Price of Liberty

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” – Wendell Phillips

It’s always surprising how many people claim to support the right of Free Speech — until it becomes inconvenient. Rather than engaging in adult conversation with those who disagree with them, many resort to name-calling, suppression of criticisms, talking points, and lies.

People like this have been eating away at the founding principles of the United States for decades. They can be found among members of all political parties and ideologies. Knowingly, or unknowingly, they become tools of the ruling class, allowing them to persist in their corruption and their abuse of the citizens. This is a dangerous cancer afflicting the Republic.

Veteran U.S. Marine, Michael T. Lester, reminds us in We Are the Bad Guys, that a democracy dies when its people cede their control to the rulers, and replace true patriotism with nationalism. In this excerpt, he calls us to return to the founding principles of the Founders:

Dissent has always been a crucial element of true patriotism…True patriotism is rooted in principle…false patriotism, by contrast, is about performance — loud slogans and empty gestures, unmoored from responsibility.

To be a patriot, then, is not to stand by government unconditionally but to call it back to its founding promises and principles…patriotism demands courage. It requires questioning authority, even when doing so is unpopular. It requires sacrifice, not in empty gestures but in the willingness to engage with uncomfortable truths, and it requires a love of country strong enough to confront its flaws rather than deny them.

Patriotism is a devotion to principles: liberty, justice, equality before the law.

Nationalism is devotion to power: loyalty to the party or nation-state above all else..

Nationalism demands silence in the face of wrongdoing; patriotism demands accountability.

Accountability requires courage. It is easier to shout slogans than to demand reform.

The American Revolution was not led by conformists but by dissenters. Thomas Paine wrote, “Government in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”

To love America is to love its principles more than its power. It is to insist that justice applies to all, that liberty cannot be selective, and that equality under the law is not negotiable. It is to use America’s power for good for everyone, not just a select few.

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No War is Inevitable, No War is “Good”

“No war is inevitable until it has begun.” – Patrick J. Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War

The debates about the war with Iran can be quite curious in that those who pretend to be experts seem to lack the context of history. Every war seems imminent or unavoidable to them. They are appalled at the idea the United States can be pulled into war by other countries or interests. The world’s superpower cannot be convinced to do something not in its best interest, they claim.

In fact, this has occurred more times than we care to admit.

The U.S. had managed to stay out of the tragically avoidable World War I for its first couple years. It wasn’t her fight. A war rooted in antiquated alliances and ideas of empire which turned Europeans against each other in a horrific disaster. America had long held to George Washington’s plea for the nation to avoid entangling alliances (also known as the Washington Doctrine of Unstable Alliances). In his farewell address, he said:

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities… it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements.

Britain and France’s war had become costly in lives and material, and they needed help. As Buchanan writes, “British propaganda had convinced us the Germans were beasts and we must join the good war for a new world where Prussian militarism would never menace mankind again.” But there was more. Lies about German atrocities. The sinking of the ocean liner Lusitania by a German submarine had caused outrage, yet it had been carrying munitions. The Brits also cut transatlantic cables, impeding communication with Germany. It is true, German subs had targeted some American ships, and at one point tried to bribe Mexico into attacking the U.S., but was it worth sending millions of soldiers to Europe?

At the end of the war, with over 100,000 dead, and 200,000 injured, Americans wondered what was the point of the sacrifice. They believed they had been “hoodwinked and swindled…And the next time Britain rang for help, America would take her time in answering the call…until France had been overrun and Britain thrown off the continent at Dunkirk.”

Flash forward a few decades to Vietnam. The militant anti-communist wing of the U.S. government pushed the “falling dominoes” narrative: If Vietnam fell to the communists, than so so would all of Southeast Asia. Initially, President Kennedy seemed to support this, but as time went on, his position began to shift. In October 1963, with U.S. troop presence still relatively small, he said, “We need a way to get out of Vietnam. This is a way of doing it. And to leave forces there when they’re not needed, I think, is wasteful, and it complicates both their problems and ours.”

Less than a month later, he was murdered and the warhawks continued to ratchet up the war, and stumbled face-first into an escalation trap. The communists would eventually take over Vietnam and rule to this day. Did Southeast Asia become a communist empire and unite to become some menace to the world?

No, Vietnam now is an important trade partner with the U.S., exporting tens of billions of dollars of goods to us.

There are just wars, but there are no good wars. Every war has consequences, unintended and otherwise. We must take great care to not allow ourselves to be convinced to enter a war that hasn’t first been brought to us. Not every threat is existential. Not every world leader we don’t like is a Hitler. Diplomacy is not a sign of weakness, but one of strength and respect for life.

Peace through strength means show we can act when we must, and defend ourselves when required. However, more often than not, when we are told we must go war, the exact opposite is true.

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Hearts and Minds Don’t Change With Bombs

It is disturbing the war champions are in tears now the war with Iran may be over. They are so obsessed with war, they ignore the history of how these conflicts play out, or why wars should be avoided to begin with.

Regime change was always a complete fantasy. Brute force never brings about the uprising of the people. It only hardens the people as their country is destroyed. How did “bombing Vietnam back to stone age” work out? Did Iraqis welcome Americans like the French did in the 1940s? Did twenty years of war empower the Afghans to resist the Taliban? Have decades of sanctions helped the Cuban people, or made them suffer?

The other typical outcome is complete chaos; a death spiral into dystopian destruction. See Libya, Somalia, and Syria.

The thinking person is forced to ask this: Do the Iranian people want to be “liberated?” That question is hard for some to fathom, but must be asked. In spite of their repressive government, and propaganda they are told, do Iranians see us as liberators?

Here’s some history the commentators leave out:

The U.S. toppled the Iranian government in the 1950s, installing a leader not known for his stellar human rights record — like torture and executions — which led to the Islamic Revolution. We supported Iraq (yeah, we helped create Saddam) in their war with Iran that caused hundreds of thousands of casualties. Add to that decades of economic sanctions.

Think Iranians might have tough time seeing the U.S. as a friend, regardless of how bad their rulers may be?

This reminds us of how Germany was oppressed, starved, and economically gutted by the Allies after World War I. Did Germany become a submissive, third world state? No, the perfect environment was created for the Third Reich to rise. People wonder how the Germans let the Nazis take control, but if you understand what happened after World War I, it is no surprise at all. Oppression and violence from the outside unites people, even if their leaders are disreputable.

Maybe, someday, change will come to Iran. No doubt there are people in Iran who dream of revolution. Most organic, true revolutions happen from within. One might say the Iranian government prevents this from happening. Or the Iranians are unarmed and scared. These arguments only take us so far. The American colonials were exponentially outmatched by the British Empire. Yet they won.

Also consider we left many other Middle East countries alone, not telling them how to live or govern, and they shifted westward in their society. Our closest allies — economically and strategically — in the region are not democracies. Even though we may want to, it’s not up to us to tell others how to live.

Forcing change from the outside is doomed to fail. From within, hearts and minds will change. Maybe slowly, but they will change.

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Existential Threat

While the U.S. is bogged down in another expensive distraction, the actual threat continues to quietly, yet not so secretly, build its empire.

The Chinese mentality of extreme patience, and long-term planning on the scale of decades or longer, will be our undoing. They’re an ancient culture that acts carefully with purpose. They have overlaid communistic totalitarianism onto ancient Chinese culture and philosophy. The U.S. is young, often acting out like a teenager trying to figure out adulthood. If we ever grow up, we could learn a lot from China.

While they have spend recent decades spreading out over the world, building alliances and obtaining resources thorough economic and financial agreements, we have spent trillions on war, bankrupting ourselves and putting ourselves at risk. Ironically, our reliance on Chinese goods has funded their plans and expansion.

The point of no return is almost here. We must change course.

The clock is ticking.

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Our History, and Future, Defined by the Land

“The Europeans used ink to draw lines on maps: they were lines that did not exist in reality and created some of the most artificial borders the world has seen.” – Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography

Unfortunately, geography is often taught as an exercise in memorizing places on map. In reality, what is on those maps have defined and constrained nations, wars, and civilizations.

As Marshall details in his book, Prisoners of Geography, the success and failure of nations is directly affected by the physical characteristics (weather, rivers, seas, mountains and deserts) of their location. Decisions by leaders, and their nation’s “strength and vulnerabilities,” must yield to geography.

Sometimes, it is artificial geography, as the quote at the beginning alludes to, that is impacting our world. Many of the problems in Africa and the Middle East are caused by borders not drawn along cultural or natural lines, but rather are arbitrary ones imagined by empire builders. The downstream affects of these fabricated boundaries have saddled world history with a legacy of war and chaos.

Even in our modern world where technology can overcome these obstacles to an extent, geography still can be an immovable force.

Just look at what is going on in the Straits of Hormuz.

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Law of Unintended Consequences

“A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” – Ronald Reagan

Every war is bound by the Law of Unintended Consequences. If you study history, you know this. Most of our “leaders” don’t study history, or if they do, they don’t have the IQ to understand it. Let’s take a look how this applies to the war with Iran:

Law of Unintended Consequences Example 1:

Countries see what is happening in Iran and Venezuela, and other recent debacles like Libya and Iraq, and are asking, “How can we avoid being attacked or invaded?”

Simple: Get some nuclear weapons.

This has been the position of North Korea, now more solidified in recent weeks as the war with Iran unfolded.

We’ve been technically at war with North Korea since 1950. Their leaders have been evil, dangerous, oppressive, and killed millions. On the scale of evil and threat, they rank much higher than Iran.

One thing the leaders of North Korea are not: stupid.

So because of a new war allegedly over nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles (the threat of missiles and nukes was quickly refuted), we will likely have more proliferation of a horrific weapon that should never had been invented — a weapon that was an unintended consequence of World War II.

Law of Unintended Consequences Example #2:

It is clear some things in this war aren’t going as planned or hoped (and hope is bad way to conduct a war).

Fuel and other shortages are already occuring around the world. Military planners have long warned this would happen in a war with Iran. To alleviate the fuel shortages, sanctions were lifted on Russia.

The country we are at war with via Ukraine.

Since we effectively handed over funding to Russia, Ukraine attacked their refineries, putting the world at risk.

Russia is providing weapons and intelligence to Iran. North Korean troops are in Ukraine. Weapons and troops that deter China are being pulled from the Far East allies Japan and South Korea.

We are one mistep from global meltdown.

Or maybe the World War has already begun.

If cooler heads don’t end the war now, the chances of this spiraling out of control increase exponentially by the day.

And many consequences, known and unknown, will impact many, many generations.

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Freedom, Your Rights, are Fragile

“Every time this nation goes to war, Americans…become less free.” – Saagar Enjeti

This is true, and quite often involves violations of the Constitution:

Newspaper editors arrested during the Civil War. War opponents arrested during WWI. Japanese Americans sent to internment camps in WWII. Patriot Act warrantless spying on citizens. Institutionalizing torture. Jailing whistleblowers.

The are unfortunately many more examples we could list. These aren’t actions of a democracy. They are abuses of power.

Times of crisis and war are when our rights need protected the most. The Constitution does not make exceptions.

These violations only occurred because the people looked the other way and allowed it to happen. Every time they did, it emboldened the ruling class to do it again and again. If you support them, sooner or later, it will come back to haunt you. You will find yourself a target of their illegal power.

Every time this nation goes to war, we quickly learn who doesn’t care about rights or the Constitution. They reveal themselves. Keep those people in mind. There will come a time when they endanger your freedom. They are not your friends.

Rights are not partisan. You either believe in them, or you do not.

“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again.” – Ronald Reagan

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Is the Fall of the West Unavoidable?

The best historians don’t try to rewrite history or even engage in much interpretation. Instead, they create a time machine by going to the original sources and writing the story of actual people. Sometimes the past seems so distant that it seems unreal. It was real, and the people were real.

Raymond Ibrahim is one of these historians and has written the definitive series on the Crusades (though, strictly speaking, many of the wars with Muslim armies and kingdoms aren’t classified as part of the Crusades). This is an era much misunderstood and maligned in our time, but also a time that directly shaped the world we now live in.

While reading these books, I couldn’t help but notice a curious irony. Europe spent centuries resisting Muslim invasions threatening to overrun Europe. Flash forward to the Twenty First Century: Wars the West has fought in the Middle East have produced millions of refugees flooding into Europe. In spite of the best efforts of European press and governments to hide the effects, the clash of civilizations has produced many problems no longer ignorable. People in the United States, seemingly unaware of what really goes on the world, opened their border to similar issues, with still many not understanding what uncontrolled immigrations does to societies.

The Western Roman Empire, among other reasons, came to an inglorious end from endless wars and the massive cultural changes resulting from the influx of thousands of immigrants. Modern Europe arose out of those ruins, while defending themselves from invaders. Now Europe and the West face similar problems that brought down the Romans.

Is the same fate inevitable? If it is, what will rise in their place?

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Health is a Human Issue, Not a Partisan Fight

“Illness is not red, blue, or purple. Your cells don’t have an ideology. Everyone is affected by this chronic disease epidemic and by our food system. It is a human problem, a shared suffering common to humanity.” – Dr. Mark Hyman

Chronic diseases have skyrocketed.

Neurological diseases are out of control.

Fertility is declining.

So are lifespans.

Industrial farming is on the verge of collapse, it is unhealthy, and environmentally destructive.

$29 trillion will be spent or lost because of health issues over the next 35 years.

Do you think health is really a partisan issue? Or is it a critical issue that impacts every human being?

I encourage you to read Dr. Mark Hyman’s new book, Food Fix Uncensored. Learn how we got here. See how our collapsing health isn’t just hysteria, but worse than you likely know. Find out how you can change course and make a difference for us now, and for future generations.

Let our descendants write, “In 2026, our ancestors came together and saved us.”

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Are Aliens Among us?

This is part 2 in a series. See part 1, Are we Alone in the Universe?

“But where is the evidence? It’s MIA. Neither [David] Grusch nor anyone else claiming to have knowledge of secret government UAP programs has ever been able to publicly produce convincing photos showing alien hardware splayed across the landscape. And remember, we’re not talking about a Cessna that plowed into a wheat field. We’re talking about, presumably, an alien interstellar rocket, capable of bridging trillions of miles of space, and sporting technology that is obviously alien.” – Astronomer Seth Shostak

I have found the recent UFO (now called UAPs) revelations a bit curious. The media and the ufology community is acting like this is something new. The public is surprised the government is studying UFOs? Ever hear about Project Blue Book? Since the end of World War II, this topic has entered the public mind ever so often. The cyclic nature of UFO interest makes this all seem orchestrated. Why, at certain times, are the flames of UFO encounters fanned?

I’ve already explained the unlikelihood of aliens visiting Earth, but getting past that, we need to first address a problem in ufology. Many researchers, though not all, seem to start with the assumption that UFOs are extraterrestrial life from other planets. The problem with this assumption is it colors these studies. For example, we often hear UFO sightings increased after WWII due to humans acquiring nuclear weapons. The aliens are supposedly here to monitor us and stop us from destroying civilization.

Why would aliens, so much more advanced then us, care if we had nuclear weapons? If they did, why didn’t rid our world of the warheads? Why are these advanced beings crashing all of the time? Why are they mutilating cattle?

None of it adds up. The exponential increase in technological research during the Cold War, much of it secret, is a much more rational explanation. Many UFO accounts, when looked at a little deeper, appear rather terrestrial from a technological aspect. Even events like the iconic Roswell crash, with its alleged alien bodies, has a terrestrial explanation, one that’s more diabolical than aliens harassing us (see the work of Annie Jacobsen and Joseph P. Farrell). What then of the whistleblowers who claim they have access to secret sources about UFOs?

In the 1980s, Bob Lazar revealed he had worked at a site associated with Area 51 where they were reverse engineering alien spacecraft. He also claims to have glimpsed strange bodies that may have been alien. I undertook a meta study of Lazar, and looked at a number of Lazar’s interviews, documentaries and writings. His story has stayed remarkably consistent over the decades, and he doesn’t come across as a deceiver, nor has he benefited financially in a significant manner. As a whistleblower, though, the government has largely left him alone — which would be odd if he was truly releasing sensitive information. Here are what I think are the potential interpretations concerning Lazar:

  1. What Lazar is saying about aliens is true, and the government had recovered spacecraft.
  2. Lazar misidentified and misunderstood what he saw and worked with.
  3. The government wanted Lazar to believe there were aliens, when they weren’t, so he would spread misinformation to cover up classified projects.
  4. The government and Lazar, together, spread misinformation and there aren’t any aliens.

All things considered, I suspect it is #2 or #3. What about others in this UFO space like David Grusch, Luis Elizondo, or Steven Greer? Even when people have solid credentials, as many of these people do, it still comes down to “a guy says he knows a guy who knows another guy who heard from a guy that the government has alien spaceships” as astrophysicist Adam Frank wrote. We see a lot of secret sources, things that were seen but cannot be revealed, etc. Are these people being unknowingly used to spread disinformation? Are the efforts of some, like Greer, influenced by their own personal beliefs? Is the government about to use the alien scare as way to control us, as Werner Von Braun warned many decades ago? Whatever the case, over the past seventy years, no whistleblower or person with access to secret knowledge has brought us closer to evidence of aliens visiting Earth.

I also warn people the intel community has perfected disinformation and pysops operations. They have been doing this for decades with unlimited resources. If they want to fool a whistleblower into thinking they are telling the truth, or fool the public with a leaker on their payroll, you would never know. Do you think they would let leakers run around freely when they have imprisoned others for much less?

What of the small percentage of UFOs that can’t be explained away as misidentifications, frauds, or terrestrial technology? Astronomer Hugh Ross calls these RUFOs: Residual Unidentified Flying objects. These, as professor Diana Pasulka discovered in her research, are “UFO contact events [that] include supernatural and paranormal elements that influence people’s lives” much like similar events throughout history she had found in ancient archives, though those weren’t described as UFOs.

In part 3, we will take a look at what these encounters may be. Is there a part of this world our ancestors intimately knew, which we have relegated to myth?

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