The nature of the natural resource is moot. So long as a country has wealth to rob, any crook who makes a convincing enough argument socialism can rob it. We're seeing it start to happen in America.

As Venezuela falls into the abyss of economic collapse – the economy has halved in five years, a contraction worse than the Great Depression or the Spanish Civil War – a simplistic narrative in the American press has formed, which starts with the Chavez regime seizing control of the country in 1998. 

(The charismatic populist Hugo Chavez is, after all, the leader most Americans are familiar with when talking about Venezuela, as he made worldwide headlines with his 2006 UN speech where he called U.S. President Bush "a devil" while celebrities like Sean Penn and Michael Moore cheered him on.)

In the 1950s, Venezuela enjoyed its place among the top 10 richest countries on a per-capita basis. How has it turned into a country where more than 2.3 million of its 30 million citizens have fled since 2015 due to starvation? A toxic mix of creeping interventionism, institutional decay, private property seizures, irresponsible fiat monetary policy, and wide-ranging corruption are the main culprits. But Chavez wasn’t the instigator of this mess; the story goes back much further and should serve as a cautionary tale about one country’s faithful adherence to the tenets of socialism to the bitter end.

The Early Venezuela Economy: From Backwater to Boom Country

Gaining its independence from Spain in 1811, Venezuela started out as one of Latin America’s most politically unstable countries, remaining that way until the early 20th century. During this period, Venezuela was primarily a coffee exporter, but the game changed when its first oil field was completed in 1914. From that point forward, Venezuela went from a regional backwater to Latin America’s richest country in a matter of decades.

Oil reserves weren’t the only factor behind Venezuela’s economic success. Property rights were respected, regulations were low, sound money was the norm (Venezuela did not have a central bank unitil 1939) and the country was able to attract skilled immigrants from Italy, Portugal, and Spain. These factors helped catapult Venezuela to one of the richest countries in the world by the 1950s. Some estimates had Venezuela in the top 10 richest countries on a per capita GDP basis.

Venezuela Transitions into Military Rule

Interestingly, Venezuela was governed by numerous military dictatorships during this time period. Juan Vicente Gómez, who helped consolidate the modern-day Venezuelan state, ruled from 1908 until his death in 1935. Although Gómez had a tyrannical reputation for his suppression of free speech and other basic civil liberties, he did not tamper with the Venezuelan economy. After Gómez’s death, democracy advocates struggled to reform the government for nearly 15 years. Despite the democratic activists’ efforts, Venezuela reverted back to military rule in 1948, under the tutelage of Marcos Peréz Jiminéz.

Under the regime of Peréz Jiminéz, Venezuela received international praise for its economic performance. That being said, the Peréz Jiminéz regime did experiment with certain interventionist policies such as the creation of the state-owned steel company SIDOR and the government’s encroachment into the hospitality industry. But these interventionist policies would pale in comparison to the welfare statism pursued in the following decades.

Continue reading Venezuela and the Paradox of Plenty: A Cautionary Tale About Oil, Envy, and Demagogues at Ammo.com.

It's not unreasonable to assume that China would have pulled its advertising from a newspaper that ran unflattering news articles about China. It would be kind of a stretch to assume otherwise, in fact.

The United States of America can take pride in a number of things, among them arguably the two greatest cultural and scientific achievements of human history: The moon landing and atomic power. It is the latter that we will focus on in the article, the unleashing of the power of the atom, for good and for ill.

America was the first nation to split the atom and applied it immediately to the war effort. It was not for a lack of trying on the part of America’s rivals: Germany famously had their own nuclear program. Less well known is that the Empire of Japan was also looking for a way to weaponize the primal forces of nature.

But America got there first. And their ability to do so not only changed the course of the Second World War, it also changed the course of human history. For the first time ever, mankind has the ability to wipe away human life as we know it at the push of a button. On the other hand, we also have a clean, reliable fuel source that could outstrip all existing sources, if the political will were there.

This is the story of how America unleashed and harnessed the power of nuclear fission, for better or for worse.

Pre-History of the Atomic Bomb: Physics and Fascism

To understand how the United States acquired the bomb, it is first necessary to briefly explain how man’s physical view of the cosmos was revolutionized by the new physics. In the early 20th Century, Pierre and Marie Curie observed radium for the first time and noticed that certain substances were highly radioactive.

Scientists and laymen alike began to believe that atoms contained massive amounts of energy just waiting to be harnessed. H.G. Wells published his novel, The World Set Free, about atomic warfare, in 1914. In 1924, Winston Churchill speculated about the destructive power of nuclear fission.

A little later, the top physicists of Germany were leaving in droves because of the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis. By the time the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, many of the top scientists had left the continent entirely, most for the United States, but some also for Canada. What this meant was that the best nuclear physicists in the world were concentrated in North America by the end of the 1930s, leaving Germany with a serious drought.

Still, it was the Germans who first discovered nuclear fission in 1938, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for Chemistry. Otto Hahn was the first person to discover the process, which made a nuclear weapon theoretically possible. Once nuclear fission was discovered and the applications of such a discovery extrapolated by the major powers of the time, the race was on to see who would be the first to unlock the power of the atom for military purposes.

The Also-Rans: Germany and Japan

By all accounts, Germany should have had the first nuclear weapon. They, after all, were the first to discover nuclear fission, though the atom was first split by Englishman Ernest Rutherford at Manchester University in 1911. However, as stated above, most of the top scientists of the country were leaving because of the Nazi regime and its hostility toward Jews.

The Nazis were also tripped up because they disbanded their original team pursuing the secrets of the atom, the Uranverein (Uranium Society). The group was formed in April of 1939, but disbanded in August of the same year. Some of the most brilliant scientists left in Germany were removed from the project and sent off to regular military duty. There were a couple other German projects in 1939, but nothing centralized like later projects, which were much closer to the Manhattan Project.

The second Uranverein was formed on the same day that the Second World War began in 1939. The initial report from the group was so pessimistic that they concealed their results from Hitler for two weeks and even then only casually mentioned it: It would probably take five years to get an atomic bomb and the Americans would likely be able to develop one sooner. With this, the atomic weapons project was not given the attention it would have been given if the Germans believed they could have developed a weapon first.

In 1942, the project was scaled back even further, as it was not believed that the group’s efforts would be decisive in ending the war. The atomic weapons project was effectively ended, with Albert Speer putting the bulk of the work toward the production of nuclear energy rather than nuclear weapons. It was around this time that the atomic bomb project was shelved entirely. Speer believed that it would have taken all of Germany’s resources to produce an atomic bomb by 1947.

Japan actually had a more robust and advanced nuclear weapons program, which was ultimately scuttled for a historically ironic reason: The Japanese didn’t believe anyone else had the imagination to see how atomic power could be used as a weapon. Indeed, they singled out the American government as not being able to grasp how nuclear fission could be used in warfare. The project was scrapped in favor of more work on radar.

Curiously, Japan is sometimes counted as a nuclear power today. A term called “nuclear latency” means that Japan has all the know-how and material to produce an atomic weapon very quickly if they choose to do so. It is widely believed that if Japan had the will, it could produce an atomic weapon inside of a year. Indeed, this is sometimes subject of internal debate in the country, which is constitutionally prohibited from making offensive weapons, but has sought to find ways to define tactical nuclear weapons as defensive – especially as China has become more militarized and aggressive.

The Pre-History of the Manhattan Project

The Einstein–Szilárd letter was drafted by Leó Szilárd in 1939. Albert Einstein signed off on it. The gist of the letter was that Germany was attempting to develop an atomic bomb. It urged America to begin stockpiling uranium ore and to expend more resources studying atomic chain reactions.

Roosevelt was extremely interested in the letter. Despite the fact that the United States was not yet a belligerent in the Second World War, he ordered the creation of the Advisory Committee on Uranium. Army Lieutenant Colonel Keith F. Adamson authorized $6,000 (over $100,000 in 2020 dollars) to buy graphite and uranium for Enrico Fermi and Leó Szilárd to use toward their experiments.

They were not able to achieve the chain reaction necessary to create atomic energy of any kind, let alone a weapon.

The program went through a couple of different permutations and even absorbed the information of a previous, more aggressive and more advanced British program of a similar kind. In June 1939, they discovered the critical mass of uranium needed for such a chain reaction – 22 pounds. This could easily be carried by the existing bombers of that time period.

On October 9, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the creation of a robust, permanent and dedicated atomic program steered by his Top Policy Group. Roosevelt was a part of this group along with Vice President Henry Wallace, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and the Chief of Staff of the Army, General George C. Marshall. Roosevelt prioritized the Army over the Navy because he had more faith in their ability to run large-scale projects.

The Manhattan Project Begins

Originally “Manhattan” was only the name of one of the districts where the atomic work was happening. However, over time it became the code name for the entire project, which eventually involved over 130,000 workers and cost about $2 billion ($28 billion in 2020 dollars). Over 90 percent of that was spent on factories and the production of the fissionable materials that were a prerequisite for building a weapon. Less than 10 percent of the budget was spent on the actual weapon itself.

The cost associated with the development of uranium was so significant because of the technologies of the 1940s. Enriching uranium was difficult and costly, with some researchers at the time estimating that it would take 27,000 years to produce a single gram of the correct type of uranium necessary, when kilograms were what the project was calling for. The Manhattan Project eventually got around this by effectively learning how to get much more bang for their thermonuclear buck. They switched to a different bomb design that required significantly less uranium by compounding the explosive power of what they had.

The Manhattan Project is perhaps the most intensive human labor effort in history, undertaken by the ascendant world economic power during the biggest war in human history. The War Production Board gave the project the highest priority rating in 1942, a luxury that the United States was easily able to afford because of its place in the world economy and its relatively late entry into the Second World War.

While the Project is generally associated with Los Alamos (known as Site Y), there were no fewer than 20 different sites where the Manhattan Project was up and running. Indeed, the first nuclear chain reaction that reached critical mass took place not in a New Mexico desert, but in a University of Chicago laboratory.

Originally, the Manhattan Project was working on three different types of nuclear weapons: The Thin Man (a gun-type fission plutonium weapon), the Fat Man (an implosion-type nuclear weapon) and the Little Boy (a gun-type fission uranium weapon). Of these, the first was abandoned in July 1944, when researchers realized that it would probably not work properly, with the Fat Man prioritized while production on the Little Man continued.

There was a 100-ton test explosion on V-E Day, May 7, 1945, at the Trinity Site outside of Bingham, New Mexico – but the real first atomic test took place on July 16, 1945. Codenamed “Trinity” by Robert Oppenheimer, the test was planned because the team wasn’t sure that the weapon would work and, if it did, they weren’t entirely sure what it would do upon detonation. The weapon was nicknamed “The Gadget” and was basically the same design as the Fat Man. In the event of failure, Lieutenant General Leslie Groves would have had to explain the loss of a billion dollars of plutonium to the Senate.

On August 6, 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on the city of Hiroshima. Three days later, the B-29 Bockscar dropped the Fat Man implosion-type plutonium weapon on the city of Nagasaki, the secondary target. Its original primary target, Kokura, was too heavily covered in clouds and smoke.

On August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers.

The Manhattan District itself was abolished August 15, 1947.

Invading Japan?

Other than copious amounts of nuclear weapons testing, the bomb has only ever been dropped twice, both times by the United States on Japan. There is reason to believe that the United States threatened the Empire of Japan with nuclear destruction before dropping the bomb: The Potsdam Declaration issued an ultimatum to Japan that if it did not surrender unconditionally that it would face "prompt and utter destruction.”

The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians. This does not include the number of civilians killed due to the radiation from the bomb.

It is appropriate to consider this one of the most inhumane attacks in the history of war. However, it is equally appropriate to weigh the atomic bombing of Japan against the planned invasion of Japan, known as Operation Downfall. It’s easy to Monday-morning quarterback the decision to drop the bomb, but to fully understand the “why” requires stepping into the shoes of the men making the decisions. It does not require giving them a pass.

Few Americans at the time even spent a lot of time thinking about the Okinawa Campaign, despite the fact that it left over 100,000 men dead on both sides. FDR died in the middle of it and the Germans surrendered, so the Okinawa Campaign, despite its carnage, got lost in the shuffle.

The lasting impression on the American public was a taste for extra-conventional means of waging the war to save American lives, not limited to napalm and carpet bombing. This wasn’t just due to the high casualties, but also the Japanese methods of war, including kamikazes and banzai charges, each of which were methods of weaponizing suicide. This resulted in the Western forces becoming far, far more aggressive with picket destroyers and flame-throwing tanks. Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who later ran for Vice President on a platform of using nukes against North Vietnam, was more than willing to oblige these more brutal methods.

There was a plan for invading the Japanese mainland islands, going back before the surrender of Nazi Germany. Known as Operation Downfall, stealth was not an attribute: The geography of Japan made the general outline of the invasion readily known to the Japanese government.

Operation Downfall, scheduled for November 1945, was divided into two parts. Operation Olympic was a series of Army landings designed to capture the southern third of the third-largest of the Japanese mainland islands, Kyūshū. The second, Operation Coronet was aimed at capturing the Kantō Plain on the main Japanese island of Honshū. This Allied invasion would consist of American forces and a combined Commonwealth Corps. The Soviets had not yet declared war on Japan and the Chinese were in no position to help invade the Japanese mainland. Japanese defensive plan Operation Ketsugō aimed at an all-out defense of Kyūshū.

If carried out, this would have been the largest amphibious invasion in history.

The Japanese had 2.3 million Japanese Army troops at their disposal, aided by a 28 million strong national civilian militia. The Vice Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff, Vice Admiral Takijirō Ōnishi, predicted the number of Japanese deaths at 20 million, a staggering number. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff predicted between 25,000 and 46,000 Americans dead. University of Chicago political science professor Philip Quincy Wright and American physicist William Shockley, using information from Colonels James McCormack and Dean Rusk, as well as cardiac surgeon Michael E. DeBakey, envisioned a far more grim result for the Allies: 400,000 and 800,000 Allied dead, with Japanese fatalities between 5 and 10 million.

The first plan to mitigate the casualties was not atomic weapons, but chemical ones, with phosgene, mustard gas, tear gas and cyanogen chloride moved into the theater. Biological weapons were also considered on the table.

There was also the massive bombing campaign to both weaken the military and soften civilian resolve in the island in advance of the invasion. All told, 67 cities were firebombed by LeMay. This absolutely devastated the six largest cities of Japan, as well as destroyed many of Japan’s so-called “paper cities,” which were still largely constructed with, as the name would imply, paper. And the disturbing fact is that LeMay still might have saved more lives than would have been lost on both sides from a land invasion of the homeland.

Continue reading The U.S. of A-Bomb: How American Nuclear Weapons Changed the Course of Human History at Ammo.com.

He was already unqualified when he took the oath of office and has no actual authority anyway, so I don't see the need.

The Great Reset is upon us…or at least the powers that be are trying to bring it out. What was once a fringe “conspiracy theory” is now on display plain as day for everyone to see. The economic, political, academic, and media elites around the world are leveraging the chaos, confusion, and restrictions on liberty from the COVID-19 lockdowns and using them to radically alter society around the world.

What will this change look like? The global elites want to create a society of renters who own nothing, while also pushing a social agenda that would be unpopular with the unwashed masses and difficult to implement in a society with a broad, ownership-based middle class. What this means is that you would rent not just your home, but also your phone, computer, car (though you probably will “carshare,” the term for renting a car when you need one for an extended period and summoning one when you need it for a ride), and even the pots and pans you cook with.

The flip side of this will be a radical transformation of the world economy. No longer will you have a job in the sense that it has traditionally been understood. Instead, you will work various and sundry "gigs," all of which place you in a precarious position at any given time. You will receive a fee for services performed, with no benefits, paid time off, healthcare, or anything else that the middle class in the West has become accustomed to.

To facilitate the Great Reset, rural populations will have to be coerced into more concentrated population centers since dispersed populations have too high a "carbon footprint." The suburbs will be a thing of the past as suburbs and exurbs become more like cities. Mixed-use housing, where you and 500 other people live in a mid-rise condo hive with shops and "workshare" spaces (the new version of an office – on your dime, not your employer's) in the same area.

The short version is that it's a total end to the American way of life, specifically the way of life of most of the Western middle class. The specifics, including the why, are a longer story that you're going to want to read if you want to be ready to fight against the Great Reset.

Continue reading The Great Reset: The Global Elite's Plan to Radically Remake Our Economic and Social Lives at Ammo.com.

Church attendance in the United States is at an all-time low, according to a Gallup poll released in April 2019. This decline has not been a steady one. Indeed, over the last 20 years, church attendance has fallen by 20 percent. This might not sound like cause for concern off the bat. And if you’re not a person of faith, you might rightly wonder why you would care about such a thing.

Church attendance is simply a measure of something deeper: social cohesion. It’s worth noting that the religions with the highest rate of attendance according to Pew Forum have almost notoriously high levels of social cohesion: Latter-Day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Evangelical Protestants, Mormons and historically black churches top the list.

There’s also the question of religious donations. Religious giving has declined by 50 percent since 1990, according to a 2016 article in the New York Times. This means people who previously used religious services to make ends meet now either have to go without or receive funding from the government. This, in turn, strengthens the central power of the state.

It is our position that civil society – those elements of society which exist independently of big government and big business – are essential to a functioning and free society. What’s more, these institutions are in rapid decline in the United States, and have been for over 50 years.

Such a breakdown is a prelude to tyranny, and has been facilitated in part (either wittingly or unwittingly) by government policies favoring deindustrialization, financialization and centralization of the economy as well as the welfare state. The historical roots of this breakdown are explored below, along with what concerned citizens can do to mitigate its impact on their loved ones.

What Is Bowling Alone?

The urtext of this topic is Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by political scientist Robert D. Putnam. He uses the decline in league bowling as a sort of shorthand for the overall decline in American participation in social life.

The local bowling alley was known as the blue-collar country club, and it was the invention of the automatic pinsetter that changed the game, making it faster and more accessible. The first million-dollar endorsement sports deal was Don Carter receiving a million dollars to bowl with an Ebonite signature ball designed for him in 1964.

Business was driven by league play. People would sign up to join a league, which had them in for 30 weeks of once-weekly play. In the course of doing this, they would rub elbows with teammates, opponents and whoever happened to be hanging out in the bowling alley at the time. Between 1940 and 1958, the United States Bowling Congress’ membership exploded from 700,000 to 2.3 million. The Women's International Bowling Congress’ membership climbed from 82,000 to 866,000, with the American Junior Bowling Congress ballooning from 8,000 to 175,000. In their heyday, bowling leagues brought in a whopping 70 percent of all bowling alley income. Now they bring in a paltry 40 percent.

Again, the point here is not that there is something magical about bowling, which acts as a social glue in the United States. Rather, it is that the existence of bowling alleys as a third place in American life was the symptom of a vibrant and healthy civil society, not its cause. People preferred to socialize with others in a place outside of home or work. Putnam is quick to point out that the number of people who bowl in the United States has actually increased since the golden age of bowling – the problem is that they’re all doing it alone.

The decline in bowling league membership parallels the decline of memberships in a number of other civic organizations including the Knights of Columbus, B’Nai Brith, labor unions, the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, the Lions, the Elks, the Kiwanis, the Freemasons, parent-teacher organizations, the League of Women Voters and the Junior Chamber of Commerce to name only a few examples other than bowling leagues and churches.

What this means is that there are significantly fewer connections between people and fewer civic-minded discussions going on now than there were in the past. It also means the loss of identity tied to something other than work and consumer goods (see the explosion of adults spending their money on Star Wars or Harry Potter knick-knacks).

Putnam lays the blame at the foot of technology. Television, and to a much greater extent, the Internet, individualized how people spend their spare time. Still, there is a solid case to be made that the decline of civil society and the resulting loss of social capital is not simply the result of new technologies. It is equally the result of government policies which, through design or through negligence, further erode civil society.

Continue reading Bowling Alone: How Washington Has Helped Destroy American Civil Society and Family Life at Ammo.com.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a mass murder occurs when at least four people are murdered, not including the shooter, over a relatively short period of time during a single incident. Over the last 30 years, the United States has seen a significant increase in mass shootings, which are becoming more frequent and more deadly.

Seemingly every time a mass shooting occurs, whether it’s at a synagogue in Pittsburgh or a nightclub in Orlando, the anti-gun media and politicians have a knee-jerk response – they blame the tragedy solely on the tool used, namely firearms, and focus all of their proposed “solutions” on more laws, ignoring that the murderer already broke numerous laws when they committed their atrocity.

Facts matter when addressing such an emotionally charged topic, and more gun control legislation has shown that law-abiding Americans who own guns are not the problem. Consider the following: The more gun control laws that are passed, the more mass murders have occurred.

Whether or not this is correlation or causation is debatable. What is not debatable is that this sick phenomenon of mass murderers targeting “gun-free zones,” where they know civilian carry isn’t available to law-abiding Americans, is happening. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, 97.8 percent of public shootings occur in “gun-free zones” – and “gun-free zones” are the epitome of the core philosophical tenant of gun control, that laws are all the defense one needs against violence.

Therefore, when the media and politicians focus their ire on guns, specifically what types of guns are used, such as AR-styles, carbines, semi-automatics, and “high capacity” handguns, in the wake of such tragedies the American public are being intentionally drawn into an emotionally charged debate about legal gun ownership (irrespective of whether the murderer’s gun was legally or illegally obtained). This debate leads them away from the elephant in the room and one of the real issues behind mass shootings – mental health and prescription drugs.

Ignoring what’s going on in the heads of these psychopaths not only allows mass shootings to continue, it leads to misguided gun control laws that violate the Second Amendment and negate the rights of law-abiding U.S. citizens. As Jeff Snyder put it in The Washington Times:

“But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow.”

Violence, especially random violence, is a complex manifestation of various thoughts, feelings, and external factors. When a multivariate analysis of these factors is conducted, it becomes apparent that it’s not just mental health issues that are leading to such an increase. There may be an underlying substance which plays a role in a high percentage of these violent acts – the use of prescription antidepressants, specifically selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs.

At first glance, it makes sense that those involved in mass shootings may be taking antidepressants, as they’re clearly suffering from some sort of mental health issue. But the issue with SSRIs runs much deeper than just a random mental health break. These drugs are a prescription for violent crimes, and that’s a story the anti-gun media and politicians don’t want to talk about.

Continue reading Prescription For Violence: The Corresponding Rise of Antidepressants, SSRIs & Mass Shootings at Ammo.com.

The minority which is most Marxist is also the most vocal about it. There are plenty of fascist extremists in America as well, but they're rightly shunned whereas commie rats are allowed to spew their filth from seemingly every source of media.

Calvin Coolidge is one of our favorite U.S. Presidents. He served two terms between 1923 and 1929, and was known for being soft-spoken and principled. Nicknamed "Silent Cal," Coolidge was deeply concerned with tax reduction and the federal budget, as well as U.S. intervention abroad in the aftermath of World War I in 1919.

Prior to the Coolidge administration, the U.S. government had grown unchecked for years under the Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson administrations. Wealth redistribution, government regulation, and the strength of unions were on the rise during this era of American progressivism.

When President Coolidge and his administration came to power, they helped cut the national debt almost in half, and cut America's tax rates and tax rolls to boot. These cuts worked – unemployment averaged 3.3% during Coolidge's two terms, and the American GDP increased a whopping 17.5%.

President Coolidge was the rare politician who stuck by his principles of government restraint and fiscal responsibility. Below are a few of our favorite quotes.

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

“No person was ever honored for what he received.  Honor has been the reward for what he gave.”

“Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”

“Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.”

“Whenever the state of the Treasury can permit, I believe in a reduction of taxes. But I am not advocating tax reduction merely for the benefit of the taxpayer; I am advocating it for the benefit of the country.”

“The wise and correct course to follow in taxation and all other economic legislation is not to destroy those who have already secured success but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful.”

“An expanding prosperity requires that the largest possible amount...be invested in productive enterprise under the direction of the best personal ability. This will not be done if the rewards of such action are largely taken away by taxation.”

“We cannot improve the condition of the people or reform human nature by intruding the Nation into the affairs of the States or despoiling the people of their business.”

“The success of the Government does not lie in wringing all the revenue it can from the people, but in making their burden as light and fairly distributed as possible, consistent with the proper maintenance of the necessary public functions.”

“I want the people of America to be able to work less for the Government ...to have the rewards of their own industry. That is the chief meaning of freedom.”

“I would like it if the country could think as little as possible about the Government and give their time and attention more undividedly about the conduct of the private business of the country.”

“The property of the people belongs to the people. To take it from them by taxation cannot be justified except by urgent public necessity. Unless this principle be recognized, our country is no longer secure, our people no longer free.”

“A government which requires of the people the contribution of the bulk of their substance and rewards cannot be classed as a free government, or long remain as such.”

“We need not concern ourselves much about the rights of property if we will faithfully observe the rights of persons. Under our institutions their rights are supreme. It is not property but the right to hold property, both great and small, which our Constitution guarantees.”

“Civilization and profits go hand in hand.”

“That tax is theoretically best which interferes least with business.”

“No matter what any one may say about making the rich and the corporations pay the taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil. It is your fellow workers who are ordered to work for the Government every time an appropriation bill is passed.”

“The appropriation of public money always is perfectly lovely until some one is asked to pay the bill...the people will have to furnish more revenue by paying more taxes.”

“There is no substitute for a militant freedom. The only alternative is submission and slavery.”

“There is no greater service we can render the oppressed of the earth than to maintain inviolate the freedom of our own citizens.”

“Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.”

“When once the right of the individual to liberty and equality is admitted, there is no escape from the conclusion that he alone is entitled to the rewards of his own industry.”

“The individual has rights, but only the citizen has the power to protect rights. And the protection of rights is righteous.”

“Freedom is not only bought with a great price, it is maintained by unremitting effort.”

“When once the right of the individual to liberty and equality is admitted, there is no escape from the conclusion that he alone is entitled to the rewards of his own industry. Any other conclusion would necessarily imply either privilege or servitude.”

“If ever the citizen comes to feel that our government does not protect him in the free and equal assertion of his rights... he will withdraw his allegiance from that government...”

“In its main features the Declaration of Independence...is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man...are ideals.”

“Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing.”

“To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.”

“The Constitution is the sole source and guaranty of national freedom.”

“[But] the matchless wisdom that is enshrined in our Constitution...needs constant effort and tireless vigilance for their protection and support.”

“It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.”

“We have got so many regulatory laws already...we would be just as well off if we didn’t have any more.”

“The people cannot look to legislation generally for success.”

“After order and liberty, economy is one of the highest essentials of a free government.”

“I favor the policy of economy...because I wish to save people...Economy is idealism in its most practical form.”

“Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.”

“There is no justification for public interference with purely private concerns.”

“Unfortunately the Federal Government has strayed far afield from its legitimate business...confine our Federal expenditures to the legitimate obligations and functions of the Federal Government…the fabric of our constitutional form of government…tends to be gradually weakened and undermined by this encroachment.”

“Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness.”

“There is scarcely a word in the constitution of any of our States or of our nation that was not written there for the purpose of protecting the liberties of the people from some servitude which a despotic government had at some time imposed upon them.”

“Where commerce has flourished there civilization has increased... Today it is not the battle fleet, but the mercantile marine which in the end will determine the destiny of nations.”

“No complicated scheme of relief, no plan for Government fixing of prices, no resort to the public Treasury will be of any permanent value.”

“After all, the chief business of the American people is business... In all experience, the accumulation of wealth means the multiplication of schools, the encouragement of science, the increase of knowledge, the dissemination of intelligence, the broadening of outlook, the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture. Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence. But we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well-nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it.”

“Our country is an exceedingly good example of the fact that if production be encouraged and increased, then distribution fairly well takes care of itself... no other country ever approached ours in the equal and general distribution of prosperity.”

“We have had many attempts at regulation of industrial activity by law. Some of it has proceeded on the theory that if those who enjoyed material prosperity used it for wrong purposes, such prosperity should be limited or abolished. That is as sound as it would be to abolish writing to prevent forgery.”

“Government price fixing, once started, has alike no justice and no end. It is an economic folly from which this country has every right to be spared.”

“Where the people themselves are the government, it needs no argument to demonstrate that what the people cannot do their government cannot do.”

“There can be no perfect control of personal conduct by national legislation.”

“[I will not] surrender to every emotional movement seeking remedies for economic conditions by legislation.”

“We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more laws, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.”

“If all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.”

“When depression in business comes we begin to be very conservative in our financial affairs. We save our money and take no chances in its investment. Yet in our political actions we go in the opposite direction. We begin to support radical measures and cast our votes for those who advance the most reckless proposals. This is a curious and illogical reaction.”

Calvin Coolidge Quotes: Inspirational Quotes from the 30th President of The United States originally appeared in The Resistance Library at Ammo.com.

"""Suicide"""

In honor of George Owell’s birthday yesterday, here’s a selection of our favorite quotes about freedom of speech, political correctness, and the First Amendment.

“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
– George Orwell

“Political correctness is tyranny; just tyranny with manners.”
– Charlton Heston

“Why does the left hate free speech? Because they don't know how to talk about the substantive merits when they are challenged. Having submerged themselves in disciplining each other by denouncing any heretics in their midst, they find themselves overwhelmed and outnumbered in America, where there is vibrant debate about all sorts of things they don't know how to begin to talk about. They resort to stomping their feet and shouting ‘shut up’... when they aren't prissily imploring everyone to be ‘civil.’”
– Author Ann Althouse

“Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.”
– Mark Twain

“The right to speak freely does not include the right to be taken seriously.  And it certainly doesn't include the obligation that others must supply you with a platform.”
– Johan Norberg

“Those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognize it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of censorship.”
– Aryeh Neier

“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.”
– Philip K. Dick

“Political correctness is a sinister device constructed by the left to cause the negative outcomes of left-wing ideology to never be subject to criticism.”
– Peter McLoughlin

“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.”
– Henry A. Wallace

“I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.”
– P.D. James

“Political correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by the mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.”
– RJ Wiedemann

“If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.”
– Epictetus

“A joke is either funny or it's not funny. If I hear a funny joke, you know what I do? I laugh, that's what I do. I don't start a focus group to see who got hurt by the joke.”
– Alonzo Bodden

“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”
– Ray Bradbury

“Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious.”
– Bill Lind

“To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?”
– Kevin Alfred Strom

“Political tags – such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth – are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
– Robert A. Heinlein

“Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.”
– Maimonides

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
– Voltaire

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum...”
– Noam Chomsky

“Debate refines a good idea. That's why we have two major parties in Congress. Somebody says, “I have a great idea for the country.” We say, “Wonderful! Put it on the table. Let's debate.” And we start the debate by questioning the guy who has this great idea. After the third question he says, “I withdraw my great idea. I forgot about those three questions.”
– Jim Rohn

“We (as a society) have to be committed to defending free speech however impolitic, or unpopular, or even wrong because defending that is the only barrier to violence. That's because the only way we can influence one another short of physical violence is thru speech, thru communicating ideas. The moment you say certain ideas can't be communicated you create a circumstance where people have no alternative but to go hands on you.”
– Sam Harris

Continue reading Freedom of Speech and Political Correctness Quotes: Quotes About the First Amendment at Ammo.com.

The more authority we grant the government, they more they will do to preserve it. They will always try to sell us on forfeiting our freedom by promising to make us safer. But giving more power to the only organization which can legally rob us, imprison us, and kill us cannot make us safer.

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

You get it. Nonbiased media can't exist. They're either selling mid-size sedans or political agendas, because at the end of the day someone has to pay to keep their lights on.

“I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom, and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building... the NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default... they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them.”
– Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden might not yet be a historical figure, but he certainly is a hero. He is the whistleblower of all whistleblowers, the American who blew the lid off of Washington's spying on private citizens. But Snowden’s leak revealed that it’s not just the U.S. government that is spying on virtually every American – big American telecommunications companies are also helping them to spy as well.

Snowden’s upbringing is largely uneventful. His maternal grandfather was a Coast Guard rear admiral and his father was also an officer in the Coast Guard. His mother was a U.S. District Court clerk. His parents divorced around the time that he would have graduated high school in 2001, but Snowden is a high school dropout. After a nine-month absence due to mononucleosis, he simply took the GED exam and then began taking community college classes. Despite a lack of a bachelor’s degree, he worked at a master’s online from the University of Liverpool.

Snowden had a keen interest in Japanese popular culture, and even worked for an anime company early on in his career.

How Snowden Became a Government Employee

While often thought of as little more than a computer geek, Snowden is in fact a former Army Reserve member and even signed up for special forces training. However, he broke both of his legs in a training accident and was discharged soon afterward. His motivation for joining the military was not to avenge the 9/11 attacks, but specifically the invasion of Iraq and a desire to liberate oppressed peoples in the country. He enlisted in April 2004, and was discharged in September of that year.

In 2005, he then worked at the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Study of Language as a security guard. While a training ground for the National Security Agency (NSA), this is not a classified facility. However, Snowden did have to obtain a security clearance to work here. In 2006, he accepted a job with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after speaking to them at a job fair. Known as a “computer wizard,” he lived in a hotel room while he completed his training.

His first CIA assignment took place under diplomatic cover in Geneva, in March 2007. He claims that while there, he saw agents get a Swiss banker drunk, then had him arrested when he drove home. The CIA then, according to Snowden, offered to help him out in exchange for him becoming an informant. These claims are obviously disputed by the CIA.

He then worked for Dell starting in 2009, as an NSA subcontractor, where he was known as a “genius among geniuses.” His time there mainly involved training employees on how to protect data from Chinese hackers.

From NSA Subcontractor to Whistleblower

It was during his time at Dell that Snowden began to become disillusioned with his work. He claims that his breaking point was seeing James Clapper, then Director of National Intelligence, lie to Congress under oath on March 15, 2013 (ironically, the Ides of March). He took his now-famous position at Booz Allen Hamilton in mid-2014, with the explicit intention of finding out just how deep the spying rabbit hole went. He even acted as a bit of an espionage agent while there, obtaining login credentials from over 20 employees by claiming that he needed them to do his job. Snowden, for his part, disputes that he ever did this. However, it has been corroborated by coworkers.

Snowden claims that he repeatedly reported what he considered to be inappropriate use of data collection to no fewer than 10 officials with proper clearance before going public. In an interview with NBC News, Snowden claims he was told to keep quiet about possibly illegal programs. Following the NBC News interview, the CIA downplayed Snowden’s work, describing him as a “low-level analyst.” He also claims that he initially planned to leak the information earlier, but held back to see if President Barack Obama would make any reforms or changes to the program. He made the final decision to leak when he saw that no such reforms were forthcoming.

Snowden entrusted independent journalist Glenn Greenwald to facilitate the leak while reporting for The Guardian. Greenwald championed Snowden’s efforts to expose the NSA, eventually becoming editor of The Intercept, which began as a platform to report on Snowden’s released documents. Together, they worked closely with director Laura Poitras, whose documentary about Snowden, Citizenfour, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Oscars. Snowden was attracted to both of them due to a Salon article Greenwald wrote about Poitras, who had become a target of the government due to her controversial films.

Since Snowden began leaking information while still under the employ of the NSA, he demanded maddeningly secure channels to leak the information. He claims that he combs through every document that he releases to ensure that it is relevant to his mission of exposing government spying, to protect agents in the field as well as their assets, and to not reveal impertinent information, even when it might be significant news. (Despite his efforts, an intelligence operation within al-Qaeda was exposed due to an improperly redacted document given to the New York Times. It has also been reported by the Sunday Times that due to Russian and Chinese decryption of the Snowden files, operations were forced to change in the field.)

No one knows precisely how much Snowden leaked, but we know that it’s a lot – and it’s believed that only one percent of all documents have been leaked. Australian officials put the number at as many as 20,000 Australian documents. British officials estimate 58,000. The original NSA estimate was between 50,000 and 200,000, but it is now believed that Snowden leaked much, much more – the current Department of Defense estimate is 1.7 million. This includes over 160,000 intercepted emails and text messages, some of which are hundreds of pages long, as well as nearly 8,000 documents taken from 11,000 different online accounts.

It is suspected that further leaks are on the way. The Australian government believes that the worst is yet to come.

What Snowden’s NSA Leak Revealed

Again, no one knows for sure what’s in all of the leaked documents, particularly given that a very small amount of what he took from the NSA has actually been leaked to the public. But some of what we do know – which the intelligence community believes is not the most damning information that Snowden has – is chilling.

The PRISM program was the first thing revealed. Basically, with a court order, but without any notification to the person being spied on, the government can read your emails and other electronic communications. There were also leaked details about an NSA call database, as well as a massive British government surveillance program called Boundless Informant. XKeyscore is a wiretapping program that allows any target to be surveilled with only a personal email needed to conduct the surveillance, which would allow access to virtually everything done on the Internet. Snowden likewise revealed that the government was surveilling millions of American citizens, including everything from their instant messages to where they are based on the location of their mobile phone.

The leak also discovered that the NSA:

• Collects data on every website you visit and every Internet search you make.
• Collaborates with big telecommunications companies to track who you talk to and for how long.
• Deliberately develops flawed encryption to spy on sensitive communications.
• Hacks the SIM card on your phone.
• Uses the Five Eyes Alliance to get other countries to spy on you because they’re legally prohibited from doing so themselves.
• And, of course, lies to Congress about the whole thing so that there’s no oversight by your elected officials.

The CIA, the NSA and the GCHQ used such unlikely platforms as XBox Live, Second Life and World of Warcraft to both surveil Americans and also to find informants. The NSA collected information about the séxual proclivities of people it considered radicalizing forces in the world with an eye toward using it to discredit them in the future. Among the targets of the massive intelligence-gathering effort was the largest Brazillian oil company – hardly a threat to national security. Other targets included UNICEF, Medicins des Monde, European Commissioner Joaquin Almunia, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Angela Merkel, among 35 other heads of state allied with the United States.

Totally unrelated to any kind of security of anti-terrorism efforts, the NSA used programs to spy on their own love interests, a practice so common that they named it: “LOVEINT.”

Snowden has said that his death or capture would not halt the release of further information, implying that there is some kind of “kill switch” in place that will keep the information flowing even if he is not able to personally release it.

Finding Asylum in Russia & An Uncertain Future

Snowden left Hawaii, where he was stationed, under the pretext of receiving treatment for epilepsy on the mainland. Instead, he went to Hong Kong and from there to Russia. His final destination was originally meant to be Ecuador by way of Havana, however, he was not able to board his flight to Cuba. He claims that the United States government wanted to keep him in Russia in an attempt to smear him as a Russian spy.

Snowden remains in Russia, but has not formally been granted permanent asylum, only temporary asylum which continues to be extended. He has sought asylum in 21 different countries, all of which were denied. He alleges American interference in his quest for asylum. In Moscow, Snowden makes most of his living off of speaking fees, and lives largely at the pleasure of Vladimir Putin’s government. One need only look to Julian Assange to see how precarious his position is.

While Snowden remains a controversial figure, we believe him to be a hero. All signs point to him having gone through as many official channels for redress before turning to the only one that he had left – direct communication with the American public through sympathetic journalists. His appeals to the American public have largely gone unheeded.

NSA Director General Keith B. Alexander and CIA Director General James Clapper both lied under oath to Congress about the extent of domestic surveillance. Not only were they not prosecuted, but they have also been handsomely rewarded for their efforts with speaking fees far in excess of what Snowden earns for teaching the public about privacy, cryptography and government snooping.

Edward Snowden: The Untold Story of How One Patriotic American Exposed NSA Surveillance originally appeared in The Resistance Library at Ammo.com.

What is a government if not the dominant gang? If the Mexican government can't stop this, then who is actually the Mexican government?

Exactly. They're not a platform for free speech and don't deserve to represent themself as such. All too happy to censor until they too are censored. Not saying Nigeria should ban them, but they don't have a moral highground here.

"I'm not carrtying this wasp spray for self-defense, officer. I'm just really concerned. Concerned about wasps!

You seek truth.

Farm subsidies are perhaps the ultimate, but secret, third rail of American politics. While entitlements are discussed out in the open, farm subsidies are rarely talked about – even though they are the most expensive subsidy Washington doles out.

All told, the U.S. government spends $20 billion annually on farm subsidies, with approximately 39 percent of all farms receiving some sort of subsidy. For comparison, the oil industry gets about $4.6 billion annually and annual housing subsidies total another $15 billion. A significant portion of this $20 billion goes not to your local family farm, but to Big Aggie.

(Note that this $20 billion annual farm subsidy figure doesn’t take into account the 30+ years of ethanol subsidies to the corn industry nor export subsidies to U.S. farmers issued by the USDA.)

The government never properly explains why this is. Certainly small farmers are growing their crops at enormous risk. However, it’s not clear that agriculture is any different than other high-risk industries – especially because the United States is blessed with some of the most fertile farmland in the world, and a highly skilled labor force.

Subsidies don’t just cost taxpayers, an expense that might properly be justified by showing a return on investment. Subsidies also provide powerful disincentives against innovation, as well as cost effectiveness and diversification of land use.

There is also a strong case to be made that farm subsidies are a major driver of the obesity and cancer epidemic in the United States. Every time Washington interferes in the private sector, they are picking winners and losers. The winners chosen are companies producing food that’s high in calories and low in nutritional density – and that helps make Americans sick and fat, because it distorts what food is available at what price.

While President Trump has sometimes discussed reducing farm subsidies, the solution to the problem is much more radical – the total elimination of all farm subsidies from the federal budget.

Continue reading Food Is Freedom: How Washington’s Food Subsidies Have Helped Make Americans Fat and Sick at Ammo.com.