Are You Feeling Like Bob?

"There are two potential violators of man's rights: the criminals and the government. The great achievement of the United States was to draw a distinction between these two — by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the activities of the first." -- From Ayn Rand's 1963 essay titled "Man's Rights" in The Virtue of Selfishness. There are those attracted to less government and there are those attracted to big government. Fortunately, the fathers of the United States Constitution believed in limited government and maximum individual liberty. Unfortunately, degeneration of human values is accelerating, and it is a huge attraction for psychopaths. Psychopaths are non-producers, so they live on the production and substance of producers of wealth. The psychopaths who inhabit the D.C. cesspool under the mantle of "public servant" covet power above all else and to them the U.S. Constitution — which they swore an oath to defend — is a meaningless and antiquated document. What does this mean? It means that you are on one side and the government and its politicians and bureaucrats are on the other. They don't want you to know this or they would lose control. Many remain under the delusion that the criminal class in Washington, D.C., hasn't crossed the line Rand described to achieve its own nefarious ends. But that delusion should be dispelled once and for if you read about police power in my recent letter. "Law enforcement" is part of the system that helps thoroughly enforce the power mongers' manipulation of your mind. They convince you to obey, against your best interest, from cradle to grave. They convince you to eat foods and take vaccinations that will kill you and your children. They create wars of human sacrifice under benevolent terms like patriotism. They set up a secret Gestapo and call it the "National Security Agency." And then they pass unconstitutional laws like the USA PATRIOT Act (and subsequent extensions) and the National Defense Authorization Act, which grants the president the authority to indefinitely detain American citizens and suspends habeas corpus. These laws with their friendly-sounding names are just some of the artifices of deception present in almost everything you read and hear.  The men in political power, under any party name, keep themselves and their buddies in power to keep mass corruption covered up. The same bureaucrats are always in charge so as to keep a tight lid on in order to prevent exposure. Does it matter that Orrin Hatch retires? Not if outsourcer-in-chief Mitt Romney takes his place. Two establishment CINO (conservatives in name only) peas in a pod. Does it matter if Al Franken has left the Senate? No, since he was replaced with another globaloney-progressive, Tina Smith, the campaign-whisperer to every gun-grabbing, anything-goes, moral relativist who has run for office from the Democratic Party in Minnesota since Walter Mondale’s son ran for governor in 1998. And if she flames out over the next 10 months, maybe their next senator will be the new mayor of St. Paul, who thinks the National Anthem is an "Ode to Slavery." Whoever the replacement senators and representatives will be in 2018, they will be looking for power and prestige. They become addicted to it. Otherwise, why wouldn't Senator John McCain retire from the senate to fight his brain cancer? Instead, he stays on. There's nothing heroic about his addiction to the spotlight senators are in. McCain is just another of the power seekers, to whom the most attractive government is some form of collectivism. It can be given any name — "maverick" politics a-la McCain, "compassionate" conservatism of George Bush, progressive politics, the European model — but it is all collectivism. Collectivism attracts hard-wired psychopaths who use the system for cronyism and their aggrandizement. They care not one whit about constitutional government and the rule of law. They only care about a political smokescreen to hide their chicanery. Collectivism is ideal for government expansion at the expense of the people. Who expanded government more than supposed conservative George Bush? And now we have the bloated Department of Homeland Security to "enforce" everything from immigration to airline security, both of which have succeeded at their goal. Not to enforce immigration law or ensure airline security, but to control what Americans do, where they go and how they go. I do not agree with Ayn Rand in that the only moral goal of man is happiness. But I do agree that each man should be a producer who lives by his own effort and does not give or receive the undeserved. This is the opposite of the elected criminal class in D.C. The elites in the District of Criminals and the money power behind them are so far removed from the people over whom they lord and/or whom they employ, that they may as well be on a distant planet in another solar system. All the thoughts they think and all the things they do are designed to draw more power and more wealth into their control. Americans have been pushed and pushed until they are near the brink. Much of the blame for their anger falls on a government that is out of touch with middle America and tone deaf to its pleas. Trump listened and promised to help, and he is now president. Hillary promised to take things away from people "for their own good," and she lost the election. As the smarmy journalist class loves to say, "This is not rocket science." Most Americans see Congresses past and present inserting fingers into every aspect of daily life: whether it's surveillance cameras on residential streets or how long you can live on a boat, whether you can have a couch on your porch or sit on the sidewalk in public or how much art you have to put in your new building (all laws in various states), to bureaucrats arbitrarily deciding which services you need to be "certified" to provide, or how one can use his own property, or the government deciding what type of health insurance you mustbuy. Americans who have been awakened to all this, readers like yourself, are tired of the policing in their living rooms, tired of the rules, tired of the theft. They also realize that money is the key to elections, and perhaps this is why Federal Election Commission filings reviewed by The Wall Street Journal found the Democratic National Committee had only $6.3 million in the bank on Dec. 1, while the  Republican National Committee had $40 million. To date there have been very few lawmakers on either side who I would recommend voting for. But voters seem to be betting, regardless of the Roy Moore loss in Alabama, that there's a better chance for more freedom through electing conservative candidates than liberal ones. Is this an election year during which their bets pay off? Yours for the truth, Bob Livingston Editor, The Bob Livingston Letter™