Category Archives: libertarianism

RepubliKeynesian Ben Stein Froths At The Mouth About Trump

Debt, Donald Trump, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, libertarianism

“Frightening, idiotic, nonsensical, insane, breathtakingly horrible, flabbergasting, makes me want to cry”: Does this spleen, vented by Ben Stein, resemble an “argument”? It was the sum total of Stein’s “case” against Donald Trump’s recent pronouncements about a foreseeable recession.

As an “expert” who despises Mr. Trump, Stein—an actor, comedian, lawyer and self-styled economist—holds sway with the liberal, malfunctioning media. Our establishment “RepubliKeynesian” appeared on the anti-Trump channel, CNN, to huff and puff about Mr. Trump’s alleged far-fetched doom-and-gloom about a troubled economy. If I recall, this expert was clueless about the previous bubble, not that errors prevent the pundit class from returning for encores.

“We’re not in a bubble, unemployment is not high, Trump needs to consult a real economist [take me, me, screams Stein silently] were some of Stein’s assertions to the smirking, vacuous looker, Pamela Brown. Naturally, Brown provided no counter perspective.

Suffice it to say that Trump’s warnings about the effects of the enormous national debt, the still bigger burden of unfunded liabilities owed, as well as his assessment of the real unemployment numbers would certainly comport with more distortions in the economy and more bubbles.

Oh, and Trump supporters are all idiots for not sympathizing with Stein’s outrage.

Anyhow, not one argument was advanced by Stein for his case against Mr. Trump, only ad hominem. Had the smirker in the anchor’s chair called in an economist, say, of the Austrian persuasion—or even Paul Craig Roberts, United States assistant secretary of the treasury for economic policy under President Reagan, in 1981—she would have heard a perspective more in agreement with Trump than with RepubliKeynesian Ben Stein.

Donald Trump’s ‘He Started It’ Argument Is Libertarian

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Feminism, Free Speech, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Logic, Reason

Donald Trump’s ‘He started it’ argument, whinged CNN’s Anderson Cooper, is a five-year-old’s argument. Maybe. But it’s also the skeleton of the libertarian, non-aggression axiom: aggression against aggressors only.

First, context via Gawker:

During last night’s CNN-hosted Republican town hall in Milwaukee there was a funny, and perhaps even cathartic, exchange between Anderson Cooper and Donald Trump over Trump’s hounding of Ted Cruz’s wife, which culminated with Cooper telling Trump he was acting like a child while Trump insisted that he wasn’t acting like a child. …

MORE.

It’s not enough to malign something as childish. You have to show that the maligned childish thought or act is wrong. Children can be right, on rare occasions. Besides, the liberal left worships The Children (as do their partners among new, feminized, Michelle-Fields conservatives). Adults are the dolts in every Hollywood film. In liberal lore, those founts of knowledge and wisdom spring from the effing kids, mostly.

In this case, The Donald aka The libertarians aka The Kids are correct. Aggression against aggressors is justifiable.

Of course, verbal aggression is not the aggression libertarians are referring to when we apply libertarian law. Speech is not aggression.

Donald Delivers Economic Expertise @ Free-Market Speed

Debt, Donald Trump, Economy, Free Markets, libertarianism, Trade

No sooner had I penned “Trump And Trade,” questioning the slavish devotion of my own philosophical tribe, libertarians, to trade deficits, without considering that America’s trade imbalances occur in the context of debt—personal, corporate, state—than the magnificent Maria Bartiromo introduced, on Sunday Futures, the equally impressive Stephen Miller to speak to these matters.

Miller is a Trump Campaign senior policy adviser.

To comport with his earlier contention that, “We can’t have a service only economy,” Miller stated today (3/20):

It’s the donors vs. the voters. “The choice we have is between the national interests vs. the special interests.”

Mr. Trump’s has killed off the Cult of Megyn Kelly. Next on his to-do list: Replace crappy journo Kelly with pro Ms. Bartiromo.

Related:

“The Me Myself And I Megyn Kelly Production.”

“Trump And Trade.”

3/21/016:

UPDATED: TRUMP AND TRADE

Donald Trump, Free Markets, libertarianism, Regulation, Trade

“TRUMP AND TRADE” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Mitt gives Mormons (whom I love) a bad name. I thought Mormons weren’t meant to bad-mouth others. Yet Mitt had nothing but bad things to say about Donald Trump, who is political tabula rasa and has never passed a law in his life.

Neither has Trump ever caused the death of a single Iraqi kid. But the religiously devout Romney called him evil for defiling the precious memory of someone who had caused many thousands of such deaths: Bush II.

The meme about Mitt Romney is that had he attacked Barack Obama with the vim and vigor he reserved for Trump, he might have made it to president.

(Likewise, if only Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League went after Muslims who lob bombs at Jews with the passion he reserves for gentiles who raise their right hand in a pledge of support for Trump. Poor Abe is seeing Nazi faces in the clouds again.)

Romney also claimed Trump would “propose 35 percent tariff-like penalties” and “would instigate a trade war that would raise prices for consumers, kill export jobs, and lead entrepreneurs and businesses to flee America.”

I don’t know that Trump favors protective tariffs, import quotas or export subsidies.

I do know that we don’t have free trade.

What goes for “free trade,” rather, is trade managed by powerful bureaucracies – national and international – central planners concerned with regulating, not freeing, trade; whose goal it is to harmonize labor, health and environmental laws throughout the developed world. The undeveloped and developing worlds do as they please.

My understanding is that Trump simply wants to make these agreements and organs work for the American people.

I know, too, who did support “labeling China a currency manipulator,” so that he could “put in place, if necessary, tariffs where … they are taking unfair advantage of our manufacturers.”

Mitt Romney in 2012.

When it comes to the glories of an aggregate, negative balance of trade, libertarian post-graduate cleverness deserves to be questioned. …

… READ the rest. “TRUMP AND TRADE” is the current column, now on WND.

UPDATED (3/15):