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The Demise of the West? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on August 22, 2019

Mr. Rockwell’s article makes some good points which is why I re-posted. The remainder of the article is a request to help fund his new book.

I encourage you to lick the link to investigate.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/lew-rockwell/the-demise-of-the-west/

By

The Left is the most dangerous ideological phenomenon in the history of mankind. It glorifies poverty, the total state, and mass death. The Left wants to destroy Western civilization, based on Christianity, the traditional family, and the free market.

It’s no coincidence that Communists killed more than 100 million people, not including their wars.

By the way, young people are not taught about the evils of the Left, only its myths. They do not believe there were gigantic atrocities in the Lenin-Stalin Soviet Union, nor Mao’s China. Socialism is good! Everyone is better off under socialism. Everyone is Equal.

Equality is the magic word. Since it does not and cannot exist, it is is a license for total state power. After all, some people are smart, some stupid. Some good looking, some ugly. Some creative, some dull. Some hard working, some lazy. Some athletic, some couch potatoes.

According to the Left, private property and the free market are evil, not the sources of prosperity and civilization itself. The family is the ultimate evil, since is the ultimate source of inequality. That’s why Karl Marx called for its abolition.

The key fact about the human race is our radical inequality, said Mises. Without it, there could be no division of labor, no social cooperation, no market. There could be no liberty, because liberty depends on the ability of people to exercise without hindrance their unequal talents.

It’s more than ironic that Leftists call us fascists and Nazis, since fascism had its origins in communism and socialism, and Nazism was National Socialism. Both Mussolini and Hitler denounced the free market and all it stands for. But then, Leftists never tell the truth.

Where did this poison originate? Not so much in the ancient world, though it had its advocates there too. One Greek myth talked about the ruler Procrustes, who would force visitors to sleep in his iron bedstead. If you were too tall, he’d have your feet chopped off. If too short, he’d have you stretched on the rack. It’s still a good summary of egalitarianism.

The birth of modern Leftism was the French Revolution, with its wars, conscription, egalitarianism, mass deaths, and total state. Defeated, it rose again in Communist Marxism, the Russian Revolution, and all its despicable offspring.

Yet Marx’s idea of a proletarian revolution proved ridiculous and impossible. The attempt to put this idea into practice in Soviet Russia led to terror and mass murder that staggered the world. Far more effective was Cultural Marxism, originated by mostly German Communists in the 1930s, who moved like a plague to the United States in the 1940s. Putting aside direct efforts to revolutionize the means of production, they focused on destroying bourgeois culture—the family and Christianity especially—as the path to power…

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Germany 1880 1945: Art Posters of the Third Reich

 

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Why Are Progressives so Bad at Governing? | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on June 21, 2019

Not only does de Blasio call for an end to private property and the total transformation of the economy via the “Green New Deal,” but he also has pushed “egalitarian” initiatives like ending charter schools in New York. (The fact that charter schools perform better than their regular public-school counterparts galls de Blasio and he believes they must be stopped.)

https://mises.org/wire/why-are-progressives-so-bad-governing-0

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Paul Krugman declared that the Bush administration failed in its response to the flooding of New Orleans because the administration consisted of people, according to Krugman, who didn’t “believe in government.” One cannot say that about progressives who truly believe in government, and believe in unlimited government at that. Yet, it also is clear that when in power — and especially when they face no real opposition — progressives generally govern very badly. Why this is so — in direct contradiction to Krugman’s stated belief — requires an examination of the progressive mindset, something Krugman probably is intellectually and emotionally incapable of doing.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: New York’s Progressive Disaster

The first thing to understand about progressives in government is that they have a much different view of “progress” than most other people. For example, even though whatever positive changes New York made in the 1990s and 2000s has been waning during the terms of Mayor Bill de Blasio, de Blasio believes that future “progress” now must come in the form of something other than the decline of crime rates and business growth. Instead, de Blasio, who wears his socialist cap proudly declares that the real threat to New York’s future is private property. He says:

Our legal system is structured to favor private property, (but) people would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. If I had my druthers, the city government would determine every single plot of land, how development would proceed. And there would be very stringent requirements around income levels and rents. That’s a world I’d love to see.

Any competent (or even incompetent, for that matter) economist can tell us how such a scenario plays out in the long run, and the economic chaos that was the former Soviet Union stands as Exhibit A, while the New York of the 1970s and the 1980s is Exhibit B. Yes, even in the face of hardcore evidence against his position, de Blasio stands firm. In fact, an entire new wave of politicians in this country calling themselves “progressives” are trying to fashion a “new” economy, one based upon a “Green New Deal,” and other massive interventions into private economic activity. That the experience of socialism never matches its utopian rhetoric seems not to have changed a mind among this new generation of progressives.

If de Blasio is an example of modern progressivism (he even took his honeymoon in Cuba, taking a cue from Bernie Sanders who honeymooned in the USSR shortly before it collapsed), then his words and actions shed light on what progressives consider to be “proper” governance. Not only does de Blasio call for an end to private property and the total transformation of the economy via the “Green New Deal,” but he also has pushed “egalitarian” initiatives like ending charter schools in New York. (The fact that charter schools perform better than their regular public-school counterparts galls de Blasio and he believes they must be stopped.)… Read the rest of this entry »

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Want More Investment and Entrepreneurship? Protect Private Property | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on June 4, 2019

https://mises.org/wire/want-more-investment-and-entrepreneurship-protect-private-property

The principles of economic thought tells us that investments would flow to places with less capital accumulation, the reason being is that there would be less competition, thus a higher rate of return on investments. Indeed, as Adam Smith noted in the Wealth of Nations, capital accumulation would be the inevitable hindrance to economic growth.

However, this not as we have it in the real world. Many countries, especially those in the Global South, have very little capital, but yet aren’t flooded with investments. The reason for this is simple: there is no assurance that their property and investment would be protected by the law.

Picture this, why would someone invest in a piece of property, plot of land, or share in a business when there is a high probability that a random bandit, even worse, the government, could steal it at any time without assurance of compensation? This is certainly the norm in many authoritarian countries. For example, a report from the Business Anti-corruption Portal described the police in Nigeria “as the most corrupt institution in the country”, as they often impede on businesses and act above the law. If a country wants to attract foreign direct and portfolio investments, there ought to be a framework that holds people accountable to the arbitrary use of force: this is the rule of law.

This also goes hand-in-hand with property rights since the rule of law is the necessary condition under which property rights can be successfully employed. Indeed, as James Robinson points out in his essay, “Property Rights and African Poverty,” the lack of property rights has been the number one obstacle to economic prosperity in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is contrary to most prevalent views which blame the legacies of colonization and also the geographical location of sub-Saharan Africa to its economic shortcomings.

In addition, most of these countries are filled with an abundance of natural resources — for or example the diamonds in Congo, gold in Ghana, and oil in Nigeria — but yet are not flooded with investments. Some commentators have called this phenomenon the “resource curse.” This occurs when governments focus solely on natural resources as a means to get revenue while ignoring other parts of the economy, consequently making the country worse off as a whole.

Although there is some truth in this statement, the fact that these countries don’t possess or uphold a framework of laws which protect persons and property from arbitrary government interference is still the key explanation to this problem. As Thomas Sowell puts it brilliantly in his book, Basic Economics, “ Countries whose governments are ineffectual, arbitrary, or thoroughly corrupt can remain poor despite the abundance of natural resources, because neither foreign nor domestic entrepreneurs want to risk the kinds of large investments which are required to develop natural resources into finished products that raise the general standard of living.”

On the other hand, we could take a country, Hong Kong, which does not have an abundance of natural resources, but has been flooded with capital in recent times. Furthermore, Hong Kong has been continuously ranked as one of the freest places in terms economic freedom by think-tanks such the Fraser Institute and the Heritage Foundation…

It is fair to say that concepts like the rule of law and property rights are not innate to any civilization; indeed, countries like the United States and Britain, which we could say have civil institutions, underwent violent revolutions in order to put these principles in place. This is not to say that current less-economically developed countries need to follow a similar path. Needless to say, there is a need to change the intellectual climate in these nations. This could be done by being less dependent on foreign aid, imposing checks and balances on politicians, and implementing free-market economic policies such as free trade and lower taxes.

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Private Property Movie Review (1960) | Roger Ebert

 

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Fascism Has Always Been An Enemy of Private Property | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2019

https://mises.org/wire/fascism-has-always-been-enemy-private-property

The Left and mainstream political science identify Italian fascism and German national socialism as a right-wing ideology. Their motivation is clear — they do not want to be associated with regimes that brought civilization the horror and suffering of an unprecedented scale. The Left traditionally substantiates their point of view with two theoretical propositions. First of all, fascism and Nazism do not belong to the Left because those regimes did not institute total collective ownership on means of production as Marx prescribed. Secondly, nationalism and racism have traditionally been features of the Right, whereas the Left is perceived to be internationalist in nature.

Private Ownership in Name Only

Let us consider the first postulate about the failure of these regimes to carry out total socialization of private property. Thus, Stalin pointed out in his interview to American journalist Roy Howard, “The foundation of the [socialism] society is public property: state, i.e., national, and co-operative, collective farm property. Neither Italian fascism nor German National-‘socialism’ has anything in common with such a society. Primarily, this is because the private ownership of the factories and works, of the land, the banks, transport, etc. has remained intact, and, therefore, capitalism remains in full force in Germany and Italy.” That has been the notorious argument of Marxian socialists.

The great Ludwig von Mises attacked logical inferences of the Left by pointing out that in non-Marxian socialist regimes the private property was de jure allowed, but de facto the state was the principal owner of the means of production. “If the State takes the power of disposal from the owner piecemeal, by extending its influence over production; if its power to determine what direction production shall be, is increased, then the owner is left at last with nothing except the empty name of ownership, and property has passed into the hands of the State”, wrote Mises in Socialism.

Indisputably, his arguments authentically describe real economic affairs under these regimes. Indeed, entrepreneurs were deprived of the free commodity market, labor market, and international money market; the state established wage and price controls, and overall influenced all stages of production, distribution, and consumption. However, it should be recognized that Mises’s arguments do not find the proper understanding and effect in modern realities.

[RELATED: “How the Nazis Converted German Agriculture to Socialism” by Chris Calton]

The thing is, the twentieth century was cracked by two bloody World Wars and the prolonged Cold War. Only a state can wage World Wars as it can gather and manage the necessary financial, economic, and people resources. Thus, for the last century, the state had been very firmly fixed in the economic sphere of society, and it reluctantly gave up its position. After all, many generations of people live in conditions where the state dictates the conditions of the economy. They do not even suspect that the state and the economy may have different relations. Contemporary industrial countries are guilty of conducting policies that resemble ones from the cookbooks of Italian and German governments. Indeed, the state has put in place various regulations that adversely affect the business and economy as a whole, including, among other things, control over the minimum wage, the establishment of social programs that are fueled by the substantial redistribution of wealth, and many other measures.

Mises pointed out that the state controlled the economic life, conducting various measures of coercion. He is undoubtedly right; however, the socialist regimes have utilized both methods: coercion and persuasion, and the latter occupied even more prominent importance. In contemporary settings, the outright collectivist indoctrinations in educational institutions became a primary form of persuasion…

Nationalism Is Not Unique to the Right

The supposed exclusive nationalism and racism of the Right is a political myth propelled by the vicious leftist propaganda. It is known that the founders of Marxism were xenophobes that adhered to the Hegelian division of nations to historical and non-historical. The founder of revolutionary syndicalism Sorel was an ardent anti-Semite. Some currents of socialism preached outright chauvinism; others used internationalist rhetoric in order to gain political benefits. Moreover, nationalism was not a factor that divided the political spectrum into the Left-Right wings at the beginning of the 20th century. Instead, it was the attitude to property rights (or antagonism between capital and labor, in Marxian terms) that divided the political spectrum. Therefore, nationalism might be inherent in various political philosophies, in both the defenders of capital and the proponents of labor…

Italian Fascism and German Nazism constitute anti-materialist, anti-positivist current of the socialist movement, which was extremely hostile toward ideas of Marxism and democratic socialism. Nevertheless, they shared a continuum bench of the socialist team. Communists occupy the extreme left, followed by the Social Democrats; the right flank belongs to fascists and Nazis — they are the right wing of the Left.

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banksy-anarchism

Banksy

 

 

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Envy, Inc. | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on May 22, 2019

Why do intellectuals, particularly university professors, resent capitalism? Simple, Mises explains: they resent the higher incomes and prestige of the risk-taking, entrepreneurial widget makers they look down upon.

Why do working class voters resent capitalism? Capitalism provides freedom, Mises tells us, but also imposes responsibility for one’s lot in life (a suggestion for which Jordan Peterson is deeply resented on the Left).

https://mises.org/wire/envy-inc

Presidential aspirant Kamala Harris promises to compel private companies with more than 100 employees to disclose what they pay employees to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. Companies that don’t pay women “enough” will pay fines until they demonstrate an acceptable level of gender parity. South Bend, Indiana’s “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg thinks America needs a federal “Equality Act” to make up for past racism, sexism, and homophobia. Senator Elizabeth Warren champions direct cash payments to black Americans as reparations for slavery. And all of the 2020 hopefuls take great pains to characterize income and wealth disparity as the defining issue of our time.

The ostensible thread connecting all of these public policy ideas is equality. Millions of Americans firmly believe the proper role of government is to make us more equal, and thereby make society more just. Old-fashioned liberal ideas about private property and natural rights barely register in this worldview. And it won’t be changed by an election or politician; egalitarianism as an animating political, economic, and social principle is firmly entrenched across the West today.

Are these proposals rooted in justice, or hatred and envy? Are they presented as an appeal for restitutionary justice, however far-fetched and far-removed? Or do they represent a gross display of cynical politics, an appeal meant to divide? We hate to play amateur psychologist. But after more than a century of progressive claims of good intentions, the results speak for themselves: capitalism and markets increase freedom and prosperity, while political engineering is zero-sum and antagonistic.

Ludwig von Mises explained so much of what still plagues us today in his underrated classic The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality. Written in the early 1950s, toward the end of Mises’s long career, this short book exhibits easier language and faster pace than his earlier works. Having been in the US for more than a decade at this point, one senses a change in Mises’s written English. He’s more comfortable in his diction and syntax, and utterly unconcerned with staying in his lane as an economist.

For Mises, capitalism is private property and markets. It is the engine of civilization, and the hallmark of any society with a natural and healthy “urge for economic betterment.” It is the only way to organize society that comports with human nature, promotes peace and social cohesion, and advances material well-being.

So what accounts for its constant vilification? Read the rest of this entry »

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On the American Ideology – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 30, 2019

Now, I tell you no secret when I admit that I hold this for a massive pile of rubbish…

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/04/hans-hermann-hoppe/on-the-american-ideology-and-its-proponents-and-beneficiaries/

By

Translated from German by Ohad Osterreicher[1]

“We paint the world to ourselves as we like – until everything breaks down and no longer holds.”

We live in the age of the American Empire. It can be that this empire will someday crumble. In the foreseeable future, however, it is here to stay, not on account of its military strength but first and foremost because of its ideological power. For the American empire has achieved something truly remarkable: the internalization of its core belief system as an intellectual taboo into the minds of most people.

Granted, all states rest upon aggressive violence, and the USA is no exception. The United States as well do not hesitate to annihilate everyone who opposes their legislative despotism. Though the USA had thus far employed little actual violence to have its orders submissively followed because the overwhelming majority of the population and especially of the opinion-forming intellectuals have accepted the system of values and convictions which makes up the American empire.

According to the official, USA approved belief system, we are all equally intelligent and reasonable people, who are confronted with the same “harsh reality” and are bound to the same facts and truths. Of course, it is true, that even in the age of the American empire, in the USA, people do not live in the best of all worlds. There are many more problems to be solved. Though with the American system of a democratic state, humanity has found the perfect institutional framework which makes the next step in the direction of a perfect world possible; and if only would the American system of democracy takeover worldwide, would the way to perfection be clear, smooth and free.

The single legitimate form of government is democracy. All other forms of government are worse, and any government is better than none. Democratic states like the USA are of the people, by the people and for the people. In democracies no one rules over the other; instead, the people rule over themselves and are thus free. Taxes in democratic states are therefore contributions and payments for governmentally provided services; accordingly, tax avoiders are thieves, who take without paying. To provide shelter for fleeing thieves is thus an act of aggression against the people, from whom they are trying to escape.

Though there are still other forms of governments around the world. There are monarchies, dictatorships, theocracies, and there are feudal landowners, tribes, and warlords. And for this reason, democratic states often must necessarily deal with non-democratic states. Eventually, all states must be converted to the American ideal, because only democracy allows for a peaceful and continual change for the better.

Democratic states like the USA and its European allies are inherently peaceful and do not wage war against each other. If they must fight any wars all at, then these are preventive wars of defense and liberation against aggressive and undemocratic states, that is, just wars. All countries and territories that are presently in war with or occupied by American troops or its European allies – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libyan, Syrian, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen – were therefore guilty of aggression and their war waging and occupation on behalf of the democratic West were an act of self-defense and liberation. However, there is still much to be done. Especially Russia and China still pose a huge threat and must be liberated, in order to make the world finally safe.

Private property, markets, and profits are useful institutions, but a democratic state must ensure that with the appropriate legislation, private property and profits are acquired and used in a socially responsible manner and that markets function efficiently. Moreover, markets and profit-seeking entrepreneurs cannot produce public goods and are thus incapable of satisfying any social needs. And they cannot take care of the truly needy. Only the state can take care of social needs and the less fortunate. The state alone can, through the finance of public goods and aid to the poor, increase the public welfare, and diminish poverty and the number of the needy, if completely not eliminate.

Especially the state has to put the private vice of greed of the pursuit of profit under control. Greed and the pursuit of profit were the leading causes of the most recent large financial crisis. Reckless financiers generated an irrational exuberance among the public, which ultimately had to crash into reality. The market was wrecked, and only the state stood ready to save the day. Only the state, through appropriate regulation and supervision of the banking industry and financial markets, can prevent such a thing from happening again. Banks and companies went bankrupt, yet the state and its central banks held ground and protected the money and jobs of the workers.

Advised by the leading and best-paid economists in the world, states and especially the USA have discovered the causes of economic crises and realized that in order to get out of an economic mess, the people must simultaneously consume more as well as invest more. Every cent under the mattress is a cent withheld from consumption and investment, which in turn impairs future consumption and investment expenditure. In a recession, spending must first of all and under all circumstances be increased; and when the people do not spend enough of their own money, the state has to do it instead. Prudently, states have this option, for their central banks can produce any necessary liquidity. If billions of Dollars or Euros are not enough, then trillions will do; and if trillions do not meet the goal, then surely quadrillions will. Only massive state expenditure can prevent an otherwise unavoidable economic meltdown. In particular, unemployment is the result of low consumption: people who do not have enough money to buy consumer goods; this problem must be remedied by providing them with higher wages or higher unemployment benefits. Read the rest of this entry »

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Your Property – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 9, 2019

If you can’t prohibit someone from entering or using your property, or controlling what takes place on your property, then your property is not your own; it belongs to the government.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/04/laurence-m-vance/your-property-is-not-your-own/

By

Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado, was accused by Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission in 2013 of discriminating against a homosexual couple because he refused to bake them a cake for their wedding. An administrative law judge issued a lengthy written order finding in favor of the couple, which was affirmed by the Commission. The decision was appealed to the Colorado Court of Appeals, which affirmed the Commission’s decision in 2015. A petition for a writ of certiorari was filed with the Supreme Court in 2016, and was granted in 2017. The Court, in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), in a 7-2 vote, ruled in favor of Mr. Phillips because “the Commission’s actions here violated the Free Exercise Clause.”

Phyllis Young was not so lucky…

The Supreme Court last month refused to hear Young’s appeal of lower court’s ruling that she violated Hawaii’s public accommodation law, which bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, when she refused to rent a room to the lesbian couple. Since the ruling stands, Young now faces some sort of penalty for freely exercising her religion.

She thought she could do what she wanted on her on property. She thought she lived in the land of the free.

If you can’t prohibit someone from entering or using your property, or controlling what takes place on your property, then your property is not your own; it belongs to the government.

Religion has nothing to do with it.

In a free society, the property rights of business owners are no different than those of homeowners.

In a free society, business owners have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason on any basis.

In a free society, discrimination by a business against a potential customer in any form and for any cause must be permissible.

In a free society, business owners have the absolute right to hire only certain people and give discounts to only certain people.

In a free society, every person has the natural right to think whatever he wants about any other person or group.

In a free society, every person has the natural right to associate with any other person who is willing to associate with him.

In a free society, there is no right to rent or live where you choose.

In a free society, no one has any legal recourse if a business refuses to hire him or serve him.

In a free society, there are no “public accommodation” laws.

In a free society, there are no civil rights commissions.

In a free society, there are no anti-discrimination laws.

In a free society, property rights are supreme; in an authoritarian society, your property is not your own.

 

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Capital is a Mystery to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on April 4, 2019

…the problem in underdeveloped countries is that “most people cannot participate in an expanded market because they do not have access to a legal property rights system that represents their assets in a manner that makes them widely transferable and fungible, that allows them to be encumbered and permits their owners to be held accountable.”

https://mises.org/wire/capital-mystery-alexandria-ocasio-cortez

We all know that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is dominating the political news with her demands for socializing the economy. Bob Murphy has explained that her Green New Deal “makes no sense on economic grounds” and even for Keynesians it “ would be nonsensical to implement such a program today.” Given the inanity of the Green New Deal, I would like to propose a course of study for Ocasio-Cortez.

While Ocasio-Cortez has a degree in economics, she apparently never learned the lessons stressed by Hernando de Soto in his The Mystery of Capital. The country would be better off if AOC and politicians of all stripes understood and took to heart de Soto’s warnings.

“People who have adapted every other Western invention, from the paper clip to the nuclear reactor, have not been able to produce sufficient capital to make their domestic capitalism work.” This, according to de Soto, is the mystery of capital.

De Soto argues that “capital, the most essential component of Western economic advance, is the one that has received the least attention” and shows that the major barrier to the production of capital is the lack of private property rights in struggling countries. Socialism, particularly the extreme proposals from Ocasio-Cortez, undermine and in some cases completely eliminate private property. De Soto provides us with a mainly historical argument showing that adopting socialist proposals will destroy the capital producing engine that powers the U.S. economy.

Westerners, de Soto points out, take this capital producing “mechanism so completely for granted that they have lost all awareness of its existence.”

De Soto’s fear is that if we don’t understand the importance of private property in producing the capital necessary for our increasing standards of living then “the West might damage the source of its own strength. Being clear about the source of capital will also prepare the West to protect itself and the rest of the world as soon as the prosperity of the moment yields to the crisis that is sure to come.”

The Green New Deal could be such a crisis…

De Soto focuses on the lack of capital in poorer countries. On this issue, I recommend Mises’ “The Plight of the Underdeveloped Nations.”2 Here, Mises provides us with an excellent analysis of the institutional problems in less developed countries. The countries are underdeveloped because “they had been slow in developing those ideological and institutional conditions which are the indispensable prerequisite of large scale capital accumulation.” What should underdeveloped nations do to “eradicate penury”? “They must resort to laissez faire; they must remove all obstacles fettering the spirit of enterprise and stunting domestic capital accumulation and the inflow of capital from abroad.”

If Ocasio Cortez and other socialists understood the lessons of de Soto and Mises they might be reluctant to support policies that destroy the basis of a thriving economy, private property rights and capital accumulation.

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AOC

 

 

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The Tyranny of Conservatism – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 19, 2019

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/03/laurence-m-vance/the-tyranny-of-conservatism/

By

Conservatives say they believe in the Constitution, limited government, federalism, free enterprise, individual freedom, private property, and the free market. But, of course, this means absolutely nothing since they say they believe in these things even when their actions show that they don’t believe in any of them.

Consider the drug war.

Does the Constitution authorize the federal government to have a war on drugs? Of course not. But that doesn’t stop conservatives from supporting the DEA and the federal drug war.

Is a government limited to reasonable defense, judicial, and policing activities compatible with government interest in the eating, drinking, smoking, medical, and recreational habits of Americans? Of course not. The only limited government that conservatives seek is one limited to control by conservatives.

Do conservatives believe that all drug polices should be instituted on the state level and that the federal government should have nothing to do with prohibiting or regulating drugs? Of course not. Conservatives only believe in federalism when the federal government does something they don’t like.

Do conservatives believe that free enterprise includes the freedom to buy and sell drugs? Of course not. They want the government to prohibit people from peacefully buying and selling drugs. Read the rest of this entry »

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Bring on the Migrants – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 18, 2018

The Libertarian solution to immigration “problem”.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/04/no_author/doug-casey-on-the-migrant-crisis/

By Nick Giambruno

Nick Giambruno: The migrant crisis is tearing Europe apart. What’s your take Doug?

Doug Casey: I’m all for immigration and completely open borders to enable opportunity seekers from anyplace to move anyplace else. With two big, critically important, caveats: 1) there can be no welfare or free government services, so everyone has to pay his own way, and no freeloaders are attracted 2) all property is privately owned, to minimize the possibility of squatter camps full of beggars.

In the absence of welfare benefits, immigrants are usually the best of people because you get mobile, aggressive, and opportunity-seeking people that want to leave a dead old culture for a vibrant new one. The millions of immigrants who came to the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had zero in the way of state support.

But what is going on in Europe today is entirely different. The migrants coming to Europe aren’t being attracted by opportunity in the new land so much as the welfare benefits and the soft life. For the most part they are unskilled and poorly educated. Read the rest of this entry »

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