State Sovereignty in the Face of Ruin and Key Principles
by Ben Faulkner
By all accounts, the past several weeks have been an extraordinarily difficult span of time for the residents of the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and western Florida. A toxic combination of crude oil along with multiple gasses and chemicals continues to spew unabated into the Gulf of Mexico, the full impact of which is still a giant unknown. Tar balls are washing ashore along the seaboard and crude is oozing into marshes, while fishing has come to grinding halt. Amidst this disaster, a number of troubling stories have begun circulating (some confirmed and some remaining anecdotal) of a media blackout underway along stretches of beach, of troop deployments, of possibly using a tactical nuke to seal the fissure, and of the federal government preventing the impacted States and local communities in some instances from taking the necessary actions to prevent the sludge from making landfall or entering estuaries. Some reports have begun to suggest that scope of this event is several orders of magnitude greater than we are presently being told, a fact which certainly could be a plausible explanation for the effort to tightly control the flow of information from the region.
It is entirely possible that the oil itself is not necessarily the greatest danger afoot in this calamity. Flowing hydrogen sulfide, benzene, dichloromethane, vanadium and the oil-dispersant chemicals employed by BP are rendering parts of the Gulf a veritable grab back of phase-changing poisons. What effect the prevailing winds or a hurricane would have in moving these compounds landside is the billion dollar question at this point. The President is slated to address the public this evening on the disaster, but in all likelihood, he will make no mention whatsoever of the prospect of large-scale evacuations that some are suggesting may take place in the none-too-distant future. I for one do not care to speculate what the coming weeks might hold for the Gulf Region, but an honest assessment at the moment is looking grim.
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When the Buck Stops with the President, People Lose
by Gary Wood
Pres. Harry Truman made the phrase, “the buck stops here” famous. Pres. Obama has embraced a similar stance with his often used “the buck stops with me” line. Every president between Truman and Obama have told the people the POTUS (President of the United States) is where the buck stops when it comes to many situations such as natural disasters, man created disasters, economic challenges, environmental concerns, and more.
According to the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum the phrase was embraced by Truman when he received a sign for his desk. The library website shares the following story;
The sign “The Buck Stops Here” that was on President Truman’s desk in his White House office was made in the Federal Reformatory at El Reno, Oklahoma. Fred M. Canfil, then United States Marshal for the Western District of Missouri and a friend of Mr. Truman, saw a similar sign while visiting the Reformatory and asked the Warden if a sign like it could be made for President Truman. The sign was made and mailed to the President on October 2, 1945. (“The Buck Stops Here” Desk Sign)
Coming out of World War II Americans were ready to embrace this message. From the time of Teddy Roosevelt’s Bully Pulpit we have been taught our POTUS is the center of government for the people. “By the postwar era, Washington’s humble term “chief magistrate” could no longer adequately describe an office that in power and responsibility had expanded far beyond Hamiltonian hopes or Jeffersonian fears.” (Healy, The Cult of the Presidency, 2008, p. 79)
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The Napolitano Revolution Hits Television
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In October 2009 in an article entitled “Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Libertarian Phenomenon,” I wrote:
If Fox News were to decide to put Napolitano on the air, his show would undoubtedly shake up the nice, little comfortable world of the statists. Both conservatives and liberals would undoubtedly be stunned, shell-shocked, and dumbfounded over how to deal with a television show filled with purist, hard-hitting libertarians challenging the fundamental premises of the welfare-warfare state that is so beloved to conservatives and liberals.
Well, I can’t say that the statists who appeared on the judge’s inaugural show this past weekend were stunned, shell-shocked, and dumbfounded, but I can say that for the first time in television history, they were challenged to address libertarian positions by a libertarian television talk-show host. For that reason alone, it was an absolutely incredible hour in the history of the libertarian movement.
After all, for years libertarians and the libertarian perspective have, by and large, been shut out of the television talk-show circuit. The debate has almost always been between liberals and conservatives. In other words, it’s always been a debate — if you can call it that — involving one form of statism versus another form of statism — that is, over which statist reform program should be adopted — the liberal one or the conservative one. The libertarian perspective — abolishing and dismantling statist welfare-warfare programs in favor of freedom, peace, and the free market simply has not been presented, much less discussed.
That all seems to be changing. Libertarianism is on the rise, as reflected most recently by the spate of articles attacking libertarianism, from both the left and the right. The statists are undoubtedly sensing the rising number of people who are now exploring libertarianism or even calling themselves libertarians. The statists are obviously getting nervous or even running scared.
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Forcing Politicians to Listen: Dissent, Rebellion and All-Around Hell-Raising
by John W. Whitehead
The reception that Representative Frank Kratovil Jr., a Democrat, received here one night last week as he faced a small group of constituents was far more pleasant than his encounters during a Congressional recess last summer. Then, he was hanged in effigy by protesters. This time, a round of applause was followed by a glass of chilled wine, a plate of crackers and crudités as he mingled with an invitation-only audience at the Point Breeze Credit Union, a vastly different scene than last year’s wide-open televised free-for-alls. The sentiment that fueled the rage during those Congressional forums is still alive in the electorate. But the opportunities for voters to openly express their displeasure, or angrily vent as video cameras roll, have been harder to come by in this election year.
~ "Democrats Skip Town Halls to Avoid Voter Rage," New York Times (June 6, 2010)
For all intents and purposes, democratic government is breaking down, and we are approaching a crisis point in American society as greater numbers of those on the left and right are beginning to recognize. They see a government that is not only malfunctioning; it is also a government that is spinning out of control. And a government out of control is one that won’t listen.
In such an environment, when government is resolutely deaf and blind to the will of the people, what is to be done? In the words of journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, "dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots." The question is: how does one go about raising hell and forcing politicians to listen?
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