Original Articles – Page 7 – Monica Perez Show

Confessions of a Neo-Conservative

February 26, 2013 by Monica

Several times on the show, I have made mention of the book Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, Selected Essays 1949-1995, by Irving Kristol. If his name sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Kristol was a popluar and influential writer and political commentator for over fifty years; he was a father of the neo-conservative movement … Read more

The Scales Fell From My Eyes

January 16, 2013 by Monica

Recently I was asked by Eric Bigelow of I Am An Individual to write an essay on my libertarian awakening, and here it is….
Several years ago, perhaps after seeing the Soviet-style campaign posters for Obama in 2008, I began to realize that the American Experiment had failed and tried to figure out why. I wondered: If the Founders had put an express right to secede in the Constitution, would the federal government have respected States’ rights more? If Lincoln had not been elected or if he had let the South go, would the federal government have been checked, giving rise to two truly federalist (rather than nationalist) governments, or to a peacefully reunited country whose government respected the voluntary nature of the Union? If Wilson had not been elected or if we had entered the First World War on the side of Germany (a distinct possibility), would classical liberalism have been saved? If we had never gotten ourselves involved in any foreign entanglements as President Washington had advised, would we now be a free society shining a beacon of hope to the rest of the world?
Unfortunately, with every question I asked myself, the obvious answer kept popping up: no matter what the Founders could have done, no matter what change could have been made to the Constitution, no matter what politician was or wasn’t elected, the experiment of liberty-preserved-by-government would have failed. I concluded that if there is a seat of power, eventually that seat will be filled and enlarged by those who desire power and its rewards, rather than occupied by those who wish to limit government and promote liberty.
I distinctly recall having this epiphany while vacuuming my bedroom–it was like when the Twin Towers fell, or as the older generation say, when JFK was shot–I remember the exact instant, it was so momentous to me. My despair was total but at the same time, liberating. I knew my quest for liberty and justice was utterly hopeless, that man was destined for servitude, but I didn’t have to worry about it anymore because there was nothing anyone could do. I actually thought I had come to the end of my quest for truth the way the guy in the commercial a few years ago, bleary-eyed and unshaven, clearly having just spent days surfing the web, got a message on his screen: “You have come to the end of the Internet.” That was me. I had come to the end of the metaphorical Internet, or so I thought.

From Smallpox to Singapore: Why a Gun Ban Won't Work in the U.S.

December 19, 2012 by Monica

I find it highly distasteful to engage in the debate about gun control at this time first because I think gun control advocates are using an incomprehensible tragedy for political gain and I don’t want to play into their hands; second, because I am still sick about what happened in Newtown–I cannot stop thinking about it and I really want to; and third, and most important, because the gun control debate detracts from the real issue in this case: society and mental illness.* Many rampage killings occur in the U.S., but also in countries with strict gun control and all over the world by means other than guns. Why do people kill like this? And is there anything we can do about it?
Despite my personal preference to focus on other issues, the gun debate has been reignited once again and I do have some thoughts to share on the subject.
Gun control is a two-part debate: (1) will stricter gun control or more liberal gun rights result in greater day-to-day safety, and (2) regardless of the answer to the first question, isn’t it necessary to have an effectively armed citizenry in order to deter governmental tyranny?
I usually skip the first question because regardless of the answer to that one, the second one is decisive in my opinion. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini and Pol Pot among them killed over 100,000,000 of their own, mostly disarmed, citizens in the twentieth century. No matter how many

It's Faith & It's Fascism

December 18, 2012 by Monica

The leaders of the collective are not calling for a gun ban because they have concluded it will reduce the number of killings in this country–they don’t start from scratch like that. They are doing it because their religion is Faith in Government. They believe without question that government can cure all the ills in … Read more

Thankfulness Is in the Eye of the Beholder

November 21, 2012 by Monica

If you’ve ever listened to my show or perused my website you probably know my story, but I’ll sum it up just in case. I’m the youngest of nine in a blue collar family. We always had what we needed but not much of what we wanted. My parents loved us, worked hard, blah blah blah, but I wanted stuff and I dedicated my whole existence to getting out of my parents’ house and having all the things I needed and wanted: a dry towel after a shower, a whole half a bed, name-brand ice cream–you know, the finer things in life. In pursuit of these dreams, I worked like a dog waitressing six nights a week while going to community college, transferring to Harvard on a full scholarship and ultimately getting a JD-MBA from Stanford. In the course of these pursuits,

7 Reasons Libertarians Can Be Happy Romney Lost

November 16, 2012 by Monica

One of them is not that Obama would make a better President–I’m not saying that! Frankly, I have self-righteous-socialist fatigue and was ready for a change even if it just meant being lied to–I guess I prefer surreptitious, shame-faced socialism to the blatant, arrogant kind, but that’s just me. So I’m not glad Obama won, but there are a few things to give the stalwart libertarian some small comfort.
1. The Liberty Movement and the Tea Party were totally betrayed by the Republican establishment who used the now discredited excuse of “electability” every time they threw a Tea Party candidate under the bus in 2010 or cheated Ron Paul in the 2012 primaries. But the days of beating into submission the grassroots movements struggling to keep the Republican party honest may be behind us. Every single one of the people I know who are disappointed (some devastated) by Obama’s reelection are no more disgusted with Obama then they ever were, but they are freshly and totally disgusted with the Republicans. As I’ve always said, the Republicans are worse than the Democrats because the Democrats honestly represent the statist left, while the Republicans pretend to defend limited government and in so doing take the place of those who actually would. Now that it has been shown that the political strategy that demands people of good conscience choose the lesser of two evils instead of actual good is no more a winning one than sticking to one’s principles would have been, perhaps it can be put to rest. (Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?)
2. We are headed for a financial and political crisis just like the one we are seeing in Europe. We are one step behind Europe on the road to serfdom and one step behind them on the road to collapse. Romney’s insistence on maintaining every last government program and Obama’s insistence on bloating them all further is the difference between death by a thousand paper cuts and cutting an artery. I’m not crazy about those options but maybe it’s better to take a razor to the jugular–at least you’ll know what killed you! Here’s why: Nixon closed the gold window in 1971 and we had unbearable inflation within a decade. Had Reagan and Volcker not intersected at a singular moment in monetary history and voluntarily put the brakes on, people might have realized the problem and at least maintained some appreciation for real money. However, Reagan and Volcker delayed the inevitable; now we have arrived at a much later stage of the crisis and it’s almost impossible for the average citizen to connect the dots.

Hoisted By Their Own Petards

November 7, 2012 by Monica

Whenever I ask myself, “What were the Republicans thinking?” I find the answer in the immortal collection of essays by Irving Kristol, Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. In that book, Kristol lays out his grand plan for how the Republicans can truly achieve immense power in the United States, but that to do so will mean abandoning principles of fiscal conservatism and balanced budgets and embracing the “conservative welfare state.” Kristol further instructs that in matters of economics and foreign policy, the people aren’t to be listened to (as democratically elected politicians sometimes mistakenly believe), rather they are to be led because they are ignorant of these matters and they know it. In addition, Kristol and his associates guided the New Right to create a budget crisis by implementing socialist policies to compete with those of the left and to use this crisis to force the public to choose between traditional socialism and market-based social engineering. Well, the people have chosen: If you’re going to have a welfare state, let the left run it–after all, you can’t beat a guy at his own game.
The pundits on all sides will talk about this election as being a choice between right and left, speculating, “Was Romney too far to the right?” Or, “Was Romney not ‘right’ enough?” But “the right” as it is now defined comes with all sorts of baggage that is both inconsistent with the founders’ principles (to which the right pays much lip service) and irrelevant to national politics (or at least should be). The right has become the right side of the left: a quasi-market-based philosophy promising more efficiently to achieve the-all-things-to-all-people government at the core of liberal philosophy. But what makes the Republican Party “too right” to the pundits is that it couples this “conservative welfare state” with federal attempts to control people’s behavior at home and the shape of the world outside its borders. Regardless of the labels, from top to bottom, the right now merely offers a different flavor of statism from the left’s, not an alternative to statism itself. What’s worse is that while not providing an alternative to statism, the New Right purposely displaces those who would.

The Final Debate

October 22, 2012 by Monica

Romney is competitive–he likes to win. Obama is egotistical–he likes to be admired. That’s why when these two go at it, Romney has a lightness about him–to him it’s a game. Obama on the other hand is pissed–to him it’s personal.
This was obvious from the first minutes of the first debate. Obama seemed to seethe at Romney. Not only that, but Obama actually seemed kind of depressed and has ever since. I think part of why he hates Romney and seems so put out by debating him is that Romney and this whole tough campaign have triggered an identity crisis in Obama.
This is the sink or swim moment Obama never had. I’ve had my own, so I recognize the signs. It happened to me when I had to learn the difference between school and work. I was always lucky enough to get standardized test scores that would make a tiger mom weep, but when I finally got to the big leagues–my rude awakening being a summer internship at a bulge bracket investment bank’s mergers and acquisitions group–it became clear to me that coasting through multiple choice questions while the clock panicked my peers was not enough to succeed in the real world. Hard work, knowledge, skills, experience and instincts were giving my co-workers advantages over me and I was getting a run for my money. I caught on pretty quickly that I had to change my game, but the experience was intense and painful.
I see reflections of this same kind of pain washing over Obama’s face every time he’s in a room with Romney. I’m not suggesting that Obama coasted through life on his ability to take standardized tests–he has never given me reason to believe he was as brainy as the media made him out to be. No, I believe Obama’s advantage was more akin to George W. Bush’s: connections that gave him both position and protection. Obama’s stepfather was a liaison between the Indonesian government and big oil, Obama’s mother worked for Tim Geithner’s father at the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, and Obama himself went to an elite private high school in Hawaii, just to name a few.

America's Talent Deficit: A Free Market Solution

October 20, 2012 by Monica

The plight of the anti-austerity crowd in the PIIGS countries often loses my sympathy when I notice that the most vociferous and violent protestors seem to be students against cuts in university subsidies. If there is one “entitlement” that has no moral basis whatsoever, in my opinion, it is this one, yet these free-riding students are the most self-righteous. I pity many of the people who are dependent on the bankrupt systems they grew up in, sometimes through no fault of their own. These include it’s-too-late-to-start-over Social Security dupes, already-sick Medicare recipients and I-paid-into-Unemployment-for-years dolees.
Professional students, however, are not on my sympathy list. I have come to believe that higher education is not really serving the social purpose these angry, marching students seem to base their sense of righteousness on. That is, higher education is not simply the great equalizer, the path on which the have-nots can learn the secrets of the haves and enter their ranks based not on birth but on merit. Today’s higher education is not intended simply to illuminate the minds of the children of the ignorati with crucial facts, critical thinking and the art of argument–doing that really would give the ruling classes a run for their money!