Liberty Maven

I make a habit of devouring anything Robert Higgs writes. Well, I must admit I haven’t found time to read any of his books. However, two of them are on my “read next” list. “Depression, War, and Cold War” and “Crisis and Leviathan” are right at the top of the list. In the meantime I’m enjoying his articles being published at The Independent Institute.

In his latest article Higgs takes on political partisanship. His arguments are nothing we haven’t heard before, but he finds unique ways to make them.

Thus, Democrats encourage people to hate big corporations, and Republicans encourage people to hate welfare recipients.

Of course, it’s all a fraud, designed to distract people from the overriding reality of political life, which is that the state and its principal supporters are constantly screwing the rest of us, regardless of which party happens to control the presidency and the Congress. Amid all the partisan sound and fury, hardly anybody notices that political reality boils down to two “parties”: (1) those who, in one way or another, use state power to bully and live at the expense of others; and (2) those unfortunate others.

Even when politics seems to involve life-and-death issues, the partisan divisions often only obscure the overriding political realities. So, Democrats say that anti-abortion Republicans, who claim to have such tremendous concern for saving the lives of the unborn, have no interest whatever in saving the lives of those already born, such as the poor children living in the ghetto. And Republicans say that Democrats, who claim to have such tremendous concern for the poor, systematically contribute to the perpetuation of poverty by the countless taxes and regulations they load onto business owners who would otherwise be in better position to hire and train the poor and thereby to hasten their escape from poverty.

Read the entire article here and be sure to watch the video of Higgs’ great lecture at George Mason University last week.