An Open Letter to the Left

From Jeremy N. Choate:  (and much finer than most of the inChoate rantings from the left, heh).

Lately, I must admit that my hostility towards your political ilk has ramped up, pretty dramatically.  No, it’s not because we, at this point in my life, have a half-black president in the White House, and I’m some closet racist who is becoming increasingly frustrated at the prospects of the White Man’s power slipping through my fingers.  I know that you’ve accused our side of such nonsense, and the thought keeps you warm at night, but I can assure you that it is a comfortable fiction of which you should probably divest yourself.

Now before I waste too much of your time, let’s establish who I’m talking to.  If you believe that we live in an evil, imperialist nation from its founding, and you believe that it should be “fundamentally transformed”, lend me your ears.  If you believe that the free market is the source of the vast majority of society’s ills and wish to have more government intervention into it, I’m talking to you.  If you believe that health care is a basic human right and that government should provide it to everyone, you’re the guy I’m screaming at.  If you think minorities cannot possibly survive in this inherently racist country without handouts and government mandated diversity quotas, you’re my guy.  If you believe that rich people are that way because they’ve exploited their workers and acquired wealth on the backs of the poor, keep reading.  Pretty much, if you trust government more than your fellow American, this post is for you.

First of all, let me say that we probably agree on more things than you think.  Even between Tea Party Patriots and Occupy Wall-Streeters, I’ve observed a common hatred of the insidious alliance between big business and big government.  As Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) so correctly noted, government should never be in the business of picking winners and losers in corporate America, and no person, organization, union, or corporation should have their own key to the back door of our government.

Second, contrary to popular belief, conservatives really are concerned with the plight of the poor in this nation.  You accuse us of being uncompassionate, hateful, racist, and greedy, but studies have shown that when it comes to charitable giving, conservatives are at least (if not more, depending on the study you read) as generous as liberals in caring for the poor.  The difference between us is not in our attitude towards the problem – it’s our attitude towards the solution.  We believe that the government does practically nothing well (since without competition or a profit motive there is no incentive to do well) and has made the plight of the poor far worse than it would have ever been had government never gotten involved.  For a stark example of this, look no farther than the condition of the black family in America since the “War on Poverty” began.  You believe that more government is the answer, and that if we only throw more money at the problem, the problem will go away.  We believe, as Reagan so aptly stated,

Government is not the solution to our problems;  government is the problem.

Third, as people who might actually have to avail ourselves of a doctor’s services at some point in our lives, we are just as concerned with the condition of America’s healthcare system as you are.  While we believe that America has the world’s most capable physicians, has the world’s most innovative pharmaceutical industry, and is on the cutting edge of medical technology, we also understand that the delivery system is far from perfect.  However, unlike you, we see a grave danger in turning the administration of that delivery system over to the same entity that is responsible for giving us the United States Postal Service.  There are private sector solutions that should certainly be explored before we kill the system, altogether, by giving it to the government to run.

Read the rest here.

If you dissent from the left's doxy you are not "normal".

Gina McCarthy and Obama’s Totalitarians

Posted By Jamie Glazov On June 26, 2015 @ 12:52 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage 

^[1]Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov disappeared from public view in early May, 1984 after he had begun a hunger strike to get permission for his wife, Yelena Bonner, to travel to the U.S. for heart surgery. In the Soviet paradise, wanting one’s anti-Soviet wife to live, and, worse still, to be saved by evil capitalist surgeons and not by the holy surgeons of the Soviet utopia, was, clearly, an exercise in abnormal psychology.

Sakharov was undoubtedly “mentally ill.” No wonder, therefore, that Soviet authorities forcibly confined him in a closed ward of the Semashko Hospital in Gorky, where he was force-fed and given drugs to alter his state of mind. This is how Soviet authorities believed they would get the Soviet dissident to not only stop caring about his wife, but to also make a public recantation about his abnormal anti-Soviet views – a gambit in which they ultimately failed.

The Soviet system had a long and cruel record of perverting psychiatry to abuse political dissidents. Labelling many thought-criminals ”insane,” the communist regime institutionalized them under horrifying conditions in mental hospitals and force-fed them dangerous and mind-shattering drugs. Dissidents such as Pyotr Grigorenko, Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Esenin-Volpin, Vladimir Bukovsky and Natalya Gorbanevskaya were among the brave heroes who did not elude this grotesque form of Soviet barbarity. Grigorenko was forcibly committed to a special psychiatric hospital for criticizing the Khrushchev regime. Brodksy was sent to mental hospitals for not writing the right kind of poetry; his treatments involved “tranquilizing” injections, sleep deprivation and forced freezing baths. Esenin-Volpin was institutionalized in the Leningrad Special Psychiatric Hospital for his anti-Soviet thoughts. Bukovsky was also confined to the same psychiatric hospital for “anti-Soviet agitation.” Gorbanevskaya was committed to a psychiatric hospital for, among other “abnormality” crimes, attending the 1968 Red Square demonstration against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

And now enter the leftist totalitarians of the Obama stripe. While anti-Soviet ideas caused dissidents to be confined to psychiatric institutions in the Soviet Union, the soil is now being fertilized for the same process in the American leftist land of Alinskyite hope and change. Indeed, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy consoled leftists worldwide this past Tuesday, engaging in Soviet-style labeling vis-à-vis global warming dissidents that would have made Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov proud. Addressing an audience ^[2] at a White House summit, she stated that “normal people,” and not climate skeptics, would win the debate on global warming. She made the comment in the context of why the EPA had issued a recent report ^[3] on global warming’s negative impacts on public health, stressing that, “It’s normal human beings that want us to do the right thing, and we will if you help us.”

The contention that global warming skeptics are not “normal people” is, of course, a normal sentiment coming from a leftist. The Left, as the history of the Soviet regime and other communist regimes has well revealed, breathes it oxygen by labeling. The opponents of the messianic utopian cause are always “evil” and/or “mentally deranged” to one extent or another. And these labels are very effective in demonizing and dehumanizing dissidents — especially when the labels have that little inconvenient limitation of not having any relationship to the actual facts. There is enough evidence to suggest, after all, that man-made global warming is the myth that the skeptics say it is. A strong presentation of the facts by Shillman Fellow Daniel Greenfield on this score can be found here ^[4] and here ^[5].

Gina McCarthy’s totalitarian attitude toward global warming skeptics parallels, of course, the Soviet mindset that forced Soviet dissidents into psychiatric hospitals and to be force-fed drugs. McCarthy and her superiors in the Obama administration do not, at this point, have the power to put the skeptics they are labeling into asylums, and to be administered “tranquilizing” injections and immersed into ice baths, but it is clear from their own words what their desires are – and what path they are clearing for the brave new world.

^[6]The spheres of powerlessness and dehumanization being built by the Gina McCarthys of the Obama administration, to which dissidents and the opponents of “hope and change” are being banished, are somewhat of a personal issue for this writer. My father, Yuri Glazov ^[7], was a scholar at the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a professor at Moscow State University who became a “skeptic” about the Soviet paradise in which he lived. He attended human rights demonstrations in Moscow on behalf of political prisoners and signed letters of protest against Soviet political repressions. For not being “normal” in this particular regard, he was fired from his work and received a labor card with a special secret code that meant that he was blacklisted and could not receive employment anywhere in the country. The activities he had engaged in could land a Soviet citizen in the gulag or a psychiatric hospital for decades. But we were the lucky ones. The ones who got away.

My family never forgot, obviously, those who we left behind — and Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Esenin-Volpin, Vladimir Bukovsky and Natalya Gorbanevskaya were and are among our friends, and the torment they endured for not being “normal” remains etched in history and in our hearts, and we gauge very clearly the pernicious ideological seeds that spawned their persecution and suffering.

My family escaped a totalitarian hell to come to a free country to now face, in the most tragic and bizarre sense, the ideological cousins of our tormentors. The Left and its totalitarian gate-keepers are now in solid power here, slowly but surely building the prison walls and “psychiatric” spaces designed for the treatment of abnormal skeptics. Gina McCarthy and her ilk must be called out for exactly who they are — and for what they are intending to do. The unimaginable cruelties that Andrei Sakharov endured in the Semashko Hospital in Gorky in the mid-1980s must never be forgotten and must never leave our hearts, for they are the dividing lines in the battle between good and evil, despite the labels that try to camouflage the truth.

Have you noticed photos of these Obama leftist appointees (including Lois Lerner) look like the bitter angry Commissars of yore? 

Freedom: The Unfolding Revolution

Excellent piece by Jonah Goldberg on the Libertarian State:

‘Why are there no libertarian countries?”

In a much-discussed essay for Salon, Michael Lind asks: “If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?”

Such is the philosophical poverty of liberalism today that this stands as a profound question.

Definitions vary, but broadly speaking, libertarianism is the idea that people should be as free as possible from state coercion so long as they don’t harm anyone. The job of the state is limited to fighting crime, providing for the common defense, and protecting the rights and contracts of citizens. The individual is sovereign; he is the captain of himself.

It’s true, no ideal libertarian state has ever existed outside a table for one. And no such state will ever exist. But here’s an important caveat: No ideal state of any other kind will be created either. America’s great, but it ain’t perfect. Sweden’s social democracy is all right, but if it were perfect, I suspect fewer cars would be on fire over there.

Ideals are called ideals for a reason: They’re ideals. They’re goals, aspirations, abstract straight rules we use as measuring sticks against the crooked timber of humanity.

In the old Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and today’s North Korea, they tried to move toward the ideal Communist system. Combined, they killed about 100 million of their own people. That’s a hefty moral distinction right there: When freedom-lovers move society toward their ideal, mistakes may be made, but people tend to flourish. When the hard Left is given free rein, millions are murdered and enslaved. Which ideal would you like to move toward?

Follow the link and read the rest.

[Excerpted from Ron Paul's historic farewell speech to Congress]

How Much Did I Accomplish?

In many ways, according to conventional wisdom, my off-and-on career in Congress, from 1976 to 2012, accomplished very little. No named legislation, no named federal buildings or highways—thank goodness. In spite of my efforts, the government has grown exponentially, taxes remain excessive, and the prolific increase of incomprehensible regulations continues. Wars are constant and pursued without Congressional declaration, deficits rise to the sky, poverty is rampant and dependency on the federal government is now worse than any time in our history.

All this with minimal concerns for the deficits and unfunded liabilities that common sense tells us cannot go on much longer. A grand, but never mentioned, bipartisan agreement allows for the well-kept secret that keeps the spending going. One side doesn’t give up one penny on military spending, the other side doesn’t give up one penny on welfare spending, while both sides support the bailouts and subsidies for the banking and corporate elite. And the spending continues as the economy weakens and the downward spiral continues. As the government continues fiddling around, our liberties and our wealth burn in the flames of a foreign policy that makes us less safe.

The major stumbling block to real change in Washington is the total resistance to admitting that the country is broke. This has made compromising, just to agree to increase spending, inevitable since neither side has any intention of cutting spending.

The country and the Congress will remain divisive since there’s no “loot left to divvy up.”

Without this recognition the spenders in Washington will continue the march toward a fiscal cliff much bigger than the one anticipated this coming January.

I have thought a lot about why those of us who believe in liberty, as a solution, have done so poorly in convincing others of its benefits. If liberty is what we claim it is—the principle that protects all personal, social, and economic decisions necessary for maximum prosperity and the best chance for peace—it should be an easy sell. Yet, history has shown that the masses have been quite receptive to the promises of authoritarians which are rarely if ever fulfilled.

Authoritarianism vs. Liberty

If authoritarianism leads to poverty and war and less freedom for all individuals and is controlled by rich special interests, the people should be begging for liberty. There certainly was a strong enough sentiment for more freedom at the time of our founding that motivated those who were willing to fight in the revolution against the powerful British government.

During my time in Congress the appetite for liberty has been quite weak; the understanding of its significance negligible. Yet the good news is that compared to 1976 when I first came to Congress, the desire for more freedom and less government in 2012 is much greater and growing, especially in grassroots America. Tens of thousands of teenagers and college-age students are, with great enthusiasm, welcoming the message of liberty.

I have a few thoughts as to why the people of a country like ours, once the freest and most prosperous, allowed the conditions to deteriorate to the degree that they have.

Freedom, private property, and enforceable voluntary contracts, generate wealth. In our early history we were very much aware of this. But in the early part of the twentieth century our politicians promoted the notion that the tax and monetary systems had to change if we were to involve ourselves in excessive domestic and military spending. That is why Congress gave us the Federal Reserve and the income tax. The majority of Americans and many government officials agreed that sacrificing some liberty was necessary to carry out what some claimed to be “progressive” ideas. Pure democracy became acceptable.

They failed to recognize that what they were doing was exactly opposite of what the colonists were seeking when they broke away from the British.

Some complain that my arguments makes no sense, since great wealth and the standard of living improved for many Americans over the last 100 years, even with these new policies.

But the damage to the market economy, and the currency, has been insidious and steady. It took a long time to consume our wealth, destroy the currency and undermine productivity, and get our financial obligations to a point of no return. Confidence sometimes lasts longer than deserved. Most of our wealth today depends on debt.

The wealth that we enjoyed and seemed to be endless, allowed concern for the principle of a free society to be neglected. As long as most people believed the material abundance would last forever, worrying about protecting a competitive productive economy and individual liberty seemed unnecessary.

The Age of Redistribution

This neglect ushered in an age of redistribution of wealth by government kowtowing to any and all special interests, except for those who just wanted to be left alone. That is why today money in politics far surpasses money currently going into research and development and productive entrepreneurial efforts.

The material benefits became more important than the understanding and promoting the principles of liberty and a free market. It is good that material abundance is a result of liberty but if materialism is all that we care about, problems are guaranteed.

The crisis arrived because the illusion that wealth and prosperity would last forever has ended. Since it was based on debt and a pretense that debt can be papered over by an out-of-control fiat monetary system, it was doomed to fail. We have ended up with a system that doesn’t produce enough even to finance the debt and no fundamental understanding of why a free society is crucial to reversing these trends.

If this is not recognized, the recovery will linger for a long time. Bigger government, more spending, more debt, more poverty for the middle class, and a more intense scramble by the elite special interests will continue.

We Need an Intellectual Awakening

Without an intellectual awakening, the turning point will be driven by economic law. A dollar crisis will bring the current out-of-control system to its knees.

If it’s not accepted that big government, fiat money, ignoring liberty, central economic planning, welfarism, and warfarism caused our crisis we can expect a continuous and dangerous march toward corporatism and even fascism with even more loss of our liberties. Prosperity for a large middle class though will become an abstract dream.

This continuous move is no different than what we have seen in how our financial crisis of 2008 was handled. Congress first directed, with bipartisan support, bailouts for the wealthy. Then it was the Federal Reserve with its endless quantitative easing. If at first it doesn’t succeed try again; QE1, QE2, and QE3 and with no results we try QE indefinitely—that is until it too fails. There’s a cost to all of this and let me assure you delaying the payment is no longer an option. The rules of the market will extract its pound of flesh and it won’t be pretty.

The current crisis elicits a lot of pessimism. And the pessimism adds to less confidence in the future. The two feed on themselves, making our situation worse.

If the underlying cause of the crisis is not understood we cannot solve our problems. The issues of warfare, welfare, deficits, inflationism, corporatism, bailouts and authoritarianism cannot be ignored. By only expanding these policies we cannot expect good results.

Everyone claims support for freedom. But too often it’s for one’s own freedom and not for others. Too many believe that there must be limits on freedom. They argue that freedom must be directed and managed to achieve fairness and equality thus making it acceptable to curtail, through force, certain liberties.

Some decide what and whose freedoms are to be limited. These are the politicians whose goal in life is power. Their success depends on gaining support from special interests.

No More ‘isms’

The great news is the answer is not to be found in more “isms.” The answers are to be found in more liberty which cost so much less. Under these circumstances spending goes down, wealth production goes up, and the quality of life improves.

Just this recognition—especially if we move in this direction—increases optimism which in itself is beneficial. The follow through with sound policies are required which must be understood and supported by the people.

But there is good evidence that the generation coming of age at the present time is supportive of moving in the direction of more liberty and self-reliance. The more this change in direction and the solutions become known, the quicker will be the return of optimism.

Our job, for those of us who believe that a different system than the one that we have had for the last 100 years, has driven us to this unsustainable crisis, is to be more convincing that there is a wonderful, uncomplicated, and moral system that provides the answers. We had a taste of it in our early history. We need not give up on the notion of advancing this cause.

It worked, but we allowed our leaders to concentrate on the material abundance that freedom generates, while ignoring freedom itself. Now we have neither, but the door is open, out of necessity, for an answer. The answer available is based on the Constitution, individual liberty, and prohibiting the use of government force to provide privileges and benefits to all special interests.

After over 100 years we face a society quite different from the one that was intended by the Founders. In many ways their efforts to protect future generations with the Constitution from this danger has failed. Skeptics, at the time the Constitution was written in 1787, warned us of today’s possible outcome. The insidious nature of the erosion of our liberties and the reassurance our great abundance gave us, allowed the process to evolve into the dangerous period in which we now live.

Dependency on Government Largesse

Today we face a dependency on government largesse for almost every need. Our liberties are restricted and government operates outside the rule of law, protecting and rewarding those who buy or coerce government into satisfying their demands. Here are a few examples:

•Undeclared wars are commonplace.

•Debt is growing exponentially.

•Welfare for the rich and poor is considered an entitlement.

•Bailouts and guarantees for all kinds of misbehavior are routine.

•Supporters of sanctions, currency manipulation, and WTO trade retaliation, call the true free traders “isolationists.”

•Sanctions are used to punish countries that don’t follow our orders.

•Tragically our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.

•Central economic planning through monetary policy, regulations, and legislative mandates has been an acceptable policy.

•The economy is overregulated, overtaxed, and grossly distorted by a deeply flawed monetary system.

•It’s now the law of the land that the military can arrest American citizens, hold them indefinitely, without charges or a trial.

•Rampant hostility toward free trade is supported by a large number in Washington.

•The drone warfare we are pursuing worldwide is destined to end badly for the U.S. as the hatred builds for innocent lives lost and the international laws flaunted. Once we are financially weakened and militarily challenged, there will be a lot of resentment thrown our way.

•The Patriot Act and FISA legislation passed without much debate have resulted in a steady erosion of our 4^th Amendment rights.

Questions

Excessive government has created such a mess it prompts many questions:

•Why are sick people who use medical marijuana put in prison?

•Why does the federal government restrict the drinking of raw milk?

•Why can’t Americans manufacturer rope and other products from hemp?

•Why are Americans not allowed to use gold and silver as legal tender as mandated by the Constitution?

•Why do our political leaders believe it’s unnecessary to thoroughly audit our own gold?

•Why can’t Americans decide which type of light bulbs they can buy?

•Why is the TSA permitted to abuse the rights of any American traveling by air?

•Why should there be mandatory sentences—even up to life for crimes without victims—as our drug laws require?

•Why is Germany concerned enough to consider repatriating their gold held by the FED for her in New York? Is it that the trust in the U.S. and dollar supremacy is beginning to wane?

•Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?

•Why is it political suicide for anyone to criticize AIPAC?

•Why haven’t we given up on the drug war since it’s an obvious failure and violates the people’s rights? Has nobody noticed that the authorities can’t even keep drugs out of the prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?

•Why do we sacrifice so much getting needlessly involved in border disputes and civil strife around the world and ignore the root cause of the most deadly border in the world—the one between Mexico and the U.S.?

•Why does changing the party in power never change policy? Could it be that the views of both parties are essentially the same?

•Why did the big banks, the large corporations, and foreign banks and foreign central banks get bailed out in 2008 and the middle class lost their jobs and their homes?

•Why do so many accept the deeply flawed principle that government bureaucrats and politicians can protect us from ourselves without totally destroying the principle of liberty?

•Why do so many in the government and the federal officials believe that creating money out of thin air creates wealth?

•Why does Congress willingly give up its prerogatives to the Executive Branch?

•Why can’t people understand that war always destroys wealth and liberty?

•Why did we ever give the government a safe haven for initiating violence against the people?

•Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong.

•Why do some members defend free markets, but not civil liberties?

•Why do some members defend civil liberties but not free markets? Aren’t they the same?

•Why is there so little concern for the Executive Order that gives the President authority to establish a “kill including American citizens, of those targeted for assassination?

•Why don’t more defend both economic liberty and personal liberty?

•Why is it claimed that if people won’t or can’t take care of their own needs, that people in government can do it for them?

•Why are there not more individuals who seek to intellectually influence others to bring about positive changes than those who seek power to force others to obey their commands?

•Why do we allow the government and the Federal Reserve to disseminate false information dealing with both economic and foreign policy?

•Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority?

•Why should anyone be surprised that Congress has no credibility, since there’s such a disconnect between what politicians say and what they do?

•Why does the use of religion to support a social gospel and preemptive wars, both of which requires authoritarians to use violence, or the threat of violence, go unchallenged? Aggression and forced redistribution of wealth has nothing to do with the teachings of the world great religions.

•Is there any explanation for all the deception, the unhappiness, the fear of the future, the loss of confidence in our leaders, the distrust, the anger and frustration? Yes there is, and there’s a way to reverse these attitudes. The negative perceptions are logical and a consequence of bad policies bringing about our problems. Identification of the problems and recognizing the cause allow the proper changes to come easy.

Statist Thugs

From Brandon-Smith of of Alt-Market blog via Zero Hedge.

A mass exodus from ignorance and organized opposition to tyranny is the dream of every freedom loving person within the Liberty Movement today.  We would like nothing better than to put an end to the expanding establishment police state in the most peaceful manner possible.  We dream of a day when a transition back to the Constitutional values that once made America brilliantly unique in the world is possible, and can be accomplished without incredible pain or terrible bloodshed.  We long for that once-in-a-century uprising, that great march, that spontaneous eruption of the citizenry demanding a more truthful government.  At the same time, though, we realize that such events are rare, and few if any great changes in the history of man are made without sacrifice, and without direct confrontation.

The reason why peaceful and popular activism almost never occurs successfully, the reason why good people are made to stand and suffer, falls not only to the establishment elites who seek out and abuse power; there are others who share in the blame.  Regardless of the age, the culture, or the social conditions, there is ALWAYS a percentage of the general populace that embraces the totalitarian dynamic.  There is always someone in our neighborhood, in our workplace, and within our family that finds vindication or advantage in supporting the state, even if the state has turned viciously criminal.  They are not only useful idiots; they are conscious participants in the process of pacification and enslavement of their own society.  They understand their role perfectly, and they enjoy what they do.

The psychologist Carl Jung in his examination of the rise of violent fascism in Germany as well as the collectivist surveillance state in communist Russia theorized that there is in fact a certain percentage of people in any given epoch that carry within them a latent ability to abandon conscience.  That is to say, there is always hidden within a portion of the multitude an inborn potential for sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies.  These tendencies remain dormant for many under most circumstances, but every once in a while a society falters to the point where such diseases of the soul are encouraged, and the monsters in millions are allowed to come out and play.  

Is it possible that some men are more apt towards truth and freedom while others take more naturally to dominance and deceit?  Perhaps.  I find that under certain circumstances even the best human beings can make catastrophic errors in judgment.  However, there is a difference between those who misstep in life, and those who savor destruction.  For these people I reserve the label of the “statist thug”; a ghoul in common man’s drag just waiting for the opportunity to scrape out a spoonful of petty authority and assert his will over others.  These folks are the day’s damned.  And what’s worse; though they may have been born with a predisposition towards despotism, they still had a choice, and they chose villainy.  They deserve no special treatment and no quarter from us.

As America faces down wave after wave of fiscal difficulties, agovernment gone rogue with false left/right politics, and policies that disregard civil liberties for the sake of centralized authority, I believe the statist thugs of our time will soon flow out of the dark recesses and rotten sputtering gutters of our society like a river of septic putrescence.  We all know them when we see them, but do we really understand what makes them tick?  Here are some common psychological attributes of the overzealous statist; the failings and inadequacies that make him what he is…  

Statist Thugs Thrive During Immoral Times

The worst statists are utter screw-ups and failures in normal or semi-normal environments.  They barely have the ability to function without constant surrounding chaos and desperation which they use to camouflage their spastic and childish characters.  They are often seen as the dregs of a culture during peaceful years, and only climb to prominence when crisis overtakes the nation.  When a social environment turns tenuous or explosive, the statist excels.  Corrupt governments require the aid of questionable individualsin order to tighten control at the local level, and so anyone willing to set aside morality and principle automatically becomes a highly valued commodity.  Statists will flock to government employment during national “emergencies” or unjust wars, and use the inbred system to their advantage.

Statist Thugs Want Respect, Even If They Don’t Deserve It

Statists demand respect, and they will pursue authoritative positions just so they can remind people of the respect they are supposedly owed.  Some of them do realize that legitimate respect is earned through valuable works, knowledge, experience, and generous creativity.  They know it cannot be bought, and that it cannot be conned through clever talk, boastful discussion, and theatrical chest beating.  And so,instead of attempting real achievement, or taking the risk of falsely playing a part and being exposed, they look for a title and a uniform to fill the void.  They eventually attain respect derived by force through institutions within the system.  This title will likely be a miniscule part of the overall government conglomerate, but the statist will act as if he is the emperor of Earth once you wander into his narrow jurisdiction.  The slightest hint of defiance will send him into fits of rage.

Statist Thugs Only Understand Violence

Keep in mind that not every person in a uniform is a statist, and identifying them is more a matter of behavior than outward appearance.  There is no such thing as reason, logic, or even law in the realm of the statist thug.  You cannot discuss a matter of conflict with him.  You cannot point out that the legal structure he claims to represent does not support his views.  You cannot calm him using words and solid philosophy.  The only thing he understands is power, and the only thing that he regards is strength.  When faced with overwhelming reason, the statist will attack rather than think.  This attack, unfortunately, will only be silenced by an equal or greater display of force…

Statist Thugs Savor Weakness In Others

Show any signs of fear or weakness and you have given the statist exactly what he has always wanted.  He does not desire an equal fight.  In truth, he avoids situations in which his opponents are fairly matched.  This is because, deep down, all statists and power monger are cowards.  Anyone who is so desperate to control every aspect of his environment even to the point of hurting and enslaving others is obviously afraid of a great many things.  Attempting to be quietly diplomatic or grasping for mercy only encourages them to take their maliciousness to the next level.  Statists seek easy prey to satiate their thirst for dominance.  They will abuse women, children, the elderly and disabled, anyone that cannot defend themselves.  As soon as the goon encounters a person willing and able to fight back, however, his smug façade disappears and the hidden coward emerges.

Statist Thugs Love Law For The Law’s Sake

Statists revel in bureaucracy and red tape.  They love laws and regulations regardless of application.  They feel safe within a highly structured and contained system because most of them are followers, not leaders.  The idea that they may one day have to blaze their own path without the aid of a vast government machine cradling them like lost infants is terrifying to them.  Statists are not able to survive without someone telling them what to do and when to do it.  On the other side of the coin, they also enjoy the manner in which the modern legal framework can be twisted to fit whatever disturbed logic happens to strike them.  The more a society is cluttered with overt legalities, the easier it is to misinterpret and exploit the distraction and confusion they create.

Statists Believe Government Should Parent Society

The goal of a statist is to impress his will upon others by any means necessary.  Government simply offers the most expedient and convenient tool for them to do the job.  Of course, in their minds many of them will try to rationalize the abuse of government power by asserting that it is ultimately for the good of everyone.  It is not enough for them to live life the way they see fit for themselves; all people must be “shown the light” for the betterment of the group as a whole.  When confronted with someone who dissents against their oppressive world view, they usually respond by accusing the activist of “not caring about other people’s well being, or the well being of the country”.   You will almost always hear the Statist talk about the group, or the collective, over the individual, because the easiest way to dominate the citizenry is to erase the concept of unique individualism and condition them towards herd behavior.  Individuals with strong characters infuriate statists. 

Anyone Can Be A Statist

Many people (myself included) have never found much solace in the establishment and its parade of self-importance.  For me, most methodologies of government have always been a sick kind of joke.  Elaborate buildings and ceremonies, nice suits and uniforms, the money and the celebrity, the news shows and talking heads; it’s all costume.  It’s a parade of drunken clowns and carneys dipped in glamour and glitter and pomp.

The very concept of government is in itself an abstraction.  It is an artificial social edifice that seems to give weaker men a sense of security (or false security), even when it is at bottom a threat to them.  The assumption is that the establishment (meaning the power elite) must exist at all costs.  The statist cannot imagine otherwise.  He is at once a fan of the totalitarian game and an avid bouncing giggling cheerleader.  His greatest dream is to be a part of the beast; to share in the “glory” of the empire and live vicariously through its conquests.

A statist thug can be anyone, from the overweight and overzealous TSA agent at the airport to the brutally nosy and vicious old lady next door.  Some participate in tyranny directly by wearing the uniform and wielding the baton, while others participate behind closed doors and curtains by informing on their neighbors.  Regardless of their demeanor, each statist has one thing in common; an obsession with the continuance of the system to the point of madness.  There is absolutely nothing the state can do to make them second guess their love affair.  No crime too shocking,no attack too unjust.  During the blackest moments of mankind, they are the willing tools of oppression.  They make revolution - physical revolution, necessary.  With them, oligarchs take root.  Without them, oligarchs take shelter, or disappear altogether...

Factual Free-Market Fairness

A superb post by Diedre McCloskey:

The story is, in a few brief mottos to stand for a rich intellectual tradition since the 1880s:  Modern life is complicated, and so we need government to regulate.  Government can do so well, and will not be regularly corrupted.  Since markets fail very frequently the government should step in to fix them.  Without a big government ee cannot do certain noble things (Hoover Dam, the Interstates, NASA).  Antitrust works.  Businesses will exploit workers if government regulation and union contracts do not intervene.  Unions got us the 40-hour week.  Poor people are better off chiefly because of big government and unions.  The USA was never laissez faire.  Internal improvements were a good idea, and governmental from the start.  Profit is not a good guide.  Consumers are usually misled.  Advertising is bad.

Thus Anderson: ”Externalities, asymmetrical information, and other collective action problems are . . . pervasive in economic life.  Countless ways of conducting business reap gains for some while imposing unjust costs on others.  Create a cartel.  Stuff rat feces in sausages.”  Thus Freeman: “It is a truism to say that in order to achieve the benefits of an efficient market economy (increasing productivity, greater economic output, increasing productive capital, etc.), the basic rules of property, contract, and exchange must be structured [by government] to realize efficient market relations.”

No.  The master narrative of High Liberalism is mistaken factually.  Externalities do not imply that a government can do better.  Publicity does better than inspectors in restraining the alleged desire of businesspeople to poison their customers.  Efficiency is not the chief merit of a market economy: innovation is.  Rules arose in merchant courts and Quaker fixed prices long before governments started enforcing them.

I know such replies will be met with indignation.  But think it possible you may be mistaken, and that merely because an historical or economic premise is embedded in front page stories in the New York Times does not make them sound as social science.  It seems to me that a political philosophy based on fairy tales about what happened in history or what humans are like is going to be less than useless.  It is going to be mischievous.

How do I know that my narrative is better than yours?  The experiments of the 20^th century told me so.  It would have been hard to know the wisdom of Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman or Matt Ridley or Deirdre McCloskey in August of 1914, before the experiments in large government were well begun.  But anyone who after the 20^th century still thinks that thoroughgoing socialism, nationalism, imperialism, mobilization, central planning, regulation, zoning, price controls, tax policy, labor unions, business cartels, government spending, intrusive policing, adventurism in foreign policy, faith in entangling religion and politics, or most of the other thoroughgoing 19^th-century proposals for governmental action are still neat, harmless ideas for improving our lives is not paying attention.

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries ordinary Europeans were hurt, not helped, by their colonial empires.  Economic growth in Russia was slowed, not accelerated, by Soviet central planning.  American Progressive regulation and its European anticipations protected monopolies of transportation like railways and protected monopolies of retailing like High-Street shops and protected monopolies of professional services like medicine, not the consumers.  “Protective” legislation in the United States and “family-wage” legislation in Europe subordinated women.  State-armed psychiatrists in America jailed homosexuals, and in Russia jailed democrats.  Some of the New Deal prevented rather than aided America’s recovery from the Great Depression.

Unions raised wages for plumbers and auto workers but reduced wages for the non-unionized.  Minimum wages protected union jobs but made the poor unemployable.  Building codes sometimes kept buildings from falling or burning down but always gave steady work to well-connected carpenters and electricians and made housing more expensive for the poor.  Zoning and planning permission has protected rich landlords rather than helping the poor.  Rent control makes the poor and the mentally ill unhousable, because no one will build inexpensive housing when it is forced by law to be expensive.  The sane and the already-rich get the rent-controlled apartments and the fancy townhouses in once-poor neighborhoods.

Regulation of electricity hurt householders by raising electricity costs, as did the ban on nuclear power.  The Securities Exchange Commission did not help small investors.  Federal deposit insurance made banks careless with depositors’ money.  The conservation movement in the Western U. S. enriched ranchers who used federal lands for grazing and enriched lumber companies who used federal lands for clear cutting.  American and other attempts at prohibiting trade in recreational drugs resulted in higher drug consumption and the destruction of inner cities and the incarcerations of millions of young men.  Governments have outlawed needle exchanges and condom advertising, and denied the existence of AIDS.

Germany’s economic Lebensraum was obtained in the end by the private arts of peace, not by the public arts of war.  The lasting East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere was built by Japanese men in business suits, not in dive bombers.  Europe recovered after its two 20^th-century civil wars mainly through its own efforts of labor and investment, not mainly through government-to-government charity such as Herbert Hoover’s Commission or George Marshall’s Plan.  Government-to-government foreign aid to the Third World has enriched tyrants, not helped the poor.

The importation of socialism into the Third World, even in the relatively non-violent form of Congress-Party Fabian-Gandhism, unintentionally stifled growth, enriched large industrialists, and kept the people poor.  Malthusian theories hatched in the West were put into practice by India and especially China, resulting in millions of missing girls.  The capitalist-sponsored Green Revolution of dwarf hybrids was opposed by green politicians the world around, but has made places like India self-sufficient in grains.  State power in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa has been used to tax the majority of farmers in aid of the president’s cousins and a minority of urban bureaucrats.  State power in many parts of Latin America has prevented land reform and sponsored disappearances.  State ownership of oil in Nigeria and Mexico and Iraq was used to support the party in power, benefiting the people not at all.  Arab men have been kept poor, not bettered, by using state power to deny education and driver’s licenses to Arab women.  The seizure of governments by the clergy has corrupted religions and ruined economies.  The seizure of governments by the military has corrupted armies and ruined economies.

Industrial policy, from Japan to France, has propped up failing industries such as agriculture and small-scale retailing, instead of choosing winners.  Regulation of dismissal has led to high unemployment in Germany and Denmark, and especially in Spain and South Africa.  In the 1960s the public-housing high-rises in the West inspired by Le Courbusier condemned the poor in Rome and Paris and Chicago to holding pens.  In the 1970s, the full-scale socialism of the East ruined the environment.  In the 2000s, the “millennial collectivists,” Red, Green, or Communitarian, oppose a globalization that helps the poor but threatens trade union officials, crony capitalists, and the careers of people in Western non-governmental organizations.

Yes, I know, you want to reject all these factual findings because they are “right-wing” or “libertarian.”  All I ask you to do is, once in a while, consider.  Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.

Follow the link and read it all.

Bill Whittle's What We Believe

So, then why is liberal Los Angeles 400 pot shops to close.

Hard drugs truly impair judgement over the long term. Getting drunk is a short term affair by comparison. True some folks are addicted to alcohol and cannot quit. But, hard drugs are by definition addictive. Ask someone who has been addicted to things like meth if it is possible to function as the drug takes complete control of your body.

Restrictive laws offend my libertarian tendencies, but the destructive aspects of hard drugs make for a powerful case.

Sting and Soros Hook Up For A Duet Of Pro-Drug Stupidity

Reagan's 1964 Convention Speech

Some required viewing.

What It Feels Like To Be A Libertarian

by John Hasnas

Political analysts frequently consider what it means to be a libertarian. In fact, in 1997, Charles Murray published a short book entitled "What It Means to Be a Libertarian" that does an excellent job of presenting the core principles of libertarian political philosophy. But almost no one ever discusses what it feels like to be a libertarian. How does it actually feel to be someone who holds the principles described in Murray’s book?

I’ll tell you. It feels bad. Being a libertarian means living with an almost unendurable level of frustration. It means being subject to unending scorn and derision despite being inevitably proven correct by events. How does it feel to be a libertarian? Imagine what the internal life of Cassandra must have been and you will have a pretty good idea.

Imagine spending two decades warning that government policy is leading to a major economic collapse, and then, when the collapse comes, watching the world conclude that markets do not work.

Imagine continually explaining that markets function because they have a built in corrective mechanism; that periodic contractions are necessary to weed out unproductive ventures; that continually loosening credit to avoid such corrections just puts off the day of reckoning and inevitably leads to a larger recession; that this is precisely what the government did during the 1920's that led to the great depression; and then, when the recession hits, seeing it offered as proof of the failure of laissez-faire capitalism.

Imagine spending years decrying federal intervention in the home mortgage market; pointing out the dangers associated with legislation such as the Community Reinvestment Act that forces lenders to make more risky loans than they otherwise would; testifying before Congress on the lack of oversight and inevitable insolvency of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to legislators who angrily respond either that one is "exaggerat[ing] a threat of safety and soundness . . . which I do not see" (Barney Frank) or "[I[f it ain’t broke, why do you want to fix it? Have the GSEs [government-sponsored enterprises] ever missed their housing goals" (Maxine Waters) or "[T[he problem that we have and that we are faced with is maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place" (Gregory Meeks) or that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are "one of the great success stories of all time" (Christopher Dodd); and arguing that the moral hazard created by the implicit federal backing of such privately-owned government-sponsored enterprises is likely to set off a wave of unjustifiably risky investments, and then, when the housing market implodes under the weight of bad loans, watching the collapse get blamed on the greed and rapaciousness of "Wall Street."

I remember attending a lecture at Georgetown in the mid-1990s given by a member of the libertarian Cato Institute in which he predicted that, unless changed, government policy would trigger an economic crisis by 2006. That prediction was obviously ideologically-motivated alarmism. After all, the crisis did not occur until 2008.

Libertarians spend their lives accurately predicting the future effects of government policy. Their predictions are accurate because they are derived from Hayek’s insights into the limitations of human knowledge, from the recognition that the people who comprise the government respond to incentives just like anyone else and are not magically transformed to selfless agents of the good merely by accepting government employment, from the awareness that for government to provide a benefit to some, it must first take it from others, and from the knowledge that politicians cannot repeal the laws of economics. For the same reason, their predictions are usually negative and utterly inconsistent with the utopian wishful-thinking that lies at the heart of virtually all contemporary political advocacy. And because no one likes to hear that he cannot have his cake and eat it too or be told that his good intentions cannot be translated into reality either by waving a magic wand or by passing legislation, these predictions are greeted not merely with disbelief, but with derision.

It is human nature to want to shoot the messenger bearing unwelcome tidings. And so, for the sin of continually pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, libertarians are attacked as heartless bastards devoid of compassion for the less fortunate, despicable flacks for the rich or for business interests, unthinking dogmatists who place blind faith in the free market, or, at best, members of the lunatic fringe.

Cassandra’s curse was to always tell the truth about the future, but never be believed. If you add to that curse that she would be ridiculed, derided, and shunned for making her predictions, you have a pretty fair approximation of what it feels like to be a libertarian.

If you’d like a taste of what it feels like to be a libertarian, try telling people that the incoming Obama Administration is advocating precisely those aspects of FDR’s New Deal that prolonged the great depression for a decade; that propping up failed and failing ventures with government money in order to save jobs in the present merely shifts resources from relatively more to relatively less productive uses, impedes the corrective process, undermines the economic growth necessary for recovery, and increases unemployment in the long term; and that any "economic" stimulus package will inexorably be made to serve political rather than economic ends, and see what kind of reaction you get. And trust me, it won’t feel any better five or ten years from now when everything you have just said has been proven true and Obama, like FDR, is nonetheless revered as the savior of the country.

(h/t Matt Welch)