The Separation of Marriage and State

 “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity!” was the rallying cry of the French Revolution.  As it turned, Equality won out as the preeminent virtue of the three. Therefore, French society needed to be leveled.  Leveling was accomplished by severing heads from the ruling elites.

Whenever the word “equality’ crops up in public policy discussion, you know that a political solution is about to be imposed.  And when political solutions are imposed, someone takes a haircut while someone else reaps ill gotten gains.

Consider for a moment, the recent dust up over gender wage inequality.  Economists such as Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams debunk this canard through rigorous analysis.  The do this by adjusting for the facts that many women opt for less time consuming professions such as teaching or nursing that afford them the flexibility to spend time raising their families.   They also adjust for the fact that many women voluntarily step off of the corporate ladder for extended stretches in order have children and raise families.  They go on to note that when these variables are accounted for, there is negligible difference in the earnings of men and women of comparable qualifications.

Government attempts to impose “equality” would simply interfere with the lifestyle and career choices that women voluntarily elected while burdening employers with endless paperwork to justify their pay structure.

Sowell performs the same analysis for reported race based differences in earnings.  When all other factors are solved for, Blacks and Whites with comparable qualifications earn comparable money.  The factors that drive the overall shortfall in African American incomes include the dangerous zip code monopoly schools that they are forced to attend, the war on drugs which disproportionately jails young Black men, minimum wage laws that prevent them from taking their first step on their career path and a welfare system that rewards single parent families.

Government attempts to impose to impose wage equality ignores the true reasons the income disparity which is State created.

Thus it totally baffles me that many who profess to be libertarian support marriage equality.  Libertarians from Rand to Rothbard and from Bergland to Boaz agree that the State has no business in regulating relations between consenting adults.  That is the philosophically consistent libertarian stance.

Marriage equality, however, is a political imposition, a statist contrivance.  Ayn Rand tell us that the statist is a person “who believes that some men have the right to force, coerce, enslave, rob, and murder others.” 

In this instance the people who will suffer are those of various religious convictions who elect not to endorse same sex marriage.  By using the full force of the courts and the endless array of anti-discrimination statutes these dissenters are forced into acquiescence with practices that they find objectionable.

It is true that a great many libertarians are secularists who may have little sympathy for those who they might dismiss as religious bigots.  To this there are two responses.  The first is Martin Niemoller’s chilling epitaph:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

The point being is that for each of us, the day may come when the State will force us to kowtow to that which we find odious.  That is why we stand in unison with others with whom we disagree.

The other reason is that is essential that libertarians stand on principle.  Principle is what sets us apart from and above the political riff-raff.  Republicans, Democrats, neo-cons and liberals worship at the altar of expediency.  They think nothing of using any means to attain the ends that they desire.  Think of George W. Bush saying that he "abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system".  WTF?

So, would we stand in the way of same sex couples pursuing happiness as they see fit?  Not at all.

Marriage needs to be depoliticized by removing it from State oversight.  Whenever anything of value is brought into the political realm it becomes the object of strife and acrimony.

Civil marriage is rightly the subject of contract law between two (or more) consenting parties.  Religious marriage is a matter of personal choice for the participants.  There is no place for State involvement in church services.

Classical liberal doctrine separated church and state, protecting religious expression from State interference.  The evolved libertarian also separates:

Commerce from State

Education from State

Banking from State

Money from State

Healthcare from State

Energy from State

Agriculture from State

Technology from State

Transportation from State

Art from State

The Environment from State

Charity from State

Telecommunications from State

Internet from State

Infrastructure from State

Personal defense from State

Likewise, now is the time to divorce marriage from state.  Ultimately, all of the above can summed up in just two lines:

Separation Me and State

Separation of You and State

 

Related Posts:

Privatizing Marriage
Losing Faith in Politics
The Wisdom of the Ancients

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."
- Paul Simon

The Lie of "Tax Expenditures"

A message from my State Assemblyman, Troy Singleton, landed in my inbox recently.  The point of Mr. Singleton’s missive was that our State should be more judicious in its manner of granting tax exemptions to selected businesses. Who could object to greater discernment and deliberation on the part of our elected officials?

Singleton touts his Economic Opportunity Act of 2013 that creates jobs by allowing “individuals or businesses to reduce their tax liability if they meet certain criteria”.  Therefore by the testimony of his own legislation, Singleton recognizes that reduced taxes translate to more jobs and greater prosperity in general.  Most Jersey politicians recognize this.  That is why we have Urban Enterprise Zones in the state.  Urban Enterprise Zones are neighborhoods where the political class has granted tax relief to resuscitate their moribund economies once the collectivists have plundered, raped, pillaged and left them for dead.

The obvious question is, if everyone accepts that tax relief makes life better, why not relieve us of taxes altogether?  No one has ever argued that more income extracted from honest businesses or individuals makes life better.

Singleton proposes that New Jersey taxpayers underwrite extensive economic analysis to better determine which businesses are most deserving of special tax privileges.  Murray Rothbard, one of the most astute economic thinkers of all time, points out that economists are ill equipped for such a task.  He writes:

“Contrary to the pretensions of many economists, he is of little aid to the businessman. He cannot forecast future consumer demands and future costs as well as the businessman; if he could, then he would be the businessman. The entrepreneur is where he is precisely because of his superior forecasting ability on the market. The pretensions of econome-tricians and other “model-builders” that they can precisely forecast the economy will always founder on the simple but devastating query: “If you can forecast so well, why are you not doing so on the stock market, where accurate forecasting reaps such rich rewards?”

Of course all economic analysis must be subject to interpretation.  This job falls to silver tongued lobbyists.  You can bet that the firms with the best lobbyists will also be the ones most deserving of tax breaks.

But what really gets my (1/4) Irish up is when my Assemblyman starts throwing the term “tax expenditure”.  What is a tax expenditure?  It is simply any money that the government lets you keep after they are finished taking their share.

For instance, let’s say that you spend the day digging ditches for $100 and the government takes half of that.  The $50 that you have left is a tax expenditure that the government has made to allow to get enough food to eat and a place to sleep so that you come back tomorrow and produce more tax revenue for them.  The underlying assumption behind “tax expenditures” is that everything that you have is really government property and that they are doing you a solid by allowing you to keep a bit for yourself.

Here is an example.  A mild mannered kid goes to school each day only to have his lunch stolen by a bully. After a while, the mild mannered kid starts performing poorly in his studies because he is weak and hungry.  The school is considering expelling him for poor performance.  Seeing this, the bully realizes that his meal ticket may be going away.  Therefore he now steals only half of the mild mannered boy’s lunch so that his victim can have enough sustenance to stay in school.  Thus the bully has made a “tax expenditure” of a half of lunch per day in order to maintain the viability of income stream.

And that is the lie of tax expenditures.  What is theirs is theirs.  And what is yours is theirs as well.

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."
- Paul Simon

Occupy The Tea Party

A recent headline in WND Money proclaims that BANKS EXHALE AS TEA-PARTY POWER FIZZLES. 

 

Here in 2014, few seem to remember that the Tea Party movement did not coalesce as racist mob out to lynch Barack Obama.  Instead, it united in protest of what then candidate, Bob Barr, called the BOMB, that Bush Obama McCain Bailouts.  The Tea Party was launched to crusade on behalf of capitalism, free markets, fiscal responsibility and monetary sanity, not on cultural or racial animus.

 

Not long after the election of President Obama, another populist uprising emerged, the Occupy Movement.  This bunch was younger, scruffier and less respectful of private property than the Tea Partiers.  Yet they had much in common.

 

Both objected to the bailout of millionaires and billionaires who could not competently manage their companies or their investment portfolios.

 

Like all decent and compassionate people, both would like to see health care provided to all deserving Americans.  Of course their solution differed.  The Tea Party opted for deregulation so as to unleash the power of free markets, drive prices down and make quality care affordable for the masses.  The Occupiers would opt for single payer.  Both would agree; however, that the Affordable care Act is little more than a sop to Big Insurance, Big Pharma and the AMA while giving free pass exemptions to favored corporations and labor unions.

 

The Occupiers and the Tea Party also joined hands in opposition to the Fed’s expansionist monetary policy, particularly those of both camps who supported Ron Paul.  Once again this is a policy that benefits only the wealthiest of Americans while doing material harm to the average citizen with a savings account or is living on a fixed income.  Additionally, currency inflation has been used by regimes throughout history to finance unpopular wars and obscure their true cost.

 

We see the same problems.  We see that corporatism and crony capitalism are at the heart of America’s material woes.   We differ as to the cure. This is why Daryl Brooks, Mark Falzon and I reached out the Occupy Trenton in 2011 to try to bridge the gap.

 

Together we can make life uncomfortable for corrupt politicians and their corporate clients.  This is why Ralph Nader is calling for an alliance of “authentic conservatives, libertarians, progressives and liberals” to combat this infestation.

 

The fight must start with an understanding of economics based in human action, an appreciation for natural and just law, an insistence government in accordance with that law and an abhorrence of arbitrary rule by the whims of men.

 

But most of all it requires fortitude and commitment, because tyranny never sleeps.

 

Related Posts:

Insuring Profits for Insurers

Democratize The Fed

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."
- Paul Simon

God, Guns and Misplaced Faith

In this month’s Catholic Star Herald, the newspaper of the Camden Diocese, Father Robert J. Gregorio writes an impassioned plea to neuter Americans’ right to defend life, limb, liberty and property by repealing the Second Amendment.

Unfortunately, Father, chose to begin his chain of reasoning by invoking Germany’s decision to place speed limits on the autobahn for the greater public good.  In boxing, this is called “leading with your chin”.

Father opens his article with the phrase, “Not that long ago in Germany”.  Ok, let’s talk about what went down in Germany no so long ago.  The Nazi Party disarmed its political opponents.  They made it felonious for any Jew to own firearms.  How did things work out for those disarmed Jews?

In the Soviet Union and then later in Maoist China private gun ownership was banned.  In both countries and in others as well, the banning of firearms has routinely resulted in the genocide of millions. 

Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist China had one other feature in common as well.  All three suppressed religion.  Yes, to some extent, they allowed the freedom to “worship”.  They allowed people to go into their church buildings to hold services but they were forbidden to put their faith to work outside of the church walls.  Sound familiar?

The left is at war with people of faith in America.  This is most evidenced in the HHS mandates and in civil rights actions against those who object to same sex marriage.  Candidate Obama spoke volumes of the elite’s contempt for devout, salt-of- the-earth Americans when he dismissed them as rubes that cling their “guns or religion”.

Should we be afraid of our own government?  The short is “yes”.  Federal agencies from the Post Office to Homeland Security from the Social Security Administration to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are stockpiling weaponry. This same government is also growing more and more intolerant of whistleblowers who see the king in all his nakedness and call attention to it.

On a local level our police forces and turning into paramilitary units by recycling the cast-off battlefield weapons of our international wars.  In addition to this we know that our government is spying on as and the NDAA authorizes it to indefinitely jail supposed enemies without warrant or recourse to habeas corpus.

Like the cowards that they are, government bullies the old and the weak.  They sent in a small army to harass septuagenarian, Cliven Bundy.  They backed off only when massed militia forces stood them down. The Feds are also picking on 70 year old medical marijuana patient, Larry Harvey in Washington State, looking to send him to prison.  This is the same government that killed innocent women and children in Waco and Ruby Ridge.  Locally, in my home town, the police fire bombed the local Black radical group, The Move, killing women and kids.  Need I go on?

Lawless states, such the one that America is fast becoming, cannot tolerate dissent.  Religious minorities are often the most truculent dissenters, and therefore bear the full brunt of State suppression.  However, God’s people need not be trampled upon by Philistines.  Mosses, Joshua, Saul and David understood this.  Judah Maccabee got it.  Solomon did not and this led to destruction of the kingdom.

Yes, gun ownership entails risk.  Diving cars and flying planes entail risks that kill thousands yearly.  The foods that we consume, the beverages that we drink and the drugs that we take each entail risk and side effects.  Free enterprise implies the risk of failure and bankruptcy.  Freedom is risky but freedom is also glorious.  Freedom empowers humans to be all that they can be.  Freedom is the only hope of human kind ever lifting itself out of the mire poverty and destitution.  We see that lesson repeated over and over again in the Developing World.

Freedom requires a free people to be able to protect itself from the usurpations of authoritarian regimes.  Freedom requires an armed and vigilant people.  We cannot depend on government to protect our liberty.  Like the Stockholm Syndrome, that is a dangerous delusion of placing trust in your captor.

Related Posts:

Poking Holes in the “Anti-War” Left

Papal Fallibility

A Well Regulated Militia

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OnFire Radio Show

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."
- Paul Simon

“Why Did You Make Sister Hit You?”

Back when I was in Catholic school and I acted up, I could expect a stiff whack from the hand of authority.  Typically, the news of my comeuppance would travel home with me.  When my Dad got home, he would ask, “Why did you make Sister have to hit you?”  Upon hearing my story, he would administer a second dose of Sister’s medicine.

The goal of Catholic education was to turn out saints.  Apparently today’s kids are already saints and do not require the same correction that I needed to be set on the straight and narrow path.  At least according to Attorney General Eric Holder

Holder spoke this weekend at the Morgan State commencement ceremonies where he rehashed his latest shtick. The AG asserts that the disproportionate discipline rates in public schools and incarceration rates of Black Males is proof positive that racism lives.  Let’s consider these one at a time and then in tandem.

In a recent article entitled “Politics Versus Education”, Thomas Sowell takes Holder on directly.  He writes:

“Among the biggest obstacles to educating children in many ghetto schools are disruptive students whose antics, threats and violence can make education virtually impossible. If only 10 percent of the students are this way, that sacrifices the education of the other 90 percent.

The idea that Eric Holder, or anybody else, can sit in Washington and determine how many disciplinary actions against individual students are warranted or unwarranted in schools across the length and breadth of this country would be laughable if it were not so tragic.

Relying on racial statistics tells you nothing, unless you believe that black male students cannot possibly be more disruptive than Asian female students, or that students in crime-ridden neighborhoods cannot possibly require disciplinary actions more often than children in the most staid, middle-class neighborhoods.

Attorney General Holder is not fool enough to believe either of those things. Why then is he pursuing this numbers game?

The most obvious answer is politics. Anything that promotes a sense of grievance from charges of racial discrimination offers hope of energizing the black vote to turn out to vote for Democrats, which is especially needed when support from other voters is weakening in the wake of Obama administration scandals and fiascoes.”

Moving on to the second issue, let me begin by acknowledging that incarceration rates are disproportionally high among African American men.  However, it would not be too far off base to suggest that this in not so much a function of racism as the lack of legal opportunities due to a failing economy coupled with the unlimited upside of the drug market. 

No risk, no reward.  No hope, why not? The trap is set for young Black men but not out of racism.   They are shackled by the stupidity of America’s heavy handed economic policies combined with the senseless War on Drugs.  Obamacare and minimum wage increases will not set put these men on the road to lawful prosperity.

But for arguments’ sake, let’s go along with the premise racial bias is afoot here.  Who then would be the perpetrators?

To a great extent, Black male students attend urban inner city schools.  Inner city schools are controlled predominantly by Democrats and by teachers unions who are also Democrat.

How about the big city and Federal criminal justice systems that are busing and jailing young Black men?  They are also controlled by Democrats.  Therefore it seems that Eric Holder is calling racism on his own team.  You go, sir!  Tell it like it is! 

To get their base worked up, the Dems are busting on their own people and then blaming it on the great racist in the sky

It seems that Harry Browne was spot on in observing that,” “The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, 'See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk.”

What we have here with Mister Holder is government creating a problem that it will pretend to solve.

 

Related Posts:

How Socialism Makes You Stupid

Who Owns The Kids?

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OnFire Radio Show

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."
- Paul Simon

The Flawed Legacies of Hamilton and Jefferson

Two ideas that libertarians hold dear, free market capitalism and limited government have been poisoned by the flawed legacies of two arch rivals in George Washington’s first cabinet, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

Alexander Hamilton may have been the United States’ first big time political operative.  Hamilton sought his fortune in the corridors and the backrooms of power.  He cozied up to President Washington, the most powerful man in America and ingratiated himself with the financial elites of New York and Philadelphia.

Hamilton used his office as Treasurer to direct largesse to his powerful big city friends.  One of his first initiatives was to pay of the States’ War debts using Federal funds. 

Many Revolutionary War veterans were holding state war bonds that were virtually worthless.  They saw no prospect of ever being paid.  As Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton put forward a plan whereby the Federal government would buy these state bonds at full face value.

His plan had two moral failings.  The first was that he gave his wealthy friends inside information on the plan so that they purchased the debt from the poor vets at pennies on the dollar and then reaped a windfall when the Feds paid them off in full.  The second was that that the Southern states had already paid their war debts.  Therefore the Southerners wound up shouldering a big chunk of the Northeast’s obligations.  The first bail out.

Hamilton financed this boondoggle for his cronies by putting an excise tax on the sale of whiskey.  Hardscrabble backwoods farmers made whiskey from their unsold grain as a means of preserving its utility rather than seeing it rot.  This sparked an uprising known as the Whiskey Rebellion.  Enraged local farmers refused to pay this unfair tax.  President Washington dispatched over 12,000 troops to western Pennsylvania, under the command of Hamilton, to suppress this uprising for the benefit of his cronies. 

Hamilton also successfully established the first American central bank which was both unconstitutional and a source of ready money for the Eastern financiers.  He also advocated for a British style mercantile economy whereby politically connected merchants would receive subsidies and grants of monopoly privilege from the Federal government.  This was the exact system that Adam Smith denounced in The Wealth of Nations.

Being a political man, his policies produced no wealth.  He only moved the rightful property of others to favored friends.

By contrast, Thomas Jefferson was a producer.  He ran a working plantation which grew crops for trade as well domestic essentials such as meat and vegetables for consumption.  Other homespun enterprises included a blacksmith shop a carpentry operation as well as manufacturing facilities for textiles and nails.  He was an architect, scientist, designer, philosopher and writer.

As a disciple of John Locke, Jefferson believed in the sovereignty of the individual and envisioned a government whose functions would be limited to protecting and upholding each individual’s God-given natural rights.

If Jefferson was the prototypical libertarian, Hamilton may be regarded as the archetypal fascist, advancing an unholy entanglement of state and private interests.  In fact, his Federalist Party went so far as to enact the Sedition Act that made dissent with their policies illegal.

And herein lays the problem.  Many modern writers hold up Hamilton as the father of American capitalism and he was nothing of the sort.  They mistake his brand cronyism as the model for capitalist enterprise and rightfully turn away in disgust.  This was the beef of the Occupy movement as well as Tea Party populists.

Jefferson, on the other hand, was guilty of the most heinous hypocrisy.  While he and other like minded Southerners advanced the causes of individual self determination, limited government and states’ rights, they also held slaves.  Civil rights charlatans can now cast words like “liberty”, “states’ rights” and “limited government” as codes  for rolling back the protections that they believe shelter them from racial assaults.

Sadly, because of the Hamiltonian tradition, most people misunderstand true free markets capitalism.  To them Capitalism is a dirty word, an insider’s game that is rigged so that all fail except for the privileged few.  Likewise, libertarian arguments for limited government are oft perceived as thinly veiled racism.  Minorities and their friends have mistakenly come to view government as their protector rather than the plunderer that it is.

It is incumbent upon activists in the liberty movement to address these misconceptions, to debunk crony capitalism and to reach out beyond our white male core if we are ever to arrest the statist onslaught, let alone see liberty in our time.

Subscribe to the 2 Percenter blog by going to http://feedage.com  and entering 2percentpov into the Search box on top -choose your favorite reader.

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OnFire Radio Show

Streaming  on Hamiltonradio.net

    Podcast at Blogspot, iTunes, Stitcher, Podomatic & YouTube

"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."
- Paul Simon