Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 27, 2009

Until forced to change its plans because of public outcry, a National Guard unit from Carroll, Iowa planned to hold a four-day training exercise in civilian disarmament in the nearby town of Arcadia.

The drill involved a staged search for, and apprehension of, a figure called an ?arms dealer.? The operation was designed to train troops to carry out door-to-door searches and vehicle inspections, as well as methods of crowd and traffic control.

While these tactics are associated with long-term military occupations abroad, they also resemble the methods used with ever-greater frequency by our increasingly militarized domestic law enforcement. Chicago, for instance, has a new anti-gang unit -- commanded by a Marine veteran of the Iraq war -- employing the same tactics used by troops patrolling Fallujah.

The abortive training exercise in Iowa suggests that outright military occupation of US cities is a real and troubling possibility.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 26, 2009

New and infuriating details continue to be revealed in the case of Ethiopian-born British resident Binyam Mohammed, who was kidnapped by the CIA, tortured at the hands of CIA-trained foreign interrogators, and, until recently, held at the Gitmo detention camp.

During his imprisonment in a CIA-affiliated prison in Morocco, Mohammed was routinely beaten. He was also tortured through the use of a surgical scalpel to make tiny but painful incisions on his back, chest, and genitals.

Cleared of all terrorism-related charges a year ago, Mohammed remained in Gitmo for several months. Recent medical examinations reveal evidence that he was routinely beaten until literally the day of his discharge from the facility. One doctor said that the extent and severity of Mohammed?s trauma suggested that he was a victim of medieval abuse.

This was all done by agents of our government to a man they knew to be innocent.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 25, 2009

It?s likely that millions of Americans were surprised, puzzled, and offended when Eric Holder, the nation?s first black Attorney General, who was appointed to that post by the nation?s first black president, accused us of being ?a nation of cowards? because of an alleged reluctance to discuss matters of race.

For more than a generation, America has properly aspired to be a society in which individuals are assessed on the basis of character and achievement rather than skin color. Now Holder perversely insists that those priorities reflect some kind of deeply entrenched national character flaw. What really matters where racial progress is concerned, he insists, are words, rather than deeds.

To our nation?s credit, we have largely transcended our historic inter-ethnic conflicts. But this is certainly reversible if Holder and his ilk succeed in having Americans think of themselves as members of artificial racial collectives, rather than as individuals.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 24, 2009

Prior to his career in electoral politics, President Obama was famously employed as a ?community organizer.? For those still puzzled over what a community organizer does, the example of the group ACORN will be instructive.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, is a radical group inspired by the teachings of cultural Marxist Saul Ailinsky. In recent days, ACORN has been organizing what it calls ?homesteading? efforts in a half-dozen major U.S. cities.

ACORN is assembling mobs and training large numbers of professional squatters to break into foreclosed homes and occupy them in the name of what they call ?the community.?

The group?s leaders openly admit that they are doing this in counterpoint to the Obama administration?s program to subsidize some people unable to pay their mortgages. This revolutionary ?scissors strategy? is aimed at destroying the principles of contract and property rights on which a free market depends.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 23, 2009

During the 1990s federal enforcement agencies accused banks and other lending institutions discriminating against minorities who applied for mortgage loans.

By the end of the decade, a concerted effort was underway to compel lenders to extend credit to minority applicants even when their circumstances and credit histories were marginal or worse.
Today, many of those trapped in bad sub-prime mortgage loans are the supposed beneficiaries of this federally sponsored push to overcome supposed lending discrimination.

And many of the lenders who were brow-beaten into making loans to such marginal borrowers are now being assailed as ?predatory lenders? who supposedly took advantage of desperate, helpless poor people. A federal task force in Maryland is actually threatening to seize money and other assets from bankers accused of predatory lending.

This is yet another example of the way that government creates the poison and the supposed antidote in the same laboratory.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 20, 2009

In a severe recession, thrift stores are among the few businesses that flourish. Consumers eager to save every penny will eschew boutiques and shopping malls in favor of second-hand, consignment, and charity-run thrift stores.

Last fall, displaying government?s peculiar genius for making things worse, Congress enacted the so-called Consumer Product Safety Act of 2008. This act is purportedly intended to protect children from trivial amounts of lead in certain products ? including children?s books ? manufactured prior to 1985.

Such products are common in thrift stores, of course. The estimated cost for an individual store to test its goods for compliance is as high as $30,000 ? a potentially crippling financial blow to stores with very low profit margins.

Full enforcement of that act has been deferred for a year. But many chains have already thrown out huge amounts of merchandise, which helps neither them nor consumers. The measure should be repealed immediately.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 19, 2009

During his February 11 radio broadcast, Rush Limbaugh warned the Democrats that their expansion of government power and spending was ?creating a monster that you will not be able to control forever. ?

He then abandoned any pretense of principle by predicting that once restored to power, the Republicans ?are going to use the power that the left is centralizing in the federal government to punish them, to break 'em up, and to make them pay for this.?

Like many other Republican-aligned pundits, Rush never criticized George W. Bush for radically expanding the power and expense of the central government, which the Democrats now control.

And rather than seeking to de-fang the monstrous state, Limbaugh and others of his ilk are lusting for a chance to control it again. It?s a pity such people don?t love liberty more than they hate their political rivals.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 18, 2009

In the early 1990s, as Japan suffered a severe economic collapse, Washington dispatched a team of high-ranking economic analysts to Tokyo. Their advice was to permit the market to work the bad assets out of its system. Many of that country?s investment and commercial banks would fail, but the alternative ? using taxpayer funds to prop them up ? would only prolong the crisis.

Ignoring that advice the Japanese government bailed out the dead and dying financial institutions, thereby creating an entire class of so-called ?Zombie banks? ? that is, banks that are artificially kept alive through government intervention. As a result, Japan has suffered a depression that has lasted nearly two decades.

As our own financial crisis deepens, Washington is choosing to ignore the advice it once gave Japan in favor of creating our own collection of nationalized ?zombie banks.? This may well lead to our own generation-long depression.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 17, 2009

Embedded in the $797 billion pork-barrel measure that we?re told to call a ?stimulus package? can be found billions of dollars to expand the infrastructure of our emerging police state.

Billions are set aside for Justice Department?s ?Byrne Grant? program to create counter-narcotics task forces that include professional criminal informants and paramilitary strike teams. That combination frequently results in armed raids against innocent people.

The bill also includes $1 billion for the COPS program to hire and train local police. This has contributed significantly to the unconstitutional federalization of law enforcement.

While these amounts don?t seem impressive, every dollar increases forfeiture by police has become nothing less than brazen piracy. Federal subsidies will help this kind of corrupt opportunism to flourish.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 16, 2009

In Genesis we read about a war among the evil kings of the ?Cities of the Plain? in which Lot, Abram?s kinsman, was taken captive.

Abram mounted an armed rescue of Lot, and in the process he came into possession of a large amount of goods that had been stolen from the King of Sodom. Those goods were wealth amassed by that King through the lawless plunder of the people he ruled.

Invited by the King of Sodom to keep the loot as a reward, Abram refused, saying that he would not let it be said that the King of Sodom had made him rich.

Arbam?s refusal to participate in plunder stands in stark contrast to the attitude of Idaho Governor Butch Otter and other Republicans who opposed the so-called ?Stimulus Package,? yet are eager to share in nearly a trillion dollars? worth of plundered wealth.

Men of principle don?t consent to receive stolen property.

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