By Chris Rossini
2+2=4 is the truth. But let's say that you don't like that. You believe that it should be 2+2=5. How long do you think it would take you to make it so? 10 years? 100 years? 1,000 years? The answer, of course, is never. But even though good people keep trying to explain that you can't override the truth, you won't accept it. You're going to spend your life in a quest to force others to accept that 2+2=5. Your first task is to find some comrades; some other people that agree with you. You obviously can't pull this off on your own. So many people accept that 2+2=4, you're not going to force an error on everyone all by yourself. You need others for this. It turns out, it's not very hard to find others just like you. They too want 2+2 to equal 5. They too want to "regime change" the truth. So you and your comrades form a club, and you meet regularly to plot strategies and tactics. Since your club wants to force 2+2=5 on others, you're drawn (like moths to a flame) to the gang of people known as government. After all, this gang has a monopoly on the use of force. Get in control of the monopoly, and you can wield the force in favor of your 2+2=5 agenda. Gaining control of the government monopoly is a lot easier said than done. Your club will have to muscle out the other clubs that are also drawn to and in control of government. They're your first obstacle. These other clubs are just as misguided as you are. They believe that War = Peace, and Theft = Charity. They too are trying to impose the impossible on everyone else. But right now, they have the control, and you don't. So they have to go. Your 2+2=5 agenda must come first. So you must cunningly sweep aside the other clubs. No ethics. No morals. No scruples. Just sweep them aside. The ends justify the means. After your club "wins," you now have the reins of power in your foolish hands. Your 2+2=5 agenda can now be pushed through every major megaphone that you can think of. The name of the game is propaganda. Schools ... media ... corporations ... rallies ... parades ... speeches ... Hollywood ... social media ... major sports ... Everywhere the average person turns, they see that 2+2=5! You don't relent. You just keep dialing up the intensity of the message. Once the propaganda reaches a fever pitch, you and your club are in your glory. You now have swarms of people shouting 2+2=5! To celebrate, your club prepares to publicly drive the final nail into the coffin. Never again will anyone be able to proclaim that 2+2=4 ... It shall be 2+2=5 forever! And then.... Out of nowhere...and completely unexpected... ...it all comes crashing down. The whole scheme collapses onto itself in what feels like an instant. 2+2=4 is "reborn" in the speed of a lightning bolt, and Life is renewed with vigor! You failed to make the false into the truth. After much time passes, something unusual occurs. Approximately 100 years later, another club of "regime changers" decide to pick up where you left off. This new club recognizes that you were right in wanting to make 2+2=5, but you failed because you missed certain things. You just did it wrong! You forgot to do A, B & C, and you never did X, Y, & Z. This new club will plug up the holes that you missed. They will drive the final nail of 2+2=5 home. They will avenge your failure and will usher in the final regime change, The new club of comrades concludes that one of your major mistakes was that you limited 2+2=5 to your own country. You can't have the rest of the world on a 2+2=4 standard. It'll never work. The whole world must believe that 2+2=5. This new club is "thinking" even bigger than you. They will make the regime change a global one! Global institutions will usher in the new age. 2+2=4 has no chance! This time it is definitely going down! And so, just as what occurred 100 years ago, the propaganda is piped through every megaphone ... Parades ... rallies ... 2+2=5 as far as the eye can see. It's a global phenomenon! To celebrate, this new global club prepares to publicly drive the final nail into the coffin. Never again will anyone be able to proclaim that 2+2=4 ... It shall be 2+2=5 forever! This time all over the globe! Anyone who dares to proclaim that 2+2=4 will have to leave the Earth's atmosphere! And then.... Out of nowhere...and completely unexpected... It all comes crashing down in what feels like an instant. The whole global scheme collapses onto itself. 2+2=4 is once-again "reborn" like a bolt of lightning, and Life is renewed with vigor! Let's get to the moral of this story. The final nail can NEVER be driven in to make 2+2=5. Truth is immutable and not subject to change. It is not subject to anyone's opinion. The truth just is, and in this case the truth is that 2+2=4, now and forever. Individual Liberty is a truth about human nature in the same way that 2+2=4 is a mathematical truth. Truth is truth, whether it is spiritual, mental, physical, mathematical, biological...etc. When it comes to the truth about human nature, every single individual is naturally endowed with liberty. Every individual is the final arbiter on what he or she believes, and how to act to make him or herself happy. The buck stops at the human individual. For thousands of years, some individuals have had a problem with this. They don't mind their own freedom, but they don't like that others have freedom. And so they spend their lives wasting away their freedom in trying to abolish the freedom of others. They always fail, because you cannot change the truth into something false. But failure never seems to stop new tyrants from trying. For thousands of years, the newest tyrants have been trying to plug-up the holes of the previous collapses in tyranny. And yet, Liberty is always "reborn." In truth, Liberty is not really "reborn" because it cannot die, at least not as long as human life exists. As long as there is human life, there is Liberty. Life = Liberty. Now is the time to speak the ideas of Liberty with conviction and to set brushfires of freedom in the minds of men! Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared before a US Senate Committee today to warn Senators against opening the country after the coronavirus outbreak. Opening too soon - before a vaccine - will bring needless death and suffering, he said. No mention of the needless death and suffering caused by the lockdown itself - cancer treatments cancelled, surgeries cancelled, Depression-level economic collapse, depression, suicide, abuse. How long must we continue listening to this "expert" who has gotten everything wrong thus far?
Keep the Liberty Report alive - make a tax-deductible contribution to the Ron Paul Institute: http://www.ronpaulInstitute.org/support
By Ron Paul
A Fresno, California waffle restaurant dared to open its doors for business this weekend to the delight of a long line of customers, who waited up to two hours for the “privilege” of willingly spending their money in a business happy to serve them breakfast on Mother’s Day. This freedom of voluntary transaction is the core of what we used to call our free society. But in an America paralyzed by fear – ramped up by a mainstream media that churns out propaganda at a level unparalleled in history – no one is allowed to enjoy themselves. Thankfully everyone carries a smartphone these days and can record and upload the frequent violations of our Constitutional liberties. In the case of the waffle restaurant, thanks to a cell phone video we saw the police show up in force and try to push through the crowd waiting outside. An elderly man who was next in line to enter was indignant, complaining that he had been waiting two hours to eat at the restaurant and was not about to step aside while the police shut down the place. The police proceeded to violently handcuff and arrest the man, dragging him off while his wife followed sadly behind him to the police car. It is hard not to be disgusted by government enforcers who would brutally drag an elderly man away from a restaurant for the “crime” of wanting to take his wife out for breakfast on Mother’s Day. A virus far more deadly than the coronavirus is spreading from Washington down to the local city hall. Tin pot dictators are ruling by decree while federal, state, and local legislators largely stand by and watch as the US Constitution they swore to protect goes up in smoke. Politicians with perfect haircuts issue “executive orders” that anyone cutting hair for mere private citizens must be arrested. In Texas a brave salon owner willingly went to jail for the “crime” of re-opening her business in defiance of “executive orders.” To add insult to injury, Governor Greg Abbott very quickly condemned the one week jail sentence of salon owner Shelley Luther – but the officers who arrested her were only carrying out Abbott’s own orders! First we were told we had to shut down the country to “flatten the curve” so that hospitals were not overwhelmed by coronavirus patients. When most hospitals were nowhere near overwhelmed, and in fact were laying off thousands of healthcare workers because there were no patients, they moved the goalposts and said we cannot have our freedom back until a vaccine was available to force on us or the virus completely disappeared – neither of which is likely to happen anytime soon. Many politicians clearly see the creeping totalitarianism but lack the courage to speak out. Thankfully, patriots like Shelley Luther are demonstrating the courage our political leaders lack. When Patrick Henry famously said “give me liberty or give me death” in 1775, he didn’t add under his breath “unless a virus shows up.” If we wish to reclaim our freedoms we will have to fight – peacefully – for them. As Thomas Paine wrote in 1776, “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
By David Stockman
Yes, they are.....gone. We are referring, of course, to all of the jobs created not only since the Great Recession bottom, but during the entire 21st century to date! That’s right. The 20.5 million jobs plunge reported for April essentially wiped out the “strong labor market” brouhaha of the 244 “Jobs Friday” reports since January 2000. In fact, the 131.072 million nonfarm payroll jobs reported for April 2020 were actually below the 131.124 million jobs reported way back in February 2000 when Bill Clinton was still scurrying around the White House looking for some place to hide the blue dress. Total Nonfarm Payrolls, 2000-2020
Needless to say, embedded in the above disastrous chart is the boot heel of Lockdown Nation at its most vicious. That is, it has brutally monkey-hammered those channels of daily economic life that are based on social congregation—–bars, restaurants, hotels, malls, salons, gyms, movies, concerts etc.
In the case of the leisure and hospitality sector, for example, the lockdowns have caused an 8.2 million or 48% drop from the record level of 16.87 million jobs reported by the BLS just two months ago in February. Yet that isn’t even the half of it. The 8.715 million leisure and hospitality jobs reported for April represented the lowest level since, well, January 1988 when the BLS recorded 8.66 million jobs in this sector. So the foolish politicians in Washington can drop all the PPP money on the small business sector they can possibly compute with or without a Cray machine, but that’s still a drop in bucket compared to wiping out 32 years of jobs growth in the most labor-intensive sectors of the entire US economy. Total Jobs In The Leisure And Hospitality Sector, 1988-2020
Well, actually, we are talking about the weakest employment report in the leisure and hospitality sector in 41 years. As we regularly remind, what counts for economic activity and paychecks is hours on the clock, not the head counts which make the headlines.
Due to tumbling average weekly hours in this sector, the hours index has plunged 56% during the last two months. At a level of 58.5 in April 2020, the hours worked index thus stands at the same level first crossed in November 1979. Moreover, it’s not as if the leisure and hospitality sector is some marginal back-street of the US economy. Just 60 days ago some 17 million workers were pulling paychecks from the tens of millions of firms and establishments which comprise the sector. The fact is, in these labor intensive businesses, the index of hours worked is about as close to a proxy for total activity or GDP in the sector as you can get. So did any of the Donald’s economic policy geniuses tell him the Dr. Fauci’s insane plan to lockdown the economy and put most workers and customers in these businesses under house arrest would actually wipe-out 41 years of economic advance in hardly a fortnight? Indeed, you can look at the chart below—-and many like and similar ones from other sectors which we display later—and call Lockdown Nation the economic crime of the century, and with no exaggeration whatsoever. Index Of Aggregate Hours For Leisure and Hospitality Workers, 1979- 2020
In the case of social congregation up close and personal, which is to say the restaurant and bar sub-sector, the wipe-out was even more complete. Except in a few months during the Great Recession, there has never been a down month in this category since the BLS started tabulating the sector separately in January 1990.
Apparently, they started too late, however. The 12.301 million jobs in that sector reported for February instantly became a true case of “honey, I shrunk the kids”, given the young average age of the workforce in these venues. So in April only 6.384 million bar and restaurant jobs were left standing. And that figure—wait for it—was the lowest ever recorded, including the initial 6.54 million tabulation back in January 1990. So here is joined the central issue of the entire state-orchestrated prohibitionist campaign against the invisible coronavirus. If you really want to stop the spread of an infectious pathogen, or even stretch-out its migration thru the general population, you have to stop social congregation cold and on a dime. That is, you have to deliberately and brutally crush commerce, business activity and paychecks to the heretofore unimaginable depth shown in the charts above and below. And you have to do so in an economic channel where workers and businesses alike function in a hand-to-mouth modality without rainy days funds or cash reserves and beneath the mill stones of prodigious debt, rents, leases and other inflexible obligations. But why mount such a brutal assault on these brittle sectors in the first place? The overwhelming share of both employees and customers in the socially congregating sectors—led by leisure and hospitality venues—consists of people under 65 years of age. Yet these people are no more in harm’s way than the day-in and day-out risks posed by illness, accident and self-inflicted harm in modern society. To reprise the CDC’s own expansively defined WITH Covid-death numbers (63,469) through May 2nd, the share of total deaths and mortality rates for the three Nations of Covid were are follows: • Kid Nation under 15 years: 60.9 million persons and 13 deaths (0.02% of total) or 0.02 per 100,000; • Parents & Workers Nation 15-64: 214.5 million persons, 12,637 deaths (19.9% of total) and 5.9 per 100,000; • Grandparents & Great Grandparents Nation 65 and older: 52.4 million persons, 50,819 deaths (80% of total) and 97.0 per 100,000. In short, if you are thinking straight, you do not stop social congregation in the leisure, hospitality, personal services and retail sectors to protect the 276 million persons in the Kids Nation and Parent & Workers Nation, who comprise the overwhelming share of congregants there.
Their risk of death is tiny. Indeed, the mortality rate of 5.9 per 100,000 for the Parents & Workers Nation is barely above the mortality rate for suicide among that age group and less than 1% of the cohort’s total annual mortality rate of more than 600 per 100,000.
Likewise, the overwhelming share who do become infected with the Covid-19 either remain asymptomatic or experience spells of influenza-like illness or discomfort that are par for the course during the winter flu season. So if the Fauci/CDC/IHME/Gates Foundation’s dragnet of house arrest is not really being done for their own good, what’s the purpose? As we said, it’s a capricious Social Science Experiment of Brobdingnagian aspect. Apparently, these social planners think they can stop the spread of the kind of virus variation that has been circulating in the human population from time immemorial. But such sweeping state intervention has never been tried or needed in the past, and has already failed this time around. That is, the antibody studies cropping up around the nation and world indicate that 5- 20% of the population has already been infected, which amounts to 15-65 million people in the US alone. Stated differently, the horse-of-Covid is already out the barn door. Continuing the misbegotten Social Science Experiment of an unelected camarilla of mad scientists, do- gooders and numbers geeks even a day longer is tantamount to criminal. That’s the true meaning of today’s shocking jobs report. For crying out loud, the places where Grandparents and Great Grandparents Nation congregates is not mainly the bars, gyms, hair salons, restaurants, malls, movie houses and Home Depots, anyway. They could have easily been warned to stay away from said venues—especially if they also had serious medical afflications already. And the places were they do typically congregate—retirement villages, cruise ships, tour buses, nursing homes, bingo parlors, shuffle-board courts etc. could have been targeted with enhanced measures of hygiene, testing, personal protection gear, isolation, treatment and generous financial assistance at a fraction of the trillions that are being destroyed by Lockdown Nation. In fact, fully 19,800 or 31% of all the WITH Covid deaths reported by the CDC through May 2 were among the population 85 years old or older!
There are just 6.5 million persons in this category, meaning that their Covid-mortality rate has been 305 per 100,000. That’s 52X higher than for Parents & Workers Nation, and 15,000 times higher than for Kids Nation.
The utter irrationality of locking down the heart of social congregation venues fairly screams out from the CDC’s own data. You almost have to believe that if someone had given Dr. Fauci a boot full of piss with a nursing home drown on the bottom, he still wouldn’t have recognized the real locale of the corona problem. Total Jobs In Bars And Restaurants Sector, 1990-2020
Needless to say, the ultimate point of social congregation would be the airline business, and in that instance you could ask a simple question per the above Covid-19 mortality data. To wit, what would be the risk of death to anyone on a B-737 load of healthy under 65-year olds?
The answer, of course, is tantamount to none. Well, unless it was a Boeing Max! Yet, here’s the nosedive of employment in the air transportation sector for April, and that’s just the warm-up. By the end of the month virtually 90% of commercial air travel had stopped, meaning that the 27% jobs plunge last month will be drastically eclipsed in May. Moreover, the level of perhaps 100,000 jobs likely for May will be the lowest not only since the BLS started collecting the data separately in January 1990, but also since the airlines stopped serving lunch with silver and china and at no charge in the economy section. Total Jobs In Air Transportation Industry, 1990-2020
For want of doubt, consider also some of the retail sector data that came out of today’s jobs report, where the decades of accumulated economic activity wiped-out in less than 60 days has been equally stupendous.
In one fell swoop, all the retail jobs created during the 26 years since May 1994 evaporated in the last two months. That’s right. What had been recently called a retail-apocalypse has been turned into an outright economic Armageddon. We dare say that within six months the only retail chains which will not have filed for bankruptcy will be Walmart, Target and Nordstroms. And that’s to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of remaining moms and pops who were hanging on for dear life from the Amazon juggernaut. Thanks to Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates, their euthanasia will soon be complete. Total Jobs In Retail Sector,1994-2020
For instance, one remaining redoubt of small chains and independent retailers has been the furniture and home furnishings store sector. Yet in the last 60 days, 46% of the jobs that were reported in the February count have vanished, meaning that what is left is only a fraction of the activity level recorded way back in 1990, when this sector was first tabulated.
The point is, the plunging blue line below is not merely a measure of jobs; it’s an index of what has happened to the tens of thousands of small businesses and local and regional chains which still offer consumers an alternative to Walmart, Amazon and the giant furniture warehouses. Total Jobs In Retail Furniture And Home Furnishings Sector, 1990-2020
And speaking of coup d’ grace’ for small businesses, you have the same story with specialty stores for sporting goods, hobbies, books and music. The April figure of 351,000 jobs was down by 36% from the 550,000 jobs reported in February, and by 45% from the peak reached on the eve of the Great Recession.
Needless to say, in an honest capitalist market there is nothing sacred about the number of jobs or the number, size and modality of businesses which compete in any given sector of the economy. They are meant to rise and fall as competitive forces, consumer preferences and technological changes work their will. But what you see in all of these charts has nothing to do with capitalism at work or the beneficent force of the unseen hand and its propensity for what Schumpeter called “creative destruction”. By contrast, the virtual jobs obscenity reported for April was the work of the Very Seen Hand of the State, and comprised the pointless destruction caused by a camarilla of arrogant fanatics gone off the deep-end. Total Jobs In Retail Sporting Goods, Hobby, Books And Music Stores Sector, 1990-2020
This article was reprinted with permission from David Stockman's Contra-Corner.
David Stockman began his career in Washington as a young man and quickly rose through the ranks of the Republican Party to become the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. Stockman is an Advisory Board member for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Ginning up fear and terror was key to getting hold of the country, tossing millions of Americans out of work, and setting fire to the Constitution. A nation ruled by fear is a nation that falls into tyranny. How the elites use fear as a method of control. Plus on today's program: Why did so many coronavirus deaths occur at nursing homes? The "Georgia Model" is working well so far...and it's driving the fearmongers crazy. And is HR 6666 as demonic as they claim? All this in today's Liberty Report!
Sign up for free updates from the Ron Paul Institute at: http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/subscribe
It took over 200 years for the U.S. national debt to reach $1 Trillion. Now, $1 Trillion of debt is added in just 1 month! A monopoly central bank that counterfeits money paves the road to economic ruin. While Americans should have never allowed the creation of the Fed in 1913, and should have put an end to it quickly, the day is approaching when the Fed will have no choice but to end itself.
By William J. Murray
As of April 25, 2020, more than 30 million Americans were receiving unemployment payments. Around 10 million more who had been self-employed were suddenly unable to earn an income yet found they could not file claims because of antiquated state systems. The federal CARE Act was passed by Congress to support all those now unable to work because of the Covid-19 Pandemic, including the self-employed. Tens of billions of dollars were transferred to state governments for unemployment programs. By mid-May, around 40 million newly unemployed Americans will be receiving payments to be unemployed -- or to be more specific -- paid not to produce any products. At the beginning of the Pandemic, 67.9 million Americans were already being paid by Social Security Administration programs to be unproductive. (SSA.gov) There are approximately 230 million adults over the age of 18 in the United States. By mid-May, a staggering total of 108 million of those adult Americans will be receiving money to remain unproductive. That is an incredible 47% of the population being paid to do nothing. At the same time, with some overlap, 40 million Americans receive food aid from federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP). In addition, the federal government pays for childcare for about 1.5 million children. This does not include state and city welfare programs. As an example, the state of New York was providing welfare payments to 600,000 people before the pandemic began. Officially the United States budget is nearly $800 billion for other welfare programs, not including social security. The $800 billion does include Medicaid, but not Medicare. As of May, estimates are that $3 trillion will be passed out in “transfer” payments during 2020 to individuals not to produce any products, although the recipients will buy products including medical care. While termed “transfer payments,” that is not a true definition because a large portion of the money does not come from taxation, but rather from the federal government just printing the money. Initially the federal government was projected to spend about $1 trillion more than was received in taxation for fiscal 2020. With additional pandemic spending so far, and reduction in taxes paid, the government is projected to borrow $4.5 trillion -- the emphasis being on “so far.” (WSJ 5/5/20) This massive amount of money from the central government does not include the roughly $4 trillion the Federal Reserve has pumped into the system so far this year to prop up the casino known as “the markets.” Now the Fed is buying ETF corporate bond funds. Here is the big question: Where will the products come from that tens of millions of Americans are being paid not to produce? In my book, Utopian Road to Hell, I wrote of my experiences in the Soviet Union just before the Great Collapse. I witnessed, firsthand, the result of people being paid to produce little or nothing. The Soviets invented the reusable shopping bag, but not to be “green.” Everyone had a folded-up bag just in case something became available. Women carried them in purses, men in lunch pails or briefcases. Lines would appear out of nowhere, sometimes at a street corner waiting for a truck to pull up to sell food, or even durable goods, on the black market. Tens of thousands in Moscow went to flea markets such as Levsha, which now sells mostly nostalgia items, but back then it was to find necessities. The Soviet people were not poor, as depicted in Western media at the time. They actually had plenty of money because there simply was nothing available to buy with their earnings! “For the good of the people” prices were fixed far below production costs, and jobs were guaranteed for life. Workers were paid regardless of the profitability or quality of their products. The Russian and Ukrainian areas of the Soviet Union had more fertile farmland than the United States, but still had to buy grain because of the lack of productivity. In the Soviet Union, the retirement age was set at 60 for men and 55 for women, to show the world that communism did more “for the good of the people” than Western nations. (Note: President Putin tried to rectify the early retirement of productive people and saw his popularity immediately drop.) During the years of perestroika (1985-1991) and after, I maintained a jointly owned company in the Soviet Union. In Moscow the metro cost about two cents to ride, at a time it was almost $2 in Paris. Bread was the equivalent of 5 cents a loaf, yet probably cost in the area of 50 to 75 cents a loaf to produce. The costs were of course fixed “for the good of the people” and as a result bread was rarely available -- although lots of moldy bread could be found in dumpsters. That’s because whenever bread was available, people would grab far more than they could use, causing hoarding shortages. The core of the problem was, of course, workers being paid far more that the value of the products they produced. The products may have been of poor quality, and with quantity lacking also, but they did produce something. Currently in the United States, “for the good of the people” nearly half of the adult population is paid to produce nothing at all. This works so long as third-world nations manufacture and grow products of value that Americans can buy at ridiculously low prices, with money our government just prints. The system will continue to work as long as our nation can force on others the use of the dollar as the world’s currency. There is more “for the good of the people” to come. So much more “for the good of the people” that the dollar may lose its value regardless of our military and current economic strength. Nancy Pelosi, for all intent and purposes the head of the Democratic Party, has moved in the direction of a “universal minimum wage” proposed by Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders and other socialists. In light of Covid-19, Senator Sanders proposed $2,000 per month per person as a “universal minimum wage” for every American. Presumably, a family of four would receive $96,000 a year. Who in a family receiving that much money would be willing to work anywhere, even for $14 an hour which is the highest minimum wage in the nation? (That wage is in Washington, DC of course). By working, the individual in Washington, DC would make just $29,120 a year, versus $24,000 a year tax free to do nothing. Then who will bring in the crops? Illegals? Not if illegals are included in the universal minimum wage “for the good of the people.” Some high paying manufacturing jobs such as those in defense will be filled, but not many more. At some point China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and the rest will begin to realize that the paper we are handing them cannot be used to buy anything, because America produces little but armaments, and Boeing airplanes that are lead balloons. At that point, the whole scheme fails. It is, after all, a Ponzi scheme that promises more and more out of the pot, for less and less put in the pot. Again … where do the products come from … the products all that money being printed “for the good of the people” will be able to buy? The products simply will not be available, and Americans will carry around their bags hoping to find something, just as did the Soviet citizens who lived in a nation that provided little more for “the good of the people” than hunger.
William J Murray is the president of the Washington, DC based Religious Freedom Coalition and author of several books, his last, Utopian Road to Hell, details the historic pitfalls of collectivism.
Across Texas, citizens are furious over the seven day jail term handed out to a Dallas salon owner who re-opened her business. The judge called her "selfish" and demanded she apologize. She refused and became a symbol of resistance to tyranny. Governor Gregg Abbott, feeling the heat, is issuing executive orders to minimize his original executive orders. Plus - Shocking developments in new New York Covid cases and how to solve the coming meat crisis.
Remember when the whole country was on lockdown over a pandemic that killed nearly 120,000 Americans? No? Because although there WAS a pandemic that year and it DID kill that many Americans, there was no lockdown. The mainstream media urged people to remain calm. And it passed. So what's different this time? Plus - our take on the OUTRAGEOUS Dallas judge who sentenced a beauty salon owner to seven days in JAIL for daring to open her business to willing customers. Finally - Neil Ferguson's real disgrace.
Please keep the Liberty Report on air with a tax-deductible contribution to the Ron Paul Institute: http://www.RonPaulInstitute.org/support
By Chris Rossini
This quote by Samuel Adams perfectly captures the American spirit and how it will survive: "It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." Let's unpack it. We start with the idea of majorities. Politicians love talking about majorities. They constantly manipulate people with poll after poll, always showing that government must take away liberty. Politicians will trot out their "experts" just in case some need a little more deception in order to be convinced. But, the "majority" is the political bread and butter. If the majority says so, you're supposed to accept it as something sacred. Putting aside that you should pay little attention to government-approved "experts" and polls, the truth of the matter is that the majority of people are followers. Majorities never set the direction. The majority always follows the direction that is set into motion by minorities, by the few, and often by "the fringe." This is not to demean anyone. Understanding this gives no permission to look down on anyone. Everyone is a part of the majority is some form or another. A person can be an absolute genius in his or her field, but a complete ignoramus when it comes to other fields. Just because someone knows the immutable laws of physics or chemistry does not mean he knows the immutable laws of economics, or that he understands biological laws. A man can be a multi-millionaire, or even a billionaire, and he's still a part of the majority where he is ignorant. It is here, that others who know better, can be tempted to take advantage of that ignorance. So everyone is a part of the majority in some sense, and majorities are followers. They can follow ideas that are good. But they can also follow ideas that are bad and harmful to themselves. A tell-tale sign that a person is in the majority is when they resort to calling for the use of force. If you ever hear the words "there ought to be a law," or "government should," you're hearing the voice of the majority. If you happen to be the one voicing those words, it's best that you get out of that majority. You're only harming yourself in the end. Good ideas never require the use of aggressive force. Never. Throughout mankind's history, those who have advocated for liberty and peace have frequently found themselves in the minority. Their job has always been the same. As Samuel Adams pointed out, it's to tirelessly set brushfires of freedom in the minds of men. The mind is always the target. The real battle is always a battle of ideas. Nothing can stop an idea, rooted in truth, that has been adopted by a tireless minority. This is why government monopolizes schools. It's all about targeting the mind. And no matter how bad government schools are at educating kids, government does not want to let that monopoly go. You must send your kids to Caesar, so that Caesar can send them back to you as Romans. This is also why government and media are attached at the hip. The target is always the mind. It's always about ideas, and government wants to make sure that you're flooded from every direction by ideas that they want you to believe. So the minority who believe in Liberty must tirelessly find new avenues to get the word out. No matter how much the censors and "narrative-controllers" try to plug-up every leak in their apparatus, there's always another crack somewhere to get the message of Liberty through. Once a critical number of people (still a minority, of course) hear and embrace the message of Liberty, the tide starts to turn. Life is Liberty. There can be no Life without it. George Washington said that "Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." Tyranny is a slow-going grind. It's unnatural and takes an unbelievable amount of time, money, and resources to keep going. It saps the life out of everyone. Liberty is rapid and powerful! Liberty is a part of our nature, and when people embrace it, the world begins to shake. Once the tireless minority turns the tide, the majority will not be far behind. They will follow, because that's what majorities do. Many may not even fully understand why they are following. They may not know all the intricacies and the beauty of the ideas of Liberty, but they will follow nevertheless. Don't be fooled by not being surrounded by libertarians. Just because most people around you parrot propaganda, it means nothing for the success of Liberty. Looks can be deceiving. Not everything is as it seems. Set brushfires of freedom in the minds of men and everything can change in what appears to be an instant. |
Archives
April 2024
|