A terrible misreading of Libya

http://politifi.com/news/War-in-a-PostAmerica-World-1808245.html

Peter Beinart, in his overly anxious declaration of a Post-America World , believes that America is weak, and this is why Europe is taking the lead in Libya. Look, I've been against the invasion of Libya from the minute it was considered, but to say Europe is "leading" is laughable. So far, the majority of the action has been American action. Sarkozy only wanted the image-enhancement of being strong for his next election.

Europe is weak and in confusion -- America can handle this by itself, but it shouldn't be handling it at all. Beinart says the future will not need America, but all the evidence points to America being needed now more than ever. America has to decide for itself what our role will be, but we are not forced out of the international scene into weakness, not yet. America is needed economically as a leader moreso than militarily, but in the world of realism and politics, America is desperately needed militarily. Europe will not last long without the threat of American support. Again, we need a new doctrine going into the 21st century. It's not that we can't play the role of World Police, but that we shouldn't. Europe is not strong, but they need to become strong, and we need to bring our troops home.

The comparison Beinart makes between Obama and Jefferson is simply silly. Obama is an interventionist, an internationalist, a globalist -- Jefferson, although he initially was a non-interventionist, became an interventionist in the Mid-East when Arab countries became an obstacle to open trade, which makes Beinart's claim sillier. The principles first promoted by Jefferson are foreign to Obama.

Promoting limited government is a radical position in 2010

Just like Jeffersonian limited government was radical in in the 18th century and was resisted by conservatives like Alexander Hamilton from the start, so today in the 21st century it's still a radical idea. Most of the people in the political sphere talking about limited government, or "small" government, are actually talking about tweaks to statism -- a little downsizing and a few efficiency tweaks -- smarter government. I see the consversations all over the internet and on cable news -- when it gets to the nitty gritty, what they really mean is removing a few regulations, reducing taxes a little, cutting spending to prior "reasonable" levels -- levels still much higher than the costs of a limited government.

To truly limit government radical changes will have to take place, and the whole system will have to be redesigned to prevent government from excerising powers which Jeffersonian principles orginally restricted. Republicans have been able to fool the public and libertarians in the past by talking about limited, or "small", government, while really meaning adjustments to a corrupted statist system.

It would be helpful if everyone would say what they mean, and if making adjustments to a statist system is what you mean, then don't say you promote lmited government.

Update on Saturday, October 16, 2010 at 02:29PM by M. Farmer

h/t to Cato

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704631504575531913602803980.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The state defines rights?

In the comment section of E.D.Kain's post at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen -- do nothing -- Mark Thompson responds to my call for a limited government which protects basic rights, writing -- "You need a state to define what those rights actually are, not just to protect them."

I wonder if Mark means just our state, or if this is generalized to include all states -- either way it's a strange response, considering the horrors of past state definitions of rights.

From Utopia in Power, written by Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr Nekrich, we find a passage that shows how relying on state definition of rights might not be the best way to go for everyone involved: 

On December 27 the leader announced the end of NEP and the start of a new era. The problem was as follows, he declared: "Either we go backward to capitalism of forward to socialism." In exact conformity with Bolshevik tradition, the problem was presented so as to allow only one response. It was necessary to go on the offensive. "What does this mean?" Stalin asked, and answered himself: "It means that every policy that consisted in limiting the exploitative tendencies of the Kulaks, we have switched to a policy of eliminating Kulaks as a class." The path forward was a path of "complete collectivization". To those who questioned whether dekulakization was necessary to complete collectivization, Stalin replied: "The question absurd!" A great lover of Russian proverbs, he added, "When the head is cut off, why cry over a few hairs?"

The next sixty-five days shook the country more than the ten days in October 1917 that "shook the world". Those nine weeks convulsed the lives of the Soviet Union's more than 130 million peasants, transformed the country's economy, and changed the very nature of the state.

Two processes went on simultaneously: the creation of collective farms (kolkhozes) and the liquidation of the kulaks. Above all, dekulakization was necessary to provide the "material base" for the collective farms. From the end of 1929 to the middle of 1930,

        more than 320,000 kulak farmers were dekulakized. Their property (worth more than 175 million ruples)  was transferred to the indivisible funds of the kolkhozes and used for the entrance fees of poor peasants and unpropertied farmhands. Former kulak property amounted to more than 34 percent of the total value of the indivisible funds of all the kolkhozes taken together. [this paragraph is footnoted as --Istoria SSSR v10 tomahk, 8:551]

The liquidation of the kulaks deprived the countryside of the most enterprising and independent-minded peasants and broke the spirit of resistance...

The Russian state didn't define rights, they viciously violated rights. John Locke and others had already defined rights before it was known that the German state under the Nazis were violating the rights of Jews by killing them.

Locke believed people have rights prior to the existence of government -- and, like others, believed that a government violating these rights should be done away with.

Immanuel Kant wrote:

The civil state, regarded purely as a lawful state, is based on the following a priori principles:

1. The freedom of every member of society as a human being.

2. The equality of each with all the others as a subject.

3. The independence of each member of the commwealth as a citizen.

These principles are not so much laws given by an already established state, as laws by which a state can be established in accordance with pure rational principles of external human right.

Kant's idea is key -- rights are known through reason based on what's objectively known to foster human flourishing. Some would say rights are God-given, but the point is the same -- it's what's best for men and women according to human nature. We have plenty of history by which to judge this, and the horrors of the violations -- again from Utopia in Power:

Proceeding from general principles to the concrete example of Czechoslovakia, Pravda noted, "Communists in the fraternal countries could not allow themselves to remain inactive in the name of an abstract principle of sovereignty while watching one of their number fall into the process of antisocialist degeneration." Pravda concluded: "Those who speak of the action of the allied socialist nations in Czechoslovakia in terms of "violations of rights" forget that in class society there is not and there has never been a classless law. Laws and legal procedures  obey the class struggle, the laws of social development....Formal legal considerations should not lose the class point of view."

Recently, I've talked about the dangers of partisanship -- this is where you usually find over-dependence on the state, so, I'm confused by Marks' statement, because I know he's not a partisan.

In the partisan madness bred by violation of individual rights and dependence on the state for definitions of rights, you get Yuri Pyatakov explaining to Valentinov-Volsky:

Since you do not believe that people's convictions cannot change in a short period of time, you conclude that our statements [of capitulation]...are insincere, that they are lies...I agree that people who are not Bolsheviks, the category of ordinary people in general, cannot make an instant change, a turn, amputating their own convictions...We are not like other people. We are a party of people who make the impossibile possible...And if the party demands it, if it is necessary or important for the party, we will be able by an act of will to expel from our brains in twenty-four hours ideas that we had held for years...Yes, I will see black where I thought I saw white, or may still see it, because for me there is no life outside the party or apart from agreement with it.

Then there is Jefferson:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...

No, it's not necessary for the state to define rights -- it's only necessary they protect the rights, because as Jefferson also wrote:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it...

Preserving the basic rights is our greatest responsibility -- they are much too important to leave to state definitions.

The need for a libertarian revolution

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/us/politics/27web-budget.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

It might be time to withdraw our consent to be governed by this government and form another one. This is how America was supposed to roll and it's time to re-read the Declaration of Independence.

What Obama's doing is exactly what got many individuals in financial trouble -- project a rosy income future and borrow like mad. With Obama, though, it's a con job -- they all know that the projections are whack -- it's just a matter of getting past objections to put his social engineering program into action.

We need a libertarian revolution and a reformation of government. This madness can't be sustained.

And, to be honest, it's not just Obama, but the whole government that has recognized an opportunity to take over the economy and they're going forward. Until I see the Republicans calling for a new government and rebelling like a gang of raging Jeffersons, I'll assume their marginal resistance is a show.

The power of the private sector

For too many years business success in the private sector has been framed as a threat to public welfare -- this couldn't be further from reality. The fact that there are dishonest businesspeople and corporations with a pocketful of politicians says something about certain aspects of human nature and government interference in the free market and nothing about the generative force of the private sector. Plus, as pols are framing big business as a danger to public welfare they're neglecting to include the role they play in protecting big business from competitiion, thereby increasing danger to the public welfare.

In the main, private enterprise concerns which are left to compete, produce and innovate are the structure of the US on which everything else is built. Companies like Sapphire Energy are poised to change the world if their research proves to be valid. There is enough generative energy in the private sector that if left alone by government we'd have practically full employment and a growing economy that steadily raises the standard of living of every citizen in the country -- even those without much income would pay less for products and services through increased efficiency and lower prices and fees.

The fact that politicians regulate and tax success out of envy, a sense of "justice", and a selfish desire to transfer lucrative power to its own realm is a shameful reality that if people truly understood they would change with disgust and urgency. It can't be long before the government game is revealed through corruption, failure and enough information sinking into the consciousness of the private sector.

America is a country suited for production, growth and prosperity, yet we allow our government to interfere and place obstacles in the path of progress because we fell victim to our own success. Out of a generous spirit and an abundance of material holdings we fell for the con of equality and fairness which the government has cynically used to frame the argument as enlightened representatives protecting human welfare from greedy capitalists. We are in a technological age that is far beyond the populist manipulations politicians still use to keep people enslaved to an old Marxist-influenced mindset that savvy politicians picked up on long ago to empower the state and create positions of privilege for a certain class in our country -- corporate thieves and political thieves - one wanting the privilege of protected wealth, the other the privilege of protected power. As they struggle now to keep the rigged-game going, it's showing signs of failure and people are becoming more aware of the arrangement -- still, though, way too many people have become addicted to the payoff which has kept them quiet and sated. 

Continuing to transfer money from productive private endeavors to unproductive political schemes is catching up with the players much like Madoff's ponzi scheme which eventually caught up with him and failed. From the perspective of time, this scheme is only a minute old and falling apart. It's time to get past this ugly blip of selfish manipulation and allow free men and women in the private sector to do what they are meant to do -- achieve, grow, prosper and carry us all to the future. The sensational horror of a techno-controlled, robotic and impersonalized future might be good for selling a few books, but I don't believe that's our future -- neither is the utopian view of a government-protected population given their needs by benevolent leaders in white robes like Gods from Mt Olympus.

The libertarian view held by some that we can operate without a federal government through private protection and private dispute-resolution entities is something I think would be too convoluted, conflicted and confused, so I see a need for a minimal government, but as Jefferson envisioned (mostly), not Hamilton. Minimal government doesn't mean unimportant, because I believe a minimal government has an important role to play. Leadership that protects the public's basic rights, prevents corruption and maintains a position in the world as representing a truly free nation is vital. Leadership is important in verbalizing what we stand for as a nation, even if what we stand for is pluralism and no one or two bullet-points of jingoism. We don't need nationalistic zeal, we need leadership that simply represents a free society as a example of what freedom can accomplish, open to free trade and global cooperation. Others can follow if they like, but we don't hard-sell or force anything, merely show by deeds, results and language which reveals who we are.

Because there are no perfect people and power corrupts it's important for government to be constitutionally limited, and it's important to have a strong court system to prosecute fraud and abuse in all forms which violate individual rights. When corporations aren't protected by government favortisim, small and medium size companies can compete with better ideas, flexibility and efficiency, so there's little worry that a few powerful corporations can control the markets. Big and clumsy are liabilities in today's world and big business cut loose from government protection will fall flat if they don't become efficient, innovative and competitive. 

We have a private sector that is ready to grow and prosper, and all that's needed is for government to get out of the way and stop the central management. This will require a strengthening of The Constitution to clearly state the limits to government power --- the "public welfare" escape has caused too much damage.