No Hillary, Donald et al, The President's First Job is Not to Keep Americans Safe

The Democratic debate on Saturday proved one thing: powerful interests that transcend the political parties have an agenda. That's the only explanation for the talking point mindlessly repeated by virtually all of the presidential candidates in both parties: "It is the first job of the president to keep Americans safe."

Maybe it's a slogan that's been thrown around in Council on Foreign Relations meetings or some other gathering of the wonderful people who make all the decisions for us rubes. But wherever it came from, it was certainly no coincidence Americans heard it from virtually every candidate, Democrat or Republican, during the past two debates. It would have been only slightly spookier if they heaped effusive praise on Raymond Shaw.

More important than it being creepy and patronizing is that it's completely wrong. The first job of the president is not to keep Americans safe. It is to defend their liberty.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post...

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

There is nothing new about the neoconservatives

Robert Eno of Conservative Review named Rand Paul the “standout of the night” after the December 15 Republican Presidential Debate on CNN. Eno laments that the mainstream media, including “conservative media pundits,” will proclaim Rubio the winner. Eno implies these pundits aren’t true conservatives, referring to a species of unicorn sought by millions of self-identified conservative voters.

Rand Paul himself has called out Rubio and other proponents of the U.S. military empire as failing to adhere to authentic conservative principles. The self-named “neoconservatives,” we’re told, are really progressives in Republican clothing, failing to promote the true conservative principles of small government, free markets and a noninterventionist foreign policy.

Rand is right about nonintervention, but he’s wrong about conservatism. There is nothing new about the neoconservatives. The essence of conservativism itself is belief in the need for an all-powerful government that regulates every area of life domestically and dominates every other nation in the world. This has been the conservative worldview for thousands of years. It has never changed.

Conservatives see the world as Thomas Hobbes did. Human nature is so depraved that the government must be powerful enough to “keep them in awe.” Like other enlightenment philosophers, Hobbes saw the relationship of nations to one another as virtually identical to the relationship between individual people. They are all in a de facto state of war unless one nation dominates the rest.

This explains the otherwise puzzling compulsion by generations of U.S. politicians to interfere in the affairs of destitute Third World countries thousands of miles away. Just as individual liberty within society is a threat to the commonwealth, self-determination by any individual nation is a threat to the world order. The “domino theory” offered as justification for the Korean and Viet Nam Wars was firmly rooted in Hobbesian conservatism. So was the British Empire.

Many conservatives would object and point to Edmund Burke or Russell Kirk as representing the true tenets of conservatism. There’s only one problem: Burke and Kirk agree with Hobbes on just about everything.

Read the rest at TomMullen.net...

Edward Snowden Is Still a Hero, Regardless of ISIS, San Bernardino and Paris

It's official. The terrorists are winning. They have achieved the one and only goal of terrorism itself: to achieve a political outcome based on the "terror" caused by highly publicized attacks on civilians.

Just days after Dagen McDowell of Fox Business blamed the San Bernardino shooting on Edward Snowden and the USA Freedom Act, Joe Scarborough called for "post-Edward Snowden legislation that stops this person-to-person encrypted messaging" on Morning Joe. He also said, "We're going to have to give the CIA powers to interrogate these terrorists to see where the next attack's going to come from."

As the CIA has always had the power to interrogate anyone it wishes to, this can only be code for "torture." Lest this be written off as the ravings of MSNBC's token Republican, his Democratic guest agreed wholeheartedly. Scarborough had either the audacity or the cluelessness (it's always hard to tell) to end the segment by riffing on a Bush/Cheney mantra, saying: "The world changed after Paris."

Anything both Fox and MSNBC are trumpeting in unison can reasonably be assumed to be completely wrong.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post...

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

Press Release: Tom Mullen destroys conventional wisdom on American politics with new title

Contact: Tom Mullen (tom@tommullen.net)

Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness Part One available November 27, 2015

Buffalo N.Y. - Author and columnist Tom Mullen reveals the truth about the American conservative and liberal movements and their incompatibility with the American Creed – the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

Contrary to conventional wisdom that Republican politicians who expand government are “RINOS” or that totalitarian Democrats aren’t “true liberals,” Mullen proves conservatism is an inherently big government philosophy, liberalism is antithetical to inalienable rights and neither inspired the founding fathers.

With in-depth analysis of seminal political thinkers, including Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke and Marx, Mullen exposes the true nature of conservatism and liberalism, proving both in their purest forms are poison to American liberty.

About the author

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America. His work has appeared in The Washington Times, The Huffington Post, Rare and numerous other publications. Tom holds a B.A. in English from Canisius College and an M.A. in English from Buffalo State College. Tom is also a singer/songwriter with several CD releases, both as a solo musician and with his band, The Skeptics. He resides with his family in Western New York. More information can be found on his website at www.tommullen.net.