Auto Insurance Robbery

For the past couple of years, every time my auto insurance is due for renewal the price increases substantially even though I have never had a claim and the vehicles have not changed. The last time

I renewed I commented that the price had gone up a lot more than I expected. Another agent was within earshot and she said, "Yeah and it's going to keep going up. We have a lot of complaints about that."

I am not for government regulation of private business, but when the insurance companies get mandatory insurance laws passed, they should not be able to charge whatever they want or exclude certain kinds of cars. There is talk - I don't know how accurate - of insurance companies refusing to insure internal combustion engine cars in the not too distant future. This creates a situation where insurance companies have veto power of what kind of vehicles are allowed. It has nothing to do with safety, but policy.

You shall drive an electric car or not drive at all since you have to have insurance to legally drive the car.

It seems that the only solution, or the most obvious one is to return to "freedom of choice in insurance." If the "customer" is not required to purchase the service, the vendor will have to compete to gain the customer. If the insurance or lack thereof is the decision of the car owner the vendor can charge whatever they want. If the system is rigged so that everybody who wants to drive has to purchase a policy it should be regulated. This is not regulating a private entity since the company has colluded with government to require the purchase of its service.

I can't see any other remedy for runaway price increases. It's either charge what you want in a free market or have set rates in a compulsory market.

On a totally different note, I have thought for several years that government vehicles should all have to be painted in high-visibility colors over most of their external surface, excluding the roof. Government vehicles, whether owned by government or leased, borrowed, rented or otherwise acquired should be required to be painted a high-visibility color over 60% of its surface. This would prevent police from driving around in cars that border on unmarked. It would also make everybody aware of how many vehicles government has if staff cars that presently have no markings were blaze orange or safety yellow. It would also help to protect the chilllllldren by keeping them from not seeing the oncoming garbage truck. If it only saves one life....

The Panacea

 A question I ask people periodically is, if they could change one thing to remedy the decline of society, what would it be? It can't be something like going back in time to alter things or summoning extraterrestrials like Klaatu and Gort to police society. It hast to be something that is theoretically possible no matter how unlikely or unworkable.

Some of the responses are things like term limits for politicians, elimination of the income tax, ending or enhancing the drug war, voter IDs, policing the borders, mandatory prison sentences, ending lifetime appointment of judges, legalizing drugs that are presently illegal, increasing the number of police, and so on.

Think about this for a minute before you see my choice so as not to be prejudiced. Nobody has ever suggested the action that I would take. Once a condition has been around long enough to predate any living person in the society it is very hard to see that it is bad.

If you suggest that democracy, plutocracy, dictatorship, monarchy, theocracy, diabolocracy, hagiocracy, aristocracy, a republic or any other type of government is bad, you will be met with defenders and the argument that “it's always been this way” or “what are you going to replace it with?” It's about like asking what you're going to replace incest with.

The principle that few people ever seem to consider is, “Is this a legitimate power of government?”

Is it legitimate for government to outlaw prostitution? There are moral and practical arguments against prostitution, but that isn't the question. Probably all of those arguments would apply with equal force against fornication or any form of debauchery. The main argument against prostitution legalization is something like, “If we legalize prostitution there will be a lupanar on every street, families will be destroyed, young girls will be corrupted...” and on and on. Even if all of that is correct, it doesn't mean that government can legitimately exercise power over it.

I mention this because when I argue for my societal remedy I'm always met with the “If we do this, disaster will strike” response.

If I could change one thing it would be to forbid government involvement of any kind in schooling, or as they like to call it, education. There would have to be an amendment that was so air tight that the government could never get its paws on the conveyance of thought or information. It would have to forbid any compulsion, tax support, accrediting, certification or licensing of teachers, textbook selection, courses of study, lunch or any kind of meal provision, standards, transportation, government school boards or aid to private school boards, testing, land grants, buildings, instructional materials such as videos, libraries, research grants, scholarships, aid for athletics or musical programs, student loans, ad infinitum. Government would be forbidden to have anything to do with a school or a school by any other name.

Recently, a person running for office was decrying the state of “education” and said that she was going to return control to the parents. This kind of thing is said all the time, but it is not possible to have both compulsion and parental control. As long as there is compulsion it is the one doing the compelling that is in control, not the parents or anybody else. If the “customers” of a protection racket decide they want to choose their own thugs, the type of punishment meted out and various other reforms, they might fool themselves into believing that they are in control, but they will find out otherwise when they miss a payment. If you are compelled to do anything you are not in control of that activity. If the parent gets a voucher the government is still in control. Whatever the government funds, it controls.

God endowed man with free will, but government abrogates it.

Even if there were a committee of heroic virtue and angelic intellect running the schools, as long as the government has so much as authority to stripe the parking lot it will metastasize and gain control of the entire operation.

If government was not in control, how many drag queens do you think would be invited to school? How much time would be devoted to teaching sodomy? How much time would be devoted to sex education of any kind? Would there be a controversy about someone's pronouns? If you were a boy, would there be some question about which bathroom to use? How about if you were a girl? Would anybody pretend that you were not mentally ill if you “identified” as the opposite sex and expected others to go along with your delusion? Teaching or promoting manifest absurdities is destroying society. No society can survive where everybody lies or pretends to believe lies and goes along with them.

Diversity is supposed to be a wonderful thing, why not diversity of thought and opinion? When the purpose of the school is to produce automatons it cannot allow independent thought and analytical thinking. When everyone is taught false or incomplete information, we all end up like the dwellers in Plato's cave who see things only in shadow. As it is, almost all of us believe things that are not true because that's what we were taught. It's as though we have an induced blindness and have to work to restore our sight. Government wants no citizens who see clearly.

If parents were actually in control there would be all sorts of opinions, some conventional and some revolutionary, but it would be the will of the parent prevailing, not the government. If independent thought were allowed the results would probably start to show themselves fairly soon because the parents would find out things they didn't know in the course of teaching their children. In twenty years there would would be millions of people who had not grown up being integrated into the herd.

This would also remove the burden of paying to instruct somebody else's children. If you think this is wrong or that you have a better panacea, don't keep it a secret. Think about this - what the government can compel you to do, it can forbid you to do. If government can set a minimum wage it can set a maximum wage since it has authority over wages.

The schools are not the only source of error and deception; there are newspapers, movies, magazines, television shows, websites and all sorts of agencies, bureaus, companies et cetera, but if the populace can think analytically and critically the effects of these things will be blunted.

Alexis de Tocqueville probably had no idea how bad things could get when he wrote, “I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.” and that was before government control was universal as it is today.

Russian Missiles In Mexico As Mexico Joins SATO

Chris Sullivan
Mendax News Service

Mexico has been accepted as the newest member of SATO – South American Treaty Organization – after years of wrangling by South American countries over allowing a non-South American country
into the alliance.

Mexico was finally allowed into the alliance after agreeing to station Russian missile batteries in Matamoros, Nogales and Tijuana for defense against attacks from Venezuela, Suriname, Pottsylvania and Nicaragua.

U. S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinkered sounded the alarm against SATO moving right up to the US border and allowing Russian missiles on its soil. Russian spokesman Boris Badenov gave assurances that the missiles were for defense only and would not be used to menace the United States.

Blinkered reminded SATO members that when the alliance was formed it was only to include South American countries and would not move one inch (25.3 milometers) toward the United States.

Mexican President Jacobo Arbenz suggested that Cuba could be an alternative basing location if it joins SATO and stressed that it is a defensive organization. Basing missiles in Cuba would move them farther away from the US border and perhaps make it easier to thwart any threat from Pottsylvania.

Pottsylvanian spokeswoman Natasha Fatale claims that Pottsylvania has no hostile intent toward Cuba or any SATO members and that manufacturing an imaginary threat was a way for Russia to threaten the US.

Badenov assured Blinkered that the missiles would not be nuclear armed and that it would take several hours to convert them to nukes and probably be too much of a hassle. Arbenz and Badenov stated emphatically that Mexico is a sovereign country and can form whatever alliances it sees as advantageous and deploy any weapons it wishes on its own territory.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Asstin has contended that Russia is going to use its bases in Mexico to funnel captured US weapons to Aztlan separatist groups in the southwest. Badenov denied any plans to do that, but pointed out that if the US were not sending Javelin missiles, Stingers, mortars and various other weapons to Ukraine, Russia would not have them to send.

Asstin and Blinkered have both expressed fears that Russia wants to initiate and support an insurgency in the US to cause havoc and weaken it. Badenov laughed off the idea, but said flippantly “We wheel brink zeese weepons backs to zyou, hah hah, zjust keeding.” Blinkered responded that the US would consider any arming of indigenous militant or separatist groups or people an act of war.

President Arbenz has suggested that SATO might send its mediators Salvador Allende, Rafael Trujillo and Manuel Noriega to negotiate a settlement.

A Priest's Answers About Confession

1. Most people know that the seal of the confessional prohibits disclosure of anything heard in confession, but are there other ways of violating it?

Yes, two ways, directly and indirectly. Directly would be disclosing that John Doe confessed to embezzling funds, indirectly would be saying something like “Adultery was the first sin ever confessed to me." John Doe then discloses at some point that he was the first person to ever go to confession to this priest.

2. Is it permissible to disclose whether you have heard someone's confession? For example, the police or a divorce lawyer ask if you heard John Doe's confession, can you answer that question?

Yes, but it would be imprudent. Better to say “I can't answer.”

3. If I were to confess to you that I was the killer of Robert Kennedy and it was not Sirhan Sirhan, and you were convinced that I was not crazy, but the actual killer, what advice would you give? Sirhan is rotting away in jail. Would this factor in?

There is no requirement to turn yourself in, but in charity you should. The priest cannot require you to turn yourself in.

4. How does the seminary prepare students to hear confessions? Is it strictly an academic exercise or do you have “role playing,” for lack of a better term, to drive home the reality of it?

No practice was done at this priest's seminary, but apparently it is done in some others.

5. Do you have a preference for face to face or secret confessions? If you have such a preference, is it personal taste or do you think one has advantages over the other?

No preference, but face to face contributes to building humility.

6. Assuming that new priests might be shocked by hearing certain things, does there come a point where nothing can shock, if it ever did?

Yes, after five years or so you have heard just about everything.

7. Is it possible for non-Catholics (i.e. you are aware of it) to come to confession and if so, can they be given absolution?

If they are something like Greek, Russian, Ukrainian Orthodox or Old Catholics and cannot get to their own priest it is permissible. If they are Protestants it would be possible, say, point of death, but highly unusual.

8. Do the sexes approach confession differently? I ask this from my experience that it seems there are many more men in line than women and the men seem to take less time.

I'm not going to answer that question.

9. I would suppose that the sins of lying, stealing, fornicating are constant favorites throughout history and that some sins are faddish. Do you think that such things as camera phones and on-line pornography or just ready availability of trashy literature has changed things?

Yes. Pornography used to be something that had to be sought out in seedy areas and most people were embarrassed to be seen going into the shops. Now it is everywhere and nobody has to leave their house.

10. Years ago there were admonitions against such things as gossip, calumny, detraction and similar things, but not so much today. In the secular press we hear about “bullying,” but when things are not mentioned very often, do most people cease to think they are sins?

People have more anonymity today than years ago and can commit all kinds of sins without concern of anybody knowing.

11. What do you think about priests assigning what I would call silly penances. For instance, a friend of mine was once told to take a bubble bath for his penance and I have heard of crazier things.

Silly penances should not be given.

12. Are there handbooks for confessors? I don't mean handbooks of moral theology and such things, but handbooks of how to give advice?

Yes, but they are beyond my own experience.

13. I tend to think – I stress think, I have no evidence – that people who go to confession have less need of a psychiatrist, if there is ever such a need. Do you think this is true, not true or no opinion?

Yes, but sometimes there is a need for professional help or drugs or such things as that.

14. Have you ever seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie I Confess, and if so, how realistically does it represent the seal of confession and Fr. Logan's predicament?

I have not seen it.

15. Can a penitent ever be directed to turn himself in for a crime he has confessed?

No, it is asking too heroic a virtue.

16. “Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain they are retained.” (St. John 20:23) is pretty much the commission for the power to forgive sins, but when and why would you withhold absolution?

If someone is committing a mortal sin and refuses to stop they can't be absolved. Someone practicing contraception or patronizing whore houses, robbing banks and so forth cannot be absolved without resolving to stop such things.

17. Is a layman who overhears somebody's confession bound by the seal just as a priest is?

Yes.

18. Does hearing confessions alter the view you had of human nature before becoming a priest?

Yes, it shows you the weakness and fragility of human nature.

19. If you are traveling outside of your diocese and somebody approaches you in an airport or train station to hear their confession, can you do so, or do you not have faculties there?

Yes, it is assumed you have universal faculties for such things.

20. I know of a guy who went to a priest that could read souls and in fact the priest mentioned something to him that he had no way of knowing. It was an incident that had occurred in Vietnam. Have you ever heard of this, do you believe in it and have you ever known anybody that had that gift/power?

Yes, some well known priests such as Padre Pio had this ability. I have never known anybody who had it.

21. I knew an old priest – now dead – that told me a priest can never mention something to you that you told him in confession. For example, somebody is constantly getting drunk and the priest sees a program about a surefire cure for drunkenness, he can not say to the person, “I saw a program on a guaranteed cure for drunkenness” if the person confessed that to him. The person would have to bring it up first. Is this correct?

Yes.

22. Is it the case that you can divulge something you heard in confession if you didn't learn of it in confession? For instance, you are in the bank when John Dillinger comes in and robs the bank. John later comes to you and confesses that he robbed the bank. The police arrest John and ask you if he robbed the bank. You know that he did because you were there, not because he told you in confession.

A situation like this is always difficult and you would have to be very careful what you said.

23. There are nine ways of being an accessory to someone else's sin: by counsel, command, consent, provocation, praise or flattery, concealment, partaking, silence, defense of the ill done. Would it be unusual for someone to confess violating these? Do you think these are widely known?
Would buying stolen goods be partaking, or something else? Would a person's not mentioning something such as an adulterous affair that he is aware of to the offended party be concealment? When would something like that be concealment and when would it be detraction to make it known?

Buying stolen goods would be partaking. If the secretary and the CEO are having an affair it might be imprudent to tell the secretary's husband, but it wouldn't be detraction.

24. When someone is studying to become Catholic, how much of an obstacle is confession, or is it?

I don't know. Ask them.

25. Does having heard confessions make it easier – generally – to go to confession yourself? Does it make it harder or make no difference?

I don't really know.

26. In the first centuries of the Church there were fairly severe public penances and a process called exomologesis that entailed sackcloth and ashes, kneeling outside the Church and so on. Do you think that things have gotten too easy or that abolition of such things was best?

I think the abolition of the severe penances was a good thing and also allowing multiple confessions instead of a once in a lifetime occurrence.

These are the answers of a priest of about 27 years.

Lies

 

“Words are the progeny of the soul.”
Clement of Alexandria – The Stromata

St. Augustine wrote two treatises on lying. One called Lying ca. 394/395 and a later one called Against Lying.ca. 420. He takes a very strict position against any kind of lies.

He does not consider jocose lies to be lies or illustrative lies such as a parable to be lies. Satire would probably fall under the heading of jocose lies, but he makes no exception for what moderns would call the noble lie.

A lie to divert the slave catchers from the trail of the runaway slave is still a lie, but he admits there are mitigating circumstances. To illustrate his point he gives the example of someone demanding that you commit adultery or rob someone to avoid their killing an innocent party. This is a case of your attempting to avoid a moral evil, but you are using an evil means to avoid it.

 

Today lies are the common currency of government and most of the news reporting agencies. It's not that they are frequently in error, it's that they are knowingly telling lies usually by commission, but sometimes by omission. Today it is much worse than the days not that long past when people complained of media bias and much, much worse than 1807 when Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Norvell:

...“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.”

 

Anthony Esolen asks in his book Out Of The Ashes, Are We a World of Liars?

“In a word, yes."

"It is almost impossible in the modern world not to accept lies as a matter of course. We are told that a woman can make as good a soldier as a man. Except for the rare amazon, that is a lie”

In the same vein a few pages later: “Here is a quick and generally reliable rule to follow. If people have always said it, it is probably true; it is the distilled wisdom of the ages. If people have not always said it, but everybody is saying it now, it is probably a lie; it is the concentrated madness of the moment.”

Lying destroys the credibility of the writer or speaker. Once the reader or listener discovers a lie in a column or broadcast it causes him to question or doubt everything else by the author.

As an example, there are two writers that I hold in high regard for their opinions on political matters and their consistent exposing and denunciation of government crimes and outrages, but at Easter time for a few years past they have both written about how the Roman government executed Jesus because they feared he was going to set up a political movement of some kind. There is no way this can be an error unless neither one of them has ever heard or read any of the Gospels. Pick any one of the four and they give essentially the same account.

St. Matthew 27

27:1 When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people met in council to bring about the death of Jesus.

27:2 They had him bound, and led him away to hand him over to Pilate, the governor.

The death of Judas 27:3 – 27:10 Omitted

Jesus before Pilate

27:11 Jesus, then, was brought before the governor, and the governor put to him this question, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ Jesus replied, ‘It is you who say it’.

27:12 But when he was accused by the chief priests and the elders he refused to answer at all.

27:13 Pilate then said to him, ‘Do you not hear how many charges they have brought against you?’

27:14 But to the governor’s complete amazement, he offered no reply to any of the charges.

27:15 At festival time it was the governor’s practice to release a prisoner for the people, anyone they chose.

27:16 Now there was at that time a notorious prisoner whose name was Barabbas.

27:17 So when the crowd gathered, Pilate said to them, ‘Which do you want me to release for you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?’

27:18 For Pilate knew it was out of jealousy that they had handed him over.

27:19 Now as he was seated in the chair of judgement, his wife sent him a message, ‘Have nothing to do with that man; I have been upset all day by a dream I had about him’.

27:20 The chief priests and the elders, however, had persuaded the crowd to demand the release of Barabbas and the execution of Jesus.

27:21 So when the governor spoke and asked them, ‘Which of the two do you want me to release for you?’ they said, ‘Barabbas’.

27:22 ‘But in that case,’ Pilate said to them ‘what am I to do with Jesus who is called Christ?’ They all said, ‘Let him be crucified!’

27:23 ‘Why?’ he asked ‘What harm has he done?’ But they shouted all the louder, ‘Let him be crucified!’

27:24 Then Pilate saw that he was making no impression, that in fact a riot was imminent. So he took some water, washed his hands in front of the crowd and said, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood. It is your concern.’

27:25 And the people, to a man, shouted back, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’

27:26 Then he released Barabbas for them. He ordered Jesus to be first scourged and then handed over to be crucified.

To top it off in case there is any doubt, St. Peter himself says in Acts 3:

3:13 You are Israelites, and it is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our ancestors, who has glorified his servant Jesus, the same Jesus you handed over and then disowned in the presence of Pilate after Pilate had decided to release him.

3:14 It was you who accused the Holy One, the Just One, you who demanded the reprieve of a murderer

3:15 while you killed the prince of life.

If it is true that the truth will set you free it seems obvious that the more we come under the influence of lies the less free we are. Moderns such as Orwell and Huxley have made clear the indispensability of lies to maintain control of a populace. This is tyranny 101.

The lie is the foundation stone of government. The more tyrannical, the greater the use of the lie. From the local tax commissioner or school board member all the way up to the President, dishonesty is the standard operating procedure. Almost without exception, office holders crave power and will lie to get it. Lord Acton's famous quote about power tending to corrupt leaves out the obvious corollary that power attracts corrupt people. As he says, “Great men are almost always bad men,” but they were bad to begin with. Very few people go into government to serve anybody but themselves.

Those who want to reform society or throw the bums out or “Take back America” must develop an obsession with accuracy. If you notice a lie or an error in an article, notify the author. It's possible that he is repeating “received knowledge” that isn't correct, not intentionally lying.

Everything put out by the government is suspect, whether it's about climate change/global warming, the “pandemic,” terrorist bogeymen, Russians under the bed, temporary taxes, torture, any kind of supposed attack by the enemy de jour, Huns impaling babies or Iraqis taking them from incubators, Spaniards blowing up battleships, the oil crisis, weapons of mass destruction and on and on. Arthur Sylvester, a government spokesman put it plainly to a group of reporters, “Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you’re stupid. Did you hear that? — stupid.” The truth from a professional liar.

 

It's an odd thing that the government can lie to the people – the principal - but the people cannot lie to the government – the agent. Why is there not a law against government lying? When Richard Nixon resigned from office the babblers went on and on about how, “Nixon lied to the American people” as though that was unusual. People are charged for lying to Congress or lying to the FBI, but Congress, the FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, DEA and every other branch of government routinely lie to the people. This is analogous to your hiring an agent of some kind, a banker, say, that can lie to you, but you cannot lie to them without going to jail.

It is impossible that anything can be corrected when all remedial action proceeds from false information. It must become the normal condition of society that liars are anathematized, shunned, denounced, condemned and blackballed by all decent people if any improvement is to be affected.

The country is not failing because of racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia, but because of veritaphobia or mendaciphilia. (I know I've mixed up some Latin and Greek roots here, but you get the idea.)

 

Lies are so commonplace that they pass almost unnoticed unless they pertain to something you happen to know quite a bit about, but think of the millions of people who might not have been killed if the truth had been told.

What if Walter Durante and The New York Times had told the truth about the Ukrainian famine or Holodomor? Would millions of people have been saved from starvation?

What if the Hearst papers had not promoted war with Spain by their “Remember The Maine” writings? What if it had been emphasized and widely reported that the German government had warned that the Lusitania was subject to attack? The German government actually placed ads in newspapers warning of attack.

What if Huns impaling babies on bayonets or Iraqis taking babies out of incubators or Assad gassing his people with Sarin gas or Saddam Hussein's WMDs had been shown to be false? Not only were these lies not exposed, but were widely reported as factual by the dominant press agencies. There are always a few voices of truth crying in the desert, but they have no audience except a few people who make themselves students of what is happening.

The dissemination of lies is not the entire problem, the suppression of the truth is the opposite problem. It's a problem that has been around for a long time. In 1883, John Swinton spoke these words at the Journalists Gathering at New York's Twilight Club:

"There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand they would never appear in print. I am paid $150 a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should permit honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours, my occupation would be gone. The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread.
 

"You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an 'independent press.' We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."  

It is important for the Manipulators Of Society to keep truth out at all costs because truth has a power of its own. When it is seen it is usually recognized. As John Milton said in Areopagitica, “Let her [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.” Any error can be discovered and corrected if open debate is permitted.

 

When some person or entity wants to prevent the spread of “misinformation” or “disinformation” it is almost certain that they are protecting their lies under the guise of “fact checking” or protecting the public.

Truth is the most important component of an argument. If you have to lie, there is something wrong with your position. One lie detected casts doubt on everything else you say.

Writing around A.D. 300 Lactantius says what is applicable for all times:

“For when I know that the greatest orators have often been overcome by pleaders of moderate ability, because the power of truth is so great that it defends itself even in small things by its own clearness: why should I imagine that it will be overwhelmed in a cause of the greatest importance by men who are ingenious and eloquent, as I admit, but who speak false things; ...”

Civics Course

I was talking to a friend a few days ago about an idea I've had for many years and never acted on it. It is to produce a civics book for home schoolers that explains things the way they really are instead of the way they are taught to children. He liked the idea so there are at least two people that like the idea.

What I envision is a book that explains how government is supposed to work with popular elections, checks and balances, independent branches, enumerated powers, etc. and how it actually works through lies, bribery, blackmail, intimidation, murder, spying, extortion, selective prosecution, secrecy, theft and every sort of criminality. What would be required is a textbook that exposes the actual crimes perpetrated by government with scrupulous documentation and attention to detail. No unsubstantiated crimes should be included, only proven or admitted events. The treatment wouldn't need to be exhaustive, but should impress upon the student that government lies, cheats and steals all the time and is part of its standard operating procedure.

A few examples come immediately to mind such as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Operation Northwoods, the Tuskegee Experiment, MKUltra, Operation Mockingbird, Operation Gladio, Operation Ajax and so on. There were also various experiments on Americans involving exposure to nuclear bomb tests and other sources of radiation to see the affects on people and the Pont-Saint-Esprit poisoning in France in 1951. For good measure, perhaps the overthrow of Salvador Allende and Jacobo Arbenz could be included.

Examples of perfidy need not be restricted to poisoning, bombing or drugging, but would also include "If you like your doctor, you're going to be able to keep your doctor" and "Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars" or Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, "[The Iraqi soldiers] took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor." There are so many government lies that it won't be a problem to find an adequate number.

A brief illustration of how payoffs, blackmail and threats work in the introduction and passage of bills would be needed along with an exposition of how the revolving door between politics and business works.

I suppose that the book should be on the 9th or 10th grade level, but somebody with teaching experience would have a better idea. I am reminded of an interview Vladimir Posner did with Oliver Stone a few years ago in which Stone said that the history he was taught in school was largely correct, but that there was lots of history he was not taught.

I've been mulling over who should write this book and have come up with a few nominees who may or may not have any interest in it or even think the project has merit. James Bovard is an obvious pick since he has already written thousands of words on this and similar subjects. Tom Woods is another likely draftee as is Charles Burris and Jacob Hornberger. Anything to do with Lincoln or Hamilton could be handled by Thomas DiLorenzo.

Mind Expanding Books

A friend recently sent me a 2015 YouTube audio interview with Lewis Lapham that covers several interesting things. One of the things he says is that he gave out books that he found interesting or useful. Around 25 minutes in he says “I find something that is wonderful to read and then I want to give some people, just hand it to them and say, here look...The whole point of education is to awaken in the student the power and trust in his or her own mind….I mean the freedom of the mind is a truly wonderful thing.”

That might have been the point of education when Lapham was young, but it isn't anymore, except maybe in the small schools, both primary and secondary that strive to teach the student how to think

logically, critically and systematically. The whole point of education seems to be to teach students to think inside the box. Any opinions or information from outside the box is bad, wrong, dangerous, corrosive, hateful, malicious and always proceeds from bad motives.

Since I don't have Lapham's financial resources I'm not going to be giving out free books, but I am going to offer my opinion about several books that are worth reading, some of which I don't agree with, but think their content is important to know even if it's wrong and maybe most especially if it's wrong. These are not reviews, but there are probably online reviews of all them.

These are not in any particular order except for the first one, The Law by Frederic Bastiat. There are several versions of it available and the one I am familiar with – in fact I did use to give it out – was sold by FEE and was translated by Dean Russell. Walter Williams says that “...a liberal-arts education without an encounter with Bastiat is incomplete.” The book is only about 75 pages, so it shouldn't intimidate anyone.

Another great book that doesn't get much attention any more is Our Enemy The State by Albert Jay Nock. Nock dissects and exposes the kleptocratic nature of the state. He draws a distinction between “government” and “The State.” When a government performs negative functions such as protecting life and property it is legitimate; when it provides goodies, regiments society and violates rights it is the state. This is a short book that is worth reading if just for Nock's writing style,

While I'm stuck in the political rut I'll mention The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Etienne De La Boetie a sixteenth century political philosopher. He shows that the tyrant can do nothing without ordinary people to execute his commands. This is another short book, about 86 pages, but good things come in small packages, or so I've heard. He sums up his argument with “...there is nothing so contrary to a generous and loving God as tyranny – I believe He has reserved, in a separate spot in Hell, some very special punishment for tyrants and their accomplices.” My copy has an introduction by Murray Rothbard.

If you are religious, or even anti-religious you should at least be familiar with the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses. These are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These are in the Old Testament of the Bible in case you don't know. Much of Western Civilization derives from these books so you ought to at least have a rudimentary acquaintance with them. If you don't pick up anything else you can commit the Decalogue to memory.

Read the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John if you never have. If you get really ambitious you can read the entire New Testament. So many common expressions originate with the Gospels that you ought to know their origin. Things such as “cast the first stone, the blind leading the blind, strain out the gnat and swallow the camel, remove the spec from your own eye, brood of vipers, whited sepulchers, prodigal son, widow's mite, salt of the earth, Good Samaritan, extra mile, turn the other cheek, eye of the needle, casting pearls before swine, wolf in sheep's clothing, tree known by its fruit” and on and on come from the Gospels. All of this is online somewhere I'm sure, but I prefer paper books.

If you are familiar with this New Testament stuff already you should pick up The Apostolic Fathers.

These are the oldest Christian writings outside the New Testament. Some were actually included in the NT canon until 397 AD when the Council of Carthage codified the canon. They are usually letters from Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Barnabas, The Didache, The Shepherd of Hermas and sometimes Diognetus and Fragments of Papias. The Shepherd of Hermas is the most unusual to my way of thinking. I think The Shepherd became an object of interest among the hippies, probably for its dreamy imagery.

Before I go off on a different path, pick up a copy of The Koran and read through it. I don't believe Mohammed was a prophet or that The Koran is inspired, but over a billion people consider it their holy book so it doesn't hurt to know something about it. The copy I have I got in 1982 and it's a Penguin book translated by N. J. Dawood in 1956. I have no way of knowing how good the translation is, but it's good for when you get those emails quoting the Koran and you check and find out it doesn't say what is alleged. One of the Commandments I mentioned previously forbids bearing false witness.

Some people think it's okay to tell lies if it makes their opponent look bad.

The Prince by Machiavelli should be read by everybody, not just politicians. It explains perfectly how to acquire and retain power. It gave Machiavelli a bad name which I think is undeserved. He doesn't say that his formula is morally right, he just says “This is how things work.” He didn't publish it in his lifetime and it isn't certain whom he wrote it for. He was a brilliant guy whatever else he was and in his letters he always counsels honesty. Many powerful people sought his advice so his opinion carried weight.

When I was in high school we were assigned The Communist Manifesto to read, but it was looked at critically. Now it's probably viewed as handed down from Mt. Sinai. I think that many people today would find little to disagree with in it. I mentioned to a teacher several years ago that it calls for “A heavy, progressive or graduated income tax” and he said he had taught the book and didn't remember that. Ted Kennedy once got into an argument about that plank when somebody mentioned it.

A really weird book that I picked up at a Goodwill book sale years ago is The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. I probably had it 15 or 20 years before ever reading it. I read that under Bolshevik rule it was a death penalty for having a copy. Naturally I had to read it. Henry Ford printed thousands of copies and sold or gave them away. Wikipedia says it's a plagiarism and forgery of earlier works. It is usually assailed as an anti-Semitic forgery, but I don't remember the Jews being mentioned much if at all. It could be said to be anti-Semitic insofar as it outlines a supposed Zionist plot. Whatever the origin or motive of the writer, it outlines a step by step plan for gaining power and influence that makes The Prince look like a Cliff Note version of the plan. It's been several years since I read it and some of it seemed fanciful or crazy, but some made perfect sense.

Brain Sex is a book that I was made aware of about a year ago and it is fascinating. It's by David Jessel and Ann Moir, two BBC reporters or former reporters. Everybody that is remotely in touch with reality knows that men and women think differently and act differently. All this is very much denied now, but that can't last because mother nature can't be fooled. Almost anybody knows that girls are better at verbal skills than boys, but women also hear better than men. Men are better at math and spatial skills which is supposedly why men can parallel park better than women. All this is a result of physical differences in the brain, not conditioning. The book came out in the '80s or early '90s and is widely available for very little money.

Tainting Evidence by John F. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne is a book about forensic labs and evidence.

After you read it you will never trust crime lab evidence again. The authors show that the labs are not scientific organizations, but arms of the prosecution. They cite instances where exculpatory evidence is thrown out and the defense is not made aware of it. Two cases that figured prominently in my mind were the O. J. Simpson case and Walter Leroy Moody, who was convicted of blowing up a judge and some others. The Moody case was familiar to me because it was on the local news and Moody's lawyer was a year or so ahead of me in high school. Moody might have been guilty – I think he probably was - but the government bribed a witness into perjuring himself against Moody. This is a 1998 book and there have probably been tremendous gains in DNA evidence since then, but it's worth reading.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn is not a household name, but he wrote a very influential book in 1952 called Liberty Or Equality. The title would strike the average American as odd since liberty and equality are regarded as almost interchangeable terms. The book argues that you can have one or the other. If you insist on equality you will end up destroying liberty. Anybody looking at the institutions of "higher education" in the US can't help but see that the fiction of equality is destroying them. Not all opinions are of equal value, all people are not equally talented, smart, beautiful, articulate, agile or any other way. This is not a book to start with if you are just delving into political theory. Over the years several people have borrowed mine and all found it fairly difficult.

On Power - The Natural History of Its Growth is a book by Bertrand De Jouvenel that traces the metaphysics, origins and nature of power. One of the strange things he discusses is that the lower on the social scale you identify power's origin, the more power you can end up with. This is something that many others have pointed out. If law or power originates with the will of the people, then anything can be lawful as long as a majority says so. Depending on what percentage of the people are complete idiots, it's not hard to see how a huge number of bad laws are passed. Gauging by the quality of magazines, books, movies and TV programs that predominate it seems that there are lots of shallow people in society. Many people have heard the phrase "The King can do no wrong" and interpret that to mean that the king is above the law. Several years ago I read that what it actually meant was that the king is not allowed to do wrong any more that anybody else. The king was bound by the eternal or natural law as were all people.

Anything by Frank Chodorov is worth reading. For some reason he has fallen into borderline obscurity. All of his books and articles possess the highest degree of lucidity. Reading his arguments for whatever point he is advancing is like being hit with a cattle prod. Many of the things he wrote probably sounded so radical in his day that they would have been dismissed. In one of his 1945 essays titled On Saving The Country he asks, "In its potentiality, if not yet in its methods, is the FBI any different from the Gestapo?" The answer is no, but even today with all the revelations about corruption, abuse and usurpation of power the news babblers keep assuring their viewers that the field agents are good, it's only the upper echelons that are bad.

His book the income tax: root of all evil was an exposition of how all Americans were made slaves by allowing the government to have a prior claim on all wages. He makes the obvious point - some things are only obvious after somebody points them out - that all species of intervention is made possible by revenue. Police, judges, prosecutors, file clerks, code enforcement officers, OSHA inspectors and so on all have to be paid. Cut off the money and the meddlers have to find useful employment. Robert Nozick might have been inspired by this when he came up with The Tale of the Slave which is presented on YouTube.

While on the subject of slavery, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel's book Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men is a thoroughly researched book that is worth having just for the bibliographical essays at the end of each chapter. He goes into lots of economic analysis and conveys his information with the detachment of an academic, which is what he is. This is not a diatribe on how either side was right or wrong, but more expository in nature. He brings up such things as how non-slave owning Southerners objected to being drafted into slave patrols to protect the slave owner's interests. There isn't the usual hagiography of Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, or anybody else. It's the best book I've read on the subject, although I haven't read that many.

The Crowd is an 1895 book by Gustave Le Bon on the psychology, behavior, opinions, reasonings and other characteristics that make up a crowd. Le Bon does not consider just any large group a crowd, nor does the crowd have to be unorganized. Parliament might be a crowd whereas the attendees of the symphony might not be. Crowds seem to adopt a morality of their own and act through emotion instead of reason. I don't think Le Bon defines any numerical component to the makeup of a crowd; it seems to be more a matter of unitary action and immunity to reasoned argument. A small group such as a home owners association might be a crowd while the spectators at an auto race are not. The book is referred to in many subsequent books so it's useful to know about it.

While not exactly about crowds Obedience To Authority is a very interesting study on how individuals obey an authority figure even if the figure has little authority and no means of enforcing his commands. It is a recounting of a study conducted by Stanley Milgram in the early '60s that was suggested to him by the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Milgram wanted to see how ordinary people would resist or cooperate in inflicting pain on their fellow man. He concocted an experiment that was supposedly studying the effects of punishment on learning, but actually it was measuring how compliant ordinary people are when told to do something they find objectionable.

Edward Bernays is someone unfamiliar to most people, but he had an effect on their lives. If they know anything about him it's probably that he was the nephew of Sigmund Freud or that he popularized bacon and eggs by his "Hearty breakfast" campaign. In 1928 he wrote a book called Propaganda describing some of his methods. I have no doubt that he was brilliant even though he was on the "wrong side" from my point of view. Fortunately it doesn't make any difference what side he was on because he explains his methods in this very short book. The very first paragraph explains almost the whole book; "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society, Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." On things such as the trial balloon; "It is the method commonly used by a politician before committing himself to legislation of any kind, and by a government before committing itself on foreign or domestic policies." For those who think the schools can be reformed; "The normal school should provide for the training of the educator to make him realize that his is a twofold job: education as a teacher and education as a propagandist." On the perennial problem of bias, fake news, disinformation or whatever term you prefer; "The media by which special pleaders transmit their messages to the public through propaganda include all the means by which people today transmit their ideas to one another. There is no means of human communication which may not also be a means of deliberate propaganda, because propaganda is simply the establishing of reciprocal understanding between an individual and a group." On the omnipresence of propaganda; "...it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons - a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million - who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world."

Going back in time about 450 years we have Bernal Diaz describing his exploits with Cortes in The Conquest Of New Spain. Diaz describes a lot of actions that sound like something out of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto. He describes one town they entered that had a rack of skulls that could be easily multiplied that had over 100,000 skulls on it. One of the things that makes the book believable is that Diaz doesn't make himself the hero of the story; in fact he admits to being scared to death. He explains how Cortes had an Indian girlfriend who could speak Spanish and one or two Indian dialects. They had a priest they found somewhere who had been enslaved by the Indians and could speak two or three Indian languages and Spanish. This was how Cortes organized his allies against the Aztecs. He relates how they were in a village when Montezuma's tax collectors came and roughed up some of the local rulers, thus giving Cortes the idea of getting various tribes on his side because they hated the Aztecs taxing them to death and taking their women. Some of the Indians were friendly and some were not. If they had to fight the Indians, Cortes would capture some of them and treat them well and tell them they wanted to be friends and trade, buy, sell and so forth.  Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. If the Indians attacked them again they wiped them out. I have known several people that have read the book and all of them think it's great. There's a Penguin edition or at least there was.

Red Mexico is a book by an Irishman named Captain Francis McCullagh about the communist takeover of Mexico and the Cristero Rebellion. This is a series of events unknown to most Americans. For years it was almost impossible to get, but it has recently been reprinted. Leon Trotsky was murdered in Mexico and a friend who has a PhD in history and taught at West Point among other places told me years ago that Trotsky largely authored the Mexican Constitution.

One of the things that appears very unusual are several pictures in the book of people walking casually down the street to their place of execution without handcuffs or any restraint. 

Tragedy & Hope is the magnum opus of Carrol Quigley. Wikipedia says of it: "Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time is a work of history written by former Georgetown University professor, mentor of Bill Clinton, and historian, Carroll Quigley." 

The book gained notoriety because Quigley spills the beans on bankers and other powerful people running things. A couple of books relied heavily on it mainly because of Quigley's admitting that there were powerful people and organizations who pull the strings and that he had examined their records, but that he approved of them. Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy relied heavily on it and Cleon Skousen's The Naked Capitalist was a review of it. Quigley considered himself conservative, but thought that the two parties should be identical so that there would always be continuity in policy no matter who won. He was clearly for rule by experts. He would be booted out of any top tier school now for some of his views. He decried homosexual propaganda in books and movies. He didn't believe the atomic bombs should have been dropped on Japan. He seemed to think that women working was a bad thing and that schools had become so tailored to girls that boys found them boring. He said that Democracy or popular government was only possible where citizens had access to weapons equal to anything the government had. In a 1974 interview, three years before he died he said that he had debated Gary Allen and Larry Abraham. Abraham was a co-author with Allen of None Dare Call It Conspiracy. Quigley said sort of derisively in the interview that Allen only knew what was in that book, but Abraham knew a lot and brought up facts he had never heard of. I thought it was an amazing admission for a guy in his station. I wondered if the debate was after the publishing of Wall Street and The Bolshevik Revolution. Quigley says that his book is "inexcusably long" which it is at 1348 pages, but it's pretty interesting.