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Liberty
A Warm Welcome, and other assorted editorial duties
Hello all. I’m proud to announce and introduce Jesper Ahlin to the blogging team here at NOL:
Jesper Ahlin received his B.A. in philosophy from Linköping University and is now a graduate student in philosophy at Uppsala University. He has conducted Stureakademin, a study program run by the classical liberal think tank Timbro, and is the local coordinator for European Students For Liberty in Sweden. As a right-libertarianish thinker he enjoys reading Mises and Rothbard as well as Hayek and Nozick. He also likes ice hockey, music and traveling.
Jesper’s debut post can be found here. He’s currently hanging out in Washington and New York City, but do look for more of his posts in the near future. I, for one, am very excited to be blogging alongside Jesper.
In other news around the blog, Andrew is shocked – SHOCKED! – to find Senator Elizabeth Warren in the company of other rich, white (class-wise, of course) liberals. What would a “sincere and credible populist” be doing rubbing elbows with rich, white (class-wise, of course) Leftists? After all, Senator Warren, a Native American, was a law professor at Harvard. Think of all the glass ceilings she shattered. Do read the whole thing. As always, it’s very well-written.
‘Populism’ is just a quaint term for ‘fascism’ and ‘fascism’ is just a fancy term for ‘nationalism’. All three terms are useful if you want a society to be culturally, economically and politically stagnant. What, for example, is the criteria for being an ‘American worker’ (one segment of society that Senator Warren holds especially close to her heart)?
The guy who works twelve hours a day at a hospital, four days a week?
The guy who works twenty hours a week at a deli slicing pastrami?
And what, for example, characterizes an ‘American worker’ from, say, a ‘German worker’?
Nobody in Warren’s populist camp ever really defines what it means to be an ‘American worker.’ Policy matters, and policies targeting certain segments of society – whether for good or for ill – will only guarantee stagnation, especially if the certain segment of society is only vaguely defined. Not everybody can drive a BMW to work and, more importantly, not everybody wants to.
Elsewhere, Hank and NEO and Edmund argue about political power. It seems to me that they are simply arguing about how this power should be shared, rather than how it should be shorn. This is a dangerous precedent, in my opinion. Read Edmund’s whole piece, and the exchange that follows.
Personally, I don’t care which party is in office, as long as laws that are anathema to libertarianism can be repealed. Conservatives are often an embarrassment to themselves and to their countrymen. They rarely travel, are often less educated than their Leftist peers and usually possess a deep belief in the power of magic and sorcery to solve the social and personal problems that they inevitably come to face in life.
For all this, at least they aren’t Leftists.
Thanks for reading and, more importantly, for sharing your thoughts in the ‘comments’ section. Together, through arguing, we are doing the fine-stitching of democracy.
Gentrifying Tacky Sac: not bad if you can stomach the corruption and iniquity
A few months ago, I lit into the Capital Area Development Authority, or CADA, for redlining a significant portion of Midtown Sacramento to exclude poor and middling tenants. What I find particularly objectionable about this redlining is that it is done as a matter of deliberate government policy, since CADA is a joint powers authority chartered by the Sacramento municipal and California state governments, and that there seems not to have been any pushback from local activists or the courts.
CADA administers a huge amount of residential property to the east and south of the Capitol, enough to unilaterally set housing policy on a number of blocks. Some of the conditions that it sets for tenants are draconian, among them, open lines of credit with on-time payment histories, high credit scores, stable, long-term tenancies with landlords who are not friends are relatives, and absolutely no negative references from past landlords. These conditions are objectively discriminatory against poor applicants, who are often forced to rely on makeshift living arrangements with friends or relatives, unable to pay bills on time because they simply lack the money, and preyed upon and retaliated against by systematically criminal slumlords. The question is not whether discrimination against the poor is taking place here, but whether or not it is morally and legally acceptable.
There’s another question that really muddies the waters: is discrimination against the poor practical? Having spent quite a bit of time in Midtown and Downtown over the past few months, I have no doubt that CADA has done a lot to clean Midtown up. Midtown doesn’t have anything like the hordes of shambling homeless mentally ill, patina of grime, and trails of trash that one finds on the K Street light rail mall, or, as it’s lovingly called by its marketeers in the (posh) drinking industry, “The Kay.” The 16th Street light rail station has a bit of that dysfunction going on, but it’s safe to assume that CADA’s redevelopment activities, some of them only a block to the north, have brought some degree of improvement to the station by increasing the sheer number of non-derelict passengers using the station at off-peak hours. If this is the case, it has to have marginally improved the quality of life for the disproportionately poor passengers who change trains there. (16th Street is the last station leaving downtown before the Gold and Blue Lines split, the former east towards the dodgy neighborhoods of Rancho Cordova, the latter south towards the much scarier ghetto sector of inland South Sacramento.)
CADA’s territory in Midtown is more or less free of the malt liquor bottle shops, intractable pants-on-the-ground al fresco alcoholics, undermedicated long-term outpatients, and criminal underclass elements that plague many parts of Sacramento and its suburbs. These things have been driven out by clean and orderly businesses and the sort of clean and orderly people who patronize them, who are also the sort of people one is not scared to encounter on the streets late at night. I’ve come to the conclusion that, questions of equity aside, CADA is clearly doing something right.
This still leaves troubling questions of civics. I would have much weaker objections to a private developer applying such conditions to prospective tenants at a luxury apartment complex that was built entirely on the free market, i.e., completely without eminent domain, weaselly tax-break inducements, or other government favors. (These conditions are met disgustingly less often than developers would like us to believe). At a high enough level, any residual objections I might have to the abuse of credit rating inquiries or other background investigations would be moot anyway, since serious high-rollers in real estate consider cash on the barrel head the offering that covers a multitude of sins, a most fitting sacrifice of first fruits.
The problem is that draconian tenancy conditions are applied most heavily against those who can least manage to meet them. Many rental markets are monopolies or oligopolies controlled by slumlord thieves who steal tenants’ security deposits as a matter of course. In these markets, the idea of tenants of limited means being able to exercise a right of free association to find better landlords or some sort of roommate arrangement sounds like a cruel joke. On the whole, American housing law is de jure equitable but de facto a dual system of high and low justice.
The proper role of government intervention in such a market is to enforce equity standards on landlords, many of whom are easily shown to be in willful and material violation of federal racketeering law. As a matter of equity at law, government agencies have absolutely no business helping unethical and often criminal landlords and banks entrench themselves as private tyrants by allowing them to help redline the poor out of apartment complexes that are tantamount to public housing.
One of the great intellectual frauds of agencies like CADA is their false promotion as civic and community organizations. CADA is more accurately described as a regulatory capture apparatus operating at the behest of neighborhood business interests. A huge amount of what passes for community civics in the United States is in fact business marketing strategy enforced through government policy. This is classic regulatory capture. What business owners want in these cases is to flood the neighborhood with their target demographic. Sure enough, CADA’s rental conditions are perfectly designed to flood Midtown Sacramento with yuppies and their disposable incomes.
This is a point that cannot be made clearly enough: the purpose of CADA’s draconian rental conditions is NOT to ensure that its tenants are orderly, peaceable, acceptable risks to their landlord, and capable of improving community life through their presence; it is to ensure that they’re moneyed enough to patronize the local yuppie joints at a suitable price point. These conditions are patently not designed just to screen out risky applicants who have trashed previous rental units, worked crack territories on Hella South Stockton, held meth bake sales in Rancho Cordova, or had regular 3 am bruiser sessions with their live-in lovers and the Sheriff’s Department’s night watch. They are also designed to screen out perfectly peaceable and civic-minded applicants who brew their own Sanka at home and eat pork and beans out of a can instead of dropping thirty dollars a day on lattes and Thai food. Some of these people are exactly the types whose eyes are good to have on the street. Do we want maternal 7-Eleven clerks and home health aides from the trailer parks and the ghettos moving into the neighborhood to keep their eyes on the streets? As a matter of civics, we do. As a matter of economics, it probably depends on whether they’ll buy their pork and beans at the Midtown Safeway or trek out to the Rancho Cordova Grocery Outlet, but the answer is: No, they’re poors.
And no, this is not being done so that these mother hens will continue to grace their old neighborhoods with their wisdom and supervision. Any self-described progressive who says otherwise is concern-trolling the Sacramento banlieue with suggestions that the crabs all work to keep each other safely within the barrel. If anyone in charge of policy at CADA gives a shit about Rancho Cordova, I’m Mother Teresa.
It isn’t about high civics; it’s about marketing through government policy, a much crasser proposition. Many elements in the business community do their level best to elide the difference between civics and business, but it’s a real and serious one. CADA’s class-based redlining is effective policy, but it is not equitable or ethically sound policy. Don’t think for a split second that they’re the same thing.
Filosofiska skillnader och likheter mellan liberalism och libertarianism
Libertarianismen betraktas ibland som en förlängning av liberalismen, men trots att de båda idétraditionerna har mycket gemensamt finns det också mycket som skiljer dem åt. Båda anammar filosofiskt metodologisk individualism och utgår därför i sin verklighetsbeskrivning från individen. Båda är också stora förespråkare av frihet – akademisk frihet, social frihet, ekonomisk frihet, och så vidare. Men tittar man på de båda traditionernas grundvalar är skillnaderna tydliga. Liberalismen förespråkar frihet och endast frihet, libertarianism förespråkar rättigheter och endast rättigheter.
Eftersom liberalismen utgår från att individen ska vara fri utgör idétraditionen av hel familj av idéer. Man kan påstå att frihet är ”frånvaro av hinder”, vilket brukar kallas för negativ frihet, men man kan också säga att frihet är samma sak som ”möjligheter”, vilket brukar kallas för positiv frihet. I det förra fallet krävs endast att omgivningen avstår från att ingripa medan det senare kräver någon slags insats från omgivningen så att individen ska uppnå ett visst tillstånd. Man kan också påstå att frihet kräver en viss variant av rättvisa, vilket åtminstone sedan John Rawls enorma nedslag i den politiska filosofin på sjuttiotalet är en vanligt återkommande tanke. Det går idag knappast att diskutera politisk filosofi på allvar utan att på något sätt förhålla sig till Rawls rättviseteori.
Libertarianismen har (åtminstone enligt många) samma förfader som liberalismen i sextonhundratalsfilosofen John Locke. Locke argumenterade för att människan genom Gud har tilldelats en naturlig rätt till sin egen kropp. Det är ur denna tanke som liberalismen hämtar sin idé om individens frihet, medan libertarianismen hämtar sin idé om individens rätt. Gud, säger libertarianen, har ingenting med saken att göra, men det är ett obestridligt faktum att människan till fullo äger sin egen kropp. Ingen har rätt till hela eller ens en del av någon annans kropp, utan dessa våra fysiska uppenbarelser i världen är våra egna tempel att förvalta efter bästa förmåga och förstånd. En av de mest framstående utvecklingarna av detta sätt att tänka finns att hämta i Robert Nozicks ”Anarki, Stat och Utopi”, som Nozick skrev som svar på Rawls rättviseteori. Liksom att en seriös filosofisk debattör måste ta hänsyn till Rawls måste hon också ta hänsyn till Nozicks undersökning av individens rätt till sig själv.
Libertarianismen är inte lika lätt som liberalismen att dela upp eftersom ”rätten till sig själv” helt enkelt är svår att bryta ned i mindre beståndsdelar. Det är en svår grundsats att bestrida, och det är inte heller där som konflikten med andra idétraditioner utspelar sig – åtminstone inte enligt libertarianismens motståndare. Om det är sant att varje individ har fullständig rätt till sin egen kropp måste det nämligen följa logiskt att ingen har rätt till någon annans kropp, och att man därför inte med moralen i behåll har rätt att inskränka på någon annans handlingar utom när dessa strider mot andras motsvarande rätt till sina respektive kroppar. Det vill säga, jag får exempelvis inte svinga min knytnäve på ett sätt som hindrar ditt huvud från att fungera så som du vill att det ska fungera. Jag är fri att slå med mina nävar, men inte om mina slag träffar dig. Hur går en sådan fullständig själväganderätt ihop med att man måste betala skatt? Med att man inte får använda narkotika? Eller med ett samhällskontrakt som man aldrig har skrivit under? Det går helt enkelt inte. En fullständig själväganderätt är helt och hållet oförenlig med all form av ofrivilligt samhällsdeltagande. Om det är sant att individen har fullständig rätt till sin egen kropp finns det alltså inget sätt på vilket man kan motivera en stat moraliskt.
Den liberala diskussionen om vad frihet är har sin motsvarighet i libertarianismens diskussion om vad individen har rätt till av det som inte tillhör hennes kropp. En fullständig själväganderätt tycks i de flestas ögon vara rimlig, men konsekvenserna av en sådan själväganderätt verkar i stället orimliga. Många tycker helt enkelt att skatt, förbud mot narkotika och ett statligt våldsmonopol är nödvändiga för att samhället ska fungera, och alltså måste det finnas något fel med libertarianismen. Man hittar sin angreppspunkt i externt ägandeskap, alltså individens ägande till annat än sin egen kropp. Kan det vara så, argumenterar man, att individen måhända äger sig själv, men att allt som befinner sig över, under och mittemellan individer tillhör alla?
Liksom att liberalismen delas upp i negativ och positiv frihet delas libertarianismen därmed upp i höger och vänster. Nej, säger högerlibertarianer, individen äger sin egen kropp till fullo och äger därmed också allt som hon med hjälp av sin arbetskraft omvandlar till ägodelar. Det finns ingenting som heter ”gemensam” egendom, för endast individer kan utöva ägandeskap över fysiska ting. Ja, säger vänsterlibertarianer, individen äger sin kropp till fullo, men allt som hon blandar sin arbetskraft med tillhör alla – alltså är det inte individens äganderätt till sig själv och sitt arbete som ska inskränkas på, utan det som hon med sin kropp bearbetar till egendom. Jorden, träden, vattnet och allt annat tillhör alla och måste fördelas därefter enligt något annat och från individen skilt mekaniskt schema. Inkomstskatt är grovt omoraliskt, men skatt på den mark som arbetsplatsen befinner sig på är ett måste så att inte naturens resurser fördelas orättvist.
Det finns alltså både likheter och skillnader mellan liberalism och libertarianism. Ingen seriös tänkare kan utan goda skäl avfärda någon av de två och fortfarande förvänta sig att bli tagen på allvar. Tankeströmningar som vanligtvis tar starkt avstånd från metodologisk individualism och (särskilt) ekonomisk frihet har faktiskt också anammat frön från de båda idétraditionerna. Föreställ dig exempelvis om den politiska debatten inte hade behandlat frågor som ”integritet” och vad det hade gjort för realpolitisk skillnad. Hade sjukjournaler varit offentliga handlingar? Skulle terroristlagar någonsin kritiseras? Vilka begränsningar skulle FRA ha?
En politisk tänkare, oavsett vilken roll denne spelar, borde ägna tid och energi åt att undersöka vad självägandeskap egentligen innebär moraliskt. Det finns handlingar som obestridligt är fel. Man straffar inte en oskyldig för sitt eget höga nöjes skull. Varför inte? Därför att individen har ett värde. Vad detta värde är, och hur det kan och bör realiseras i politiken, är en oerhört viktig diskussion som inte får åsidosättas. Libertarianismen är den politisk-filosofiska gren som har de mest välutvecklade argumenten för individen och borde därför uppskattas och respekteras av varje seriös debattör. Om man inte tar individen på allvar förtjänar man nämligen inte själv att tas på allvar.
Forty years after the launch of feminism
On Halloween afternoon I was downtown Santa Cruz on a candy expedition, escorting my grand-daughter the delightful M., five. M., a brown-skinned child, was Rapunzel. She was wearing a purple sequined dress with a petty-coat showing its pale blue border beneath, white gloves, and a blond wig to her ankles. She would have easily won the contest if there had been one. All afternoon women voiced their appreciation of her look.
My perspicacious observations on that occasion:
All little girls still want to be princesses or fairies. None wants to be a fire man, or a firegirl, or a fireperson. None wants to dress in neutral colors. If it’s not pink, it’s purple.
Nearly all little boys want to be dressed as anything with a gun, or a sword, or anything with a truck. Those I saw who are dressed as anything else were obviously forced by their politically correct or social climbing Moms. The way you know is that they sulk in spite of the large amounts of candy in their loot bags. A small number of little boys do want to dress as fairies but that’s nothing new. And it has nothing to do with feminism.
Fat women take Halloween as just another opportunity to wear a push-up bra and to hang out (or to almost hang out).
Almost no straight man wants to wear a costume. Those few men who do wear one have been blackmailed by their wives. You know it because they are costumed to represent the minor part of a pair or of a trio of which Mrs is the principal, the Tin Man of Wizard of Oz, for example. Costumed straight men are thus merely fashion accessories, as well they should be.
Forty years later: Feminism: 0; Mother Nature: 1.
I am not making this up. Open your eyes for the Goddess’s Sake!
And I know it’s completely different in San Francisco but it has nothing to do with feminism, one way or the other, or the other.
Liberty Movement Cannot Just Rely on the Right
In order for the liberty movement to make things work, they need to do a little bit of the left and right at both times. For every “liberal” government program they cut, they have to cut a “conservative” government program. For every right-wing cause they champion, they must champion a left-wing one. The severity of this problem really sunk in when I noticed how much the Koch brothers had co-opted the Liberty Movement. If libertarians do not stress their common ground with liberals, they are going to be screwed. Sure, it is important to take over the Republican Party, but at the same time, they have to appeal to a significant portion of liberals and Democrats.
I’ve been to many events that I suspect were likely funded by the Kochs, to one degree or another. Although I support the economic ideas promoted, they speak half-truths and promote half-ideas. They use silence to omit half of the core libertarian message. They use the word “liberty” over and over again, until the word loses meaning. They are obsessed with “taking over the Republican Party”, and marginalize all those who support the Libertarian third party. They talk about repealing Obamacare, cutting taxes, loosening regulations, and cutting welfare, but that is about it. Koch-sponsored events barely scratch the surface on the following topics: the drug war, the police state, the neoconservative Middle Eastern foreign policy, the growth of the defense department, corporate bailouts, corporate subsidies, private prisons, CIA-backed dictatorships overseas, or any of the social issues linked to the Christian Right.
I have become incredibly jaded and exhausted with the talk about “appeasing to the Republican base”. There is no longer any reason to care what pro-lifers and evangelicals say, or cater to their opinions. No one need care what some old, chubby, white haired, closet racist, small town gladhanders have to say. They are old, and will be dead or retired by the end of the decade. Their opinion should be irrelevant. It is time to pick the battles. The old Republicans are stupid, senile, and reactionary, and are completely incapable of challenging political enemies on a modern stage. Meanwhile, liberal Democrats have brainwashed the whole younger generation, and are on the verge of causing us economic collapse (not entirely their fault – ie. Bush). And all the Republicans can come up with is to scream the same reactionary, obstructionist things instead of coming up with new ideas. Here is a link to an article discussing the demographic reality.
Hosting forums on fighting Obamacare, heavy-handed regulations, gun control, and high taxes is all well and good. When taken out of context from the rest of the libertarian message though, it makes libertarianism repulsive to the left. It looks like a bunch of straight white males wearing bowties, complaining about welfare and taxes. We all know what reaction this triggers from liberals. The paragraphs below contain are the message that libertarians actually say. The highlighted bracketed sections are what liberals hear them say, at least when Koch Industries controls the message.
“Poor people are arrested for drugs and other embellished charges because of the police state, and are sent to private prisons, and leave their families behind, and when they get off they have no choice but welfare. We need to stop the police state that ruins the lives of the poor, and then {cut the welfare that the poor have become dependent on} as they no longer will need it.”
or
“{We need to loosen regulations on American companies and remove mandatory union laws}, because corporate robber barons will go overseas to countries with CIA-backed dictatorships and exploit poor people in the third world, causing blue-collar Americans to lose their jobs and get on welfare. When the jobs return to America, {we should cut welfare}.”
Taken out of context, the libertarian looks exactly like the stereotype that statist liberals want to play up. The statist liberals are viciously dedicated to ruining the libertarian image in front of anti-war, pro-civil liberties liberals who should join the cause. And with their four-fifths of the media, Obama’s Hollywood friends, and poorly informed immature university students trying to rage out against their parents’ corny world, they have far more campaign power than any conservative or libertarian.
That brings us to Rand Paul, and his modus operandi for 2016. The word on the street is that Rand is a libertarian like his father, pretending his best to be an “establishment Republican”. As a result, he is incredibly careful about the libertarian things he says. Or is he? Despite the fact that Roe vs. Wade is upheld by the Supreme Court, that no one will ever overturn, he’s still wasting his time trying to appeal to the pro-life evangelical crowd. Supporting pro-life legislation does more harm than good in today’s climate, especially with the venomous reaction it causes from four-fifths of the media and the young activists. It is not a battle worth fighting.
Here is what Rand Paul has going for him.
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He opposed the Syrian War
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He’s opposing mandatory minimums for drugs
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He’s opposed NSA espionage
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He said GOP needs to “agree to disagree” on gay marriage
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He filibustered drones
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He supported an end to foreign aid (specifically to countries who persecute Christians)
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He has pledged to filibuster Janet Yellen’s taking office of the Fed until it is audited. (Of course, given that most people know nothing about the Fed, the media outlets will likely portray this as Rand “being sexist and opposing a woman taking an key position”)
Of course, many Obama supporters will stick their head in the send and ignore all of these things. In terms of Syria, NSA, and drones, all liberal Democrats have to say is, “OF COURSE HE’S OPPOSING THE WAR BECAUSE HE’S JUST OBSTRUCTING OBAMA!!!!! IF BUSH WAS PRESIDENT, ALL THOSE STUPID FUCKING REPUBLICANS LOVE WAR AND WOULD BE SUPPORTING IT!!!!!!” Statements like the above were floating all over the media and internet during Rand’s filibuster.
Rand Paul is obviously not afraid of stating his opinion on the Civil Rights Act, which is that although he believes any discrimination enforced by law is utmost unconstitutional, and should be overturned, he believes that a privately-owned establishment has the right to refuse service to whomever for whatever reason. (To put this in context, private establishments in Southern states before 1964 had to comply with Jim Crow regulations enforced by the state government. The greater blame falls on state politicians, as opposed to private business owners.) Like Barry Goldwater in 1964, Rand Paul believes that the free market would end private discrimination.
If Rand Paul is willing to come out and state this rigid extreme libertarian opinion, then why the hell is he so afraid of promoting libertarian ideas about drug wars, foreign policy, the military-industrial complex, and the prison-industrial complex. Let everyone be warned, if Rand runs in 2016, his Goldwaterite opinion on the Civil Rights Act is the only thing Democrats will talk about it. They will repeat this over and over again, making it the headline every time Rand’s name is mentioned on the news.
I just trust that with every move Rand Paul makes, he is listening to his father on how to go about it. It is just time for Rand to come out as a libertarian on more issues than the typical Tea Party ideas. I am not sure why so many libertarians want to kiss the tushes of “establishment Republicans”, as Republicans are statistically and numerically doomed, by demographics and age. There are characters all over the media who will do whatever it takes to see Rand destroyed. The time to think ahead is now. It is equally important to garner the support of common ground liberals and progressives as it is to take over the Republican Party. Anyone who does not see this is a fool.
Civilization: A Praxeology
A thought-game by L.A. Repucci
Okay; suppose civilization collapses. Positing the end of our current human paradigm — the sum of our economic, governmental and technological works subtracted — is a non-partisan exercise. Both ends the ideological spectrum are ever doomsday prophets, decrying an immanent collapse, undone either by means of our State or our Liberty.
‘Resources are held in Common!’ cries the socialist. ‘Property is product of my Life and Liberty’ cries the anarchist…both claim we are robbing ourselves blind. Let’s skip the part of the process where the libertarians and collectivists argue about roads and markets, and just imagine the ‘end’ is behind us all, and we (any two or more parties) survived, and are left to re-establish civilization. This proposition is essentially a ‘dropped on a deserted island’ scenario — an exercise in pure a priori, inductive inquiry.
We are left to our own devices; a natural state with no default preset values, no existing law or paper contracts, no social institution, normative or common tradition.
It’s just you, me, and the pile of radioactive rubble that previously was a long-defunct post office.
How to proceed? What rules shall we make for ourselves, and how should we best go about the process of survival?
Please, feel free to take your turn by leaving a comment — this is an open-ended invitation to engage in the process of civilization. In the interest of intellectual honesty, I would offer that it is entirely my intention to pursue a libertarian outcome, to our mutual benefit.
Game On. =)
Related articles
- Ludwig Von Mises (splunkett1.wordpress.com)
- What Austrian Economics IS and What Austrian Economics Is NOT (coordinationproblem.org)
- The Value of Left-Libertarian Alliances (pileusblog.wordpress.com)
Freedom of Speech? No Such Thing!
I get lots of solicitations for libertarian groups and I’m very pleased that there are so many of them these days. I can’t possibly support them all but I recently ponied up for an organization called F.I.R.E. (Freedom for Individual Rights in Education). Their focus is on fighting suppression of free speech on college campuses. Thus, for example, FIRE announces its Speech Code of the Month for October 2013:
Salem State University in Massachusetts prohibits “cultural intolerance” in its residence halls—a broad ban that threatens debate on controversial issues in a place where students often speak the most freely. Making matters worse, the policy applies not only to “actions” but also to “omissions,” broadening its scope to include not only speech but also a student’s personal decision not to speak.
It burns me up to see self-appointed fascist administrators launching attacks on individuals who dare to speak their minds in unpopular ways. And yet, there is a problem, centered on the distinction between public and private institutions. Suppose a small Baptist college decided that students would not be allowed to mock Christianity or promote Islam on campus. Could there be any objection to such a policy? Now suppose that same college decided it would not admit black students. Any thoughtful libertarian would have to defend this policy, distasteful though it may be, on grounds of freedom of association. The bottom line is clear: owners of private colleges have every right to determine whom they will admit as students or hire as faculty and how they are required to act on campus.
Now what about state colleges such as Salem State? Such institutions are “public property,” an oxymoron if we think about it. “Property” denotes the right to use or dispose of some valuable asset, implying an exclusion of non-owners or others who have not been invited to use the property. On the other hand “public” means, if anything, that anybody is allowed to use the asset and nobody is excluded. Who owns San Jose State University where I teach? The California State University Board of Trustees is the most likely candidate, but the faculty has a lot of control through the faculty unions and faculty senates. The Governor and the legislators wield a lot of influence too. The citizens own the place in theory but the connection between SJSU and the citizenry is so remote that it might as well be non-existent. The lack of clarity about who owns the place is the source of most of the idiotic, wasteful, and sometimes downright offensive policies that we see at SJSU and all other government agencies.
So what sort of speech is to be allowed at SJSU? I would say anything goes except shouting down lecturers. Objectionable behavior such as name-calling should be met with ostracism and boycotting or perhaps tit-for-tat. No need for prohibitions. But the people who have power over these matters no doubt see it differently.
Thinking about it more, there really isn’t any such thing as freedom of speech. Speech is not carried out in a vacuum (literally: there can be no sound waves!). If you’re speaking you are standing on someone’s property; if writing you’re using pen and paper or a computer. Land, pen, paper and computers are all resources whose owners have the right to determine who uses them and how. I have no right to invade your house and deliver a speech in your living room nor to grab your computer and compose a blog. Freedom of speech can only mean freedom to use one’s property, or the property of another who has given consent, for speaking purposes. (This, by the way, solves the fire-in-a-crowded-theater conundrum. Prohibitions on yelling “fire” are not a diminution of freedom of speech but rather a recognition of a theater owner’s right to control behavior on his property. See Rothbard’s excellent Ethics of Liberty p. 114.)
In the end, as Rothbard points out, there is no dichotomy between property rights and “civil” rights. There are only property rights, recognizing one’s own body as one’s primary form of property.
Shopping in communism versus capitalism
In a narrative portion of his latest (and characteristically riveting) novel the author has written the following sentence that prompts me to wag my finger at him a bit. “Now it was a Western-style shopping mall stuffed with all the useless trinkets capitalism had to offer…” Daniel Silva, The English Girl (2013). The sentence reveals something very important about capitalism as well as Silva’s apparent failure to understand it.
Silva was contrasting the Soviet style, drab, grey shopping center with the more recent type that have been springing up in Russia and the former Soviet bloc. Yet instead of showing appreciation for the mall with its great variety of trinkets, which include both what he can consider useless and the useful kind, he appears to show disdain for it.
It is precisely the fact that such malls include thousands of trinkets, some useful to some, some not, that makes capitalism so benevolent. Unlike the Soviet Union and its satellites, where only what the leadership deemed to be useful got featured in shopping malls (such as they were), in Western-style malls millions of different individual and family preferences are on display and for sale, aiming to satisfy the huge variety of tastes and preferences.
I recall many moons ago there was a fuss about the popularity of the Pet Rock! It was — may still be — a trinket sold as a novelty item. I remember defending it from its disdainful, snooty critics, arguing that there may well be a few people for whom it would be suitable gift.
Say your grandfather worked in a mine or quarry and now on his 80th birthday you want to get him something not quite useful but meaningful! He has everything useful already, so you pick the Pet Rock for him. It would make a nifty memento! Might even bring tears to his eyes.
For millions of others it would indeed be a “useless trinket” but not for old granddad. And for every other item that author Silva may consider useless, there will be someone who finds it touching!
That is precisely what individualism implies. Something Marxists cannot appreciate since for them only what advances the revolution counts as useful. Individuals as such, with their idiosyncrasies, do not count for anything! And capitalism rejects this misanthropic doctrine, which is why the enormous variety of goods and services is part of it while under socialism and communism only what is proper for the revolution makes sense to produce!
I wish Mr. Silva had indicated some of this as he derided those Western-style shopping malls. Even if he cannot find something useful for himself in them, he can at least appreciate them as contemporary museums of possibilities.
YAL member speaks at County Cannabis Regulatory Hearing
On October 22, 2013, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors convened to vote on re-regulating medical cannabis cultivation and distribution via local grow operations and a local dispensary. Unfortunately, while the public applauded my comments regarding the issue, the County Board were not swayed from moving forward a “regulatory scheme” as Board member John Leopold commented after the 3-2 vote to further restrict the liberty of free people.
From the Comments: Liberalization is about much more than just the economy
Andrew is skeptical of NAFTA’s achievements:
NAFTA isn’t the only major factor at play, although you’re right that it has provided Mexico with some huge economic benefits. This is especially true in the factory towns along the US border, which are able to absorb a much larger absolute amount of surplus labor from poorer, less developed parts of the country today than they could a generation ago. That said, I’m still ambivalent about NAFTA on account of the severe short-term economic and social dislocation it caused, e.g. to US factory workers who were undercut by Mexican competitors and to small Mexican farmers who were undercut by major US agribusinesses. It strikes me as a hastily and abruptly implemented policy change that caused a lot of needless collateral damage in the short term. Whether this damage was worthwhile in the long term depends a lot on one’s role in the North American economy at the time. On the whole, I’d say NAFTA has been a mixed bag.
This, I think, is in response to the 2003 academic paper (published by three economists) that I cited in defense of NAFTA’s success. It is a paper that only focuses on economic indicators (such as per capita income or total factor productivity). Here is what it found: NAFTA has not had a discernible effect on the US or Mexican economies. The displacement of US factory workers and Mexican farmers that Andrew mentions had been going on long before the implementation of NAFTA. Basically, NAFTA merely reduced the amount of paperwork associated with the changes in both economies. It has not hastened the changes.
Similarly, it appears that the growth of Mexican and American purchasing power parity are simply part of a hemisphere-wide trend that has also been going on for decades. In short, economists have found the economic effects of NAFTA to be negligible. So why do they continue to overwhelmingly support it?
My answer to this question can be found, I think, in Andrew’s keen perception of the changes in Mexican society:
Over the same time that NAFTA has been in place, Mexico has also become much more Protestant and nondenominational in religious affiliation, better educated, and, as I understand it, somewhat better governed and administered. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I have no reason to suspect that the religious shift had anything in particular to do with Mexico’s improving economy or trade liberalization. “Church-planting” missionaries of the sort that have evangelized Latin America don’t look for a particular economic or policy profile in a country before imposing themselves on it, although they do generally appreciate a certain amount of poverty and dysfunction, as long as they’re reasonably reasonably safe in country, since people in economically healthy, well-governed countries are less receptive to their pitches. This is a very cynical analysis, but the cravenness in “mission field” circles can be mindblowing.
What’s happened in much of Latin America in the last decade or so is that these evangelism programs have hit critical mass. They’re now self-sustaining operations being run mainly by Latin American evangelists pestering their own countrymen, or sometimes people in nearby countries. Gringo missionaries are still working in Latin America, but they’re no longer critical to the growth of evangelical churches there. (Besides, there’s much more street cred to be had in evangelizing a recently restive Muslim village in Northern Ghana, or, as my relatives and everybody at their church called it, Africa. I bless the rains….)
Liberalization is about much, much more than economic growth. The decline of Catholicism in Mexico, for example, is an incredibly good trend. This is not because Catholics suck, but because Mexican society is becoming more diverse. Liberalization means opening a state’s political, economic and social institutions to the world.
Undertaking liberalization thus exposes a society to changes. Sometimes societies may have a tough time with changes, especially if there are deeply entrenched political structures in place. Most often, though, these changes tend towards more political liberty (see “1994 Mexican Elections: Manifestation of a Divided Society?” and “Institutionalizing Mexico’s New Democracy,” both by Joseph Klesner, and be sure to read between the lines), more social diversity and, yes, more economic growth.
Of course, with new and overall positive changes come new challenges. The differences between the old challenges and the new, however, are cavernous. Politically, gridlock supplants revolution. Socially, vice replaces desperation. And economically, policy replaces cronyism.
Now, this is a broad view, but I think it is a concrete one nonetheless. There are two major objections to liberalization that I would like to briefly discuss.
The first is my assumption that diversity is, in and of itself, a good thing. Some people simply cannot stand diversity, whether it be of the ethnic and linguistic variety or of the intellectual variety. The former form of intolerance is often to be found among conservatives; the latter in Leftist circles. However, the fact that people I don’t like disapprove of diversity is not a good excuse for being a proponent of diversity.
So what follows is my concise defense of diversity. Diversity opens individuals up to higher degrees of tolerance. It gives individuals more choices. Its very nature makes people smarter by exposing them to more points of view. Added together, these benefits are a recipe for wealth and stability and peace.
There is a tendency, however, for diverse organizations (including societies) to have more conflict. It is this conflict that conservatives and Leftists alike point to as proof that diversity is an undesirable plague. Yet, under the right framework, conflict from diversity produces immeasurable amounts of wealth (see also this paper by economists Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor). This framework revolves largely around well-protected property rights and the protection of a handful of other rights (free speech, free press, etc.).
It is this framework that, conveniently enough, allows me to segue into the next most common objection to liberalization: that it doesn’t work and often makes things worse for a society. The data in this regard is not much clearer than the data on NAFTA’s effects on Mexico. That is to say, there is not enough evidence to prove conclusively that trade liberalization leads to economic growth. However, data over the past 30 years or so does suggest that states which undergo liberalization efforts tend to have economies that grow steadier, polities that oppress less and societies that adapt to cultural change more easily. If you can find evidence that you think may refute my argument (“that the rough overall trend of liberalization is beneficial to mankind”), you know where the ‘comments’ section is.
Criminalizing Innovation
By Fred Foldvary
The U.S. government has attacked an entrepreneur and his new product, as another episode of the federal government’s war on enterprise. In this case, the entrepreneur CEO is Craig Zucker, the company was Maxfield & Oberton, and the product was Buckyballs.
Buckyballs were small magnetic spheres made of neodymium, a rare-earth element that is a powerful magnet. As they stick together, the balls can be assembled into shapes such as pyramids. They were named “Buckyballs” after Buckminster Fuller, an American architect, inventor of the geodesic dome, and futurist visionary. His friends called him “Bucky,” and the neodymium spheres were somewhat like Bucky’s domes.
The company imported the balls from China and started selling them in 2009. They became a popular office toy. But the Buckyballs were banned in July 2012 by the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is now seeking to prosecute Zucker for having sold the balls.
In 2012 the Commission also sent letter to retailers warning of the risks to consumers of using Buckyballs and asking them to stop selling them. That was effective in stopping the sales. The Commission stated that the balls were a hazard for young children who swallowed them.
The company had developed the Buckyballs in collaboration with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and after the action by the Commission, the firm provided it with a corrective-action plan. Buckyballs were sold with a warning against access by children, and they were not sold in toy stores. But the Commission pursued a lawsuit against the firm even before examining the corrective plan. As pointed out by the Wall Street Journal article (cited below) on that case, there are many potentially dangerous products being sold, such as cleaning chemicals, knives, and balloons. Buckyballs were intended and marketed for adults, and, according to the WSJ article, no deaths have been associated with the Buckyballs.
The Commission declared, as a justification for the ban, that Buckyballs have “low utility” and are unnecessary, despite purchases by 2.5 million adults who spent $30 each. The principle established by the Commission is that government determines which products are desirable, not consumers. Any product could be banned by the standards of the Commission.
The company then engaged in a publicity campaign regarding the actions by the Commission. In the end, the government was too powerful to resist, and the company was terminated in December 2012. However, in February 2013, the Commission charged Zucker as being personally liable for the costs of a recall costing $57 million if the Buckyballs are judged to be defective.
The federal government has by this action abolished limited personal liability under U.S. law for corporations as well as partnerships. From now on, the executives of a firm will be vulnerable for the liabilities of the firms. Any entrepreneur will now risk losing all that he owns if he engages in the production or distribution of any product. The effect of this government action is to strangle American entrepreneurship.
In the case of United States v. Park in 1975, the Supreme Court ruled that the CEO of a food company was criminally liable for a rodent infestation. This ruling was based on the federal Food and Drug Act. But another case, Meyer v. Holley in 2003 ruled that ordinary liability applies unless there is a clear Congressional intent to hold corporate officers personally liable. The relevant law in the Buckyballs case is Section 15 of the Consumer Product Safety Act, which regulates corporate persons, not individual persons.
The WSJ article says that since Zucker did not commit any criminal violation, the Commission’s continuing prosecution of Zucker “raises the question of retaliation for his public campaign against the commission.” If the Commission achieves its goal, personal-injury lawyers will take advantage of personal liability to go after CEOs and other company personae.
This action by Congress, the Courts, and the Commission has to be seen in the perspective of a broad war by government on private enterprise and consumer choice, using taxes, restrictions, mandates, and prosecutions, ultimately resulting in an economy that is nominally private but substantially controlled by governmental chiefs. The name for that system is “fascism.”
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Reference: Sohrab Ahmari, “What Happens When a Man Takes on the Feds,” Wall Street Journal, August 31-September 1, 2013, p. A11.
Why is India so poor? A macro approach
India’s total area, in square kilometers, is 1,222,559 3,166,414.
The total area of France, Germany, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (or “the West”), in square kilometers, is 1,223,543 3,106,585.
Think of this comparison in terms of regions: one region is India, the other is the West. Both regions are densely populated. Both regions have a number of languages and an even greater number of regional dialects. Yet one region is wealthy, and the other is poor.
One way to look at this phenomenon would be to glance at the macro institutional structures in place in these two regions. India is one country. The West is composed of 6 17 countries. That’s six seventeen centers of power, as opposed to one, within territorial spaces that are roughly equivalent in size.
If we think about these macro institutions and incorporate them into other institutional arguments that focus on the micro institutions, then India actually has a lot of hope. The West saw numerous wars before it finally came to the arrangements it now has (six seventeen independent centers of power and a free trade zone binding them together), so India has a great blueprint for improving its macro institutions.
On the downside, of course, is the fact that many factions won’t really care if India becomes freer and more prosperous, so long as they get theirs. Along with the standard public choice explanation, the path dependency argument also suggests that India has a tough road ahead.
Sometimes being a libertarian sucks.
Update: Dr Gibson was kind enough to point out that I had initially calculated India’s size in square miles rather than square kilometers. I have taken that into account and updated it accordingly. Conceptually, my argument actually grows in strength with the corrected size.
Does the New York Times read NOL?
Parag Khanna definitely reads Notes On Liberty. From his latest op-ed in the New York Times:
Devolution is even happening in China. Cities have been given a long leash to develop innovative economic models, and Beijing depends on their growth. One of the most popular adages among China watchers today is: “The hills are high, and the emperor is far away.” Our maps show a world of about 200 countries, but the number of effective authorities is hundreds more. [check out “Federalism, Chinese Style” by Gabriella Montinola, Yingyi Qian, and Barry R. Weingast for a fascinating look at the ongoing devolutionary trends in China – BC]
The broader consequence of these phenomena is that we should think beyond clearly defined nations and “nation building” toward integrating a rapidly urbanizing world population directly into regional and international markets. That, rather than going through the mediating level of central governments, is the surest path to improving access to basic goods and services, reducing poverty, stimulating growth and raising the overall quality of life.
Connected societies are better off than isolated ones. As the incidence of international conflict diminishes, ever more countries are building roads, railways, pipelines, bridges and Internet cables across borders, forging networks of urban centers that depend on one another for trade, investment and job creation.
I’ve been making this same argument here at NOL for quite some time now, but Dan Drezner disagrees. He has three bones to pick with my argument (as augmented by Dr Khanna in the NYT):
- People were writing about devolution all the way back in 1995, so Khanna’s insights aren’t particularly new or exciting. This is true; if you’ll remember my recent post on federalism as an alternative to imperialism you’ll recall that Adam Smith was making the same argument as Khanna in 1776.
- Contra Khanna, states have always been in competition with other forms of governance (not government). Khanna needs hard empirical evidence to prove that the devolution he writes about is as prominent and fast-moving as he claims it is.
- Other academics, mostly economists, have been claiming precisely the opposite of what Khanna is arguing; namely that states have been increasing in size and scope over the past few decades. Drezner hesitantly errs on the side of the economists, who at least bring data to the table, but claims that there is probably a middle ground between Khanna and the economists.
As far as throwing out ideas to back up the devolutionist argument, it might be a good idea to look at the nation-state’s loss of monetary sovereignty to supranational (or quasi-national) organizations in the West. Or the separatist tendencies of regions within supranational organizations like the EU that threaten to break up nation-states. Or the fragility of African and Islamic states, as evidenced by the dictatorships and wars often found in these regions. Or the multilateral trade agreements that are becoming more and more inclusive, and more and more complicated. There are probably many more, and if you can think of any feel free to leave them in the ‘comments’ section.
With all of this said, Drezner has a point. The state has found a number of ways to counteract the various effects of globalization, and proving that the state is in decline is, for the moment, extremely hard to do. Yet Drezner’s point says nothing about Khanna’s overall argument, which is merely that devolution is a good thing and ought to be embraced by more progressively-inclined people.
The interesting question here is not the current situation of the state itself, but rather if a consensus can be forged, among thinking people, around the idea that political decentralization and economic integration leads to freer societies. Until a consensus built around this idea can be reached among intellectuals, I fear despotism will reign in most parts of the world at most times.
What the Hell is a “RINO” Anyway???
I have serious problems understanding the definition of the term ‘RINO’. The term is supposed to mean a Moderate Republican, i.e. a Republican that shares views with a Democrat. However, the term is used by so many contradictory parties that it lacks real meaning. Many people hold up President Reagan as the hard definition of a true conservative, with his quote of “the soul of conservatism is libertarianism”.
In the 2012 election, the four Republican candidates each represented a key demographic of the current Republican base. There was Mitt Romney, a Mormon westerner who had become merged with the moderate eastern Money Trust Rockefeller establishment. There was Rick Santorum, a right-wing Catholic obsessed with social issues and ready to wage a Christian jihad. There was Newt Gingrich, a Baptist-turned-Catholic career politicians who’d passed centrist legislation throughout the Clinton administration. And of course, Ron Paul, a libertarian carrying the youth vote, ironically carrying views of a politician born in the 1890s, who would have been a member of the bipartisan anti-Roosevelt Old Right coalition.
The idea of a RINO came into existence around the campaign of Barry Goldwater, an Arizona Senator, who won the 1964 nomination instead of Nelson A. Rockefeller, the grandchild shared by John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil and Senator Nelson Aldrich, who pitched the original idea for the Federal Reserve. Even though he won the nomination, Goldwater was written off as an “extremist” by many, and Rockefeller was considered a “moderate”. But what does this really mean?
As America was still very homogenous in 1964, most regions had a strong local culture. At the time, the Republican base was comprised of Midwestern Lutherans, Western Mormons, wealthy New England Episcopalians, and transient career military families. At the time, most Southern Baptists and Catholics were still largely Democrats. Goldwater winning Southern states in 1964 did not permanently secure the Solid South as red states, despite the widely toted myth. (Third party Wallace of 1968 and Democrat Carter of 1976 prove this.) As a general phenomenon, the lower-middle-class flyover demographics were known as the extremists, while the upper-middle-class city and suburban folk were known as the moderates.
Despite being categorized as a “right-wing extremist” in 1964, Goldwater still had little in common with the heartland evangelicals of today. Goldwater had no connection to fundamentalist Christianity like Governors Perry or Palin. One side of his family was Jewish, and the other side was Yankee Episcopalians, and Goldwater was an Episcopalian his whole life. Goldwater supported no legislation in regards to gay marriage, drugs, or abortion. Goldwater is directly quoted as saying, “Mark my words, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and sure they’re trying to do so, there’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly these people frighten me”.
Everything Barry Goldwater predicted about the Christian fundamentalist hijack eventually came true. Now the term RINO has a whole new meaning than when two socially liberal Episcopalians were vying for the nomination in 1964. Many Republicans referred to John McCain (a career military man with no regional ties) and Mitt Romney (a flip-flopper from the far left state of Massachusetts) as RINOs or moderates. But when Obama ran against them in 2008 and 2012, his campaign spent countless efforts painting the two candidates as right-wing extremists
Since 2008, the mainstream liberal media outlets have generally painted all Republican candidates in the same stereotype: old, uncool, racist, sexist, cranky, corny, money-hoarding, miserly Mr. Scrooges, obstructing Obama’s hip-and-groovy “CHANGE”. It mattered little how moderate McCain’s and Romney’s records were, the media rhetoric implied that anyone running against Obama had a closeted agenda with the same motivations as the Thurmond, Wallace, or Duke campaigns. Vice President Biden shouted out to an audience during a debate with Paul Ryan, “Romney is gonna put you all back in chains”. The MSM saw no problem with this.
So what are the concrete issues that make or break the difference between the RINOs and a non RINO? Is it the military, war, and foreign policy? Is it economics? Is it Christian social issues? (a dead horse, as far as I’m concerned) Are the rants espoused by Limbaugh, Hannity, and other Fox News anchors the policies that anyone who runs as a Republican are “supposed” to have? Fox anchor Ann Coulter referred to libertarians as “pussies”, and implied that supporting drug legalization was RINO/moderate, by mashing different ideologies from left and right. Everyone has different definitions of RINO.
So this brings up the question: Was Ron Paul a “RINO”? Fox News certainly said so in the 2012 election. Were Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater “RINOs”? Many Democrats who hate the Tea Party would say so today. Although one must acknowledge Ron Paul’s ultraconservative personal views, one should realize he would give power back to the fifty state governments, with the intention that each American demographic can carve out a haven. There is no point pretending that Ron Paul is a hip guy with young libertarian social ideas: his views have changed little since he was a medical student in the 1950s.
Despite this, Ron Paul had the potential to represent a purge of many issues that the left hates about the Republicans; policies relating to drugs, gays, abortion, corporate bailouts, but most importantly, the wars in the Middle East. This was only exacerbated by Rick Santorum’s extremist Christian authoritarian rants, and his comment that he wanted to “fight against libertarian influence in the Republican party”. Despite the Obama administration’s continued drone warfare allover the Middle East, the Obama 2012 campaign repeated the same 2008 rhetoric that this was Bush’s personal, Republican, corporate, Islamophobic war. Simultaneously, the other three Republicans called Ron Paul an isolationist coward for his foreign policy. Ron Paul could have been the perfect moderate with ideas compromising from both sides, and yet they trashed and defamed him every possible chance.
Unfortunately, it is the Tea Party, and not moderate Republicans or Democrats, who have been blamed for the government shutdown. Personally, I think the Republicans handling the shutdown is a poorly planned reactionary idea. This kind of political activism only works if the libertarian-leaning Republicans were to shut down the government about the wars in the Middle-East, or the incarcerations of non-violent drug offenders. Otherwise, the MSM will just paint them as quintessential obstructionist right-wing cranks, as they have done so far.
McCain’s machine of moderate Republicans have marched in lockstep behind Obamacare, in an attempt to make Ted Cruz and other libertarian-leaning Republicans look like the “extremists”, Obama-haters, and Confederate secessionists. Despite the fact that libertarians are supposed to share a good bit ground with progressives, Democrats and moderates are together pointing to libertarianism “the far right fringe”. Moderate Republicans need to keep in mind that when is all over, the liberal media outlets will put all Republicans, moderate and conservative, in the same category as tongue-speaking, back-alley-abortion-causing, end-of-times, Limbaugh-hypnotized, warmongering, theocratic neo-confederates no matter what.
If liberal Democrats prefer moderate ‘Rockefeller Republicans’, or big government Republicans, let them have each other. If they think the enemy is small town, small business people, let them feel that way. Democrats can have Republicans like the Bushes, an old New England Money Trust family, long term ally of the Rockefellers, with CIA connections and investments in the baby Standard Oil corporations. After all, when corporate exploitation, global imperialism, and war profiteering makes millions, they can cash in and use the money to look humanitarian later in life. Just don’t dress him up like a Texas good ol’ boy, and then blame flyover folk for him.
Not Reagan, Goldwater, Taft, Coolidge, Eisenhower, or possibly even Bush, Sr. would ever have done what George W. Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan, or what Nixon did in Vietnam. (both cited for the claim: “Republicans are warmongers”) Meanwhile, Democrats Wilson, Truman, and Johnson started long wars based on the idealistic grounds of “spreading democracy”. It is the imperialist Republican war machine and CIA added to the liberal Democrat dream of international government that make a poisonous combination together.
Maybe a RINO is what we want. If RINO means secular Republican; with no evangelical Christian dogma influencing government policy, then RINO is good. If RINO means Republican who embraces science and new technology, then RINO is good. If RINO means anti-war Republican, who wants to cut military spending, then RINO is good. If RINO means socially liberal Republican, then RINO is good. If RINO does not recite unoriginal reactionary propaganda from Fox News, then RINO is good. If RINO is opposed to neo-conservative foreign policy, then RINO is good. Maybe RINO is what we need after all.
Notes On Liberty 