Why Incumbents Always Win

Here is an excellent podcast from Cato Institute on why incumbents always win, and why multi-millionaire Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman is no exception to this rule.

But perhaps here is a better explanation:

When asked to name two of Snow White's Seven Dwarfs and two of the nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 77% of Americans polled were able to identify two dwarfs, while only 24% could name two Supreme Court Justices.

73% of those polled [were] able to name all three of The Three Stooges, while only 42% could name the three branches of government.

And guess which ones are the ones who vote!

Campaign Wiki

I received a spam from the Wikipedia people informing me of the creation of a Campaign Wiki.

I have used Wikipedia before (as have many, I deduce, since so many google searches have the Wikipedia entry at the top), but have never contributed.

I spent a few minutes looking at the Campaign Wiki, and the learning curve is too steep for me. Anybody care to walk me through the process of creating an entry for my campaign?

http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/Campaigns_Wikia

There is no Button

Here I began a discussion based of Leonard Read's claim that he would "push the button" to abolish the State. I responded to one critic of this idea here. I remain a button-pusher.

But there is no button to push. So how do we get there from here? Or, more concretely, how do I persuade people to vote Libertarian?

It is important (especially for button-pushers like me) to keep in mind that even some Libertarians don't want to get "there." They are afraid of pure 100% laissez-faire capitalism (i.e., "anarcho-capitalism"). There are really two questions here. Before voters ask "How do we get there from here?" voters ask "Should we get there at all?"

I want to get there. I would "push the button" to get there. I want a world free from the crime of socialism, free from theft ("taxation"), free from senseless bureaucratic regulation.

To get there from here, candidates and campaigners like me must keep in mind that most folks are trained to react strongly against the idea of eliminating all socialism and moving to pure capitalism.

This fear is so strong, that those who are perceived as really serious about cutting government and lowering taxes (rather than just mouthing off campaign slogans) are considered "extremists" and "fanatics."

The idea of pushing the button was called "stupid" here, in a post to a Libertarian group. A Libertarian group is where you would expect to find people ready to cut taxes and cut government. But even here you find that same emotional reaction to "anarchy." For those who are not members of the group and cannot read the post, here is how it began:

Okay, one problem here. If our principle is "no taxation" then do we have any government at all? Do we have a police force, military, court system, fire department. I'm just fine with not paying representatives (sorry to the candidates but if that's how we want it done, fine) but I rather like having a professional able to investigate crimes, a military to protect us from the islamofacists and I like my Logan Rogersville Fire Dept. I actually voted for the tax increase to pay for more firefighters, the first tax increase I've ever voted for (we are a growing area and my garden hose just isn't going to cut it if my neighbor's house catches fire). So are we against taxation? We cannot be. To be completely against taxation is stupid, and if you are completely against it then I'm not sorry to say that you are stupid. As a classical liberal I view the government as a necessary evil. It is evil, yes, but it is necessary and we must give it some leeway to maintain itself,

Three things must be said. First, we can have government without "the government"; order and safety without taxation.

• "The government" feeds the poor.
  But the poor can be fed without taxation.
• "The government" builds schools.
  But schools can be built without taxation.
• "The government" builds roads.
  But roads can be built without taxation.

All these things -- charity, education, and transportation -- were at one time provided exclusively by the free market, with no government involvement.

There is no social service -- the elements of what we call "government" -- that can only be provided by "the government" and its various systems of "taxation," that is, theft. A Free Market in these services would deliver these services at a lower cost, with higher quality and efficiency, without threatening violence to those who don't pay the government's price for them. Even the services mentioned above -- "a police force, military, court system, fire department" -- can be provided without taxation.

The question is, why should we? The answer is, taxation is theft. Taking money from people under threats of force or violence is immoral.

But the libertarian writer above believes that it is "necessary" to maintain a system of institutionalized extortion in order to have our disputes adjudicated, crimes investigated, fires extinguished, and Islamofascist aggression resisted.

We can have "professionals" providing these vital services, just like we have professionals treating sickness, preparing legal instruments, and drawing up blueprints for our homes or businesses, without having these professions nationalized, i.e., seized and monopolized by the State, and funded through extortion.

Notice that our libertarian above voted to increase taxes, rather than force the government to provide these services more efficiently at a lower cost. I can only suspect that if Libertarians think and vote this way, the public at large is even more unwilling to "push the button."

Why would the average voter even consider the possibility of voting libertarian? If "libertarian" is the fellow above, who votes for more taxes, why vote for him when Democrats and (especially) Republicans have proven themselves more than willing and able to raise taxes? They will win in an election, whereas the libertarian tax-hiker will lose. Why not vote for the winning party?

The only reason someone would vote libertarian is if they want smaller government and lower taxes. I mean, really want that. Surely people know by now that even though Republicans talk about smaller government and lower taxes, they're not really going to deliver that. The only possible reason for voting libertarian is that you actually want less "government," that is, more social services at a lower price through the Free Market.

But most voters do not want this! Most voters want more "government" because "government" means social services provided "free." The great advantage of "the government" is that it claims to provide the vital social services we want, yet without our having to pay for them. The real costs are either transferred to our neighbor, or postponed into a future we don't have to deal with right now. The popular perception is (1) only the government, and not the Free Market, can provide certain essential social services, and (2) somehow, I can benefit from these services without having to pay for them personally. "Something for nothing."

Before people will vote libertarian, they must be persuaded that (1) less government means a better standard of living for me -- in every area of life -- and (2) even if I could get something for myself by having my neighbor (or my grandchildren) pay for it, government extortion (or deficit spending) is immoral.

In other words, few people will vote Libertarian unless they're convinced that we must get there from here.

If the government has proven itself to be the only way to provide the most vital and essential social services, why can it not be trusted to provide services which are not as vital? Why all this talk about "cutting" an institution which has proven itself to be so necessary? As long as a voter believes that government is "necessary," the possibility of voting for someone who is committed to cutting government will be seen as "dangerous."

Stiff Competition

I was understandably up late last night checking the returns on yesterday's primary.

I faced stiff competition.

NOBODY was running against me.

During the campaign I heard the same line from voter after voter:

Kevin, you're a nice guy and all that, but NOBODY is running against you, and I've always felt that NOBODY knows how to spend my money better than I do, and NOBODY knows how to run my business better than I do, and NOBODY should have the power to remove "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" from our local school classrooms. If you're elected, can you do as good a job as NOBODY can do?

I say, "I'll try my hardest."

But that just wasn't good enough.

NOBODY got more votes than I did.

Hiroshima / Nagasaki

Yesterday marked the 61st anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Wednesday will mark the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki.

This is a truly horrifying anniversary. A generation that has a memory of the event is dying, and is being replaced by one that has no appreciation of its significance.

Only the United States has obliterated hundreds of thousands of non-combatant civilians with a single nuclear bomb.

The use of nuclear weapons against Japan has been justified on the grounds that a larger number of people would have died had the bombs not been used. This claim has been refuted by a number of writers, summed up here. The net result of U.S. intervention in Asia from 1940-1950 was the enslavement of a billion people to communism, and the murder of tens of millions. Prof R.J. Rummel says that communist democide in China totals 77 million. That does not include the millions of unborn slaughtered by a forced-abortion policy.

Americans sat on their hands as the federal government made friends with "Uncle Joe" Stalin and that "Agrarian Reformer," Mao Tse Tung. Americans did nothing when the federal government gave military aid to the Taliban and Saddam Hussein in the 1980's

Americans can no longer be apathetic and silent. The U.S. federal government was the greatest force for death and totalitarianism in the 20th century. If we fail to internalize this fact, the 21st century will be a bloodbath.

I agree with Richard McSorley: It's a sin to build a nuclear weapon. Such weapons inescapably murder innocent non-combatant civilians. No political or military theory can justify this.

Future generations will look back at the United States not as the keeper of peace, but as the bringer of destruction.

Thoughtful articles on the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. in Japan can be found at LewRockwell.com.

On Pushing the Button

Yesterday I mentioned Leonard Read's proposal to "push the button" if a button existed to eliminate "the government." Here is a response to that idea:

An interesting thought experiment, that. All coercion ends tomorrow. There is no national defense, no police, no courts. Further, there is no way to enforce contracts, save individuals taking matters into their own hands. All transit systems stop. All airline travel stops, for there is no air traffic control. Most water and sewage systems stop. Street lights go off. Nuclear missile silos are abandoned, or commandeered. With all this going on, few would go to work, in both the government and the private sector. Why work when you can’t get there, and your paycheck is worthless?

Sure, some things might still function, but clearly there would be a profound setback in everyone’s standard of living. Perhaps there would gradually spring up new, non-coercive mechanisms to keep the peace. But, then again, perhaps not.

In the post-anarchy-button-pushed world, we would be in a state of nature. The concepts of “rights” and “property” would be as meaningless as they are to flora and fauna.

This kind of fear-mongering inhibits all movement towards a libertarian society. It is psychologically impossible for most people to get involved in cutting the size of government because of this fear of going "too far."

We live in an essentially socialist culture. Most of our lives, most of the decisions we make, are regulated by the government. We accept pervasive socialism as inescapable. One can imagine a movement to abolish a particularly egregious government pork barrel, but nobody wants to join a "movement" to cut all government programs because the fear of cutting too much government is greater than the fear of growing too much government. We worry about "anarchy," but nobody worries about totalitarian tyranny, because that only happens to "them." "We" would never allow that to happen here. Never mind that the government that exists today is many times more tyrannical than the government abolished by America's Founding Fathers in 1776, and would horrify the Founders.

It is the nature of political change that "movements" are required to make political changes. A majority of people might be opposed to a government project that only benefits one special interest, but the lobby of that special interest is politically stronger than the diffused desires of a majority of voters. The special interest stands to gain a million dollars, while a hundred million people each stand to lose only a penny. Political change is always orchestrated.

I believe an explicitly "anarchist" movement is needed to orchestrate a cut in government, that is, to actually begin reducing the size of government. (I'll let the PR Dept. come up with a marketable substitute for "anarchist.")

(Now that I write that, a position I've long held, I doubt myself, and wonder about a movement to cut every government program by 10%. Call it a "reverse-tithe" movement, based on the idea that God only requires 10%, but the government requires 5 times more than that, and shouldn't we make a start to cut goverment by 10%: every program, every grant, every agency -- every number in the budget is cut 10%. An almost purely-symbolic gesture, but still important. Could a "reverse-tithe" movement ever get off the ground? I doubt it, because the special interests would all say

• "But MY budget was already cut!" (By which they mean, "We asked for a 20% budget increase, but those mean ol' nasty Republicans slashed our requested increase by FIFTY PERCENT and our special interest's budget was only increased by 10%!" [and of course the Republicans boast to their constituents, "I helped cut government spending by 50%!")
• or "My cause is exceptional, and should actually be INCREASED!"

When it comes to actually cutting the size of a government budget, most people are unwilling to "push the button."

When Americans abolished the government of Britain in the American Colonies, stiff psychological resistance had to be overcome. Historian David McCullough, author of 1776, and John Adams, wrote:

Adams more than anyone got the Continental Congress to vote for the Declaration [of Independence]. Keep in mind that only about a third of the country supported the Revolution. Another third was opposed –– the Loyalists or Tories, who saw themselves as the true patriots because they were standing by their King. The remaining third, in the human way, were waiting to see who won. But Adams got the Congress to vote for the Declaration and many wrote about it afterwards.

America's Founding Fathers "pushed the button." They did not simply gradually diminish the power of the British Monarch. They abolished it entirely. This is why only 30% supported the movement: it was radical. America's Founding Fathers created an entirely new system of government. They abolished the King altogether. People around the world -- not just most Americans -- did not believe that society could survive without a king, with the people governing themselves ("consent of the governed"). Surely such a headless nation would collapse into chaos and "anarchy." Conservative Christian Physician Benjamin Rush eventually signed the Declaration of Independence, but at first he was very skeptical about the idea of a society remaining organized without a king:

Never before had I heard the authority of kings called in question. I had been taught to consider them nearly as essential to political order as the sun is to the order of our solar system.

The blogger we quoted above is held captive by the same kind of thinking. Most Americans are. But America prospered without a king.

And America can prosper without any "government" at all.

If America could prosper without the minimal monarchy of 1775, certainly America doesn't need the vast, dominating, suffocating "Administrative State" that exists today.

We need to recapture the vision of 1776, and then continue onward.

Let's consider the paranoia of the blogger we quoted above. This is what he said would happen if we were to "push the button":

All coercion ends tomorrow. There is no national defense, no police, no courts.

And that's just the beginning of the chaos and "anarchy."

Of course, it isn't going to happen like this. There has to be political movements, debate, and a Congressional vote. Money has already been allocated for this fiscal year, so let's imagine that pushing the button means ending government at the end of this fiscal year. What would your local police department do if they knew that all their funding was going to dry up in 30, 60, or 90 days?

Can we assume that they care about the people they serve, and would continue working during the transition? Or are they only in it for the money?

If you owned a gas station, and a patrolman pulled in and asked for a tank of gas on credit, would you give the policeman any gas? If not, and if nobody in the country would support the police in any way, who gets to overrule those decisions and impose on millions of Americans a law requiring support of the police?

If you were a policeman, and were willing to work for a week or two without pay while a committee was appointed to do fund-raising, would you walk the beat, or if you had a desk job, would you put in some time volunteering with the fund-raising committee?

Would the fund-raising committee, or a coalition of fund-raising committees across the nation, calculate the amount the average person in their jurisdiction had been paying for police services, and send a letter saying,

Dear Consumer,
Last year you paid $X.00 for police services. If you wish continued police services, please enclose a check for that amount.
Sincerely,
Your local Police Department.

Of course someone in the police department might anticipate that with the end of the government monopoly, consumers might also receive a letter like this, from a competitor:

Dear Consumer,
We represent a coalition of Detectives, Patrolmen, and Administrators who are planning on resigning from the government police department when government funding expires next month. We are familiar with the waste, abuse, and inefficiencies of government police, and we are starting a new firm offering you better police protection at a lower price.
We will not be investigating or arresting anyone for recreational or medical drug use, but will instead concentrate on protecting you and your property and securing restitution for damage done. Last year you paid $x.00 for police services. We are guaranteeing you the same level of protection for 20% less or your money back.
Sign up today!
Sincerely,
Police Services, Inc.

There are dozens of books, articles, and other studies on how courts, sewage systems, utilities, air traffic control, street lights, and other government functions can be provided by a Free Market. Among the basics are Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty, and David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom. Also valuable in this context is Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions. The Free Market -- millions of consumers and millions of entrepreneurs -- contains the knowledge needed to make the decisions on how to provide vital services with the greatest efficiency. The government does not have all this knowledge, and cannot make correct decisions. These books also help understand why the Free Market can best provide goods and services which haven't even been invented yet, using market mechanisms which themselves have not yet come into existence.

Every day in the world, old businesses fold and new businesses take their place. The Market decides which ones should go, how their assets should be distributed, which aspects of each business should be undertaken by which new businesses, and this transition from old to new is best handled by the Free Market, that is, by the millions of people who are directly involved in each industry and have the knowledge necessary to make efficient decisions.

To say that America would collapse into chaos, and hundreds of millions of consumers and millions of entrepreneurs would just sit around wringing their hands instead of rapidly re-designing the infrastructure that keeps life going is myopic, misanthropic, and elitist. It reflects the same thinking that leads to socialism. It is a denial of the ability of the Free Market to create the transition from old businesses to new.

The essential question is, Does life work better under (a) the Free Market, or under (b) some form of Socialism. If the answer is (a), then the Free Market itself will spontaneously evolve the mechanisms necessary to make the transition from socialism to a Free Market. We can't anticipate these solutions, any more than we could have anticipated how a Free Market would put a television in every American household. But if our theory of the Free Market is correct, these solutions will evolve.

We should push the button.

I'd Push the Button

Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, gave us the thought-provoking idea of abolishing all government infringements of liberty all at once.

In this post I'd like to state the idea. In the next post I'd like to answer a "utilitarian" objection, and then in a later post I'll explain why the desire to "push the button" does not preclude support for a more gradual repeal of statism when no "button" presents itself. Here is what Leonard Read wrote:

---

Following World War II and prior to the relaxation of wartime wage and price controls, I made a speech entitled "I'd Push the Button." This title was taken from the first sentence, "If there were a button on this rostrum, the pressing of which would instantaneously release all wage and price controls, I'd put my finger on it and push."

This was regarded as a radical notion, radical in the sense of being so thoroughgoing that few persons shared it. However, if an act is morally wrong or economically unsound, the quicker it is abolished the better.

Many people seem to hold the view that the beneficiary of special privilege acquires a vested interest in his unique position and should not be deprived of it all of a sudden. They give little thought to the many persons from whom the plunder has been taken. It makes no difference what example of wage or price control one takes--rent control is as good as any. Under this control people have been permitted to occupy someone else's property at less than the free market would allow. By reason of this fact renters have been privileged to buy more tobacco or vacations, or some other good or service than would otherwise be the case. The landlord has been deprived of the fruits of his own labor. Yet, when it comes to the matter of restoring justice, most people will think of the disadvantages suddenly falling upon the renters rather than the accrued damage done to the owner.

Imagine a habitual and successful thief. For years he has been robbing everybody in the community without their knowledge. He has a fine home, cars, servants, and is a pillar of society. Upon discovering his fraud, should his robbery be diminished gradually or should justice be restored to the community at once? The answer appears too obvious to deserve further comment.

People, when contemplating the removal of authoritarianism, seem to fear that a sudden restoration of justice would too severely disrupt the economy. The fear is groundless. During the early days of our New Deal we were the victims of the NIRA, the National Industrial Recovery Act, a system of wage floors, price ceilings, and production quotas. Originally, it was accepted with enthusiasm by most of the business community. Slowly, the fallacy of this nefarious program was realized. Thoughtful business leaders agreed it had to be repealed. But, many of them argued that the repeal would have to be gradual. To remove it at once would throw the economy into a tailspin. Then, one afternoon the Supreme Court ruled that NIRA was unconstitutional. As of that moment all of its regulations and controls ceased to exist. Did this shake our economy? There wasn't a noticeable quiver except that all indices of prosperity showed improvement.

The fallacy of the theory of gradualism can be illustrated thus: A big, burly ruffian has me on my back, holding me down. My friends, observing my sad plight, agree that the ruffian must be removed. But, believing in the theory of gradualism, they contend that the ruffian must be removed gradually. They fail to see that the only result of the ruffian's removal would be my going to work suddenly!

There is nothing to fear by any nation of people in the removal of restrictions to creative and productive effort except the release of creative and productive effort. And why should they fear that which they so ardently desire?

---

The Cult of "National Security"

Yesterday I commented on "The Cult of Social Security," America's blind faith in the government's ability to take care of us when we're old, despite overwhelming evidence that it can't and probably wouldn't if it could.

I have also compared the Republican Party to a cult, and the Democrats show similar symptoms.

One of the marks of a cult is the willingness of cult members to accept the teachings of the cult leader without question, without analysis.

This report from BBC News highlights "the cult of national security." The cult leader merely has to suggest something, not even come right out and declare it explicitly, and cult members will believe it. As many as 70% of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9-11, though there is no evidence for this. Fifteen of the 19 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia. The remaining four came from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon. According to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, this distribution reflects the proportions of trainees at al-Qaeda camps and the relative ease of obtaining U.S. visas for Saudi citizens.

North Korea, China, and even Pakistan, with approximately 50 nuclear warheads, are and were greater threats to U.S. security than Iraq.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are pathologically anti-Christian, while Saddam allowed greater freedom for Christian missionaries. Saddam Hussein was a dictator, but he was also more secular than Muslim, and Christians had freedom in Iraq, which is now being lost in in the new Islamic Theocracy created by Bush’s Global War on Christians. See also, The other Iraq war - The Washington Times: Commentary - March 29, 2005 and The End of Christianity in Iraq by Glen Chancy.

So why did the U.S. invade Iraq rather than Saudi Arabia? Why did the U.S. invade Iraq rather than North Korea, a dictatorial regime more lethal against its own people than Saddam's? (North Koreans live in bitter poverty; Iraq was one of the more modernized nations in the Middle East.)

Members of the Cult of National Defense never ask these questions.

The Cult of Social Security

Imagine that your son or daughter ran off and joined a wacko religious cult.

The charismatic leader of the cult convinced your kid -- under intense social pressure from other cult members -- to give half of all income earned to the cult, and the cult promised to take care of all your kid's needs when your kid got old.

An independent audit would disclose that none of the money "contributed" by your kid to the cult was actually being saved or invested for your kid's future, but was being spent by the cult on other things.

You want your kid to leave this cult, but the leaders have convinced your kid that it would be "apostasy," and your kid would be "disloyal," "unsubmissive," "rebellious," and a host of other words. You don't want your kid to turn over everything earned to the cult, but the cult says your kind of thinking is "selfish." "You need to trust the lord and think about the needs of others," the cult tells your kid. "We're a community," the cult members chant; "We're a family." "Besides," the cult says, "look at all the older members of our cult that we're taking care of."

Sure enough, the cult has several retirees who haven't died of starvation. But there's no doubt that if those older members of the cult had invested in the stock market or in private annuities rather than the cult's system, they would be enjoying a much higher standard of living than the cult provides.

Surveys of cult members reveal that more than 50% of the cult members are suspicious of the cult leader's claims about financial trustworthiness, but they "contribute" their earnings anyway, in an effort not to appear to "lack faith" in the eyes of others. When asked if they believe that they will be taken care of when they're old, more than 80% said they were "somewhat sure" they would, but that same number indicated that they were "somewhat sure" other members of the cult might be denied benefits due to "budgetary constraints." These cult members believe they should be free to invest their money in higher-paying investments, but that same freedom should not be extended to other cult members, because others cannot be trusted with such freedom.

One of the marks of a "cult" is unquestioning belief in the cult leader or authority system. By this standard, Americans are more than members of a cult; they are zombies. Unthinking, uncritical acceptance of government propaganda has become the American way of life.

The "Social Security" program is an unethical, unChristian pyramid scheme. It is financially bankrupt by all accepted accounting systems. Any corporation that managed its employee pension fund the same way the cult in Washington D.C. manages your Social Security "contributions" would find its CEO in prison. It is a very, very, bad system -- a bad idea immorally managed -- and yet Americans believe what they are told about it: that it is "one of the great moral successes of the 20th century."

It was an immoral system from the beginning.

The cult in Washington D.C. has increased its power and control in ways America's Founding Fathers could never have imagined: every area of life has come under the jurisdiction of this cult.

The Libertarian Party's "Statement of Principles" opens with this bold declaration:

We, the members of the Libertarian Party, challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual.

If your kid fell under the domination and control of a fraudulent, misleading, coercive, manipulative, degrading wacko cult, you would not want to agitate for "reform" of the cult. You would want your kid OUT of that cult immediately. If you discovered that a hacker was draining your bank account of a few dollars every day, you would not want him to gradually stop robbing you.

We reached a point decades ago when it came time to free Americans from their zombie-like devotion to the Cult of the Omnipotent State.

http://KevinCraig.US/social_security.htm

Christianity and Capitalism

Click here for a conversation between D. James Kennedy and Baylor Univ. Prof. Rodney Stark on the myth of "the Dark Ages."

The Roman Empire, like any "good" empire, was a despotic totalitarian regime, with a huge percentage of the population enslaved, and the rest engaged in or championing sexual perversion.

Modern secularists want us to believe that when the Roman Empire fell under its own depraved weight, the world was plunged into centuries of intellectual stagnation and the eclipse of civilization.

Civilization is Liberty Under God, and this is what was developing after the fall of the Empire. During the so-called "Dark Ages," capitalism, representative democracy, science, and philosophy developed as a result of the triumph of Christianity over Greco-Roman humanism.

"Humanism" is not "humanitarianism." "Humanism" is the worship of Man rather than God. The worship of man as god inevitably takes the form of the worship of the State or the Emperor.

The Middle Ages could be called "the Frontier Age," because Europe broke away from Roman Imperialism just as America broke away from mercantilism, and began expanding the frontiers of human learning and civilization.

Click here for more on the connection between Christianity and Liberty.

Christianity is the greatest enemy of imperialism. Therefore, the federal government has been suppressing Christianity in an effort to expand its own power and crush liberty at home and around the world.

Apple Pie and Torture

"It's as American as apple pie."

Torture?

Do good Americans support torture?

James Bovard notes that "the Bush administration is desperately scrambling to get Congress to pass a law to retroactively legalize torture."

"Retroactively legalize" means to legalize torture that the U.S. has already committed.

Bovard notes that "Congress effectively incorporated the Geneva Convention on treating detainees into the U.S. statute book [through] the War Crimes Act of 1996." "The Supreme Court’s decision last month declaring that the Bush order on enemy combatants was illegal means that the Bush team also did not have the right to torture detainees."

Bovard quotes a Washington Post article which says,

The law initially criminalized grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions but was amended without a hearing the following year to include violations of Common Article 3, the minimum standard requiring that all detainees be treated “humanely.” The article bars murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, torture and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degradingtreatment.” It applies to any abuse involving U.S. military personnel or “nationals.”

It is astonishing that many supporters of "the War on Terrah" -- many claiming to be Christians -- believe the Geneva Convention should not apply to U.S. government treatment of prisoners. It is equally astonishing that they will go to the polls in November and vote for those who will be seen by history to be war criminals.

Bovard says, "Attorney General Gonzales is sweating that even top government officials (like himself) could face charges if the law is vigorously enforced. However, since it would be up to the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute, he probably has little to fear."

Congress should not amend the law to exclude high-ranking government officials, despite Bush Administration desires to be excused from minimal standards of human decency, to say nothing of the higher law of Christ.

Abolishing "Vital Government Services"

Capitalists of a pure libertarian stripe believe that the Free Market provides groceries, computers, automobiles and refrigerators better than the government could. Higher quality, lower prices, to more people.

What about Courts, police, firefighters, and national defense? Don't these vital social services prove we need some socialism?

Murray Rothbard answers:

---

PEOPLE TEND TO FALL into habits and into unquestioned ruts, especially in the field of government. On the market, in society in general, we expect and accommodate rapidly to change, to the unending marvels and improvements of our civilization. New products, new life styles, new ideas are often embraced eagerly. But in the area of government we follow blindly in the path of centuries, content to believe that what­ever has been must be right.

In particular, government, in the United States and elsewhere, for centuries and seemingly from time immemorial, has been supplying us with certain essential and necessary services, services which nearly everyone concedes are important: defense (includ­ing army, police, judicial, and legal), firefighting, streets and roads, water, sewage and garbage disposal, postal service, etc. So identified has the State become in the public mind with the provision of these services that an attack on State financing appears to many people as an attack on the service itself. Thus if one maintains that the State should not supply court services, and that private enterprise on the market could supply such service more efficiently as well as more morally, people tend to think of this as denying the importance of courts themselves.

The libertarian who wants to replace government by private enterprises in the above areas is thus treated in the same way as he would be if the government had, for various reasons, been supplying shoes as a tax-financed monopoly from time immemorial. If the government and only the government had had a monopoly of the shoe manufacturing and retailing business, how would most of the public treat the libertarian who now came along to advocate that the government get out of the shoe business and throw it open to private enterprise? He would undoubtedly be treated as follows: people would cry,

"How could you? You are opposed to the public, and to poor people, wearing shoes! And who would supply shoes to the public if the government got out of the business? Tell us that! Be constructive! It's easy to be negative and smart-alecky about government; but tell us who would supply shoes? Which people? How many shoe stores would be available in each city and town? How would the shoe firms be capitalized? How many brands would there be? What material would they use? What lasts? What would be the pricing arrangements for shoes? Wouldn't regulation of the shoe industry be needed to see to it that the product is sound? And who would supply the poor with shoes? Suppose a poor person didn't have the money to buy a pair?"

These questions, ridiculous as they seem to be -- and are -- with regard to the shoe business, are just as absurd when applied to the libertarian who advocates a free market in fire, police, postal service, or any other government operation.

The point is that the advocate of a free market in anything cannot provide a "constructive" blueprint of such a market in advance. The essence and the glory of the free market is that individual firms and businesses, competing on the market, provide an ever-changing orchestration of efficient and progressive goods and services: continually improving products and markets, advancing technology, cutting costs, and meeting changing consumer demands as swiftly and as efficiently as possible.

---

The words "as possible" are important. It is not possible for the government to provide any goods or services at a lower price or with higher quality to more people than the Free Market. The iron laws of economics will not yield to the wishes of politicians.

www.STOPtheSPP.us

I have created a new website, www.STOPtheSPP.US for my campaign. The dot-com and dot-org domains were already taken by an anti-immigration extremist who isn't even using them. I also picked up the dot-net domain, which I'll use for a more general, non-campaign use. Last night at the "Families for Change" Candidate Forum, there was strong interest in the SPP. Even some of the other candidates grabbed my SPP handouts.

Flight 800 - July 17, 1996

"Today marks the 10th anniversary of the destruction of TWA Flight 800, the investigation of which represented the most conspicuous and consequential misdirection of justice in American history."

The CIA admits 270 competent eyewitnesses, many with military backgrounds, saw what looked like a missile down a 747 off Long Island with 230 people on board. More than 700 actually saw the event. The government has destroyed evidence and pressured media not to recount the testimony of the eyewitnesses.

The obvious question is: who shot down the plane? The next question is, why doesn't the government want America to know the truth?

Jack Cashill has a series of articles on WorldNetDaily:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51090

There has never been a Congressional hearing on TWA Flight 800.