Category Archives: libertarianism

Have Social Security Will Travel

IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Private Property, Taxation

Or, more precisely, have Social Security—will receive earned income credit (EIC) from the American taxpayer. The good fortune belongs to illegal aliens who, “under Obama’s new executive amnesty,” will receive Social Security numbers, enabling them to apply and qualify for the EIC.

Libertarians want individuals to keep all of their income because it properly belongs to the individual, not to government. To the extent the state returns income to any individual in the form of exemptions, deductions and credits—to that extent government is returning private property it stole. However, when given to a segment of the population, a tax credits, as part and parcel of tax policy, is usually stolen from other taxpayers. Government does not make do with less; it simply steals more from others.

Laurence M. Vance at LRC.com has a piece on libertarians and taxation:

… The libertarian view of taxes is not that taxes should be fair, adequate, sufficient, constitutional, uniform, flat, simple, efficient, apportioned equally, or low. It is not that the tax code should help the poor, benefit the middle class, and be business friendly, should not be used for social engineering purposes, income redistribution schemes, or have loopholes, and should ensure that everyone pays some arbitrary “fair share.” And neither is it that most Americans are not legally required to pay income tax, filing your taxes is voluntary, paying your taxes is voluntary, the 16th Amendment was not properly ratified, etc., etc., etc. My final reply to those arguments is simply two words: Irwin Schiff.

The libertarian view of taxes is simply that taxes should not exist in the first place. There should be no tax code because taxation is theft and violates the non-aggression principle. …

… If Congress—for whatever reason—decided to give a special tax deduction or credit to Americans named Bob, Americans who owed [sic] a horse, Americans with red hair, or Americans with green eyes it would be a good thing as long as Americans not named Bob, who didn’t own a horse, who didn’t have red hair, or didn’t have green eyes didn’t have to make up the difference. …

MORE.

UPDATED: Adam Kokesh In ‘Amerofantacy’ Land

Iraq, Just War, libertarianism, Military, Propaganda, Terrorism, War

Adam Kokesh the soldier returned from Iraq and sobered up. Now, Kokesh is truly fighting for authentic American liberties. But does the Idiocracy even have an inkling what freedom is, any longer? Are Americans as stupid as the small and select sample interviewed by Kokesh for the YouTube clip “The Truth About American Sniper from An Iraq Combat Veteran”? Judging from the mantra mouthed throughout the exchange with viewers of American Sniper—“Navy SEAL Chris-Kyle-was-fighting-for-our-freedom”—the answer is, “Yes, they are.”

After writing for the North American market for almost 20 years—and certainly since I became persona non grata among Republicans for exposing their war propaganda—I suspect the courageous Adam Kokesh is fighting a losing battle.

But so am I.

UPDATE: Chris Kyle, Worse Than Just A Bad Ass.

Jack Kerwick does an exhaustive job of “sorting out truth from myth” about Chris Kyle. Wow. I didn’t know the half of it: “Once we are swept up in hero-worship—or maybe its idolatry—reason, facts, logic, evidence, and, most importantly, considerations of fundamental fairness and decency are all too easily swept away.”

Kerwick, moreover, cites one A.J. Delgado, who made short work of Kyle on no less a mainstream publication than National Review.

So why the hysteria over those who refuse to hero-worship this guy?

The-Camel-Ate-My Homework Theory Of Culpability

Britain, Crime, Europe, Foreign Policy, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Islam, Jihad, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Media

“The-Camel-Ate-My Homework Theory Of Culpability” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

… Disaffected, disadvantaged, disenfranchised is how progressives prefer to depict the Muslim murderers in their midst. After all, progressives hail from the school of therapeutic “thought” that considers crime to have been caused, not committed. Misbehavior is either medicalized and outsourced to state-approved experts, or reduced to the fault of the amorphous thing called society.

The most famous advocate of the-Camel-Ate-My Homework theory of criminal culpability is Barack Obama. Obama’s flabby assumption has it that the poor barbarians of France’s burbs have been deprived of fraternité. “Europe needs to better integrate its Muslim communities,” lectured the president.

Also guilty of a social determinism that flouts their philosophy of individual freedom are libertarians. For the sins of man, hard leftists blame society and libertarian saddle the state: U.S. foreign policy, in particular. A war of aggression, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and torture are thus “principal catalysts for this kind of non-state terrorism,” argued Ray McGovern.

“The-state-made-me-do-it” argumentation apes that of the left’s “society-made-me-do-it” argumentation. Both philosophical factions, left and blowback-libertarian, are social determinists, in as much as they implicate forces outside the individual for individual dysfunction.

Myself, I despise U.S. foreign policy as deeply as any Muslim. But it would never-ever occur to me to take it out on my American countrymen.

In the context of free will, and in a week in which we remember the Holocaust, Viktor E. Frankl rates a mention.

Dr. Frankl came out of Auschwitz to found the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy. The philosopher and distinguished psychiatrist said this of his experience in the industrial killing complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau: “In the camps one lost everything, except the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

To plagiarize another Jews (myself): “You can see why liberals have always preferred Freud to Frankl [my family included]. They retain a totemic attachment to the Freudian fiction that traumatic toilet training is destiny.”

Dr. Frankl lost his beloved young wife in Auschwitz, yet told poignantly of finding her, if figuratively, in a tiny bird that flitted close by. If this man was able to discovered the reality of free will and human agency in a laboratory like Auschwitz; so too can Muslims find the will to respond adaptively to events that enrage them and are indeed unjust: Western foreign policy.

The idea that the Brothers Kouachi and thousands of their coreligionists in the West who’ve joined ISIS were driven by “disaffection” to do their diabolic deeds conjures a skit from the “Life of Brian,” John Cleese’s parody of Judea under Rome. …

… The complete column is “The-Camel-Ate-My Homework Theory Of Culpability.” Read the rest on WND.

UPDATED: A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN

Canada, Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Islam, libertarianism, Terrorism, The State, The West

“A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

He adopted the religion of peace and forthwith proceeded to shatter the peace of his countrymen.

In the waning months of 2014, Quebecer Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot Cpl. Nathan Cirillo in the back, at Canada’s National War Memorial in Ottawa. Zehaf-Bibeau then stormed Parliament, but was dispatched by a sergeant-at-arms before he could do further harm.

The mother of the martyr, Susan Bibeau, is a “deputy chairperson of a division of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board.” Mrs. Bibeau has done quite well as a Canadian bureaucrat, acquiring “homes in Montreal and Ottawa.” Her errant son told mommy dearest of “his desire to travel to Syria,” a fact she revealed only after the butcher’s bill came due; following Zehaf-Bibeau’s lone-wolf, wilding rampage on Parliament Hill.

Why would a convert to Islam want to travel to Syria? To visit the ruins? And why would a Canadian civil servant, who described her son as a misfit, not report Zehaf-Bibeau’s destination of choice to the authorities? In any event, it transpires that said authorities had been investigating Zehaf-Bibeau, but had yet to determine whether or not to confiscate his passport.

Before Michael Zehaf-Bibeau came another Quebecer called Martin Couture-Rouleau. Like Bibeau, Rouleau went to war with his countrymen upon converting to Islam. He rammed his car into two Canadian Forces members near Montreal, one of whom died of his injuries.

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Couture-Rouleau was known to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, and had been closely monitored. These authorities were confident that Couture-Rouleau and 90 other suspected extremists “intended to join militants fighting abroad.”

So what did the Canadian security apparatus do to forestall an attack on Canadian soil? First, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police staged an intervention. The Mounties tried to “talk Couture-Rouleau down” from his murderous mindset. Convinced that the therapeutic intervention succeeded, the Mounties then stopped monitoring him. Oh, and they also took away Couture-Rouleau’s passport. …

… The point here is not to belabor well-known, accepted outrages. Instead, I’d like to float a modest proposal. …

Read the complete column. “A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN” is now on WND.

UPDATE (1/24):

Myron Robert Pauli: These idiots who say that America was attacked “from Afghanistan” or “from Iraq!!” – that would be true if missiles flew from there – but as it was, the US allowed people into this country (mostly Saudis – no Afghans or Iraqis on 9/11) who went to flight school in this country, boarded airplanes in this country, and even got visas renewed AFTER flying into buildings by the State Department. Security begins AT HOME and not stomping around Garbagecanistan propping up Malikis and Abadis and Kharzis.
Yesterday at 7:21am · Like

Myron Robert Pauli: Can the feds explain why when an American citizen with a biometric DoD identity card (myself) flies – to talk at a conference on Aircraft Survivability, no less – he is subjected to TWO nudie scans, TWO gropes, mass spectrometer of all carry on luggage, and one hour of interrogation ….. BUT when Umar Farouk Underpantsabomber flies to the US from Nigeria via YEMEN !!! and his dad calls the authorities on him, they let him on the airplane?????? These buffoons refuse to protect America while the government sends aid to ISIS-Sunni-“rebels” who are going at the non-threatening (albeit dictatorial) Assad and the late Khadaffi.
Yesterday at 7:26am · Edited · Unlike · 1