Category Archives: Political Philosophy

UPDATE II: Who’s It To Be? Teddy No. 1 or Teddy No. 2? (‘Nut Gingrich’)

Elections, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, History, Ilana Mercer, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republicans, Socialism, The State, War, Welfare

The excerpt is from “Who’s It To Be? Teddy No. 1 or Teddy No. 2?” now on WND.COM:

“What are the odds that a Democratic commander-in-chief and his chief Republican rival declare their philosophical fidelity to the Progressive Theodore Roosevelt on the same day?

In an effort to better conjure Roosevelt, the shameless Barack Obama had flown to Osawatomie in Kansas, where, in 1910, Teddy delivered his “New Nationalism Address.” So radical was the Roosevelt political program that its author was condemned as “‘Communistic,’ ‘Socialistic,’ and ‘Anarchistic’ in various quarters.”

On the day of this staged affair—in eerie synchronicity—Newt Gingrich, whose favorability among Republican “caucus goers” is at 33 percent and rising, described himself to broadcaster Glenn Beck as “a Theodore Roosevelt Republican.”

Back in the day, “the Eastern United States denounced [Roosevelt] as a ‘communist agitator.’” This was “the most radical speech ever given by an ex-President,” writes Robert S. La Forte in The Kansas Historical Quarterly:

“[Roosevelt’s] concepts of the extent to which a powerful federal government could regulate and use private property in the interest of the whole and his declarations about labor … were nothing short of revolutionary.”

As La Forte chronicles, “Roosevelt had no interest in retaining the ideals of Jeffersonian ‘state’s right’ demagogues, as he called them. He was interested in a Hamiltonian concept of power which he described as the ‘New Nationalism.’”

Roosevelt’s speech, seconded White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, “Really set the course for the 20th century.” Yet to listen to the president in Kansas, a vote for “a Theodore Roosevelt Republican” is a vote for a Mad-Max dystopia, where “everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”

Don’t look for a “square deal” from the characters on the other side of the aisle. “We want to avoid becoming a welfare state like the European states” is the stock phrase we get from GOP pointy heads. Truth is not their stock-in-trade. As they tell it, America has a long way to go before it turns as Rooseveltian as Europe. …”

The complete column is “Who’s It To Be? Teddy No. 1 or Teddy No. 2?” Read it now on WND.COM.

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UPDATE I (Dec. 8): Nut Gingrich is what a a LRC.COM blogger has christened You Know Who, pointing out Nut’s support for “two governments in the United States: one that follows the Bill of Rights and one that doesn’t (for our “security,” of course).” MORE.

UPDATE II: More explosive details about “Newt’s grand schemes for a small, unintrusive federal government”: “NEWT PRESENTS A FRESH NEW VIRTUAL FACE” by Ann Coulter.

Theatre of the Absurd

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections, History, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Republicans, The State

A couple of hours ago I filed this week’s WND column with my editor (I file on Wednesdays). I have just heard Judge Napolitano deliver his editorial on Freedom Watch. Uncanny. The theme of my new column tracks with the Judge’s editorial. I had titled my column “Who’s It To Be? Teddy # 1 Or Teddy # 2?” (My good editor will often find better, more pithy titles.) In any event, I wrote this:

“What are the odds that a Democratic commander-in-chief and his chief Republican rival declare their philosophical fidelity to the Progressive Theodore Roosevelt on the same day? And I replied, “The dice were loaded in Teddy’s favor. The sitting Democratic president (Obama) and the Republican odds-on favorite for president (Gingrich) are in TR’s corner…”

Our heroic Judge, in his December 7 segment (not yet posted), asks and answers similar questions.

Hopefully, many more people beyond the libertarian orbit will come to experience the same gut reaction at this theatre of the absurd.

One Nation Under Inflation

Debt, EU, Europe, Fascism, Federal Reserve Bank, Federalism, Political Philosophy, Regulation, Socialism, States' Rights

“When it grows up, the EU wants to be just like the US. That was Jose Manuel Barroso’s message to his host at the US Public Broadcasting Service.” The excerpt is is from “One Nation Under Inflation,” now on WND.COM:

“The EU Commission president, a chap called Jose Manuel Barroso, told PBS’s Jeffrey Brown, on November 28, that the European suprastate is not quite up to American statist standards.

Barroso lamented that the EU lacks America’s level of ‘convergence’: ‘We have a common currency, but not, for instance, a common treasury,’ said this slick operator. Fiscal discipline (one wonders what our commissar means by that) can only come about with more ‘pooling of sovereignty.’

The Commission’s president certainly sees the US as a model ‘fiscal union,’ with a high degree of ‘fiscal policy’ ‘integration’ throughout; and is almost envious of the fact that the US federal government possesses ‘the instruments’ that have allowed it to accumulate enormous liabilities: Evidently, America’s debt-to-GDP ratio is larger than the European Union’s.

In a nutshell: Barroso longs for Brussels to be able to do the necessary tinkering to keep the PIIGS of the Eurozone —Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain—living at the expense of their more industrious, austere neighbors to the north. (Presiding European bureaucrats like himself live-it-up no matter where they reside.) The EU, complained its Capo di tutti capi, needs to create those “instruments.”

When it comes to Newspeak, Barroso still beats Obama.

In any event, when it grows up, the EU wants to be just like the US. That was Jose Manuel Barroso’s message to his host at the US Public Broadcasting Service. So successfully has the Unites States government submerged the sovereignty of its states that a top European technocrat longs to be like us. We must be in worse shape than we imagined. …”

The complete column, The excerpt is is from “One Nation Under Inflation,” now on WND.COM. Read it.

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Pipes on Private Property (Courtesy of JIMS)

Individual Rights, Israel, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Pseudo-history, Russia

Sponsored by the Jerusalem Institute for market Studies, the “Property and Freedom” lecture below was given by Prof. Richard Pipes, author of the book Property and Freedom. Here’s a shocker: historians of the West have paid scant attention to the role of private property in the annals of America and Europe. “If you look for the word ‘property’ in the index of American books dealing with evolution of American [and European] attitudes you tend to find nothing there,” says Pipes.

(Property and Freedom is cited in Into the Cannibal’s Pot.)

You already know what this writer thinks. It should be, life, property, liberty. In that order. Property trumps liberty, for liberty can be variously defined. Our government insists we are free so long as we can vote. We know this to be untrue. Property, moreover, is harder to redefine by the state. If our rights to property were fully upheld—the same state that tells us to consider ourselves free (and be grateful) would be unable to control huge areas of our lives—bedroom, boardroom, deathbed, you name them.

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