Movie Review: America: From Freedom to Fascism (2006)

Passionate call to action from leading-edge libertarian director Aaron Russo
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright

freedom_to_fascismReview originally posted, April 2007. — bw

Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws. —  Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild

The Constitution is just a goddam piece of paper.
— George Bush II

Today I come down to earth with commentary on Aaron Russo’s important documentary for resolving two peculiarly American precipitants of tyranny: the income tax and the Federal Reserve Act. Both of these confiscation-and-control mechanisms were set in place in the ominous year of 1913.

Note: This review was written originally in spring of 2007. Since 2003, with the publication of Peter Hendrickson’s Cracking the Code: The fascinating truth about taxation in America, steadily increasing numbers of people have come to understand that the federal income tax is NOT unconstitutional—namely, because income is very specifically defined in the statutes and code as an excise due to exercise of a federal privilege.

When I first wrote this review, neither the producer of the film nor I were aware of the ‘Hendrickson Discovery.’ Thus several of Russo’s observations about the tax while correct in spirit (if one uses the incorrect yet commonplace definition of income) are not correct in fact. Still, I have retained the wording from the original review.

[The fact is that a goodly part of the intent of those behind the 16th Amendment was to obfuscate the reality of the income tax as solely applying to payments or property rendered to an individual from the federal government. IOW, these tax advocates did want—via subterfuge and deception—the people to come to believe that their non-federal direct earnings were subject to the tax.] Continue reading

Article: The 2004 Libertarian Party National Convention

Four Days in May
an insider’s look at the Party of Principle, from Atlanta
by Brian Wright

New Picture (11)Here in spring of 2014, roughly a decade later, I’m reassembling my impressions from diaries I kept of the key event in 2004, which I was disappointed in the result of. Reviewing the text, I see that I was not all worked out spiritually—who ever is, even a man into his 50s at the time?—and may have stated harsh or overly judgmental impressions of people. I apologize for this, but like my advocating to vote for (yes, believe it or not) John Kerry in 2004, I have to own my past mistakes and personal shortcomings. (Heck, in 2004 I still pretty much accepted the Official Story of the 9/11 Attacks!) Many regrets to any and all I may have offended; chances are strong I have favorable views toward you today. Continue reading

Brian’s Column: Liberty and Celebrity

Some thoughts on ‘being known for being known’
and what it means to the freedom movement

This definition of celebrity—being known for being known—is pretty close to a quote from a an interesting piece I read from a Web article by Daniel Epstein published a couple of years ago in The Weekly Standard of all places[1].  Actually, Epstein was quoting Daniel Boorstin from The Image: Or What Happened to the American Dream: “The celebrity,” Boorstin wrote, “is a person who is well-known for his well-knownness.”[2]

Epstein continues by making a distinction between fame and celebrity: fame being based more on actual achievement, while celebrity especially recently become more the art of being paid attention to by large numbers of people on television regardless of any personal noteworthiness. Probably the most classic example is Brian “Kato” Kaelin, the house guest of OJ Simpson.  The Kaelin persona reminds me of the Woody Allen movie, Zelig, in which a nondescript man seeks to blend in and dissemble as if he were one of the famous people himself. Continue reading