Consider Liberty

The protests and ultimate governmental overthrow in Ukraine has been in the headlines for a few weeks now.  In the last few days the situation has been heating up and a good time is being had by all in politics and media.  You see, as it’s being reported by the mainstream, Russian President Vladimir Putin is aggressively invading the destabilized Ukraine – particularly the Crimean Peninsula.  Politicians and talking heads are making this sound like a global catastrophe in the making perpetrated by a belligerent leader in an attempt to establish the dominance of his country on the world stage.  The United Nations is holding an emergency meeting of its Security Council in the coming days to assess the situation.  The United States is threatening consequences for Russia if she doesn’t back down.  Lots of dogs are barking and many sabers are rattling.  At it’s face, it sounds like Putin is overstepping, and perhaps he is.  As with every story, there is another side. To get a better grip on the situation we need a little prospective from the history books.  First of all, Crimea itself can be divided into two parts.  The first being the Autonomous Republic of Crimea […]

I talk a lot about politics.  I have a blog that focuses largely on politics (thanks for reading it).  I read a lot about politics.  Well, I also tried to break into politics and I’m considering giving it a second go.  Unfortunately, it’s left me ill at ease and struggling with what I view as a moral dilemma. In 2012 I ran for my local Republican committee.  I was seeking election to the position of Committeeman.  This is basically the lowest level of elected political office.  The role is that of “vote-getter”.  Responsibilities include voter registration, staffing the polls on election day, signature collection to get candidates on the ballot, “get out the vote” efforts, door-to-door canvasing and placing all of those political signs that appear everywhere before an election. At the time when I ran for the position it was vacant, and had been for over a year.  I contacted my county GOP and expressed interest in fulling the vacancy, which can be accomplished by appointment by the GOP county executives.  I had a meeting with the GOP executive responsible for my part of the county which I thought had gone well.  My appointment to the post never came […]

Tuesday evening President Obama addressed the nation for his State of the Union speech.  As usual, this was a horse and pony show with little in the way of substance and less in the way of honesty.  As usual, the president intends to correct the nations problems with more of the same – more government.  The nation is crumbling beneath weight of a Leviathan government, and the president’s solution is to feed Leviathan more. The president threw out a lot of cherry-picked statistics and funny figures.  One of them was a claim that unemployment is the lowest it’s been in 5 years.  While this is technically true based upon the politically convenient method used to measure it, the figure forgets the millions of individuals who are no longer looking for work.  The people who have given up on the job market aren’t counted toward the official unemployment numbers.  He goes on to talk about how “if you work hard and take responsibility you can get ahead in America”.  This is a very interesting remark considering the source.  This president has made it his mission not only to discourage hard work, but also to demonize those who are the most successful. […]

I received an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite for my birthday.  It’s a wonderful update for my old Kindle Keyboard.  While I was busy loading it up with free books from Mises.org I stumbled across an option to subscribe to Mises Daily articles on my Kindle.  The cost is $.99 per month, but each day the new articles are delivered wirelessly and are ready for me whenever I choose to read them.  I’ve found this to be immensely convenient and as a result I’ve read the Mises Daily articles much more regularly since this discovery. As it turns out, anyone can submit a blog to Kindle.  So I submitted Consider Liberty.  If you happen to be interested in reading my articles on your Kindle, go ahead and subscribe! For the sake of full disclosure, I do earn a percentage (30% I believe) from the $.99 subscription fee.  I’d rather offer this for free, but I can’t as Amazon dictates the $.99 fee. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Based on a work at http://www.considerliberty.com.Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

I’m really not sure what took so long for me to get around to addressing this… When I started this site I had lazily thrown “© Consider Liberty – All Rights Reserved” in the footer of the site and never gave it another thought.  Well, that’s not so much in keeping with the freedom and ideas I want to be promoting here. As of today, that’s been fixed.  All content, past and future is now licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (unless specifically stated otherwise).  As stated on the Creative Commons website, this means: You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that […]

Welcome back for Part 2!  I know, it’s been a long time coming.  If you haven’t already, check out part 1 of this series before continuing. All of the disclaimers given at the start of part 1 remain in full force.  Without further ado… Internet Security Use Firefox for web browsing – Mozilla has no direct connection to any company taking part of PRISM (unlike Internet Explorer and Chrome). Use Firefox Extensions to add security – NoScript is a great little add-on that blocks scripts from running, thus helping to prevent script based attacks. HTTPS Finder and similar add-ons detect when a webpage has HTTPS (encrypted HTTP) and uses it when available.  This encrypts the connection between the site and your computer. Note that many sites have HTTPS but that the HTTPS version of the site may not be intended for public use so formatting issues, loading problems and errors are common. Use “private mode” in your web browser, particularly if using a public computer – it will leave no trace of your activity and will block any tracking cookies. Consider an alternate “private” search engine such as DuckDuckGo which claims not to keep any search records. Now, the above tips help to secure and […]

If you didn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised.  Here is the rundown: On Friday, December 13th there was a shooting in Colorado at Arapahoe High School in Denver.  A single student entered the school openly carrying a firearm and wearing tactical gear.  He proceeded to shoot a fellow student (who is alive, though in a coma) before taking his own life.  The whole incident was over in 80 seconds. So, why hasn’t this been blown up by the media and run with a new headline hourly since it happened?  Why wasn’t this been reported on as heavily as Sandy Hook, or the Dark Knight shooting in Aurora, CO? The answer is simple, and sickening.  There is no political gain to be made from this horrible tragedy.  There are several reasons for that.  The first of which is the weapon itself.  The shooter was carrying a single firearm.  It was not an AR-15, or an AK-47 or any type of so-called “assault weapon”.  It wasn’t scary looking, and it didn’t have a “hi-capacity” magazine.  It was a shotgun.  The very same weapon Vice President Joe Biden recommended that people purchase. The second reason for the media silence is the shooter.  He was described […]

Today it is being reported that a judge in Washington has issued a preliminary ruling that the NSA’s far-reaching collection of telephone call metadata is “likely” in conflict with the Forth Amendment.  The ruling is open to appeal and is not a final ruling that has any immediate impact on the NSA.  While it’s refreshing to see a judge employ some common sense, I think it’s unlikely that anything significant will come of this for a few reasons.  First, this is a judge making a ruling in court.  He’s a member of the judicial branch of the government.  The NSA is also part of the government.  Expecting the government to police itself is on the same level of naivety as expecting a serial murder’s left hand to control the evil impulses of his right.  My second reservation is the simple fact that the government flagrantly disregards its own laws whenever they are inconvenient.  So the judges can judge all they like, and the legislators can legislate until pigs fly; Leviathan will continue matching onward to its own drummer trampling our freedoms with each step. Here is the Guardian’s report on the recent ruling: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/16/nsa-phone-surveillance-likely-unconstitutional-judge Unless otherwise expressly stated, this work is licensed under […]

Today is the 72nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  As FDR called it, a “date which will live in infamy”.  For our grandparents this was a defining moment in their lives. This was one of those events which is frozen in time, allowing you to recall where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news.  It is what 9/11 has been for my generation.  But it shares another similarity as well. Pearl Harbor could have been avoided.  Just like 9/11, it was the result of foreign intervention on the part of the United States in the affairs of other nations.  The president at the time was Franklin D. Roosevelt.  FDR was relishing the idea of getting the US entangled in World War II but wanted an excuse to do so.  His first attempt was the coordinated attack with Britain on German U-boats in the North Atlantic.  Hitler did not take the bait.  After this first failure, FDR changed his focus to Japan (an ally of Germany).  Japan at the time was in the midst of an industrial revolution and relied heavily on the importation of raw materials and oil for its economic success.  Japan […]

Tuesday marked Election Day 2013 around the country.  The majority of positions up for election were local, but there were also two gubernatorial seats up for contest.  In addition there were a number of interesting ballot initiatives.  Let us take a look at some of the week’s events. Election Tuesday Chris Christie won reelection in the New Jersey gubernatorial race by a massive margin of around 20 percentage points.  This was not really a surprise given how he’s been riding the wake of Hurricane Sandy ever since the storm hit the Jersey Shore.  The fact that a Republican has won in such a traditionally “Blue” state has set quite a few tongues wagging about Christie’s bipartisan appeal and his seemingly imminent run for the White House in 2016.  He also brought in a large percentage of the Hispanic and black vote, which are two demographics Republicans always lose to the Democrats.  Christie points out that his success is based on being pragmatic and willing to compromise.  The problem is that Christie misses the mark with many conservatives, because he appears to most as just another moderate Republican.  Sure, he has a sharp rhetorical style, but it often makes him sound […]