Asleep At The Wheel

Why will America come back before too long? Because it appears to be the only country in the world asking the most important question of the day.

The truly fundamental question that is at the heart of the disaster toward which we are racing is being debated only in America: is it possible for a free market economy to support a democratic socialist society? On this side of the Atlantic, the model of a national welfare system with comprehensive entitlements, which is paid for by the wealth created through capitalist endeavour, has been accepted (even by parties of the centre-Right) as the essence of post-war political enlightenment.

This was the heaven on earth for which liberal democracy had been striving: a system of wealth redistribution that was merciful but not Marxist, and a guarantee of lifelong economic and social security for everyone that did not involve totalitarian government. This was the ideal the European Union was designed to entrench. It was the dream of Blairism, which adopted it as a replacement for the state socialism of Old Labour. And it is the aspiration of President Obama and his liberal Democrats, who want the United States to become a European-style social democracy.

But the US has a very different historical experience from European countries, with their accretions of national remorse and class guilt: it has a far stronger and more resilient belief in the moral value of liberty and the dangers of state power.

One thing to keep in mind kids. Don't get cocky. There is a LOT of Trash hauling still to be done.

The Elite Speak

I found at Hawaiian Libertarian the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski.

"The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities." - Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, 1970

I'm working to put a lot of sand and gravel in that machine.

SEIU - Disrupting Capitalism

Of course the SEIU will make things more difficult for their private sector counterparts. But what do they care? They have government guns on their side. If they can maintain the left's hold on government.

That may be coming to an end.

Nothing

The only thing government does well. Provided it can do it at all.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

They Could Never Lose

I was talking to a rational liberal friend last night (he is an engineer) and as per usual we got to talking politics. He said something I totally agree with. To wit: "If Republicans stopped trying to get their way on social issues through force of law they would never lose an election." Think about it my R friends. Long and hard.

Me? As long as we have two parties interested in using big government to get their way by force I will continue to play balance of power politics. Which explains my vote for Obama in 2004.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

I Feel Like A F**king Dupe

One of my e-mail correspondents sent me an e-mail bemoaning the turn to hard social conservatism of the Republican Party. He was also regretting that he supported so many Republicans who have now turned on the Tea Party (he also worries that the Tea Party may be turning into a socon movement rather than sticking strictly to fiscal conservatism) . So I decided to do what I could to buck him up.

Here is my reply. With a few added notes in brackets [ ].And amended for the sake of the privacy of my correspondent:

========================

I feel like a fucking dupe.

Aren't we all? It is like any revolution. The old order gets shaken up and no one knows what will replace it. A new birth of liberty or just a different kind of totalitarianism.

Maybe it is time to form some groups of our own - may I suggest: LiberTea? Kinda catchy don't you think?

BTW O'Donnell was a member of the Delaware Republican establishment until she had a chance of winning. [note: O'Donnell may be a socon with libertarian political beliefs. Kinda like Palin.]

For the most part I run on hope (well I do have my bad weeks) and I do believe I can change some minds at the margins. So I keep hammering away at the same old themes. You never know who may have missed my last polemic. In advertising most advertisers give up on a winning idea when the advertiser gets bored of it. Well before the audience gets tired. I try to avoid that mistake.

We are at war with the statists of the right and left. So what do we have? I'd say at this point maybe 10% to 20%. Not enough to move things yet. But more than enough to work with.

Just remember Captain Jones. His ship is sinking. When he fires his guns more of his crew die than he kills of his enemies. So what is his reply when the opposing Captain asks, "Have you struck?" And of course his reply has gone down in history (maybe not exact), "I have not yet begun to fight". He maneuvers his ship into close quarters, grappling the opposing ship, and the Marines in the foretops clear the decks of the opposing Captain's ship and they board. After a bloody hand to hand fight he takes the Serapis and watches his ship sink. Victorious.

In battles things often look darkest when you are close to victory. Both sides are exhausted. The side that can at that point surge wins.

We are (IMO) far from that point. But we are wearing them down.

It has taken us 40 years to come even close to ending the drug war. But victory is in sight. Once that blows up in the faces of the statists they will have a lot of answering to do. "Don't give up the ship".

Cross Posted at Classical Values

I Have A Feeling About Government

I do not do engineering based on received wisdom or feelings. I don't think government should be done that way either.

I place no reliance on Virgin or Pigeon. My method is science my, aim is very limited government.

Where's The Party, Man?

Francis Cianfrocca is discussing Class Warfare In America. At the end of his piece he mentions a businessman's lament.

...I had a conversation yesterday with an old friend who runs a high-ten-figure hedge fund. (They're flat for the year, like the rest of the hedge-fund world.) What he wants is to join a political party that believes in not taking people's money and in not telling them what to do: small govt without the bibles. This is something I hear from business guys all the time: the whole "social liberal/fiscal conservative" thing. So far, there's no political movement they can believe in.

In fact the lack of such a party is why we are in so much trouble. When the Bible thumping gets too loud the fiscal conservatives stop paying attention to the money and go all in on correcting the social flaws in America at the point of a government gun. The swing voters get disgusted. They listen to the promises lies from the Democrats. And when the Ds get in they run wild. The thumpers then start in with the "what happened to the money - you crooks?" Then the conservatives get fiscal for a while and the cycle starts again. In the mean time the socially liberal/fiscally conservative segment of the population is continually whipsawed.

Which leads to the question: do conservatives really want small government or do they want power over people who are in their opinion self-destructive?

If conservatives want small government (for real) I think broadening the coalition might prove helpful. We are going to need all the deviants and dopers we can enlist (and more) to restrict the leviathan and keep it restricted. That means that even if conservatives get power it might not be wise for them to start in on the margins of their coalition. Because you know what happens when you run out of margin. Here is how Bill Whittle describes loss of margin: "Out of altitude, out of airspeed, out of ideas. Eject! Eject! Eject!" The question is: are conservatives tired of getting ejected? Are they smart enough to figure out what to do? My answer is - most likely YES on the first and NO on the second.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Give Us The Money

With shouts of "Give Us The Money" and "We Need The Cash", public employees demonstrate in Springfield, Illinois.

Nothing could make it more obvious after a demonstration like this that there is a war going on in America between government and the people over who is going to be the Master and who is going to be the Servant. Who will be on the leash and who will be on top.

The American Thinker has more.

H/T Jccarlton at Talk Polywell

Cross Posted at Classical Values

What To Do?

I was reading the other day an article about the Angry Middle.

Here is something I found in the article that rings true:

It's not a resurgent right wing that should trouble Obama's party. Indeed, the stronger the right's role in shaping the Republican message, the harder it will be for middle-of-the-road voters to use the Republicans to express their discontent.

He goes on to lament socialism's prospects. Tough year for him. Tough decade in fact.

Here is what I see happening from watching the ebb and flow of politics from the last 20 or 30 years. The socialists get in and wreck the economy. Rs fix it. Then they think because they got in they have a mandate for moral crusades. The Terry Schiavo case was particularly egregious. The Rs get sloppy with their financials. Out they go. The Ds get in wreck the economy. Then the Rs come back.

Except we have a bunch of new anti-economic laws that NEVER get repealed. Sarbanes-Oxley is killing venture capital. So we get a ratchet effect.

Let me just outline a few of the ongoing effects (as evidenced by past and current moral crusades) of the Moral Socialism that periodically puts us in the hands of the socialists.

The Stalinist public school system (and mandatory attendance) was championed by Protestants as indoctrination centers for Catholics and Jews.

Alcohol prohibition was another moral crusade. Billy Sunday ring a bell? Fortunately that didn't last long.

Drug prohibition is on going. But that is failing too - politically. Medical marijuana got 58% of the vote in Maine vs 53% for traditional marriage.

Sooner or later moral socialism fails just as economic socialism does. For the same reason. Government can no more make us moral than it can make us prosperous.

I have nothing against moral crusades. Done in the private sector. It is when the moralists get the bright idea that with he help of government guns they can FORCE people to do the right thing.

Not in America. We are a nation full of people willing to break laws we don't agree with. Which is why drug prohibition with 95% compliance is such a failure.

So let me tell you what I see coming. Abortion. Not just restrictions which seem reasonable. But a total ban. Are there enough people who don't agree with this to form an abortion underground? No doubt. And then policing gets hard.

Access to women contemplating abortion is no longer frequent - because no woman wanting an abortion even if only fleetingly is going to want the fact known. Who wants to be investigated by the police?

Doctors may fall out of the practice but today we have drugs. RU-486 can be imported from France (drug dealers will handle it) or birth control pills could be used. So of course tighter restrictions on birth control pills will be required (and that will give us an increase in undesired pregnancies and thus increase the demand for illegal abortions - yipeee - we can then demand harsher laws and more of them to fix the problem).

Moral socialists suffer from the same defect that economic socialists have. They think: "once I have a law the law will be obeyed in the way I contemplate and voila a better world."

But it never works that way.

So what do I think should be done about abortion:

1. Kick the fn socialists out of government and get the economy moving again. Many abortions are for economic reasons. And stop staying home on election day because the fn R Party has served up some RINO. We at least have the ear of the RINO (Harriet Meyers?). The Communists are not going to listen.

2. End the drug war asap. Why are there so many abortions in the black community? Because we have a significant part of that community (about a third of all males) in jail or in the criminal justice system for prohibition violations. And we keep them there long enough to be sure to destroy any family they may have once had.

Demographics explains how it works.

It also explains "Girls gone wild". And where to go to find the wild women. Hint: look for places where the ratio of women to men is above 1.05 or more. Above 1.5 and you are in (you will pardon the expression) slut city. We are not being afflicted in this nation by declining morals and a culture of evil. We are afflicted by bad demographics. So how do you fix that? Beats me. Maybe we just have to learn to live with it unless we encourage differential abortion of females. No. I don't think so. Absolutely not.

3. More intensive teaching of birth control. The Baptists COULD do this. They just don't have the nerve. But if they were really sharp they could slip in a morals lesson or three while showing how to put a condom on a banana with your mouth.

4. Information - how well do crisis pregnancy centers work? Is there a better way? In fact more information on all programs that reduce abortion. Then the private funders can get the most bang for their buck.

There are probably more things to be done. Those come to my mind.

But for God's sake. Keep it out of the hands of government. That includes government funding.

I'd love to hear some major Moral Socialist come to his senses and say: "You know, what I want is of such intrinsic goodness that I don't need any government help to promote these ideas. And not only do I not need any help - I don't want any. There doesn't have to be a law. Social pressure can do the job. After all look at what changes to cultural attitudes have done for tobacco consumption. The only people who still smoke that stuff are hard core schizophrenics."

The only way government can accomplish anything is with sticks and stolen carrots.

Who do you want to steal from to accomplish your goal? Who do you want beaten with sticks?

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. - H. L. Mencken

Government functions by committing what in other contexts would be called crimes. It has a certain utility. But is a danger and ought to be strictly limited. Government can make you a slave - through taxation or though imprisonment. And slavery is against the law. Except for government.

In short: Government is a Criminal Enterprise.

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." Geo. Washington

Is it worth increasing the number of criminals in our society (nearly permanently) in exchange for being able to say: "It is against the law." Of course followed by (from a different sort of person): "I know a guy who knows a guy......."

I guess it all depends on what kind of world you want to live in.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Canned Government

Or paying taxes in one easy lesson. Subtitled: where does the money go?

H/T R. Dave via e-mail

Running Out Of Other People's Money

The direct link to the video is Daniel Hannan MEP: The devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money" - Margaret Thatcher.

Other videos by Daniel Hannan:

Jeffersonian Principles Part 1

Jeffersonian Principles Part 2

Jeffersonian Principles Part 3

And what do you know? Amazon has a book:

Jeffersonian Principles: Extracts from the Writings of Thomas Jefferson

Tea Party At The Alamo

Sgt Mom gave a rousing speech at the Tea Party at the Alamo recalling the history of Texas. It is not too long. Follow the link and read the whole thing. Note that Sgt. Mom was one of the organizers of the Alamo Tea Party and she and the other organizers managed to get rock legend Ted Nugent to say a few words there. Way to go Sgt. Mom.

You can read some history about three of the people she mentions in her speech by reading Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Experiments In Government

There are plans afoot for a floating city off the coast of San Francisco.

A floating city off the coast of San Francisco may sound like science fiction, but it could be reality in the not-too-distant future.

The Seasteading Institute already has drawn up plans for the construction of a homestead on the Pacific Ocean.

One project engineer described the prototype as similar to a cruise ship, but from a distance the cities might look like oil-drilling platforms.

That is very interesting. But it is not the most interesting part of the plan.

According to the plans, the floating cities would not only look different from their land-based counterparts, but they might operate differently, too.

Patri Friedman, a former Google engineer who now works for the Seasteading Institute, said floating cities are the perfect places to experiment with new forms of government.

Some of the new political ideas the group is tossing around include legalizing marijuana and making intellectual property communal -- so that everyone would take ownership in art produced on the city at sea.

"The idea isn't just about getting away from rules or getting rid of rules. It's about a system that encourages experimentation with different political systems," he said.

Now that sounds very libertarian to me. And being of a libertarian persuasion myself I find the whole idea very appealing.

In the late 1880s people were lamenting the closing of the American frontier. This could portend the opening of a new American frontier. I wonder if they have considered the need for a Navy for protection from pirates?

And what will they do for power? Too bad they can't buy a Bussard Fusion Reactor off the shelf.

Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained
Why hasn't Polywell Fusion been fully funded by the Obama administration?

You can learn even more about the project at The Seasteading Institute.

And if you want to read a science fiction story about floating cities may I suggest A Floating City by Jules Verne.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

We Don't Need No Stinkin Taxes

And why don't we need no stinkin taxes? Because we can steal the money.

A two-decade-old state law that grants authorities the power to seize property used in crimes is wielded by some agencies against people who never are charged with — much less convicted of — criminal activity.

Law enforcement authorities in this East Texas town of 1,000 people seized property from at least 140 motorists between 2006 and 2008, and, to date, filed criminal charges against fewer than half, according to a review of court documents by the San Antonio Express-News.

Virtually anything of value was up for grabs: cash, cell phones, personal jewelry, a pair of sneakers, and often, the very car that was being driven through town.

Some affidavits filed by officers relied on the presence of seemingly innocuous property as the only evidence that a crime had occurred.

Linda Dorman, an Akron, Ohio, great-grandmother had $4,000 in cash taken from her by local authorities when she was stopped while driving through town after visiting Houston in April 2007. Court records make no mention that anything illegal was found in her van. She’s still hoping for the return of what she calls “her life savings.”

Dorman’s attorney, David Guillory, calls the roadside stops and seizures in Tenaha “highway piracy,” undertaken by a couple of law enforcement officers whose agencies get to keep most of what was seized.

To keep the revenue flows increasing police are given a bounty on the assets they seize.

Under civil asset forfeiture, your property – not you – is charged with a crime. Hence the bizarre title of civil forfeiture cases: "United States vs. one 1998 Mercedes Benz," "California vs. 1711 Main Street," and so forth.

Once your property is charged with a crime, it can be seized and kept by police, even if you are never convicted of anything. An appeals court in Florida even ruled that police can personally receive bounties of 25 percent of the value of anything they seize from you, such as your car, bank accounts or home.

There are now more than 400 federal offenses and thousands of state and local offenses for which your cash, car, bank accounts and home can be seized – including shoplifting, hiring an illegal alien such as a maid (California), playing a car stereo too loud (New York), transporting illegal fireworks, gambling, having illegal drugs on your property, and merely discussing violating any law ("conspiracy”), such as underpaying your taxes.

More than $1 billion in property is now seized without trial each year from innocent Americans, according to the national forfeiture defense organization FEAR (Forfeiture Endangers American Rights)

All this theft stems from an old superstition called (well I can't think of what it was called - can some one help me out here?) which states that the property is guilty of the crime. I'm not making that up.

Civil asset forfeiture is based on the legal fiction that an inanimate object can itself be `guilty' of wrongdoing, regardless of whether the object's owner is blameworthy in any way. This concept descends from a medieval English practice whereby an object responsible for an accidental death was forfeited to the king, who `would provide the [proceeds, the `deodand'] for masses to be said for the good of the dead man's soul . . . or [would] insure that the deodand was put to charitable uses.'

And you know what? Theft by government has a long and dishonorable history.

Kings. The problem was the government was an agent of the ruler. And rulers never have enough money. Ever.

However, it remained in the king's interest to extend the list of offenses considered treasonous, since his coffers benefited [Pollock and Maitland, 1968, Vol. 2:500]. The dispute over forfeiture versus escheat continued on into the fourteenth century. Lords were alarmed that the king was calling so many offenses treasons, thus causing them to lose their escheats [Simpson, 1986:20]. In some cases the king did not return the land to the lord after a year and a day, producing additional consternation. The distinction between high and petit treasons established in 1352 solved the problem satisfactorily to the lords' favor [Bellamy, 1970:80-87, Bellamy, 1979].

As per usual the brigands running the show have forgotten that polite fiction that we in America hold to - in theory - that the government is the servant of the people. From time to time the principle is reasserted. And we may be able to say that the Lords of America solved the problem satisfactorily to the lords' favor. Sooner rather than later.

H/T Colleen McCool

Squaring The Circle

How do you enforce traditional values and at the same time promote limited government?

Until Republicans resolve that question neither the traditional values people nor the limited government people are going to trust the party.

Ending The Income Tax

Carla Howell is at it again. She is trying to end the income tax in Massachusetts. Again. She first tried it in 2002 and got 45% of the vote. Not bad. I hope she does better this time. I think 50.1% might be good enough.

H/T Instapundit

Crooks

Rob Payne is complaining about how big corporations are buying government. He sees this as a big right wing plot. Or at least a corporate plot since they "invest" in both parties. However, they are not the only ones.

The ecology industry has its hands in the pie. The government gives out global warming grants.

In fact any where government money goes a part of it flows back to our Congress Crooks.

The only way to get out of this mess is to restrict government power.

That was the idea behind the Constitution.

However, it is not something the "progressives" want to hear. The truth is that any interest will eventually co-opt government oversight. It happened with the ICC and every other attempt that has been made. The FDA? Tell me about it.

Smaller government is the only hope. An impossible dream to be sure. Perhaps curtailing its growth is possible.