Category Archives: Individual Rights

UPDATED: Ann Coulter Disses Barry Goldwater’s Devotion To Private Property

Affirmative Action, Ann Coulter, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Private Property

In her latest column, “DON’T BLAME ROMNEY,” Ms. Coulter suggests that,

…purist libertarian Barry Goldwater … — as you will read in [her] book, ‘Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama’ — nearly destroyed the Republican Party with his pointless pursuit of libertarian perfection in his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Well, that immutably just position on private-property rights, taken by “purist libertarian Barry Goldwater,” is the position adopted in Into the Cannibal’s Pot, where I write the following:

In a free society—one not silhouetted by the State—honored is the right of the individual to associate and disassociate, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will. Contrary to the civil servant, the private person’s “refusal to deal” ought to be sacrosanct. … In the encroaching American State, the right of free association has been circumscribed by crippling codes of hiring, firing, renting, and money lending. The culprit is the Civil Rights Act of 1964…

(Pages 119-120)

Cited in Into the Cannibal’s Pot is another “purist” who feels no compunction about defending a sacred individual right: the fine libertarian legal theorist Richard Epstein, author of Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws.

(“The Cannibal’s” predictive value seems to dovetail with its respectable Amazon rank below, today:
#3 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
#23 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Civil Rights & Liberties
#29 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Public Affairs & Policy > Social Policy)

UPDATE: In response to the Facebook thread: Ms. Coulter is very bright. Brilliant in many ways. But she’s not a deep thinker. I think she’s a solid writer and has a quick mind. I’ve always liked her b/c of those qualities, so rare among the the teletwats (sorry, could not help that).

Circumscribing Gouging = Circumscribing Private Property

Business, Capitalism, Economy, Ethics, Individual Rights, Objectivism, Political Economy, Private Property, Reason

Rights-based arguments are seldom made by members of the media and their guests. In explaining what a (semantic) aberration the term gouging is John Stossel opted to privilege the utilitarian angle. So did his guests.

Like any voluntary exchange of goods, “gouging” amounts to free people exchanging property to which they hold title. Each relinquishes something he values less (money/goods/labor) for something he values more (money/goods/labor).

John Stossel and guests prefer to stick to purely utilitarian economics. That’s the mindset that prevails.

I’d like to hear our side argue for freedom by saying that, whether free markets work or not is secondary to the unalienable, immutable, rights of men. It so happens that—surprise!—upholding the absolute rights of the individual to life, liberty and property works very well. Wealth redounds to all.

Bless Stossel for his efforts to promote economic literacy, over decades. However, I listened to Steve Horowitz last night, and then “muted” when Stossel made the perennial decision that guides the dueling perspectives political panel.

Rather than let Steve enlighten, Stossel allowed the reality denier to hog the stage with a perversion, not a version, of the truth.

“By presenting the public with two competing perspectives—you mislead viewers into believing that indeed there are two realities, and that it is up to them to decide which one is more compelling.”

This positively postmodernist format would be fine were Rome not burning. However, “a Homeric contest is underway in the USA. Rome is burning. Now is not the time to fiddle or to unwittingly defraud the public.”

As I wrote in “More Chris Christie Cretinism*: Outlawing Price ‘Gouging,’” in addition to acting as “the street signs of the economy,” “prices are the prerogative of private property”:

In a free market, the institute of private property ensures that we have prices. “Prices are like a compass: pegged to supply and demand they ensure the correct allocation of resources. Without market prices, supply and demand cannot be brought into balance and, by extension, consumer needs cannot be satisfied. Conversely, in socialized systems there are no prices because there is no private property. Absent such knowledge, misuse, misallocation and mismanagement of capital are inevitable.”

Diplomatic Immunity From The Dangers Of Occupation

Barack Obama, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Government, Individual Rights, Islam, Just War, Terrorism, War

Our government’s only legitimate function is to protect American lives, one by precious one. Yet under “W,” ordinary Americans were regularly beheaded in the theaters of war Genghis Bush launched. None of their representatives stateside bargained for their lives or staged showy Congressional hearings to probe their forsaken security.

“President Bush sat bone idle, never lifting a bloodstained finger to haggle for his countrymen.”

The helpless faces in televised pleas of Americans such as Private First Class Keith Maupin, Paul Johnson, Nick Berg, and American engineers Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong; the depraved indifference of my countrymen to their plight—these haunted me throughout 2003-2004, documented in columns such as “AFTER THEIR HEADS ROLL, AMERICA’S DEAD REMAIN FACELESS.”

Now, Republicans are attempting to saddle a war president by any other name—Barack Obama—with the blame for the “resurgence” of terrorism in America’s occupied territories, when the same anger was evinced by the occupied under Bush, and it will persist under future Republican leaders.

One voice of sanity on foreign policy is “departing Congressman” Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. Kucinich, who will be sorely missed, made a cameo today during the “House Hearing on Attack on U.S. Consulate in Libya,” where he asked about al-Qaida’s presence in Libya. Lt. Col. Andrew Wood said: ‘Their presence grows everyday. They are certainly more established than we are.'”

More from Kucinich via Reason:

Departing Congressman Dennis Kucinich said at today’s hearing on security failures in Benghazi that rather than engaging in partisanship Congress ought to look at its role in failing to curb American interventionism as what led to the terrorist attack in Benghazi on 9/11, saying extremists exist and are more powerful in Libya because the U.S. “spurred a civil war” there, “absent constitutional authority, might I add.”
Kucinich blamed “decades of intervention” on the rise of extremists in the region and asked why no lessons from Iraq were drawn on Libya.
“Interventions do not make us safer,” Kucinich said, “they are themselves a threat to America,” before asking how much more Al-Qaeda there is in Libya now than before the U.S. intervention (the only answer he got was that they have a bigger presence in Libya than the U.S. does.” He also asked how many surface-to-air missiles were still missing since the U.S. intervention. Between 10 and 20,000, according to one of the witnesses.

A Republican Dick Called Carlson

Classical Liberalism, Elections, Founding Fathers, Individual Rights, Journalism, libertarianism, Liberty, Race, Republicans, Ron Paul

Journalism being what it is these days, this StarTribune report, and most other “reports,” failed to mention the “Where” in their lead story: Over which Senate seat are Kurt Bills (approved by Ron Paul) and Dick Carlson (endorsed, possibly, by the reality TV community) bickering.

(Perhaps we were expected to infer the information a journalistic lead should impart from the name of the newspaper doing the reporting: The Minneapolis StarTribune.)

In any event, Ron Paul stands for sound money, limited government (with respect to welfare and warfare alike), individual liberties and property rights. Unable to deal a blow to the constitutional principles of the American Founding Fathers, a dick called David Carlson—a Republican whose rival Ron Paul has endorsed—is choosing to fight filthily. The political battle is over the U.S. Senate seat of the senior United States Senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar.

WATCH:

I’m David Carlson, and I approve this message because you have the right to know.

The transcript that follows is courtesy of Daily Kos, which, predictably, doesn’t care much about a country buckling under debt, regulation and central planning, just so long as its countrymen are coerced into sharing a single worldview.

Kurt Bills is a disciple of Ron Paul, and now he wants to be our U.S. Senator. What would America have looked like if we had President Paul and Senator Bills? Well, ‘states’ rights first’ means no Civil War to free the slaves. It means women and minorities aren’t voting. We don’t have integration and open schools. Kurt Bills own school could be all male and white. Ron Paul even stated, “Saving the Jews was absolutely none of our business” and that Adolf Hitler was initially a positive force for Germany! In Ron Paul’s and Kurt Bills’ America, black veterans who are unwanted in a restaurant can be told to leave. Ron Paul even said Martin Luther King Jr. seduced underage girls and boys and was a gay pedophile. Kurt Bills, a devoted supporter of Ron Paul, has already had our senate race called the most mismatched in America.
Minnesota, let’s make the battle for our senate seat a serious race and not put up another unelectable, radical candidate. Say no to Ron Paul and Kurt Bills.

From the Star Tribune:

[Carlson’s ad] will not have a wide viewing. Carlson said he spent a few thousand dollars to run it in the western and southwestern suburbs. But it could make a mark on Bills, who has struggled in his quest to unseat Klobuchar.

Carlson is “a 30-year-old former Marine Corps Sergeant,” which gives you an idea of the kind of constitutionally ignorant foot-soldiers for the state the military so often produces.