The Germ (Chris Christie) Worries About The Strain (Libertarianism)

libertarianism, Morality, Pop-Culture, Republicans, Terrorism

If you’re as old as I, you’ll remember Michael Crichton’s “Andromeda Strain,” a popular thriller novel which was adapted to the screen. Forever in my mind will Gov. Chris Christie be associated with The Strain.

Christie The Germ is denouncing a “strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties,” and “is a very dangerous thought.” Thomas Mullen explains the inexplicable:

TAMPA, July 27, 2013. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., introduced an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill that would have defunded the NSA’s blanket collection of metadata and limited the government’s collection of records to those “relevant to a national security investigation.”
It terrified New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who lashed out at those who supported the bill and libertarianism in general.
“As a former prosecutor who was appointed by President George W. Bush on Sept. 10, 2001, I just want us to be really cautious, because this strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now and making big headlines, I think, is a very dangerous thought,” Christie said.
Yes, it is dangerous, but to what? It is dangerous to the bloated national security state, which tramples the liberty and dignity of every American under the pretense of protecting them from what Charles Kenny recently called the “vastly exaggerated” threat of terrorism.

Yes, Gov. Christie is in the news again, and not for cavorting with Barack Obama, but for speaking out against politicians who appear to be libertarian.

“Chris Christie’s problem is not his weight, but his character. New Jersey’s popular Republican governor is the consummate backstabbing, slimy, opportunistic politician, who, for good measure, also preaches and practices the dirigiste economics of an Obama (and a ‘W’)”.

Christie’s outburst is par for the course; it’s part and parcel of the frequent displays of professional discourtesy among the crass opportunists in our politics.

Look at it as a turf war, defined as “a dispute between criminals or gangs over the right to operate within a particular area.”

Our Parallel Economic Universe

Crime, Economy, Objectivism, Political Economy, Politics, Propaganda, Reason

Financier Peter Schiff’s findings of fact in Florida V. George Zimmerman are much like mine in “The Colosseum of Courtroom Cretins,” where it was noted that “Idiocracy elite lacks the ability to separate the political constructs to which it is wedded (racism) from the facts of a case brought in a court of law.”

Or, as Mr. Schiff puts it in “Print the Legend”: “preconceived emotional commitments to a narrative [consistently trumped] demonstrable facts.”

Schiff goes on to compare the parallel reality constructed in the response to the Zimmerman acquittal and the fiction of our economic indices:

“The vast majority of observers continue to subscribe to the dominant narrative that our economy is improving, the Fed’s Quantitative Easing programs are responsible, and that the debt we are currently accumulating is not a long-term problem.”

“The current administration, the media, Wall Street, and the Fed itself, are particularly committed to this narrative. After all, we have been pursuing these policies for more than five years, and many of these parties have a particular emotional and pecuniary investment in a positive outcome. It would be difficult for them now to admit that their preferred cures have not only been ineffective, but harmful. As a result, they will continue to advocate for the current policies until they get the answers they expect.”

“Not only do their underlying assumptions defy economic law and objective rationality, but they are also at odds with the evidence that continues to arrive. The data makes it clear that while asset prices (stocks, bonds, and real estate), are currently being inflated by an activist monetary policy, the real economy continues to stagnate. What supports do exist are based solely on government intervention. Yet they nevertheless discuss a potential Fed exit strategy as if the economy were in a position to make such a transition without bringing on an even more severe recession than the last. In this light, the failure of QEI to produce a real recovery led directly to QEII, and so on to QE Infinity. We are unwilling to challenge our initial assumptions about what is really wrong with our economy and how to fix it.”

“To get a sense of justice and emotional clarity over the death of Trayvon Martin, many cling to the image of a saintly youth and ignore the more difficult reality of a troubled teen picking a fight with an inept neighborhood watchman. Accepting this reality does not lead to a conclusion that Trayvon deserved to die, but it denies the self-justifying conclusions that keep race relations dysfunctional. It also allows us to ignore more troubling and far more common tragedies like the one that befell 18 year old Jett Higham, another African American youth who lost his life in a nighttime run to a local convenience store. The media decided that this tragedy was a non-story, as his killers were also African Americans teens.” [Emphasis added.]

Oh For The Privileges Of A ‘Registered Provisional Immigrant’ (RPI)

Classical Liberalism, Government, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Nationhood, Taxation, The State, Welfare

“Immigration Bill A Statist’s Dream” is now on Economic Policy Journal, which, given its traffic rank and the intellectual vitality of its authors and editor, is fast usurping all others as the premier libertarian site on the worldwide web.

To the analysis offered by the column (always circumscribed by a word count), I’d like to add the following points for your consideration:

What is there to like about the fact that the new, privileged wards of the state will enjoy protections unavailable to nationals or to immigrants who’re in the US on merit?

Ask egalitarians of the libertarian and liberal left.

There is not much you and I can do—much less our corrupt representatives in the House—if General Keith Alexander’s National Security Agency and apparatus sics his spies on us. The same goes for our rights under the successors of Lois Lerner and Sarah Hall Ingram, at the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt division.

But woe betide the NSA or IRS agent who does unto a “registered provisional immigrant” (RPI) what he did to a tea-party patriot. The “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” promises to name and shame this wicked government worker. Caught in the improper use of a registered provisional immigrant’s personal data, the agent will incur a criminal penalty.

The Bill (the lengthy summary of which is linked here) specifies that snooping on beneficiaries of S.744 will be permitted only for the purpose of determining benefits. These, to quote the EPJ column, are “carved out of the hides of taxpaying Americans, immigrants included.”

To prevent any “errant” law-enforcement officer from daring to quiz a suspicious registered provisional Democrat about his status, a “document of special protection while waiting” will be issued to The Protected One.

Oh for the privileges of a ‘Registered Provisional Immigrant’ (RPI).

I suppose that we-are-the-world libertarians can rejoice in the fact that the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” makes “illegal alien” a thing of the past—not due to the promised defense of this country’s borders, but because of a near abolition of the legal versus illegal distinction.

As this column has written, “Would that the American Welfare State did not exist. But since it does and is, unfortunately, likely to persist for some time to come, it must stop at the Rio Grande.”

The same source has also done the work your US representatives won’t do—can’t we export them?—and that is: Read and honestly distill the Immigration Bill.

Holder Messes With Texas Because … He Can

Barack Obama, Federalism, Law, Racism, States' Rights

This administration is obliterating what’s left of the federal scheme: Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department is moving against the states and end-running the Courts, first in the Zimmerman case and now with respect to the Supreme Court’s decision regarding election rules in Texas.

Apoplectic over the high court’s weakening of laws that privilege protected groups , Holder, reports Fox News, “asked a San Antonio-based federal court to force Texas to get permission from the federal government before it can make any additional changes to its voting and election laws.”

Other than Fox News, the news and cable networks appear not to be reporting this.

The administration has a tradition to uphold. In 2010, The Hildebeest herself announced the intention of the Obama Administration to sue Arizona and Gov. Jan Brewer for insisting it had a right to pass Arizona’s immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070.