What is seen and what is not seen.
— Christian Heiens (@ChristianHeiens) August 25, 2017
Archive for the ‘Libertarianism’ Category
What he said (12)
August 23, 2017I believe both these idiots have the freedom to say what they want. But they are still assholes and I hate them equally. #America pic.twitter.com/XIKxJAuPWS
— Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyMMA) August 13, 2017
Learn from history or be doomed to repeat it
February 24, 2017Recently I came across a clip by Dave Rubin (via Carpe Diem), which led me to watching other videos on his YouTube channel.
Here’s a very recent clip of Dave talking about something I’ve been wondering about myself: how the current political turmoil will resolve itself into something more like normal.
This clip is one of his monologues. He may be better known for his dialogues: one-on-one interviews and there are many of those.
I was thrilled to find somebody making a go at talking up the Classical Liberalism array of thought. I hope he continues doing that.
As for this clip, the call for people to study history and to develop their own ideas for the role of government is one I certainly agree with. The last presidential election left me with a very strong feeling that we may be headed for the days of Bread and Circuses.
But on second thought, I’m encouraged by recalling one of my favorite quotes from Margaret Thatcher:
Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.
We’ve done it before.
I second that emotion
January 6, 2017Nick Gillespie writes a retrospective of last year’s Libertarian presidential campaign.
It reflects my views pretty well, including the part about Bill Weld. But RTWT.
Thank You, Gary Johnson, for Being the Best Thing in 2016!
Before we completely flush 2016 down the memory hole, let us pause to remember Gary Johnson, the former two-term governor of New Mexico who generated a record number of votes as the Libertarian Party’s candidate for president. If there was anything good that happened in 2016 — a year filled so much awfulness that even the Chicago Cubs could win the World Series after a thousand-year drought — it was @govgaryjohnson‘s ramshackle campaign to bring a very different way of thinking and talking about national politics to America.
In the end, of course, there was a lot of disappointment. He didn’t crack 15 percent in polls to route around the bullshit criteria created by the two major parties to keep people like him off the stage; he supported the inalienable rights of gay Nazis to force homophobic Jewish bakers to make German chocolate cakes in the shapes of swastikas; he spaced out while talking to recidivist plagiarist Mike Barnicle on Morning Joe and asked, What is Aleppo?; and so much more. Yeah, yeah, I get it. […]
To all of it, I say, politely: Go screw yourselves, all of you.
Gary wasn’t perfect and I still don’t really comprehend anything about that tongue-thing while talking to NBC reporter Kasie Hunt, who was understandably all like, Get me the hell out of here. But in the end, Johnson pulled almost 4.5 million votes (3.3 percent of the total), compared to 1.3 million votes (1 percent) four years ago. Of course, all of us who voted for Gary Johnson wanted him to do better still, but the world exists to disappoint us believers in small government. […]
During the race I noticed that people had begun to figure out there was such a word as ‘libertarian’ in the language. (I wonder how many points that would get you in Scrabble.)
When I slapped a Johnson-Weld sticker on my ride and got a couple of high signs and honks from passing vehicles, I figured the word was trickling out. One couple saw the sticker in a parking lot and came over to talk about the Governor. In short, the sticker worked better than my Bernie is My Comrade shirt, which only seemed to confuse most people.
But turning the political outlook is hard work and slow as well. Think about the last time a new major political party emerged quickly in the U.S. It was when the Republican party was organized at the start of the Civil War.
Nobody’s written "The Battle Hymn of Free Trade" – or seems likely to. So the LP‘s got a long row to hoe.
Recommended reading
December 31, 2016Daniel Bier, writing at Learn Liberty, has compiled a list of books he recommends.
I’ve removed his summaries for each of the books, so you may want to RTWT. It’s brief.
13 books every well-rounded libertarian should read
There are books that every libertarian should read and books every libertarian has read, but those circles don’t perfectly overlap. Here are 13 diverse book recommendations for well-rounded thinkers.
Economic Sophisms – Frederic Bastiat […]
Basic Economics + Applied Economics – Thomas Sowell […]
Beyond Politics: The Roots of Government Failure – Randy Simmons […]
The Problem of Political Authority – Michael Huemer […]
The Myth of the Rational Voter – Bryan Caplan […]
The Theory of Moral Sentiments – Adam Smith […]
The God of the Machine – Isabel Paterson […]
No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority – Lysander Spooner […]
Radicals for Capitalism – Brian Doherty […]
Democracy in America – Alexis de Tocqueville […]
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress – Robert Heinlein […]
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn […]
I’ve read about half of these. I give the list +1 for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, for The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and for anything written by Thomas Sowell, who once said, "It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." I’ll allow that Twain himself couldn’t have put that one any better.
But I give the list -1 for Paterson’s The God of the Machine. What an incredibly odd read that is. I found Paterson’s use of pseudo-technical terms to describe economic relationships both tedious and distracting. So I’d say read one of Russell Roberts’ books instead.
The older books on this list (Bastiat’s, Smith’s, and Spooner’s) are available for little or nothing to Kindle readers.
Can this election get any weirder?
November 2, 2016The Washington Post reports on Rachel Maddow’s interview with Libertarian VP candidate Bill Weld yesterday. (I think the headline a little over-the-top but there’s no denying that Gov. Weld’s interview was unusual.)
Libertarian Party VP nominee Bill Weld basically just endorsed Hillary Clinton
He didn’t say it directly, but the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential nominee, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, for all intents and purposes endorsed Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Weld, a former Republican, said he was “vouching” for Clinton and praised her effusively while arguing that the choice between the two major candidates is clear — all while not really vouching for the top of his own ticket, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson.
Weld has been hinting in this direction for weeks, saying nice things about Clinton, warning about Trump and suggesting people choosing between the two should pick Clinton. But at this juncture in the race, the Libertarian Party is struggling to get the 5 percent of the vote that would qualify it for federal matching funds and easier ballot access.
At Reason, Matt Welch reports on the reaction among Libertarians.
Libertarians Denounce Bill Weld
[…] Libertarians of both the capital-L and small-l variety have treated Weld with suspicion ever since (and in fact a decade before) he converted to the party’s cause two weeks before this May’s nominating convention, at which the former Massachusetts squeaked by in a second ballot by the narrowest of margins on the bitterly divided convention floor. Five months of is he/is he not supporting Hillary Clinton later, many of those ideologically disposed to root for the Libertarian ticket have clearly had enough. Though it’s obviously anecdotal, I have never seen libertarian Twitter so nearly unanimous on a close-to-home political issue. […]
I said “nearly unanimous” above; there are some libertarians out there defending Weld today, including Josh Guckert at The Libertarian Republic and a handful of people on Twitter. And I would certainly add to the conversation the suggestion that a Weldless L.P. ticket may never have gotten anywhere near the amount of media interest and poll support without such an Acela corridor-approved wingman.
What song the sirens sang
September 16, 2016I’d heard about this forum at Cato and was curious about it. So I’m glad Ron Bailey wrote this summary article for Reason’s blog. It’s hard to excerpt so I’ve just included a few snippets from it. RTWT though.
Why Is Socialism So Damned Attractive?
What is the attraction of socialism?The Cato Institute held a policy forum Wednesday to consider that question, featuring talks from the moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt and the evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby.
One problem they quickly encountered was how to define socialism in the first place. Is it pervasive, state-directed central planning? A Scandinavian-style safety net? Something else? Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who pursued the Democratic presidential nomination while describing himself as a socialist, attracted a big following among voters under age 30. But most of those voters actually rejected the idea of the government running businesses or owning the means of production; they tended to be safety-net redistributionists who want to tax the rich to pay for health care and college education. And this was, in fact, the platform Sanders was running on.
Cosmides then turned to a fascinating 2014 study in The Journal of Politics by the Danish political scientists Lene Aarøe and Michael Bang Petersen. Aarøe and Petersen found that certain cues could turn supposedly individualistic Americans into purportedly welfare-state loving Danes, and vice versa. […]
In that experiment, researchers asked 2,000 Danes and Americans to react to three cases involving a person on welfare. In one, they had no background information on the welfare client. In the second, he lost his job due to an injury and was actively looking for new work. In the third, he has never looked for a job at all. The Danes turned out to be slightly more likely than the Americans to assume that the person they knew nothing about was on welfare because of bad luck. But both Americans and Danes were no different in opposing welfare for the lazy guy and strongly favoring it for the unlucky worker. “When we assess people on welfare, we use certain [evolved] psychological mechanisms to spot anyone who might be cheating,” Michael Bang Petersen explained in press release about the study. “We ask ourselves whether they are motivated to give something back to me and society. And these mechanisms are more powerful than cultural differences.”
The next panelist, John Tooby, turned to those counterproductive attitudes. Tooby has long been puzzled that so many of his colleagues are not struck by facts like Hong Kong’s amazing economic success. (Its GDP increased 180-fold between 1961 and 1996 while per capita GDP increased 87-fold and inequality fell.) […]
The chief problem, he suggested, is that many people are beguiled by “romantic socialism”—that is, they imagine what their personal lives would be like if everyone shared and treated one another like family. We evolved in small bands that were an individual’s only protection from starvation, victimization, and inter-group aggression. People feel vulnerable if their band does not exist. Such sentiments are more or less appropriate when people lived in small groups of hunter-gatherers composed mostly of kin, but they fail spectacularly when navigating a world of strangers cooperating in global markets.
The third speaker was Jonathan Haidt, whose research explores the intuitive ethics that undergird the psychological foundations of morality. His goal is to reconcile the universal human behavior identified by evolutionary psychology with the cultural variations highlighted by anthropology. He and his colleagues have identified six moral foundations, but he focused on just three during the session. Those three were care/harm, fairness/cheating, and liberty/oppression.
In contemporary politics, liberals are chiefly concerned about care and harm. They see fairness mostly as equality of outcomes. He illustrated this with photos taken during the Occupy Wall Street episode in Zuccotti Park. (One Occupy sign, for instance, read “Tax the Rich Fair and Square.”) On the other hand, conservatives see fairness has proportionality; if you work hard, you get to keep the rewards. Haidt showed a Tea Party sign that read, “Stop Punishing Success—Stop Rewarding Failure.” […]
Another Occupy Wall Street placard shown in Haidt’s presentation said “Equality Now! Liberty Later.” In response to that sentiment, Haidt quoted Milton Friedman: “A society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty. And a society that aims first for liberty will not end up with equality, but it will end up with a closer approach to equality than any other kind of system that has ever been developed.”
Balanced Rebellion
September 8, 2016Here’s a clever ad.
FYI, it looks like BalancedRebellion.com expects you to have a Facebook account.
Friday’s political gossip
July 24, 2016I’ll be surprised (very pleasantly) if this happens. So for what it’s worth.
Will Jeb Bush Endorse Gary Johnson for President?
Rumors are spreading that Gary Johnson is joining to receive support from some previous presidential hopefuls. (Getty)
Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate might be getting public support from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, both Republicans who have unsuccessfully run for the White House. […]
Via Ricky Campbell and Matt Welch
Libertarians in politics
July 18, 2016I ran across a couple of opinion pieces in the last couple of days about Libertarians in national politics. This first one’s by Kevin Williamson. I usually enjoy his pieces even when I don’t agree with them – but I have no big argument with this one. (My emphasis below.)
How’s that ‘libertarian moment’ working out?
Las Vegas — Yeah, I told you so.
As the presidential campaign season kicked off, many of my friends and colleagues insisted that the United States was having a “libertarian moment.” I thought otherwise, and argued (in Politico) that the admirable Senator Rand Paul, the closest thing to an out-and-out libertarian with any currency in mainstream political circles, would have a hard time seeking the Republican nomination not in spite of his libertarianism but because of it. The idea that Americans are closet libertarians who desire a regime of economic liberalism and a hands-off approach to social questions is not supported by the evidence. […]
I am writing from FreedomFest, the annual Las Vegas gathering of libertarians ranging from those we’d recognize as ordinary conservatives to the Libertarian-party types, goldbugs, marijuana obsessives, and the rest of the merry liberty-movement pranksters. The discussions have ranged from libertarianism in the Islamic world to Black Lives Matters to New Hampshire secession, a subject that may be of some interest to my fellow Texans.
The conversations here are familiar: The proponents of free people and free markets have a “branding problem,” and, if we could only figure out the right words to say in the right order, then people would flock to our banner. At the Planet Hollywood hotel and casino, a famous libertarian activist sweeps his hand over the adult video games, the burlesque dancers at the Heart Bar, the people wandering around with foot-high daiquiri glasses and says: “Hopefully, the whole world will soon look like this.”
And we libertarians wonder why we’re losing. […]
The complexity of the real world exceeds what can be adequately addressed by our ideologies, and the variety of real human beings — and real human experience — means that there are real differences in basic, fundamental values. Most people do not want their values to be tolerated — they want their values to prevail. The terrorists in Nice and Orlando are not fighting for toleration. Neither are the neo-socialists now migrating from the Sanders camp to the Clinton camp or the Trumpkins who are sure that their frustrations and disappointments are being artificially and maliciously inflicted on them by a nefarious elite. And that’s why we are not having a libertarian moment, but a nationalist-socialist moment.
I told you so.
Yep. The "let live" part seems to be a lot harder for many than the "live" part.
This second one’s by Kristin Tate, who has a different take on the cause of Libertarians’ problems.
Libertarians’ Big Problem (and How to Fix It)
As purveyor of The Libertarian Chick, I have discovered that it is impossible to please all of my fans. Over the years I have gotten cranky emails from readers who call me “The Tea Party Chick,” “The Republican Chick,” “Democrat Chick,” “hippie chick,” among others (some are too mean to include here — my mommy reads this blog!)
It is no different on my Facebook page. When I post an article about government welfare I am a “heartless neocon”; when I express support for Ted Cruz, I am “bought out by the Republican Party”; when I post about legalizing hemp I am a “left-wing nut job.”
All this capricious griping has become the norm among the libertarian community. The mindset seems to be that if you don’t agree with every aspect of the Party platform, then you are not really a libertarian.
This stubborn purism became especially real to me after I was blocked from the official Libertarian Party Facebook page. (Yes, they blocked the Libertarian Chick! Isn’t that ironic?) After expressing an opposing opinion *GASP* to one of their vocal Admins, he kicked me off the page. Just like that.
The Libertarian Party has a big problem on its hands. The exclusive nature of the group — requiring litmus tests on such topics as immigration, tax policy, government spending and social issues — is largely why we have been unable to affect major change.
We libertarians are principled people. We have strong convictions, which is what led us to break out of the the two-party system in the first place. But clinging to these convictions without allowing any dissent is what often hinders us from actually getting anything done. […]
You in?
June 30, 2016Here’s a pretty nicely done ad from Team Johnson-Weld. #youin.
As I’ve said earlier, the Libertarians look like the best bet in November.
I’m not sure I’d be saying how "easy" good government is, though. A recalcitrant Congress could change that tune pretty quickly. (But I Am Not A Politician.)
Johnson & Weld on CBS News
June 19, 2016Let’s make the Constitution great again.
Update: Since the YouTube link rotted, here’s the same clip. (I think.)
Order yours now
April 20, 2016Jeff G sent a link to a post at Reason that led me to Liberty Maniacs site, where you’ll find this:
FEELING THE BERNS: BERNIE SANDERS IS ABUSING TRADEMARK LAW TO SUPPRESS MY PARODY
Now Bernie Sanders is trying to abuse trademark law in an attempt to suppress my free speech, in almost the exact way the NSA, DHS, and Hillary Clinton’s Super PAC did.
Yesterday, April 14th, the Bernie Sanders campaign sent a cease and desist letter claiming that I am unlawfully selling my parodies because they used the likeness of the official Bernie Sanders for President logo in this shirt. […]
I’m hoping the Streisand Effect will kick in and teach at least one lawyer a lesson.
This episode only confirms that your first reaction to any lawyer who sends you a demand letter should be to tell him or her to go piss up a rope. Seriously.
I wish I’d known that 20 years ago when an overzealous legal nitwit at CBS tried to shake me down for a domain name (of all things). I let him off for expenses, which in retrospect was being way too easy on him.
By the way, Liberty Maniacs sells the T-shirt the NSA tried to squash with copyright law.
And is there anything more ridiculous than a publicly funded agency trying to protect a copyright from the very public it’s supposed so serve? Who owns that copyright, anyway? Shouldn’t it be public property since it was funded with public money?
Why does the NSA even have lawyers to write those obnoxious demand letters?
Still standing with Rand
February 14, 2016It’s no secret that I backed Rand Paul’s presidential campaign (both here and financially). So naturally I was disappointed when he decided to end his campaign last week while I was traveling for business.
Not that I need another reason to despise Donald Trump, but I’ll add this one to the pile anyway. Thanks, Donald.
I think Nick Gillespie nails in it in this column, and that includes the parts about Rand trying to pass himself off as a conservative. Gillespie writes:
The short version of what went wrong is neither complicated nor difficult to explain.
Donald Trump happened, bending virtually all the light to him like a black hole for most of the past six months or more. […]
His [Rand’s] campaign was lackluster at times or, even worse, a conservative repudiation of the “libertarian-ish” tendencies that had earned him sobriquets such as “the most interesting man in the Senate” and “the most interesting man in politics.”
The guy whose 13-hour filibuster forced President Obama to promise not to drone-kill American citizens drinking coffee at Starbucks and who said the GOP needed to be “white, we need to be brown, we need to be black, we need to be with tattoos, without tattoos, with pony tails, without pony tails, with beards, without” rarely hesitated to jump on the anti-Planned Parenthood and anti-Syrian refugee bandwagons along with all the other GOP candidates.
I don’t regard a conservative as someone who necessarily wants to conserve liberty. Some want to conserve American political heritage; others just want to conserve their idea of a “good social order.” I’m with the first; the others can take a hike.
That’s why I talk, write, and vote libertarian: I don’t trust conservatives (as a group) to maintain liberty in any consistent, principled sense. And I was disappointed when Rand jumped on the very bandwagons that Gillespie mentions.
But to paraphrase an old saying in the software business: good marketing beats good principles any day.
All that said, I still think Rand was the best choice for those of us who want liberty to be conserved and expanded. So I liked Rand’s farewell video last week.
What he said (9)
January 16, 2016From Frederic Bastiat, The Law (1850), p. 22:
Socialism, like the old policy from which it emanates, confounds Government and society. And so, every time we object to a thing being done by Government, it [i.e., socialism and socialists] concludes that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of education by the State — then we are against education altogether. We object to a State religion — then we would have no religion at all. We object to an equality which is brought about by the State then we are against equality, etc., etc. They might as well accuse us of wishing men not to eat because we object to the cultivation of corn by the State.
You can read The Law here.
More evidence for the limited government argument (2)
January 9, 2016Moe Lane writes at RedState:
Washington Post admits that, no: electric cars were NOT worth it.
At least, if you use the rule of thumb that any time you ask a question in a headline then the answer is always going to be ‘no:’ “The government has spent a lot on electric cars, but was it worth it?” And the answer to the question is no in this case, too. There are three ways that the Washington Post (note that I am not criticizing WaPo article author Charles Lane, here: he’s obviously figured it all out already) could have worked that out ahead of time, in fact; all it had to do was look more closely at the title. […]
Read the whole thing; it’s brief. Better yet, follow the link the to WaPo article.
When electric cars get charged from solar cells or from zero point energy (assuming that’s practical), then I’ll buy one.
But to buy an electric vehicle which is charged by coal-fired generation (as mine would be) is just adding another step, with its particular inefficiencies, to the total energy use. TANSTAAFL applies to engineering as well as to politics. That’s why engineers won’t shut up about it.
It’s tough to beat the energy density in petroleum. Unless you’re willing to burn hyrdrogen or natural gas, or you’re willing to use nuclear sources, then you should burn petroleum. You don’t have to be an engineer to look this stuff up.
My view is that people should convert their vehicles to natural gas. It’s cheaper and it’s better in terms of emissions. If you’re one who worries about catastrophic warming, look at what the switch from coal to natural gas has done for US carbon emissions. They’ve fallen since 2007.
I always think that the example of places like Cuba, Venezuela, the Soviet Union, North Korea, the old ‘Eastern Bloc’ in Europe, und so weiter, would be enough to convince anyone that governments have no business trying to run markets.
But I’m learning not to be surprised when those examples aren’t convincing.
What he said (7)
December 24, 2015Here’s a good article by John Stossel. RTWT.
Politicians Without Borders
Today’s politicians seem to have few limits.When driving on treacherous roads, guardrails are useful. If you fall asleep or maybe you’re just a bad driver, guardrails may prevent you from going off a cliff.
Recently, The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel used the phrase “no political guardrails” to point out how many of today’s politicians seem to lack any constraints, any safeguards against their use of power. She’s onto something.
“Mr. Obama wants what he wants. If ObamaCare is problematic, he unilaterally alters the law,” Strassel writes. “If the nation won’t support laws to fight climate change, he creates one with regulation. If the Senate won’t confirm his nominees, he declares it in recess and installs them anyway.”
Hillary Clinton does it too. In fact, she promises that once she becomes president, that is how she will govern. If Congress won’t give her gun control laws she wants, she says she’ll unilaterally impose them. Likewise, if Congress rejects her proposed new tax on corporations , “then I will ask the Treasury Department, when I’m there, to use its regulatory authority, if that’s what it takes.”
Whatever it takes. So far, the public doesn’t seem to mind.
Donald Trump’s poll numbers go up after he promises “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” says that “there’s nobody bigger or better at the military than I am,” says that he’ll make Mexico “pay for that wall” and so on.
Apparently lots of people like the idea of a big, strong mommy or daddy who will take control of life and make everything better. Constitutional restraints? They’re for sissies. We want “leadership”—someone “strong” to run America.
I don’t. I’m an adult. I don’t want to be “led.” I will run my own life. Also, a president doesn’t “run America.” The president presides over just one of three branches of government, and there are strict limits on what he can and should do.
The Constitution was written to limit political authority. Those limits left individual Americans mostly to our own devices, which helped create the freest and most prosperous country in the history of the world.
Now, advocates for both parties are off the rails. Some Republicans demand that the IRS audit the Clinton Foundation. Part of me wishes that it would. I suspect their foundation is largely a scam, a pretend charity that props up the Clintons’ egos and pays Hillary’s political flunkies. Heck, in 2013, it raised $144 million but spent only $8.8 million on charity!
Shut it down! But where are the guardrails here? As Strassel put it, “When did conservatives go from wanting to abolish the IRS to wanting to use it against rivals?”
Today, politicians act as if guardrails are just an annoyance. And they get rewarded for that. […]
I think Mr. Stossel nails it with the last two sentences above. Constitutional limits? Who needs ’em?
This article reminds me of Gene Healy’s Cult of the Presidency.
Update:
Here’s something John tweeted today. “What he said” for Mr. Read too.
No Truce With Kings 