On the 20 Year Anniversary of Ruby Ridge

Ruby Ridge energized the radical militarized part of the right wing in a way it had not been energized for years. Ruby Ridge was the event in which the U.S. government set out to determine whether a man who had bought land and moved his family there to get away from what he called a corrupt world, was "connected to" white supremacist or anti-government groups.

What libertarian--and even we Objectivists--are not opposed to the government? It seems that some of our 21st century objections come right from this wrongful use of government power that then turned to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, where it killed 76 people, after a 51-day standoff, by accidentally starting their building on fire. These two events were cited by Timothy McVeigh as one reason for his part in the Oklahoma City bombing.

But no right wing sentiment is justification for taking the lives of other innocent people, as McVeigh did. Whether it is justification for killing certain guilty officers of the government in an act of revolution is yet another question. During the American Revolution there were patriotic Americans who detested the acts of the British government, but rationally set forth their reasons to say it wasn't enough for a revolution.

Yet, short of killing specific government officers guilty of acting with disregard toward the Constitution, what other means do the American people actually have for unseating an evil government? How can America have its own 'Arab Spring'?        

Sara Weaver, one of the survivors of Ruby Ridge, said she is devastated each time someone commits a violent act in the name of Ruby Ridge. "It killed me inside," she said of the Oklahoma City bombing. "I knew what it was like to lose a family member in violence. I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

Ms. Weaver, who's older brother was killed by officers in an ambush, and who's mother was killed as she opened her front door while holding one of her babies, by a bullet to the head by one of the government snipers, did not say it was wrong to kill innocent people, as McVeigh had done. Weaver only talked about losing family members in violence. One is not the same as the other. McVeigh was clearly wrong; but was the government? A wrongful death settlement left Ms. Weaver and her sister each $1million. Today the survivors would ask for more, much more.

The Whiskey Rebellion was the first instance of the government using its force against Americans opposed to its use of power. During President Washington's first term Alexander Hamilton needed to raise money to pay federal debts, and persuaded Congress to pass an excise tax on the manufacture of whiskey. The tax was resisted, as it appeared that the eastern "big business" whiskey producers were being favored. When a taxman went to one area of western Pennsylvania, more than 500 armed men resisted. This should have been a wake up call to the new government that it was doing something wrong, but it didn't work. President Washington told the States to call out their militia to quell the resistance, and then he rode at the head of those forces, 15,000 strong. What better demonstration of government force than to have the President lead the army against you?

This use of federal armed power against Americans was one of the reasons for the formation of Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, which later repealed the tax. And now we have the spectacle of President Obama's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law Dec. 31, 2011. "President Obama [ ] will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. The President can put you or I into jail indefinitely, without a cause presented to us and without an attorney--if he alone says so.

There is currently a preliminary federal injunction blocking its enforcement. Truth-Out.org said, "US District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York Katherine B. Forrest agreed [that a part of the NDAA would prevent journalists from talking to the enemy]. In a 68-page opinion, she wrote [that journalist Chris] Hedges' and his co-plaintiffs fears that section 1021 could impact their First Amendment rights are 'chilling,' 'reasonable' and 'real'."

But it could be used against you, me, our neighbors, our family members as well, if the President--and the President alone has the authority--decides that an American citizen, anywhere in the world including in our own home, was:

"a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces,"

These fears are 'chilling,' 'reasonable' and 'real' because neither Congress nor the president defined the terms 'substantial support,' 'associated forces' or 'directly supported', not to mention that neither al-Qaeda nor the Taliban can always be easily identified, and that a 'belligerent act' could be anything, including spitting on the sidewalk in a display of your disdain.

President Obama is energizing most of the right wing, both of the sort that has religious sensibilities, and the sort that says their guns will have to be taken from their cold, dead fingers. But he's not where the trouble began; he's only the trouble we elected.

We must stand for our state's sovereignty, our unalienable rights, above all for our individualism against the behemoth that is flying drones in our skies above us, and that is listening to our every phone and internet conversation for the secret words that trigger an investigation to determine whether we are 'connected to' this, that, or the other thing, or whatever it wants to call a 'belligerent act'.

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© Curtis Edward Clark 2012

Proof Nobody 'Gets It' About Economy

Mitt Romney, replying to a question by Gayle King on CBS This Morning said, "Well, of course, we have to have regulation on Wall Street and on every street to make sure that our economy works well..."

Do we, Mr. Romney? We cannot call our system 'free enterprise' when that phrase, meaning an economy run by the forces of the market place, is instead run by political ideology. It doesn't matter if we mean your ideology or Obama's or Marx's. If an economy isn't free of politics, then you can't use the phrase.

On the self-declared Marxist website Political Affairs, author John Case discussing science-based economics wrote, "You cannot ever make economics non-political." However, he then goes on to explain how libertarian, Austrian-school economics is not political. He even states unequivocally that "The 'Austrian School' is the opposite of a data or evidence driven framework." Case cites Paul Samuelson's Keynesian economics as "a more scientific framework for economics." Case doesn't like libertarian economics.

Austrian economics is exactly the opposite of government's Keynesian-driven 'evidence', dealing exclusively instead with business evidence, the kind business people deal with on a sometimes hour-by-hour basis. Business professionals make decisions based on whatever they need to know when they need to know it, such as the rising prices of their materials or the falling price of their goods, or of their competitor's goods; the cost of transportation; the cost of labor, etc. These are not the things about which a government should worry; in fact, a government which protects men's rights ought to stay completely away from the things business professionals need to worry about.

A free nation needs to worry about protecting society from men who set out to bilk victims and receive ill-gotten gains, not about men working within legitimate market forces. Artificially affecting market forces makes the economy less able--in some cases impossible--to operate. When a government manipulates market forces using the evidence it chooses to see, it has no objective basis on which to set those manipulations. What objective standards could it possibly use since it is not operating a business?

As one example, should government help the trucking industry maintain status quo rates to prevent drivers from being laid off, or leave it alone so that producers can ship more cheaply, thereby creating more jobs or paying workers more (or both)? How can competition properly lower production and consumer prices, when government helps trucking companies maintain their current rates instead of letting market forces determine those?

But not even the conservatives like Romney seem to get this fact. Paul Ryan is nothing more than a conservative who attracts Tea Party labeling by being less progressive. Romney's desire to 'regulate every street' makes him sound very threatening. Does he mean such things as retaining the corn ethanol requirements, part of the Renewable Fuels Standard, that caused farmers to sell or slaughter livestock this summer because corn became so expensive when the drought prevented corn and wheat from growing? Using corn for ethenol is predicted to cause the price of our food to rise by as much as 14% in 2013.

(Read how farmers switched from growing white corn to yellow corn, "making the base of most Mexican foods unaffordable." What happens in one place, affects other places. Should things be affected by honest markets, or political ideologies?)

Economist Richard M. Salsman wrote in The Objective Standard, "There is a lagged influence between academic economics and public policy, but increasingly since the 1970s academic economists have recognized that free markets work, that 'market failure' reflects poorly defined and ill-protected property rights, and that boom-bust cycles and sapped prosperity are consequences of bad public policies."

He uses as examples of 'academic economists' the Nobel Prize winners F. A. Hayek of the 'Austrian-school' of economics (1974), the idea of 'monetarism' from Milton Friedman (1976), 'rational expectations' from Robert Lucas (1995) and Thomas Sargent (2011), the 'public choice' of James Buchanan (1986), and of supply-side economics by Robert Mundell (1999).

These are the economics that John Case and other Marxists, and progressives like President Obama and Hillary Clinton, abhor. Let's see whether Romney and Ryan come anywhere near such "academic" standards as those which advocate a really free economy.

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© Curtis Edward Clark 2012

Is There Originalism in the Tea Party?

Now that fiscal conservative Paul Ryan has been chosen as Mitt Romney's choice for VP, I think this is a good time to republish this article from last year. There seem to be many who think that because Ryan says he is a fan of Ayn Rand, that it means he is automatically some sort of laissez-faire radical. The fact is that in a recent FOX interview with Britt Hume, Ryan stated Rand had inspired him, but that that he is 'opposed' to her 'atheistic philosophy'. That is certainly not a rejection of her philosophy, but only of her atheism, because her atheism did not propel her economics or her support of individual sovereignty. But Paul Ryan is no Objectivist, any more than Alan Greenspan, who walked away from his Objectivist roots before he took the job of Chair of the Federal Reserve.
A good reference about this subject is at The Objective Standard, a publication that does not appear to be associated with any other Rand-oriented institutions. 

I am not ready to say whether or not anyone in the Tea Party has Originalist interpretations which they have or have not stated. I just don't know, yet. I questioned the office of Ron Paul, and the office of a locally-elected member of Congress, but as yet have gotten no response from either office. [And I never did.]

In March of 2010 the New York Times published an article about the lack of social issues in the Tea Party agenda. "The motto of the Tea Party Patriots, a large coalition of groups, is 'fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets.'....But the focus is also strategic: leaders think they can attract independent voters if they stay away from divisive issues."

In December of 2010 Suite 101 published this: "The Tea Party is a grass-roots movement in favor of smaller government, fiscal conservation, and an originalist interpretation of the Constitution."

The Atlantic said Tea Party members are "by and large, social conservatives, not social libertarians," and "In fact, it seems that the main intellectual solution offered, and problem posed, by the Tea Party movement is the connection between government spending and personal liberty."

That, for me, is the rub, especially if it is true--that the Tea Party sees their freedom only (or mostly) in fiscal conservatism, rather than in uprooting the anti-Constitutional legislation of coercion that has been allowed to survive not only debate, but to survive through various courts including the Supreme Court.

Why is it OK for members of the Tea Party to authorize or approve the spending of money on the dole if it is simply less money, enough less to make them happy to spend any at all? In other words, why is it OK to spend $5 trillion on Medicaid if it isn't OK to spend $15 trillion? Why is it OK to spend $500 million on a State's food stamp program, when they don't think its OK to spend $900 million? Where (and why) does the subjective line exist?

It is a subjective line, because there should be no line. Charity exists where charity is felt, not by local or State officials who have no right to redistribute what Peter has to feed Paul. It exists where concerned individuals and charitable institutions exist to feed, clothe, house, and give medical care to 'Paul'. That would be an Originalist interpretation, not necessarily on all government charity, but on such programs as social security, which is enforced on both employees and employers, yet which pays so little after retirement that anyone living only from that finds themselves in the poor column when compared to their wage-earning or pension-earning neighbors.

It wouldn't make it 'more Constitutional' if they were not in the poor column of government recipients. If our society was geared toward finding the solution to retirement income that is neither forced upon employees nor employers, a solution that does not redistribute wealth nor force anyone to set aside money but rather sets high standards of inducement for saving toward retirement, then the Constitutionality of such inducements would be the question.
   
But it is a Constitutional issue when only the cost/benefit ratio, or even simply the cost itself, is at issue rather than the law which makes the matter an issue to begin with.

The Tea Party needs its Originalists to step forward, take at least some of the reins, and steer the party, slowly-but-surely if slowly is necessary, toward the Founding ideas, rather than just in the direction of subjective and very temporal ideas, ideas that change as the political pendulum swings. The 'grass roots' represented by the Tea Party should be more substantive than to be simply fiscally conservative.

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© Curtis Edward Clark 2012

Goulash Collectivism in the US

It doesn't matter how large government becomes, when it's doing only what is proper to its powers according to the Constitution.

'Goulash collectivism' is the hodge-podge of the various political policies we live under, from LBJ's 'Great Society', from FDR's government employment of the unemployed, from JFK's altruistic "ask what you can do for your country"; to social security, to unending unemployment payments, to phony 'green' energy programs that destroy the oil and coal industries we still depend on, to our new insurance program of 'buy-it-or-get-taxed-for-not-doing-it' policy, to the over-all dogged and ferocious meddling by government in our lives.

That we are employing this goulash collectivism "is not just a fringe view," wrote Mark Trumbull, in The Christian Science Monitor. In a poll, "A majority said it should not be the government's role to redistribute wealth, and a majority said they prefer 'a smaller government providing less services'."

No, it is not just a fringe view, though it may be said that it isn't the left wing progressives who are going to admit it. But it is odd how those progressives can turn and twist the message of prior leaders to fit their own agenda. President Lincoln, said President Obama last year, told us "that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves." He wanted to establish that the redistribution of wealth (his words, not mine) was something we cannot do at all for ourselves--as if it was something that ought to be done in the first place.

While we should not even be trying to do such a thing for ourselves, should we doing it through government, and should a political leader turn the words of other leaders into what they were not meant to say? The things that people "cannot do, or cannot well do, for themselves, fall into two classes," Lincoln said. The first class "embraces all crimes, misdemeanors and non-performance of contracts. The other embraces all which...requires combined action, as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself."

In the last few years the case has been made that Lincoln was a socialist. Even the politically libertarian Congressman Ron Paul has gotten into that act. But it is clear from the quote that our current President used Lincoln's words out of context. Lincoln also said, "I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men’s rights." That is libertarianism, not socialism; it upholds the Ninth Amendment and the idea of individual sovereignty.

It's clear that the progressives could throw as many progressive-sounding quotes from Lincoln as anyone else could throw freedom-loving quotes, but it is another thing altogether to use a quote out of context.

And what is really out of context is a debate over the size of government versus its proper purposes, as were described by Lincoln. If a government is doing only what is proper to it according to the Constitution, it doesn't matter how large it becomes. If the Federal and State governments were doing only what is proper and Constitutional, governments would be larger than they are now if we had the same number of citizens as mainland China.

Yet, the very things that progressives advocate are social programs which Originalist readings show the Founders were entirely against. Until the "Affordable Health Care for America Act" was passed, the biggest social overhaul of government services and of social justice programs was the Great Society, the various acts passed by the progressive President Lyndon Johnson. His anti-poverty program was the most far-reaching piece of socialism in US history.

"Because it is right, because it is wise, and because, for the first time in our history, it is possible to conquer poverty," LBJ told us to justify his meddling. Through his "Economic Opportunity Act of 1964" he began to transfer money from those who had, to those who had not, from "each according to his ability, to each according to his need," just as Marx said ought to be done.

This is not the original purpose of any part of the Constitution, as described by any of the Founders, yet the poverty of those who receive it no worse than it was in 1776--except in comparison to those who are not impoverished. Poor is poor. Yet, the poverty guidelines for 2012 are $11,170 for an individual, while the average income for all Americans is $47,000. So 'poor' is measured as one-quarter of the average, while in the first years of our nation one-quarter of the average would have been a God-send. And yet James Madison said, "Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." He saw the black-and-white of the meaning of the Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson, forecasting what Marx would later say was the proper thing, was more more on the moral mark than Madison, when he wrote, "To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”


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© Curtis Edward Clark 2012