Category Archives: Fascism in America

How Badly This Administration Wants War

Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Fascism in America, Military, Non-Intervention, War on Terror

Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker:

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations.

This sum, 400 million dollars is larger than the 350 million requested to bail out bad loans in the current mortgage crisis.

So what is the U.S. government purchasing with this princely sum?

In recent months, according to the Iranian media, there has been a surge in violence in Iran; it is impossible at this early stage, however, to credit JSOC or C.I.A. activities, or to assess their impact on the Iranian leadership. The Iranian press reports are being carefully monitored by retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who has taught strategy at the National War College and now conducts war games centered on Iran for the federal government, think tanks, and universities. The Iranian press “is very open in describing the killings going on inside the country,” Gardiner said. It is, he said, “a controlled press, which makes it more important that it publishes these things. We begin to see inside the government.” He added, “Hardly a day goes by now we don’t see a clash somewhere. There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed.”

Is the U.S. government targeting individual Iranian officers? Probably not. In all likelihood, The U.S. is providing dissident groups with money and arms in exchange for intelligence – and has little control over what these groups do.

Many of the activities may be being carried out by dissidents in Iran, and not by Americans in the field. One problem with “passing money” (to use the term of the person familiar with the Finding) in a covert setting is that it is hard to control where the money goes and whom it benefits. Nonetheless, the former senior intelligence official said, “We’ve got exposure, because of the transfer of our weapons and our communications gear. The Iranians will be able to make the argument that the opposition was inspired by the Americans. How many times have we tried this without asking the right questions? Is the risk worth it?”

The groups that the U.S. are funding are, to be frank, what George Bush likes to pretend what the war on Terra’ is dedicated to eradicating:

The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.

One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran. “This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists,” Nasr told me. “They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.” The Jundallah took responsibility for the bombing of a busload of Revolutionary Guard soldiers in February, 2007. At least eleven Guard members were killed. According to Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support.
…
The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

And, as usual, the amateurish attempts to play “the Great Game” are backfiring:

In recent weeks, according to Sam Gardiner, the military strategist, there has been a marked increase in the number of PJAK armed engagements with Iranians and terrorist attacks on Iranian targets. In early June, the news agency Fars reported that a dozen PJAK members and four Iranian border guards were killed in a clash near the Iraq border; a similar attack in May killed three Revolutionary Guards and nine PJAK fighters. PJAK has also subjected Turkey, a member of NATO, to repeated terrorist attacks, and reports of American support for the group have been a source of friction between the two governments.

Gardiner also mentioned a trip that the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, made to Tehran in June. After his return, Maliki announced that his government would ban any contact between foreigners and the M.E.K.—a slap at the U.S.’s dealings with the group. Maliki declared that Iraq was not willing to be a staging ground for covert operations against other countries. This was a sign, Gardiner said, of “Maliki’s increasingly choosing the interests of Iraq over the interests of the United States.” In terms of U.S. allegations of Iranian involvement in the killing of American soldiers, he said, “Maliki was unwilling to play the blame-Iran game.” Gardiner added that Pakistan had just agreed to turn over a Jundallah leader to the Iranian government. America’s covert operations, he said, “seem to be harming relations with the governments of both Iraq and Pakistan and could well be strengthening the connection between Tehran and Baghdad.”

At this point, I would ask all readers to consider what would happen if Canada or China was spending this amount of money to destabilize” the United States through targeted assassinations and the like? How would average U.S. citizens respond to such acts of war? Would they turn against a belligerent government in Washington DC? Or would they rally behind the U.S. government and support it?

The effect of U.S. policy in the region is quite predictable. The United States government, and by extension the United States people, will be seen as a dangerous aggressive enemy. Make no mistake, since 1953 the United States has been in a war with the Iranian people. Every escalation of the conflict has taken the form of the U.S. government initiating an escalation, the Iranians responding and providing the U.S. government with a casus belli for another escalation.

Absent U.S. meddling, the Iranian people would probably be ready to throw out the religious authorities who have ruled the country since 1979. The religious authorities have wrecked the economy through excessive taxation and a loose monetary policy. By attacking the Iranian government, the U.S. is strengthening it. Iranians who would otherwise see a nuclear weapons program as a dangerous misuse of resources become convinced that it is the best hope for a defense against U.S. aggression. They are not blind to the fact that the government of Pakistan has prevented the u.S. government from hunting systematically for Osama bin Laden. They see how the Pakistani nuclear arsenal deters the U.S. from attacking it, and they cme to the logical conclusion that they need one too.

A war with Iran is absolutely not in the interests of either the United States government nor the people of the United States. The American people will lose a great deal of treasure and find themselves confronted by numerous implacable enemies. The U.S. governments will earn enmity and hostility from governments it seeks to dominate. These governments will not only be unwilling to work with the U.S. government but may even provide safe haven for those who wish to kill Americans.

The only people who benefit from this action are those who wish to infuriate groups like Hezbullah while depriving it of monetary support. In other words, a faction of Israeli politicians who seek to expand settlements in the occupied territories and to keep the Israeli policy of anti-Arab apartheid in place.

The fact that the U.S. government is willing to spend a princely sum in an attempt to trigger such a war does more than shock me. I think it borders on treason.

tarran
I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.
https://thelibertypapers.org/author/tarran/

Obama & McCain Call For Renewed Laws Against Witchcraft and Those Who Make Infernal Pacts With the Devil

Constitution, Democrats, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Economics, Election '08, Energy Policy, Fascism in America, Foreign Affairs, Free Trade, Government Regulation, Government Waste, Politics, Property Rights, Republicans, Theory and Ideas

In barbaric cultures, when people find themselves facing unpleasant changes, like the failure of crops or natural disasters, they look for scapegoats to blame. In the Europe and early colonial America, all to often the quest for a scapegoat took the form of a persecuting old women, who were charged with having used magic to curse their neighbors crops or herds. The fact that many of these old women owned or were squatting on property that was coveted by neighbors or powerful landlords was not lost on the more enlightened thinkers of the time.

Witches in the StocksThree centuries may have passed since the infamous Salem Witch trials, but the backwards superstition that prompted them is still with us. And Barrack Obama and John Sidney McCain have decided to publicly embrace the superstitions and to lead a modern day hunt looking for witches and sorcerers to punish. their targets are not the old defenseless women that their predecessors hung and burned alive. No, they have decided to target a new scapegoat. The speculator:

Kill the speculators! is a cry made during every famine that has ever existed. Uttered by demagogues, who think that the speculator causes death through starvation by raising food prices, this cry is fervently supported by the masses of economic illiterates. This kind of thinking, or rather nonthinking, has allowed dictators to impose even the death penalty for traders in food who charge high prices during famines. And without the feeblest of protests from those usually concerned with civil rights and liberties.

Yet the truth of the matter is that far from causing starvation and famines, it is the speculator who prevents them. And far from safeguarding the lives of the people, it is the dictator who
must bear the prime responsibility for causing the famine in the first place. Thus, the popular hatred for the speculator is as great a perversion of justice as can be imagine.

Walter Block – Defending the Undefendable

How have these evil speculators supposed to be driving up prices? The International Herald Tribune endeavors to explain – using arguments which would be right at home in the Chewbacca Defense or in A Tryal of Witches.

The “Enron loophole,” a 2000 measure that allowed unfettered oil trading on electronic markets, is now blamed by many for speculation in the tight energy market and is seen as responsible for the rapid increase in prices …

The Enron loophole was “slipped into law by Senator Phil Gramm in late 2000 at the behest of Enron lobbyists to exempt some energy traders from the regulations and public protections applicable to exchange-traded commodities. As a result, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is unable to fully oversee the oil futures market and investigate cases where excessive speculation may be driving up oil prices,” said an e-mail from the Obama campaign. …

Energy trading giant Enron collapsed in a major corporate scandal in 2001 that sent executives to prison, but not before it won exemption a year earlier from federal oversight for energy commodity trading. Critics claim that measure has allowed speculators to drive up the price of oil well beyond levels dictated by current supply and demand.

The International Herald Tribune, Obama details plan to tax excess oil company profits, end energy trading loophole

So what have these evil speculators done? They have purchased oil today and stored it, hoping to sell it tomorrow for a much higher price. How does this raise the price? To answer this question, we must look at how a speculator acquires his oil. When a company which is pumping oil out of the ground auctions off their oil, the speculator offers more money than anyone else to purchase the oil. Let’s think about the implication of that statement for a moment. The speculator spends his own money and offers more of it to the producer than anyone else. In other words if we are being screwed by the price of oil, the speculator, who is paying more than we are, is even more screwed.

In the short term, this does drive the price of oil up. However, in the end, the speculator must sell his oil. he must sell his oil to people who wish to consume it, and at a higher price than he paid for it. If he guesses right, he can sell every barrel he has for a price higher than he paid for it. If, on the other hand, only when the price is $30.00 a barrel lower than he paid for it, will enough people be willing to purchase his oil for him to sell off all his stock, he may take a huge loss – having made a small fortune by wasting a large fortune. Much like a witch who wastes her time cursing a neighbors sheep by dancing naked under the full moon having drunk a potion made out of fingernail clippings, the speculator who tries to purchase enough of a good to create an artificial shortage is wasting his time and money.

This can be easily shown from the reaction of commodities traders to one of the most blatant attempts by any speculator to corner a market and drive up the costs of agricultural products permanently. This speculator hoped to double or even trebble the price of grain by creating artificial shortages. This dastardly speculator was called the United States Agriculture Department, and it was acting at the behest of many congressmen in the 1920’s to prop up food prices at the levels they had reached in World War I when under Herbert Hoover’s leadership, it tried to corner the world grain market using the American taxpayer as a source of financing.

The FFB managed to hold up wheat prices for a time. Seeing this apparent success, wheat farmers naturally increased their acreage, thus aggravating the surplus problem by the spring of 1930. Furthermore, as America held wheat off the market, it lost its former share of the world’s wheat trade. Yet, prices continued to fall as the months wore on, and the heavy 1930 acreage aggravated the decline. The accumulating wheat surpluses in the hands of the FFB frightened the market, and caused prices to tumble still further. …

The FFB programs had thus inadvertently encouraged greater wheat production, only to find by spring that prices were falling rapidly; greater surpluses threatened the market and spurred greater declines. It became clear, in the impeccable logic of government intervention, that the farmers would have to reduce their wheat production, if they were to raise prices effectively. The FFB was learning the lesson of every cartel-production must be reduced in order to raise prices. And the logic of the government’s farm monopoly also drove the FFB to conclude that farmers had been “overproducing.” Secretary of Agriculture Hyde accordingly lectured the farmers on the evils of “overproduction.” The Secretary and the FFB urged farmers to reduce their acreage voluntarily.

The first group of farmers selected to bear the brunt of this sacrifice were the marginal Northwest growers of spring wheat-the original agitators for price supports. They were not very happy at the prospect. The farmers, after all, wanted subsidies from the government; having to reduce their production of the subsidized crop had not been included in their plans. A group of economists left Washington at the end of March to try to persuade the Northwest farmers that they would be better off if they shifted from wheat to some other crop. In the meanwhile, in this topsy-turvy world of interventionism, troubles piled up because the wheat crop was abundant. Surpluses continued to accumulate, and wheat prices continued to fall. Legge and Hyde toured the Middle West, urging farmers to reduce their wheat acreage. Governor Reed of Kansas reflected the common-sense view of the farmer when he wondered why the government on the one hand promoted reclamation projects to increase farm production and, on the other hand, urged farmers to cut production.[20] Since the individual farmer would lose by cutting acreage, no amount of moral exhortation could impel any substantial cut in wheat production.

As wheat piled up in useless storage, foreign countries such as Argentina and Russia increased their production, and this increase, together with the general world depression, continued to drive down wheat prices.[21] On June 30, 1930, the GSC had accumulated over 65 million bushels of wheat held off the market. Discouraged, it did little until late 1930, and then, on November 15, the GSC was authorized to purchase as much wheat as necessary to stop any further decline in wheat prices. Bravely, the GSC bought 200 million more bushels by mid-1931, but all to no avail. The forces of world supply and demand could not be flouted so easily. Wheat prices continued to fall, and wheat production continued to rise. Finally, the FFB decided to dump wheat stocks abroad, and the result was a drastic fall in market prices. By the end of the Hoover administration, combined cotton and wheat losses by the FFB totaled over $300 million, in addition to 85 million bushels of wheat given gratis to the Red Cross.

Murray Rothbard – America’s Great Depression

The important lesson from Herbert Hoover’s disastrous experiences as a speculator is that a speculator cannot create an artificial shortage. Why?

1) because consumers of the good will be aware that the speculator has a great deal of the commodity in storage waiting to go back on the market and will make their plans accordingly.

2) because until he is selling the stuff he bought for more than he paid for it, the speculator is losing massive amounts of money.

Thus if the speculator guesses wrong about future demand for consumption, he will go broke. If the speculator is right, and the price of oil will go up much higher, then the speculator has provided a marvelous service. For when consumers are at their most desperate, when the supply of oil is at a low point relative to demand, the speculator adds his stock to the supply. This action alleviates shortages, and thus drives prices down. Furthermore, by taking product off the market now, by bidding up prices now, the speculator encourages producers to increase production helping mitigate the future shortages that the speculator is foreseeing.

The so-called “excessive” profits that Obama and McCain are demogouging against are as mythical as the witchcraft that the British Crown so zealously prosecuted more than a quarter millenium ago. It is ironic that as they make speeches about the downturn in the mortgage industry, a textbook case where speculators completely misread future consumer demand and were financially wiped out as a result, that these politicians turn around and accuse another class of speculator of doing the same thing. It is shameful that just as fellow Harvard alum William Stoughton promoted a superstitious theology that sent people to the gallows, Barack Obama, who really should know better, has chosen to promote a superstitious econology that will inevitably destroy many lives.

tarran
I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.
https://thelibertypapers.org/author/tarran/

The People of Yavapai County, Their District Attorney, and Their Sherriff Cordially Invite Serial Killers To Hunt On Their Land

Crime and Punishment, Fascism in America, Police Watch

If you are a serial killer who is looking for human prey, you can find some very nice hunting grounds Yapavai County in Arizona. At night, you will be able to force any car you want to stop in a deserted spot at your whim – all you have to do is put some blue flashing lights and a siren on your car and act like a sherrifs deputy..

That is because the sherriff’s office has announced that it is willing to use deadly force to stop motorists on highways even if they are in fear for their safety and are unsure whether the person signaling tha they should pull over is a police officer or not.

And, yesterday, a jury in the county gave its stamp of approval, convicting Dibor Roberts of felony flight and resisting arrest after she failed to pull over on a dark highway:

On Cornville Road, well before the populated area, Sheriff’s Sergeant Jeff Newnum apparently tired of waiting for Roberts to reach a settled area. While he was, in fact, a police officer, he now proceeded to justify every fear an American may have about rogue cops. He raced his cruiser in front of Roberts’s car, forcing her off the road. He then smashed her driver’s-side window with his baton and grabbed a cellphone she was using to check his identity. Accounts vary at this point. While police deny it, the press has reported that Newnum dragged Roberts from her vehicle, threw her to the ground, and handcuffed her while driving his knee into her back.

The sheriff argued that Mrs Roberts should have known that the vehicle signaling her was a police cruiser because it was “fully marked”. I doubt this; I don’t think markings will be visible on a dark road when the only illumination is provided by bright blue lights flashing in rapid and slightly disorienting pattern. Nor is the sheriff troubled by the way the traffic stop was effected. In fact, he praised the officer’s actions, claiming that the officer did the stop “by the book”.

So, it seems that the law enforcement community in Yapavai county is adamant: if someone signals a car driving on a dark county road in the middle of the night and orders them to pull over, they should do it, or face a potentially lethal car crash. They should not arm themselves after they stop, because then the officer is authorized to shoot the driver. Rather they should pull over and meekly await the orders of whomever owns the car with the flashing blue lights. And, if they are lucky, it will be a police officer and not a Ted Bundy who knocks on their window.

H/T J.D. Tucille of the Disloyal opposition

tarran
I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.
https://thelibertypapers.org/author/tarran/

Hillary Supports Stealing Your Money If You Don’t Buy Health Insurance

Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Election '08, Fascism in America, Healthcare, The Welfare State

The former Democrat front runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton in her quest to become national mommy president says that she will steal your money if you don’t health insurance:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans.

The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always specified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed on ABC’s “This Week,” she said: “I think there are a number of mechanisms” that are possible, including “going after people’s wages, automatic enrollment.”

Clinton said such measures would apply only to workers who can afford health coverage but refuse to buy it, which puts undue pressure on hospitals and emergency rooms. With her proposals for subsidies, she said, “it will be affordable for everyone.”

Not only is she going to steal my money to give health insurance to deadbeats, but she’s going to steal my money if I do not decide to buy health insurance.

I don’t know what’s worse, the fact Hillary Clinton is even running for president on such an immoral platform or the fact that people are actually voting for her?

Kevin Boyd
I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.
https://thelibertypapers.org/2005/11/22/a-bit-about-kevin/

Federal Driver’s Licenses: The Government’s New Plan To Screw Up Your Life

Doublespeak, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Fascism in America, Federalism, Foreign Affairs, Free Trade, Government Regulation, Immigration, Individual Rights, Keep and Bear Arms, Politics, Privacy, Socialism, Technology, The Nanny State, The Surveillance State, The War on Drugs

The brainiacs who’ve made air travel almost as fun as a 10-hour Coca-Cola enema have unveiled their new master plan for creating an efficient security system…federally mandated drivers licenses for everybody under the age of 50, which all states will be forced to comply with by 2011, whether they’re capable or doing so or not, if the Department of Homeland Security gets its way.  The rationalization for this plan, of course, is the same as that for any authoritarian program…a centrally mandated, controlled, and issued driver’s license will make it more difficult for con artists, drug traffickers, illegal immigrants, or terrorists to gain access to identification that could compromise our security. 

What goes unsaid, of course, is that such a program will inevitably make it more difficult for everyone else to get a driver’s license as well.  Do you like the two-hour wait at your state DMV every time you have to renew your driver’s license?  You can bet it’s going to be longer once every application has to run through a federal database that’s responsible for processing 50 times as many applications which will need to be cross-checked against watchlists of known terrorists, criminals, or illegal aliens.  Considering how flawlessly this approach has worked for the FAA with their no-fly lists, I’m finding it a little hard to believe that the process will run more efficiently or effectively than it does now, or that you’ll be getting your new driver’s license back on the same day that you’ve applied for it (as you can now).  Especially since the systems and processes the feds use to cross-reference are notoriously buggy.

Of course now if you go to the DMV and the computers are down, the inconveniences are relatively minimal.  You may have to come back the next day and endure another two hour wait, and you have to be a bit more careful about any traffic violations lest you get busted for driving on an expired license but you’ll generally be able to go about your life relatively freely.  Under the feds’ new program, however, if you aren’t able to procure your license for reasons beyond your control, or if you’re actually denied a license you won’t be able to enter a federal building, board an airplane, open a bank account, buy a gun, vote, verify your identity when using a credit or debit card, or do anything else that’s significantly affiliated with the federal government.  Basically, the Real ID program will effectively strip anyone who doesn’t have a federally-issued ID card of their citizenship or ability to even function in everyday society.

Perhaps the people who oppose Real ID are being unfair and overly paranoid, but considering that the Bush’s new Czar of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, issues absolute gibberish like this…

“We worked very closely with the states in terms of developing a plan that I think will be inexpensive, reasonable to implement and produce the results,” he said. “This is a win-win. As long as people use driver’s licenses to identify themselves for whatever reason there’s no reason for those licenses to be easily counterfeited or tampered with.”

…to explain his position, somehow I don’t think that their fears are that insane, especially since the creation of an identification card that cannot be forged is about as likely as the ability to corporeally exist without occupying space.  And spending the better part of ten years watching my own little section of the federal government (the U.S. Army) screw up even the most basic of background checks has led me to believe that the feds are generally incapable of handling and should rarely, if ever, be entrusted with this sort of authority.

Update:  A commenter who expanded on this on his own site raised one very valid point that I think merits highlighting: 

It’s funny.  They keep calling it a “driver’s license,” but they never mention anything about driving.

Update 2:  Apparently 17 states have already objected to the Real ID plan. 

UCrawford
I Can’t Think Of A Catchy Title

I suppose the best way to describe myself would be to say that I have a problem with authority. I’ve always disliked when people told me what to do, even as a young child, and I’ve always preferred to find my own path through life and make my own decisions, even if it occasionally went against the conventional wisdom and sometimes worked to my short-term disadvantage. My dad said I inherited it from him, but that I’ve taken it to a whole new level. When I was young I wanted to be a journalist, until I got to college and realized that journalism was less about the search for objective truth than it was about writing the stories that best suited your employer’s interests, whether they were true or not (which didn’t sit well with me at all). So I drifted aimlessly through a couple of years of college as an indifferent (often drunk) student, unsure of what to do with myself until one of my fraternity brothers gave me a copy of “The Fountainhead” and I got hooked on the ideas that success and a refusal to conform to societal standards were not mutally exclusive, and that the greatest evil in the world was society and government’s failure to recognize or accept individuality and individual freedom as a strength, not a weakness. So I threw myself into studying politics and history, worked in a few political campaigns after college, had some success, and thought about doing a career in politics until I realized that most of the people I knew who had never had a career outside of politics had no comprehension of how the real world actually worked and tended to make a lot of bad, self-absorbed decisions that rarely helped the people they claimed to be representing.

That didn’t sit well with me either, so I decided to put any thoughts of going into politics on hold until I’d actually had a life and possibly a real career, and I spent the next couple of years drifting between a series of random yet educational jobs (debt collector, deliveryman, computer salesman, repo man, dairy worker) that taught me the value of hard work, personal responsibility and the financial benefits of dining at Taco John’s on Tuesday nights (2 tacos for a buck) when money got tight.

After awhile, however, the desire to see the world (and the need for a more consistent and slightly larger paycheck) convinced me to join the Army, where I spent ten years traveling around the world on the government dime working as an intelligence analyst. I generally enjoyed my time in the military, despite the aforementioned problem with authority (which wasn’t as much of an issue in the military as many people might think it would be), and I got to see that the decisions our political leaders make were sometimes frivolous, often ill-informed, and always had unforeseen repercussions down the road…especially on the soldiers tasked with implementing those decisions. I was fortunate enough to spend most of my 10 years in the military doing jobs I enjoyed, traveling to countries that I always wanted to see (Scotland is the greatest place in the world to hang out, Afghanistan is very underrated) and working with people I liked and respected, until I finally decided that at 35 it was time to move into a job where I didn’t have the threat of relocation lying over my head every two or three years, where I didn’t have to worry about my friends being blown up, and where I didn’t have to work in any capacity for George W. Bush.

I work now for a financial company in Kansas where I’m responsible for overseeing, pricing and maintaining farms, commercial and residential properties, mineral assets, insurance policies, annuities, etc. In my spare time I like to read books on economics, history, and politics (I’m preparing to tackle Murray Rothbard’s “Man, Economy & State” and Von Mises’ “Human Action”…should take me about a year at the rate I’m currently finishing books), watch movies, and destroy posers on “Halo 3” (where I’m signed in under “UCrawford” for anyone interested in taking a shot at me some time). I used to play rugby until age, inconsistent conditioning, and a string of gradually worsening injuries finally convinced me to quit. I’m a rabid fan of the Kansas Jayhawks in general and their basketball and football programs in particular and I’m also a devoted fan of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals. I’m also fond of going online and debating/picking fights with people on the merits of the philosophy of individual freedom…sometimes to the point of being an asshole (but hopefully a reasonably well-informed asshole). I’ve been a big fan of The Liberty Papers ever since finding it online, I respect the body of work they’ve put out, and I’m honored that Brad Warbiany invited me to join his jolly band of freedom fighters. So cheers, Brad, and to everyone else I look forward to reaching consensus or locking horns with you in the near future.

http://dangerouslyidealistic.blogspot.com/
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