Posts Tagged ‘libertarian’
Analyst Observes “Quiet Libertarian Victories”
RealClearPolitics posted an article this morning pointing out how recent court decisions have upheld libertarian values in the areas of campaign finance, gun control, climate change legistlation, and drug policy. These judicial victories coupled with Rep. Ron Paul’s, R-Texas, straw poll victory at CPAC offer a hopeful future for liberty in American politics. Below is an excerpt from the article; follow the accompanying link to read more.
“The last several years have not been easy for libertarians to stomach. The U.S. government, which had bloated under President George W. Bush and a Republican Congress – the annual budget had climbed from $2 to $3 trillion under Bush and that didn’t count much off-budget military spending – has grown even more under President Barack Obama and his Democrats.
The U.S. now has nationalized industries, out-of-control deficits, and a looming entitlement crunch to deal with. And that’s before we factor in Obama’s calls for even more stimulus and new programs. America, the joke goes, doesn’t have the change to afford hope any more. So why are so many libertarians smiling?”
Read the full article here.
The article is written by Jeremy Lott, who has worked with the Cato Institute and currently co-hosts the Competitive Enterprise Institute‘s Liberty Week podcast.
The Libertarian Revolution
Watch this great interview between Andrew Napolitano and Reason‘s Nick Gillespie on the future of the libertarian movement. They demonstrate that both parties have incrased the size and scope of government power, even Reagan and St Lincoln. Only libertarianism protects individual rights and promotes social-cultural-economic progress. As the great libertarian writers of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries understood, a free society enjoys liberty, prosperity, peace, and civilization. Big Government tyranny leads to slavery, stagnation, war, and barbarism. May God save us from bipartisan tyrants.
See the video here.
Blame the Market, Everybody’s Doing It
I think it’s safe to say that our country is going through some very challenging times. As if a war half way across the world isn’t enough, we have now been hit with a recession touted as being the worst since the Great Depression. While the US has weathered other recessions that could arguably be considered worse than the current one, none of those were near as threatening. The US has never been in such terrible financial shape while going through such a crisis. This is not to say that we were in good shape at the time of the Great Depression. However, our current national debt, which makes the debt of the early 20th century seem like chump change, is threatening this country in ways never before experienced.
There is a lot of finger pointing going on, mainly by our politicians who don’t want blame to fall on their shoulders. The government’s main culprit thus far has been the greed of corporate executives. Our situation has transformed into another blame game where the free market is destined to lose. The strategy of big government during recessions is to blame capitalism in order to gain support for more governmental regulations. If the market gets better, the politicians cheer the effectiveness of the new regulations. However, if the market should go deeper into recession, the government claims it is because not enough regulations were instituted. Do you see how this is a tad bit unfair to capitalism? How will the free market ever get a chance under these unjust critiques?
Anybody claiming the free market caused this crisis should seriously reconsider. The US is not a free market economy. We haven’t had a free market since the Federal Reserve (a.k.a. the Fed) was established in 1913. A free market cannot exist in a society where interest rates are controlled by a central bank.
Hurray for Mark Sanford
The Republican governor of South Carolina, who has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, recently offered a nuts and bolts overview of how the stimulus package could ruin his state’s finances.
A quick summary of Marxism
According to the late, great libertarian writer, Henry Hazlit….
“The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects – his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.”
Two Threats To Liberty
This talk was delivered on June 1, 2007, at the Future of Freedom Foundation’s Conference on “Restoring the Republic: Foreign Affairs and Civil Liberties.” By Lew Rockwell, Jr of lewrockwell.com. http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/conflict-or-cooperation.html
There are two clear and present dangers to liberty in America. One is known as the left, and the other is known as the right. They are dangerous because they seek to use government to mold society into a form they seek, rather than the form that liberty achieves if society is left on its own.
I’m going to assume that the left and the right come to their views sincerely, that their passion for using government is driven by some fear that the absence of government would yield catastrophe. So the burden of my talk today will be to identify and explain the common thread that connects the worldview of the left and the right, and suggest that they are both wrong about the capacity of society, whether it is defined locally or internationally, to manage itself.
Majority Rules
Government never has impressed me. If anybody has read more than one of my articles, that fact is pretty clear. I feel as if most government action is based on special interest and ultimately does no good for society as a whole. Obviously government intervention has gotten us into the mess we are in today. If you feel it is a free market problem, I would suggest doing some research. Since the government has gotten more involved in trying to fix our economy, our national debt has ballooned from about $5 billion to $10 trillion. Also, as author G. Edward Griffin of The Creature from Jekyll Island explains, net worth of two-income families is lower than one-income families used to claim, the percentage of Americans who own their homes is dropping, the age at which a family acquires their first home is rising, mortgage foreclosures are increasing, the number of families in the middle-class is falling, family debt is greater, savings are smaller, the number of people below the poverty level is rising, the percentage of people working beyond age 65 is rising, and the rate of personal bankruptcy is quadruple what is was in 1960. This is all with government run programs trying to help the poor, regulate the banks, and save the economy. Is it any wonder I don’t buy into government help?
