In the Spring of ’04, I was struck by the idea that I had to have a piece of chocolate pudding pie. I decided to make it myself. The crust was made by hand, with flour, ice-water and butter. The filling was made with cocoa, sugar, cornstarch, vanilla, butter, and whole milk mixed together in a bowl and then microwaved it until it came to a slow boil.

After baking my pie shell in the oven and filling it with the warm pudding, I left it to set up in the refrigerator for several hours. For the topping, I used heavy whipping cream, vanilla, and sugar, with just a touch of rum to help flavor it. Let me tell you that it was everything you could ever want a chocolate pudding pie to be! I cut a generous slice and ate it with the whipped cream along with a hot cup of coffee. Not something that you would want to eat every day, at least if you valued your health, but offered as a punctuation of one’s life, a brief interlude of pleasure, it was truly perfect.

This pie cost me about six dollars and fifty cents to make. Most restaurants assume a thirty percent food cost so you would expect to pay two dollars and seventy cents for a slice of this pie if it was cut into eight pieces. The problem is you that cannot find it at that price anywhere. What you are offered instead is a poor imitation of the reality that is chocolate pudding pie. A chiffon filling with artificial flavor that is more air than anything else, and topping made of whipped oil instead of cream. All this for about three dollars and fifty cents and that doesn’t include the coffee. The sad thing about it is that most people don’t realize that they are being served a cheap imitation. They like the way it tastes.

A silly thing to be writing about, chocolate pudding pie. But I submit to you that so much of what we are being served up today by our suppliers, our corporations, our media and our government is so pervasively artificial that we should be seriously considering what it might take to replace them with the genuine article. To begin with we would have to stop swallowing the stuff they are feeding us. Even if we often like the way it tastes.

by Roderick T. Beaman

I never really cared that much whether homosexuals were permitted to serve in the military. I figured this was just as much their country as mine and they’d be just as tenacious, and perhaps more so, defending it as anyone else, especially when you consider that in some countries homosexuality is punishable by death.

Barry Goldwater wrote that he didn’t care either. All he wanted to know was that the guy next to him in the foxhole could shoot straight. Ken Hamblin, the Black Avenger, wrote something similar about affirmative action; that he never cared what color the pilot was when he flew, he just wanted to know ‘did he kick ass in flight school.’ I’ve always felt that way and never really understood the problem.

Some claimed that it would create a sense of unease if military people knew that homosexual members were looking at them in the shower which seemed reasonable until I realized that I’d already been in open showers at YMCAs and health clubs where it was highly likely there were homosexuals anyway. So what was the big deal?

A number of years ago, one of the Lucian Truscotts, the fourth I think, wrote an article that appeared in The Providence Journal about his experiences in the Korean War when the men in his battalion thought one was homosexual. Truscott wrote of the cruel taunts heaped upon him but also, finally when he was killed, how they all wept. That’s what it takes sometimes to awaken people to their intolerances, I’m afraid. We forget all too quickly that we are all Children of a Creator and that none of us is more worthy of His love than another. We’re all capable of some cruel things and some wonderful examples of decency. At any rate, I’m glad that’s all over.

But there is a far more vexing question which has not been posed by either the conservatives nor the liberals in this matter. That question is, why do we have such an extensive military in the first place?

Article I, Section 8 of The Constitution empowers the Congress ‘To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; (and) To provide and maintain a Navy. Article II, Section 2 states ‘ The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;…’

The wording of The Constitution with regard to the navy is much more permanent than that for the army. I think this is no accident. A mere look at the map is enough to tell why.

Even today, we’re isolated from many of our trading partners. At that time, we were contiguous only to Canada; Spanish and French colonies lay to the west and south with Mexico, a long overland distance away, all with indistinct borders. We were just a short sail from many Caribbean and other New World nations but an ocean away from Europe.

We had to become a maritime nation and we needed to have a navy to protect our shipping. In fact, a lot of what it did in those early years was just that, as evidenced by the Barbary Coast Wars and the Quasi-War with France. Our shipping was being harassed and it also contributed to our War of 1812 with Britain. Shipping was vital to our survival! It still is.

We have five basic military services; Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard but we really need just two. The Marines are actually part of the Navy anyway; the Coast Guard a naval service. Aircraft carriers could many of the needs of an air force. That would leave only domestic ground defense to be provided which, of course, is where the militia come in which could also fill the remainder of the needs of an air force, which was part of the Army to begin with.

It’s also obvious that Founders wanted us to rely extensively on our various militias for defense. That was part of the purpose of the Second Amendment. So we really have little need of a standing army but like everything else governmental, the military has become a huge bureaucracy whose main interest is self-preservation.

Most military spending is unnecessary. Harry Browne once estimated that the entire defense budget could be covered with just $100 billion; later he lowered it to $50 billion. A stripped down federal military, especially the Army, with reliance on militias, run by the states, necessitates only a skeleton federal crew with fifty states as laboratories for developing the most efficient & effective models.

Anyone who has spent any time on a military base knows about the budget jokes; how at the beginning of the budget year there’s meat loaf for dinner and at the end, roast beef and lobsters. That’s how all bureaucracies work. They have to spend their allotment for the year so their officers can trek to Capitol Hill to request an increase for the next year to mourn how ‘woefully inadequate’ the current allowance is for their current mission, which, of course, always has to be expanded.

Whether it’s health education, welfare, environmental, law enforcement or military services, a bureaucrat is a bureaucrat is a bureaucrat. You will never hear a department or military Chief of Staff ask for a budgetary decrease. That has to be a sure ticket to a funeral for any government career.

Cyril N. Parkinson formulated his famous, humorous law, partly from observations of the military while in the British Civil Service. He noted how the number of personnel in the foreign service increased as the empire dissolved. An essence of Parkinson’s Law is that any bureaucrat wants subordinates, to magnify his own position; he doesn’t want competitors and he certainly never wants to resign.

I don’t know what was going through so many of our minds during those years when, unbeknownst to us, the Soviet Union was collapsing from within. We got snookered by the military and the CIA that kept up the alarms about Soviet capabilities. For me, I began to see the light about the military sometime during the 1980s, the Reagan years.

Our children were going to school and my wife became friendly with another woman whose husband was a career military man. She told my wife, one day, that they were anticipating that the next hot spot would be the Mideast.

At that, I said, whoa! Aren’t we simply fighting to end the communist threat to us? Isn’t that why we’ve had this huge military presence all these years? The answer, I came to realize was, of course it’s not. We’ve had this military presence to ensure the military’s survival.

It was then I realized that the military is just like any other government bureaucracy. Its first order of business is its own preservation. Karl Marx predicted the withering away of the state once the workers’ paradise came to pass but, the neither the state nor its bureaucracies, ever withers; no earthly paradise is possible. And so, today we find ourselves in imbroglios around the world.

That’s why the military discerned future problems in the Mideast. It needed a secondary bogeyman if the first one faltered and falter it did with the collapse of the eastern Europe Soviet satellites and finally the Soviet Union itself in 1991. And the fun continues.

The groundwork for overseas intervention that began with William McKinley, accelerated with Woodrow Wilson making the world safe for democracy and Franklin D. Roosevelt maneuvering us into World War II and the CIA’s unconstitutional foreign policy interventions that Robert Taft warned about, all have come to fruition. The military-industrial complex has been saved.

If tomorrow, somehow, peace descended over the entire arc from Morocco to Bengla Desh, the military would scramble and discover a new enemy du jour. You can count on it. It’s the truth about the military.

And as far as freedom goes, one of the greatest dangers to a free society and the world, is from soldiers sitting around with little to do. But don’t ask and don’t tell about it.

This article originally published in The Freedom Beam, November 7th, 2011 Dr. Roderick T. Beaman is an osteopathic family physician practicing in Jacksonville, Florida. Born in New York City, he attended New York University as an undergraduate. He is a recipient of a 2003 Ron Paul Liberty in Media Award. He has written a novel that he has given up hope of ever getting published and so has made it available for the asking through TheFreedomBeam@comcast.net.

by Rebekah Sharp

The FHFA (Federal Housing Financial Authority) has instituted seventeen separate law suits in the state of New York on behalf of Fraudie Mac and Phoney Mae (that’s us, as both of these institutions are in receivership) against the seventeen major banks (trusts/securities) for the massive fraud that perpetrated the biggest ponzi scheme in the history of our nation that has flat lined our economy. Since the filing of these suits, the fifty attorney general investigations and settlements (ooops I mean forty-nine now, they ousted Sniederman from New York because he was too tough on the banks) has been halted with the major banks walking out of the settlement meetings. That has me very busy and quite frustrated on two counts. First, didn’t like the settlement terms as it would let the banks off the hook for their criminal and civil liability, leaving homeowners without legal recourse to pursue a remedy and a collective settlement amount of only twenty billion to be divided up among the fifty states leaving a mere four hundred million for each state in the hands of, in our case Pam Bondi. Once the fees and cost for this investigation, which has already taken over one year, are paid back, that doesn’t leave much for the folks and there is no specifics in the plan of how much or who will be the recipient of what is left. So maybe it’s a good thing the banks walked out of the settlement meetings. But is it? No, it is not because there have been no penalties imposed for their walking out and that clearly tells us all just exactly who is in charge, the banks and not the attorney generals. Pam Bondi either doesn’t have a clear understanding of the problem or she too is in bed with the banks as throughout this year-long investigation she has lead the disruption (along with four of her contemporaries) of the settlement stating boldly and loudly that the deadbeat homeowners should not be rewarded for their irresponsibility by not paying their mortgages. Part of the original deal was the majority of the attorney generals wanted to make the banks reduce the principal amount of the loans to current market value and reduce the interest rate to a fixed four percent on homesteaded property. Ms. Bondi was against that too and fired the two assistant attorneys’ general, June Clarkston and Teresa Edwards, because they were too aggressive when pursuing the banks and the companies aiding the fraud. This has lead to an investigation into their wrongful termination. More of your tax dollars at work.

You may remember HB1191 the Fair Foreclosure Bill that it was subsequently killed in the 2011 Florida legislative session. That’s the bill that would make the State of Florida a non-judical state leading to the abolition of our homestead exemption and leave homeowners without legal recourse to pursue the massive fraud and the threat of eviction in twenty-four hours, rather than the current seventy-two hour requirement. Passidomo (R), of Tampa, has reintroduced The Fair Foreclosure Act of 2012 to be taken up in January’s session. This is the third year she has presented this bill. We must stop it once again, however this time will be the most difficult as the bank lobbyists have been very busy bees stuffing our representative’s coffers with career bonuses and promises of more for their 2012 re-election campaigns . This is a non-partisan problem…surely you see if this bill passes it will strip Floridians of so many of their liberties. The elderly are already having a very difficult time making their property tax payments, as with the rest of the state with their unemployment rate is so high.

We, at RLCNEF are committed “restore” the peoples liberties, and take our country back. Conservatives stand for the rule of law, and as such we hold the position that no citizen shall be deprived of property except by that same rule of law. Accordingly, we also hold that sufficient laws already exist in the state of Florida. We must stay on careful watch and not allow any more of our liberties to be taken and I sincerely feel that is role is to combat the Unfair Foreclosure Act of 2012. I am working day and night on this ONE project. Please help me.

The seventeen lawsuits filed in New York on behalf of the people, is yet another smoke and mirrors game to allow the folks to think that finally something serious is being done to make the banks pay back the money they stole from this country. Surely it will end in yet another settlement with most of the language written in such legalese as to exonerate the banks of all their civil and criminal liabilities at a huge cost to taxpayers. Let’s consider the expense to file, maintain and bring to a conclusion seventeen lawsuits in New York. The J.P. Morgan complaint filed is two hundred, seventy-seven pages long. I know because I read it. Imagine how much that document alone cost us to prepare and file. It’s nice to see so many attorneys employed in this country while the remainders of the folks eke out a living day by day. Let’s not forget that Fraudie Mac and Phoney Mae engaged in the exact same illegal and fraudulent behavior as the folks they are suing (and continue to engage in as I write this) and that will certainly be raised during the course of these suits. There is already talk of banks filing suit against them. So it goes that Wall Street has begun the in-fighting between themselves, all pointing the finger at each other.

Now the trillion dollar question is: How is any of this helping the economy, the homeowners or the rest of the American people? This is just another attempt to divert the public from the simple and plain solution put all the bankers in handcuffs. All these suits filed to avoid the obvious conclusion that what they have done is immoral, illegal both criminally and civilly and arresting each and every one and freezing their assets, both on shore and off shore, would solve the problem. Then, require the principal reduction to all homestead property to five percent below the Net Market Value (NMV), leaving a five percent equity position in the home. This very simple solution would get the economy back on track as homeowners can make their payments, plus fix up the homes they are allowing to deteriorate due to fear of foreclosure. Lowes, Home Depot, all kinds of businesses would improve and so would the real estate sector. Home values would go up, or at least stop going down and would serve to get this country back on track again.

I am committed wholeheartedly to this cause and will stand with the millions of others who have been and continue to be affected by this tragedy. If you agree please sign the petition to kill this bill: http://signon.org/sign/do-not-support-the-florida?source=s.tw&r_by=26214

Rebekah Sharp is a member of the Executive Board of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Northeast Florida.

Regarding Ax Handle Saturday, I am not exactly sure why we should be celebrating a day when a bunch of black folk got beat up by a bunch of white folk with ax handles. I think it is unlikely to happen again given Republican efforts made to repeal Jim Crow gun laws preventing African Americans from arming themselves. Any such attempt made now by racists to assault their fellow citizens would be surely be met by a hail of gunfire, and that’s the way it should be.

I am told that approximately 360,000 Union soldiers died during the Civil War, of which approximately 40,000 were black. The rest were white. It seems silly to talk about what color they were now, as they are all dust. By their actions they preserved the Union, and they ended the open practice of slavery.

Racism is still going strong, based on the idea that the color of a person’s skin will automatically serve as an indicator of how they think and act politically. Of course there are some cultural arguments to be made. If you are a member of a group of people that looks alike and has the same history and traditions, and lives in the same area, it might be likely that you would hold the same opinions as your life-long friends and relatives. But that should not discount the fact that a person can grow as an individual and change their political opinions based on reason.

People love to mix racism with politics, not to end it, but to promote is and use it to fool the voter. Although it is personally appalling to me, I will condescend for a moment to draw attention to skin color. Former Councilwoman Glorious Johnson, Mr. Sam Newby, Vice Chairman of the Republican Party of Duval County, Clive Rickets, Chairman of the Libertarian Party of St John’s County, these among others are champions of Liberty and the American Way. Patriots do not view them as “African” Americans, but only as Americans who by the serendipity of nature happen to have dark skin. They are not leaders of “black” men, they propose to lead “all” men. Justice Clarence Thomas, defender of the Constitution and natural law, a man who would never apologize for his country; Dr. Alan Keyes, defender of Liberty and the life of the unborn, Herman Cain, Dr. Condi Rice, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jennifer Carroll, Eldridge Cleaver, all of them Republican political examples to be emulated. However, to say that one does or does not admire them because of their color their skin is as ludicrous as saying that I admire Lord Acton because he was fat.

What is most annoying is when racists accuse others of being racist. It is not racist to be rich and to want to keep your money. It is not racist to say that before we allow this country to degenerate into all-out, one-world socialism, we will go to war in the streets. It is not racist to say that we do not have as a country or as individuals the resources, or the responsibility, or even the desire to take care of all the needs of the poor. It may or may not be selfish, or mean spirited, but it is not racist. Racism is the big lie and should never be tolerated. The vocabulary of racism, even the word “race” should never be tolerated. We are all one race, one set of DNA. Differences in color, in height and weight, in age, are ridiculous subjects for political contemplation.

Differences in ideology however are not. Differences in ideology are fodder for war between countries, and for civil war. We fought the Civil War based on the question, “Will men be free or slaves?” NOT “Will black men be free or slaves?” It appears that we are soon to fight that battle again, not over the issues of color but over the issue of economics. Will men be free or slaves? Will they be able to keep the fruits of their labor? Will they be able to own property? Will they be able to keep what they have earned to enrich themselves and their families, or will it be taken from them and given to others who have not earned it in the interest of “fairness.”

We on the far right despise racism and do not tolerate it. We stand for liberty for all. We demand due process and equal access for all to the procedures and processes that describe our political system. Our system, a constitutional republic, administered by representatives elected by democratic process. A capitalistic economy ruled by market forces that anyone, anyone at all may benefit from and grow rich . A system where the rights of the individual are more important than the rights of the “state”, or the “masses.” A system that tens of thousands of Americans have died to establish and preserve, that we ourselves are prepared to fight and die for even today, and tomorrow. Let’s celebrate that instead the memory of some horrific act that means nothing today except for its value as a tool to alienate men and women of good will on the basis of color.

(Louis William Rose is a political philosopher and the Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Northeast Florida you can contact him at louisrose@yahoo.com)