LAWFUEL – The Legal Newswire – The Ron Paul campaign has the establishment running scared, writes LewRockwell.com.
For the latest proof, witness the addition to the race of yet another pro-war neocon – Alan Keyes.
Many people find it unsettling to ask questions about the reality of democracy, especially when the answers may contradict the bromides drummed into them for years in their government school civics classes.
But let’s leave aside fundamental questions about the legitimacy of democracy for another day – even though such inquiries are extremely important. For now, let’s assume that democracy in principle is the panacea it’s supposed to be, and examine how it works in the United States in practice.
This may be discomforting for some to consider, but elections are mostly scams perpetrated by the ruling elite to con average, unsophisticated people into thinking that they control the government. This is best evidenced by the farcical presidential elections held every four years, where the establishment fields two interchangeable candidates as your “choice.”
It’s not necessarily that vote counts are being rigged (although such fraud undoubtedly occurs in some cases); it’s that, regardless of who receives the most votes, the government is re-elected. Whether the voters chose interchangeable Socialist-Fascist Candidate A or B is mostly irrelevant.
Going back over the last generation, what was the urgent difference between George W. Bush and John Kerry, George W. Bush and Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, or George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis?
In reconsidering these races, don’t look back on them in terms of relatively trivial distractions like gay marriage, stem cell research or medical marijuana; think in terms of fundamental questions about the legitimacy and nature of the state:
For example, by what right does the state presume to tax your income at any level? Are you still a free person when you have a portion of your income confiscated as the price of making a living? If you believe you are still free now, at what level of (arbitrarily determined – but, of course, not by you) confiscation would you no longer consider yourself to be free?
By what right does the state presume to steal another 15% of your income, supposedly on the assumption that you’re too inept to save for your own retirement?
