Why are politicians always in trouble with the law?
SNIPJust unbelievable those that can't stay out of trouble themselves want to run for office and tell the rest of us how to live.
Entirely believeable. One just needs the rest of the picture.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident..." That all men are created equal. Endowed with unalienable rights. Among these unalienable rights are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. (Not all powers, only the "just" powers.)
Hunt up John Locke's
Second Treatise on Government (1689?) on-line. Skim through it. It is the source of Jefferson's ideas from the Declaration of Independence given above. You'll even see one or two places where Jefferson wrote it practically word for word.
Then hunt up Lysander Spooner's
No Treason (1870?) on-line. About 2/3's of the way into the essay you will see where Spooner makes the example that it is wrong for a man to point a gun in your face and demand money. And, the wrongness does not go away just because Mssr's A, B, and C deputize Mr. D to make the threat and demand on their behalf (election).
Thus we find government's legitimate scope is very narrow indeed. Protecting rights from criminals. Yet, we find that government that steps even a tiny bit beyond this scope becomes criminal (A, B, and C deputizing D).
And, there you have it. Criminals in government.
Add government's power and emoluments (pay and benefits from office), and you something
very attractive to criminals or the criminally-minded.
[Of course, I am defining criminal much more broadly than just a rapist, robber, burglar, or fraudster. If we only define criminals that way, we miss the much larger pool of criminals (government) who exceed the legitimate purpose of government by acting as agents for Mssrs. A, B, and C.]
Thus, we get all sorts of unbelieveable contradictions:
Eric Holder not prosecuting the Black Panther voter-intimidators after the '08 election.
The Clinton State Department promoting freedom of journalism on practically the same day she is calling for Julian Assange's head.
Ben Bernanke telling us he needs to buy $600B in Treasury Bonds to break the recession and put people back to work, without telling us he necessarily means the US must go $600B further in debt, and that he is going to devalue the dollar by $600B by printing $600B more out of thin air. And, that somehow all of this is going to put people back to work when $1.2T in deficit spending, and all the bank bailouts ($700B?) in '08 and '09 didn't solve the economic crisis. Oh, since the Federal Reserve is a private banking cartel, how does criminals-in-government fit into this picture? The Treasury (government) sells those bonds to the Federal Reserve. Bonds are just loan documents promising to pay interest and principal. The government takes the loan, offering the bonds as written promises to pay. Guess who gets to pay? Right. You. In the form of taxes. Just a complex game of Mssrs A, B, and C, deputizing Mr D to point both an economic gun and a real gun in your face.
I'll stop there with examples of contradictions.
As soon as we shift the ideas about criminals and about government, suddenly it becomes not only believeable but predictable and expected.
