From the mouth of the only nationally recognized politician in the United States of America who is willing to speak the unvarnished truth. The single one who is willing to violate the mafia-like oath of Omerta to which every successful big-time U.S. pol since Dwight Eisenhower has either submitted or been ostracized and non-personed by the Permanent Government Media Complex.
Or worse.
Bet on it.
Read on for more.
“[The shutdown] is less of an event than everyone’s claiming it to be,” he said. “The closedown doesn’t close down people who want stuff, it didn’t close down [the National Security Agency] and all the other things the government may be doing to us. The government marches on.”
[He] believes President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law, which forces Americans to buy private health insurance, is “an outrage” that the U.S. Supreme Court should have declared unconstitutional, but he doubts Republican leaders truly believe in individual choice, the purported cause of the current impasse.
“Republicans are supposedly on the side of cutting and watching that we don’t get too much government intrusion in medical care, but when they were in charge they increased the size and scope of government intervention in medical care,” he said, “so I don’t think they’re sincere about it.”
Political leaders, [he] predicted, “will fuss and fume all for political gain – it’s all political gamesmanship.”
“How did the Democrats get away with this idea of, ‘No, we’re not going to conference’ and then blame the Republicans for being extremists when they won’t even go to conference? That gets pretty tiring to tell you the truth.”
He’s been watching news coverage on the TV, and he says he “can imagine why the average American citizen is pretty tired of it all.”
“The shutdown is actually a distraction from the debate that I think they should be having,” [he] said. He’s particularly upset by domestic and foreign U.S. policies, and says Federal Reserve policy and deficit spending should have taken precedence in the current government-funding debate.
“Republicans and Democrats are basically in agreement with authoritarianism…they believe that one way or another you have to be an authoritarian, to tell you how to spend your money [and] both of them tell you how to run your personal life. And they’re both very excited about telling every country what to do, and giving them money if they behave or bombing them if they don’t.”
—snip—
“…’the wave of the future’ is a coalition of anti-authoritarian progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress opposed to domestic surveillance, opposed to starting new wars and in favor of ending the so-called War on Drugs.”
“The so-called shutdown is more of a political event,” he said, “The government doesn’t really shut down, they do the symbolic things: you can’t go up in the Washington Monument, you can’t visit the White House and you can’t go in the parks.”
—snip—
…he doesn’t believe Obama “technically” has the authority to alter the start dates of either the employer or individual insurance mandates, “but I don’t think that has stopped him from starting wars without permission,” he said.
Yup.
So who is this truth-teller?
Lemme see…
Barack Obama?
Please.
John McCain?
C’mon.
Ted Cruz?
Get real.
Hillary Clinton?
John Boehner?
Harry Reid?
Nancy Pelosi?
Joe Biden?
Not a chance.
Rand Paul?
Nope.
Aw hell…I won’t torture you any more.
It’s…
James Madison
Revisited.
From the prophet James Madison:
“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
“The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.”
“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.”
“All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.”
“Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.”
“The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.”
“Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
“A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”
“Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.”
Of course…it isn’t James Madison speaking in the initial quotes that I posted. But it’s what he would be saying if he was here.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
