Liberty Maven

Maybe we all should be asking ourselves what is the purpose of our interventionist foreign policy? What makes us think we can help (I use that term loosely) Afghanistan where others have failed miserably?

We’re lost — that’s how I feel. I’m not exactly sure why we’re here,” said Specialist Raquime Mercer

The soldiers’ biggest question is: what can we do to make this war stop. Catch one person? Assault one objective? Soldiers want definite answers, other than to stop the Taleban, because that almost seems impossible. It’s hard to catch someone you can’t see

The chaplains said that many soldiers had lost their desire to help Afghanistan. “All they want to do is make it home alive and go back to their wives and children and visit the families who have lost husbands and fathers over here. It comes down to just surviving,” said Captain Masengale.

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If America was one big classroom the teacher should be admonishing students, making them stay after school and repeatedly write “Ron Paul is right” on the blackboard until their fingers cramp up. Of course, that would never happen. We’d never allow political indoctrination into our schools, right? America’s decreasing influence in the world and ultimately its downfall can be attributed to our “failure is not an option” culture which fools you into believing you are winning when in reality you have already lost.

This culture is being thrust upon our nation’s young people at an early age. Young children are constantly being reassured that they are doing a “good job” for the most mundane accomplishments. Those who play sports are presented participation trophies. No, we wouldn’t want any of them to actually excel beyond just “showing up”, do we? While playing games it’s always important to make sure each child gets a turn at winning or at least the game ends in a tie where “everyone wins!” We are beginning to see the effects of this mentality.

At some point these children grow up and the realities of life smack them square in their glass jaws. Everyone can never be equal. Life is not fair. Hate will always exist. Yet they were always taught the opposite so they get “active” and try to fulfill the promise of their youth. Their activity naturally progresses toward the one entity they believe has de facto power to fulfill this promise: government.

Yes, everyone wants to take the government drug to be pain free, but everyone remains ignorant of that particular drug’s evil side effects and addictive nature.

Everyone has become “too big to fail”.

I was once asked in a job interview, “Do you think you learn more from your successes or your failures?” I answered “failures, of course.” Failure forces you to reexamine your premises, think outside the box, and try again. In order for failure to “work” it must not be rewarded. Yet this is precisely what our government is doing and has done for quite some time.

In our increasingly more overt politically-correct society, is it perhaps time to reexamine our premises? If someone is born without limbs it doesn’t mean we should go out and round up all of the “limb-full” and amputate their arms and legs in the interests of equality. Sure it’s an extreme metaphor but this is precisely what we are trying to do when we support plans that attempt to make life “more fair” for the underprivileged at the expense of those who worked to make their own lives better. It is class warfare and all classes lose in the end.

The opposite is true too. We should not be funneling taxpayer money to private banks and auto companies. A bad business is a bad business and we’d know it was bad if it were left alone to fail or thrive. Executives and employees will learn from the failure and move on to try again. Once the crying stops, innovation is a by-product of failure.

Rewarding failure makes it a goal rather than a consequence of poor decisions. Failure should not be shunned. It should not be embraced. It should be accepted as a lesson learned. Trying and failing is what makes trying again and succeeding so satisfying.

We need to channel the Founder’s cavalier spirit, end government mollycoddling, and realize if we fall down we can pick ourselves back up again. Sure we may make a mess of things at times but the most important thing is persistence.

FDR famously said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” If he had instead said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear of failure”, we might be in a much better place today.

Sever the strings-turned-chains between the free market puppet and it’s government master and this heartwarming yet bittersweet story could happen many times over. It could become the norm rather than the exception.

Because of caring people and a caring company, a terminally ill little Green Forest girl was flown home Friday by air ambulance from M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, so she can spend her last days surrounded by the people who love her most.

Jada Harper, who turned seven on Sept. 1, has an inoperable malignant tumor in her brain and is in a coma with a ventilator doing her breathing for her. She has been at the famous cancer center in Houston since July, but her situation is now at the point not much else can be done to help her.

I emphasized the first phrase above to emphasize what is absent: government. It doesn’t say because of some government program. No company was forced to help this poor child and her family. A company made up of individuals with the ability to make a decision to do what is right was responsible for this “random act of kindness”. Perhaps what makes this story more interesting is the company that helped is a direct competitor to a government entity.

Friday afternoon, Jada was flown home to the Ozarks — on a gurney, attached to the machine that breathes for her. FedEx Freight paid the $11,000 bill for the special medical flight her family was unable to afford.

FedEx who competes with the government sponsored United States Postal Service (USPS) acted when others failed. Sure, they may have been acting in their own self-interest to garner “free” advertising and customer goodwill, but how can they be criticized for performing this mutually beneficial act?

$11,000 is chump change for a company like FedEx, but apparently this isn’t an isolated occurrence.

“One thing that impresses me about this company is that the company has a heart,” Reeves said. “Our company does a lot of things like this. It’s been recognized as one of the most admired companies in the world, and this is why.”

It is this phenomenon that represents the best argument for a true free market. If companies weren’t over-regulated and over-taxed perhaps these random acts of kindness would multiply until they become the general rule rather than the exception. Imagine a world where companies all realize that helping people also helps the bottom line. Anyone can make a buck, but not everyone can make a devoted customer.

In a free market the customer acts as regulator. Companies would be trampling over themselves and each other to find the next person (potential customer) to help. When a third party, in this case the government, forces companies (and individuals) to fork over 40-50% of their profit (or income) and then uses it on projects that rarely achieve their intended purpose the result is widespread resentment. In this case companies and individuals become less charitable. The tax and regulatory burden hinders their ability to participate in benevolent actions like FedEx.

Imagine companies that have 50% more profit competing to be number one on the list of most charitable companies. There is no doubt that the result would be a monumental increase in assistance for people and organizations who need it.

We don’t need government to lead, nor follow. We just need government to get out of the way. It’s time to break the government chains of taxes and regulation. This would not only foster economic prosperity but it would also spawn a renaissance of benevolence. This benevolence would come voluntarily and resentment-free from private companies and individuals. It’s good for business, good for the poor, and good for America.

This is very good news for gun rights fighters. The Supreme Court has accepted the case to answer the question on whether the 2nd Amendment applies, or is “incorporated”, to the states.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to decide whether strict local and state gun control laws violate the Second Amendment, ensuring another high-profile battle over the rights of gun owners.

The court said it will review a lower court ruling that upheld a handgun ban in Chicago. Gun rights supporters challenged gun laws in Chicago and some suburbs immediately following the high court’s decision in June 2008 that struck down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia, a federal enclave.

The new case tests whether last year’s ruling applies as well to local and state laws.

While this is good news for hopeful gun rights activists it raises questions for die hard Constitutionalists. The dirty details of “incorporation” reveals some divisions among us. I’ve previously discussed my own thoughts on “incorporation”, but I can certainly understand the opposing viewpoint. The question came up earlier this year when the states rights argument was utilized by the anti-gun rights Senators in reference to the Thune amendment that would have permitted concealed carry reciprocity between the states.

The conventional wisdom is that the Supreme Court has a very good chance of voting in favor of 2nd Amendment incorporation. Perhaps, the more interesting thing, similar to Heller, will be what the majority opinion says at the conclusion of the case.

Insanity:

CLINTON, Indiana – When Sally Harpold bought cold medicine for her family back in March, she never dreamed that four months later she would end up in handcuffs.

Harpold bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband at a Rockville pharmacy. Less than seven days later, she bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her adult daughter at a Clinton pharmacy, thereby purchasing 3.6 grams total of pseudoephedrine in a weeks time. Those two purchases put her in violation of Indiana law.

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Michael Moore utilizes  a word in the title of his new movie to elicit praise and respect from his Left-leaning fans and derision from his Right-leaning critics. Unfortunately for all of us, he uses the wrong word to describe his movie’s subject matter. It’s not capitalism, silly man; it’s corporatism. Therefore, I refuse to call his movie anything but what its true title should be: “Corporatism, A Love Story“.

Let’s head to Merriam-Webster to clear this up. Which one of the following best describes America today?

capitalism: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.

corporatism: the organization of a society into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and exercising control over persons and activities within their jurisdiction.

The correct answer is, of course, corporatism. A  key phrase in the definition of capitalism is “by investments that are determined by private decision“. How do government bailouts of private industry reconcile with this definition? They don’t. And if you think this is a recent phenomenon then I urge you to consider the Savings and Loan bailouts back in the 80’s and 90’s.

Another assertion in the definition of capitalism that does not compute in America today is that the prices, production, and distribution of goods are supposed to be determined by a free market.

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As part of the platform that got him elected almost a year ago, Barack Obama promised not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 annually.  But now he’s seriously pushing the idea that all citizens be forced to carry health insurance or else the IRS will impose a penalty.  And he claims this isn’t a tax.

In an interview on Sunday, George Stephanopoulos grilled President Obama by asking the rather obvious question, “Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money [to buy insurance], fining you if you don’t. How is that not a tax?”

Jeff Jacoby’s op-ed on Boston.com discusses the president’s response:

If Ron Paul won last November he could have easily started his inauguration speech with the following quote:

The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C’s interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.

- William Graham Sumner, “The Forgotten Man“

Sumner effectively describes the agitated state of America’s overlooked citizens in 2009 even though his words were penned in 1883. These are the people you see walking and driving to work every day after dropping their children at school. These are the retirees taking up a hobby after working for themselves and the State for their entire lives. These are the stay-at-home mothers and fathers keeping the house clean and the children fed. They go about their daily routine with hardly a complaint nor a frown.

Well, they used to.

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A professor teaching a computer security class I had in college stood up in front of the class one day and said, “Today we are going to discuss the salami attack or salami slicing. Does anyone know what a salami attack is?” I laughed at the juvenile thoughts that entered my mind. In my college-aged stupor little did I know it was the perfect term for what the United States has been experiencing since the early 20th century.

From Wikipedia:

Salami slicing is a series of many minor actions, often performed by clandestine means, that together results in a larger action that would be difficult or illegal to perform at once.

Today Obama is taking it to new levels. He’s acting like the proverbial kid in a candy store or perhaps saying he’s like a fat man at a deli counter is more appropriate. Our government has been salami slicing it’s way toward a socialist and fascist hybrid I call socio-fascism for the last 100 years or so. Certain administrations were worse than others, but it’s not too hard to believe that the Obama Presidency will go down in history as the one that signaled the final slice in the socio-fascist incrementalism pie.

For America to turn the corner and get “better” things are going to have to get a lot worse. People are still dreaming of government-sponsored comfort and Obama is doing his best to deliver. Government words and statistics are attempting to mask the hard economic pain reverberating through America. We need to see beyond this feel-good facade and find the truth.

We are a spoiled-rotten coddled nation of eternal victims with a codependency on government. Government is an abusive spouse who promises unicorns but only ever delivers blunt trauma to the head.

Perhaps the turn-around will come when the “green shoots” become nothing more than “green shits”, when everyone realizes the government is the source of the problem rather than the solution.

It’s time to refuse the government’s salami.

“The two parties should be almost identical so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.” – Carroll Quigley, from Tragedy and Hope

Originally published August 24, 2009 at http://towneforcongress.com/economy/the-other-party

As I travel around and meet people as part of my run for U.S. Congress next year, one of the first questions I am most frequently asked is: “Are you a Democrat or a Republican?” Of course, I politely answer I am running as a private citizen, and explain why I am dissatisfied with both parties. Pretty much everyone I talk to understands my reasoning, even if they think running without a party is fruitless. All too often, I hear in reply defensive answers such as “Well, I am a registered ____ just because I want to vote in the primaries.”

Some people don’t stop there though. Multiple times I have been asked why I don’t spin off and start my own party. The first time I was asked this I was caught aback, as I had never even considered it. It is, of course, dreadfully apparent that the Republicrats ruthlessly control politics in the United States. Third parties, whom I wish all the luck in the world, have not been able to break their chokehold.

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