The truth about TSA scanning

Russell Longcore, writer of DumpDC, recently took a flight from his home city of Atlanta. After noting the efficiency of the TSA scanners there (they added only five minutes to his waiting time), he makes this observation:

[I]f you think that the TSA is doing passenger screening in America for national security reasons, you are crazy. This entire Homeland Security/TSA effort is about controlling the American populace and showing them who is boss. Common sense has been abandoned in favor of political correctness. Passenger “profiling”…is verboten. Yet Israelis do profiling at their airports, and they have not had an incident since 1968.

Failure to profile not only inconveniences and humiliates ordinary Americans, it is a very heavy price to pay for "political correctness." Mr. Longcore continues:

Here is an excerpt from an article at Renful Premier Technologies, a London-based company specializing in airport security training.• "If the operator is unsure about the contents of a bag, pausing the machine to apply image enhancement and/or selecting to hold it, adds seconds or minutes to processing just one passenger out of many hundreds queuing to be checked in. And what if a passenger, intent on martyrdom, is carrying half the weapon on their body? Surely, the only method currently available to prevent that passenger from boarding would be to apply profiling. When Israeli screeners use Profiling to flag a passenger for further scrutiny, a ‘smart call’ is made. This is a well established and consistently applied procedure. A judgment is made on a passenger, based on a variety of factors including: intelligence that may already be known, the passengers body language, ticket details, answers to initial brief questions and other signs which make that passenger stand out. Do the ‘other factors’ include their race, gender, age and ethnic appearance? Yes. Are these screeners trained to apply judgments that are politically sensitive? Absolutely. From the results can one claim this method is necessary? Definitely. Profiling can be used to tighten security for the greater volume of passengers whilst not drastically increasing the cost to airlines and airports. This can only be achieved by focusing resources where they will be of most use; on the select few passengers that may pose a risk." [Emphasis added here and below]

Meanwhile, beginning his return home, he finds the TSA personnel detaining a frail 90-year-old woman in a wheelchair with a full body search! (Mr. Longcore learned the age of the woman from her daughter). He continues:

As I said previously, common sense has been abandoned entirely. When TSA employees accost wheelchair-bound old women and young children, it’s not really about passenger safety. They cannot truly believe that people like these described constitute a potential threat to the aircraft in which they will be flying. This is entirely about the appearance of concern, and the absolute intention to control the American populace.

The only scientific poll I have seen on this subject is that of CBS News (Nov. 15), which asserts that 81% of the American people support the scanning procedures. Only 37% believe that ethnic profiling is justified. While I have seen some vaguely question the way its questions were posed, the poll does meet known standards for scientific polling; and while I would have liked to have seen a larger sample, the one cited is large enough for the ±3% margin of error.

I hope that poll is wrong; because if 81% are really willing to endure that kind of humiliation just to take a plane, we will find ourselves at the end of Hayek's road to serfdom. The way back will be painful and will take generations.

"He who would exchange essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety." (Benjamin Franklin). And be assured, we will soon have neither.

A nude awakening

The Transportation Security Administration security restrictions are so ridiculous that its logic can easily be demolished by a college student. And, as a matter of fact, it has.

Evan DeFilippis, writing for the Oklahoma Daily at the University of Oklahoma, takes a step-by-step methodical approach in presenting the reasons why TSA scanning is both humiliating and unworkable:

• Statistical data show that plane crashes due to terrorism (1 in 25 million) are less likely to occur than crashes due to mechanical failure or pilot error (1 in 9.2 million). Mr. DeFilippis presents an array of other statistics listing causes of accidental death that are far more likely than either.
  
• TSA workers are overworked and underpaid. It is unreasonable to expect that viewing a scanner, that such workers can completely distinguish between good people and bad people in less than five minutes.
• It ignores the psychology of terrorism. Terrorists are proactive. They look for what works. TSA is reactive -- they seek to prevent what has already been done (thus guaranteeing that the same approach will not be attempted again by any terrorist with the intelligence greater than that of a pinhead).

Mr. DeFilippis also makes some pithy comments about the impact TSA has on our liberty:

The inconsistency of our outrage is instructive — it shows that our perceptions of safety and security are not reflective of reality but are instead dictated to us externally by demagogic politicians who have a vested interest in our fear. We are a passive audience trapped in a theatre of the absurd — apparently too absorbed in brilliantly orchestrated drama to realize it’s all just a play...

Security for the sake of security is pointless — I can assure you that the risk of terrorism would be neutralized if airline passengers were required to board planes naked but such a requirement would be so intrusive and humiliating that security would have lost its meaningfulness. There’s no purpose in security if it debases the very life it intends to protect, yet the forced choice one has to make between privacy and travel does just that. If you want to travel, you have a “choice” between low-tech fondling or high-tech pornography; the choice, therefore, to relegate your fundamental rights in exchange for a plane ticket. Not only does this paradigm presume that one’s right to privacy is variable — contingent on the government’s discretion and only respected in places that the government doesn’t care to look — but it also ignores that the fundamental right to travel has consistently been upheld by the Supreme Court. [In support of this point, he cites United States v. Guest (1966)].

And to those who think things could be worse, he makes a fundamental moral point:

Every time we convince ourselves that things “aren’t that bad” and thus not in need of change, we are training ourselves to be complacent in the face of injustice, and we are weakening our capacity to challenge those forces most in need of change. It could always be worse, but that doesn’t mean we should surrender the opportunity to make it better.

However, the point of TSA really isn't to combat terrorism. It is to condition the American people for slavery to an all-powerful federal (and perhaps eventually, world) government. If the American people continue to exchange essential liberties for (the illusion of) a little temporary safety, they will ultimately find that there are no liberties left to exchange.

Man threatened with fine for refusing TSA scan

If you're one of the holdouts who believes that our liberties are not under attack, read this story by Robert J. Hawkins of the San Diego Times-Union.

Saturday night, a 31-year old computer programmer from Oceanside, California, John Tyner, was preparing to take a flight from the San Diego International Airport to South Dakota to go pheasant hunting with his father-in-law. When Mr. Tyner entered the security area, Transportation Security Administration agents directed him to the full-body scanner. He refused the full-body scan, citing health and, uh, exposure concerns about the effects of the scan.

The agents left him with a choice. Either submit to the scan, a groin search (which he also refused), or leave the airport. But there's a catch. If he leaves the airport, he is subject to a lawsuit and an $11,000 fine. Mr. Tyner opted to accept this risk.

However, what probably galled the feds more than anything else was that he taped the entire experience on his cell phone and posted it to his blog two hours later.

Interestingly, there is a poll attached to the article that shows that 53% of the 6,630 people polled at the time of this writing believe that the intrusion and inconvenience of such scanning outweigh the security benefits. The other options were: "security officials should make exceptions for passengers who refuse normal procedures after determining they don't pose a security risk through other means", 27%; and "aviation security is essential and passengers must get used to the new rules", 18%.

I feel sadness for that 18% -- they have already accepted slavery.

Obviously, the TSA agents either do not know about, do not understand, or do not care about the Fourth Amendment -- but then I suppose they consider the Constitution to be a dead letter.

For the record, here is the Fourth Amendment (emphasis added):

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In other words, if we had a Constitution that was being observed, the TSA agents would have had to be able to explain (eventually to the satisfaction of a federal judge) why they believed Mr. Tyner to be a terrorist. I would be very interested in hearing what that explanation is...

TSA agents keep Ron Paul supporter off the plane

You will have to listen to the audio to believe it. Fox News reported on Saturday that a young man was stopped by Transportation Security Administration officials on his way to a Campaign4Liberty meeting. It seems that he was carrying $4,200 on him, and thought the source of the money wasn't any of their business until they cited the law authorizing the question. Fortunately, he carried a high-tech cell phone that can work as audio recorder.

TSA ignored his request and called in the police.

Virtual buckeye to lewrockwell.com .

Imagining freedom

For most of us, this is hard to do, but Lesley Swann at the Tenth Amendment Center paints a clear picture, imagining what Patrick Henry would say if he had to live in our day. Following is an excerpt:

“If you want to control the future, you must strip the next generation’s ability to imagine anything different.” – Ernie Hancock

We Americans have become so conditioned to accept whatever our government throws at us in the name of “safety” that we have completely forgotten what it is to live free and be secure in our persons. Our lives are so filled by surveillance cameras, worries about terrorism, fears about food safety, fears about illegal drugs, and other issues that we have forgotten the basics of our republic’s founding. As Mr. Hancock’s statement points out, if we can no longer imagine what it is to be free, then our future is going to be one where we lose more and more of our freedoms to the surveillance of the nanny state. Patrick Henry didn’t give his impassioned speech demanding “give me safety, or give me death.” He was prepared to give up safety and in fact his very life when he said:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

What would Patrick Henry say if he had to go through airport security today? I imagine some TSA agents and all Americans present would get a very fiery and passionate earful about allowing the freedoms that he and the rest of our Founders fought so hard to gift us to waste away. Just as we imagine Patrick Henry giving TSA agents a tongue lashing, we also have to start imagining the world in which we want to live just as Mr. Hancock pointed out. This is not easy, as quite frankly, it’s a world in which most people alive today have never lived. It was a world in which our Founders had never lived either, but they dared to imagine a different world and worked to bring their imagining to reality. Thanks to them, that world existed here once, and it can again. Like our Founders, we must imagine that world and work to make it happen at all levels of government – federal, state, and local.

I will be helping this along with my book, Governing Ourselves (preview), which I hope to get published this summer.

Which will it be: martial law or independence?

Scott Lazarowitz at the Bastiat Institute recounts the warnings of many writers to date that the U.S. Government is headed toward a police state:

We are unfortunately experiencing the culmination of the “perfect storm” for totalitarianism in America. The buildup of decades of state-worshipping indoctrination in our schools to the point of developing a prevalent police state mentality is not helpful to liberty, to say the least.

In this day and age of TSA porn Nazis and molestation sickos, which is a federal government policy run amok now at America’s airports, and which is a policy primarily to empower agents of the State to remind us mere subjects of the State’s supreme superiority, the real (albeit unstated) reason for any martial law will not be to “protect the public,” but to further empower the State. The real purpose of martial law would be to stifle political dissent and for the federal State to remind the sheeple who’s the boss, just like the TSA is doing.

So what are the alternatives?

Now, one solution to prevent a police state with martial law would be to undo the federal economic and monetary policies that have led the U.S. to the point of possible economic collapse...

But will that happen any time soon? Nope. We can’t rely on the same nincompoops and scoundrels in Washington who are committing these acts against our liberty to actually reverse themselves. As Perry Como would say, “It’s just impossible.”

A much more practical solution would be for the people of the states to nullify all federal laws and policies, police state dictates and mandates, a “de facto secession,” as Congressman Ron Paul had described. And not just any federal martial law that might be imposed, and ObamaCare, but especially the banking and legal tender laws that restrict competition in money and banking, and allow for competing currencies in the states and a return to the Gold Standard. (And don’t forget the important recognition of the individual’s right to bear arms.)

The people of the states have a right to nullify federal laws that violate their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, period. And they also have a right to fully secede from the “Union” as well. No one has a right to force someone else to be a part of an association against one’s will. The federal government has no moral right and no legal authority to force the people of any state to be a part of a “Union,” in which that union’s government is destructive of their liberty, prosperity and security. [Emphasis added.]

If we can save the Union by successfully implementing nullification resolutions and passing the "Repeal Amendment," this would be the most desirable solution to the problem. But if we can't, we must be prepared to break up. An individual has much more influence over Ohio's government than he has that of the United States -- and to the same extent our state government is more accountable.

NULLIFY full-body scanning!

Following up on yesterday's post:

The new Ohio General Assembly has an opportunity to spare our citizens the indignity of the TSA full-body scanners. Pass an act declaring that the full-body scanner is illegal in Ohio, and that any TSA agent who uses one (or anyone who attempts to install a new one) in an Ohio airport will be subject to arrest by the county sheriff and prosecution in the Ohio courts.

While one may reasonably argue that civil aviation is appropriately a federal responsibility by citing its right to regulate interstate commerce (U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8)*, the federal government is not responsible for passenger safety on the airlines. The airlines themselves have invested billions of dollars in aircraft, personnel training, and infrastructure. In most other businesses, security is the responsibility of the company. Why should airlines get a free ride and allow government to interfere with its operations in this way?

As I pointed out yesterday, full-body scans and groin checks are (in more ways than one) a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment. If security were left to the airlines, they would find techniques that are convenient and protect the dignity of their passengers -- otherwise, they will lose business to their competition.

What about the terrorists in our midst? The airlines and their insurance companies don't want their planes destroyed. No one wants the lawsuits that would follow from a terrorist attack. The airlines have the knowledge and the resources to come up with better solutions.

But the feds could do one thing that would eliminate the threat entirely. Get out of the Middle East and Afghanistan. Completely. I will explain how this enhances our national security in a future post.

So, newly-elected Ohio legislators, are you up to the challenge?


* Readers who object to my citations of the Constitution in the face of my recent "the Constitution is dead" arguments (here and here) are reminded that, under the rule of law, the Constitution remains the "supreme law of the land" until that unhappy day when it is repealed. The question we must ask ourselves when we face a violation is, do we live under the rule of law or the rule of men? Or stated more bluntly, will we live in freedom or in tyranny?

Inspired by a post by Andy Myers in Facebook, and by Sirius/XM radio commentator Mike Church.

On revolution

The Ohio Republic has repeatedly written on the possibility of revolution. I have thought for some time that a revolution is in the air in this country; even though I think Glenn Beck’s assertion that it has already begun is premature. However, given the rate at which the degradation of our liberties is taking place, as evidenced by the TSA scanners, the Food Safety Act, and (possibly) the proposed rules on “Net neutrality,” I can see the revolution beginning in 2011, instead of 2012 as I had originally thought.

Every revolution is unique, and each affects its society in a unique way. Each is the explosion that follows when pressure builds up beyond the ability of a society’s institutions to contain it. Since the pressure builds up gradually, it is impossible to predict when the explosion will take place – but those who are watching can see the pressure building, and know that one is imminent.

How a revolution ends depends on whether the instigators prevail, as they did in Russia in 1917; and how prepared they are to govern, as the French were not in 1792. It also depends on how the people react to the revolution. Do we surrender to what appears to be an unstoppable force, or do we try to stop the revolution, as the French did in 1968? History shows that revolutions hardly ever end in exactly the way the instigators expect. Hegel’s dialectic is true, albeit not in the way Karl Marx anticipated: the thesis (revolution) is always met by an antithesis (reaction), resulting in a synthesis (society following the revolution). If revolutions do not always end as expected, its ideas (or its scars) will nevertheless continue to influence the society.

Glenn Beck is correct on this point: revolutions begin by creating chaos. No one (including Mr. Beck, if he is honest with himself) can know right now whether his particular recipe is accurate. His theory is that the revolution will involve a bottom-up approach (by union thugs and “progressive” activists on the street), coupled with a top-down one (by officials in the Obama Administration and rich and influential people like George Soros). There certainly is evidence that the radical left will try to pin the chaos on tea party activists and “right-wing extremists.”

We may not be able to avert a revolution, but we can prevent the left from imposing its dictatorship of the proletariat on our country. The left has an Achilles heel: its intellectual arrogance. Every statement they publish, every plan they make, reeks of contempt for the intelligence of the American people and their willingness to act. They think that we will fall for every trap they lay, that we will immerse ourselves in football and Desperate Housewives on the tube until it is too late. They think that those of us who do resist, will do so violently. After all, what other reason can there be for asserting our right to bear arms? The rest of us, they think, will engage in a feckless quest to use our corrupted institutions to reverse decades of policies that they have developed in preparation for this day. The key to stopping the left, then, is to act in ways they do not anticipate.

However, to act in ways they do not anticipate, we need to develop some new ways of thinking. Once the revolution begins, the United States of America-as-we-know-it will cease to exist. Not may, will. All of us who treasure our history and our institutions will experience the stages of grief: denial, anger, loss and, acceptance.

In the war of ideas, the Eastern Establishment must be countered by a libertarian intelligentsia; which, fortunately we do have. We have the Mises and Cato Institutes, Walter Williams, and Chuck Baldwin. In Ohio, we have the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law and the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions. Ohio has another asset, not evident in very many other states: a cohesive liberty movement. That movement made a mistake in this election by trusting too much in the Republican Party; but it will soon realize that it was a mistake. In our state history, we have protected civil liberties much more effectively than most other states. The reason for this has been the fidelity of our courts to the Bill of Rights in our 159-year-old Ohio Constitution. Obviously, we’re not perfect (as Manna Storehouse and the Constitution Day kerfuffle in Andover attest), but we can be proud of our overall record.

With one exception, we have everything we need to protect our freedom. We have the brains, the movement, and the laws behind us. What we need, and this does not come naturally to Ohioans, is the willingness to use them in creative ways.

In revolutionary times, we must think of ourselves as Ohioans first and Americans second. While the nation remains in some semblance of domestic peace, we must continue to use our existing institutions to resist tyranny; for example, by using our new Republican General Assembly and Governor to nullify unconstitutional federal laws in Ohio. We must uphold the rule of law as long as we can.

But when that peace ends, the rule of law at the federal level will go with it. In preparation for that day, we have three very high priorities: we need to strengthen our organized state militia to augment the National Guard to protect us from externally-generated violence; we need to establish a mechanism for using silver in everyday transactions (honest money); and we need for all of us to start thinking, buying, and as practicable, manufacturing locally. And we need to start on all three priorities now. As I wrote earlier, we cannot predict the day the revolution will begin, but we can sense that it will begin very soon. It could be today – it could be a year from now; but we need to prepare now.

In so doing, we will do one of two things, both protecting our liberties. If the rest of the United States proves to be of the same mind as we are, we will all defeat the “progressives” and save the union. Otherwise, we will be prepared to declare and sustain our independence.

We the sheeple of the United States...

Mike Adams at Natural News reports of a study conducted in the early 1960s, known as the Milgram experiments, which shows that 70% of people will administer painful, even lethal, electrical shocks if told to do so by a researcher. Now this is psychological research, and no one was really harmed. The "shocks" were signals given to an actor to feign pain. The researchers used psychological tricks like warning the subjects that they would ruin the project or do serious harm to the individual if the shocks were not administered as ordered.

The study was replicated in 2008 at the University of California at Santa Clara ... with the same results.

Mr. Adams writes:

For many years, psychologists speculated the original studies must have somehow been flawed. Humans beings couldn't be so cruel and gullible, could they? But now this repeating of the study immediately clobbers any debate on the subject and forces us all to confront the terrible reality: Most human beings of all ages, races, religions, cultural upbringings and professions will actively torture, harm and even kill fellow human beings if ordered to do so. [Emphasis in the original]

Why is this important to understand? Because it explains the sheeple effect that's so dominant in society today. Why do consumers obey apparent authorities so blindly? Why do they do what they're told even when it goes against all common sense and their own ethics?

According to Mr. Adams, we were all raised to be mind slaves:

Think about it: From the very first day you go to kindergarten, you're punished for getting out of line (literally), talking out of place, expressing your own ideas or refusing to follow commands. This psychological brow-beating goes on for thirteen years, and it's enforced by most parents, counselors and other authority figures.

And in most universities, the browbeating continues through the college and graduate school years. Very few of us are really taught to think for ourselves.

He cites a common example of this kind of conditioning, done at Costco and Sam's Club:

[P]eople just wait at the exit for some lame worker to check their receipt and mark it with a pen. People actually line up like cattle even after they paid for their stuff! I just walk out the door with the stuff I paid for, utterly ignoring the silly "receipt checkers" who keep screaming "Sir! Sir! Sir!" What I've learned is that after three or four screams, they just shut up and go back to the line of sheeple. Just slap on a pair of headphones, crank up your iPod and walk right out of the store, folks. Why are you giving up your Constitutional rights and submitting yourself to illegal search and seizure for a cart full of stuff you just paid for? [Emphasis added]

This explains the conundrum faced by libertarians. We want our people to be free, but only 30% of us know that we are not -- and even among that 30%, only about 3% of the population is motivated to do anything about it. Even intelligent people (or myself for that matter) sometimes get caught acting like one of the "sheeple." In everyday situations like the Costco one, it is probably harmless; but we need to heighten our awareness, so that we do not let ourselves be lulled into more harmful invasions of our rights, like the TSA scanners and police ID checks. 

The women's liberation movement realized that the first step to success was to raise the consciousness of the population to how women were being discriminated against. Libertarians need to do the same thing with the general population. I hope this post has been a small contribution in that direction.

Virtual buckeye to The Liberty Voice.

Update Dec. 7: Here is a concurring opinion from Bruce E. Levine at AlterNet. He cites eight reasons why young Americans are not fighting the system. I will refer you to the article to read the details, but here is the list:

1. Fear they cannot repay their student loan debt
2. Misuse of psychiatry and drugs to quell non-compliant behavior
3. Schools that educate for compliance and not democracy
4. "No Child Left Behind," a federal program that bases aid on test scores, which forces teachers to teach to the test, and not helping the child learn how to think for himself
5. Confusing the difference between education and schooling. Young people are taught that disliking school is the same thing as disliking learning.
6. Normalization of surveillance -- beginning at home as parents monitor their children's computers and social networking pages.
7. Television -- for sixty years, the opiate of the people
8. Fundamentalist religion and "fundamentalist consumerism," which destroy self-reliance and foster self-absorption.

The case for Ohio independence: consider the Feds' track record

This by Russell D. Longcore, who writes the secessionist website DumpDC.com, via LewRockwell.com. Reprinted in full because I couldn't decide where to cut it, except for a little redundancy.

If you can’t think of reasons that state secession is a better solution for liberty than working within "the system," consider the record of the Federal Government of the United States.

Sure, you can ultimately lay the blame on all of us, since we are the ones who allow the atrocities of Washington to continue. But for now, let’s look at Washington’s record of achievement over the last 150 years.

War of Northern Aggression – 1860s: The North wages war on a confederation of seceding states who left lawfully. Over 600,000 men died on both sides.

Reconstruction: 1860s–1870s. The North plunders the South...

Spanish-American War – 1898: "Remember the Maine?" A complete lie told by newspaperman WR Hearst, bought by the public and Washington to go to war.

Federal Reserve: established in 1913. For 96 years, it has mismanaged the economy and counterfeited currency.

IRS and the Income Tax (16th Amendment): 1913. What starts out as a small tax becomes a leviathan. What starts out as a small division of the Treasury becomes the most feared weapon of Washington.

World War 1: 1914–1918. 117,000 dead Americans, 205,000 wounded. The US had no business in a European family war but President Wilson had other ideas.

Depression I: 1929–1940s. The Federal Reserve caused it.
New Deal: 1933–1936. FDR’s massive government jobs program, plundering the wealth of the USA. Fascism by another name.

World War II: 1941–1945. Another European war, we had no dog in this fight. FDR baited the Japs into attacking Pearl Harbor, giving him political cover.

Cold War: The US and the USSR escalate preparations for war to new heights, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons.

Korean War: 1950–1953. 36,000 Americans dead, 96,000 wounded.

Viet Nam: 1950–1975. 58,000 dead Americans, 303,000 wounded.

Creation of three letter agencies: HEW, HHS, CIA, FDA, FCC, DOA, DOD, EPA, and the list goes on...

New Cabinet bureaucracies: Energy, Education, Homeland Security, etc.

Grenada invasion: 1983. 19 Americans dead, 116 wounded.

Panamanian invasion 1989: 23 Americans dead, maybe 3,000 civilians killed.

Bosnian War: 1992–1995: US sends troops under UN flag, millions of civilians made refugees.

Gulf War: 1999. President George HW Bush commits a massive force to Kuwait. 379 Americans die, 776 wounded in a 100-hour war.

Iraq: 2003–present. About 5,000 Americans dead, over 35,000 wounded (that they’ll admit to). That doesn’t count casualties of our mercenaries...I mean contractors.

Afghanistan/Pakistan: 2001–present. About 1,000 Americans dead, over 4,500 wounded. That doesn’t count casualties of our mercenaries...I mean contractors.

TSA: 2001–present. Domestic airline travel done "the government way."

Let’s not forget...
Counterfeiting, bailouts, nationalization and massive inflation: Just another way that Washington says "you belong to me."

Regulation of every facet of human life: Try to think of a second of your life that is not regulated in some way by Washington. Quick answer: that second does not exist.

Two-party political system: two sides of the same coin, both Washington cheerleaders and sycophants. Both want to spend unconstitutional money. Out of control military, bases in 130 nations.

Here is the point to this litany of tyranny. The government of the United States of America has screwed up the entire planet through their actions over the last 150 years. The events of currency collapse and inflation in our not-too-distant future will reverberate throughout every nation on earth.

States of the United States that choose to secede will certainly be affected by the implosion of the Washington government. But, could any new nation ever match the "Hall of Shame" listed above?

New American nations, formed from the seceding United States, would be little pinpoints of light and liberty. If their only guiding principle was to not make the same mistakes that the US government made over the last 150 years, they would be destined for success.

How could they fail?