The United States of America will never be the same, it will be a much worse place to live and work. Amid a three-month pandemic there has been a three-week cultural revolution, ignited by the brutal death of African American George Floyd in Minneapolis, that has changed our country forever.
When discussing government overreach, which incidentally continues unimpeded, or the danger of the monopoly of force concentrated in the hands of government in the way of law enforcement, especially from federal police, particularly the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), I’m frequently told that if one has done nothing wrong there is nothing to fear from government. And when I describe my first-hand experience in Cuba, or relate events from my studies of communism in the former USSR, China, Cambodia, Venezuela, and the Eastern European Satellite states, I’m told: “But Dr.
Depending on the level of culture and social progress, violence can take different forms in different societies. In the mid‑twentieth century, Stalin’s brutal communist government killed more Soviet citizens through privation, forced labor, and famine than soldiers fighting the Germans in World War II.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s comments were totally inappropriate for her position as Supreme Court judge.
A Time to Betray — The Astonishing Double Life of a CIA Agent Inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran by Reza Kahlili is one of the most heartrending and enthralling accounts I have ever read of courage, dissimulation, and personal suffering in the genre of espionage memoirs.
Recently, Bill Ferguson, a local columnist in The Macon Telegraph, opined it is "time to call for a new constitutional convention." To make his points, he tells us about the public's general dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in our nation, and then tries to scare us to death with the frightening scenarios of a government shutdown, the U.S. defaulting on the national debt, and the gridlock in Congress, so that "these once-unthinkable situations could come to pass."(1)
In his book, After Fidel — The Inside Story of Castro's Regime and Cuba's Next Leader, author Brian Latell, a National Intelligence Officer (1990-1994) and the top analyst for Cuba and Latin America for all the U.S intelligence agencies, describes in persuasive detail the personal relationship between Fidel and Raúl Castro. At the time this book was written, Raúl Castro was the anointed successor to the Maximum Leader.
B. F. Skinner (1909-1990) was a prominent professor of psychology at Harvard (1958-1974) and a founder of Operant and Behavioral Psychology.
Georg Hegel (1770-1831), the father of dialectical idealism, which Karl Marx transmogrified as Marxist dialectical materialism, lamented that what we do learn from history is that man does not learn its lessons!
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then.
— Thomas Jefferson
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.
— Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles
of the Federal Constitution, 1787
DATELINE: Warsaw, Poland, 1943
In anticipation of the release of my new book by the same name, I'm republishing this seminal article on the subject.
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The role of gun violence and street crime in the United States and the world is currently a subject of great debate among national and international organizations, including the United Nations. Because the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the individual right of American citizens to own private firearms, availability of firearms is greater in the U.S. than the rest of the world, except perhaps in Israel and Switzerland.
"One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic," said Joseph Stalin (1879-1953). It is estimated that between 20 to 40 million people, mostly Russians, were killed by Stalin during his dictatorship (1924-1953). Stalin, the Soviet dictator, not only exterminated purported "enemies of the peoples" but also liquidated almost the entire slate of communist Bolshevik leaders, who had been his and Lenin's friends during the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The "Right" versus "Left" convenient but capricious political arrangement came from the seating position of delegates to the National Assembly during the French Revolution, but it is at times a confusing concept and too often subject to media and academic bias and even misinformation. I have found it easier to have a political spectrum based on degrees of government control.
No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed, or outlawed, or banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor send upon him, except by the legal judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.
Magna Carta, par. 39
No More Wacos --- What's Wrong With Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It
[What are taxes?] The greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner
and crevice of industry[which] watches prosperity as its prey and permits
none to escape without tribute.
Thomas Paine
The Rights of Man (1791)
Let us flee to the land of the barbarian
where we may live as free men.
Roman citizen, A.D. 4th cent.
Do not dig a hole for somebody else,
lest you fall in it yourself.
Russian proverb
The Politics of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba by Charles J. Brown and Armando M. Lago,(1) the subject of this issue's Editor's Corner, only came to my attention because its documentation value was mentioned in two special issues of The New American magazine chronicling the Elián González saga,(2,3) the story of the six-year-old Cuban boy who had been a point of contention between the Cuban-American community in Miami who wanted him to stay in American freedom, on the one hand, and the U.S.
As we learned from the Clinton administration and much of the media, a machine gun in the hands of a federal agent is now a symbol of benevolence and concern for a child's well-being.---James Bovard, Author, Lost Rights
Thirty-six years ago after a harrowing ordeal at sea, Miguel A. Faria, Jr., escaped from Cuba with his father and found a new home in the United States. Cuba's loss was America's gain. A consummate historian, Dr. Faria here applies himself with gusto, using a treasure-trove of inside information to tell his personal odyssey and to reveal the true story of the Cuban Revolution and its sell-out to communism. Especially noteworthy are the unknown stories of the Cuban patriots who fought Castro's communist regime.
The Castro brothers' hatred for the United States became immediately apparent upon gaining power in 1959. Fidel began making his long harangues against the United States, and the Cuban mobs so inspired began collectively composing such anti-American slogans as Cuba Si, Yanquis No! and Fidel seguro a los Yanquis dale duro! ("Fidel, for sure, hit the Yankees hard!").
Raúl Castro, the 70-year-old, younger brother of dictator Fidel Castro, has been publicly anointed successor to the Maximum Leader, and there is no reason to believe that leadership and the spoils of Cuban infamy will pass to anyone else in the Cuban hierarchy, unless Raúl's demise precedes that of his ailing 75-year-old, but still charismatic, brother.
In Part I of this essay, we discussed the secret epidemic of dengue fever, the Cuban gulag and other aspects of Cuban medicine leading to a poor state of health in that Caribbean island, based on Dr. Dessy Mendoza Rivero's book "¡Dengue! La Epidemia Secreta de Fidel Castro" (in Spanish only).
In his State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush proposed the formation of a USA Freedom Corps, calling for every American "to commit at least two years 4,000 hours over the rest of your lifetime to the service of your neighbors and your nation."
This will require 80 hours per year for every adult American. On Jan. 29, 2002, at another function, Bush further explained the concept and gave a pitch for the "volunteer" program that will require $560 million from taxpayers by 2003.
This article was originally published in the Macon Telegraph and News on February 21, 1989 and is republished here for readers of HaciendaPublishing.com.