Socialist Saturday

Well, tomorrow we'll likely move a little closer to the statist dream of healthcare reform. Despite the fact that the country doesn't want what congress has to offer, the senate is going to cram it a little deeper down our throats. A few months ago, Obama made some comments which indicated his position that America would learn to love the reform and thank him later. I knew, and wrote about it, at that time, that he was planning to push this through regardless of what the public wants.

This is what everyone paying attention tomorrow needs to understand -- our government has gone off in its own direction. We've lost control.

The Great Healthcare Scam of 2009

Slowly but surely, in America, a strong state is creating a weak people. When the state begins to rule over its subjects rather than protect rights, the people are no longer free. It appears that Democrats, Republicans and the American people are going to accept a mandate to buy insurance. There is some resistance to a public option - however, that will be compromised to something softer which can be hardened later, but it appears most everyone is accepting the inevitability of a mandate, despite some squawking about possible prison terms for egregious violation, whatever that means -- you either buy insurance and obey the law, or you don't and break the law.

 

A mandate to buy healthcare insurance is a violation of individual liberty, no matter how it's rationalized. It's a national confiscation of private property by the state. What we receive for our labor, usually money, is private property, and the state has no right to force us to give that property to someone else. Income tax falls in the same category, and this is one reason which explains how people have been trained to ignore these violations of our rights.

 

How much more government intervention can we take before the whole nation is too weak to resist? The government is in pursuit of more power, and control of healthcare is the gateway to achieving this control. Frank Chodorov was right 60 something years ago when he wrote about the income tax being the root of all political evil. The 16th Amendent sent America on a crash course which is now becoming evident as producers are mere cash cows to pay for statist schemes. The senate healthcare reform bill has many new taxes which are just the beginning of the confiscation which will come later.

Even the mandate is a sneaky income tax. The government is desperate to find ways to confiscate as much money as they can from tax payers to get this ill-conceived government take-over through congress and past the American people.

Reclaiming the Right

Rightwing has become somewhat of a confused and convoluted position. Moving forward, or backward, the libertarian/right movement of the 30s and 40s, the right has transformed into something unrecognizable. Murray Rothbard wrote an essay in 1964 about the transformation, and the Rothbard would be even more appalled today, 45 years later, as the right is in a greater, confused state of intellectual disarray.

There is evidence of a present resurrection among independents and some conservatives, but it remains to be seen if this resurrection is grounded in anti-statism and non-intervention overseas like the Old Right. Hardly anyone is addressing the internal threat of statism as both left and right have found new external threats which take precedence over liberty, peaceful trade and free markets. The modern right gives lip service to classical liberal principles, but these principles are largely viewed as quaint ideas of a simpler, less dangerous past.

The old charge of "isolationism" missed one of the core values of the Old Right, what Rothbard described as America "serving the world as a beacon light of peace and liberty, rather than as master of a house of correction to set everyone in the world aright by force of bayonet."

The perceived threat of communism turned the right into militaristic statists, retrenching into a traditional system satisfied with temporary loss of freedom for the sake of Power, God and Nation, much like Bush's betrayal of the free market to save the free market. Individual liberty, free markets and limited government became something we could attain later, but, in effect, classical liberalism was being traded for a statist-leaning conservatism. Many moderate statists today yearn for Buckley when they should yearn for Nock.

The New Order created by the Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution and the French Revolution has been sliding back to the ogligarchic control of the Old Order, but it has a new face. Today's conservativism, which passes for the Right, is a conglomeration of muddled thinking, although a strain of classical liberalism/libertarianism is breaking through. Anti-communism was replaced with anti-terrorism, and while both have been threats, each has been a rationalization for building a more powerful, interventionist state. "Terrorists" are actually statists using different tactics, and America continues fighting statism with more powerful statism, just as we did with the communists. The weapon to use against statism is anti-statism, but we have to believe that statism is wrong in order to use this weapon properly and too have any integrity.

If it's a matter of the most powerful statists winning, then we might win the war of control, but how many innocent people must die in the process? How much liberty must be lost? And if the idea of statism lives on, then we'll always be fighting some other statist power which challenges us for control. Where are the voices of anti-statism in the world, upholding the New Order of classical liberalism which transformed the world once upon a time? The progressives are preaching a stale moral relativism, while the conservatives are preaching military superiority, but no one is preaching individual liberty, free markets and limited government. It seems as if these principles have been assigned to obscurity as we discuss ways for groups of states to control the world.

We are no longer that "beacon light of peace and liberty", just a powerful state with no vision of the future. It embarrasses most intellectuals to even think in such terms of having a vision of the future inspired by classical liberal principles, much less voicing these principles full-throatedly and attempting to persuade others to follow, or, through our actions, lead by example.

The world should be tired of war by now, but there are no champions for peace. The world should be tired of coercion by now, but there are no champions for liberty. The world should be tired of central planning and social engineering, but there are no champions of limited government and voluntary action. Well, there's not many champions, and the ones who do raise their voices are called reactionaries, rubes, rightwing fanatics, gullible, isolationists -- they are ridiculed and marginalized. To be fair, some strains of the right deserved ridicule and marginalization, and we're better off for their loss of power and influence, but, hopefully, the original resistance by libertarians to the Rooseveltization of America will never die.

There's still a useful distinction between right and left, but the right has been reduced to a few surviving libertarians screaming against a powerful and destructive wind. Melodramatic? Quixotic? I prefer to think that it's a healthy defense of liberty, and an authenic call for peace and prosperity for all -- a right resistance to a statist left and a confused moderate middle.

Republican moderates see robots not people

Recently, moderates like David Frum have written about Rubio and Crist, and other primary challenges in which the conservative base is supporting conservative candidates against  candidates favored by moderates.

The moderates are claiming that their candidates hve local support and can win, but the national conservative movement is hurting the moderate candidate by financially supporting conservative candidates in primaries who can't win the general election. For this theory to be valid, one has to believe that voters are stupid and will change their minds when money enters the campaign. If the moderate choice has local support, then the candidate should win the primary, then be in a good position to win the election once the party unites behind the primary winner.

I don't think conservatives will pull a Scozzafava and vote for the Democrat candidate if their conservative candidate loses a primary -- in NY-23 there was no primary, but Scozzafava fell behind and dropped out when the conservative independent candidate, Hoffman, gained a lead, then Scozzafava supported the Democrat.

But, if Crist wins the primary, the conservatives will not throw their support to the Democrat, so the moderates don't have to worry about the primary depleting Crist's campaign money and energy -- in fact, it should enhance Crist's campaign.

The moderates are afraid Rubio will get attention and that the voters will prefer him over Crist, therefore placing the conservative over the moderates' choice. But that would be the people's choice. If the voters really don't like Rubio as a candidate, they will not vote for him. If the people like Crist, they will vote for him. In this partisan environment, Democrats and Republicans have made up their minds, and since independents are more politically active, they can register Republican for the primaries and vote for either Crist or Rubio.

In order to give credence to Frum's theory, you would have to believe that primary's are a problem, and that in order to avoid them, voters must rely on the Republican moderate leadership to pick one candidate which everyone supports without question. As far as national support interfering with local elections, if the locals know their politicians, then national interference will have little effect on outcomes. I can understand a presidential election being influenced by money and marketing when the nation is not familiar with certain candidates, but local voters know the players and can make informed decisions. Frum, and other moderates, are wrong to think voters in local elections are swayed by national support from the conservative base. The local voters in Florida will decide in the primaries who they want to run, and that will be their choice.

The moderates are less concerned with local voters having free choice than with who has control of the party. This lack of concern for choice, and this assumption that people are robots who can be programmed by the conservative base leaders, reflects poorly on the moderate mindset as it relates Republican voters -- or people in general for that matter.

Moving past government claims of deregulation

http://www.aei.org/outlook/100089

This is long, but it's very important to understand this rebuttal of government claims that deregulation caused the financial problems from the past year. What's incredible is that the administration and congress are going forward as if the deregulation narrative is valid. I don't think the seriousness of government dishonesty is yet fully realized. Since most people don't take the time to understand cause and effect related to government intervention, the government can promote these false explanations and get by with it. It must be stopped.

The damage our representatives can cause by creating regulations and laws based on deceitful claims blaming the free market can't be overstated. What will happen is that the new regulations and laws will cause more problems, then there will be more false explanations, then more laws and regulations, until the government controls the financial industry. Healthcare, finance and energy -- what's next?