On Dogs and Tea

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/china-s-dog-meat-festival-opens-despite-ban-rumours-8964726

***Li Yongwei, a Yulin resident in his 40s, said dog was the same as any other meat. “You shouldn’t force people to make choices they don’t want to make, the way you wouldn’t force someone to be a Christian or a Buddhist or a Muslim,” he said.***

Li, a budding Lockean seems not to notice that the People’s Republic Of China has no qualms about forbidding Christianity other than under the auspices of the Party-sanctioned Church.

Only a people brainwashed that they have no national culture would defend dog meat as no different than say pork . All Cultures Are Equally Arbitrary is the motto of our “multicultural youth”.
Multiculturalism cannot exist within an individual, other than in multiple personality disorders. (And even then, I wonder if there has ever been a case of such?)

Pigs are supposedly intelligent. But pigs have not evolved like dogs. Dogs have evolved extreme sensitivity to humans’ emotional cues. And their facial muscles (especially Goldens) very much express their thoughts and feelings.
So, the “west eats pork and therefore cannot protest East Asian dog-eating” is not valid.
But what if it were valid. Does the fact that cultures are comprised of arbitrary symbols, signs and ethics mean they are equally as good? “Oh”, the intilecktchuel responds “‘good’ and ‘bad’ themselves are *mere* arbitrary constructions.”
And so is language. But intilecktchuels blather on endlessly spewing syllables like birdsong never perceiving that their every utterance is *merely* an arbitrary sound, or group of squiggles on a page!

WHY DO WE ALLOW CHINESE PRODUCTS TO POUR INTO AMERICA? The Miseans (neo-confederates) argue that Free Trade is based on libertarian principles. Clearly, these are principles the Framers of the Constitution knew not. Congress is given the authority to develop trade policies viz. foreign nations.
The Free Traders then try Utilitarian argument: that if each country specializes in producing that which it does well and efficiently and trades with other countries all will benefit.
But this breaks down completely when some nations keep their workers’ wages to a bare minimum. It allows the production of nearly everything to be offered for less money.
“The choice is in our hands” i.e. we can choose to not purchase Chinese products. This is not a valid argument. The Tea in the ships at the Boston wharves were taxed minisculey. The British East India Company had created a tea glut. The taxed British tea was less expensive than the smuggled product. Human nature being what it is, and not what it’s not, will only rarely forgo immediate self interest in the interests of a better future or out of morality.
The Sons of Liberty unlike the future Sans Coulottes of the French Revolution and then the Reds of the Russian Revolution did not claim the right to “remold the world closer to the heart’s desire”. The American Revolution did not attempt to change human nature.
Taxed Tea was intolerable. Even if it were cheaper than smuggled untaxed tea. Human nature was not going to be changed by the Sons, but the temptation of the tea would be removed.
Same with claiming that Americans vote for cheap Chinese imports with their dollars. Perhaps so. But we have no qualms about outlawing various drugs because they are addictive. The product of coolie labor is addictive.
Boycott it, yes. But that is not sufficient. Destroy it at the docks is the Sons of Liberty’s way. The American way!

THE MURDER OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: Stand Your Ground

THE MURDER OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
I have always dreaded the coming Civil “Unrest”. THEY wish for nothing so much as “armed white Christian militia” to fire at their minions. Then the iron-fisted Police State will be unleashed.

THEY are deliberately importing hordes of foreigners in order to make all people in America minorities, and thus destroy any sense of an American culture and nation.

John Locke and the Enlightenment Philosophers whose thinking informed the formation of America, recognized that human society itself is organic and largely self-governing.
The State of Nature as Thomas Hobbes saw it was “ware (war)as is of every man against every man“. And men’s lives were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Thus, Hobbes attempted to justify the imposition of authority from above to maintain peace. In this case it was the British Monarchy which he defended as necessary.

Locke however, as the first English liberal (in the classic sense, which we must reclaim!) recognized that Hobbes was wrong. Locke had a more optimistic sense of humanity. Society develops organically. It spontaneously self-assembles through organic institutions, such as Religion, Trade and the rules of moral behavior. Government is required only for the purposes of protecting the society from external predatory societies, and from predatory individuals within the society. There are also large complex projects over which only Government can organize: large-scale irrigation, erection of forts (no jokes! I heard that snickering in the back row!), monuments, food storage etc.
WHAT THE NWO LACKEYS and Trendies are attempting, successfully, is the deliberate destruction of the ORGANIC nature of America. There is unmitigated war against everything and anything that once went without saying. Even English is dismissed as the National Language. There is NO AMERICAN NATION allowed in the sense of a nation being the sum of culture, language, borders and People. America is to be a mere geographic expression. There is no specific American culture, language, general belief system or morality. There are Italian, French, Japanese and thousands of other Peoples. But even the suggestion of an AMERICAN PEOPLE is mocked as passé at best, and more likely dismissed as triumphalist, xenophobic, racist, ethnocentric and whatever PC sin comes to mind.
NEVER in all of history do I know of any case in which a nation’s culture was deliberately destroyed by its government!  (With the notable exceptions of the USSR and Red China.  Now that is a very exclusive set, indeed!)
ONLY A GOVERNMENT seeking TOTALITARIAN political power would deliberately destroy all competitive institutions. Organic sources of cultural norms and mores must therefore be “deconstructed“.  ONLY GOVERNMENT can maintain cohesion in such an atomized STATE.
****
I HAVE ALWAYS DREADED THE POTENTIAL “CIVIL UNREST” that will herald the de facto Police State becoming de jure.
We are dying as a People; our organic institutions are under mortal attack. IF WE DO NOT RISE UP AND CLOSE OUR BORDER AND FIGHT ANY WHO WOULD DARE INTERVENE by attacking us as “racists, white supremacists, vigilantes, extremists” etc we shall perish as a People and a Nation. Let us at least be remembered as a PEOPLE who did not shuffle forlornly and meekly into extinction. If America dies, let our death be as heroic as those who gave their last full measure to gain and preserve our Liberty and Independence.

Yahoo: Nausea Journalism

http://news.yahoo.com/column-enlightening-puzzled-republicans-180944211.html
YAHOO carries a story from “Reuters” by a Nicholas Wapshott.  It is one of those articles that is so wrong on so many levels that one wonders where to begin.  Here is the lead off paragraph to set the tone.

“Moderate Republicans cannot fathom what has happened to their party.
Once a happy band of no-nonsense, pro-business conservatives, cautious in everything from money to marriage — including their wary response to the onward march of 1960s liberal social values — they were prepared, within reason, to trim their policies to match the voters’ mood. After all, to achieve anything in government you first have to win elections.”  

Wapshott of the Glib & Facile School of Journalism misses the “good ol’ boy” finger-to-the-wind, say-anything, promise-everything party of his woozy memory; a Golden Age of Blue Blooded Northeastern Republicans conning Midwestern Bible-reading simpletons into supporting low corporate taxes in return for Mom, Apple Pie, and family farm subsidies.  Wapshott sees both “regressive” groups as body-checking the forward rush to Post-Modern America.  “Unfair!” he subliminally whines, they were already labeled and filed under the appropriate headings (Racist, Misogynist, Homophobic, Plutocratic etc. etc.)  How dare they engage in Evolution (which must be taught as dogma in the schools!)?
“Republicans puzzled by the rise of dogma and division in their party” begins Nicholas in his empathic embrace of the poor little rich party that was.  Somehow the “wary response” to the cultural revolution that broke out in The Sixties has been forgiven, and is no longer dogmatic nor divisive?
After several paragraphs “proving” that “radical conservatives” in the Party have been soundly defeated whether in Primaries or in the General Election citing of course “Mr. Republican” Barry Goldwater, he reluctantly turns towards “the likeable Ronald Reagan, who put a Hollywood gloss on ultra-conservatism. Once in the White House, the former California governor turned out to be more amenable to horse-trading than his obdurate campaign rhetoric suggested.”  So in fact Reagan was merely a tepid moderate playing a role as an ultra-conservative principled leader.  Hmm, the clever grad of the G & F School of Journalism sure has “unpacked” RR.  (Not.)
Now the author cuts to his point.  All the above was written to distinguish the past with the current “GOP base, who demand no compromises, no bargaining in Congress, no tax rises, no politics as usual“.  To accuse us, The Tea Party “and the libertarian wing” of the GOP as obdurate and unwilling to compromise principle is meant to be damning!  But, he is so molded by Newthink that standing on principle, to him, is a ludicrous posture taken by a naif, and not the mark of a serious “player”.  Mr. Wapshott seems to enjoy believing that we who identify with the Tea Party are unaware of the role of compromise in the art of politics.  This is not so, however.
I have not been aware of any sense of intransigence among the Tea Party or our more libertarian brothers.  What the author calls obduracy and intransigence was merely our making recourse to the single branch of Government in our hands.  The Left (let us quit the charade, the modern Democratic Party is socialist and authoritarian) controls the White House and the Federal Bureaucracy and the Senate.  The Supreme Court has become unmoored from The Constitution and its rulings are not predictable, nor based on any underlying rationale.  (The finding that the fine for not purchasing Federally approved health insurance is in actuality not a fine but a tax is in and of itself proof enough!)  The only means at hand to halt the steamroller of ObamaCare was seen as the House of Representatives and specifically its power of the purse.  The House Republicans who refused to pass a continuing resolution without some relief from the Affordable Care Act were not stamping their feet and holding their breath over a triviality.  In fact, in the weeks following the surrender and the passage of the “clean” Continuing Resolution to fund the Government, the roll out of the ObamaCare Program was so chaotic that it seems as many Leftists are seeking to delay the deadline for registering as well as Conservatives.  This proves that the House’s motives were serious enough to warrant the exercise of its power to block spending.  Thus it paints their decision as pragmatic and not dogmatic!

Next Mr. W goes on to lecture us on the proper role of government in a republic and his take on liberty.  “Even before the crash of 2008 and the 2009 fiscal stimulus that ignited the Tea Party, libertarians had begun infiltrating the Republican Party. Their emphasis is a belief that the problem with almost everything is the government — or what everyone else calls the democratic will of the people.”  Libertarians infiltrated (like Viet Cong, or Al Qaida?) the GOP.  Here is the nub of the article that so irritated me.  He equates libertarian ideals with skepticism of governments’ motives and ability.  This is a weak definition.  Until Journalism Schools began their export of priestly interpreters of the signs of the times most Americans had a healthy distrust of Government.  This was the bare minimum of good citizenship.  A libertarian of course distrusts government.  But what the Journalist fails to recognize is that libertarians trust individual human beings.  Or to be more exact, libertarians trust other individuals who are rational agents who legally and morally go about seeking to better themselves.  We trust that humans guided by morals and rational self-interest will create self-assembling societies.  Notice how the author describes the antithesis of liberty: the democratic will of the people!
As the woman screeched “That man was right!” this man too, is right!  The “democratic will of the people” is the false idol created by despots and tyrants since the dawn of time.  Elections do not create or diminish rights.  Majority-based laws are valid only within the very circumscribed area into which we have delegated some of our personal sovereignty.  The Democratic Will of The People has no legitimate business inside my property, with my person. or with my property.  If no single individual has the right to take that which is mine, or force me to do that which I loath, then a majority of them have no greater right.  Zero times N is zero. They apparently do not cover algebra at the G & F School of Journalism.
Next, he takes a look at the schisms within the Party on wedge issues, i.e. abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, and legalization of  marijuana.  He discovers large differences on these issues between those who identify themselves as libertarian versus those who would call themselves Tea Party supporters, and asks “So where does this leave moderate Republicans?”

What the author cannot understand is that mature adults can seek common-ground in important matters and agree to disagree on others.  Unlike the Democratic Party with its rigid Stalinist conformity and talking points, the Republican Party retains the qualities of individuality.  The alleged differences in approach to the above listed wedge issues vanishes when both libertarian and Tea Party republicans look to restore government to its proper place. Both groups dislike the arrogance of government.  Many Tea Party folks who stand against Gay Marriage, and other social issues do so because they rightly perceive that special interest groups are using the coercive power of government to change society.  The commonality of all but the tepid Chamber of Commerce cadre will stand together to resist the Leftist conceit that the government stands above Society.  The Republican essence is that societies have governments but not the reverse: Governments do not have societies! 

A Redeclaration Of Independence?

The Federal Government has substituted itself for King George III.  The Executive, the Judicial and the Legislative Branches are all at fault.   It is not the just the Obama administration.  Nor the Bush administrations.  Nor the fault of the Clintons.  It is not the Democrat Party or  Republican Party that bears the blame, it is both.   It is the patient relentlessness of the Progressive Movement that is the cause.  It is the fault of human nature released and unhindered by Constitutional limits on government power.  It is the result of giving in to the temptation of using coercive force to advance pet theories of social improvement.  It is the result of using the Power of Government to reform human nature.  It is the fault of the Utopians.
We are all aware of the ringing rhetoric of the initial few paragraphs of The Declaration of Independence.  The individual points listed by Jefferson and signed off on is less widely discussed.  It is interesting to consider these points as they might  be seen today. The Federalist system as outlined in The Constitution has been totally crushed by the Federal Government.  We might derive benefit from comparing the points that placed the Founders at odds with the King in 1776 with those that put our Tea party movement at odds with the Political Establishment of both parties in the second decade of the Twenty-first Century.
So:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. The Federal Government has refused to enforce the laws passed by the Representatives of the People.  The Defense of Marriage Act was left unenforced by the current Attorney General’s Justice Department.  The Border was left unsecured despite Congress mandating the construction of a fence. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. Texas was threatened with a USAF enforced No Fly Zone if its State Law forbidding intrusive body searches was carried out.  Arizona’s attempt at policing its own illegal alien population was overturned by the Supreme Court, which is a Federal Institution.  In cases too innumerable to list the SCOTUS has overturned Laws enacted by the States that involve explicit powers not ceded to the Federal Government.  (All Powers not explicitly listed in the Constitution are reserved to the States and the People.) He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
The Federal Government has endeavored to increase the numbers of illegal aliens in the States, for the purpose of increasing the States’ expenditures on healthcare and welfare of impoverished foreigners.  This is to make the States more dependent upon the Federal Government than otherwise they would be.  They have encouraged the influx of foreigners for the purpose of lowering the price paid to laborers.  They are even at this very time attempting to make legal citizens of multiple millions of foreign-speaking aliens for the purpose of gaining ever more dependent populations.  This is for two purposes.  One: The century long push toward greater democracy has succeeded in overwhelming the limitations placed upon the proper arena wherein majoritarianism may dictate.  Massive numbers of poorly educated illiterate non-fluent English speakers being easily manipulated and bribed by government largesse serves the mob-tyranny’s purposes.  Two: the underlying hatred of Free Markets by the educated elite seeks the deliberate bankrupting of “The System”.  This is so they can say that “Capitalism has failed”, when in actuality they have destroyed it.  And this they do in order to once and for all destroy America as The Exceptional Nation.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
The Federal Government has established vast bureaucratic institutions that oppress the people.  Merely the cost of funding these bureaucracies is draining the pocketbooks of the People.  Even worse is the appropriation of the free use of private property by these branches of Federal Power. Privately owned lands are closed to farming, mining, building upon or any usage whatsoever by the whims of unelected Federal Bureaucrats.  They have invented a False Belief System called Man Made Climate Change.  They have falsely made catastrophic predictions.  They have used the crisis atmosphere to attack the very act of exhaling.  The Federal Environmental Agency has ruled that Carbon dioxide is a pollutant though there is no evidence that it is.  The Federal SCOTUS has ruled that this EPA may define anything as a pollutant and thus has empowered it to regulate every form of production and commerce.
They have sent militarized Food and Drug Administrators to storm dairy farmers for selling raw milk.  They have sent militarized EPA units to building sites to halt the owner’s attempts to improve it.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
The Federal Government has kept the United States of America on a total war footing for at least Seventy-Five years.  They have deliberately thrust us into the midst of Europe’s wars and machinations.  They have used the Armed Forces of the United States supposedly as defenders of the Liberties of foreign nations.  But even worse is the fact that they have used our Military to support oppressive regimes in diverse lands. They have illegally usurped the State Governors’ duties as Commander-In-Chief of the States’ Militias.  They have maintained a Standing Army larger than the greatest of European war-loving Nations.  They tax the American People in order to spend more on the Federal Military than the rest of the world does on its.
They have taken the United States to War without the expressed approval of the Congress.  They have created an International group of alliances and have put our military at the call of foreign states.
They are training a Paramilitary for domestic use.  The Department of Homeland Security another of the Bureaucratic despotisms eating out our sustenance is buying up the market of ammunition.  The Federal Government seeks to disarm the American People despite the Second Amendment.  They can only be motivated by the basest motives.  They have signed an International Small Weapons Ban that theoretically places American citizens under International Law, to be judged and prosecuted, fined and imprisoned by foreigners.
They have established networks of spies amongst our own people.  They treat the People as they might an enemy nation. They listen to our telecommunications.  They search without the approval of a Judge.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
The Federal Government has illegally entered the United States into International and Supranational Organizations foreign to our Constitution. They have placed dangerously powerful bureaucracies over us.  They have created an Internal Armed Force found nowhere in the Constitution.  They pass laws with names designed to trick the many.  The Patriot Act is one that criminalizes the Patriot!  The Department of Homeland Security is deployed throughout our lands.  It is aimed at we the people.  The Federal Government looks at Americans who support the Constitution and Liberty as enemies of the state!
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
Deliberate armed attacks on religious separatists resulted in no prosecutions for the  murder of children and women.  They claim the right to kill any American who they believe is an enemy of their government.  Many whistleblowers and reporters have died in unusual circumstances.  They have lost our trust.  We now imagine the F.G doing things once thought unimaginable.
The deliberate shipping of guns to known criminals was not only considered but also acted upon.  Guns were sold to foreign criminals who used them to kill thousands of innocents in their own country of Mexico.  And it was expected that there would be killings of Americans in America.  This was done in order to gain the support of the people for disarming themselves.  They have misled the People into fearing guns rather than the criminals who misuse them.
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
In this case the Federal Government has enacted Trade Policy that has markedly harmed the People of the USA.  Though the Constitution gives the Congress the power to regulate international trade it has abdicated that role to the Executive.  The F.G. has enacted Trade Agreements with foreign nations in order to further the interests of the select few.  They have forced the American born laborer to compete with the hordes of Asia.  The vast improvements in shipping have diminished the price of importing most products across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.  The great Cities of the American Heartland where the industrial might of the nation once held sway have become rusted blighted regions.  They have allowed inexpensive imports to replace nearly all American production returning our export profile to that which is seen in developing nations; raw materials, agricultural products and the like. They have allowed the jobs that may not be done cheaper overseas by Asian coolies to be done by foreigners who are present here illegally.  They have encouraged the undermining of the rule of law by turning a blind eye on these practices because the bottom line of the few is benefited.
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
The Federal Government imposes fees and licenses upon every conceivable activity.  They are forcing Americans to purchase Health Insurance covering conditions that they would otherwise not be concerned about.  Their Supreme Court has termed this a “Tax”.
The IRS has been used as a Political Arm of the Federal Government.   It has abused its taxing power by selective scrutiny.  Its taxing power itself is of unclear Constitutional validity.
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
As listed above unelected bureaucrats are depriving many American citizens of their property rights.  In the name of the “Patriot Act” citizens may be investigated without a search warrant.  They may be tried in so-called FISA courts that are not in the public domain.  Often as part of the judgment the afflicted parties are forbidden from speaking of their experiences.
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
Gitmo. The Federal Government has constructed a prison in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.  The claim that this is not on American Territory “allows” them to keep prisoners taken from anywhere in the entire world.  American citizens accused of crimes against their own country have been and are kept there as well.
For abolishing the free System of English Laws … For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
The Federal Government in the course of two and a quarter centuries has usurped most of the Powers carefully and deliberately left to the States.  This has been so thorough that the word “state” has achieved an additional definition. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/state
Definition 5 a : a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory; especially : one that is sovereign.  This was the definition of the word in 1787. It is only with the passing of time especially after the Civil War that definition 7 evolved. a : one of the constituent units of a nation having a federal government “the fifty states”.  The States were originally the fount of Sovereignty.  Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution does cede to the Federal Government the power “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States.”   However Americans were Citizens of their respective State.  It was only by virtue of one’s citizenship in a State of the Union that one was considered to be an American citizen.  But on July 9 1868 it was changed.  After the Civil War The Fourteenth Amendment was added.  Former Confederate States were required to ratify it before they were restored to the Union.  The original sin of Slavery still exacts is toll.  In reaction to the low purpose to which States’ Rights were put, we have now a Federal Despotism.
The F.G. altered the composition of the US Senate.  Article One Section 3.The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State chosen by the Legislature thereof for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.   This is a key point in understanding the Framers’ understanding of the Federal System.  The Senate was envisioned as essentially a conference of Ambassadors, two from each State.  This once more shows the nearly full sovereignty the States were presumed to retain.  This was the law of the land for most of American History!   Progressives had been campaigning for a change to popular election of the Senate.  They succeeded and under the demonic Woodrow Wilson the Seventeenth Amendment rewrote this law. William Jennings Bryan and the reformers argued for popular election of the US Senate.   In a foretaste of what was to become their standard operating procedure their methods included highlighting perceived flaws with the existing system, specifically corruption and electoral deadlocks, and through arousing populist sentiment. ‘Most important was the populist argument; that there was a need to “Awaken, in the senators…a more acute sense of responsibility to the people”, which it was felt they lacked; election through state legislatures was seen as an anachronism that was out of step with the wishes of the American people, and one that had led to the Senate becoming “a sort of aristocratic body – too far removed from the people, beyond their reach, and with no special interest in their welfare“.’ (Quoted from Wiki quoting ““Ulysses at the Mast: Democracy, Federalism, and the Sirens’ Song of the Seventeenth Amendment” by Jay. S. Bybee.)

On the other hand “Ralph A. Rossum, writing in the San Diego Law Review, notes that the debate over the amendment’s adoption lacked “any serious or systematic considerations of its potential impact on federalism…The popular press, the party platforms, the state memorials, the House and Senate debates, and the state legislative debates during ratification focused almost exclusively on expanding democracy, eliminating political corruption, defeating elitism and freeing the states from what they had come to regard as an onerous and difficult responsibility. The only three exceptions were Root, Hoar, and Representative Franklin Bartlett” (Wiki article on the Seventeenth Amendment).  Perhaps here is the first example of the bum’s rush used to such effect in the “Affordable Care Act” and the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act” out of the Senate.  The Constitution’s Senate was to be the domain of established men.  It was the opposing force to the populist House of Representatives.  The political establishment of the State, presumably knowledgeable of the issues important to its economy would be represented in the Senate.  Clearly this would not do for the Progressives.  They rightly saw the Established pillars of the community as being a bulwark against statist redistribution.   A mere glance at Chuck Schumer, John McCain and the rest of the Gang of Eight is unfortunate evidence of the original wisdom of the Constitution.  The existence of such an Asiatic gang belongs in the Peoples’ Republic of China not in the US Senate.  This is the result of popular election of Senators.
In fact, if there were one thing and one thing only to undo it would be this Seventeenth Amendment. The Seventeenth Amendment has done more to undermine the true Federalist relationship between the National Government and The States than any other act.  The masses of the voters are not well educated or sophisticated enough to resist the temptations of the demagogue.  The particularities of the individual State’s interests as distilled through the local and State legislatures is eradicated.  Thus the interests of a politically savvy class who are economically creatures of the Nation are united across State lines.  In the same manner a newer set of politically savvy creatures of the Global economic space is eroding the particularities of “mere” national interests.  The Seventeenth Amendment deserves its own dedicated essay.

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
The F.G. through its Supreme Court and Constitutional Amendments has overturned a multitude of State laws; all adopted through open State Legislatures in accordance with established State Constitutions.  They have abused the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution to construe a right to impose whimsical theories of social betterment upon the People.
They are buying entire production runs of ammo in order to make an end run around the Second Amendment.  Instead of the right to bear arms we are going to be left with the right to bare arms.  Arms without ammo are bare and useless.  They have created a new paramilitary force that is nowhere empowered by the Constitution.  It is a standing army and worse.  It is a standing army tasked with the mission of waging war against the People.  They have militarized the Federal Emergency Management Agency; an agency itself not conceivable to the Founding Federalists.  They have utilized natural disasters to disarm citizens.  They boast of never letting a good crisis go to waste!  And they have shown the willingness to create crises if none are naturally forthcoming.  FEMA has signed an agreement with its Russian equivalent in which they agree to train and prepare to “help” with the others’ emergency mass situations.  This is high treason.  The presence of armed Russians at any American mass emergency would itself constitute the greatest emergency ever witnessed on this Continent.  Manpower is not lacking in America.  The only  “advantage” Russians would afford the F.G. is a willingness to fire upon Americans that fellow Americans might refuse.  In exactly the same manner the Hessians were utilized against the English-speaking colonists.  Fellow Englishmen overall would not take vengeance upon civilians.  But the Hessians would.
They have arrayed a suite of high tech weapons and spy-ware against us, the American People.  Whether we wish it or not, they are making war upon us.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
The agents of Federal Tyranny are actively stirring up racial animosities among the American People.  They have enticed mentally handicapped persons to take part in conspiracies aimed at creating Crises, crises that are not wasted.  They have invited foreigners who have no common heritage with our history, languages or religions to come in mass migrations.  They have traveled the world apologizing in our name for evil and malevolent deeds that we have not committed.  They attempt to frighten us with Terror that is attributed to the very foreigners they have forced us to accept into our communities.  They do so to justify the paramilitary police state aimed at us.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
We have petitioned many referenda only to have the Federal Courts disavow them.  We have passed State laws only to see them too overturned.  We have tried to nominate candidates to represent us but the Federal Courts have intruded into the manner in which we conduct our primaries.  The IRS has illegally placed roadblocks to our Political Action groups.  We have been labeled as terrorists for resisting tyranny.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Federal brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the true united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies(States), solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies (States) are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Federal Tyranny as it is now composed, and that all political connection between them and the State of The USSA, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

No FUN!

 

“The Vet Will See You Now”

Federalist Society success inspires campus copies news.yahoo.comDURHAM, N.C. (AP) — A new conservatism is beginning to emerge on some college campuses, spurred in part by opposition to President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. This AP story cannot help dropping its pants. The last paragraph “The Benjamin Rush Society traces its roots to 2008, when Canadian activist Sally Pipes organized a Washington meeting with support from the Kansas City-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Its credo: “the profession of medicine calls its practitioners to serve their patients rather than the government.” Conversely, they also support so-called “concierge medicine” in which those with more money pay for individualized care otherwise unavailable.”
NOTICE THE “CONVERSELY”. NOTICE THE “SO-CALLED” Concierge Medicine.
Only one with preconceived notions of what the word “patients” means could define the two points as being opposed. Serving patients per the AP apparently means Patients In The Abstract. Only by reading “patients” as meaning the General Public can “Concierge Medicine” be considered “converse”.
This is exactly the problem. This is the nub of every debate about Left vs. “Right”; Socialism vs Free Enterprise, Statism vs. Capitalism, Slavery vs. Liberty!
The Leftist sees The People. The American Constitutionalist sees A Person.
The moral practicing doctor is in an individual doctor-patient relationship with EACH of his/ her patients. It is not a collective construct. The Leftist will invariably charge the moral practicing doctor with Public Health responsibilities.
In the past, the doctor was one of the more highly respected individuals in the community. This was not because he was a revered healer. In fact in times not so long past, the best doctor had little to offer the sick. He was however always one of the more educated men in town. The Doctor was traditionally literate in Latin and had exposure to the entire body of Western Literature. He was not naive to Political Philosophy, as the high numbers of physicians amongst the leaders of the American Revolution attests.
It is not mere happenstance that the diminishment of the social standing of doctors has occurred simultaneously with the evolution of Medical education. Rather than producing well-rounded humanists the process is producing extremely narrowly focused technicians. A better healer, yes (maybe!); but no longer is he a repository of classical Liberal education.
These medical students of the Rush Society have chosen well their name. They will be the soul of an otherwise soulless guild. They will be the Professional men and women, the few in a sea of non-Western/post-Western “providers”.
The practice of medicine is either based upon treating individuals OR upon treating populations. The former proposition requires doctors, the latter, veterinarians.
Despite their worst intentions the Left cannot overturn the No Free Lunch Law. The American people deserve doctors treating them individually not vets treating them as a herd animal. Or maybe not, maybe they do not deserve anything more than they demand?

No Visions Please (A Nod To William Findley)

William Findley

Gordon Wood tells the story of William Findley and the Pennsylvania assembly. To sum up his summary In The Radicalism of the American Revolution, the following:

“One of the crucial moments in American politics-maybe the crucial moment- occurred in 1786 during several days of debate in the Pennsylvania assembly over the rechartering of the Bank Of North America. “ During this time there was a widening divergence of interests between eastern Pennsylvania’s genteel class in Philadelphia, and the western entrepreneurs. The “Old Money” wanted to keep the amount of circulating money low. The westerners needed “cheap” money and more credit. Farmers needed capital for farming implements, seed and other supplies. The craftsmen and merchants needed capital as well to keep up with demand of an increasing population.

“The principles in this debate were William Findley, a Scotch-Irish ex-weaver from western Pennsylvania and a defender of the debtor-relief and paper-money interests in the state, and Robert Morris, the wealthiest merchant in the state, with aristocratic aspirations and a major supporter of the rechartering of the bank.”   William Findley was everything that the founders and the Federalist elite despised as “being narrow, illiberal, and interested…” Morris and his supporters in the Philadelphia gentry continued “to pose as disinterested gentlemen in the classical mold”. They sought to maintain that they, being Gentlemen were above “crass marketplace interests and concerned only with the public good”.

Findley and his supporters in the assembly responded with charges that Morris and his supporters were also interested men as well. This in and of itself was nothing new. It was standard, and remains standard rhetoric in political debate. But, Findley went where no man had gone before, and unfortunately few go today. “He accepted Morris’s and the other bank supporters’ interestedness in the bank and found, he said, nothing unusual or improper in their efforts”. “After all, they could hardly be expected to do otherwise.” Wood quotes Findley, “ Any others in their situation… would do as they did.” And here is the unrecognized second revolution, that which made America, America!   Findley stated, “They had every right to advocate their cause, on the floor of this house”. But they then had no right to pass off their support of their personal interests as acts of “disinterested virtue”! “The promotion of interests in politics suggested Findley, was quite legitimate, as long as it was open and above board and not disguised by specious claims of genteel disinterestedness. The promotion of private interests was in fact what American politics ought to be about.” These are Gordon Wood’s summary, and my highlighting.

This is what we have forgotten. Humility is admitting that The Public Good, or The Common Good is not knowable. All we can know (and even that, only approximately) is what our own interests are. It has been the willingness of Americans to at least subconsciously recognize this truth that allowed for the continuation of The Republic. There are but few points in which The Public Interest is clear and unified. Americans have always formed parties in which people of certain interests that have no problem with other people on different issues will agree to support each others legislation and to resist efforts of their common foes. The sum total of all the give and take of individual interests is admitted to be the only and best approximation of Common Interest.   The Federalist # 10 by Madison (the young Madison before TJ beguiled him) correctly asserted that the best protection against the government becoming too beholden to any particular interest was to be found in the very multiplicity of interests in a continental-sized republic.

We have been misled into the hubristic belief that there is One Public Interest, and we can know what it is. I suggest that the twenty-four hour a day seven days a week news media has allowed each of us a sense of having a God’s Eye view of our society at large. That necessarily creates hubris. When individual’s horizons are from Coast to Coast and in fact global, we believe we have a view from on high as to again claim “disinterestedness”. The ubiquitous media brings to our attention “issues” that would otherwise be unknown. Oh, there are men who wish to marry one another? Really? Hmm, well I guess we ought to discuss this, since it is a widespread phenomenon. CNN had a story about increasing income inequality? Oh, we ought to have a discussion about this. In other words concepts that are not visible to us in our normal lives are forced upon our attention. And through the media we are forced to have an opinion. We watch professional pundits opine on these “issues” and become personally involved as if the issues were any of our business. We are then led to believe that because we have opinions on these “issues” we must have our representatives get involved. Then regardless of which side of the “issue” one is on, we begin to agree that the government must be involved too.   Thus the Pro-Marriage Political Action Groups and the Gay Lesbian Transgendered Interplanetary PACs battle it out.   Our screens are filled with talking and debating heads, debating what the government should do. No matter which side gains, the government always wins. The government is the casino, and the house always wins!   This is why we demand “A Vision” from our Presidential candidates. But, unless this tendency to presume a “God-like” omniscience is seen for the illusion it is, we will merely substitute one “Wise Visionary” with another. Our belief that we are seeking some mystic Common Good that like a Platonic ideal lies beyond our actual interests is what drives the “culture wars”. And it is the wrongheaded belief that Government ought to be about creating the ideal society that is destroying Liberty.   We ought be concerned to realize that Plato’s Republic is diametrically opposed to American Liberty.   We must not send representatives to government who are “visionaries”. Visionaries are either poets or insane. They have no place in a self-governing republic.

Of course we have to stop the socialistic and totalitarian direction in which America is now moving. But let us stop making the argument that Obama is wrong because his understanding of The Public Good is flawed; while we have a more accurate understanding of it.   When Ideologues ask their opponents “what is your economic plan?” and an attempt at an answer is made, it only feeds into the very pernicious concept that there must be a Plan. Maybe “no plan” is better.

For the majority of American history, from Findley until our generation we voted in accordance with our perceived interests. We didn’t presume to know anything about some Common Good. Thus we are at a very dangerous time. We have stepped back from the nasty looking sausage machine of honest self-interest politics.   The pre-modern concept of the Elite Citizen-Philosophers ruling in The Public Interest appears again in the Post-Modern setting. This is the path that leads to the French Revolution, not the American.

CRONY CAPITALISM: the Impossible “Ideal”

Why should we allow the word “Crony” to besmirch the word “Capitalism”?  Crony ______ism is not Capitalism, of any kind.
“Capitalism” itself is a word that ought to be questionable. The implication is that it is a system based on a theory.  As such it is used as an antonym to “Socialism”.  Socialists probably coined the word “Capitalism” in order to create a false dichotomy, a false debate between two economic systems.  But this is not so.  Socialism is a system.  What is called “Capitalism” is merely descriptive of the sum total of exchanges between free adults making rational decisions in their own interests.  It is not a system.  It is not based on any Theory.  Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” was not a founding document for a system.  It was merely a description of the economic behaviors of free people.  It is not a “Capitalism’s Manifesto”!

“Capitalism”, as an “ism”, with its cigar smoking or monocle-wearing plutocrat was invented as the “thesis” required for Socialism’s “antithesis”.  By using their word we are colluding with Socialists! We should exclusively use the term “Free Enterprise” and refuse to countenance “Capitalism”.  Notice how “Crony-Free Market economics” is self-contradictory.  It does not compute.  How can a free people freely exchanging goods and services be aligned with cronyism?

A crony, requires a “croner”.  A croner is a person with the authority to use the power of the state to grant boons to his pals.  His pals are “cronies”.  Therefore for there to be cronies, there must be “croners” and for there to be croners, there must be a state apparatus powerful enough to intrude upon the free exchange of goods and services to favor certain connected pals over the non-connected.

Socialism with its overtly state-controlled economy is no more than the means of creating a Croner Class!  To those who use the term “Crony Capitalism” I would reply “Crony Socialism”.   I might add under my breath “I would if it weren’t a redundancy!”

ANTI-ANTI-FEDERALIST PAPER

ANTI-ANTI-FEDERALIST PAPER

There has been much vilification of the Constitution by the Statists and the Libertarians.  We shall ignore the Statists as being beyond remedial correction, for now.

It is the libertarian movement of Lew Rockwell, Ralph Raico, and the many others over at the Von Mises Ludwig Institute that concerns the supporters of Constitutional Federalism.

The Federalist Papers, written as individual freestanding essays, organized into a single volume with an underlying direction are well known.  They appeared in newspapers throughout the young United States.  Their purpose was clear; it was to make the case that the new Constitution was superior to the Articles of Confederation.  The Articles created a very loose confederacy of sovereign states.  The Central Government was absolutely a creature of the States.  It could recommend that the States fund it.  It restricted itself purely to being the interface of the united States and the rest of the world.  The lower case “u” in “united” is not a typo.  The Articles were an agreement among sovereign States that had agreed to present a common front to the world in regard to foreign policy, defense and trade.  The weakness of this system was made manifest in the financial turmoil and terrible credit rating of the new nation.  The Army was disbanded but for a small force to defend against Indians.  Even so, the Army leaders were often bedeviled by the actuality of being made up of Thirteen Armies.  The Congress could pass laws that required the States to fund the, but left the manner of collection to the states.  In the final analysis many times the States welshed on promises made in the Congress.  Though the call for the Constitutional Convention occurred before the outbreak of Shay’s Rebellion, this near anarchic state of affairs in western Massachusetts focused the delegates’ minds.
Shay’s Rebellion was due to the lack of circulating money and credit.  The individual states were saddled by debt run up in the Revolution.  Some states with land claims that were established in the early 1600’s claimed their western end was at the Pacific Ocean!  Thus, Virginia Pennsylvania, and North Carolina were selling their western lands across the Appalachians, and paying down their debts.  The New England States did not have claim to western lands.  Thus Massachusetts, suffered high state taxation, and severe monetary contraction.
The Articles were clearly not working.
The States sent delegates to a Convention to “fix” the problem with the Articles.  However, they voted themselves the authority to do away with it and start from scratch.
Once completed it had to be ratified by the States.  The Constitution created a far stronger and a more robust Federal Government than many had expected.  The fear of the replacement of the King of Britain by an American tyrant was hardly the reason the Revolution was fought!  To allay these fears, and to support the case for the Constitution, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison in concert wrote a series of articles published in the newspapers of the day.  They were read and discussed in taverns and Coffee Houses through out the United States.  That the newspaper-reading public could and would read their lengthy arguments replete with historical references is an embarrassment to our present citizenry!  Not even the New York Times today would be able to attract a readership for this writing style.  (Or better, what the NY Times-readers think of themselves would be diminished if these articles were the talk of Starbucks!)
There never was an organized response called “the Anti-Federalist Papers”!  Many dissenting voices wrote.  Many articles appeared in many newspapers with dire warnings of a too powerful central government.
WIKI: “Major Anti-Federalist authors included Cato (likely George Clinton; Brutus (likely Robert Bates), Centinel (Samuel Bryan), and the Federal Farmer (either Melanchthon Smith, Richard Henry Lee, or Mercy Otis Warren). Speeches by Patrick Henry and Smith are often included as well.

One of the major points of the articles was the danger the new Constitution would bring without a statement of individual rights. Some of the Anti-Federalist concerns were addressed in the Bill Of Rights, which was added later. Historian Ralph Ketcham comments on the opinions of Patrick Henry, George Mason and others who were not so eager to give up the local autonomy won by the revolution:

Anti-federalists feared what Patrick Henry termed the “consolidated government” proposed by the new Constitution. They saw in Federalist hopes for commercial growth and international prestige only the lust of ambitious men for a “splendid empire” that, in the time-honored way of empires, would oppress the people with taxes, conscription, and military campaigns. Uncertain that any government over so vast a domain as the United States could be controlled by the people, Antifederalists saw in the enlarged powers of the general government only the familiar threats to the rights and liberties of the people.

The Anti-Federalists (with their “a ‘splendid empire’ that, in the time-honored way of empires, would oppress the people with taxes, conscription, and military campaigns”) indeed seem to have been prescient.  But to make the case that it was the Constitution as ratified to some degree through the efforts of Hamilton, Jay and Madison that is to blame is a facile argument.
The Von Mises; Neo-Confederate wing of the libertarians have vilified Alexander Hamilton.  No matter is it that he was mortally wounded in a duel with the truly villainous Aaron Burr!  As the Constitutional Regime became operative, the Ideal of Gentlemen Leaders rising up above the pettiness of self-interest to legislate wisely became less than obvious.  However the United States lacked the numbers of truly wealthy Gentlemen of Britain.  Collecting rental money on their landed estates and becoming leisured, refined and educated with the ideals of the Enlightenment, worked in Britain.  Though Southern Plantation owners approached that level of “Gentility” they had to keep a sharp eye on the Tobacco markets, on their overseers, and on their slaves.  They were not as independent of interests as the British squire.  The Northern pretenders to Gentry were even more seen as poseurs.
The divide became between the Federalists and the Republicans.  The concept of parties was at first resisted.  Party was looked down upon from the lofty heights where men like President Washington existed.   The idea that men fresh from the mechanic shop, the shoemaker, the tradesmen of all kind could have a political opinion was just so unexpected.
Though the anti-Federalists objected to the ratification of the Constitution, as mentioned above, much of their impetus was taken by the addition of the Bill Of Rights.
Thus the current habit of setting The Federalist Papers symmetrically against the Antifederalists is glib and false.  For one, the former were a standard canon of essays by the three men; Hamilton, Jay and Madison.  There was never any official canon of writings or writers ever organized into The “Anti-Federalist Papers”.  The Complete Anti-Federalist, was written by Herbert J. Storing (1928-1977), a professor of Constitutional History and Law, The Federalist Papers, and, most notably, the Anti-Federalists. Prior to his death at the age of 49 he had completed most of his annotated seven-volume collection of Anti-Federalist writings, The Complete Anti-Federalist that was later completed by his former student Murray Dry.
Thus the “Anti-Federalist Papers” is a creation of the Twentieth Century.  It is today becoming popular and is a rally point for the resistance to the overweening Federal Government.
The Financial Leviathan of the Fed and other Global interests are seen as the conspiring against individual Americans’ Liberties, and against the interests of the USA.  This is something I agree with.

However, to trot out Alexander Hamilton as the demonic tool of International Banking is foolish.
The debates between Hamilton and Jefferson became enflamed even more by their opposing feelings on the French Revolution.  Hamilton the Anglophile who admired Britain’s ability to fund its military and her allies against the French Revolutionaries and later against Napoleon, was despised by the Francophile Jefferson who was not adverse to the guillotine and revolution.
In retrospect who was right?  What if Jefferson’s way prevailed.  They nearly resulted in Civil War, in the crisis of 1807.  The preceding Federalist, John Adams, was inherently disgusted at the violence ripping apart French society.  He armed US trading vessels to fend off the attacks by France on ships bound to Britain.  He was alarmed by the presence in the United States of French Revolutionaries.  Jefferson had even put one on the Federal payroll at his State department, during Washington’s last term.  Adams passed the Alien and Sedition Act out of a real fear that certain foreign intriguers were kindling the Revolutions sweeping Europe.  This “proved” the fears of the Jeffersonian/ anti-Federalist party called the Republican-Democrat Party.

To conflate all this with Hamilton’s financial construction at Treasury is to miss the point.

It was Hamilton’s plan for the Federal Government to assume the debts of all the States incurred during the American Revolution.  This debt had been discounted sharply as it became more and more evident that the government under the Articles would never be able to repay it.  Indeed, “money interests” bought it up at sharp discounts.  But when the US Constitutional Government agreed to make good on the entire debt, those who sold low hoping to save something from a bad investment lost out; because the Treasury paid face value, 100%.  This actually did benefit the “money men”.  But, it also benefitted the Credit of the USA.  That Credit allowed for the greatest growth of national size, wealth and power in world history!
Let us not wring our hands over the tyranny in the Federal Government and leave it at the feet of Hamilton and the Federalists.  Federalism stipulated checks and balances on the Federal and State Governments and between the Executive, legislative and Judiciary.  What we have now is no longer Federalism.  The fact is that Anti-Federalists if they had prevailed, the United States would never have become the greatest power in world history.  Too many of the Lew Rockwells prefer a weak America, rather than an imperial one.  However a weak America would have not survived the 1820’s let alone the Civil War.  No coincidence that the Von Mises Club considers Abraham Lincoln a tyrant.  They would prefer a multitude of weak independent states, perhaps involved with rival European powers, being passive in the world rather than the active America of modern history.  No they do not long for slavery.  But they believe the “sanctity” of States’ Rats supersede the benefits the Constitution have provided.
To go Anti-Federalist now is not to return the Federal Government back to its Constitutional size and mission.  It will distract from the better chances of the return to the Constitutional checks and balances that allowed the USA to produce more wealth for more people than any other nation in all of human history!

ALL LIBERTARIANS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL

NOT ALL LIBERTARIANS ARE CREATED EQUAL

The idea that Libertarianism is monolithic must be corrected. It is also important to point out that extreme Libertarianism in international affairs differs from Globalism in no particular manner.
(“Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace”)

The Radical Austrians perceive international borders to be illiberal impediments to people, capital, goods and services.
(“You, you may say 
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one”)
Many Ron Paulistas dream the same dream.  I am surprised, however that the most fierce of foes of sinister globalism, Alex Jones, and his clones are Paulistas.
Libertarian Constitutionalists agree on the premise that the Constitution as the Framers conceived it is the best hope of maintaining a Liberal republic.  It is the Constitutional piece that is required to maintain liberty; and unfortunately I am detecting a nascent anti-Constitutional, or anti-Federalist contingent within the Libertarian ranks.  The rise of those who would exhume Alexander Hamilton and exile him from the Pantheon of American Founders is an ominous sign of how far down the path of Anti-Federalism the Austrian Schooled radical libertarians wish to go.  Coupled with the sudden urge to “honestly” deal with Abe Lincoln, and declare him a Tyrant, by some of the supporters of the movement behind Ron Paul is concerning.  It becomes evident that even if the Constitution were to be fully restored there would remain legitimate differences in the policies that various interests would seek.  Indeed, when the Federal Government no longer is in charge of picking winners and ameliorating the losses of certain losers, there would remain a legitimate diversity of interests that would still need to be sorted out through deal-making and compromise of Representatives and Senators.  The return of legitimate Constitutional government would represent the beginning of new political debates; and this is good.  But it will raise the question of: now, what shall our reinvigorated Liberal republic do; how shall it conduct itself in the society of other sovereign nations and states?

How shall the Federal Government use the legitimate powers conferred upon it to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”?  These are political issues that are legitimate debates within a constitutional republic.  However, Dr. Paul and his followers have taken particular stances on some of these issues and have made them into tests of loyalty to Libertarian Doctrine, which they aren’t.

What if someone who is less enamored with the Constitution than another candidate, but the other candidate reflects one’s own opinion of a policy that is believed to be superior to the Constitutionalist’s proposed use of Constitutional power?

For instance: Trade Policy.

Trade Policy is to be set by the Congress: Article one; section 8; third paragraph “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”.

The dogmatic Radical Austrian ideological libertarian insistence upon Free Trade as a logical corollary to individual liberty is at odds with the Constitution.

So if a candidate A is in favor of a nationalist trade policy, (Dr. Paul admits that setting Trade Policy with foreign states is a legitimate Federal power in “End The Fed”) but believes it to be illiberal, and not only bad on a practical level, but evil for its reduction of liberty, what to do?
Unfortunately there is no candidate A! (That would have been the Pat Buchanan Constitutionalist that never showed up for this campaign season; it might have been Michele Bachmann, or Sarah Palin. Alas.)

And if candidate B is in favor of a very forward Naval defense policy  (as Constitutionally laid out in Article One, section 8, paragraph 13: “To provide and maintain a Navy;” to ensure American preeminence over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; the God-given moats that will forever guarantee our Independence, then I ask what of the equally Constitutionally minded Dr. Paul’s evisceration of America’s forward and yes, offensive control of the Seas?  Agreed, that the very idea of a single pair of “boots on the ground” in the middle of Central Asia is as absurd as landlocked Mongolia investing in a Navy!  But, America has evolved from the antebellum days. No longer divided into a Northern modernizing commercial republic producing wealth through increasing industrialism, agricultural but becoming a major player in international commerce; and a Southern fossilized remnant of Cavalier Britain before their Civil Wars.  The Cavaliers, or Royalists were based upon a landed gentry with aspirations to nobility.  They derived their wealth from agriculture and rentals.  They scorned the upstart Middleclass with their Reformed Protestant chapels.   They, the new Bourgeois, or Middleclass, were represented by Parliament.  They were the shop keeps, the craftsmen, the merchants that represented the dawn of The Modern Age.  The final act of the British Civil Wars took place in Appomattox Court House Virginia.  America has moved on.  No longer is half the nation ruled over by aristocratic families set upon White Columned Mansions upon a well-tended lawn, surrounded by monoculture cotton for export.  And no longer are “servants” (southern for “Slaves”) used as beasts of burden and fed and clothed by the products of the plantations themselves.  This medieval landscape had to die before the United States of America could come into its own.  The Confederacy for all its talk of “states rats” was essentially fighting against the triumph of the “bourgeois shopkeepers”.   It was men like Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis who like Napoleon before them scorned the fighting spirit of the crass bourgeois Anglo-Saxon “shop keeps”. In case some have not noticed or have come to regret the fact, the North won.  And the results were not the South and the new west becoming a greater New England but instead an entirely new USA becoming a Continental Constitutional Republic of wealth, and power, on a level unseen in history. The New World, Atlantis perhaps, saved western Europe three times and continues to do so.
It is now no longer feasible to be as supreme as once we were. The inevitable occurred as new continental-sized states were ruthlessly unified by means of the various Isms’ of the Twentieth Century.  Now, there are nations the size and might of which have never been seen stomping over the face of the planet.  The Great Powers we reckoned with as a young nation were France, Britain, Spain, and Germany was not yet even a unified state yet.  The Framers never dreamed that nations with fabulous names from a mythic past, like Persia, India, China, or a backwards Russia would trod the earth like Behemoths. There are Chinese cities whose names we do not even know that have more people than Portugal, or Spain!

Yet, still the Atlantic and Pacific moats protect us.  But we will require the forward offensive Naval and Air Power to project our frontiers to the far side of those oceans. The Constitution requires in Article One, section 8, paragraph 13: “To provide and maintain a Navy”, and if they could envisage such a thing as an Air Navy, the Framers would surely have added that to the paragraph. Constitutional Libertarians need not be non-interventionalist in foreign policy.  The USA has evolved from a small group of semi-autonomous states clinging to the eastern seaboard to a Continental power with interests spanning the globe.  There is no example in history of a major power reaching an apogee and deciding that they shall step back a pace or two so as to “not be over there”.  Nations are like Dylan said about people, only more so, they are either “busy being born or busy dyin'”.  Major nations continue to strive or they begin to collapse.  There is never any middle course.   Maybe, President Paul, will thread that needle.  But, I would not trust his Austrian School fanaticism that sees all international borders as purely “illiberal” and arbitrary lines on a map. They are Constitutionalist (but only maybe, it appears the Articles of Confederation are starting to seem more to their liking!)  yet they do not abide Congress restricting the flow of labor, capital, and goods flowing unimpeded across our borders.  The Constitutional right of Congress “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes” though admitted by Dr. Paul, was said by him to be unwise policy.  I disagree.  There are those Austrian Scholars who giggle that we should be grateful to those people who wish to sell us the consumer goods we want for a price lower than American companies could provide.  The Doctor giggles, ‘should we ask them to charge us more?’ Problem is that the cheap imported goods are not so cheap, no, not so cheap at all.  Drive from Green Bay, down the western shore of Lake Michigan, past derelict plants.  Then visit South Chicago, where our current president prepared for the office by organizing the urban street.  Round the bend to Gary, Indiana, proceed through to Detroit, Toledo, Erie, across New York State past Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica; one long rusting blight of what was once the source of the might that created the wealth that when needed became the arsenal of democracy.  It lies like a bleeding corpse.  Perhaps a new “Industrial Ruins National Park” will revitalize the region?  This is the cost of ~giggle~ the Chinese not charging us enough for the goods we want.  Libertarianism in international affairs differs from Globalism in what particular manner?  Our Alex Jones’ friends, so vigilantly on guard against The New World Order Globalists, have somehow anointed Dr. Paul.  Yet he would do his best to facilitate freer trade if that were possible.  H would allow the last remnant of industry to be sucked out to China, and he would also reduce the size of our Navy facing this same hyper-industrializing China.

Dr. Paul’s unwavering loyalty to the doctrine of Free Trade is not the typical pragmatic Anglophone Way.  (It is interesting how Anglophobic paranoia fills Alex Jones’ clones; just as it did the isolationists in the early twentieth century.  Anglophobia unites illiberal attacks on the Modern Age both from the right and the left!, but that thought is for another time). Even Jefferson knew that theories must come second to the reality of statecraft.  He went beyond the Congress’ authority to purchase New Orleans and took up Napoleon’s offer for the entire Louisiana Territory. Would an ideologue make that compromise? 
Would Dr. Paul have looked beyond his ideology to base his decision on statesmanship?
As China begins to grow militarily into a potential major challenger to American dominance in the Pacific, the good Doctor prescribes harsh cuts in military spending.  When China pushes past the First Island Chain, if we allow the “Finlandization” of Japan, Taiwan, The Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam, we shall have a new border.  Not only will we be ineffectual at the southern border, with Mexico, we should then have a western border with China in California.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact, Lincoln commented.  Nor is Constitutional Libertarianism a philosophy dependent upon the generosity and peaceful intentions of others.  Radical Austrian Libertarianism would be, it ought to be discarded as just one more Utopian Ism.  Does he suggest private ships with Letters of Marque instead of the US Navy patrol the western Pacific?  Is he crazy?  We can and ought to be libertarian within our borders, but maintain supremacy in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.   And we also need to protect our people from having to compete with coolie labor in a race to the bottom.

Ironically, Hamilton, and Lincoln, now considered fiends by the Lew Rockwell, Ralph Raico, Von Mises intellectuals of the Austrian School are believed to have injected a virus of International (Jewisssh) Bankers into the United States.  Yet, they are the ones who were assassinated!  Imagine the conspiracy theories if Hamilton shot and killed Burr, or Jefferson!  Or if it was Jefferson Davis assassinated instead of Lincoln! Finally, the last straw for me, was the vile Jew hatred spewed last week by former CIA man Scheuer, a standard on Judge Napolitano’s show.  The Judge a Paulist and an Austrian, proved to me how essentially un-American Radical Austrian School Libertarianism is last week.  The vile anti-Semitic comments on the websites of Alex Jones, and on Facebook pages discussing St. Paul shows who these Theories attract.  No, I cannot blame Jones and the Facebook Pagemasters for the comments of their followers.  But, it would be foolish to pretend there is no connection between the Ism of Radical Libertarianism and the vile anti-Zionist, anti-Jew tide of filth.  The psychosis in the US between the Leftists worshippers of Obama, on the one hand and the spitting spew of anti-Jewish hatred on the anti-Globalist side is leaving a narrow almost untenable path.  Glenn Beck seems to be the sole guardian there.  Mark Levin is not a Libertarian, so though a Constitutionalist on many points, he is willing to use the Federal power to fight the drug war.  Forced to choose between the two “opposites” this country is committing suicide.

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

― Abraham Lincoln

For a Nationalist Constitutionalist Libertarian

My problem with Ron Paul is his libertarian orthodoxy. He admits in “End The Fed” that the Constitution gives the Congress authority to regulate trade with foreign nations. His Austrian School ideology claims Free Trade is the only MORAL policy a free people can accept. (Article One, Section eight.)
A Statesman must not allow idealism to overwhelm the clear national interest. No one has an “Interestometer”, that somehow determines a singular best national policy. A Statesman must have his moral compass, but must also lead by gut too. We are humans and not purely rational un-embodied minds. Jefferson Himself, sainted by Libertarians purchased the entire Louisiana Territory from Napoleon though Congress had authorized him to only negotiate for New Orleans. Would Ron Paul have been statesman or ideologue in this case?
Free Trade is absolutely not a logical necessity of Libertarianism; unless the very concept of a national border itself is considered an infringement and an imposition. In that case, despite being Philosophically opposed, the absolute identical policy would be enacted by The Globalist as by the Libertarian!
Since The Constitution gives the Congress the authority to determine a Trade Policy for the United States, the lack of any meaningful policy, i.e. Free Trade, is in and of itself a policy. The only question is, is it a wise policy, is it good for America?
Ayn Rand would ask “For whom?” “For whom is Policy A beneficial, and to whom is it harmful?” Yes, there are winners and losers in any Trade Policy; but as we just established Free Trade itself is a Trade Policy. Only the Congress having abdicated its Constitutional Role has removed Trade from the proper political consideration it deserves. As the writers of the Federalist Papers hoped, a continental-sized Republic would have so many clashing interests that no one single interest could dictate to the rest. Thus, the nasty appearing sausage machinery of political horse trading allows for the closest approximation to “The Common Interest”. It doesn’t require the presumed clairvoyance of the popular leader who can divine the Common Interest or the technocrat with the non-existent “Interestometer”; it makes no claim to perfection. Humbly, the Framers never strove for Idealistic Perfection. Our Constitution is not for Angels, but for self-interested and rational humans with at least some degree of morality.
Free Trade is pernicious. It virtually allows for Human Sacrifice of entire swathes of the nation; the so-called Rust Belt; in order to support its Ideology; and the multinational corporations. Conservatives recall when companies made things. That was what they defined themselves as: car makers, airplane makers, clothing makers etc. But, with the rise of huge mega-corporations owned by shareholders, the only thing necessarily created is increased worth of the stock. That is the sole fiduciary responsibility of the Board; to maximize the worth of the stock; period. If that requires closing US Factories and either building new ones in Asia, or by entirely leaving the manufacturing business and changing into an import and distribution system; then that is what must be done. MUST, because of Fiduciary Law!
I bet most individual stock holders, and most individual CEO’s hired by the Board would love to maintain the production within the USA, if they could. But since American Law allows it, they must avail themselves of the ability to outsource manufacturing to Asia to either coolie, peon or outright slave labor! Only by making it less profitable by adding import duties to reflect the price that American labor would be paid, and the cost of conforming to American regulatory diktats, can US manufacturing be re-booted.
When smarmy Free Trade advocates ask us why we should be angry at China for providing us with this or that consumer good at a quality and price unmatched by US production, we must point to the Rust Belt, the sky-rocketing unemployment, and underemployment, the rise of a dependent population enthralled to Government for handouts, and thus effectively leashed to Big Government political parties. That is what cheap imports cost!
The so-called High Tech and Service Economy that was going to replace the Industrial heartland has not materialized. The economic system that once allowed an average intelligent, high school graduate who played by the rules a chance to work in industry and afford to pay down a real mortgage on real property to raise a family and save for retirement and his kids’ college has been sacrificed at the alter of Wall Street and Libertarian Orthodoxy.
We need a Constitutional Nationalist; as Pat Buchanan represented. We need to reign in the Globalist/military/ security/ industrial/ pharmaceutical Complex. Ron Paul is only half the answer.
Who will put America ahead of Free Trade Ideology, as well as ahead of Globalist Foreign Policy? Where is the Pat Buchanan conservative constitutionalist to go?