Saturday, June 15, 2013
Friday, June 14, 2013
Attacking Liberty
It seems these days that libertarians can never get a break. Libertarians are criticized by the welfare redistributionist liberals for our support of free market capitalism while the warmongering neoconservatives criticize libertarians for being against unnecessary foreign wars. This is to be expected to some extent. After all, libertarianism is the only consistent political philosophy that rejects government interventionism at home in domestic affairs and abroad in foreign policy. Libertarians truly understand freedom and what a true free society entails, which tempers with the plans of the governmental planners.
Libertarians and libertarianism have been under attack by the so-called "experts" lately in a more vicious and frequent manner. Mike Konczal has recently written an article entitled "We Already Tried Libertarianism - It Was Called Feudalism". In this article, the author attempts to pin libertarianism to the feudal system of the Middle Ages. Michael Lind at Salon.com thinks that he has come up the ultimate anti-libertarian trump card in the form of "the question libertarians just can't answer": If your approach is so great, why hasn’t any country anywhere in the world ever tried it? Tom Woods has effectively responded to such as question, twice. This has led Michael Lind to say that libertarians need to "grow up".
In the political swamp known as Washington D.C., mainstream politicians, especially the neoconservatives, are denouncing Edward Snowden's whistle-blowing of the National Security Agency's program of spying on American citizens while applauding the NSA and reassuring Americans that they don't have anything to worry about. Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the most unwavering neoconservatives in Washington D.C. has also denounced "Ron Paul's policies", claiming that such policies of peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations are a "threat to America. As Chris Rossini writes,
The ideas of Liberty are like kryptonite to the neo-con mind, which seeks conquest, subjugation and obedience. Lindsey Graham embodies that mindset like no other: faced with the ideas of liberty and the policies produced by the ideas of liberty, he recoils in horror!
Why have libertarians been denounced with such ferocity lately? Because more and more people are beginning to see that libertarianism is the answer to the political and economic problems facing the United States and the world while rejecting the authoritarianism of the U.S. government and it's propagandists, which makes them feel threatened. Chris Rossini goes on to say that,
Libertarians and libertarianism have been under attack by the so-called "experts" lately in a more vicious and frequent manner. Mike Konczal has recently written an article entitled "We Already Tried Libertarianism - It Was Called Feudalism". In this article, the author attempts to pin libertarianism to the feudal system of the Middle Ages. Michael Lind at Salon.com thinks that he has come up the ultimate anti-libertarian trump card in the form of "the question libertarians just can't answer": If your approach is so great, why hasn’t any country anywhere in the world ever tried it? Tom Woods has effectively responded to such as question, twice. This has led Michael Lind to say that libertarians need to "grow up".
In the political swamp known as Washington D.C., mainstream politicians, especially the neoconservatives, are denouncing Edward Snowden's whistle-blowing of the National Security Agency's program of spying on American citizens while applauding the NSA and reassuring Americans that they don't have anything to worry about. Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the most unwavering neoconservatives in Washington D.C. has also denounced "Ron Paul's policies", claiming that such policies of peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations are a "threat to America. As Chris Rossini writes,
The ideas of Liberty are like kryptonite to the neo-con mind, which seeks conquest, subjugation and obedience. Lindsey Graham embodies that mindset like no other: faced with the ideas of liberty and the policies produced by the ideas of liberty, he recoils in horror!
Why have libertarians been denounced with such ferocity lately? Because more and more people are beginning to see that libertarianism is the answer to the political and economic problems facing the United States and the world while rejecting the authoritarianism of the U.S. government and it's propagandists, which makes them feel threatened. Chris Rossini goes on to say that,
The stream of controversies that have hit government over recent months have given us many more open ears and open minds to reach. It is up to us to educate and share with others the beautiful ideas of Liberty.
The Neocons will fight tooth and nail to keep fear, apprehension, and paranoia in the limelight. For liberty does nothing but throw a monkey wrench into their nefarious plans.
The major battle is over which America shall prevail: the original version, which was grounded in the principles of liberty, peace, commerce and non-intervention. Or, the modern neo-con version, which is grounded on surveillance, war, cronyism and Empire.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Social Security: The New Deal’s Fiscal Ponzi
By David Stockman
[Excerpt from THE GREAT DEFORMATION: The Corruption of Capitalism in America by David A. Stockman. Published by PublicAffairs.]
The Social Security Act of 1935 had virtually nothing to do with ending the depression, and if anything it had a contractionary impact. Payroll taxes began in 1937 while regular benefit payments did not commence until 1940.
Yet its fiscal legacy threatens disaster in the present era because its core principle of “social insurance” inexorably gives rise to a fiscal doomsday machine. When in the context of modern political democracy the state offers universal transfer payments to its citizens without proof of need, it offers thereby to bankrupt itself—eventually.
By contrast, a minor portion of the 1935 legislation embodied the opposite principle—namely, the means-tested safety net offered through categorical aid for the low-income elderly, blind, disabled and dependent families. These programs were inherently self-contained because beneficiaries of means-tested transfers simply do not have the wherewithal—that is, PACs and organized lobbying machinery—to “capture” policy-making and thereby imperil the public purse.
To the extent that means-tested social welfare is strictly cash-based, as was cogently advocated by Milton Friedman in his negative income tax plan, it is even more fiscally stable. Such purely cash based transfers do not enlist and mobilize the lobbying power of providers and vendors of in-kind assistance, such as housing and medical services.
Social insurance, on the other hand, suffers the twin disability of being regressive as a distributional matter and explosively expansionary as a fiscal matter. The source of both ills is the principle of “income replacement” provided through mandatory socialization of huge population pools.
Read the rest of the article here.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Obsessing over Benghazi
Recently, there has been much hoopla over the September 11th, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya which resulted in the death of four people, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. As hearings after hearings on Capitol Hill continue to provide ample evidence that the Obama Administration did not take the security of the embassy seriously and did not allow the embassy to protect itself, more and more Americans are becoming angry over the Benghazi incident. The group of Americans most angry over the Benghazi attack are the Neoconservatives. They continually criticize the Obama Administration's actions during the attack on Benghazi, which they perceive to be proof that President Obama is not willing to defend "American interests" (which is a Neoconservative code-word for the interests of the U.S. government) and that he is a "Neo-Isolationist" (if only!!).
The Neoconservatives continue to beat this horse because it seems that the Neoconservatives are dissatisfied that President Obama is not warmongering enough for them. It appears that the Neoconservatives will continue to harp about the Benghazi attack until the American people get angry enough to throw President Obama out and put a much more "suitable" candidate in his place.
Unfortunately, the real issue at hand that should be discussed in relation to the Benghazi attack will not be discuss because the implications would be too politically harmful to the Washington elite: blowback. The attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi was the unintended consequences of American interventionism into Libya when the U.S. government launched an air war against that country. Ron Paul summarizes the point succinctly as follows:
Neither side wants to talk about the real lesson of Benghazi: interventionism always carries with it unintended consequences. The US attack on Libya led to the unleashing of Islamist radicals in Libya. These radicals have destroyed the country, murdered thousands, and killed the US ambassador. Some of these then turned their attention to Mali which required another intervention by the US and France.
Previously secure weapons in Libya flooded the region after the US attack, with many of them going to Islamist radicals who make up the majority of those fighting to overthrow the government in Syria. The US government has intervened in the Syrian conflict on behalf of the same rebels it assisted in the Libya conflict, likely helping with the weapons transfers. With word out that these rebels are mostly affiliated with al Qaeda, the US is now intervening to persuade some factions of the Syrian rebels to kill other factions before completing the task of ousting the Syrian government. It is the dizzying cycle of interventionism.
The real lesson of Benghazi will not be learned because neither Republicans nor Democrats want to hear it. But it is our interventionist foreign policy and its unintended consequences that have created these problems, including the attack and murder of Ambassador Stevens. The disputed talking points and White House whitewashing are just a sideshow.
The Neoconservatives continue to beat this horse because it seems that the Neoconservatives are dissatisfied that President Obama is not warmongering enough for them. It appears that the Neoconservatives will continue to harp about the Benghazi attack until the American people get angry enough to throw President Obama out and put a much more "suitable" candidate in his place.
Unfortunately, the real issue at hand that should be discussed in relation to the Benghazi attack will not be discuss because the implications would be too politically harmful to the Washington elite: blowback. The attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi was the unintended consequences of American interventionism into Libya when the U.S. government launched an air war against that country. Ron Paul summarizes the point succinctly as follows:
Neither side wants to talk about the real lesson of Benghazi: interventionism always carries with it unintended consequences. The US attack on Libya led to the unleashing of Islamist radicals in Libya. These radicals have destroyed the country, murdered thousands, and killed the US ambassador. Some of these then turned their attention to Mali which required another intervention by the US and France.
Previously secure weapons in Libya flooded the region after the US attack, with many of them going to Islamist radicals who make up the majority of those fighting to overthrow the government in Syria. The US government has intervened in the Syrian conflict on behalf of the same rebels it assisted in the Libya conflict, likely helping with the weapons transfers. With word out that these rebels are mostly affiliated with al Qaeda, the US is now intervening to persuade some factions of the Syrian rebels to kill other factions before completing the task of ousting the Syrian government. It is the dizzying cycle of interventionism.
The real lesson of Benghazi will not be learned because neither Republicans nor Democrats want to hear it. But it is our interventionist foreign policy and its unintended consequences that have created these problems, including the attack and murder of Ambassador Stevens. The disputed talking points and White House whitewashing are just a sideshow.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
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