Americans have this strange illusion that unlike people in other countries, we are all unique individuals who are fiercely upholding our rights to be different. Yet, regardless of where we live, how old we are, and how much money we make, this nation of 300 million people all shop in the same stores, eat at the same restaurants, watch the same television shows, vote for the same political parties, and blindly obey the government, without any question at all.

The reality is that we are not a country of free spirits. We’re a country of clones. We are clones who unquestionably follow orders.

We are told to dump our kids into a failed government school system that is destroying their future, and we obey. We are told to take a huge portion of our paycheck and hand it over to corrupt government bureaucrats to spend as they wish, and we obey.  We are told to send our kids to die in wars without end, for no good reason, and we still obey. Worse of all, we are told that a vote for anyone but a Democrat or Republican is “wasted”, so we obey.

From Henry David Thoreau to Martin Luther King, civil disobedience was a huge part of America’s quest for freedom. Over the last 40 years we’ve lost our nerve. Now we obey. That is the America we live in today. This is not that America that the framer’s risked their lives to create.

Barack Obama won a decisive victory over Hillary Clinton in North Carolina, trouncing her by 14 points. She barely squeaked out a win in Indiana. Obama picked up four additional “super delegates” today. He’s about 170 delegates shy of the nomination. She is out of money and has had to loan her campaign $6.4 million in the last month.

The spirited contest has been great for the Democrat Party. At this point, it’s over. She should get out.

The big question that the Democrats need to ask themselves is which candidate will have the best opportunity to beat McCain. A lot of pundants have agonized over this. My view is that the answer is pretty simple.

The most important fact about the situation today isn’t who can attract the most “moderate” voters in the fall. Rather, it’s this: movement conservatives loath John McCain, but they have a visceral hatred of Hillary Clinton. If Clinton gets the nomination, they will hold their noses and line up behind McCain. If she doesn’t get the nomination, they might stay home on election day, or cast their vote elsewhere.

Where else could they go? Well, if Bob Barr can manage to get the Libertarian Party nomination a lot of folks could vote for him. Otherwise, a smaller number might opt for Chuck Baldwin who is the Constitution Party nominee.

Ron Paul demonstrated that a great many GOP-leaning voters are extraordinarily unhappy. The guy raised $34 million. He beat the presumptive nominee (Rudy Giuliani) in most of the caucuses. The latest news is that his new book is poised to top the New York Times best seller list. One of his most obscure issues – the problems created by the Federal Reserve – is starting to resonate with the American people, as evidenced by a new CNN/Opinion Research Poll.

Let’s not forget that 19% of Americans did vote for Ross Perot in 1992, even after we all knew he was nuts. So, it's not inconceivable that a 3rd party candidate like Bob Barr could make a big impact this year. A few points in a couple of key states and it's over for McCain.

A Hillary nomination will torpedo it all, because she is such a polarizing figure that people will line up behind McCain just to keep her out of office.

I haven’t been one to pounce on the news that Barack Obama’s pastor is a bit of a racist. People are entitled to their own views, regardless of how vile those views are. Obama says that he found value in attending that church, with that pastor, in spite of that rhetoric. Who am I to question this? I do however wonder what Obama would say if Clinton had been attending a church with a white pastor, who used the same type of rhetoric about blacks.

Obama’s relationship will Bill Ayers is another matter entirely.

Who is Bill Ayers? He’s a terrorist, no different than Osama Bin Laden. He was a leader in the Weather Underground. They blew up 30 bombs, including at the New York City Police Headquarters, the Capitol building, and the Pentagon. One bomb killed three people. Then he disappeared for 10 years.

Ayer’s motto: “Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents". Not only has Ayers never apologized for his actions, he’s still proud of them. In 2001 he said: “I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough”.

“Prosecutorial misconduct” was the reason he’s not rotting in prison today.

So, what’s the connection between Ayers and Obama? Obama and Ayers live in the same neighborhood. Ok, so there’s not much to say about this. They also served on the board of the same foundation. Hey, we all have to work with people we don’t like, right? Yes, but Obama could have declined to serve on the board if Bill Ayers was on it. Now we find out that when Barack Obama first ran for the State Senate in 1995, his coming out party was held at the home of Bill Ayers. That’s where Alice Palmer, who was stepping down from her State Senate seat, announced that Obama was her chosen successor.

I voted for Obama in the Democratic caucus and I don't regret it at all because the Iraq war is the #1 issue for me. This is troubling nevertheless.

Oh by the way, while he was President, Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of two Weatherman who were sent to prison.

We all know the story about Mike Huckabee pushing for the parole of Wayne Dumond, who was convicted of raping a teenager. Huckabee asked for a meeting with the Arkansas parole board, where he pressured them for Dumond's release. After Dumond was paroled, he raped and murdered two women. Of course, Huckabee denies any involvement in Dumond's release, but members of the parole board tell a different story.

What you might not know is that Huckabee granted 1,033 pardons and commutations in his 10 years as governor of Arkansas. That's more than twice as many as his three predecessors, Bill Clinton, Frank White, and Jim Guy Tucker, did in the 17 years they served as governor. During his tenure as governor, Huckabee issued more commutations and pardons than all of the six neighboring states combined. Those states include Texas, which has more than 8 times the population of Arkansas.

Several of the criminals Huckabee set free were convicted murderers. Glen Green is one such murderer that Huckabee wanted back on the streets.

In 1974 Glen Green kidnapped Helen Lynette Spencer on Little Rock Air Force Base, where he beat and kicked her as he tried to rape her. She managed to break loose, but he caught her and beat her with a pair of nunchucks. Then he then stuffed her into the trunk of his car. Green told investigators that he did rape her several hours later because her body was still warm. Then he put her in front of his car and ran over her several times. Finally, he dumped her body in the Twin Prairie Bayou.

In 2004, the Arkansas Board of Parole reviewed Green's clemency case and found it to be without merit. Huckabee rejected the parole board's findings and decided that he would grant clemency to Green. Fortunately, a huge public outcry forced Huckabee to backtrack on his decision.

If this was an isolated case, then maybe it could have been considered nothing more than a grave oversight. Unfortunately, this is just one of many incidences where Huckabee used dubious judgment when deciding whether to set violent criminals free.

Huckabee claims that his belief in Christian redemption was the motivating factor in his decisions to release brutal rapists and murderers from prison. If Christian compassion was really the motivating factor for Huckabee, perhaps he should have saved some of it for the victims and their families. Yet, Huckabee's office often didn't bother to contact them about his pardons, even though Arkansas law requires such notifications.

How does Christian redemption explain Huckabee's pardon of Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards for a traffic violation, after he met Richards at a concert? Who would even think about doing something as ridiculous as wasting time on a pardon for a traffic ticket that resulted in a $162 fine?

Perhaps a better explanation for Huckabee's orgy of pardons is that he was drunk with power. Huckabee was the potentate of a tiny, backwards state -- the same state that gave us the narcissistic Bill Clinton. The power to overturn the state's justice system with the stroke of a pen may have caused Huckabee's ego blow up larger than the Ron Paul blimp.

Just imagine how much power Mike Huckabee would have as President of the United States and what he might do with it.

The tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto seems to have given neo-con pundits a collective sigh of relief. They view this as another vindication of their belief that the U.S. government must do whatever it takes to fight "Islamo-fascism", including continuing to prop up ruthless dictators like Pervez Musharraf.

Unfortunately for the neo-cons, Benazir Bhutto had a different view. In November, Parade Magazine asked her what she would like to tell President Bush. She replied: "Your policy of supporting dictatorship is breaking up my country. I now think al-Qaeda can be marching on Islamabad in two to four years."

The most troubling thing about the people who pass for "conservatives" nowadays is their stubborn refusal to understand Bhutto's point -- that U.S. government policy in the Middle East is a key cause of the troubles we face with terrorism today.

During the Cold War, the Soviets and the U.S. government propped up opposing dictatorships around the world. The Soviets had people like Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega. We countered with people like Augusto Pinochet and the Shah of Iran. I don't have any axe to grind whatsoever with what the U.S. government did during the Cold War. We were fighting an organized, ideological enemy, with a huge military capability that enslaved half the people in the world. We had to do whatever it took to win.

A funny thing happened when the Cold War ended. The U.S. government stopped propping up dictators in Latin America and Asia. However, it continued to do so in the Middle East. Billions of U.S. dollars continued to flow into the hands of some very nasty tyrants. That helped radicalize their populations against us.

The U.S. government has given over $50 billion to Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak has ruled Egypt under a state of emergency since 1981. Every 6 years, he stages a rigged election. Reports of the torture of political prisoners in Egypt are frequent, credible and widespread. The lead suicide pilot on 9/11 was Mohamed Atta, who was born in Egypt.

The Saudi Royal family has been a reliable ally for the U.S. government for 5 decades. They also run the most brutal regime in the world. Osama bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia, as were 15 of the 19 hijackers.

The U.S. government has also given Musharraf over $10 billion and violent opposition to his dictatorship has only gotten worse.

Why is it so hard for neo-con pundits and politicians to understand that there might be some relationship between U.S. government support of tyrants in the Middle East and suicide terrorists? The CIA knows there is. They call it "blowback". I actually think there are a lot of neo-cons who really do understand. They just won't admit it because they are scared. No, they aren't afraid of the terrorists. They are worried that the only thing keeping the old Reagan coalition together is the so-called war on terror. After all, given the last 7 years no one honestly believes that the GOP stands for small government and fiscal responsibility any longer.

Fighting communism was the one banner that the entire diverse Reagan coalition could rally behind. After the Cold War ended, some conservatives, most notably Pat Buchanan, started questioning the need for the U.S. to maintain troops in 130 countries. This potential crack in the coalition alarmed the neo-cons, so they went looking for a new villain. For a while it looked like that villain might be China and the neo-cons beat the war drums against them for 10 years. Then came 9/11 and they were handed their new focus of evil in the world, except that al-Qaeda isn't a state, with a huge army, and tons of nuclear weapons. Rather, it's nothing more than a tiny band of criminals who managed to pull off 9/11 largely due to the incompetence of the FBI.

The neo-cons are alarmed again today by Ron Paul because he is the only candidate brave enough to question whether U.S. government policy in the Middle East might have something to do with the terrorist threat we face today. The neo-cons are demonizing Ron Paul every bit as much as they demonized Buchanan.

Anyway, the quote from Benazir Bhutto will appear in Parade magazine on January 8th. That will be too late for the Iowa caucuses, but maybe it will start to wake enough people up before Super Tuesday to make a positive difference to our future.

One of the most interesting things about the current presidential campaign is the sudden interest in the Federal Reserve Bank. When was the last time monetary policy got this much public attention? During Carter's 21% inflation? When Nixon severed the last link between the dollar and gold? We might have to go all the way back to when Roosevelt confiscated gold in 1933.

Of course, all of the chatter is coming from one candidate --Ron Paul.

His most intriguing notion is that the Federal Reserve Bank needs some competition. At first, this sounds like a rather impractical idea. However, I can safely say that the technology needed to make this a reality is already in widespread use today.

Money serves two purposes in society. First, it's a "medium of exchange", which means that it facilitates buying and selling. Second, it's a "store of value", which means that it should retain its purchasing power into the future.

The dollar is a widely accepted medium of exchange in the U.S. because the government mandates it as such. However, the dollar has not been a particularly good store of value over the last 100 years or so. There are a lot of ways to compare the value of a dollar between the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 and today. All of them show that the dollar is now only worth between 1 penny and 6 cents. It's not a good track record.

Fortunately for us, the dollar has lost its value gradually enough as to not cause major social unrest. Other societies haven't been so fortunate. In Germany, government monetary shenanigans after WWI caused a hyperinflation that wiped out the middle class and set the stage for Hitler.

In the U.S., you both save and buy things in dollars. However, it's actually quite possible to save in one currency and buy in another. In fact, it's done all of the time. I've been in over 25 countries. In all of them, I can use the debit card from my American bank to withdraw money from an ATM or buy things in the local currency. The ATM network takes care of figuring how many dollars to deduct from my bank account given the amount of local money I'm spending.

It's also possible to have a system where you can save in multiple currencies. Swiss banks allow you to have accounts denominated in any number of currencies, including U.S. dollars, Euros, and Swiss Francs.

So, there isn’t any technical reason that you couldn't save in whatever currency you want and buy things that are priced in another currency. The only thing that prevents you from doing this today are government laws that exist to protect the monopoly of the Federal Reserve Bank.

The same technology that already exists to support multiple coexisting national currencies could also support multiple coexisting privately issued currencies. As is the case with anything else, competition in currencies could help create a more robust and sound monetary system. Currencies that lose value over time would lose customers to better currencies and wouldn't be widely accepted as either a store of value or medium of exchange.

What about cash? There are times when you want your purchases to be anonymous. No problem. There are many examples of cards that have the characteristics of cash on the market today. Pre-paid cell phone cards and Starbucks cards are just two examples. There isn't any reason why the industry couldn't evolve a set of interoperability standards for generic cash cards, just like they have for debit cards.

Who would issue these private currencies? Financial institutions would be a good bet. My guess is that some large technology companies might be eager to do this as well.

So, despite the horror displayed by myopic mainstream pundits, Ron Paul's idea about competing currencies really isn't so crazy after all.

Christmas has come and gone, so it looks like we're going to survive another year. At least we kind of did.

The housing market is in the tank. The dollar is on the verge of collapse. The situation in Afghanistan has gotten significantly worse. The current indept administration has destroyed our important relationship with Turkey. The bumbling of last two administrations have finally convinced the Russians that they really do need to be wary of our intentions. The leading Democratic presidential contender is an ex-first lady who is probably the coldest, most calculating and power hungry politician since Nixon. The leading GOP contender is an ex-mayor who believes that "freedom" is about submitting yourself to government authority (Yes, that is was he said: go Google it). Sure, there seems to be some good news in Iraq, but only because we've further entrenched ourselves there with more troops, with no apparent plan on how to get out without the country erupting into civil war. Oh yes, Osama Bin Laden is still at large.

Worse of all, our civil liberties are under attack like never before.

The government has already blessed us with the "Patriot Act", which among other things expanded the government's ability to spy on our electronic communications, as well as on our medical and financial records.

We are now faced with the even more troublesome "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" (HR 1955), whose vague language could be used by the government to classify American activities like civil disobedience as "terrorism".

Together, these acts present the greatest danger to liberty in our history.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure George Bush and Dick Cheney are honorable men who are only trying to protect us from the terrorists, drug dealers, and whatever bogie man comes up next, right? Even if you believe that, these guys are only going to be in office another year and those laws will still be on the books when they leave. What happens when President Clinton declares that we need her protection from the "vast right-wing conspiracy"???

Remember, that Hitler came to power through legal means and then used "terrorism" as an excuse to pass the enabling act, which allowed him to assume complete power.

I know, this is the land of the free and the home of the brave so it can't happen here, right? Well, during the presidency of John Adams, the "Alien and Sedition Act" was passed, which made it a criminal offense, punishable by two years in jail, to criticize the government. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus so that he could jail his critics. Woodrow Wilson feared widespread dissent against his plans to get America involved in the Great War, so he passed the "Espionage Act" and the "Sedition Act" and used them to silence and even jail his critics. During WWII, Franklin Roosevelt locked up natural born American citizens of Japanese and Italian ancestry.

Here's what is really disturbing this time: Information technology has become a means for government to target average citizens who dissent, rather than just people who are in visible, public opposition.

We all know that the National Security Agency has been snooping on electronic communications coming in and out of the country for years. Now, they are working with all of the major telcos to snoop on communications within the country, without court orders. The administration is currently pushing legislation to protect companies from lawsuits who help the NSA spy on you.

The "Real ID Act" morphs state drivers licenses into a national id card. Starting in January 2010, employers won't be able to hire you, financial institutions won't be allowed to do business with you, and you won't be able to do anything involving the federal government, including boarding an airplane, unless you have a compliant id.

A few years ago, the administration proposed their "Total Information Awareness" program, which among other things used data mining and social network analysis to discover, extract and link sparse information across databases to analyze your behavior. After a huge outcry the original program was defunded by Congress, but many of its original projects have quietly continued under other funding.

The "Patriot Act" and the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007", enabled by information technology could make 2008 the year Big Brother becomes a reality.

Despite these and other misuses of information technology to violate our civil liberties, I am absolutely certain that such technology will turn out to be the great enabler of positive change for our world. After all, who would have guessed even six months ago that a group of political neophytes could have harnessed the power of the Internet to propel the presidential candidacy of a mild mannered Texas OBGYN to national prominence? Hopefully, the government is not testing their data mining and social network analysis on Ron Paul’s 50,000 Facebook friends!

There is little doubt that 2008 will be a critical juncture in our history. Thomas Jefferson told us that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We must decide whether we will allow the government to use technology to restrain us or whether we will use technology to restrain the government.