Information about RSS
Hornberger’s Blog Archives
FFF Email Update — February 9, 2010

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Libertarianism is the Light Shining through the Statist Darkness
by Jacob G. Hornberger

For years, liberals and conservatives have played this little game in which they imply that they hold opposing philosophies. Nothing could be further from the truth. There’s not a dime’s worth of difference, philosophically speaking, between a liberal and a conservative.

It would be difficult to find a more perfect example of this phenomenon than the Bush-Obama administrations. Despite repeated attacks by conservatives against Obama, what is always lacking is any showing by conservatives how Obama’s policies are different from those of his predecessor Bush.

In fact, Bush, McCain, Palin, Obama, and Biden could easily have run as interchangeable running mates, given that they all agreed on one important point: what the role of government should be in society.

Sure, there will always be differences in style or particular programs, just as there will be carping about how the president is mismanaging the economy or foreign affairs, but everyone knows that it’s all political posturing with the aim of ousting the incumbent and regaining power. Once that goal is achieved, the game starts over again, with the ousted party carping about how the incumbent is mismanaging the economy and foreign affairs.

Consider the following socialistic, interventionist, and imperialist programs, and ask yourself the following question: Which programs do Mr. Liberal Barack Obama and Mr. Conservative George W. Bush oppose?

Social Security
Medicare
Medicaid
Food stamps
Welfare
SBA loans
Foreign aid
Government-business partnerships
Economic regulations
Income taxation
Trade restrictions
Immigration controls
Public (i.e., government) schooling
The Federal Reserve
Paper money
Home loan assistance
Corporate bailouts
The drug war
Military invasions and foreign occupations
Foreign military bases
Enhanced interrogation techniques (i.e., torture)
Military tribunals
The military industrial complex

My hunch is that your answer is “none.” Sure, there are conservatives who oppose some of those things just as there are liberals who oppose some of them. And most conservatives and liberals call for “reform” and for ending “waste, fraud, and abuse” in government programs. But if you were to do a survey, the overwhelming majority of both liberals and conservatives would oppose a repeal of those programs.

Yet, it is those programs — and the statist philosophy underlying those programs — that are at the root of the problems facing our nation today. That’s where the out-of-control federal spending, ever-mounting debt, and ever-increasing infringements on economic liberty and civil liberties are coming from.

You see, liberals and conservatives believe that it is the primary role of the federal government to be a domestic provider and an international policeman.

What the statists don’t want to acknowledge is an important point, the ones that we libertarians must continue emphasizing and reemphasizing: the ever-deepening woes our nation is facing is due to the statism that both liberals and conservatives have foisted on our nation.

You see, the last thing statists want to do is take personal responsibility for the damage they have wrought to our nation with their statism. They want to blame America’s economic woes on such things as free enterprise, greed, big business, and bankers and America’s foreign-policy woes on hatred for America’s religious and cultural values.

And the reason they want to do this is so that people don’t start focusing on the real cause of America’s woes — the statism of liberals and conservatives. Because if people started focusing on the real cause, then they might well ask themselves an important question: Why not rid ourselves of the cause of our woes by ending, not reforming, all that liberal and conservative statism?

Take a look at that list of socialist, interventionist, and imperialist programs again. To understand how different libertarians are from conservatives and liberals, ask yourself the following question: How many of those things would libertarians oppose?

Answer: All of them. Sure, it’s possible to find libertarians here and there who favor one or another of these things, but the vast majority of libertarians would oppose all or almost all of them. And the reason for that is because of the philosophy that libertarians believe in: a philosophy of individual liberty, economic freedom, free markets, voluntary charity, a non-interventionist foreign policy, and a limited-government republic.

Statists — conservatives and liberals alike — place their faith in government and force and then refuse to acknowledge and take responsibility for all the bad things that their statist philosophy has produced.

Libertarians, on other hand, place their faith in freedom, themselves, others, and God, which is why their freedom philosophy inevitably produces prosperity, harmony, and morality.

Statism is on the ropes, all over the world. As the statists desperately try to cobble together “reforms” intended to make their statist philosophy work, any fixes they are able to come up with will be temporary only.

Ultimately, people will figure out that there is only one way out of the statist morass — libertarianism. We libertarians are the light shining through the statist darkness.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Socialism and Imperialism Are Taking Us Down
by Jacob G. Hornberger

In a February 6 editorial, the mainstream newspaper the New York Times took note of the dangers of out-of-control federal spending and soaring debt. In 2011 alone, the projected deficit is $1.3 trillion, an amount that even the Times calls “breathtaking.”

But what is even more breathtaking is what Times recommends that federal officials do. You’re not going to believe this and so here’s the link to the editorial so you can verify what I’m saying.

The Times is saying that U.S. officials must spend even more money than they’re already spending, in order to create jobs!

That’s right, on the one hand, the NYT editorial board, which has to consist of some rather smart people, says that “persistently high deficits are harmful to the economy and the country’s long-run security” and, on the other hand, says that the federal government must spend even more money in order to create a “jobs revival.”

That is economic nonsense in its purest form.

Now, consider this article — “Is Greece’s Debt Trashing the Euro?” — that was published by the Times on the same date as the editorial. The point it makes is that Greece’s soaring indebtednesses is threatening to bring down the entire Euro monetary system.

No doubt the NYT editorial board would say, “Greece just needs to spend more money to create jobs.”

In its editorial, the NYT points out that Republican criticism of the deficit and the national debt ring hollow because the Bush administration did the same thing. That’s of course true. But what the Times fails to mention is what Bush did to cause federal spending to soar out of control: He ordered the troops to invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pardon me, but didn’t the NYT support those imperialist escapades that enabled Bush to send federal spending through the roof?

Don’t you just love people who rail against out-of-control federal spending while embracing and supporting the things that the spending is going for?

Consider Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and military spending — the programs that everyone agrees are the root causes of out-of-control federal spending and soaring debt.

The statists always call for reform, reform, reform. The latest brilliant proposal, which the NYT endorses, is a commission to study the problem, one that will inevitably conclude, “The system needs reform.”

Hope springs eternal for the statists. All that’s needed is more spending, higher taxes, and “reform,” and socialist-imperialist paradise will finally have arrived.

That’s just siren-song nonsense. What’s actually needed is a repeal of all socialist programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and all the rest, along with all the taxes that fund them.

Yes, you read that right — repeal, not reform — and immediate.

No, there will not be people dying in the streets. Instead there will be the greatest outburst of economic prosperity and vitality that people have ever witnessed, along with the greatest outpouring of voluntary charity. It just requires self-esteem, self-confidence, self-reliance, and an unswerving belief in one’s self, others, freedom, and God.

Moreover, it entails an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. troops continue to kill, maim, torture, incarcerate, kidnap, and destroy every day. Yes, you read that right — withdraw immediately. And not only from there, but also from Korea, Europe, Japan (where the Japanese people are demanding an end to the U.S. occupation of their country), Africa, Latin America, and everywhere else. Why, it’s even time to start closing military bases here in the United States. The Cold War ended long ago, and all the U.S. Empire has done since then is stir up trouble to keep the warfare largess flowing to the military-industrial complex.

Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s end the drug war too, immediately. What possible justification for spending money on this 35-year old failed, immoral, and destructive program could there be, except that it provides revenue (including bribes and asset forfeiture) for public officials and drug lords?

Only by restoring a genuinely free-market, limited-government republic to our land can we hope to restore morality, freedom, harmony, and prosperity to our land.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Americans Are Paying for Socialism and Imperialism
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Both liberals and conservatives have long lamented that Americans have not been bearing their fair share of the costs of the U.S. Empire’s longstanding imperialist escapades in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That’s ridiculous.

Consider the ever-increasing debt that is being added to each person’s balance sheet. Each American currently owes $40,000, which is his individual share of the debt that the U.S. government owes its creditors. Like it or not, the federal government, through the IRS, wields the authority to collect that money from you and everyone else.

On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to allow the feds to go $1.7 trillion deeper in debt. According to an article in the Washington Post, that amounts to an increase of $6,000 per person. That will increase the amount you owe to $46,000. If you have a family of four, your share of the government’s debt will be $184,000.

Suppose the IRS decided to collect that money from you. How easily could you pay them?

Of course, that’s not likely, as public officials are fully aware of the anger and rage they would be confronting if they used the IRS to collect that money. Incurring debt is one thing but having the IRS forcibly collect the money from the taxpayers to pay it off is another.

Nonetheless, creditors who loaned the federal government the money to pay for its welfare-warfare state expenditures, such as the Chinese government, ultimately want to be paid back. And the only way they can be paid back is by the U.S. government’s forcibly taking money from the U.S. citizenry and using it to pay back the Chinese government and other creditors.

So, when the rubber hits the road and the feds need to start paying off their creditors, how are they going to get the money? Some will be in higher taxes, but my hunch is not a lot. Historically, one of the things that profligate officials fear most is a tax revolt. Instead, they’ll simply print up the necessary money and use it to pay off the creditors.

That will, of course, cause prices of most everything in the United States to soar. It’s a convenient way to tax people without letting them know they’re being taxed. If prices soar, say, 25 percent while real incomes remain the same, then people will have effectively been taxed 25 percent.

The beauty of the scheme, of course, is that Joe and Mary Sixpack will have no idea of what’s going on. They’ll think that the problem is with greed, avarice, business owners, bankers, and speculators. They won’t have any idea that it’s the government’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, that is taxing them through monetary debasement.

As an aside, that’s one of the beauties of public schooling and state-supported colleges and universities. People go through these institutions being taught that inflation is a mysterious and fearful disease that strikes nations at random, like the flu. The last thing Joe and Mary will suspect is that soaring prices constitute government’s way of forcing people to provide the money to pay off its debts and financing its ever-growing expenditures.

This is where socialism and imperialism have led our country — down a road to moral debauchery, dependency on the state, damage to individual self-reliance and personal independence, foreign anger and hatred for our nation, ever increasing attacks on our freedom and privacy, soaring expenditures and debts, and the threat of national bankruptcy.

That sure seems to me that Americans are bearing a fair share of the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other parts of America’s welfare-warfare state. My hunch is that as time goes on, an increasing number of Americans will wish that they had listened to us libertarians a long time ago.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Socialism, the Great Equalizer
by Jacob G. Hornberger

If you’d like a good picture of where American socialists are leading our country, consider the situation in North Korea, which is the world’s best model of a socialist society. In North Korea, everyone is equal because everyone is equally poor. The government is the sole owner of the means and results of production, which means it is the sole employer in society. Everyone works for the government. It totally controls the economy. It is the central planner of all economic activity. It has a central bank and government-provided paper money.

North Korea is an economic disaster, and that’s not a coincidence. That’s what socialism produces — equality in poverty, despair, and starvation, not to mention brutal enforcement of economic rules, dictates, and regulations.

If you think the United States has economic problems, they’re nothing in comparison to the situation in North Korea. A New York Times article today describes the situation as dire. Food supplies are meager and the prices of what food is available are soaring, in large part because of the government’s debasement of the currency. Making matters even worse, the North Korean regime is now engaging in “sweeping attempts to revive socialist central economic planning and crack down on private markets” including “punishing private traders who smuggled goods from China.” You know — those evil, greedy, profit-seeking, bourgeois, private-sector, speculator swine that socialists everywhere hate so much.

No doubt American socialists will love the ingenious way the authorities decided to steal from “the rich” in order to better maintain total economic equality among the people. The government recently issued new paper currency and told people to bring in their old paper money to exchange for the new paper money. But — and here’s the kicker — each citizen was permitted to exchange only a limited amount of old notes, making any excess savings in old notes worthless. How’s that for a brilliant way to plunder and loot people and equalize their economic condition?

There is one positive part of this story: the New York Times actually seems to understand that North Korea’s economic distress is a direct consequence of its socialist policies. The bad news is that all too many Americans continue to blame greed, deregulation, and the free market for America’s economic woes rather than the U.S. government’s socialistic policies, including its out of control spending for domestic welfare-state programs and the monetary shenanigans of its central bank, the Federal Reserve.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

China’s “Muscular” Failure to Submit to the U.S. Empire
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Consider this opening paragraph from a New York Times article regarding the U.S. government’s arms sales to Taiwan:

“For the past year, China has adopted an increasingly muscular position toward the United States, berating American officials for the global economic crisis, stage-managing President Obama’s visit to China in November, refusing to back a tougher climate change agreement in Copenhagen and standing fast against American demands for tough new Security Council sanctions against Iran.”

The Times’ reporter obviously forgot to also mention China’s refusal to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan to help the U.S. Empire with its occupations of those two countries.

You see, in the eyes of the U.S. Empire and mainstream reporters, it is considered “muscular” — as in flexing one’s muscles — as in getting too uppity or big for one’s britches — to fail to go along with official U.S. imperial policy.

Never mind that Chinese officials might think that imposing sanctions on Iran might be immoral, especially when sanctions are causing plane crashes that are killing crews and passengers. Never mind that they might find sanctions to be counter-productive. They’re not supposed to express such independent thoughts. When the world’s sole remaining empire wishes to implement a policy against another country, China and everyone else is expected to fall into line. Refusal to do so is muscular.

What if China doesn’t favor a tougher climate-change agreement? That’s irrelevant. All that matters is what the Empire wants. China is expected to go along. Failure to do so indicates that China is getting too independent, too aggressive, too muscular.

Don’t U.S. officials stage-manage visits by foreign rulers to the United States, especially those who refuse to bow to the U.S. Empire? Why is it considered normal when U.S. officials to do that but “muscular” when China does it?

And what’s wrong with berating U.S. officials for causing the global economic crisis? They did cause it, especially with their Federal Reserve’s easy-money policy and Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s reckless mortgage policies. What’s wrong with speaking the truth? Oh, that’s a super no-no in the mind of imperial officials and mainstream reporters. It may be true but China is not supposed to openly say it. China is expected to simply comment on how beautiful the U.S. president’s birthday suit is.

It’s no different with other independent-minded rulers, such as Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, or Kim Jong Il. Imperial officials and mainstream journalists will declare with much indignation that the reason they oppose such rulers is that they’re communists, terrorists, evil people, or whatever. But that’s not really what’s going on here. The reason that such rulers are resented by imperial officials and mainstream journalists is that they’re too “muscular” — that is, too independent of the Empire.

After all, don’t forget that the Empire has absolutely no reservations about partnering with brutal dictators, especially unelected ones. When that happens, mainstream reporters don’t even think twice about it. It’s just considered normal. It doesn’t even matter how badly the foreign ruler mistreats his own citizenry. All that matters is that the foreign ruler do the Empire’s bidding in international affairs.

Consider: the Shah of Iran. Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein. Pervez Musharraf, and the rulers of Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, to mention just a few. They’re all brutal, authoritarian dictators or regimes that the U.S. government has partnered with or supported. Why? Because the rulers cooperate with the Empire, oftentimes in return for U.S. taxpayer money being funneled into their coffers.

This is what distinguishes the U.S. Empire from, say, the Roman Empire. The U.S. Empire doesn’t send U.S. officials to rule over its overseas domains. Instead it finds a local official to assume the reins of power, but only one who is pledged to fully cooperate with the Empire in international affairs. No getting too “muscular.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is selling some new weaponry to Taiwan. Of course, that’s not considered “muscular” or aggressive. According to the New York Times article, that’s considered to be “pushing back” against China’s “muscular” attitude of refusing to bow to U.S. imperial wishes.

We shouldn’t forget that it was China that loaned the Empire the money to invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan. Wait until China gets perturbed and decides to suddenly dump its massive amount of U.S. debt securities onto the market. No doubt U.S. imperialists and mainstream reporters will consider that to be “muscular” as well.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Why Didn’t the Nanny State Protect Us from Toyota?
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Would someone please explain to me how it’s possible that millions of Toyota vehicles have that accelerator problem? I thought the federal government was supposed to keep us safe from these sorts of things. Consider, for example, this page, which contains the “Federal Motor Vehicle Standards and Regulations” issued by the Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance, Safety Assurance section, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation.. It states: “These requirements are specified in such a manner ‘that the public is protected against unreasonable risk of crashes occurring as a result of the design, construction, or performance of motor vehicles and is also protected against unreasonable risk of death or injury in the event crashes do occur.’”

Indeed, what about those much-vaunted car “safety inspections,” where people have to wait in line for an hour or two to get their cars inspected and, of course, hand over some moolah to the state for the privilege of having a pretty decal on their windshield? Since they’re supposed to ensure that our cars are safe (hey, they are called “safety” inspection stickers, right?), then how is it possible that people have been driving millions of cars that are obviously unsafe?

Do you see the problem?

It’s actually the same problem with respect to the hundreds of millions of dollars lost by investors in the Bernie Madoff scandal. How is it possible that such a scandal occurred? Wasn’t everyone in Madoff’s line of work subject to federal regulations ensuring that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen?

Or how about the recent bouts of salmonella poisoning from hamburger meat? How is this possible? Isn’t the meat industry close regulated by federal officials? Doesn’t the “food” in Food and Drug Administration include beef? Isn’t the purpose of such regulations to ensure that the public is not subjected to these sorts of things?

As we libertarians have been pointing out for decades, the paternalistic state is nothing more than a big fraud and sham, one designed to convince people to fund a gigantic, bureaucratic, parasitic state that will keep them safe from the vicissitudes of life. Yet, as people once again learn, all those beloved regulations and regulators don’t keep people safe at all. Bad things continue to happen in life, as they always will. The nanny society can’t stop that.

Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t just involve parasitic bureaucrats sucking hard-earned money out of people’s pockets under the pretense that they’re keeping them safe. It’s much worse than that. The nanny state lulls lots of people into a peaceful state of innocent bliss in which they think they’re being kept safe from the hazards of ordinary life. Thus, people become less cautious and more gullible, and thus, are less safe than they otherwise would be.

What’s the libertarian solution? A complete separation of the economy and the state, one in which the government has no more power to regulate economic activity than it does to regulate religious activity.

Would there still be safety defects, stock-market frauds, and other such bad things? Sure, just as there are today. But the difference would be that people would tend toward developing a keener sense of self-responsibility and caution in their lives, knowing that the nanny state wasn’t purporting to take care of them.

Moreover, the free market (free, as in free of all government control) provides its own self-correcting mechanism that tends toward keeping people safe. Consider Toyota. It’s moving quickly toward finding a solution to the accelerator problem not because some federal bureaucrat is ordering it to. It’s doing so because of the threat of lawsuits and falling consumer demand for Toyota vehicles. In the free market, the consumer is the ultimate sovereign. If consumers stop buying Toyota vehicles, Toyota goes out of business, no matter how big and wealthy it is today.

The nanny state, like the socialistic welfare state, has proven to be a disaster and a fiasco and an expensive one at that. It’s time that Americans restored a genuine free-market society to our land by separating the economy and the state.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Will Obama Try to Pack the Court Too?
by Jacob G. Hornberger

President Obama’s tiff with the Supreme Court over the Court’s ruling in the corporate-spending case brings to mind what President Franklin Roosevelt, one of Obama’s icons, did when the Supreme Court began declaring some of his socialist and fascist schemes unconstitutional. Roosevelt came up with a plan that would enable him to pack the Court with additional justices, legal cronies of FDR who he could count on to vote to uphold his alien schemes.

After Roosevelt assumed office in 1932, he embarked on what is undoubtedly the most revolutionary transformation of American life in U.S. history. For more than 100 years, the central notion of the American republic — that which had distinguished America from most of the rest of the world — was its free-enterprise system. It was an economic philosophy that held that people had the fundament, natural, God-given rights to engage in economic enterprise and enter into mutually beneficial economic arrangements with others, all free of government control, accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth, and do whatever they wanted with their own money.

Along came Roosevelt, who used the Great Depression as a means to adopt the socialist and fascist systems that were proving so popular in Europe, especially Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union. This included adoption of socialist transfer programs, such as Social Security, by which the state took money from one person and simply transferred it to someone else. It also included government control over economic activity, exemplified by FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Act, which cartelized American industry, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which placed the stock market under federal control.

Roosevelt sold this new-fangled system to the American people by employing two means of deceit. First, he argued that the Great Depression reflected the failure of America’s free-enterprise system, when in fact the Great Depression actually reflected the failure of America’s Federal Reserve System, a governmental system of monetary control adopted in 1913 that violated the principles of free enterprise. Second, he argued that his schemes were designed to save America’s free-enterprise system when in actuality they abandoned it.

Of course, whether America should adopt a free-market system, a socialist system, or a fascist system was a political decision. But whether a socialist or a fascist system could pass constitutional muster was a legal issue, one that the Supreme Court had to address when pertinent cases reached the Court.

Much to the chagrin of Roosevelt, the Court began declaring some of his alien schemes in violation of the Constitution. Like Obama today, Roosevelt went on the rampage against the Court for daring to stand in his way by declaring his programs illegal under our form of government.

Given Roosevelt’s dictatorial proclivities, he didn’t stop at simply criticizing the Court. He came up with a plan to alter the make-up of the court, the most important of which was his proposal to expand the number of justices serving on the Court. FDR proposed appointing a new justice for every sitting justice who was over 70 years old. He had carefully calculated that this would enable him to appoint a sufficient number of new justices who would provide him with the number he needed.

FDR tried to deceive Congress and the American people by claiming that the sole purpose for his plan was to assist an over-worked Supreme Court. Much to his displeasure, the Chief Justice of the United States responded by showing that there was no backlog of cases in the Court.

To the everlasting credit of the American people, there was a tremendous national outcry against Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme. Despite the economic distress that people were suffering during the Great Depression, they did not like FDR’s tampering with our nation’s constitutional system, especially when the tampering was intended to give the president more power to run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution.

FDR’s court-packing scheme went down to defeat. But Roosevelt ended up winning the war anyway. With Justice Owen Roberts’ “switch in time that saved nine” and retirements from the bench, FDR was able to secure a majority on the court that would vote to sustain any violation of economic liberty he proposed.

Will Obama follow in the footsteps of his icon and come up with his own plan to pack the Court? Anything is possible. Let’s just hope that if he does, the reaction of the American people will be the same as it was in 1937.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.