A Confederation of Confederacies?
2007-03-02 21:23:00
I Recently Re-read Thomas Jefferson's Letter to Samuel Kercheval (1816). In the letter to friend Samuel Kerchavel, Jefferson intended to provide advice to his friend on the proper administration of Virginia's counties. In the process, he introduced his somewhat famous idea for "Ward Republicanism":"Divide the counties into wards of such size as that every citizen can attend, when called on, and act in person. Ascribe to them the government of their wards in all things relating to themselves exclusively. A justice, chosen by themselves, in each, a constable, a military company, a patrol, a school, the care of their own poor, their own portion of the public roads, the choice of one or more jurors to serve in some court, and the delivery, within their own wards, of their own votes for all elective officers of higher sphere, will relieve the county administration of nearly all its business, will have it better done, and by making every citizen an acting member of the government, and in t
Return of the Blog
2007-03-02 21:05:00
After being busy with school and deploying to Iraq for six months, I've decided to re-start the Blog I never started.
Read more: Return
Interesting Results from CPAC
2007-03-05 20:20:00
Although I usually place little hope for Old Right libertarianism in the modern Republican party, there were some interesting Results from the 34th Annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Straw Poll. The first reassuring piece of data from the Straw Poll is that the grassroots of the GOP has not completely bought into the big government conservatism of President G.W. Bush. When asked "All things being equal, would you be MOST likely to support a Republican candidate for President who called themselves a 'Ronald Reagan Republican' or a 'George W. Bush Republican'", only 3% of those polled responded with Bush, and 79% responded with Reagan:From CPAC ResultsIn another straw poll question, respondents were asked "Which of the following comes closest to your opinion regarding America's foreign policy?", with answer choices being "America's foreign policy should be based on protecting its own economic and national security interests" or "America's foreign policy should
Thoughts on Land Value Taxation (LVT), Georgism, and "Good Greens"
2007-03-13 19:48:00
I have recently been reading literature on Georgism. Georgists believe that everything an individual creates is their own personal property and the government has no right to take possession of it. Separating Georgists from anarchocapitalists, however, is the georgist belief that land cannot be truly owned, only "rented" from the community. As a result, georgist assert that all forms of taxation, whether they be on labor, capital, or improved property, are unjust. Taxation
on the unimproved value of land, i.e. the value of a piece of land if there were no improvements on it, is taxable.Georgists assert that this land-value tax (LVT) is merely rent paid back to the community. As a result of a tax on only a piece of property's land, the growth of communities will be natural (no urban sprawl), and wilderness will be preserved without the coercive power of government.While reading up on georgism, I couldn't help but think about Ward Republicanism, a "Confederation of Confederacies", and
Read more: Value
, Greens
re: Different Kinds of Libertarians
2007-03-18 16:25:00
Complicated Visionary posted a piece a while back that categorized different types of libertarians. The author put libertarians into 10 broad categories:Randians/Objectivists/Egoists - Meet John or Jane Galt. While most card-carrying Objectivists assert that they are not libertarian in name, the movement started by Ayn Rand (author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged) was and is an important influence on the thought of modern American Libertarianism (Cathy Young says that “Libertarianism, the movement most closely connected to Rand's ideas, is less an offspring than a rebel stepchild.”). They imagine an individualist/collectivist and egoist/altruist dichotomy and put it at the heart of their entire worldview as the supreme good vs. evil (along with some peculiar axioms like “A is A” and “existence exists”). According to those influenced by Randian Egoism, greed is a virtue, while compassion is a deadly sin. The word capitalism can stimulate a spontaneous orgasm. They ar
Read more: Kinds
, Libertarians
An Anomaly in the Warfare-Welfare thesis?
2007-03-23 16:51:00
As many may know, there is a strong correlation between the size of government and the occurrences of wars and emergencies. Looking solely at American History, major wars and "emergencies" result in bigger government:The Global War on Terror - Big Government "Conservatism", Bush-style. Non-defense spending is skyrocketing and we have the largest new entitlement program, the Medicare Prescription Drug Act Vietnam - "Guns n' Butter"; The Great Society Korea - Death of the Old Right ( the birth of "Buckleyism"); New Deal programs cemented into permanence WWI - Progressivist programs, such as the Income Tax, the Federal Reserve, and the 17th Amendment WWII/Depression - The New Deal, price controls, income tax withholdingsThe Civil War -- Legal Tender laws, the Income Tax, centralized banking, etc. The War of 1812 - Hyperinflation, price controls The Revolutionary War - Hyperinflation, price controlsWhat is missing from this list is the Mexican-American War. The Polk Administration radical
Read more: Warfare
, Welfare
On Euthanizing Public Education
2007-05-22 16:26:00
A couple of years ago, I supported school vouchers. I thought "hey, why don't we get our local, state, and federal governments to give vouchers equal to the average education cost to parents. The parents can then use the voucher to go to private school." Since then, I've realized that any such program would be a de-facto socialization of all private schools in the country; the government would only allow vouchers to go to pre-approved schools with pre-approved curriculum; in order to capture the multi-billion-dollar windfall, private schools would conform to government guidelines, perhaps even unionizing in some states.Today, I believe that the only real way to reform education is through tax credits -- tax credits for pulling your kids out of school.This can be best accomplished by simply dividing up the Department of Education
's annual budget among all K-12 schoolchildren who are not enrolled in public school. With about 6.5 million K-12ers either in private school or homeschool,
Read more: Public
The "Conservative" Nanny State?
2007-05-27 15:49:00
In his recently-published book entitled The Conservative Nanny
State
: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (available free online), Economist Dean Baker from the Center for Economic and Policy Research excoriates the Corporate Right for phony support for free markets. Although Baker is thoroughly statist, he makes a lot of good points. For one, he points out how the Corporate Right loves cheap immigrant labor, but vigorously opposes the immigration of tens of thousands of well-qualified foreign professionals, like the thousands of well-qualified Indian and Eastern European physicians. He also points out the sham of intellectual monopoly grants; he asserts that Microsoft gains more from their intellectual property monopoly grants every year ($40 billion) than the US government spends on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) welfare program doles out every year ($18 Billion); He also does a good job of exploding the myth of “big business”-“big
Ron Paul: "Freedom is Popular"
2007-06-29 18:41:00
Thanks to RedStateEclectic.
Read more: Freedom
, Ron Paul
Bloggers for Paul at Iowa Event Center on Saturday
2007-06-29 16:29:00
Laura from RedStateEclectic and myself have arranged to have a booth/table set up with a dedicated internet connection from Ron Paul's rally on Sunday in Iowa.We will be liveblogging and webcasting from the event, with 6 - 8 slots alotted if anybody else wants to join us. We should be able to get plenty of interviews with supporters (possibly from campaign members and Rep. Paul himself) and footage from the event. RedStateEclectic's Webcast is here.Please contact me if you're interested in participating.
Read more: Center
, Saturday
Can Government be Consensual?
2007-12-04 20:54:00
Can Government
be Consensual? In my opinion, yes. Take, for example, the phenomenon of homeowners' associations (HOA). Can anybody deny that HOAs perform similar to a state? They (1) regulate behavior, (2) can restrict membership, and (3) provide community services. HOAs are voluntary -- 100% contractual; any member can choose to sell his or her property or lobby to get the rules changed.Of course, HOAs are a natural reaction to the decline of the state -- local governments cannot provide community services effectively (or at all), so private entities emerge to offer demanded services. And since they merely augment the state -- and do not replace the state -- they are not performing as many services as they would otherwise. If a local municipality allowed residents to "opt out" of public services, HOAs would become much more dynamic.When I say "opt out of public services", I am of course talking about residents (1) refusing to accept public services and (2) keeping their tax payments
Rebuilding The GOP From November's Ashes
2008-05-12 15:24:00
As I've mentioned before, SC Gov. Mark Sanford is the highest-ranking libertarian in the United States, agrees w/ Dr. Paul on 99% of the issues, and provides the best near-term hope of getting a libertarian in the White House. Despite his stances, the MSM has been floating the idea of McCain picking Sanford to prevent libertarians from defecting to the LP ticket (if it's Barr) or Obama. Today, TNR
Read more: Rebuilding
, November
Will the GOP Lose the South?
2008-05-14 10:04:00
Probably. Throughout the south, McCain remains very unpopular amongst GOP supporters -- if it wasn't for Romney and Huckabee splitting the dixie vote 50/50, McCain would have lost every southern state except for Louisiana (which Ron Paul won anyway). Throw in the tidal wave loss for the GOP that's coming in the house (and we saw a glimpse of it last night) and a massive, heavily-energized black vo
Read more: South
General Election Prognostications
2008-05-16 10:20:00
I really don't think it's going to be that close. For one, the polling data does not reflect the severely-depressed GOP turnout that we'll see in the fall, the anti-GOP sentiment, the energized democratic base, or the massive black voter turnout we'll see if Obama is the nominee. The Obama camp has said that their strategy is to capitalize on the resurgence of the party in the Mountain West to cap
Read more: General
, Election
Barack Gorbachev?
2008-05-20 13:58:00
David Seaton of TPM asks if Obama is the American Gorbachev:What can we expect from an Obama presidency? If he gets a huge mandate and a Democratic Senate and Congress, there are two possibilities that I can see, either he doesn't try to really change anything... a lot of disappointed kids and a lot of wasted time. Second possibility, he does try to change things, and it all falls apart....The sec
Read more: Barack
More on Obamanomics
2008-05-22 09:53:00
As I mentioned yesterday, the nuts and bolts of an Obama economic policy is much more market-oriented than the MSM has led us to believe -- to the economic right of Clinton for sure and possibly to the right of McCain (depending on whether you see another tax cut paired w/ a debt orgy as market-oriented or not). Now, David Friedman (the anarchocapitalist son of Milton Friedman) is coming out favor
Obamanomics
2008-05-21 09:53:00
After I read the great review of "Nudge" at LvMI this morning, I started doing a little reading on the subject and I stumbled upon this upcoming NYT review of the book.According to the article, Obama and his economic team oppose outright bans and strict regulations, but instead prefer the "nudging" approach. After reading the article, I've came to the conclusion that Obama is to the right of Clint
Why Obama-Hagel Makes So Much Sense
2008-05-23 15:39:00
As I mentioned earlier today over at LRC, an Obama
-Hagel
ticket is making more and more sense. After taking a look at the electoral college calculator, the Democrats win if they (1) win Iowa, (2) win Colorado, and (3) win Omaha's Congressional District (Obama could also win w/ NM and NV if they lose CO). Based on that, Hagel will deliver at least one of Nebraska's 5 electoral votes (maybe even tak
Read more: Sense
From Jonah's Lips to God's Ears
2008-05-23 15:29:00
Yesterday, I fantasized about McCain running on a unity NeoCon ticket, a ticket that would be a political windfall for the Libertarian Party. Today, NRO's Jonah
Goldberg calls for the very same thing:Meanwhile, a national-unity ticket would, among other things, expose Obama’s fraudulent claims to be a post-partisan uniter and reformer. The party-line, left-wing Democrat has done almost nothing i
NRO: 'Barr is Irrelevant'
2008-05-22 13:39:00
So irrelevant that the NRO brain trust had to put together an editorial excoriating Barr for changing his mind on the Patriot Act, the War on Drugs, and the Global War on Tactics:We don’t begrudge anyone the right to change their views, and applaud Barr’s change on medical marijuana. But on the war on terror, he’s simply wrong, opposing laws that have updated and rationalized the government
Read more: Irrelevant
Update: More on Obamanomics
2008-05-22 13:12:00
Update: I received an e-mail from a reader who did not buy the ends/means argument, but Murray Rothbard sure did. From his essay "Left and Right: Prospects for Liberty" (1965): Thus, with liberalism abandoned from within, there was no longer a party of hope in the Western world, no longer a “Left” movement to lead a struggle against the state and against the unbreached remainder of the Old Ord
Read more: Update
Libertarian Leverage
2008-05-27 09:57:00
Via Liberty Maven, Ron Paul Forums member 'Peace&Freedom' made an excellent post summarizing five ways that the Barr-Root ticket advances the rEVOLution. In a nutshell, the Barr-Root ticket will:1. Ensure McCain's defeat, making it easier for Ron Paul Republicans to take over the party in the next cycle.2. Pressures the GOP to move towards a pro-liberty position from within and without3. A strong
Read more: Libertarian
, Leverage
Libertarian Leverage
2008-05-27 09:57:00
Via Liberty Maven, Ron Paul Forums member 'Peace&Freedom' made an excellent post summarizing five ways that the Barr-Root ticket advances the rEVOLution. In a nutshell, the Barr-Root ticket will:1. Ensure McCain's defeat, making it easier for Ron Paul Republicans to take over the party in the next cycle.2. Pressures the GOP to move towards a pro-liberty position from within and without3. A strong
Read more: Libertarian
, Leverage
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