When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things,
shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power,
it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another.
Thomas Jefferson
Chart of the Day: Exploding Social Security Disbursements
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| via CNS |
Do as I say, not as I do. pic.twitter.com/ywlTEtPKKg
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 10, 2015
The leftstream media is more interested in a hoax exam taken by Ben Carson at Yale 45 yrs ago than Obama's grades. https://t.co/tycafsnhmS
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 10, 2015
I'm just wonder: is this a class at Yale or the University of Missouri? Academia has become a political whore. https://t.co/XEJ0KQCI7d
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 11, 2015
Image of the Day
Political Potpourri
Betters news for Trump in two new state polls, one with a narrow lead over Carson in SC, flipping yesterday's result, and a 15-point lead in NJ. The sad thing is Christie, who once had a 40-point advantage in his home state, is now in fourth, barely edging Cruz. SC favorite son Lindsey Graham is down to barely 2 points. I suspect they will withdraw in a face-saving move before their home primaries (barring a miracle recovery). Not surprising that Donald Trump would do well in a state bordering NY; note that that primary is in June. I suspect that by then the race will have narrowed to a handful of candidates at most.
A Parody of Modern Academia
Intrinsically Corrupt Civil Forfeiture
Presidential Apprentice
Facebook Corner
(Jeffrey Tucker). I'm ever less impressed by the claim that public property means that migration across borders is a form of invasion. That's really no different from saying that my right to drive to the local convenience store to buy beer is made possible only by public roads that wouldn't exist under anarcho-capitalism. My going to the store is therefore a form of invasion that private property would otherwise make impossible. Therefore we should have the state prevent me from driving around and buying stuff -- because we can't have the freedom to move around so long as the state exists. Or something like that. It really is a form of sophistry -- an ideologically convoluted excuse to introduce the state where it has no business interfering.
Rothbard wrote this too in the Journal of Libertarian Studies: "However, on rethinking immigration on the basis of the anarcho-capitalist model, it became clear to me that a totally privatized country would not have “open borders” at all. If every piece of land in a country were owned by some person, group, or corporation, this would mean that no immigrant could enter there unless invited to enter and allowed to rent, or purchase, property. A totally privatized country would be as “closed” as the particular inhabitants and property owners’ desire. It seems clear, then, that the regime of open borders that exists de facto in the U.S. really amounts to a compulsory opening by the central state, the state in charge of all streets and public land areas, and does not genuinely reflect the wishes of the proprietors."
Rothbard, of course, flip-flopped on his issue, but the fact is that we have an unalienable right to migrate. Let me quote Rothbard before he lost his mind:
"Tariffs and immigration barriers as a cause of war may be thought far afield from our study, but actually this relationship may be analyzed praxeologically. A tariff imposed by Government A prevents an exporter residing under Government B from making a sale. Furthermore, an immigration barrier imposed by Government A prevents a resident of B from migrating. Both of these impositionsare effected by coercion. Tariffs as a prelude to war have often been discussed; less understood is the Lebensraum argument. “Overpopulation” of one particular country insofar as it is not the result of a voluntary choice to remain in the homeland at the cost of a lower standard of living) is always the result of an immigration barrier imposed by another country. It may be thought that this barrier is purely a “domestic” one. But is it? By what right does the government of a territory proclaim the power to keep other people away? Under a purely free-market system, only individual property owners have the right to keep people off their property. The government’s power rests on the implicit assumption that the government owns all the territory that it rules. Only then can the government keep people out of that territory.
"Caught in an insoluble contradiction are those believers in the free market and private property who still uphold immigration barriers. They can do so only if they concede that the State is the owner of all property, but in that case they cannot have true private property in their system at all. In a truly free-market system, such as we have outlined above, only first cultivators would have title to unowned property; property that has never been used would remain unowned until someone used it. At present, the State owns all unused property, but it is clear that this is conquest incompatible (sic) with the free market. In a truly free market, for example, it would be inconceivable that an Australian agency could arise, laying claim to “ownership” over the vast tracts of unused land on that continent and using force to prevent people from other areas from entering and cultivating that land. It would also be inconceivable that a State could keep people from other areas out of property that the “domestic” property owner wishes them to use. No one but the individual property owner himself would have sovereignty over a piece of property."
As for Rothbard II, Hoppe et al., the great Walter Block refutes them here
(Lew Rockwell). It is impossible to believe that the U.S. or Europe will be a freer place after several more decades of uninterrupted mass immigration
Pure rubbish. Your property rights are limited; for example, if you buy property surrounding mine, I did not lose my right to travel to and from my property. If I enter into a contract to hire foreign-based labor, you don't have a right to intervene in my contract, any more than you have a right to restrict my rights to purchase raw materials or components for my widget factory.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of the original artist via IPI |
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| Courtesy of Glenn McCoy via Townhall |
Aretha Franklin, "Don't Play That Song"
The Abortion Debate
Why Abortion is Unjust Discrimination
Posted by Stand to Reason on Monday, November 2, 2015
