Category Archives: Classical Liberalism

Updated: Arnold Issuing IOUs

Classical Liberalism, Debt, Economy, Federalism, Government, Inflation, Political Economy, Republicans, The State

For a long time, “moderate” Republicans considered California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger a member of the “saner” Republican guard. Arnold drove his state to insolvency, and insolvency, you see, can shore up a moderate’s credentials.

Schwarzenegger has pumped up his state’s bloated bureaucracy and ballooning parasitical class. Now, in a referendum, California voters have rejected milquetoast measures that would allow The Terminator to continue to hobble along with his $21 billion deficit.

The Republican governor made sure he was out of town during the vote. “He was not the public face of the effort,” reports the New York Times. But rather, Arnold “let teachers and firefighters do his talking for him in advertisements, and indeed was not even in the state the day of the vote.”

“Representative democracy,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in Bureaucracy, “cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government pay roll. If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for.”

One of the causes of inflation and debt is the public sector—with its capacity to hire while the public sector must fire—and award its members with inflated wages and benefits, the kind we can only dream of.

Update (May 20): Arnold gave it a bash; he tried to peddle a “package of budget-balancing measures that he promised would temporarily fix the state’s financial crisis.”

MSNBC: “Schwarzenegger said the state’s residents have had to sell off motorcycles, second cars and hold garage sales to make ends meet in recent months. Now, they’re telling state officials that the government has to shrink, too.

“Don’t come to us for extra help. That was the message.”

Me: Moocher-in-chief, however, knows how to try and prolong the party, with some leverage against the moochers he governs:

“Still, Schwarzenegger said the budget cuts to come may be more painful than California voters realize. While they may not want to pay more for services, they can’t say specifically which services they would pare, he said.

He said cuts will certainly come in education, health care and in prisons by transferring undocumented immigrants to federal facilities and transferring more non-violent offenders to local jails. He plans to meet with state lawmakers in the afternoon to discuss the state’s options.”

Update III: Swine Flu Part II: Pandemic Threat Raised

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Democrats, Government, Healthcare, Homeland Security

JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE US-MEXICAN BORDER. Breitbart: “Suddenly faced with a new and unforeseen threat, people entering the country who said they felt unwell were questioned about their symptoms. But there were no reports of anyone refused entry.”

THE SWINE STILL AWOL Although Secretary Napolitano has advised Americans not to travel to Mexico, the Homeland Security’s headless head lady has instructed border agents to lay off entrants from Mexico; do only passive surveillance now.

“Right now,” she said, “we don’t think the facts warrant a more active testing or screening of passengers coming in from Mexico. … All persons entering the United States from a location of human infection of swine flu will be processed through all appropriate CBP protocols. Right now those are passive. That means that they’re looking for people who — and asking about, are you sick, have you been sick, and the like; and if so, then they can be referred over for further examination.”

Meantime, world-wide, “thermal scanners and upgraded checks for flu-like symptoms” have been implemented at airport checkpoints.

MSNBC: “Ira Longini, professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Washington in Seattle, talks about using ‘social distancing’ to reduce transmission of swine flu.” But worries that the window of opportunity is closing.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but “social distancing” would include precisely the measures this administration (following in the the footsteps of the last band of bastards) refuses to take: Put some distance between residents of flu “Ground Zero” (Mexico) and the US.

(Swine Flu Part I.)

Update I: Writes the indefatigable Brenda Walker of VDARE.COM:

“I don’t think Washington would shut down the Mexican border for any reason. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of American citizens are killed yearly by illegal alien Mexicans and those victims are considered by elites to be the acceptable cost of the globalized economy. Nothing changed in immigration policy after 9/11 when 3,000 died in an hour. So don’t expect a few germs to alter the Potemkin village that stands for national security these days. DHS is not even testing travelers from Mexico for the virus even though the government has declared a public health emergency.”

Update II (April 29): Those anarchists who think laissez faire is best in the case of the Mexican Flu will be disappointed. The WHO has raised the pandemic threat to 5, “meaning the world is at imminent risk of a pandemic from H1N1 swine flu,” said Dr. Margaret Chan.

This also means that the US can no longer just wave through entrants from Ground Zero.

In my household there is a little less snickering at the resident Howard Hughes: me. For years I’ve practiced rituals my family has scoffed, even mocked. Having grown up in a water-poor country where fruit and veg. are irrigated with “recycled” water (Israel), I wash produce down to the individual berry, and dry it, with the hope that mechanical manipulation helps remove filth.

With me in my handbag are alcohol impregnated “wet ones”; I prefer these to bottled gel, because you can’t sterilize handles, bars and door knobs with the latter. My keyboard has recently been replaced since vigorous cleaning had caused the letters to fade. I’ve been barred from our very old TV remote, after Sean managed to salvage it.

You get the drift.

Still, Scherie G. makes exactly the point that needs making. Not everyone entering the US is equal, however much our egalitarians would like that to be the case. Americans are so naive, they fail to even begin to imagine the kind of hygiene, health, and eating habits mass migration brings to their country.

As an immigrant to this country, I was screened for TB, HIV, Hepatitis B., and other infectious diseases. Can I honestly say that the host population had no right to know whether I carried these dread diseases?

Anyone who has not crossed over into the intellectual abyss that is anarchy will recognize that, yes, the host population has a right to be protected from an assault on their persons.

What infuriates me is the fact that such screening is practiced on a biased sample: one which is law abiding, tax-paying, and relatively well-off and healthy.

The number of communicable diseases—some really grotesques, such as brain worms, dengue fever, and leprosy—that have entered the US because of unselective immigration is appalling.

“Each illegal with Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis coughs and infects 10 to 30 people, who will not show symptoms immediately. Latent disease explodes later,” reports WND.

So the idea that once one carrier enters the country, then the other million need not be stopped is worse than stupid. The greater the number of infected entering the country, the greater and wider-spread the harm.

Update III: DHS does not have to solve the problem of the flu; all it has to do is its duty: defend this country’s borders. Not sure why this simple thing is so hard to grasp. It must be the affliction that accompanies those congenital, left-liberal, anarcho-instincts.

Update III: The Real Tea Party Movement (Go Home Republicans!)

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Republicans, Taxation

“The Founders were Lockean liberals who believed that we had natural rights and could combine to delegate certain powers to the government such as self-protection. But in natural law, no man can steal from another so you can’t delegate that power to the government and create a welfare state. Similarly, the people don’t have the right to counterfeit, so they can’t delegate that power to the Federal Reserve. And the people do not have the right to rule the world, so they can’t delegate to the government the right to create a global military empire.”

The Founders were not anarchists but they still had a dim view of taxes. To tax people for purposes other than core government functions is theft and tyranny. Jefferson said that in his own words in his First Inaugural.”

The excerpt is from my WND interview with James Ostrowski, tea party organizer and author of the manifesto, “How We Can Win the Second American Revolution Without Firing a Shot.”

Update I (April 18): if you missed the column on WND, you can catch it each and every week on Taki’s Magazine, where the reading, overall, is really really good. Read “The Real Tea Parties,” NOW on Taki’s Magazine.

Update II : The absolute imperative of denouncing the GOP was the theme of my interview with Jim Ostrowski. Is my wish coming true? I hope so. Rep. Gresham Barrett of South Carolina was booed off the stage he tried to occupy.

“Barrett faced the ire of the tea party protesters because of his vote last year for the $700 billion,” reports the Huffington Post.

Here’s the clip. “GO HOME” the crowd cries. The Republican knave tries to galvanize the crowd with the “our men and women in the military” mantra. But all he gets is: “GO HOME, GO HOME, GO HOME, too late, too late, boo, boo.” Love the fury.

Update III: In her syndicated column, Michelle Malkin, the only real fiscal conservative among Republican pundits, documents the extent of the revulsion GOPiers (including those who appeared with Sean Hannity) have inspired among tea party goers:

“If only the condescending cable TV anchors at CNN and MSNBC had paused from wallowing in gutter puns about tea bags, they might have reported an even more significant phenomenon: Tea Party protesters were as vocal in their criticism of Republicans as they were of Democrats. In Salt Lake City, Utah, a crowd of 2,000 repeatedly booed GOP Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, who both supported the $700 billion TARP bailout, and protested GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman’s decision to accept $1.6 billion in porky stimulus funds.”…

Read on.

Update III: The Real Tea Party Movement (Go Home Republicans!)

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Republicans, Taxation

The excerpt is from my WND interview with James Ostrowski, tea party organizer and author of the manifesto, “How We Can Win the Second American Revolution Without Firing a Shot.”

“Barrett faced the ire of the tea party protesters because of his vote last year for the $700 billion,” reports the Huffington Post.

Read on.