There is no one date that can be identified as to when Rome fell and the Dark Ages began.  Alaric and the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 and Geiseric and the Vandals sacked it in 455, but it wasn’t until hundreds of years later that the Gauls, ruled by the conquering Franks,  realized that they were no longer speaking Latin but rather a new language derived from Latin.  Eastern Rome or Constantinople did not fall to Sultan Mehmed and the Ottomans until 1455.  Whatever date you choose to assign, there was a period of several hundred years during late antiquity when literacy rates were lower than previously, population had been decimated because of a series of plagues between the sixth and eighth centuries and few records were kept.  I would argue that this decline was necessary for the rebirth of European civilization that occurred in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and in Europe’s most backward quarter at the time, Great Britain, from the 1500s to 1800s.

Compared to the period from 1776 to 1971, we have entered into an  incipient dark age.  The dark age is not necessarily identifiable through declines in literacy, although recent studies announced in the newspapers  indicate that students’ achievement has been in the decline.  Nor do I predict the outbreak of plagues, although there have been such predictions.  Rather, excessive monetary creation and the new money’s transfer to Wall Street and real estate interests have slowed wage growth and innovation. We are in a dark age compared to where we would have been without the Federal Reserve Bank , the current monetary system and income taxes.

In other words, the Federal Reserve Bank’s control of the money supply has displaced technological and market innovation with financial  and real estate speculation and government.   Until Richard M. Nixon finally abolished the  gold standard in 1971 the real hourly wage grew at 2% per year.  Since then, the real hourly wage has not grown at all.  The difference between the wage profiles with compounded 2% annual growth and 0% annual growth over 40 years is around 100%.   American workers today are earning  1/2 of what they would have been earning had the gold standard been in place and savings and investment  resources allocated efficiently.

No one can know what the economy would have looked like in the absence of the Fed and the income tax, but there is no question that there would have been considerably more rapid and more extensive rates of innovation, just as there had been in the late 19th and early 20th centuries before the Fed was established.  There would be less opportunity to work in low-paying retail jobs and less stock market appreciation.  But there would have been opportunities to work in technologies that are unknown to us and unknowable because the individuals who would have otherwise invented the technologies became stock traders or lawyers instead of inventors.  Likely there would be cures to diseases that are today unknown, methods of transportation that are unknown and conveniences that are unknown.  Compared to where we would have been without the Fed, we are living in a dark age.

The Dark Ages perpetuated the Roman class system, replacing Roman Emperors, Senators and Equestrians with barbarian tribal chieftains like Clovis as kings and various feudal titles like earl, duke and count.  In the American case, the Fed creates a three-class system: those with early access to Fed reserves, to include the banking system, the military-industrial complex, Wall Street and government;  a middle class that mostly works in the military-industrial complex  with some access to Fed reserves; and a lumpen proletariat without much access, about a third of the population.   The three-class system replaces the egalitarian democracy of laissez faire capitalism, which was characterized by fast paced competition and more fluid class structures than today.

The new dark age is perpetuated by the creation of gilds or interest groups that resist change.  Public employee unions demand the privileges to which they have become accustomed, as do their “betters” on Wall Street.  The lowest extreme of the lumpen proletariat is content with section 8 housing, welfare and Medicaid, and the right not to work.

The new system is not yet so stable as the manorial and feudalist system of the earlier Dark Ages.  The trifurcation of society will see stagnant living standards that may eventually decline.   Medical innovation and then the standards of health care will be reduced, along with declines in the quality of diet, resulting in stagnant or perhaps increasing rates of mortality.

America’s state-controlled media will attribute stagnation and decline  to capitalism or to foreigners.  They will protect the aristocrats of Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and government at all costs.

It remains unclear whether American wages will continue along the current stagnant path of the past 40 years or will begin to decline as the nation’s economy becomes less important on the global scene.  In order to regain a growth position (in real wages) there will need to be considerable upheaval in the American economy.  It seems most likely  that the wealth transfers to Wall Street, the military industrial complex and government will not abate unless there is an overt crisis.

Yesterday, the Board of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Virginia voiced its support of SB 66, a bill which prohibits different types of discrimination in public employment — including discrimination against same-sex attracted workers. The bill defines “sexual orientation” as a person’s actual or perceived heterosexuality, bisexuality, homosexuality, or gender identity or expression.

Several Virginia RLC members have been vocal on the issue, including David Lampo, who penned an op-ed in The Richmond-Times Dispatch, and RLCVA Board member Rick Sincere, who spoke at a press conference organized by Equality Virginia on the bill’s passage.

Said Lampo in his op-ed, “… Republicans could lose it all again if we let our party go back to the culture wars and religious extremism that some in our party seem to relish. Not only must we resist the divisive urges of the more extreme elements of our party; we need to restore the image of our party to one of social tolerance and support for individual liberty, two of the important values it was built on.”

He continued, “One of the ways to do this is to implement a policy of employment nondiscrimination for all government employees, including gays and lesbians. Virginia currently has no statute establishing a statewide policy against discrimination in employment for any public employees.”

Rick Sincere, a longtime RLC member, spoke on the issue:

The RLC received press hits in the Washington Post, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Fredricksburg Free-Lance Star. Governor Bob McDonnell has stated repeatedly that he opposes discrimination in state employment, including discrimination based on sexual orientation — affirming the RLC’s position on the issue.

A Republican Liberty Caucus-endorsed candidate for House of Delegates in Virginia was endorsed by The Washington Post last week.

Eric Brescia, who is running in a longtime Democrat stronghold in Arlington, Virginia, impressed The Post. Brescia, who is young, articulate, and has strong libertarian leanings, has run a campaign that may well fit his far-left district during an economic crisis due in part to overspending: his campaign emphasized policies that are socially tolerant and fiscally conservative.

The Post said, “[Brescia] is exactly what the Republicans need in Northern Virginia: an independent-minded thinker who has fresh and specific ideas for how to save money in health care and make government work better.”

Brescia is running for an open seat and will face Democrat and Green Party opponents. He spoke to Republican Liberty Caucus members in August at a Republican Liberty Caucus of Northern Virginia meeting.

Notably, the entire campaign platform, media relations, and grassroots effort was organized almost entirely by Republican Liberty Caucus members.

In addition to traditional conservative positions on economics, Brescia has also bucked the party line by supporting civil liberties, equal treatment for gays and lesbians, and fair treatment of immigrants — positions he shares with many RLC members.

Prominent right-wing blogger (and apparent closet Bircher) Eric Odom has decided to spend a lot of his time covering the controversial special election for New York’s 23rd Congressional District, in which liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava has received the backing of the GOP establishment, and her Conservative Party opponent Doug Hoffman has attracted the support of a lot of the more outspoken pundits on the right and a number of religiously extreme anti-liberty groups like Eagle Forum.

In his latest article Odom makes the peculiar observation:

The race represents a clear message being sent to the RNC. And the message is simple… the liberty movement is not going to tolerate liberal Republicans anymore.

Now, I’m not sure who appointed Odom the spokesman for the liberty movement, but he seems to have forgotten that an essential component of that movement is, oddly enough, support for liberty. In all its forms. Not just the economic liberty of lower taxes, but also the other liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and granted to all people under natural law; liberties like freedom of association, of religion, of speech and of privacy.

I don’t know all that much about Doug Hoffman’s politics. He manages to avoid mentioning most of the tough issues on his website. But I can guess what some of them are by his list of endorsements, which includes a number of groups which can only be considered strongly anti-liberty and even among the greatest enemies of liberty on the political right.

Eagle Forum is certainly the worst of the lot. This group of bigoted biddies is headed up by Phyllis Schlafly. They are in favor of war, torture, abstinence and creationism. They are strongly anti-gay, not only opposing gay marriage, but also actively homophobic and supportive of gay reeducation programs. They’re also against gambling, divorce, pornography, immigration, birth-control, marijuana and vaccines. In my opinion no candidate endorsed by Eagle Forum could ever be considered a “liberty” candidate. Eagle Forum would basically like to turn the country into a totalitarian theocracy. Any candidate who loves liberty should publicly reject their endorsement.

Some of the other groups endorsing Hoffman are nearly as bad: GING-PAC is an extreme religious right group which promotes “family values” and “biblical government” which seems pretty ominous. The National Organization for Marriage is an anti-gay group claiming to be “the preeminent organization dedicated to preventing the legalization of same-sex marriage,” which makes them strongly anti-liberty. Many of the other groups endorsing him are pro-life groups; in itself not a problem, but many of them also promote a religious agenda which includes opposition to gay rights and birth control, and even support for school prayer.

Now, I’m by no means a fan of Dede Scozzafava, but she does at least have a reasonable record on many issues of individual liberty. She’s too supportive of unions and too tied into the New York leftist establishment, but she is relatively fiscally conservative, in favor of gun rights and for cutting taxes. I would never pick Scozzafava as a candidate or encourage a group I was part of to endorse her. But that said, she’s still less anti-liberty than Hoffman is. If his endorsements represent his views, Hoffman is actively opposed to a great many of our basic liberties, while Scozzafava is just another opportunistic moderate-to-liberal Republican who will vote with other Republicans more often than most Democrats will, and certainly more than any Democrat far enough to the left to get elected in her district.

There are some Republicans who claim to be part of or even speak for the “liberty movement” within the party who are not really part of it. They’re just religious fanatics and single-issue social conservatives who pay lip service to the idea of smaller government and want to cash in on the momentum they see growing. Their dirty secret is that they oppose Scozzafava not because of her level of commitment to liberty, but because she’s pro-choice and pro-gay. Nothing else matters to them. They are one of the groups which got us in the mess the GOP is in today, as bad as the neocons and big-business Republicans. They’re statists on too many issues and that makes them enemies of liberty.   They must not be allowed to hijack the liberty movement and drive the party in the wrong direction.

The truth is that liberal Republicans still have more in common with the liberty movement than Democrats or even most socially conservative Republicans, and while that doesn’t mean you should support an uninspiring candidate like Scozzafava, don’t let anyone get away with a big lie like claiming that a candidate like Doug Hoffman, who is endorsed and funded by Eagle Forum and other groups of bigots, extremists and theocrats, is in any way a candidate who supports liberty.

Hoffman may be a conservative, but he’s not a liberty conservative. He’s just another statist who wants to use the power of government to dictate how people live.  He’s not that different from Scozzafava, he’s just bad in different ways.  Don’t waste your time and effort on this pointless contest between two bad choices.  Spend your money and enthusiasm to support the many Republican candidates in other campaigns who are authentic advocates for individual liberty, free enterprise and limited government.

In the past year or two John McCain has been painted as a moderate. Likewise, Bill O’Reilly claims to be a moderate.  The same is true of the Democratic Party newspapers and magazines.  I claim the opposite.  McCain, Obama, O’Reilly and the old-fashioned, Democratic media are extremists. We of the RLC are moderates.

Liberty Republicans need to make the  message clear:  we are the moderates. The people in power are extremists.

Extremists like Obama and McCain claim that ever increasing scope and power of the state; taxes that escalate past fifty percent of  earnings; increasing government regulation that cripples progress; and massive subsidization of the ultra wealthy through the Federal Reserve Bank and the Bush-Obama bailout are moderate. But their policies are extreme by any measure.

Libertarians occupy the middle ground. We are for progress, but not for authoritarian state control. We are for liberty, but not for special privileges for the very wealthy.

Much of the reason that pro-freedom moderates have been forced to cede ground to socialist extremists of both parties is that we have allowed them to claim a “middle ground” between, on the one hand, right wing extremism represented by what they call “fascism” and left wing extremism.  Libertarians know that the extreme left and the extreme right are identical.  Hitler’s national socialism is no different from Stalin’s socialism in one country, as John Lukacs has pointed out.  The very notion of “right” and “left” is inappropriate to the American experience. The debate in America is between moderate advocates of freedom and advocates of centralization and tyranny.

The mainstream of American history has reflected a moderate majority that advocates freedom and reduced scope of government.  American history, beginning with Alexander Hamilton, has also included extremists who advocated socialist ideas such as the Federal Reserve Bank (in Hamilton’s day the Bank of the United States) and government ownership  of business (which Hamilton did recommend with respect to manufacturing. Hamilton was the first Rockefeller Republican.)

It is a bitter, tragic tale.  By the late 19th century the extremists learned from the Roman Emperors, who in Augustus’s time provided bread and circus to the Roman proletarians.  Later, Septimius Severus increased benefits to the Roman army and civil service.  By providing bread and circus to the proletarians and increasing military pay, the Emperor and his wealthy clients could retain power.

The Democrats, following the 16th century kings like Henry VIII (see Bertrand de Jouvenal’s On Power for the history of how this pattern continued into the middle ages) arrived at a realization that their Roman strategy could work in America:  1. Call subsidization of banking a “new deal.” 2.  Create a transfer payment system that defers costs inter-generationally. 3. Claim that the radical, large-scale system (very similar to Mussolini’s fascism) is “moderate” and that anyone who opposes it is “reactionary”, using the media to this end.   The system worked well for fifty years.

Control of the media was essential to painting libertarian moderates as “reactionaries”. By 1912, when Senator Robert Marion La Follette, a presidential candidate, said in a speech to the magazine industry that Wall Street’s control of the magazine industry  had continued the process of decline of a free press  in America, the New York Times the next day, in early February 1912, claimed that La Follette had suffered a nervous breakdown, ending his hopes for a presidential bid.

Today, the evolution of technology has an unforeseen effect that works in the favor of pro-freedom moderates.  The fringe extremists who have seized control of the American power structure find it difficult to suppress the World Wide Web.  Thus, we have an important new opportunity. Let us use it to reclaim the center!

Mitchell Langbert blogs at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com.

Today I read that Honolulu, Hawai’i is considering jailing bus customers who are deemed ‘too smelly’.

That’s right: stinky bus riders would be penalized financially up to $500 or go to jail for up to six months.

Not surprisingly, the American Civil Liberties Union says it is “concerned with laws that are inherently vague, which opens the door to discriminatory enforcement based on an officer’s individual prejudices.”

Okay, true enough.

But the overarching problem with this type of law — despite being difficult to enforce — is that it restricts the freedom to live one’s own life and make one’s own choices based on a moral judgment declaration issued by the state: Thou Must Shower Daily and Wear Deodorant! Furthermore, it encourages nanny-state laws of this type that restrict human behavior to crop up in other areas and in other parts of the country.

Of course, wearing deodorant and showering are social norms that one should expect to follow in a society.

But why should the state be their enforcer?

The purpose of government is to protect individual rights and to punish individuals who harm others.

A harm is a wrongful hurt.  Not wearing deodorant is not a wise choice, but it is not a harm.

A majority of AOL readers polled agree that the Hawai’i smelly bus passenger ban is good public policy.

Professor Andrew J. Cohen of Georgia State University researches social toleration. He says:

“A [classical] liberal government has as its primary goal the maintenance of a social environment within which individuals can pursue their own conceptions of the good. Toleration is thereby seen as an instrumentally valuable good — meta-good — that is the priority of right over good and which is manifested in [classical] liberal neutrality.”

Heck, over eighty percent of those polled have been offended by a stinky rider on a bus.

I’ve definitely sat next to some smelly folks on airplane flights before, but the last things I would wish upon them are fines or jail time.

My grandmother has ridden on buses in her city since the late 1940s — as her primary means of transportation.  I’m sure she’s encountered many a stinker. None of the stinkers have caused her quality of life to decrease — except perhaps for a half hour on a bus.

This past weekend I was on a flight where two fellas who had never met each other before plopped down next to each other on the airplane and would not stop talking.  Of course, they were talking very LOUDLY and were seated directly behind me.

One of the men was bragging to the other about how he was flying to DC to consult Mr. Obama on “federal regulations” at the White House. They talked for the entire two-hour flight.

Should these loud, obnoxious men be banned from talking?  They weren’t following social norms and they were bothering me and everyone around me.

The plane landed and we were all done with them.

The same is true of the bus passengers coping with a rancid smell.  There is a choice to avoid them, ignore them, or simply deal with the odor.  Of course, confronting them is another option that an individual can take.

I’d ask for a little more social toleration, please.

If you’re so inclined, contact Councilmen Rod Tam and Nestor Garcia — who co-sponsored the anti-odor bill — and explain to them kindly that, in a free society, individuals must be allowed to have poor hygiene.

As Jacob Hornberger once said, “If you’re not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you’re not free at all.”

Significant penalties on individuals is the wrong approach. How ’bout penalizing government (by shrinking its size and starving it of unnecessary dollars earned by the American people!) for the wretched stink it has enacted upon us all?

In February, The Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC), a “fusion center” that “collects intelligence from both the local agencies and the DHS and uses these combined sources to analyze threats and better combat terrorism and other criminal activity”, labeled some Ron Paul supporters and other constitutionalists as militia members.

On July 28, Missouri RLC Chairman Rob Hillman (above, center) offered testimony to the Interim Committee on State Intelligence Analysis Oversight regarding the MIAC report. That bipartisan Committee, chaired by Rep. Bob Dixon and Vice-Chaired by RLC-endorsed Rep. Jim Guest, was formed to gather public testimony about the MIAC fusion center in Jefferson City and the fusion center “MIAC Report” leaked to the public in February. The Committee is to report to the entire House of Representatives its findings.

On March 31, the Missouri RLC Board resolved unanimously to encourage the State Legislature to create a permanent MIAC oversight Committee. Rep. Jim Guest, Chairman of the REAL ID and Personal Privacy Committee, also sponsored HB 1138 to only permit MIAC to engage in constitutional activities in the future.

The Obama administration is considering forced vaccination of children and adults in response to the possibility of a swine flu epidemic this fall.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been preparing public school superintendents for the possibility that their schools will be used by the government as inoculation centers for a nationwide swine flu vaccination program which may include mandatory vaccination of public school students who are already required to receive several other government mandated vaccinations.

While there is a genuine threat of a swine flu pandemic, it does not justify the level of fear mongering being engaged in by the Obama Administration at a time which makes it look very much as if they are using this issue to advance their health care agenda. Although numbers like 90,000 deaths and 1.2 million hospitalizations from the CDC seem frightening, they fall within the parameters for the effects of the yearly outbreaks of other kinds of flu.

There is no legitimate reason for any program of forced mass vaccination, especially directed at school children and using state mandated public education requirements as a threat to force parents to comply. Mandatory vaccination programs are a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy and personal security. It is especially important that the rights of children and the rights of their parents to make decisions about their childrens’ welfare be protected.

Here in Texas we saw an attempt at forced vaccination when Governor Rick Perry tried to mandate that all teenage girls be given the Human Paphaloma Virus vaccine at a cost of over $400 per vaccination to the taxpayers. Outrage over the huge tax cost of the program was exceeded only by anger over having this vaccine forced on teenagers. Protests were so effective that the program was killed. Now we need to do the same on a nationwide basis.

The issue of vaccination – in fact the entire healthcare debate – comes down to one very simple question. Who should make the healthcare decisions for you and your family? Should it be you or should it be legislators or commissions of nameless and faceless government bureaucrats like those created by proposed healthcare legislation.

This issue is so important and so personal that giving up control to government is terrifying. As a result, we are seeing massive nationwide grassroots protests against government run healthcare because whatever the faults of the current system, people want to keep control and make their own health care decisions.

Vaccines are one of the great advancements of modern medicine and for the most part they are safe and important for protecting children and adults from real health threats. Nonetheless it is still morally wrong for government to force any kind of choice like this on citizens against their will. Government should protect freedom of choice, not take it away.

The Republican Liberty Caucus is working to oppose both so-called healthcare reform and mandated vaccination programs.

Citizens have the right to make their own health care decisions, including opting out of current school vaccination requirements and not being forced to comply with any future government inoculation program.

Americans should be trusted to make responsible decisions about the health of their family members and the safety of the community. The role of the government should be to protect citizens and their rights, not to make medical decisions for them without their consent.

So I ask again, who do you want making your health care decisions?

In a recent column, well-respected conservative pundit George Will wrote in his syndicated Washington Post column about the absurdity of laws against online casinos, and why the online casino and poker industries should be legal in the U.S. According to Casino News Authority, an online casino news agency, “It’s a huge step for a prominent Republican columnist to come out in support of the online casino industry.”

“Having turned gambling, which once was treated as a sin, into a social policy, government looks unusually silly criminalizing online forms of it,” says Will. He notes that “gambling is productive of pleasure for tens of millions of Americans for whom it is a frequent pastime,” and he doesn’t understand why “government should try to tightly circumscribe a ubiquitous human activity that generally harms nobody.”

In 2006, Congress effectively outlawed internet gambling by making it illegal for banks or credit-card companies to process payments to online gambling operations.

Opines the Casino News Authority website, “it’s good to see a Republican that understands the gambling industry, and more importantly, understands the freedom that Americans should always have.”

Of course, I agree with George Will — “Congress … SHOULD fold its interference with Internet gambling and certainly should get its 10 thumbs off Americans’ freedom to exercise their poker skills online.”  Exclamation point.

At least some Republicans understand the distinction between personal moral values and government-forced ‘moral values’.

Voters are increasingly turning away from the Republican Party, as voter registration and voter identity polls increasingly illustrate. And there seems to be few voices of reason on where the Republican Party should go from this point forward.

Voters under 30 voted 66% to 32% for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 – part of the biggest age disparity the exit polls have ever measured in a race for president. Young voters were the GOP’s worst age group in 2006 and 2004 as well.

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, “History suggests that an entire generation’s partisan profile can be shaped in the first decade of voting. Imagine a Democratic-leaning millennial generation (those born between the late 1970s and the year 2000) adding 4 million potential voters a year to the U.S. electorate over the next decade.”

Young voters are less socially conservative than the electorate as a whole on issues ranging from homosexuality to immigration. They are also more secular and participate less in organized religion. In a recent Pew poll, 25% of Americans born since 1976 were atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – compared with 13% of baby boomers.

“Young voters need to see a GOP that is more socially libertarian, particularly toward gay rights. With changing demographics come changing attitudes,” Republican consultant Mike Murphy wrote in Time magazine this month, lamenting in the same column that “A GOP ice age is on the way.”

The GOP also has to find a way to appeal to non-white voters.  In 2008, voters under 30 were 62% white while voters over 30 were 77% white .

So how can the GOP simultaneously attract black, Hispanic and Asian voters, continue its appeal to white voters, and also capture young voters?

Voters are looking for consistency — a cohesive vision for peace and prosperity — and solutions to our problems.

The Republican Liberty Caucus offers the solution: less government, more liberty.

Government at every level in this country continues to be too big, too intrusive, and too expensive.

Solutions we seek — from our nation’s dwindling health care system and dilapidated schools to our meddlesome foreign policy and increasing civil liberties violations — can be found when government is reduced or eliminated from the issue.

As a RLC Adviser Ron Paul has repeated time and again, liberty is the great unifier.  A vision of limited government unites all Americans in the great purpose of our nation’s government: to protect the rights of all American citizens and to be limited in scope and size.

Is there any vision more empowering than that?