Northern Illinois Campaign for Liberty

The political world, or at least the right (as in right vs. left, not right vs. wrong) part of the political spectrum is all abuzz with news about the “Mt. Vernon Statement.” I guess it doesn’t occur to some people that even non-politicians don’t always do as they say, and simply signing a “statement” is not going to change anything.

But, that’s not what I meant to say…I intended to point out some anomalies in the Mt. Vernon Statement. I found out about this from Fox News, not always a libertarian’s best friend (I suspect that a dog could easily be a libertarian’s best friend over Fox)…but I digress. Here’s the link for yourself, so you can read the article, and send me raging emails about how wrong I am, or, if you prefer, you may email me with letters extolling my clarity, honestly, and ability to see through facetious scams put on by the neo-cons.

So, by now you’re wondering if I have a point, and frankly, I am wondering too. So I’ll try to get down to business. The Mt. Vernon Statement is suppose to determine “Who’s Who” in the conservative circle. I think they could more truthfully say the Mt. Vernon Statement is supposed to determine Who’s Who in the neo-con circle.

From the Mt. Vernon Statement, “The conservatism of the Declaration asserts self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature’s God. It defends life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It traces authority to the consent of the governed. It recognizes man’s self-interest but also his capacity for virtue.”

I apologize, but I didn’t realize they had conservatives back in the 1770’s, I thought they had the Patriots and the Tories, and of course, the undecided.  But that’s rather irrelevant, so I’ll move on.

Conservatism asserts life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, according to the Mt. Vernon Statement. How nice, (I really am serious here), that conservatives are always defending life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Then perhaps it was a malicious hacker who added these words, “It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that end.”

“Advancing freedom?”

Do you know what that means?

The War in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We’re advancing freedom by fighting two unnecessary wars in the Mideast.

We’re asserting life by killing innocent civilians.

We’re defending liberty by taking away our own freedoms to fight these wars that will take away their freedom as well.

We’re protecting the pursuit of happiness by helping to embroil the Mideast in long, bloody, violent, and unhappy conflicts.

Uh-huh…or should I say, “yeah right”?

By Lew Rockwell

But the problem is that the capacity to imagine freedom — the very source of life for civilization and humanity itself — is being eroded in our society and culture. The less freedom we have, the less people are able to imagine what freedom feels like, and therefore the less they are willing to fight for its restoration.

Click here to read the complete article

by Karen Kwiatkowski

Andrew Bacevich describes America as an “unserious empire.” He corrected his PBS interviewer who had offered the more commonly heard phrase “reluctant empire” as a way to think about our country. Evidently there is concurrence of American political thought that America is indeed an empire, legitimate debate limited only to the qualifier.

Before examining our unserious empire, it might be interesting to see why it is that being “reluctant” is more acceptable toAmericans at war than being unserious. If I am a reluctant bride or a reluctant student, the implication is that I am forced to do something by the stronger party in a husband/wife or teacher/student relationship. “Reluctant” implies that the doer of the deed wants something different, and in marshalling their limited autonomy, is trying to avoid the sin perceived.

Clearly, the United States is in no way a reluctant empire.

Click here to read the complete article.

As most people should know by now, Sen. Joe Lieberman has declared that the U.S. must plan a preemptive attack Yemen, to find the dangerous terrorist cells that threaten the existence of America. Sen. Lieberman claims that a U.S. official he spoke with while visiting Yemen said, “The war in Iraq was yesterday’s war. The war in Afghanistan is today’s war. The war in Yemen is tomorrow’s war.”  And I suppose that means we must embrace the future?

I am not sure how many people are familiar with Emmanuel Goldstein. You probably have never met him, I am fairly confident of that. Emmanuel Goldstein was a key character in Orwell’s novel, “1984.” Goldstein, however, was unique because he never actually appeared in the book. He was “heard of”  but never heard. He did, however, serve a very important purpose for the Ministry of Truth, and Love, and Peace, and all the other lovely virtues that the totalitarian government claimed to stand for.  Goldstein’s existence, or supposed existence, drew all the people together. Every day those who served in the government were united by the “2 Minutes Hate”…where everyone gathered around the telescreen (TV and surveillance tool) to see an alleged picture of Goldstein and stand screaming at the screen. “As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed onto the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counterrevolutionary activities…” Suffice to say, Goldstein was used to unite the people, so they were constantly engaged fighting this unseen enemy and didn’t think about committing acts of treason against Big Brother. And the reader is left at the end of 1984 suspecting, but not knowing for certain, that Goldstein wasn’t real, and was created by the Ministry of Truth to be used for their purposes. Of course you never find out, but after reading the book, there’s a certain “gut feeling” that Goldstein wasn’t real.

So you’re asking…why did you bring up Goldstein? A fictional character who probably didn’t even exist in fiction?

I would like to know why Goldstein comes to mind every time I hear anything about Osama bin Laden, or “The War on Terror.” Maybe there is a real danger to America. In which case, it would be good for us to step back, look at our actions in the Mideast, look at our mistakes and imperialist acts of aggression, and show the world we’re reading to be a beacon of liberty to world–without shoving the beacon down the throats of every other country in the world. Or maybe there is no real threat to America from terrorists. Maybe most of this is made up and fabricated by the government to unite America. Look at how after 9-11 Americans mutely swallowed The Patriot Act “to protect our country.”

You don’t have to believe me, I am just saying…

By Jo Comerford

$57,077.60. That’s what we’re paying per minute. Keep that in mind — just for a minute or so.

After all, the surge is already on. By the end of December, the first 1,500 U.S. troops will have landed in Afghanistan, a nation roughly the size of Texas, rankedby the United Nations as second worst in the world in terms of human development.

Women and men from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, will be among the first to head out. It takes an estimated $1 million to send each of them surging into Afghanistan for one year. So a 30,000-person surge will be at least $30 billion, which brings us to that $57,077.60.  That’s how much it will cost you, the taxpayer, for one minute of that surge.

By the way, add up the yearly salary of a Marine from Camp Lejeune with four years of service, throw in his or her housing allowance, additional pay for dependents, and bonus pay for hazardous duty, imminent danger, and family separation, and you’ll still be many thousands of dollars short of that single minute’s sum.

Read the complete article here.

Okay, perhaps it is a little early to say I am truly “vindicated” but that is certainly the way things are looking. Remember my recent post about Human Rights and the Gitmo Detainees? I said, “Once we start saying that some people don’t have the right to a speedy and public trial, we’re on a dangerous road. Don’t forget that only last spring most of these readers were labelled ”right-wing terrorists” in a MIAC report. So if the “regular” terrorists don’t have a right to a speedy and public trial, it is only a short step to denying right-wing terrorists their basic rights, and pretty soon all American citizens are being tried in kangaroo courts…”

And you thought I was crazy (well, maybe you didn’t, but that sounds better, you know)…and now look–the Supreme Court just ruled that any person that the President or his administration labels a “suspected enemy combatant” will no longer be considered a human. That’s right. “They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity.”   And what scares me is that these “non-existent” persons are only suspected enemy combatants…nothing has been proven yet, but their rights are stripped from them. And don’t you think that the conservatives, the libertarians, the right-wing extremists of America are the true enemy of the government?

Anyways, if you don’t believe me, you can read the article here.

And I promise that I will not make a habit of vindicating myself and my opinions, because heaven help me if I sound even remotely similar to Rush Limbaugh.

If you don’t know this about me already, you’ll know now. I have a habit of challenging everything that those around me take for granted as being right. Example, there was recently an uproar about the Gitmo prisoners being brought to Thomson IL, which I don’t think is more than 90 miles from where we live. Within only a couple days, many conservatives came out against it, including Rep. Manzullo. That’s fine, I understand the concern, especially since there is at least one, maybe more, nuclear plants in this area…it would make an ideal target for terrorists, if you’re going to go along with that story. But with the prospect of having terrorists as near neighbors, I’ve observed the common attitude towards them, and I couldn’t just agree with everyone, I had to do some research.

People around here at least, and I suspect around the country, think that the Gitmo detainees are somehow almost “sub-human.” The media certainly doesn’t do anything to correct this feeling. Have you noticed that there’s only one picture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed used in most mainstream newspapers? And it is one of him looking nearly sub-human, his hair tangled and wild, and a “brutal” scowl on his face. Now, I am sure most people don’t even think about this, they just go along with whatever is the popular thought. I am here to say, that will not do. That is not enough. Let me explain.

As I learned from listening to a lecture on the history of natural rights, there are various schools of thought when it comes to where our rights come from. This isn’t a discussion about the origins of natural law, so I’ll spare you the complications. But I tend to align myself with the school of thought that teaches that there are some basic rights that are inherent in human beings, and when you deny people these rights, you are denying their humanity. There’s debate over what these rights are, but certainly it includes the right to life and liberty.

So here’s my point, in case you were getting worried I didn’t have one.

In my opinion, to deny these prisoners the right to life and liberty without due process of law and a fair trial is to deny their humanity.

From what I’ve learned about the Constitution, I’ve realized that the Constitution doesn’t give any rights, it only protects rights that already existed. Maybe some people have some sort of racial/cultural idea about rights, that one group of people have inherent rights and others don’t. But for myself, I believe that every single person on this planet has the right to life, liberty, and property, and that only by proving their guilt in an open and fair court can their rights be taken away.

I am not challenging the guilt of these terrorists, I am only saying that they deserve a speedy and public trial, not because I have a fondness for terrorists, but because of the principle behind it. Once we start saying that some people don’t have the right to a speedy and public trial, we’re on a dangerous road. Don’t forget that only last spring most of these readers were labelled ”right-wing terrorists” in a MIAC report. So if the “regular” terrorists don’t have a right to a speedy and public trial, it is only a short step to denying right-wing terrorists their basic rights, and pretty soon all American citizens are being tried in kangaroo courts, which reminds me of what happened in Europe during, oh, maybe around the 1930’s through the 1960’s…but I won’t name any names here.

So, there’s my take on it. I still don’t like the idea of the terrorists coming to reside in Thomson, but I don’t think we should send them to any penetentiary to sit for years on end, occasionally waterboarded and interrogated.  They should all go to court. If they’re guilty like everyone thinks, there should be enough evidence to prove it. If they’re not guilty, then shame on us for wanting to keep them detained for who know’s how long, just because we can.

You know our government well enough–give an inch and they take a mile. So we give them the inch and let them detain and torture these terrorists indefinitely, and then it might happen to us.

By Becky Akers

It’s been fun watching the alleged Constitutional scholar make a complete fool of himself on one of the most basic of Constitutional points, hasn’t it? It would be even more fun if liberty in general and the lives of five men in particular didn’t hang in the balance.

Read the rest of the article here.

This has been my first Veterans Day as an outspoken and staunch non-interventionist. I would conclude that this is not our favorite holiday. Non-interventionists are just not popular on Veterans Day, for obvious reasons.  We are different, we stick out, we look just a bit crazy, maybe a little selfish, unpatriotic, oh well, I won’t go on.  So what exactly is it about us? Why are we so dogmatic, and almost Scrooge-ish about Veterans Day?

I could say a lot to answer that, but I won’t. I just had a few thoughts on the subject, and thought I’d write it down.

All over the news day they are talking about the men and women who have given up their lives for America.

That sounds very good, sounds almost like something the Ministry of Peace might put out…okay, I’ll refrain from going there. I always end up quoting 1984, wonder why.

We are gravely told that these men and women have sacrificed their lives for our freedom, for our country.

Well, theoretically, if we wanted to be logically consistent,we should have a Jihadist Day too.  I mean, there are men and women around the world who have given up their lives for their country, for their religion.  What is the difference?

Yes, the Jihadists come over here and bomb our buildings and kill our citizens.

But do you think we don’t do that over in Iraq and Afghanistan? Let’s not be naive, of course we do.

Pardon me, if I am missing some crucial detail, but um…what is the difference between our troops over there, and the Muslims radicals over here?

And um, I hate to bring this up, but what happened to being a city on the hill? Setting an example for the world? As one author aptly put it, instead of being a city on a hill, we’re trying to “hillify” the world.

One more tiny objection…am I the only one in America with qualms about the current wars being unconstitutional? Does that not concern anyone else? The Constitution says that Congress must declare war, but in these cases, the president just did it.

So that’s why I am a non-interventionist, and while I admire those who give their lives, I admire the American military as much as any other group of people through out history who sacrificed their lives for something that they believed in.

That’s why I think we should go back to celebrating Armistice Day, and celebrate the end of war and the renewal of peace.

October 26th

In this MegaVote for Illinois’ 16th Congressional District: Recent Congressional Votes Senate: Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2010 Senate: Medicare Physician Fairness Act of 2009 Senate: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 House: Solar Technology Roadmap Act House: Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010 Upcoming Congressional Bills Senate: Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009 Senate: Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 House: Small Business Financing and Investment Act of 2009 House: Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 House: Making Continuing Appropriations for the Fiscal Year 2010

Recent Senate Votes

Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2010 – Vote Agreed to (79-19, 2 Not Voting) The Senate passed the conference report of this $42.8 billion bill funding the Department of Homeland Security, sending it to the President. Sen. Richard Durbin voted YES……send e-mail or see bio Sen. Roland Burris voted YES……send e-mail or see bio Medicare Physician Fairness Act of 2009 – Vote Rejected (47-53) The Senate failed to garner the necessary votes to begin debate on this bill that would repeal the Medicare physician payment formula that results in annual cuts that Congress reverses every year. Sen. Richard Durbin voted YES……send e-mail or see bio Sen. Roland Burris voted YES……send e-mail or see bio National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 – Vote Agreed to (68-29, 3 Not Voting) The Senate gave final approval to this bill authorizing defense spending, which also contains a provision that extends the definition of federal hate crimes to include crimes in which victims are targeted because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Sen. Richard Durbin voted YES……send e-mail or see bio Sen. Roland Burris voted YES……send e-mail or see bio

Recent House Votes

Solar Technology Roadmap Act – Vote Passed (310-106, 16 Not Voting) The House passed this bill that intends to guide research, development, and demonstration of solar energy technologies. Rep. Donald Manzullo voted NO……send e-mail or see bio Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010 – Vote Passed (385-11, 36 Not Voting) The House approved this bill that authorizes $10 billion for the Coast Guard for fiscal year 2010. Rep. Donald Manzullo voted YES……send e-mail or see bio

Upcoming Votes

Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009 – H.R.3548 The Senate is scheduled to work on this bill that would extend by 13 weeks unemployment benefits in states with a jobless rate over 8.5%. Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 – H.R.2847 The Senate is again expected to work on this $64.9 billion legislation funding the Justice Department, Commerce Department, National Science Foundation and related agencies and programs. Small Business Financing and Investment Act of 2009 – H.R.3854 The House is scheduled to vote on this bill intended to improve programs that provide small businesses access to capital. Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 – H.R.2996 The House is expected to vote on this $32 billion bill funding the Department of Interior and Environmental Protection Agency. Making Continuing Appropriations for the Fiscal Year 2010 – H.J.Res.___ The House is also scheduled to vote on this resolution to continue funding government operations, as only four of the 12 annual appropriations bills have been completed for FY 2010. This continuing resolution may be included as a part of the Interior and Environment appropriations bill.

•Solar Technology Roadmap Act – Vote Passed (310-106, 16 Not Voting)

The House passed this bill that intends to guide research, development, and demonstration of solar energy technologies.

Rep. Donald Manzullo voted NO

•Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010 – Vote Passed (385-11, 36 Not Voting)

The House approved this bill that authorizes $10 billion for the Coast Guard for fiscal year 2010.

Rep. Donald Manzullo voted YES

Upcoming Votes

Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009 – H.R.3548

The Senate is scheduled to work on this bill that would extend by 13 weeks unemployment benefits in states with a jobless rate over 8.5%.

Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 – H.R.2847

The Senate is again expected to work on this $64.9 billion legislation funding the Justice Department, Commerce Department, National Science Foundation and related agencies and programs.

Small Business Financing and Investment Act of 2009 – H.R.3854

The House is scheduled to vote on this bill intended to improve programs that provide small businesses access to capital.

Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 – H.R.2996

The House is expected to vote on this $32 billion bill funding the Department of Interior and Environmental Protection Agency.

Making Continuing Appropriations for the Fiscal Year 2010 – H.J.Res.___

The House is also scheduled to vote on this resolution to continue funding government operations, as only four of the 12 annual appropriations bills have been completed for FY 2010. This continuing resolution may be included as a part of the Interior and Environment appropriations bill.