UPDATED: Apartheid South Africa: Reality Vs. Libertarian Fantasy

Free Markets, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Private Property, South-Africa

“Apartheid South Africa: Reality Vs. Libertarian Fantasy” is the new essay, now on WND. It tackles the “economic reductionism, typical of the impoverished analysis of South Africa, offered so authoritatively by libertarian economists stateside.” Excerpted below are two sections therefrom:

… LITE LIBERTARIANISM VS. THE RIGHT KIND

Herein lies the difference between the paleolibertarian analysis and what this column has termed the lite libertarian one, philosopher Hans-Hermann Hope being the finest example of the former. The rest fall into the latter, lite category.

A crucial difference between lite libertarians and the Right kind is that to the former, the idea of liberty is propositional–a deracinated principle, unmoored from the realities of history, hierarchy, biology, tradition, culture, values.

Conversely, the paleolibertarian grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure. “The pursuit of the … paleolibertarian ideal,” explained Catholic philosopher Jack Kerwick, Ph.D., “is the pursuit of an ideal of liberty brought down from the clouds to the nit and the grit of the history and culture from which it emerged.” …

… FREEDOM VS. EGALITARIANISM

Contra the economic reductionism of the lite libertarian, free-market capitalism is a necessary but insufficient condition to sustain freedom in a country of South Africa’s complexion.

The truth absent from the phantasmagorical formulations critiqued is this: Economic freedom does not necessarily reduce so-called wealth inequality. Inegalitarainism is a feature of a free economy. If history is anything to go by, certain minorities will achieve prosperity from poverty, no matter how gravely the state and society impede them. Jews did it in Europe. Levantines and Indians in Africa and the Middle-East. Chinese in southeast Asia and everywhere else they go. Europeans in South Africa.

Moreover, “While all people want safety and sustenance for themselves, not everyone is prepared to allow those whom they dislike and envy to peacefully pursue the same.” (P. 4.) Free-market capitalism is not enough to safeguard ordered liberty in racially riven societies like South Africa, where the majority will always covet the possessions of immensely wealthier minorities and associate these riches with racial privilege.

Ultimately, the rights to life, liberty and private property will forever be imperiled in a country whose constitution has a clause devoted to “Limitation of Rights,” and where redistributive “justice” is a constitutional article of faith. (P. 101)

This, paleolibertarians (all three of us) know too well.

In “The Cannibal” chapter entitled “Saving South Africans S.O.S.,” secession is explored as one solution, it being a species of the private-law society delineated by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Hoppe, of course, has never been afraid to speak to the “unequal civilizing potential” (in James Burnham’s coinage) of different people and peoples. …

Read the complete essay. “Apartheid South Africa: Reality Vs. Libertarian Fantasy” is now on WND.

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President Pinocchio’s Proboscis Honored

Barack Obama, Ethics, Morality, Politics

The Washington Post has followed in PolitiFact’s footsteps in honoring the presidential appendage not once but thrice. Earlier this week, “PolitiFact named ‘If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,’ the Lie of the Year for 2013.”

“If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it” comes in first on the WaPo too.

Does this mean that Barack Obama is liar of the year? Liberals will never go as far as to denounce the individual doing the deed.

(More here about “President Pinocchio’s Growing Proboscis.”)

The Price Of ‘Certainty’

Debt, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Government, Military, Republicans

Sec. 401. of the ‘‘Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013’’ (on page 2 of 77 pages) stipulates the obvious “Increase in contributions to Federal Employees’ Retirement System for new employees.” Well of course.

Conversely, Sec. 403. of the same impenetrable document stipulates an “Annual adjustment of retired pay and retainer pay amounts for retired members of the Armed Forces under age 62.” Judging by the apoplexy among members of the military, the verbiage means cuts to the warfare arm of the welfare-warfare state.

New York Time:

Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, all Republicans, will bring military families to the Senate on Tuesday to protest the cuts. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, complained of “a real hit to military retirements,” and said the measure did not do enough to reduce the deficit.

Those gullible enough to serve Uncle Sam without questioning whether going abroad in search of monsters to slay is indeed tantamount to defending “American Freedoms”—should wisen up. Of course your pay will be cut first. To your masters, your life is also forfeit.

And:

Under the budget deal, spending on defense and nondefense programs would rise from the $967 billion slated for this fiscal year to $1.012 trillion, mitigating the impact of across-the-board spending cuts and allowing congressional lawmakers to draft detailed spending plans for the first time in several years. Spending in fiscal 2015, which begins Oct. 1, would rise from $995 billion to $1.014 trillion. Though total spending would rise $63 billion over 10 years, the measure would trim the deficit slightly.

Here’s Judge Andrew Napolitano’s take on the agreement struck between Rep. Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Committee chair, Democrat Patty Murray (here they are on Meet the Presstitutes):

The speaker has demonstrated a poverty of leadership,” Napolitano said. “He did get 332 votes because he got the Democrats to vote with him and he lost the Republicans who retain the value of small government. This doesn’t decrease the deficit, it adds to it. It doesn’t decrease the debt, it adds to it.”
“This is an absolute fraud. They’re afraid of reality. They have no sense, the Republican establishment,” he continued. “They have no sense of small government values that they were elected to put into law.”
“Wow, tell us how you feel,” co-panelist Juan Williams joked.
“There is no distinction between John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi on this,” the judge asserted.

Mitch (McConnell), Mark (Levin), And The Military Industrial Complex

Military, Republicans, The State, Welfare

In an effort to further marginalize those “Republican challengers further to the … right who have few qualms about trimming military budgets,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been rattling the defense industry with threats that “spending cuts” favored by tea party-aligned Republicans will come at the expense of “robust national-security spending.”

We can only hope so.

Writes Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Gerard Baker:

What he’s really saying is that he’s a big spending Republican [IM: is there any other kind?] who will take care of these special interests if they help him in the primary …’It’s, you scratch my back, I will scratch your back.’

What I don’t get is this: This story I got from an exercised Mark Levin. The broadcaster, an unwavering champion of the warfare state and the welfariate that mans it, was irate. Why? Isn’t Mitch, on this front, more aligned with Mark than “tea party-aligned candidates,” some of whom wish to cut military spending?