Don’t Participate in the Power Ritual

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8:32... and also chiseled into the marble entrance of the CIA Central Intellegience Agency... how's that for irony!

Most of what you believe about your government is a lie, an elaborate illusion to keep you ignorant of the truth. To the extent to which you buy their lies and the propaganda of the major media you are deluding yourself. "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

So, citizen, are you going to take the blue pill or the red pill ? As Morpheus said, "all I offer is the truth and nothing more".

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies.... They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and the name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void and ineffective for any purpose since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it; an unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed... An unconstitutional law is void. (16 Am. Jur. 2d, Sec. 178)

“Nationalism does nothing but teach you to hate people you never met, and to take pride in accomplishments you had no part in.” Doug Stanhope

There's a fine line between the American dream and the American nightmare. Don Henley

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. - Ayn Rand

Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important. ~ T. S. Eliot

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism when hate for people other than your own comes first. Charles De Gaulle

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable. - H. L. Mencken

debators

... the power of the modern State depends on factional animosity. As Randolph Bourne said, “War is the health of the State.” And that includes the “orderly and procedural” civil war of mutual plunder that characterizes modern democracy. That kind of war too is the health of the State.

By giving its subjects access to the mechanism of “legal plunder” and coercion, the democratic State stimulates and gives free reign to their cupidity and cowardice toward each other. They huddle into “herds” (factions, interest groups, political parties, etc) in order to gain the strength in numbers and unity of purpose necessary to plunder and persecute by proxy, and to defend against like treatment at the hands of enemy herds.