You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long.
Boris Yeltsin
Guest Post Comment: Nazis v. Tea Party
As I write, I'm running into browser issues playing the video. So I may post a follow-up comment on the video vs. the general theme of the Nazis vs. Tea Party. I seem to recall PJ Media is more of a conservative portal, so I'm not sure of the editor's past issues with the portal.Guest Post Comment: Hawaiian Dem Congresswoman Not a Non-Interventionist
There are a couple of general points. First, keep in mind Germany was one of the innovators in social welfare policy like social security. Hitler did not win office based on the final solution; in fact, he and his party members ran a populist redistributionist campaign, with punitive taxes aimed at corporations and the wealthy elite. A good writeup on this: http://reason.com/archives/2007/08/15/hitlers-handouts
Second, Tom DiLorenzo has a very good essay at the Lew Rockwell portal on economic fascism. In essence, if you want your private company, you can have it--so long as you subordinate the "common good", i.e., the Statist rules and regulations, taxes, etc. In a separate post, he characterizes the American economy as a fusion of fascism and socialism, where he goes beyond old-school "the State owns production" form of socialism to a Hayekian description of radical egalitarianism/redistribution. In a 2009 piece he did on the healthcare system, he points out at the beginning of the twentieth century roughly 90% of hospitals were for-profit; by the end it had completely flipped.
One of the things the Reason piece pointed out is that you can have right-wing anti-capitalist populism. Nationalism is typically, but not always, a right-wing phenomenon. Right-wing nationalism is more prone to empire-building.
It's fairly clear that the Tea Party, clinging to its small government roots, is the antithesis to today's Democratic left-wing authoritarians, which like the fascists seek to control the economy through a strong central government.
Okay,now you're just pulling my leg: Democratic non-interventionism: since when? Wilson, FDR, Truman, and JFK/LBJ were the Dems who got us into the in the bloodiest wars of the twentieth century.
The current Administration, despite a Congressional super-majority, did not accelerate our Iraq withdrawal schedule--and in fact, without Congressional approval, resumed military missions. He's gotten involved in Libya and Syria and has radically expanded droning strikes, all without Congressional approval. He even promoted Bush's Gen. Petraeus and more than doubled casualties in Afghanistan.
Non-interventionism is very much consistent with the Old Right, including the late Robert Taft, and paleoconservatives, like Pat Buchanan. Almost all pro-liberty conservatives, like myself, believe in small government, including scaling back a bloated Pentagon and perpetual wars.
Guest Post Comment: Bobby Jindal and Lose Hyphenated Americanism
Wow, this blog is in the nativist tradition of the Know Nothings and the KKK. This has nothing to do with "political correctness"; it's part of individual liberty, the negative rights to migrate and to be left alone and live, if we choose, in culturally-cohesive communities speaking in whatever language we choose. It's none of your business whether other people's cultural identity lives up to your cultural preference of Americana. That's tyranny of the majority, something our Founding Fathers fought against.Facebook Corner
Finally, I thought I had addressed this point in an earlier posted comment: I am a right-libertarian, but I believe in an open immigration system. You are confusing right-wing populism with right-libertarian. Right-libertarians believe in negative rights and the unalienable right of property.
I am a proud fourth-generation Franco-American (my ancestors migrated from Quebec during the nineteenth-century diaspora and settled in New England). And my primary language when I started kindergarten was French. Somehow I picked up English in no time without a bilingual school program; European kids (but not American ones) can easily pick up one or more additional languages. My preceding generations were bilingual but primarily spoke French at home.
(Reason). We can identify two kinds of economic inequality, and government favoritism causes one of them. Let's keep this in mind as we contemplate what, if anything, government ought to do.
I actually thought Richmond would develop the topic a little differently--e.g., the infamous Davis-Bacon Act, which served to prop up government contract wages on a (higher) prevailing wage standard; this was signed by Hoover, who obsessed about deflationary aspects of wage cuts during the early Depression. But artificially high wages are like winning the lottery where other workers can't compete at a (lower) market-clearing level, just like dysfunctional minimum wage policies. Government wage standards can also work in the other direction; for example, one prospective government contractor I know had to accept a $10K salary cut because the government thought his market-competitive salary was excessive by their standards, even though the contractor management was willing to pay that salary off the existing contract and worried about placing a lesser-qualified person in the position.
Of course, relative to the size of the economy, these types of policies have, at best, nominal effects. As Richmond points out, inequality does not imply the "Progressive" inference of zero-sum compensation. One must also look at purchasing power of wages. For example, improved availability of lower-cost and/or higher-quality goods and services leaves the worker better off even though his employer manager gets a healthier raise or bonus. (A first-class plane ticket doesn't get to the destination any faster but can contribute to the feasibility of the flight.) Not to mention the figures can provide a misleading representation of employment, e.g., a manager decides to hire additional lower-wage workers.
But Richmond's point remains: the free market is far more efficient and effective than megalomaniac Statist "reform" policies that only serve to obfuscate the marketplace in favor of the rulers, bureaucrats and/or cronies.
(relatives). Lawsuit claims UNC and NCAA broke promises in 'spectacular fashion' (the fraud of providing an inferior education to student-athletes).
I don't think in 8 years of college teaching I was asked to give a student special consideration; if I taught an athlete, I never knew it. I can't speak for others. This just looks like a lawyer trying to cash in after the school uncovered the scandal. But it sounds that the issue here reflects a failure of lower education. The fact that one of the plaintiffs was suspended over suspected academic honesty doesn't make the case stronger. Bottom line, universities don't give guarantees; if you get an unmarketable degree, that reflects your own decisions. These athletes knew the game being played. I have no doubt that the sports program assisting these kids were working around the system, at best ethically dubious. The kids probably didn't really care; they probably saw themselves as the next Michael Jordan, and college ball was their golden ticket to the pros. Only like the vast majority of college athletes, they never made it.
(Reason). Bobby Jindal is wrong. Hyphenated Americans are good for America. Here's why.
I'm a fourth-generation Franco-American (my great-grandparents were part of the nineteenth-century Quebec diaspora). As the firstborn and only sibling whose first language was French (my parents and grandparents were bilingual), I and my brothers always had a fascination with our heritage, perhaps inspired by the Roots generation; but as Air Force brats, apart from our folks' Massachusetts community, and mostly attending public school, we were well-assimilated. My parents and their siblings had long dropped the hyphen, unambiguously referring to themselves as Americans; my Mom still remembers when the Anglo girls used to mock her then French-accented English in early primary school. Other than the occasional cretons or tourtière, our Catholic faith, and occasional private discussions in French between the folks, you might never tell. When my Dad retired from the military, the family settled in Texas, and fellow Franco-Americans were rare; I've never dated a Franco, and only one of my siblings, my first sister, married someone with a French background, whose ancestry includes a famous French female saint.
I don't care what the xenophobic nativists think about hyphenated identities; I think most of them have an inferiority complex over speaking just one language. There was similar fear-mongering about Franco neighborhoods, parochial schools and parishes, that we would never assimilate. That's in part why the KKK came after us (immigrants and Catholics? Two-for-one.) Relax , people; I've worked with and dated people from different backgrounds my whole career; it makes life interesting.
(National Review). Yes, Ron Paul et al. are blaming the victims.
Williamson is normally a decent columnist, but this is not a good effort. Blowback is slander? Hardly: it's certainly at least a contributing factor to Muslim unrest in France and/or elsewhere. Blaming the victims? It seems like Williamson is trying to have it both ways: you either blame France's foreign policy or you blame Charlie Hebdo; the former is an issue with the French government; the latter with the victims.
Williamson needs to choose Ron Paul or alternate opinions from affiliated groups, not confound the allegations. On Ron's Facebook group, there was a posting on the blowback theory. I argued that this was not blowback on foreign policy, because this was not terrorism pointed at France's government, a symbolic target (say, the Eiffel Tower) or the general public. This was a case where Charlie Hebdo had published inflammatory cartoons which many, if not most Muslims find offensive and it was not the first time Charlie Hebdo had been attacked for doing so. This has been a known issue at least since there was a fatwa on the life of Salman Rushdie after publication of his fourth novel, with controversial discussion of Mohammed. The circumstances simply don't fit blowback, a more general terrorist scenario, by Ockham's razor.
Now let's point out that France has a hate speech law which Charlie Hebdo has managed to sidestep. (I don't accept the concept of hate speed laws, but we have to do is accept the status quo for what it is.) Muslims are offended by what they see is a double standard in the hate speech law enforcement. But in fact Charlie Hebdo is a piece of work; for example, it has caricatured the pope as a streetwalker in drag, it has published images of Jesus masturbating and the Holy Virgin Mary performing lewd acts. A lot of the material it publishes is uncivil and ethically dubious in nature. Does that justify the murder of these "satirists"? Of course not. But they did violate the non-aggression principle.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Steve Kelley and Townhall |
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists
Céline Dion (with Adrea Bocelli), "The Prayer". One of my all-time favorite songs/duets. It ranks #2 on my Céline favorites ("To Love You More").
