The Decline of Libertarianism

While I share many views with libertarians, I don’t consider myself one.  I do think that the non-aggression principle is a good standard to live by, for example, but that it only covers half of the second greatest commandment: love your neighbor as yourself.

But libertarians themselves seem to have fallen into irrelevancy of late, which is unfortunate.  I think this is largely because while they squabble over what constitutes consent or aggression, our entire country and society is being thoroughly dismantled by Moloch worshippers.

Of late, I have noticed a sharp divide in the libertarian movement.  Mostly, this revolves around the Left-Libertarians, who appear to be only interested in sex, drugs, and promoting anti-discrimination laws, and the Nationalist Libertarians, who are more concerned with the imeding collapse of the United States and the destruction of the culture of freedom.

It looks to me that the Left-Libertarians have, by and large, won the Libertarian Party.  This was solidified when Gary Johnson took the nomination and when that jackass danced naked live on C-SPAN.  My brother, who supported the Libertarian party, disagrees and argues that the Left-Libertarians are only a fringe group.

I argue that the Libertarian party and the greater movement has been successfully converged by Social Justice Warriors who seek lower taxes so they can rape children.

That’s probably an exaggeration but the evidence of convergence is fairly clear to me.  At Porcfest, a annual libertarian conference in New Hampshire, the focus appears to be oriented around sexualizing children, promoting prostitution, orgy tents, and gay slow-dancing.

It seems to me that many libertarians get lost on trying to use rational thinking to apply the non-aggression principle to immoral actions.

And there lies the problem with libertarian thought: applying rational thinking to the inherently irrational concept known as morality.  Look, you can rationalize morality all you want.  But at the end of the day, the non-aggression principle cannot be created using mathematical proofs, scientific methods, or Socratic methods.

There is no logical reason to not murder someone.  It simply is wrong in the same way that 1+1=2.  The reality of the situation is, that while customs and practices are cultural, morality tends to be universal in many different ways.

I have yet to come across a culture where theft is legal, where murder is considered godly, save a few obscure cults, and lying is considered a virtue.  While I am not an anthropologist by trade, I think I’d have heard of some civilization or society somewhere.  And in the rare cases where morality is inverted (like holding up sodomy as the highest virtue), those societies usually collapse within a few generations.

And this is the crux of the libertarian movement as a whole: it seeks to impose a kind of moral code through logic, reason, and evidence without understanding that morality is, at its core, irrational.  Because of this, the movement is doomed to be converged by drug addicts looking to avoid jail time, child rapists seeking validation, and nutcases trying to subvert reality.

Like the anarchists of the 1800s, I suspect that the libertarians of the 1900s will continue to fade into obscurity as the decades of this century pass.  Those who seek to shift the reality of morality and society through political movements often do go the way of the dodo.

Libertarianism vs. Anti-Utopianism

I have stated in the past that I am anti-Utopian but not libertarian.  I think the difference needs to be spelled out as I do have many libertarian leanings but I ultimately cannot bring myself to aspire to the title.

Firstly, libertarianism requires a certain level of optimism about human nature, much like communism does.  It believes that if many of the restrictions that the government places on human beings are lifted, then people will behave in a rational and responsible manner.

The trouble with this premise is that man is not a rational creature but a rationalizing one.  There are very few individuals in the world whole view it through the scope of pure rational thinking and usually they are so socially autistic, most people write them off.

Personally, I don’t know what the obsession is with rational thinking to begin with.  Irrational thinking is no more a sin than rational thinking a virtue.  They are simply two different modes of processing information in the world.

That being said, libertarians like hold themselves up as paragons of rational thinking to the point of foolishness.  In many cases, they assume falsely that all human beings are equal, that racial and sex differences don’t matter, and that everyone in the world yearns for freedom, they merely lack the means to do so.

Truth be told, human beings are perfectly comfortable with the path of slavery, provided the slave master doesn’t oppress them too much.  It took decades of oppressive slavery in Egypt before the Israelites finally rallied behind Moses and left that country to form their own, as an example.

As an anti-Utopian, I share the view that government should be minimal or eliminated (either way works for me) but because human beings are rationalizing creatures rather than rational creatures.  Because no matter who is in charge, you will always have a rationalizing sociopath or psychopath at the top running things.  Less government is preferable for no other reason than to limit the scope and reach of those kind of people.

Secondly, libertarians tend to derive their moral worldview from economics.  I’ve heard so many talk about how free trade would bring peace to the world, failing to recognize that the world has scarce resources and sometimes people want to violently seize those resources.

It’s like they have a complete denial of original sin or the seven deadly sins or any other real vice that we suffer from.  Greed and envy are usually the primary drivers behind war, not lack of free trade.  This is a level of magic thinking that is on par with modern cultural Marxists really whose own dogma seems to be that less white, straight, Christian men will lead to global world peace.

I believe that while free trade is a noble goal, it is a foolish one.  We have had a couple of decades of free trade with many nations now and all we have to show for it is the rust belt.  I know, many libertarians will argue that the US didn’t implement it right.

But that’s like saying the Soviet Union didn’t do communism right.

Instead, we should be mindful that other nations do not think as we do, even white European nations.  That we have our ways of preferable governance and they have theirs.  And that you will have to engage in some form of restrictive trade in order to maintain domestic stability in the job market.

Thirdly, libertarians have their priorities mixed up.  They advocate for things like open borders and drug legalization over and above advocating for a deregulated market and an end to the welfare state.

Open borders is really a pie-in-sky fantasy world.  The only feasible way that such a world would exist is if all nations decided to adhere to the libertarian principles and abolished their governments in favor of private markets for everything.  When that happens, open borders isn’t even an issue because, guess what, there are no more goddamn borders anymore anyway.

Drug legalization is something I agree with.  I think too many resources have been used to focus on activities that I don’t consider crimes.  I agree with libertarians that crimes should only be when an individual takes away another individual’s life, liberty, or property through force or fraud.  This is because I believe true justice is about restitution, not punishment.

The trouble is, legalizing drugs only further enables a regulated market and the welfare state.  The welfare state will be further abused to enable the moochers to sit at home and enjoy their cocaine whilst getting their monies in the mail from the ever shrinking productive class.

Only when the welfare state is more or less dismantled and the labor market fully deregulated will drug legalization make any kind of sense.  At that point, using drugs will require you to deal with the consequences of your bad decisions and there’s a better chance you’ll do it rationally.

Lastly, libertarians seem to have a huge boner for democracy and the democratic process.  What they fail to acknowledge is the fact that the Libertarian party never even comes close to a majority, that most people disagree with them, and that libertarianism can exist in a nation that isn’t a democracy or republic.

In fact, I’d argue that peasants in feudal Europe during the Middle Ages had more rights and protections than the average US citizen does today.  And an abusive government was often met with the end of a pistol or rapier during those times as well.  We do know that the largest massacres in those times occurred at the hands of foreign invaders and diseases but not at the hands of their own governments, unlike today.

My view is that humanity is largely stupid, irrational, and easily driven to violence.  I don’t hold out hope that this is going to change if we stop spanking our children, ensure that boys keep their foreskins, or eliminate all forms of government.

But it is precisely this view which leads me to many of the same conclusions as libertarians.  Because in the end, we really don’t want a stupid, irrational, and insanely violent group of people ruling over us.  Best to play it safe and limit the power and scope of government.

Ramblings on Morality, Welfare, and Libertarians

One of the main reasons I am no longer libertarian is because libertarians tend to equate morality as being based on either science or economics.

Well, the secular ones do at least.  This is especially true among so-called “left-libertarians” where consent is morality and anything is valid so long as it brings no harm to others in a physical or financial way.

And so we end up with morons arguing that it is morally acceptable to masturbate to porn on a commercial airplane.

Morality isn’t derived from economic theory or scientific experiments.  It comes from the overriding culture under which you live and that moral code largely comes from the religion that dominates it.

There is a commonality between moral codes.  Of course, most people here in the West don’t stone rape victims like they do in Iran but at the same time, we both agree that murder is evil.  Of course, we’re both flexible in our definitions of murder.

My point is, libertarians seem to think that by removing the influence of the State, somehow people will become more rational, moral, and responsible.

I believe the opposite but I agree with their belief that there should be less government if only because I believe that people deserve to suffer for the consequences of their actions.  Domestically, the government protects people of all races, classes, and sexes from the consequences of their actions.

From bailing out banks to cutting a check to a mother of six from six different men, the government never lets people suffer the consequences of their stupid, irrational actions.

Unless, of course, you’re a white man, which is a different matter altogether.

I don’t believe that it will make people better, anymore than democracy has clearly not made people smarter or religion has made people good.

But it will hold them accountable for their terrible decisions.

And I don’t know about you, but I am tired of being shamed and robbed to make the stupid and irresponsible people of our country feel better about their shitty lives.

The Cuckterians

I used to consider myself a conservative.  Then I realized that conservatives by and large don’t support small government like they claim but only the stuff they don’t like, much like the Left.

Then I considered myself a libertarian.  But this past year has demonstrated to me that libertarians are just as much a bunch of losers as conservatives.  For them, though, it is more a matter of the policies they support which will ultimately cause them to become obsolete.

I’m speaking, of course, of the wide libertarian support of “refugees” and open borders in general.  For some reason, libertarians tend to fall into magic thinking where land masses are what cause people to become civilized.

It is a shear blindness to the true nature of humanity and how fallen we are as a people.  Letting outsiders into a country which allows citizens to vote is pure stupidity because it means that these people who do not have the same values like individual sovereignty will supplant the current culture.

I think libertarians have failed in the same manner that conservatives have because they focused on politics more than culture.  And even their cultural framework lacks a clear-cut religious or, at the very least, moral code which nearly every other culture in the world has.

The problem with political movements in any kind of democratic system is that you need to affect the culture first and foremost in order to get the people voting the way you want them to.  This is why communists were so successful in the West: they simply changed the culture to fit their narrative starting in the 1960s.

And this is how the communists won the West though they lost the Soviet Union in the last century.  They convinced everyone that collectivism was good, that people are groups of genders, races, and sexual orientations rather than individuals and thus were able to divide and conquer.

Now we see the fruits of their labors.  Blacks make up a smaller and smaller minority every year yet too many morons try to prove to them they aren’t racist.  Meanwhile, those same blacks you are supposed to prove yourself to are calling for your head.

The same is true with the “Syrian refugees”.  They are coming here to spread Islam, a religious and political movement that runs counter to Western ideals and definitely runs afoul of libertarian thought.  No, you cannot be a devout Muslim and a libertarian at the same time.  This is because the Muslim method of evangelism runs counter to the non-aggression principle itself, as history has demonstrated time and time again.

This is where ideals meet the real world, which is not so cut and dry.  No, the government is not the cause of all the world’s troubles.  Sin is.  And yet, this simple answer to the existence of evil in the world baffles libertarians to no end.  It never ceases to amaze me how often their rationalizations hamsters run in their heads to avoid the origin of evil altogether.

Ultimately, this is why I’m not a libertarian anymore and I am downright appalled that these morons would rather see Europe and the US overrun by Muslim invaders in order to preserve their precious ideology than build a better country here first.

Circumcision or Why I’m Not an Egalitarian

There is a group of libertarians I’ve witnessed who regard male circumcision as the equivalent of female circumcision.  These are people who usually argue that women are more privileged than men because parents are permitted to “mutilate” a little boy’s penis but not a little girl’s vagina.

The trouble is, our egalitarian Western ideals seem to have been taken too far.  What people in the West call “female circumcision” is really just genital mutilation.  Only a man can be circumcised, not a woman.  This much is fairly clear as last I checked, a woman doesn’t have a penis.

As to the matter of circumcising baby boys, though, this does have trouble with libertarian ideals.  For one thing, the libertarian ideals call for not bringing harm to other individuals and many argue that circumcising a baby boy is bringing harm to a child.

On the other hand, there are religious reasons for doing so, at least among Jews and Muslims, though many Christians believe this to be something they must practice in order to get right with God, Book of Acts notwithstanding.

What do I think?  I think these libertarians are looking for any excuse to attack religion.  While I agree that there are some problems with circumcising boys, especially when you’re not all that religious, there is no indication that it has devastating effects on the health and sexual well-being on men as a whole.

Personally, I don’t think you should circumcise your baby boys unless you have a strong religious reason to do so.  It does not rob them of their sexual enjoyment, but at the same time, it isn’t necessary for Gentiles to perform such an act on their children.  Consider just baptizing them instead.

This is one of the many reason why I can’t stand with libertarians whole-heartedly since many of them seem to have reached a point where gender differences don’t exist.  Male circumcision is a very different thing from female genital mutilation.

And yes, in the interest of full disclosure, my son is not circumcised.  I am, but that was done when I was a baby and I’m not bitter about it.  Maybe I’m missing out on something, but I haven’t noticed anything myself, especially considering that the sexual experiences of individuals varies from person to person.

Libertarians Should Not Defend Corporations

Economics is not morality.  This is my primary problem with Anarcho-Capitalists as they tend to equate the two and assume that people will behave once government restraints are lifted.  And while I do agree that too much government is terrible, no government administering justice for offences that cannot be measured is just as bad (offences that cannot be measured are murder, rape, and kidnapping, unlike property crimes).

There is a split I’ve seen though among libertarians and their support or non-support of large corporations.  On one side, you have the free marketeers who demand that all corporations be allowed to operate with impunity.  On the other side, you have free marketeers who demand that the concept of corporation be abolished entirely.  I tend to agree with the latter over the former.

The problem right now is that the welfare and warfare state in the United States is being propped up by large corporations.  And no, these are not necessarily government contractors.  These are companies that could make a healthy profit outside of the government dole and yet are still taking every advantage they can to ensure the continuation of the welfare state.

This is inherently immoral.  Yes it is profitable and yes, many business executives would probably be foolish to not take advantage of the government’s cankerous tit.  But what is profitable is not necessarily what is moral.

It is immoral to take the hard-earned money of a productive citizen and pass it on to anyone else, be they rich or poor.  This is because taking that money is theft.  Stealing is a sin last I checked.

And encouraging a thief is just as bad.  This is essentially what many large corporations are doing when they lobby for the welfare state.  They are behaving immorally and without integrity.

Now, I am not saying that we should pass a law to make companies more moral.  On the contrary, I believe that we should deregulate and cut welfare spending entirely.

The trouble is, all the big money is backing the welfare-warfare state largely without regard for America’s golden goose, the middle class.  Nearly every major industry that features national or multi-national corporations has their hands in the government pie in some way.  And so long as they do, they are going to continue to ensure that the pie is fresh.

So before you go to Wal-Mart or do banking with Bank of America, try and figure out what they stand for.  If they are lobbying for more government, not less, then perhaps you look elsewhere for your goods and services because they already are stealing from you.

Misrepresenting Christianity, Capitalism, and Libertarianism

So I saw this article shared by a friend on Facebook.  It is basically a piece from the New York Times about how Christianity is incompatible with both free markets and libertarianism.  These kind of hit pieces are common, especially among the more smug Left-wing elite who like to use religion to justify their political motivations.

Before I break down the article, I would like to point out a few things: first of all I don’t believe that Christianity is apolitical and that the teachings of Jesus are.  This is a common defense that many right-wing pundit take when attacked by the Left for, in the Left’s eyes, not following the teachings of Jesus.  If anything, I would argue that the Left has a lot to answer for in this day and age given their promotion of sexual depravity, envy, and strife.  They are, in many ways, modern day Pharisees.

That being said, I don’t believe that the Right-wing is righteous.  Just not as wicked as the Left wing.  At the very least, they are seeking to be more like Jesus, while the Left openly mocks Him and His teachings.  There is no political ideology that brings one closer to God, but there are some that will turn you away from Him.

Now, to understand my disagreements with that article, you have to understand that all political ideologies boil down to how the government should interact with its citizens.  The range is from total and absolute control to no government at all.  The former is communism and the later is anarcho-capitalism.  And just about every political ideology falls in-between.  In this context, however, none of them are inherently bad ideas if every person on the planet was a “perfect” Christian.

But that is impossible for everyone.  And as power increases along the spectrum, so does the possibility of it corrupting the individuals in charge.  In the Soviet Union, for example, the head of Stalin’s secret police, Beria, was known to have raped women under threats of having them arrested.  He got away with it because power was too centralized under the control of a few elites.

Back to the article.  It was written by Professor James K.A. Smith and he demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of Christianity, free markets, and libertarianism.  Firstly, he seems to think that Christianity is about equality.  That equality is a virtue to be found listed alongside other fruits of the Spirit.

He could not be more wrong.  God never refers to everyone as equals.  If anything, He treats people the exact opposite throughout the Bible.  Moses, as an example, is chosen to be the greatest prophet of the Old Testament.  And every time he was challenged, God intervened and punished those who disagreed with Moses as that was a disagreement with God.

The “equality” he refers though seems to be “income equality”.  Again, this more specific definition is still not a virtue.  In the Bible, we see how God rewards certain people with riches and wealth while leaving others to fend for themselves.  And even the faithful are not always rewarded.  If you are looking for income equality, it is not found in the Bible.

As for free markets, Professor Smith claims that while capitalism brought many poor people out of poverty, a fact that only a fool would deny, it has ceased “to be an engine of the common good, it is inconsistent with Christianity”.  In that quoted statement, he has clearly misunderstood both Christianity and free markets entirely.

Christianity is not about the common good.  Fundamentally, it is about individuals acknowledging that Jesus is the Son of God, that He died a perfect sacrifice for all of us in order to redeem us before God as we are steeped in sin.  The Nicene Creed pretty much sums up Christianity.  Nothing about that creed has to do with economic theory or political theory.

As for the current “contemporary capitalism” as he calls it, he clearly does not understand what true free markets are.  A free market system is one where there is no government intervention in any good or service and that all economic transactions are completely voluntary.  To that end, we live in a country where money is printed and distributed by a public-private company and any attempts to compete with it are met with prison time, where health insurance is forced upon us or we face incremental fines, and where nearly every aspect of food, fuel, shelter, labor, and clothing is heavily regulated to ensure that only large companies can even hope to compete.  None of these things represent capitalism or free markets by any stretch.

The United States is not a free market country.  I daresay it has not been so since at least the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of the late 1800s but I suppose the argument could be made that going back even to founding of the modern governmental system that we were not free market.  George Washington fought a war based on a 3% tax on tea then as President turned around and imposed a 25% tax on hard liquor and squashed a rebellion against it.

He also argues that Christianity is critical of greed.  This is true.  But he argues that greed is measured by income, which it is not.  The poor in this country are just as greedy as some of the wealthy.  In many cases, I’d argue that the poor would rather remain in poverty-level incomes in order to keep more disposable income, which means the middle class ends up paying for their lifestyle.  That is a great evil, according the wisdom of King Solomon.  Like most sins, greed is a matter of the heart and income measurements alone are not a good indicator of greedy man’s heart.

Finally, Professor Smith argues that Christianity is incompatible with libertarianism, claiming that it is “an ideology rooted in social atomism that pits all against all in a war of wills”.  Here again he demonstrates his own ignorance of what libertarianism really is and instead applies his own view.

In truth, the root of libertarian ideology is the non-aggression principle, which asserts that aggression is inherently immoral.  Aggression in this case means any unsolicited actions of others that physically affect an individuals property or person, no matter if the result of those actions is damaging, beneficial, or neutral to the owner.

In other words, the root of libertarian morality is nearly identical to the Second Greatest Commandment, which is to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Libertarians just apply their root morality to everyone, even to people who work for the government.

So while Christianity is certainly not compatible with the whole of the political spectrum, it does not mean that it is incompatible with any of it.  I always enjoy it when a Leftist will openly attack the right wing by openly stating that they aren’t good Christians.  Because the Left-wing believes that truth is subjective and that there is no objective truth, any time they judge others should be met with mockery.  This is because if you have no objective standards, then you have no moral standing to judge others.

The Libertarian Blindness to Sovereignty

Libertarians, especially of the Anarchist bent, tend to view public property as imaginary.  What I mean by this is that they tend to see government-managed lands in the abstract rather than in the practical.

I personally do not believe that there is a such thing as public property, but government property.  The leaders in the government tend to call it public property because it sounds more appealing to the dumb masses.  In truth, they own it and they’ll be damned if they are going to give it up.

I get annoyed by anarcho-capitalists when they refer to a country’s borders as “imaginary” as well. I’m sorry, are your own property lines imaginary?  Sovereignty, like it or not, is a practical reality that cannot be denied.

I understand that the government does a piss poor job of handling the property that the dumb masses entrust to it.  In some cases, they simply took too much of it and presume to manage it when they lack the resources, manpower, and political will to do so properly.

But collective sovereignty is a real thing, like it or not.  I do agree that the individual is sovereign, but at the same time, society creates constructs to handle the affairs that they believe to be outside of the sovereign individual.  Things have gotten out of hand lately, but the idea isn’t necessarily a bad one.

And this also illustrates the blindness that libertarians possess when it comes to promoting decentralization.  Activists should focus instead on the government’s own ineptness in managing public properties, highlight the hypocrisies inherent, and provide an alternative solution.  At a national level, this may seem like a daunting task, but there are other options.

While the Federal government continues to expand its powers, the local and state governments still maintain some level of autonomy.  And while the Federal government has generally done a poor job of handling Federal lands, largely due to corporatists interests overriding the will of the locals, local and state governments remain the best option.

So go the local and state leaders and hold their feet to the fire.  Demand to know why property taxes are so high when the schools are failing and the roads are cracked and broken.  Ask why the police focus more on non-violent crimes while letting violent offenses go.  Demand to know why the police insist on getting SWAT teams, assault weapons, and tanks added to their departments.

And then offer alternatives.  If you are not and/or cannot be wealthy, trying getting local rich people to invest in private ventures like roads and affordable schools.  You’d be surprised how well politicians will listen to you when money is involved.

In this way, you can bring about better conditions suited for liberty and change the culture without having to look like a complete fool with a stupid sign.

Libertarians and the Open Borders Fallacy

Libertarians, in general, have a problem when it comes to their advocacy of open borders. Often times, I think that most libertarians believe economics to be the only legitimate form of science and their irrational advocacy of open borders (and free trade) highlights this.

To start, libertarians are staunch defenders of property rights. This is all well and good, except they forget that any government body has property as well. While the anarchist wing will suggest that the State is illegitimate (I mostly agree), they forget that any immigration reform where open borders is made a policy by a State entity will not further the cause of liberty.

This is largely because the immigrants come from countries with different values and different perspectives on the role of government in our lives. Latin America especially has long histories of dictatorships and corrupt democracies that make even our current state of affairs look tame in comparison. To top that off, many of them do not share the same values of liberty and freedom that libertarians believe and this is only further exasperated by the fact that they do not speak English naturally.

The fact that immigrants won't have the same values on liberty and freedom will also serve as a greater frustration when you consider that they or their children will be allowed to vote. This has happened in the past. When German immigrants came to the United States in the 1800s, the idea of government being essential to a child's education and in enforcing morality became much more rampant, for example.

Another problem is that they make the mistake of calling borders "imaginary lines" created by government. Really? So the property line for your land is an imaginary line as well? What you need to understand is that all property that is labeled as "public property" is really just government property. In other words, it is property that is owned by the State and that they are the ones who manage it. And in a representative democracy such as ours, the collective will of the people should dictate how that property is managed. As such, creating an open borders situation is really like having an open property line on your own yard.

The truth is, open borders is not a good policy to advocate right now, especially if your ultimate goal is the elimination or downsizing of government. This is because if the such a thing were to happen, then open borders happens naturally. As it stands right now, between the labor regulations and the welfare state, having immigrants pouring into our country is suicidal and does not spread liberty, but constricts it.

The Old King is Gone, Long Live the King

People need a leader.  I wish it were not true, that people would be able to think for themselves, but as the feminist movement, the progressive movement, the conservative movement, and the neoconservative movements have all proven, people want more government, not less.  They want to defer their leadership to someone else because it is the easiest way to absolve themselves of the responsibility for their actions.  Like Pilot washing his hands in front of mob while ordering the execution of Jesus, for the crime of free speech no less, everyone wants to blame the other guy and clear their own guilt in the matter.

For the Ron Paul movement, this is sadly no exception.  While Ron Paul himself stood for freedom, individualism, and a world where people are self-determinant and instead adhere to the non-aggression principle.  He knew his run in Congress would be a Hail Mary play in politics.  To be the one man who stood against the growing tide of Statism and tyranny.  It was very admirable and I doubt this generation or the next will see another man like him.  It is very rare for men who think like him to risk politics.  Rarer still that they come out of it largely untouched by its corrupting influence.

So it is no wonder that already many in the liberty movement are wondering who the next man in Congress will be their man.  Already Senator Rand Paul has proven to be wanting in many cases, although he done more than most other “Tea Party” candidates have done for the cause of liberty.  In any case, it is clear that there was only one Ron Paul, just like there was only one Ronald Reagan for the conservative movement and only one Bill Clinton for the, um, blowjob movement.

What if the real answer is simply that there should be no one to lead.  What if the real answer is for people to start living outside of the government and to practice the non-aggression principle at all times.  To ignore all the regulations, mandates, and laws that choke the average man and only serve to empower a select few while scraps are handed out to the other parasites who are glad to get their “Obamaphones”.

Perhaps we should focus inwardly, perfect the art of liberty, and pass on that knowledge to our descendants.  In Italy, for example, there is a large black market, which is widely considered to be socially acceptable as they rightly view all politicians and government agents as corrupt parasites.  Maybe here in the United States, we could build something like this here.

We won’t achieve liberty through political means.  If anything, Ron Paul has proven that in his decades of service within Congress.  The common mentality of those who desire power through political means is one of selfish ambition and greed, not altruism nor benevolence.  Hell, it wouldn’t surprise if Ron Paul had a few skeletons in his own Congressional closet.  I certainly didn’t agree with his own pork barrel legislative measures.

The main point is that Ron Paul was the king of the liberty movement and while he still has life and has plans to continue it, he is no longer at the level of power he once had.  His congressional district is gone (probably on purpose by Republican operatives).  His run in Congress is done.  And while he may still have influence, there is a limit as he will die eventually.

So put not your faith in kings of this world, but work for your own life.  The best thing you can do for liberty is to live it and defy the tyrannous yahoos who presume to be gods among men when they are really just children in adult clothing.

The individual is sovereign.  The individual is the king of himself.

The Folly of Utopian Libertarians

It seems that Vox Day has been having an informal debate with Gary North over the question of free trade (note that free market and free trade are two very different concepts).  I say informal because Gary North as of yet refuses to even mention that he is responding to Vox Day, even though he clearly is.  However, in Vox Day’s latest post, he brought an interesting observation:

The foolish utopianism of North and his kind is usefully revealed in terms such as "the invisible line known as a national border". The significant line isn't geography, but rather people, and when the lines are not drawn in accordance with the population, trouble begins. Germany unified despite being divided into two different states because the Germans are one nation. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia broke up because multiple nations were trapped together in one state. The European Union was founded on the principles North espouses and it is foundering because it refused to take those "invisible lines" into account. Nations are more than mere jurisdictions.

This perfectly reflects why I don’t subscribe whole-heartedly to anarchism or anarcho-capitalism.  I have always viewed both ideas as Utopian and I am vehemently anti-Utopian in my views.  Incidentally, this is also why I am opposed to Statist philosophies as well because most of them are all about getting government to “work right”.

Before the turn of the last century, countries were mainly defined by common cultures and races, not by governments drawing up imaginary lines.  Usually, a government would draw up a border in the aftermath of a war.  This changed following World War I where the leaders of the alliance drew up new borders and made up whole new countries.  This was also done following World War II as well.

People form nations and national identity, not governments.  Governments usually are created as a result of the rise of nations, not the reverse as so many anarcho-capitalists get confused.  This is not to say that anarcho-capitalists have bad ideas.  I think they have a lot of good ideas that can be implemented.  But they forget that their ideas will only work if the people of a region are wiling to accept them and live by them.  It  is not the government that is the problem, it is the people who are willing to live such a government.

The central tenant of the libertarians and the anarchists is the non-aggression principle.  But basically, this is a secular version of the second greatest commandment that Jesus told his followers: love your neighbor as yourself.  In essence, a follower of such a commandment would not harm others, regardless of what his or her orders are, because he or she would not want such harm upon him or herself.  The problem with this is that if the Son of God can’t get people to love one another as they love themselves, then what hope do a bunch of secular idealists have?

This is why I do not subscribe to Utopian viewpoints.  Much of the logic behind the free market hinges on the rational actions of man, but I say we should strive for the free market because people are supposed to face the consequences of their actions.  The difference is clear: anything less than a free market means you have a society that wishes to remain immature and foolish.  It takes a real adult to face hard decisions.  Much of the nostalgia surrounding the World War II generation is the fact that the men made many hard decisions without batting an eye, even long after the war.  But the fact remains that man is not a rational creature, not naturally anyway.

It is people that make up nations, not governments.  We must always remember that the solutions to the ills of society is not economic ones, but individual ones.  We need to recognize that the government is only as good as the people it rules over, which says a whole lot about our nation.  We should not tie in our national identity with the government over us, but with our own culture and history.  And yes, the United States has a cultural history of individualism, unlike much of the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, with the large influx of immigrants (both illegal and legal) and the expanding population of minority groups which don’t share that heritage, I do not believe that the United States will exist as it has by the end of this century.  Perhaps it will, there is always hope so long as there is a significant group of people who hold to such traditions.

As for the perfect society, always keep in mind that there is not one, there never will be one, and that any attempts to create one will end in ruin, death, and desolation.  There is no economic, political, or scientific way to fix man.  Improvements and tweaks can be implemented, but at the end of the day, much of it hinges on people.  And people are, at best, going to look out for themselves.

Answering Jon Stewart’s Questions

So Jon Stewart has 19 questions for libertarians and I thought I would take a stab at them.

What would be your best response to these questions and statements:

1. Is government the antithesis of liberty?

Government as an institution is not the antithesis of liberty.  However, as with all institution, government is a collection of selfish individuals working to further its goals.  As government has the ability to apply force and is often run by selfish individuals who seek power over others, the actions of it often stamp out liberty.  The short is that ideally no but practically yes.

2. One of the things that enhances freedoms are roads. Infrastructure enhances freedom. A social safety net enhances freedom.

The purpose of roads is to facilitate the transportation of individuals from one location to another.  However, they do inherently enhance freedom.  Think about the Oregon Trail and how there was no road but plenty of freedom.

The public works that are designed to enhance “infrastructure” could easily be built and maintained by the private sector.  Virtually everything that the government does can easily and readily be done by private citizens in a private market.  Even things like defense and justice could theoretically be done in the private market.

As for the concept of a social safety net, is that not what TARP was all about?  A safety net that is provided by the government more often than not will not only catch you when you fall, but ensnare you in a web of regulations and red tape.

3. What should we do with the losers that are picked by the free market?

The free market is about free choice.  The market itself does not pick losers since it is not a centralized economic theory.  What happens is that producers make choices on how to present their product to a consumer.  If they fail to make their product appealing to consumers, then they will fail.

This does not mean that individuals who “lose” in the free market are losers forever.  The beauty of the free market is that you get as many chances as you can feasibly do.  Most of the great entrepreneurs were huge failures during the first decade or two of their lives.

4. Do we live in a society or don't we? Are we a collective? Everybody's success is predicated on the hard work of all of us; nobody gets there on their own. Why should it be that the people who lose are hung out to dry? For a group that doesn't believe in evolution, it's awfully Darwinian.

Libertarians have a wide ranging belief when it comes to evolution.  One thing they all tend to recognize is that a free society tolerates all kinds of beliefs and seeks only peaceful interactions with others.  So it is ludicrous to state that all libertarians don’t believe in evolution.

As to the question at hand, people who lose are never hung out to dry.  As stated in my answer to number three, nobody is a permanent loser.  For those who are truly downtrodden with some kind of mental handicap or physical handicap, there are always options in a free market and there will always be charity in some form or another.

5. In a representative democracy, we are the government. We have work to do, and we have a business to run, and we have children to raise.. We elect you as our representatives to look after our interests within a democratic system.

Theoretically, yes that is the case.  In practical terms, the elected representative will usually defer to the group with the most money to give to them.  The United States government was originally a Republic, where only a small section was determined by the general population and the rest were either appointed or selected based on the rules outlined.  Ultimately, they were all given limited powers so it is not our interests they should be looking at necessarily, just our interests within the scope of the powers explicitly granted by the Constitution.

6. Is government inherently evil?

Given that all people are sinners and that government is a collection of sinful individuals, then yes it is.  As an institution, no it is not.

7. Sometimes to protect the greater liberty you have to do things like form an army, or gather a group together to build a wall or levy.

All of which can be done without the aid of a government.  Military might can be created by private organizations along with walls and levies.

8. As soon as you've built an army, you've now said government isn't always inherently evil because we need it to help us sometimes, so now.. it's that old joke: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars? How about a dollar? -Who do you think I am?- We already decided who you are, now we're just negotiating.

Again, government is not the only option for defense against foreign invasion.

9. You say: government which governs least governments best. But that were the Articles of Confederation. We tried that for 8 years, it didn't work, and went to the Constitution.

If you read the Articles of Confederation, you would notice that many of the powers outlined there were then copied over to the Constitution.  By and large, the Constitution merely added a federal court system, a chief executive, a central currency standard, and some other new powers.  Very little was left out.

In any case, the Founding Fathers originally were suppose to improve the existing system and decided instead to do their own system.  It was done based on irrational fears of the splitting of the Union into separate entities.

That being said, the United States Constitution is not a bad system.  There a few things I would like to see removed from it, but by and large it was a fairly solid document for a governmental system.

10. You give money to the IRS because you think they're gonna hire a bunch of people, that if your house catches on fire, will come there with water.

None of us give money to the IRS.  If you think you give money to the IRS, try not giving them money and see what happens.

Also, the Federal government does not concern itself with house fires (yet).

11. Why is it that libertarians trust a corporation, in certain matters, more than they trust representatives that are accountable to voters? The idea that I would give up my liberty to an insurance company, as opposed to my representative, seems insane.

But you can choose the corporation, despite the ever increasing monopolization of various industries due to the increasing government regulations.  You cannot choose your government, merely the jerks who are supposed to be running it.  Even that is questionable at best.

12. Why is it that with competition, we have such difficulty with our health care system? ..and there are choices within the educational system.

For part one, any industry that is heavily regulated will have difficulties in the free market.  The problem is government regulations, not the lack of them.  If you look at the software industry, an industry that is not regulated all that much save some minor intellectual property standards, you would notice that it is prosperous and provides numerous options.

As for the educational system, the choices are a government skool, a slightly-better-but-still-shitty private school, or homeschooling.  In all cases, you have to meet minimum standards set by the government and you still have to pay taxes to support the government ones.  Not much of a choice as far as I am concerned.

13. Would you go back to 1890?

The free market is about moving forward.  However, if you mean the government as it was then, it would be a good start.  The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was probably one of the biggest free market-destroying pieces of legislation ever produced by our Imperial Federal Government, coming in a close second to the Federal Reserve Act.

14. If we didn't have government, we'd all be in hovercrafts, and nobody would have cancer, and broccoli would be ice-cream?

If government had not built all those roads in 1950, then we might have a different mode of transportation now.  But no, most libertarians are not Utopians, merely practical free marketeers.

15. Unregulated markets have been tried. The 80’s and the 90’s were the robber baron age. These regulations didn't come out of an interest in restricting liberty. What they did is came out of an interest in helping those that had been victimized by a system that they couldn't fight back against.

The free market, especially the likes of Wall Street, has been heavily regulated since the rise of the Progressives at the turn of last century.  What happened in the 80s, 90s, and in the last decade was that the government regulators started to become more and more entwined with the businessmen they were regulating.  It could be argued that this has gone on for much longer than that, but essentially the regulators were either bought off or replaced by greedy individuals.  There were plenty of safeguards in place to prevent such unethical behavior and these were largely ignored by everyone involved.

Mr. Steward, you really should not believe everything you see on Hollywood.

16. Why do you think workers that worked in the mines unionized?

There were some horrible conditions, but unions came about because of one individual wishing to exert power over his boss.  The horrible conditions were used as an excuse to get the workers on the union bosses side.  Ultimately, private unions were never Socialist as they often kicked out the communists, by the way.

17. Without the government there are no labor unions, because they would be smashed by Pinkerton agencies or people hired, or even sometimes the government.

The Pinkerton agencies were largely responding to potential violence against the private property of the owners.  In the beginning days of the unions, a strike usually meant a literal strike against the factory or mine they were working in.  In fact, if you check your history books, you would note that the Pinkerton agencies often suffered losses at the hands of the unions more so than the unions suffered at the hands of the Pinkerton agencies.

18. Would the free market have desegregated restaurants in the South, or would the free market have done away with miscegenation, if it had been allowed to? Would Marten Luther King have been less effective than the free market? Those laws sprung up out of a majority sense of, in that time, that blacks should not.. The free market there would not have supported integrated lunch counters.

Laws like Jim Crow laws were established in opposition to the free market.  A businessman would not want to alienate a whole group of customers just because of their race as he would lose a lot money.  Greed, more often than not, would trump racism.

The free market did not create Jim Crow laws.  Government did.

19. Government is necessary but must be held accountable for its decisions.

Government is not necessary nor can it be held accountable since the only option for the people to hold government accountable is choosing between a douche and a turd sandwich every election cycle.

Reason TV interviews Penn Jillette

Penn Jillette discusses his book and views

OK, I know I have called Penn Jillette a cowardly atheist in the past.  This does not mean I do not have some level of admiration for him.  After watching this video, I have few observations:

• At one point Penn mentions that having doubt means you are an atheist.  This is kind of a broad definition as it does not describe doubt for how long or what kind of doubt.  I myself have had doubts about the existence of God but there have been things I have witnessed that cannot be explained.
• Penn Jillette is a Naturalist and it shows.  Naturalism is the belief that science is the ultimate tool to observe and experience reality as we know it.  Unfortunately, many Naturalists tend to expand their definitions of science in order to fit their worldview.  In Penn’s case, he twittered about how some gamers cracked a biology code in three weeks that had eluded scientists for decades.  But that was not science that cracked it, it was video gamers.  There is a difference.
• His views on helping others is perfectly in line with mine.  If you want to help someone, do it yourself, don’t make the government do it at the expense of the productive citizenry.  Why do you think there are so many people who are on welfare these days?  While economics is part of it, there would not be constant poverty or generational poverty if there was no welfare state.  Well, at least there would be very little.
• It can be argued that atheism or non-belief has been a part of Socialism from the beginning since its founder, Robert Owen, was an atheist as far as I can tell.
• Not considering that God even exists is a declaration of certainty.  So to claim that you do not know and in the same breath to claim there is no God or gods is two-faced and hypocritical.  He does indicate that he is open to being converted, should the evidence present itself, so at least that is an admission that is less narrow than other atheists I have observed.  At least he did not state the possibility of an alien creating man like Richard Dawkins has in the past.
• Reading the Bible is very difficult and it is clear that if more people like Penn took up the task, there probably would be more non-believers.  I state this because it is a hard thing to read and accept as God openly and without apparent remorse kills off several people while telling us to not murder.  While I am not going to delve into that now, it is definitely a stumbling block.
• Taking away God from the Religious Right would effectively make them become the Tea Party.  The Religious Right, however, has been marginalized as of late as social issues are no longer the larger issues.  Who gives a flip about gay marriage when the Federal government is bankrupt.  Well, bankrupt if it did not have all that weaponry.
• Penn Jillette does not seem to know that terrorism is not solely based on religious teachings.  He forgets about the kamikazes and Tamil Tigers.
• If someone was ordered by God to kill his family, he would never get into court or would be acquitted on purely legal grounds.  However, I think God has withheld His wrath for now.  I could be wrong though.

All in all, I am actually quite impressed with Penn Jillette.  In contrast to my pessimism, I think his optimism is a bit refreshing.  Sure things are not perfect, but only the Utopian strives to make the world perfect.  The rest of us just strive to life our lives and I believe that this is the true heart of libertarian thought.

The Tyranny of the Watchmen

There are certain actions which we are not permitted to do as human beings.  While some people are complete pacifists, where any act of violence or force is considered wrong, most people at least follow the non-aggression principle, which states that you may not initiate force against another person.  The initiation of force, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or property, where property is what a person owns, is considered to be a violation.  Most reasonable people can agree to this simple principle.

However, the problem is that you will have a small minority of people who have little regard for the property or person of others and instead will commit acts of theft, vandalism, murder, etc.  The human being is capable of great evil and great good after all.  When this happens, reparations are required of the perpetrator because of the harm caused.  We call this concept justice and it is different from revenge where justice is eye for an eye while revenge is head for an eye.  In other words, the reparations must fit the crime.

Most people usually allow for a government entity of some kind to be able to apply justice.  Basically, in order to enforce reparations, you need to initiate force and usually a government body is set aside for that purpose.  The vast soup of political and philosophical ideas mostly agree on having some government force, save for the various anarchist philosophies (each of which have about a dozen adherents as they are more numerous than the more “mainstream” schools of political thought).

What happens, though, when the popular institution of justice decides to overreach?  Usually, people bend over and rationalize the overreach as necessary, or worse, blame the victim of the overreach.  This happens dozens of times everyday now across the United States where government thugs are permitted to run rampant with the full support of the average citizen.  While the apathy is rapidly diminishing, as people are beginning to realize more and more how bad things have gotten, it is still significant among the dumb masses.  More people care about football than politics.  Normally, this would not bother me actually because if the Statists had no sway over us, than politics would not be that big of a deal.

The fact is, the United States government at all levels (Federal, State, and Local) have systematically violated just about every law they demand we adhere to.  When I talk about violations, I do not mean legitimate acts of reparation, but acts of violating the non-aggression principle without regard for reparations.  For example, the commonwealth of Virginia, my state of residence, has outlawed gambling.  The law itself violates the non-aggression principle as gambling does not and government should not be involved in bad decisions.  At the same time, Virginia runs a lottery system, where people can gamble by buying state-issued lottery tickets of various kinds.  Meanwhile, detectives in my state are entrapping people for harmless sports bets and sometimes getting them killed (see the tragic case of Dr. Salvatore J. Culosi).  This is a grave overreach of government action and gambling should be legalized.  Unfortunately, because of the money off of those who are just plain stupid, I doubt there will be any such action any time soon.

There have been other incidents.  The shooting death of Oscar Grant, where BART police officer Johannes Mehserle of Oakland shot and killed a young man because he was on his stomach resisting arrest.  The fact is, Oscar Grant was not fighting back, he was simply making it difficult to be arrested.  But he was lying down, unarmed, and could easily have been handcuffed and taken away.  Instead this coward shot him.  And what was the punishment for this man?  He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, served two years with time served added into the sentence and is now out of parole.  If you watch the various videos, any sane person would have called it murder and Johannes Mehserle should have been still in prison now.

But the rules are different if you are a government worker.  This is how you can tell that we are no longer a Republic but a tyranny with most of the political process as being nothing more than a sideshow.  The bureaucracy at all levels has gotten so big that it is impossible for 536 elected people and 9 appointed judges to completely and properly oversee it.  So instead of the law be applied evenly to everyone regardless of what their standing is, it is applied selectively and only severely to those who exist outside of the “Outer Party”.

If we are to regain our freedom, we must first dismantle the various agencies, rules, and regulations which are designed not to enforce the non-aggression principle, but to protect the interests of those so-called protectors of the American citizenry.  Until that happens, there will be no liberty, just power and who has it.

As a final note, I would like to point out a couple of blog-related things: 1) I know that the video I posted was in Italian, not Spanish as I got confused over what the description said and I have trouble telling the languages apart as I only know English, and 2) I am not doing a 9/11 post because I simply do not care to.  All that can be said on that topic has been said elsewhere.

The Idiocy of Multiculturism and Open Borders

The tragic shooting of dozens of people in Norway by a slightly deranged murderer highlights the problems inherent in the Western civilizations these days.  The murderer’s apparent motive was one of anti-immigration, especially Islamic immigration, where he believed that Islam in incompatible with a secular Western civilization.  He also believed that the current government of Norway did not care about what the people believed on this issue, enough to resort to outright mass murder in what can only be described as a brilliant attack.

We should, however, look past the tragedy and analyze this murderer’s motives in the attack.  The victims of this crime would demand it of us if this person had been a Muslim executing a jihad attack.  The issue is the rise of diversity in the West and the tragic downfall of once sacred ideals as a result.  What was once held as a lofty ideal by a culture is suddenly drowned out by the competing cultures of other societies which creep into the existing society.

Multiculturism does not bring peoples from different societies together in peace and unity.  Instead, we have a series of competing cultures all looking to dominant one another for their own benefit.  The result is cultural conflict and, eventually, outright war.  This is especially true when you have Islamic radicals, who despise Western societies and values with a passion, free reign to declare their open hostility to the country they live in.  If Europe has any sense, they will begin a process of expelling any Islamist before they behead another relative of Van Gogh.

It is high time that the West looked at the nations who have maintained their society and history over the years without being overcome with foreign cultures.  Both Japan and China have largely kept their societal values over the centuries because they have largely been a closed culture.   While some people can make headway into those societies, you would be hard-pressed to bring many of the values of the West into Japan or China without considerable effort.

The open borders crowd seems to believe that American exceptionalism will win out on the incoming immigrants, provided we promote it.  But if the Afghans and Iraqis do not accept it under the barrel of a gun, how can we expect locals to accept it voluntarily?  More often than not, they will not accept it and instead combine their own values with their newly found freedom of speech.

This need not be a national phenomenon.  My aunt and uncle live in rural Pennsylvania where many “sophisticated” New York City people have decided to start retiring to.  Not a bad decision, since the property values were lower and the area is a lot quieter.  However, they have started to complain to the local county supervisors about the smell of manure that is rampant in the region, especially during the Spring.  And while I am sure that not all of them are complaining, there are enough to actually warrant attention.  It is patently absurd to think that you can live in a rural area and not be bothered by the smell of manure any more than it would be for me to live in downtown Harlem and not expect a great of harassment from the locals.  Yet these morons somehow think that there is no downside to living in a rural area.

Migrants never adapt local customs and values so long as there is a large enough group who migrate with them.  Instead, they retain their own values, customs, and languages while neglecting to learn the customs, values, and languages of their neighbors.  Eventually, radicals rise up within these communities who agitate them into conflict with the natives.  Right now in California, you will find a large group of Hispanic immigrates who want nothing more than to kick all the white people out and send them back to Plymouth.  It is a shame since white people, especially rich white people, are largely responsible for their jobs, which many of these activists will freely admit.

I can attest that the Hispanics who have come to my area are not exactly the kind of people you would want to be around.  The equivalent would be white trash really.  I have yet to see a Hispanic community who had any sense of how to take care of their own property, which is ironic considering how well they are landscaping.  Local elderly, white citizens often complain to the county supervisors (who do jack crap) about how there are five families packed into homes with trash on the the front yard.  The home next to my parents’ house has brown grass from some chemical spill (I can only assume) which they have yet to fix.  The backyard used to have a nice playground and shed but now has a rock garden, which is not all appealing.  I wish I could say that these are isolated incidents, but this kind of thing happens all over.

I really hope that there is no violence or race war of any kind.  I hope that each and every community can find a way to coexist along some kind of implied agreement.  Unfortunately, given the escalation of anti-white, anti-West rhetoric in the Black, Hispanic, and Islamic communities in the West (along with a few others), I see nothing but violence and conflict up ahead, especially during this depression.

For those of us looking to protect ourselves from such hatred, we need to keep in mind what happened to the various American Indian tribes and how mass migration affected them.  Isolationism looks more and more appealing every day as far as I am concerned.

Immigration Madness

Libertarians seem to have a very sharp divide on a few issues.  The question of dealing with illegal immigration is definitely one of the most divisive issues among most of the libertarians I’ve read up on in various blogs.  The divide comes down to the age old question of open borders versus immigration enforcement.

With the recent Arizona Immigration Law court ruling, where certain provisions were struck down, I’d like to elaborate some of my positions on immigration.  Now, it isn’t exactly black or white, because there are very complex economic, political, and administrative issues that have created this mess.

First of all, I am not for open borders right now.  I believe that open borders should be our ultimate goal, but simply overturning immigration laws at the Federal and State level will not create a healthy open borders situation.  The problem largely lies in Federal government intrusion into various areas of our lives.  Immigration laws should be the last laws to be repealed, not the first and simply providing amnesty to all illegal aliens here will only create more problems.

A major factor that just about no considers is the impact of the minimum wage on the demand for illegal labor.  If an employer has to pay more for his employees, then he may very seek out day laborers in order to mitigate his expenses.  Because of the minimum wage, most law-abiding people can’t compete with the illegal labor.  So if we were to eliminate the minimum wage, we could see a lot of illegal labor being curtailed by young workers who are simply looking for some kind of experience.

Another major factor is the State Department’s lack of a clear, easy program for immigrating into the United States.  The process, as any legal immigrate can tell you, puts the Vogon bureaucratic red tape to shame.  It takes several weeks to several months for foreign nationals to immigrate here and the process is never easy.

The War on Drugs factors into this as well.  Legalizing drugs (or having the Federal government back off of it) would greatly reduce the crime that is so prevalent on the borders.  I know, this is a controversial position, but a large portion of crime is related to the illegal drug trade, which is nothing more than a sophisticated smuggling operation brought about by the demand for addicts here and the desire for money in third-world hellholes.

The welfare state must be dismantled entirely in order to ensure that those who come here are doing so for work and not for free rides.  I know that a significant portion of the people who do come here are looking for better opportunities, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a large portion who are simply looking for a handout.

Lastly, much of our democratic system must be reworked so that the tyranny of the majority cannot reinstate the failed policies of Statism.  If we have open borders, then you have to be prepared to see large portions of people crossing the border and voting the same way that they did in their own country (if they were allowed to vote).  This means that whatever Statist policies were commonplace there could easily become commonplace here and this is flat out unacceptable.  People, in general, tend to leave places for a better life, but often fail to discard their beliefs that created the intolerable conditions they are fleeing from.  I call these people locust voters because they destroy everything by voting for Statists and then move on to another location when they don’t like the result.

In short, I am perfectly prepared to adopt a policy of open borders, provided we dismantle significant portions of the government first, which I don’t see happening at all, short of a total civilization collapse.  So for the time being, I will support border enforcement policies until we get to that point, if we ever do.

Libertarian Films and Television Shows I've Liked

There are many films and television shows that are laced with some libertarian-type themes.  They are not always apparent, since it's sometimes a small part of the entertainment, but it's there.  I've watched a lot of movies and television shows in my day, and I have to say that such ideals are often welcome in an entertainment culture that is usually dominated with secular humanist themes, which are not libertarian by any stretch of the imagination.  So here's a short list of movies and shows I've enjoyed that have a libertarian theme to them:

• The Night Stalker/The Night Strangler - This was originally aired before my time, but when I first watched this, I loved both these made for television movies.  Darrin McGavin plays Carl Kolchak, an in-your-face reporter who's been fired more than most people have had jobs.  In the first movie, he tracks down and kills a vampire, something he himself is unwilling to believe even exists at first, but the ending really brings out the libertarian theme.  Let's just say that the government morons are more interested in covering their own butts rather than acknowledge Kolchak's own heroism.  The second movie is a rehash of the first, only a different town with a different monster with a Carl Kolchak more open to the unusual answers.  These movies were so popular, a series was made (entitled Kolchak - The Night Stalker) which was the spiritual precursor to the X-Files, I'm told.
• 24: Season Eight - OK, while most of the show involved way too much government for my taste, the final season of the show really demonstrated how all our government resources can be turned against us with even morally upright leaders in power.  I twittered that this season showed what happens when Statism runs amok, and a couple fellow twitterers agreed.  Probably the best part was when Jack Bauer justifies (and rightly so in my view) his actions in the latter part of the season.  Very libertarian approach, if you ask me.
• Lost - This show had a lot of themes in it, but the libertarian theme was really about the circumstances of the characters.  All of them were on an island, dealing with the simple problems that all communities deal with, all without really formalizing a governmental structure.  Even the mysterious and mostly hidden leader of the island never really intervened directly with the inhabitants because he believed that people should know right from wrong without his help.  Two minor characters also end up living their own lives on the island, which also underlines a liberty ideal, that you are only as free as much as you assert that freedom.
• Burn Notice - This show is about a spy who is burned by some unknown party, which basically means he's left to fend for himself.  He ends up doing odd jobs, which usually involve helping people in trouble in ways that the government can't help them.  While liberty ideals aren't really discussed on the show, a man living in his own means and being hired to do essentially police work is strongly libertarian in my view.  Also, the show has Bruce Campbell as a regular star.
• Firefly -This series featured a group of outlaws in a distant solar system trying to live for themselves independent of the central government.  The characters are great, the show's premise was awesome, and Joss Whedon really did a great job with it.  Too bad Fox sucks at picking out good television programming.  The movie that came from the show, entitled Serenity, is much heavier on the theme of the perils of central planning.  I highly recommend the movie, if nothing else.
• Cowboy Bebop - This anime show deals with the a bunch of bounty hunters trying to catch criminals and collect the bounties.  Often times, they end up getting screwed over by the government (in one show, they catch the criminal, but since it was an artificial intelligence, the police don't declare it to be human and thus no bounty is paid).  One of the major aspects of this future is how the police are totally corrupt from top to bottom and very difficult to deal with.  The movie plays this theme as well, which in America is called Cowboy Bebop - The Movie, although the original title was Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door.
• Tears of the Sun - While this movie's main characters are special forces, I found this one to have a great ideal about how sometimes you have to do what's right, despite what your government tells you to do.  Some could argue that it smacks of military interventionism, but I disagree.  Also, since I've traveled to Africa in the past, it's one of the movies that gets me almost crying (almost, I am a man after all).
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - This movie, based on the popular book series (the trilogy of five), features a universe where the President does nothing but distracts the people from the real authority and demonstrates just how absurd bureaucrats really are.  I don't think anyone has captured this level of humor and depth in such a way as Douglas Adams did.
• Penn & Teller - Bullsh*t! - This show is just plain great in demonstrating the stupidity of big government.  There were many episodes dealing with gun control, drug legalization, and capital punishment to name a few.  Too bad they're atheists, because they sometimes make rather nasty attacks on Christianity.  But you can always skip those episodes.

Well, that's the short list.  I know, some of these may be a bit of a stretch and there are always many different ways to interpret a movie or television show.  But that's how I see things.  Feel free to add your own to this list in the comments section.  I'd be interested to see new things with libertarian themes.

Libertarians: Keeping Conservatives Honest (More or Less)

It’s no secret that there is no love between conservatives and libertarians.  Well, there is some, but often times there is just as much disagreement between conservatives and libertarians as there is between liberals and conservatives.  The ideology is very different between the two and libertarians are often looked down upon by many conservatives.
The insults are probably the worst.  Of all the libertarian people I’ve read up on and talked to, most of them have yet to refer to conservatives in some clever and derogatory way.  At best they are called fools for voting Republican without regard for the consequences.  However, I’ve seen libertarians be called “liberaltarian” and “kook” among others by the very conservatives who grip about liberal insults.
While it’s true that all of us libertarians have a very different outlook on the role of government, we are not all that dissimilar from conservative thought.  I myself was a conservative in my younger, more naive years (there I go insulting them like I just complained about).  I made the transition when I realized that freedom was more important than security and that the government has been, by and large, a very bad investment when it comes to justice and security.
But libertarianism does more than offer an alternative to conservatism for those who desire limited government.  Because we are further to the right (generally) than the conservative movement, we tend to keep conservatives more honest and question their own leaders when they refuse to adhere to the principles of limited government.  What we do is challenge there more fanatical devotions to Republican leaders who behave like liberals but claim the holy mantle of conservatism.
This doesn’t always work out the way we want, of course.  If one of us libertarians pushes too hard, the conservative will buckle down and get defensive, to the point of supporting worthless dolts who don’t give a damn about their own ideals.  This guy Bennett from Utah is a prime example, considering that he was re-elected during the Bush years.
The truth is, libertarians are needed within the conservative movement because we going to hold you to your principles, whether you like it or not, because many of those principles are our principles.  Sure we have conflicting views on some things like foreign policy and social issues, but at the same time, this nation isn’t too concerned about those things right now.
Considering what has happened in Greece, what will probably happen in Europe, and what has to happen here, isn’t it time we set aside our petty differences on social and foreign policy and focus instead on the very serious fiscal issues that Democrats and liberals clearly don’t give a damn about?
Or are we bound to constantly fight each other over things we both know the government cannot fix any time soon where as budgets are surprisingly easy, despite what a politician might tell you.
Still though, I fully expect many conservatives to look down on libertarians because for many, it’s considered some kind of higher calling.  I know because I used to think that way too.  And so long as you believe that you are right and everyone else is evil, well, you’ll never compromise.

Conservatives, Divisive as Ever

Shortly after Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll, I posted a poll on the small conservative forum I regularly post on.  It was a question as to whether or not you would vote for Ron Paul, if he managed to secure the Republican nomination for President in 2012.  Many conservatives, you see, have trouble with the very notion of Ron Paul winning his Congressional seat, let alone such a high office.
So I posed the following answers to the question “If Ron Paul wins the nomination in 2012 to run as President, would you vote for him?”:

• Yes, I would gladly do so
• Yes, I would begrudgingly pull that lever for him
• Yes, but only if President Obama is still on the Democratic ticket
• No, I’d vote Democrat instead
• No, I’d vote third-party or write-in instead
• Not even in Hell

So the poll went on for awhile.  Eventually, the mods locked the thread because, you see, the Ron Paul-haters really stepped up the hateful rhetoric and many of the more libertarian posters responded in kind.  In any case, the final results were as follows:

• Total people who voted: 28
• Total people who would gladly vote for Ron Paul: 7 (25%)
• Total people who would begrudgingly vote for Ron Paul: 6 (21%)
• Total people who would do so only if Obama was on the Democrat ticket: 5 (18%)
• Total people who would vote Democrat instead: 2 (7%)
• Total people who would vote third party: 2 (7%)
• Total people who said they wouldn't even vote for Ron Paul in Hell: 6 (21%)

When Rush Limbaugh responded to the CPAC straw poll, he merely stated that there must have not been that many conservatives at CPAC for him to have won.  At another point on this same forum, I asked someone if he would rather vote for a pro-choice libertarian or a pro-life Statist.  He responded by stating he’d rather have a Statist running things than a libertarian solely because of that one issue.
Conservatives are not the answer to limited government.  They are merely the other side of the coin when it comes to directing this nation.  I’m afraid our best bet is to convince those few who are open to libertarian ideas that our ideas are better and marginalize the fanatics.

Conservatives Need Some Lessons on Economic Freedom

Being a libertarian-minded person (I don’t consider myself to be an ‘exact’ libertarian, but it’s close enough), I am astounded by the number of people who have no idea what true economic freedom means.  I am also astounded by how many people are afraid of letting the government regulations be completely removed from pretty much all industries and let the chaos of the free market bring us to prosperity.
Conservatives, by and large, should know better.  Unfortunately, they generally do not and this is one of the primary reasons why I don’t associate my ideological title with theirs anymore.  In most cases, conservatives are for free and open trade, but when it comes to certain things, they differ to the government rather than the market for things that really have nothing to do with true government functions.
A good example is the banking industry that we all live under right now.  I have heard time after time many conservatives talk about how the banking industry needs to be regulated by the government.  The reasons are the same that liberals use for pretty much all other industries, so why do they single out the banks in this manner?
For one thing, they do support the Federal Reserve and the system that is entailed with it.  While I can’t go into all the details why this is a fallacy, let’s just say that the Federal Reserve is a huge break from even the constitutional power of Congress to print money.  Under the current Federal Reserve system, the wealth of the middle class is slowly being drained away because of the inflated currency.  Do you really consider yourself middle class when both spouses have to work in order to sustain their lifestyle?
Another reason is the fear of a banking monopoly if the so-called restraints of government were taken off.  This is an absurd argument, especially considering that the banks already have a pretty nasty monopoly on us as it stands.  Do you think a software company could have coerced the government into bailing them out?  If Microsoft were about to go under, wouldn’t they have more influence on the American consumer than the banks?  I mean, if the banks collapsed, you would probably be forgiven most of your debt but if Microsoft went under, well, you’d see a lot of security exploits and hacks like no one’s business.  The point is, any industry could be more crucial than another and the only reason the banks got to extort us is because they were in the secret rooms providing false prophecies of doom and gloom.  And Congress drank the Kool-Aid on our behalf.
There are others they seem to forget could easily be handled in the free market.  NASA, for example, is a artifact from the Cold War and if there is any advantage to space exploration, I’m sure that the free market could find it and do a much better job than the government can.  The postal service is proving to be a waste of resources.  For me, I find myself throwing most of my mail out because it’s junk.  With the rise of the Internet and other telecommunications, most of which exist in the private markets, the postal service is becoming irrelevant in very short order.
There is hope though.  As more and more conservatives begin to interact with other Tea Party members, many of which are libertarian, we’ll see more of these free market ideas go out into their ranks.  With Ron Paul nearly winning a Republican straw poll (not a conservative one, just Republican), this demonstrates the politically active are leaning more to the libertarian side rather than close to the center right.  And with the likes of David Frum saying exactly the things that they don’t want to hear, it’ll only push conservatives in that direction.
At least I hope so.  I’m not a prophet and if I was, my blog wouldn’t be about politics.