of money and feeding a growing roster of corporate welfare clients.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently met with leaders of several major Pentagon contractors ? including Boeing and Lockheed Martin ? to propose a ?closer partnership? in order ?to secure steady growth in the Pentagon?s budget over time.?

If defense were the real objective, the Pentagon ? which spends roughly as much as the combined military budgets of the rest of the world ? would be seeking opportunities to reduce its expenditures, rather than rationales to justify continued budgetary growth.

The Founding Fathers were hostile to standing armies and foreign entanglements, since the first often lead unnecessarily to the second and both are natural enemies of liberty. Gates and his corporate cronies embody the kind of military establishment the Founders opposed.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 25, 2010

Last week the Supreme Court struck down most of the so-called McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The ruling, which treated corporate contributions to political campaigns as a form of protected ?free speech,? triggered widespread outrage from people who insist that money is corrupting politics.

In a refrain echoed by many critics of the ruling, President Obama and the New York Times insisted that lifting restraints on corporate campaign donations represents the death of what they call our ?democracy.?

The Times hysterically pronounced that the ruling ?has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.? This suggests that spending limits favor insurgent candidates over corrupt incumbents. But the McCain-Feingold law was designed to protect congressional incumbents, whose turnover rate is lower than that of the old Soviet Politburo.

Genuine political reform would severely limit what government can do, rather than what private citizens can spend in promoting their interests.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 22 2010

St. Augustine defined a government as the dominant band of robbers in any society, a criminal clique with the power to re-define its plunder as ?public policy.?

He illustrated that principle in the famous parable of the pirate and the emperor. The first is described as a public menace because he preys on people with a single ship and small crew of cut-throats; the second is deemed a ruler because he does the same thing with the help of huge fleets and vast armies.

Bill Clinton updated Augustine in a brief comment offered in the middle of an extensive interview published in the December 2009 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Addressing contemporary international affairs, Clinton defined terrorism as ?killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority and go beyond national borders.?

By that definition, killing, robbery and coercion carried out with state authority aren?t terrorism ? at least, from the perspective of whatever robber band is currently dominant in global affairs.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

January 21, 2010

If Chinese official Li Shiming had respected the lives and property of others, his wife wouldn?t be a widow, his children wouldn?t be fatherless, and 18-year-old Zhang Xuping wouldn?t have become a murderer.

Zhang was hired to kill Li by a farmer in a north China mining town. Li had used his high position in the Communist Party to terrorize and plunder many local residents through extortion and blatant acts of terror. Those who opposed him in any way were subject to beatings inflicted by police or other hired thugs and often summarily imprisoned.

When Zhang was sentenced to death for killing Li. more than 20,000 people signed a petition demanding clemency. The young man?s real crime, wrote one local commentator, was that he ?refused to be obedient and to be a slave.?

This tragic episode displays, to good effect, the elemental conflict between those who live to control others and those who wish to be free. It may also be a foretaste of our own future.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.