“It is in war that the State really comes into its own; swelling in power, in number, in pride, in the absolute dominion over the economy and the society” Murray Rothbard

I’m sure that I have probably authored a blog post with the same title as this one at some point in the past. Its is a recurring thought of mine. There were a couple of news stories this week that really brought the point home again.

The first was Dan Coates, Trump’s director of national intelligence, asking Congress to reauthorize the NSA’s surveillance of all of our emails, texts, phone calls, etc. because our government needs to know what we all say and what we all think so that it can properly protect us. What is so maddening is that the State institutes mass surveillance of Americans with laws with such inspiring titles as the Patriot Act and the Freedom Act. It is incredibly ironic that the president whose campaign was spied on using FISA warrants obtained with false information supplied by his opponent’s campaign would participate in the continuing mass surveillance of American citizens.

The second was the news that although the US is negotiating peace in Afghanistan, 8,600 soldiers will remain there. What? Isn’t 18 years of war enough. The neocons in the Trump administration view anytime an American soldier comes home as a loss. It is so insane. Afghanistan is just a little smaller than Texas at 251,000 square miles. Do the math and that is one American soldier per 29 square miles. Isn’t it time to leave Afghanistan to the Afghans?

It is important to remember that like every empire before it, the American empire will one day (probably soon) come to an end, especially with $22.5 trillion in national debt and deficits of more than $1 trillion as far as the eye can see. Wikipedia has a great graphic of the rise of the Roman Republic which became the Roman Empire and then descended into nothing. The same fate awaits America unless its citizens shake off their slumber and take actions to restore their unalienable rights which the State has taken from them.