Category Archives: Liberty

Obscene Party Protests Porn-Law Laxity

Individual Rights, Law, Liberty, Regulation, Republicans

As if you didn’t already know this: America doesn’t have two parties, but one, big, obscene party. Today it was the Republican’s who protested a rare, Obama regulatory lapse: Omigod! The Obama administration is not enforcing obscenity laws against the porn industry.

After Attorney General Eric Holder recently shut down the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, [Orrin] Hatch derided the move Friday in a statement to Politico.
“Attorney General Holder told the Judiciary Committee last year that this task force was the centerpiece of the strategy to combat adult obscenity,” Hatch told Politico. “Rather than initiate a single new case since President Obama took office, however, the only development in this area has been the dismantling of the task force. As the toxic waste of obscenity continues to spread and harm everyone it touches, it appears the Obama administration is giving up without a fight.”

If the Big, Obscene Party continues in its wastrel ways, pretty soon, the porn industry will be the only one standing. Although the work of porn is done lying down, the industry, I believe, is still standing thanks to the support of the American consumer.

Leave consenting adults to their own depravity.

UPDATE II: Thomas Jefferson On Debt & Despotism (S & P Simply I.Ding The Corpse)

Constitution, Debt, Founding Fathers, Liberty

In the eyes of Thomas Jefferson, observes Marco Bassani, “the greatest danger came from the possibility of legislators plunging citizens into debt.” Bassani, a professor of history and political theory at the university of Milan, Italy (and a Facebook friend), has written perhaps the best book on “the political theory of Thomas Jefferson.”

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude,” quotes Bassani in Liberty, State & Union. The “fore horse” for oppression and despotism is public debt [which is better relabeled government debt]. “Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression” (p. 106).

If only the high-minded Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, had written the Constitution with crooks in mind.

UPDATE I (April 18): What took them so long? Standard & Poor’s has cut the American credit outlook to negative, reports Bloomberg.com:

“S&P assigned a one-in-three chance it will lower the U.S. rating in the next two years, saying the credit crisis and recession that began in 2008 worsened a deterioration in public finances. Budget differences among Democrats and Republicans remain wide and it may take until after the 2012 elections to get a proposal that addresses the concern, S&P said.”

And that’s not the half of it.

Despite the skewed reporting on the move, even the New York Times recognized that what the following sources say must be included in their report, today:

“The idea that the U.S. public finances are on an unsustainable trajectory is hardly new news,” economists from Capital Economics said in a research note. “Indeed, we warned that the U.S. might be downgraded, or at least put on negative watch, as far back as nearly two years ago.”

What has “You-Can’t Fix Stupid” got to say for himself? He blames partisanship, of course, for the S & P’s belated reality check—but then responds to the economic reality reflected in the S&P’s downgrade with … a wave of his magic political wand:

For their part, administration officials played down the revision while reiterating Washington’s determination to act. Treasury officials “believe S.&P.’s negative outlook underestimates the ability of America’s leaders to come together to address the difficult fiscal challenges facing the nation,” an assistant secretary for financial markets, Mary J. Miller, said in a statement.
President Obama has initiated a bipartisan process that will help make progress on restoring fiscal responsibility, the statement said.
“I think this is fundamentally S.&.P’s making a political judgment,” said Austan Goolsbee, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, in an interview with Bloomberg TV news, pointed out that President Obama in a recent speech had said that there would be actions taken to promote fiscal responsibility. “I don’t think that the S&P’s political judgment is right.”

UPDATE II: I.DING THE CORPSE. The S&P’s “special talent is to arrive at the morgue and predict the demise of the deceased,” writes the Financial Post’s Terence Corcoran.

The United States has already forfeited its role as the economic leader of the world. Under the Obama administration’s program of rising debt, soak-the-rich tax policies, spending expansions and regulatory overkill, America is already establishing itself as a fiscal and economic mediocrity.

UPDATED: Liberty Vs. Libertinism

Classical Liberalism, Founding Fathers, Hebrew Testament, History, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Morality, Political Philosophy

Is there a name for the error of viewing history through the prism of contemporary moral standards (or sub-standards)? I had hoped that John Stossel would prod his guest, the progressive historian Thaddeus Russell, with his Socratic method of questioning, to tell us why it is that he, Russell, conflates libertinisim with liberty.

Russel’s banal history-from-below has it that we owe our freedoms less to the Founders’ political philosophy, than to the “saloons and speakeasies, brothels and gambling halls, to antiheroes such as drunken workers who created the weekend; prostitutes who set the precedent for women’s liberation, madams who owned land and used guns, and provided cutting-edge of fashion, … criminals who pioneered racial integration, unassimilated immigrants who gave us birth control, and brazen homosexuals who broke open America’s sexual culture.” (HERE.)

Yes, to listen to this progressive historian, the unions, and not the Hebrews, “created” the Sabbath. Actually, the Founders had quite the affinity for the Hebrew Bible—some of them even spoke Hebrew. (Horrors, that would have required a lot of that Puritanical mindset and discipline Russell bashed as regressive on the Stossel segment—as Hebrew is HARD.) They would not have needed “drunken workers” to teach them about the spiritual and ethical significance of some sort of Sabbath.

Walter Block makes clear in “Libertarianism And Libertinism,” that “as a political philosophy, libertarianism says nothing about culture, mores, morality, or ethics. To repeat: It asks only one question, and gives only one answer. It asks, ‘Does the act necessarily involve initiatory invasive violence?’ Libertarianism doesn’t have a position toward “pimping, prostituting, drugging, and other such degenerate behavior,” writes Block.

What then is the precise relationship between the libertarian, qua libertarian, and the libertine? It is simply this. The libertarian is someone who thinks that the libertine should not be incarcerated. He may bitterly oppose libertinism, he can speak out against it, he can organize boycotts to reduce the incidence of such acts. There is only one thing he cannot do, and still remain a libertarian: He cannot advocate, or participate in, the use of force against these people. Why? Because whatever one thinks of their actions, they do not initiate physical force.

Walter attests that he came to regret his earlier “enthusiasm about the virtues of these callings.” “Marriage, children, the passage of two decades, and not a little reflection,” he writes endearingly, “have dramatically changed my views on some of the troublesome issues addressed in this book. My present view with regard to ‘social and sexual perversions’ is that while none should be prohibited by law, I counsel strongly against engaging in any of them.”

Myself, I’m not so much a social conservative as my friend Prof. Block is. Rather, I believe in the paramountcy of privacy. If “civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy,” in Rand’s magnificent words, then sexual exhibitionism – homosexual or heterosexual – is anathema. The heroic and creative inner struggle is what brings out the best in man. My heroes are in the Greek tradition: Silent, stoic, principled yet private. Which means the Founders, and not Russell’s philanderers.

On the Fox Business website, Stossel promised that Russell would tell him “why his beloved founders actually wanted to keep the people docile and timid,” and why “Americans owe really overdue thanks to the libertines – the prostitutes, drunkards, and musicians.” Russel failed to deliver.

It is hardly surprising, or cutting edge history, as Russell would have you believe, that the American Founding Fathers did not favor prostitution, homosexuality, and infidelity. But it is worse than stupid for this progressive historian to cast these men, with their traditional mores, as enemies of progress. It demonstrates why we are losing liberty: Most people don’t even know to what they owe the peace, plenty and prosperity this country was blessed with and now risks losing.

UPDATE (MARCH 12): Robert Glisson, as penance for wasting your money on this progressive’s piss-poor output, you will have to buy a few copies of my new book for handing out (it’s due out on May 10).

Watching The Words

Constitution, English, Glenn Beck, Internet, Journalism, Liberty, Literature, Media

Judge Andrew Napolitano delivered a fine editorial tonight on the not-so-wonderful-mind slot (The Glenn Beck Show). If only Fox News believed in the written word and posted the transcripts along with the image. (Good luck locating the same editorial on the Freedom Watch space.) For those of us who still like to read and post words, not images, FoxNews is one of the worst offenders. (I know, select transcripts will eventually propagate on the page, days later.) Reading is faster and more economical than watching a screen.