Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 10, 2009

In his famous 1838 Lyceum Address, Abraham Lincoln declared that the mightiest foreign army imaginable ?could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.?

Regrettably, Lincoln later did much to create the modern welfare-warfare state that supplanted our constitutional republic, and now threatens to leave us enslaved and destitute.

Last week, the Pentagon conducted its first-ever economic war game. At the end of the two-day exercise, China emerged as the victor, with Russia significantly strengthened as well. One key factor was China?s ability to undermine our economy by dumping its dollar-denominated Treasury bonds.

Those bonds are the debt that our government amassed in our name.
They quite probably will be the key to our destruction as a free people.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 9, 2009

In the early years of the Great Depression, most rulers subscribed to the Keynesian doctrine that radically increased government spending leads to economic recovery. The New York Times, reviewing that history in an April 1st article, observed that the country that most eagerly embraced that doctrine was Nazi Germany.

?More than any other country ? Nazi Germany ? set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and built monuments to the Nazi Party across Munich and Berlin.?

Many Keynesian economists believed that Hitler had solved the problem of unemployment. Economists of the Austrian school, such as , Ludwig von Mises Friedrich von Hayek, and John T. Flynn, warned that government control over the economy inevitably leads to political totalitarianism and war.

Regrettably, the Obama administration ? like its predecessor ? has embraced the National Socialist approach to economic recovery.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 8, 2009

Last week?s G-20 summit in London laid the foundation for a global fiat currency.

According to Point 19 of the joint G-20 communique, signatories ? including the Obama administration ? agree ?to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250 billion into the world economy and increase global liquidity.?

?SDR? refers to Special Drawing Rights, a kind of international cashier?s check issued by the International Monetary Fund. That function of the IMF has been dormant for a half-century. This has changed now that the ever-depreciating U.S. dollar is losing credibility as a global reserve currency.

As British financial commentator Ambrose Evans-Pritchard observes: ?In effect, the G-20 leaders have activated the IMF?s power to create money?. In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play? outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it.?

One is constrained to observe that there is nothing ?theoretical? about this particular conspiracy.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 7, 2009

Under the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine, the rulers of the Soviet Union claimed the right to use force to preserve the international gains made by international socialism.

The Obama administration, building on the work of its predecessors, has devised a domestic version of that doctrine.

Under a long-established principle, federal subsidies always involve central government control; if you take the government?s shekels, you take its shackles as well. Last fall, the Bush administration compelled a number of unwilling banks to accept federal bailout funds.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, financial reporter Stuart Varney describes how one major bank that received bailout funds has been prevented by the Obama administration from repaying the money. In fact, it has been threatened with retaliation if the bank persists.

Once the federal government has bought an interest in a bank or other enterprise, the Obama administration won?t permit it to regain independence. The Brezhnev Doctrine lives.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 6, 2009

Since last September, the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve have spent, lent, or issued loan guarantees totaling $12.98 trillion. Last year?s Gross Domestic Product ? the combined value of all productivity and assets ? was $14.2 trillion.

The price tag for this exercise in corporate communism is $42,105 for every American. The amount of money diverted into the rescue effort is fourteen times the $900 billion in U.S. currency presently in circulation.

It?s entirely likely that the Treasury and Fed have siphoned away the equivalent of the entire U.S. economy.

With foreign investors gagging on Treasury notes, the Federal Reserve has begun the process of monetizing the debt by buying T-bills. Monetizing the entire bailout so far would result in an inflation factor of 1,400 percent.

Our rulers are prepared to sacrifice the middle class in a futile attempt to save Wall Street from its own corruption.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 3, 2009

Police from several departments swarmed Wethersfeld High School in Connecticut on March 26 to conduct a drug sweep. Every locker, classroom, and car was searched, without a warrant or probable cause.

A nearly identical exercise was carried out in Westfield High School in Massachusetts almost exactly a year ago. This patently unconstitutional exercise, explained a local news account, was intended ?to send the school district?s message that drugs will not be taken lightly.? Despite the use of tactics worthy of a gestapo raid, police failed to find any narcotics anywhere on or around the campus.

According to School Superintendent Michael Kohlhagen , ?This is just one step in the right direction, to ensure our students continue to learn and thrive in a drug free environment.?

A less self-congratulatory view would be that this sort of thing is designed to teach students to submit to totalitarian abuses of their individual liberties.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 2, 2009

On the night of March 11, 2007, David Lozano of Austin, Texas received a phone call from a violent man with whom his wife had an affair. So when he later heard a knock at the door, Lozano loudly chambered a round in his handgun in the hope of scaring away the would-be assailant.

Lozano didn?t know that his antagonist had phoned in a false domestic violence report that sent Officer Roger Boudreau to his home.

When Lozano opened the door, Boudreau opened fire. Lozano, seeing only an unidentified figure in black, responded in kind. He was wounded and eventually lost a leg. He was also jailed for more than a year. Officer Boudreau, whose report of the incident contained several misrepresentations, received a medal of valor.

Last week, charges were dropped against Lozano, which is a small but important victory for the cause of armed self-defense against unlawful state violence.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 1, 2009

Nina Fedoroff has been the chief science advisor to the Secretary of State since 2007.

One purpose of the State Department is to identify potential threats to our country and deal with them through diplomacy.

Ms. Fedoroff brings an interesting perspective to that task: She believes that people ? all people everywhere ? are a potentially lethal threat.

In an interview with the BBC, Fedoroff declared: ?There are probably already too many people on the planet.? She insists that the human population has already exceeded ?the limits of sustainability.?

Fedoroff?s view ? namely, that people are humanity?s greatest threat, as it were ? is typical of those who consider human beings primarily as consumers, rather than producers. The challenges of food and energy production can easily be met if human ingenuity is unshackled from statist controls.

There?s genuine irony in the fact that population control advocates never consider themselves to be part of the surplus.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 31, 2009

Ernesto Guillen stopped for coffee at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Baltimore on his way to Johns Hopkins Hospital to visit his 4-year-old son, who was being treated for leukemia. He found himself among more than a dozen other men who were arrested solely because they were Latinos.

The January 2007 raid on the 7-Eleven was conducted by a unit of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement?s Fugitive Operations Program. The unit had fallen behind in its mandatory quota of arrests. Under orders to ?bring more bodies in,? the unit simply arrested every working-age male who fit the ethnic profile.

Several of those arrested were in the country illegally. Most of them, however, were not. Guillen spent three nights in jail before his release. Another was wrongfully incarcerated for nearly three weeks.

Outrages of this kind are common where law enforcement is carried out according to quotas.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

March 30, 2009

It?s no exaggeration to say that a shift manager at the typical fast food restaurant has more business acumen and practical managerial skill than Barack Obama. Yet he now presumes to make top-level corporate personnel decisions at General Motors.

GM is on the brink of bankruptcy. Its market share has consistently eroded even as its labor costs ? particularly union-imposed ?legacy costs? for health care and other benefits ? have soared. Along with other ailing US automakers, GM has been on taxpayer life-support.

The company has asked for, and received, promises that the Obama administration will provide it with additional taxpayer aid. However, as a condition Mr. Obama demanded the resignation of GM?s Chairman and CEO, Rick Wagoner.

GM has lost scores of billions under Wagoner?s leadership. Obama?s budgets, however, anticipate deficits running into the trillions. Presumably he will bring that same touch to the management of GM and the other major corporations he plans to nationalize.

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