Category Archives: Individual Rights

Dead-End Debt Debate

Debt, Democrats, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Ilana On Radio & TV, Individual Rights, Inflation

The following is from “Dead-End Debt Debate,” now on WND.COM:

“The economy is in advanced stages of decrepitude due to debt: public and private. Nevertheless, a just-released ABC News/Washington Post poll revealed that 58 percent of self-identified Republicans believe that if their government doesn’t continue to borrow apace, things will get worse.

In legislative language, our wily political pitch men have been granted license to lift the debt ceiling! Quick-fix quacks in both chambers can now proceed to borrow by further inflating the country’s fiat money supply.

Duly, two broad plans have been hatched. These schemes are aimed at saving financial face, more than slashing spending or trimming America’s gargantuan government. To listen to this school of scoundrels – represented by statists from different corners of the political boxing ring, from Fox News’ Stuart Varney to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow – not to raise the debt ceiling is plain unpatriotic. … Needless to say that, “Cross-party consensus results when political expediency trumps principle.” …

The complete column is “Dead-End Debt Debate,” now on WND.COM:

My new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon.

Please note that you can purchase the lower-cost Kindle copy of “The Cannibal” without having to own a Kindle – all you need is a PC or a hand-held device (iPad or phone). This hyperlink describes the free Amazon software application for these devices. So you do not require a new gadget to read the book on Kindle.

A good way to help this work’s mission, and raise awareness of the issues covered in depth and detail in the book, is to post your reviews to Amazon. You don’t have to have purchased the book from Amazon to review it on the site.

Upcoming Mercer media appearances are here. I’ll be talking with Chuck Wilder of “Talk Back” tomorrow, Friday, July 22, from 12:40PM until 1:00PM Pacific

TSA Goons To Burrow In Your Bone Marrow

Constitution, Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Private Property, Regulation, States' Rights, Technology, Terrorism

How do TSA tormentors consolidate more control over American travelers? They escalate the security threat. It was a matter of time before the home-grown terrorists of the Transportation Security Administration found a ruse to move from using technology that scans the surface of their victims’ bodies to technology that exposes our internal organs by means of medical X-rays.

The ALLEGED reason for rogering and radiating a pathetically pliant American population deeper and more vigorously? Nothing very concrete is needed. A “2005 incident in which Colombian men were accused of surgically implanting narcotics into human couriers.” Yes, the TSA has simply floated a rumor, based on a 2005 memo it has dressed up to appeal to all news outlets, and these outfits have reported it as fact:

Reports of al Qaeda preparing so-called “belly bombs” designed to be surgically implanted in potential terrorists before they board airplanes have already led to increased scrutiny for anyone traveling to the U.S. who appears to have had recent surgery, U.S. officials said.
The Department of Homeland Security recently issued a bulletin warning of renewed interested in the tactic — suspected to be the latest innovation from infamous alleged bomb maker Ibrahim Asiri. According to U.S. officials, a would-be attacker would slip through airport security, board a plane and detonate the bomb using a chemical-filled syringe. …”With proper skill, a surgeon could indeed package a bomb or explosive device [and] it could be implanted inside the abdominal cavity,” he told ABC News. Melrose said that if placed properly, a bomb the size of a grapefruit may not even cause the patient discomfort.

This is the dynamic behind the subjugation at the airports.

And why not? Tea-Party “freshmen” are getting stale. They’ve been doing nothing much about the assaults on citizens who travel by air. Why should they? Sure, there was a bit of a commotion, late last month, over the obviously necessary humiliation of a 95-year-old, gravely ill woman, whose adult diapers TSA trash removed in the course of a securing the nation’s flying public. The protests amounted to meek requests for a TSA apology, no more. None was forthcoming.

Tea party representative have forgotten the little people—with the exception of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), who penned an op-ed in The Hill, today, 07/05/11:

The requirement that Americans be forced to undergo this appalling treatment simply for the “privilege” of traveling in their own country reveals much about how the federal government feels about our liberties. The unfortunate fact that we put up with this does not speak well for our willingness to stand up to an abusive government.
Many Americans continue to fool themselves into accepting TSA abuse by saying, “I don’t mind giving up my freedoms for security.” In fact, they are giving up their liberties and not receiving security in return. Last week, for example, just days after an elderly cancer victim was forced to submit to a cruel and pointless TSA search, including removal of an adult diaper, a Nigerian immigrant somehow managed stroll through TSA security checks and board a flight from New York to LA — with a stolen, expired boarding pass and an out-of-date student ID as his sole identification! He was detained and questioned, only to be released to do it again 5 days later! We should not be surprised to find government ineptitude and indifference at the TSA.
At the time the TSA was being created I strongly opposed federalization of airline security. As I wrote in an article back in 2001:
“Congress should be privatizing rather than nationalizing airport security.

Ditto. The same argument was made in “WHOSE PROPERTY IS IT ANYWAY?,” on June 5, 2002.

UPDATE II: Libertarianism Lite Likely Won’t Cut It

Constitution, IMMIGRATION, Individual Rights, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy, Pop-Culture, Ron Paul, Sex, Terrorism, The Zeitgeist

Some libertarians dream that the establishment-endorsed libertarianism-lite, currently being touted on Fox News- and Business as the only legitimate strand of libertarianism, will catch-on in this America. Dream on.

Liberty loving adults in the US tend not to identify with fast-talking youths, wearing trendy eye-wear, who insist that the cultural foot-and-mouth that is “Glee” and Gaga is the very essence of American freedoms and liberties. (Anyone who has ever read this space knows that I don’t have any objection to risque expression; only to artistically worthless cultural products.)

Granted, life-style libertarians come in all shapes and sizes; they are often older, but are always juvenile. In the country’s founding documents, they divine all kinds of exhortations to let it all hang out. Much as the Left does.

If I’ve learned anything about what remains of Middle America, it is that ordinary, gun-toting, homeschooling, bible-thumping Americans are unmoved by people who draw their paycheques from foundations, think tanks, and academia, and wax orgiastic about MTV and Dennis Rodman. Although it might appear sophisticated, this stuff is reductive and shallow—a kind of post-graduate cleverness that lacks any philosophical depth.

Life, liberty, property: that’s what negative liberty is all about. The rest is either fluff or ancillary.

True, libertinism can be freeing in many ways, but forgotten by left-libertarians (I prefer libertarians lite; it’s more accurate) is this: libertinism is subsumed within a larger, more-inclusive category of liberty.

Besides, joining the Idiocracy is never liberating. Things that addle the brain permanently are, ultimately, not liberating.

(And what’s up with Nick Gillespie’s less than harsh words about the War on Terror? On Fox News’ Stossel, Gillespie seemed to second the general impetus of the War on Terror. He also went soft on the TSA, protesting only that a well-intentioned effort (TSA) had gone terribly wrong. Wrong! The War on Terror is an unconstitutional crock that guarantees the growth of the state. The TSA is engaged in legalized crime and needs to be dismantled, its goons jailed for each assault perpetrated.)

As I noted, when defending Ron Paul, in 2008, from attacks by the same libertarians,

Beltway libertarians … are moved in mysterious ways by gaping borders, gay marriage, multiculturalism, cloning, and all else “cool and cosmopolitan.”
Judging by Reason’s “35 Heroes of Freedom,” “cool and cosmopolitan” encompasses William Burroughs, a drug addled, Beat-Generation wife killer, whose “work is mostly gibberish and his literary influence baleful.”
Madonna Reason has exalted for, as they put it, leading “MTV’s glorious parade of freaks, gender-benders, and weirdos who helped broaden the palette of acceptable cultural identities and destroy whatever vestiges of repressive mainstream sensibilities still remained.” That sounds like the unscrambled, strange dialect spoken by a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies.

[Or is it “Womin’s Studies”?]

Naturally, I’m down with any lifestyle the individual chooses, just so long as he or she doesn’t visit violence on others (as the TSA does). But to conflate low-culture and manifest ignorance with American liberties is asinine. (And very much the essence of life-style libertarianism.) As the libertarian law goes, all human beings have the freedom to act-out in anyway they like, so long as they abide by the non-aggression axiom.

Personally, I favor discretion. For if “civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy,” in Ayn Rand’s magnificent words, then sexual—or any other—exhibitionism is anathema.

UPDATE I (June 29): Tom DiLorenzo has blogged the this post at LewRockwell.com:

“Fast-Talking Youths Wearing Trendy Eye-Wear . . .
Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo on June 29, 2011 02:42 PM

.. and “waxing orgiastic about MTV and Dennis Rodman” on the FOX networks. That’s how Ilana Mercer describes the Kochtopusian “libertarian lite” crowd of Beltway “libertarians.” They’re the same crowd that orchestrated a vicious smear campaign against Ron Paul, as Ilana discusses.
Ilana’s just-released book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, is a must-read. Among the “blurb”writers who praise the book on the first few pages are yours truly, Tom Woods, Thomas Szasz, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

UPDATE II (June 30): ANARCHISM. In reality, working as we are with so few options, there is not much that separates the classical liberal (your host, Mises, etc.) and the anarchist (Rothbard, LRC). The wise, freedom-loving thinker knows this, and works to optimize collaboration. However, as someone who was once an anrachist, and had reconsidered, after careful thought, turning to liberalism in the classical (and American) tradition, my thoughts on anarchism may be of interest.

Here they are in “AGAINST ANARCHISM.”

“Do Immigration Laws Violate Libertarian Axiom” is another relevant read. Ditto my immigration archive, the articles in which advance (unanswered) arguments as to why humanity does not have the right to venture wherever, whenever.

UPDATE IV: Not Cueing The Mariachi Band For Perry (Female Self-Ownership)

Abortion, Conservatism, Crime, Elections, Individual Rights, Political Philosophy, Politics, Private Property, Republicans, States' Rights, Welfare

I “Cued The Mariachi Band” when Rick Perry, the (dashing) governor of Texas, defied Mexico City, The Hague, and their enablers in Washington, and ended José Medellin’s miserable life. Bush, on the other hand, was willing to wrestle a crocodile for Medellin, the man who raped Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña in every which way possible and then proceeded to strangle, slash, and stomp the young Texan girls to death.

And it is a happy occasion when any American politician whoops it up for the Tenth Amendment, and speaks about property rights, as Gov. Perry did at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, La. Have you noticed that almost none does? It’s usually, “The right of Boeing to open a business,” rather than the title an owner has in his property, as an extension of the individual’s self-ownership (and they always preclude a woman’s right of self ownership, for some reason). (“The right of ownership is an extension of the right to life. In order to survive, man must— and it is in his nature to — transform the resources around him by mixing his labor with them and making them his own. Man’s labor and property are extensions of himself.”

Fair enough: Seventy percent of all jobs created in the US last year were in Texas. Alas, the governor’s record is at best spotty. And at a time when no one but a minority cares to sweat the “social issues,” these, unfortunately, formed a good part of his address in New Orleans.

UPDATE I: I’d like to clarify (but not discuss abortion, because the abortion issue is one hill upon which I refuse to die): When, last night, I praised Gov. Perry for “whooping it up for property rights,” I added in parenthesis that “this precludes a woman’s self-ownership.” What I meant is this: I always wonder why it is that, when speaking of the right of ownership (property), which is an extension of each individual’s dominion over his body and the things he homesteads—conservatives sidetrack the problem of a woman’s dominion over her body. I don’t wish to discuss abortion. However, conservatives never flesh out this inconsistency. Perhaps they believe human beings, women in particular, don’t have a property right in their own bodies. How does ownership arise, in the conservative mind? Does property not include one’s own body?

UPDATE II (June 20): Cross-posted @ facebook: Kevin (Williamson), I have worked out a formulation about abortion that appeases (as opposed to pleases) me as a paleolibertarian and an absolute propertarian. But is it safe to share it? I worry, because I die on enough hills. It seems prudent not to come out on this issue. Libertarians can agree that no state funding, local or federal, should be allocated to such a procedure. Liberals should be exposed, but never are (certainly not by conservatives), for conflating this position (no public funding) with a denial of what they term “abortion rights.” However, it’s highly problematic to say that by virtue of her fertility, a woman loses a property title in her body. She doesn’t.

UPDATE III (June 20): Kevin, Myron, Don, Joseph, Guy, etc: The tone on this Facebook thread/Wall is pleasingly rational and civil. It’s not surprising among these respondents/writers/thinkers, here. I wonder how many friends I’d lose if I shared my solution, which is still unsatisfactory. Look, abortion is a horrid procedure; especially now that what was promoted as a “blob,” can be viewed by available technology. At 6 weeks in utero, my daughter’s heartbeat was loud—it melted me. Walter Block, a dear friend, has developed “the evictionism theory of abortion.” I don’t subscribe to it, needless to say. But any traditionalist/libertarian solution to the abortion vexation has to be rational, and consider a person’s dominion over his body.

UPDATE IV: From the Facebook thread/Wall: It’s, however, incontrovertible to say that “late-term” termination is a euphemism for cold-blooded murder. Not to evoke the Argument from Nazi-ism (one of the laziest and lowest forms of argument); but it’s the stuff of Josef Mengele, or his female counterpart (his right-hand “service provider,” the proverbial Brunhilda).