The economic and spiritual aspects of man's nature are inextricably intertwined. He cannot be economically free, or even economically efficient, if he is enslaved politically; conversely, man's political freedom is illusory if he is dependent for his economic needs on the state.
Thus, for the American Conservative, there is no difficulty in identifying the day's overriding political challenge: it is to preserve and extend freedom.
Release the holders of state power from any restraints other than those they wish to impose upon themselves, and you are swinging down the well-travelled road to absolutism.
The framers... knew that rules of government... would be no match for men who were determined to disregard them. In the last analysis their system of government would prosper only if the governed were sufficiently determined that it should.
Broken promises are not the major causes of our troubles. Kept promises are.
We have gone the way of many a democratic society that has lost its freedom by persuading itself that if "the people" rule, all is well.
The turn will come... when Americans... decide to put the man in office who is pledged to enforce the Constitution and restore the Republic.
I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size.
My aim... is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden.
I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible.
The Tenth Amendment... means that the States have a right to act or not to act, as they see fit, in the areas reserved to them. The States may have duties corresponding to these rights, but the duties are owed to the people of the States, not to the federal government. Therefore, the recourse lies not with the federal government, which is not sovereign, but with the people who are, and who have full power to take disciplinary action.
If we condone the practice of substituting our own intentions for those of the Constitution's framers, we reject, in effect, the principle of Constitutional Government: we endorse a rule of men, not of laws.
The only way to persuade farmers to enter other fields of endeavor is to stop paying inefficient farmers for produce that cannot be sold at free market prices.... Most farmers want to stand on their own feet. They are prepared to take their chances in the free market.
The real evil in the labor field... is the enormous economic and political power now concentrated in the hands of union leaders. Such power hurts the nation's economy by forcing on employers contract terms that encourage inefficiency, lower production and high prices -- all of which result in a lower standard of living for the American people.
The natural function of a trade union... is perverted the moment a union claims the right to represent employees who do not want representation, or conducts activities that have nothing to do with terms of employment (e.g., political activities), or tries to deal with an industry as a whole instead of with individual employers.
As long as union leaders can force workers to join their organization, they have no incentive to act responsibly.... If unions had to earn the adherence of their members the result would be -- not only more freedom for the working man -- but much less dishonesty and high handedness in the management of the union affairs.
The American taxpayer... has lost confidence in his claim to his money. He has been handicapped in resisting high taxes by the feeling that he is... obliged to accommodate whatever need for his wealth government chooses to assert.
When the federal government enacts programs that are not authorized by its delegated powers, the taxes needed to pay for such programs exceed the government's rightful claim on our wealth... The government must begin to withdraw from a whole series of programs that are outside its constitutional mandate.
The effect of Welfarism on freedom will be felt later on -- after its beneficiaries have become its victims, after dependence on government has turned into bondage and it is too late to unlock the jail.
Conservatism is through unless Conservatives can demonstrate and communicate the difference between being concerned with these problems and believing that the federal government is the proper agent for their solution.
The state that is able to deal with its citizens as wards and dependents has gathered unto itself unlimited political and economic power and is thus able to rule as absolutely as any... despot.
One of the great evils of Welfarism [is] that it transforms the individual from a dignified, industrious, self-reliant spiritual being into a dependent animal creature without his knowing it.
If the objection [to private charity] is raised that private institutions lack sufficient funds, let us remember that every penny the federal government does not appropriate for welfare is potentially available for private use -- and without the overhead charge for processing the money through the federal bureaucracy. Indeed, high taxes... is the biggest obstacle to fund raising by private charities.
We have forgotten that the proper function of the school is to transmit the cultural heritage of one generation to the next generation, and to so train the minds of the new generation as to make them capable of absorbing ancient learning and applying it to the problem of its own day.
We have forgotten for whom education is intended. The function of our schools is not to educate, or elevate, society; but rather to educate individuals and to equip them with the knowledge that will enable them to take care of society's needs.
Implicit in every law, ordinance, statute, and code is a mechanism for enforcement which, taken to its logical end, allows the state or municipality to use increasing amounts of coercion up to and including lethal force, if necessary, against the non-compliant. This is worth remembering when government at any level seeks to "protect" us with official actions from "monsters" that seem to exist primarily in the minds of busybodies who are eager to use their power to control, intimidate or inconvenience citizens who dare think outside the box. Safety is fast becoming an Orwellian buzzword for justifying increased government control at all levels.
The key point is that going into bankruptcy does not destroy the firm's capital, both physical and human. As a result, that capital can become available for a new firm, perhaps even a competitor, to purchase at a discount and use more profitably than the bankrupt firm did. In the case of the Big Three auto companies, doing things at lower cost and producing a better product would not be hard.
If they declare bankruptcy and need to liquidate assets to pay off creditors, it's quite likely that other car manufacturers (and let's remember that "The Big Three" are not all of the "US auto industry" as many other firms have plants here) would be interested in buying up their factories and perhaps even rehiring their labor, though certainly with contracts less generous than the UAW's current ones...
Well-functioning markets require that misallocated resources have opportunities to get reallocated to more valuable uses when those mistakes are revealed...
Supporters of the auto bailout could use a refresher course on all of this.
Indeed, the “bad” economists have advised short-sighted politicians (Dare I repeat myself?) to do the most visible things. The news cameras will show the autoworkers in Detroit going to work instead of being laid off. When Congress and the incoming presidential administration raise the minimum wage, the news cameras will record the life of a single mother who has received a raise.
The cameras, however, will not record those millions of people elsewhere who lose their jobs because resources are being diverted from productive uses to the political uses of propping up automobile companies that have been a rendition of the “living dead” for many years
government, left to its own devices, provides neither liberty nor security.
Consider this: How many times has someone accosted you, hand on gun, who was not an agent of the state? For me, anyway, the answer is never.
Yes, armed agents have stopped me at roadside checkpoints, but no one else, locked and loaded, has harassed me on the roads. And there is something to consider about that truth.
To believe that the more the state threatens my person, and the more that the state invades my property, the greater my security is to believe the lie central to the state. And to watch fellow countrymen harassed, only to assume that the state must have reason for its harassment is to turn backs on the very same rights expected to protect us in the end...
Liberty provides security, not government.
Quote of the Afternoon
October 28, 2007 – 3:54 pm by murraymises
We are... opposed to communism... no more so than we are opposed to fascism or socialism or any other form of authoritarianism... To stress the threat of communism is to divert attention from the threats of equal potency and nearer to home. We cannot help seeing in the concentration of power in our own Executive an attack on freedom; in the drive for government schooling we see the menance of collectivist indoctrination; in taxation and inflation we recognize the gradual abolition of private property… If under cover of our preoccupation with communism these threats to freedom are permitted to go unchallenged, what is accomplished? –- Frank Chodorov (early 1950s, as quoted in Brian Doherty’s Radicals for Capitalism)
Substitute the word “terrorism” for “communism” and the quote could have been written yesterday. Yes, America is progressing, but toward totalitarianism not freedom.
American schoolchildren are receiving some valuable lessons in democracy, American-style...
After all, bribery is the name of the game in U.S. politics. It’s just that we don’t call it that for the sake of appearance and respectability...
How then does the president bail out auto companies when the U.S. Senate has refused to approve the deal? Isn’t that what dictatorship is all about?
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The Fed takes the position that such secrecy is essential to its operations. The taxpayers, whose money is being used to make such loans, will just have to trust their appointed officials at the Fed. But hey, isn’t that type of secrecy found in communist and other totalitarian regimes?
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Bush took the position that he could sign the agreement on his own, without the approval of Congress. Isn’t that a strange way for democracy to operate? Doesn’t it seem more akin to dictatorship?
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Otto von Bismarck once said, “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” The same holds true for politicians and bureaucrats in the U.S. and the dictatorial actions they take.
There is an almost invincible prejudice that a man who gives a dollar to a beggar is generous and kind-hearted, but that a man who refuses the beggar and puts the dollar in a savings bank is stingy and mean. The former is putting capital where it is very sure to be wasted, and where it will be a kind of seed for a long succession of future dollars, which must be wasted to ward off a greater strain on the sympathies than would have been occasioned by a refusal in the first place. Inasmuch as the dollar might have been turned into capital and given to a laborer who, while earning it, would have reproduced it, it must be regarded as taken from the latter...
There always are two parties. The second one is always the Forgotten Man, and any one who wants to truly understand the matter in question must go and search for the Forgotten Man. He will be found to be worthy, industrious, independent, and self-supporting. He is not, technically, "poor" or "weak"; he minds his own business, and makes no complaint. Consequently the philanthropists never think of him, and trample on him...
For our present purpose it is most important to notice that if we lift any man up we must have a fulcrum, or point of reaction. In society that means that to lift one man up we push another down. The schemes for improving the condition of the working classes interfere in the competition of workmen with each other. The beneficiaries are selected by favoritism, and are apt to be those who have recommended themselves to the friends of humanity by language or conduct which does not betoken independence and energy. Those who suffer a corresponding depression by the interference are the independent and self-reliant, who once more are forgotten or passed over; and the friends of humanity once more appear, in their zeal to help somebody, to be trampling on those who are trying to help themselves...
A trade union raises wages by restricting the number of apprentices who may be taken into the trade. This device acts directly on the supply of laborers, and that produces effects on wages. If, however, the number of apprentices is limited, some are kept out who want to get in. Those who are in have, therefore, made a monopoly, and constituted themselves a privileged class on a basis exactly analogous to that of the old privileged aristocracies. But whatever is gained by this arrangement for those who are in is won at a greater loss to those who are kept out...
Almost all legislative effort to prevent vice is really protective of vice, because all such legislation saves the vicious man from the penalty of his vice. Nature's remedies against vice are terrible. She removes the victims without pity. A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set up on him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness. Gambling and other less mentionable vices carry their own penalties with them.
Now, we never can annihilate a penalty. We can only divert it from the head of the man who has incurred it to the heads of others who have not incurred it. A vast amount of "social reform" consists in just this operation. The consequence is that those who have gone astray, being relieved from Nature's fierce discipline, go on to worse, and that there is a constantly heavier burden for the others to bear...
The industrious and sober workman, who is mulcted of a percentage of his day's wages to pay the policeman, is the one who bears the penalty. But he is the Forgotten Man. He passes by and is never noticed, because he has behaved himself, fulfilled his contracts, and asked for nothing...
Judge Richard Sanders: "... we must speak our conscience in moments that demand it, even if we are but one voice."
Or, for that matter, if we have only one set of shoes to hurl at the Emperor.
Policymakers, from the Dear Leader on down, are hermetically sealed off from dissent of any kind. On those rare occasions when frustration and moral outrage find a fissure in that bubble and the serenity of a political celebrity is disturbed, the result is usually a prominent display of some kind of corrective violence directed at the dissident.
Because he's a sitting judge, Sanders won't be punished in any way for his eruption. A private citizen almost certainly would face some kind of reprisal: That, after all, is what Tasers are for.
You have to ask this question: If the Detroit carmakers are in dire straits, going broke in two weeks, right now in late 2008, how can the UAW wait until 2011 to make its concessions? The financial problem is today, not two years from today. The threat of liquidation, with perhaps a few million autoworker, supplier, and car-dealer jobs lost, is today's threat, not a 2011 threat. So what's the UAW waiting for?
That's easy. Gettelfinger is waiting for President Obama and a Senate with 58 Democrats. He also was playing a game of bluff with President George W. Bush. He knew Bush had $15 billion of TARP money ready to go, meaning the TARP was Gettelfinger's trump card. The tough-minded union leader never believed the White House would let GM sink and possibly force millions of job losses in the middle of a recession.
So while Sen. Corker was negotiating in good faith (even with the support of Democratic big-wig Chris Dodd), Gettelfinger doomed the deal, knowing full well that the Democratic Senate conference would never walk away from the UAW.
You don't have to be a technician to know that foreign makers – whether building abroad or residing in the United States – make a superior car at a better price, no matter how much the "Big 3" waste on hopped-up advertising campaigns. In fact, we should welcome their complete bankruptcy. Maybe they can regroup or maybe they can't. That's for the market to decide.
In the meantime, not cranking out these endless cars would be a welcome relief, freeing up labor and capital for more economically useful purposes.
To bail them out with tax dollars is an amazing insult to American consumers. What Americans have chosen not to buy, the government is now effectively forcing them to buy. You want a Toyota and paid for it with your money but your government is now saying that you should have bought a Pontiac, so it is tapping into your bank account to make it happen – and then not even giving you a car for your money!
The pilot’s value is a product of his humanity, not a function of the job he has chosen or the clothing he wears to work. The same can be said of Yoon’s wife, Yong Mi; his daughters, 15-month-old Grace and 2-month-old Rachel; and his mother-in-law, Suk Im Kim. Each of them was a treasure of incalculable worth...
None of these individual human lives should have ended on that morning. But if one couldn’t be spared, it was the moral duty of the pilot to sacrifice his own – assuming, of course, that there is a coherent moral code underlying the institutions of American militarism...
This lieutenant thus confronted that rarest of things, an opportunity for a member of the US Armed Forces actually to defend the lives of American civilians. In this case, he could have done so by turning around and attempting to make it back to the Abraham Lincoln, rather than flying over a heavily populated area aboard a stricken fighter jet...
Had he done so, he may have had to ditch his plane in the ocean and dying at sea. But he would have protected the civilian population, which is supposedly the reason our government has a military in the first place...
I do not mean to suggest that I wish this young man had died... I am underscoring the fact that it would be ethically perverse to suggest that the proper course of action was to sacrifice the lives of four civilians in order to save the life of a Marine...
I am very concerned, however, that Yoon’s generous gesture will help fortify an already widespread, and thoroughly pernicious, assumption – namely, that those wearing government-issued uniforms are more valuable than the population at large, and should be protected at the cost of civilian lives...
The only morally sound answer to this predicament is that the military officer must sacrifice himself on behalf of the civilian. That, after all, is what he was trained to do, what he had promised when he enlisted. To do otherwise would be to nullify the entire stated purpose of having a military establishment in the first place. Any other conclusion would be based on the assumption that the civilian population exists to defend the military, rather than the reverse...
Rather than forcing civilians to sacrifice their lives for the military, conscription forces civilians to surrender their lives to protect the State and those who control it...
Although we’re rarely told that our rulers assume we exist to protect them and serve their needs, that assumption is infused into the warp and weave of the Regime...
The unadorned truth, however, is that Yoon's family was taken from him needlessly, killed as collateral damage in the routine operations of the Leviathan State.
There is no mention, however, of the one essential ingredient to the Paul phenomenon that is missing in the Trust's memo: the commitment to consistent philosophic principles that united so many behind Ron's campaign...
Where were these concerned "Trustees" when their GOP president, George W. Bush, was engaging in wars that put billions of dollars into the pockets of their corporate friends, and led this same president to state, to members of Congress, that he would declare martial law if they did not pass legislation bestowing hundreds of billions of dollars of largesse upon Wall Street banking interests? Is the GOP so hopelessly bankrupt that some of its members must resort to a distinction without meaning that condemns state socialism while ignoring its own contributions to the state-sponsored economic destruction emanating from a Republican White House?
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Ron Paul’s success has been due to a growing awareness – particularly among young adults – of the fundamental distinction between the "free market" and the "business system."
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Members of the next generation – those capable of and having an incentive to do the math – have figured out that the present system will prove a disaster for them. With a population of approximately 300,000,000, the anticipated $7,600,000,000,000 corporate bailout will, by itself, cost a family of four some $100,000...
As the last eight years have confirmed, conservatism in general, and the Republican Party in particular, have long been morally, spiritually, and intellectually bankrupt...
For more years than I can recount, we have long had a one-party system in America, disguised in the form of two branches that owe their allegiances to the country’s corporate owners, and who espouse minor variations on the same establishment-serving themes...
James Wolcott: "To stop being conned, stop conning yourself."
Most people on the left are not opposed to freedom. They are just in favor of all sorts of things that are incompatible with freedom...
Freedom ultimately means the right of other people to do things that you do not approve of...
The arrogance of commandeering young people's time, instead of leaving them and their parents free to decide for themselves how to use that time, is exceeded only by the arrogance of imposing your own notions as to what is or is not a service to the community...
You can make anything an "entitlement" for individuals and groups but nothing is an entitlement for society as a whole, not even food or shelter, both of which have to be produced by somebody's work or they will not exist...
What "entitlements" for some people mean is forcing other people to work for their benefit. As a bumper sticker put it: "Work harder. Millions of people on welfare are depending on you."
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The most fundamental question is: What in the world qualifies teachers and members of college admissions committees to define what is good for society as a whole, or even for the students on whom they impose their arbitrary notions? What expertise do they have that justifies overriding other people's freedom?
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What lessons do students get from this, except submission to arbitrary power?
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In other words, people on the left want the right to impose their idea of what is good for society on others-- a right that they vehemently deny to those whose idea of what is good for society differs from their own.
The essence of bigotry is refusing to others the rights that you demand for yourself. Such bigotry is inherently incompatible with freedom, even though many on the left would be shocked to be considered opposed to freedom.
For better or worse, a country is in large part its government. Thus for most people, loving one’s country means, among other things, feeling a sense of loyalty to and even reverence for its government. That doesn’t mean that people never criticize “their” government. But for the person who thinks of himself as patriotic, the criticism never reaches down to the core; it’s usually directed at specific politicians...
In the United States, the idea of self-government is reinforced by state schooling and the news media, which plant the message that if one doesn’t like the government, one has only oneself to blame...
Yet the word “patriotism” doesn’t really get at what underlies the suspicion we’ve seen expressed. “Nationalism” better captures the phenomenon, because it connotes something like a religious attitude toward the nation, as though it were a transcendent mystical entity, an object of worship, with the government its material representative. That explains why the flag is treated as something sacred. Why else would people force their kids to pledge allegiance to it (with a Nazi-style salute in the early 20th century), fear its touching the ground, or want a constitutional amendment forbidding the burning of it?
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This highlights one of the contradictions in conservatism. Most conservatives pay lip service to free people, free markets, and small government while simultaneously singing the praises of government activism in foreign policy...
An earlier generation of conservatives, who really were skeptical of state power, opposed foreign intervention...
For the current crop of conservatives, nothing provides the opportunity for “America” to show its greatness and leadership as do foreign policy and, most especially, war. In reality, what they actually provide is an opportunity for self-serving, ambitious presidents to create legacies and funnel citizens’ wealth to government contractors — Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex...
Worship of the nation and its government is in fact inconsistent with America’s founding ideals. Thomas Jefferson said the appropriate attitude of a free people toward the government is “jealousy” not “confidence,” much less adoration. He spoke of the need to keep it caged. He was right, but if he were around today, conservatives might accuse him of not loving his country. Stripped of its incidental characteristics, government is nothing but physical force. So government, even under the best of circumstances, must always be eyed with suspicion. No Jeffersonian can be comfortable with government activism in foreign affairs. Appeals to security are to be met with high skepticism, for it’s too easy a cover for political intrigue...
That conservatives relish almost any foreign activism shows how un-Jeffersonian they are. They are nationalists and state-worshipers. For them, to love America is to love the government...
There certainly are things about America to love. The philosophy expressed in the Declaration of Independence tops the list... Any dedication to liberty and resistance to tyranny are worthy of admiration...
But for that very reason, so much about “America” deserves not love or pride but contempt. From the start, people in power have sought to nullify the ideals that distinguished America from other countries. The record of U.S. interventionist foreign policy, which has required coercion of the American people and others, is a record of shame. American presidents have supported and even installed dictators to advance the U.S. government’s imperial agenda. Their military policy has regarded civilian lives as expendable in the pursuit of an international regime amenable to the American ruling elite’s mercantile interests. Of course, that was justified as spreading freedom and democracy, a charade that fooled far more Americans than foreigners...
Capitalism in practice has meant a system of mercantilist privilege for wealthy interests, with harmful consequences at home and abroad. That is not something to be proud of. It is something to be condemned...
To neutralize dissent, the government and its “private sector” clients have inculcated an ethic extolling “service to our country,” especially military “service.” We are asked to believe that every American soldier sent to intervene in a foreign land was “defending our freedom.” A largely uncritical populace accepts this view, and even when people grow tired of a military operation, they rarely entertain the thought that the politicians and military personnel responsible for it are guilty of crimes...
Insisting on the alleged virtue of loving one’s country mainly serves to give those in power a blank check. The alternative, though, is not to hate one’s country, for that would merely be the other side of the same fallacy. A country per se should be an object neither of love nor of hatred.
[I]t stands to reason that if workers in developing countries are underpaid and exploited, a profit-seeking businessperson would be able to reap immediate profits by hiring the workers away from their current occupations and re-employing them elsewhere.
If people pass on the opportunity, Caplan argues, then they implicitly accept the tragic-but-nonetheless-real fact that workers in very poor countries simply are not very productive. Low wages, then, are not the product of exploitative multinational corporations but of extremely low productivity...
[T]he textile sweatshops derided by rich westerners offer higher wages and better working conditions than the alternatives in very poor countries. People in developing countries need more sweatshops rather than fewer.
Regulation also will not change the productivity of very poor workers...
Can companies "afford to pay more?" Again, the answer is no. Firms might be able to pay above-market wages in the short run... In the short run, we can improve standards of living for some people. In the long run, this illusory prosperity comes at the cost of increasing future poverty...
The idea that expanding and integrating the global marketplace exploits the poor is a myth that causes avoidable misery. Protesting and trying to slow the advance of international capitalism is not the solution. Encouraging the development of institutions in which the world's poor can increase their productivity is.
