You might agree with the result in this specific case, but it sounds like a bad move that makes government less transparent to those who it claims to serve.
The more enemies government creates or identifies, the more power it will be allowed to assume.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
— Dave Smith
If no one can appeal to justice except to government, justice will be perverted in favor of the government, constitutions and supreme courts notwithstanding. Constitutions and supreme courts are state constitutions and agencies, and whatever limitations to state action they might contain or find is invariably decided by agents of the very institution under consideration.
— Hans-Hermann Hoppe
In the last 13 years, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when compared to our two world wars, Korea, and Vietnam, have not resulted in staggering numbers of Americans killed. But the deaths of non-Americans as a consequence of our sanctions, invasions, and bombings are numbered in the hundreds of thousands. We may not be counting, but the Muslim world is. Recipients of such violence and their families have long memories.
― Ron Paul
There are some arguments in favor of government, I don't deny that. Though I wouldn't say this quote necessarily argues in favor of government on its own.
It's position is that If you believe the constitution exists as a contract between the states and the federal government then states must have a way to adjudicate disputes with the federal government or it becomes too lopsided to be considered a contract.
My preference is for no government and failing that as little as possible.
Weakening or eliminating the power of the Federal Government is a step in the right direction.
Part of effective argument is accepting the premises of your opponent to the degree that you can still make your point as it's far more effective than trying to tell them everything they believe is wrong.
Where powers are assumed which have not been delegated a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every state has a natural right, in cases not within the compact to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.
— Thomas Jefferson
Government has killed more New Yorkers than Al-Qaida and forced taxpayers to fund them both.
Always has been.
Government has killed more New Yorkers than Al-Qaida and forced taxpayers to fund them both.
Where powers are assumed which have not been delegated a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every state has a natural right, in cases not within the compact to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.
— Thomas Jefferson
The only way to succeed is secede.
Our best answers for a free society are probably going to need to be put in secession efforts. Because once people see that as a working example and the world just doesn't blow up, then we can take secession all the way down to the individual.
― Eric July
We must promote the idea of secession. Or more specifically, we must promote the idea of a world composed of tens of thousands of distinct districts, regions, and cantons, and hundred of thousands of independent free cities such as the present day oddities of Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Greatly increased opportunities for economically motivated migration would thus result, and the world would be one of small [classically] liberal governments economically integrated through free trade and an international commodity money such as gold.
― Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible ‘anarchy’, why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person
― Murray N. Rothbard
Acts of rebellion which promote moral and political change must be nonviolent. And one of the most potent nonviolent alternatives in the country, which defies the corporate state and calls for an end to imperial wars, is the secessionist movement bubbling up in some two dozen states including Vermont, Texas, Alaska and Hawaii.
― Chris Hedges
I always support secession, and I think that the founders made a mistake by not having that in the Constitution
― Ron Paul
Secession is a peaceful act.
The fact that the feds will shoot us for wanting to escape their control does not make our desire to leave a violent act.
Cast it into the fire.
Another thing missed in your list
- Censor negative stories (the laptop) about your candidate in the run up to the election, making false claims of Russian interference
They're not scared that you're not wearing a mask, or else they'd distance themselves.
They're scared that you are being disobedient.
― Michael Malice
If you're afraid of strangers live in a gated community.
Sure, but people coming from other nations is only a problem IMO if coming here confers power to them over me or a responsibility from me unto them.
If I'm allowed to protect my property, and I'm not obligated to give up my property for others against my consent; then it doesn't really bother me if some Somali wants to come eat out of the local garbage dump.
Exactly, birthright citizenship is another incentive for illegals to come here, especially when such citizenship confers rights to welfare.
Here is what I think is an intelligent and detailed take on immigration from a Libertarian perspective (Milton Friedman):
I’ve always been amused by a kind of a paradox. Suppose you go around and ask people: ‘The United States before 1914, as you know, had completely free immigration. Anybody could get in a boat and come to these shores and if landed at Ellis Island he was an immigrant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?’ You will find that hardly a soul who will say that it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. ‘But what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?’ ‘Oh, no,’ they’ll say, ‘We couldn’t possibly have free immigration today. Why, that would flood us with immigrants from India, and God knows where. We’d be driven down to a bare subsistence level.’
What’s the difference? How can people be so inconsistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today? Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There’s a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before 1914 is not possible today. Why not? Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promises a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing.
If you have free immigration, in the way we had it before 1914, everybody benefited. The people who were here benefited. The people who came benefited. Because nobody would come unless he, or his family, thought he would do better here than he would elsewhere. And, the new immigrants provided additional resources, provided additional possibilities for the people already here. So everybody can mutually benefit.
But on the other hand, if you come under circumstances where each person is entitled to a pro-rata share of the pot, to take an extreme example, or even to a low level of the pie, than the effect of that situation is that free immigration, would mean a reduction of everybody to the same, uniform level. Of course, I’m exaggerating, it wouldn’t go quite that far, but it would go in that direction. And it is that perception, that leads people to adopt what at first seems like inconsistent values.
Look, for example, at the obvious, immediate, practical example of illegal Mexican immigration. Now, that Mexican immigration, over the border, is a good thing. It’s a good thing for the illegal immigrants. It’s a good thing for the United States. It’s a good thing for the citizens of the country. But, it’s only good so long as its illegal.
That’s an interesting paradox to think about. Make it legal and it’s no good. Why? Because as long as it’s illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare, they don’t qualify for social security, they don’t qualify for the other myriad of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket to our right pocket. So long as they don’t qualify they migrate to jobs. They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take. They provide employers with the kind of workers that they cannot get. They’re hard workers, they’re good workers, and they are clearly better off.
Now in the time since these statements were made, laws have changed, immigration is still regulated but we give illegal immigrants taxpayer funded benefits even though they are illegal and so illegal immigration has the same negative effects Friedman calls out as legal immigration in our welfare state.
Other distortions have happened as well, minimum-wage laws create an effective subsidy for illegal labor. IMO most of the problems associated with immigration are problems caused by government, but you have to roll back those issues before you can even consider opening up the country to immigration as it was before we started restricting it.
The Libertarian idea of Open-Borders is a rational take in a truly free-society, but it is incredibly dangerous under our current regime where we legitimize the idea of majority backed coercion and forceful wealth distribution.
The smart libertarians do not focus on or agitate for open-borders but will admit that ideological consistency demands that property owners be given full control over their property.
It's the same reason you don't see Ron Paul advocating for an immediate cessation of social-security or the civil-rights act despite admitting that in principle he opposes both. As a practical matter they are very low on the totem-pole of things that need fixing and focusing on those issues first may well make things worse.
The most basic principle to being a free American is the notion that we as individuals are responsible for our own lives and decisions. We do not have the right to rob our neighbors to make up for our mistakes, neither does our neighbor have any right to tell us how to live, so long as we aren’t infringing on their rights. Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free.
― Ron Paul
Nullification is back on the menu boys.