Category Archives: Political Philosophy

UPADATE III: Fox News And Its Truth Deniers (Left-Libertarianism)

Business, Economy, Founding Fathers, History, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, Ron Paul, Socialism

The following is excerpted from “Fox News And Its Truth Deniers,” now on WND.COM:

“The dueling perspectives political panel is compatible with the aims of CNN, MSNBC, and the other progressive broadcasters. Here is how it works: You invite a member of the Republican establishment; often a RINO—preferably a bimbo—to do battle with a lefty from similar circles. The sides are ideologically so close, that, in all likelihood, the panelists hang out after the show.

This format is positively postmodernist. Why? Because, by presenting the public with two competing perspectives—you mislead viewers into believing that indeed there are two realities, and that it is up to them to decide which one is more compelling.

The one parallel universe is represented on Fox Business by the likes of Nancy Skinner, Caroline Heldman, Tara Dowdell, Carl Jeffers, Joe Sibila, Erika Payne, and others. …

The philosophical filth spewed by such characters – almost nightly on freedom-promoting programing, no less – is that government can spend and lend to good effect; that it can tax without discouraging and disrupting production; and that our overlords in D.C. can regulate “better” (read energy-squandering) industries into being by steering capital and labor away from bad (energy-efficient) industries (oil and gas). …

The truth is that truth is immutable, never relative. The little truth there is in mainstream media should not be diluted or presented by its adherents as dueling with untruth.

The above Fox News fixtures no more represent truth or promote it than does your average Holocaust denier.

With an exception: Libraries have long since engaged in a robust debate as to how to classify Holocaust-denying literature. While admirably advocating for unfettered free access, Professor of Library Services John A. Drobnicki has suggested moving Holocaust denial out of the History section in US libraries and closer to the ‘Bigfoot books,’ so that Holocaust denial’s Dewey Decimal designation is with ‘hoax materials.’

Indeed, hacks are not historians. Although the dueling-perspectives panel format would suggest it is—the economic bunk spewed by the likes of Skinner, Heldman, Dowdell, Jeffers, Sibila, and Erika Payne is no version of the truth, but a perversion of it.” …

The complete column, “Fox News And Its Truth Deniers,” is now on WND.COM. Read it.

My book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. (Don’t forget those reviews; they help.)

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Barnes and Noble is always well-stocked and ships within 24 hours.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher. Inquire about an Xmas special on bulk buys.

UPDATE I (Nov. 18): MSNBC has just inaugurated the nauseating “NOW,” which utilizes the dueling-perspectives panel discussed in my WND column to great effect. Here is the little RINO Lolita S. E. Cupp making a weak case for the right of a man to hire a lawyer, in a pathologically litigious country, which jails more individuals than any other: the USA. By “a weak case,” the hallmark of an establishment Republican (or whatever one chooses to dub this political species), I mean that grimaces, gestures, and a paraphrasing of the host replace serious argument. In particular, earlier in the debate, Cupp picked up on a catchy phrase the host had used, and repeated it again and again (“precipice politics) in order to conceal her vacuity. In the loud talking (for it wasn’t intelligent debate) about the Super Committee, Naomi Wolf was the only individual to zero in on the issue of a soviet-style politburo making decisions in a so-called representative democracy. (Wolf didn’t put it this way, but she made the point effectively. And, of course, the US was supposed to be a republic, not a mobocracy.) Otherwise, everything is all very friendly and flirty.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

UPDATE II: Via Facebook: What uncharacteristic intellectual pettiness it is to zero in on a trivial convention used in the column, instead of addressing the issue of natural law and reality, also the core of the column. This is what the column is about. However, maybe some here disagree that “truth is immutable, never relative.” And that “the little truth there is in mainstream media should not be diluted or presented by its adherents as dueling with untruth.”

UPDATE III: LEFT-LIBERTARIANISM. To the “there is nothing wrong with Judge and Stossel” crowd: ‘Cmon: They are the best we have, but there is plenty wrong. They are left-libertarians. For a while, Paul was teetering there too, but was pulled back from the brink by the conservatism of the his base, the majority of whom do not think that, at 1 million a year, the US needs more immigration and that anchor babies are dictated by the Constitution.

‘The Program’ Behind The Occupy Wall Street Protests

Business, Capitalism, Democracy, Economy, Individual Rights, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Private Property

Tired of listening to mealymouthed left-libertarians laboring to find commonalities with the Occupy Wall Street “sleepover”? You should be. I know I am. I have no sisterly solidarity for socialists.

Here’s the stark reality of this extravaganza: Within the buildings are people beavering away, working for a living. Railing against them without—sitting idle in the parks, streets and on sidewalks—are individuals who trash, scream, sleep for hours on end, loiter, strip down and publicly body-paint each other, copulate and defecate.

Economist George Reisman dissects the farrago of economic errors the protesters and their sympathizers commit: “What the protesters do not realize is that the wealth of the one percent provides the standard of living of the ninety-nine percent.”

Read “How a Highly Productive and Provident One Percent Provides the Standard of Living of a Largely Ignorant and Ungrateful Ninety-Nine Percent” by George Reisman.

UPDATED: Rick Gets Rabid; Ron Paul Endures

Economy, Elections, Political Philosophy, Politics, Private Property, Ron Paul, Taxation

The following is from my new WND.COM, “Rick Gets Rabid; Ron Paul Endures”:

“CNN must be desperate for the ratings the network receives whenever it hosts a Republican presidential debate. As moderator of the Tea Party Debate in Tampa, Florida, last month, Wolf Blitzer worked it. And not once did leftist activist-cum-anchor Anderson Cooper mention bullying in Las Vegas, Tuesday night: Viewers of the Western Republican Debate got off lightly. The excuse for a newsman known as Anderson Cooper did only one stupid thing: Demonstrate to the seven presidential contenders how to introduce themselves.

CNN was on its best behavior, which is more than one can say about Governor Rick Perry (R-TX). He sounds a lot like a slightly less stupid ‘W,’ which is still plenty stupid (and cunning to boot). The man is so much like The Decider in demeanor that it’s unsettling.

In bashing Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax-reform plan, Perry persistently called Cain ‘brother’ (‘I love you, brother, but…’). This phony, patronizing touch was plainly insulting.

For colorful metaphors that capture the tapped arteries of taxation in the Cain plan—destined to balloon with the lifeblood of the taxpayer—it’s hard to beat Grover Norquist. The president of Americans for Tax Reform likened 9-9-9 to putting ‘tapeworms in your tummy to try and maintain your weight.’ And to ‘having three needles in your arm drawing blood instead of one.'” …

Read the complete column, “Rick Gets Rabid; Ron Paul Endures,” now on WND.COM.

My book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon.

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Barnes and Noble is always well-stocked and ships within 24 hours.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher.

UPDATE: Barely a Blog participants and readers, please “Like” “Rick Gets Rabid; Ron Paul Endures” on WND.COM. Remember to “Like” the “Return to Reason” column on WND.COM, every week. Thanks.

Percolating Euroskepticism

Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Foreign Policy, Nationhood, Political Philosophy, States' Rights

Last month I warned that European “politicians had better beware: Ordinary Germans have come to realize that adding an overarching tier of tyrants—the EU—to their own government has benefited them as a second hangman enhances the health of a condemned man.”

Mainstream media is catching on:

“…there has been a colossal misunderstanding,” writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of The Telegraph, “around the world of what has just has happened in Germany. The significance of yesterday’s vote by the Bundestag to make the EU’s €440bn rescue fund (EFSF) more flexible is not that the outcome was a ‘Yes'”.

This assent was a foregone conclusion, given the backing of the opposition Social Democrats and Greens. In any case, the vote merely ratifies the EU deal reached more than two months ago – itself too little, too late, rendered largely worthless by very fast-moving events.
The significance is entirely the opposite. The furious debate over the erosion of German fiscal sovereignty and democracy – as well as the escalating costs of the EU rescue machinery – has made it absolutely clear that the Bundestag will not prop up the ruins of monetary union for much longer.

Left and right, American statists want to believe that work-horse Europeans (Germans, for instance) support the Eurozone and the wider European Union (EU). As I ventured in “Euro-Bondage & the Next Tier of Tyrants,” it is but a matter of time before patriotic Euroskeptics, to whom our press makes only veiled mention, reject the absurd claim that the EU colossus would or could advance their interests.

Fans of freedom, and hence of nullification and secession, should watch the developments in Germany with great interest. That country’s government and high court have flouted the people’s sovereignty for too long. A change is a coming…