Jesus lived in a police state

Posted on 2017-12-25 by TPOL Nathan

by Nathan Barton

Although I do not believe in celebrating Christmas as a religious holiday, I hope you will not mind me sharing the comments by John W Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute.  I’ve added a few notes to it. The links should work, to document John’s statements. My thanks to John and everyone at the Rutherford Institute for allowing The Price of Liberty to reprint the entire column, with my comments.

Jesus was born in a police state

“Jesus is too much for us. The church’s later treatment of the gospels is one long effort to rescue Jesus from ‘extremism.’”—author Gary Wills, What Jesus Meant

The Christmas narrative of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable, where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus.

Unfortunately, Jesus was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state1. When he grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say—things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings. Continue reading →

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Dealing with the 21st century police state

Posted on 2017-12-23 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton
The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) recently sent an email, describing a really bad situation they are trying to help. Here is an edited version of what they published. (With comments by Mama Liberty and me.):

For most moms, a knock at the door while homeschooling is merely an annoyance—but for Holly Curry and her family, that knock became a nightmare.

The day before, on the way to taking her kids to karate lessons, Holly had stopped at a local café to pick up some muffins for the kids. She left her kids in the locked van. The fan was running, it was a cool spring day, and she wasn’t gone for more than five minutes.

But five minutes and a few muffins was all it took to change her family’s life forever. Continue reading →

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My Perfect Christmas

Posted on 2017-12-21 by MamaLiberty

By MamaLiberty

1950 was a hard year. My father died and my mother was left with two small children. She was a “housewife” and had no particular marketable skills. She also didn’t have any family who could help her much. She was a recovering alcoholic and suffered from severe depression. Not a pretty picture.

This, of course, was long before the social workers, welfare, food stamps, WIC, or any of the alphabet soup government offices and “programs.” All she had was her faith in God and her children, the few friends who stood with her, and the understanding that it was her responsibility to raise her children and get on with life the best she could.

So, the winter of 1950 found us all staying with a friend’s family in a small Southern California desert town. Not the rich and beautiful part, but the dirt road, snowed in, wood stove outback of the Morongo Valley. There was no telephone or reliable transportation. Continue reading →

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Arrogance and evil

Posted on 2017-12-21 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

The new TrumpTax now seems a done deal, but on Tuesday the 19th of December, it was a bizarre sort of public spectacle as the House and Senate debated it, voted on it, traded back and forth, and played their usual parliamentary games.

Not the least of the bizarre behavior was in Congress, but in the realm of “celebrity-land” and featured a certain “Rosy O’Donnell” of television fame. As reported by The Blaze, she used Twitter to publicly offer 2 million FRNs (dollars) to both Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine, to vote against the tax bill.

As a number of people pointed out, what she did was a federal crime. Although she later tried to make it into a joke or an offer to donate to their favorite charity, nothing similar to that defense has worked with situations where someone makes a joke about a bomb on an airliner or about assassinating the president. Rosie O’Donnell IS A CRIMINAL – no matter if unindicted or without an actual court conviction. Continue reading →

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A merry Christmas, indeed … and an example of liberty

Posted on 2017-12-20 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Fortunately, the Christmas season always brings stories of good things that people do for each other, and here are a couple.

On Sunday the 17th of December, when Atlanta Airport had a massive power outage that shut the place down and left thousands of stranded travelers (apparently thanks to government ineptitude: no surprise, eh?), a highly-vilified group stepped in to help, as reported by KSAT San Antonio.

Chick Fil A, known (and condemned) for its strong stand on not being open for business on Sundays and its opposition to homosexuality and same-sex “marriage,” supplied thousands of chicken sandwiches to feed stranded travelers. The food was given and delivered, at no charge to either the airport, the city (or other government) or the stranded travelers. The company’s owners and employees understand their priorities, voluntarily giving up a day to worship and have family time to help people, even at considerable personal cost.

A second event in Dallas Texas, also involved giving and sharing, despite the condemnation of government. City government in Dallas, Texas, was supposedly responding to public worries and to protect the public safety by making it illegal to feed the homeless in the large Texas city. They passed a law in December 2014 to ban such give-aways. Since the law was passed, police have conducted numerous raids to shut down “illegal” food distribution. Continue reading →

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It’s a battle, not the war (FISA Sec 702)

Posted on 2017-12-19 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute addresses a serious situation we face in the next two weeks in his recent commentary via Laissez Faire). Here is the heart of his analysis:

As it now stands, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—the legal basis for two of the National Security Agency’s largest mass surveillance programs, “PRISM” and “Upstream”—is set to expire at the end of 2017.

“PRISM” lets the NSA access emails, video chats, instant messages, and other content sent via Facebook, Google, Apple and others. “Upstream” lets the NSA worm its way into the internet backbone—the cables and switches owned by private corporations like AT&T that make the internet into a global network—and scan traffic for the communications of tens of thousands of individuals labeled “targets.”

Section 702 has been used as an end-run around the Constitution to allow the government to collect the actual content of Americans’ emails, phone calls, text messages and other electronic communication without a warrant.

Under Section 702, the government collects and analyzes over 250 million internet communications every year. There are estimates that at least half of these contain information about U.S. residents, many of whom have done nothing wrong. [As if doing something “wrong” is a reason, without being tried and convicted, to steal away our God-given rights.] This information is then shared with law enforcement and “routinely used for purposes unrelated to national security.” Continue reading →

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At last – a return to sanity?

Posted on 2017-12-17 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

It appears, as I write on Thursday afternoon, that the FCC has killed “net neutrality” – two years after the hideous abomination was put into effect by the Obummer regime acting on behalf of George Soros and a cabal of Tranzis trying to turn the internet into a government monopoly, like a “public utility.”

Laissez Faire Books has a great article on it, and a neat logo.

But just because net neutrality is dead does NOT mean that government control of the internet, and government attempts to prevent innovation and better, faster, larger ways to communicate will come to an end.  Not in the United States, and not in the world.  (Oh, by the way, the world has NOT come to an end just because the FCC repealed this piece of garbage.  Nor will it end if the courts uphold this decision to roll back a tiny little piece of the regulatory state. And we’ll see if the “Resistance” really riots over this or not.)

But government WILL continue to try and gain (and regain) control over communications.  This is a never-ending battle: freedom of the press (real freedom, not license to lie and propagandize), privacy of the mails, open freedom to publish and print and broadcast and just plain write will continue to be attacked by the minions and beneficiaries of government power – and those people too stupid or too compromised to understand and resist the people who so desperately want to control us – and everyone else.  And who WANT to be controlled. Continue reading →

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Sharing quotes about our biggest headache

Posted on 2017-12-16 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Having just visited with a number of friends, business associates, and clients on their current challenges, it was appropriate that I received a neat collection of quotes from a relative. Many of their challenges have to do WITH government or are a problem BECAUSE of government. (My thoughts are in parentheses after the quote and author.)

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a government. John Adams (So, we clearly have at least 543 excess people in DC (535 in Congress, 2 in the White House, 9 in the SCOTUS, minus John Adams’ three.)

If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. Mark Twain (And mind you, he wrote this BEFORE radio and television! Even before talkies!)

No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. Mark Twain (1866) (Notice it was not just Congress – but ANY legislature: from the town’s common council and the county board of commissioners to the statehouse and on to DC.) Continue reading →

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Free speech? In DC? Ha!

Posted on 2017-12-15 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton
The METRO (the subway and bus/train system which serves the District of Columbia and nearby areas of Northern Virginia and Maryland) has a ban on political and religious advertising on its buses, trains, etc. It is commonly called the “Geller Ban” because Pamela Geller and her advertising was the original reason for the “outrage” which prompted the ban.

Here is one of the original ads banned – after all “Free Speech” is political, and the Prophet of Islam is religious AND political:

Continue reading →

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Mind Your Business – We Are One

Posted on 2017-12-14 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

The following pictures are of the very first coin authorized by the Continental Congress, in 1776.  It is called the Fugio coin.  (The Continental Congress was known then as the Congress of the Confederation, and officially “the United States in Congress Assembled.” More on that, later.)

Much like the modern (and now defunct) Liberty coin, it did not have a value on it.  It is called a dollar (back when a dollar was worth a whole lot), apparently when it was minted in silver.  It was the same size as the common and popular Spanish (or Austrian) “thaler” or dollar.  But if it was made out of copper, it was apparently worth some smaller amount (perhaps 1/8 dollar, or 12.5 cents – the original “bit” as in “eight bits” to the Spanish thaler or dollar), and out of brass, worth perhaps a single cent or penny (equal to the British penny of the day). Continue reading →

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