by Bryce Shonka

Forget everything you know about politics. Forget the age old story about the Democrats and the Republicans, where one side is good and the other side are a bunch of America hating vats of pure evil. Forget about the left vs right debate, forget about conservative vs liberal. At this stage in the game, there are only two sides;

Those who support the further growth of a centralized authoritarian state and those who oppose them.

That’s it. There are your teams, which one are you playing for? Continue Reading

by Gary Galles, Mises.org

2009 has seen the greatest proliferation in American government command and control in over half a century, together with its corresponding constriction in liberty. Power is increasingly being centralized in the federal government—at the expense of individuals and their voluntary associations — with the creation of multi-billion or trillion dollar new programs, massive bureaucracies and breathtaking income redistribution nowhere authorized in the Constitution.

While the current engorgement of our federal government already implemented or being proposed is unprecedented, it follows much the same path as earlier episodes, such as FDR’s New Deal. That is why there is wisdom to be found from those who understood and opposed that accumulation of social power in the hands of the government. Perhaps no one offers us more wisdom in this regard than Felix Morley, in his The Power in the People (1949). Continue Reading

by Ray McBerry - 2010 Candidate for Governor in Georgia

Today Georgians panic at the thought of being removed from federal government dependency, having forgotten that life did exist before the current level of intrusion, and life existed abundantly. Though we assert that the civil government spawns waste, bureaucracy and tyranny, we waffle at the sea of uncertainty as to how best proceed toward liberty.

The path to freedom is achievable but it is not easy. It is not easy because it depends on the political will of the people, a people who have been indoctrinated through government school systems to be owned by their government rather than to own their government. Continue Reading

By Brian Roberts

Article 3 in Series, Restoring Freedom: An Entrepreneur’s Perspective

We must bring our revolutionary product of individual freedom to market, and soon; otherwise servitude, Washington D.C.’s product of choice will monopolize and we will see out market share for freedom disappear and our great experiment in self-government fail.

Crossing the Chasm, a book focused on bringing technology products to market, presents an analogy based on World War II Europe. After Hitler took control of Europe, the Allies were left without a front to counter Axis aggression. At the time many considered Europe lost. The Allies, faced with an impossible task, developed a strategy to liberate Europe. That’s what we need: a strategy to liberate freedom itself. Continue Reading

by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Keynote speech at the Ohio Rally for State Sovereignty, August 1, 2009.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Video: Part 1, Part 2

Let me set down a couple of fervent beliefs that animate everything I do and everything I say.

I believe that God created heaven and earth and every single individual on the planet.

I believe that the God who gave us life gave us liberty and that freedom is our birthright.

I believe that the States created the federal government and not the other way around.  And that the power that the States gave to the Federal Government - they can take back. Continue Reading

Continue Reading

by Judge Andrew Napolitano, LewRockwell.com

For a professor of law at one of the country’s best law schools who was once the go-to guy in the Justice Department whenever the Bush White House needed legal cover for its truly lawless ventures outside the Constitution, John Yoo has revealed a breathtaking ignorance of American values, history, and jurisprudence.

In his startling mea culpa, published in the Wall Street Journal recently, Professor Yoo confessed to advising President Bush that he possessed powers from some source other than the Constitution, that in the name of public safety he could cut down all laws written for the express purpose of restraining the President, and that Americans would expect no less than this so long as they were actually kept safe as a result of it.

He advanced the argument that since the President’s first job is to keep us safe, he could disregard the 1978 FISA law as “obsolete” since it was written in an era when modern day non-state terrorism was not contemplated. By this unprecedented and perverse logic, one wonders if the President was told if he could disregard as obsolete any law that was inconvenient to his purposes; even the Supreme Law of the Land itself, which the Constitution declares itself to be. Continue Reading

By James Bovard, CampaignforLiberty.com

The REAL ID Act may be on the verge of receiving its final coffin nails. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is pushing a replacement bill that poses many of the same threats as REAL ID. The history of REAL ID should inspire friends of freedom to once again vigorously oppose any and every federal grab for their personal information.

The feds had sought legislation to create national ID cards in the 1990s but were rebuffed by a Republican Congress. But, after 9/11, “everything changed” — at least in Washington. Regardless of the reasons why the CIA and FBI failed to stop the hijackers, the solution was far more snooping and the potential creation of hundreds of millions of dossiers on American citizens. Almost overnight, it became widely accepted that the government must have unlimited powers to search anywhere and everywhere for enemies of freedom. The worse the government’s failure to protect Americans, the further it permitted itself to intrude. Continue Reading

by Harry Browne

Originally published July 4, 2003

Unfortunately, July 4th has become a day of deceit.

On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress formally declared its independence from Great Britain. Thirteen years later, after a difficult war to secure that independence, the new country was open for business.

It was truly unique — the first nation in all of history in which the individual was considered more important than the government, and the government was tied down by a written Constitution. Continue Reading

by John W. Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute

“It astonishes me to find… [that so many] of our countrymen… should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty… which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries.”
–Thomas Jefferson, 1788

“Most citizens,” writes columnist Nat Hentoff, “are largely uneducated about their own constitutional rights and liberties.”

The following true incident is a case in point for Hentoff’s claim. A young attorney, preparing to address a small gathering about the need to protect freedom, especially in the schools, wrote the text of the First Amendment on a blackboard. After carefully reading the text, a woman in the audience approached the attorney, pointed to the First Amendment on the board and remarked, “My, the law is really changing. Is this new?” The woman was a retired schoolteacher.

For more than 200 years, Americans have enjoyed the freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion, among others, without ever really studying the source of those liberties, found in the Bill of Rights–the first ten amendments to our U. S. Constitution. Continue Reading