In The Advocates for Self Government’s most recent Liberator Online, James W. Harris brings up the subject since Gideon Rachman wrote in The Financial Times that “for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible” and then goes on to discuss how the European Union has doing their part to attempt to unify that part of the world, and how he feels it could easily be used as a model for the whole world.

“A ‘world government’ would involve much more than cooperation between nations,” Rachman says. “It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union [EU] has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.”

A world government, Rachman stresses, could not be created democratically, because we ignorant unwashed masses, lacking the wisdom and foresight of those who rule us, mostly hate the idea.

“Even in the EU — the heartland of law-based international government — the idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for ‘ever closer union’ have been referred to the voters.

“In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians — and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters.

“International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic.”

I find all this talk nauseating, but interesting nonetheless.  Read the whole of Harris’ article at The Advocates for Self Government.

With Obama promising more bailout and stimulus packages, it’s pretty scary to take a look at how much money has been “doled out” recently:

Lets recap the amount of money spent thus far this year. A word to the wise, get some duck tape to wrap around your head, cause these numbers all together is gonna make it explode… if it hasn’t already:

• $29 billion for Bear Stearns
• $143.8 billion for AIG (thus far, it keeps growing)
• $100 billion for Fannie Mae
• $100 billion for Freddie Mac
• $700 billion for Wall Street, including Bank of America (Merrill Lynch), Citigroup, JP Morgan (WaMu), Wells Fargo (Wachovia), Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and a lot more
• $25 billion for The Big Three in Detroit
• $8 billion for IndyMac
• $150 billion stimulus package (from January)
• $50 billion for money market funds
• $138 billion for Lehman Bros. (post bankruptcy) through JP Morgan
• $620 billion for general currency swaps from the Fed
• Rough total: $2,063,800,000,000

Yes, over $2 trillion dollars. That $8 billion for IndyMac doesn’t even seem big anymore. Oh, and keep in mind that this doesn’t include the hundreds of billions the fed has and will buy up in commercial paper and lend out to other financial firms. The deficit is nearly $440 billion this year, and the national debt is $10.5 trillion. If these numbers don’t shake the next Congress into becoming more fiscally responsible, nothing probably will.

Yikes.  Here is the original source of information at Reason.com.

Are you living in the “Constitution-Free Zone?”

Probably so.

“Constitution-Free Zone” is a term the ACLU has created to dramatize yet another massive new federal assault on your Bill of Rights freedoms.

Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the American people are not subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches.

The border, however, has always been an exception to this. The Supreme Court has long upheld the government’s right to conduct a “routine search” of people entering and exiting the country, without a warrant or probable cause. This is known as the “border search exception” of the Fourth Amendment.

But what is “the border”? Ah, there’s the problem.

You’re probably thinking it’s a small strip of land where the U.S. coast meets the ocean, or where U.S. territory bumps up against Mexico or Canada.

Wrong.

The federal government defines the “border” as a 100-mile wide strip that circles the United States.

Nearly two-thirds of the entire U.S. population — almost 200 million people — live within this strip.

Indeed whole states fall within this area: Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. As do nine of the ten largest metropolitan areas in America.

Read the rest of the article here.

Enemies of economic liberty are gleefully using this crisis to discredit free market ideas and ram through a Big Government agenda.

We’re hearing them everywhere. A few examples:

“Raw capitalism is dead.”
– Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary, TIME magazine, September 18.

“… The free market in finance, unregulated and unsupervised, has failed.”
– New York Times.

“[The idea that] the market knows best — that era is over. Market fundamentalism is taking a beating in policy circles and the public mind.”
– Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute.

You and I know this is nonsense. The free market isn’t to blame. This mess was created by Big Government. And it won’t be solved by putting still more Big Government foxes in charge of the henhouse.

But many in the public are listening. And believing. And fearing free markets.

Read the whole thing. It’s good reading.

Ask Dr. Ruwart

Dr. Mary Ruwart is a leading expert in libertarian communication. In this column she offers short answers to real questions about libertarianism. To submit questions to Dr. Ruwart, see end of column.

* * *

Is compromising libertarian principles necessary to spread libertarian ideas?

QUESTION: I’ve been frustrated by some libertarians who think that “compromising” libertarian principles is the best way to get the libertarian message accepted by the public, on issues including mandatory health insurance and campaign finance restrictions. When I disagree with them, I am derided as a “purist.” How do I answer them?

MY SHORT ANSWER: Those who advocate mandatory health insurance and other government programs usually do so because they believe that freedom doesn’t work, at least on that particular issue.

Ask your fellow libertarians if they truly believe the government solution they advocate is better. If they do, provide them with the facts and figures showing how liberty trumps government every time.

Tax-supported government programs, like mandatory health insurance, invariably give us less than the free market would. For example, every country with mandatory health insurance has long lines for the expensive procedures, even if they are life-saving. In Britain, those over 55 years old are often denied kidney dialysis outright, so that the available spots can be given to younger people. Canadian heart patients flock to the U.S. for cardiac surgery, rather than die waiting in line. Patients who would get life-saving treatment in the U.S. are told to go home and prepare to die. You can find a great deal of documentation on this particular issue at www.ncpa.org and www.heartland.org.

You can get hundreds of examples proving that liberty, not coercion, provides the best outcome on this and many other issues from my book Healing Our World, available either from the Advocates (updated 2003 edition) or as a free download from www.ruwart.com (the older 1992 edition).

If your friends already believe that liberty provides the better solution, ask them how they can, in good conscience, encourage voters to adopt something that will harm them. If they answer that the end justifies the means, you can use arguments — like the ones in Healing Our World — to show how the means ultimately dictate the ends.

Instead of compromising libertarian principles, they can work to craft a persuasive way to present their arguments. The Advocates for Self-Government web site is full of resources to help anyone do just that.

Libertarians often believe that they can’t be effective unless they are elected. However, consider the effectiveness of U.S. socialists in the twentieth century. Even though only a few explicit socialists and Socialist Party members were elected in the past century, most of the major economic planks of the 1928 Socialist Party platform were quickly adopted by the Democrats and Republicans and became, to a major degree, U.S. law.

“In our opinion, the Socialist Party was the most influential political party in the United States in the first decades of the 20th Century,” wrote renowned libertarian economists Milton and Rose Friedman in their 1980 book, Free to Choose.

Maybe we should be less focused on election outcomes and more focused on winning hearts and minds, something that we can’t do by comprising our message. We wouldn’t want to win the “battles,” only to lose the “war!”

* * * * * * * *

Got questions? Dr. Ruwart has answers! If you’d like answers to YOUR “tough questions” on libertarian issues, email Dr. Ruwart at: ruwart@theAdvocates.org

Due to volume, Dr. Ruwart can’t personally acknowledge all emails. But we’ll run the best questions and answers in upcoming issues.

Dr. Ruwart’s previous Liberator Online answers are archived in searchable form at: http://www.TheAdvocates.org/ruwart/categories_list.php

Dr. Ruwart’s outstanding books “Healing Our World” and “Short Answers to the Tough Questions” are available from the Advocates: http://www.TheAdvocates.org/Merchant2/merchant.mv

“Maybe you haven’t heard, but this is the year of freedom.”

So says no less than TIME magazine, in an excellent article on the libertarian movement in their July 21 issue.

The remarkably positive article is yet more proof that libertarian ideas are catching on and spreading fast.

The article describes how libertarians have grabbed the public’s attention this year:

“First there was the Ron Paul revolution, in which an avuncular 10-term Representative from Brazoria County, Texas, raised more than $34 million as a pseudo-Republican candidate, garnered more than a million primary votes and outperformed Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson, all on the back of a get-government-off-my-back platform.

Read the rest of the article here.

President John McCain: A Military “Near-Dictator”?

John McCain proudly announced the newest member of his staff this week. Michael Goldfarb, online editor for the neocon magazine The Weekly Standard, is his new Deputy Communications Director.

Last April, Goldfarb wrote the following about the powers he thinks the U.S. president possesses:

“The framers… sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war.”

Oh, really? The Founders wanted a president with “near dictatorial” power? Responds liberal journalist Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com:

“Until the Bill Kristols and John Yoos and other authoritarians of that strainentered the political mainstream, I never heard of prominent Americans who describe the power that they want to vest in our political leaders as ‘near dictatorial.’ Anyone with an even passing belief in American political values would consider the word ‘dictatorial’ — at least rhetorically, if not substantively — to define that which we avoid at all costs, not something which we seek, embrace and celebrate.

“And the very idea that the Founders — whose principal concern was how to avoid consolidated power in any one person — sought to vest ‘near dictatorial power’ in the president is too perverse for words. But that’s been the core ‘principle’ driving the destructive radicalism of the last seven years, and it’s an extremist view that is obviously welcomed at the highest levels of the McCain campaign.”

Goldfarb has also endorsed torture techniques such as beatings and waterboarding, and has called for amnesty for corporations which assist the government in knowingly and illegally spying upon Americans without warrants.

But of course, that’s what you’d expect from the spokesman for a “near dictator,” right?

(Source: Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/02/goldfarb/index.html )