Random Observations On 2012

RON PAUL'S supporters are often unfairly accused of disregarding electability. The truth is that electability matters greatly to us, but only if we have multiple candidates to choose from. Many of us are unwilling to support RINOs and known liars who

• have shown a willingness to tailor their message to the audience (and thus cannot be trusted to follow through on anything they claim to believe in),
• have embraced bigger, more intrusive government as the preferred solution to a host of social and economic ills,
• supported a government mandate to force Americans to purchase health insurance,
• eagerly look forward to sending more American soldiers into harm's way while having never served in the military themselves, and
• view the due process protections of the U.S. Constitution as bothersome details to be skirted by fair means or foul.

For us, there is only one choice. Every one of these statements applies to every Republican presidential candidate left in the race, except for Ron Paul.
If electability trumps principle so completely that these facts shouldn't matter, then what is the real purpose of this election? It would seem that Albert Nock was right when he wrote in 1936 that elections had become merely "a contest for control and management" of an ever-expanding bureaucratic apparatus and the power it afforded. Is this election about whose turn it is to run the big government, or is it about limiting the federal government?

ON THAT note, here's a thought for those of you who claim to believe in "small" government as opposed to "big" government. What makes government big: the price tag or the level of involvement in people's affairs? The Tea Party movement has rightly called much attention to the insanity of our government consistently spending more than its revenues. It has also argued effectively for the economic benefits of keeping money in the private sector where it can be used productively rather than destructively. But the election results so far indicate that many conservatives are willing to settle for promises of a more efficient government in lieu of a more limited one.
I submit that government is not made smaller by reducing spending, but by repealing excessive and unjust laws and regulations. A government which more efficiently intrudes itself into the affairs of individuals, families, businesses and foreign nations does not appeal to me.

DONATIONS from active duty military personnel to Ron Paul''s campaign in the last quarter totaled six times the amount given to all other Republican presidential candidates combined. Not bad for the one candidate who isn't afraid to criticize the unjust wars these men and women are being called on to wage. Come to think of it, maybe there's even a connection.



YOUNG VOTERS have overwhelmingly backed Ron Paul in the election thus far. Conventional wisdom (or its modern substitute) looks to youthful rebellion as the explanation. There's probably a bit of that, but as one who has rubbed shoulders with more Ron Paul supporters than most media pundits even know about, I think there's a more relevant explanation. Americans who are thirty and under, for the most part, are skeptical of the federal government's ability to deliver on the absurd promises our grandparents extorted from it. Many of us view entitlement programs as somewhere between a Ponzi scheme and a bad joke, rather than hallowed symbols of the American Way. We tend to be equally skeptical of the idea that the rest of the world longs to be liberated and democratized by an overwhelming application of military force, and perhaps less inclined to oblige even if such a desire exists. This is understandable, considering that we hope to inherit whatever is left of our country when the baby boomers are finished looting it.



DR. PAUL is often criticized for not promising to endorse the eventual nominee, whoever that is. Some GOP elites are on record saying that he should be thrown out of the party for his unwillingness to make such a commitment. Does anyone really think that any of these hypocrites would endorse Dr. Paul if he were the nominee? I didn't think so. Ann Coulter and Newt Gingrich, among others , have indicated that they would vote for Obama rather than Paul. Hmmm.



AT THE RISK of sounding a bit conspiratorial, I can't help noting that:

• Ron Paul is the only candidate whose percentages in every caucus and primary, without a single exception, have gone down as the total percentage of votes reported goes up;
• Ron Paul was close to winning Iowa and close to second in Nevada;
• For the first time in history, Iowa's vote count was moved to a secret location;
• Iowa and Nevada both claim to be unable to report a precise count;
• Both caucuses were handled so badly (whether intentionally or not) that the Iowa GOP chair and the Nevada GOP chair both resigned afterward.

I'm just saying.

Why I Am Not A "Truther"

Three years ago I started to delve into the so-called "9-11 truth movement" and the subject of conspiracy theories in general on this blog. I never followed through, partly due to a lack of time, but also because I decided there was little to gain and much to lose by the attempt. Several recent developments have reopened the topic, however, and a series of discussions over the Memorial Day weekend convinced me, with some trepidation, to run the risk of putting a few more observations in writing. With trepidation, because I will almost certainly offend some who I respect by denying the credibility of claims they find convincing, and others by noticing claims they find utterly ridiculous.

In that earlier post, I noted that it often seems as though there are only two camps when it comes to political conspiracy theories. One chooses to accept the "official" government explanation in every instance; the other sees masterful deception, sinister motives, and almost divine omnipotence behind every news-worthy event. Considered calmly and in the light of history, both these extremes are nonsensical. Governments are made up of men; generally speaking, unscrupulous and dishonest men, but men none the less.

To consider the first: the idea that official pronouncements on any topic should carry much weight is silly on its face. The dishonesty of politicians and the incompetence of career bureaucrats are both matters of common knowledge. Particularly in regard to foreign policy, official statements are usually meaningless and frequently intended to deceive. Diplomacy has been defined, with good reason, as the art of lying for one's government. The entire history of international relations, from ancient Israel to the present, is a history of deception on a grand scale. In my view, far from lending extra weight to any version of events, the fact that a story is the official line goes in the scales against it.

The other extreme, however, is equally silly. It is beyond reason to assume that every major event is part of a vast human plan. Human plans don't generally work out as they are supposed to, and the bigger and more complex they are, the less likely they are to succeed. Moreover, there is a vast difference between recognizing dishonesty in the official story line and uncovering the real truth of the matter. Decades or even centuries later, with the benefit of hindsight, it often remains impossible to know with certainty the truth about many major events. I am continually frustrated when "truthers" present the most mind-boggling explanations for the events of 9-11, and when asked to state the evidence, immediately begin to cite problems or inconsistencies in the 9-11 Commission report, evidence of official cover-ups, or examples of how the powers that be have benefited from those events as "evidence" for their wild hypothesis. Often they seem sincerely unable to comprehend why such "evidence" does nothing to prove their own explanation.

The fact is that while there are many holes in the official account of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, most of the various alternatives floating around under the umbrella of the "truth movement" have no credible evidence at all to support them. They seem generally to be developed without any substantive investigation of the actual facts while suspiciously well adapted to make exciting documentary material. Most treat the airplanes as a distraction and claim that the twin towers were brought down by internally placed explosives. Some claim that no airliners were involved at all. Either way, these "alternatives" assume intricate conspiracies of incredible magnitude, requiring the knowledge and complicity of hundreds or thousands of eye-witnesses, emergency responders, construction workers, police and military personnel, airline employees, news media, demolition and recovery workers, stock brokers, high-ranking government officials, petty bureaucrats, and Islamic terrorist organizations. Such conspiracies are the stuff of science fiction, not reality.

I would venture the opinion that the real 9-11 conspiracy is much less exciting. I suspect that it involves an obscenely long wish list of expanded powers sitting in a file cabinet at the Justice Department, under the absurdly patronizing title of The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act. I suspect that it stayed in that file cabinet because, while both Republican and Democrat administrations would have dearly loved such an expansion of executive power, both also knew that, in ordinary times, bringing it forward would inspire jealousy in the evil hearts of opposition legislators. So there it languished, waiting for an appropriate time of crisis and the brief moment of bipartisanship that a good crisis always brings. As I noted in the earlier post, such a crisis was bound to occur sooner or later, given the volatile combination of military occupations, tyrannical regimes propped up with American foreign aid, and the constant, petty, manipulative meddling that former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer calls "imperial hubris" - again on the part of both Republican and Democrat administrations.

No doubt Sept. 11, 2001 will go down in history as a Reichstag moment, and rightly so. But to conclude from this that it must have been an "inside job" is unwarranted and unnecessary. The Thompson killings in 1846, the sinking of the Lusitania, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident were all similarly anticipated, provoked, and used to manipulate the American public into support for otherwise unpopular wars. The official story behind each of these events is full of holes. None of them, however, was an "inside job." In each case, the enemy was baited into an act of war that justified a military response, and the problems with the official account stems from the difficulty of leaving the bait out of the story.

(For those who take issue with the idea that the U.S. provoked the 9-11 attacks, I again quote the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer: "Bin Laden has been precise in telling Americans the reason he is waging war on us. None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty and democracy, but have everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world.")

While the standard template for discussing the 9-11 attacks (a benevolent and peaceful America blindsided by a "sucker punch ... from somewhere in the back") is somewhere between a bad joke and a pack of lies, there is overwhelming evidence available regarding the actual events themselves. Even the collapse of WTC 7 is easily explained without resorting to alternative theories, if one takes the time to examine the structural issues and the eyewitness testimony relating to it.

What bothers me about all of this is not that conspiracy theorists don't trust their government, but that they don't invest the time and effort to scrutinize each others' claims. Most conspiracy theories have a grain of truth somewhere, buried in mountains of conjecture and fiction. Rumors of secret experiments with cloud seeding and weather manipulation magically grow into fantastic stories of "chemtrails" and population reduction efforts. Radio telescopes and ionospheric research become mind-control projects that can also cause massive earthquakes. Secret and exclusive clubs where powerful elites and their mistresses drink, party and discuss how to dig deeper into our pockets morphe into pagan temples where birds, rodents and worse are sacrificed to Satan himself. These claims serve only one purpose: to discredit those who buy into them. Unfortunately, many conspiracy afficionados seem to think it is everyone else's responsibility to disprove their ideas, and are content to dismiss any skeptic with the question, "Have you researched it yourself?"

In the mean time, policies and actions that truly threaten everything we hold dear are pushed forward right under our noses. While President Obama's birthplace was the subject of useless but frantic scrutiny, litigation, and alternative media attention, his political and economic policies have done incalculable damage to our nation and our freedoms. Just as the 9-11 "truth" movement was unfairly but effectively used to discredit Ron Paul in 2008, so the "birther" issue has more recently been used to discredit Tea Party activists, even those who paid no attention to it. The 2012 election will be either a tremendous opportunity or another blow to individual liberty. We would all do well to select carefully the issues to which we will devote our time and efforts.

Conspiracy Theory 101.1

I’ve intended to write a post about conspiracy theories for over a year. Writing time is scarce these days, between work, EMT class, homeschooling and political activism – but working on Ron Paul’s campaign has brought this issue into focus more times than I care to acknowledge. Two months ago I finally caved in to intense peer pressure and agreed to watch a pile of DVDs that would supposedly offer irrefutable proof that our government directly perpetrated the attacks on 9/11/01. Having heard second-hand many of the arguments put forward by Mssrs. Jones, Avery, etc., I fully expected to find these “powerful presentations” less than convincing. However, I was unprepared for … well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Before I offer my thoughts on 9/11, it might be useful to consider the concept of conspiracies in general. In general, I find that folks tend to fall into two categories: those who believe conspiracies are everywhere, and those who refuse to believe they exist at all. Both of these positions result in an unrealistic perspective on life.

In one form or another, conspiracies form a critical part of the political history of every powerful nation that has ever existed. From ancient Israel, Persia, Greece and Rome to Spain, the Netherlands, France and England, on to Russia, Germany, Japan and yes, the United States of America, every nation that has played a major role in world affairs has been subjected to the attention of those who stand to gain or lose through manipulation of those affairs. I could provide specific instances from the histories of each of these nations, where the events in question appear very different to the bird’s-eye view of historians than they would have appeared to contemporary observers. So to assume that the political landscape of the only superpower in the world today is free from the influence of secret outside forces is to believe a fairy tale.

Even within the memories of many who read this, our own country has seen numerous conspiracies come to light. Some are on a small scale; some on a large scale. Some, like the Watergate scandal, run afoul of government interests and are exposed by the justice system; others, like the murder of President Diem during the Vietnam War, involve the interests of the government and consequently are shielded from legal exposure. Some, like the 1953 overthrow of Iranian PM Mohammed Mossadegh, are resolved with time and more information; while others, like the 1995 bombing of the Murrah building in OKC, remain a mystery, with little known except that the “official” explanation is false. In short, conspiracies do play, indeed are playing, a significant role in the politics and events we experience from day to day.

The question one needs to ask, then, is this: how do we know when we are seeing the effects of such plots? Unfortunately, the abject ignorance of history that characterizes Americans today leaves many of us without the intellectual tools needed to answer that question with reasonable accuracy. Add to the mix Americans’ widespread distrust of the government and the media, and one result is that those who realize they are being lied to tend to assume that a direct, causative relationship exists between the liar and the events in question. So, for example, when the President claims that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks on 9/11, those who perceive the emptiness of that claim conclude that the President must be hiding something (which he is), so he must be the guilty party (oops - non sequitur). Actually, the President’s false claims could be related to a number of factors, most likely his pathological urge to overthrow Hussein with or without a reason.

The other combination that tends to fuel conspiracy theories is when a powerful organization or individual benefits from a major event. To continue with the 9/11 illustration, the reasoning runs like this: the terror attacks created a climate of fear perfectly suited to the implementation of police state measures and the repression of individual liberty (true); the government took full advantage of this climate to implement such policies (also true); therefore the government must have arranged the attacks (again, non sequitur). While the administration certainly took advantage of the situation, it would have required only minimal understanding of American foreign policy and the principle of blowback to realize that an Islamic terrorist attack on the U.S. was bound to occur in the near future.

Coming soon: how to test a "conspiracy theory" for probability.