[Mini-podcast] American Stalin: Joe Steele in the Age of Obama and Trump

From 'My LPeeps! Libertarian Mini-podcast'

Conservatives compared Obama to Stalin and now liberals compare Trump to Hitler. What if there was a little but of truth to both? What if the American Presidency just has too much power? What would happen in America if the President was a lot MORE like Stalin? Harry Turtledove gives us a glimpse of that America and helps us ask questions about the power of the leviathan state.

Listen on Soundcloud

American Stalin — ‘Joe Steele’ in the Age of Obama and Trump

I’ve been a fan of Harry Turtledove’s writing ever since I picked up a copy of Great War: American Front back in 2009. Turtledove has the ability to weave the stories of numerous ordinary people together to make one large patchwork fabric of an impressive, epic tale of a history that might have been. This is the case with his 2015 novel, Joe Steele, which has a relevant message for our time in the age of Obama and Trump.

President Steele immediately begins a series of economic reforms under the first Four Year Plan—an allusion to Stalin’s Five Year Plan but tailored to the President’s term in office—with makes FDR’s New Deal look like a children’s game. The federal government begins confiscating property under eminent domain for large-scale collective farming. The Supreme Court justices who rule the new policies unconstitutional suddenly find themselves in front of a military tribunal for a show trial, and promptly sentenced to death by firing squad. Joe Steele then moves on to purge the military establishment and key political opposition (as well as purging loyal followers who pose a future potential threat to the regime).

For starters, Turtledove proves the extent of his research and his expertise in the field of U.S. history by using real case law from the Civil War that allows the federal government to try civilians by military tribunal rather than by jury trial. And while Americans may sleep well today believing themselves safe from labor camps, current federal documents tell a different story.

Read more

Open Borders: Lesser Threat to Life and Property than the Trump State

President Trump was the target for sharp criticism after enacting a temporary but ongoing ban on immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.  While President Trump has certainly earned his share of criticism for hostility to immigration, Americans shouldn’t forget that the Democrat Party plantation hardly cares for immigrants either.  Both parties want a central strong state and naturally oppose the libertarian concept of open borders.  It’s still a hardly-spoken of secret on the Left that President Obama’s administration deported 29% more undocumented immigrants than George W. Bush’s administration.

Democrats will oppose open borders just as easily as the most conservative Republican.  Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006.  Democrat Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren just recently introduced a bill that removes the per-country cap on H1-B visa applicants, but it also more-than-doubles the minimum salary of applicants to $130,000.  If passed, the only other way applicants can get their H1-B visa is for the company hiring them to pay the government an extortion fee of 200% the applicant’s annual salary.  Therefore, companies would be paying three times for the value of one highly skilled worker.  This economy-killing legislation could have been pulled straight from a chapter of Atlas Shrugged.

Physicist Michio Kaku claims that the ongoing Information Revolution has a weakness, and that weakness is America’s educational system.  “If the stupid index of America keeps rising every year… how come the scientific establishment in the United States doesn’t collapse?

Read more at The Libertarian Republic

# # #

Challenge President Trump but Cheer On the First Lady

My friends and my readers know that as a proud Libertarian Party member, I oppose many if not most of President Trump's policies. Nonetheless, I still thoroughly respect him for being the worthiest, most difficult political adversary I've ever faced. These days, he seems not to know how to lose!

I'll oppose him in the political arena and I'll do my best to scale back federal power over the states and the people, but I'll also do my best to learn from his winning strategies. I'll do so knowing he's not thin-skinned, and he understands that's what opposition parties do.  I know he'll continue vigorously defending his policies while I vigorously attack them.  Despite what I believe are my moral obligations as a Libertarian, I’m nothing short of impressed with the new First Lady.

For starters, I vehemently disagree with the hypocritical liberals making negative comments about her occasional nude photoshoots as a supermodel.  I thought we had already established that women have the right to do what they please with their bodies, and that slut shaming is not okay!  I admire everything she had accomplished in her career.  She is literally a self-made woman who grew up designing and sewing her own clothes, who worked her own way out of a Communist republic to become a supermodel in New York City.  This was all before she met the current President.  I took great delight in reading a well-written, well-researched article on how she’s the archetypal wife and mother from Proverbs 31, and encourage all to read it as well.

That being said, the negative comments being made about Barron in the news media and on social media are absolutely unacceptable.  Barron is 10 years old; he’s a child and is OFF LIMITS to the public.  Anyone who goes after him will be fair game for public ridicule.   I’m equally disgusted by the abhorrent behavior of all the right-wingers who wished Sasha Obama a happy 15^th birthday by commenting on her Facebook page with horrible racial slurs about her family going back to Africa. President Obama may have been born abroad, but Michelle LaVaughn Robinson is the girl from the South side of Chicago (you right-wing garbage peddlers!).  If either Barron Trump or Sasha Obama were involved in the Boy Scouts of America (two BSA sub-groups are co-ed), I’d be happy to teach them both how to shoot safely and participate in shooting sports at my BSA ranges—and not talk politics the entire time.

As the grandson of dirt-poor immigrants, I think it's wonderful that immediately after the first black FLOTUS, America has its first immigrant First Lady: the beautiful and magnificent Melanija Knavs Trump.  I can’t help but agree with Dr. Michio Kaku that the H1B visa just might be what saves America.  Society has many ills, but these little social victories are reminders that humanity might be getting better after all.

I've decided to formally invite the First Lady to this December's military and veterans ball (but I'm not telling you loquitos which one). At this time there's really no other accomplished human being with whom I'd rather spend an evening talking and dancing. I know it's a long shot but I'm sending the invitation anyway.  I talked it over with my lovely Russian-born friend Natyusha (who is also a fan of Melania Trump), and should the First Lady accept the invitation, the three of us will go together and we’ll call it the first meeting of the Eastern European Women for Liberty caucus.  How wonderful is it that an immigrant risen to such prominence inspires Americans like Natyusha and I.

Our politics need not rule our relationships with our fellow human beings.  Let there be dialogue.  Let there be understanding.  And, as always, give me liberty or give me death.  It’s time to send an invitation and reach out to a wonderful human being.

Deo Vindice. Allons!

* * *

P.S. I’m still challenging the President and his agenda!

* * *

Philadelphia Style magazine cover digital image courtesy of The Inquisitr.

American Stalin — ‘Joe Steele’ book review

I’ve been a fan of Harry Turtledove’s writing ever since I picked up a copy of Great War: American Front back in 2009. Turtledove has the ability to weave the stories of numerous ordinary people together to make one large patchwork fabric of an impressive, epic tale.  Such is the case with his 2015 novel, Joe Steele.

Joe Steele is based on a short story of the same name written in 2003, and expanded in 2014 to be a long, standalone novel.  In this novel, the man who would become Stalin is an American, a Democrat congressman from California rather than a Georgian-born Communist Party bureaucrat in Russia.  Born and raised among farm laborers in Fresno, Joe Steele is a dedicated socialist and is militantly pro-labor.

The story follows the Sullivan Brothers, reporters both, over a twenty year period.  One will unwillingly become a propagandist for the regime while the other is deported to a labor camp and must later fight on the front lines to atone for his political crimes.  Our story begins at the height of the Great Depression.

When the nominating process at the 1932 Democratic National Convention comes to complete gridlock between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joe Steele, no one knows who will challenge Herbert Hoover for the Presidency.  The sudden death of FDR in a house fire leaves Joe Steele the uncontested nominee and the eventual landslide victor over Hoover.

President Steele immediately begins a series of economic reforms under the first Four Year Plan—an allusion to Stalin’s Five Year Plan but tailored to the President’s term in office—with makes FDR’s New Deal look like a children’s game.  The federal government begins confiscating property under eminent domain for large-scale collective farming.  The Supreme Court justices who rule the new policies unconstitutional suddenly find themselves in front of a military tribunal for a show trial, and promptly sentenced to death by firing squad.  Joe Steele then moves on to purge the military establishment and key political opposition (as well as purging loyal followers who pose a future potential threat to the regime).

J. Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover also plays a prominent role in the novel.  Joe Steele’s second term is when the Government Bureau of Investigation—an alternate-history play on the FBI but resembling Stalin’s NKVD and later KGB—sets up a system of labor camps in North Dakota, Colorado, and New Mexico where political prisoners work themselves to death for “political reform.”  These are an obvious take on the true-history Gulag concentration camps in the Soviet Union.

This novel shows America slogging through the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War much the way it did in true-history, but with the frightening tones of an endless Executive dictatorship, one-party rule, and a police state.  It’s frightening to watch Norman Rockwell’s America descend into a totalitarian state.  While certain true-history events are changed—for instance, a ‘Japanese War’ kicking off the Cold War instead of the Korean War, or Albert Einstein refusing to design an atom bomb for Joe Steele—much of the novel is grounded in truth.

For starters, Turtledove proves his expertise in the field of U.S. history by using real case law from the Civil War that allows the federal government to try civilians by military tribunal rather than by jury trial.  And while Americans may sleep well today believing themselves safe from labor camps, current federal documents tell a different story.

President Obama signed a series of Executive Orders that essentially allow the federal government to create an America similar to the version in Joe Steele.  Free speech is nothing but a privilege as long as Executive Order 10995 remains in effect, allowing the government to seize and control all communication media.  Natural resources and utility companies aren’t safe from seizure while Order 10997 gives the government carte blanche over all electrical power, gas petroleum, fuels, and minerals.

A maximum security FEMA camp in Wyoming

Collective farms are made possible by Order 10999, giving the government authority to take over all farms and food sources.  Order 11004 gives the Housing and Finance Authority the power to relocate communities, build new housing, and transit large populations.

Even worse, labor camps are also made possible by President Obama’s Executive Orders.  Order 11002 allows the Postmaster General to watch the entire population by operating a national registration of all persons.  Order 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision in times of war or peace.

After reading what the federal government currently has the power to do, does Joe Steele still look like pure fiction?  This novel is highly recommended to any students of American and Soviet history, as well as anyone who values liberty.

* * *

Joe Steele cover art courtesy of Turtledove Wiki. J. Edgar Hoover picture courtesy of The Guardian.  FEMA camp image courtesy of Popular Mechanics.  These images used according to Fair Use.

Five Libertarian Ideas #28 - Libertarian talking points

Intellectual property and crony capitalism

Part of the reason DVDs and Blu Rays are expensive to buy is due to the MPAA and major studios successfully lobbying Congress for evermore anti-piracy legislation, which artificially decreases the supply of movies on discs. When I was a teenager and spending money was very limited, I used to go to Chinatown and buy crystal-clear bootleg DVDs for $5 a pop. The utility of a store-bought DVD or bootleg DVD was the same, so I maximized my spending power by buying multiple cheap DVDs rather than spend $20 on one store-bought. This was before lightning-speed downloading and streaming.  Regulation of the black market didn't, and doesn't, work. –10/16

Mao Zedong (left), Ho Chi Minh (right)

Intervention in Indochina

The endless ironies of foreign intervention and foreign aid boggle the mind at times. In 1945, an anti-Japanese guerrilla leader was dying from malaria and dysentery. US intelligence agents nursed him back to health. The guerrilla leader would later be known as Ho Chi Minh, responsible for the deaths of 58,286 Americans, 3 million Vietnamese, and untold numbers of Cambodians and Laotians. –10/19

Libertarians and pre-libertarians

Those who identify as libertarian do so because of a conscious decision to live by libertarian principles. The numberless masses who either sympathize with libertarianism, or who agree with the Golden Rule and personal responsibility without knowing libertarianism, are pre-libertarian. They are great minds waiting to blossom. The most fanatical statists who insist on maintaining omnipresent government are simply anti-liberty. –10/20

Rocky Mountain fur trapper

Liberty and survival

The history of westward expansion in America is the history of individuals carving out a livelihood where there was yet no government. They were solely responsible for producing, or trading for, the means for their own survival. I have the ability to do the same; the benefits of the division of labor, and my need for social interaction, compel me to choose to live in an area over which a government rules. However, only the most fanatical statists actually need government to keep them alive. Others can do it on their own, regardless of government. –10/20

Obamacare and changing the dialogue

It's hilarious that emails from Barack Obama's website are calling government-run health insurance "Obamacare." This shows that after years of bashing the Affordable Care Act and President Obama, Republicans have finally changed the dialogue (albeit in an immature way). While the neocons spent years getting people to hate "Obamacare" (which I call Son of Romneycare), libertarians spent years discussing auditing and ending the Federal Reserve, abolishing the IRS, and bringing our troops home. Now it's taking hold! –10/21

* * *

Mao and Ho picture by the government of North Vietnam, c. 1955.  "Old Bill Williams" painting by Alfred Jacob Miller, c. 1839.  Both images are in the public domain and were obtained from Wikipedia.

Five Libertarian Ideas #23 - Libertarian national defense, Part II

See Libertarian national defense Part I

President Obama calls for “peace”

President Obama has said about the rioting and police response in Ferguson, MO: "Now is the time for peace and calm on the streets of Ferguson. Now is the time for an open and transparent process to see that justice is done." Which is exactly why he allows the Pentagon to distribute military arsenals to local police departments like Ferguson PD... -8/15

The Pentagon

From the Pentagon to the police station

I am NOT okay with the Pentagon giving military arsenals to local police departments. I can see the use for a SWAT team but not a SWAT army. The Pentagon should be issuing surplus goods to the National Guards. If there is a genuine military-grade threat at home, the Governor should call up the state militia, NOT militarized police. -8/15

When statist academics command armies

One of the things I like best about Navy SEAL Dick Marcinko's books is that he tells it like it is. There are always politicos in Washington--some idealistic to the point of self-righteous, some totally corrupt--who constantly screw with the military.

Despite their naivety and outright arrogance, none of these pencil-pushing idiots have ever served or knows how to lead troops in battle. Yet they use the military to push their personal agendas and it always gets people killed. -8/17

Private military/security contractors

Citizen militias vs. private military companies

Libertarians are often undecided on whether the ideal military organization is the citizens' militia or the private military company. Both entities can align with libertarian ideas, depending on the morality and objectives of the operators.

The citizens' militia predates the US Army by over 150 years, but the first English colonial warriors were private sector troops, as Plymouth and Jamestown colonies were corporate endeavors. Just as both entities can be effective tools for communal self-defense, both types of entities can throw away morality and become instruments of oppression for states, quasi-states, warlords, and private sector despots. -8/18

Libertarians, anarchists, and voting

For those who believe that the state is violence and that even voting is ultimately participation in such violence, consider this: voting for libertarians, or libertarian ballot measures, is self-defense. -8/14

* * *

Private military contractors photo courtesy of Private Military Contractors Facebook page. Pentagon aerial photo Camila Ferreira and Mario Duran used via CC BY-SA 3.0 license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Five Libertarian Ideas #7 - A new Pledge of Allegiance??? Romney vs Rand

A new Pledge of Allegiance?

I like my version of the pledge better: I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the preservation of the rights and liberties guaranteed therein. –1/23

Minimal state verses totalitarian state

My friends in the liberty movement know I'm not an anarchist, but they know I agree with many #libertarian anarchist ideas because they're first and foremost libertarian ideas. However, many anarchists have told me that the "minimal state" is just as dangerous as the totalitarian state. I have to disagree there for one (of several) reason(s): I can go out in public and talk about what a fool President Obama is, whereas if I insulted Kim Jong Un's name in North Korea, I'd be up against a firing squad faster than I can say "I'm a sovereign individual." –1/25

2014 State of the Union

Folks, he flat out said he's doing what he wants without consulting Congress. I'm neither surprised nor horrified. I was kind of expecting it anyway. Most second-term Presidents do whatever the hell they want anyway. I'm just gonna keep doing what I want, which is libertarian/conservative activism. Constitution, liberty, star-spangled patriot black-and-yellow awesomeness. Ron Paul! –1/28

Bonus thought: I'm amused that the center of attention at the State of the Union was NOT the President, but Duck Commander. –1/29

Romney vs Rand? Romney supporters joining the Paul camp

This week I've had online exchanges with modern conservatives (supporting Romney in 2012) who are frustrated enough with Republican leadership. For the FIRST time, THEY SUPPORT THE PAULS. It's happening!!!! I know it's all going according to Ron and Rand's plans, but after so many setbacks for the movement, it's freaking awesome to have one's faith rewarded. –1/29

What ‘conservatism’ means

The theory behind conservatism is to CONSERVE, ultimately preserving a laissez-faire way of life so our children can grow up without dependence on a monolithic state. This brand of conservatism was all but extinct, but Ron Paul has managed to light brush fires in people's minds that are giving old-school conservatism and new-school libertarianism a fighting chance in this country. –2/2

* * * 

Porcupine Gadsden flag by "Kowulz" and used via CC BY-SA 3.0 license.  Ron and Rand photo by Gage Skidmore and used via CC BY-SA 2.0 license.  Both images obtained from Wikimedia Commons.