Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

August 12, 2008

How often do employees of privately owned businesses receive professional commendations after completely messing up? Are awards of that sort handed out to private employees whose incompetence endangers innocent lives, and results in extensive damage to private property?

Last December, a Minneapolis SWAT team mistakenly raided the home of Vang Khang, which he shares with his wife and six children. Thinking his family was being robbed, Khang grabbed his shotgun and fired blindly through a closed door. Thankfully, nobody was injured, although some of the officers reported trivial shrapnel damage to their body armor.

The City apologized for the unjustified raid ? and then presented eight SWAT officers with commendations for ?perfor[ing] very bravely under gunfire.?

According to Police Chief Tim Dolan, ?the officers didn?t make any mistakes.? They certainly did: They raided the wrong house, failed to identify themselves, and left innocent children exposed to gunfire.

Apparently, that?s the stuff of which contemporary heroism is made.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

August 11, 2008

The deepening military conflict between Russia and its former republic, Georgia, offers a potent reminder of George Washington?s wise advice that America should stay out of foreign conflicts.

Under the rule of American-educated Mikhail Saakashvili, Georgian forces invaded the breakaway province of South Ossetia, whose population is predominantly ethnic Russian. That attack killed ten Russian troops and hundreds of Russian civilians. Russia mounted a retaliatory attack against Georgia, and Saakashvili ? who was brought to power with Washington?s aid ? appealed for help from the United States.

Washington has unwisely maintained a small military presence in Georgia since at least 1993. Serious proposals have been made to bring that oil-rich nation into the NATO alliance. Had that happened, the NATO treaty would commit us to war with Russia ? a truly ominous prospect. Our only productive role in this conflict would be to use our diplomatic influence to bring it quickly to an end.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

August 8, 2008

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has described an alleged recent meeting in the Vice President?s office to discuss ?a dozen ideas ? about how to trigger a war? with Iran.

?The one that interested me the most [Hersh continued] was [the suggestion that the US military] build ? boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.? After all, ?if you get the right incident, the American public will support? military retaliation.

Far-fetched as this might seem, we should recall that n a January 2003 meeting with then-British Prime Minister Tony Blairi, George Bush suggested that the US could goad Saddam into firing on a U2 reconnaissance plane in order to justify war with Iraq.

Were our rulers genuinely seeking to defend our nation, they wouldn?t be devising pretexts for unnecessary wars.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

August 7, 2008

Shortly after 9-11, several high-profile figures ? including then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, and NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw ? received letters containing the anthrax virus.

Numerous news accounts, citing official sources, claimed that tests performed in the Army?s research labs at Ft. Detrick, Maryland supposedly confirmed that the anthrax samples had been created in Iraq.

George W. Bush reinforced that supposed connection in his 2002 State of the Union Address; countless articles and speeches invoked the purported Iraqi bio-weapons attacks in the build-up to the Iraq war. That conclusion did a great deal to cultivate support for the war.

The FBI, which didn?t support that conclusion, identified Bruce E. Ivins, a researcher at the Ft. Detrick lab, as the chief suspect. Ivins died last week in an apparent suicide. But it?s clear that Ivins was not alone in perpetrating this hoax, which was politically useful to the Bush administration.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

August 6, 2008

In 1998, Congress passed the so-called ?Iraq Liberation Act,? a largely symbolic measure that served as the prelude to war. Subsequent resolutions have targeting other nations, such as Iran and Syria.

On July 31, the House enacted ? by a 419-1 vote -- a resolution condemning abuses of human rights in China. Those abuses are plentiful, of course, but as Ron Paul ? the only Congressman to vote against the measure ? reminded his colleagues, ?we have no authority over the Chinese government. It is our Constitutional responsibility to deal with abuses in our own country or those created abroad by our own foreign policies.?

Congress hasn?t abolished the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Export-Import Bank, or other conduits of tax subsidies to corporations doing business in China. Congress has the constitutional authority and duty to end those subsidies. It prefers the sterile hypocrisy of striking politically profitable poses.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

August 5, 2008

Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden?s former chauffeur, is presently being tried by a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Hamdan?s trial by military commission ? the first convened under a law passed in 2006 ? permits both hearsay testimony and evidence extracted through torture, as long as the prosecution insists that such tainted evidence is ?reliable.? The prosecution was permitted to withhold hundreds of pages of evidence from the defense. These are just some of the ways military tribunals are rigged to favor the prosecution.

That same 2006 law, the Military Commissions Act, permits the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects even if they are acquitted of all charges. Admiral David Thomas, commander of the Gitmo facility, has said that Hamdan would remain a prisoner even if he is found innocent.

Where the State can extract confessions through torture, and continue to imprison those who are acquitted, trials serve no purpose other than propaganda.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

August 4, 2008

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who passed away on August 3 at age 89, heroically exposed the Soviet Union?s prison camp system. He was rewarded with a Nobel Prize and punished by exile from Russia.

After arriving in America, he endured a different kind of exile. In his Harvard Commencement Address thirty years ago, Solzhenitsyn provoked the incurable hostility of the Western academic elite by showing how their brand of humanistic materialism differs only in detail from that of the totalitarian Soviet regime.

Westerners were free to fill their bellies even as their souls starved, he observed, warning against a worldview that displaces God and puts man at the center of everything. The West was staring into ?the abyss of human decadence,? typified by a degenerate popular culture and depraved ruling elite.

Unless the West turns back to God, this corruption will eventually destroy both our prosperity and our individual freedom.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn understood that we cannot reclaim our liberty unless we recognize that it is Christ who sets us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 30, 2008

This September, a group of political and corporate elitists will convene a two-day ?Service Nation Summit? in New York City.

The organizers support a proposal to re-instate conscription for all 18 year-olds as a condition of college admittance. Conscripts would be required to serve in either a military or domestic capacity as directed by the government.

Conscription of any kind is an unconstitutional form of involuntary servitude.

During the July 1863 Civil War draft riots, the New York Times defended conscription, insisting that the government is entitled ?to every dollar and every right arm in the country for its protection?.? We?re often told that governments exist to protect the people, but the moral premise of conscription is that the people exist to protect the government.

Nothing is more patently anti-American than the totalitarian assumption that we belong to the government that is supposed to be our servant.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 30, 2008

Robert Jordan of New London, Connecticut, a 48-year-old insurance salesman, wanted to be a policeman.

In 1996, Jordan applied to the police department. Like all applicants, he took a pre-employment intelligence test, scoring 33 points out of a possible 50. However, the department was only interested in applicants whose scores were between 20 and 27.

The reasoning here is that people with even modestly exceptional intelligence will find themselves bored or frustrated with police work. This policy is not unique to the New London Police, but so far they?re the only agency to be sued over it.

Jordan?s court challenge resulted in a federal court ruling this month upholding the hiring policy. Jordan?s ?equal protection? claim would have been upheld if he were a member of an officially accredited ethnic minority, a woman, or a sexual deviant.

But there is no such recourse for those found to be too intelligent for government work.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 29, 2008

The Senate convened in a special Saturday session on July 26, to pass a measure supposedly intended to provide relief for embattled homeowners who face foreclosure.

In fact, the so-called ?Foreclosure Prevention Act? authorizes an open-ended bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the corrupt, government-sponsored financial enterprises that created the housing and mortgage crisis.

The bill provides the Secretary of the Treasury with practically unlimited power to lend money to Fannie and Freddie. Or he can nationalize those companies outright, should he and the president deem it necessary. No further action by Congress ? the supposed guardian of the public purse ? would be required.

Together, Fannie and Freddie have roughly $5 trillion in liabilities. We can expect taxpayers to be saddled with that entire sum. We can likewise expect this to be merely the beginning of taxpayer bailouts of banks and other ailing institutions ? and the end of market capitalism.

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