Judge Andrew Napolitano VS. John Stossel on the NSA

The Tollkeepers on the Road to Serfdom

By D.W. MacKenzie

Elected Federal officials can be voted out of office. But the entrenched army of empowered, unelected Federal bureaucrats remains to wield its power, and the Internal Revenue Service bureaucrats are some of the worst. Six years ago I published an article in The Freeman on the incompatibility of the tax code and liberty, and the threat to liberty continues unabated.

Friedrich Hayek described the process by which bureaucratic empowerment and discretion extirpates personal liberty and democracy as “the road to serfdom.” He warned us all that socialism requires bureaucratization. In the socialist state bureaucrats would become the new aristocracy and its citizens would take on the role of serf. My article argued that similar dangers existed with increasing the powers of the IRS bureaucracy, and that democracy could not be relied upon to hold it in check. Recent abuses validate this fear. Any agency without restraint and accountability is a threat to personal freedom and should be abolished.

I have published critiques of the US government and politicians without IRS reprisal, including some that targeted tax policy and the IRS specifically. The types of concerns I raised regarding IRS authority were spelled out by Hayek in his classic The Road to Serfdom. Scholars from Jeff Sachs to Gordon Tullock have claimed that Hayek’s warnings about abuse in social democracy were overstated. After all, many Western nations have large public budgets and extensive regulations without suffering the dire results that Hayek predicted.

The current IRS scandal has renewed concerns regarding abuse of IRS power. One flagrant example from the last election was the partisan use of the IRS as a political weapon. The IRS has a history of political abuse. Hoover, FDR, JFK, and Richard Nixon all used the IRS against enemies, long before Clinton or Obama. In the wake of recent scandals, some politicians are now investigating the IRS. IRS officials, like Douglas Shulman, Lois Lerner, and Holly Paz, in their appearances before Congress, have exhibited the arrogance of an entitled aristocrat instead of the public servants that they are.

Read the rest of the article here. 

Ron Paul Discusses the Coming War with Syria

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, 

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.

The Myth of a Fair Tax-Joe Salerno

Ron Paul Warns about Government Surveillance in 1984

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.