This post is brought on due to this article, which was linked at LewRockwell.com in the blog, then strangely removed.

The coming evangelical collapse

And this is the author credit,

Michael Spencer is a writer and communicator living and working in a Christian community in Kentucky. He describes himself as “a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality.” This essay is adapted from a series on his blog, InternetMonk.com

Even if you are an atheist, you might want to give the article a read.  If you are a theist, you might want to check out the InternetMonk blog, on a quick perusal, I found it fairly interesting, considering it’s really not my cup of tea.

But back to the title of this post, the bankruptcy of evangelicals, baptists, catholics, protestants, lutherans, whatever is tied directly to the fact that as long as they tolerate a state that steals, and a state that murders, then they are bankrupt in their beliefs.  Anyone who advocates murder is not a libertarian.  That goes for your Eric Dondero Libertarian Republicans as well.  It is not acceptable to take one innocent life in a war (even to harm an innocent or their property), morality and justice does not wither under tests of scale, only weakness of character.

The democratic institutions which have harmed Christians and their values, as much as it has teased them with empowerment, are also to be rejected as being in direct conflict with the values of Jesus and the Kingdom of Heaven.

Any Christian who lectures on any social values, while supporting the corrupt, immoral, and sinful state and it’s lies, violence and theft, has no credibility at all

I’m an atheist, but I was a theist at one time.  All that changed, is that I understand that morality doesn’t have to originate with divine decree.  It can be self-evident, that the rational path, the most productive path, is peaceful, voluntary, free market relations.  The likes of which Jesus of the Bible, advocated through his disciples’ writings.

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Lew posted the Top 10 Podcast link today.

1. $2000 Gold and the Break up of the US: Gerald Celente
2. The Biggest Bubble in the History of the World: Ron Paul
3. America’s Slow-Motion Fascist Coup: Naomi Wolf
4. The Greatest Depression in History: Gerald Celente
5. Thanks for the Inflationary Depression: Peter Schiff
6. How the Government Wrecked the Economy: Peter Schiff
7. The Panic of ’08: Lew Rockwell interviews Ron Paul
8. The Crash of ’08: Lew Rockwell interviews Jim Rogers
9. Stop the Bailout!: Lew Rockwell on the Michael Reagan Show
10. There Is Hope: Ron Paul

My favorite of this lot, is the amazing Naomi Wolf interview.  Perhaps I have listened to too much Ron Paul, Peter Schiff and Gerald Celente (who are all excellent btw), but the Noami Wolf interview was a great gateway to the left, and a really special moment where it turned into a conversation between two intelligent people sharing information and ideas.

Sadly, the left-libertarian doorstops (they have to be good for something) haven’t seemed to have done much to help promote it.

Some of my other favorites include (in no particular order)

28. What is Neoconservatism?

65. A Libertarian in the USSR

32. Intellectual “Property”

13. The Old Right

15. Democracy: The God That Failed

68. Are You an Anarchist?

8. The Scam Called the State

I hope more libertarians blog about and share these around.  They appeal to all sorts of different groups, from anarchists to Reagan republicans, antiwar protestors to wall street observers.

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Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today – but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

If it takes 20 Palestinian “terrorists” to kill an Israeli, does this mean the Palestinians are really bad at terrorism?  I’m the last guy to justify violence by anyone but the math simply does not add up.  7,000+ rockets over 8 years, but only 20 Israeli fatalities.  Contrast that with thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of Israeli force during the same period.

Typically, we assume a single rocket (like a single terrorist/suicide bomber) to be capable of harming or killing more than one person.  To the layman, or someone educated by the western media, 7,000 rockets is synonymous with at least 7,000 deaths.  The facts don’t bear this out.  And when one looks at these pathetic rockets, it’s a wonder they haven’t killed more than 20 some people by what can only be called sheer random chance.

Contrast that with American made bombs.  The per bomb death totals, even the aggregate totals are never revealed.  How many bombs will Israel drop on Gaza? How many people will die?

Obviously, I have sympathies for the Palestinians.  I also have sympathies for Israelis.  There are ways these conflicts can be solved without violence.  But as long as the killing is distorted as justice, such resolutions will never become possible.

One positive outcome of this recent mass slaughter in Gaza, is that the world is re-aligning against dramatic and massive use of military force.  Shock and awe is giving way to shock and horror.

As the global depression deepens, it’s important for those of us who would champion liberty to remind everyone that declining prosperity has definitely come at the expense of military adventurism, empire and conquest for the elites.

Basically, Foreign policy, privacy, national debt and the Federal Reserve. The 4th is the most important point.

Returning recently to the Ron Paul Forums, DailyPaul and Campaign for Liberty sites, I’ve been so disappointed that people were still very focused on electoral politics, and not on the monetary and economic liberty issues. Electoral politics are useless, as long as the system of corruption and theft is not directly attacked, and attacked primarily through the illegal, immoral and unconstitutional Federal Reserve system.

The great thing about this press conference, is that left candidates like McKinney and Nader will carry the FED message back to their supporters, who are probably oblivious to the way that institution works, or how it enables the warfare and corporatist state, while robbing from those dependent on the welfare state, keeping them in a permanent state of poverty and servitude.

This is a huge opportunity, and I hope that the CFL and the individual candidates capitalize on that opportunity to generate a legitimate movement, not just in America, but worldwide, to get rid of inflationary fiat money and central banking.

Any RPers who are reading this, please, please, please I plead of you, it is necessary that you learn how the monetary system works, and precisely why sound, free market money is a must if there is ever going to be a smaller state, and an end to the usurpations of fascist big government.

I will post a follow up with some resources to get people started, in the meanwhile Tom Woods at the CFL seems to be the most knowledgeable person there about the inner workings and history of the Federal Reserve system. Lean on him for knowledge, he’s a great resource to have in the struggle for liberty.

Also, Bob Barr not attending does irritate me. He’s intentionally avoided confronting the monetary system which is why I feel that he is not gaining traction and people are not buying into his campaign.

If Bob wants people to trust him, he will have to take risks, speak truth to power, and attack the state at it’s central nexus. Libertarians are not stupid, and his campaign generates next to zero excitement, because he’s boring, dour and cowardly in his approach.

Bob, you screwed up by missing this press conference. You can make it up by standing up to the FED starting today.

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Google releases their new browser, named Chrome. Someone mentioned that it was difficult to find Chrome related domain names. Not too difficult for me. I scored 4 in 10 minutes.

Also, the release of Chrome is somewhat surprising. I’m not a tech gawker, and admit I had no idea it was coming even though it coincided with Google shutting down it’s CPA referral program (perhaps due to someone I know who had found a way to push massive conversions through it) where it promoted Firefox heavily. After doing so much work to move people to a browser that is now a competitor…

Maybe it was to give Microsoft a kick in the jiggly bits.

What’s fascinating to me is that the internet is evolving so rapidly that browsers are becoming more diverse and more disparate. Chrome is not like other browsers, although only the more technically minded folks will realize how different it really is. There truly is a lot of differentiation in the freest market mankind has ever seen.

FSK lost his job. That sucks. Although I think the drama of his workplace was starting to crush his soul, so maybe it is a good thing that he is now searching for a new mission. I’ve been there. I’ve always been better for the resets in my life, whether I pushed the button or someone else did.

I have 10 drafts, or unpublished, half-written, half-baked posts. With each passing day, I feel less connection to them, and the reasons I started them in the first place. While this holds true of what I thought might be a legendary post about the LRC Podcast, with the lack of podcasts for what feels like a couple weeks now, perhaps it is best that I didn’t get that one done or sink hours into transcribing audio quotes.

I totally abuse commas. So sue me.

I don’t like blogging. Bloggers have always seemed like soapbox self-promoters to me. There are so few who have something worthwhile to say, and many who just want acknowledgment for saying anything. But I have to admit that it is cathartic. And can be reflective.

On the Mises forum, someone asked, “How does an industry benefit from being taxed?”. What proceeded were explanations of the method by which companies benefit from taxation, and the conclusion that taxation functioned similarly to regulation as a barrier to entry.

I was going to add to the discussion and point out that lobbyists and corporations now write legislation, because whether it is tax or regulation, the government is the most efficient way for big business to control and limit competition. There doesn’t seem to be enough disgust with statism and the status quo for me in those discussions. At times, the environment seems very laissez-faire and in direct contradiction to Mises admonition, “tu ne cede malis”. I’m all for laissez-faire, but not when it comes to my oppression.

There are so many charades going on around us. The campaign charades, the legislative charade, the patriotic charades. Yesterday I listened to a few friends talk about Obama and Palin. They both acknowledge the system is a scam, that politicians are parasites and so forth, but are completely enthralled with the cult of personality that surrounds speech making and grandstanding.

“You should watch Bill Maher!” they tell me. Well, no I shouldn’t. I gave up Maher early in my transformation. He’s a cynical bigot whose primary contribution is attacking everything and everyone. The problem is, he does it indiscriminately. Literally, the loose cannon of left-intellectualism.

This guy, Francois Tremblay, does a Market Anarchist Carnival. I thought about signing up for it, but I don’t have a lot of content yet. I don’t know that he would let me run one.

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Doublethink is the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs. It is an integral concept of George Orwell‘s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

War and Peace, turning their backs on one another.

One of my favourite examples of doublethink is

“War is Peace” or, “We have to fight’em over there, so we don’t have to fight’em over here”.

The premise being that only through war abroad can there be peace at home. Or that killing creates safety. Or that murder is a tool to prevent, yep, you guessed it, murder.

FSK addresses some of these on a recent blog post. But he sees them as trolling, not realizing that they are just stupid arguments, made by people who are doublethinking or holding two contradictory opinions simultaneously.

“People are intrinsically evil. Therefore, government is needed.”

This is a favourite of mine, and apparently many liberal progressives! If people are intrinsically evil, and the government is composed of people, then do we need a government of intrinsically evil people, to deal with intrinsically evil people? It’s a good question, isn’t it?

To date, governments have proved to be much more evil, on a much larger scale than individual citizens, or even gangs and groups.

After all, who can mass kidnap (arrest and convict) people and place them in rape rooms (prisons), without actually committing a crime by any popular legal definition?

Who can bomb, maim, draft, shoot, sink, demolish, assassinate and torture, and it’s all legal? Government.

Which brings me to another example FSK posted;

“Without the State, won’t small disputes escalate into war?”

When people say things like this, it really makes me wonder if they understand that the state already escalates disputes into wars. If the state was known for diplomacy, given that there are literally hundreds of states world wide, we would not be coming out of a century of massive suffering and warfare, but an era of unheard of peace!

One last word on doublethink. It’s everywhere. The number of people holding multiple contradictory opinions simultaneously today is off the charts. If you stop to look and listen for them, you will be astounded by the fact that most of what man entertains between his ears is completely irrational.