By Tom Rhodes, 3/16/2018
Government is a necessary evil. All the Utopian thinking will never make anarchy in any form a viable way to protect the freedom and liberty of society as a whole. Taxes to fund government are also necessary. There is no argument, tariffs are a form of taxes. When talking about taxes, we are discussing the funding government. Contemplating all revenue sources, tariffs should be rationally considered. If you want to fund government with just voluntary contributions you might as well believe leprechauns mix pixie dust with unicorn farts to turn into gold that you can find in pots at the end of a rainbow.
Governments exist for a lot of good reasons, including common defense. Governments have historically done a better job of defending borders than any other form of organization, and are certainly a damned sight better at it than international corporations. Those international corporations are government-created entities. In essence tariffs are a form of border defense. They can and do protect a nation from influence and actions of other nations in more ways than one.
Government is funded by taxes. Taxes can come from usage fees, sin taxes, tariffs, licensing fees, or direct taxation of individuals and/or corporations. Those direct taxes can come from income, or consumption tax, or taxing accumulated wealth. All taxes “manage the economy, ” tariffs are no more so than any other form of taxes.
Fundamental libertarian philosophy is that the less involved government is in an individual’s life the more liberty and freedom that individual has. Comparing different tax types, tariffs are considerably less intrusive, and cause less economic disruption, than any of the direct taxation alternatives; income taxes, consumption taxes, and wealth taxes. Publisher and author, Theodore Beale asks, “If you believe that government is a terrible way to get things done, why would you rather have it interfere on a holistic and daily basis with the economic activity of every single domestic citizen rather than on a far less frequent basis with the cross-border shipments of a limited number of foreign corporations?”
The large sway in US national politics from statist and government nanny Obama, to close down the EPA, Trump, is evidence that government is far more controllable by the people than international corporations like Google or Apple. Even knowing that the government is somewhat corrupt and clearly non efficient, having Government convey legal advantage to manufacturing companies that employ large numbers of people in a tariff system is far better than conveying advantage to Wall Street financial companies that do not in a free trade system.
The idea that all taxes are evil and society can exist without taxes and/or government is juvenile and absurd and is no more realistic than socialism with total control of the economy by some few ruling elite and just as dangerous. Government, and therefore taxes, are a necessary evil. Tariffs put more of the taxes on big companies that did the importing than direct taxation. Those big companies own the media, and buy off politicians. They have convinced so called “conservatives” and worse yet libertarians, that free-trade between nations is better, because it forces the individuals not big corporations to pay most of the taxes.
What’s better for a hundreds fat cats and international corporations on Wall Street is free-trade, that’s worse for millions of average workers in industries that were moved overseas to fatten the wallets of those same fat cats and international corporations. As a country we survived and thrived using tariffs not direct taxation on individual income until 1913. Tariffs as a system of taxation to fund that government is far less intrusive on individuals, than any direct taxation system. From a libertarian point of view, that alone makes it superior.
Before you start yelling “FREE TRADE” answer the question posed near the beginning of this article, “If you believe that government is a terrible way to get things done, why would you rather have it interfere on a holistic and daily basis with the economic activity of every single domestic citizen rather than on a far less frequent basis with the cross-border shipments of a limited number of foreign corporations?”
Showing posts with label Libertarian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Libertarian. Show all posts
Friday, March 16, 2018
Friday, March 24, 2017
Diversity: Where Libertarianism Goes to Die
by Tom Rhodes, 3/27/2017
I read this at Voxday today, “Libertarianism and pure classical liberal economics are elegant and seductive systems; but they did not stand up to the test of empirical evidence.” That sums up the failure of libertarianism.
Libertarianism works for a people willing to self-govern who share a culture, with common values. Libertarianism like our constitution is a reflection of a specific culture with a specific set of values. Any society that embraces libertarianism but does not have a shared culture by an overwhelming majority will fall apart and cease to function as a cohesive society.
Our forefathers were clear, and our constitution based on libertarian(classical liberal) ideas, functioned and created a society where more people prospered than any other in the history of the world. Until 1965 the USA protected it’s cultural heritage, it did so by not accepting large numbers of people from dissimilar cultures and worked at having those cultures assimilate and adopt American culture. The root of that culture is from Northern Europe primarily the English with some Dutch and German. There is/was one unifying cultural root of those Northern European Cultures - Protestant Christianity.
Significant numbers of most other cultures cannot be readily absorbed, and will cause strife and separation and disharmony in a society if allowed to immigrate in large numbers. Because Catholicism is closely related to Protestantism small but significant amounts of immigrants from Catholic cultures have be absorbed in the USA.
History is clear, any society is invaded by force or allows invasion of large numbers of people from other cultures dies. Opening our doors to the third world as resulted not in those immigrants assimilating and becoming Americans. Rather than diversity being uniting and uplifting phenomenon, it has resulted in strife, and the breakdown of our culture. Such invasion inevitably leads to war. Be it the Hispanics and Blacks in Compton, American colonists and Native Americans in the USA, the Moors and Christians in Spain, or the Mongols and where ever they moved, cultures don’t survive large numbers of a different culture invading. The tactic of moving in, building up a significant but culturally separate population, then taking over and eliminating the native culture is how both the Quran and history showed as the method for Islam to expand. The clash of cultures results in War. The mime “Diversity + Proximity = War” is proven by history. Right now there appears to be one exception, but it isn’t over and may yet come to war, that is Brexit. England may be able to salvage it’s culture and remain England without war, but the jury is still out.
History has shown that man is tribal and does not generally trust, tolerate, and live well with other tribes. God separated man into various tribes at Babul. Weather you believe this is an allegory to the evolutionary divergence of man, or to explain tribalism, or the literal truth, is irrelevant. Unless artificially forced, man will choose to live with people of his tribe. You have to be blind not to see that people live and mingle in groups of others who are like them. Almost every big city in the USA has a “China Town” or “Little Italy” within its borders. When I was a kid, the kid’s from our block were a distinct group from those “others” who didn’t live on our block. This is not forced it is natural and part of our evolutionary design. Gated communities exist because people don’t want to live in close proximity to “others.”
One group, tribe, culture, race, whatever is neither superior or inferior to another. They however are not the same. Being different is neither bad nor good it is just different. Utopian thinking libertarians, liberals, conservatives, socialists or whoever, that believe “if everybody would just blah blah blah, then everything would be great and everybody would be happy” are all wrong. Be it a society without government where everybody respected and valued the property of others or a society where government owned and controlled all property with no individual having ownership and all receive a share of the total, or whatever, they are all utopian ideas that history has shown will not work.
What history shows is that pure libertarianism, or anarchy, or socialism, or capitalism, or communism, or Islam, or any other “system” of governance don’t work for all people everywhere. The reason is clear, not every person is the same, not all tribes are the same, not all cultures are the same, and what one person or group values is not the same as what the other group values. History is clear when one group tries to force or otherwise condemns the values of another group, either the other group surrenders and allows its culture to die or they fight.
The people of many cultures say stuff like, “My culture will not surrender to yours, and will fight to the death rather than abandon our values and beliefs.” In the USA that is shortened to “Live Free or Die” or “Give me Liberty or Give me Death,” but it would just as easily be believed if said from a Japanese samurai; all variations on a theme of “Death before Dishonor.” So when cultural values clash, the result will be WAR! Islam is great in recognizing and capitalizing on this historic human trait that exists in all cultures, an evolutionary means of protecting culture. Islam clearly and boldly claims, you will surrender to Islam, or we will fight to the death. Other cultures will do the same, they cannot and never will live peacefully together. Ignoring this human trait that exists in every culture will lead to nothing but sorrow and violence. Keeping cultures separate is civilized, to do otherwise is to invite barbarism.
There is not, nor ever will be, one set of values and customs that everybody agrees. God separated the people, when man tries to undo what God did it never works out for the betterment of Man. When God separated men and created the different languages, it wasn’t only other language that men couldn’t understand, the very thinking and values of those “others” are so foreign that different tribes cannot understand (hence appreciate) the values of other tribes. The Alt-Right has a bull’s-eye on this point. All cultures have the right to protect themselves and keep other cultures from taking them over. As such, all cultures have the right to keep other cultures out, and institute a government, laying their government’s foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
When looking at languages, how do you reconcile people who don’t have a different word in their language to differentiate earning and winning. They equate earning money through hard work as the same as winning the lottery. You have money weather you earn it or win it is not relevant. The idea that actions, work to earn, or gambling, are the same when it comes to how you gain property. Who has more, is luck based, not based on the consequences of actions. This means that in some cultures, the idea that you must work to earn riches just doesn’t compute. You gain wealth because of who you are, who you know, and how lucky you are, what you do doesn’t relate to what you have. In the USA, what you do, is more important, than who you are. That is almost unique to American culture, where what your dad did or who he was is kind of irrelevant, a place where a black kid out of Chicago can be elected president one election cycle after an industrial robber baron’s family was president. A Chinese labor immigrant’s kids will never be president in Saudi Arabia, it’s just not culturally possible.
If a people choose they may institute a theocracy that they think will likely provide for their safety and happiness, or a commune, or a republic, or a democracy, or a King, or a Pope, or whatever. But no culture has the right to institute a government on another and all cultures have the right to protect themselves. The nation state appears to be the best method man has devised to divide diverse cultures avoid wars, and provide the means in which those societies can institute governments on principles that seems each separate and distinct society can best prosper. Forced unification, as seen last century by the USSR, fails and cannot be sustained.
When our founding fathers formed the USA, declaring our independence they summed up the idea that all not all cultures can get along and stay as one unified group of mankind. They declared that all men (meaning mankind and each culture) were created equally, but recognized they are different. As such declared “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
The forced unification in Iraq of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites has resulted in a constant war, some arbitrary outside group like the UN cannot force divergent cultures to live under one roof and not war. It has never happened and will never happen.
The EU is falling apart, the English are not the French who are not the Germans, who are not the Swiss or Dutch. The English have shown that they cannot and will not tolerate “others” dictating to them how they must live, Brexit is the best we can hope for, as English left the EU without violence. Great Britain has had to war to maintain unity because the Scotts, Irish, Welsh, and Brits, although nominally unified in being a Christian nation, as separate cultures have a lot of trouble staying together, much less staying bound to EU. The history of Great Britain is one of trying to force different cultures to unify and those different cultures warring to maintain their independence.
The USA will fall apart, the states used to have a set of shared values and culture, that is no longer true, the separation of the USA into smaller nation states is as inevitable as the breakup of the USSR. Hopefully we won’t repeat our past as when Americans war against each other the losses and devastation are more massive than any other warring tribes in history. If the USA has another civil war, it will end when one or the other group will be destroyed, ask the native Americans when we’ll stop, and how much of their culture and way of life can be maintained. The civil war resulted in the utter destruction of the South, it’s no longer the same, there is some “southern” culture but the facts are clear the Union invaded and forced cultural and societal change on the South in the War Between the States, some states still aren’t allowed to create their own voting laws.
If you believe “we can all get along” you’re an idiot. We can’t, never have, never will. Each culture should for the betterment of their own people learn to live with themselves, and nurture and institute what form of government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Globalism and one-worlders ideas have in the past, are now, and will always lead to war. Libertarianism is not functional except for a group of people who share the same values and culture. As a system it has proven to work for such a group whose values and culture are rooted in Protestant Christianity, but libertarianism is not a functional political system on a world wide scale where the same values and traditions of Christianity are not shared.
Diversity and libertarian ideas don’t work together. If they did the LP would be the strongest political party in the USA. The libertarian party theoretically embraces diversity, but it cannot and does not attract a diverse cross section of the population. The LP is made up of protestant white males of northern European heritage, and although not technically Christian, as a group and philosophy libertarians embrace the culture of the “protestant work ethic” a product of Reformation Theology. At its heart, libertarianism is the political manifestation of a subset of Protestantism, Calvinism. Cultures not of northern European origin, reject Protestantism, and disdain Calvinism and thus don’t accept libertarianism. The USA started changing at the beginning of the 20th century with a large influx of Catholics (Irish and Italian), this changed the culture and diluted the Calvinist influence. As such even though the LP, which as a political philosophy is clearly non-racist, and embraces acceptance of diverse people and ideas in principle, the LP is rejected by most of the USA.
The Libertarian Party (LP) rejected the Christian roots to libertarianism, and is the party is a combination of the libertine with Calvinism which makes the party inherently illogical and unacceptable to most people. The historic fact that libertarianism, allowing people liberty to succeed or fail and do what they want so long as they don’t harm others, resulted in the most prosperous society for more people doesn’t carry much weight. The reason is cultural. The idea that people are not duty bound, nor should they be forced to support others who fuck up is not acceptable to most other cultures, and as such libertarianism is rejected by most people.
Diversity is Strength is a lie. There is strength in unity not diversity. The USA is a prime example, since 1965 when we abandoned protection of our culture and unity as people and embraced diversity, the USA’s strength politically, economically, educationally, has diminished. Libertarianism worked for a while for a culturally unified Protestant population. On a larger world-wide scale it is and will remain a failure. Libertarianism will only function for a culture that is willing to protect itself. Libertarians for open borders, who embrace diversity, and reject the idea that a culture has the right to protect itself from others is virtual suicide. The 16 points of the Alt-right are currently the most advance and practical reality based political ideology where libertarianism can function. Read what Alt-Right says, not how they make you feel, the Alt-Right is coming together of great philosophy with realism and human nature. You can ignore the Alt-Right, but like ignoring the ideas of radical Islamists, the reality of what they represent will change your life and eventually world view.
I read this at Voxday today, “Libertarianism and pure classical liberal economics are elegant and seductive systems; but they did not stand up to the test of empirical evidence.” That sums up the failure of libertarianism.
Libertarianism works for a people willing to self-govern who share a culture, with common values. Libertarianism like our constitution is a reflection of a specific culture with a specific set of values. Any society that embraces libertarianism but does not have a shared culture by an overwhelming majority will fall apart and cease to function as a cohesive society.
Our forefathers were clear, and our constitution based on libertarian(classical liberal) ideas, functioned and created a society where more people prospered than any other in the history of the world. Until 1965 the USA protected it’s cultural heritage, it did so by not accepting large numbers of people from dissimilar cultures and worked at having those cultures assimilate and adopt American culture. The root of that culture is from Northern Europe primarily the English with some Dutch and German. There is/was one unifying cultural root of those Northern European Cultures - Protestant Christianity.
Significant numbers of most other cultures cannot be readily absorbed, and will cause strife and separation and disharmony in a society if allowed to immigrate in large numbers. Because Catholicism is closely related to Protestantism small but significant amounts of immigrants from Catholic cultures have be absorbed in the USA.
History is clear, any society is invaded by force or allows invasion of large numbers of people from other cultures dies. Opening our doors to the third world as resulted not in those immigrants assimilating and becoming Americans. Rather than diversity being uniting and uplifting phenomenon, it has resulted in strife, and the breakdown of our culture. Such invasion inevitably leads to war. Be it the Hispanics and Blacks in Compton, American colonists and Native Americans in the USA, the Moors and Christians in Spain, or the Mongols and where ever they moved, cultures don’t survive large numbers of a different culture invading. The tactic of moving in, building up a significant but culturally separate population, then taking over and eliminating the native culture is how both the Quran and history showed as the method for Islam to expand. The clash of cultures results in War. The mime “Diversity + Proximity = War” is proven by history. Right now there appears to be one exception, but it isn’t over and may yet come to war, that is Brexit. England may be able to salvage it’s culture and remain England without war, but the jury is still out.
History has shown that man is tribal and does not generally trust, tolerate, and live well with other tribes. God separated man into various tribes at Babul. Weather you believe this is an allegory to the evolutionary divergence of man, or to explain tribalism, or the literal truth, is irrelevant. Unless artificially forced, man will choose to live with people of his tribe. You have to be blind not to see that people live and mingle in groups of others who are like them. Almost every big city in the USA has a “China Town” or “Little Italy” within its borders. When I was a kid, the kid’s from our block were a distinct group from those “others” who didn’t live on our block. This is not forced it is natural and part of our evolutionary design. Gated communities exist because people don’t want to live in close proximity to “others.”
One group, tribe, culture, race, whatever is neither superior or inferior to another. They however are not the same. Being different is neither bad nor good it is just different. Utopian thinking libertarians, liberals, conservatives, socialists or whoever, that believe “if everybody would just blah blah blah, then everything would be great and everybody would be happy” are all wrong. Be it a society without government where everybody respected and valued the property of others or a society where government owned and controlled all property with no individual having ownership and all receive a share of the total, or whatever, they are all utopian ideas that history has shown will not work.
What history shows is that pure libertarianism, or anarchy, or socialism, or capitalism, or communism, or Islam, or any other “system” of governance don’t work for all people everywhere. The reason is clear, not every person is the same, not all tribes are the same, not all cultures are the same, and what one person or group values is not the same as what the other group values. History is clear when one group tries to force or otherwise condemns the values of another group, either the other group surrenders and allows its culture to die or they fight.
The people of many cultures say stuff like, “My culture will not surrender to yours, and will fight to the death rather than abandon our values and beliefs.” In the USA that is shortened to “Live Free or Die” or “Give me Liberty or Give me Death,” but it would just as easily be believed if said from a Japanese samurai; all variations on a theme of “Death before Dishonor.” So when cultural values clash, the result will be WAR! Islam is great in recognizing and capitalizing on this historic human trait that exists in all cultures, an evolutionary means of protecting culture. Islam clearly and boldly claims, you will surrender to Islam, or we will fight to the death. Other cultures will do the same, they cannot and never will live peacefully together. Ignoring this human trait that exists in every culture will lead to nothing but sorrow and violence. Keeping cultures separate is civilized, to do otherwise is to invite barbarism.
There is not, nor ever will be, one set of values and customs that everybody agrees. God separated the people, when man tries to undo what God did it never works out for the betterment of Man. When God separated men and created the different languages, it wasn’t only other language that men couldn’t understand, the very thinking and values of those “others” are so foreign that different tribes cannot understand (hence appreciate) the values of other tribes. The Alt-Right has a bull’s-eye on this point. All cultures have the right to protect themselves and keep other cultures from taking them over. As such, all cultures have the right to keep other cultures out, and institute a government, laying their government’s foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
When looking at languages, how do you reconcile people who don’t have a different word in their language to differentiate earning and winning. They equate earning money through hard work as the same as winning the lottery. You have money weather you earn it or win it is not relevant. The idea that actions, work to earn, or gambling, are the same when it comes to how you gain property. Who has more, is luck based, not based on the consequences of actions. This means that in some cultures, the idea that you must work to earn riches just doesn’t compute. You gain wealth because of who you are, who you know, and how lucky you are, what you do doesn’t relate to what you have. In the USA, what you do, is more important, than who you are. That is almost unique to American culture, where what your dad did or who he was is kind of irrelevant, a place where a black kid out of Chicago can be elected president one election cycle after an industrial robber baron’s family was president. A Chinese labor immigrant’s kids will never be president in Saudi Arabia, it’s just not culturally possible.
If a people choose they may institute a theocracy that they think will likely provide for their safety and happiness, or a commune, or a republic, or a democracy, or a King, or a Pope, or whatever. But no culture has the right to institute a government on another and all cultures have the right to protect themselves. The nation state appears to be the best method man has devised to divide diverse cultures avoid wars, and provide the means in which those societies can institute governments on principles that seems each separate and distinct society can best prosper. Forced unification, as seen last century by the USSR, fails and cannot be sustained.
When our founding fathers formed the USA, declaring our independence they summed up the idea that all not all cultures can get along and stay as one unified group of mankind. They declared that all men (meaning mankind and each culture) were created equally, but recognized they are different. As such declared “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
The forced unification in Iraq of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites has resulted in a constant war, some arbitrary outside group like the UN cannot force divergent cultures to live under one roof and not war. It has never happened and will never happen.
The EU is falling apart, the English are not the French who are not the Germans, who are not the Swiss or Dutch. The English have shown that they cannot and will not tolerate “others” dictating to them how they must live, Brexit is the best we can hope for, as English left the EU without violence. Great Britain has had to war to maintain unity because the Scotts, Irish, Welsh, and Brits, although nominally unified in being a Christian nation, as separate cultures have a lot of trouble staying together, much less staying bound to EU. The history of Great Britain is one of trying to force different cultures to unify and those different cultures warring to maintain their independence.
The USA will fall apart, the states used to have a set of shared values and culture, that is no longer true, the separation of the USA into smaller nation states is as inevitable as the breakup of the USSR. Hopefully we won’t repeat our past as when Americans war against each other the losses and devastation are more massive than any other warring tribes in history. If the USA has another civil war, it will end when one or the other group will be destroyed, ask the native Americans when we’ll stop, and how much of their culture and way of life can be maintained. The civil war resulted in the utter destruction of the South, it’s no longer the same, there is some “southern” culture but the facts are clear the Union invaded and forced cultural and societal change on the South in the War Between the States, some states still aren’t allowed to create their own voting laws.
If you believe “we can all get along” you’re an idiot. We can’t, never have, never will. Each culture should for the betterment of their own people learn to live with themselves, and nurture and institute what form of government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Globalism and one-worlders ideas have in the past, are now, and will always lead to war. Libertarianism is not functional except for a group of people who share the same values and culture. As a system it has proven to work for such a group whose values and culture are rooted in Protestant Christianity, but libertarianism is not a functional political system on a world wide scale where the same values and traditions of Christianity are not shared.
Diversity and libertarian ideas don’t work together. If they did the LP would be the strongest political party in the USA. The libertarian party theoretically embraces diversity, but it cannot and does not attract a diverse cross section of the population. The LP is made up of protestant white males of northern European heritage, and although not technically Christian, as a group and philosophy libertarians embrace the culture of the “protestant work ethic” a product of Reformation Theology. At its heart, libertarianism is the political manifestation of a subset of Protestantism, Calvinism. Cultures not of northern European origin, reject Protestantism, and disdain Calvinism and thus don’t accept libertarianism. The USA started changing at the beginning of the 20th century with a large influx of Catholics (Irish and Italian), this changed the culture and diluted the Calvinist influence. As such even though the LP, which as a political philosophy is clearly non-racist, and embraces acceptance of diverse people and ideas in principle, the LP is rejected by most of the USA.
The Libertarian Party (LP) rejected the Christian roots to libertarianism, and is the party is a combination of the libertine with Calvinism which makes the party inherently illogical and unacceptable to most people. The historic fact that libertarianism, allowing people liberty to succeed or fail and do what they want so long as they don’t harm others, resulted in the most prosperous society for more people doesn’t carry much weight. The reason is cultural. The idea that people are not duty bound, nor should they be forced to support others who fuck up is not acceptable to most other cultures, and as such libertarianism is rejected by most people.
Diversity is Strength is a lie. There is strength in unity not diversity. The USA is a prime example, since 1965 when we abandoned protection of our culture and unity as people and embraced diversity, the USA’s strength politically, economically, educationally, has diminished. Libertarianism worked for a while for a culturally unified Protestant population. On a larger world-wide scale it is and will remain a failure. Libertarianism will only function for a culture that is willing to protect itself. Libertarians for open borders, who embrace diversity, and reject the idea that a culture has the right to protect itself from others is virtual suicide. The 16 points of the Alt-right are currently the most advance and practical reality based political ideology where libertarianism can function. Read what Alt-Right says, not how they make you feel, the Alt-Right is coming together of great philosophy with realism and human nature. You can ignore the Alt-Right, but like ignoring the ideas of radical Islamists, the reality of what they represent will change your life and eventually world view.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Why are So Many Libertarians Pro-Murder?
By Tom Rhodes, 7/30/2015
My dictionary defines murder as: killing another person deliberately and not in self-defense or with any other extenuating circumstance. That means by definition to purposefully and with forethought, to kill a human being who has committed no act of aggression against another, is murder.
The idea that if a human being is less developed than other human she may be killed just because her mere existence is unwanted by her mother is quite simply an abominable immoral murder. Whether it’s legal or called “abortion” is irrelevant, it is murder. If you support the right of women to murder innocent people who have instigated no act of aggression against anybody, yet condemn men who murder innocent marines working in recruiting stations, you are a hypocrite and of low moral character.
Planned Parenthood just got caught selling body parts from innocent murdered babies. “The grisly business of the abortion monolith and its blithe nonchalance in the face of the gruesome reality have been Planned Parenthood’s stock-and-trade since the time of its notorious founder, Margaret Sanger.”
I have read and paraphrased some valid questions from a lot of different sources that the pro-innocent-baby-murder crowd don’t want to answer:
If the unborn babies are not human, then why is there a market for their body parts for human scientific research?
If the “POC” (Product of Conception) is just a “blob of tissue” why would anyone want the heart or lungs?
Other than age (stage of development), why is a mere “blob of tissue” with human DNA, human heart, and human lungs, not a human?
If you it’s OK to sell human parts of the very young people for profit, why not sell older more developed body parts like maybe your working spare kidney?
Who’s to say an assisted-care facility shouldn’t sell parts from deceased patients for profit?
Who’s to say an assisted-care facility shouldn’t accelerate their patients death to facilitate organ harvest for profit?
How is murdering the poor and homeless to harvest their organs any more egregious?
Another lexicon for consideration; the word fetus has Latin roots, it comes from the word foedus, which means unborn baby. A fetus by definition is simply an unborn baby, if that fetus has human DNA it is a human baby at an early stage of life. It is not dead, it is not something other than human, it is as the Latin root word definitions clearly states, a baby. Calling the baby a fetus in an attempt to dehumanize the baby that a mother murders, doesn’t change the cold hard facts, abortion is murder of an person who has committed no crime nor any act of aggression against anybody. Being legal doesn’t make it any less murder.
“Abortion is a crime that kills not only the child but the consciences of all involved.” ~ Mother Teresa
It is not scientifically arguable that abortion is not killing a human. The only argument is at what stage of human development do we grant that human the right to life. If society can arbitrarily choose to make the right to life based on age (stage of development), then the right to life is not a right, but a privilege. A privilege granted only to those whom others have deemed worthy of existence. If life is a mere privilege, how can anything else be a right?
How can a rational person take the official Libertarian position seriously? The official Libertarian position on murdering a member of your baby is “Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.” Using that logic it should be up to each person to decide if murdering some family member who is inconvenient or unwanted and the government should not create any laws against it, leaving it up to the family embers conscientious consideration. Using that logic the LP Platform supports Honor Killing of family members.
Why doesn’t the LP Platform read: “Recognizing that Avunculicide, Familicide, Feticide (or foeticide), Filicide, Fratricide, Geronticide, Honour killing, Infanticide, Mariticide, Matricide, Neonaticide, Nepoticide, Parricide, Patricide, Prolicide, Senicide, Sororicide, and Uxoricide, are sensitive issues and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.”???
The reason is clear, the first and primary right every person has, that was the foundation and reason we created our government and the fundamentally the root of everything we think of as a right is the right to life. Abortion is the idea that a mother knows better than her unborn baby whether that baby is worthy of existing. That her superior knowledge of how that baby existing will affect her life and the probably quality of that baby’s life is enough to determine if that baby has the right to life. Once you accept abortion, you accept the idea that those with power and authority have the right to determine if those without power and authority can even exist. If you accept that a person with power and authority can murder those under her authority without recourse, how can you logically accept any limits on that power and authority. Clearly not a libertarian idea. Why do so many libertarians accept the idea that those with legal power and authority have the right to control other’s lives, even if that other is allowed to live that life?
My dictionary defines murder as: killing another person deliberately and not in self-defense or with any other extenuating circumstance. That means by definition to purposefully and with forethought, to kill a human being who has committed no act of aggression against another, is murder.
The idea that if a human being is less developed than other human she may be killed just because her mere existence is unwanted by her mother is quite simply an abominable immoral murder. Whether it’s legal or called “abortion” is irrelevant, it is murder. If you support the right of women to murder innocent people who have instigated no act of aggression against anybody, yet condemn men who murder innocent marines working in recruiting stations, you are a hypocrite and of low moral character.
Planned Parenthood just got caught selling body parts from innocent murdered babies. “The grisly business of the abortion monolith and its blithe nonchalance in the face of the gruesome reality have been Planned Parenthood’s stock-and-trade since the time of its notorious founder, Margaret Sanger.”
I have read and paraphrased some valid questions from a lot of different sources that the pro-innocent-baby-murder crowd don’t want to answer:
Another lexicon for consideration; the word fetus has Latin roots, it comes from the word foedus, which means unborn baby. A fetus by definition is simply an unborn baby, if that fetus has human DNA it is a human baby at an early stage of life. It is not dead, it is not something other than human, it is as the Latin root word definitions clearly states, a baby. Calling the baby a fetus in an attempt to dehumanize the baby that a mother murders, doesn’t change the cold hard facts, abortion is murder of an person who has committed no crime nor any act of aggression against anybody. Being legal doesn’t make it any less murder.
“Abortion is a crime that kills not only the child but the consciences of all involved.” ~ Mother Teresa
It is not scientifically arguable that abortion is not killing a human. The only argument is at what stage of human development do we grant that human the right to life. If society can arbitrarily choose to make the right to life based on age (stage of development), then the right to life is not a right, but a privilege. A privilege granted only to those whom others have deemed worthy of existence. If life is a mere privilege, how can anything else be a right?
How can a rational person take the official Libertarian position seriously? The official Libertarian position on murdering a member of your baby is “Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.” Using that logic it should be up to each person to decide if murdering some family member who is inconvenient or unwanted and the government should not create any laws against it, leaving it up to the family embers conscientious consideration. Using that logic the LP Platform supports Honor Killing of family members.
Why doesn’t the LP Platform read: “Recognizing that Avunculicide, Familicide, Feticide (or foeticide), Filicide, Fratricide, Geronticide, Honour killing, Infanticide, Mariticide, Matricide, Neonaticide, Nepoticide, Parricide, Patricide, Prolicide, Senicide, Sororicide, and Uxoricide, are sensitive issues and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.”???
The reason is clear, the first and primary right every person has, that was the foundation and reason we created our government and the fundamentally the root of everything we think of as a right is the right to life. Abortion is the idea that a mother knows better than her unborn baby whether that baby is worthy of existing. That her superior knowledge of how that baby existing will affect her life and the probably quality of that baby’s life is enough to determine if that baby has the right to life. Once you accept abortion, you accept the idea that those with power and authority have the right to determine if those without power and authority can even exist. If you accept that a person with power and authority can murder those under her authority without recourse, how can you logically accept any limits on that power and authority. Clearly not a libertarian idea. Why do so many libertarians accept the idea that those with legal power and authority have the right to control other’s lives, even if that other is allowed to live that life?
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Libertarians, Useful Idiots for the Left
By Tom Rhodes, 7/1/2015
Interesting blog were Sultan Knish explains why it is useless to attempt reason with leftists, and how Libertarians have become the Lefts useful idiots.
Being a moderate, or compromising, with the left is a losing proposition. In the case of Gay Marriage the Libertarians have been the Left's useful idiots, just as liberals have been in the past. The historical evidence for their behavior and the consequences is compelling. Read the entire blog and you'll understand how the Libertarians we been used by the Left and have given them more tools to gain power and take liberty from us all.
Interesting blog were Sultan Knish explains why it is useless to attempt reason with leftists, and how Libertarians have become the Lefts useful idiots.
...
The left will destroy the things you care about, because you care about them. It will destroy them because that gives them power over you. It will destroy them because these things stand in the way of its power. It will destroy them because a good deal of its militant activists need things to destroy and if they can't attack you, they'll turn on the left in a frenzy of ideologically incestuous purges.
...
You can't accommodate the left on social issues. You can't accommodate it on fiscal issues. You can't do it. Period.
The left exists to destroy you. It does not seek to co-exist with you. Its existence would lose all meaning. Any common ground will be used to temporarily achieve a goal before the useful idiots are kicked to the curb and denounced as bigots who are holding back progress.
The purpose of power is power. The left is not seeking to achieve a set of policy goals before kicking back and having a beer. The policy goals are means of destroying societies, nations and peoples before taking over. If you allow it a policy goal, it will ram that goal down your throat. It will implement it as abusively as it can possibly can before it moves on to the next battle.
It's not about gay marriage. It's not about cakes. It's about power.
More fundamentally it's about the difference in human nature between the people who want to be left alone and those who want power over others. ...
Being a moderate, or compromising, with the left is a losing proposition. In the case of Gay Marriage the Libertarians have been the Left's useful idiots, just as liberals have been in the past. The historical evidence for their behavior and the consequences is compelling. Read the entire blog and you'll understand how the Libertarians we been used by the Left and have given them more tools to gain power and take liberty from us all.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Rational Decision Making
By Tom Rhodes, 2/3/2015
Pew Research survey shows there is a huge gap between what scientists believe and what the average person believes. "On the whole, as compared to most members of the public, scientists are likely drawing from a larger scientific knowledge base — and thinking more scientifically — about each of these issues," George Mason Univ. communications professor Edward Mailbach wrote in an email. "Therefore, their views appear to be more in line with a completely dispassionate reading of the risks versus the benefits."
The biggest split between scientists and the general public is on GMO foods. Fully 88 percent of the scientists surveyed said it is safe to eat genetically modified foods, while only 37 percent of the public say it is safe and 57 percent say it is unsafe. Over two thirds, 68 percent of scientists indicated it is safe to eat foods grown with pesticides, compared with only 28 percent of the general public.
Dispassionately looking at the facts, the war on GMO is clearly emotional not rational. Libertarians in general are somewhat more scientific, that’s why differences in libertarians opinions on GMO’s are more towards labeling issues, not banning issues. I generally like to point out the average US lifespan before the general use of pesticides, antibiotics, and GMOs compared to after their general use. The data is clear, pesticides, GMO’s, and antibiotics in our food production has accompanied a huge increase in our lifespan.
Consider the type 2 diabetes, there is an obvious and measurable increase in type 2 diabetes. Lots and lots of people want to blame our diet, GMOs, etc. What people don’t recognize or look at is the fact that we have a lot more people living long enough to get it. The average person who is diagnosed with type 2 diabetes is over 50. Now 100 years ago the average lifespan in the USA was under 50. The increase in type 2 diabetes very closely matches the increase in our population’s age. More older people more old people diseases. Not to say that our food does not contribute to the problem, but would you rather large numbers of people didn’t live to 50, or having to deal with diseases that generally don’t happen until 50? The real reason we are seeing more type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cancer, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, arthritis, and cardiovascular diseases is we have a lot more people surviving long enough to get those diseases. Let’s face it, we are better off with more people dying of old age diseases in their 60’s to 80’s than when people died in their 20’s to 40’s of the flu or foodborne disease, or animal borne pathogens. Those disease increases are an indicator, they mean we’re living longer fuller lives. More than medicine, engineering has prolonged our lives, from cheap refrigerators, cheap electricity, cheap HVAC, indoor plumbing, clean water, and safely processed food, we live a lot longer.
A hundred years ago the Spanish Flu killed around 100,000,000 people. Fully 2% of the people who got it died. The last flu pandemic in 2009 less than 400,000 people died, equally about 0.03% of the people who catch the flu dying. Because of better diets that pesticides, antibiotics, and GMO’s and other technology provide we have a 100 fold increase in the entire world’s population surviving a common disease, the flu.
Want to drink raw unpasteurized milk, go ahead, but know that the science and facts are clear, you’re at greater risk of getting sick and dying drinking raw milk than of any of the complications that may exist from drinking pasteurized milk. But you can’t compare milk borne diseases of 100 years ago to today either, the same tech that makes indoor plumbing and refrigeration common, has made milk processing safer at every stage. The chances of getting a raw milk disease are also a lot less than in the past. Pasteurized may be safer overall, but if you know the farmer and trust his practices, for that dairy (not all dairies) the raw may be safer than pasteurized. More importantly if you’re an adult, the science is clear, the health benefits of milk are questionable at best be it pasteurized or not.
Rational based decisions by the general public are not that common. Scientists generally say the way to clean safe cheap energy is nuclear, not what the general population thinks. The science on anthropogenic global warming is also pretty clear, but then neither the ruling elite nor general population want rational scientific decisions for what to do about global warming. Neither do the scientists, who make a bazillion dollars of researching global warming and climate change so long as their results are what the people controlling the money want. In the case of global warming, the ruling elite, who control the money, want more government so they can have more control. Follow the money, still more accurate than just about any indicator. Money from the government is just as tainted as money from some industry. TANSTAAFL
Take the current measles scare. It is a scare not a problem. The fact is there have been zero measles deaths in the past decade according to the CDC. If you look in the VAERS database you notice another fact, in the past decade there have been about 108 deaths due to complications from measles vaccines. Another fact is there have been over 6000 deaths of children from bicycle accidents in that same decade. You really care about children ignore measles and outlaw bicycles. Statistically there is a greater chance of your child dying from the MMR vaccine than from catching measles. Like the flu in the USA people generally don’t die from measles.
We need to learn to think like scientists and make rational decisions. But then I may be biased, I’m a professional chemist.
Pew Research survey shows there is a huge gap between what scientists believe and what the average person believes. "On the whole, as compared to most members of the public, scientists are likely drawing from a larger scientific knowledge base — and thinking more scientifically — about each of these issues," George Mason Univ. communications professor Edward Mailbach wrote in an email. "Therefore, their views appear to be more in line with a completely dispassionate reading of the risks versus the benefits."
The biggest split between scientists and the general public is on GMO foods. Fully 88 percent of the scientists surveyed said it is safe to eat genetically modified foods, while only 37 percent of the public say it is safe and 57 percent say it is unsafe. Over two thirds, 68 percent of scientists indicated it is safe to eat foods grown with pesticides, compared with only 28 percent of the general public.
Dispassionately looking at the facts, the war on GMO is clearly emotional not rational. Libertarians in general are somewhat more scientific, that’s why differences in libertarians opinions on GMO’s are more towards labeling issues, not banning issues. I generally like to point out the average US lifespan before the general use of pesticides, antibiotics, and GMOs compared to after their general use. The data is clear, pesticides, GMO’s, and antibiotics in our food production has accompanied a huge increase in our lifespan.
Consider the type 2 diabetes, there is an obvious and measurable increase in type 2 diabetes. Lots and lots of people want to blame our diet, GMOs, etc. What people don’t recognize or look at is the fact that we have a lot more people living long enough to get it. The average person who is diagnosed with type 2 diabetes is over 50. Now 100 years ago the average lifespan in the USA was under 50. The increase in type 2 diabetes very closely matches the increase in our population’s age. More older people more old people diseases. Not to say that our food does not contribute to the problem, but would you rather large numbers of people didn’t live to 50, or having to deal with diseases that generally don’t happen until 50? The real reason we are seeing more type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cancer, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, arthritis, and cardiovascular diseases is we have a lot more people surviving long enough to get those diseases. Let’s face it, we are better off with more people dying of old age diseases in their 60’s to 80’s than when people died in their 20’s to 40’s of the flu or foodborne disease, or animal borne pathogens. Those disease increases are an indicator, they mean we’re living longer fuller lives. More than medicine, engineering has prolonged our lives, from cheap refrigerators, cheap electricity, cheap HVAC, indoor plumbing, clean water, and safely processed food, we live a lot longer.
A hundred years ago the Spanish Flu killed around 100,000,000 people. Fully 2% of the people who got it died. The last flu pandemic in 2009 less than 400,000 people died, equally about 0.03% of the people who catch the flu dying. Because of better diets that pesticides, antibiotics, and GMO’s and other technology provide we have a 100 fold increase in the entire world’s population surviving a common disease, the flu.
Want to drink raw unpasteurized milk, go ahead, but know that the science and facts are clear, you’re at greater risk of getting sick and dying drinking raw milk than of any of the complications that may exist from drinking pasteurized milk. But you can’t compare milk borne diseases of 100 years ago to today either, the same tech that makes indoor plumbing and refrigeration common, has made milk processing safer at every stage. The chances of getting a raw milk disease are also a lot less than in the past. Pasteurized may be safer overall, but if you know the farmer and trust his practices, for that dairy (not all dairies) the raw may be safer than pasteurized. More importantly if you’re an adult, the science is clear, the health benefits of milk are questionable at best be it pasteurized or not.
Rational based decisions by the general public are not that common. Scientists generally say the way to clean safe cheap energy is nuclear, not what the general population thinks. The science on anthropogenic global warming is also pretty clear, but then neither the ruling elite nor general population want rational scientific decisions for what to do about global warming. Neither do the scientists, who make a bazillion dollars of researching global warming and climate change so long as their results are what the people controlling the money want. In the case of global warming, the ruling elite, who control the money, want more government so they can have more control. Follow the money, still more accurate than just about any indicator. Money from the government is just as tainted as money from some industry. TANSTAAFL
Take the current measles scare. It is a scare not a problem. The fact is there have been zero measles deaths in the past decade according to the CDC. If you look in the VAERS database you notice another fact, in the past decade there have been about 108 deaths due to complications from measles vaccines. Another fact is there have been over 6000 deaths of children from bicycle accidents in that same decade. You really care about children ignore measles and outlaw bicycles. Statistically there is a greater chance of your child dying from the MMR vaccine than from catching measles. Like the flu in the USA people generally don’t die from measles.
We need to learn to think like scientists and make rational decisions. But then I may be biased, I’m a professional chemist.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Republicans and Democrats Represent Parties of Violence
By Tom Rhodes, 12/12/2014
America is so Overcriminalized the government as controlled by the violent combination of Democrats and Republicans now routinely kills innocent citizens. Both parties lust for power, and are willing to use violence against the American people to keep and maintain that power. Neither party exists to complete the mission statement and purpose for which we the people instituted a government. George Will correctly characterized how the lust for using violence that both parties share has changed our government saying, “American government is increasingly characterized by an ugly and sometimes lethal irresponsibility.”
At one time our society was just, not perfect, but at least we ascribed to the goals of justice and the rule of law. Both ideas have been abandoned by both the Democrats and Republicans, ignoring the wise words of our forefathers and the principles this nation was founded. When we had a just society we had few laws, and those laws were easy to understand and they focused on protecting life, liberty, and property. Today it is impossible for any person to understand much less know all the laws that they are ruled by, much less abide by all of them. Professor Steven Carter of Yale Law School explains the legal reality that now exists in America:
One thing is clear and proven by the hundreds of people killed every year by the police, any law that comes with a fine or possibility of arrest, the government is saying do as we dictate or we will kill you. Laws and government are force, and the threat of violent force and death is what backs up the law. Ask Mr. Garner, who is now dead, because the Democrats and Republicans created laws that said selling cigarettes without collecting the appropriate tax is illegal, and failure to do so we will send armed men, with the authority to kill you, to force you to comply. Why does NY put such a huge tax on cigarettes that it is estimated that 70% of cigarettes in NY were obtained on the black market? Because they think smoking is bad for you and want to change your behavior and punish you if you don’t do what they think is best. They are willing to kill you, if you try to avoid paying their punishment for not behaving as they dictate is in your best interest.
The government wants to control you and your choices. To enforce punitive taxes on tobacco products, the government is willing to kill you. Oh they will say it’s not breaking the tobacco tax law that got Garner killed, it’s resisting arrest. That makes it worse, the fact that you won’t accept the government control, and would dare resist the government controlling your voluntary actions is grounds for you death. It was the cigarette tax laws that can lead to the death of those the police seek to arrest.
Do a quick Youtube search and you can find hundreds of videos of police beating up people who would dare question their authority. Mention your constitutional rights, like freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to remain silent, freedom to travel, and you are likely to be detained and assaulted for “resisting arrest.”
You law and order Republicans, you’re violent statists who are willing to have kill people to enforce your ideas on how people ought to live. You think people who choose to take drugs for recreational purposes are so evil that the government should control their actions, and if they resist the government control of their voluntary actions the government should use force, up to and including killing such individual if they don’t submit to the government. The difference between a Republican and most libertarians is that although both generally dislike recreational drugs, and think that recreational drug use is not a wise idea, libertarians are not willing to let someone else get killed because they have a different perspective.
Uber liberal, socialist, and statist, Barney Frank in 2009 said, "Criminalizing choices that adults make because we think they are unwise ones, when the choices involved have no negative effect on the rights of others, is not appropriate in a free society." That of course was Democrat Hyperbole. He voted to make it illegal for you to use the light bulb of your choice, voted to limit free speech over the internet, voted for more government regulations on what you can and can’t eat, cosponsored laws giving the government more oversight in tobacco products, voted against retailers being allowed to set their own prices, and is famous for voting to control who banks must lend money. Obvioulsy he like most Democrats talks about people being allowed to make their own choices, so long as those are the choices he approves, otherwise he is quite willing to send armed government officials to force you to capitulate, and who have the authority to kill you if you refuse.
The actions of both the Democrats and Republicans clearly demonstrate they are OK with using the violent force to dictate that you live the way they think is best, and have opted for trying to control you through violence or the threat of violence. If you think that isn’t true, ask yourself why the BLM needs to be armed and have massive amounts of weapons and ammo? Why does the Dept. of Education, Department of the Interior, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Agriculture, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Commerce, Department of Energy, Department of Health & Human Service, Department of Interior, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Railroad Retirement Board, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, need armed need armed law enforcement officers? The answer is clear, they are willing to use the threat of violence and even kill the people to enforce the rules and regulations of those departments.
Even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has armed officers.
Democrats and Republicans so want to rule over everybody, they’ve created and armed a zillion Departments of Whatever. Anybody’s failure to comply with the hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations can, and often does, result in violent force used to rule over everybody. Republicans and Democrats have proven the are willing to risk the lives of their fellow citizens to get their own way, they make all sorts of things illegal, and authorize the use of force up to and including killing citizens who fail to capitulate.
Are you willing to allow the government the right to kill other citizens who don’t share you’re belief that people shouldn’t do recreational drugs?
Are you willing to stand by and let another person die at the hands of the government, because they choose to bet playing cards?
Do you think someone should lose his life because he offered to pay for sex? Do you think a person who takes money in exchange for sex should die at the hands of government? I think prostitution is wrong, it’s bad for both the prostitute and the solicitor, but it’s a voluntary exchange and I don’t think I have a right controlling how others live. Because I think it’s wrong, I am personally boycotting prostitutes and urge others to do the same. What I don’t do is threaten others by saying I’ll send people authorized to use force and punish you if you choose purchase or sell sex. If you support laws that make prostitution illegal you are saying that you are willing to kill people who are willing to refuse to accept your control of their sex lives.
The ruling elite, be they Republicans and Democrats, want to control you and your life. They have proven willing to hire, train, and arm people and send them to force you to comply, they have authorized those people to kill you if you fail to comply. Sell loosies on the streets of NY, you could get dead. It’s a shame so many are willing to use violence to control how others live.
Ask yourself these question about any law: Does this law make a voluntary choice of an individual that has no direct effect on the rights of another a crime? If someone refuses to obey a law, should the government have the authority to use violent force to enforce it, even killing those who refuse to obey? If you can’t answer yes to both questions you should oppose the law, and demand it be repealed.
America is so Overcriminalized the government as controlled by the violent combination of Democrats and Republicans now routinely kills innocent citizens. Both parties lust for power, and are willing to use violence against the American people to keep and maintain that power. Neither party exists to complete the mission statement and purpose for which we the people instituted a government. George Will correctly characterized how the lust for using violence that both parties share has changed our government saying, “American government is increasingly characterized by an ugly and sometimes lethal irresponsibility.”
At one time our society was just, not perfect, but at least we ascribed to the goals of justice and the rule of law. Both ideas have been abandoned by both the Democrats and Republicans, ignoring the wise words of our forefathers and the principles this nation was founded. When we had a just society we had few laws, and those laws were easy to understand and they focused on protecting life, liberty, and property. Today it is impossible for any person to understand much less know all the laws that they are ruled by, much less abide by all of them. Professor Steven Carter of Yale Law School explains the legal reality that now exists in America:
…federal law alone includes more than 3,000 crimes, fewer than half of which found in the Federal Criminal Code. The rest are scattered through other statutes. A citizen who wants to abide by the law has no quick and easy way to find out what the law actually is — a violation of the traditional principle that the state cannot punish without fair notice. In addition to these statutes, he writes, an astonishing 300,000 or more federal regulations may be enforceable through criminal punishment in the discretion of an administrative agency. Nobody knows the number for sure. Husak cites estimates that more than 70 percent of American adults have committed a crime that could lead to imprisonment. …making an offense criminal also means that the police will go armed to enforce it. Overcriminalization matters… Every new law requires enforcement; every act of enforcement includes the possibility of violence. …Don’t ever fight to make something illegal unless you’re willing to risk the lives of your fellow citizens to get your way.
One thing is clear and proven by the hundreds of people killed every year by the police, any law that comes with a fine or possibility of arrest, the government is saying do as we dictate or we will kill you. Laws and government are force, and the threat of violent force and death is what backs up the law. Ask Mr. Garner, who is now dead, because the Democrats and Republicans created laws that said selling cigarettes without collecting the appropriate tax is illegal, and failure to do so we will send armed men, with the authority to kill you, to force you to comply. Why does NY put such a huge tax on cigarettes that it is estimated that 70% of cigarettes in NY were obtained on the black market? Because they think smoking is bad for you and want to change your behavior and punish you if you don’t do what they think is best. They are willing to kill you, if you try to avoid paying their punishment for not behaving as they dictate is in your best interest.
The government wants to control you and your choices. To enforce punitive taxes on tobacco products, the government is willing to kill you. Oh they will say it’s not breaking the tobacco tax law that got Garner killed, it’s resisting arrest. That makes it worse, the fact that you won’t accept the government control, and would dare resist the government controlling your voluntary actions is grounds for you death. It was the cigarette tax laws that can lead to the death of those the police seek to arrest.
Do a quick Youtube search and you can find hundreds of videos of police beating up people who would dare question their authority. Mention your constitutional rights, like freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to remain silent, freedom to travel, and you are likely to be detained and assaulted for “resisting arrest.”
You law and order Republicans, you’re violent statists who are willing to have kill people to enforce your ideas on how people ought to live. You think people who choose to take drugs for recreational purposes are so evil that the government should control their actions, and if they resist the government control of their voluntary actions the government should use force, up to and including killing such individual if they don’t submit to the government. The difference between a Republican and most libertarians is that although both generally dislike recreational drugs, and think that recreational drug use is not a wise idea, libertarians are not willing to let someone else get killed because they have a different perspective.
Uber liberal, socialist, and statist, Barney Frank in 2009 said, "Criminalizing choices that adults make because we think they are unwise ones, when the choices involved have no negative effect on the rights of others, is not appropriate in a free society." That of course was Democrat Hyperbole. He voted to make it illegal for you to use the light bulb of your choice, voted to limit free speech over the internet, voted for more government regulations on what you can and can’t eat, cosponsored laws giving the government more oversight in tobacco products, voted against retailers being allowed to set their own prices, and is famous for voting to control who banks must lend money. Obvioulsy he like most Democrats talks about people being allowed to make their own choices, so long as those are the choices he approves, otherwise he is quite willing to send armed government officials to force you to capitulate, and who have the authority to kill you if you refuse.
The actions of both the Democrats and Republicans clearly demonstrate they are OK with using the violent force to dictate that you live the way they think is best, and have opted for trying to control you through violence or the threat of violence. If you think that isn’t true, ask yourself why the BLM needs to be armed and have massive amounts of weapons and ammo? Why does the Dept. of Education, Department of the Interior, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Agriculture, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Commerce, Department of Energy, Department of Health & Human Service, Department of Interior, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Railroad Retirement Board, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, need armed need armed law enforcement officers? The answer is clear, they are willing to use the threat of violence and even kill the people to enforce the rules and regulations of those departments.
Even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has armed officers.
Democrats and Republicans so want to rule over everybody, they’ve created and armed a zillion Departments of Whatever. Anybody’s failure to comply with the hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations can, and often does, result in violent force used to rule over everybody. Republicans and Democrats have proven the are willing to risk the lives of their fellow citizens to get their own way, they make all sorts of things illegal, and authorize the use of force up to and including killing citizens who fail to capitulate.
Are you willing to allow the government the right to kill other citizens who don’t share you’re belief that people shouldn’t do recreational drugs?
Are you willing to stand by and let another person die at the hands of the government, because they choose to bet playing cards?
Do you think someone should lose his life because he offered to pay for sex? Do you think a person who takes money in exchange for sex should die at the hands of government? I think prostitution is wrong, it’s bad for both the prostitute and the solicitor, but it’s a voluntary exchange and I don’t think I have a right controlling how others live. Because I think it’s wrong, I am personally boycotting prostitutes and urge others to do the same. What I don’t do is threaten others by saying I’ll send people authorized to use force and punish you if you choose purchase or sell sex. If you support laws that make prostitution illegal you are saying that you are willing to kill people who are willing to refuse to accept your control of their sex lives.
The ruling elite, be they Republicans and Democrats, want to control you and your life. They have proven willing to hire, train, and arm people and send them to force you to comply, they have authorized those people to kill you if you fail to comply. Sell loosies on the streets of NY, you could get dead. It’s a shame so many are willing to use violence to control how others live.
Ask yourself these question about any law: Does this law make a voluntary choice of an individual that has no direct effect on the rights of another a crime? If someone refuses to obey a law, should the government have the authority to use violent force to enforce it, even killing those who refuse to obey? If you can’t answer yes to both questions you should oppose the law, and demand it be repealed.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Libertarianism, Religion, and the DH
By Tom Rhodes, 8/20/2014
Libertarians are a tolerant lot, except when it comes to religion. For some reason many, not all, and not even a majority, but many, are under the delusion that expressing and practicing and having your political actions influenced by any religion other than atheism is somehow not libertarian. Many libertarians actually support “Freedom From Religion.”
We really need to give everybody some Big-Boy pants, and teach the whiners to learn to focus their efforts on something productive. The anti-religion crowd needs to go back and read the constitution, and re-read, over and over again, the First Amendment. The First amendment guarantees freedom of religion, and prohibits the government from establishing a religion. It does not protect atheists from exposure to other religion. In fact any elected official, or government official, or employee, so long as they are not forcing others to believe as they do have a right to exercise their freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and express religious viewpoints even at government events.
At some point those whose religion is atheism, atheists, must come to an understanding that they must abide by the same rules they attempt to use to control others. Atheism is a religion. A Religion is defined as a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects. Atheism like Christianity, Islam, or the belief in the Greek Gods of Old, or the Norse God Oden, has a position on the existence of the divine or the afterlife. It’s not like baseball and having the righteous belief that the designated hitter is an abomination before all that is true, good, and honorable in baseball (a belief all morally righteous, intelligent, and fair thinking people share). Because atheism has a set of generally agreed upon beliefs by a number of persons concerning the existence of a divine or the afterlife it must rationally be considered a religion or sect of some kind.
The right to say there is no god or supernatural has no precedence nor priority over the right to say there is only one God, or many gods. Even among elected or government employed people. Unless they force you to believe as they do, or make your belief a basis of how you are treated under the law, rules, regulations, etc. Everybody is free to express their religion, even atheists, as they see fit. It is only when religion is used to determine how a law, rule, regulation, or something the government does, is there a problem.
Our country is being torn apart and destroyed by the continuous broadening of the idea and scope of “infringement” on the rights of others. Catering to atheists is destroying the country. We need to return to the American philosophy of "live and let live." Endowing hypersensitive crybabies with the power to censor those who don’t share their religion is upsetting the equilibrium that liberty and justice for all created, and has proven to work extremely well for an long time.
The Libertarian Party of Florida is not a religion, it has no specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon concerning the existence of a divine or the afterlife. The basic beliefs of the LPF are irrelevant to the existence or not of a divine being. Like all political parties the LP is an organization that exists to gain political power. The LP welcome people of any and all beliefs so long as you do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force or use of fraud to achieve social or political goals.
Now if you believe that there should be different rules, laws, regulations, or courts for people of different religions you clearly don’t share the beliefs and goals of the LP and should consider another political party. If you’re an atheist who wants to eliminate religious expression in public, eliminate evangelism, censor or silence those who don’t share your beliefs, and are willing to institute laws and use the force of government to be “free from religion” you probably shouldn’t be in the LP. You do not have a right to be free from exposure to other people’s religions. If you believe government schools should be able to censor graduation speeches so that valedictorians don’t “offend” people with their “Ode to Oden” or praise for Christ, for getting them through high school, you probably don’t belong in the LP, that is clearly the exercise of rights the government is restrained from infringing upon.
The LPF exists to gain political power in order to establish a society based on personal liberty and responsibility—a society in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives. The LPF believes the most desirable method of organizing society is the natural order that arises when the unalienable rights of individuals to life, liberty and property ownership are respected and protected. If your religion doesn’t share that belief you probably shouldn’t be in the LPF. The LPF believes that people have the right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and pursue happiness in whatever manner they choose so long as they do not forcibly or fraudulently interfere with the equal rights of others. Libertarians welcome the peace, prosperity, and diversity that freedom brings.
__________________________
Oh on a side note, if you believe the DH is a good rule, you are clearly a statist pig who has disavowed even pretense of holding libertarian beliefs, hate equality under the rules, and trust in evil egalitarianism. The idea that because a pitcher is notoriously bad at hitting the ball, they deserve to be exempt from the rules other players must abide; allowing some other person to play in their place is clearly unequal treatment that offers special treatment for some players and not others. The DH is like having somebody else take the math part of your ACT, because your good in english but bad in math.The DH is almost as evil as water cooling on a Harley. The DH is an abomination to baseball, libertarianism, freedom, truth, the American Way, and all that is good and right in the world. Society tolerating the DH is the canary in the bird cage, showing we are headed to totalitarianism. Although religion should not be a litmus test against being in the LPF, maybe we should add a platform plank to disqualify all people who believe in the DH not only from the LPF but from the voter rolls as well.
Of course my opinion on baseball might be a tad extreme, even for Libertarians, but unlike politics, baseball is important.
Libertarians are a tolerant lot, except when it comes to religion. For some reason many, not all, and not even a majority, but many, are under the delusion that expressing and practicing and having your political actions influenced by any religion other than atheism is somehow not libertarian. Many libertarians actually support “Freedom From Religion.”
We really need to give everybody some Big-Boy pants, and teach the whiners to learn to focus their efforts on something productive. The anti-religion crowd needs to go back and read the constitution, and re-read, over and over again, the First Amendment. The First amendment guarantees freedom of religion, and prohibits the government from establishing a religion. It does not protect atheists from exposure to other religion. In fact any elected official, or government official, or employee, so long as they are not forcing others to believe as they do have a right to exercise their freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and express religious viewpoints even at government events.
At some point those whose religion is atheism, atheists, must come to an understanding that they must abide by the same rules they attempt to use to control others. Atheism is a religion. A Religion is defined as a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects. Atheism like Christianity, Islam, or the belief in the Greek Gods of Old, or the Norse God Oden, has a position on the existence of the divine or the afterlife. It’s not like baseball and having the righteous belief that the designated hitter is an abomination before all that is true, good, and honorable in baseball (a belief all morally righteous, intelligent, and fair thinking people share). Because atheism has a set of generally agreed upon beliefs by a number of persons concerning the existence of a divine or the afterlife it must rationally be considered a religion or sect of some kind.
The right to say there is no god or supernatural has no precedence nor priority over the right to say there is only one God, or many gods. Even among elected or government employed people. Unless they force you to believe as they do, or make your belief a basis of how you are treated under the law, rules, regulations, etc. Everybody is free to express their religion, even atheists, as they see fit. It is only when religion is used to determine how a law, rule, regulation, or something the government does, is there a problem.
Our country is being torn apart and destroyed by the continuous broadening of the idea and scope of “infringement” on the rights of others. Catering to atheists is destroying the country. We need to return to the American philosophy of "live and let live." Endowing hypersensitive crybabies with the power to censor those who don’t share their religion is upsetting the equilibrium that liberty and justice for all created, and has proven to work extremely well for an long time.
The Libertarian Party of Florida is not a religion, it has no specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon concerning the existence of a divine or the afterlife. The basic beliefs of the LPF are irrelevant to the existence or not of a divine being. Like all political parties the LP is an organization that exists to gain political power. The LP welcome people of any and all beliefs so long as you do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force or use of fraud to achieve social or political goals.
Now if you believe that there should be different rules, laws, regulations, or courts for people of different religions you clearly don’t share the beliefs and goals of the LP and should consider another political party. If you’re an atheist who wants to eliminate religious expression in public, eliminate evangelism, censor or silence those who don’t share your beliefs, and are willing to institute laws and use the force of government to be “free from religion” you probably shouldn’t be in the LP. You do not have a right to be free from exposure to other people’s religions. If you believe government schools should be able to censor graduation speeches so that valedictorians don’t “offend” people with their “Ode to Oden” or praise for Christ, for getting them through high school, you probably don’t belong in the LP, that is clearly the exercise of rights the government is restrained from infringing upon.
The LPF exists to gain political power in order to establish a society based on personal liberty and responsibility—a society in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives. The LPF believes the most desirable method of organizing society is the natural order that arises when the unalienable rights of individuals to life, liberty and property ownership are respected and protected. If your religion doesn’t share that belief you probably shouldn’t be in the LPF. The LPF believes that people have the right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and pursue happiness in whatever manner they choose so long as they do not forcibly or fraudulently interfere with the equal rights of others. Libertarians welcome the peace, prosperity, and diversity that freedom brings.
__________________________
Oh on a side note, if you believe the DH is a good rule, you are clearly a statist pig who has disavowed even pretense of holding libertarian beliefs, hate equality under the rules, and trust in evil egalitarianism. The idea that because a pitcher is notoriously bad at hitting the ball, they deserve to be exempt from the rules other players must abide; allowing some other person to play in their place is clearly unequal treatment that offers special treatment for some players and not others. The DH is like having somebody else take the math part of your ACT, because your good in english but bad in math.The DH is almost as evil as water cooling on a Harley. The DH is an abomination to baseball, libertarianism, freedom, truth, the American Way, and all that is good and right in the world. Society tolerating the DH is the canary in the bird cage, showing we are headed to totalitarianism. Although religion should not be a litmus test against being in the LPF, maybe we should add a platform plank to disqualify all people who believe in the DH not only from the LPF but from the voter rolls as well.
Of course my opinion on baseball might be a tad extreme, even for Libertarians, but unlike politics, baseball is important.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Libertarianism and Islam
By Tom Rhodes, 8/12/2014
There are not many but some in the Libertarian party who are ardent supporters of Islam. The LP is about liberty and freedom, and has very minimal standards. Basically agree with the non-aggression principle and can be a libertarian. There are millions of people who are Muslims but not radical Islamists. Most are nominally Muslim by birth or social construct, but are not practicing. Just like liberal pro-gay rights Christians, they aren’t really Christians as they must and do reject the clear teachings of the Bible. Most Muslims aren’t don’t really believe in Islamists and the Koran, as they reject many of its clear teachings. The clear teachings of the Islamic Holy writs, the Koran and Hadith, are incompatible with libertarianism.
As such I have some questions for any Muslim who claims to be a libertarian and claim to uphold the Five Pillars of Islam and believe in the divine inspiration of the Koran and the reliability of the Hadith, I’d love to hear your responses to these questions.
We often hear horror stories of little girls being married to older men, genital mutilation, and honor killings of women who allegedly brought disrepute on their families. Do you categorically and without qualification denounce the practices of child brides, clitorectomies, and honor killings?
It is undeniable that non-Muslims living in some Muslim countries have been reduced to severe second-class citizen status (dhimmitude, in full) and forced to pay the oppressive jizya tax. In some Muslim countries, they can be jailed or killed simply if someone accuses them of blaspheming Muhammad. Do you categorically and without qualification denounce these practices and endorce non-Muslims to live as complete equals in both our and other countries?
Do you unqualified and without reservation support freedom of speech, even speech that might be considered blasphemous to Mohamad?
Will you defend the right of others to speech that which you consider Blasphemous?
Do you categorically and without qualification denounce all calls to execute so called blasphemers of Mohamad, like Wilder and Rushdie?
This year the Muslim Association of Malawi (MAM) called for homosexual people in the
country to be given the death penalty. Do you categorically and without qualification denounce all calls to punish people for being homosexual?
In quite a few Muslim countries, conversion is forbidden under penalty of death. Do you categorically and without qualification denounce this practice and support the 1st Amendment that guarantees free and open religious interaction, denouncing all punishments of any kind for conversion?
The Islamic State has demanded that non-Muslims convert or die. ISIS is carrying out Christian executions and even crucifixions right now. Do you categorically and without qualification denounce the practice of forced conversions?
All radical Muslim groups want to enforce Sharia Law. Do you categorically and without qualification stand against the implementation of Sharia?
“The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” is a famous Hadith. Do you categorically and without qualification state that Israel and the Jews have a right to exist?
I would love to get some direct answers from Muslims in the LP. The little dealing I’ve had with them is clear, they want different rules for Muslims than non-Muslims, they hem-haw and obfuscate supporting equal rights for everybody equally. We must consider a problem with answers by a person who claims to uphold the Five Pillars of Islam and believe in the divine inspiration of the Koran and the reliability of the Hadith. Islamic holy writs are pretty clear and grant Muslims the right and duty to lie to non-Muslims if it will further the cause of Islam.
So rather than simply accept the word, we must look at the actions of “moderate Muslims.” First and foremost I don’t expect honest, direct, answers to these questions. They will be qualified, or attacks on the questioner, or otherwise obfuscated and redirect with indirect answers. History is dotted with the likes of Mahmoud Abbas, who repeated the notorious actions the late Yasser Arafat who in English to Western/Israeli audiences routinely make lots of grand statements on peace but in Arabic to Muslim audiences routinely called for the eradication of Israel.
A vocal Muslim Libertarian argues that there should be separate court with separate rules for Islamists, and contracts Muslims enter should be treated differently and adjudicated differently than are contracts and laws for non-Muslims. Until and unless Muslims who claim to be Libertarian, openly and without qualification, call for all laws and all courts to treat everybody equally regardless of religion, sex, race, etc. their claims to be libertarian must be suspect. Unless we see moderate Muslims who claim to be Libertarian, openly and without qualification, publically denouncing the totalitarian and non-libertarian words, deeds, and actions of Islamists both here and abroad, their words must be suspect.
Right now it would be nice just to get clear unqualified answers to the above questions, that would be a start.
There are not many but some in the Libertarian party who are ardent supporters of Islam. The LP is about liberty and freedom, and has very minimal standards. Basically agree with the non-aggression principle and can be a libertarian. There are millions of people who are Muslims but not radical Islamists. Most are nominally Muslim by birth or social construct, but are not practicing. Just like liberal pro-gay rights Christians, they aren’t really Christians as they must and do reject the clear teachings of the Bible. Most Muslims aren’t don’t really believe in Islamists and the Koran, as they reject many of its clear teachings. The clear teachings of the Islamic Holy writs, the Koran and Hadith, are incompatible with libertarianism.
As such I have some questions for any Muslim who claims to be a libertarian and claim to uphold the Five Pillars of Islam and believe in the divine inspiration of the Koran and the reliability of the Hadith, I’d love to hear your responses to these questions.
We often hear horror stories of little girls being married to older men, genital mutilation, and honor killings of women who allegedly brought disrepute on their families. Do you categorically and without qualification denounce the practices of child brides, clitorectomies, and honor killings?
It is undeniable that non-Muslims living in some Muslim countries have been reduced to severe second-class citizen status (dhimmitude, in full) and forced to pay the oppressive jizya tax. In some Muslim countries, they can be jailed or killed simply if someone accuses them of blaspheming Muhammad. Do you categorically and without qualification denounce these practices and endorce non-Muslims to live as complete equals in both our and other countries?
Do you unqualified and without reservation support freedom of speech, even speech that might be considered blasphemous to Mohamad?
Will you defend the right of others to speech that which you consider Blasphemous?
Do you categorically and without qualification denounce all calls to execute so called blasphemers of Mohamad, like Wilder and Rushdie?
This year the Muslim Association of Malawi (MAM) called for homosexual people in the
country to be given the death penalty. Do you categorically and without qualification denounce all calls to punish people for being homosexual?
In quite a few Muslim countries, conversion is forbidden under penalty of death. Do you categorically and without qualification denounce this practice and support the 1st Amendment that guarantees free and open religious interaction, denouncing all punishments of any kind for conversion?
The Islamic State has demanded that non-Muslims convert or die. ISIS is carrying out Christian executions and even crucifixions right now. Do you categorically and without qualification denounce the practice of forced conversions?
All radical Muslim groups want to enforce Sharia Law. Do you categorically and without qualification stand against the implementation of Sharia?
“The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” is a famous Hadith. Do you categorically and without qualification state that Israel and the Jews have a right to exist?
I would love to get some direct answers from Muslims in the LP. The little dealing I’ve had with them is clear, they want different rules for Muslims than non-Muslims, they hem-haw and obfuscate supporting equal rights for everybody equally. We must consider a problem with answers by a person who claims to uphold the Five Pillars of Islam and believe in the divine inspiration of the Koran and the reliability of the Hadith. Islamic holy writs are pretty clear and grant Muslims the right and duty to lie to non-Muslims if it will further the cause of Islam.
So rather than simply accept the word, we must look at the actions of “moderate Muslims.” First and foremost I don’t expect honest, direct, answers to these questions. They will be qualified, or attacks on the questioner, or otherwise obfuscated and redirect with indirect answers. History is dotted with the likes of Mahmoud Abbas, who repeated the notorious actions the late Yasser Arafat who in English to Western/Israeli audiences routinely make lots of grand statements on peace but in Arabic to Muslim audiences routinely called for the eradication of Israel.
A vocal Muslim Libertarian argues that there should be separate court with separate rules for Islamists, and contracts Muslims enter should be treated differently and adjudicated differently than are contracts and laws for non-Muslims. Until and unless Muslims who claim to be Libertarian, openly and without qualification, call for all laws and all courts to treat everybody equally regardless of religion, sex, race, etc. their claims to be libertarian must be suspect. Unless we see moderate Muslims who claim to be Libertarian, openly and without qualification, publically denouncing the totalitarian and non-libertarian words, deeds, and actions of Islamists both here and abroad, their words must be suspect.
Right now it would be nice just to get clear unqualified answers to the above questions, that would be a start.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
It’s Only Logical
By Tom Rhodes, 3/18/2014
You may or may not have noticed, but a disproportionate number of Libertarian party are professional computer nerds. The reason is simple, programmers and the like steep themselves in logic all day every day. They clearly see failure and erroneous outcome when bad logic is implemented. Programs fail and they have to spend three times the time debugging bad logic, the get it; doing it right the first time is easier, and undoing the poor logic another programmer is even harder. Looking at history, observing society, and being logical, the proof is obvious. Liberty, the protection of individuals rights, the rule of law, and equality under the law, provide the best standard of living for more of society than any other system. Hence programmers, computer geeks, disproportionately move to the Libertarian party.
Super eggheads like Bill Gates live libertarian values but talk like liberals. That’s because they are smart enough to know that not everybody can look at something logically and that when it comes to winning a confrontation, logic is at the bottom of the list of effective tools. So using superior logic they abandon libertarian “talk” and implement the other two more effective tools in coming out on top in a confrontation.
Those other two tools, violence and emotion. In any confrontation of any type, the side willing to use violence, and having the ability to use violence wins. PERIOD!!! Weather morally right or not, effective use of violence wins any confrontation, and the side with superior firepower and proven willingness to use it wins. Say 4 people meet and one tells all the others to give him their wallets. They refuse, he pulls out a gun shoots one and takes his wallet, then tells the others to give him their wallets. Having seen a clear demonstration of superior firepower and the willingness to use it, they quickly give up their wallets.
After violence the next most effective is emotion, we see politicians crumble all the time doing stuff that has proven to be bad and ineffective, because the emotional angst is stronger than the logic. Look at the government program “Head Start.” It has been repeatedly proven to be very expensive and have ZERO long term benefits. But when face with the emotional argument that cutting funding to head start would be cruel to poor children, and who would deny poor children a “head start” in education, politicians crumble. The emotional appeal wins over the logical facts.
Liberals have seen that emotional appeal and emotional attacks win over logic. Thus it is virtually impossible to have a rational discussion with a liberal. While you offer logical points to support your position, the liberal is offering some new way to convince others that you’re an evil monster who wants to deprive poor children of food, or hate women, or your racist. It doesn’t matter if they have an logical reasoning to support their emotional claims, they pull at heart strings. If it “feels” right the willfully embrace stupidity and deny facts. This is how liberals work, they feel good about positions that are emotionally satisfying regardless of how many people such a position hurts. Liberals have emotionally blinded themselves to believe that their ideas are well-crafted and intellectual, regardless of the facts.
The reason ultra-logical libertarian arguments don’t work is because we like liberals ignore human behavior. The LP is associated with anarchy. We have permitted esoteric discussion and anarchist ideology to permeate the LP. Thus our image is of anarchists. The fact is we should have embraced and promoted the idea that government is a necessary evil.
No amount wanting a “voluntary” society is going to change the simple fact that there has to be somebody willing to use force to protect the rights of those who can’t protect themselves. The reality is that a society based solely on voluntarism cannot work, because there is always going to be the amoral bastard who is willing to use violence to take what he wants, and they only way to stop such a person is with superior firepower. We established a government to have that superior firepower, tasked with protecting the life, liberty, and property, of everybody equally. That superior firepower has a cost, it is paid for with taxes. When the LP says “taxation = theft” what it is saying is a very emotional and loud declaration that we want a lawless society. People KNOW that “we all can’t just get along” and that some force must instill lawful behavior and protect the week. Government is a NECESSARY evil.
Look at the emotional attacks against the city who refused to put out the fire of a home that didn’t pay for fire protection. The headline read “ Firefighters let home burn over $75 fee -- again” The liberals and news media were aghast at the idea that a fully capable fire department while on site to protect a neighbor’s home would not lift a finger to protect the home of those who didn’t pay the fire district fee, a mere $75/yr. This is an example of how libertarian ideas in practice look. You can choose or not choose to pay a fee. With liberty is risk, not choosing to pay the fire district fee means you don’t get the benefit of a fire department. Seeing a family’s home burn to the ground and knowing they lost everything they own, when it could have been salvaged has such an emotional impact that the logical libertarian lesson in making wise life choices is lost.
The liberty to have a choice and keep your money or pay for fire protection is lost. The logical libertarian is instead a cold calloused uncaring heartless money grubber. Rather than feel and or see the emotional suffering because people choose to exercise freedom, in this case the liberty to pay a fire district fee or not, the emotional argument wins, liberty loses, and everybody should be forced to pay a tax, not fee for service. The liberals emotional wellbeing is more important than individuals liberty to choose to pay for a service or not.
Logic and reason are not going to win the emotional battle. The strong application of logic and reason lead to being productive. The politically incorrect fact is that the LP is overwhelming comprised of rational men and dreamy utopian anarchists. The emotional pleas of teary eyed single mothers and children win out over productive men all day long and utopian dreamers every time. Illogical emotions are leading to the use of force to make everybody comply in order to reinforce emotional satisfaction. The moral decay of our society is making it very clear that our ideas will not be refuted logically and we will not be treated with the respect we attempt to treat others. Our cool logical, rational arguments, or pie in the sky anarchist utopian ideas fall on deaf ears.
As libertarians to be successful we need to jettison our anarchist image. That means treating anarchists in the party the same way we treat liberals. We need quit being logical and rational, and appeal to the emotions of Americans. We need to play the emotion game better and harder than they do. Start with pulling at the heartstrings using examples and stories of people who die, suffer, are hurt by oppressive government. Attacking Obamacare with examples of people who were doing well but now dead because the death panels denied them service, etc. Lots of images and stories of Storm Troopers abusing innocent people, etc. Emotionally attack limousine liberals as hard as we can.
Arguing with liberals is like playing chess with a pigeon; no matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon is just going to knock over the pieces, crap on the board and strut around like it's victorious. There is a way to beat pigeons - Roast Squab with Bacon and Grapes Recipe. We have the logical and rational arguments, they don’t work. We must gain both the moral and emotional high ground. Suggestions?
You may or may not have noticed, but a disproportionate number of Libertarian party are professional computer nerds. The reason is simple, programmers and the like steep themselves in logic all day every day. They clearly see failure and erroneous outcome when bad logic is implemented. Programs fail and they have to spend three times the time debugging bad logic, the get it; doing it right the first time is easier, and undoing the poor logic another programmer is even harder. Looking at history, observing society, and being logical, the proof is obvious. Liberty, the protection of individuals rights, the rule of law, and equality under the law, provide the best standard of living for more of society than any other system. Hence programmers, computer geeks, disproportionately move to the Libertarian party.
Super eggheads like Bill Gates live libertarian values but talk like liberals. That’s because they are smart enough to know that not everybody can look at something logically and that when it comes to winning a confrontation, logic is at the bottom of the list of effective tools. So using superior logic they abandon libertarian “talk” and implement the other two more effective tools in coming out on top in a confrontation.
Those other two tools, violence and emotion. In any confrontation of any type, the side willing to use violence, and having the ability to use violence wins. PERIOD!!! Weather morally right or not, effective use of violence wins any confrontation, and the side with superior firepower and proven willingness to use it wins. Say 4 people meet and one tells all the others to give him their wallets. They refuse, he pulls out a gun shoots one and takes his wallet, then tells the others to give him their wallets. Having seen a clear demonstration of superior firepower and the willingness to use it, they quickly give up their wallets.
After violence the next most effective is emotion, we see politicians crumble all the time doing stuff that has proven to be bad and ineffective, because the emotional angst is stronger than the logic. Look at the government program “Head Start.” It has been repeatedly proven to be very expensive and have ZERO long term benefits. But when face with the emotional argument that cutting funding to head start would be cruel to poor children, and who would deny poor children a “head start” in education, politicians crumble. The emotional appeal wins over the logical facts.
Liberals have seen that emotional appeal and emotional attacks win over logic. Thus it is virtually impossible to have a rational discussion with a liberal. While you offer logical points to support your position, the liberal is offering some new way to convince others that you’re an evil monster who wants to deprive poor children of food, or hate women, or your racist. It doesn’t matter if they have an logical reasoning to support their emotional claims, they pull at heart strings. If it “feels” right the willfully embrace stupidity and deny facts. This is how liberals work, they feel good about positions that are emotionally satisfying regardless of how many people such a position hurts. Liberals have emotionally blinded themselves to believe that their ideas are well-crafted and intellectual, regardless of the facts.
The reason ultra-logical libertarian arguments don’t work is because we like liberals ignore human behavior. The LP is associated with anarchy. We have permitted esoteric discussion and anarchist ideology to permeate the LP. Thus our image is of anarchists. The fact is we should have embraced and promoted the idea that government is a necessary evil.
No amount wanting a “voluntary” society is going to change the simple fact that there has to be somebody willing to use force to protect the rights of those who can’t protect themselves. The reality is that a society based solely on voluntarism cannot work, because there is always going to be the amoral bastard who is willing to use violence to take what he wants, and they only way to stop such a person is with superior firepower. We established a government to have that superior firepower, tasked with protecting the life, liberty, and property, of everybody equally. That superior firepower has a cost, it is paid for with taxes. When the LP says “taxation = theft” what it is saying is a very emotional and loud declaration that we want a lawless society. People KNOW that “we all can’t just get along” and that some force must instill lawful behavior and protect the week. Government is a NECESSARY evil.
Look at the emotional attacks against the city who refused to put out the fire of a home that didn’t pay for fire protection. The headline read “ Firefighters let home burn over $75 fee -- again” The liberals and news media were aghast at the idea that a fully capable fire department while on site to protect a neighbor’s home would not lift a finger to protect the home of those who didn’t pay the fire district fee, a mere $75/yr. This is an example of how libertarian ideas in practice look. You can choose or not choose to pay a fee. With liberty is risk, not choosing to pay the fire district fee means you don’t get the benefit of a fire department. Seeing a family’s home burn to the ground and knowing they lost everything they own, when it could have been salvaged has such an emotional impact that the logical libertarian lesson in making wise life choices is lost.
The liberty to have a choice and keep your money or pay for fire protection is lost. The logical libertarian is instead a cold calloused uncaring heartless money grubber. Rather than feel and or see the emotional suffering because people choose to exercise freedom, in this case the liberty to pay a fire district fee or not, the emotional argument wins, liberty loses, and everybody should be forced to pay a tax, not fee for service. The liberals emotional wellbeing is more important than individuals liberty to choose to pay for a service or not.
Logic and reason are not going to win the emotional battle. The strong application of logic and reason lead to being productive. The politically incorrect fact is that the LP is overwhelming comprised of rational men and dreamy utopian anarchists. The emotional pleas of teary eyed single mothers and children win out over productive men all day long and utopian dreamers every time. Illogical emotions are leading to the use of force to make everybody comply in order to reinforce emotional satisfaction. The moral decay of our society is making it very clear that our ideas will not be refuted logically and we will not be treated with the respect we attempt to treat others. Our cool logical, rational arguments, or pie in the sky anarchist utopian ideas fall on deaf ears.
As libertarians to be successful we need to jettison our anarchist image. That means treating anarchists in the party the same way we treat liberals. We need quit being logical and rational, and appeal to the emotions of Americans. We need to play the emotion game better and harder than they do. Start with pulling at the heartstrings using examples and stories of people who die, suffer, are hurt by oppressive government. Attacking Obamacare with examples of people who were doing well but now dead because the death panels denied them service, etc. Lots of images and stories of Storm Troopers abusing innocent people, etc. Emotionally attack limousine liberals as hard as we can.
Arguing with liberals is like playing chess with a pigeon; no matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon is just going to knock over the pieces, crap on the board and strut around like it's victorious. There is a way to beat pigeons - Roast Squab with Bacon and Grapes Recipe. We have the logical and rational arguments, they don’t work. We must gain both the moral and emotional high ground. Suggestions?
Monday, November 4, 2013
Florida AG race heats up with Bondi facing opposition
By Karl Dickey
October 30, 2013
Republican incumbent Pam Bondi is facing opposition to retain her position as Florida's Attorney General. Over this past weekend Libertarian Bill Wohlsifer announced he is considering to run for the office and on October 21, 2013 Democrat George Sheldon filed to run for the office. To date, these are the only two potential challengers Bondi has and candidates have into June, 2014 to qualify to be on the November, 2014 ballot.
Attorney Bill Wohlsifer
Wohlsifer is on the Executive Committee for the Libertarian Party of Florida and is an accomplished intellectual property attorney based out of Tallahassee, Florida. Wohlsifer is a freedom advocate looking to free Floridians of what most Floridians find as 'unjust' laws such as the criminalization of medical marijuana in Florida. Earlier this year, Wohlsifer, on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Florida, pointed out to the State of Florida that their election laws were not congruent which helped the state party avoid a frivolous fine imposed by the state.
This month the Libertarian Party put out a press release encouraging voters to end the cycle of voting Republican or Democrat and begin voting for Libertarian candidates.
Bondi has been meeting with opposition by both Republicans and Democrats for her position to block the American Airlines and US Airways proposed merger. She also had met with conflict in her attempt to block a proposal expected to be on the November, 2014 ballot for Floridians to decide whether to legalize medical marijuana in the state.
Sheldon is a former Florida Department of Children and Families secretary who left in 2011 to join the Obama administration working under Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Sebelius has been under fire recently for her gross mismanagement of the HealthCare.gov website.
The Libertarian Party of Florida is quickly racking up many qualified candidates to run for public office in 2014 including most notably Adrian Wyllie who is challenging Governor Rick Scott and 20 other candidates in the 2014 Gubernatorial race.
Friday, October 25, 2013
Who's Responsible?
By Tom Rhodes, 10/24/2013
Some Libertarians were in uproar over recent news about a school that had the police come into the house and search every student's locker, screaming about abridging the student's civil liberties. There are several, clearly libertarian, reasons that this uproar is unjustified. One, the lockers are not the students property, they belong to the school, and as the owner of the lockers, the school has the right to set the rules to their use, including reserving the right to search/inspect them for prohibited items as the school sees fit. Second, based on legal liability and legal obligations the schools have concerning their charges, look up the term in loco parentis, just as a parent has the right to look in their kids dresser drawers and discipline them accordingly.
More importantly, students do not have all the legal rights and civil liberties of adults. Contrary to what some libertarians think, this is a good thing. We don't let 6 yr olds kids drive, we let 10 yr olds vote, and don't allow 12 yr olds to buy guns. Why? Because they don't have physical abilities, emotional abilities, mental abilities, or experience, to do everything an adult does. Not to say that they are incapable of many adult tasks, experience has shown that many a 6 year old can operate heavy equipment, just look at small family farms.
In times past we allowed any kid who wanted to go to the local hardware store and buy guns and ammo without restrictions. Today you must be an adult to exercise that right, the wisdom of this is clear, today with enough guns in private hands to arm every man, woman, and child, we have a fewer accidental gun deaths than in the past, and accidental gun deaths continues to drop. Restricting the decision and right to purchase arms to adults, who have all their civil rights and have reached an age where they can be held legally responsible for their actions, has proven to be a wise decision, and reasonable. Not the NRA, GOA, nor any reasonable adult thinks that 12 yr old boys shouldn't be allowed to buy guns and ammo. Those in the LP who think children should have all the rights of adults are idiots, ignore human history, and give the LP a bad name. Yes some 10 yr olds are mature enough to own guns, vote, etc. and some 40 yr olds are not mature enough to vote, or drive, and certainly shouldn't own a gun; but individual extremes don't justify either granting kids adult rights nor taking away rights from all adults.
On whole the maturity to assume the responsibility of many adult decisions does not exist in children. That is why parents have both legal and moral authority over their children. Parents as adults are responsible for both the provision and protection of children. But who's responsible for adults?
The anti-gun crowd today bases almost every argument they have against guns on the idea that the state is in loco parentis of every person regardless of age. Their arguments assume that nobody is an adult and that the state is responsible for everybody. Just as a parent can decide which of their kids is allowed to play what video games, or even if their child can own a video game, the anti-gun crowd wants the state to determine which of its children is allowed to own a gun and what types of guns that child can own. Liberal anti-gunners believe the state is every citizen's parent.
Working on the assumption of the state being in loco parentis to every person, they assume the state has (or should have) the legal authority to control what people do, just as parents have the legal authority to control their children. They disregard the fact that with in loco parentis comes not only the legal authority to control the actions and possessions of those you are charged but the legal obligation to protect those you are charged. This is a big problem. The courts have consistently and repeatedly ruled that "government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen."
"The duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists."
Those were the decisions of our courts in specific response to a suit against Washington DC police by three young women who had been raped and beaten during a home invasion. During their 14 hour nightmare of repeated rape and assault, two of the women had repeatedly called the D.C. police. They even saw a police car drive by their townhouse after their first call for help. They were told help was on its way in subsequent calls, but the police never showed up. In Warren v. District of Columbia, it was decided that the police have no legal obligation to protect individuals, emphatically saying that individuals not the government are responsible for their own individual safety.
This decision was made at the same time there was ban on firearms in the home for self-defense in Washington DC. Part of the reasoning of both the Heller and McDonald decisions is that individuals not the government are responsible for their own self defense. Thus the law of the land is that all adults have the legal right to arms to defend themselves. This is based on the fact that the only person responsible for any individuals self defense is that individual.
Any liberal anti-gun hoplophobic statist that infers that you have no need of a gun and that the police are there to protect you is either totally ignorant and uninformed or purposefully lying to you. If you depend upon law enforcement to protect you, then you are a self deluded fool. No you don't "have" to own a gun, you can choose not to go where there are high levels of violent crime, choose to live in a safe neighborhood, and choose to take other security precautions. In fact those simple precautions will probably mean that in your entire life you'll never actually need a weapon to protect yourself.
If even one of the women in the Warren v. District of Columbia had been armed, they might not have had to endure 14 hours of rape and assault, and we may not have had the courts remind us that the government is not responsible for our safety. Take the liberal hoplophobe advice and pee your pants when confronted by a rapist; but according to the results of an Obama directed research by the CDC, "Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was 'used' by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies."
What does this mean and how does it answer the question, "Who's Responsible?" Simple, the government is not in loco parentis of every person, thus you and nobody else has the Duty to Protect you and your family; the government has no legal or moral Duty to Protect, and in assuming the responsibility of being an adult, responsible for your own security and safety, it is important that you know that nothing is more effective for you and your families protection than being armed.
Obama's CDC research confirms the wisdom of our fore fathers, NOTHING, has been found to consistently lower injury rates among crime victims than the victim being armed and using such arms in self defense. The Second Amendment is Pro-Choice, your choice to be armed or not, the government shall not infringe upon your choice. If you remember the old 70's TV Series Kung Fu, then you'll take Po's advice "choose wisely grasshopper."
Some Libertarians were in uproar over recent news about a school that had the police come into the house and search every student's locker, screaming about abridging the student's civil liberties. There are several, clearly libertarian, reasons that this uproar is unjustified. One, the lockers are not the students property, they belong to the school, and as the owner of the lockers, the school has the right to set the rules to their use, including reserving the right to search/inspect them for prohibited items as the school sees fit. Second, based on legal liability and legal obligations the schools have concerning their charges, look up the term in loco parentis, just as a parent has the right to look in their kids dresser drawers and discipline them accordingly.
More importantly, students do not have all the legal rights and civil liberties of adults. Contrary to what some libertarians think, this is a good thing. We don't let 6 yr olds kids drive, we let 10 yr olds vote, and don't allow 12 yr olds to buy guns. Why? Because they don't have physical abilities, emotional abilities, mental abilities, or experience, to do everything an adult does. Not to say that they are incapable of many adult tasks, experience has shown that many a 6 year old can operate heavy equipment, just look at small family farms.
In times past we allowed any kid who wanted to go to the local hardware store and buy guns and ammo without restrictions. Today you must be an adult to exercise that right, the wisdom of this is clear, today with enough guns in private hands to arm every man, woman, and child, we have a fewer accidental gun deaths than in the past, and accidental gun deaths continues to drop. Restricting the decision and right to purchase arms to adults, who have all their civil rights and have reached an age where they can be held legally responsible for their actions, has proven to be a wise decision, and reasonable. Not the NRA, GOA, nor any reasonable adult thinks that 12 yr old boys shouldn't be allowed to buy guns and ammo. Those in the LP who think children should have all the rights of adults are idiots, ignore human history, and give the LP a bad name. Yes some 10 yr olds are mature enough to own guns, vote, etc. and some 40 yr olds are not mature enough to vote, or drive, and certainly shouldn't own a gun; but individual extremes don't justify either granting kids adult rights nor taking away rights from all adults.
On whole the maturity to assume the responsibility of many adult decisions does not exist in children. That is why parents have both legal and moral authority over their children. Parents as adults are responsible for both the provision and protection of children. But who's responsible for adults?
The anti-gun crowd today bases almost every argument they have against guns on the idea that the state is in loco parentis of every person regardless of age. Their arguments assume that nobody is an adult and that the state is responsible for everybody. Just as a parent can decide which of their kids is allowed to play what video games, or even if their child can own a video game, the anti-gun crowd wants the state to determine which of its children is allowed to own a gun and what types of guns that child can own. Liberal anti-gunners believe the state is every citizen's parent.
Working on the assumption of the state being in loco parentis to every person, they assume the state has (or should have) the legal authority to control what people do, just as parents have the legal authority to control their children. They disregard the fact that with in loco parentis comes not only the legal authority to control the actions and possessions of those you are charged but the legal obligation to protect those you are charged. This is a big problem. The courts have consistently and repeatedly ruled that "government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen."
"The duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists."
Those were the decisions of our courts in specific response to a suit against Washington DC police by three young women who had been raped and beaten during a home invasion. During their 14 hour nightmare of repeated rape and assault, two of the women had repeatedly called the D.C. police. They even saw a police car drive by their townhouse after their first call for help. They were told help was on its way in subsequent calls, but the police never showed up. In Warren v. District of Columbia, it was decided that the police have no legal obligation to protect individuals, emphatically saying that individuals not the government are responsible for their own individual safety.
This decision was made at the same time there was ban on firearms in the home for self-defense in Washington DC. Part of the reasoning of both the Heller and McDonald decisions is that individuals not the government are responsible for their own self defense. Thus the law of the land is that all adults have the legal right to arms to defend themselves. This is based on the fact that the only person responsible for any individuals self defense is that individual.
Any liberal anti-gun hoplophobic statist that infers that you have no need of a gun and that the police are there to protect you is either totally ignorant and uninformed or purposefully lying to you. If you depend upon law enforcement to protect you, then you are a self deluded fool. No you don't "have" to own a gun, you can choose not to go where there are high levels of violent crime, choose to live in a safe neighborhood, and choose to take other security precautions. In fact those simple precautions will probably mean that in your entire life you'll never actually need a weapon to protect yourself.
If even one of the women in the Warren v. District of Columbia had been armed, they might not have had to endure 14 hours of rape and assault, and we may not have had the courts remind us that the government is not responsible for our safety. Take the liberal hoplophobe advice and pee your pants when confronted by a rapist; but according to the results of an Obama directed research by the CDC, "Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was 'used' by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies."
What does this mean and how does it answer the question, "Who's Responsible?" Simple, the government is not in loco parentis of every person, thus you and nobody else has the Duty to Protect you and your family; the government has no legal or moral Duty to Protect, and in assuming the responsibility of being an adult, responsible for your own security and safety, it is important that you know that nothing is more effective for you and your families protection than being armed.
Obama's CDC research confirms the wisdom of our fore fathers, NOTHING, has been found to consistently lower injury rates among crime victims than the victim being armed and using such arms in self defense. The Second Amendment is Pro-Choice, your choice to be armed or not, the government shall not infringe upon your choice. If you remember the old 70's TV Series Kung Fu, then you'll take Po's advice "choose wisely grasshopper."
Monday, July 29, 2013
“Libertarian Islamist” an Oxymoron
By Tom Rhodes, 7/29/2013
The foundational principles of libertarian philosophy include the Non Aggression Principle, Equality under the law, and the Rule of Law. You cannot honestly say you’re a Libertarian if you don’t believe that all laws should apply to everybody equally, and that no individual or group is above the law. Believing that any individual or group should have different laws or be treated differently under the law is the path to tyranny and not compatible with libertarianism.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) arguably the image and positions of Islamists in America. The official position they have taken, as Mustafa Carroll, executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth CAIR branch, told a crowd at a rally is that Islam that members of the faith should not be bound by American law.
There is currently a push by some “libertarian” Islamists, to gain acceptance of Islamists in the LP. The general goal is to label and smear those doesn’t say that Islamism is libertarian and embrace Islamists in the LP is bigots. While ignoring debate about principles.
If the LP is the party of principle, it cannot and must not accept people who proclaim that belonging to any group puts them above the law of the land. Not only does this concept violate the Rule of Law, it violates the NAP, it proposes to use the force of government to silence opinions and ideas they don't like and to grant them special privileges over others.
The concept our government was created is that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” To be a good Muslim you must reject this notion. Islamists belief system and holy writ claim that those who don’t believe as they believe are sub-human, and must pay for the privilege of not being Muslim, or become enslaved, or be put to death. Until that basic premise is rejected by Islam, it is not compatible with modern western civilization, much less libertarian principles or the LP.
As long as Islamists reject the rule of law, and want different rules for some people than others, and promote group ideology over individual rights they are not compatible with libertarian philosophy, nor are they compatible with the LP. This isn’t to say if you’re a Muslim you can’t be a member of the LP or can’t be libertarian, but it is to say if you reject the Rule of Law and want different laws or courts for Muslims than the rest of America, you have rejected the LP and its principles. If you don’t openly and publicly reject the idea that “practicing Muslims, we are above the law of the land,” you don’t have a place in the LP.
The foundational principles of libertarian philosophy include the Non Aggression Principle, Equality under the law, and the Rule of Law. You cannot honestly say you’re a Libertarian if you don’t believe that all laws should apply to everybody equally, and that no individual or group is above the law. Believing that any individual or group should have different laws or be treated differently under the law is the path to tyranny and not compatible with libertarianism.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) arguably the image and positions of Islamists in America. The official position they have taken, as Mustafa Carroll, executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth CAIR branch, told a crowd at a rally is that Islam that members of the faith should not be bound by American law.
“If we are practicing Muslims, we are above the law of the land” ~ Mustafa Carroll, executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth CAIR branchAt least he is open and honest about the Islamic Principles. They do not believe in the Rule of Law. The rally was held in Austin as part of a nationwide effort to hold “Muslim Capitol Day” events.
There is currently a push by some “libertarian” Islamists, to gain acceptance of Islamists in the LP. The general goal is to label and smear those doesn’t say that Islamism is libertarian and embrace Islamists in the LP is bigots. While ignoring debate about principles.
If the LP is the party of principle, it cannot and must not accept people who proclaim that belonging to any group puts them above the law of the land. Not only does this concept violate the Rule of Law, it violates the NAP, it proposes to use the force of government to silence opinions and ideas they don't like and to grant them special privileges over others.
The concept our government was created is that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” To be a good Muslim you must reject this notion. Islamists belief system and holy writ claim that those who don’t believe as they believe are sub-human, and must pay for the privilege of not being Muslim, or become enslaved, or be put to death. Until that basic premise is rejected by Islam, it is not compatible with modern western civilization, much less libertarian principles or the LP.
As long as Islamists reject the rule of law, and want different rules for some people than others, and promote group ideology over individual rights they are not compatible with libertarian philosophy, nor are they compatible with the LP. This isn’t to say if you’re a Muslim you can’t be a member of the LP or can’t be libertarian, but it is to say if you reject the Rule of Law and want different laws or courts for Muslims than the rest of America, you have rejected the LP and its principles. If you don’t openly and publicly reject the idea that “practicing Muslims, we are above the law of the land,” you don’t have a place in the LP.
Friday, July 26, 2013
Winning the War of Ideas
By Tom Rhodes, 7/26/2013
Statists are losing the war of ideas. Look at the NJ liberal governor who happens to look like an elephant, and claims to be an elephant's latest rant against libertarians. Gov Christie says promoting the Fourth Amendment, and limiting the government from searching every persons effects is "dangerous." Like all statists over the history of man, they use the excuse that giving the state control of you will make you safer. What they don't do is tell you they mean "safer for the state" not safer for you.
It's gotten so bad that leftists are now calling for the end of the First Amendment, saying limiting free speech is a "necessity."
The obvious problem is that since the internet has allowed people to communicate and publish without going through government, big business, or a newspaper editor, ideas and information that the ruling elite would rather not have discussed, exposed, or broadcast, are now readily available to everybody. Snowden exposing the state's clear violation of its constitutional restrictions is "dangerous."
Exposing the fact that when liberal statist ideas are implemented, they result is ruin, as evidenced by Detroit after 50 years of liberal statist rule. Statists of all stripes want to put the genie back in the bottle, they want to control what information the masses are exposed. They are losing their grasp on what they thought they controlled. More and more people don't watch television as a primary means of news and entertainment. They have more choices and can actually respond and participate. A guy in his pajamas can expose the ruling elite and bring the actions of the high and mighty to the masses. This not only can, but has resulted in the impeachment of the President of the United States. The Drudge Report lead to Clinton's Impeachment.
The Libertarian Party (LP) has been around for 40 years. It was ignored for years, and until recently was treated as a foil for late night comedians. When formed in the early 70's you had your choice of ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS on TV, and other than highly edited editorials in your local newspaper, the statists controlled the ideas people were exposed, and the LP message was shut down by the ruling elite. In the Mid 80's two things happened to begin the destruction of statist control of the media and ideas. The courts forced the FCC to get rid of the so called "fairness doctrine" which lead to an explosion in talk radio, and technology advanced to a point where the internet became commercially viable. In the last 20 years, digital image technology and cell phones turned virtually every person walking the street into a reporter. That Damn 1st Amendment now means that the cops are routinely exposed for abusing our rights, Rodney King was just the start. Video and audio recording in court rooms, of the police, at town hall meetings, etc. continue to expose statists for the controlling anti-freedom, two-bit dictators they are.
The right says libertarian ideas are dangerous; the left says limiting speech is a necessity; Libertarian ideas and their implementation means more freedom, and less government. Less government means less power for the statist ruling elite. They are fighting the idea that you as an individual know best how to live your own life. That is a dangerous idea, they want control. Education is the key, the internet and 1st Amendment allow everybody to get the education they need and want without filtering by the ruling elite. In addition to wanting restrictions to free speech on the internet, they want to control what your taught. This is why Common Core, NCLB, the Dept of Education, the FCC, etc. exist. This is why Eric Holder is attacking home schooling. Control; they want to control you right down to what ideas you are exposed and what you are allowed to learn. There is a war of ideas and the battle is not over. The preamble of our Constitution starting with "We the People" was a slap in the face of the ruling elite. They now claim that those ideas that culminated in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that limited the government are dangerous. They are dangerous; dangerous to the ruling elite.
Because the statists are losing the war of ideas, they are now actively calling on government and corporate control of the ideas people can share. Because of the loss of control to the news, ideas, and information that the masses are exposed, the LP can no longer be ignored. Because of the exposed abuses of power and observable outcomes of statist policies, laughing at the libertarian is not longer an effective tool to diminish their influence. The Statists are now openly attacking and fighting both libertarians and libertarian ideas like the Rule of Law, Freedom of Speech, natural rights, etc. This is good news, as the next step is Libertarian Victory.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Statists are losing the war of ideas. Look at the NJ liberal governor who happens to look like an elephant, and claims to be an elephant's latest rant against libertarians. Gov Christie says promoting the Fourth Amendment, and limiting the government from searching every persons effects is "dangerous." Like all statists over the history of man, they use the excuse that giving the state control of you will make you safer. What they don't do is tell you they mean "safer for the state" not safer for you.
It's gotten so bad that leftists are now calling for the end of the First Amendment, saying limiting free speech is a "necessity."
The obvious problem is that since the internet has allowed people to communicate and publish without going through government, big business, or a newspaper editor, ideas and information that the ruling elite would rather not have discussed, exposed, or broadcast, are now readily available to everybody. Snowden exposing the state's clear violation of its constitutional restrictions is "dangerous."
Exposing the fact that when liberal statist ideas are implemented, they result is ruin, as evidenced by Detroit after 50 years of liberal statist rule. Statists of all stripes want to put the genie back in the bottle, they want to control what information the masses are exposed. They are losing their grasp on what they thought they controlled. More and more people don't watch television as a primary means of news and entertainment. They have more choices and can actually respond and participate. A guy in his pajamas can expose the ruling elite and bring the actions of the high and mighty to the masses. This not only can, but has resulted in the impeachment of the President of the United States. The Drudge Report lead to Clinton's Impeachment.
The Libertarian Party (LP) has been around for 40 years. It was ignored for years, and until recently was treated as a foil for late night comedians. When formed in the early 70's you had your choice of ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS on TV, and other than highly edited editorials in your local newspaper, the statists controlled the ideas people were exposed, and the LP message was shut down by the ruling elite. In the Mid 80's two things happened to begin the destruction of statist control of the media and ideas. The courts forced the FCC to get rid of the so called "fairness doctrine" which lead to an explosion in talk radio, and technology advanced to a point where the internet became commercially viable. In the last 20 years, digital image technology and cell phones turned virtually every person walking the street into a reporter. That Damn 1st Amendment now means that the cops are routinely exposed for abusing our rights, Rodney King was just the start. Video and audio recording in court rooms, of the police, at town hall meetings, etc. continue to expose statists for the controlling anti-freedom, two-bit dictators they are.
The right says libertarian ideas are dangerous; the left says limiting speech is a necessity; Libertarian ideas and their implementation means more freedom, and less government. Less government means less power for the statist ruling elite. They are fighting the idea that you as an individual know best how to live your own life. That is a dangerous idea, they want control. Education is the key, the internet and 1st Amendment allow everybody to get the education they need and want without filtering by the ruling elite. In addition to wanting restrictions to free speech on the internet, they want to control what your taught. This is why Common Core, NCLB, the Dept of Education, the FCC, etc. exist. This is why Eric Holder is attacking home schooling. Control; they want to control you right down to what ideas you are exposed and what you are allowed to learn. There is a war of ideas and the battle is not over. The preamble of our Constitution starting with "We the People" was a slap in the face of the ruling elite. They now claim that those ideas that culminated in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that limited the government are dangerous. They are dangerous; dangerous to the ruling elite.
Because the statists are losing the war of ideas, they are now actively calling on government and corporate control of the ideas people can share. Because of the loss of control to the news, ideas, and information that the masses are exposed, the LP can no longer be ignored. Because of the exposed abuses of power and observable outcomes of statist policies, laughing at the libertarian is not longer an effective tool to diminish their influence. The Statists are now openly attacking and fighting both libertarians and libertarian ideas like the Rule of Law, Freedom of Speech, natural rights, etc. This is good news, as the next step is Libertarian Victory.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Friday, June 14, 2013
The New Idea to Governance
By Tom Rhodes, 2/14/2013
Both factions of the ruling party, the Democrats and Republicans, continue to present old failed ideas. Calling them Progressive or even Conservative doesn't change the fact that they simply want to have the powers of rulers of old. They are still trying to convince us that they are the enlightened elite smart enough to dictate how we should live. This method of ruling is older than written history. The idea is that only those enlightened rulers should be allowed to use force, and the fact that by virtue of being stronger and having better weapons then everybody else grants them not just the authority, but the right to take your property is how society has worked throughout history. Be it tribalism, feudalism, communism, despotism, progressivism, or whatever ism that is currently vogue with the ruling elite, it is the same tired old philosophy. What has been hinted but never fully attempted is Libertarianism.
All the methods of a ruling oligarchy have been around for as long as man has been around, only since the enlightenment has the radical idea that people should be free to live as they want, own and acquire property unfettered by the ruling elite, and the purpose of government is to protect the live liberty and property of all individuals equally. The early works of Smith, Burke, and Locke lead to the ideas our Founding Fathers so concisely put in our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Never before was a government instituted that was so clearly limited. Every other governing system, including that of today's so called "progressives," are statist. They work on the idea that the State has supreme power and the ruling elite know best how everybody should live and has the authority and power to dictate how others live.
Progressives today continue to try and push us to a future that is a repeat of the past. They want to revert to some variation of tribalism with a ruling person or oligarchy that controls all use of force and can force the people to do as they think is best. From dictating what food you can eat, how big a soda you can buy, to how you must build your house, to who is allowed to cut your hair, the assumption is that they know better how to live your life than you do. Their excuse today seems to be that because so many people don't make the right choices that the government must protect people from themselves. They loudly proclaim that the people are too stupid to know how to live their own lives, so they the enlightened will force the stupid masses to live as the ruling elite dictate.
Libertarianism is the only philosophy that doesn't assume some elites, be they kings and dukes, or Presidents and Bureaucrats, or dictators, or other form of gangs with enforcers, have the knowledge and authority to dictate how you should live. Being a libertarian means you don't assume to know how others should live; you assume they should be allowed to choose how they want to live and benefit from that choice; you also assume that should others make bad life choices you should not be forced to pay for those choices; you believe that government is a necessary evil, but should be limited to protecting the natural rights of all individuals equally under the rule of law from force or fraud by other individuals, groups or countries.
Libertarianism is the newest philosophy of how to govern ourselves. History is clear, there will be a government, where there is anarchy soon warlords of some type appear and some statist government emerges. History is also clear; no form of government has lifted the quality of life and relative wealth of the masses better than limited government implementing libertarian ideas. In terms of human history, the libertarian idea is new, and for those in power it is scary, it limits their power, it limits their control, and where in place actually promotes the rule of law where even those in power can be held accountable.
We used to have the rule of law in the USA. Nixon was justly impeached and forced to resign over abusing his power. His abuse included sending the IRS after his enemies, how things have changed. Both Democrat and Republican factions of the ruling party, will not allow themselves to be tried and judged by the same laws they force upon the masses. They are reverting to some variation of tribalism, were the few in power who have better arms and willingness to use force dictate to the masses how to live.
There is nothing "Progressive" about so called liberal/progressive ideas; we are again reverting to the oldest governance known to man, statism; rule by the strongest most willing to use force to preserve their power and enforce their dictates. The ideas and practices that made America prosper were innovative and new, they were libertarian innovations; the ideas and practices that are zapping our prosperity are old and retrograde, they are statist and tribal. The Libertarian Party exists to implement the newest and most "progressive" method of governance, Libertarianism.
Both factions of the ruling party, the Democrats and Republicans, continue to present old failed ideas. Calling them Progressive or even Conservative doesn't change the fact that they simply want to have the powers of rulers of old. They are still trying to convince us that they are the enlightened elite smart enough to dictate how we should live. This method of ruling is older than written history. The idea is that only those enlightened rulers should be allowed to use force, and the fact that by virtue of being stronger and having better weapons then everybody else grants them not just the authority, but the right to take your property is how society has worked throughout history. Be it tribalism, feudalism, communism, despotism, progressivism, or whatever ism that is currently vogue with the ruling elite, it is the same tired old philosophy. What has been hinted but never fully attempted is Libertarianism.
All the methods of a ruling oligarchy have been around for as long as man has been around, only since the enlightenment has the radical idea that people should be free to live as they want, own and acquire property unfettered by the ruling elite, and the purpose of government is to protect the live liberty and property of all individuals equally. The early works of Smith, Burke, and Locke lead to the ideas our Founding Fathers so concisely put in our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Never before was a government instituted that was so clearly limited. Every other governing system, including that of today's so called "progressives," are statist. They work on the idea that the State has supreme power and the ruling elite know best how everybody should live and has the authority and power to dictate how others live.
Progressives today continue to try and push us to a future that is a repeat of the past. They want to revert to some variation of tribalism with a ruling person or oligarchy that controls all use of force and can force the people to do as they think is best. From dictating what food you can eat, how big a soda you can buy, to how you must build your house, to who is allowed to cut your hair, the assumption is that they know better how to live your life than you do. Their excuse today seems to be that because so many people don't make the right choices that the government must protect people from themselves. They loudly proclaim that the people are too stupid to know how to live their own lives, so they the enlightened will force the stupid masses to live as the ruling elite dictate.
Libertarianism is the only philosophy that doesn't assume some elites, be they kings and dukes, or Presidents and Bureaucrats, or dictators, or other form of gangs with enforcers, have the knowledge and authority to dictate how you should live. Being a libertarian means you don't assume to know how others should live; you assume they should be allowed to choose how they want to live and benefit from that choice; you also assume that should others make bad life choices you should not be forced to pay for those choices; you believe that government is a necessary evil, but should be limited to protecting the natural rights of all individuals equally under the rule of law from force or fraud by other individuals, groups or countries.
Libertarianism is the newest philosophy of how to govern ourselves. History is clear, there will be a government, where there is anarchy soon warlords of some type appear and some statist government emerges. History is also clear; no form of government has lifted the quality of life and relative wealth of the masses better than limited government implementing libertarian ideas. In terms of human history, the libertarian idea is new, and for those in power it is scary, it limits their power, it limits their control, and where in place actually promotes the rule of law where even those in power can be held accountable.
We used to have the rule of law in the USA. Nixon was justly impeached and forced to resign over abusing his power. His abuse included sending the IRS after his enemies, how things have changed. Both Democrat and Republican factions of the ruling party, will not allow themselves to be tried and judged by the same laws they force upon the masses. They are reverting to some variation of tribalism, were the few in power who have better arms and willingness to use force dictate to the masses how to live.
There is nothing "Progressive" about so called liberal/progressive ideas; we are again reverting to the oldest governance known to man, statism; rule by the strongest most willing to use force to preserve their power and enforce their dictates. The ideas and practices that made America prosper were innovative and new, they were libertarian innovations; the ideas and practices that are zapping our prosperity are old and retrograde, they are statist and tribal. The Libertarian Party exists to implement the newest and most "progressive" method of governance, Libertarianism.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Pravda and Libertarians Agree
By Tom Rhodes, 1/14/2013
Even arguably the most socialist periodical in the world, Pravda, recognizes our government's actions after Sandy Hook are an opportunistic fraud. From Pravda, December 28, 2012, an article by Stanislav Mishin and is titled "Americans Never Give up Your Guns," sums up exactly what statists in the USA are doing.
Statists on the left in the USA's position is that that since some people are mentally off balance and we don't know where all of them are, and we can't infringe upon their rights, so we should disarm everyone, and ignore the rights of law abiding gun owners.
Intellectually, statistically, morally, and constitutionally the anti-gun statists' position is without merit. When libertarians and Pravda agree you know the government is up to no good.
Even arguably the most socialist periodical in the world, Pravda, recognizes our government's actions after Sandy Hook are an opportunistic fraud. From Pravda, December 28, 2012, an article by Stanislav Mishin and is titled "Americans Never Give up Your Guns," sums up exactly what statists in the USA are doing.
"Government will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime ...No, it is about power and a total power over the people. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns ... they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question."
Statists on the left in the USA's position is that that since some people are mentally off balance and we don't know where all of them are, and we can't infringe upon their rights, so we should disarm everyone, and ignore the rights of law abiding gun owners.
Intellectually, statistically, morally, and constitutionally the anti-gun statists' position is without merit. When libertarians and Pravda agree you know the government is up to no good.
Monday, May 14, 2012
It’s Time For Libertarian Economics
We have had 30 years of Democrat economics and Republican economics. Both have been different faces of the same scam, and it’s time for a change.
There has in fact been no real economic expansion since 1980. Not one three month period has elapsed where the economy expanded faster than did total debt from 1981 to 2009. From 2002-2008 the amount of true inflation, measured against the increase in earnings of the population, averaged nearly 10% a year. Compounded over six years this is enough to destroy 75% of your purchasing power.
That’s the truth from a monetary perspective. It’s why we “needed” an Internet and housing bubble -- so you didn’t immediately starve, riot and put a stop to the scams. You, the common person, were played as a rube for the benefit of a tiny fraction of the population in Washington DC and on Wall Street.
2007 and 2008 laid the facts bare; the economy and markets collapsed as the ability of individuals to borrow more and more money came to an end. The economy has not recovered -- over the last year on a population-adjusted basis we have in fact lost 1.3 million jobs; 6 million jobs have vanished since the alleged “recovery” began in the summer of 2009.
Government cannot provide what you are not willing to pay for in the form of taxes here and now. Anything else is economically unstable just as it is if you lose your job and then run up your VISA card to pretend you still have an income.
Libertarians believe that the initiation of force -- including fraud -- is always wrong. Whether that force comes via fraudulent claims made by companies selling stock, crooked appraisals and mortgage deals, robosigned documents in foreclosures, offshoring your job while repressing people in slave labor and destroying their environment or laws allowing certain firms to charge 1,000% more for a drug here than in Canada, it’s unacceptable. When government promises benefits it knows it cannot pay for, including Medicare and public-sector pensions, that’s theft from you and your children. Today, government fraud -- borrowing with no ability or intent to pay, ever -- is a full 10% of the economy and has been for the last four years.
Economic prosperity requires a stable currency and honesty between government and the people, in which the services people want are paid for with current taxes. This is the essence of a balanced budget. It begins with recognition that government inflation of the economy by 10% every year and effective counterfeiting of the dollar by banks and The Fed issuing un-backed credit are mathematically unsound.
Only Libertarians are willing to bring this discussion to the public. We’re the third-largest political party and the only one with answers that will prevent economic Armageddon. That resolution will not come without pain, just as ceasing drinking requires that you deal with the hangover, but if the alternative is liver cancer and death isn’t the hangover a better option?
Karl Denninger is a former CEO in the Internet space, a popular economic blogger who operates The Market Ticker (http://market-ticker.org) an at-large Executive Committee member of the Libertarian Party of Florida and Secretary of the Libertarian Party of Okaloosa County. The opinions expressed are his own.
Karl Denninger
The Market Ticker ®
Cuda Systems LLC
314 Olde Post Road
Niceville FL 32578
karl@denninger.net
850- 376-9364
There has in fact been no real economic expansion since 1980. Not one three month period has elapsed where the economy expanded faster than did total debt from 1981 to 2009. From 2002-2008 the amount of true inflation, measured against the increase in earnings of the population, averaged nearly 10% a year. Compounded over six years this is enough to destroy 75% of your purchasing power.
That’s the truth from a monetary perspective. It’s why we “needed” an Internet and housing bubble -- so you didn’t immediately starve, riot and put a stop to the scams. You, the common person, were played as a rube for the benefit of a tiny fraction of the population in Washington DC and on Wall Street.
2007 and 2008 laid the facts bare; the economy and markets collapsed as the ability of individuals to borrow more and more money came to an end. The economy has not recovered -- over the last year on a population-adjusted basis we have in fact lost 1.3 million jobs; 6 million jobs have vanished since the alleged “recovery” began in the summer of 2009.
Government cannot provide what you are not willing to pay for in the form of taxes here and now. Anything else is economically unstable just as it is if you lose your job and then run up your VISA card to pretend you still have an income.
Libertarians believe that the initiation of force -- including fraud -- is always wrong. Whether that force comes via fraudulent claims made by companies selling stock, crooked appraisals and mortgage deals, robosigned documents in foreclosures, offshoring your job while repressing people in slave labor and destroying their environment or laws allowing certain firms to charge 1,000% more for a drug here than in Canada, it’s unacceptable. When government promises benefits it knows it cannot pay for, including Medicare and public-sector pensions, that’s theft from you and your children. Today, government fraud -- borrowing with no ability or intent to pay, ever -- is a full 10% of the economy and has been for the last four years.
Economic prosperity requires a stable currency and honesty between government and the people, in which the services people want are paid for with current taxes. This is the essence of a balanced budget. It begins with recognition that government inflation of the economy by 10% every year and effective counterfeiting of the dollar by banks and The Fed issuing un-backed credit are mathematically unsound.
Only Libertarians are willing to bring this discussion to the public. We’re the third-largest political party and the only one with answers that will prevent economic Armageddon. That resolution will not come without pain, just as ceasing drinking requires that you deal with the hangover, but if the alternative is liver cancer and death isn’t the hangover a better option?
Karl Denninger is a former CEO in the Internet space, a popular economic blogger who operates The Market Ticker (http://market-ticker.org) an at-large Executive Committee member of the Libertarian Party of Florida and Secretary of the Libertarian Party of Okaloosa County. The opinions expressed are his own.
Karl Denninger
The Market Ticker ®
Cuda Systems LLC
314 Olde Post Road
Niceville FL 32578
karl@denninger.net
850- 376-9364
Thursday, May 10, 2012
New York Town Implements Libertarian Taxing Strategy
By Tom Rhodes 5/10/2012
New Rochelle N.Y., looking at decreased revenue and increased costs, like many US towns is strapped for cash. Being responsible to its citizens and recognizing that they have limited funds, in their 2012 budget New Rochelle eliminated some of their towns holiday celebrations including their Fourth of July Fireworks, their Memorial Day and Thanksgiving Parades. Although these civic events are very important they took the responsible action.
Canceling these events saves the citizens of New Rochelle $135,000. Such austerity measures are hard to accept for many people, and the city of New Rochelle wants to put these events on for its businesses, citizens, and community. So rather than raise taxes or borrow money, they have asked for citizens for VOLUNTARILY support (tax themselves) to pay for these traditional holiday celebrations.
So far these targeted donations have covered the cost of the Memorial Day parade, and it looks like donations will also cover the Thanksgiving parade. These Parades cost $30,000 each. It doesn't look like they will collect enough to put on the July 4th Fireworks, at $75,000 it is a substantial cost.
New Rochelle Mayor, Noam Bramson, said New Rochelle is in a "time of fiscal challenge" and depends on the support of donations to help out. What an awesome position for a town to take, that it can and does depend upon its citizens and business community to make the right decisions about what the town can and can't do. No, it hasn't eliminated property taxes, but it is a huge step in the right direction. A town recognizing that it governs and provides services at the consent of the governed, including "depending" upon citizen and local businesses to support for such actions as parades, fireworks, etc. is the reality of implementing of libertarian ideology.
If you want to support a town calling for truly voluntary not forced taxation, for the communities luxuries you can donate by calling 914-654-2087.
New Rochelle N.Y., looking at decreased revenue and increased costs, like many US towns is strapped for cash. Being responsible to its citizens and recognizing that they have limited funds, in their 2012 budget New Rochelle eliminated some of their towns holiday celebrations including their Fourth of July Fireworks, their Memorial Day and Thanksgiving Parades. Although these civic events are very important they took the responsible action.
Canceling these events saves the citizens of New Rochelle $135,000. Such austerity measures are hard to accept for many people, and the city of New Rochelle wants to put these events on for its businesses, citizens, and community. So rather than raise taxes or borrow money, they have asked for citizens for VOLUNTARILY support (tax themselves) to pay for these traditional holiday celebrations.
So far these targeted donations have covered the cost of the Memorial Day parade, and it looks like donations will also cover the Thanksgiving parade. These Parades cost $30,000 each. It doesn't look like they will collect enough to put on the July 4th Fireworks, at $75,000 it is a substantial cost.
New Rochelle Mayor, Noam Bramson, said New Rochelle is in a "time of fiscal challenge" and depends on the support of donations to help out. What an awesome position for a town to take, that it can and does depend upon its citizens and business community to make the right decisions about what the town can and can't do. No, it hasn't eliminated property taxes, but it is a huge step in the right direction. A town recognizing that it governs and provides services at the consent of the governed, including "depending" upon citizen and local businesses to support for such actions as parades, fireworks, etc. is the reality of implementing of libertarian ideology.
If you want to support a town calling for truly voluntary not forced taxation, for the communities luxuries you can donate by calling 914-654-2087.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
40% of Democrats prefer Federal Inmate 11593-051 over Obama.
By Tom Rhodes, 5/9/2012
From a cell in a Texas penitentiary, Inmate 11593-051 was able to mount a bid for US President. In the West Virginia Democrat Presidential Primary, 40% of the Democrat voters chose Federal Inmate 11593-051, Keith Judd, over sitting US President B.H. Obama. What does it say when the sitting president, who is virtually uncontested in his own party, loses 40% of his own party members to prison inmate single handedly running a campaign from an out of state federal prison?
All I can say is that when the Gallop poll shows Romney ahead in single digits, the GOP has jumped the shark. When federal prisoners can get 40% of his home state's Democrats to vote for him, spending a mere $2500 in a filing fee, and issuing some press releases from prison, it's clear that the voters don't want Robama or Obamney. The only difference in the two is hair style and in what year the graduated from a Northeastern Elitist School.
If you want something different then ever expanding federal government, political favoritism, don't keep voting the same way. Insanity is doing the same thing you did in the past and expecting a different result. Voting Republican or Democrat and expecting a different result is insane.
You have a real viable alternative to choose from. At the LP Convention last week the Libertarian Party overwhelmingly selected former governor Gary Johnson to be our presidential candidate. He will be on the ballot where you live, since you one single vote won't really make any significant difference in the outcome, at least if you vote for Johnson, you will be able to say, "Don't Blame Me I didn't vote for Him." If either of the two elitist statists offered by the major political parties wins in November.
Check out Gary Johnson 2012
From a cell in a Texas penitentiary, Inmate 11593-051 was able to mount a bid for US President. In the West Virginia Democrat Presidential Primary, 40% of the Democrat voters chose Federal Inmate 11593-051, Keith Judd, over sitting US President B.H. Obama. What does it say when the sitting president, who is virtually uncontested in his own party, loses 40% of his own party members to prison inmate single handedly running a campaign from an out of state federal prison?
All I can say is that when the Gallop poll shows Romney ahead in single digits, the GOP has jumped the shark. When federal prisoners can get 40% of his home state's Democrats to vote for him, spending a mere $2500 in a filing fee, and issuing some press releases from prison, it's clear that the voters don't want Robama or Obamney. The only difference in the two is hair style and in what year the graduated from a Northeastern Elitist School.
If you want something different then ever expanding federal government, political favoritism, don't keep voting the same way. Insanity is doing the same thing you did in the past and expecting a different result. Voting Republican or Democrat and expecting a different result is insane.
You have a real viable alternative to choose from. At the LP Convention last week the Libertarian Party overwhelmingly selected former governor Gary Johnson to be our presidential candidate. He will be on the ballot where you live, since you one single vote won't really make any significant difference in the outcome, at least if you vote for Johnson, you will be able to say, "Don't Blame Me I didn't vote for Him." If either of the two elitist statists offered by the major political parties wins in November.
Check out Gary Johnson 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Use of Force
By Tom Rhodes 2/24/2012
The one and only requirement to be a member of the Libertarian Party is to take a pledge, affirming that you do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals. This is a short summary of the non-aggression principle. This is based on a very old assumption. That man is a rational being.
This is a moral stance, choosing to move a relationship outside the realm of reason into the realm of physical violence – is immoral among rational human beings. This is based this assertion on the self-evident fact that your faculty of reason, your ability to integrate the data of your senses into concepts (from which you make decisions regarding goal-directed actions), is your only means of long-term survival. It is not moral and just to use force to effect social or political change.
If there is a human conflict there are only two way to resolve that conflict: reason or force. Force has a physical component, but this does not mean all manifestations of force involve a physical component. Theft is force, because it deprives people of assets rightfully theirs. Fraud is force, because it is a form of theft. The use of a threat of force to coerce a response it is still force.
Our Declaration of Independence was a confirmation of the non-aggression principle. We declared our independence using reason and logic and offered a clearly non-violent means to establish sovereignty from England. England, then initiated force, not reason, to attempt to instill its will on America. The use of force in response to England’s aggression was moral and just, as the use of force for self-defense is not immoral.
Democrats, Statists, socialists, leftists, and progressives of all type, realize that they cannot win based on logic and reason, so they continually resort to force to impose their will on others. Obamacare is a prime example. Education, reasoning, and communicating of all types have failed to convince a significant portion of the population to voluntarily purchase health insurance. People doing careful risk analysis sometimes choose not to purchase insurance despite what the left think is in their best interest. The idea that some people may make reasoned decisions that don’t conform to what statists think are best, and then choose to act or not act in what they feel is their individual best interest galls at statists. Having failed to convince the people they now resort to force.
Since statists cannot persuade the people through reason and they force them to comply with statist wishes; Statists contradict the recognition of reason as the only moral method achieve political or social goals. We see this almost every day. Democrats cannot persuade the voters to do as they wish, they use the courts or executive orders to force their demands – demands that run contrary to individual reason. Pointing at your citizens the gun of government mandate, telling them they’ll do as the government dictates no matter how injurious to those citizens those dictates are, is violence. It is the kind of violence that makes liberals insufferably self-righteous and arrogant when they hold political power.
If you accept the fact that all people are discrete individuals, sole owners of themselves, and not the property of another, you then accept that you cannot live another person’s life, thus you cannot presume to force others to comply with your wishes. Your inalienable rights to your person and to the results of your labor are violated when force is initiated against you.
Obamacare and other crony Democratic tyranny conform to no morally acceptable philosophical justification. Statist force is not rational, or moral. Statists, specifically liberals, use force for the singular purpose of molding and shaping a disinclined public to their statist ideology. They are content and willing to lie, to defraud, to steal in making their case, but if necessary they are just as content to make you comply. In the history of implementing leftist ideology is also the history of the most violent forceful revolutions and governments in the history of the world. The more socialistic a government is the more violently forceful it is.
Failure to accept liberal ideology, regardless of what personal harm it may bring you, if you choose not to obey, liberals will see to it that you end destitute, imprisoned, or dead. These are actions they will happily initiate and they also they’ll expect you to thank them for doing it; it’s for your own good after all.
Reason and logic dictate that economically, low taxes, free enterprise, and economic freedom provide the best overall quality of life for more people in a society than any other system. This is proven historically and objectively.
Reason and logic are discarded because economic freedom and liberty also imply economic responsibility. This means that a certain portion of society, when granted economic freedom will fail to support themselves, and suffer. Although overall more people will be better off Liberals use this as an excuse to throw away reason and logic, and employ despotic methodologies to control the people through emotion.
It is this reasoning used to “mandate” every person by virtue of being alive, purchase health insurance. The idea is that because we must Force people (through taxes) to provide charity, to pay for health care goods and services for those who cannot or will not take responsibility for themselves, thus they have the right to force everybody to purchase insurance. Logic and reason and a failure to accept that people are free to make choices, and prosper or suffer as a consequence of those decisions, grants liberals the impudence to justify the use force to enforce their morals on everybody else. Because they believe people won’t make choices they think are best, and failing to use reason to convince people to make choices they think are best, liberals simply abandon reason and use force.
If you believe that it is morally acceptable to use force, or the threat of force, to achieve political or social goals then you can justify the Obamacare mandate. If however you believe that people have unalienable rights, you cannot justify the Obamacare mandate.
The people of the USA have spoken using reason, we selected through elections, representatives to thwart the policies and objectives of the Obama administration. Having failed to use reason and logic to convince the people through their representatives to implement laws that Obama and the leftist in the Democrat party want, they now resort to force, ignoring the rule of law, ruling by executive order, and bureaucratic fiat, not legislation. Because our representative government didn’t produce the results the Obama administration wanted, they have proven to be willing to abandon the constitutional checks and balances and resort to force not reason to get their way. The dictates of the Obama administration forcing churches to purchase and provide goods and services that are clearly historically against both their conscience and beliefs by fiat not law is one example. The creation of positions that can impose such “regulations” through bureaucracy rather than legislation, are evidence that statists of both parties don’t want to even bother with reasoning and persuading the people, but instead prefer the use of force.
This is a return to the ruling class and clear usurpation of individual liberty. Statists are concentrating power in ruling elite by trading individual liberty for “security” using force not reason. They failed using reason and persuasion, and since they believe that the ends justify the means they accept resorting to force. The results, if history is any indicator, will be tyranny not security. Of course tyranny by a few ruling elite with general mass privation is the norm for mankind throughout its entire history; liberty, freedom, and relative luxury that it produces are the historical exception. The only faster way to tyranny than the slow socialization of a republic, is anarchy.
The one and only requirement to be a member of the Libertarian Party is to take a pledge, affirming that you do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals. This is a short summary of the non-aggression principle. This is based on a very old assumption. That man is a rational being.
This is a moral stance, choosing to move a relationship outside the realm of reason into the realm of physical violence – is immoral among rational human beings. This is based this assertion on the self-evident fact that your faculty of reason, your ability to integrate the data of your senses into concepts (from which you make decisions regarding goal-directed actions), is your only means of long-term survival. It is not moral and just to use force to effect social or political change.
If there is a human conflict there are only two way to resolve that conflict: reason or force. Force has a physical component, but this does not mean all manifestations of force involve a physical component. Theft is force, because it deprives people of assets rightfully theirs. Fraud is force, because it is a form of theft. The use of a threat of force to coerce a response it is still force.
Our Declaration of Independence was a confirmation of the non-aggression principle. We declared our independence using reason and logic and offered a clearly non-violent means to establish sovereignty from England. England, then initiated force, not reason, to attempt to instill its will on America. The use of force in response to England’s aggression was moral and just, as the use of force for self-defense is not immoral.
Democrats, Statists, socialists, leftists, and progressives of all type, realize that they cannot win based on logic and reason, so they continually resort to force to impose their will on others. Obamacare is a prime example. Education, reasoning, and communicating of all types have failed to convince a significant portion of the population to voluntarily purchase health insurance. People doing careful risk analysis sometimes choose not to purchase insurance despite what the left think is in their best interest. The idea that some people may make reasoned decisions that don’t conform to what statists think are best, and then choose to act or not act in what they feel is their individual best interest galls at statists. Having failed to convince the people they now resort to force.
Since statists cannot persuade the people through reason and they force them to comply with statist wishes; Statists contradict the recognition of reason as the only moral method achieve political or social goals. We see this almost every day. Democrats cannot persuade the voters to do as they wish, they use the courts or executive orders to force their demands – demands that run contrary to individual reason. Pointing at your citizens the gun of government mandate, telling them they’ll do as the government dictates no matter how injurious to those citizens those dictates are, is violence. It is the kind of violence that makes liberals insufferably self-righteous and arrogant when they hold political power.
If you accept the fact that all people are discrete individuals, sole owners of themselves, and not the property of another, you then accept that you cannot live another person’s life, thus you cannot presume to force others to comply with your wishes. Your inalienable rights to your person and to the results of your labor are violated when force is initiated against you.
Obamacare and other crony Democratic tyranny conform to no morally acceptable philosophical justification. Statist force is not rational, or moral. Statists, specifically liberals, use force for the singular purpose of molding and shaping a disinclined public to their statist ideology. They are content and willing to lie, to defraud, to steal in making their case, but if necessary they are just as content to make you comply. In the history of implementing leftist ideology is also the history of the most violent forceful revolutions and governments in the history of the world. The more socialistic a government is the more violently forceful it is.
Failure to accept liberal ideology, regardless of what personal harm it may bring you, if you choose not to obey, liberals will see to it that you end destitute, imprisoned, or dead. These are actions they will happily initiate and they also they’ll expect you to thank them for doing it; it’s for your own good after all.
Reason and logic dictate that economically, low taxes, free enterprise, and economic freedom provide the best overall quality of life for more people in a society than any other system. This is proven historically and objectively.
Reason and logic are discarded because economic freedom and liberty also imply economic responsibility. This means that a certain portion of society, when granted economic freedom will fail to support themselves, and suffer. Although overall more people will be better off Liberals use this as an excuse to throw away reason and logic, and employ despotic methodologies to control the people through emotion.
It is this reasoning used to “mandate” every person by virtue of being alive, purchase health insurance. The idea is that because we must Force people (through taxes) to provide charity, to pay for health care goods and services for those who cannot or will not take responsibility for themselves, thus they have the right to force everybody to purchase insurance. Logic and reason and a failure to accept that people are free to make choices, and prosper or suffer as a consequence of those decisions, grants liberals the impudence to justify the use force to enforce their morals on everybody else. Because they believe people won’t make choices they think are best, and failing to use reason to convince people to make choices they think are best, liberals simply abandon reason and use force.
If you believe that it is morally acceptable to use force, or the threat of force, to achieve political or social goals then you can justify the Obamacare mandate. If however you believe that people have unalienable rights, you cannot justify the Obamacare mandate.
The people of the USA have spoken using reason, we selected through elections, representatives to thwart the policies and objectives of the Obama administration. Having failed to use reason and logic to convince the people through their representatives to implement laws that Obama and the leftist in the Democrat party want, they now resort to force, ignoring the rule of law, ruling by executive order, and bureaucratic fiat, not legislation. Because our representative government didn’t produce the results the Obama administration wanted, they have proven to be willing to abandon the constitutional checks and balances and resort to force not reason to get their way. The dictates of the Obama administration forcing churches to purchase and provide goods and services that are clearly historically against both their conscience and beliefs by fiat not law is one example. The creation of positions that can impose such “regulations” through bureaucracy rather than legislation, are evidence that statists of both parties don’t want to even bother with reasoning and persuading the people, but instead prefer the use of force.
This is a return to the ruling class and clear usurpation of individual liberty. Statists are concentrating power in ruling elite by trading individual liberty for “security” using force not reason. They failed using reason and persuasion, and since they believe that the ends justify the means they accept resorting to force. The results, if history is any indicator, will be tyranny not security. Of course tyranny by a few ruling elite with general mass privation is the norm for mankind throughout its entire history; liberty, freedom, and relative luxury that it produces are the historical exception. The only faster way to tyranny than the slow socialization of a republic, is anarchy.
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