libertarian

The United States is headed for an economic crisis bigger than the current recession. Congress is too scared of voters turning against them if they do the courageous thing, the right thing. They all think they will be out of office and retired when the goose dies. I cannot tell if they have their heads in the sand or in some other dark place.

Politicians keep looking at the market and keep finding it broken. They think up ways to fix it, to make it more fair. Thus they take what could be a win-win situation and turn it into lose-lose.

We libertarians recognize the value of a system of laws. More than any other movements, ours espouses formation of a system of laws that will be a system that implements justice and that will work. Our goal is a system that first promotes justice, but which yearns also be a society of love. A society must first be a society of justice before it can be a society of compassion and wellness.

How will future historians view the Ron Paul Campaign? They will recognize this as the change point, when the people realized they could do it themselves. Ordinary people are creating tools that are changing politics; by so doing they are proving that the people can govern themselves. That was the original vision that brought America into being, watch as ordinary people make that vision a reality.

I'm unabashedly for Ron Paul, but I'm also more unabashedly for libertarianism and achieving a system of government that not only holds dear, but honors and implements, the concepts of individual rights and equality.

Kubby already has an account with us to use to spread his campaign materials, speeches, and press releases. All others Presidential Candidates registered libertarian are welcome to the same.

I am not a member. I quit the Libertarian Party because I gave up on politics. That is the same reason I part company with Objectivists at ARI. There is one choice: politics or the market.

Is the problem of Congress' massive spending due to lobbyists the real problem? Congress fails time and again to end it. Where do they get the authority? Where do they get the money?

If it is necessary to limit government, then perhaps we cannot have government. It is after all a "monopoly on the use of force in a given geographic area." Everyone has to deal with it. Therefore if what we need, as human beings, liberty and agencies to protect that liberty, government is the worst way of trying to provide them. We need a polycentric ordering of society, not a single power.

If you were President/Prime Minister for a day, with the power to do absolutely anything (Supreme Court? What Supreme Court?), what would you do and why? I would start dismantling everything bad in our government, because they destroy liberty instead of securing it.

Is it possible that we really cannot get what we want from government? Is Libertarianism as we know it today radical enough? We meet with politicians to express our concerns. We sign petitions. We cast votes on issues and referendums. We switch to another politician when he or she sounds like they better espouse our position. We sometimes see near-unanimity among citizens. But the elected representatives still implement different programs and enact different laws than what we wanted. Is there something perverse about the incentives of political systems?

We did not separate powers properly. We did not go far enough. We separated the 3 functions, legislative, executive and judicial. But we have only one congress, one president and one court system. These still make up one government, which is a monopoly. Perhaps we had to have many decades or more than a century behind us to wake up to the evils of monopolies. A monopoly is a rare thing and harmless in a totally free market, but can be very harmful in a mixed economy, where the government helps to form monopolies. It is bad when enabled by government, it is even worse when established within government. Liberty must have a structure. If we do not want free-ranging license, but rather liberty, we need a structure that implements justice and the rule of law. What would be the essentials of such a way of ordering society? And how can it be done without a monopolistic government?

Translating the above gobblygook, it indicates that someone clicked on a link to us from one of LewRockwell.com's Gary North's articles. So, being slightly ego stroked I wandered over to the story in question to see what they had to say about us. Except there was nary a link to us there. Nor does there even seem to be any reference to Crockett or Paul, which would at least give sustenance to the, “There was a link, but it's now been removed.”

So, what gives?

Sure, setting up a 'bot, or a proxy filter, or a dozen other methods to change the Referer field is dead simple, but that really falls into Black (or at best Dark Grey) Hat SEO tactics [1]. Which is rather unseemly, and highly annoying, given the tiny population of the libertarian web space. And it was from Lew!

While libertarian George Phillies equates the mercenary with the child molester, another libertarian flipped that recipe like a flapjack and ended the military draft in America. In his book "Radicals for Capitalism" Brian Doherty whets our palettes with a tasty tale of Milton Friedman who served on the government commission that ended the draft in 1973. Opposed to ending conscription, General Westmoreland stewed over the prospect of leading an army of mercenaries. According to Doherty, a verbal food fight broke out.

A large brew-ha-ha has sparked over at KN@PPSTER over the possibility that Ron Paul is a racist. While I disagree with Tom on the dissection of the document he cites, and thereby its meaning, I've been somewhat shocked that Tom also disagrees with the statement, mine and others, that Ron Paul is the “best current choice to promote libertarianism.”

[This thread has morphed into “Who is the best current choice to promote libertarianism?,” so please pop on over there and leave your thoughts :) --MJ]

Tom Knapp, over at KN@PPSTER, found an old, seemingly racist article written by Ron Paul, and has requested libertarians to abandon Paul for the offence.

While initially shocked and appalled, after reading the article I have to come to the conclusion that Tom jumped the gun and came to the wrong conclusion.

Here's my reply to Tom's post....
[Please leave replies to Tom on Tom's blog. If you want to flame me, you can leave them at either place :)]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the link to Paul's article and a lively debate over it. I'll be upfront and politely disagree with your conclusions and ask you to reconsider your request for ditching Paul.