Monthly Archives: October 2013

Libertarian Party: Party of Isms, Not Individualism

Gender, IMMIGRATION, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Race, Ron Paul, States' Rights

When it comes to playing manipulative politics with social issues—matters of “racism,” “sexism” (blah, blah), with which government should not concern itself—there’s no daylight between left-liberals and left-libertarians.

The loser Libertarian Party is running a gubernatorial candidate (Robert Sarvis?) against one of the most libertarian attorneys general a state has had: Virginia’s Ken Cuccinelli. The latter has an impressive record of achievements and has taken principled positions on the issues.

For instance, Attorney General Cuccinelli’s attempts to nullify federal health insurance mandates in Virgina go as far back as March of 2010, when he launched a legal challenge to “shield Virginians from paying any penalties for not purchasing federally-approved health care.”

By Wikipedia’s telling, the Libertarian Party’s challenger, Sarvis, “supports same sex marriage and says it is a personal issue for him because his own marriage, which is biracial, was illegal in Virginia 50 years ago.”

By the same token, why not support affirmative action, on the ground that it wasn’t the law “in Virginia 50 years ago”?

Left-liberal argumentation! Sanctimonious too.

As one who believes that the state should stay out of marriage altogether, I cringe when so-called liberty lovers join Hollywood dimwits to place this issue at the forefront of the fight for freedom and beat people about the head with it. If you care about liberty, keep the state out of marriage; don’t expand its purview. Go to an attorney and solemnize your marriage through contract law.

Unsurprisingly, this Libertarian Party candidate is for open borders, framing the matter by using more sly, liberal illogic. (Here: I know immigrants, therefore immigration should proceed unfettered.)

Remember that immigration has pitted governors like Arizona’s against the Feds in a heroic fight for the right of state representatives to protect their statesmen from trespass. On immigration, left-libertarians come down foursquare on the side of the federales. You can be sure that the latest Immigration Bill will be Sarvis’s dream-come-true.

Cuccinelli, on the other hand, has ruled that “state law enforcement officers are allowed to check the immigration status of anyone ‘stopped or arrested.'” According to FoxNews, Cuccinelli issued a legal opinion … “extending that authority to Virginia police in response to an inquiry over whether his state could mirror the policies passed into law in Arizona.”

Most telling, Ron Paul has endorsed … Cuccinelli.

UPDATED: GOV.CON Is Working As Intended

Communism, Economy, Government, Healthcare, Socialism, The State

Delay it, fix it, tweak it, get Amazon’s computer programers to redesign it; and, boohoo, the poor president—a pox on Obama!—is so poorly served by it!

Republicans and Democrats alike have made these specious, irrelevant, mealy-mouthed points about the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” That includes those “pig-ignorant panelists” who turn the Sean Hannity Show into such a zoo. (My apologies to all animals, who are far and away superior in intelligence and manners to Sean’s panelists.)

You can no more mend Government.Con than you could have tweaked Stalin’s Gulag.

Read “Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work” at the preeminent libertarian site, Economic Policy Journal:

…In the bureaucracy, incentives will forever be inverted. Failure results in success: in more funds, more training, more time off. “We don’t have profits and losses in the civil service. Success in the civil service is measured by the size of our staff and budget. A bigger department is more successful than a smaller one,” smiled the marvelously sardonic Sir Humphrey Appleby, superstar of the satire “Yes, Prime Minister.”
Since it “manages” money not its own, government has no real incentive to conserve resources, ensure a job is properly done, or deliver on its promises. Entrusted with the administration of assets you don’t own, have no stake in; on behalf of people you don’t know and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement—how long before your on-the-job performance mirrors that of the government? …

MORE.

UPDATE: “Some health insurance gets pricier as Obamacare rolls,” concedes the LA Times. But what would an LA Times article be without floating a foolish theory, blaming business for a law that has mandated extended coverage?

Guaranteed, exhaustive coverage is driving up rates:

Individual policies must also cover a higher percentage of overall medical costs and include 10 “essential health benefits,” such as prescription drugs and mental health services. The aim is to fill gaps in coverage and provide consumers more peace of mind. But those expanded benefits have to be paid for with higher premiums.

Justice demands that people who scoffed at the right analysis (see “Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured,” August 7, 2009) of this law and cheered it on should suffer. They deserve to suffer. But I fear the future for all. Be afraid.

Exculpating Evil: Depravity Or Deprivation?

Crime, Justice, Morality, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Race, Racism, Reason

CORRESPONDENT DON LEMON is a (piss-poor) prime-time reporter for CNN. Deprivation was the theme of Lemon’s sympathetic segment on 14-year-old (alleged) slasher Phillip Chism. Chism killed his 24-year-old math teacher with a box cutter.

According to Lemon’s editorializing , the possible source of Chism’s deprivation, boohoo, was not depravity but an absent father. Bill O’Reilly—and all other “conservative” pundits—is also prone to backwards logic, namely that if someone does something evil, then you work backwards in search of exculpating factors. Anything but pure unmitigated evil.

Controlled studies show that well-functioning individuals tend to report as many pathological experiences as do people who don’t function well. The same faulty reasoning must lead us to conclude that their trauma caused their successes.

Investigation Discovery featured a gaggle of Australian lasses who murdered a girl who had made their leader jealous. These feral females beat their victim and then set her alight as she begged for mercy. The stiffest sentence received by one of them was 17 years.

It’s a consolation that here in the U.S., Chism will be tried and sentenced as an adult.

Lemon:

DON LEMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The students are back at Danvers High School.

COLLIN BUTLER, JUNIOR, DANVERS HIGH SCHOOL: I’m trying to return to some essential of normalcy.

LEMON: The school’s flag at half-staff and pink ribbons on the trees — reminders that thing are still far from normal.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why would someone do this to someone so nice?

LEMON: Still, more questions than answers as to what made 14-year-old Phillip Chism allegedly kill his math teacher Colleen Ritzer with a box cutter on Tuesday and then dump her body in the woods behind the school’s athletic field. He then went to this theater to see Wood Allen’s “Blue Jazzman”.

Chism’s uncle in Tennessee among those who still can’t understand why.

TERRENCE CHISM BLAINE, UNCLE OF PHILLIP CHISM: This is the furthest thing from reality for me to believe that Phillip could, you know, get entangled in something like this.

LEMON (on camera): His uncle told CNN that Chism’s parents are separated. Chism’s father, a former military man, is now living in Florida. The question is, could trouble at home be one of the reasons behind his alleged attack?

CARRIE KIMBALL-MONAHAN, SPOKESPERSON, ESSEX COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: An investigation is a broad and painstaking effort. So they’re all, any and all information that’s pertinent and relevant to proving our case is taken into consideration.

LEMON: Would something like that be relevant?

KIMBALL-MONAHAN: It could be.

LEMON (voice-over): The freshman student Cambria Cloutier sat near Chism in Ritzer’s math class. She said he was a good student but that something was different about Chism’s behavior on Tuesday.

CAMBRIA CLOUTHIER, FRESHMAN, DANVERS HIGH SCHOOL: He was a little more quiet than usual. He had his ear buds on. He was drawing. He was not doing math. He wasn’t paying attention.

LEMON: Clouthier says Ritzer teacher asked Chism to stay after class to help him with what he missed, telling CNN’s Pam Brown that she walked by the classroom after school and saw the two of them together.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What did you see in the classroom at 3:15?

CLOUTHIER: I saw Ms. Ritizer standing at her desk computer smiling at me. And then I saw Phillip slouching in his chair, staring at me when I walked by.

LEMON: Just 15 minutes later, according to sources close to the investigation, Colleen Ritzer was brutally killed in the school’s second floor bathroom.

CLOUTHIER: If I had walked by there 15 minutes later, what could have happened? If I witnessed that, what could I have done?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: And sources close to the investigation say there is no indication that there is anything in this young man’s path that would lead him to this type of behavior. And they also say that reports of him having a crush on the teacher are unfounded. In the meantime, Erin, 24-year-old Colleen Ritzer will be laid to rest on Monday.

BURNETT: Thank you, Don.