"Not One Conservative Agrees with Ron Paul"

Sometimes talk radio makes me crazy! It didn’t always, though. As a matter of fact, I used to find great comfort in listening to my favorite hosts when I lived in Southern California. During those years, there were several hosts I relied on to keep me sane, one in particular I dubbed “the Voice of Reason.” These hosts’ rational arguments against the false hope of entitlements and the impossibility of a centrally-controlled economy provided me a constant palliative to all the liberal rhetoric to which I was daily exposed in LA. I sloughed off the growing social agenda these hosts seemed to be pushing and also decided to give the benefit of the doubt to Bush & Co. on invading Iraq–who was I to presume to understand the complexities of geopolitics? Eventually, however, I stopped listening to talk radio, in part because I couldn’t get worked up about cultural issues (and I am opposed to legislating morality), but more because I finally started to notice that we were making the situation in the Middle East worse not better and all of a sudden there was an agenda there beyond preventing another terrorist attack on American soil. At this point, I didn’t know if the talk show hosts were lying or stupid or blind or what, but I couldn’t listen to them anymore. Once the scales had fallen from my eyes and I saw that the right had become a fake-out for a different kind of Statism, there was no going back.
Since beginning to do talk radio myself, however, I have had to listen to other hosts to get a bead on things like rhythm, timing, and what they call in the business “formatics.” So I tuned in to my former favorite, “the Voice of Reason.” Big mistake. He was talking about Ron Paul, and as so often is the case these days with right-wing talk show hosts talking about the good doctor, the gloves were off.  To me, the New Right’s vehemence in opposing Paul betrays their desperation, and their universal preference for Rick Santorum over Ron Paul betrays their true priorities:  they are OK with big government and limitless debt if they get to legislate morality and continue to battle for control over the Middle East. In my mind, the New Right have revealed themselves as just as disrespectful of the Constitution and the liberty and justice they pretend to defend as the left whom they are pretending to defend us against—and what’s worse, they actually take the place of, and in Ron Paul’s case, denounce, real liberty-loving fiscal conservatives who are trying to fight the good fight.
Listening to the radio today only drove me further from being influenced by the lockstep hosts of prime time. After taking a call on Ron Paul (which I have noticed this host does just to give himself an opportunity to make his anti-Paul case), the Former Voice of Reason said, “I bounce things off people all the time and if I bounced a view off of everyone I knew and they all disagreed with me I would doubt myself. For all those people who like Ron Paul, how do you respond to this: Not one conservative figure agrees with Ron Paul. Are they all fools? Charles Krauthammer is a fool. Ann Coulter is a fool. George Will is a fool. Only Ron Paul sees the light! He’s a prophet! He can prophesy!”
This is when I started to lose it.  The Former Voice of Reason gets to say all this and I can’t answer him back!  I could refute every sentence, every phrase, yet the host rants on unchecked! I was actually tempted to call in—but what for? They always cut off Ron Paul defenders when they start making sense.  So for all of those who are frustrated as I am by the latest media bias and have heard these same specious arguments before, here is my rebuttal to the Former Voice of Reason….
First, this particular host is quite self-assured in his intellectual superiority and I highly doubt he goes around taking surveys to help him form his views. He did say he would talk to his friends, which might be true, but that’s not what he suggested for us–he suggested we take a survey not of OUR friends but of HIS friends! In truth, he’s suggesting the sheeple do what he claims he would never do: go along with the crowd rather than think independently and stand on principle. By suggesting that listeners take a survey of what media bobble-heads are saying rather than think for themselves, he shows that he views his listeners and their associates as beneath himself and his. Isn’t the fact that 26,000 out of 130,000 Republican Iowans voted for Ron Paul and “not one conservative figure agrees with [him]” more evidence that it’s the host’s posse of self-selected “conservatives” who are not questioning their own views?
Second, I would dispute the premise that not one conservative figure agrees with Ron Paul (unless by “conservative” he simply means “neo-conservative”). Stuart Varney, Andrew Napolitano and John Stossel all have shows on Fox—they are libertarians, fiscally conservative and in favor of small government. If there are only two choices—conservative and liberal—these guys are conservative. The fact is, I’m sure the Former Voice of Reason would like to close the circle and get these guys off the air, which is precisely why everyone on the air ends up agreeing with each other—they are all in it together to keep their jobs and push their agendas without dissenting voices that might stimulate independent thought. Both arms of the liberal-fascist media have one nearly universal criterion for inclusion: staunch support for the establishment. Either wannabe bobble-heads know conformity is the price of admission to the media club and they gladly pay it, or they are actually smoking the kool-aid and believe in it. Any way you slice it, though, left or right, opportunistic or sincere, the mainstream media are a self-selected group of dedicated Statists.
Third, depicting Ron Paul as a prophet implies he has some kind of cult of personality working. Anyone who has ever seen or heard Ron Paul knows this notion is laughable. A cult of personality requires first, personality, and second, ego. Ron Paul’s personality is practically undetectable and he appears to be pathologically egoless. People don’t follow Ron Paul on blind faith with reverent awe for a soothsayer, they follow him because he makes sense and is offering up facts and conclusions he obviously holds to be true.  He never uses arguments like “follow the crowd” and “everyone agrees with me” as the Former Voice of Reason apparently now favors. He explains his theory and why history, morality and human nature support it and how he applies the theory to the facts at hand. At that point, Dr. Paul’s message is in the listener’s own hands—or should I say, in the listener’s own mind. Following Paul depends on the listener evaluating the theory and the facts, observing the world around him, and yes, maybe bouncing ideas off friends, and then drawing his own conclusions. Paul’s view is not a prophecy, and he’s not a cult-leader. With Ron Paul it’s all about reason, principle and respect for individuals, both under the law–in protecting civil liberties–and personally–in his belief that individuals can and must handle their responsibilities as free people, including seeking and finding the truth.
Perhaps the problem is that the Former Voice of Reason is creating a tautology—defining the term “conservative” in such a way that one must per force disagree with Dr. Paul’s views on foreign policy or not qualify as a conservative. Is this fair?  What is a conservative after all? I think Barry Goldwater, “Mr. Conservative,” who galvanized the conservative movement in the Sixties with his book The Conscience of a Conservative, would say that a conservative wants to limit the government to its constitutional functions, keep government a negative institution (it stops people from having their rights infringed upon and nothing more), and have government exercise restraint in both domestic spending and foreign entanglements. I think Senator Goldwater would agree with Congressman Paul across the board.  Here are some Goldwater quotes that I think support this conclusion:

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
You don’t need to be straight to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.

Unfortunately, however, the concept of conservative has been redefined to mean neo-conservative, a term which refers to a movement that began to thrive when the Republicans won the evangelical vote during the Reagan era and continued to gain dominance with the Republican Party adopting a foreign-interventionist view in order to promote the New World Order under Bush pĂ©re.  The Former Voice of Reason is only right that “not one conservative agrees with Ron Paul” if we redefine conservative to mean someone who believes in pre-emptive war and legislating morality and who is willing to compromise on fiscal conservatism (i.e., talking about cutting entitlements while spending money to police people’s bedrooms and bloodstreams, not to mention policing the world, is not fiscal conservatism, it is not small government, and it always means compromise with the other side for more spending all around.)
But semantics and pressure to conform won’t stop Ron Paul or his supporters. Libertarians will keep popping up every time the corruption of the State demands that the People turn from their jobs and families and step in to try to beat back a government they had foolishly credited for a period of peace and prosperity. The term “Classical Liberal” referred to the first wave of modern libertarians beginning in the 19th century, but over time, the left co-opted the word “liberal;” then Goldwater launched the “conservative” revival but the neocons have apparently hijacked that word in the same way; so now, those who want to restrain government are called Libertarians—a term which the liberal-fascist center is already trying to misrepresent by equating it with the Tea Party movement (with whom Libertarians differ on important issues including the Drug War and the War on Terror). But there will always be defenders of liberty who champion the individual over the State, and Statists in disguise will always try to steal their identity, because these people of principle earn and re-earn a reputation for integrity and justice that when co-opted is politically invaluable. But this uncompromising “remnant” will always be there with the same rich, consistent, principled ideology of individual rights, no matter what name you give–or deny–them.

Ron Paul on Piers Morgan 1/4/12

I discovered it last night. Somebody shared it with me. And I thought it was pretty funny.” Huntsman said. “You’ve got to have a little bit of levity and humor in this business or you’d go crazy. So just tell Dr. Paul that I owe him a tweet in return, and he should be — he should be expecting one sometime soon.” he added. (Oh, and someone better tell Ron, it’s called a “tweet” not a “twitter.”)

Follow up: Apparently Huntsman DID get Paul back! A video allegedly released by Ron Paul calling Huntsman “the Manchurian Candidate” was apparently put together and released by Huntsman operatives! See the commercial and read more in this article at the blog End Run: Huntsman Complicit in “False Flag”-style Dirty Trick Against Paul

Our Enemy the State

I recently found Our Enemy the State, by Albert Jay Nock, under a chair in my kids’ playroom–I must have bought it long ago and misplaced it. I flipped the book open to a chapter: “Politics and Other Fetiches,” and despite the unpromising chapter heading I was immediately riveted. Although written in 1935, Our Enemy … Read more

What Ron Paul Thinks of America–Rebuttal

Here is a letter I sent to the editor of the Wall Street Journal regarding an article published on December 22. (I imagine they get millions of letters after they slam Ron Paul, so I doubt it’ll get published there, but hey, this is what the Internet is for!)
Dear Sir:
In her opinion piece, “What Ron Paul Thinks of America,” Dorothy Rabinowitz implies that Ron Paul, like Barack Obama, hates America.  This could not be further from the truth.  Dr. Paul loves America, but it’s an America that makes people so proud and patriotic that they take certain basic principles for granted, blinding them to the realities of the New American Way.  Ms Rabinowitz also suggests that Dr. Paul disregards the suffering of the victims of 9/11.  This too is untrue.  Dr. Paul actually wants to prevent such suffering in the future by objectively evaluating what it is in our power to control. While, as Ms Rabinowitz points out, President Obama traverses half the globe making speeches apologizing for Bush’s America, the President’s actions reflect and even magnify his predecessor’s foreign policy–a policy that on the campaign trail he claimed to abhor and then was elected to reverse.  In contrast, Dr. Paul has a deep respect for America and would not renege on his promise to return her to her principles. 
The voters want the War on Terror to end if only because it’s not working:  Radical Islam continues to fill the voids we leave in our wake and there’s no end in sight to our destabilizing policies.  We The People are being forced to look more critically at our government’s actions.  Unfortunately, it’s hard for us to get the facts and think for ourselves with both wings of the mainstream-media spouting the same propaganda in support of endless war.  At least Dr. Paul prompts us to look past the jingoism and think a few things through.
Sincerely,
Monica Perez
I just read a great article in the Foreign Policy Journal also rebutting this WSJ article.

Also, Hornberger’s Blog at The Future of Freedom Foundation goes into great depth in his rebuttal of Rabinowitz’s piece.

"Merry Christmas, Sheriff!" Homeland Security Treats Texas Town to a Brand New Surveillance Drone!

“What? You Don’t LOVE It?!”

I read in today’s Wall Street Journal that Homeland Security bought Montgomery County, Texas, a $300,000 surveillance drone. Not only does this smack of both the surveillance state and crony capitalism–the US government is promoting drone sales abroad as well–but it’s an abuse of taxpayers’ money to use federal funds to pad the policing power of municipalities. Federal funding of municipal responsibilities eliminates even the indirect possibility of connecting the costs and (alleged) benefits of government spending. (In this case in particular, the benefits themselves are clearly mixed. The title of the article tells the story: The Law’s New Eye in the Sky: Police Departments’ Use of Drones Is Raising Concerns Over Privacy and Safety.)
The Articles of Confederation and Thomas Jefferson’s own philosophy both forbade forced taxation at the federal level. American citizens were meant to have control of their government and that meant keeping taxing and spending decisions close to home. It is the disconnection of spending decisions from even the implied consent of the taxed that allows government to get out of control. Faced with the direct connection between spending and taxation, a citizenry will push back when an expense is clearly not worth the money, or worse is actually potentially harmful to the people–local governments reject such initiatives all the time. However, as taxes go underground and spending decisions become more remote, it’s harder for taxpayers to identify when enough is enough, much less to stop the madness.
The government, of course, does all it can to forestall tax resistance. Providing the mechanism to obfuscate excessive taxation and circumvent tax resistance is what makes the Federal Reserve such an insidious tool of big banksters and crony capitalists. The Fed, which is and always has been a private corporation owned by large banks, makes an agreement with the Treasury: abdicate to us your right to control the money supply, and in turn we will print money to buy the bonds that finance your profligate spending and allow you to shift the tax burden onto a future constituency.
The withholding method of taxation is similarly devious. By forcing one’s employer to make it a condition of employment that he pays your tax bill before he pays your wages, the government has eliminated its traditional stooge, the tax collector, and the natural resistance he engenders.  Co-opting employers masks the use of force inherent in all taxation and emasculates a powerful tool of taxpayer resistance, the tax revolt.
In the case of Montgomery’s drone, not only is the tax side of the equation manipulated by using federal funds for a purely local purpose, but also the spending side is manipulated by masquerading cronyism and intrusiveness as a public good, i.e., defense. Nothing will push the tax resistance threshold higher than fear of physical danger. . . .Enter the Drug War and the War on Terror.
In these cases the government creates an ever-increasing demand for its own services because it is both the antagonist and the hero.  The more the government spends battling reactionary and amorphous opponents such as drugs and terror, the greater the dangers become, and there can never be a definitive victory because there is no definitive enemy. The Drug War is surging in Mexico and Guatemala and at the same time heroin production in Afghanistan is going through the roof thanks to both the Great American Drug War and the Glorious War on Terror. In its own right, the War on Terror has eliminated the two most powerful opponents of radical Islam in the Middle East, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. (I am not defending these two murderers, just making a point.) The government gets bigger, the cronies get paid, the people acquiesce to higher and higher spending, and it can go on forever.
Well, almost forever.
The obvious underlying horror of Montgomery’s drone is not that you and I paid for it, it’s that Homeland Security didn’t donate the drone in an altruistic effort to help local law enforcement investigate accidents and keep good citizens safe. There are myriad self-serving reasons that Homeland Security would want down-home drones like this one. Among these reasons, I fear, is to monitor those same good citizens for signs they’ve had enough of spendthrift and overreaching government and might finally be mounting a resistance. When that day comes, the citizens of Montgomery County might wish they had left this particular present under the tree.

Accounting Reform Precipitates Financial Crisis

I just read a great article by one of my favorite Austrian economists, Jesus Huerta de Soto, explaining an aspect of the financial crisis that I never heard anyone point out. The government cannot be trusted with the money, the law or, apparently, accounting standards! I found the following article at Professor Huerta de Soto’s page “articles in English” on his website jesushuertadesoto.com. Here is the full text:
FINANCIAL CRISIS: THE FAILURE OF ACCOUNTING REFORM
JesĂşs Huerta de Soto
Professor of Political Economy, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
The years of “irrational exuberance” which have characterized the current economic
cycle have culminated in a profound crisis in both the banking system and financial
markets, a crisis which threatens to trigger an acute, global economic recession. A
central feature of the recent period of artificial expansion was a gradual corruption, on
the American continent as well as in Europe, of the traditional principles of accounting
as practiced globally for centuries. To be specific, acceptance of the International
Accounting Standards (IAS) and their incorporation into law in different countries (in
Spain via the new General Accounting Plan, in effect as of January 1, 2008) have meant
the abandonment of the traditional principle of prudence and its replacement by the
principle of fair value in the assessment of the value of balance sheet assets, particularly
financial assets. In this abandonment of the traditional principle of prudence, a highly
influential role has been played by stock brokers, analysts, investment banks (which,
fortunately, are now on their way to extinction), and in general, all parties interested in
“inflating” book values in order to bring them closer to supposedly more “objective”
stock-market values, which in the past rose continually in an economic process of
financial euphoria. In fact, during the years of the “speculative bubble,” this process
was characterized by a feedback loop: rising stock-market values were immediately
entered into the books, and then such accounting entries were sought as justification for
further artificial increases in the prices of assets listed on the stock market.
In this wild race to abandon traditional accounting principles and replace them with
others more “in line with the times,” it became common to evaluate companies based on
unorthodox suppositions and purely subjective criteria which in the new standards
replace the only truly objective criterion (that of historical cost). Now, the collapse of
financial markets and economic agents’ widespread loss of faith in banks and their
accounting practices have revealed the serious error involved in yielding to the IAS and
their abandonment of traditional accounting principles based on prudence, the error of
indulging in the vices of “creative,” fair-value accounting.
It is in this context that we must view the recent measures taken in the United States and
the European Union to “soften” the impact of fair-value accounting for financial
institutions. This is a step in the right direction, but it falls short and is taken for the
wrong reasons. Indeed, those in charge at financial institutions are attempting to “shut
the barn door when the horse is bolting”; that is, when the dramatic fall in the value of
“toxic” or “illiquid” assets has endangered the solvency of their institutions. However,
these people were delighted with the new IAS during the preceding years of “irrational
exuberance,” in which increasing and excessive values in the stock and financial
markets graced their balance sheets with staggering figures corresponding to their own
profits and net worth, figures which in turn encouraged them to run risks with
practically no thought of danger. Hence, we see that the IAS act in a pro-cyclic manner
by heightening volatility and erroneously biasing business management: in times of
prosperity, they create a false “wealth effect” which prompts people to take
disproportionate risks; when, from one day to the next, the errors committed come to
light, the loss in the value of assets immediately decapitalizes companies, which are
obliged to sell assets and attempt to recapitalize at the worst moment, i.e. when assets
are worth the least and financial markets dry up. Clearly, accounting principles which,
like those of the IAS, have proven so disturbing must be abandoned as soon as possible,
and all of the accounting reforms recently enacted, specifically the Spanish one, which
came into effect January 1, must be reversed. This is so not only because these reforms
mean a dead end in a period of financial crisis and recession, but especially because it is
vital that in periods of prosperity we stick to the principle of prudence in valuation, a
principle which has shaped all accounting systems from the time of Luca Pacioli at the
beginning of the fifteenth century to the adoption of the false idol of the IAS.
In short, the greatest error of the accounting reform recently introduced worldwide is
that it scraps centuries of accounting experience and business management when it
replaces the prudence principle, as the highest ranking among all traditional accounting
principles, with the “fair value” principle, which is simply the introduction of the
volatile market value for an entire set of assets, particularly financial assets.
This Copernican turn is extremely harmful and threatens the very foundations of the
market economy for several reasons. First, to violate the traditional principle of
prudence and require that accounting entries reflect market values is to provoke,
depending upon the conditions of the economic cycle, an inflation of book values with
surpluses which have not materialized and which, in many cases, may never materialize.
The artificial “wealth effect” this can produce, especially during the boom phase of each
economic cycle, leads to the allocation of paper (or merely temporary) profits, the
acceptance of disproportionate risks, and in short, the commission of systematic
entrepreneurial errors and the consumption of the nation’s capital, to the detriment of its
healthy productive structure and its capacity for long-term growth.
Second, we must emphasize that the purpose of accounting is not to reflect supposed
“real” values (which in any case are subjective and which are determined and vary daily
in the corresponding markets) under the pretext of attaining a (poorly understood)
“accounting transparency.” Instead, the purpose of accounting is to permit the prudent
management of each company and to prevent capital consumption, by applying strict
standards of accounting conservatism (based on the prudence principle and the
recording of either historical cost or market value, whichever is less), standards which
ensure at all times that distributable profits come from a safe surplus which can be
distributed without in any way endangering the future viability and capitalization of the
company.
Third, we must bear in mind that market value is not an objective value: in the market
there are no equilibrium prices a third party can objectively determine. Quite the
opposite is true; market values arise from subjective assessments and fluctuate sharply,
and hence their use in accounting eliminates much of the clarity, certainty, and
information balance sheets contained in the past. Today, balance sheets have become
largely unintelligible and useless to economic agents. Furthermore, the volatility
inherent in market values, particularly over the economic cycle, robs accounting based
on the “new principles” of much of its potential as a guide for action for company
managers and leads them to systematically commit major errors in management.
Moreover, if this state of affairs is serious for a financial institution, it is much more so
for any of the small and medium-sized enterprises which make up 90 percent of the
industrial base.
Fourth, we must remember that the abolished accounting standards already stipulated
that in the additional notes of the annual report, stockholders be informed as of a certain
date of the market value of the largest assets, but this in no way affected the stability nor
the traditional principles of prudence demanded by any accounting assessment of the
different entries in the balance sheet. Furthermore, the accounting standards abolished
were prudent and anti-cyclic, and they allowed for provisions to cover all sorts of
contingencies, provisions sadly missing now.
Conclusion
Just as “war is too important to be left to the generals,” accounting is too vital for the
economy and everyone’s finances to have been left to the experts, whether they be
visionary professors, auditors eager to strengthen their position, analysts, (ex)
investment bankers, or any of the manifold international committees. All have been as
arrogant in the defense of their false science as they have been ignorant of their role as
mere sorcerer’s apprentices playing with a fire that has been on the verge of provoking
the most severe financial crisis to ravage the world since 1929.
Madrid, December 8, 2008

Feds Seize 150 Websites for Selling Counterfeit Merchandise–Kind Of

I saw this article titled “Feds seize 150 websites in counterfeit crackdown” and thought to myself, could the Feds actually be acting within the confines of normal law enforcement? After reading last week about a fisherman who was robbed by the Feds of the largest tuna ever caught, I was in the mood to have my faith in government restored. (As if!) So I was willing to overlook two of my own peeves in the case at hand, specifically:  I don’t want the Feds anywhere near the Internet, and as an anarcho-capitalist I don’t actually believe in using government to enforce copyrights, patents and trademarks (more on that below).  But busting counterfeiters is at least an example of government action NOT in the service of gratuitous revenue generation or the ubiquitous Drug War, so I was encouraged and read on. I was at once amused to read that even the federal agent being interviewed for the article found it noteworthy that the Feds were cracking down on real crime. The article actually quotes ICE Director John Morton as saying, “This is straight crime. This is people being duped into buying a counterfeit.”

This quote demonstrates to me that Mr. Morton knows full well that most of what he does has nothing to do with “straight crime” (mala in se crime, or crime that is bad in itself), but rather he is almost always enforcing prohibitions (mala prohibita crime)–drugs, guns, prostitution–and fighting the inevitable violence that arises in black markets that perforce operate outside the law. The way I see it, mala prohibita crimes are crimes created by the government because authorities not only refuse to enforce otherwise valid contracts but actually attack people for making voluntary arms-length transactions. It drives me near to madness to think my tax dollars go to creating and then enforcing immoral laws that result in so much death and destruction. (I have actually thought that if there’s a Judgment Day the greatest sin I will have to answer for will be having paid taxes that were used to finance theft, murder and injustice.)

Director Morton’s quote genuinely delighted me, though, for another reason:  he was claiming to fight counterfeiting as the fraud of selling knock-offs under false pretenses and not for trademark infringement. As I mentioned, anarcho-capitalists such as I don’t believe the government can tell people what to do with their private property even if what they do with it is copy an idea someone else came up with and then put out in the world for all to see. It’s rather a nuanced argument and it was my last reservation about anarcho-capitalism, however, through the persuasive arguments of Stephan Kinsella, I am now totally convinced of the correctness of this position. (Concidentally, patents et al are powerful tools of crony capitalists.)

I should have stopped reading this article right there, though, ’cause wouldn’t ya know it? Director Morton was so uncomfortable with the idea of fighting “straight crime,” that he felt he had to further justify his actions. He went on to say, “Typically we don’t track the volumes of sales of these particular sites. . . . We are worried about organized crime and [that profits] are going to fuel other criminal activity.” So it IS about the Drug War after all! Or he hopes it is. In any case, it most certainly is NOT about protecting taxpayers from fraud–that would be too paltry a goal for the mighty federal government!

Maybe I shouldn’t get bent out of shape about something as apparently minor as this, but earlier today I read about a former marine, Jose Guerena Ortiz, who was suspected of selling pot. A SWAT team snuck up to his house and he, awakened by his fearful wife, grabbed his gun and the cops mowed him down in his living room in front of his four-year old. This counterfeiting article made me hope that law enforcement was doing something OTHER than trying to figure out the next guy who might be selling something they don’t like and killing him. But I guess that’s what it was all about anyway. I should’ve known.

Read the article here: Feds seize 150 websites in counterfeit crackdown