Category Archives: libertarianism

At Simi Valley, Jingoism, Military Offensives, Military Build Up & An Arms Race Trump

Elections, Foreign Policy, Iran, libertarianism, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, Republicans

The second primary season Republican debate took place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. It didn’t disappoint. It was, as one commentator ventured, the Super Bowl of politics.

The matinee sported the least popular candidates, cobbling together a meager one percent in the polls (two are at … zero). The debate, however, was probably the more substantive of the two sessions. (Alas, as beautifully as CNN had staged the Presidential Library, the rendition of the national anthem was G-d awful. Apparently, they could not find a decent singer in Simi Valley, although, according to Yelp, there are plenty performing arts and opera studios in the vicinity.)

CNN certainly put Fox News to shame. Unlike the first primetime Republican debate, in Cleveland, Ohio, where anchor Megyn Kelly took center stage and singled out Donald Trump for a splenetic attack; CNN’s Jake Tapper (moderator), chief political correspondent Dana Bash, and Hugh Hewitt of the Salem Radio Network, concentrated the debate on the issues and the individuals behind the lecterns. (As always, nothing their in-house studio pundits predicted or advised prior to the debate transpired.)

Ms. Bash briefly did a Kelly, when she attempted to tap Jeb Bush’s anger over a quip Donald Trump had once made about Jeb’s Mexican wife influencing his perspective on immigration. Trump refused to grovel. This was good. However, he did show contrition over unkind cuts he had made about Carly Fiorina’s face. Fiorina could have cracked a smile (or maybe she couldn’t, given the possible nip-and-cuts to The Face).

Fiorina—whom media types like moron S. E. Cupp keep calling “Carly,” for some reason—is indubitably a clear and logical thinker, with a facility with the English language. What a shame that her words are those of a consummate neoconservative who wants to commit the country to a buildup of a military that is already the largest in the world, America’s, and an arms race with China and Russia.

The matinee featured two senators and two governors: the sitting senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, and the former senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum, as well as the sitting governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, and former New York Governor George Pataki.

Pataki, it was noted, had refused to take the Trump Pledge, saying that even if Trump were the Republican nominee, he, Pataki, would not support him.

Jindal’s introduction bears repeating:

“I don’t have a famous last name. My daddy didn’t run for president. I don’t have a reality TV show. I’ll tell you what I do have, I’ve got the backbone, I’ve got the bandwidth, I’ve got the experience to get us through these tough times, to make sure that we don’t turn the American dream into the European nightmare.”

When challenged about his violation of Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment—against attacking fellow Republicans—Bobby Jindal responded speedily to say Donald Trump, whom he has been savaging, was neither a Republican or a conservative and would eventually implode. About the man currently in office Jindal’s remark had me laughing:

“Obama has declared war on trans fats and a truce with Iran. Think about that. He’s more worried about Twinkies than he is about the ayatollahs having a nuclear weapon.”

Jindal on immigration: Without assimilation immigration is invasion.

Lindsey Graham’s case of War Tourette’s is only getting worse.

Ask him about immigration and the answer is: We’ll fix it by going to war against ISIS.

Ask him about the economy and the answer is: 10,000 American boots on Iraq’s blood-soaked soil.

Ask him about the year of the political outsiders and his chances as an insider and the answer is: Let’s get on with winning a war, any war. Give me waaaaaaaar.

Follow up with, “Why do Republican voters view your service in government as a liability and not an asset?” and Graham replies: “Obama is making a mess of the world … I am so ready to get on with winning a war …”

With Lindsey, all roads lead to war.

It didn’t help that Graham derisively paired libertarians with vegetarians when appealing to the different constituencies that would warm to his war-all-the-time Tourette’s.

Graham is the consummate globalist. He did, however, surprise by declaring that birthright citizenship was “bastardizes citizenship.” Unlike equal-opportunity fencer Scott Walker who perceives a problem on the Canadian border, Graham, who decried birthright tourism, conceded to never meeting an illegal Canadian. Too true.

American and European governments have settled comfortably into a pattern of using the funds they extract from their overburdened taxpayers to promiscuously promote the welfare of citizens the world over. This flouts the mandate of every government! In this context, Santorum made a very important point relevant to all the communities currently being flooded by the decree of D.C., Brussels and Berlin:

“This debate should not be about what we’re going to do with someone who’s here illegally; this debate should be about what-what every other debate on every other policy issue is in America. What’s in the best interest of hardworking Americans? What’s in the best interest of our country.”

That’ll be the day.

As was the case with the Republican candidates in the previous election cycle (Mitt Romney included), no foreign policy learning curve is evident among this crop.

Indeed, by the time the two grueling sessions ended, well into the night, all 15 Republican candidates—bar Rand Paul and, to a degree, Donald Trump—had asserted that American exceptionalism lay in leading the world not in technological innovation, comity, commerce and as exemplars of individual rights—but by projecting America’s military power the world over. Somehow, the candidates viewed the US government’s bankruptcy as having no bearing on their unanimous plans for an arms race with Russia and China and renewed military offensives in the Middle East.

Rand Paul came as close as possible to the libertarian ideal on all wars, the drug war too: refrain from a rash foreign policy, engage with Russia and China, talk to the Mullahs before you “bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran” (a jingle popularized by jingoist John McCain), leave drug policy to the states (not ideal, for consumption is to be left to the individual, but better than most). To not have signed on to the bombing of Assad was a good thing. Have we learned nothing about the perils of toppling dictators, only to see the rise of barbarians worse than their predecessors?

That was Rand Paul. He did alright.

Sadly, Trump fell for the Hugh Hewitt gambit: Instead of standing with Ron Paul’s foreign policy (and capturing the Left), Trump went on to condemn the Republicans on the podium for their (short-lived) wisdom of voting against the bombing of Syria.

Rand Paul and Donald Trump excepted, all subscribe to the hackneyed lies about the root-causes of Middle-East instability and why the region’s populations are on the move (naturally, the magnet of western welfare went unmentioned): They assert Bashar Hafez al-Assad needs to be removed, when in fact he was the source of stability in Syria, much as Saddam Hussein was in Iraq.

If Assad is the reason Syrian, Iraqi and Libyan populations are emigrating en masse (NOT)—then America’s lack of a more energetic involvement in Iraq and Syria the candidates consider the solution to the problem.

Neoconservatives are still in the business of creating their own parallel reality and forcing us to inhabit the ruins.

Unless in defense of the realm, Americans are not keen on more of the same foreign-policy folly. Let us keep our military mitts to ourselves. Let us defend our own borders. That, it would seem, is the prevailing sentiment among Republicans, although not among the establishmentarians who occupied the Reagan Library for the debate.

Oh, and did I mention that, while he’s demeanor was very good, Donald Trump made absolutely no attempt to show some familiarity with the issues? Trump might want to rethink this approach, for it belies the candidate’s claim to have surrounded himself with the best people possible, or to have good judgement.

Ann Coulter Offers A Corrective To Judge Andrew Napolitano

Ann Coulter, Constitution, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Liberty, Neoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism

I’ve been following Judge Andrew Napolitano long enough to know he is a Reason-type, left-libertarian, who supports Civil Wrongs legislation, even coming down occasionally against the most basic of liberties: absolute freedom of association and the rights of private property.

Therefore, I like not only that Ann Coulter is finally naming names, but that she has offered a serious corrective to the Judge’s ideologically skewed facts, in “Fox News anchored in stupidity on 14th Amendment”

… Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox’s senior judicial analyst … at least got the century right. He mentioned the Civil War – and then went on to inform Bream that the purpose of the 14th Amendment was to – I quote – “make certain that the former slaves and the native Americans would be recognized as American citizens no matter what kind of prejudice there might be against them.”

Huh. In 1884, 16 years after the 14th Amendment was ratified, John Elk, who – as you may have surmised by his name – was an Indian, had to go to the Supreme Court to argue that he was an American citizen because he was born in the United States.

He lost. In Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not grant Indians citizenship.

The “main object of the opening sentence of the 14th Amendment,” the court explained – and not for the first or last time – “was to settle the question, upon which there had been a difference of opinion throughout the country and in this court, as to the citizenship of free negroes and to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black … should be citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.”

American Indians were not made citizens until 1924. Lo those 56 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, Indians were not American citizens, despite the considered opinion of Judge Napolitano.

Of course it’s easy for legal experts to miss the welter of rulings on Indian citizenship inasmuch as they obtained citizenship in a law perplexingly titled: “THE INDIAN CITIZENSHIP ACT OF 1924.”

Yeah, Trump’s the idiot. Or as Bream said to Napolitano after his completely insane analysis, “I feel smarter just having been in your presence.”

MORE.

Incidentally, it is true that since “Adios!” Ann Coulter can do no wrong. That she has recovered recently and magnificently does not mean that you should forget the years of neoconism, lauding the lovely Bush wars (calling them magnificent), ignoring immigration, and being wrong on too many things. I didn’t read her column for years (except on court cases and feminism) until now. I bought only “Treason,” which is a great book. The rest of her books were witty riffs on the theme, “Liberals this; liberals that,” seldom considering that Repubs are liberals too. To forget what neoconism’s most bright and beautiful representatives had wrought is unforgivable.

However, the always-adorable Ann is fast making up for past sins.

Wendy McElroy On The Invasion Of The Libertarian Body Snatchers

Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism

Libertarian theorist Wendy McElroy worries that she might have to leave the movement she practically founded, because, to use a biblical quote, “there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph.” A new generation of self-styled libertarians that doesn’t know the meaning of libertarianism has arisen, according to which Wendy, and certainly myself, are deemed “brutalists.”

I wrote “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fem, I Smell The Blood Of A Racist” about one of their luminaries, before I understood the extent of the revisionism in which the “humanitarians” were engaged.

So numerous are the libertarians who condemn me that I have long since stopped giving a damn. Most are like the proverbial (or metaphysical) tree falling in the woods. We know they say stuff, but nobody wants to stick around to hear them make the tedious sounds they make.

Over to Wendy, who is heartbroken over “the attempt to change the ground rules of libertarianism through introducing left-leaning attitudes and concepts”:

… the absurd and manufactured debates [is] about “”thin” and “thick” libertarianism – the “humanitarians” versus the “brutalists.” It is an attempt to introduce political correctness into libertarianism so that it is not enough to advocate nonviolence; you have to advocate it for the right reason, as defined by those who provide themselves as moral filters. They call me a brutalist. This means I will never violate your rights; your children, your property are safe in my presence because I respect your right to live in peace. But I don’t protect your children for the right reasons. For this, I am to be excoriated. This is the second approach to a new definition of libertarianism: People wish to analyze society not according to whether it is voluntary but in order to ferret out signs of power and privilege which they self-righteously condemn. Consider open source software. It has been castigated as a realm of privilege because it predominantly consists of white men. Open source software is source code that is thrown into the public realm so that anyone can modify and enhance it. It is a pure expression of free speech; the product is available to everyone for free; there are no entry barriers or requirements other than caring enough to learn code. Learning code is also available and free to all.

I think it was the condemnation of open source software that made me crack. Out of the goodness of his heart, my husband has devoted substantial time to what amounts to an intellectual charity. He pursues it for the same reason he repairs and gives computers for free to underprivileged children; he believes in the power of technology to lift people out of poverty. (BTW, I strongly suggest no one criticize my husband to my face on this point; I am likely to render the most Irish of all responses.)

Open source software is condemned for no other reason than it involves few women or minorities. This reflects nothing more than the choice of those women and minorities. It costs nothing to learn coding. Tutorials are available for free to all and everywhere. Correction: It does cost time and effort. The individual has to exert him or herself. I’m not willing to make the investment but neither do I blame the first white guy I see for my own inertia. If there is something in the culture of women and of specific minorities that prevents them from rising, then blame the culture. Don’t blame a white man like my husband who is falling over himself to provide a free service. (Correction: my husband is Hispanic … but that won’t give him a free pass. I mean, after all … the genitalia. And the grand critics of society don’t really care for accuracy.)

Last night, I contemplated my exit from a movement that considers me to be a “brutalist” after years of unpaid work promoting nonviolence. I found myself engaging in an emotional release that I’ve used for many years. I wrote a letter to my father. My dad died when I was ten years old. I loved him. …

Read “A Letter to My Father” By Wendy McElroy

Rand Paul Looks Down At The Little People, Too

Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Republicans, Ron Paul

Rand Paul (R-KY) has the eyes of a dead fish. The man is charmless; antipathetic. Not surprisingly, he has a nasty streak. Rand, too, looks down on the little people for finding merit in Donald Trump.

“Wolf,” whined Paul to the CNN reporter, “if you would give [sic] some other candidates time from eight in the morning until eight at night all day long, every day for three weeks, I’m guessing some other candidates might rise as well.”

“I think this is a temporary sort of loss of sanity,” he added, “but we’re going to come back to our senses and look for somebody serious to lead the country at some point.”

Like Rand Paul, another dynastic politician, who, like liberal and Republican regimists, looks down at the little people?

The rest.