Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire More Doom and Gloom

Watching Fox News this morning and some guy came on touting his new book.

From his perspective, there is no way anyone other that a radical liberal was going to win that last election. He cited the eight years of intensive anger/hatred of "W" for winning two in a row, along with the concentrated effort of the lefties to register new voters. That, and our stupid position on immigration, allowed us to be undermined from within and caused the "perfect storm" to form and generate the energy to literally walk all over any conservative candidates who might have hit the scene.

Top that off with what we have allowed to happen to our education system and this mess is more than likely to continue to deteriorate.

Sounds about right to me! I think the Republican party has pretty much got it that "Same-O, Same-O" is not going to get it next time around either!


Phil

Funny how the media spoonfeads that very sentiment.

If they don't stop obsessing about Obama, and if they don't come up with a coherent conservative plan, and if they don't come up with a leader, they will most likely lose......again.....

On the flip side, if the economy continues to tank--or not get any better, or the fed government becomes even more bankrupt and cannot borrow more money, maybe the Democrats will make it impossible for them to win either......


What we need in this country is a good small government, big liberty, third party to emerge.....



Casey

I couldn't agree more but I'm afraid that between Acorn registering dead, ficticous and illeagal voters, an in the tank media and judicial and general corruption at the polls, we will have democrap dictators from now on out.

You think so? So far I don't. Republican strategy during the campaign was pretty much limited to, "Obama is the DEVIL! BOOGA BOOGA!" Now, it's "Obama is doing BAD THINGS! BOOGA BOOGA!" I don't really see a lot of difference between the two.

If Republicans were to change that tune and start proposing solutions, like "Abolish the Federal Reserve!" (I think that's the wrong idea, but we are extremely unlikely to hear the right idea in that area from a Republican, whether neo or paleo) or getting serious about state and regional secession (okay, Rick Perry is, but the Republicans are distancing themselves from him as a crackpot), then they might attract a following. But they don't seem interested in that.

I think it's quite possible that the Republicans have now won their last election, and that they will choose to fade into history rather than change their tune, because the real and crucial solutions that will have to be implemented to deal with the consequences that so many decades of Republicrat rule have now made inevitable would be too damaging to the folks who have climbed to influential positions in the Republican Party and in the State.

I think it'll be left to a third party to identify itself with real solutions (even if they're the wrong ones), while the Republicans simply "BOOGA BOOGA!" themselves into oblivion. I have no idea which third party it will be, but I'm pretty sure it won't be the Libertarian Party unless they make a sudden turnaround of almost the same abruptness and radical nature that would be required of the Republicans, which is very unlikely to happen.

There was a time when I would have said that the Democrats will enjoy a number of years of unbroken rule while the various third parties fight it out to determine which will replace the Republican Party; but by the end of Obama's term, this country will be in such shambles that the average Democrat is going to be even more reluctant to vote for Obama again that the average Republican was to vote for McCain. Could be that the Democratic Party has also won its last election.

Ultimately, of course, the fundamental problems of the State can't be solved by the State, no matter what party controls it, but Americans have yet to learn that lesson.

I think in ten years, the situation in what is now called the United States is going to look so completely different from the way it does now that it'll be unrecognizable. For instance, I'll be astonished if we're still using the dollar.

well they seem to have a plan and as far as my research tells me the plan is to inflate our money supply allow some bankruptancys prevent others until our debt is being paid back with cheaper dollars.

if all goes according to plan they are hoping I believe to have a debt of about 35 trillion and a GDP of about 70 trillion. not good but doable I reckon

course under this scenario prices due to inflation will probably have a 5 fold increase.

tis about the best case scenario at this point.

they have to prop up the banks they feel for if they don't international commerce will come to a grinding hault, and we'd likely have a scenario that made the '20s look like a picanic.


course we also run the risk of hyperinflation and that would not be fun either.

so the first scenario is middle ground of the two extremes and about the best that can be hoped for it seems.


a hell of a balancing act they are attempting, let's hope they are sure footed.

Barak, couldn't agree more, as history including our own, has so monotonously shown us - I would have said taught, but clearly that is untrue. I would amend your statement, if you'd allow to "... but Americans of our generation have yet to learn that lesson." It's clear that our Founding generation reached your conclusion by 1773 and adopted the only way to change a tyrannical government that history has proven to work.

But, "Those who do not study history are bound to repeat it" as Santayana points out. So down the road to insanity we go, calling for petitioning our representatives and other self-serving functionaries pleading our case for Liberty. Interesting, but sad and dissapointingly predictable in its outcome.

At this point I don't see how eventual hyperinflation, bringing with it the total destruction of the dollar, can be avoided.

The money-from-thin-air that spells the dollar's doom has already been created, and is in vast part still on deposit with the Federal Reserve: the banks haven't loaned it yet, because (we must assume) they're terrified of what the future holds. Eventually, the Obama administration is going to force them to start lending it, either by promising to backstop any bad loans or by beginning to charge them a percentage fee for keeping it with the Fed.

Once that happens, the fractional-reserve multiplier will kick in, and the inflation you described will hit like a hurricane.

People will notice their money decreasing in value by the day, panic, and start dumping the dollar like crazy to get into something that doesn't lose its value by the day. Panic will breed more panic, and the value of the dollar nobody wants anymore will be bid down to practically nothing.

"You wanna buy that rifle? This is your lucky day. Normally it goes for an ounce and a quarter, but today I can let you have it for one ounce even. What's that? Dollars? I don't want your dollars; what am I going to do with them? Yes, I know I advertised the rifle for $1500 at one time, but that was back when the dollar was worth something and you could buy things with it. What? A wife and kid to feed? [pause] Sigh--okay, I'll take your dollars, but I'm going to have the dickens of a time getting rid of them. And the price is now $4500. It'll be $5000 tomorrow."

Aaaand presto: hyperinflation.

Hyperinflation can be ultimately bad if it leads to the creation of another fiat currency--especially if the new fiat currency is simply the old one with zeros added on ("From now on we will do business in New Dollars, where each New Dollar is worth exactly one billion old dollars") the way they have in Zimbabwe. It can be ultimately good if it leads to the adoption of a sound currency--or better yet, several competing sound currencies. Either way, though, regardless of what happens after, it's sure going to suck big-time during.

Point conceded.


"Change" is a good word, in the sense of changing one pair of shoes for another. The tyrannical government wasn't eliminated by violent revolution; it was merely replaced by one starring a different set of tyrants. Revolutions are impossible to control, and when one is over, the people in power are always the ones who have proven most facile and ingenious at killing people and breaking things; whereupon, in the general case, they set about creating a replacement government in which they can set their peculiar talents to work, frequently rooting out and destroying all remaining fragments of the previous administration.

That doesn't gain anybody anything.

I fervently hope widespread violent revolution isn't the way we end up going.

Whether one were to agree, ....or disagree

that's just a damn fine piece of writing, B.

Keep shortening it up,...brevity suits ya'.

just a suggestion, s' all.

GTC

LOL well obama has a chance to look great with things the mess there in but so far he's looking like crap. Very near looking like a fish out of water theres still hope in 2012.

For all you liberals here, Hussein Obama and the other wacko democrats have NOTHING, ZERO to offer over the republicans!

Obama has approved a budget that will more than DOUBLE our national deficit in 4-5 years; George Bush didn't even spend that much! The worst is yet to come when Obamination tries to pass a massive nationalize healthcare program that will cost billions more and add it to the deficit.

Our military will be weaker when Hussein Obama is finished; he already said he wants to cut the military by 25%! Our very own president has seen fit to bash, slander and blame America for nearly every world woe and is now targeting our soldiers and other good people as terrorists, while refusing to use the term on true terrorists.

As for Obama's nominees, they can't even pay their taxes and have been linked to radical socialist groups. Gee, remember Ayers and Acorn? I guess some things will never change.

Yeah, you liberals have received what you asked for in Obamination and the "CHANGE" you have is far, far, worse than George Bush!

Thanks.

...and vice versa, of course.


Debt, amigo: double the national debt in 4-5 years. He's already more than doubled the national deficit.


My instinct is to say that by the time he manages to push socialized medicine through, the white-market economy and the State will be far enough gone that it won't matter. If we're lucky, the black-market economy will swell and take over and the country will survive, although it will look much, much different. If we're not lucky, people will start shooting each other, and then all bets are frickin' off.


Oh, I'd like to see it cut much more than that. I'd like to see every foreign US military base I can think of evacuated and sold, and whatever military forces we don't need to defend our borders brought back home to their families and put to use doing productive work in the private sector rather than sucking down tax money practicing destroying people and things.

I'll bet we could cut it by 70-80% and not suffer any loss of security.


I hate the term "their taxes"--and "my taxes" and "his taxes" and "your taxes." The extortion money the State demands I give it to lift its threat of imprisonment is not "my taxes" in any sense of the word, and I don't "owe" it any more than I owe the mugger in the alley the money he demands I give him to lift his threat of physical harm.


Hey--all the important bad things that are happening to this country right now are economic, and in that area Obama is merely continuing the course originally mapped out by Baby Bush. McCain would also have continued that course, according to what he said during the campaign.

The only course of action that might have some positive effect at this point would be for the government to back completely off on all its bailouts, guarantees, deposit insurance, defense of fractional reserves, and banking and market regulations, and let interest rates find their free-market levels rather than honking them coercively around with the Fed. I happen to think it's already too late for even that, but I've been wrong before.

The point is that there isn't a single Democrat or Republican within a hundred miles of DC (always excepting the estimable Dr. Paul) who would even consider that for a moment. Every Democrat and every Republican is unalterably fixed on using the coercive power of the State to meddle in the economy, thus continuing to further destroy it.

The answer is not partisanship. The answer is not bipartisanship--heaven forbid! The answer, if there is one, is apartisanship: "A pox on both your houses!"

On this point I think we'll disagree, as the old tyrannical government was indeed forcibly destroyed by a violent revolution. In fact, revolutionary change in the face of a tyrannical government can be no other. What political means are available in this circumstance?



On this, we agree. Typically this is not the group that initiates revolt - as they are usually some disaffected portion of the ruling elite. They are not true revolutionaries, but effectively evolutionaries. What they seek is a 'bigger slice of the pie' for them. They represent sustaining change, not disruptive innovation.

Those who replace the old ruling order - your "replacement government" - are those whose preparation, persistence and willingness to prevail through any means, are favored by chaos. Those are "their peculiar talents" in the disorder of revolution and their defining traits in the construction of the new government's political character.


An interesting observation, for when dispassionately viewed - if such be possible in these matters - this is the essential element of a successful revolutionary change. The faster all vestiges of the old elites disappear, the more effectively the "replacement government's" direction can be enacted.


It would unfortunately not be surprising. Isn't this the predictable result when a sufficiently disenfranchised, but effective portion of the populace perceives that political means are no longer available to them to affect institutional government in ways favorable to them?

BTW, historically revolution not followed by replacement governments result in failed states. As a practical matter, I offer Somalia as the most recent and evident example. Liberty, in its true sense, has never been the result. But as we live in an imperfect world, return to its best expression, democratic America, would be close enough IMO.

Political means, as in petitioning the tyrannical State for redress of grievance? None, of course: I think it's silly of us at this point even to be still trying, what with painstakingly inoffensive Tea Parties backed up by a threatened (also probably painstakingly inoffensive) march on Washington. But there are a lot of folks--a lot of folks--who still disagree with me on that one, and we will need to wait for the State to show them the error of their ways. Some of them will refuse even then to see it.

I suspect Glenn Beck will be one of them. He can't, after all, be saying things that will cause the State to pull the broadcast licenses of his affiliates: they'll drop his show if he tries that.

But the very failure of the political means that is evident already to some of us and that will become evident to more of us militates against proceeding to military means, because the military means is simply a subset of the political means. The only difference is that the non-military political means involves only the threat of violence, while the military means itself involves actual violence. Both of them are based on coercion.

As Franz Oppenheimer so astutely pointed out, there are always two ways to get what you want: the political means and the economic means.

In this context, the economic means amounts to simple civil disobedience--but not in a small-scale organized fashion, as in some sort of sit-in or protest, but in a large-scale unorganized fashion, where people simply do what is best for them and their families rather than what the State decrees they should do.

The State says you have to use the dollar it's in the process of rapidly destroying? Use silver or gold or whatever (but probably silver or gold) instead. (Post a sign in your store: "90% off everything if you pay in pre-'65 silver coins!") The State says you have to disclose your income and that of your employees so that it can extort its taxes from you and them? File zeros, and make it expend its resources discovering your "error." The State says you may not hire people who do not present certain papers to you, and you may not pay anyone less (or more, perhaps) than a certain wage? Hire whomever you think would make the best worker, and pay him whatever he's worth to you and is willing to take. The State says you have to go to great care and expense to keep track of a number of ridiculous parameters of your business, and faithfully and regularly report them to it? Simply neglect the reports, or if you prefer, gin them up out of thin air in whatever way you think will do you the most good for the least effort.

Of course the State will try to make examples of a few of us--harassing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, killing us--but it can't make examples of all of us, and after not too long at all it'll discover that it's making martyrs, not examples. Look what happened to an essentially no-account backwoods racist redneck in Idaho and a weird quasi-Adventist cult in Texas when the State tried to make examples of them: they ended up being storied, venerated icons in the liberty movement.

This is the sort of thing that, done on a large scale, might truly result in the demise of the State, rather than just the replacement of it. It's what people should really mean when they say, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." Neither votes nor protests nor violent revolt could ever accomplish anything approaching that.


That's not anything I'd call success; it's more like putting a wolf in your chickenhouse to get rid of the fox.


It's historically common, yes; but it's not the only way, it's not a way that has any hope of making a fundamental change, and it's not the right way. I choose to remain optimistic--while I continue to stockpile guns and ammunition, of course.


Uh...don't look now, but I'm afraid your tautology is showing.


Lots of people consume what the State's intellectuals have to say about Somalia and think they understand the situation, when that couldn't be further from the truth. You might try doing a little research on Somalia to find out where the violence actually comes from. I think you will discover that during the periods when there is truly no government in Somalia, it's one of the crown jewels of Africa in terms of economic activity, technology, and opportunity. The widespread violence comes to Somalia only when somebody--either an internal would-be warlord or a foreign power like the US--is trying to impose a government upon it.


Not close enough for me. Our compulsory government confinement schooling teaches us to see a beautiful light from heaven and hear the songs of angels whenever anyone says the word "democracy," and government military training greatly amplifies that reaction; but if you manage to separate yourself from that conditioning and examine the assumptions behind democracy (and republicanism) dispassionately, you'll find that it's simply more of the same old thing: it's fundamentally just as coercive and tyrannical as a monarchy or a dictatorship or a military junta. "Political representation" is a bogus propaganda concept that cannot ever exist in real life.

While in many ways I agree, I fear it's the ONLY way to get rid of those in government who are determined to ruin the country.. It appears elections won't do it AND they're too widely spaced to allow controls over those now in power who are so speedily achieving dictatorship status..

In some ways, these little 'tea parties' may be just a warning tremor before the earthquake hits..

True. I disagree. The original tea party brought about a rather large change. Maybe not, but I fear it's now the ONLY way.. Amen, brother, amen...

Of course. The "democracy vs. tyranny" dichotomy is a crock.


Mmm, not so much--at least not in any long-term sense. Do you know how much the tax on tea that got those folks so riled up was? Do you know how much our tea is taxed now?


It's not the only way; as a matter of fact, from a larger perspective it's not any way at all, because it's not going to make things any better. If it fails, the thugs we have now will become much more powerful and oppressive; if it succeeds, we'll simply get a different gang of thugs. Lose/lose.

That my friend is one of your best posts, succinct and to the point. AND RIGHT ON THE "MONEY".