K.K. Forss does not claim medical marijuana solves all his problems. His pain from a ruptured disc in his neck is debilitating. He is unable to go to work or to the First Baptist Church he used to attend because of the pain and muscle spasms. Taxpayers through Medicare spend over $18,000 a year on his various medications. Half of those drugs are strong narcotics. The other half address the various side-effects brought on by the first half, such as nausea, heartburn, heart palpitations, difficulty sleeping, and muscle spasms.
No, marijuana would not completely address all his pain, but it made a tremendous difference in the quality of his life when he tried it for over a year. It helped him regain 38 pounds he had lost. It calmed his muscle spasms and helped him sleep. In short, it alleviated many side effects and greatly reduced his need for other expensive medications. Mr. Forss estimates that being allowed to use medical marijuana would save taxpayers at least $12,000 a year in medications he would no longer need. He would also be able to work occasionally and attend some church services.
Scientists at the University of California at Davis recently completed a study that backs up Mr. Forss’s experience, finding that cannabis demonstrates significant relief of neuropathic pain. Many in government call for more studies while people like K.K. Forss suffer. More studies will not change what many patients already know, and that is for some, medical marijuana helps their pain. But over-reaching government gets in the way.
K.K. Forss lived in constant fear of federal and state officials so he eventually stopped taking medical marijuana and switched to his more rigorous and expensive pill regimen. Presently, twelve states have passed legislation allowing marijuana, under certain conditions, to be prescribed legally by doctors for patients who could benefit from it. K.K. Forss lives in Minnesota, where it is not yet legal. However, even if it is legalized by the state, Mr. Forss will still have plenty to fear from the Federal government, as cannabis dispensaries and clinics that operate under these state laws are still under fire from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
In other words, the federal government sees fit to use our tax dollars to raid state sanctioned healthcare clinics, to imprison and fine patients and operators, in order to compel people like Mr. Forss to be bedridden and overmedicated at great taxpayer expense every single day.
The Federal government should recognize that states have the authority to decide these issues. This affords all states the opportunity to see which policies are most beneficial. As a Congressman and a physician, I strongly advocate that healthcare decisions should be made by doctors and patients, not politicians or federal agents, which is why I am an original co-sponsor of the recently introduced “Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act” which would bar the Federal government from intervening in such doctor/patient relationships that violate no state law.
The bottom line is that K.K. Forss should be treated as a free American. Mr. Forss is one of many who would like to use marijuana medicinally because it helps him. Politicians and bureaucrats have no right to interfere.
Monday
IS HIS MESSAGE OVER?....NO WAY!
Ron Paul failed to translate an impressive fundraising operation into widespread support for his 2008 bid for the presidency, but the Lake Jackson Republican still may end up hitting pay dirt.
To further Paul's Libertarian-leaning agenda, his campaign is exploring a novel way to use millions of dollars in leftover donations: setting up a for-profit publishing company that would focus on free-market economics and personal liberties — causes the Texas congressman holds dear.
Political finance experts say such a business venture funded with some $4 million in political cash would test the bounds of federal campaign finance regulations.
"I've never heard of anyone taking their campaign money and putting it into a for-profit corporation," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, an organization that advocates campaign finance reform.
FEC guidelines
A Federal Election Commission spokesman said that former office-seekers have some leeway in using leftover campaign money, as long as they don't benefit financially from the venture.
"There's a provision that says you can use the funds for any lawful purpose, so long as it's not personal use for the candidate," said FEC spokesman Bob Biersack.
But the election watchdog agency cannot enforce its own rules because a majority of its board seats are vacant, the result of a partisan stalemate on Capitol Hill.
A supply of donors
Political professionals say Paul's mailing list is a potential gold mine if he rents those names to interest groups or other campaigns.
Jesse Benton, a spokesman for Paul, said the campaign has the names of 160,000 donors who have given an average of about $100 each. Add the number of people who have signed up to receive campaign information, but have not donated money, and the e-mail list grows to 400,000.
On the market, the list of 160,000 donors would probably fetch about $135 per 1,000 names for each use, or about $21,600 a pop, estimated Kevin Shuvalov, a partner in Olsen & Shuvalov, an Austin firm that does fundraising and voter contact mailings, including for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign.
It may not sound like a lot, but Stephanie Catina, director of list services for Response World, a Richardson, Texas, list-services company said that good lists can be rented over and over.
For example, the list of American Heart Association donors has been passed around for years, she said. In the political arena, Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign list remains on the market.
Bigger and better.
The Paul presidential campaign already has rented its list twice — once to his Texas congressional re-election committee, which raised $1.4 million, according to CQ Moneyline, a site that tracks FEC records; and once to incumbent Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., who serves with Paul on the Republican Liberty Caucus, a group of Libertarian-minded lawmakers.
Benton said the campaign is being careful with its list because of the level of trust Paul has with his donors.
Presidential lists, such as Paul's, are attractive because they include donors from across the country. Because Paul has brought so many new participants into the presidential process, his list also would offer candidates a chance to expand their money network to nontraditional givers.
Additional options
Despite single-digit polling in the majority of primary states, Paul is sitting on about $4 million in campaign cash, Benton said.
The campaign is evaluating what to do with the extra money. Benton said options include supporting like-minded candidates through Paul's Liberty PAC; donating leftover money to Paul's FREE Foundation, the 501(c)3 organization that publishes his newsletter; trying to influence public policy through a 501(c)4 nonprofit group; or creating "something inventive and entrepreneurial" like a for-profit corporation to produce publications.
Federal guidelines stipulate that campaign funds can't be used for the candidate's personal use, specifically things such as vacations, mortgage, rent or household items. Funds also can't be used to seed a for-profit corporation that benefits an individual or shareholder.
However, that might not preclude Paul from creating a carefully structured for-profit corporation specifically designed for educational purposes.
And even if someone were to file a complaint against a candidate for misusing campaign funds, the FEC is hamstrung because it lacks sufficient members to take any action.
THE DOUBLE TROUBLE OF TAXATION
Taxes were on the forefront of many Americans’ minds this week as they scrambled to meet the April 15th deadline to file their returns. Tax policy in this country hurts taxpayers twice – once when they pay taxes, and then when the government spends the money. Americans are sick and tired of the financial burden and the endless forms to fill out. To add insult to injury, after collecting this money the government does some very detrimental things to the economy.
The burden of complying with the income tax is tremendous. Since its inception in 1913, the tax code has gone from 400 pages to over 67,000. The Tax Foundation estimates that around $265 billion dollars and 6 billion hours are spent just on compliance. That expense amounts to about 22 cents of every dollar the IRS collects. Imagine the boon to the economy if we spent that time and money expanding our businesses and creating jobs!
Aside from the direct loss of money and productivity, the funds from the income tax enable the government to do some very destructive things, such as vastly over-regulating economic activity, making it difficult to earn money in the first place. The federal government funds over 50 agencies, departments and commissions that formulate rules and regulations. These bureaucracies operate with little to no oversight from the people or Congress and generate around 4,000 new rules every year and operate at a cost of about 40 billion dollars. There are some 75,000 pages of regulations in the Federal Register that Americans are expected to know and abide by. Complying with these governmental regulations costs American businesses more than one trillion dollars per year, according to a study by Mark Crain for the Small Business Administration. This complicated system drives production to other countries and shrinks our job market here at home.
Big government is destructive when it takes your money and when it spends it. There is no economic benefit to supporting a government sector as massive as ours. In fact, this country thrived for well over 100 years without an income tax. Today, if you took away the income tax, the government would still have revenue from other sources equal to total government spending in 1990, when government was still too big. $1.2 trillion should be more than enough to fund a government operating within its constitutional confines, and that is exactly what we need to get back to.
I have introduced legislation many times to abolish the IRS and the income tax. It is fundamentally un-American to require taxpayers to testify against themselves and be considered guilty until proven innocent. Abolishing the IRS altogether would trigger an avalanche of real growth in the economy.
With these financial hard times only just beginning, this would be the most efficient and logical way to get our economy growing again, and Americans would need not dread the 15th of April every year.
The burden of complying with the income tax is tremendous. Since its inception in 1913, the tax code has gone from 400 pages to over 67,000. The Tax Foundation estimates that around $265 billion dollars and 6 billion hours are spent just on compliance. That expense amounts to about 22 cents of every dollar the IRS collects. Imagine the boon to the economy if we spent that time and money expanding our businesses and creating jobs!
Aside from the direct loss of money and productivity, the funds from the income tax enable the government to do some very destructive things, such as vastly over-regulating economic activity, making it difficult to earn money in the first place. The federal government funds over 50 agencies, departments and commissions that formulate rules and regulations. These bureaucracies operate with little to no oversight from the people or Congress and generate around 4,000 new rules every year and operate at a cost of about 40 billion dollars. There are some 75,000 pages of regulations in the Federal Register that Americans are expected to know and abide by. Complying with these governmental regulations costs American businesses more than one trillion dollars per year, according to a study by Mark Crain for the Small Business Administration. This complicated system drives production to other countries and shrinks our job market here at home.
Big government is destructive when it takes your money and when it spends it. There is no economic benefit to supporting a government sector as massive as ours. In fact, this country thrived for well over 100 years without an income tax. Today, if you took away the income tax, the government would still have revenue from other sources equal to total government spending in 1990, when government was still too big. $1.2 trillion should be more than enough to fund a government operating within its constitutional confines, and that is exactly what we need to get back to.
I have introduced legislation many times to abolish the IRS and the income tax. It is fundamentally un-American to require taxpayers to testify against themselves and be considered guilty until proven innocent. Abolishing the IRS altogether would trigger an avalanche of real growth in the economy.
With these financial hard times only just beginning, this would be the most efficient and logical way to get our economy growing again, and Americans would need not dread the 15th of April every year.
Tuesday
BAILING OUT BANKS
There has been a lot of talk in the news recently about the Federal Reserve and the actions it has taken over the past few months. Many media pundits have been bending over backwards to praise the Fed for supposedly restoring stability to the market. This interpretation of the Fed's actions couldn't be further from the truth.
The current market crisis began because of Federal Reserve monetary policy during the early 2000s in which the Fed lowered the interest rate to a below-market rate.
The artificially low rates led to overinvestment in housing and other malinvestments. When the first indications of market trouble began back in August of 2007, instead of holding back and allowing bad decision-makers to suffer the consequences of their actions, the Federal Reserve took aggressive, inflationary action to ensure that large Wall Street firms would not lose money. It began by lowering the discount rates, the rates of interest charged to banks who borrow directly from the Fed, and lengthening the terms of such loans. This eliminated much of the stigma from discount window borrowing and enabled troubled banks to come to the Fed directly for funding, pay only a slightly higher interest rate but also secure these loans for a period longer than just overnight.
After the massive increase in discount window lending proved to be ineffective, the Fed became more and more creative with its funding arrangements. It has since created the Term Auction Facility (TAF), the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF), and the Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF). The upshot of all of these new programs is that through auctions of securities or through deposits of collateral, the Fed is pushing hundreds of billions of dollars of funding into the financial system in a misguided attempt to shore up the stability of the system.
The PDCF in particular is a departure from the established pattern of Fed intervention because it targets the primary dealers, the largest investment banks who purchase government securities directly from the New York Fed. These banks have never before been allowed to borrow from the Fed, but thanks to the Fed Board of Governors, these investment banks can now receive loans from the Fed in exchange for securities which will in all likelihood soon lose much of their value.
The net effect of all this new funding has been to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial system and bail out banks whose poor decision making should have caused them to go out of business. Instead of being forced to learn their lesson, these poor-performing banks are being rewarded for their financial mismanagement, and the ultimate cost of this bailout will fall on the American taxpayers. Already this new money flowing into the system is spurring talk of the next speculative bubble, possibly this time in commodities.
Worst of all, the Treasury Department has recently proposed that the Federal Reserve, which was responsible for the housing bubble and subprime crisis in the first place, be rewarded for all its intervention by being turned into a super-regulator. The Treasury foresees the Fed as the guarantor of market stability, with oversight over any financial institution that could pose a threat to the financial system. Rewarding poor performing financial institutions is bad enough, but rewarding the institution that enabled the current economic crisis is unconscionable.
The current market crisis began because of Federal Reserve monetary policy during the early 2000s in which the Fed lowered the interest rate to a below-market rate.
The artificially low rates led to overinvestment in housing and other malinvestments. When the first indications of market trouble began back in August of 2007, instead of holding back and allowing bad decision-makers to suffer the consequences of their actions, the Federal Reserve took aggressive, inflationary action to ensure that large Wall Street firms would not lose money. It began by lowering the discount rates, the rates of interest charged to banks who borrow directly from the Fed, and lengthening the terms of such loans. This eliminated much of the stigma from discount window borrowing and enabled troubled banks to come to the Fed directly for funding, pay only a slightly higher interest rate but also secure these loans for a period longer than just overnight.
After the massive increase in discount window lending proved to be ineffective, the Fed became more and more creative with its funding arrangements. It has since created the Term Auction Facility (TAF), the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF), and the Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF). The upshot of all of these new programs is that through auctions of securities or through deposits of collateral, the Fed is pushing hundreds of billions of dollars of funding into the financial system in a misguided attempt to shore up the stability of the system.
The PDCF in particular is a departure from the established pattern of Fed intervention because it targets the primary dealers, the largest investment banks who purchase government securities directly from the New York Fed. These banks have never before been allowed to borrow from the Fed, but thanks to the Fed Board of Governors, these investment banks can now receive loans from the Fed in exchange for securities which will in all likelihood soon lose much of their value.
The net effect of all this new funding has been to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial system and bail out banks whose poor decision making should have caused them to go out of business. Instead of being forced to learn their lesson, these poor-performing banks are being rewarded for their financial mismanagement, and the ultimate cost of this bailout will fall on the American taxpayers. Already this new money flowing into the system is spurring talk of the next speculative bubble, possibly this time in commodities.
Worst of all, the Treasury Department has recently proposed that the Federal Reserve, which was responsible for the housing bubble and subprime crisis in the first place, be rewarded for all its intervention by being turned into a super-regulator. The Treasury foresees the Fed as the guarantor of market stability, with oversight over any financial institution that could pose a threat to the financial system. Rewarding poor performing financial institutions is bad enough, but rewarding the institution that enabled the current economic crisis is unconscionable.
Thursday
WHAT I THINK....STAN WARFORD
I was born and raised a liberal Democrat. My grandmother, who lived through the Depression, thought that Franklin Roosevelt was the savior of the United States. My father, who was a farmer, explained to me why it was a good policy for the government to pay farmers to not grow crops. For years I thought that gun control laws were necessary to curb violent behavior. At one time I believed that minimum wage laws were compassionate. I used to defend our government in its foreign interventions, especially those based on humanitarian grounds.
But, during the past twelve years, I have rejected many political beliefs taught to me by my family and my schools. I now believe that our country is in serious trouble that only libertarian principles can alleviate.
Furthermore, these problems have a direct effect on your future.
When you graduate, you will look for a job. What if you cannot find one because the economy is in a recession or even a depression?
Your salary will be paid in dollars. What will those dollars be worth after the Federal Reserve decreases their value with its policy of inflation and Wall Street bailouts?
You will begin to save for your retirement. What if you pay into Social Security your whole life but receive no benefits at the end because the system is bankrupt?
And, heaven forbid, what if you must terminate your employment because our country reinstates the draft and sends you off to war as it did with my generation in the 60's?
The Non-aggression Principle
Libertarianism is based on this Non-aggression Principle: It should be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided that he does not initiate violence or threaten violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another.
The Non-aggression Principle implies all the common prohibitions against theft, murder, rape, torture, and violence against other individuals except in cases of self-defense of one’s person or property.
But government itself is financed by the compulsory payment of taxes by its citizens. Taxes are not voluntary. If you disagree with the policies of your government you may not withhold your taxes because if you do the government will threaten you with the violence of law enforcement.
It therefore follows that the government that governs best is the government that governs least.
The libertarian philosophy advocates a small government in line with the US Constitution as envisioned by our founding fathers. It is growing in popularity but has a huge uphill battle to wage. Our government is in large part controlled by special interest groups and the leaders of an entrenched two-party system. The maintenance of this system is based on a series of myths that are perpetuated to justify an ever-expanding government that assumes more power year by year, the very antithesis of a government that governs least.
Here are some of those myths.
Myth number One – That which is immoral should be illegal.
It is true that many actions that are immoral should be illegal – actions such as theft and murder. However, no action by any individual in the privacy of his own home that does not initiate violence against another should be illegal even if it is immoral. Nor should any action between two consenting adults that does not initiate violence against others be illegal even if it is immoral.
We are in the midst of a huge, expensive, failed war on drugs. The war itself produces more harm than the abuse of the illegal drugs. A recent study puts our incarceration rate at 1%, the highest per capita rate of any country in the world. It is estimated that about a half million of these are for nonviolent drug offenses. Alcohol prohibition was responsible for gangland violence in the streets, and drug prohibition is no different. Libertarians call for an end to the drug war.
Myth Number Two – Government regulation is necessary to save us from the failures of laissez faire capitalism.
The prime example of this myth is the belief that laissez faire capitalism caused the Great Depression and that government intervention in the economy ended it. The fact is, however, that the Federal Reserve was founded in 1913, a full 16 years before the fateful stock market crash of 1929. The Fed presided over an expansion of the credit market, which produced the roaring 20’s, the largest economic bubble in history before its collapse.
In recent history, we have seen the dot com bubble and now the real estate mortgage bubble. Both of these bubbles are created by government intervention in the credit market through the Federal Reserve central bank. Libertarians call for an economic policy governed by the principles of the Austrian School of Economics, which includes a minimization of government intervention in the free market.
Myth Number Three – Government intervention in the affairs of foreign countries is necessary for the security of its own citizens.
Ever since the tragic events of September 11, our executive branch has justified its intervention in Iraq and the subsequent erosion of our civil liberties in order to secure our safety. It has even established a policy of preemptive war, whereby it claims the authority to invade another country because that country might aggress against us in the future. Imagine the chaos in the world if every country claimed that authority.
Our intervention in Iraq has made us less safe, not more, because of the unintended consequence called "blowback" by the CIA in its recently declassified report on our policy in Iran. The 9/11 Commission report also describes the blowback phenomenon. Our military intervention, apart from its devastating effects on Iraqi civilians, acts as recruiting tool for extremists. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
Libertarians call for a foreign policy of nonintervention in general and an immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq in particular.
Myth Number Four – Non-interventionism is the same as isolationism.
Isolationists want to isolate the country from interaction with the rest of the world. To that end, they are for national economic self-sufficiency and protectionist tariffs. Isolationists use trade wars and economic sanctions as foreign policy tools to isolate other countries from the world economy.
Libertarian non-interventionists, on the other hand, support international trade, low tariffs, cultural exchange, and diplomatic contact. They view trade as so beneficial that they refuse to withhold it even from despotic states. A positive example is our continuing trade with Communist China, which serves to open that country to the liberal ideals of the west and is beneficial both to us and to them in spite of their tarnished record on human rights. A negative example is our continuing economic boycott of Cuba, a policy that has failed to remove its leader of a half century.
Myth Number Five – If the government does not solve a social problem, the social problem will not be solved.
This myth is used to justify government provision of social services such as health care, education, and retirement. The myth is based on the conflation of negative rights with positive rights.
Negative rights are rights of prohibition against other people from initiating violence against you. Negative rights are enshrined in the phrase from the Declaration of Independence that all people have the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Positive rights force other individuals to provide you with a service. Positive rights are claims that you have a right to a job with a living wage, a right to affordable health care, a right to an education, and a right to a comfortable retirement. Government uses the fiction of positive rights to expand its power in the provision of these services.
Libertarians object to the use of government to provide social services on two grounds, one ethical and one practical.
Because tax collection is not voluntary, people who receive social services from the government do so through a forced exchange of tax dollars. The receipt of such services thus violates the Non-aggression Principle and is unethical.
The practical objection is the observation that no government agency exercising monopoly power can provide a service with better quality or lower price than the free market can under the discipline of the profit motive. We would have better schools and better health care without government interference in these markets.
Libertarians call for a government whose sole function is limited to the Constitutional guarantee of the negative rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Myth Number Six – Libertarianism is idealistic and does not work in practice.
Libertarians are often accused of having a naïve faith in the free market, and having ideas about the way society ought to be governed that are not practical. As with most myths, the truth is precisely the opposite, as can be demonstrated by public choice theory. Public choice scholars analyze the structure of government from an economic and political perspective to explain why certain policies come into being.
Government programs are not effective because the incentive system does not reward bureaucrats for good service or punish them for bad service. The Los Angeles Unified School District is impossible to reform because they do not go out of business when they provide poor service as a private company would. Nor does FEMA.
Politicians cannot be expected to be good stewards of other people’s money obtained through the force of taxation. They are motivated by the same self-interest that motivates all people. Because of the professionalization of the political class, their interest is in winning elections, a process that is only possible by courting special interests.
It is the height of naïveté to place your faith in a governmental system that can only work if its politicians and bureaucrats are saints and angels.
Conclusion
The libertarian philosophy is the ultimate philosophy of tolerance. It is a philosophy of live and let live, of not initiating violence against any other individual, of liberty for all, of peace, and of prosperity.
That is why I am a Ron Paul libertarian.
But, during the past twelve years, I have rejected many political beliefs taught to me by my family and my schools. I now believe that our country is in serious trouble that only libertarian principles can alleviate.
Furthermore, these problems have a direct effect on your future.
When you graduate, you will look for a job. What if you cannot find one because the economy is in a recession or even a depression?
Your salary will be paid in dollars. What will those dollars be worth after the Federal Reserve decreases their value with its policy of inflation and Wall Street bailouts?
You will begin to save for your retirement. What if you pay into Social Security your whole life but receive no benefits at the end because the system is bankrupt?
And, heaven forbid, what if you must terminate your employment because our country reinstates the draft and sends you off to war as it did with my generation in the 60's?
The Non-aggression Principle
Libertarianism is based on this Non-aggression Principle: It should be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided that he does not initiate violence or threaten violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another.
The Non-aggression Principle implies all the common prohibitions against theft, murder, rape, torture, and violence against other individuals except in cases of self-defense of one’s person or property.
But government itself is financed by the compulsory payment of taxes by its citizens. Taxes are not voluntary. If you disagree with the policies of your government you may not withhold your taxes because if you do the government will threaten you with the violence of law enforcement.
It therefore follows that the government that governs best is the government that governs least.
The libertarian philosophy advocates a small government in line with the US Constitution as envisioned by our founding fathers. It is growing in popularity but has a huge uphill battle to wage. Our government is in large part controlled by special interest groups and the leaders of an entrenched two-party system. The maintenance of this system is based on a series of myths that are perpetuated to justify an ever-expanding government that assumes more power year by year, the very antithesis of a government that governs least.
Here are some of those myths.
Myth number One – That which is immoral should be illegal.
It is true that many actions that are immoral should be illegal – actions such as theft and murder. However, no action by any individual in the privacy of his own home that does not initiate violence against another should be illegal even if it is immoral. Nor should any action between two consenting adults that does not initiate violence against others be illegal even if it is immoral.
We are in the midst of a huge, expensive, failed war on drugs. The war itself produces more harm than the abuse of the illegal drugs. A recent study puts our incarceration rate at 1%, the highest per capita rate of any country in the world. It is estimated that about a half million of these are for nonviolent drug offenses. Alcohol prohibition was responsible for gangland violence in the streets, and drug prohibition is no different. Libertarians call for an end to the drug war.
Myth Number Two – Government regulation is necessary to save us from the failures of laissez faire capitalism.
The prime example of this myth is the belief that laissez faire capitalism caused the Great Depression and that government intervention in the economy ended it. The fact is, however, that the Federal Reserve was founded in 1913, a full 16 years before the fateful stock market crash of 1929. The Fed presided over an expansion of the credit market, which produced the roaring 20’s, the largest economic bubble in history before its collapse.
In recent history, we have seen the dot com bubble and now the real estate mortgage bubble. Both of these bubbles are created by government intervention in the credit market through the Federal Reserve central bank. Libertarians call for an economic policy governed by the principles of the Austrian School of Economics, which includes a minimization of government intervention in the free market.
Myth Number Three – Government intervention in the affairs of foreign countries is necessary for the security of its own citizens.
Ever since the tragic events of September 11, our executive branch has justified its intervention in Iraq and the subsequent erosion of our civil liberties in order to secure our safety. It has even established a policy of preemptive war, whereby it claims the authority to invade another country because that country might aggress against us in the future. Imagine the chaos in the world if every country claimed that authority.
Our intervention in Iraq has made us less safe, not more, because of the unintended consequence called "blowback" by the CIA in its recently declassified report on our policy in Iran. The 9/11 Commission report also describes the blowback phenomenon. Our military intervention, apart from its devastating effects on Iraqi civilians, acts as recruiting tool for extremists. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
Libertarians call for a foreign policy of nonintervention in general and an immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq in particular.
Myth Number Four – Non-interventionism is the same as isolationism.
Isolationists want to isolate the country from interaction with the rest of the world. To that end, they are for national economic self-sufficiency and protectionist tariffs. Isolationists use trade wars and economic sanctions as foreign policy tools to isolate other countries from the world economy.
Libertarian non-interventionists, on the other hand, support international trade, low tariffs, cultural exchange, and diplomatic contact. They view trade as so beneficial that they refuse to withhold it even from despotic states. A positive example is our continuing trade with Communist China, which serves to open that country to the liberal ideals of the west and is beneficial both to us and to them in spite of their tarnished record on human rights. A negative example is our continuing economic boycott of Cuba, a policy that has failed to remove its leader of a half century.
Myth Number Five – If the government does not solve a social problem, the social problem will not be solved.
This myth is used to justify government provision of social services such as health care, education, and retirement. The myth is based on the conflation of negative rights with positive rights.
Negative rights are rights of prohibition against other people from initiating violence against you. Negative rights are enshrined in the phrase from the Declaration of Independence that all people have the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Positive rights force other individuals to provide you with a service. Positive rights are claims that you have a right to a job with a living wage, a right to affordable health care, a right to an education, and a right to a comfortable retirement. Government uses the fiction of positive rights to expand its power in the provision of these services.
Libertarians object to the use of government to provide social services on two grounds, one ethical and one practical.
Because tax collection is not voluntary, people who receive social services from the government do so through a forced exchange of tax dollars. The receipt of such services thus violates the Non-aggression Principle and is unethical.
The practical objection is the observation that no government agency exercising monopoly power can provide a service with better quality or lower price than the free market can under the discipline of the profit motive. We would have better schools and better health care without government interference in these markets.
Libertarians call for a government whose sole function is limited to the Constitutional guarantee of the negative rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Myth Number Six – Libertarianism is idealistic and does not work in practice.
Libertarians are often accused of having a naïve faith in the free market, and having ideas about the way society ought to be governed that are not practical. As with most myths, the truth is precisely the opposite, as can be demonstrated by public choice theory. Public choice scholars analyze the structure of government from an economic and political perspective to explain why certain policies come into being.
Government programs are not effective because the incentive system does not reward bureaucrats for good service or punish them for bad service. The Los Angeles Unified School District is impossible to reform because they do not go out of business when they provide poor service as a private company would. Nor does FEMA.
Politicians cannot be expected to be good stewards of other people’s money obtained through the force of taxation. They are motivated by the same self-interest that motivates all people. Because of the professionalization of the political class, their interest is in winning elections, a process that is only possible by courting special interests.
It is the height of naïveté to place your faith in a governmental system that can only work if its politicians and bureaucrats are saints and angels.
Conclusion
The libertarian philosophy is the ultimate philosophy of tolerance. It is a philosophy of live and let live, of not initiating violence against any other individual, of liberty for all, of peace, and of prosperity.
That is why I am a Ron Paul libertarian.
Monday
THE EMERGING SURVEILLANCE STATE
Last month, the House amended the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to expand the government’s ability to monitor our private communications. This measure, if it becomes law, will result in more warrantless government surveillance of innocent American citizens.
Though some opponents claimed that the only controversial part of this legislation was its grant of immunity to telecommunications companies, there is much more to be wary of in the bill. In the House version, Title II, Section 801, extends immunity from prosecution of civil legal action to people and companies including any provider of an electronic communication service, any provider of a remote computing service, “any other communication service provider who has access to wire or electronic communications,” any “parent, subsidiary, affiliate, successor, or assignee” of such company, any “officer, employee, or agent” of any such company, and any “landlord, custodian, or other person who may be authorized or required to furnish assistance.” The Senate version goes even further by granting retroactive immunity to such entities that may have broken the law in the past.
The new FISA bill allows the federal government to compel many more types of companies and individuals to grant the government access to our communications without a warrant. The provisions in the legislation designed to protect Americans from warrantless surveillance are full of loopholes and ambiguities. There is no blanket prohibition against listening in on all American citizens without a warrant.
We have been told that this power to listen in on communications is legal and only targets terrorists. But if what these companies are being compelled to do is legal, why is it necessary to grant them immunity? If what they did in the past was legal and proper, why is it necessary to grant them retroactive immunity?
In communist East Germany , one in every 100 citizens was an informer for the dreaded secret police, the Stasi. They either volunteered or were compelled by their government to spy on their customers, their neighbors, their families, and their friends. When we think of the evil of totalitarianism, such networks of state spies are usually what comes to mind. Yet, with modern technology, what once took tens of thousands of informants can now be achieved by a few companies being coerced by the government to allow it to listen in to our communications. This surveillance is un-American.
We should remember that former New York governor Eliot Spitzer was brought down by a provision of the PATRIOT Act that required enhanced bank monitoring of certain types of financial transactions. Yet we were told that the PATRIOT Act was needed to catch terrorists, not philanderers. The extraordinary power the government has granted itself to look into our private lives can be used for many purposes unrelated to fighting terrorism. We can even see how expanded federal government surveillance power might be used to do away with political rivals.
The Fourth Amendment to our Constitution requires the government to have a warrant when it wishes to look into the private affairs of individuals. If we are to remain a free society we must defend our rights against any governmental attempt to undermine or bypass the Constitution.
Though some opponents claimed that the only controversial part of this legislation was its grant of immunity to telecommunications companies, there is much more to be wary of in the bill. In the House version, Title II, Section 801, extends immunity from prosecution of civil legal action to people and companies including any provider of an electronic communication service, any provider of a remote computing service, “any other communication service provider who has access to wire or electronic communications,” any “parent, subsidiary, affiliate, successor, or assignee” of such company, any “officer, employee, or agent” of any such company, and any “landlord, custodian, or other person who may be authorized or required to furnish assistance.” The Senate version goes even further by granting retroactive immunity to such entities that may have broken the law in the past.
The new FISA bill allows the federal government to compel many more types of companies and individuals to grant the government access to our communications without a warrant. The provisions in the legislation designed to protect Americans from warrantless surveillance are full of loopholes and ambiguities. There is no blanket prohibition against listening in on all American citizens without a warrant.
We have been told that this power to listen in on communications is legal and only targets terrorists. But if what these companies are being compelled to do is legal, why is it necessary to grant them immunity? If what they did in the past was legal and proper, why is it necessary to grant them retroactive immunity?
In communist East Germany , one in every 100 citizens was an informer for the dreaded secret police, the Stasi. They either volunteered or were compelled by their government to spy on their customers, their neighbors, their families, and their friends. When we think of the evil of totalitarianism, such networks of state spies are usually what comes to mind. Yet, with modern technology, what once took tens of thousands of informants can now be achieved by a few companies being coerced by the government to allow it to listen in to our communications. This surveillance is un-American.
We should remember that former New York governor Eliot Spitzer was brought down by a provision of the PATRIOT Act that required enhanced bank monitoring of certain types of financial transactions. Yet we were told that the PATRIOT Act was needed to catch terrorists, not philanderers. The extraordinary power the government has granted itself to look into our private lives can be used for many purposes unrelated to fighting terrorism. We can even see how expanded federal government surveillance power might be used to do away with political rivals.
The Fourth Amendment to our Constitution requires the government to have a warrant when it wishes to look into the private affairs of individuals. If we are to remain a free society we must defend our rights against any governmental attempt to undermine or bypass the Constitution.
Saturday
GOVERNMENT FAILURE IS ENDEMIC
Before the Joint Economic Committee, April 2, 2008: Hearing on "The Economic Outlook"
Mr. Chairman, I have never been opposed to regulation, although my idea of regulation differs from that of many people in Washington. The free market and its forces of supply and demand are the most effective regulator of the private sector, and have never been known to fail absent government intervention. But piling more public sector regulation on the private sector will have a detrimental effect on the health of our financial system and sow the seeds for the next financial meltdown.
What we in Washington should be discussing is increased regulation and scrutiny of public sector regulatory and oversight agencies such as the Federal Reserve Board, the SEC, and others. The Federal Reserve's actions got us into at least one depression in the last century, and have led to continued cyclical difficulties, including the current economic slowdown.
Back in the 1970s, government-caused inflation reached levels high enough that the Nixon administration decided to implement wage and price controls. Placing blame on greedy speculators, unscrupulous mortgage originators, or panicky investors, is a common reaction on the part of government.
The solution called for, despite the numerous documented failures of government regulation, is always more regulation, more government involvement in and control over the economy, and less free enterprise. Never is the blame placed squarely where it belongs, which is on the shoulders of legislators and regulators whose actions distort the market, prohibiting legitimate market activities and encouraging the development of labyrinthine and opaque financial schemes.
The latest regulatory plan from the Treasury Department, with the potential to turn the Federal Reserve into a super-regulator overseeing state-chartered banks and bank holding companies, and acting as a guarantor of market stability, is another in a long line of half-baked government responses to financial difficulty. Recession after recession has not impressed upon government leaders the reality that the Federal Reserve's monetary policy activities are what lead to market instability.
The business cycle, contrary to what Secretary Paulson and others seem to believe, is not endemic to the free market. It is always and everywhere the result of monetary inflation and subsequent malinvestment, which when it is discovered must of necessity be liquidated in order for a true recovery to occur. Delaying the liquidation will only prolong the crisis and ensure that the next crisis will be more severe.
Every government intervention will result in a distortion of the market and a subsequent shock somewhere down the line in the future. It is about time that we recognize the failure of government intervention, get our hands out of the private sector, and for once allow the market to function.
Mr. Chairman, I have never been opposed to regulation, although my idea of regulation differs from that of many people in Washington. The free market and its forces of supply and demand are the most effective regulator of the private sector, and have never been known to fail absent government intervention. But piling more public sector regulation on the private sector will have a detrimental effect on the health of our financial system and sow the seeds for the next financial meltdown.
What we in Washington should be discussing is increased regulation and scrutiny of public sector regulatory and oversight agencies such as the Federal Reserve Board, the SEC, and others. The Federal Reserve's actions got us into at least one depression in the last century, and have led to continued cyclical difficulties, including the current economic slowdown.
Back in the 1970s, government-caused inflation reached levels high enough that the Nixon administration decided to implement wage and price controls. Placing blame on greedy speculators, unscrupulous mortgage originators, or panicky investors, is a common reaction on the part of government.
The solution called for, despite the numerous documented failures of government regulation, is always more regulation, more government involvement in and control over the economy, and less free enterprise. Never is the blame placed squarely where it belongs, which is on the shoulders of legislators and regulators whose actions distort the market, prohibiting legitimate market activities and encouraging the development of labyrinthine and opaque financial schemes.
The latest regulatory plan from the Treasury Department, with the potential to turn the Federal Reserve into a super-regulator overseeing state-chartered banks and bank holding companies, and acting as a guarantor of market stability, is another in a long line of half-baked government responses to financial difficulty. Recession after recession has not impressed upon government leaders the reality that the Federal Reserve's monetary policy activities are what lead to market instability.
The business cycle, contrary to what Secretary Paulson and others seem to believe, is not endemic to the free market. It is always and everywhere the result of monetary inflation and subsequent malinvestment, which when it is discovered must of necessity be liquidated in order for a true recovery to occur. Delaying the liquidation will only prolong the crisis and ensure that the next crisis will be more severe.
Every government intervention will result in a distortion of the market and a subsequent shock somewhere down the line in the future. It is about time that we recognize the failure of government intervention, get our hands out of the private sector, and for once allow the market to function.
HANDS OFF INTERNET GAMBLING
Before the Financial Services Committee Subcommittee on Domestic & International Monetary Policy of the US House of Representatives, April 2, 2008: Hearing on Proposed UIGEA Regulations
Mr. Chairman, I stand opposed to the regulations being discussed today because I opposed the underlying bill upon which these regulations are based. The ban on Internet gambling infringes upon two freedoms that are important to many Americans: the ability to do with their money as they see fit, and the freedom from government interference with the Internet.
The proper role of the federal government is not that of a nanny, protecting citizens from any and every potential negative consequence of their actions. Although I personally believe gambling to be a dumb waste of money, American citizens should be just as free to spend their money playing online poker as they should be able to buy a used car, enter into a mortgage, or invest in a hedge fund. Risk is inherent in any economic activity, and it is not for the government to determine which risky behaviors Americans may or may not engage in.
The Internet is a powerful tool, and any censorship of Internet activity sets a dangerous precedent. Many Americans rely on the Internet for activities as varied as watching basketball games, keeping up on international news broadcasts, or buying food and clothing. In the last few years we have seen ominous signs of the federal government's desire to control the Internet. The ostensible reasons are to protect Americans from sex offenders, terrorists, and the evils of gambling, but once the door is open to government intrusion, there is no telling what legitimate activity, especially political activity, might fall afoul of government authorities.
The regulations and underlying bill also force financial institutions to act as law enforcement officers. This is another pernicious trend that has accelerated in the aftermath of the Patriot Act, the deputization of private businesses to perform intrusive enforcement and surveillance functions that the federal government is unwilling to perform on its own.
In conclusion, I urge my colleagues to oppose these new regulations and support Chairman Frank's HR 2046, of which I am a cosponsor. Although this bill has been criticized by some for its regulatory aspects, this act does not create any new federal laws and merely ensures that Internet gambling firms comply with existing federal law. The passage of HR 2046 would restore the right of Americans to decide for themselves whether or not to gamble online.
Mr. Chairman, I stand opposed to the regulations being discussed today because I opposed the underlying bill upon which these regulations are based. The ban on Internet gambling infringes upon two freedoms that are important to many Americans: the ability to do with their money as they see fit, and the freedom from government interference with the Internet.
The proper role of the federal government is not that of a nanny, protecting citizens from any and every potential negative consequence of their actions. Although I personally believe gambling to be a dumb waste of money, American citizens should be just as free to spend their money playing online poker as they should be able to buy a used car, enter into a mortgage, or invest in a hedge fund. Risk is inherent in any economic activity, and it is not for the government to determine which risky behaviors Americans may or may not engage in.
The Internet is a powerful tool, and any censorship of Internet activity sets a dangerous precedent. Many Americans rely on the Internet for activities as varied as watching basketball games, keeping up on international news broadcasts, or buying food and clothing. In the last few years we have seen ominous signs of the federal government's desire to control the Internet. The ostensible reasons are to protect Americans from sex offenders, terrorists, and the evils of gambling, but once the door is open to government intrusion, there is no telling what legitimate activity, especially political activity, might fall afoul of government authorities.
The regulations and underlying bill also force financial institutions to act as law enforcement officers. This is another pernicious trend that has accelerated in the aftermath of the Patriot Act, the deputization of private businesses to perform intrusive enforcement and surveillance functions that the federal government is unwilling to perform on its own.
In conclusion, I urge my colleagues to oppose these new regulations and support Chairman Frank's HR 2046, of which I am a cosponsor. Although this bill has been criticized by some for its regulatory aspects, this act does not create any new federal laws and merely ensures that Internet gambling firms comply with existing federal law. The passage of HR 2046 would restore the right of Americans to decide for themselves whether or not to gamble online.
Thursday
BOOK REVIEW.....THOMAS WOODS JR.
Whatever your expectations for Ron Paul’s book The Revolution: A Manifesto, I can say with confidence that they have been exceeded. By a mile.
Ron Paul has produced the kind of book that changes the person who reads it. It is one of the most persuasively argued and beautifully written defenses of the free society I have ever encountered. No president, no presidential candidate, indeed no American politician has ever written anything like this. But that is such faint praise, and such an unjust understatement, that I almost regret uttering it.
From the first page of this book to the last, Ron Paul tells his fellow Americans things that – if the usual political and media fare we are offered is any indication – they are not supposed to hear. As I’ve said in another context, Ron Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto is, to the establishment, rather like the man who shouts out in the middle of the show how the magician is really sawing the woman in half.
What does it cover? Oh, just the Constitution, war, terrorism, the economy, trade, civil liberties, the war on drugs, the dollar, gold, abortion, executive orders, taxation, the housing bubble, the Federal Reserve, education, health care, the environment, conservatism, entitlements, foreign aid, regulation, and presidential war powers.
In order to make progress toward liberty, economist and libertarian Murray Rothbard used to say, the benign façade of the state has to be dramatically torn down. The people must be made to understand that this institution, which they’ve been taught to venerate since elementary school as the expression of the popular will, is ripping them off.
Well, this is the book Murray was waiting for.
After describing the income tax as merely a species of forced labor, for example, Dr. Paul concludes: "Strip away the civics-class platitudes about ‘contributions’ to ‘society,’ which are mere obfuscations designed to engineer the people’s consent to the system, and that is what the income tax amounts to." The word "exploited" appears several times in the book – to refer to government’s treatment of its subject population. He likewise writes, after having shown how the so-called distribution effects of inflation hurt the middle class and the working poor, that "the average person is silently robbed through this invisible means, and usually doesn’t understand what exactly is happening to him. And almost no one in the political establishment has an incentive to tell him."
One of the things that frustrated me most during 2007 was the way Ron Paul’s enemies employed predictable "anti-American" and "appeasement" rhetoric against his foreign policy views. Dr. Paul gets the last laugh here: his chapter on foreign policy is the most persuasive short statement of the non-interventionist position I have ever read. It turns the tables completely: suddenly it is the neoconservatives who are on the defensive, and Ron Paul the knowledgeable and wise statesman steering his country to safety. As a former neocon myself – who knew my enthusiasm for this book would elicit that awful confession? – I can confidently say that I would have changed my mind a lot sooner if I had been exposed to arguments like these.
It’s also a little unusual for an American presidential candidate to refer to and quote from Alexis de Tocqueville, Frédéric Bastiat, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Nozick, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, John Adams, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, William Graham Sumner, Ludwig von Mises, and other figures of comparable renown.
Now trust me that I am not doing this book justice, but here’s a sample of its style and content.
On the conservative movement:
A substantial portion of the conservative movement has become a parody of its former self. Once home to distinguished intellectuals and men of letters, it now tolerates and even encourages anti-intellectualism and jingoism that would have embarrassed earlier generations of conservative thinkers.
On blowback:
The question [CIA bin Laden expert Michael] Scheuer and I are asking is not who is morally responsible for terrorism – only a fool would place the moral responsibility for terrorism on anyone other than the terrorists themselves. The question we are asking is less doltish and more serious: given that a hyper-interventionist foreign policy is very likely to lead to this kind of blowback, are we still sure we want such a foreign policy?… I have [n]ever said or believed that Americans had it coming on 9/11, or that the attacks were justified, or any of this other nonsense. The point is a simple one: when our government meddles around the world, it can stir up hornets’ nests and thereby jeopardize the safety of the American people. That’s just common sense. But hardly anyone in our government dares to level with the American people about our fiasco of a foreign policy.
On the idea of a "living" Constitution:
A "living" Constitution is just the thing any government would be delighted to have, for whenever the people complain that their Constitution has been violated, the government can trot out its judges to inform the people that they’ve simply misunderstood: the Constitution, you see, has merely evolved with the times. Thus, as in Orwell’s Animal Farm, "no animal shall sleep in a bed" becomes "no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets," "no animal shall drink alcohol" becomes "no animal shall drink alcohol to excess," and "no animal shall kill any other animal" becomes "no animal shall kill any other animal without cause."
On civil liberties:
We have allowed the president to abduct an American citizen on American soil, declare him an "enemy combatant" (a charge the accused has no power to contest, which is rendered by the president in secret and is unreviewable), detain him indefinitely, deny him legal counsel, and subject him to inhumane treatment…. Have we been so blinded by propaganda that we have forgotten basic American principles, and legal guarantees that extend back to our British forbears eight centuries ago?… Claims that these powers will be exercised only against the bad guys are not worth listening to.
On propaganda:
Toward the end of 2007, Senator Jeff Sessions declared, "Some people in this chamber love the Constitution more than they love the safety of this nation. We should all send President Bush a letter thanking him for protecting us." What kind of sheep must politicians take Americans for if they expect them to fall for creepy propaganda like this?
On neoconservatives:
Every last prediction they made about the Iraq debacle – e.g., it would be a cakewalk, the cost would be paid by oil revenues, the prospect of sectarian fighting was slim – has been resolutely falsified by events, and yet they continue to grace the pages of major American newspapers and appear regularly on cable television talk shows. Instead of being disgraced, as common sense might lead us to expect, they continue to be exalted for a wisdom they obviously do not possess. I am reminded of George Orwell’s reference to "the streamlined men who think in slogans and talk in bullets."
On our foreign-policy debate:
The possibility that we should avoid bleeding ourselves dry in endless foreign meddling is not raised. For heaven’s sake, what kind of debate is it in which all sides agree that America needs troops in 130 countries?
On Iraq:
The leadership of al Qaeda hoped to lure us into a "desert Vietnam," an enormously expensive war that would deplete our resources and help their own recruitment by stirring up the locals against us. And that is just what happened. The war’s ultimate cost is being estimated in the trillions. The dollar is collapsing. And more terrorists are being created. According to a study by the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel, the vast bulk of the foreign fighters in Iraq are people who had never been involved in terrorist activity before but have been radicalized by the U.S. presence in Iraq – the second-holiest place in Islam.
The terrorists, in short, have played us like a fiddle.
On the Federal Reserve:
Even if the Fed chairman really possessed the singular genius our media and politicians regularly ascribe to him, what if things have reached a point at which the Fed simply cannot stop the collapse? What if economic law, which the Fed can no more defy than it can repeal the law of gravity, is about to hit the Fed and the American people like a tidal wave, before which little rate cuts here and there are like the tiny umbrella Wile E. Coyote puts over his head to protect himself from falling boulders?
This book will change minds. Of that I am absolutely certain. That’s why our chief task right now is getting it into people’s hands.
This is the next major grassroots mission: thinking up creative ways to distribute this book, in the process making it an unavoidable part of current-day political discourse. Nothing would be more satisfying than to disrupt the lead-up to the establishment’s November bore-a-thon with – gasp – a discussion of things that actually matter, aimed at the non-catatonic segment of the population.
In the short run, buy copies for yourself and your friends. Of course, lending the book also works, but actually buying them copies serves two useful purposes: 1) boosting Ron Paul’s bestseller status (dare we hope for a debut at #1?) and 2) guilting your friends into actually reading it, since they know you put down your own money on it.
The prospect that by means of this book hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of Americans may be exposed to these ideas – which this book explains and defends more compellingly than any other book of its length I have ever read – is among the happiest and most exciting developments I can recall in years. I’d say more about the book’s potential, but everything I write comes out like a cliché. This time, though, believe the clichés. Ron Paul has taken the gloves off, and the result is a thing of beauty.
Toward the very end, Dr. Paul writes:
Ours is not a fated existence, for nowhere is our destiny etched in stone. In the final analysis, the last line of defense of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of their dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be without it, there is no force that can stop them.
The book’s dedication page is striking, and fitting:
To my supporters:
I have never been more humbled and honored than by your selfless devotion to freedom and the Constitution.
The American Revolutionaries did the impossible.
So can we.
The Revolution: A Manifesto makes one thing abundantly clear: anybody who thought Ron Paul’s moment was over is sorely mistaken.
He’s just getting started.
Ron Paul has produced the kind of book that changes the person who reads it. It is one of the most persuasively argued and beautifully written defenses of the free society I have ever encountered. No president, no presidential candidate, indeed no American politician has ever written anything like this. But that is such faint praise, and such an unjust understatement, that I almost regret uttering it.
From the first page of this book to the last, Ron Paul tells his fellow Americans things that – if the usual political and media fare we are offered is any indication – they are not supposed to hear. As I’ve said in another context, Ron Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto is, to the establishment, rather like the man who shouts out in the middle of the show how the magician is really sawing the woman in half.
What does it cover? Oh, just the Constitution, war, terrorism, the economy, trade, civil liberties, the war on drugs, the dollar, gold, abortion, executive orders, taxation, the housing bubble, the Federal Reserve, education, health care, the environment, conservatism, entitlements, foreign aid, regulation, and presidential war powers.
In order to make progress toward liberty, economist and libertarian Murray Rothbard used to say, the benign façade of the state has to be dramatically torn down. The people must be made to understand that this institution, which they’ve been taught to venerate since elementary school as the expression of the popular will, is ripping them off.
Well, this is the book Murray was waiting for.
After describing the income tax as merely a species of forced labor, for example, Dr. Paul concludes: "Strip away the civics-class platitudes about ‘contributions’ to ‘society,’ which are mere obfuscations designed to engineer the people’s consent to the system, and that is what the income tax amounts to." The word "exploited" appears several times in the book – to refer to government’s treatment of its subject population. He likewise writes, after having shown how the so-called distribution effects of inflation hurt the middle class and the working poor, that "the average person is silently robbed through this invisible means, and usually doesn’t understand what exactly is happening to him. And almost no one in the political establishment has an incentive to tell him."
One of the things that frustrated me most during 2007 was the way Ron Paul’s enemies employed predictable "anti-American" and "appeasement" rhetoric against his foreign policy views. Dr. Paul gets the last laugh here: his chapter on foreign policy is the most persuasive short statement of the non-interventionist position I have ever read. It turns the tables completely: suddenly it is the neoconservatives who are on the defensive, and Ron Paul the knowledgeable and wise statesman steering his country to safety. As a former neocon myself – who knew my enthusiasm for this book would elicit that awful confession? – I can confidently say that I would have changed my mind a lot sooner if I had been exposed to arguments like these.
It’s also a little unusual for an American presidential candidate to refer to and quote from Alexis de Tocqueville, Frédéric Bastiat, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Nozick, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, John Adams, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, William Graham Sumner, Ludwig von Mises, and other figures of comparable renown.
Now trust me that I am not doing this book justice, but here’s a sample of its style and content.
On the conservative movement:
A substantial portion of the conservative movement has become a parody of its former self. Once home to distinguished intellectuals and men of letters, it now tolerates and even encourages anti-intellectualism and jingoism that would have embarrassed earlier generations of conservative thinkers.
On blowback:
The question [CIA bin Laden expert Michael] Scheuer and I are asking is not who is morally responsible for terrorism – only a fool would place the moral responsibility for terrorism on anyone other than the terrorists themselves. The question we are asking is less doltish and more serious: given that a hyper-interventionist foreign policy is very likely to lead to this kind of blowback, are we still sure we want such a foreign policy?… I have [n]ever said or believed that Americans had it coming on 9/11, or that the attacks were justified, or any of this other nonsense. The point is a simple one: when our government meddles around the world, it can stir up hornets’ nests and thereby jeopardize the safety of the American people. That’s just common sense. But hardly anyone in our government dares to level with the American people about our fiasco of a foreign policy.
On the idea of a "living" Constitution:
A "living" Constitution is just the thing any government would be delighted to have, for whenever the people complain that their Constitution has been violated, the government can trot out its judges to inform the people that they’ve simply misunderstood: the Constitution, you see, has merely evolved with the times. Thus, as in Orwell’s Animal Farm, "no animal shall sleep in a bed" becomes "no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets," "no animal shall drink alcohol" becomes "no animal shall drink alcohol to excess," and "no animal shall kill any other animal" becomes "no animal shall kill any other animal without cause."
On civil liberties:
We have allowed the president to abduct an American citizen on American soil, declare him an "enemy combatant" (a charge the accused has no power to contest, which is rendered by the president in secret and is unreviewable), detain him indefinitely, deny him legal counsel, and subject him to inhumane treatment…. Have we been so blinded by propaganda that we have forgotten basic American principles, and legal guarantees that extend back to our British forbears eight centuries ago?… Claims that these powers will be exercised only against the bad guys are not worth listening to.
On propaganda:
Toward the end of 2007, Senator Jeff Sessions declared, "Some people in this chamber love the Constitution more than they love the safety of this nation. We should all send President Bush a letter thanking him for protecting us." What kind of sheep must politicians take Americans for if they expect them to fall for creepy propaganda like this?
On neoconservatives:
Every last prediction they made about the Iraq debacle – e.g., it would be a cakewalk, the cost would be paid by oil revenues, the prospect of sectarian fighting was slim – has been resolutely falsified by events, and yet they continue to grace the pages of major American newspapers and appear regularly on cable television talk shows. Instead of being disgraced, as common sense might lead us to expect, they continue to be exalted for a wisdom they obviously do not possess. I am reminded of George Orwell’s reference to "the streamlined men who think in slogans and talk in bullets."
On our foreign-policy debate:
The possibility that we should avoid bleeding ourselves dry in endless foreign meddling is not raised. For heaven’s sake, what kind of debate is it in which all sides agree that America needs troops in 130 countries?
On Iraq:
The leadership of al Qaeda hoped to lure us into a "desert Vietnam," an enormously expensive war that would deplete our resources and help their own recruitment by stirring up the locals against us. And that is just what happened. The war’s ultimate cost is being estimated in the trillions. The dollar is collapsing. And more terrorists are being created. According to a study by the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel, the vast bulk of the foreign fighters in Iraq are people who had never been involved in terrorist activity before but have been radicalized by the U.S. presence in Iraq – the second-holiest place in Islam.
The terrorists, in short, have played us like a fiddle.
On the Federal Reserve:
Even if the Fed chairman really possessed the singular genius our media and politicians regularly ascribe to him, what if things have reached a point at which the Fed simply cannot stop the collapse? What if economic law, which the Fed can no more defy than it can repeal the law of gravity, is about to hit the Fed and the American people like a tidal wave, before which little rate cuts here and there are like the tiny umbrella Wile E. Coyote puts over his head to protect himself from falling boulders?
This book will change minds. Of that I am absolutely certain. That’s why our chief task right now is getting it into people’s hands.
This is the next major grassroots mission: thinking up creative ways to distribute this book, in the process making it an unavoidable part of current-day political discourse. Nothing would be more satisfying than to disrupt the lead-up to the establishment’s November bore-a-thon with – gasp – a discussion of things that actually matter, aimed at the non-catatonic segment of the population.
In the short run, buy copies for yourself and your friends. Of course, lending the book also works, but actually buying them copies serves two useful purposes: 1) boosting Ron Paul’s bestseller status (dare we hope for a debut at #1?) and 2) guilting your friends into actually reading it, since they know you put down your own money on it.
The prospect that by means of this book hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of Americans may be exposed to these ideas – which this book explains and defends more compellingly than any other book of its length I have ever read – is among the happiest and most exciting developments I can recall in years. I’d say more about the book’s potential, but everything I write comes out like a cliché. This time, though, believe the clichés. Ron Paul has taken the gloves off, and the result is a thing of beauty.
Toward the very end, Dr. Paul writes:
Ours is not a fated existence, for nowhere is our destiny etched in stone. In the final analysis, the last line of defense of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of their dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be without it, there is no force that can stop them.
The book’s dedication page is striking, and fitting:
To my supporters:
I have never been more humbled and honored than by your selfless devotion to freedom and the Constitution.
The American Revolutionaries did the impossible.
So can we.
The Revolution: A Manifesto makes one thing abundantly clear: anybody who thought Ron Paul’s moment was over is sorely mistaken.
He’s just getting started.
Wednesday
LEAVE RUSSIA ALONE
Before the US House of Representatives, April 1, 2008: Statement on H Con Res 154 Expressing concern over Russian involvement in Alexander Litvinenko’s murder
Mr. Speaker: I rise in strong opposition to this ill-conceived resolution. The US House of Representatives has no business speculating on guilt or innocence in a crime that may have been committed thousands of miles outside US territory. It is arrogant, to say the least, that we presume to pass judgment on crimes committed overseas about which we have seen no evidence.
The resolution purports to express concern over the apparent murder in London of a shadowy former Russian intelligence agent, Alexander Litvinenko, but let us not kid ourselves. The real purpose is to attack the Russian government by suggesting that Russia is involved in the murder. There is little evidence of this beyond the feverish accusations of interested parties. In fact, we may ultimately discover that Litvinenko’s death by radiation poisoning was the result of his involvement in an international nuclear smuggling operation, as some investigative reporters have claimed. The point is that we do not know. The House of Representatives has no business inserting itself in disputes about which we lack information and jurisdiction.
At a time when we should be seeking good relations and expanded trade with Russia, what is the benefit in passing such provocative resolutions? There is none.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to enter into the Congressional Record a very thought-provoking article by Edward Jay Epstein published recently in the New York Sun, which convincingly calls into question many of the assumptions and accusations made in this legislation. I would encourage my colleagues to read this article and carefully consider the wisdom of what we are doing.
Mr. Speaker: I rise in strong opposition to this ill-conceived resolution. The US House of Representatives has no business speculating on guilt or innocence in a crime that may have been committed thousands of miles outside US territory. It is arrogant, to say the least, that we presume to pass judgment on crimes committed overseas about which we have seen no evidence.
The resolution purports to express concern over the apparent murder in London of a shadowy former Russian intelligence agent, Alexander Litvinenko, but let us not kid ourselves. The real purpose is to attack the Russian government by suggesting that Russia is involved in the murder. There is little evidence of this beyond the feverish accusations of interested parties. In fact, we may ultimately discover that Litvinenko’s death by radiation poisoning was the result of his involvement in an international nuclear smuggling operation, as some investigative reporters have claimed. The point is that we do not know. The House of Representatives has no business inserting itself in disputes about which we lack information and jurisdiction.
At a time when we should be seeking good relations and expanded trade with Russia, what is the benefit in passing such provocative resolutions? There is none.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to enter into the Congressional Record a very thought-provoking article by Edward Jay Epstein published recently in the New York Sun, which convincingly calls into question many of the assumptions and accusations made in this legislation. I would encourage my colleagues to read this article and carefully consider the wisdom of what we are doing.
Tuesday
ON MONEY, INFLATION AND GOVERNMENT
These past few weeks have provided an unfortunate opportunity to discuss inflation. The dollar index has reached new all-time lows. The total money supply, M3, as calculated by private sources, is growing at a disturbing 17% rate. The Fed is pumping dollars into the economy at an alarming rate. Just recently the Fed announced new loan auctions totaling $100 billion. That is new money created from thin air. If these money auctions, combined with the bailout of Bear Stearns, continue to be the trend, we are in for some economic stormy weather. The explanation lies in understanding the basics of money, and why it is dangerous to give government and big banks control over it.
First, money is not wealth, in and of itself. You cannot create more wealth simply by creating more money. Wall Street bankers cry out for more liquidity, but what is really needed is more value behind the dollar. But the value, unfortunately, isn't there.
You see, the Fed creates new money and uses it to purchase securities from banks. Flush with funds, these banks seek to put this money to use. During the Fed's expansionary period, much of this money went to home loans. Through a combination of federal government inducements to lend to risky borrowers, and the Fed's supply of easy money, the housing bubble took shape. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were encouraged to purchase and securitize mortgages, while investors, buoyed by implicit government backing, rushed to provide funding. Money that could have been invested in more productive, less risky sectors of the economy was thereby malinvested in subprime mortgage loans.
The implicit guarantee from the Fed is quickly becoming explicit, as those institutions deemed "too big to fail" are bailed out at taxpayer expense. Wall Street made a killing during the housing bubble, reaping record profits. Now that the bubble has burst, these same firms are trying to dump their losses on the taxpayers. This approach requires more money creation, and therefore debasement of all dollars in circulation.
The Federal Reserve, a quasi-government entity, should not be creating money or determining interest rates, as this causes malinvestment and excessive debt to accumulate. Centrally planned, government manipulated economies always fail eventually. The collapse of communism and the failure of socialism should have made this apparent. Even the most educated, well-intentioned central planners cannot plan the market better than the market itself. Those that understand economics best, understand this reality.
In free markets, both success and failure are options. If government interventions prevent businesses, like Bear Stearns, from failing, then it is not truly a free market. As painful as it might be for Wall Street, banks, even big ones, must be allowed to fail.
The end game for this policy of monetary inflation is that the money in your bank account loses purchasing power. So, by keeping failing banks afloat, the Fed punishes those who have lived frugally and saved. The power to create money is a power that should never be granted to government. As we can plainly see today, the Fed has abused this power, and taxpayers are paying the price.
First, money is not wealth, in and of itself. You cannot create more wealth simply by creating more money. Wall Street bankers cry out for more liquidity, but what is really needed is more value behind the dollar. But the value, unfortunately, isn't there.
You see, the Fed creates new money and uses it to purchase securities from banks. Flush with funds, these banks seek to put this money to use. During the Fed's expansionary period, much of this money went to home loans. Through a combination of federal government inducements to lend to risky borrowers, and the Fed's supply of easy money, the housing bubble took shape. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were encouraged to purchase and securitize mortgages, while investors, buoyed by implicit government backing, rushed to provide funding. Money that could have been invested in more productive, less risky sectors of the economy was thereby malinvested in subprime mortgage loans.
The implicit guarantee from the Fed is quickly becoming explicit, as those institutions deemed "too big to fail" are bailed out at taxpayer expense. Wall Street made a killing during the housing bubble, reaping record profits. Now that the bubble has burst, these same firms are trying to dump their losses on the taxpayers. This approach requires more money creation, and therefore debasement of all dollars in circulation.
The Federal Reserve, a quasi-government entity, should not be creating money or determining interest rates, as this causes malinvestment and excessive debt to accumulate. Centrally planned, government manipulated economies always fail eventually. The collapse of communism and the failure of socialism should have made this apparent. Even the most educated, well-intentioned central planners cannot plan the market better than the market itself. Those that understand economics best, understand this reality.
In free markets, both success and failure are options. If government interventions prevent businesses, like Bear Stearns, from failing, then it is not truly a free market. As painful as it might be for Wall Street, banks, even big ones, must be allowed to fail.
The end game for this policy of monetary inflation is that the money in your bank account loses purchasing power. So, by keeping failing banks afloat, the Fed punishes those who have lived frugally and saved. The power to create money is a power that should never be granted to government. As we can plainly see today, the Fed has abused this power, and taxpayers are paying the price.
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