Terms of Endearment

The party of the Right has its bloomers in a bunch because the party of the little guy evidently dissed the little lady once again.  This time around, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen called his opponent, South Carolina Governor, Nikki Haley, a “whore”.

Before rushing to condemn Mr. Sheheen, let’s take a moment to reflect.  Being a man of the Left, we can assume that Sheheen holds liberal views on sexual issues. Therefore it is likely that he holds favorable views on legalized prostitution.  This would align him with leading libertarians such as Walter Block and Murray Rothbard.  In fact, no less of an authority than St. Augustine of Hippo, acknowledged the vital social function that prostitution provides and opposed outlawing it.   Therefore, by calling Governor Haley a whore, perhaps Sheheen was paying her a compliment as being someone who performs a vital social function.

Comedian Bill Maher is one more liberal who was unfairly castigated for calling another woman Governor a c**t.  From what we know about Maher, it can reliably asserted that the organ he referenced is his favorite part of the female anatomy, one he frequently pursues.   Now being a progressive and forward looking guy, I’m sure that he also rates the brain fairly high among female body parts – surely in the top 10-20%.  So, how I ask, can equating someone to something that you love so much be considered disparaging?  Once again this is case of a misunderstood complement.

Chivalry is not dead on the Left.  In the “war on women”, Democrats are a lady’s best friend, her protectors.  They love women. 

As Governor, Bill Clinton loved women so much that he had the State Police bring ordinary, everyday women to his office for private meetings.  Imagine the thrill of a one on one encounter with a handsome young governor.  What a mensch!

The Kennedys – Jack, Bobby, Ted and Cousin Mike in Connecticut – loved women to death.

In the radical Sixties, the militant Stokely Charmichael, remarked that the only position for women in his movement was “prone”.  He clearly understood just how hard women work and wanted to see them get a break and lie down a bit.

Returning to the top of the essay, it may be that Sheheen’s “whore” comment had no sexual connotation whatsoever. 

As we know many African Americans will use the otherwise verboten n-word among themselves as a token of respect and solidarity, as acknowledgment of a unique bond that they share.  Could it be that Sheneen calling Haley a whore was a tip of the hat to a sister in arms?  After all, aren’t all D&R politicians Wall Street’s bitches and whores to big donors?  Don’t they all roll over for the military industrial establishment and the war machine?

This must be a term of endearment.  After all, one politician spitefully calling another a whore is like the pasta calling the Alfredo white.

 

Related Posts:

Getting F***ed by Statists (Literally)
Poking Holes in the “Anti-War” Left

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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 Non-Political Party, Can It Ever Win?

I met Mike Kozikowski in 1998.  I was running for the U.S. House of Representatives as a first time candidate on the New Jersey Libertarian Party ticket.  Mike was a UAW shop steward and a staunch Democrat.  He is now also the 12- year incumbent Recorder of Deeds* in New Castle County, Delaware.

Over beer and crabs at the UAW Hall, Mike asked what I planned to do for the working man.  I gave him the typical libertarian line that I wanted to reduce government and slash taxes so as to put money back in workers’ pockets, to reduce burdensome regulation so a as to unleash innovation, investment and fuel economic growth that would benefit everyone.

He was not impressed.  He wanted me to do things for his guys by doing things to other guys.  He wanted me to give things to his peeps by taking away from others.  As Franz Oppenheimer would say, he wanted me to us the “political means” of force and coercion to rob from others for the benefit of his union bros. 

In America there are conservative parties and there are constitutional parties but there is only one party that will call a spade a spade call taxation what it is, “theft”.  It is stealing from a producer / tax-payer for the benefit of a tax consumer.  As the only party that is opposed to the political means of wealth redistribution, the Libertarian Party must be considered to be a non-political party.

The question is, can a non-political party be expected to win political contests?

The good news is that Americans are becoming more apt to voice libertarian sentiments when queried by pollsters.   CNN:

“has regularly asked a pair of questions that touch on libertarian views of the economy and society:

Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your own view?

Some people think the government should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view?

A libertarian, someone who believes that the government is best when it governs least, would typically choose the first view in the first question and the second view in the second.

As of June 2014, the libertarian index was at an all-time high.

The bad news is that many people are unwilling to trust politicians of any stripe to wipe away all government set aides.  They suspect that their little piece of the rock will be chipped away while that of others who are more connected will hold onto theirs.  I can’t say that I blame them or that their fears are unfounded. 

Do not expect Americans to vote en masse for a party that will not vow to protect their narrow interests while possibly letting the other guys slip by.  David Stockman’s classic saga The Triumph of Politics recounts how the ostensibly ant-government Reagan administration was undone by infighting and turf wars to protect well-heeled interest groups.

So do we despair?  No.  Let’s take heart from the track record of the socialists and Marxists.  While theses “fringe” parties never enjoyed significant electoral success in America, they did manage to implement almost their entire agenda over the course of decades.

 Instead freedom lovers must defeat the system issue by issue.  We are winning on school choice, pot, government snooping and the right to bear arms.  The Tenth Amendment Center reports on nullification victories every day.  Traditionally “pro-business” Republicans are awakening to the evils of crony capitalism and out of control central bankers.  Despite the fact the Obamacare is the law of the land, no one really seems to like it.  It has become the poster child for government overreach.  Bitcoin promises to make Ron Paul’s vision of competitive currency a reality.

So libertarians, keep on fighting your electoral battles as I have done twice.  Use your soapbox to spread the gospel of liberty and give voters a real choice.  But do not expect to harvest the fruits of your labor on Election Day.  That will come law by law, statute by statute and state by state.

*An elected off in Delaware if you can believe it.  Also a nice way to reward Party toadies.

 

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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

Where Do You Go To Go Galt?

When Ayn Rand departed her native Russia for the U.S.A. some 90 years ago she, in effect, went Galt.  She, like millions of others, fled socialist, feudalist and totalitarian homelands for the promise of liberty and prosperity in America.

Though millions more continue seek new lives on American soil each and every year, America ain’t quit as free as she once was.  In the most recent edition of the Cato Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World, the good old U.S. of A. has slumped into 12^th place.  We are tied with our cultural and political forerunner, the U.K. – the birthplace of classical liberalism.

In its online preface to the report, Cato affirms the truth that, “The foundations of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, and open markets. As Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek have stressed, freedom of exchange and market coordination provide the fuel for economic progress. Without exchange and entrepreneurial activity coordinated through markets, modern living standards would be impossible.” 

America’s index sagged, “Due to a weakening rule of law, increasing regulation, and the ramifications of wars on terrorism and drugs, the United States has seen its economic freedom score plummet in recent years, compared to 2000 when it ranked second globally.”  I don’t see much on the horizon to suggest that things will improve anytime soon.

In fact the freedom index for the world fell a smidge.  It is down to 6.64 from its peak of 6.92 in 2007.  So where does a fella go these days if he wants to go Galt?

Let me propose that he stay put and go nowhere.  That’s right, stay home and go Galt with your family and friends.  Secede!  Secession is going Galt on the group package plan.

A whopping 24% of Americans now believe that State secession is a legitimate remedy to expensive, intrusive and overbearing government.  And why not?  It’s in our DNA.  After all, America is a secessionist creation.  In a recent online posting, Ron Paul explains:

Americans who embrace secession are acting in a grand American tradition. The Declaration of Independence was written to justify secession from Britain. Supporters of liberty should cheer the growth in support for secession, as it is the ultimate rejection of centralized government and the ideologies of Keynesianism, welfarism, and militarism.

The imperial stakeholders in D.C. will argue that secession is illegal, citing the War Between the States as precedent.  However, all that war really proved in that the side with more money, more guns and more young lives to waste will typically defeat an opponent with less of each, particularly in a conventional war.  Writing in the American Conservative, historian Brion McClanahan asserts:

The Union, then, through a declaration of war could attempt to force the seceded States to remain, but even if victorious that would not solve a philosophical issue. War and violence do not and cannot crush the natural right of self-determination. It can muddle the picture and force the vanquished into submission so long as the boot is firmly planted on their collective throats, but a bloody nose and a prostrate people settles nothing.

McClanahan continues by quoting Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut – Revolutionary patriot, a drafter of the Constitution and the third Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. 

Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut said in 1788 that he feared a “coercion of arms” in relation to a delinquent state. “This Constitution does not attempt to coerce sovereign bodies, states, in their political capacity. No coercion is applicable to such bodies, but that of an armed force. If we should attempt to execute the laws of the Union by sending an armed force against a delinquent state, it would involve the good and the bad, the innocent and the guilty, in the same calamity.” Ellsworth recognized, as did the majority of the founding generation, that force did not destroy sovereignty. It created artificial supremacy, but sovereignty, the basic tenant of the founding, could not be surrendered in such a manner. Sovereignty, in fact, cannot be surrendered at all; it can be delegated, as in the powers granted to the general government in Article I, but never surrendered.

The key point is that sovereignty resides within each and every free individual.  We can choose to delegate a bit of it to the community in order to procure some limited goals such as collective security.  However, we can always reclaim what we have lent out when it becomes evident that collective in failing in its obligations or even abusing its delegated authority.

Another option is nullification.  Nullification pretty much says, “I can put up with most of this but this one law is really intolerable”.  It is secession on the a la carte menu.  It is going Galt one statute at a time.  Nullification is successfully being accomplished in many states, most notably in the realms of immigration (i.e. sanctuary cities) and pot legalization.  Again, it’s going Galt from the comfort of your recliner.

Let me close with a chant form my college days:

Go GREEN!  Go WHITE!  Go GALT!
(Perhaps I was the only one in East Lansing chanting that.)

For more information on secession please visit the Middlebury Institute.
For more information on nullification please visit the Tenth Amendment Center.

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Ayn Rand – The Only Immigrant The Left Ever Hated
Swimming Upstream in the Crimea River

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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 Practical Anarchist Faces Unemployment

At long last the old Two Percenter has joined the ever swelling ranks of jobless Americans.  And though he is no bum and a principled anti-statist, he faces a moral quandary.  Does he accept unemployment insurance payments?

On one hand, my State’s online benefits calculator advises that I am entitled to receive a paltry $16K in total benefits.  After over 40 years of paying to unemployment “insurance”, it seems only fair to get a piece of that back.  In fact my lifetime contributions will far exceed my benefit.

On the other hand, America’s unemployment insurance system is not really insurance at all.  Insurance is a wager of small sum against the odds of an unpleasant and expensive calamity occurring in one’s life.  The odds are calculated by actuaries and the financial pool is statistically self-sustaining with wagers and investment income on the premiums outpacing payouts.  State sponsored unemployment plans are funded by current tax dollars.

 Given that taxation is theft and most premium pools are bankrupt, any benefits that I might receive could be construed an act of theft on my part.

The lame justification for my thievery could be that someone stole from me therefore I am justified in stealing from someone else.  However, an eye for an eye system of justice only works when you put out the eye of the perpetrator who put out yours.  There is no justice in blinding an innocent bystander.

One might ask, why is there long term unemployment and a need to insure against it?  In a free market, temporary unemployment occurs when an individual fails to compete effectively in the marketplace.  Consumer dollars move away from the poor competitor and he moves onto another sector where he can compete more effectively.

However, America in 2014 does not boast a free market economy.  In today’s crony-fascist system, market mobility is hampered by union work rules, government regulation, tax penalties on successful firms, subsidies to connected losers, transfers to favored constituents and unsustainable monetary inflation.

So in another sense, unemployment is throwing the little guy a $16K bone to placate him while heavy hitters steal billions.

The Two Percenter is that little guy and he is fond of humble creature comforts.  He enjoys dining on gourmet

fare, imbibing premium distilled spirits and smoking fine cigars.  He does not relish the prospect of going without.

He is also a Boomer in a Millennial world.  In his chosen trade of advertising and marketing, chubby middle aged guys with white hair are looked on as being insufficiently “digital”.    Therefore this perceived Neanderthal who maintains a blog, promotes it on social media and broadcasts via digital streaming audio will strive to hone his digital chops so as to compete effectively in the 21^st Century.

So this practical anarchist will hope that he can work hard enough and fast enough to be working again before unemployment kicks in.  If that doesn’t work out, he will accept his check while continuing the job search and upgrading his skills.  He will rationalize this acquiescence to the welfare state by believing that it is his just due for being screwed by fat cat crony capitalists and corrupt politicians.

Hey, he ain’t no saint.  

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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