Darren Wolfe's Open Salon Blog

How To Be a Crook (video)

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:04:37 -0400

Ever wanted to rob your fellow man? Learn the different methods you can use... and learn who is using them on YOU right now.

Larken Rose strikes again!

Brandywine Peace Community's Good Friday Protest at Lockheed

Sat, 7 Apr 2012 10:04:08 -0400

Highlights of the Brandywine Peace Community's Good Friday Protest and Civil Disobedience at Lockheed Martin in King of Prussia, PA

http://www.brandywinepeace.com/

Come Home America at Nullify Now! Philadelphia

Sun, 1 Apr 2012 17:04:28 -0400

Darren Wolfe with Come Home America speaks at Nullify Now! Philadelphia on march 31, 2012. He spoke about peace activism, the tenth Amendment Center's Defend the Guard legislation, and the upcoming End the Fed rally.

James Madison’s Warning: The Enemies to Public Liberty

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 19:11:21 -0500

It’s Veteran’s Day once again. A time to reflect on the fact that if I’d known years ago what I know now I wouldn’t have joined the US Army. Back then I too thought I was doing my part for freedom. “We’ve got to stop the communists,” they said. Now Jihadists supposedly threaten us. These poor people living so far away aren’t the threat to our liberties. The real threat, the US government, resides here among us. Despite the fact that many in our military think they’re defending freedom by fighting they are in fact doing the opposite. Let’s look at Madison’s words on this subject.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

The fighting may be overseas but the many effects of the war are felt at home too. It brings out the worst in the government and the people.

War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

It’s bad enough that the economy is in shambles under the crushing weight of the government’s spending, taxes, and debt. The fact that these three things give the government control of the economy and, therefore, blunt the people’s ability to oppose their evil is even worse. Liberty is lost as the government grows and it grows most during war.

In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people.

Wartime propaganda whipping people into a state of fear leaves them often unable to see the truth behind the government’s power grabs. The meek acceptance of income tax withholding, the Transportation Security Administration’s groping, the Orwellian USA PATRIOT Act’s destruction of the Constitution’s protections, and the turning of the press into the government’s propaganda arm all occurred during war.

…the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war...and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

During the twenty-first century the US has been at war virtually one hundred percent of the time. The cold hearted morality of war becomes ever more entrenched in the people. “Solutions” imposed by force are the norm while voluntary ones are shunned. Civil society shrinks.

All veterans and active duty military I ask you to take another look at what you’re doing or have done. Fighting the wars that enable the government’s repression is not serving the cause of liberty. You serve or served an empire, the antithesis of it. Stop being an enemy of public liberty. Put down your weapons and take up the cause of peace, this is the only way to start to resurrect our long lost liberties.

Patrick Henry's Warning: The Tax-gatherers on the Rampage

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:10:52 -0400

This excerpt is from Patrick Henry's greatest speech, "Shall Liberty or Empire Be Sought?" where he argued against adoption of the Constitution:

In this scheme of energetic government, the people will find two sets of tax-gatherersâ€Š—â€Šthe state and the federal sheriffs. This, it seems to me, will produce such dreadful oppression as the people cannot possibly bear. The federal sheriff may commit what oppression, make what distresses, he pleases, and ruin you with impunity; for how are you to tie his hands? Have you any sufficiently decided means of preventing him from sucking your blood by speculations, commissions, and fees? Thus thousands of your people will be most shamefully robbed: our state sheriffs, those unfeeling blood-suckers, have, under the watchful eye of our legislature, committed the most horrid and barbarous ravages on our people. It has required the most constant vigilance of the legislature to keep them from totally ruining the people; a repeated succession of laws has been made to suppress their iniquitous speculations and cruel extortions; and as often has their nefarious ingenuity devised methods of evading the force of those laws: in the struggle they have generally triumphed over the legislature.

It is a fact that lands have been sold for five shillings, which were worth one hundred pounds: if sheriffs, thus immediately under the eye of our state legislature and judiciary, have dared to commit these outrages, what would they not have done if their masters had been at Philadelphia or New York? If they perpetrate the most unwarrantable outrage on your person or property, you cannot get redress on this side of Philadelphia or New York; and how can you get it there? If your domestic avocations could permit you to go thither, there you must appeal to judges sworn to support this Constitution, in opposition to that of any state, and who may also be inclined to favor their own officers. When these harpies are aided by excisemen, who may search, at any time, your houses, and most secret recesses, will the people bear it? If you think so, you differ from me. Where I thought there was a possibility of such mischiefs, I would grant power with a niggardly hand; and here there is a strong probability that these oppressions shall actually happen. I may be told that it is safe to err on that side, because such regulations may be made by Congress as shall restrain these officers, and because laws are made by our representatives, and judged by righteous judges: but, sir, as these regulations may be made, so they may not; and many reasons there are to induce a belief that they will not. I shall therefore be an infidel on that point till the day of my death.

Absolutely prophetic, Patrick Henry knew what a strong national government would do. It is past time for this to end.