by Ron Paul

Congressional hearings, White House damage control, endless op-eds, accusations, and defensive denials. Controversy over the events in Benghazi last September took center stage in Washington and elsewhere last week. However, the whole discussion is again more of a sideshow. Each side seeks to score political points instead of asking the real questions about the attack on the US facility, which resulted in the death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Republicans smell a political opportunity over evidence that the Administration heavily edited initial intelligence community talking points about the attack to remove or soften anything that might reflect badly on the president or the State Department.

Are we are supposed to be shocked by such behavior? Are we supposed to forget that this kind of whitewashing of facts is standard operating procedure when it comes to the US government?

Democrats in Congress have offered the even less convincing explanation for Benghazi, that somehow the attack occurred due to Republican sponsored cuts in the security budget at facilities overseas. With a one trillion dollar military budget, it is hard to take this seriously.

It appears that the Administration scrubbed initial intelligence reports of references to extremist Islamist involvement in the attacks, preferring to craft a lie that the demonstrations were a spontaneous response to an anti-Islamic video that developed into a full-out attack on the US outpost.

Who can blame the administration for wanting to shift the focus? The Islamic radicals who attacked Benghazi were the same people let loose by the US-led attack on Libya. They were the rebels on whose behalf the US overthrew the Libyan government. Ambassador Stevens was slain by the same Islamic radicals he personally assisted just over one year earlier.

But the Republicans in Congress also want to shift the blame. They supported the Obama Administration’s policy of bombing Libya and overthrowing its government. They also repeated the same manufactured claims that Gaddafi was “killing his own people” and was about to commit mass genocide if he were not stopped. Republicans want to draw attention to the President’s editing talking points in hopes no one will notice that if the attack on Libya they supported had not taken place, Ambassador Stevens would be alive today.

Neither side wants to talk about the real lesson of Benghazi: interventionism always carries with it unintended consequences. The US attack on Libya led to the unleashing of Islamist radicals in Libya. These radicals have destroyed the country, murdered thousands, and killed the US ambassador. Some of these then turned their attention to Mali which required another intervention by the US and France.

Previously secure weapons in Libya flooded the region after the US attack, with many of them going to Islamist radicals who make up the majority of those fighting to overthrow the government in Syria. The US government has intervened in the Syrian conflict on behalf of the same rebels it assisted in the Libya conflict, likely helping with the weapons transfers. With word out that these rebels are mostly affiliated with al Qaeda, the US is now intervening to persuade some factions of the Syrian rebels to kill other factions before completing the task of ousting the Syrian government. It is the dizzying cycle of interventionism.

The real lesson of Benghazi will not be learned because neither Republicans nor Democrats want to hear it. But it is our interventionist foreign policy and its unintended consequences that have created these problems, including the attack and murder of Ambassador Stevens. The disputed talking points and White House whitewashing are just a sideshow.

by Ron Paul

Last week at its regular policy-setting meeting, the Federal Reserve announced it would double down on the policies that have failed to produce anything but a stagnant economy. It was a disappointing, but not surprising, move.

The Fed affirmed that it is prepared to increase its monthly purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities if things don’t start looking up. But actually the Fed has already been buying more than the announced $85 billion per month. Between February and March, the Fed’s securities holdings increased $95 billion. From March to April, they increased $100 billion. In all, the Fed has pumped more than a half trillion dollars into the economy since announcing its latest round of “quantitative easing” (QE3) in September 2012.

Although many were up in arms when the Fed said it would buy $600 billion in government debt outright for the previous round, QE2, all seems quiet about the magnitude of QE3 because it doesn’t come with huge up-front total price tag. But by year’s end the Fed’s balance sheet could hit $4 trillion.

With no recovery in sight, where’s all this money going? It is creating bubbles. Bubbles in the housing sector, the stock market, and government debt. The national debt is fast approaching $17 trillion, with the Fed monetizing most of the newly issued debt. The stock market has been hitting record highs for the past two months as investors seek to capitalize on the Fed’s easy money. After all, as long as the Fed keeps the spigot open, nominal profits are there for the taking. But this is a house of cards. Eventually, just like in 2008-2009, the market will discipline the bad actions of the Fed and seek to find the real normal.

In the meantime, real families are suffering. While Wall Street and the government take advantage of access to the Fed’s new “free” money, the Fed claims there is no inflation. But who hasn’t paid higher prices at the grocery store, the gas pump, for tuition, for insurance? It’s bad enough that household incomes have stagnated, but real purchasing power has declined so much that one in seven Americans, 47.3 million people, are on food stamps. Five million are collecting unemployment insurance with 21.5 million afflicted by unemployment according to the government’s own figures. That’s 13.9 percent — close to double the 7.5 percent unemployment number reported last week.

We are certainly not in a recovery. We don’t see the long unemployment and soup kitchen lines like in the Great Depression, but that’s just because the lines are electronic now.

It is not surprising the Fed has decided to hand the American people more of the same failed policies. But it is disappointing. We know what the real solution is: allow the marketplace to work. Allow entrepreneurs the chance to create instead of stifling innovation with arbitrary regulations. Allow interest rates to rise to equal the risks in the economy. Allow bad debts to be liquidated so we can build on a firm foundation. Stop printing money to benefit the government and big banks. Restore sound money to the economy and the American people. Sound money is the bedrock for prosperity and the best check on big government and crony capitalism.

by Ron Paul

Earlier this month, entertainers Jay-Z and Beyoncé were given a license by the US government to travel to Cuba. Because it is not otherwise legal for Americans to travel to Cuba, this trip was only permitted as a “cultural exchange” by the US Treasury Department. Many suspect that the permission was granted at least partly due to the fame, wealth, and political connections of the couple.

Some Members of Congress who continue to support the failed Cuba embargo, demanded that the Administration explain why these two celebrities were allowed to visit Cuba. The trip looked suspiciously like tourism, they argued in a letter to the White House, and American tourism is still not allowed in Cuba. They were photographed eating at the best restaurants, dancing, and meeting with average Cubans, which these Members of Congress frowned on.

Perhaps it is true that this couple used their celebrity status and ties to the White House to secure permission to travel, but the real question is, why can’t the rest of us go?

The Obama administration has lifted some of the most onerous restrictions on travel to Cuba imposed under the previous Bush administration, but for the average American, travel to the island is still difficult if not impossible.

However, even those who are permitted to go to Cuba are not allowed to simply engage in tourist activities — to spend their money as they wish or relax on a beach.
The US government demands that the few Americans it allows to travel to Cuba only engage in what it deems “purposeful travel,” to “support civil society in Cuba; enhance the free flow of information to, from, and among the Cuban people; and help promote their independence from Cuban authorities.” They must prove that they maintain a full-time schedule of educational activities, according to Treasury guidelines for “people-to-people” travel.

Leave it to the federal government to make the prospect of visiting that sunny Caribbean island sound so miserable.

The reason the US so severely restricts and scripts the activities of the few Americans allowed to travel to Cuba is that it believes travel must promote the goal of taking “important steps in reaching the widely shared goal of a Cuba that respects the basic rights of all its citizens.”

Although I have no illusions about the Cuban government – or any government for that matter — it is ironic that the US chose to locate a prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba because the indefinite detention and torture that took place there would have been illegal on US soil. Further, the US government continues to hold more than 100 prisoners there indefinitely even though they have not been found guilty of a crime and in fact dozens are “cleared for release” but not allowed to leave.

Does the administration really believe that the rest of the world is not annoyed by its “do as we say, not as we do” attitude?

We are told by supporters of the Cuba embargo and travel ban that we must take such measures to fight the communists in charge of that country. Americans must be prohibited from traveling to Cuba, they argue, because tourist dollars would only be used to prop up the unelected Castro regime. Ironically, our restrictive travel policies toward Cuba actually mirror the travel policies of the communist countries past and present. Under communist rule in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere it was only the well-connected elites who were allowed to travel overseas – people like Jay-Z and Beyoncé. The average citizen was not permitted the right.

Although the current administration’s slight loosening of the restrictions is a small step in the right direction, it makes no sense to continue this nearly half-century old failed policy. Freedom to travel is a fundamental right. Restricting this fundamental right in the name of human rights is foolish and hypocritical.

by Ron Paul

A common feature of authoritarian regimes is the criminalization of alternatives to government-controlled education. Dictators recognize the danger that free thought poses to their rule, and few things promote the thinking of “unapproved” thoughts like an education controlled by parents instead of the state. That is why the National Socialist (Nazi) government of Germany outlawed homeschooling in 1938.

Sadly, these Nazi-era restrictions on parental rights remain the law in Germany, leaving parents who wish greater control over their children’s education without options. That is why in 2006 Uwe and Hannalore Romeike, a German couple who wanted to homeschool their three children for religious reasons, sought asylum in the United States. Immigration judge Lawrence Burman upheld their application for asylum, recognizing that the freedom of parents to homeschool was a “basic human right.”

Unfortunately, the current US administration does not see it that way, and has announced that it is appealing Judge Burman’s decision. If the administration is successful, the Romeikes could be sent back to Germany where they will be forced to send their children to schools whose teaching violates their religious beliefs. If they refuse, they face huge fines, jail time, or even the loss of custody of their children!

The Administration’s appeal claims that the federal government has the constitutional authority to ban homeschooling in all fifty states. The truth is, the Constitution gives the federal government no power to control any aspect of education. Furthermore, parents who, like the Romeikes, have a religious motivation for homeschooling should be protected by the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

The federal government’s hostility to homeschooling is shared by officials at all levels of government. Despite the movement’s success in legalizing homeschooling in every state, many families are still subjected to harassment by local officials. The harassment ranges from “home visits” by child protective agencies to criminal prosecution for violating truancy laws.

Every American who values liberty should support the homeschoolers’ cause. If the government can usurp parental authority over something as fundamental as the education of their children, there is almost no area of parenthood off limits to government interference.

Homeschooling has proven to be an effective means of education. We are all familiar with the remarkable academic achievements, including in national spelling bees and other competitions, by homeshcooled children. In addition, homeschooled students generally fare better than their public school educated peers on all measures of academic performance.

It makes sense that children do better when their education is controlled by those who know their unique needs best, rather than by a federal bureaucrat. A strong homeschooling movement may also improve other forms of education. If competition improves goods and services in other areas of life, why wouldn’t competition improve education? A large and growing homeschooling movement could inspire public and private schools to innovate and improve.

When the government interferes with a parent’s ability to choose the type of education that is best for their child, it is acting immorally and in manner inconsistent with a free society. A government that infringes on the rights of homeschooling will eventually infringe on the rights of all parents. Homeschooled children are more likely to embrace the philosophy of freedom, and to join the efforts to restore liberty. In fact, I would not be surprised if the future leaders of the liberty movement where homeschooled.

I believe so strongly in the homeschooling movement that I have just announced my own curriculum for homeschooling families. Please visit this revolutionary new project at http://www.ronpaulcurriculum.com.

While the Fed has for several years criticized Congress’ inability to get its fiscal house in order – ignoring its own responsibility in enabling the government’s massive deficits and debt – the Fed is now alarmed about the across-the-board sequestration “cuts.” But the cuts that so worry Bernanke are not even real cuts, as, under sequestration, the Federal budget will still increase by trillions of dollars over the next ten years.

The Fed’s third round of quantitative easing amounts to asset purchases of $85 billion per month, yet the federal government cutting $44 billion* over one fiscal year is considered “restrictive fiscal policy” that might slow economic growth and job creation. One month of Fed money-printing undoes more than a year’s worth of sequestration, yet Chairman Bernanke expects us to believe that “monetary policy cannot offset a fiscal restraint of that magnitude.”

If $44 billion can’t be eliminated without raising alarm, then getting to long-term fiscal stability, as Chairman Bernanke frequently exhorts Congress to do, can never happen.

The Fed, on the one hand, says that the economy needs fiscal stability, while with the other hand it enables profligate government spending. Just since the beginning of the year, the Fed has purchased nearly half of the federal government’s monthly deficits as part of quantitative easing. During QE2, the Fed bought $770 billion of government debt. It has kept interest rates near zero for six years now, giving the government a free ride on the backs of savers and those who have been responsible with their money.

The Fed’s power over the dollar enables the government to keep spending and paying its debts with cheapened, devalued, debased dollars. And the American people suffer the consequences of high prices, distortions in the marketplace, and the aftermath of burst economic bubbles created by easy credit. It’s well past time to return to fiscal and monetary sanity. The Fed and Congress should be ashamed.

*According to the CBO, the sequester only reduces spending by $44 billion this year, with the rest of the reported $85 billion in cuts taking place in future years.

Source

by Ron Paul

Federal spending once again dominated the debate in Washington last week, as House Republicans and Senate Democrats began work on their ten-year budget plans. Contrary to claims, neither party’s budget reduces spending. While the Republican plan increases spending a little less than the Democrat plan, it would still spend $5 trillion in 2023, an almost two trillion dollar increase over this year’s budget.

Of course, these projections of future budgets are meaningless, as a current Congress cannot bind a future one. Therefore, the projected spending for next year is the only part of the budget with any significance. So is there a great gulf between the two parties’ budgets for next year? No. For fiscal year 2014, the Democrat budget proposes spending $3.7 trillion, while the “radical” Republican budget spends $3.5 trillion!

While the two parties bicker over minor differences in spending, the stock market, which many in Washington predicted would crash unless the parties reached a “grand bargain” on taxes and spending, seems unaffected by the various manufactured budget crises. Unfortunately, the market’s indifference to Washington spending games is based on the fallacy that the deficit does not matter as long as the Federal Reserve is willing to monetize the federal debt.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is certainly doing all he can to facilitate deficit spending. The Federal Reserve’s desire to monetize the federal debt is a main reason for the aggressive program of buying federal debt via the continuous quantitative easing. Under Chairman Bernanke, the Federal Reserve is pumping as much as $85 billion a month into the American economy. This out-of-control monetary policy is largely conducted behind closed doors, yet it has much more effect on the do day-to-day lives of Americans than Congress’s phony budget debates. The Federal Reserve’s polices erode the value of the dollar, causing prices to rise, which in turn diminishes people’s standard of living. This inflation tax may be the most hideous tax of all because it is both hidden and regressive.

Of course, the Federal Reserve can only keep this up for so long before doing serious damage to the economy. The Austrian school of economics teaches that the Federal Reserve is responsible for the boom-and-bust cycles that plague modern economies. The Federal Reserve’s aggressive money pumping runs the risk of creating hyperinflation — especially once banks stop hoarding their reserves and began flooding the economy with Fed-created fiat currency.

Even though the economic crisis of 2008 proved the Austrians correct, there are still too many in D.C. and on Wall Street who believe the Keynesian fallacy that government and the Federal Reserve can spend-and-inflate our way to prosperity. But, as is the case with the narcotics addict, the longer the Federal Reserve enables Congress’s habit of deficit spending, the more painful will be the withdrawal when Congress is finally forced to kick the habit.

The role of the Federal Reserve in facilitating deficit spending by the US—and even foreign governments—means it is a mistake to segregate monetary and fiscal policy. Our nation will never get its fiscal house in order until we reform monetary policy. The first step is letting the American people know the real facts about the Federal Reserve’s actions.

The debate over the federal budget and even the battle over the Federal Reserve are ultimately arguments over symptoms rather than the cause. The root of the fiscal crisis is the belief that the federal government is qualified to manage the economy, provide for the people’s needs, and spread democracy throughout the world through either by foreign aid or by force of arms. Neither party in Washington questions the welfare-warfare state.

Until Congress begins debating questions such as whether or not we really need thousands of military facilities around the world, whether or not we should shut down the Education Department and return control to local communities and parents, and whether we should allow young people to completely op-out of the entitlement programs, the so-called debates in Washington, D.C. will continue to amount to nothing but sound and fury, signifying nothing.

by Ron Paul

Last week the US Senate took a break from debating the phony cuts known as “sequestration,” for Senator Rand Paul to hold a 13-hour filibuster to force the Obama administration to state whether it believes the President has the right to kill American citizens with drones on US soil. I find it tragic that there has to be a discussion on an issue that should be so self-evident.

However, feeling the pressure, the administration finally said “no,” but in language so twisted that no one should feel in the slightest bit reassured. According to Attorney General Eric Holder, the president does not believe he has the right to use the military to kill an American who is “not engaged in combat on American soil.” Left undefined is how the administration defines “combat.” As constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley wrote last week, “one can easily foresee this or a future president insisting that an alleged terrorism conspiracy is a form of ‘combat’.”

The administration’s outrageous response to the most serious Constitutional question of all — when a government can kill its own citizens — is clear evidence of an executive branch out of control.

Many of the drafters of the Constitution envisioned the presidency as an office with very limited powers, but even the most dedicated proponents of a strong presidency at the time would be shocked to see the concentration of power in the modern presidency.

Today the presidency is viewed as the center of the federal government, with each successive administration expanding the power of the executive at the expense of Congress and the people.

Ironically, some of the worst offenders are those who campaigned promising to reverse the power grabs of their predecessors. For example, candidate George W. Bush campaigned on a “humble foreign policy,” but as president he attacked Iraq based on his own administration’s lies and claimed the right to indefinitely detain anyone he deemed an “enemy combatant.”

Candidate Barack Obama promised he would reverse his predecessor’s constitutional abuses. Yet not only has President Obama not closed Guantanamo Bay, he reportedly holds weekly meetings in the oval office to draw up “kills lists,” uses drones against American citizens, and routinely sends the US military into combat abroad without even consulting Congress!

The modern use of “executive orders” also usurps the lawmaking function of Congress. The most notable recent example was President Obama’s January series of executive orders on gun control, but unfortunately there are countless other examples over the last several administrations.

Ultimately, the fault for the expansion of presidential power lies with Congress. Too many members of Congress are all too eager to avoid responsibility for controversial actions, preferring to “pass the buck” to the president. For example, Congress no longer declares war, but instead passes an “authorization of force” telling the president he can go to war when or if he wants!

On domestic policy, Congress passes large, vaguely-worded pieces of legislation and leaves it to the president and the bureaucrats to fill in the details. Many members of Congress score points with their constituents railing against “the faceless D.C. bureaucrats” while never mentioning that they voted for the law that gave the bureaucrats their power!

Last week, a group of “fiscally conservative” senators even tried to give President Obama more authority over spending as a part of sequester replacement that would have “required” Obama to decide where to reduce spending and where to increase it. They want to restrain the president by giving him more authority?

Growth of executive power is a threat to liberty. Fortunately, Congress can restrain the executive simply by exercising its constitutional powers. The American people must demand that Congress stop passing the buck on its foreign and domestic policy responsibilities. If the people care about liberty, they will demand their representative stand up to the imperial president. Let us hope last week’s filibuster will give Congress the backbone it needs to do its job.

by Ron Paul

Despite what the media and politicians would have us believe, the United States did not collapse last Friday when the package of spending reductions known as “sequestration” went into effect. The financial markets hardly blinked, as they have come to be more skeptical about these periodic government-hyped “crises.”

What had been portrayed as a drastic reduction in government spending was merely a decrease in the projected rate of increase in government spending over the next decade. Under sequestration, government spending increases by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years rather than $2.5 trillion without it.

So we are speeding toward collapse at only 100 miles per hour instead of 110 miles per hour.

Some in Congress are using the panic over sequestration to justify another surrender of legislative authority to the executive branch. These members want to “pass the buck” on prioritizing federal programs by giving the president, cabinet officials, and high-level bureaucrats authority to set spending priorities. However, it is Congress’s job to set priorities in federal spending.

The drafters of the Constitution give the legislature the authority over spending because they recognized it was a threat to liberty to allow this power to be concentrated in the executive branch. Congress’s willingness to cede more authority to the executive should be opposed by everyone who values liberty and limited government.

Some of the loudest objections to sequestration have come from the champions of the military-industrial complex. Yet under sequestration defense spending will still increase by 18 percent over 10 years as opposed to 20 percent without sequestration.

There are claims that the military will face a one-time real reduction back to 2007 levels of spending, before beginning to climb again next year. That remains to be seen. However, few claimed at the time that 2007 levels of military spending, occurring as they did during the huge post 9/11 build-up, were inadequate.

But despite the fact that the US spends more on military than the rest of the world combined, we are told that even this modest, short-term reduction would be, in the words of outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, “shameful” and “irresponsible.” A return to 1980’s levels of military spending in real dollars – a time of significant military build-up – is considered outrageous even though the US faces no Soviet Union or equivalent threat.

In fact, the entire $1.2 trillion dollars that the sequester is supposed to save could be realized by cutting one unneeded, wasteful boondoggle: the $1.5 trillion F-35 fighter program. The F-35, billed as the next generation all-purpose military fighter and bomber, has been an unmitigated disaster. Its performances in recent tests have been so bad that the Pentagon has been forced to dumb-down the criteria. It is overweight, overpriced, and unwieldy. It is also an anachronism: we no longer face the real prospect of air-to-air combat in this era of 4th generation warfare. The World War II mid-air dogfight era is long over.

As defense analyst Winslow Wheeler wrote last year:

“It’s time for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the U.S. military services, and Congress to face the facts: The F-35 is an unaffordable mediocrity, and the program will not be fixed by any combination of hardware tweaks or cost-control projects. There is only one thing to do with the F-35: Junk it.”

We should not look for cancellation of the F-35 program any time soon, however. The military industrial complex understands the political necessity of spreading its military Keynesianism as widely across Congressional districts as possible.

That is why F-35 manufacturer Lockheed-Martin can boast on its website that “the F-35 provides 127,000 direct and indirect jobs in 47 states and Puerto Rico.” What is unfortunately not understood is that these 127,000 workers would be far better utilized producing needed goods and services rather than treated as a jobs program disguised as national defense.

Despite the alarm over cuts that are not real cuts, it is clear that the US government is not serious at all about changing its ways. In a recent tour of the Middle East, newly-confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the US would be sending another $60 million to the rebels seeking to overthrow the Syrian government – in the midst of the sequester “crisis”!

Despite the rhetoric, there appears no intention on the part of the government to take our fiscal crisis seriously or abandon the idea that we should run the rest of the world.

When John Kerry was confirmed as Secretary of State last week his first promise was to bring “new ideas” to the job. Particularly, he promised a new approach to the two-year long civil war in Syria. He immediately set out on a “listening tour” of Europe and the Middle East, presumably to help formulate those new ideas.

So what was Kerry’s big “new idea” on Syria? Drag the United States further into the conflict by promising to send the rebels an additional $60 million in aid. Only among the Washington foreign policy establishment could a promise to redouble efforts on an old idea be repackaged as a “new idea.” New ideas, old ideas, new approaches, improved approaches – they always seem to be the same thing: calls for more US intervention in conflicts thousands of miles away that have nothing to do with us.

The Kerry plan is to overtly provide more medical and food aid to armed insurgents seeking to overthrow the Syrian government. In directly assisting rebels with material that will help them fight more effectively, the US is signaling its new role as an open participant in the conflict. Can US weapons and troops be too far behind? The administration hopes that none of the aid it provides to US-backed rebels falls into the hands of other groups like the radical Islamist al-Nusra Front, which the US has designated a terrorist group. Yet according to press reports there is little separation on the ground between the various groups. It seems unreasonable to believe that assistance provided to one group will not wind up in the hands of another group.

Both Iraq and Libya have turned out to be far more radical and dangerous after their “liberation” that was supposed to usher in governments friendly to the United States. Does it make any sense to believe that Syria will be any different?

Kerry’s new ideas are actually old ideas, and they have over and over been proven to be bad ideas. Just as President Obama has shown that his foreign policy is more aggressive and warmongering than that of his predecessor, the new more “moderate” secretary of state shows us that he has every intention of furthering the notion that diplomacy flows from the barrel of a gun. Our interventionist foreign policy is bankrupting the country and turning the world against us. It must come to an end.

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by Ron Paul

While I oppose most gun control proposals, there is one group of Americans I do believe should be disarmed: federal agents. The use of force by federal agents to enforce unjust and unconstitutional laws is one of the major, albeit overlooked, threats to liberty. Too often Americans are victimized by government force simply for engaging in commercial transactions disproved of by Congress and the federal bureaucracy.

For example, the offices of Rawesome Foods in Venice, California, have been repeatedly raided by armed federal and state agents, and Rawesome’s founder, 65-year old James Stewart, has been imprisoned. What heinous crime justified this action? Rawesome sold unpasteurized (raw) milk and cheese to willing customers – in a state where raw milk is legal! You cannot even drink milk from a cow without a federal permit!

This is hardly the only case of federal agents using force against those who would dare meet consumer demand for raw milk. In 2011 armed agents of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raided the business of Pennsylvanian Amish farmer Dan Allgyer. Federal agents wasted a whole year and who knows how many millions of our tax dollars posing as customers in order to stop Allgyer from selling his raw milk to willing customers.

The use of force against individuals making choices not approved of by the political elite does not just stop with raw milk. The Natural News website has documented numerous accounts of federal persecution, including armed raids, of health food stores and alternative medical practitioners.

Federal bureaucrats are also using force to crack down on the makers of gold coins for fear that people may use these coins as an alternative to the Federal Reserve’s fiat currency. Bernard von NotHaus, the founder of Liberty Dollars, is currently awaiting sentencing on federal counterfeiting charges — even though Mr. von NotHaus took steps to ensure his coins where not used as “legal tender.”

Yet, the federal government was so concerned over the possibility that Mr. von NotHaus’s customers might use his coins in regular day-to-day commerce they actually labeled Mr. von NotHaus a “terrorist.”

These type of police state tactics used against, among others, raw milk producers, alternative health providers, and gold coin dealers is justified by the paternalistic attitude common in Washington, D.C. A member of Congress actually once told me that, “The people need these types of laws because they do not know what is good for them.” This mindset fuels the growth of the nanny state and inevitably leads to what C.S. Lewis said may be the worst form of tyranny “…a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims.”

All Americans, even if they do not believe it is a wise choice to drink raw milk or use gold coins, should be concerned about the use of force to limit our choices. This is because there is no limiting principle to the idea that the government force is justified if used “for our own good.” Today it is those who sell raw milk who are being victimized by government force, tomorrow it could be those who sell soda pop or Styrofoam cups. Therefore, all Americans should speak out against these injustices.