Tag Archives: Government

What Hayek Said About Benghazi / IRS / AP

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The blathering classes often feast on the foibles of second term administrations, and Pres. Obama’s comeuppance is now. Some suspect Obama had a direct hand in the various scandals given that they all served his reelection interests. Maybe, but the safer bet is on a Chicago-style culture of intimidation and dirty politics that Obama and his friends brought to the White House in 2009. In any event, Obama is in the soup, and the disillusioned want to know why. F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom offers an explanation – a system where people give up rights and responsibilities to a central power attracts and breeds corruption.

Since Hayek was a famous economist and Keynes’s nemesis, readers might be surprised that Road was a political piece. Written at the height of WWII, when the best minds were either apologists or supporters of Stalin, Hayek showed that Hitler and Stalin were the same beast. Hitler, Stalin, and later Mao, and Pol Pot were the predictable outcomes of people abdicating their rights and responsibilities. Socialism might breed economic stagnation, but it also opens the door to corruption and tyranny.

As Thomas Sowell said, these people were “replacing what worked with what sounded good.” Nothing sounds as good as fairness and taking care of people, which is why everyone from Marx to FDR to Obama used the same rhetoric of social justice. Taking care of people and being taken care of sounds nice, but the ultimate price of centralizing power is corruption or worse.

The fact that the Obama administration engaged in corruption with a whiff of political motivation is not unusual. Every time an administration is caught abusing its powers, people seem surprised, but about half of recent presidents have used the IRS to attack their enemies. The surprise should be that anyone remains surprised.

The nation that cast off the chattels of royal power has now allowed itself to become subject to a permanent class of rulers operating outside of their rights. Since Solomon, people responded to abuses of power by hoping for a good king, a rare blessing. The US’s Founders, however, realized the solution was to have no king at all. When Obama, like many presidents before him, was caught abusing his power, the press called for a good king when the answer was to reduce king’s power. If the IRS is a tool of abuse, eliminate it, do not reform it.

The primary task of tyrannical governments is to convince their subjects of their necessity. Not surprisingly, the IRS focused its wrath on those who challenged its necessity. In Washington, maintaining power is a goal by itself. With each new scandal or failure, the scope of government is increased, not cut. Punishing individuals for corruption cannot cure what Hayek realized is a system designed for abuse.

Ann Coulter Has A Point

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Last week, conservative Ann Coulter took a swipe at libertarians, calling them “pussies” for their stance on marijuana. Coulter’s best qualities are her bluntness (get it?) and her willingness to fight. In her “pussies” comments, she argued that, since the US is a socialist welfare state, people’s choices regarding their lifestyles are her business – hence MJ should be illegal. Coulter has a point; socialism turns strangers into family. However, her conclusion that statism and central control are warranted is an abandonment of principle.

Libertarians come in several flavors, and nearly equally from left and right backgrounds. The actual Libertarian Party is dominated by barely reformed hippies and ideologues, who put drug policy front and center. Most libertarians, however, do not belong to the LP. While libertarians like GOP Sen. Rand Paul do not support the war on drugs, that issue is just an example in the spectrum of Constitutional abuses and overreaches by today’s government. Perhaps coincidentally, the Tea Party has embraced much of the constitutional libertarian platform of confining government to its enumerated powers.

When conservatives complain about the cost of providing services to immigrants and their children, libertarians blame welfare, not immigration. When conservatives like Coulter complain about the harm drugs do (never mind tobacco and booze), libertarians blame socialized medicine, not drugs. Perhaps Coulter is being pragmatic by acknowledging the US socialist family, but she is conceding this generation’s key battle and even the soul of the US by doing so.

Socialists refer to their subjects as family much as dictators refer to their subjects as their children. Under collectivism, the consequences of an individual’s bad choices (e.g. smoking, or drinking, or irresponsible debt) are borne by everyone. This creates what economists call a moral hazard. By mitigating the negative consequences of bad behavior, the deterrent is minimized. Why not borrow too much when the government will always bail me out? Why not smoke crack when food, shelter, and health care are available no matter how worthless drugs make me? Of course the government might outlaw crack, but the criminal deterrent has proven to be less effective than the personal ruin deterrent. The best policy regarding vices is for people to live with their decisions’ consequences, but socialism is a family where consequences are limited.

Coulter is a big sister who thinks MJ should be illegal so she does not have to pay for whatever negative consequences its users might incur. However, the socialist family is not one which libertarians wish to join. Banning drugs is ineffective at best, and the consequence of proscription might actually be more drug use based on decades’ long trends. Libertarians are not in favor of MJ, they are opposed to substituting personal responsibility for the socialist family. Liberals just like MJ for policy reasons. While MJ is a popular example and a clear policy argument, the issue is only an example of why the government should not be the master of a socialist family.

Still, Coulter has a point. The US is a socialist welfare state, and she is forced to be responsible for the bad choices of others. She is not wrong to expect good behavior from her wards. Perhaps Coulter has illuminated the key difference between conservatives and libertarians – Coulter is willing to be a member of today’s deeply flawed US socialist family, while libertarians are still willing to fight. As such a famous fighter, Ms. Coulter should try harder and expect a little more.

CO’s Hick Is Running For President

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Caught up in a wave of anti-gun-rights propaganda and irrational sentiment, the Colorado Legislature will vote today on unconstitutional and pointless anti-gun-rights bills. Among the four anti-gun-rights bills are a ban on magazines greater in capacity than 15 rounds and a requirement for criminal background checks even for private transfers of weapons. Of course, these bills will not prevent a single crime or shooting tragedy; they merely criminalize the lives of decent citizens. Further, since the background check bill is patently unenforceable, it is an obvious stepping stone to gun registration, the real goal of anti-gunners. Nobody should be surprised that once the Democrats took all the reins of power in Colorado, they immediately moved to strip citizens of their gun rights as their first priority. Colorado gerrymandering protects some fairly radical leftists who instinctively hate personal responsibility, especially as expressed in the right to self-defense. The surprise is that Gov. “Hick” Hickenlooper plans to sign the transparently fascist bills into law. The best explanation is that Hick is running for President.

Hick, for those outside of Denver, is not an actual hick. He is a former oil man and restaurateur. Personally he is an elitist, arrogant to the point of being funny, and with no interest or sympathy to anyone beyond his political ambitions. He is a serial tax raiser with an extremely leftist and paternal agenda. However, the far-left Denver Post routinely describes him as a “moderate.” Publicly, Hick courts an image that is a mixture of Western style and geeky aw-shucks charm, but he is really an exceptionally driven politician who has always boxed above his weight. Why, then, did he voluntarily stick his nose into a divisive issue that has always proven to be a loser for Democrats, especially in the West?

Colorado is a divided state. Urban centers such as Denver and Boulder are extreme-Left. Few outsiders realize that these cities are as far left as the North East or California. Denver has produced the socialist, and unhinged, Reps. Schroeder and DeGette. Boulder is the home of Ward Churchill, the professor who lied about being Indian and who called the 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns” because their work supported the evils of US capitalism. Most of the rest of Colorado is center-right, along with other Western States. State wide elections cannot be won solely with the lunatic-left urban vote, hence CO’s US Senators’ avoiding the gun issue with all their might. Hick, by comparison, initiated the gun debate in CO a few days before the CT tragedy. Hick’s predecessor’s union pandering forced him to not seek a second term, so Hick’s volunteering for the gun debate is curious politics at best. No polling exists, but Hick has probably abandoned an easy reelection for a toss-up against a gun-rights Republican.

Hick does not make these kinds of mistakes, and he has never been so bold about anything other than parking meter fees. Either he has gone crazy hanging-out with Hollywood and Washington leftists, or he has focused his sights outside of Colorado.

The conventional Democrat political wisdom is that the GOP is smashed and irrelevant. True or not, most Dems think the real 2016 Presidential Election is the Democrat primary. The US is lurching hard to the left, and Dems are falling over themselves to repudiate moderates like Pres. Clinton and align with socialists like Pres. Obama. Gov. Cuomo recently signed the most unconstitutional and disturbingly fascist gun law ever. Even GOP pols like Gov. Christie are shifting left, presumably to sail this new wind. These governors are national figures who are quite likely to run for President, so why is a backwater governor of a smallish state following their lead? Hick is aligning with the rest of the hard-left presidential field.

Hick wants to be President. He knows that Western Democrat money and votes for such an enterprise are in short supply, so his politics are mirroring the deep blue states along the coasts. Hick does not care what Coloradans want; he wants to be able to share a pleasant meal with Mayor Bloomberg, the extreme collectivist. Should Hick also come out against the Keystone-XL pipeline, his national ambitions may as well be painted on an Occupy Wall Street banner. Of course, the interests of Coloradans who want to live freely and exercise their natural and constitutional rights are merely stepping stones along his way.

Multiply Liberty By 12

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With Pres. Obama’s declaration of war on liberty (a.k.a. his inaugural address), and with the GOP’s apparent capitulation on taxation and spending, libertarians seem to have little reason to hope. Polls show that as many as one in five Americans hold libertarian views (i.e. the government regulates too much and should not be involved in private moral issues). Why, then, does Washington largely ignore such a large voting block? Why, then, does Washington constantly try to control people’s private lives? The next two to four years look bleak, but a determined minority can check the Left through jury nullification.

If 20% of Americans think the government has gone too far, then nearly 94% of twelve person juries will have at least one liberty minded member. If the government knew that it had only about a 6% chance of convicting a defendant of violating an unjust law, its intrusions would stop.

The US legal system seeks to suppress juries’ right to nullify a law. Jurists are asked to swear an oath to follow the law as written and the judge’s instructions as delivered, but jurists need not ignore the Constitution, natural law, and common sense. The point of the Constitution’s mandate of a jury of peers is to prevent the imposition of imperious dictums and political populism upon defendants, not to enable the government to convict whomever it sees fit. Further, absent some malfeasance such as bribery, jurists cannot be punished for delivering a verdict with which the government disagrees.

No jury should ever convict someone for simply possessing or carrying a weapon. No jury should ever convict someone for simply possessing an intoxicant. No jury should send a man to prison for stupid and vague regulations such as importing lobster in bags vs. boxes. Juries should nullify cases where adults choose to eat unhealthy foods like raw milk. Juries should nullify any federal law that exceeds the limits of the 10th Amendment.

Of course, prosecutors are not fond of independent thinkers who would decide for themselves whether a statute is constitutional and just. Indeed, they interview jury candidates to weed out such troublemakers. When the prosecutor asks a candidate whether he will obey the judge’s instructions, the candidate might say “yes, but I obviously will not abandon common sense.”

Likewise, defense counsel has a selfish interest in his client’s freedom. Lawyers may not flatly ask candidates if they intend to nullify. Defense counselors might instead ask this: “have you read the US Constitution?” The correlation between having read the Constitution and being interested in preserving liberty should be quite strong. Jury nullification is not about freeing criminals but about stopping the tens of thousands of unjust and unconstitutional laws.

Dear Reader: the next time you receive a jury summons, do not think of it as an intrusion into your free time; rather, think of jury duty as a chance to defend liberty. Before voting to convict the defendant, ask yourself if a law was actually violated. Did the government have the right to enact this law? Is the law consistent with natural rights? Where in the US Constitution or your state constitution is the power to enact this law? If the law is unjust by these measures, then the real crime is in enforcing it. Jurists have the right and responsibility to consider higher laws before turning an ordinary citizen into a criminal.

Shout Bits can be found on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ShoutBits

Guns, Drugs Prove Society Is Rudderless

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In the time a man can hold his breath, the Colorado State Legislature began its plot to ban and confiscate previously legal semi-automatic weapons. With a new Democrat sweep of all lawmaking powers, the first order of business is to thwart the will of most Coloradans and ban guns and restrict their private transfer. Simultaneously, a political committee is drafting rules for the commercial sale of recreational marijuana. Blessedly, Mayor Bloomberg does not live in CO, but his spirit of central control, arrogance, and fascist allegiance to the common good is alive and growing in the West.

When the voters of CO mostly legalized MJ, Shout Bits haled a bold victory for individual choice and responsibility. Regardless of MJ’s negative consequences (which may be few), it is not the government’s place to tell adults what to do with their own bodies, time, and money. When the government decides what is best for its citizens, it almost always makes poor policy and it also inverts the rightful relation of the People’s sovereignty over the government. Sadly, the Democrats’ attitude toward MJ rights does not transfer to any other individual right. MJ laws do not prove a commitment to liberalism, just a pandering to libertine permissiveness.

Just as the government has no legitimate power to regulate what people do with their own lives, it has no power to restrict gun ownership. The two issues are made of the same fabric. That is why it is sad to see the deep Blue state of CO embrace MJ and gun bans. Simultaneously recognizing people’s natural right to consume MJ, but not to own most semi-automatic weapons is hypocrisy, especially because the right to self-defense is vastly more important than the right to libations. There is no rudder, no standard by which right and wrong are measured in today’s politics.

Somehow, a nation of rights, and individualist ideals has been replaced by do-gooders who think their capricious bans on banalities such as soda drinks, raw milk, and baby formula are both helpful and legal. Of course, their weapons bans are a holy crusade in their twisted minds. In the 1920′s, the US unleashed gangland violence through prohibition, but at least those Americans recognized that their bad idea required a Constitutional Amendment. How times have changed; now a single US Senator can demand retailers stop selling certain completely legal rifles, and his will is obeyed.

The US citizen has slowly abdicated his right and responsibility to make his own decisions. This is exactly the chain of events Hayek believed led to WWII. Yes, too much sugar is unhealthy, and raw milk is a stupid idea that takes food health back 150 years. The price for allowing the government to decide what is best, however, is tyranny, as the latest round of gun confiscation proves. To keep the right to bear arms alive, citizens must resist all nanny state intrusions into the private lives of responsible adults.

So, yes, buy a gun now while you can. However, don’t draw the line of defense at the last, most desperate point. Demand the right to decide what is best on your own in every aspect of life. Once fascist gun confiscators like Bloomberg, and now possibly Gov. Hickenlooper, know they can deny your doctor’s ability to prescribe pain medication, they know they own you. A centrally planned society is the opposite of the US’s purpose, so gun-rights advocates should fight all violations of liberty. This latest gun confiscation fever is just added proof that conservatives need to start thinking libertarian.

Avoid Arguing Policy On Gun Control

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If the Connecticut school massacre was the start of a contest to see who could be the crassest and most exploitive on the gun issue, the Left won in a landslide. Before the victims’ bodies were even taken away by the coroner, the Left was blaming the NRA for the horror. No matter what the circumstances, the Left politicizes gun violence. Rep. Gifford’s shooting was blamed on Gov. Palin and the Tea Party’s indelicate political speech, despite murderer’s being apolitical and deranged. Now that the Left has won the national political battle, they are using the latest tragedy toward their perennial lust for gun bans. Freedom loving people should avoid wading into the Left’s meritless arguments and rather stand for their rights based on principle.

The Left, as typified by Sen. Feinstein, makes varied policy arguments against guns, many patently incorrect. The AR-15 does not fire high caliber rounds, it is not an automatic weapon, but yes, it can be used for hunting just fine. A 30 round magazine does not convey a magical advantage over a 10 round magazine, as it takes about a second to switch magazines and chamber the next round. Saying an ‘assault rifle’ is more dangerous than a similar rifle without a pistol grip is like saying racing stripes on a car make it faster. The list goes on, but the Left feeds on fear and ignorance, not reason. That is why arguing policy with the Left is futile.

Gun bans do not make anyone safer, as anyone living in Chicago should know. Still, while the Left sometimes claims to support the right to self-defense, Democrats always return to their gun confiscation instincts when the political wind is at their backs. Gun bans are usually political losers, so why should the Left bother? Leftist elitists in the Old Media and academia are indoctrinated in the belief that the US is evil. Professors like Louis Seidman think the US Constitution is outdated and optional. Anything that makes the US unique, such as its prosperity or its individual rights, is suspect to the Left. The OM and academic elites look elsewhere for their guidance, and very few countries respect the right to keep and bear arms. Since the US should conform to the ways of Socialist Europe, the US naturally should have a comprehensive gun ban as in Chicago. To the Left, gun bans are more about disdain for US exceptionalism than hatred of guns themselves. The Left just does not like the idea of power’s resting with common people.

The less radical Left concede that some guns are OK, for the purpose of hunting. They call hunting a “legitimate” use for a gun. That is the reason arguing policy is a loser for gun rights because when the Left defines what is legitimate, the noose around gun rights becomes ever tighter. Self-protection is a right, not a social policy. Just as the government may not demand a reason why a suspect remains silent under questioning or refuses to be searched, the government may not question for what purpose a responsible adult choses to own guns. Basic natural rights like speech, free association, and self-defense have always existed, and always will. David Gregory does not need a reason why he possessed a 30 round magazine. The real criminals are those who would deny him the right to own one. Even if a 30 round magazine or a pistol grip rifle is actually of little value, banning them is only a waypoint on the road to total gun bans. That is why those who respect the natural right to self-defense must stand on the firmer ground of principles and rights.

If freedom lovers must argue the practical need for guns, here is one: the US is going to collapse. Hopefully the collapse is far off, but every nation fails and falls into a violent contest for power. Even if the US solves its debt and spending problems, someday a thug will rise to power and seek to enslave Americans. When that day comes, maybe a century from now, who can be trusted with defending freedom? A military in the pocket of this future Caesar or ordinary citizens defending their rights. The US, the greatest nation ever, was founded and secured by the latter group. Better still, a future Caesar might think twice knowing ordinary citizens are heavily armed. For obvious reasons, the Nazis disarmed the populace before rounding up the Jews.

So, don’t apologize for guns. Don’t volunteer to put further limits on the natural right to self-defense in the spirit of compromise. The Left will never be satisfied until the entire US is subjugated as in Chicago or Washington. Basic human rights are universal, but they are often denied by evil governments. That is why rights must be defended, even when their exercise may be unpopular. Pres. Obama mocked natural rights when he derided his enemies for clinging to “guns or religion.” Stand up. Buy a weapon and own it responsibly.

 

The Cliff That Isn’t

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Washington is abuzz about the Fiscal Cliff, a combination of tax increases and modest cuts in spending growth. Since the Old Media and most of Washington always favor tax increases, the fear must be over spending. But even with the cuts, Washington will remain overfunded. So, what is not to like about the Fiscal Cliff?

The Cliff allows for tax rates to return to those Pres. Clinton approved in the early 1990′s. Most taxpayers will see their rates increase and some people who now pay no income tax will have to begin paying. In a 2007 primary debate, Pres. Obama said it was the country’s moral obligation to repeal all of the Bush tax cuts, and the OM continues to churn the notion that the Clinton tax increases caused the prosperity of the 1990′s. Now that the Democrats are in charge, most of the Clinton tax rates are unacceptable. If, as Obama now claims, the Bush tax cuts are appropriate for 98% of Americans (a fatuous figure since nearly half of Americans pay no income tax at all), does that mean Bush was 98% right in his tax policy? Does that mean Clinton was 98% wrong in his tax policy? The Cliff’s tax rates are a tool by which Obama is dividing the US along phony class lines. If everyone’s tax rates go up, Obama’s us-vs.-them, punish-our-enemies rhetoric becomes powerless.

The argument against the Bush tax cuts has always been that it lead to the budget deficit crisis. However, even Obama admits that his tax increase for 2% of Americans will not significantly reduce the deficit. Instead, the tax increase he seeks is a matter of justice, or as Warren Buffett claims, tax increases would “raise the morale of the middle class.” Obama and Buffett seem to be admitting that overall, the Bush tax cuts are not the problem they and the OM portrayed them to be, but rather the Bush tax rates only need some window dressing for “fairness” and “morale.”

The Cliff also purports to cut spending. In reality, the sequester somewhat reduces the rate of increase in spending. By any measure, all spending will remain uncut. The real-dollar per-capita budgets of all major departments will be higher than under Clinton, including Defense and HHS. In every sense the government will be better funded than under Clinton. Was Clinton an evil plutocrat who hated the poor and minorities? Further, the sequester does not address entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security. Those are the budgets whose out of control growth will destroy the US. Washington’s big spenders know they were elected to increase spending each year, and any slowdown would be against the interests of their donors.

Let the Cliff happen. Why not test the notion that Clinton’s tax rates caused prosperity? Why not see what would happen if the rate of growth in Washington’s spending was cut slightly? Why not make Obama take some responsibility for his spending habits? Why not call the OM’s bluff that the Cliff would be the end of all things? The Cliff and the negotiations surrounding it are a fabrication. The Cliff’s tax rates are Democrat tax rates, voted for by Democrats signed by a Democrat, and more recently endorsed by the Democrat Obama. The Cliff’s spending cuts are a Democrat fabrication as well. By pretending a slightly slower rate of increase in spending is a cut, Democrats built a firewall against real reform. To balance the Federal budget, spending must be cut not by $800bln over ten years, but by $10 trillion. Let the Cliff happen to deprive the Democrats of the lies they and the OM use to protect corruption, waste, and unsustainable entitlement scams.