Adam Dick

Ron Paul Institute Senior Fellow Adam Dick was a guest this week of hosts Jason Burack and Eric Dubin on the always interesting Welcome to Dystopia podcast. The conversation begins with a discussion of the killings in San Bernardino, California last week and Dick’s Sunday article “‘No Gun for You!’: Obama’s ‘Soup Nazi’ Gun Control Proposal” that challenges United States President Barack Obama’s proposal that people on the No Fly List be barred from possessing guns. From there, the conversation turns to a variety of related topics.

Matters discussed in the interview include:

• the suggestion that any person who owns a few guns and a few boxes of ammunition should be suspected of planning a terrorist attack;
• the ability of the Obama administration to unilaterally impose new restrictions related to guns, including creating gun taxes or closing the so-called gun show loophole;
• bureaucrats creating No Gun Lists to bar people with supposed mental health problems from owning guns;
• states moving to lessen restrictions related to guns;
• why you should not have blind faith that Republicans and the National Rifle Association (NRA) will oppose restriction of people’s ability to legally keep and bear arms;
• the danger created by gun free zones;
• a comparison of the frequency and death rates of mass shootings in America and Europe;
• out-of-control cops with what Dick calls “kind of an occupying army attitude” killing Americans;
• how foreign intervention by the US government encourages attacks on Americans and feeds the crisis and leviathan cycle whereby government grows and liberty suffers.

Dick’s interview takes place at the beginning and end of the one-hour podcast. But, make sure to listen to the podcast’s regular features in the middle as well. There you will hear Burack and Dubin’s interesting discussion of the oil industry and the Chinese renminbi, as well as reasons for nominating Obama, the US Congress, and Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for “Scumbag of the Week.”

Listen to the complete podcast here:

Read Dick’s Tuesday article “Don’t Believe the Hype About Gun Shootings in the US” for more information regarding some of the matters discussed in the podcast.

Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

The Soup Nazi character in the Seinfeld television show sells, at his take-out restaurant, soup that some people consider the best in New York City. But, there is a catch. Customers placing their orders at the restaurant’s counter are in fear that one mistake in phrasing or some other minor misstep will draw the ire of the Soup Nazi along with his decree “No soup for you!”

In a CBS television interview the day of the killings in San Bernardino, California, President Barack Obama effectively proposed giving an unknown number of nameless bureaucrats arbitrary “Soup Nazi” power to decide which individuals in America may or may not possess or obtain guns. If Obama’s proposal becomes law, one bureaucrat, based on the flimsiest of reason or an outright mistake, could summarily decree an individual barred from gun ownership. “No gun for you!”

Here is what Obama, in his own words, recommends in the Wednesday interview:

And for those who are concerned about terrorism, some may be aware of the fact that we have a no-fly list where people can’t get on planes, but those same people who we don’t allow to fly could go into a store right now in the United States and buy a firearm and there’s nothing that we can do to stop them. That’s a law that needs to be changed.

The next day, a vote was held in the US Senate regarding an amendment offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that would, in line with Obama’s recommendation, allow the US government to decree that individuals with some supposed connection to a terrorism threat are barred from accessing guns. By a 54 to 45 vote, senators voted not to move forward with the amendment.

Obama’s proposal may seem reasonable to many people. But, the apparent reasonableness arises from the assumption that the No Fly List is composed of people who have been objectively determined to be terrorists through an exhaustive, fastidious, and transparent process that is consistent with US constitutional principles.

That assumption could hardly be further from the truth. As I examined in my article “The Abominable No Fly List” in October of last year, the operation of the No Fly List is both arbitrary and an absolute menace to liberty.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Today I talked with hosts Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams on the Ron Paul Liberty Report. In the interview, I address how the United States government’s mass surveillance program continues unimpeded despite all the headlines saying that the recent expiration of PATRIOT Act Section 215 has terminated the snooping by the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government entities.

With Paul and McAdams, I explored the fraudulent reform that allows the snooping to continue, as well as the public education and legislative action that can end the mass spying program and other anti-liberty government actions.

Watch the complete interview here:

Many news reports are heralding that the expiration this week of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act authority has ended the United States government’s mass surveillance program. Meanwhile, in a Fox News interview, Judge Andrew Napolitano throws cold water on such claims.

Napolitano bluntly declares that the expiration of Section 215 authorization in no way prevents the US government from continuing its mass surveillance program. Napolitano explains that the National Security Agency (NSA) can continue to “gather phone calls, transcripts of phone calls, transcripts of emails, in real time” from all or nearly all Americans irrespective of the expiration of Section 215 authorization.

Watch Napolitano’s complete interview here:

In addition to the President George W. Bush executive order Napolitano mentions in the interview, the US government can also turn to the supposedly anti-mass surveillance USA FREEDOM Act, signed into law in June, for support as it continues the mass surveillance program. The US FREEDOM Act, typical of “reform” in the US government, masquerades as doing one thing when in fact it does the opposite.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Beware the United States Census Bureau. While it may seem innocuous, this government agency, which asks Americans questions and publishes demographic statistics, can quickly be turned into an instrument for mass rights abuse.

James Bovard warns in his Monday USA Today column that, should the US government pursue a “mass roundup of unpopular minorities,” the Census Bureau will likely “serve up the names and addresses on a silver platter.” After all, that is just what Bovard explains the bureau did in the 1940s to aid the US military in rounding up Japanese Americans for internment camps.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.