Category Archives: Political Philosophy

Election Briefs (March 4)

Elections 2008, Political Philosophy

* Stretch out on the Freudian chaise lounge, and free-associate the word “McCain.” The first refrain to come to mind is POW. It’s the same reflex Rudy honed in his interlocutors after 9/11. You could sleep-walk the “Rudy/9/11” refrain. I don’t think I can take 4 years of the McCain mantra. It might be easier to abhor Obama.

* Care to hazard a guess as to the reason for the obsessive calls for candidates who aren’t winning to quit? What is it with the media and other members of the chattering class out there, who cannot tolerate discordant, fractious voices, or competition in government? Words such as “spoiler” should be scorned in this context. Ditto “to unify the party.” The idea that a campaigner should slink away with his tail between his legs so as not to steal votes from the bigger tickets, or sow confusion—that’s contemptible. The greater the political chaos, the greater the chance for real political change. Oh, I get it, the Media-Military-Congressional-Industrial Complex craves consensus. In this way, positions as gate-keepers of permissible opinion are secured.

Update: Media clucked about the need for Hillary to bow out for the reasons enumerated above. What do you know; she won big in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island. The New York Times is still using moribund terminology to describe her gains. Apparently, she is barely keeping her candidacy alive. Let’s wait and see.

Although finality has yet to be reached on the Democratic front, the same consensus-seekers can at least rejoice in Huckabee’s quitting.

Diablo’s Birthday

Constitution, Federalism, Political Philosophy

“Feb. 12 ought to mark the birthday not of an American icon, but of a man whose name should live on in infamy. If Americans want to reclaim their moral character as a nation, they will have to confront and denounce ‘The Real Lincoln,’ who carried out a violent constitutional revolution (instead of pursuing peaceful emancipation like every other nation did), a revolution, which, in turn, sired the modern imperialist, interventionist and highly centralized American State.

Let’s imagine, as the Lincoln-louts claim, that the Constitution ratified in 1788 forbade peaceful secession and authorized the federal government, which was supposed to have limited powers delegated to it by the people, to invade and occupy any seceding state, declare martial law, subdue the secessionists by force, burn and ransack entire cities, and then establish a military dictatorship over those states for a dozen years.

Let’s pretend that it was constitutional to intentionally wage war on civilians, blacks included, to imprison without trial thousands of Northern citizens, jail, even execute people who refused to take a loyalty oath to Lord Lincoln, shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, incarcerating editors and owners, and generally suspend the Bill of Rights, the writ of habeas corpus and international law.

If it endorsed, or even accommodated what Lincoln did, including his ignoring of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and his violating of the Second, then the Constitution is categorically evil and self-contradictory.”

Derb On The Irrelevance of Libertarianism

Elections 2008, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Ron Paul

In “High Priests of Pomposity Pan Ron Paul” I contended that whatever was revving the Ron Paul Revolution, it was not the ideas or the “energy” of Beltway libertarians, represented by the Cato and Reason claque. In fact, there was almost no overlap between “the [Ron] Paul and the [Virginia] Postrel solitudes”:

“Ron’s Revolutionaries have coalesced around the illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq, against America’s hegemonic overreach, and for a sovereign, less ‘cosmopolitan,’ America.
Beltway libertarians, conversely, are moved in mysterious ways by gaping borders, gay marriage, multiculturalism, cloning, and all else ‘cool and cosmopolitan.’”

John Derbyshire goes further. In a new VDARE.com column, Derb contends that, “Paradoxically, Ron Paul’s candidacy is proving the irrelevance of libertarianism.”

Particularly courageous, given the commentariat’s general allergy to the truth, is Derb’s daring defense of Paul’s association

“with people, fifteen or twenty years ago, who thought that we were all better off when homosexuals had to be discreet, and that black Americans are prone to civil disorder, and that Martin Luther King was a philandering plagiarist, and that the Confederacy had a right to secede from the Union, and that the Korean storekeepers of Los Angeles behaved in true American spirit when they defended their property with guns against rioters. People really seem to have believed such things! And Paul gave them space in his newsletters! Euiw!”

As I’ve said in this space, “Derb’s Da Man.”

Derb also adds an “affirmations of undying political correctness” to his indictment of the Girls and Girly Boys of the Beltway.

That has to be particularly painful to a collective—and they do act and think as one—that likes to think of itself as ultra-rad (man).

The article is “Paradoxically, Ron Paul’s Success Proving Irrelevance of Libertarianism”

Ron Paul: ‘No More Student Visas from Terrorist Nations’

Classical Liberalism, Elections 2008, IMMIGRATION, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Ron Paul

The Paul immigration ad stated, “No more student visas from terrorist nations.” For this, these same dubious libertarians hysterically condemned him for being a collectivist—he had blanketed certain nations rather than address on merit each and every individual seeking a visa. There we go again.
A clear thinker remains wedded to reality. Libertarians who pride themselves on levitating forever between their theory as to what the world ought to be like and what it is like are anything but clear thinkers.

Policy by definition addresses the collective, not the individual. Duly, the reality-based libertarian will seek to minimize political overreach, not reach for the political Promised Land. Immigration policy by its very nature targets broad categories of individuals: educated as opposed uneducated; law-abiding versus outlaws; healthy, not unhealthy.

The idea that a presidential candidate with a libertarian sensibility—remember, Paul is running as a Republican, not as a Libertarian—must support only policies that treat each and every immigrating individual on his merits is ludicrous, although it allows the lazy libertarian his theoretical purity.

The notion that by saying to a Saudi national “Sorry, you’ll have to study in Riyadh,” one is violating his individual rights is positively stupid.

Back on terra firma a “highly selective immigration policy” can act as “an effective, non-aggressive tactic against terrorism … the perfect complement to a peaceful foreign policy.”