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Libertarians versus Liberals and Conservatives

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As I stated in yesterday’s blog post, both conservatives and liberals are using the Rand Paul controversy as a springboard to attack libertarianism in general. One almost gets the feeling that during the past several years, as the libertarian movement has been growing by leaps and bounds, a lot of pent-up anti-libertarian emotion has been building up within the statist community and that it has finally erupted as a result of the Rand Paul controversy. Why do liberals and conservatives resent libertarians so much? For liberals, it has to do with facing reality. For conservatives, it has to do with facing the life of the lie. For decades, liberals have maintained a big delusion with respect to economics. For example, convincing themselves that the Great Depression was caused by America’s free-enterprise system, they then convinced themselves that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were simply free-enterprise reforms that saved America’s free-enterprise system. Actually, the reality is that it wasn’t free enterprise that brought ...

The Confluence of Left and Right

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One of the things that fascinate me about the Rand Paul controversy is how it is exposing the longtime confluence of conservatives and liberals. For 20 years, I’ve been arguing that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between a conservative and a liberal — or, if you will, Depublicans and Remocrats — and the liberal-conservative reaction to the Paul controversy is confirming my point. Consider these aspects of the welfare state: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, public (i.e., government) schooling, public (i.e., government) housing, SBA loans, mortgage guarantees, foreign aid, bank bailouts, FDIC, education grants, corporate subsidies, and many, many more. Every one of those programs entails the socialist principle of using the force of the state to take money from people to whom it rightfully belongs in order to give it to others. I ask you: What liberal does not ardently believe in every one of those programs? What conservative doesn’t also believe in them? Oh, they might ...

Is the Peace Movement Finally Awakening?

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What America needs most today is a peace movement, a broad-based coalition that opposes not only the American empire’s operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (as well as less overt activities elsewhere), but also their attendant accretion of presidential power, which diminishes or eliminates civil liberties and the traditional protections accorded criminal suspects. Unfortunately, there have been impediments to the development of this long-overdue movement. People on the Right typically are not inclined to oppose wars. Even if they are uneasy about a given war, they equate anti-war activity with left-wing opposition to the military, failure to support the troops, and lack of patriotism. If a Republican is running the war, they are even less likely to make a fuss. Some on the Right are authentically anti-empire and are ready to join an anti-war coalition, but they seem to be waiting for others to take the initiative. The Left of course is much more comfortable opposing war and executive power and ...