Liberty Maven

During the beginning of the financial crisis Ron Paul was asked in many interviews for some of the steps he would take to help fix the situation. His answer was always more regulation for the regulators, such as the Federal Reserve. This concept struck me as a bit of infinite circular logic. When we regulate the regulators then we merely create more regulators that may need regulating. Where does it end?

Of course, the ultimate regulators are individuals like you and me. Through the political process we can regulate the poor performing stooges out of office. Strangely enough that rarely happens. The Peter Principle is alive and well within our lawmaking bodies. So this calls into question the political process itself. How is it possible to unwind the tightly bound, knotted, and tangled ball of yarn that is politics in the U.S.A. today? Should we consider tossing it in the trash and seeking a replacement? Is it fixable?

Even if Ron Paul’s “Audit The Fed” bill H.R. 1207 becomes law we still end up with the government doing their own auditing, effectively creating another element of bureaucracy that can be manipulated toward politically favorable results. That being said it is certainly a step in the right direction. I’m ecstatic that over 110 lawmakers have chosen to cosponsor the bill. Perhaps there’s a chance it will actually deliver on its promise. I’d certainly love to find out.

However, there is a fundamental flaw in calling for more transparency or regulation of the regulators. When we call for such things isn’t it vitally important that the entity bringing us the information be completely disconnected from government? Any other way, we end up back where we started.

It seems the press (today we call it the media) used to provide this function rather admirably on its own. Who is today’s equivalent of H.L Mencken? Barack Obama’s completely scripted 100 days celebration “press” conference is all the evidence we need to show how little freedom the press really has in our time.

Government is the new Hollywood, except the women are nowhere near as attractive and the men aren’t as intelligent.

Every uttered phrase is calculated to project the government as your personal superhero. You rejoice for a moment when you are unbound from the track until you realize you are merely being relocated to another track  for a bigger and faster oncoming train.

The marriage of government and the media has eliminated the concept of freedom of the press. We certainly can’t trust the government to regulate itself.

It is up to the modern day pamphleteers,  the free, unfettered, and independent online media, to shine a light on the swine-flu-infected dung heap known as government.

In the end, transparency can be found by turning off your television and turning on your computer, or reading a book.