What Is Propaganda?

As I briefly mentioned in my "about me" introduction, I am a professing Austrian Libertarian. The Austrian label defines my view of economics and the Libertarian label defines my political persuasion.

Briefly, the Austrian school of economics believes in government-free business and government-free money. Whenever a government becomes the sole producer of the currency of the realm, the country suffers from drastic misallocations of capital or bubbles and we all know what happens to bubbles…they pop.

Libertarians believe that the smaller the government, the better, because as we have repeatedly seen through history, governments are notoriously bad and doing anything except spending money. Need proof, just look at the postal service. Have they ever reported a profit or even that they broke even? Not a chance. Look at the war on drugs. In case you are not aware of it, we have lost that war in a decisive way. War on terror? We're losing that one too.

Besides a very small government, Libertarians believe in a policy of zero aggression. That means that no human being or group of human beings (read government agency) has the right to initiate force against another human being, nor to threaten or delegate its initiation. If you have a minute, think about all the ways that our government initiates force against others both here and abroad. War in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, war in Croatia, and war in Somalia. Oh sure, they told us they were doing good, humanitarian work, protecting us and all, but the simple fact is, they lied to us. They have no proof that any of these countries were ever any threat to us.

Then take a look around you. They can take your property, your possessions, and your money. By force if necessary, and not pay you a dime. All they have to do is decide that you are a threat to them and they don't even need proof.

Unfortunately, I am a product of the public school system in this country. I have been dealing with that all of my adult life. The public school system is another area in which the government has failed miserably. I was in elementary school during the 60's and we learned that the Russians used something called propaganda to keep their citizens under control and to keep them in the dark about what was going on in the rest of the world. As children, we learned that this was a terrible thing and only a communist form of government would do such a thing to their own citizens.

Since then, I have had to relearn that fact and while the communists in Russia did keep the truth from their citizens, it is not only communists that do it. In fact, right here in this country our own government does the same thing only on a much grander scale. Don't believe me? Let me ask you this…read this comment below and tell me how many times you've seen or heard this story in our mainstream news outlets.

Published in

The American Conservative
by intelligence analyst Philip Giraldi:

"The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing - that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack - but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections."

Not a one right?

I know; what does this have to do with economics? Well, a lot of things actually, but the one that hits close to home is the economic devastation of a nuclear war. Oh yes, most of you will survive the initial nuclear war. It is not mutually assured mass destruction, as the powers that be would have you believe. (More propaganda.) The hard part will be surviving after the war with our infrastructure and our economy in shambles. And oh, by the way, the government that we have come to depend on for everything in our lives will be fatally crippled as well so you will literally be on your own.

So why doesn't this story make the mainstream media? Because the government has a lot more control over the media than most of us realize and who wants to spook the sheep (that's us) and cause more problems? For this reason, over 25% of the population now gets their news from the Internet. It takes a little more work but it is the only way that you can get all the facts about a particular story and sometimes you can only get the story via the Internet because it will never appear in your local paper.