Category Archives: Religion

RFK Jr. Appears Before the House Judiciary Committee’s Firing Squad

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Watching today’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Censorship was far more interesting that watching the machinations of the currency markets, so that I couldn’t tear myself away from watching it all the way through, with, ironically, the Democrats constantly attacking the Democrat Presidential Candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and the Republicans constantly supporting and praising his pro-First Amendment arguments.

Kennedy was consistently slandered at an anti-Semite, though his actions have always been staunchly in support of Israel, and though his grandfather was a notorious Jew-hater, JFK and RFK knew their history, and had rolled far from the tree. JFK was a Liberal Democrat in the best sense of what the words meant 60 years ago, and certainly not a racist, as you can see in the firm way he integrated segregated Southern Universities. He, and his brother, and Nicholas Katzenbach, were relentless in their pressure that these universities would be integrated, because to deny one person a right to attend a government-sponsored university was akin to overthrowing the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in their understanding.

Kennedy, uniquely, was also the only President in the last 60 years, to have a spontaneous sense of humor, which you can often see flashing in his Press Conferences, which he wasn’t afraid to hold, unlike our current President. (Reagan was the master of the prepared joke or line, but he was rarely spontaneous like Kennedy.)

And all because RFK Jr mentioned the theory of ethnically-targeted bioweapons, which we can be sure has been the dream of several types of racists, and mentioned a published paper which stated that Ashkenazy Jews and the Chinese had lower rates of covid infection, and seemed to have a higher resistance to the virus. For stating this scientific observation from a published paper, Kennedy was defamed as an antisemite and inciter of Asian hate, though he never mentioned anything about Sephardic Jews, who compromise about 25% of world Jewry, and who lived in Spain under the Moors, and in the North African Islamic communities, from Morocco to Yemen, and in the Middle East, where they faced discrimination but rarely massacre. Indeed, the period of the Moorish occupation of Spain is often referred to as The Golden Age, because Jewish scholarship flourished during that time, whereas with the reconquest of Spain by the Christians, continual persecution ensued.

So, when RFK Jr was lambasted as an antisemite, saying that covid was designed to “spare the Jews”, this is exactly what he did not say. But the lemmings among the Democrats all repeated this lie, whereas all he said was that one segment of Jews, along with Chinese Asians, showed a lower rate of infection, based on a serious medical study which was published.

Representative Massie was astute enough to come to RFK’s aid by entering into the record the names of not one, but two papers put out by reputable clinical laboratories, and cited in government publications, showing that RFK’s remarks were based on published evidence.

Now, what I find ironic is that only a few days earlier, Representative Jayapal of Washington State, called Israel a racist and apartheid State, and was called up on that pure antisemitism, designed to wreak violence on Jews and Israelis, and had to apologize and tweak her comment to mean she only meant it to apply to the current government of Israel, and not per se as a condemnation of the idea of a Jewish cultural State and homeland. But I doubt very much if a Palestinian terrorist or a Nazi would be deterred from action because of this nuancing. Jayapal knew that her words wouid get at least one Israeli civilian murdered, but she said it anyway. And she, a woman living in a country that still practices the Death Penalty, while Israel has abolished this abomination, and most heinous of anti-Libertarian Crimes — the murder of an Individual by the State.

She calls Israel an apartheid State, though Jews and Moslems and Christian freely mingle in her cities, and the Druze Moslems passionately serve in her armed forces because, under Israeli rule, they are free to practice their version of Islam, whereas when they lived under Arab rule, they were murdered, and considered to be heretics. Homosexuals are also protected in Israel, while they are persecuted and often killed in several Islamic nations. And how can Israel be a racist country, when she has admitted tens of thousands of Ethiopian Falashas, who are Black, but practice a form of Judaism that is considered valid.

Yet there was no condemnation of Jayapal from today’s censorship committee Democrats, and I was very glad to see Representative Kat Cammack point out the irony of condemning RFK Jr. for stating a scientific observation from a paper, while not condemning the inflammatory and defamatory rhetoric of someone like Jayapal, who is clearly a Nazi when it comes to Israel, and whose words will tragically get people half way around the world murdered, while she lives in a country with the Death Penalty, and represents a State who basically stole its entire territory from the American Indians. To some American Indians, she is an occupier by force of their Homeland.

It was ironic too to see the Black Democrats condemning the Freedom of Speech as being somehow dangerous, when The Bill of Rights is the best friend any Black American has, and Representative Sanchez bringing up the tired and incorrect example of shouting “Fire” in a crowded theatre. As Murray Rothbard so correctly pointed out, shouting “Fire” in a crowded theatre is actually the Crime of Contractual Fraud, because the ticket purchasers, and the promoter of the event in the theatre, had an implicit contract guarantee that they could enjoy the performance in silence, and the shouter has violated that implicit contract guarantee. The Supreme Court of the United States got it wrong: Murray Rothbard got it right.

Anyway to see the Republicans repeatedly praising a Democrat, whom they agree with wholeheartedly, and to see the Democrat constantly attacking a Democrat for speaking in Defense of the Bill of Rights and especially The First Amendment, was a unique and rare treat.

No one can truly know what is in the heart of a politician, but In my opinion, RFK Jr not only not a Jew-hater, but someone who actually admires those values of Israeli society that are congruent with the values espoused by his Uncle and Father, and which he has in large part espoused in his work as a lawyer. I wouldn’t agree with some of his government intrusions into life which libertarians oppose, but I probably would agree with his libertarian interpretations of The Bill of Rights.

No, RFK Jr. is not a bigot. And he has been shamefully smeared by some of the most incompetent legislators in the US House of Representatives, politicians whose understanding of The Bill of Rights and The Right to Free Speech is miniscule and distorted. That such mediocre politicians and mediocre minds can sit in the halls of Congress is really a threat to the Republic which must be rectified at the ballot box.

— Paul Grad, former libertarian Party of Oregon Gubernatorial Nominee

One Benefit of Social Media: The Ability to Debate

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I believe one of the benefits derived from social media sites like Facebook, or the Youtube comments sections, is the ability it gives to thinkers living in physically- or socially-isolated regions, to debate, or better yet enter into dialogue, with others who have pondered over the same issues.

When I ran for Governor of Oregon in 2014, I commented on and read the Libertarian Party of Oregon Facebook page (the real one lead by Wagner and recognized by the Oregon Secretary of State as the LPO) multiple times daily. I found what I still consider the most depthful, thoughtful, discussions that I’ve ever come across on Facebook. Many of the participants lived in remote regions, and even if they’d lived in a crowded city, it’s unlikely that their close neighbors and associates would be interested in the same political issues to the same depth and degree.

It made me recall the old practice of European philosophers and intellectuals, of writing letters to certain correspondents with whom they were conducting a long-continued discussion on some point of philosophy, or political philosophy, or even artistic taste. Without the medium of the letter, a man like Goethe would have been restricted to the company of locals or those who would take the journey to visit him. With the letter, men of letters and science all over Europe were able to continue to develop and refine their ideas.

Though it doesn’t seem to work that way 99% of the time, given the puerile comments and memes that dominate, the modern internet social media group can serve the same function as the old European philosophers’ letters, giving individuals interested in certain complex topics the outlet of being able to discuss these topics, instead of just having them remain as unvoiced thoughts, or having them published in yet another book, or blog post, that few will ever read.

— Paul Grad

The Left Demonstrators Call For a Radical Libertarian Solution: Defund the Police

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It’s ironic that now the Left is calling for a policing solution — defunding the State’s police — that a few weeks ago would have been called a Far-Right Extremist solution, that call has become a perfectly respectable solution among a large chunk of the Democratic Party.

One of the Libertarian ideas that isn’t usually discussed in great depth in Libertarian circles is the question of private police forces competing with the State’s police, or abolishing the State’s police altogether and only having private competing police forces. The theory on this topic so far has not been clearly adumbrated.

This Libertarian argument usually falls along the divide of Minarchist Libertarians, who only want a minimal government that would mainly consist of the police, the courts, and the prisons, and Anarcho-Capitalist Libertarians, who argue that the State itself is the enemy of Liberty, and that private police forces and private courts, competing with each other, could solve the problem. Under Anarcho-Capitalism, there would be no State, but there would still be law — Common Law, which includes all the usual felonies like murder, assault, rapine, theft, and fraud. There is not a lot of theory as to how these competing police forces would work in practice, or what would happen if one of these police forces, with sophisticated weaponry, suddenly went rogue and started egregiously violating Common Law itself. The other police forces would have to intervene against this rogue force.

Since there seem to me to be many unanswered questions as to how this would work, I myself would adopt in the short run the Minarchist position of retaining the State police and court system, while possibly introducing private police forces. Certainly competing courts could be used to settle mercantile disputes.  Among certain religions, their religious courts could settle domestic and mercantile disputes of their members, thus saving the State courts a lot of taxpayer money.

And the idea of charging a tiny contract-insurance fee in order to use State courts if a contractual dispute arose among corporations or individual business men, would be a taxpayer-free method of financing the State Criminal Courts. I’d suggest a fee of 0.1% of the value of the contract, or $100 on a $100,000 contract. Corporations or individuals would be free not to pay the fee, though then they could not use the State courts if a dispute arose. Corporations currently pay no State income tax in Oregon, yet are free to use the State Courts when a contractual dispute arises, a most unfair situation that has never been corrected in over 20 years of Democratic Party Administrations.

Let it be observed that we currently have many instances of private police forces in America that nobody claims are Far-Right Extremist forces that must be prohibited. The guard in the bank, the guards at the entrance of the gated community, the security guards at the concert or the parking lot, and the private body guards of wealthy Liberal Democrats, are all instances of private police forces that one never hears complained of as “Far-Right Extremist” police forces.

In other words, when Libertarians advocate for abolition of State police, they are called wild-eyed extremists, but when the Leftist mobs call for it, backed by their sycophantic minions in Government offices, its all self-righteously valid.

I can only imagine how rural America views the calls to “Defund the Police”.

— Paul Grad, Libertarian

Abortion: An Undiscussed Aspect

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One of the issues surrounding abortion which I have never, ever heard mentioned is this: in the event that a widespread epidemic decimated almost all of the Human species, would abortion then be a crime?

In other words, if an epidemic wiped out 99.85% of Humanity, and there were ten million people left on earth, would abortion in that case be a crime because it could be viewed as endangering the continuity of the species?

If the world had ten million people left, while overpopulation would no longer be an immediate issue, there would be a huge dearth of human beings, and skilled human beings, to do both the grunt work and the highly specialized work that would continue the comfort level of humans which existed prior to the epidemic.

Indeed, could the human race survive if there were only ten million people left?

Under such circumstances I could envision pro-abortion activists possibly changing their position, since the survival of the human race would now have to be factored into every abortion decision.

And what if there were only 100 people left on earth? Under such circumstances, should a woman be able to abort a completely healthy fetus after six months?

Perhaps these novel aspects of the abortion issue will be discussed by those who ceaselessly debate it.

— Paul Grad

Community: The Phony Concept

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One of the phoniest and utterly unrealistic notions that seem to be bandied about with reckless abandon nowadays is the concept of “community”. We hear of the Mexican-American Community, the African-American Community, the LGBT Community, the Armenian-American Community, as well as other “communities” like the gun-owners community.

Will we soon hear of the hermit-community or the recluse-community?

Community, of course, is a collectivist concept like “society” or “the Nation”. It creates an image of all the people that fall under that label as getting together in some vast hall and agreeing 100% with what the “leaders” or “spokesman” of that community say. You imagine all the members of the Mexican-American community or the Serbian-American community nodding their heads in unison after listening to their spokesman’s proposals.

This unity of voice obviously is untrue. But the idea of “community” fits in very well with the collectivist’s or Marxist’s idea that people are not individuals but rather subsumed into large political or social classes. Marx talks about the proletariat vs the “bosses”, and puts forth the deterministic doctrine that man is doomed to act in accordance with his economic class. He conveniently forgets all the wealthy men who have dedicated their wealth to improving the lot of the poor and even advocated socialist programs, and all the poor people who have been staunch Libertarians as far as respecting property Rights.

Of course, “community” is a valid concept when it comes to small, tightly-knit groups of people who live in close proximity to each other and share a specific ideological dogma. I think it valid to refer to American Indian tribes as communities. Also the Catholic religious orders, the Hippie communes of the 1960s, the American-utopian Brook Farm experiment, the Jewish ultra-orthodox who crowd around one particular rabbi, the Hutterites, and the kibbutz movement in Israel, are all examples of what I would validly call “community”. But when the concept is stretched to include millions of people, like the so-called “Gay and Lesbian Community” or the “Native American Community” it obviously becomes a ridiculous concept with no validity. It is a mental phantom designed to brainwash the perceiver into a collectivist thought-pattern.

So let’s not be fooled by the subtle brainwashing of the thoughtless commentator who speaks of “such-and such” community. They are contributing to the brainwashing of mankind, and the promulgation of the collectivist concept that says man is not an Individual but rather part of a collective — a false idea.

— Paul Grad, Enviro-Vegan Libertarian

The Democratic Party Goes Nazi

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The failure of the Democrat Party to condemn and ostracize Rep. Omar for her Jew-hatred, and their castrated hate resolution which not only didn’t name the perpetrator, but included anti-Semitism way down the list in a long list of hatreds, even though, in this current case, the problem is solely about anti-Semitism, illustrates what a morally bankrupt organization they are.

The Democrats have shown themselves to be a contemptible, racist mob, just like they were in the 1950s, when they tolerated the Dixiecrats, those lovers of racial segregation. They were lily-livered then, and they’re lily-livered now. But this is just what you’d expect from Socialists, who want to gain commodities and comforts through coercion, instead of through the non-coercive Free Market. The fact that these Jew-hating Socialists only target Israel, a democratic, secular State that has secular law as its legal basis, not religious law, as in most Islamic countries, but then stay completely mum when it comes to the world’s worst Totalitarian Regimes, like theocratic Iran, or Red China, show that this is all about Jew-hatred, not merely criticizing Israel for its own socialist programs and taxes. You’ll never hear these bigots criticize Iran, where women are forced to wear headscarfs, and men are told by the religious police to cut their hair, or trim their beards if unruly. Kinda reminds me of the Fascists we had over us in high school, who wouldn’t let boys grow their hair long. Iran judicially murders, i.e. executes, over 1100 human beings a year; Israel executes zero, because it does not have the Death Penalty, which is one of the four cornerstones of Fascism. And what about Red China? Over 3,000 executed there annually, but that seems to have slipped off the radar of Rep. Omar and her fellow Jew-haters. Howzabout the over 1 million Uighers who have been rounded up by the Chinese Commies and confined in camps, or their continued occupation and religious rape of the Tibetan Buddhists, and Tibet, a country bigger than Texas? No pyorrhea of hate against those Fascist nations from Rep. Omar, AOC, or Lord Bernie Sanders. Nothing said about Islamic Indonesia, and Islamic Malaysia, raping the forests of Borneo. And you won’t hear it from the Greens also, who have now joined in in the Brownshirts Festival of Jew-hatred, while they have no BDS movement against Japan for murdering whales and dolphins, or whale-butchering Norway, that socialist paradise. No boycotts of Spain and Mexico for the barbaric practice of bull-fighting. And, of course, none of these Saints of the Democrat Party mention Female Gential Mutilation, widely practiced in Islamic Africa.

The Democrat Party in America can now proudly join the ranks of the Nazi Party in Germany, the current Labour Party in the UK, and the wimpy Greens, who have not stopped the destruction of the Earth with their passive, namby-pamby protests in the face of environmental destruction. Is the entire Green Party vegan? If not, they’re hypocrites. Have they called for a 40-year logging moratorium on live trees like I did when I ran in 2014?

Israel is the historical tribal lands of an Indigenous People who have had their land stolen from them for thousands of years, much like the American Indian Tribes have had. The fact that they managed to finally get it back from the Turkish Occupation, sticks in the craws of the Nazis.

All anti-Fascists and anti-Racists must withdraw and desist from any contact with the Democrat Party. If you can’t stomach the Republicans, you can always register Non-Affiliated, and write yourself or a friend in on the ballot. When the Libertarian National Party let what was clearly, in my opinion, a group of Nazis take over a County Committee in Florida, I read an article by an Antifa group that said that Libertarians should withdraw from the Party if this group in Florida were left in power. I agreed, and when the National Committee said, in effect, that the problem was not worth doing anything about, I dropped out of the Party, re-registered NAV, and have remained thus since.

It should be noted that Rep. Omar’s three anti-Semitic tropes had absolutely nothing to do with specific criticisms of Israel. Criticizing Israeli domestic policy is perfectly valid. But her tropes were all aimed at Jews: that Israel has “hypnotized the world”, that Jewish and other Congressmen are bought off by AIPAC, and that American Jews have dual loyalty. She wasn’t criticizing Israel’s high taxes, or its socialist programs, which are very similar to the Democrat’s love of taxes and socialist programs. She was specifically trying to whip up hatred against Jews, and the puerile defenses that other Democrats threw out to defend her are further proof of the tolerance for Jew-hatred in the new Democrat Party.

The appellation “Nazi” should not be thrown about lightly. Of course, the Democrats aren’t bombarding civilian cities, dive-bombing columns of refugees, or gassing Jews, Romas, and the mentally handicapped. But the first step in Weimar Germany towards the takeover by the Nazis was a tolerance for Jew-hatred and its rhetoric. That same tolerance is now found in the Democrat Party.

There must be a political price to pay for tolerating racists in a political party, and staying silent in the face of totalitarian regimes like Iran, the Gulf Emirates, and Red China. A Cordon Sanitaire must be placed around this infection in the American body-politic. The Democrat Party must pay for their Racism and toleration of Jew-hatred, which President Trump, much to his credit, forcefully denounced.

As Winston Churchill said, “Have no contact with the Nazi.”

— Paul Grad, Enviro-vegan Libertarian

The Yulin Dog Meat Crime: Red China, The Miscreant Nation

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The sadism and cruelty of the current Yulin Dog Meat Festival, at which over 10,000 are butchered by being beaten to death with metal rods, blowtorched, or thrown into caldrons of boiling water, is a good example of the brutality and savageness of the Chinese Nation. For a country and people to tolerate such barbaric practices, and let them go on year after year, shows a people corrupt and savage. Yet the rest of the world is also savage in its feckless disregard for, and quietude on, such Immoral Crimes.

Recall that President Bill Clinton gave Red China Most Favored Nation trading status, and that not one Democrat President, Senator or Congressman has ever spoken out and demanded an end to MFN trading status until these Criminals in the Dog Meat Trade, its miscreant patrons, and the Criminals in the Red Government who tolerate this, are brought to task. The Yulin Dog Meat Festival is proof that Commies will do anything for a Yuan, as illustrated by these Dog Meat Traders, who fully deserve Capital Punishment (although I must oppose it in Principle), and the Chinese Government itself.

Let us therefore resolve to boycott all products from Red China until they give up this deeply immoral activity of terrorizing and murdering dogs, which is not far from the mass torture and murder of children. I certainly would not grieve if these creeps were put up against the wall, although I’d prefer that they spend the rest of there days in cages, and at hard labour.

Let us undertake a Gandhian boycott of all Red Chinese products, and initiate non-violent political agitation leading to abandonment by Congress and the President of MFN trading status with these Criminals. Let the Liberal Democrats, for the first time in decades, tell their “Good People” to speak out against the Chinese Miscreants and their barbaric, sadistic “cultural” practices that have no place in the new civilized world.

Let us boycott Red China and give our trade to Taiwan, Free China, which bravely recently outlawed the Dog Meat Trade, showing that the Taiwanese Chinese people as a whole have a qualitative moral superiority to their Mainland neighbors. Repentance and Reform should be rewarded in the wallet, since politically we live in a very materialistic world.

While I think the treatment of factory farm animals in the West is nearly as sadistic and barbarous as the dog meat trade, there is one qualitative difference in the attitudes of the people. I doubt there are many meat eaters in Western countries, like the US and Britain, who would approve or tolerate or not condemn the intentional torture and slaughter of animals by beating them with steel rods, blowtorching them, boiling them alive, skinning them alive, and all the other inventive sadistic techniques the Chinese Dog Meat Criminals have thought up to “improve the flavor” of Fido. People in the West take the anodyne that the animals condemned to a horrific death in their abattoirs are murdered “humanely”, and that myth provides an analgesic to any Moral pain their consciences might feel as they eat their cow, veal, lamb, and rock cornish game hen. But that the animals should be intentionally tortured would be a very rare opinion I would think. However, the callousness the Dog Meat Trade breeds alike in its traders, its customers, and the Chinese nation as a whole, is a form of insanity, and the Dog Meat Traders really should be locked up for life, in mental hospital prisons, for the safety of the remainder of the society.

A society that remains silent in the face of such Crimes destroys itself, and we now have a World Society, thanks to the internet, technology, and fast planes, though we may still live in fictional individual nations. So putting an end to this filthy trade is the responsibility of people of all nations, not just the Red Chinese inhabitants. Every Crime and War going on in the world, whether to animals, or whether by governments, is the responsibility of all human beings. Although obviously there is nothing I can do immediately, right now, to affect the violence in, say, South Sudan, or Yulin, China, other than to write my Congressman, hire a hall and give a speech,demonstrate in front of the Red Chinese Embassy, or write an essay like this.

Finally, we should acknowledge the many Moral People in Red China who oppose the Dog Meat Trade, struggle against it, sabotage it, and undertake civil disobedience against it in the best tradition of Henry David Thoreau, a Great Libertarian. We absolve all those in Red China who oppose and are disgusted with this filthy business, and harbor no animus towards them.

Most likely, a puppy has been blowtorched to death, or thrown into a boiling cauldren, while you read this. Others are waiting terrorized while the mob of sadistic humans surrounds them, waiting for their meals. They’re dying as you read this. More profits for the Trader.

Let us bring Death to the Dog Meat Trade. Let us butcher this vile, heinous business. Let us make the Miscreant Nation of China pay, in lost dollars and yuan, for their toleration, promotion, and protection of this gargantuan Crime.

Let us Boycott Red China until they cease to wallow in the filth of their Moral Turpitude. Let us Boycott Red China until they outlaw the Dog Meat Trade.

Death to the Dog Meat Trade! Make the Sadists pay!

— Paul Grad, Libertarian Party of Oregon Gubernatorial Nominee 2014

World Islamic Leaders Silent and Passive on the Murder of Rohingya

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While a bloody virtual-genocide and mass persecution of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar has continued unabated for years, and now we see hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing for their lives into Bangladesh, where they are living in the most miserable conditions, we hear and see absolutely nothing effective coming from the wealthy Gulf State rulers to stop this mass murder and rape of civilians by the Burmese military, and no military action from the whimp world governments, like the US, Britain and Germany, as they stand by and passively let the murders continue, instead of trying the heads of the Burmese Military, and that phony politico, Aung San Suu Kyi, for Capital War Crimes before the UN Tribunal.

When you see the lack of solidarity between Muslims of different nations, and the utter indifference of largely Christian countries, in the face of the persecution of women and children that has gone on for years now, and is reaching fever pitch, you can see how worthless are the world national leaders, and the religious figures, who are always in the news.

It seems to me it would be fairly easy for the wealthy oil-rich Gulf Monarchs to give massive financial aid to Bangladesh to house these fellow-Muslims in decent accomodations, or even airlift all these refugees to camps in some uncrowded part of the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia or eastern Turkey, where they would be safe from the Burmese Military.

And Aung San Suu Kyi, that whimp who is afraid to speak Truth to Power, is a perfect example of the “good person” who is created by the media propaganda of many years duration as some kind of saint, and who on closer reflection turns out to be immoral and politically corrupt. US Politics, and the politics of virtually every nation, is full of such corrupt politicians and political figures. But Jefferson and Lord Acton taught us that Power Corrupts, and the Western Socialist Democracies are just as prone to such corruption as the dictatorships of the Far and Middle East. We should always be highly skeptical of government, and keep its power severely circumscribed.

The murder, rape, and orphaning of Rohingya children will go on unabated, while the Gulf Monarchs continue to sip their coffee, Trump continues to play golf, Corbyn continues to whine about Israel, and the Democrats continue to whine about Trump.

— Paul Grad, Vegan Libertarian

Should Women Have the Right to Vote? For and Against

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Of course Women should have the vote, it’s absurd to even discuss the point because woman’s consciousness is not that far removed from men’s. Women are capable of having Property Rights, just like men, and are therefore liable to receive all the Inalienable Rights enumerated by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Women are often far more intelligent that most men, and some of them seem to be able to run huge bureaucracies, like hospitals and libraries, with the efficiency that is presumably a characteristic of men.

However, I recall what my late neighbor, who was a Bluedog Democrat, used to say about women. He half-jokingly felt that America had been pretty much ruined when women were given the vote. And while I scoffed at his notion good-humordly, I thought there might be a seed of truth in his half-serious dogmatism.

(All this presupposes a certain belief in the general psychological differences that seem to characterize each sex differently, and while as we say this is only on a percentage basis of the general population, and without precluding the fact that there will be many women with many masculine characteristics, and many men with many feminine characteristics. However, we maintain and believe that there is more psychological similarity between a woman in Japan, in Uganda, and in Finland, than there is similarity between that woman and a man of her own country and ethnicity. The fact that men are generally more violent is one of those examples of a psychological difference between the sexes, and this fact is borne out by fact that the murder rate among Lesbian couples is far lower than among gay men. But the general tendency does not preclude the possibility of non-violent men or violent women.)

For I had thought in the past that women were more likely to vote socialist, or vote for government socialist programs, because they are (or were) the more sensitive sex, viewing the preservation of life and the amelioration of the social evils of the past as more important than economics. (However, such programs would eventually lead to deficits so high that the currency would be undermined, leading to inflation and social chaos, thus precipitating violence in society. Thus implementing these programs would eventually lead to Fascism, which is why Libertarians consider them so dangerous and socially destabilizing, and why they regard Socialism as so dangerous to the general peace of society).

And also women would tend to vote socialist because women tend to be in general less intellectually interested in economics and other intellectual fields than men. This is a huge generalization, because one finds many intellectual women, and many women who are far better money managers and capitalists than many or most men. But in this non-intellectual age of no reading, most modern men aren’t far behind the non-intellectual woman. Not that there is anything virtuous about intellectualism. But occasionally it can be interesting to sink your mental teeth into an essay, or the writings of philosophers like Schopenhauer, Sartre, and Camus, or Rothbard on economics, or Lord Bertrand Russell and Lord Acton on government. Or reading some meticulously-crafted fiction, like Joseph Conrad or Robert Louis Stevenson, or the intellectual novels of Alberto Moravia, which combine psychological dissection of the protagonist and main characters interlarded with a very interesting plot. I thought Alberto Moravia was the greatest novelist I’d ever read, and still think so, and told him that once at a public speech of his at a university. (Moravia wrote from 9-12am every day, and said he never gave a thought to his fiction outside of those hours. He was also a great short story writer, which is unusual, because writers are usually either great novelists or great short story writers, but rarely masters of both. Some great films have also been made from Moravia’s novels, such as The Conformist, directed by Bertolucci, and Two Women, with Sophia Loren, another Masterpiece. Moravia, like Bertrand Russell, was also a Libertarian Radical when it came to opposing all forms of censorship.)

Very few Americans, men or women, now have this intellectual addiction to mental chewing-tobacco, probably because of their addiction to the Visual Media. It is as if Cinema retained its mechanical ability to mesmerize, but after completely losing the profundity of theme that characterized even the American Cinema. We used to think American films were corny in comparison to the black and white films of the 1960s made by the new wave of French, British, and Italian directors. But now we see how great many of those American films of the 50s and 60s were in comparison to modern films. Those films were made for adults, but the modern film gears for the 14-year old boy who likes science fiction computer games.

No one can now make films like were made in the 1960s: films like Hud, the Garment Jungle, Hombre,  12 Angry Men, or The Getaway, or films that have a psychological profundity and reflect the intensity of an auteur director, the director as a strong personality, like Michelangelo Antonioni. Federico Fellini had a similar intensity, but with a humor and fun which was totality lacking in the cold world of Antonioni, or the miserable world of a child as in Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. Even when reflecting on his childhood under Fascist Italy, Fellini is full of fun in his telling of the story. You can’t imagine Antonioni or Robert Bresson ever laughing like Fellini. Bresson’s The Diary of a Country Priest is such a joyless bummer, it’s a masterpiece. No laughter there.

But with all these directors, not forgetting Ingmar Bergman, who has to be added to Antonioni and Fellini in terms of self-authorship and being near the top in the Art of Cinema, and even with the weird experimental directors like Godard, i.e. “Le Weekend”, you felt a sense of both individuality, and a philosophical exploration of some important facet of mankind’s universal life situations. Such profundity seems to have completely evaporated from Cinema into nothingness.

I put it down to the watching of television and tv commercials, which probably destroys a good part of the brain, although watching occasionally when you really have the urge to watch a film is no sin, and may actually be good for the brain if you enjoy it. (However, one should never watch or listen to a commercial on tv or the internet. Mute the sound immediately, block the screen with your hand, and skip to the video at the first possible moment.)

But starting really with the beginnings of television, and well established in the late 60s and 70s, the television took over the life of tens of millions of Americans, and such excessive viewing of images might, or must, have a deleterious effect on the human brain. The brain goes into a flabby, receptive mode, for hours, with no originality stemming from the viewer except to passively cooperate with the image on the screen by giving all their attention to it. If the story was good, profound, engrossing, or a Hitchcock, it wasn’t hard to do. But in a film like Antonioni’s The Red Desert, Il Deserto Rosso, it was necessary to exercise patience to stay with the film, although Antonioni intrigued the viewer, like Bergman, with the most incredible, beautiful shots, and cinematic juxtapositions, as when Richard Harris in the Red Desert is seen talking to some workers at a plant, and then is seen from above and in the distance, in relation to a giant piece of machinery which suddenly emits a vast cloud of loud steam. Harris so small, this vast piece of machinery so huge, dominating puny Man, who is like an ant in the face to such massive, complex, technology. Or the telephoto shots at the beginning of the film of huge factory chimneys belching forth toxic yellow smoke. And later in the film, Antonioni gliding the camera around the room’s wall while his characters converse, or the way he’d leave the camera on the scene for long seconds after his main characters had walked out of it, making you aware of the existence of objects around us, long after we’ve left them, and existing eternally on their own in silence. No other filmmaker seemed to have ever thought of such shots, or used them to deepen the mystery of the film. Or added an ending to a story like the last eight minutes of “Eclipse”, a sequence of incredible poetry and beauty, added after an intense interaction of the viewer for over an hour with the main characters, and which has no obvious direct connection to them. Seeing Antonioni’s L’Avventura and The Red Desert are musts.

So maybe television is why the movies have been so trivial for so long, compared to the masterpieces of the 50s, 60s, and even the 70s, as the Cinema began to degenerate, — that Liveliest Art that the cavemen wouldn’t have believed could be the ultimate refinement of their paintings on the walls of caves, and their petroglyphs of the American and Australian Deserts. Blame tv.

And what this all shows is that the Judaic and Islamic prohibitions against image-making are based on that primitive wisdom that image would easily take over the mind of man if it became worshiped, and that the image, like the word, is not the thing, but rather a mental illusion of thought. And the Buddhists too aim for the eliminating of all psychological images.  They all saw the danger of forming images in your mind, which are always based on the past, your past experiences. Thus, the past ends up clouding the present, and you will look at someone with your image of them based on the past, instead of seeing them in the instant now. Television, and its successor, the computer, have taken over the minds of younger Americans, because it took over their parent’s minds a generation before. And it is not only Americans, because the whole world unfortunately has been taken over by the American culture, or rather the degeneration of that culture that began in the 70s with Nixon-Carter. You can see it in the appalling sameness of dress among all people, all over the world, while not long ago each nation had a particular way of dressing that was characteristic, be it the French beret, the Englishman’s suit and tie, or the Japanese kimono or Indian Sari. Now, everybody looks like Walmart.

It is also interesting to note that these two iconoclastic organized religions, Judaism and Islam, both forbid tatooing, which is such a prominent feature of the younger generation in both  America and Europe. Obviously, such a prohibition is based on both religion’s horror of image-making, turning the human being into a picture, that human being who is supposed to give his entire worship to God, and not to any image or graven image, and who is made in God’s image. Turning the human body of someone made in the image of that God, which is an undefinable changeless process, into an fixed image, which defies the insights of these religions into the dangers of image-making, make the tatoo prohibitions completely understandable. Additionally, because of the unnecessary pain the mind is causing the body during tatooing, this torturing of the body for unnecessary reasons is considered sinful in both religions, again acknowledging the sacred nature of the human body. As an Indian non-ascetic said, the body is not a slave to be exploited by the desires of the mind, which is very similar to these religion’s views of the unnecessary suffering caused by a whim of the mind. Similarly, the use of highly deleterious drugs like tobacco, alcohol, and hard narcotics like cocaine, and the addictive opiods of the morphine family, as well as speeds and barbituates, are all looked down on as ruiners of the health of the body, while light use of caffeine in tea and coffee is tolerated, as well as the occasional glass of liquor to the non-alcoholic infrequent drinker in non-Islamic cultures, who has never been seen drunk. Or, in Islam, the frequent and sometimes vociferous debate over whether cannabis was an intoxicant that was sinful idol worship, while the other side felt it was nowhere near as bad as alcohol, and didn’t really fit into the definition of forbidden intoxication, and was also a probable prophylactic against the use of alcohol, given the hardness of life for the typical Middle Eastern Muslim in the days before technology. After reading a scholarly book in the 70s on this debate over the years on views on cannabis in Islam, of various notable Islamic thinkers throughout history, it seemed clear to me that there was a general tolerance of cannabis among many scholars, but still with a sizable minority feeling that it was forbidden. And stimulants, whether the horrendous effects of amphetamine and meth amphetamine on people, or merely the irritability of the heavy coffee drinker, are obviously to be avoided. But can you deny a morning cup of tea to the coal miner or the factory worker, or the invalid confined to one room? Such extremism imposed on others would be most unfair, as much as we might feel for ourselves that total sobriety is demanded of us by God or by our religion? One of the characteristics of Communism is its forcing of all members of the Community to live according to its standards. And that applies to religious communists too, who want to impose their religious views on the entire society. Of course, there are always Common Law rules that any sane human accepts, like prohibiting child or human sacrifice or theft. Just because you say your religion permits something, it shouldn’t mean that it contradicts Common Law, which is fairly self-evident to all. Murder, theft, rapine, and contractual fraud are all Crimes which the vast majority of Humans would object to, and they recognize the immorality of those Crimes because of their consciences. You might say the Ten Commandments are more like Laws of Human Consciousness which are common to all Humans on Earth, and Common Law is pretty similar. I believe the Anglo Saxons in England, in the 5- and 6-hundreds, had no Government, but they had Common Law and courts, and agreed to proposals fairly democratically in terms of talking the issues over together at meetings and coming to a consensus on laws and decisions without Government. But i’m not an expert on their history; I’ve merely read something to that effect. It sounds like they were better off than when they were invaded by the Normans, a virtual occupation of Britain by the French for so long that the two cultures admixed and melded together, providing an enriched language, and a rich culture, at least in literature. The architecture was interesting too, and it’s obvious that Planet Earth was meant to be covered with structures built in the Gothic Style of Architecture, the most amazing to the eye, mixed in with lots of trees and greenery. The attendees of Oxford and Cambridge were indeed fortunate to have their eyes daily filled with the beauty of the buildings, so different from our modern box-like sterile architecture. Norman Mailer, the writer and philosopher, pointed out the association between sterile architecture and violence in the cities.

England still seemed to hold off from that Kinematic degeneration a good while longer than other places, probably because of the quality of the acting, and the long tradition of British Theatre producing very interesting stories, films like “A Rather English Marriage” with Courtney-Finney now playing near-old men after giving their incredible performances as young men in the British films of the early 60s, or “She’s Been Away”, a very original story with superb acting. It began, after Room at the Top really got it rolling,  in early British New Wave films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Alan Sillitoe’s fiction is superb, and a real treat to read.), and A Taste of Honey with Rita Tushingham, based on a play written by a 17-year old teenage girl, Shelagh Delaney. What a masterpiece. Or Bryan Forbes’ The L-Shaped Room. All films portraying the grim realness of life in post-war Britain, or else well-crafted plays taken to Cinema, instead of the escapist bread of puerile unlikely comedies which had been the staples of pre-1957 Britfilm, clever as they may have been. Suddenly you were confronted with the problems of the factory worker, the Borstal Boy jailed for a first crime, the pregnant teenager with the fairly-indifferent mother. And all superbly acted.

And not even mentioning the Japanese films of the 60s And even later on, with films like Kurosawa’s Derzu Uzala, which will make you want to live in the forest, and wonder why you live in a house. Coming on top of the New Wave in France, England and Italy, it was too much. There was electricity in the air, and it never seemed to end.

And the degeneration of the quality of humor, since the early 60s when the new wave of intellectual comedy hit America, has tracked the degeneration of the quality of Cinema, and the degeneration of the quality of music. From the Stones, Dylan, the Beatles, and so many countless others, to a mess of boring synthesizer garbage, written by computers, and just as sterile. The humor of Berman, Winters, Sahl, and Dana was so intellectually sophisticated that it was cleanly outside any of the ruts that American humor had stayed within for so long: the wife and mother in law jokes, etc. Or Berman talking about Zen, where you are able to answer very difficult questions like, “You know the sound of two hands clapping, but what is the sound of one hand clapping?” Then Berman pauses and adds, “Unfortunately, I know that sound.” Or Sahl with his political jokes, or Winters with his space ships or auto mechanics. In England you had Sellers and the Goon Show, and a new absurdity humor that went back in some ways to The Theatre of the Absurd of Ionesco and others. Eugene Ionesco is great stuff, and Rhinoceros is a play that is so fitting for our modern times about the spread of Fascism. The Left ought to read this play, and then look in the mirror. They might find they had grown a horn in the middle of their face overnight. Jakov Lind’s “The Silver Foxes are Dead” is also a great play about Fascism, and Edward Albee’s first plays are Absurdist masterpieces, and a crack-up to read.

(I should add that, while Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” is invariably quoted as the beginning of Absurdist Theatre, I think it really began with Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano”, which contains a humor not found in Godot, and which is great fun to read. “The Lesson” is another must-read, and Ionesco’s short one-act play “The Leader” is another work of his dealing directly with Fascism and dictatorship. It is short enough that anti-Fascist theatre groups could manage to put on a performance.)

These psychological and economic conditionings are the conditions that produced an Obama, the last straw of the  socialist continuation that had existed since Franklin Roosevelt brought in the first socialist social programs, although given the primitive technology of those times and of prehistory which was only ceasing to exist in those days of the 20s and 30s, it is understandable that many intellectuals thought that socialism would work, and was a logical, rational system that would provide food clothes and shelter for all. And given the fact that when Roosevelt took office, about 90% of the American populace was made up of poor farmers living in rural areas, it was obvious that there would have been a persuasive argument in favor of socialism, or socialism mixed with capitalism. It had never been tried by such a wealthy country in all of history, so there were high hopes that government could act like a friendly neighborhood corner grocer, helping everybody who needed it, rather than as a necessary evil as Jefferson pointed out, because of its inevitable tendency to abuse its enormous power, and its economic power. The Middle Class was tiny, and the upper class few in numbers. So socialism easily won out.

Eighty-five years on, we can see that Jefferson was right, and the socialist democrats were wrong, just as he had predicted. And part of that, I believe, is due to the Women’s vote, because, as I said, women tend to be generally less intellectual and generally less interested in economic and political theory than men are, taken as a percentage of women and men. So they will be more easily influenced in general than men by emotional arguments that are economically disastrous for others, like the minimum wage laws, which hit teenagers and Black youth disproportionally hard, and which violate the Inalienable Natural Right to Contract, one of the fundamental Rights of a Capitalist Society. Or the Social Security confiscation, which helps keep young people poor and economically shackled, and currently robs 27.6% of an American’s paycheck, 13.8% of which he even has to pay income tax on. This violates the Inalienable Natural Right to the Fruits of your Labour. The fact that many, if not most, Women support these two unConstitutional assaults on Inalienable property Rights, the Rights that Jefferson championed as being absolutely necessary for human happiness to exist in society, shows how puerile is those women’s understanding of Inalienable Rights. These programs are supported by vast numbers of Men too, which in turn shows how limited is their understanding of the fundamentals of Jeffersonian Republicanism, the most Libertarian Government theory that has ever been the good fortune of People to inherit. Far from perfect, it is yet the least flawed conception of government that Mankind ever produced.

The fact that so many men, and even more women I’d guess, don’t understand the importance of defending these Inalienable Natural Rights, which are the cornerstones of Jefferson’s conception of Government, is the real danger to America. These Rights, and their guarantee, are the most important thing about our Government, and we’d better defend them vigorously through non-violent means or go the way that all Fascist and dictatorial governments from time immemorial have gone, leading to chaos and misery for untold billions throughout History. This is why it is possible that Women’s Suffrage may actually be leading to the decay of American Government, and my Bluedog Democrat neighbor may have been correct.

And Jefferson was twenty-six when he formulated that Libertarian conception of Government, and wrote it out in crystal clear, mellifluous prose, along with the formulations of many other of the Founding Fathers and Tom Paine. This was the latest fruit of Sane Government, that had commenced with Magna Charta, and ripened with Cromwell’s Glorious Revolution against Monarchy-in-Concert-with-Mercantilism. Not that the Founding Fathers were all that pure; most of them wangled huge land contracts, and Franklin made a fortune from Government printing contracts. The rot was soon to set in, and never left. But Rooseveltian socialism took it in a different direction.

Still, early post-Independence America was a freer and a more Capitalistic society than had ever been known in History, despite its wallowing in the Crime of Slavery, the worse anti-Libertarian Crime there is after Murder, and despite its Genocide and land-grab from the American Indian Tribes, who to this day still have the vast majority of their Tribal lands ripped off. I don’t hear any Democrats demanding that the Indians have their land returned to them. Libertarian Theory demands that stolen property be returned to its original owners, if it can be proven to be stolen. And it’s pretty obvious that the American Indian (and Canadian Indian, and Central American Indian and South American Indian) Lands were stolen by force.

So, despite my feeling that the Women’s Right to vote is one of the axioms of modern Classical Liberalism, as championed by Lord John Russell, Lord Acton, and Bertrand Russell, Jefferson, and Libertarians and Philosophers like Rothbard and Camus, and it is axiomatic that Women have the Vote, it still seems to me that there could well be a kernel of truth in my neighbor’s Bluedog view that the Woman Suffrage ruined America, and brought on the socialist mess we’ve been in for so long.

Lastly, we should recall George Bernard Shaw’s quip that when a woman seeks equality, she renounces her superiority.

— Paul Grad, Vegan Enviro-Libertarian, Libertarian Party of Oregon Gubernatorial Nominee 2014

Bertrand Russell vs. Canada’s Fascist Blasphemy Law M-103

Foreign Affairs, Law, Libertarianism, politics, Religion, , , , , , ,

Bertrand Russell would spit on the Fascism of the Left in Canada if he were alive. Lord Russell was a Leftist himself, but also a rabid Atheist who supported the Freedom of Speech, one of the inalienable Natural Rights of Mankind. He was merciless in his criticisms of organized religion, and wrote tirelessly on the issue. He opposed all censorship.

Now the so-called “Liberals” in Canada have overthrown that Inalienable Right to The Freedom of Speech by passing M-103, a law which outlaws the criticizing of Islam, labelling it Islamophobia. The Left, the Greens, the Liberal Party, and the Prime Minister have all jumped on the Nazi-Fascist bandwagon in outlawing this Libertarian Right championed by the Libertarian Americans Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, both of whom would now have been rotting in Canadian prisons now that the Canadian Left has had its way.

Is there any clearer indication of the affinity between the Left and Fascism than M-103? I think not, because the Left has always been in favor of overthrowing individual Libertarian Rights through coercion, and through forcing all the members of the community to live according to their vision and their standards. That’s why they hate the Bill of Rights, as is shown by their overwhelming support of restrictions on The Freedom of Speech as illustrated by Canada’s M-103. It also shows why Democracy is bad unless it has a Bill of Rights which is scrupulously upheld, because inevitably the majority will vote to abridge the inalienable Right or Rights of a minority, or the ultimate minority, the minority of One. The mob will beat up the Individual if it ever has the chance, and this is shown by blasphemy laws such as that in Pakistan, which has been used to condemn Christians, some mere children, to death because they allegedly said something critical of Islam.

Russell, as a rabid opponent of all organized religions, would now be thrown in jail in Canada. His valid criticisms of organized religion would now, under the Fascist law M-103, be labelled Islamophobia. His freedom to espouse Atheism and Agnosticism has now been criminalized by the “Progressives” of Canada.

Not surprisingly many Muslims who have found refuge in Canada because of persecution in their original countries are outraged by this law, which would set up the same persecution of their Freedom of Speech in Canada which they were jailed for in their former countries.

M-103 is a great victory for Fascism and a great Crime against Libertarianism, and shows how Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada is a Fascist whose National Socialism has now aligned itself with religious fanatics to protect those fanatics from any criticism, or to protect all organized religions from the slightest criticism from Atheists, Agnostics, and members of those organized religions who have valid complaints about how those religions function.

It is now a Crime in Canada to say, “All organized religion is a lie and false.” It will now be a Crime in Canada to espouse Atheism. Such a Crime against The Freedom of Speech is a vile overthrown of Human Rights and Human Dignity.

Bertrand Russell, Thomas Jefferson, and many dead Libertarians are turning in their graves as they see how Canadian Liberalism under Trudeau has been transformed into Fascist Totalitarianism.

Long Live the inalienable Right to Freedom of Speech! Down with Canada M-103!

— Paul Grad, vegan libertarian and 2014 Libertarian Nominee for Oregon Governor