UPDATE II: Beck Bucks The System (If “Incoherent & Meandering”)

Glenn Beck, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, libertarianism, Media, Uncategorized

Yes, I’ve been critical of the irrational, illogical twists and turns in the thinking of Glenn Beck in recent months. (Here). “Skeptic” (the magazine) could use Beck’s conspiracy building tactics to fill an issue on irrational thinking. However, besides exuding goodness, Beck also radiates rebellion. Whatever one thinks of Beck, he is a rebel. And like all real rebels, he too must secede from the system. Glenn’s departure from FoxNews is an act of secession. FoxNews is the system. Beck is no longer able to abide by the ideological and disciplinary constraints imposed by the Republican establishment’s megaphone.

Beck has promised his jubilant adversaries that they were “going to pray for the days of 5:00PM,” intimating that a force of nature has been unleashed on the world. Or as the Judge put it, “Bigger, better and more Beck.”

Go Glenn! Of course, as I had hoped (see “Beck has Left the Building”), The Judge may stand to inherit the slot.

UPDATE (April 7) I: I hear here, and on Facebook, lots of cheerleading for one program, The Judge’s. Or Stossell’s—who is marvelous, but still very much within the remits of conventional, by-the-book libertarianism. I love them both to bits. But none of you so-called “independent thinkers” has noticed that these shows tolerate, 1) the must-have, establishment Tea Partiers, and 2) the Reason and other narrow-faction libertarianism. The shows are still within the, admittedly, wonderful box. Those who say Beck is part of the system are as insane as Beck (who is a good type of insane; a lovable goof, as Huggs put it). Beck is a natural secessionist.

I’m surprised that you’ve all fallen to your knees before (our) ideological correctness, dismissing Beck’s brave act of secession, b/c of his errors of thought. I have news for you: In the liberty-oriented community, people tend to huddle in atrophying intellectual attics, and quibble about detecting and expelling contrarians. Dare to dissent on this or the other point of purity, and keepers of the flame will take it upon themselves to read you out of the movement. This, naturally, makes for tribalism, not individualism. The bad, moreover, have a nasty habit of crowding out the good. Or as one wag once said to me (was it Randy Barnett? I can’t recall), “Quality is never the result of intellectual purges: the most creative and independent thinkers are the first to go.” That makes perfect psychological sense: those who remain feel more secure, group cohesion having trounced intellectual vitality.

UPDATE II (April 9): Larry Auster:

Glenn Beck’s announcement that he is going to “transition off” his daily TV program later this year, whatever that means, is about as coherent as Sarah Palin’s July 2009 announcement of her reasons for resigning from the governorship. Has anyone noticed that Beck, like Palin, is inveterately incapable of forming a cogent sentence, and that one of the reasons for this, as with Palin, is that almost everything he says revolves around himself?

Indubitably true.

UPDATE II: A Capsizing Debt

Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, libertarianism, Republicans

“The United States is facing a crushing burden of debt – a debt that will soon surpass the size of the entire U.S. economy and ultimately capsize it if left on its present course. This is not the future of a proud and prosperous nation. It is the future of a nation in decline.” Republikeynesians have come a long way; this is their description of the debt crisis in “Path to Prosperity: Restoring America’s Promise” (PDF)—the House Republicans’ 2012 budget proposal, authored by the House budget committee’s chair, Paul Ryan (R-WI). And although the role of the Federal Reserve Bank in monetizing the debt is finessed—this is still more than we’ve come to expect from the GOP:

“The lenders who buy much of the federal government’s debt have noticed the disconnect between the government’s perilous fiscal situation and the low rates of interest it is paying on the bonds that constitute the government’s debts. Some have even decided to purge their portfolios of U.S. debt, and others are advising their clients to do the same.

“Through its interventions into the economy, the Federal Reserve has recently become the largest buyer of government debt in the country, and these purchases have helped keep interest rates low. But the Fed is scheduled to stop making these purchases this summer. Congress must show the market that it has a credible plan for getting the national debt under control, in order to ease concerns over the government’s creditworthiness and stave off an interest-rate spike.

… nearly every fiscal expert and advisor in Washington has warned that a major debt crisis is inevitable if the U.S. government remains on its current unsustainable path. The government’s failure to prevent this completely preventable crisis would rank among history’s most infamous episodes of political malpractice. …”

Of course, the actual steps proposed to ward off stagflation and hyperinflation are not nearly as drastic as they ought to be.

MORE.

UPDATE I (April 6): Vox Day, on Sean Hannity’s radio show, warns of “The Return Of The Great Depression.” A good reality check is my interview with Day, my WND colleague, “Great Depression 2.0’: An Interview with Vox Day.”

Mr. Hannity seemed eager to pick Vox’s brain about prudent investments during a depression. Asset protection, says Vox, is essential, over and above a focus on returns: metal and companies with a real business model; companies that also provide real services.

Listen to the interview. Notice the alarm in Sean Hannity’s voice. Austrian economists such as Vox Day have not wavered in the “apocalyptic” predictions they’ve been making. This column was warning in 2003, if not earlier, of the consequences of endless debt, credit expansion, and the dangers of hyperinflation. As did I explain to those who bothered to listen that production, not credit-fueled consumption, was whence came wealth.

UPDATE II: To Myron, below: Your cynicism alert and my point are not mutually exclusive. The GOP has come a long way, thanks to the Tea Party, in accurately describing the coming, and calamitous, effects of the debt. We both agree that it’s too little too late.

Obamanomics: Me, My Minions & YOUR Money

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Government, Political Economy, Reason, Taxation, The State

“Obama: U.S. economy cannot afford [a government] shutdown.” Unless the government continues “making key investments in things like education, infrastructure [and] innovation,” we won’t “win the future.” [Transcripts]

This dyed-in-the-wool statist needs the aid of Lego or some sort of pop-up children’s model to figure out that dolling out unemployment benefits, state aid, and government jobs programs, all necessitate the seizure of private wealth through taxing, borrowing, and printing paper.

That cannot create wealth! The fact that some individuals will get wealthy or be “helped” leaves out the unseen; the overall poverty and misery he, his minions and their schemes create.

There is no big secret about “creating” jobs. Government can’t do it. Unless it sucks more capital and credit out of the private economy, it has only the capacity to consume wealth, not create it.

Here’s a simple, crude model for Obama the statist. Play with it with the First Girls. Recommend it to your Fabian friends, Mr. president:

Put 10 blocks in box A. Take 5 blocks out of box A and place them in box B. The owner of box A is 5 blocks poorer, the owner of box B is 5 blocks richer. Total number of blocks: still 10. Total blocks added (or wealth created): 0.

Come on BO, you can do it.

The best BO can do is take a hike; go on a 4-year vacation; walk the plank; just GET OUT OF THE WAY!

His Holiness Eric Holder

Constitution, Crime, Federalism, Homeland Security, Law, Terrorism

Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., was unequivocal today in asserting Executive branch supremacy and his own omniscience in the matter of the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four, 9/11 co-conspirators. (Transcript.) Recall, Holder’s preference was for the federal courts to try the case. “[O]ur justice system,” he stated today, “would have performed with the same distinction that has been its hallmark for over two hundred years.” (Here’s one example of that justice.) Alas, Holder’s all-knowing self—he informed FoxNews’ reporter, and I paraphrase, “Yes, I do know best”—was frustrated:

Unfortunately, since I made that decision, Members of Congress have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the United States, regardless of the venue. As the President has said, those unwise and unwarranted restrictions undermine our counterterrorism efforts and could harm our national security. Decisions about who, where and how to prosecute have always been – and must remain – the responsibility of the executive branch. Members of Congress simply do not have access to the evidence and other information necessary to make prosecution judgments. Yet they have taken one of the nation’s most tested counterterrorism tools off the table and tied our hands in a way that could have serious ramifications. We will continue to seek to repeal those restrictions.