This post is the third in a three post series. Click for part one and part two.
Though the press has made much of the notion that Paul Ryan is a “conservative of the libertarian kind,” I actually believe just the opposite. Within the Republican Party there are two competing ideologies: traditional conservatism emphasizing fiscal temperance and constrained government on the one side, and neo-conservatism with an emphasis on social legislation and foreign influence on the other. I believe not only that Paul Ryan is firmly in the camp of the neo-conservatives, but also that he is the pivotal figure in the neo-conservative metapmorphosis of the Republican Party. In my view, the selection of Paul Ryan as Romney’s running mate is an indication that the neo-conservatives believe that their transformation of the Republican Party is assured and they are ready to challenge the Democrats on their own turf: Establishing, Embracing and Controlling Big Government.
The real tell that this is the moment the neo-conservatives have been building toward can be seen by comparing
Original Articles
Please Don’t Feed Me Neo-Con & Tell Me That It’s Liberty (Part 2)
This post is part two of a three-post series. Click here for part one and here for part three.
The Republican establishment, and to some extent the Democrats as well, are labeling Paul Ryan “a conservative of the libertarian kind.” I reject this characterization in its entirety. Libertarianism has three basic positions: strict adherence to free markets; strict protection of civil liberties; and strict defense of property rights (which strongly correlates with non-intervention in foreign affairs). Paul Ryan has affirmed in word and deed his desire to limit civil liberties, legislate morality and spread around the world his version of Americanism by use of force. Ryan, therefore, has denied two of the three tenets of libertarianism right out of the gate, but he does not renounce the third: he claims to support free markets and tries to continue to lay claim to the label of fiscal conservative. The question is, what kind of conservative is Paul Ryan really?
Please Don't Feed Me Neo-Con & Tell Me That It's Liberty (Part 1)
Everyone is abuzz with Romney’s “bold choice” of running mate, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan. Every bobble head with a press badge is telling us that the Tea Party and Ron Paul supporters should be psyched because, to borrow a phrase from Harry Reid: “The word is out!” Ryan’s a libertarian!
What else could he be? Ryan quotes Austrian economists and loves Ayn Rand – he must be a libertarian! And anyway, everyone says he is: Forbes calls Ryan “Ron Paul-esque,” the Financial Times calls him “a conservative of the libertarian kind,” and New York Magazine calls him “Your Annoying Libertarian Ex-Boyfriend.” He even has a libertarian-sounding name for crying out loud: Ron Paul, Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan…it just flows! As a matter of fact, someone said to me yesterday that Ron Paul was Romney’s running mate—true story! I mean those two are practically interchangeable!
What was that? You’re not so sure? Oh come now, don’t be such a purist, and don’t you dare let those nagging doubts about Ryan’s voting record bubble up to the top of your brain. And of all things, please don’t fall for it when Democratic operatives say things like, “while he may be a devotee of Ayn Rand, he has voted more like a Republican hack than a revolutionary,” or “Paul Ryan Record Shows He Could Be Running Mate of Obama.” Libertarians really do need to be more pragmatic.
Sure, Ryan denies being a libertarian
The Great Chicken Wars: A Victory for Statism
Given that I’m neither very religious nor gay, I do not take an emotional stand for or against gay marriage. As an extreme libertarian, I don’t think marriage of any kind should be sanctioned or certified by the State, nor should any privileges accrue to encourage one social choice over another. As an anarcho-capitalist (the most extreme kind of libertarian), I don’t even recognize the legitimacy of the State much less wish the State to recognize the legitimacy of my marriage.
Nevertheless, I have been trying to get at what exactly is fueling the pro-Chick-fil-A demonstrations. I got a tweet during the last show saying it was homophobia plain and simple, but I don’t buy that. If Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy had said Chick-fil-A will no longer serve or hire gays, I doubt he would have experienced an upwelling of support. On the contrary, it is my experience that the vast majority of Americans are appalled at discrimination and would not have wanted to be associated with a purely bigoted policy. A minority might have supported him, but not for long–I suspect the company would have been out of business with a policy like that, legal or illegal.
Was Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day a wild success because people wanted to show their support for the First Amendment like many claim? I don’t think so. It’s true that Rahm Emanuel, the Mayor of Chicago, and Tom Menino, the Mayor of Boston, want to control Cathy’s speech by using the force of the State to punish him economically, but I did not get the sense that the crowds in Atlanta were focused on these northern mayors.
Are Chick-fil-A appreciators coming out in droves to show their disapproval of gay marriage in particular and homosexuality in general? I’m sad to conclude there is an element of that in all of this, but it’s not the driving force.
I believe that the overwhelming driving force behind the record-breaking success of Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day is
Elite Squad: Movie Recommendation
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb-rUfBTQ1g] This is the first time I’ve recommended a movie to watch (I usually go for documentaries), but this is a must see. Elite Squad, set in the slums of Rio in 1997, claims to be based on a true story and whether or not the details of the characters are true, the tale of … Read more
"Not Obama" Is Not Enough: On & About This Week's Show
Scary Week!
Last week was scary! The Eurozone seemed to be in free fall from fears of Grexit to Spaindemonium! And the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed lower on Friday, June 1 than it did on December 31–all gains for the year erased. But the worst news was that unemployment ticked up from 8.1% to 8.2%–or so they say. The actual unemployment number is more like 22% according to Shadow Government Statistics. Obama says the 8% is still an improvement over the 10% we saw in 2010, but scratch the surface and you might find that the reason that “headline” number fell is that it doesn’t include long term discouraged workers, while the ShadowStats number does. The more comprehensive number has risen from 20% in 2010 to 22% today–things are getting worse not better!
Republocrat Oligarchy
Obama wants us to stay the course but I want no part of that! Unlike most in the mainstream, however, I think voting Republican is also staying the course! It’s no coincidence that spending and government grow year after year, decade after decade, regardless of which party is in control of Congress or the White House. Self-proclaimed former neo-Trotskyist
False Flags: On & About This Week's Show
What is a false flag?
A false flag, generally speaking, is an operation conducted by the government but blamed on another party with the intention of justifying hostile action the government wishes to take against that other party. For example, 9/11 truthers think the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, was a false flag operation conducted by the US government to justify ultimately invading Iraq. I am not a 9/11 truther both because I am not convinced by the evidence offered to support the claim and because I believe the operation was so large and so risky that the US government wouldn’t have taken the chance that the consequences would have been uncontrollable. I will continue to have an open mind on the subject, but for now I’m not convinced, but I am convinced in numerous other cases.
NATO 3
Three men were arrested recently on charges of terrorism for allegedly plotting to throw Molotov cocktails at police during the NATO Summit protests in Chicago last week. I have read reports, however, that there were police informants involved in the plot and that the lawyers for the NATO 3, as they have been called, claim the incident was a “false flag” to justify police brutality during the demonstrations. I’m not certain these guys were innocent, but I do smell a rat when a small, one-off operation is foiled by insiders who happen to be informants. I can understand how informants bust mobs and other large scale organizations after years of hard work and deep infiltration, but for an informant just to happen upon an amateurish plot seems too coincidental and almost always seems like entrapment to me and this case is no different.
A caller suggested I was defending terrorists in objecting to such entrapment
It's Just a Turf War! On & About This Week's Show
Presidential Campaign
I gave up awhile ago on the notion that Democrats vs. Republicans was a battle between social democracy on one side and free market capitalism on the other. Having witnessed the great compromise in which both parties have come together in a Liberal-Fascist Center, I realize that yes, there is a battle between the two parties, but it is one over turf rather than ideology. It reminds me more of the Genoveses vs. the Gambinos than a representative government.
This total acceptance that the politicians are like mobsters and us voters are schlubs there for the shakedown makes it almost impossible for me to even listen to politicians’ BS stump speeches anymore, but I couldn’t resist tuning in to the latest Joe Biden Show. I played the audio Saturday night, but here you can see the fire in his eyes (must have taken a lot of practicing in the mirror to get “resentment” just right.)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1o-CApj1v4]
Can you believe this guy? He’s telling middle class Ohoians he understands them by telling them he wants them to buy a house and go to college. Sorry, Uncle Joe, they fell for that one already! Now their houses are underwater and their grown kids are back at home. The American Dream is NOT a mortgage and a school loan!
The real Joe Biden said this recently at a Democratic fundraiser where he was sucking up to former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley: ”I never had an interest in being a mayor ’cause that’s a real job. You have to produce. That’s why I was able to be a senator for 36 years.” It’s funny ’cause it’s true! Biden was elected senator at the age of 29 and never looked back!
If One More Person Says "JP Morgan Is Too-Big-To-Manage" I'll Scream!
Does social power mismanage banking-practice in this-or-that special instance–then let the State, which never has shown itself able to keep its own finances from sinking promptly into the slough of misfeasance, wastefulness and corruption, intervene to “supervise” or “regulate” the whole body of banking-practice, or even take it over entire.-Albert Jay Nock, 1935
Nothing irritates me more than a government-created problem that prompts cries for more government action. A great example of this is the horrible crises, fiscal and monetary, caused in Europe by socialism and central banking, respectively. George Soros and so many others respond to the European Debt Crisis with cries for greater political union and more central government control in Europe. Historical examples of government growth in the wake of government injustice include the response to bans on unionization with laws unfairly favoring unions, or the response to government-mandated segregation with laws that infringe on private property rights under the false guise of pursuing racial justice. (Want racial justice? End the Drug War.)
The latest example of this maddening phenomenon is, generally speaking, the constant demand for more regulation of the financial sector, and specifically, calls for more regulation of trading in the wake of JP Morgan’s recent losses. The fact is, like coal mining, oil drilling and nuclear power, the financial sector is one of the most highly regulated industries in the history of humanity, yet calamities that bring us to the brink of physical, financial and planetary destruction seem to be occurring in these fields at an accelerating pace.