Morning Joe 4/11/2013 -- Grind their political bones to dust

I've been writing this week about the gun control debate and how the political characters on Morning Joe, in the Center and on the Left, have been talking about the issues. I wrote that Joe Scarborough seems politically motivated, as do all of the gun control advocates I've seen so far on Morning Joe.  Scarborough said this morning that he can't wait to see a Republican oppose the common sense gun control proposals so that the Republican will get his political bones ground to dust. When Sam Stein showed surprise at Joe's violent image, Joe said that if people don't know it, he likes to win. Joe meant he likes political victory. So, he's admitting that this is about politics, pleasing the majority who favor background checks according to some poll.

If the gun control advocates were really concerned with doing things that can help with mass killings, they'd change the current background check failures that don't catch known "rapists" and such, as Scarborough seems to bothered by, and they would promote beefed up security in vulnerable places like schools -- and that's it. The proponents of gun control are using emotion to set the stage for future legislation, and this is not the way to deal with mass killings. Michelle and Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, and many others, are using family members of victims to gain public support, when they should be looking for smart solutions which can be suggested and implemented without violating the rights of others. The dangerous mindset in the Center and on the Left is that rights are secondary to government solutions which protect the collective.

If we believe security is more important that individual rights, then we'll have no rights at all, because a powerful State looking to expand and consolidate power will use security as the means to dominate. The likes of Scarborough would scoff at the notion rights are being violated, but if representatives like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee weren't trying to slow down the process and cool down the emotions, gun control advocates would have no problem violating rights to expand State control over guns of all sorts. These gun control advocates would have no problem with a national regsitry, nor would they reject confiscating weapons already out there if the weapons are the type they ban.

Each gun control advocate on Morning Joe has said that the current proposals don't go far enough, that this is a beginning. What does this mean? I think we know what it means, and it doesn't include protecting individual rights.

A return to liberty

The form of "liberalism" which grants the few such power as to design society is for sure a perverted form of liberalism. The sine qua non of liberalism as founded after the Enlightenment is the protection of individual rights, including, especially including, property rights.

Modern liberals are allowing the right to property to fade away, thus liberty will fade away. Owning property and having the right to do with it as we please, as long as doing so doesn't violate the rights of others, is a way of excercising all rights. Understanding the importance property rights and the danger of government's ability to take our wealth at will should cause Americans to rebel against our present statist system.

A revival of true liberalism is needed, badly. I will return to this in a few weeks. I'm finishing several books and will have much to say then. 

What we can't know

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-mystery-of-khalid-aldawsari/#utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Cato-at-liberty+%28Cato+at+Liberty%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

So much for the transparent government promised by Barack Obama. The average person has no way to protect his/her rights from violation by the government we've allowed to develope over the years, especially since 9/11. Soon, we must re-evaluate where we are security-wise and rights-wise over a decade after 9/11 -- The State machine has taken advantage of the national fear to expand its powers far beyond what's necessary when there's no direct national security threat.

Melissa Harris Perry 2/19/2012 -- Melissa's new groove

Melissa has followed her bud Chris Hayes to weekend morning stardom on MSNBC --Melissa is a welcomed relief from the blowhards like Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, Martin Bashir, Al Sharpton and all the other male progressives who love to speak in defense of women and their rights, but lack the insight of a real woman like Harris Perry who has two last names, so you know she's got it going on.

Republicans and the entire rightwing should stop right now and make some deep changes in their way of thinking. The Right doesn't have to change the principles they support, they merely need to understand what the principles entail. When someone on the Right criticizes the Left for violating basic rights, the person on the Right should expand this defense of individual rights, fairness and freedom from oppression to cover women, gays, minorities and everyone humans. The critic on the Right might object and say they don't have to make their defense of liberty particular, such as women's rights and gay rights, but any liberty that is not applied particularly is not liberty.

When government makes laws recognizing marriage as between man and woman, it discriminates against two men or two women who want to also be legally recognized as married. Government and the two political parties get in a bind when they defend laws which only recognize a man and woman as a legitimate "marriage", because no one in government can reasonably defend such discrimination. To say that it's tradition in not good enough, because government has no business legislating on tradition. Slavery was traditional until it was found unconstitutional. The answer is against both sides on this issue -- the answer is not for more government intervention to give gays the same legal protections in marriage as straights, but for government to remove itself from the issue of marriage all together. In the private sector, any church can still choose to not recognize marriage as anything but between man and woman, but no one can stop any consenting adults from getting marriage -- even polygamy, if this is the marriage arrangement consenting adults choose -- it's not the business of society or government, but the business of the consenting adults involved where there is no coercion and everyone consents to the marriage arrangements. The only legal matters should be contracts made, if there's any legal issue at all, between the consenting parties involved.

This might seem radical to those who limit "liberty" to a conservative liberty or a progressive liberty or a female liberty or a gay liberty, but to anyone who thinks deeply about liberty and is serious about liberty, then it makes perfect sense. It's not condoning gay marriage or polygamy, it's just saying that no one, not even government, has any business deciding who should marry when consenting adults are involved and when there's no coercion. The same goes for issues of contraception and a woman's right to her own body and sex. Many people might not like the ideas, but if they seriously promote freedom when no one is harmed from the free choices of free people, then they have to allow others the liberty that they fight for and apply to their lives and beliefs.

Republicans will lose this fight if they attempt to limit liberty to conservative, religious liberty. Liberty is liberty and it applies to individuals, not groups or religious faiths or sexual orientation or gender or whatever.

So, go Melissa with your new groove on, but, just remember, it works the other way too, girlfriend, so don't let me hear you denying freedom to conservatives just because you're offended by that particular freedom to behave as they see fit as long as it's not violating anyone's rights.

More on Paul and McCarthy, not the Beatle

http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/09/a-tale-of-two-conservatisms

Whenever individual rights are at stake, any legislation should be perfectly clear that individual rights are protected, even when it relates to war and terrorism. Perhaps in case of direct attack with America under siege from a foreign power, unusal steps should be taken, temporarily, to ensure success in repelling the attack. But to allow government to expand the power of the State to the point it's unclear that individual rights are protected during a quagmire such as the Afghanistan War is inviting soft tyranny that can become hard overnight. Rand Paul represents the New Republican returning to classical liberal principles, while McCarthy represents a perverted conservativism that trusts State power for no apparently good reason. The disease of neo-conservatism still infects the Republican Party -- Progressive interventionism is what it's always been -- neocons coupled with Progressive interventionists spell trouble for what's left of the Constitution.