We can't do this without liberals

Nothing makes me sicker than the obscurantist efforts of Centrists who tell us we need to drop political labels and vote for representatives who will compromise and work together to get things done. Our biggest problem is that statists in both parties have worked together for decades to maintain the status quo that has finally suppressed economic growth long term and is drowning the country in debt. Our problem now is not that Republicans and Democrats are refusing to meld together in a symphony of beautiful, harmonic legislation -- it's that both sides need to limit government power.

Our political problem is complex. Underneath the status quo, which, in large part, is made up banal statists who love power more than anything, there's a battle raging between Conservatives and Liberals that is basically over social/cultural issues. Somewhere along the line, the social issues became politicized, and I don't know who's at fault, Social Conservatives or meddling, do-good Liberals. Going back to the statists in government, although many are banal power-mongers, there is also an influential Progressive presence that wishes to use interventionist government to transform America into a socialist-type country. I use the word socialist because it's still a good word, although it's loaded with images of the old Soviet Union. The new socialism is more like the European Democratic Socialism. There's a global element to the new socialism, in that there's a Progressive push to manage global affairs to achieve environmental justice, gender justice, social justice, and so forth.

This new socialism will not fare any better than the old socialism. We're dealing with consequences presently that will only get worse if Americans don't gain control of their government. To make this crystal clear, I don't see much difference between the results of Bush's presidency and Obama's presidency, except that Obama is doubling down on expansion of State power. I believe that Bush was more understanding when it came to economic freedom, but he eventually violated the principles of economic freedom in a statist effort to "save" economic freedom. We didn't have economic liberty to start with, so this makes Bush's talk just that, talk. Obama is more of a bonafide Progressive than Bush, but Progressivism infected our government with statism around the time of Woodrow Wilson and it's sickened the nation since, under Republican control and Democratic Party control. Nixon hammered the nails in the coffin first built by Wilson to lay economic freedom to rest.  Now, Progressivism is literally killing the nation.

In order to avoid national collapse, like Britain before us and Rome way before them, to name a few popular examples, Liberals and Conservatives both have to realize that the battle in the political realm must end, and any social and cultural differences must be dealt with in the free market of ideas. But how do Liberals and Conservatives come together to put proper limits on government power, and to allow the development of a free market? Are Liberals really so far gone they agree with Progressives that free markets must remain dead, not to be revived under any circumstances? Have Liberals drugged their consciences when it comes to foreign interventions and drone killings? Have Conservatives and Liberals forgotten their non-interventionist heritage as Americans?

Conservatives are just as guilty as Liberals when it comes to giving into Progressivism on the issue of the welfare/warfare State. Progressives have convinced Americans, even if most Americans might not realize the origination of the ideas due to the nature of our State-run education, that a powerful State is necessary to educate the poor and middle class, to protect the powerless citizens of foreign nations who are abused by power, to provide assistance to the needy, unfortunate and handicapped, to manage the money supply in order to avoid domination by wealthy private interests, to regulate the economy so that monopolists don't rule and set their own prices and destroy the environment in the process, to give advantages to unions so that powerful corporations don't run roughshod over workers, to provide health coverage and treatment so that profit seekers don't drain the people of their money when they get sick, on and on to control all areas of our lives. All these justifications for a powerful, controlling State appear reasonable until you learn the history of domination and freedom. When you begin looking at private sector means to deal with these issues, you begin to realize there are ways to avoid the anti-social takeover of the State.

Conservatives at least verbalize a desire to limit the power of government, and Liberals should know better,  but once Progressive ideology sold the nation on the vital need for the State to provide welfare, generations have accepted this as truth, and once Wilson led the nation to a world war, followed by a bigger war under FDR, Americans have been sold on the military/industrial complex, but it hasn't always been this way, and it doesn't have to be this way now. How do we end the war between Conservatives and Liberals in a real way, and not just some Centrist attempt to join opposites, preach pragmatism, and call it a day? Both sides, first, need to realize that they are equally responsible for our present statist system, and even if one side has pressed for statism more than the other, it's not enough to give that side justified righteousness.

I don't know which side will have the harder time accepting a political truce, Liberals or Conservatives. It only has to be a political truce, if both sides realize that the political realm is for protecting rights. As a classical liberal, I can't fathom why either Conservatives or Liberals believe our current statist system is the appropriate avenue to make changes in society and to assist the needy in society. What change is lasting that is forced on others through legislation -- what moral act is really moral if it's not a voluntary act? Why have Conservatives and Liberals become so cynical they've lost trust in our ability to work together to solve social problems and create an open, enriching, diverse culture? Would Jesus lobby government to make laws forcing people to behave the way he wants them to behave? I seriously doubt it. He would likely try to persuade, then give people the freedom to decide their moral code. He would most likely agree only with the laws that prevent coercion. Why have Liberals adopted the way of government to generate the changes they think are best? When did Liberals become manipulators and masters of other people, controlling their economic choices?

I think Liberals and Conservatives can make a political truce long enough to stop Progressivism from destroying the nation. Once government is properly limited and we're on the road to growth, peace and prosperity, Liberals and Conservatives will have more time and money to debate the social and cultural issues of our time on bigger and bigger stages.

Why Liberals have to speak up

I've been writing lately about the distinction between Liberals and Progressives, hoping there's still a distinction. Rather than berate Liberals for supporting Progressive policies and goals, I want to undertand why it is that liberals have become so complicit in an obvious attack on classical liberalism. Surely Liberals have some connection to their past. It makes no sense for liberal to mean something up to a certain point in time then become something totally different.

I've wondered why Liberals don't champion economic freedom. I can understand that Liberals possess a strong desire to help those who are powerless, but losing economic freedom hardly seems the best route to helping the poor and powerless. It's the opposite, actually, economic freedom is what's necessary to help the poor move out of poverty and to enjoy a measure of prosperity. I can't understand why Liberals are so resistant to searching for private sector solutions to poverty, inadequate education and discrimination. It appears that anyone today who still embraces statist solutions is someone who values coercive control over others, and this is an illiberal desire.

I've wondered how Liberals can maintain silence when America is still at war in Afghanistan after a decade of corruption and nation-building failure. I've wondered how Liberals can support a President who shows no concern for civil liberties. And, very recently, I've been astounded at the Liberal reaction to the atrocities committed by Kermit Gosnell. Several Liberals like Kirsten Powers and David Weigel have spoken up, but for the most part, Liberals appear reluctant to speak against the multiple baby-killing perpetuated by this monster and to demand answers regarding why regulators turned a blind eye, as if to speak out on this issue would mean association with the Right and, thus, be politically incorrect. I can't understand this.

Liberals have to be liberal, or they're just statist Progressives. If that's the case, then, fine, let me use this perfectly good word to describe myself again. As it stands, I can't call myself a Liberal, if it means supporting Progressive economic and foreign policy madness and being silent for political reasons in face of atrocities.

Dear Liberals, do you really want this?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/112459491/MoveOn-In-The-2012-Election

Here I'm talking to the Glenn Greenwald liberals. I've always considered myself a liberal, although the libertarian label fits better considering what liberals now represent and support. I am a classical liberal, but I have nothing against conservatives -- it's just I don't consider myself conservative. I explained this in a post awhile back, but it doesn't seem satisfactory. I'm conservative when it comes to conserving the Constitution and laissez faire government, but those are things of the past, so I'm more of a revolutionary, fighting for the implementation of a limited government and a free market. I would say I could be called a reactionary, but it's been so long since limited government and a free market were principles to be conserved, it's like I'm fighting for something brand new.

I'm not a libertine. I live a pretty boring life, although for awhile I was pretty wild. Once I gained self-esteem, I stopped slowly destroying myself. I'm liberal in the sense I think people should live their lives according to their own values and morals as long as they aren't violating the rights of others. I would never think of trying to enforce my morals on anyone else, but I would discuss my values and morals with anyone willing to discuss them.

I grew up around liberal people, but I don't recognize liberalism today. Liberals in the late sixties, the seventies and into the eighties were not statists. The liberals I grew up with distrusted government authority figures, even though they saw government as necessary to protect our rights, the law and our country. How liberals now can go along with the Progressive agenda is beyond me. I think liberals have been misled by the media and State education, but maybe they're sincerely supportive of Progressive, statist goals. If they really do support Progressives, I don't know how they call themselves liberals.

How can someone be a liberal and not support economic freedom and individual rights? Do Liberals really want to follow Progressives down the interventionist, centrally planned road?

Libertarians pushed back by GOP

The GOP is too steeped in desire for political power and too concerned with establishment-protection to allow renegade libertarians to move the party in the direction of anti-statism. The truth is that the Republican Party is still controlled by Burkean-type conservatives who believe that the average American needs government to provide wise and benevolent leadership, even though the leaders should prudently manage the nation's finances and restrict interventions as much as possible. This concern merely for intelligent, frugal spending and benevolent, wise leadership is not quite a libertarian revolution.

When libertarian-influenced representatives like Ron Paul talk about ending the Fed, removing our military from the mideast and bases from around the world, and eliminating entire departments, the GOP establishment-defenders shake their heads and wonder why they have to put up with such non-sense. If Paul didn't have such a big following, the establishment types would completely marginalize him and his followers -- they almost completely marginalized Paul at the convention. Romney and Ryan flirt with the most popular aspects of libertarian thought, but they don't go far before establishing a clear line of demarcation between conservatives and libertarians.

GOP conservatives talk about a "small" government, which to them means spending money on their statist preferences while cutting what they think is wasteful. Democrats do the same thing -- they usually are eager to cut military spending, then increase spending on welfare and education. Both Democrats and Republicans claim that certain parts of government are too interventionist and too costly, even unnecessary -- they just choose different aspects of government to oppose or promote. Government grows in size and power under both parties. The State is basically a self-perpetuating Leviathan that protects itself from opposition and innovation.

It's unlikely interventionist government, with all the perks, advantages and presitige congress people have voted for themselves, will do anything to limit its power. The pressure to change will have to come from the people. Welfare and warfare are two major areas which libertarians must address in ways that capture the public's imagination. When I say "libertarians" I'm not talking about members of the Libertarian Party, but anyone who understands and promotes the classical liberal principles of limited government, free markets and non-interventionism. I won't say the priniciples of our Founding Fathers, because founders like Hamilton promoted an early form of statism. The principles I promote don't belong to a period in time, but to human reason for all time.

A person who understands the principles of limited government will challenge current drug laws -- not because the person wants to use drugs or thinks that using drugs for recreation is a good idea, but because humans should be free to make their own decisions as long as their actions don't involve coercion of others to do things against their will. A person who understands the principles of non-interventionism is not necessarily a peacenik and might even support the use of incredible force when national security is threatened, but the person will not support intervening in a sovereign country to spread Democracy or to manage regime change. In the case of a country's people being slaughtered by a mad dictator, the libertarian will most likely support freeing the people from such certain death. In most cases, though, the libertarian will support each country taking care of its own issues, and although revolution is hard and requires sacrifice, each nation's people must decide what they value most and what they are prepared to lose to create change. There are certainly many grey areas in global relations, but the less the US intervenes in the business of other countries, the better off the whole world will be. The US should not intervene at all unless our national security is truly at stake or the humanitarian call for help is so great that no sane people can resist the call - but in that case there will be many nations involved in stopping a brutal murderer terrorizing the nation's people, and it will be clear that the people themselves have no power to save themselves.

In the area of welfare, libertarians must make it clear that being against government sponsored welfare is not to be against helping the poor and unfortunate. An average citizen with libertarian leanings can care more deeply than a government social worker, but still call for end end to government welfare programs. This is an area in which American's absolutely have to think innovatively and keep it simple. This is always the question when opponents of libertarianism debate the need for statist control -- what about the poor? What about the people who can't help themselves? They accuse libertarians of taking the position of I've go mine so screw the rest. Although I can't speak for libertarian leaning people as a whole, this is just not true of the libertarian philosophy in general, and it's certainly not my position. I don't know of any libertarian thinker who holds the position that the poor and the helpless should be on their own and no one should give them a hand. Most libertarians, I'm sure, feel this issue is subsumed in a free market, a free society in which people keep more of their money and can support private organizations that would provide help to the needy.

Perhaps libertarians should more fully develope their ideas regarding charity. The first thing we should establish is that charity is voluntary and thus avoids State coercion and redistribution of wealth, but this simply establishes adherence to the limited government principle. In a free market, Americans will do what they've always done, help fellow Americans in need. Those of us who believe in a free market, believe in the morality of allowing free people to make free decisions, but also believe a free market is more likely to create new wealth and widespread prosperity than a State mananged economy. There are two major categories when dealing with the issue of public welfare -- there are poor people, and then there are people who can't help themselves for various reasons. There are also people who fall on temporarily bad times and need some support until they get back on their feet, but innovative, comprehensive insurance plans can take care of this for the great majority of people. So, that leaves the poor who need knowledge, skills and a good job and the truly needy who can't help themselves.

It's no great flaw in any individual who doesn't conciously care deeply if there are others who are born in poverty and who have a difficult time finding their way out or about others who are handicapped in ways that make it impossible for them to take care of themselves. This individual might hear a story about people in poverty or about people born with physical diabilities who don't have familiy support to help them, and the individual might feel sorry for the people, but the individual, say, has a family to worry about and bills to pay -- he simply has but so much capacity to care and little to act to help such people. In the welfare state, this individual can say that he pays taxes to help people like that, so that's enough. What would happen with a limited government and free market? How would the poor receive help and the helpless receive the needed assistance to survive? Proponents of the welfare state say that private charity is insufficient and not enough people will donate to charity, and not enough organizations will form to replace all the programs of the welfare state.

I've written about this dozens of times, but with the political realm constantly framing support for limited government as a call to let the poor and helpless suffer, it seems it's not written about enough. A wealthy, prosperous America has proved in the past to be a generous nation. Americans already contribute generously to charity. When the welfare state collapses, though, and when we realize that a free market is the only way out, we'll then perhaps see just how creatively generous Americans can be. In earlier times men and women could not envision the changes that came -- the aristocrat could not envision a healthy democracy -- in the old south the master could not envision a black slave possessing the same capacity as a white person to acquire knowledge and succeed in a competitive world.

Just because most Americans can't now imagine the poor receiving a hand up in a thriving private market and the helpless receiving the care they need from private assistance organizations funded by generous corporations and grateful individuals who want to give back, doesn't mean it can't happen -- it can happen, and this is what Americans need to understand, whether we ever voluntarily transfer assistance to the private sector or not -- it can happen. The GOP would do themselves and the nation good if they would become a true opposition party. The State is unravelling, although the establishment is fighting hard to save it and redeem it. When it unravels, it would be good to have grownups ready to allow a free market to move past government interventionism and begin the process of new wealth creation and economic expansion. And it will be really good to witness this expansion and growing, widespread prosperity in the environment of peaceful, free trade internationally.

Persuasion didn't work -- the Statist route

The Left of the 60s was a different Left than we see today, although there are signs that today's far Left is becoming anti-establishment -- their reasons are probabaly as delusional as before. The 20th century saw capitalism succeed in ways no one, especially Marx and the early socialists, expected. Social democracy in Europe was much like the modern liberal movement in America -- they both realized that orthodox socialism doesn't achieve what it first claimed as goals. There was the problem of economic calculation when the State owned the means of production, but that was just one of the problems. The ruling proletariat was a delusion. Realizing the failure of orthodox socialism, reformists such as Eduard Bernstein decided that capitalism wasn't so bad after all -- it just had to be managed.

But managed capitalism brought us the Great Depression, contrary to the claims that the Great Depression was caused by a free market. America has never had a free market, nor has any other country. Relatively speaking, before the turn of the 20th century, America had the closest thing to a free market the world has known. After FDR's disastrous experiments, when the economy recovered, capitalism became relatively free once again for a couple of decades, creating enormous wealth. So much wealth was created that the New Left in the sixties believed that abundance would enable most people, especially in America, to play rather than work. The Leftists philosophers talked of productivity gains that allowed one person to do what before took 100 people. The idea that predicted the age of creative leisure wasn't well-formed.

It seemed to those on the Left that capitalism had created a form of repression, as advertising firms led people to a materialist quest which left them one-dimensional, as Herbert Marcuse wrote about during the sixties. Many in sixties saw a new age arising in which humans would be liberated from the rat race, and the New Left despised the liberal and conservative establishment, seeing government and giant corporations colluding to maintain conformity and obedience to the system. The military/industrial complex was seen as a government monster out of control, and Viet Nam was the proof. The New left attempted to form a coalition to change the world in the streets, but Kent State ended the protests with students being shot down by national guards. People today can't imagine this happening, but it did. After the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X, Watergate -- after Woodstock and Kent State, the Left decided that they would have to work within the State to gain power and make the changes they sought.

The seventies proved that perpetual abundance wasn't yet a reality. There was much disillusionment during the seventies. In the eighties the Age of Reagan and Thatcher was proclaimed, and the State was rhetorically beaten back, although interventionist government grew in size and power. Modern liberals and Leftists moved past their divisions and began creating a new coalition. In the 60s, when the New Left called on the Third World and the poor minorities to join them, they were asking poor people to become anti-materialistic. Michael Harrington writes about this in the last book he wrote. Needless to say, those who were struggling to make material gains didn't respond so well to young, priveleged intellectuals asking them to deny materialism and join their humanistic crusade for concepts. Poor people wanted jobs and money, not creative freedom -- they were hungry not repressed by material possessions.

The coalition on the Left that formed through the eighties and nineties and now into the 21st century promised something different. They promised good union jobs, a generous welfare State, redistribution of wealth, power through government interventions, social justice, and some even talked about reparations. The dream of working less, or not at all, subsidized by the State, has surived, but the Left doesn't lead with this dream. With real unemployment at around 20% and the national debt over 16 trillion it would seem insane to promote creative play over work. The Left doesn't talk as much about the repression of material abundance -- they talk about unfairness regarding the 1% with their underserved wealth. The Left doesn't protest the military/industrial complex, unless Republicans control government, because they know that the Stae can maintain power only through overseas interventions that provides us with a sense of security and national pride.

Minorities were terribly fooled this time by the Left. When the Left told minorities straight up what they proposed, minorities didn't respond, but when the power of government intervention was shown as the path to fairness and equality, minorities signed on and became permanent Democrats. This hasn't worked out so well for minorities. Welfare has become a corrupt and corrupting system -- unions are on the decline, except government unions, but they can't last because of our debt problem and they're unreasonable demands for more and more when government has less and less. The Left forgot the part of reality that's dynamic, and minorities haven't kept up with the rapid changes, because the State has not kept up. Government run education is not suitable for poor minorities to gain the knowledge necessary to succeed in the 21st century economy. Welfare has torn families apart, with young black males lacking adult male guidance, leaving them susceptible to the influence of criminal elements who become local heroes because they flash wads of money made off sold drugs which are killing those completely lost in the system.

When those who understand the generative principles of a free market and limited government bring up the failures of our statist system, we're marginalized as extremists, racists and other names to demonize us and remove the threat to State power. Supporting State power has now become an intellectually empty exercise to maintain power for the sake of power, as more and more Americans never gain the skills to thrive in the market. Minorities need good educations and skills to fill the jobs of the 21st century. We can talk about social justice and racist history all day long, but it won't help young men and women get jobs which pay a good wage so that they can live with dignity and pursue happiness with equal gusto. Statism, the Left's route to transform capitalism into a fully-managed wealth-creation source to subsidize their tired movement which long ago lost any grand vision it once had, is killing the economy. Will the New Republicans do any better? Will limited government representatives gain enough power to make major changes and limit the power of government, thus whittling the State down to size? I don't know, but minorities ought to pick a new coalition to escape the statist system and prosper in a free market -- it's the only way out.