My first contribution at the Liberty Papers in months

The essence of the post has been seen on this blog a hundred times before. Intellectimpure will soon be complaining that I’m not saying anything new. Which is true.

But liberty papers now gets more readers than I do. So I thought I’d say it anyway lol.

anyway, quick snippet

In today’s political climate, Kennedy’s famous quote has been reversed. It is now not about what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you. In this climate, freedom has been redefined as comfort. Into this environment you invite millions of people who through no fault of their own better qualify as ‘have-nots’ than ‘haves’. And as the ‘have nots’–together with the cultural elite–have shown themselves all to willing to do, they will vote from others’ pocketbooks. And they will vote for other egregious restrictions and legalized discrimination.

Like leftists, many libertarians seem to suffer from what I can only call perfectworlditis. The major difference being that while libertarians’ idea of what the perfect world is, probably is the platonic form of our own world. Whereas what leftists think the perfect world is doesn’t make sense at any level.

I have no illusions of how perfect the world is and more importantly I understand something called the Tragedy of the Commons. Which is one of the reasons I’m a hardcore conservationist (although I don’t think global warming has been proven, deforestation and other environmental destruction due to man certainly have). And why I support some kind of government regulation/funding in education. Unlike many of my fellow classical liberals and libertarians. But much like plenty of them.

It’s something I’ve seen time and time again with people looking for philosophical and logical consistency while failing to anchor themselves against real world concerns:

“I’m more internally consistent than you!”
“Not going to deny it. But as the surgeon said to the patient with gangrene, ‘would you rather die with two legs or live with one?’”
“Yeah, well, you’re right. But I’m still more internally consistent.”
“And I’m still breathing. Later”

Post on perfectworlditis tommorrow.

Amazingly enough within a couple of hours of writing yesterday’s post and heading to school, I was assaulted by yet another piece on the horrors of debt. This one in the OU student newspaper.

Apparently ’some students don’t realize future implications of frequent credit card use.’ Not going to deny that. But yet again I’m amazed by the tone of the article. If I were to write the article, it’d very much have a tone of “Quit screwing up you idiots!” Sovereign individuals over the age of majority are making bad choices. They need to stop making them.

Instead of course the article is fairly typical in its pleas for sympathy and understanding.

Moyer, a National Merit Scholarship finalist and letters major, applied for his first credit card at 18 with a credit card company set up on campus at UTD.

He did not understand the problems he was going to face.

OU gives full rides to national merit finalists. I think UTD does too. So unlike a good chunk of this country, this kid’s tuition and general living expenses were heavily subsidized. If a National Merit Finalist isn’t smart enough to understand how debt works, who is? And even more problematic, if people of above-average intellect can’t even be expected to manage their own finances who can?

“He didn’t know how he got into all of this debt and didn’t know how to get out,” she said. “He felt like a failure.”

He didn’t know how he got into all of this debt? He did it by ignoring the consequences of his actions.

Since Moyer’s death, his mother has become an advocate for groups working to change the way people get credit cards.

She has joined the advocacy group, Americans for Fairness in Lending (AFFIL). The group is pushing Congress for change.

“We are asking for credit cards to be based on how much you make and how much you owe,” she said. “I don’t understand how all of these companies can give credit cards to someone making $5.15 an hour.”

Mother loses son. Mother wants to blame someone for son’s death. Mother then seeks to change the law and restrict freedom to somehow honor her son’s death or find purpose in it. Nope, never seen that happen.

Here’s an excellent quote from a kid with a good head on his shoulders in the same article though:

Although he is stuck repaying every dollar of his loans, he said he doesn’t regret what he is doing with the money.

“It is definitely worth it,” McCroan said. “People take out 30 or 40 thousand dollar loans to buy a car. I’m getting an education with the money. In our society, education is expensive, but it is worth it.”

Course, McCroan does whine a bit about the cost of education, but then again so does everyone. I definitely bitch and moan about the 60,000 i’ve amassed for just two years of med school. But like McCroan I grin and bear it.

I know I’m beating a dead horse here but I really don’t like ‘consumer protection laws’. And I really don’t like the intimation that we’re too stupid to make decisions for ourselves. But more importantly if we are too stupid to be masters of our own lives, what business do we have telling others how to live? Democrat, Republican, and yes even Libertarian. All of us support the right to vote and some degree of social coercion through government and law. But along with the right to vote comes the responsibility to choose wisely. To pick the right leaders who will take us down the right path. And if we can’t be responsible for ourselves how can we possibly be responsible for a whole nation?

Rosie O’Donnell made a comment today about how we shouldn’t fear the terrorists:

Faith or fear, that’s your choice. You can walk through life believing in the goodness of the world, or walk through life afraid of anyone who thinks different than you and trying to convert them to your way of thinking.

I figure most people are going to key in on the ‘we shouldn’t fear the terrorists’ line. Whatever. It’s expected from her. What I personally find noteworthy is how in one short sentence she has exposed both the hypocrisy and the innate instability of the leftist worldview.

“You can walk through life believing in the goodness of the world…” is the choice she wishes us to believe she has made. ‘Faith’ in her fellow man. I consider myself a freethinker. And a tireless seeker of the truth. Are people fundamentally good? Every day in the news they shows us otherwise; rather, greed, anger, and pettiness seem to be innate characteristics. Are people fundamentally evil? Thousands of acts of kindness both large and small–many going largely unrecognized and unrewarded–would seem to belie this assertion. I submit instead that people are neutral. Neither good nor bad until we make that choice.

To have faith in the goodness of the world is to invite yourself to become a victim. Should girls at college parties get drop dead drunk assuming that all men are perfect gentlemen? Should the elderly couple entrust their life savings to a shyster? Should a person walk down the streets of Camden Town at 2 am assuming that no one will assault them?

To do so is not only the height of stupidity, but if Ms. O’Donnell truly behaved in such a fashion and truly lived in the real world, she would quickly be disabused of such lofty and inane notions.

…or walk through life afraid of anyone who thinks different than you and trying to convert them to your way of thinking. Here Ms. O’Donnell seems to be talking about the Right, religious and otherwise. But what about herself and her own politics? She rails against firearms, yet if people were truly good, she would have nothing to fear would she? She bangs her meaty fist upon her desk screaming at the camera about the need for social welfare. Yet if people were truly good, would we have need for such things? Ms. O’Donnell compares Christians to the Taliban and tells us that Christianity is if not evil, at least a danger to be carefully guarded against.

She openly derides those who seek limited government, and seeks to impose her leftist will upon us through government. She campaigns for the erosion of freedoms that could be used to cause harm and demands that government force us to be charitable.

Rosie and her ilk have no faith in the goodness of people or they wouldn’t campaign so hard to limit our freedoms and coerce us into making the social choices they want us to make. They have no respect for opposing viewpoints or they wouldn’t work so hard to silence voices like mine. Or, at best, compel us to act as they would wish through the use of government fiat, making us unwilling cogs in their machine.

What is it they fear? The evil that lies in the hearts of men. The pettiness. The greed. Just as everyone else does. This is why they fight tirelessly to control how we behave. They fear that a morally neutral tool would inevitably be used against them. They see the freedom of others as innately threatening. They fear that left alone, we would let others starve as we pad our own pockets. They fear that we have no capacity for goodwill toward others. If they do not fear such things, why do they work so hard to legislate them?

What is it they have faith in? It’s clearly not the people, or they wouldn’t try so hard to direct our every move. Yet, feeling as they do about our capacity for evil, they willingly give power to government to control us. They find little to be apprehensive about in this granting of enormous power because it will be ‘used for good’.

And yet when non-leftists are in control they briefly don the anti-establishment cloak that never leaves the shoulders of liberty-minded individuals, wearing for a time the mask of someone who sees the implicit danger of concentrated power. Faith in big government by fellow leftists, but not in big government by those other than themselves. What is this but fear of others that believe differently from you. We are left to the inescapable conclusion that what the leftist elite have faith in is in their own ability to justly preside over others.

I choose neither faith nor fear, but simple rationality. People are neither good nor bad, but will act in either fashion as their own self-interest dictates. Unlike the leftists, I do not fear others to the point I wish to control them. But neither do I have faith in them to always act in a goodly manner. More importantly, whereas the leftist has faith in ‘the right people’ and their ability to rule over us, I have faith in no one to do so. I am not an elitist, believing I operate on a level of righteousness unparalleled by ‘the common people’. I have within me the same capacity for evil as they do. And so I wouldn’t trust myself with such power, nor anyone else of a like mind. I do not hold myself above others, as the leftist elite seems to.

So. This is an ugly time in our Nation’s history. Far uglier than the Civil War and Reconstruction. Much worse than the Depression–although the seeds of today were planted by FDR, his four freedoms, and even moreso his massive ego.

Claire Wolfe puts it succinctly in the opening lines of 101 Things To Do ’til The Revolution when she says:

“America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”

That is exactly the situation we’re in. At this point it is all but impossible for one to vote for a party that supports the essential American ideal of liberty. The Libertarians who perhaps come closest still fail to acknowledge the basic pragmatism espoused by the founding fathers and which common sense when applied to classical liberal theory would suggest.

A vote for the Democrats is the same as a vote for Old Europe. Also known as the road to serfdom, socialist collapse, and totalitarianism. To vote for the Republicans is to vote for a strange combination of plutocracy, social authoritarianism, and a brand of big government all their own. Democrats fail to understand that if it requires coercion to maintain, then it can’t really be freedom. They also strangely see no problem with giving Government control of our economic lives, all the while whining about the problems faced by those without it. Republicans are unable to separate their personal moral views from their political stances. And neither party is able to understand the difference between political and economic capitalism.

Both parties are broken. The left irretrievably so seeing as the very definitions of important words like ‘freedom’ and ‘rights’ they operate under are flawed. Castles in the sand and all that. Democrats’ minds inhabit a world in which physics, biology, and basic mathematics do not obey the rules of the physical universe. They live in a world where ’socialism is a good idea in theory’. Despite the fact that it’s at the theoretic level that socialism is most flawed, failing to take into account the basic self interest inherent in all animals.

Republicans? I’d give them slightly better odds but not much better. This might be a personal bias though. Like most minarchists I’m more sympathetic to conservatism than neosocialism since although we push for legalization of many things conservatives stand staunchly against, many or most of us willingly choose not to partake in such activities. Firmly wedded to personal responsibility as we are, the liberties of excess are not objectives we are likely to pursue.

So what do we do with one of the few tools left to us? Our vote? Well, we’ve all heard the basic arguments, which basically boil down to two:

1) The Republicans are still better than the Democrats, so we should vote for them.

2) The Republicans need to be sent a message so we should…

2a. Vote Libertarian
2b. Vote Democrat

3) The political machine is completely broken so we should refuse to vote at all.

4) Give the Democrats some power so they can hang themselves with their own rope.

I think Michael Savage has taken option 3 (if you can overlook his egotism, he’s actually fun to listen to). Boortz has rejected option 1, but I don’t know if he’s committed to anything else.
Personally I’ll be using option 2a and 3 depending on availability and palatability.

Just a couple days ago I reminded people that this is not an either/or proposition. And that’s what we need to keep in mind. This isn’t about choosing between Republicans and Democrats but architecting the birth of a new party or three. About changing things from the top to the bottom. Perhaps the new parties will keep the old names, perhaps they won’t. The fact that the Democrats can call themselves the ‘Party of Jefferson’ proves that names are as ephemeral and irrelevant as can be imagined.

Not everyone will choose the same option. Not everyone should choose the same option. I will say that Option 4 is just plain stupid. The thing about government power is that once granted it is almost impossible to revoke. Bush, like the past 70 years of presidents, is operating under the ‘emergency powers’ that FDR bequeathed upon himself. His Rural Electrification Administration is still in operation. Which is strange. I’ve lived in West Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and rural New York state, and have never had a problem with access to electricity. It’s just possible that that particular branch of government has outlived its always dubious usefulness.

Choosing Option 4 in other words is to accept that revolution–a true revolution–will be the only recourse. Whether it could be avoided in any case is doubtful. Still, as a young man who hopes to raise children as soon as he finds a worthy vessel, I’d like to at least try for a peaceful solution.

The other options boil down to a combination of geography, the individual candidate, and personal principle. I refuse to vote for a Republican. I can do this because I live in what was the Reddest state in the union back in the 2004 election. I’m also lucky enough to call Porkbusting Senator Tom Coburn my own. I get to have my cake and eat it too. Were I to live in a borderline state like Ohio or Wisconsin, my personal convictions might have some negative side effects.

My vote isn’t meaningless, but it is futile. Even if the libertarian party presented me a candidate who’s head wasn’t in the clouds, a candidate with a strong and popular following, some Republican who displayed ‘Christian Family Values’ would still win. But like I said, my vote isn’t meaningless. Voting for an LP official would send a message. 5% of the vote this cycle, 10% next cycle. It would remind the people at large that there could be a viable alternative. And it would remind the Republicans that they aren’t the only option for non-socialists. And there is a certain comfort in knowing that even though I’d be ‘throwing my vote away’, at least I wouldn’t be abetting a Democrat in gaining a seat.

In a similar way, the same goes for those living in California, New York, or any of the other neosocialist bastions. They similarly have little chance of changing the tides. They are free to vote for an alternative candidate with a clear conscience. And that is what they ought to be doing without a doubt.

Borderline states, it’s you who have the real dilemma. When elections hang on margins that measure in the low thousands, your vote does make a measurable difference. Not voting for a Republican could change the election. Then again, voting for a Republican doesn’t quite convey your disapproval of the GOP. And then there’s the danger of the message being interpreted wrongly. The GOP could always take your decision not to vote for them as a signal that they need to turn even farther left. All I can tell you is that just remember that Dems in power means yet more liberty all but irretrievably lost.

Maverick candidates offer the best of both worlds. Republican candidates who support the FairTax plan, are more socially liberal, or firmly stand against the growth in the Executive Branch are people we can give our full support to. Unfortunately they’re an all too rare breed.

Nope, I don’t have an all encompassing solution to this quagmire. And there is no one-size-fits-all voting strategy. Human power struggles are far too messy. Which is probably why the Founders sought to limit the power of government so much when they created the law of the land. Sadly, we forgot their lesson. And this is the mess we’ve inherited.

All I can hope for is that we tread carefully and prudently. Whether we merely prolong the seemingly inevitable or somehow manage to revive our ailing nation, either would be better than hastening its demise.

You know what pisses me off?

Being called conservative.

You know what pisses me off even more?

When pseudosocialists call themselves ‘liberal’.

Do you know what pisses me off more than either of those?

Being told to vote for Democrats since I’m fed up with Republicans.

That one exposes just how statist and juvenile the modern so-called liberal is.

Everywhere around me I see discontent with the political leadership of both parties. The only ones who fully support the Democratic Leadership’s 12 step plan to emulate Europe’s slow decay are the ivory tower academics, their spoonfed and sheltered students, and a bunch of rich white people who feel guilty about their economic success.

And I don’t think I’ve actually met anyone who fully supports the Republican leadership. And I live in the reddest state in the union. Then again, maybe that’s why…

Yet this November, people are going to get into the booths and vote for people who don’t necessarily represent their interests or their positions, and in some cases are directly antagonistic to them. They’ll do so because “it’s as close as they can get.”

Unfortunately, when you vote you can’t put down “only because you’re the lesser of two evils,” or “I’m not voting for Republicans but against Democrats (which I may do, we’ll see),” or “I’m only voting for points 1, 3, 4, and 8 of the party platform.” A vote is all or nothing.

If we persist in the mindset that there are only two options, what will happen is we’ll enable these people to continue drifting away from what we really support. This is what the Bush administration has skillfully done for the past 6 years. I would sooner have shot myself than vote for Al Gore. I was 16 at the time, so it was irrelevent. But my position wasn’t so different from the people who were of voting age. And the Bush administration pushed their retarded agenda, the only unifying theme of which seems to be the desire to increase Executive Powers as much as possible while helping business out (which isn’t the same as advocating a free market).

Bush’s approval rating amongst conservatives has been relatively low for most of his presidency and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Yet he was voted in again in 2004. Not because people liked him but because he was better than Horseface.

And the same goes for Democrats. A lot of my left-leaning friends say they don’t support things like fully open borders, expanding social welfare, or enabling violent criminals by reducing our ability to defend ourselves, or a nanny state, but then they turn around vote for the people who do. Why? Because it’s ‘better than the alternative’.

So what do we have here? We have two political parties, neither of which represent their base all that well. And we have people that will continue to vote for one or the other knowing this. We are enabling the theocrats and the neosocialists by our unwillingness to tell them to go to hell.

A reformer, a new party, we need something. If Zell Miller and Ross Perot were to do their respective things right here, right now that’d be just about perfect. And we’re only get that if we encourage it. I don’t see any good options for 2006 but 2008 could be a very good time for an up-and-comer if we’re brave enough to break the hold the decayed and corrupt parties have on us. Don’t think of it as a vote thrown away, but as an investment on what could be something great.

At the moment we’re well within that 60 day period during which our First Amendment rights cease to exist courtesy of Sen. McCain’s insane publicity-driven political posturing. Which makes me angry. But I saw an ad air on TV that cleverly sidesteps that bit of legislative retardation. Which makes me smile.

Imagine an advertisement that starts out with a silhouette of what is clearly a female with a butch haircut (women should have long hair dammit). Imagine the advertisement explaining exactly why they can’t tell you what her name is or show you her picture. Imagine they tell you that this state insurance commissioner took tens of thousands of dollars from the very out of state insurance companies she was supposed to observe and regulate.

Now, imagine they give you a web address where you can learn more. This one right here:

www.oklahomasecrets.com

I don’t necessarily have an opinion on her. I already don’t like her. I don’t like her haircut. I don’t like her husband. As a former state employee I don’t like her abuse of expense accounts. And I don’t think the people who are supposed to be a check against something should be able to have their elections funded by that very thing. Could you imagine if Logan County (one of the nation’s largest meth hotspots) had a guy running for Sherrif who took campaign contributions from known drug dealers? Doesn’t make sense.

The advertisement could’ve been against Tom Coburn, who I would’ve voted for in 2004 if I’d been in the country at the time. I’d still have been posting about this slick little 30 second TV spot.

They found a way to bypass McCain-Feingold. And for that reason alone, I approve of their message.

Guy on a Focaljet asked this question and posted his top ten. Mine were slightly different. The one commonality, healthcare reform, showed just how different our ideologies and thought processes were. I wanted to reform it into a true market system with posted prices and employer-insurance decoupling. He of course wanted to go socialist. Which I found amusing since he supposedly likes math. And you have to be pretty bad with math to think socialist anything will work. Anyway, my Top Ten. There’s a fair amount of things you’ve seen before and these don’t necessarily go in order of importance.

1. Lock down the border
–simple logic says you cannot increase the size of your lower classes under a progressive income tax system
–furthermore, we are importing (and thus creating) an underclass, not good for them not good for us
–make English the official language. It’s the only way to be fair to all immigrant groups.

2. Tax Reform
2a. Eliminate Concealed Taxation
–the 7.5% ‘employer contribution’ to social security is a perfect example. It isn’t an employer contribution at all, but part of your paycheck deducted before you even see the stub. If you can’t see what taxes you’re paying you can’t know how badly the government is soaking you.
2b. Reduce corporate income taxes from sales
–this is effectively a concealed consumption tax, as their ‘profits’ are actually the money you spent on sales
2c. Initiate movement toward the FairTax plan
–income tax is both unconstitutional and unfair
–prebate plan ensures no one is taxed on necessities
–plus a lot more I’m not willing to get into. More here
2d. Decrease capital gains taxes
–possibly just for individuals below a certain income threshold to encourage saving and investing, reducing the need/desire for SS and government subsidized education loans

3. Healthcare reform (not what Hillary means when she says it)
3a. Decouple employers from managed care plans
–this is a form of concealed income. The employer doesn’t pay for health insurance, rather it subtracts the cost from your paycheck before you see the stub. The accountants consider health insurance just another part of payroll.
–this would increase competition as rather than having to sell to a single company, insurance companies now have to court thousands of individuals
*instead of pleasing the employer (by looking effective while being cheap), they’d have to please the person who wants to be insured.
–this would allow consumer choice as to whether full insurance is necessary or not. In many cases (especially single young people) it is simply too much coverage
3b. Push alternative coverage plans
–traditional health insurance is too inclusive, it’s like being forced to take no deductible comprehensive car insurance and a prepaid maintenance plan when all you need is high deductible liability
3c. Increase utilization of non-MD practitioners
–I’ve got a lot of respect for nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants. They could largely replace a lot of general practitioners
3d. Restrict medicaid and medicare programs significantly
–I’m very anti social welfare. It is not a good thing.
–Medicaid destroys market efficiency in healthcare. It gives too much coverage for some things and too little for others. And as eligibility grows, they become a larger and larger part chunk of the medical market. They can strongarm healthcare delivery systems in much the same way WalMart does with their suppliers.
–Medicaid and medicare encourage overuse of medical resources. You’re not paying, so why not go in for every little unnecessary thing.
3e. Allow emergency rooms to turn away non-urgent cases
–Right now ERs have to see and treat anyone who walks in the door, even someone with a simple cold
*seeing a kid with a runny nose in an ER is much more costly than in an urgent care or outpatient setting
–This is bankrupting them and increasing costs astronomically because many don’t pay, using it for ersatz primary care. This drives up your and my bill as these hospitals try to recover costs from us.
3f. Use tax incentives to encourage hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to provide indigent care
3g. Upfront pricing for medical care
–Allow patients to shop around
3h. In general encourage competition
–the current medical system is anything but a free market

4. Welfare reform
–major penalties for having children while on welfare
*not being able to take care of yourself is one thing, being derelict in your duty to raise your child is another
–couple welfare to working on government projects
*government can recoup cost of welfare by essentially ‘hiring’ these people, reducing the size of the civil service corps
–ensure that welfare is a transient safety net and not a lifestyle
–I toy with the idea of suspending their voting rights. If you’re not even taking care of yourself, what right do you have to tell other people how to live? But more importantly, if you’re living off of other peoples’ money, should you be able to vote yourself more of their money?

5. Move away from Social Security
–we will have to be weaned off of it as a 64 year old can hardly be expected to save enough money by next year to retire. Say anyone under 30 or so will not receive benefits and each year reduce the SS tax.
–private investment is a better alternative. Not government privatization of social security, but complete dissolution and moving to IRAs, 401ks and the like.

6. School reform
–competition is good
–vouchers ensure that parents are forced to spend money on their children (through taxation), yet allows choice.
–competition and government standards will ensure that even if parents do not choose school, school will still be decent
6a. Incentives to put elite schools in bad neighborhoods
–this worked well where I grew up. Kids who have little parental support nevertheless find themselves at schools with great opportunities.
6b. Accelerate the curriculum and provide public trade schools
–the answer is not dumbing down the curriculum but to smarten up the students. You won’t know what they’re capable of until you push them.
–some people can’t hack it. This is ok. There are plenty of well paying jobs for skilled labor, many of which can’t be replaced by machines.
–accelerated curricula might decrease the ‘college degree. any college degree’ requirement of many jobs.
*many jobs simply do not need a ba or a bs, they require these because the school system has gotten so crappy that they figure if you have an undergrad degree you’re up to high school standard.

7. Encourage research into viable alternative fuels–biofuels show great promise yet are underfunded compared to pie-in-the-sky tech that is often theoretically flawed, let alone impractical.

8. Remove ‘under god’ from the pledge of allegiance
–it just pisses me off and i’m running out of points to make. A 1950’s addition that undermines our founders’ commitment to a separation of religion and state.

9. Destroy the two party system
–there are more than two viewpoints out there yet sadly that is the choice we are forced to make
–The country would be better served by several parties who overlapped in ideologies. Voting blocs would disappear and there would be far less of this party line voting nonsense.

10. Shore up the constitution and its commitment to limited government–no more intellectual dishonesty about certain amendments (*cough* 2nd)
–return the Senate to state appointments rather than popular elections
*this would make senators part of state governments, and so reduce their urge to grow federal power.
–eliminate the executive powers first expanded by FDR and later by every president since
*reduce the size and power of the executive branch’s ’shadow wing’ (including FBI, CIA, ATF, etc). They don’t answer to the people and in many cases only nominally to the President. They have too much autonomy and not enough accountability.
–restrict federal powers to those areas envisioned by the founders as being necessary
–reform the judicial branch by increasing accountability and decreasing bench legislation
*there are activist judges on both the right and the left. With all too little justification they can drastically change interpretation of law even when original and/or commonsense interpretation is well established.
*term limits or at least periodic performance review periods

Thoughts
Schools and biofuels are probably the two things that pop out at you as not very minarchist. You’re right on the latter. And the former was cause for debate even in the formative years of our guiding philosophy.

I consider the environment a commons situation. And like all commons situations, self-interested individuals acting self-interestedly will result in destruction. I think that market solutions can work, but not without a regulatory framework. I see hunters, outdoorsmen, and the like as vital to preserving the natural world. I also know that we need to reduce our continued population growth and environmental impact. Not necessarily down from current levels, but control the growth from this point on.

On education, I think it was John Stuart Mill who said something along the lines of education being necessary for the maintenance of freedom. I happen to agree with him. Minarchists of all stripes tend to be very self-sufficient people and capable of taking care of themselves. These aren’t skills we’re born with, but things we learn. And it would be nice to say ‘It’s the parent’s responsibility.’ Which it is. But the truth is far too many people have children and whether through malice, indifference, or simple incompetence do not know how to turn those children into self-actualized adults. With a government education system (including a somewhat subsidized state university/college system), we can ensure that the opportunity to learn is there for all children and that they are exposed to it.

There’ll be disagreements of course. That’s kinda the point of political discourse. Anyway, that’s what I would do if I were eligible in 2008. Instead of 2020.

…maybe we’d finally get included in these massive diversity initiatives all over the place.

Thanks to the apologists at CAIR who’d much rather guilt trip Americans than actually reform their own religion, the bleeding hearts who think that if we all just hold hands and sing Kumbaiah around a campfire world peace will appear out of thin air, and the appeasers who are so scared of Islam the word ‘Allah’ causes them to lose control of their bladder and their dignity, middle and high schoolers around the country are now being taught units on Islam.

I’ve got no objection to being educated about world religions and cultures. What I’ve got an objection to is the motivation behind this. It is a tried and true axiom that ‘diversity’ only becomes important when the group we’re focusing on becomes politically important. First in the civil rights era, blacks became an important political node. Black history month, Kwanzaa, and Levar Burton in a loincloth ensued. Hispanic immigrants become the fastest growing segment of the population through means illegal (mostly) and legal. All of a sudden these new immigrants, with no history of institutional racism, become a part of the Affirmative Action eligible population, which is bizarre since other recent immigrant groups (less numerous of course) are left out. National Hispanic Month, bilingual civil servants, and illegal immigrant havens that defy US law and principles rise to the fore. Terrorists become more than just a nuisance, killing in the name of Allah, and all of a sudden Muslim Americans are in the spotlight. And, inevitably, it is followed by obsequious whoring and the judicious application of lips to buttocks.

Looking at the data from the American Religious Identification Survey from 2001, the zeal with which schools across the country are rushing to teach children about Islam seems somewhat misplaced. Especially given that one of the oldest and largest religious traditions continues to be overlooked.

As one might gather, I’m talking of course about Hinduism and Buddhism. Which really can’t be taught separately; Buddhism lacks context without a discussion of Hindu philosophy and history, and leaving out the latest reincarnation of the Hindu conception of God (Buddha) is similarly awkward. Together they represent roughly 2.5 million people as compared to the 1.5 million of Islam. Buddhism alone is just about even with Islam at about 1.5 million, while Hinduism is just behind them with 1 million.

More importantly, whereas between 1990 and 2000 the Muslim population doubled, the other two saw substantially higher growth rates. Buddhist residents nearly tripled in number, while the number of Hindus grew by an even greater 237%. But of course, no rush to add us in.

We continue to be left out of diversity initiatives across the country, and while we’re included in some, all too often we’re simply left out of the picture or given merely lip service. Far more important is it to focus on the Abrahamic religions (of which Islam is one). As an outsider, I’ve found far more similarities in those three religions than I have differences (indeed, Mohammed saw his gospel as rather similar to that of the monophysite Christians and initially approached them in a spirit of brotherhood). All three religions trace their roots to Abraham. All three place man against nature. All three count their members among ‘the chosen’. And in all three, submission to God is one of the most important themes. The eastern religions differ from them in every one of these aspects. But apparently the largest and oldest Eastern religious and cultural tradition would add little to our appreciation of the richness and variation of human cultures.

Maybe if we rioted over the Simpsons episode where Homer dressed up as Ganesh and demanded Matt Groening’s head on a platter. Maybe if we killed Texans, citing their steak addiction as an abomination unto Vishnu. Or maybe if Buddhist monks and Hindu priests demanded that we be allowed to live under our religious law despite living on American soil, or face the terrible wrath of a holy war against the American devils. Maybe then we’d be worth learning about?

If I sound angry, I am. If I sound jealous, I’m not. Disgusted would be a better word. Disgusted that people don’t see ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’ for what it is: political posturing. Muslims might be fewer in number than other groups, but they’re a very visible one given the trouble intolerant Islamofascists are creating on every continent except South America (and I might be wrong there). And at the end of the day I’m simply not a fan of enforced cultural education. It becomes just another chore when you do that. I’d much rather people come to me and ask if we really do worship cows. It sucks that that’s the public perception, but their curiosity means that when I explain the true nature of Hinduism to them, they want to hear it.

So apparently with the tightened border security in California and Texas, illegals are ‘being forced’ to traverse the ‘dangerous Sonoran Desert’. Funny, no one holds a gun to their head and tells them to come here. In fact, they pay other people to get them across. The fact that they’re taking more arduous routes tells us one thing: the potential profit is worth the risk. They make this determination on their own, using their own faculties. And if the desert claims them, then so be it. They knew what they were getting into.

Harsh? perhaps. But I have no respect for those who won’t respect the laws and the history of my country.

Journalists once again come to our rescue by using idiotic language. The vocabulary of coercion is dangerous, particularly when used in a political context. It implies an oppressor and a victim. It implies that something must be done. It begs for government to arrive, wearing the guise of protector. And just as serfs once bowed their heads to feudal lords in exchange for safety, so do we.

I am profoundly sick of hearing about ‘victims’ and people ‘forced’ to do things. If you use such language, I want to see the crime, I want to see the coercion. People choosing to do stupid, dangerous, or inane things do so at their own peril. And I’ll respect them enough to allow them their freedom. And in return I expect that people leave me alone to do what I will. Succeed or fail, it’ll be my own doing.

Imagine there’s a bomb with a 30 minute timer. A two man team from the bombsquad is dispatched to disarm it. The first guy spends 25 minutes in front of the bomb, not doing anything much. Just kinda sitting around, unsure or unwilling to start defusing it. With 5 minutes to go, he hands it off to the other guy and says ‘Your turn’. Unfortunately, a bomb this complex and intricate usually takes at least 10 minutes to disable. The bomb explodes while Number Two is working on it.

Number One’s cheerleaders stand up screaming “It’s all Number Two’s fault! He was holding the bomb when it went off!”

Number Two’s followers immediately stand up and say “Number One didn’t do a damn thing with the bomb for 25 minutes, it’s his fault. And there hasn’t been another bomb explosion in 5 years! Number Two is clearly better!”

Both are idiots. Saying that Clinton had no part in 9/11 is retarded. He was offered Bin Laden’s head on a platter and said ‘no thank you’. Under his administration the plot was brewing. For the exact same reason it is sheer lunacy to say that Bush’s efforts have been a success when it comes to terror. Whether an attack has occurred thus far is irrelevant. What is important is whether terror is being plotted under our noses or not. And there is no doubt in my mind that it is. By permant residents and citizens of the US.

And this is the most important fact we need to understand if those who truly want peace (including muslims) are to be victorious over the islamofascists. While the middle eastern terrorist organizations will always be a threat, the much greater danger comes from those who live within our borders, willing to partake in our prosperity but not our way of life. Thus far, incidents in the US have been relatively minor, but we could look to the ‘great experiment’ of Europe for what may lie ahead. The riots in France, the 7/7 bombings, the new airplane bomb attempt thwarted today. And if you’re lucky enough to have friends in the midlands of England, you can find out just how much worse the Islamofascist violence is than they let on. Which is kind of shocking considering that only a hundred miles away in London, I had no idea just how bad things were.

Being a strong proponent of free speech, I’m not much for the term ‘hate speech’. Quite frankly, no matter how intolerant, how harsh, how degrading the language you use to talk about someone or some group, I don’t think you can consider it a crime. But at the same time, there’s a line where speech and action blur, where a man’s words are intended to cause violence through the actions of others. Even this I am hesitant to call a crime, but that is what it is.

It is conspiracy to commit crimes against the citizenry and the nation itself. I know of no other way to describe it. And it is happening. Every day in mosques around the West. Dearborn’s Islamic Center of America is notorious for it, as are certain mosques in the UK and France, to name three of the countries where it is most likely to be a problem. And there are a host of organizations at the ready to play apologist while providing little in the way of reform against the radical elements of their religion (CAIR comes to mind for one). Granted, there are plenty of mosques where this does not happen. And I think that they could be our strongest allies in expunging the blight that is islamofascism from this planet.

In any exclusionary religion (namely the Abrahamic religions), there are two modes of thought when it comes to how to treat non-believers. There are those who would take up arms against the others and eliminate them entirely. And then there are those who, while they don’t believe other religions are right, are content to let God judge them for their beliefs. In Judaism and Christianity, the violent people have been largely eliminated. Yet in their sister religion Islam, they remain in large numbers. There are those who take up arms themselves, there are those who support them financially, spiritually, there are those who cheer them in the streets, and there are those who condone them. Every one of these people–even the latter–is a part of the islamofascist power structure.

But there are plenty of peaceful Muslims to be found. More here than in Europe, but nevertheless these people are just as horrified as we are by what is being done in the name of their religion. Yet they, like any immigrant group, are of split identity. They see themselves as both Muslim and American. As such, they share a common ground with us as well as with the islamofascists. The key is to acknowledge their unique cultural identity, and also win their loyalty. When they think ‘us vs. them’ we want them to think of ‘us’ as Americans and ‘them’ as the Islamofascists. Rather than feeling somewhat torn as many immigrant groups do when the political interests of their new home collides with the old. And I speak from personal experience there.

When the peaceful Muslims do so, they will cease to see the twisted Imams at ICA, in New York, in California as fellow travellers. They will see them for what they are: Hate mongering, anti-american, terrorist supporters.

If we are to win the war on terror we must acknowledge the two Islams and welcome one with open arms even as we turn away the other. And we must be unafraid to label something for what it is no matter what guise it appears in.

Full post up at Homeland Stupidity

here’s a teaser:

Before the SUV craze, soccer moms and families on road trips availed themselves of the station wagon. Available with three rows of seating (although those back seats weren’t the most comfortable), V-8 engines, and taking up no more space than a large sedan, these were truly the best of all worlds.
–snip–
Under CAFE, these relatively efficient and easy to use animals (when compared to SUVs) became unsustainable as fleet mileage was pushed ever higher.

It’s shorter than my usual fare, which is why I didn’t quote more.

So what has CAFE given us?
1. destroyed the large family car
2. made cars small and light to the point of being unsafe in crashes (as my knee can testify to)
3. reduced the incentive to move off foreign oil
4. pushed people into SUVS (admittedly along with several other factors)
5. falsely favors hybrids due to the retardation of EPA testing
6. reduces the incentive to move to biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel

I covered both points 3 and 6 in Quitting The Oil Addiction: Leave CAFE Alone in which I compared quitting oil to to quitting smoking, and in a piece I did for Homeland Stupidity.

There’s probably plenty more that CAFE has hurt. But I am at pains to remind people that the primary impetus behind my distaste for CAFE is that it prevents us from moving to biofuels sooner. Yes, it’s a libertarian standpoint, but it’s one that happily coincides with my deeply rooted and religious devotion to conservation.

We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analysing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a programme would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with the dictators. –Neville Chamberlain

I found reading the words of the man who nearly brought destruction to the British Isles and Europe in the years leading up to World War II to be both enlightening and astonishing. Then-Prime Minister Chamberlain sounded not too dissimilar from how the American and European Left sound today. Whether speaking on the need to see things from the other’s point of view–no matter how barbaric–or the infallibility of diplomacy, it was like I was reading the latest missive from DailyKos or the most recent editorial in the New York Times.

Chamberlain was thankfully succeeded by a man of strong will and stronger judgment. One who was neither afraid of being blunt in words nor being decisive in action:

We ask no favours of the enemy. We seek from them no compunction. On the contrary, if tonight our people were asked to cast their vote whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of cities, the overwhelming majority would cry, “No, we will mete out to them the measure, and more than the measure, that they have meted out to us.” The people with one voice would say: “You have committed every crime under the sun. Where you have been the least resisted there you have been the most brutal. It was you who began the indiscriminate bombing. We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst - and we will do our best.” –Winston Churchill

In later years, Churchill criticized Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, saying that it is nothing more than feeding others to a crocodile, hoping you’ll be the last to be consumed. What makes appeasement so dangerous–particularly from the Chamberlains of the world–is that they themselves may not realize what they are asking for:

This is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. –Neville Chamberlain

Central to their misguided belief is that peace is always possible. How they justify this central premise, I have never heard articulated in a logical manner. Men fight for many reasons. Sometimes they fight over property. Sometime over some slight–real or imagined–made by one against the other. But sometimes they fight because they hate the other with every fiber of their being. As in the case of the proverbial Hatfields and McCoys, it is entirely likely that conflicts of the latter kind are rooted–somewhere in the fog of antiquity–in disputes of a more tangible nature. Whatever their origin, when it comes to pass that one group defines themselves by their very hatred of the other, such matters become irrelevant.

Diplomacy can only provide a solution when the discord is directly tied to a given action or series of actions. When a state fights another, not because of who they are but because of what they did. In such cases, negotiation can provide the means to provide redress for the offending parties. The source of agitation now removed, peace is possible, indeed likely.

When the catalyst for one state’s aggression against the other isn’t what they did but who they are, there can be no peace. There can exist for a time an uneasy ceasefire. A hostile and brooding silence. But the roots of the conflict remain in place. Such an untenable situation is hardly to be desired, yet this is the limit to what negotiation can bring us. For while agreements between ambassadors and heads of state can silence the guns, they cannot change the hearts and minds of people.

What the West, Israel, and the parts of the East not already fallen face with Islamofascism is precisely the latter situation. Only intentional ignorance could lead one to any other conclusion. From the attempt to push Sharia in France and England, to the hostility of several immigrant muslim activism groups in the West, to of course the words of their own leaders, one can be left in little doubt as to the intentions of Islamic leaders. Just as Mohammed himself preached death to non-Muslims, so too do these groups. They hate the way we pray (or don’t pray), they hate the freedom we allow women even more than the freedom we allow men. They hate us for no reason but the fact that we are not them. And though many Muslims may not feel the same way, far too few will stand up against the despotic tyrants who cage their people and seek to murder us in our beds. There is no possibility of peace with men who hate you for who you are. Only an ephemeral and strained armistice.

If this is your goal, then by all means, engage in talks that will usher in your temporary truce. But know what it is you are asking for. Know that as long as you leave the men who hate you in power, they will be plotting your destruction, even as you drop your guard for the ‘peace’ you have bought.

There’s been a recent push for ‘abortion awareness’ acts both federally and at the state level. Legislation requiring that ultrasound be offered at abortion clinics, and that mothers be made aware that fetuses may be capable of feeling pain in the womb, in particular. Leaving aside the issue of legality of abortions in the first place, the reason I laud this development is that I believe in the importance of having as much information about any choice you’re going to make as possible. Efficiency and rationality of choices are highly dependent on the fidelity of one’s information, whether speaking economically, ecologically, politically, or morally. Abortion is a highly polarizing issue, and the less-than-honest tactics of Planned Parenthood are well known. I’m sure that some of the national organizations on the pro-life side of the aisle can be just as manipulative, but despite years as a pro life activist, I never encountered any of them. One-sided information, coercion, psychological manipulation are all par for the course (and I’ll admit that the latter is highly prominent in the pro-life activism playbook).

I’m not sure how many people are aware of the fact that Jane Roe is now a pro-life activist. But if you ever hear her story, it’s heart wrenching. When she went in for her abortion, she was told it was nothing more than a mass of undifferentiated tissue by the people at the abortion clinic. Such was not exactly the case. I’ve had medical embryology. It was my favorite class. And any doctor competent to do any kind of procedure on a pregnant woman knows a good deal more about pregnancy and fetal development than I do. Since only doctors can perform abortions, this means that the doctor either lied or was complicit in the dissemination of propaganda. Ms. Roe later found out the truth. I didn’t get to see her speak at Cornell, being in England playing with monkeys at the time. But my fellow members of CCFL told me it was pretty evident the guilt that was eating her from the inside.

Considering that these lies are still told (Friends have posed as couples interested in abortion before), and that every day more Jane Roes are created, I fail to see how the option of viewing an ultrasound, or being told that after 20 weeks a baby may be able to feel pain is a bad thing. The more information you have the better. There are those who’d disagree, of course. They say that somehow being told that a fetus may be able to feel pain is an abortion ‘restriction’. They also say the same thing about a woman being offered an ultrasound beforehand. You don’t have to accept the ultrasound or anesthesia offer.

It is true that there’s some controversy about whether and when a fetus can feel pain, but it is established medical fact that fetuses have pain responses even before 20 weeks. Reflexive movements away from needles, surges in stress hormones, and readjusting themselves to be ‘comfortable’ in the womb. Since some of this can occur without involvement of the brain at all, let alone the cortex, this may not be the best indication of whether they experience pain or not. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to cut the leg off a frog while its still alive, with no anesthesia. Because they have hardly any cortex, and therefore must not be able to really experience pain. Just kidding. The point however is that there’s a good deal of controversy over it and that it’s something one should at least be aware of. Here’s a pretty unbiased link I found.Personally, I’m in the 26th week camp. And I really don’t care that that applies to less than 1% of all abortions. That means it still applies to abortions.

If you’re going to take an action which affects the life of another (sorry, a beating heart [3rd week] is a beating heart), you should understand exactly what the action is you’re taking and what it means for the other individual. You should at least have the option of knowing what the fetus looks like, and how it might respond to the procedure. A lot of pro-choice people argue that this amounts to trying to guilt-trip the mother out of having the abortion. But the way I see it, being deliberately misinformed about fetal development and having other information concealed from you because it might make you change your mind means that those controlling said information are really the ones making the decision for you.

The open border policy that many libertarians support continues to baffle me. Do they not understand the implications of such a policy in today’s political environment? Do they not understand that we are in an era where some people vote money out of others’ pocketbooks? Do they not understand that in a social welfare system, the more poor people, the greater the tax burden on everyone else? Do they not understand that the lower per capita income is the larger the welfare state will grow? And that the larger the welfare state grows, the harder upward mobility will become? Yes I agree that a strong border policy isn’t necessarily a libertarian position. But are you so wedded to principle that you will cling to it as you openly invite and foster the growth of the Nanny State?

Positions such as these are one of the reasons I’ve chosen to call myself a classical liberal. To me the term not only implies the dedication to life, liberty, and property that we share with libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, but also the knowledge that while not good, a state is necessary. Laws are necessary. And that sometimes compromises must be made to better protect those rights we hold so dear.

I’ll concede that if we lived under a perfect libertarian system, if our government still resembled that envisioned by the framers, that there would be less need for a closed border (but there would still be a need for immigration control). But such is not the case, and in this world even stronger border controls than a libertarian government would call for are necessary. And as such, we must recognize that in this less-than-ideal current form of government, sometimes counterintuitive positions must be taken. This was the basis for my essay on Liberty in a Statist World.

So lets go back to the basics. We aren’t anarcho-capitalists. Therefore we all acknowledge that the state does have a legitimate role in society. I like Chris’ list the best. It’s more or less what I ascribe to as well. All of us are going to agree with most of that list, so let’s leave minor quibbles aside. Most of what a state should do is distributed equably among the people. Roads, the court system, etc. The state is funded through taxation. Obviously, this state needs borders. A line of demarcation in which services are paid for and rendered. For this state to be just, it goes without saying that the zone of taxation and the zone of services must be perfectly overlapping. There are basically two competing forms of taxation: income and consumption taxes. Currently we operate under an unconstitutional income tax system. Most of us favor a consumption tax. But that has its own problems. In the situation like we have, where a sizeable proportion of a certain immigrant population’s paychecks are sent out of the state, that means that this money is exempt from taxation. I feel it’s a relatively minor foible, and at any rate, it isn’t the system we operate under so let’s move on.

Any income tax that isn’t a flat fee is by its nature progressive. Whether it’s a flat percentage or a ridiculously progressive rate (like the system we currently have in place), the more you earn, the more you pay. Yet under a libertarian government, you don’t necessarily receive more in government services. Rather than worry about how fair such a system is, let’s move on to the basic realities of a government so funded. Government spends roughly the same amount of money on each person, yet it receives more from some, less from others. An influx of people on the lower end of the scale means that the per capita revenue and thus per capita expenditure drops considerably. A general raise on taxation rates would thus become necessary to maintain the same level of government service. And under a welfare state as the United States is (43.5% of government expenditure goes to social welfare), the more you make, the more you pay, yet the less you receive. Since government can’t tax those who receive welfare and medicaid benefits, increases in taxation would be borne fully by a relatively small proportion of the population. I developed this idea more fully, with better examples in The Economics of Illegal Immigration.

Moving on from an economic perspective, lets turn to equality. Being fully committed to the idea of negative rights, we are the only political ideologies fully wedded to the idea of equality. But in this day, equality of opportunity has been replaced with the idea of equality of outcome. Such is the political climate, like it or not. And it will only become worse. Whether it’s college admissions and courses being less dependent on test scores and more on waffling ‘qualitative’ factors, or how many black actors there are in sitcoms, sometime before I was born it was decided that equality can only be measured through proportional representation in every part of the human condition.

We are importing a population that is by and large uneducated. That doesn’t speak English. And where many show no desire to. Into this home environment children will be born. And more children per family than their native counterparts. Will these children do as well economically and academically as the native population? Doubtful. And so the hue and cry of ‘racism’ and ‘prejudice’ will be raised. A generation from now Sharptons and Jacksons with latinized names will rise up, speaking to cultural identity that their only path to ‘freedom’ lies in increased governmentally-sanctioned privilege. Privilege that will come at the expense of freedom and opportunity for all other races. And in this political climate, they will be all too successful.

Let us not forget that when the modern left redefined rights as privilege, stealing from us the title ‘liberal’, the very word that defines us, they changed the nature of American politics. They changed our nation from one that defended our inalienable rights to a tool by which one party gains advantage over another. They created a political machine in which people vote to take away the rights of others to further their own desires.

Even in a minarchist country, where there would be no welfare state, no juggernaut of privilege encroaching upon our very liberty, we must yield to basic economics. A state can only be maintained so long as the proportion of people who pay less than the average taxation amount are balanced by those who pay more. Or even those most minimal of government services we believe necessary will find themselves compromised.

This is a world in which benevolent dictatorship does not work. This is a world in which democracy is our best tool. A world where documents as strongly worded as the constitution find themselves to be as fragile and brittle as the parchment they’re written on. The greatest threat to our liberty is an oppressive majority. And it is that which you would usher in with your open borders.

A little light this week. Possibly because I suck at publicizing, but anyway, here goes.

Matt Barr argues that the NC law against cohabitation shouldn’t have been struck down by judges but by the people. Judges are designed to protect minorities. Legislatures are supposed to respond to majorities. Interesting argument.

One Man Bandwidth talks about the impending Chinese ban on organ trafficking for anything other than medical research, and how it might actually backfire.

I hate Wal-Mart. I’m guessing many of you do too. But that’s the important part about principle. I’m still happy that a federal court overturned a Maryland law requiring them to spend more on healthcare or pay a stiff penalty. Pubcrawler did an excellent writeup. Be sure to read his other entries as well.

And you’ve got to love Shining City’s analysis of how to fight the ‘con-cons’. A ‘con-con’ is a strange bird that thinks the Republican Party still resembles the conservatism it claims to embody.

Whining about the lack of AC when you’re government is footing the bill for your evacuation? Really? How ungrateful and melodramatic can you be? London Fog has highlighted everything wrong with the Left.

As a guy in his early twenties, I’m pretty sure that the real reason record company revenues are down is because new music sucks. People are tired of girly men and cookie cutter divas, eye candy though they may be (the divas, not the girly men). But if you’re going to blame filesharing, Legal Redux makes the point that the only effective way is to go after the uploaders.

Ogre details the lunacy of multilevel politics (literally) in Building Height Freedom. No one wins when the local and state legislatures battle over just how little freedom you should have and who gets to decide.

Doug Mataconis of Below The Beltway brings us three submissions this week. Congress made a mockery of freedom again with a different flag protection law. And I die a little inside. As does Doug. He also highlights how restrictive zoning laws interfere with religious freedom. And the saga of Abraham Cherrix, the poor 16 year old who’s being forced to undergo a medical treatment he doesn’t want.

Stephen Littau at Fearless Philosophy For Free Minds reminds us that we’re picking up the tab for the lebanon evacuees’ risky behavior. They take the chance, we pay the cost. Hardly fair in my book.

Thinker of What Is George W. Bush Doing wonders if the recent problems in the middle east and impending gas crisis in Venezuela might be the beginning of World War III. I wonder too.

Last, and probably least, are my own submissions. My thoughts on the Free State Project. And in The Issues Don’t Matter I argue that the issue-based platform of the middle is precisely the reason whe find ourselves in such a statist mess. Far more important is ideology.

Next week we’ll be hosted by Homeland Stupidity (shameless plug: I blog there too, once or twice a week. Usually medical issues).

I like getting emails related to the blog. They make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Someone wanted to know my thoughts on the Free State Project. He’s taken the First 1000 pledge. I’ve got a couple of close friends who’ve signed up to be part of the Free State Project, so I was passably familiar with it. But for some reason I’d always thought it was about secession. Which it isn’t.

What they are:

The Free State Project is an effort to recruit 20,000 liberty-loving people to move to New Hampshire. We are looking for neighborly, productive, tolerant folks from all walks of life, of all ages, creeds, and colors who agree to the political philosophy expressed in our Statement of Intent, that government exists at most to protect people’s rights, and should neither provide for people nor punish them for activities that interfere with no one else.

Sounds like all you could ask for in an activist group. And I think it’s an awesome first step. Some may call them optimistic, but I think those 20,000 could serve as the catalyst for something big.

New Hampshire is a great place to start; it’s already one of the most minarchist states in the union:

…it has the lowest state and local tax burden in the continental U.S., the second-lowest level of dependence on federal spending in the U.S., a citizen legislature where state house representatives have not raised their $100 per year salary since 1889, the lowest crime levels in the U.S., a dynamic economy with plenty of jobs and investment, and a culture of individual responsibility indicated by, for example, an absence of seatbelt and helmet requirements for adults.

The lack of federal support they receive is quite important. Federal funding is quite often used as a tool to twist a state’s arm into doing something they don’t like. Remember when Montana changed its speed limits to ‘Whatever Prudent’? Despite a lack of increase in crashes or fatalities, it wasn’t long until the Federal Government turned the thumbscrews on Montana, threatening to cut off their interstate funding unless they brought the limit down to 80. It was a similar situation when MADD railroaded through the increase in legal drinking age to 21.

I also like the fact that the Free State Project is not affiliated with any party. I’m not a big fan of the Libertarian Party. If anyone thought that the Anti-Federalists were out of touch with reality, they’d be dumbfounded at how insulated from the real world the LP’s positions seem to be. In my opinion, they’re only one step away from leftists in the naivete exhibited by their world view.

Personally, I think what we need is a return to the first principles of liberalism: Life, Liberty, Property. How best to protect those rights is a matter for intelligent debate. But it’s a debate that can only happen if people agree on the meanings of those words and on the fundamentally oppressive nature of the state.

And this is precisely what the Free State Project pledges to give us. Some might find their mission and goals somewhat optimistic, and they are. But it’s pessimism as much as anything that has allowed liberty to wane these past two centuries. 20,000 people moving into one state might not sound like a lot. But this is a state that is already predisposed to classical liberalism. And 20,000 activists who have gone so far as to uproot themselves and relocate to a new part of the country for the sole purpose of political change is another story entirely.

New Hampshire could become a beacon of hope to libertarian-leaning people everywhere. Even now a paragon of state and local government restraint, it would gain the label it already epitomizes. It could become a state in which the classical liberals debate the libertarians who debate the anarcho-capitalists in a situation not so far removed from that our Founding Fathers found themselves in.

The situation and the publicity it would engender might be the hot iron that libertarian-leaning conservatives and fiscally-conservative democrats have needed to campaign against the party line…and win. Bush’s dismal approval ratings–much of it due to conservative disfavor with the growth of government spending and federal power–weren’t enough. Neither is the economic and social implosion Europe is starting to go through due to the untenable nature of their ’social model’ democracies.

My one worry is that the federal government would resent New Hampshire’s independence. And as they’ve already shown in their proclivity for (so far) nonviolent blackmail and bribery, the fed is quite willing to trample all over states even when there is no benefit to doing so. And as federal power is ever on the increase, it may not be too long before we end up in a situation much like Thomas Kratmann’s State of Disobedience. But then again, I’ve been claiming for the past 5 years that the United States would fall into civil war between the statists and the libertarians sometime before 2025.

Unfortunately, while I’d love to pledge I don’t see it happening for at least 10 years. I want to be a specialist in a small field and be in academia. My career dictates where I move. Unless of course I screw up on the boards and don’t get the specialty I want. In which case, sign me up!

I watched an episode of The Boondocks last night because I was too lazy to change the channel. Boondocks is a funny cartoon. Much better than the comic strip. But the author’s politics are both ridiculous and juvenile. Which is an easy turn off for me.

This one was a dream in which MLK wasn’t killed but merely fell into a coma until the year 2000.

And throughout the entire episode it struck me just how schizophrenic Black Culture and Politics are today. The author of Boondocks pretty much holds every stereotypical Black Democrat position you can think of. Which made the speech he gave MLK at the end rather amusing:

Dr. King: This is it?! This is what I took all those ass whoppings for?! I had a dream once. It was a dream where little black boys and little black girls could drink from the river of prosperity, freed from the thirst of oppression.. But lo and behold, some four decades later, what have I found but a bunch of triflin’, shiftless, good-for-nothing niggers! And I know a lot of you don’t want to hear me say that word. It’s the ugliest word in the english language, but that’s what I see now. Niggers. And you dont want to be a nigger, because niggers are living contradictions. Niggers are filled with unfulfilled ambitions. Niggers wax and wane. Niggers love to complain. Niggers love to hear themselves talk but hate to explain! Niggers love to be another man’s judge and jury. Niggers procrastinate until it’s time to worry. Niggers love to be late! Niggers hate to hurry!

It was particularly unexpected since McGruder (the creator) excoriated Bill Cosby for his almost identical remarks in front of the NAACP some time ago.

I’m not much for the psychology of politics schtick like Dr. Sanity does, but as a writer, I will say that what an author writes in fiction can reveal things about himself even he’s not aware of. It was about my 8th short story involving a slightly schizoid guy whose great resume didn’t match up with his borderline personality. A man who kept travelling, kept searching for a group of people he truly belonged with before I realized I was talking about myself. What this episode of The Boondocks revealed is something every Black American knows deep in his heart but few are willing to accept.

Externalization of Responsibility can be quite comforting. “It’s not my fault I’m fat. It’s my genes!” Never mind that the population genetics of that doesn’t work out. “I come from a broken home! How could I be expected to be anything but a criminal!”. Nevermind the tons of friends I can point to who are doing just fine despite such barriers. Or “I have a horrible nerve disorder! I need narcotics!” One of my greatest fears is that I travel down that road.

Few can argue with the fact that things are better for Black Americans than they’ve ever een. Opportunities abound and most honest people of color will tell you that what little racism we see 99% of the time is only a matter of minor annoyance. Yet what have we seen? We’ve seen things get worse and worse for Black America. Working in public health for the summer, I’ve watched the sexual and overall trends with astonishment. By many indicators, Black Americans were healthier and more responsible in the days of segregation as they are today.

Notice I’m not saying segregation is a good thing. What I’m saying is given that they are more free than ever today, what the hell excuse do they have? NONE.

About forty years ago, Black Americans made a deal with the devil: they chose to enslave themselves once again. And just as in the days of the Slave Trade, their subjugation would not have been possible without the help of black slave traders…in this case calling themselves Black Leaders.

There’s a good man up in Langston, Oklahoma (home of Langston University) who understands this. Goes by the name of Uncle George. He’s running for mayor this fall and you’re reading an entry by one of his campaign workers. We had a great conversation when I went up there for a restaurant inspection. What the black community needs is a person who’ll stand up and give them tough love. Who’ll help them help themselves. This is the future Dr. King saw. A future in which Blacks could work their way up the ladder through their own merit.

I think he’d see what I see when I look at Black Politics. He’d see that Black Americans want to be given prosperity; earning it is out of the question. He’d see that, while racism still exists, far more worrying is the fact that Blacks have traded comfort for opportunity. Why blame yourself when you can blame someone else? The Democrat leadership’s platform revolves around removing accountability for everyone, but most pointedly for ‘minorities’ (although less than 1% of the population is from the Indian subcontinent, we aren’t considered minorities because we’re almost like Jews in our ability to climb our way to prosperity within a generation or two). Democrats offer to give them what most others have to earn. And as the old saw goes, you never really learn the value of anything until you have to earn it.

In my piece on Affirmative Action, I argued that AA essentially subsidizes mediocrity. The same is true of social welfare, medicaid, and every other redistributive program. If I feel like it I’ll probably return to that topic sometime next week.

Final post on why all moderate movements can go to hell. For this week anyway.
Earlier Entries
Never Trust A Moderate
Pragmatism Is Not An Ideology
The Issues Don’t Matter…
Meddling Tends To Backfire

Thomans Brackett Reed looks like a pretty interesting character. He ran in the same social circle as Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt, two of my favorite American icons. I really wish I knew more about him, but the following quote tells me that if our paths had ever crossed, we probably would have gotten along just fine:

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.

Unity08 ‘doesn’t have a platform’. And it’s true that they haven’t taken a position on what they’re going to do. But they have decided they need to do something about ‘pressing issues’. While I’m also concerned about our dependence on oil, the state of social security, and the laughable excuse for an education system we call public schools, I doubt I’d go about fixing it in the same way they would. As I’ve articulated several times in the past couple of days, they have defaulted to an interventionist position simply by taking a ‘focus on the issues’ stance.

Unity08 and the Radical middle in general want to move away from ideological issues to pragmatic issues. It’s a dangerous step. At the end of the day, whether its legal or not to burn a flag doesn’t really change things in this country all that much. It’s an ideological matter–an important one, banning flag burning is equivalent to urinating on the Bill of Rights and claiming you’re ‘restoring’ it–but ultimately one that matters little to the prosperity and safety of our country. On the other hand, violence, social security, healthcare, and education all have a much more palpable impact on our daily lives, on the other hand. Which is what makes these issues so dangerous to discuss without a clear ideological framework on the role of government.

Issue-driven politics becomes nothing more than a combination of bribery, scare tactics, and offers of protection in return for subjugation. Politicians offer you safety and prosperity in return for your tax money and your liberty. Sometimes they appeal to your greed (medicare drug benefits, welfare expansion, etc.) and sometimes they appeal to your fears (crime is up! must ban guns not used in crimes! Because criminals are far more scared of soft targets than they are hard ones!).

Issue-driven politics is about explaining to you that if you were reasonable you’d see that you don’t really need all that freedom, and excuse me while I assemble the walls of this cage around you “for your own protection”. I once heard the practice of purdah justified using similar logic. Bollocks.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to order my AR-15 before ‘reasonable’ and ‘pragmatic’ men attempt to ban a low-powered semiautomatic rifle just because it looks scary and I don’t actually need it.

Fourth in my Unity08 prompted extended rant about the dangers of centrist politics.

I watch a lot of family programming. ABC Family, Nickelodeon, Disney channel. While I can enjoy a dirty joke as well as the next guy (and frequently make them), I get rather tired of it when it comes to sitcoms. Maybe I’m just thirsting for the days of Leave It To Beaver and the Dick Van Dyke Show, but I like the idea that people are capable of producing an entire 22 minute program without resorting to crudities and sexuality–especially as so much of TV seems infested with teen promiscuity and other wanton behavior. Call me old fashioned, but I’m of the opinion that if you’re doing adult things you ought to be an adult. Not to mention that, having worked in public health for the past couple months, I’ve come to understand all too well the hidden and not-so-hidden dangers of the free love that modern culture seems so insistent on foisting upon us. But that’s a topic for another time.

That’s So Raven is a show on Disney Channel, a fairly funny series about a girl who has psychic visions of the future, and predictably attempts to interfere in things, either to prevent or ensure their occurence. And you know what? It almost inevitably backfires. This basic plotline is a conceit that has appeared multiple times in almost every sitcom known to man, not to mention a host of funny novels (such as all PG Wodehouse work). It’s just possible that they may be on to something.

As I’ve been talking about throughout this discussion, the biggest danger of centrist politics is that it is only issue-driven–usually practical rather than ideological–and thus focused only on how to legislate away problems. But today rather than focus on the tendency of a ‘centrist’ state to devolve into totalitarianism faster than either leftist or conservative states, I thought I’d focus on the pragmatic side of state intervention, since that’s what the middle claims to be all about.

One of the major problems with the mindset behind interventionism is that it is built upon a false premise. Understanding the order of social systems and the behavior of the individuals within them requires first that you understand that it is a dynamic process. When the behavior of one individual changes, the behavior of everyone else changes to a greater or lesser degree in response. The very order of a society is subtly changed every time one participant is affected by the actions of another. It’s a point neatly encapsulated by Gandhi’s quote that when you take an eye for an eye, everyone ends up blind.

In other words, things don’t stop, their effects reverberate throughout the group, the end result oftentimes opposite that of the initiating event. Interventionism ignores this fact, treating society as static and assuming that the only effect of a given act of government interference will be the direct one. It is as if the interventionist pulls the trigger on a .50BMG rifle expecting to make a bullet fly out the muzzle, only to be surprised when the firearm recoils in his hands. And in fact this is exactly what those sitcoms show us time and time again. The action gets the ball rolling, but cannot control what direction it takes or just how far it will travel.

One of my favorite examples of this is the push to raise CAFE standards. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Raising fuel economy standards will mean we’ll need less gasoline for the same amount of commuting and travel, which would mean a reduction in our . But, because of reduced demand, prices would drop. Less gas at a lower rate would mean that we’d be spending less on gasoline, and therefore we’ll have less incentive to turn toward alternative fuels such as ethanol or biodiesel.

Another example is the federal subsidization of college loans. Which has likely been a key factor in the explosive growth of tuition fees in the past few decades. College opens doors, so it makes sense that we find a way to help as many people pay for college as possible, regardless of income level. In this case, the unintended consequence is quite large in its deleterious effect. While many more can finance their post-secondary education, once out they find themselves under mountainous levels of debt.

To understand why this has happened, I’ll use the example of automobiles. When I moved back to the states, I knew I’d need a car. While walking 2.5 miles to and from school every day is quite feasible in London, this isn’t quite the case in Oklahoma City. I’m not a fan of debt, and so had intended to buy a 1998 Ford Ranger outright when I got settled in. My parents offered me in essence a no-interest loan on a 2006 Mustang GT that I would have to start paying back when I started residency (eerily similar to the college loan situation). I took the deal, tripling what I was willing to pay for a car. The situation is much the same for college tuition. If there was no financing available, there is no way that the current costs of tuition would be sustainable.

These are just a few examples among many. While the initial government action may be quite simple in nature, its effects are rarely straightforward. And more importantly, it can often worsen the situation. By appealing to ‘the issues’, centrist parties and the moderates that support them set themselves up to create far more problems than they will actually solve. Their solutions are too simplistic, too lacking in grounding in the science of social behavior, and too much based on the need to ‘do something‘ rather than properly address the problem itself.

Third installment in the anti-moderate rant. You can head to Unity08 to see what prompted me.

The issues don’t matter, ideology does.

My very first post on this blog made my stance on this quite clear:

The war isn’t about issues, it’s about definitions. Our definition of freedom is incompatible with theirs; granting the rights they wish to grant can only be achieved by constraining all men. We must attack their ideology, and not just their legislation.

It’s why I don’t do the link-quote-comment-quote-comment-rant thing. The problem today is that the very way we look at political issues is flawed.

In an email I received yesterday, a reader made the following comment:

I read your post today, and I think you are way off base when talking about Unity08. I think you need to read more about their core values, and less about what their supporters personal ideologies are…

I believe this is what Unity08 is saying: Politics is messed up because political parties are only pushing wedge issues (in order to GOTV). Therefore, no real issues are being pursued (education, social security, health care, etc etc). Unity08 believes that by nominating (and maybe electing) a viable third ticket, that the major political parties will have to cater more towards the middle, and therefore get back to the core issues that Americans want resolved (or at least talked about).

Unity08 hasn’t taken a stand on any issues (because they have not nominated any candidates) – so to say that they are anything but an organization claiming to provide Americans with a third choice come 2008, is simply wrong.

And he’s right in that this is all Unity08 claims to be. But my very problem with them stems from the fact that they are trying to divert attention toward those which ‘reasonable people’ want addressed. Yesterday’s rant about pragmatism could easily have been devoted to ‘reasonable legislation’ with nary a word changed.

While wedge issues do have the unfortunate side effect of diverting attention away from impending challenges our nation will face, they are important in that they allow for a quick and easy identification of a politician’s ideology. Michael Bloomberg has done an excellent job of painting himself as a rather libertarian-leaning Republican, but his draconian stance on gun control reveals his true colors. Without such wedge issues, many might never have known any better.

The problem isn’t right or left, the problem isn’t that we’re choosing polarizing issues to elect our leadership on, it’s not that we’re failing to focus on the ‘crucial and pressing’ issues, the problem is that we are electing people based on how they will increase the scope of government.

I’m not a big fan of the middle. While some have clearly developed and thought out their moderate stance, most take the position because they’re vaguely dissatisfied with the polarizing rhetoric of both parties, but see something wrong in society and think ’someone ought to do something’. That ’someone’ is usually government.

In my opinion the middle has taken the first step of seeing something wrong with the social limitations Republicans want to impose as well as the socialism that the Left clearly so wants to take us toward. But the fact that they fail to question whether government should get involved in a given issue at all is what makes them so dangerous.

Just because a piece of legislation is ‘reasonable’ doesn’t make it right. I’ve used the helmet law example because I currently work for the Oklahoma State Department of Health and hearing the Injury Prevention people going on about how we’re ‘backward’ for being the last state without a helmet law really gets my goat. I don’t even ride motorcycles or quads, nor do I plan to. But it’s an almost textbook case of a ‘reasonable’ law that is nevertheless completely unjust. Yes, there is a traumatic brain injury problem in Oklahoma. But why should the government be able to criminalize my doing something that can only harm myself.

Another problem with the middle is that they’re more focused on ‘doing something’ about these pressing issues than what effect government intervention will actually have. That’s the topic for tommorrow’s post so I won’t go into much detail here. But we can all think of laws that were passed and had an effect quite the opposite of what was intended.

The Founding Fathers were quite wary of government. They understood that it could be used by some citizens to oppress others. By politicans to oppress citizens. And that eventually all governments would cease to serve the interests of their constituents. It was for this reason that they were so adamant about philosophical discussions. This is why thousands upon thousands of different pamphlet titles were produced in our Nation’s formative years. This was why the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists started one of the earliest newspaper editorial wars. This is why, although similar in background, temperament, and ideology, Jefferson and Adams fought to their dying days about the implementation of their political philosophy.

What will save our country isn’t shifting attention to issues that interest the middle, but rather engaging everyone in a frank and open discussion about what the role of government should be, why they have authority, when they should interfere in the affairs of man, and how they should do so. Only if we elevate ourselves to be truly political beings can citizen participation bring anything but oppression and tyranny. A friend of mine back in high school told me that the first duty of a good jew was to question. It’s that questioning spirit and intellect that our country most needs now.

Continuing my week-long rant dedicated to the inanity of the radical middle. Prompted by Unity08.

When I ask a moderate to actually explain what he believes in (i.e. negative liberty, collectivism, whatever), frequently enough his answer is, “I’m a pragmatist.” He’ll then usually accuse me of having my head in the clouds. Which is funny, since I take my philosophy from real life. From history and from evolutionary biology. I’ve taken the time to really understand human nature and not to think only about the ‘problem’ and the government ’solution’, but about the the unintended consequences as well. More importantly, I don’t think there is a more pragmatic viewpoint than classical liberalism. It is the only political philosophy that balances the occasional failures of self-interested individuals to organize, the maximization of liberty, and the threat of tyranny against each other. Most other ideologies ignore one or more of these aspects of human nature.

Pragmatism is not an ideology, but a tool. Classical liberalism (in my opinion) can be differentiated from libertarianism primarily through its higher degree of pragmatism. We share with libertarians our inherent distrust of government; However, we also recognize that the market can’t solve all problems and that sometimes central planning can be necessary (as in highways). As I said yesterday though, this position isn’t to be confused for statism. A classical liberal sees government intervention as inherently bad but sometimes necessary. A statist on the other hand, sees intervention as fundamentally good. They see government in an enabling role whereas we see it in a restrictive role.

Pragmatism is a tool. It is the flexibility to compromise your ideology to better harmonize with the realities of a far more complex world. As I discussed in the debate I had with Francois Tremblay, an ideology is much like a mathematical model. It works only when certain conditions are valid. When these conditions don’t apply, the model doesn’t work so well. Pragmatism allows you to bridge that, to recognize when the model doesn’t work, and to aid you in finding a solution, rather than merely ignoring the problem altogether.

When a moderate calls himself a ‘pragmatist’ what he really means is that he is an adherent of interventionism. He supports the use of government restriction, regulation, taxation, and criminalization to fix societal problems and to curtail personal choice. He sees a problem and immediately assumes that government is the best source for a solution, often ignoring the fact that government caused the problem in the first place. It is the moderate you’ll find supporting ’sensible’ legislation. Helmet and seatbelt laws, fast food taxes, gun control (because a pistol grip makes a rifle so much more dangerous), and other such monstrosities. And slowly the role government plays in making personal choices for us will grow. They will cage us before our very eyes and we won’t even notice, feeling comforted by the boundaries they place around us.

There’s a new third party group out there calling themselves Unity08.

It’s more or less the same ‘Having no political ideology is an ideology’ garbage typical of the Radical Middle.

Let’s look at who they say they are:

Unity08 divides issues facing the country into two categories: Crucial Issues – on which America’s future safety and welfare depend; and Important Issues – which, while vital to some, will not, in our judgment, determine the fate or future of the United States.

In our opinion, Crucial Issues include: Global terrorism, our national debt, our dependence on foreign oil, the emergence of India and China as strategic competitors and/or allies, nuclear proliferation, global climate change, the corruption of Washington’s lobbying system, the education of our young, the health care of all, and the disappearance of the American Dream for so many of our people.

By contrast, we consider gun control, abortion and gay marriage important issues, worthy of debate and discussion in a free society, but not issues that should dominate or even crowd our national agenda.

I could scarcely come up with a more comprehensive list of all possible ways a government could meddle in the affairs of its citizens.

My problem with moderates is that by positioning themselves between the two poles of statism, they would create the worst of all possible worlds. The Left sees economic redistrubtion and social engineering as inherently good. The Right sees restriction of ‘immoral’ behavior as a worthy province of government intrusion. ‘The Middle’ challenges neither of those perspectives, instead accepting that both are good ‘in moderation’ whatever that means. But if there is one thing we can learn from history, it is that governments grow over time. They grow more ponderous, they grow more restrictive, and their interests grow farther and farther away from those of the people they claim to represent. By failing to question whether or not government should even be allowed, they would open the floodgates of power and so cage us all. Hardly a desirable platform.

Moderates also confuse ‘democracy’ for ‘freedom’. To do so is to ignore the lesons of history, of human nature, and of the sad excuse for a constitution that Iraq recently ratified. They forget how short a step it is from ‘rule of the people’ to ‘mob rule’. And that a tyranny of the majority is still a tyranny. But most importantly they fail to understand that democracy is nothing more than a tool. And like all tools, it needs to be guided. No one can deny the importance of voting in a just society. But it also can’t be denied that all too often the vote has been used to imprison one group or to allocate special privileges for another. Such things are hardly just and do anything but further the cause of freedom and prosperity.

The importance of structural restraint of government power as well as the danger of democracy were things well known to our founding fathers, who sought to create a way to keep both inherently destructive forces at bay with the Constitution. Moderates forget both of these lessons, perhaps two of the most important ones the founding fathers conferred upon us

July 7 was a morning like any other for me. I woke up in the tiny cubbyhole they called my dorm room, washed my face, changed packed my bags and sat down to check the news. Was I in for a shock. King’s Cross St. Pancras tube station. Not two miles from me. My station, had been hit by a suicide bomber. The park next to my college was the scene of two or three more. These ones were on buses, one of which bore an all too familiar route number. While this was happening, a mile or two north of me, Islamic immigrants were in the streets chanting ‘Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda’.

After two hours of trying to get through the grid to tell my parents that no, I wasn’t dead, since I’d slept in and missed class, I gave up and just sat there. Brooding. In the coming days and weeks, the police were on a hair trigger, literally. You heard about the Brazilian electrician who was mistakenly killed. And, well, I had more than a few MP-5’s off safe pointed at me. Which wasn’t very reassuring given that British police don’t understand the concept of ‘trigger control’ (Finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot).

You’d think it would have been a wakeup call to the Brits. It was more like when you hear a sound that’s loud enough that you snort, switch positions, and then fall back asleep without ever really becoming awake. For a while they were ‘Oh now we get what Americans have been saying’, but almost before my eyes they reverted to ‘We just need to coddle them. Make advertisements for ham sandwiches illegal! And ban the public display of calendars featuring piglets! [both of which happened] That’s why they kill us!’.

This despite a British poll corroborating the Mark 1 Brain where 1/3 of islamic immigrants in Britain said they believed they should actively work to destroy western society, 56% understood why the bombers did what they did, and 6% feel they were fully justified.

There was a great Terry Pratchett quote from his newest book, Thud which I wanted to put up today. I’m at work and book’s at home, so I’ll put it in this evening.

If it looks like a terrorist sympathizer, it quacks like a western civilizaiton-hater, and it walks like an intolerant buffoon, why would you tolerate it? If someone hates everything I stand for, I will not bother asking why. I won’t try to blame myself. I won’t ask them if my piggy calendar or ham&cheese hot pocket offends him, because quite frankly it’s none of his business. If he threatens me. If he supports those who threaten me either actively or in sentiment, I will simply stand and fight.

A few of my fellow med students took a trip to Kenya to do AIDS outreach work this summer. Dispensing medication and the like. I told them they had just consigned a lot of innocent and uninfected people to die and would be actively working to spread AIDS. I then went on to explain to them how most foreign aid to nations which are under unsustainable conditionds is not only useless, it is harmful. They were understandably upset. Which doesn’t change the fact that I’m right. And I felt vindicated when they came back saying now they understand what I was talking about. I was also pretty happy that the experience has started one of my leftie friends on the road to rationality.

You see someone starving, hurt, or dying, and it’s only natural to want to do something about it. As social mammals, we’re literally wired for compassion. But, one thing that separates us from other social mammals are the size of our brains. It would be nice if we used those once in a while. There’s a reason why theoretical economists, ecologists, and the like have to go to school for so long. And that’s because these issues are quite complex. And a simple action-reaction model quite frankly almost never works. A small dose of poison can leave you healthier than none at all. Sometimes tax cuts can increase GDP and federal tax revenue (see Laffer Curve). And yes, withholding aid to impoverished nations often results in less total suffering than granting that aid.

There’s a lot of different ways to look at foreign aid and understand just why it’s so harmful. I once wrote a 25 page paper on one of these perspectives that barely did the concept justice. Needless to say, I won’t be going into full detail in this initial post. Just wanted to introduce the basic ideas.

Ecology
I became a die-hard Hardinite while taking a class about the intersection of EEB and culture. When it comes to method of political discourse, he’s probably my clearest influence. Following his example, I take things back beyond economics to the more encompassing science of ecology. And like him, I come away from it with a strong libertarianish bias. Hardin wasn’t the first political behavioral ecologist, though. That would have to be the maligned and misunderstood Thomas Malthus, who interestingly enough both preceded and heavily influenced Darwin.

Mr. Hardin was very critical of foreign aid his entire life, seeing it as aggravating a problem caused by an already artificially high and unsustainable population level. The basic idea is that a given ecological area has a certain carrying capacity. That’s how many animals it can sustain indefinitely. Now, you can support a larger population level on that land for a while. But eventually the area will crash. Resources will have been eaten away instead of being replenished. And the population will almost completely die off. Because the land was so badly ravaged, the new carrying capacity will be considerably lower than it used to be.

Which is pretty much the situation we have in many parts of Africa and Asia. We simply have too many people for what the land can support. Foreign aid can’t change the intrinsic factors of fertility and natural resource distribution. But it can support and even increase this artificially high population. Which will further ravage the land and further decrease the carrying capacity. Not pretty.

Epidemiology
The thing about STD’s like AIDS is that they’re often spread actively and voluntarily. For something like TB, malaria or leprosy, it’s a bit of a different story. Transmission happens diffusely. With the latter diseases foreign aid can be effective. This is partly because you can actually cure the infected. Diseases like those three are dependent on a number of environmental and population level factors and don’t really have all that much to do with the individual person. Every time I go to the backwaters of India, I’m exposed to all three. And, even though I’ve got a lot more money than the poor, there’s really not a whole lot more I can do to protect myself from those pathogens. I’m always a bit surprised when my TB exposure test comes back negative. I know I don’t have it. But I’m almost positive I’ve been exposed. And malaria? Fairly positive I’ve had that.

India’s also got a rather high density of AIDS infections and an escalating rate of infection. But that doesn’t even faze me. This is because unlike the other three, which will spread no matter what you do (more or less), AIDS requires that people engage in certain activities. Which I don’t do. And, unlike the other three, you can’t cure AIDS. You can only extend the asymptomatic period using anti-retroviral drugs (the drug cocktails you hear about on the news every now and then). Which basically means you’re given more time in which to spread the virus.

This is a particular problem in areas where there’s a high degree of promiscuity, unplanned pregnancy, and rape, which is much of subsaharan Africa. You have people both knowingly and unknowingly spreading the AIDS virus to many different partners, who also have many different partners. You have already infected people becoming pregnant. And you have strange ideas about how raping virgins can cure you. Artificially extending the period during which a given person can be a part of that vicious cycle–especially when they probably will be–is thus actively increasing the incidence of HIV infection.

Human Nature
The thing about money is that it’s a symbol. It’s a piece of paper or common metal, or even just a number in a computer somewhere. You can say “this is to feed the starving”. But once you hand it to an African politician, all bets are off. As a guy I was talking to once remarked “When you think about all the money that’s going into Africa, how much richer their politicians are getting, and how much worse the continent is getting, it’s not too hard to connect the dots”. Which sounds about right.

Economics
Not much here because I don’t think you can have a full discussion of this without taking a more in depth look at ecological factors and their interplay with economics (no nothing as boring as Guns, Germs, and Steel), so I’ll get to it later. But I will say this. The strength of an economy is fundamentally dependent on its natural resources, either past or present. If a nation can’t feed itself, it can never develop into something greater. Once its economy is off the ground, the agricultural self-sufficiency part becomes a little bit less necessary. But in Africa we have an entire continent that is so far beyond its carrying capacity one can barely fathom how it got there. People like Gates are throwing money at the place so they can feel better about themselves, talking about ‘development’ and ‘education’ and all that. Utter rot. You cannot build a castle in the clouds for the simple reason that all economies need low-level workers. All economies no matter how service and/or technology oriented need entry-level, unskilled, and semi-skilled labor. And if the people who would fill those jobs can’t get enough to eat, how are they supposed to provide the foundation of your economy?

Conclusion
The only time you can make a truly strong case for foreign aid is when a transient deficiency occurs, such as a tsunami or a hurricane. I know it sucks to see other people suffer. And giving and helping out feels so good. But sometimes help can really hurt. I’m going to leave you with a hick parable that I think you’ll find fairly apt:

A fire breaks out in the barn…the summer heat, all that hay, and even looking at it funny could’ve done it. Everyone on the farm breaks as fast as they can for the buckets, forming a chain from the cattle trough to the barn. The bucket is filled, and as it gets passed from one peson to the next a little bit of the water sloshes out. By the time it gets to Poppa, who’s closest to the fire, it’s only halfway full. Dousing the growing conflagration, he’s surprised when instead of sizzling and popping, it explodes with tinges of blue, bigger and hotter than ever. That wasn’t the cattle trough, but JimBob’s corn whiskey still. As everyone begins to flail around in panic, you realize they’re only fanning the flames…

Common Sense
I confess that this is an emotional hot button for me. As an immigrant (well, son of immigrants), I view this a little more passionately than most. And as a man who’s had to deal with language barriers in multiple countries (despite speaking the ‘native’ language) thanks to ‘multiculturalism’ efforts, I am slightly more fervent in the expression of my opinion on the idiocy of it.

I’ve seen how this idiocy has adversely affected England and India firsthand. And have heard plenty of horror stories from my Parisian roommates during grad school. That’s the thing about Europe. They’ve made most of the mistakes the left wants to make here. We should try and learn from them.

Nevertheless, I’ll state again that among non-hispanics only cowards, nihilists, and the unreasoned support this crap. Amongst hispanics, we have people with misplaced loyalties and a shocking lack of respect for their hosts.

The latest outrage would have to be Oregon firefighters losing their jobs because they don’t speak spanish.

Much as it pisses me off, I’m not going to say that businesses shouldn’t be able to require bilingual workers/managers. I am, after all, a free market supporter. And if a restaurant puts up a sign saying ‘Employees Speak English Only’ I’ll be eating there fairly frequently. Turnabout is only fair play.

But government is a totally different matter. There are several reasons why:
1. Solidarity: One language, one people.
2. Practicality: One language is cheaper, easier, and more streamlined
3. Equality: Spanish-speaking amounts to a privilege for people of a certain race over others.
4. Neutrality: Although English was invented by white people, it is universal. It does not define a single race, ethnicity, or creed.

These are about as self-evident as you get and need no exposition. So I’m not going to bother.

What Makes Them So Special?
But from one of Kim du Toit’s readers comes a great little story:

So, after the “undocumented immigrant doing work no American will do” left with his beer no American could drink, I said to the clerk, “So here’s the question: If YOU can speak English, why can’t *that* guy?” This guy starts wagging his finger at me, and in this great Indian accent starts screaming about illegals who have been here 15 years and can’t speak English! He says, “Dees guy come into my store, and is about to be buying some-teeng, I don’ rememba wot, and he no speek English. I say to him, You f*cking guy, you are leeving in dis country 15 YEARS, and you don’ learning the English? You f*cking guy!!! So dees Mexican illegal telling me I am bod bod mon, and dees Italy woman standing behin’ him say to him, Dees mon is right! You learn da Eenglish! We all did!”

Which sounds about right doesn’t it. Immigrants are guests. And a good guest follows the rules, traditions, and codes of behavior of his host. As a sign of respect if nothing else. Learning a new language can be hard, and that’s why a reasonable attempt to try English is good enough. We’re not asking for world-class orators here, just a good faith effort. I don’t hesitate to drop into Spanish if they try English first. Try Spanish on me first and I might as well be deaf.

I’ve brought it up before, but it really does apparently bear repeating. What makes them so different? Why do they get a privilege not accorded to my parents? And if no other immigrant group in the past has needed this privilege why do they? Why are we forced to bend to their desires? Coercion of the lowest order. It is nothing more than racism. It is a preference accorded to one ethnic group but not to another. If I were to go to the Department of Health and demand to speak to someone who knew Telugu, or even French, they’d look at me like I was insane. But Spanish? Well then, that’s a different story.

The Benefits Of Bilingualism: A Diversionary Tactic
Personally, I think knowing more than one language is very important, even if you never have to use anything but English. My grammar and composition abilities in English improved dramatically as I became conversational in French, for one thing. Telugu, well, that’s my mother tongue, I have to be at least half-competent in it if I’m going to be able to look myself in the mirror and call myself Indian. And Spanish? Cornell told me that Telugu wasn’t a language, so I’d have to learn a new one to fulfill that requirement (where was their [censored] ‘respect’ for other cultures there? Oh, you mean it only matters if the other culture is politically expedient? Imagine that). Still, it’s good to be able to claim you know Spanish if you’re going into the medical professions (which pisses me off). And it’s made reading articles in portuguese about Brazilian monkeys relatively painless. Which is good, since I study them.

Needless to say I’ll be pushing my kids to learn at least a couple of languages. But what angers me about that argument is that first of all, it’s a mischaracterization of the ‘English Only’ position. We are not opposed to bilingualism. We are opposed to newcomers telling us to change while making no attempts to do so themselves.

Furthermore, while they want us to be bilingual, they make no such demands on the immigrant group itself. It’s fine for them to continue to speak only Spanish. In fact, if they were willing to ask of hispanic immigrants what they ask of you and me, we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place.

I Feel Carpal Tunnel Coming On
Someone’s going to have to learn a new language to keep the lines of communication open. Logically, who should it be?

Radio sucks. Ergo, it got stuck on Tammy Bruce during my iced tea run. She was going on about how the guy who woke up from the coma changes everything about the Schiavo situation. I was going on about how she’s a stupid [censored]. Apparently the conservative world needs a quick lesson in neurobiology. So here we go.

This is a nerve cell (neuron):

(from http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/color/pic1.html)

Notice that there’s a big fat part at the top. That’s the cell body. That’s where all the machinery that makes the cell do its thing is. That’s where the DNA, the mitochondria, the ribosomes, all of that are. These provide the instruction set, energy, and proteins, respectively.

Now the long part is called the axon. It’s basically a biological combination of an electrical conduit and a subway tunnel. It’s essentially a passive structure. Nothing starts in the axon, merely passes through it.

At the end are the synaptic terminals. This is how the nerve cell sends a message to the next nerve cell in the chain.

Looking back to the top of our picture, the yellow branch-looking thingies are what receive the signals sent by the synaptic terminals.

Ok, now that we know all about that we can discuss how nerves respond to injury. Nerve cells, along with muscle cells, don’t keep proliferating and dividing in adulthood. They’re done. This is why after a heart attack you have reduced heart function. Once those cells die from lack of oxygen, nothing can grow back to replace them. This is also why in stroke patients, even after they recover function, it’s rarely as good or as natural-feeling as it used to be. The injured area doesn’t regenerate, other cells just learn to pick up the load.

But while we can’t make new nerve cells, injured nerve cells can regenerate. This is why finger re-attachments work. They can even take the relatively useless sensory nerves that pass over your collar bone and put them into your face to replace damaged or congenitally absent nerves there.

It’s important to note that a neuron can only regenerate if its body is intact. As I mentioned, all the machinery is in that body. Without that machinery, there’s no way to repair the damage. If it’s the axon though, the nerve cell’s body can repair it, although it may take years.

The difference between a coma and a persistent vegetative state is that in a coma, generally the cells are all there (well most of them anyway), it’s just that the axons are all screwed up. Generally as a result of blunt force trauma. In a PVS on the other hand, the cells themselves are dead. Hence the term braindead (the old non-PC term for PVS).

In a coma there is generally brain activity because the cells themselves are still alive. It’s just scattered and disorganized since the wires are tangled and snapped off. Axon growth is inhibited by several chemicals in the brain (that you don’t see in the peripheral nervous system) which is why regrowth can take months, years, even decades…but at least it can potentially actually happen. In a PVS there is nothing. There are no cells to fire. There are no cells to regenerate themselves. There is no chance of recovery.

Terry Schiavo’s brain was gone. This guy’s wasn’t. I don’t want to get overly philosophical here, but if the brain is the seat of the soul and the brain itself is no longer functioning, I really can’t consider it taking her life. Terry was a vacant body, this guy was not.

John Eyler makes a very good point about the role of the press in keeping a watchful eye on the government. Yes, mainstream media annoys all of us. We don’t like their ideology, their bias, or their inability to understand the difference between ‘reporting’ and ‘editorializing’. But just because they are one-sided doesn’t mean that what they say about the current administration should be censored.

Talking about their recent exposure of whatever the newest Bush domestic spying plan is (can you tell how upset I am about their compromising this ’secret’?), John makes the point so succinctly that I’m not even going to try to one up him:

What is sure is that the Press in this instance was keeping an eye on our government and that is their job. I don’t care if the Press goofs now and again, prints secrets it shouldn’t, I want them philosophically out to get the government. I wish they were just as rabid with a Democrat in the hot seat, but as a rule I don’t want them holding back or taking orders. [emphasis added]

I think what a lot of bloggers forget is that we are very much a part of the media. Maybe people don’t pay to read us, and maybe our advertising income isn’t so great (I’ve made 38 dollars since the end of March…woohoo!), but what we do is present news and editorials to a large (relatively) and diffuse audience. Which, as far as I can tell, is what the MSM does. What applies to NYT et al. applies to us.

The first amendment is one of the most important checks against the growing power of government. Without the press’s ability to bring issues to a large number of people in a limited amount of time, we would be far more hampered in our ability to keep watch on and control an inherently dangerous (but necessary) institution.

We tend to limit our discussion and understanding of checks and balances to the three major branches of the federal government. But just as important are the checks and balances that the Founders placed in our own hands. Freedom of speech, assembly, and press are paramount among them. And they all work hand in hand to deliver a much more powerful gestalt than merely the individual pieces. Imagine the freedom to say what you want, but only to a handful of people at a time. Imagine the freedom to gather in a large group, but be limited in how you could address your cohort. Imagine the freedom to publish whatever you want in the broadsheets, but your readership left unable to discuss it.

No, these freedoms work together, and they work together precisely to keep the government from becoming too powerful. Which is why the Bill of Rights protects them from government desecration.

As John said, I’d prefer it if the MSM acted this way no matter who was in power. And the world would be a much better place if the truth of the European style ’social model’ the Democrats would have us live under were known. But chastising the NYT, saying what they did shouldn’t be allowed because government doesn’t like it? Kind of like shooting yourself in the foot.

John made another comment about diversity in the media as well:

The only caveat I have is that we must have more diversity of thought in the Pressrooms around America. Too few owners are in control and the breadth our debates could attain is thwarted by this. This is the great problem that the MSM afflicts us with. Give us a larger more competitive Press and we will only benefit.

He’s right. Much of the problem with the spread of leftist ideologies today has to do with biased ‘reporting’. Every mistake of conservatism laid bare, every mistake of neo-socialists both here and abroad simply whitewashed away. But that’s why we exist. We are the answer to diversity in the media. Newspaper subscriptions are plummeting. CNN is no longer the monopoly it once was. And everyday more and more people forsake the biased, one-sided traditional media for the blogosphere. We are biased too, no denying that. But we declare our bias openly. We have comments and trackbacks. We debate and we submit to carnivals. We take elements of all three freedoms and blend them together. And we are stronger for it.

Almost exactly a year ago, the entire country was abuzz with the news of Kelo v. New London. It was an inevitable happening in a nation that is slowly but surely progressing toward central planning and the road to serfdom. As seems to be more and more often the case, the intense and principled commentary of Originalist judges is ignored, the government is given yet more power, and the leftists are leading the charge in eroding our freedoms. More recently, the New London City Council, showing that greed knows no bounds, re-affirmed their decision to evict Ms. Kelo and several other residents on June 6th. Yes, I know a lot of leftists were upset at this and don’t possibly see how this could be related to their political ideology. Then again, one of the problems with their entire outlook is that they’ll seek to mandate one thing without looking at the social and economic repercussions. Dropping a 400lb fatty into the community swimming pool and then being taken completely unawares by the tidal wave emanating from his entry. So let me say this clearly:

In a political system that sees government control and redistribution of private wealth as inherently good, it is inevitable that such power will only continue to grow.

I found my posts on this subject from almost a year ago and thought I’d throw them up here

Kelo and the Death of a Country
I’m pretty impassioned about American politics. I scream at the TV and at my monitor. I ‘passionately debate’ (read: scream as spittle flies from my mouth) anything from abortion to gun rights to conservation as often as I have opportunity. I’ve been angry, I’ve been happy, I’ve been annoyed. Today, I was depressed. For the first time in my life, politics actually made me depressed.

You see, living in England for the past 8 months, I realized that the difference between Europeans and Americans is that while we are citizens, they have never thrown off the ideological yoke of being subjects. In England, that’s a literal truth; even their passports read “Subject of the Queen of England.” As much as they claim to be free-thinking individuals what all Europeans really want is to be coddled and controlled by an overarching government. Subjects, not constituents.

Today, I actually contemplated whether America really was better than Europe or not, for the first time in my life. Today, we became subjects. The court (the liberal justices anyway) ruled that ‘Government Knows Best.’ The essence of their position is that city officials know more than their constituents about ‘what’s best for the city’. Might as well just call it the Divine Right of Kinghood. In their scathing dissent, Supreme Court Justices (to paraphrase Clarence Thomas) succintly said that if A can potentially pay more taxes than the current occupant B, the govt is justified and siezing B’s property to give to A. The government just became an evil corporation, concerned with only the bottom line. At the hands of liberal justices, i’m at pains to remind you.

Every American’s personal autonomy has just been destroyed. We have become serfs on the feudal lord’s estate. He has allowed us to work it, to live on it, even to call it our own, just as Serfs did in the Middle Ages. And just like those peasants, we are subjects. Subject to the whim of a government who can evict us on the premise that our houses and our small businesses don’t give it enough money…

The guys who settled out West went there for one reason and one reason only; the prospect of owning their own land. A place to call their own. They rode the Oregon Trail, they turned the barren soil of the Dust Bowl into something of a breadbasket. They lived, they sacrificed, they died to call a place their very own. All that work was shat on today by the Supreme Court, who today told us that our land and our property is only ours as long as the government decides not to snatch it from us. This isn’t all that different from England, where Queen Elizabeth II allows her subjects to engage in a parliamentary government…at least until she gets bored of it and decides to assert her sovereignty.

Today I am no longer an American citizen…Today I became a subject.

More Kelo Ranting
Any mention of Kelo, anywhere, in any form, sends me reaching across my room for my cowboy hat. 3 Doors Down - Life of my Own finds its way onto the mp3 player and I snarl at the words: “Kiss me while i’m still alive/kill me while I kiss the sky/Let my die on my own terms…Freedom carries sacrifice/Remember when this was my life”. My hands absently stroke the imaginary 12 guage shotgun of my mind and the confederate flag on my wall gets a glance or three. I snarl softly (it’s 4am and the walls are thin) “Come and get it you dicks.”

Lots of famous dead people have said that private property ownership is key in an enlightened society. Madison said it somewhere in the Federalist Papers. PA’s constitution says it, so do most other states. I’ve even heard a diry liberal say it, for chrissakes. How can you call yourself free when you can’t own the very house you live in?

Heinlein once said that a “generation that ignores history has no past and no future.” The American Dream used to be to own a house and to fill it with things like a loving wife, 2.3 kids, and an assortment of smelly pets. From this day forth, no one will ever live it in the good ole US of A. Not only have we forgotten about that dream, we’ve forgotten the very basis of it: the context in which our consitution was written. In US History we learn about anything and everything, but all too often, the great debates, the Federalist Papers, the original writings of Franklin, Jefferson, Madison et al are forgotten, BUT on the upside, we learn that George Washington Carver made over 400 industrial products from the peanut. We learn the names and the actions, but we never learn the thoughts behind them. This, my friends, is a crime.

As many famous dead (and live) people have also pointed out, the Constitution is not so much a document enumerating the powers of the government but actually an article of delegation. Its intent was not to establish the government’s authority but rather its limits. “This is what ‘We the people’ will allow you to do. This, right here, is what you can’t do.” Somewhere along the way, probably with the invention of the career politician, we lost sight of that. Rather than the people limiting the government, the government now circumscribes our participation in every sphere. Somewhere along the way Democracy (always in danger of mob rule), became a sham. There developed a ruling class, a class that manipulated and used the people to entrench themselves ever more firmly in power by getting the people to shamefully’ delegate ever more to them.

Yes, i’m still depressed over the Kelo decision. And the burning rage of a young man who just watched his beloved country die continues to grow deep within my chest. What bothers me more than anything is the seeming lack of rage in others. The conservative bloggers are up in arms (quite literally in the RKBA sect). A few of the more intelligent liberals are as well. But by and large the erosion of what has always been claimed to be the foundation of personal autonomy has not had the effect it should have.

On his deathbed, Dylan Thomas’s father heard these words whispered into his ear:

Do not go gentle into that good night…
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

That dying light is freedom, the night a slow freefall into Statism, where Big Brother knows best. William Wallace said it, Washington said it, and many others in between and after. Freedom or death. Back in 2nd grade, when we first learned all about the Patrick Henry speech and the letter opener trick we all ran around the classroom, at recess, at home. Standing on a chair, a desk, or a swing, we’d shout it “Give me liberty…or give me death,” before shoving a pen into our armpit. I missed with the pen once and stabbed myself square in the chest. I still have the scar. And the memory of that innocent youthful fervor. The choice is ours, do we go gentle? Yoke ourselves to a burden our forefathers fought tooth and nail to separate ourselves from 230 years ago? Or do we rage, do we scream, do we fight, for the freedom that was given us by the sacrifices of good men for a future many of them would never see?

I’ve made my choice.
——————————–

Shoot, I’ll probably re-use my 4th of July piece from last year as well. I wrote better back then. Course, I was trying to impress a girl, which probably explains some of the difference in quality.

I generally enjoy Rick Roberts in the morning. He had the balls to call one of those California congresswomen (they’re fairly interchangeable aren’t they?) a socialist, to her face, on the air. And then after saying that she and her ilk were what’s wrong with America, He hung up on her. On his own radio show! How can you not like a guy like that.

But every now and then he does the ‘morally outraged citizen legislating something just to feel better’ thing. He supports the flag-burning amendment because, to paraphrase ‘when our rights are used against us, as flag burners do, it’s no longer ok.’ Which is a pretty weak argument.

To quote Boortz, ““Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.” It’s a sentiment he and other libertarians share with the founding fathers themselves. In fact, I’d say that the legality of flag burning is one of the greatest examples of the strength and sanctity of our Bill of Rights. Granted, said argument rings hollow when it comes from the mouths of the people doing the flagburning, but their insincerity makes it no less true. Besides, now you’re hearing it from a patriot.

And one of Rick’s callers, an activated guardsman, said it even better (again paraphrased): “Why should the government have any right to tell me what I can or cannot do with the flag I would die for.”

Says it all, really.

Denise Bode wants to be the US Representative for my district. What caught my attention was her voicing of support for the Fair Tax as I was flipping through the radio on the way to work yesterday.

Sounds good to me. So I went to her website, read a bit about her and I liked a lot of what she has to say.

Of course, there’s the typical
With a deep commitment to traditional family values, Bode pledged to stand up for traditional marriage, to oppose gay marriage, the right of our children to pray or say the Pledge of Allegiance (”Under God”), and faith-based solutions to our most pressing social problems. But here in Oklahoma, such platitudes are practically necessary regardless of political affiliation.

But there’s plenty here for the libertarian and the real conservative anxious to get back to the small government our supposed representative party has taken us so far from:

Bode will vote to reduce federal tax burdens for individuals and small business so Oklahoma families can keep more of their earnings. Bode is, and will continue to be, a true taxpayer and small business advocate. Denise supports the concept of a Fair Tax (a consumption tax), but it must be accompanied by responsible government spending. Supporting President Bush’s tax cuts and making them permanent is a good start, but it is only a start - elected officials say that they support this concept, but have themselves supported increases on taxes and fees while wasting taxpayer money in their respective districts

And it’s not all talk, this is exactly what she’s done with the Corporation Commission here. Back under Reagan, she was a congressional staffer working to effect tax cuts and elimination of the death tax. Her husband was also an important force in working to reform welfare.

On healthcare, “Gaining control over the spiraling costs of health care is a function of driving out unreasonable and unnecessary governmental regulations.”

On immigration:

By some estimates, illegal immigration costs this nation $22 billion per year. Bode will fight to eliminate this economic drain on our nation. How much is enough? It is estimated by the Center for Immigration Studies as well as national think tanks that building a wall along the border would cost $5 billion - reducing the flow of illegals would result in an aggregate annual savings for the taxpayers.

Sounds about right to me. And at any rate, damn the cost, as it is I’m going to be a substantial bulwark in the United States’ social welfare system, I don’t need to be a donor for Latin America’s system as well.

Yeah, I could do without the Christian rhetoric. I’m a big fan of traditional values and am more than a little puritanical in the way I live my life. But Christians don’t have a monopoly on morality, which is how these politicians try to make it sound. They are the second youngest major religion, and I feel more than a little slighted every time I hear the phrase ‘Christian family values’. These are values my family had long before Jesus ever walked the earth; values that are integral to who we are.

They’re also–and this is key–not something that needs to be legislated. Part of what makes up morality is that it’s a choice. If we legislate all temptation away, it wouldn’t be virtue so much as blind obedience. It’s the same thing I say to leftists when they ask why I don’t think political affiliation has anything to do with charitable spirit.

But I’m willing to look past that to get some good people in Congress. Lord knows we’ve lucked out with Coburn and his pork crusade.

Still not sure if I’d vote for her or not, but it really would be something if two of the most outspoken conservatives in Congress were from Oklahoma.