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Thread: Libertarian Surge

  1. #1

    Libertarian Surge

    Libertarian Surge

    By DAVID BOAZ

    April 07, 2014


    Libertarianism — the political philosophy that says limited government is the best kind of government — is having its moment. Unfortunately, that’s mostly because government has been expanding in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and the financial crisis. Somehow government failures lead to even more government.

    When the financial crisis hit in the fall of 2008, the politicians in Washington had one response: start printing money and bailing out big businesses. First it was Bear Stearns, then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, then most of Wall Street. But voters had a different response. Polls showed widespread opposition to the bailouts. When Congress prepared to vote on President George W. Bush’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, Americans made their opinions known in no uncertain terms. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown reported, “Like my colleagues, my phones have been ringing off the hook. The sentiment from Ohioans about this proposal is universally negative.”

    In the end, though, Congress took another vote, and the lobbyists won. Wall Street got its bailout. And we can date the birth of the tea party movement to that very week.

    Meanwhile, the government’s response to the financial crisis sent people looking for answers. Sales of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” and Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” soared. The Cato Institute’s pocket edition of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution even hit The Washington Post best-seller list.

    Libertarian ideas often cross left-right boundaries. Lots of libertarians were involved in the tea party and the opposition to the bailouts, the car company takeovers, the 2009 stimulus bill and the quasi-nationalization of health care. But libertarians were also involved in the movement for gay marriage. Indeed, John Podesta, a top adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and founder of the Center for American Progress, noted in 2011 that you probably had to have been a libertarian to have supported gay marriage 15 years earlier. Or take marijuana legalization, which is just now becoming a majority position: Libertarians have been leaders in the opposition to the drug war for many years.
    Libertarians have played a key role in the defense of the right to keep and bear arms over the years, notably in the two recent Supreme Court cases that affirmed that the Second Amendment means what it says: Individuals have a right to own guns. Support for stricter gun control has been declining for years.

    Much of the libertarian energy in the past few years was generated by the presidential campaigns of former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, and then by the leadership of his son Rand Paul representing Kentucky in the Senate. When Ron Paul began his campaign in 2007, he didn’t attract much attention. But then, in a nationally televised debate, he clashed with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani over the causes of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The confrontation became the cable TV moment of the night.

    The next day, the conservative magazine National Review declared it a victory for Giuliani. But his campaign never got off the ground, while Ron Paul’s took off. “Ron Paul” briefly even became one of the most popular search terms on Google News. Paul’s support, especially online and among young voters, was intense, but it wasn’t broad enough to win any primaries.

    Paul ran again in 2012, and he found even more success. He hadn’t changed much; indeed, his themes sounded like what he’d been saying since he entered Congress in 1976: The federal government is spending too much, printing too much money and launching too many wars. But the country, and the issues, had changed.

    In 2007, Ron Paul warned that an economy based on debt and cheap money from the Federal Reserve was not sustainable, but the economy was booming and nobody wanted to listen. After the crash of 2008, they started listening.

    In 2007, Paul criticized excessive federal spending, but with a Republican in the White House Republicans weren’t much interested. When Obama opened taxpayers’ wallets, they listened.

    In 2007, Paul criticized endless military intervention, but most Republicans were content to repeat, “The surge is working.” By 2012, even Republicans were getting weary of 10 years of war. They listened.

    In 2007, Ron Paul said that Congress and the president should not act outside their powers under the Constitution, but Republicans didn’t want to hear about unconstitutional acts by a Republican president. After the bailouts and the health care takeover and Obama’s unauthorized war in Libya, they listened.

    And in 2010, a hitherto unknown ophthalmologist in my home state of Kentucky got elected to the U.S. Senate, helped by being the son of Ron Paul and by the energy of the tea party. Rand Paul upset the Republican establishment candidate in the primary, then comfortably defeated the Democratic attorney general in November.

    Rand Paul, like his father, doesn’t agree with libertarians on everything. But in the Senate he’s been a strong voice for freedom on a wide range of issues. He introduced a bill to cut spending and actually balance the federal budget. He spoke out against President Obama’s intervention in Libya. He managed to kill a particularly bad piece of indefinite detainment legislation just by demanding that the Senate vote on it in public view. He fought “government bullies” from the EPA to the TSA, and even managed to get detained by the TSA when he objected to a full-body patdown.

    Most memorably, in 2013 he stood like Jimmy Stewart in the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” at a desk in the Senate for 13 straight hours to force the country’s attention on the issue of unmanned drone strikes.

    Shortly after Paul’s filibuster, America’s libertarian soul was pricked again by a series of revelations about government surveillance, overreach and abuse of power. First came the reports suggesting that the IRS had targeted tea party groups and those engaged in “educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights” for extra scrutiny and delays in confirming their tax-exempt status. Then we learned that the Justice Department had been looking at the telephone records of as many as 20 reporters and editors at The Associated Press as well as Fox News reporter James Rosen. Both those efforts were part of the Obama administration’s unprecedented war on whistleblowers.

    Then came the stunning revelations about the massive surveillance of Americans’ phone calls and emails by the National Security Agency. We learned that in more than a dozen secret rulings, the secret surveillance court has created a secret body of law authorizing the NSA to amass vast collections of data on Americans. The NSA broke privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times a year.

    Americans were shocked. Members of Congress expressed outrage. President Obama defended the surveillance programs and assured us that the people with access to all this data “take this work very seriously. They cherish our Constitution.”
    But distrust of government is in America’s DNA. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in condemning the Alien and Sedition Acts: “Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.”

    This time it wasn’t “Atlas Shrugged” or “The Road to Serfdom” that shot up on the best-seller lists, it was another libertarian classic: George Orwell’s “1984,” known for its warning that “Big Brother is watching.”

    David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and author of “Libertarianism: A Primer and The Libertarian Vote.”
    Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...#ixzz2yOzo7n2J



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  3. #2
    Is This How We Should Describe Libertarianism?

    Laurence M. Vance

    This is how Cato’s David Boaz begins an article on libertarianism: “Libertarianism — the political philosophy that says limited government is the best kind of government.”

    Don’t Republicans and conservatives say that limited government is the best kind of government?
    This reminds me to also mention the inadequacy of another statement one sometimes hears about libertarianism: “socially liberal, economically conservative.”

    Either way the United States could still be dropping bombs all over the world.

    2:31 pm on April 8, 2014

    Email Laurence M. Vance
    http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/...ibertarianism/


    re: Describing Libertarianism

    Thomas DiLorenzo

    So David Boaz, who has written several books that attempt to redefine libertarianism as beltwaytarianism combined with libertinism, now says libertarianism means “limited government.” But the question is: How “limited”? One percent smaller than the current governmental leviathan? Five percent less? More importantly, WHO will impose such limits? The American people lost the ability to control their own central government when their rights of secession and nullification were destroyed at gunpoint almost 150 years ago. Boaz and all of his fellow beltwaytarians are, of course, dead set against secession and silent about nullification because their primary goal is the Quixotic one of being “accepted” by the leftist zealots at the Washington Post, New York Times, etc.

    Having destroyed the rights of secession and nullification, the central state took the appointment of U.S. senators out of the hands of the people of the states (by state legislatures) with the Seventeenth Amendment calling for popular elections. Once elected by popular vote, senators can then cater exclusively to wealthy donors, the people back home be damned. They could no longer be recalled (fired) for bad behavior by their state legislatures. That’s how a John McCain could move to Arizona, and a Hillary Clinton could move to New York, and become U.S. senators “from” those states.

    The income tax and the Fed then enabled the state to impose and enforce military conscription beginning in World War I. Having thus reintroduced slavery, the state demonstrated that it owns us and all of our income, only allowing us to keep whatever percentage IT decides by announcing what income tax rates were to be. Decades of case law have “reinterpreted” the Constitution to render it meaningless as a means of limiting government, just as John C. Calhoun predicted it would in his 1850 Disquisition on Government. The state then went hard to work making it virtually impossible to unseat any incumbent in Congress with gerrymandering, taxpayer-funded permanent campaign staffs, hundreds of committees and subcommittees designed to streamline the buying of votes by ladeling out massive amounts of individual and corporate welfare, the virtual banning of third parties, and myriad other forms of barriers to entry into politics. Ask Ron Paul about that.

    “Limited government” is not only not the definition of libertarianism; in today’s world it is meaningless blather.

    8:58 pm on April 8, 2014

    Email Thomas DiLorenzo
    http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/...ibertarianism/

  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by David Boaz
    In 2007, Ron Paul warned that an economy based on debt and cheap money from the Federal Reserve was not sustainable, but the economy was booming and nobody wanted to listen. After the crash of 2008, they started listening.

    In 2007, Paul criticized excessive federal spending, but with a Republican in the White House Republicans weren’t much interested. When Obama opened taxpayers’ wallets, they listened.

    In 2007, Paul criticized endless military intervention, but most Republicans were content to repeat, “The surge is working.” By 2012, even Republicans were getting weary of 10 years of war. They listened.

    In 2007, Ron Paul said that Congress and the president should not act outside their powers under the Constitution, but Republicans didn’t want to hear about unconstitutional acts by a Republican president. After the bailouts and the health care takeover and Obama’s unauthorized war in Libya, they listened.
    Great examples of Team Blue vs. Team Red thinking. As long as Team Red's guy was sitting in the Oval Office, no one wanted to hear the criticisms that Ron Paul was offering. Once Obama settled in, everything Bush was already doing, they were ready to blame on Obama.

    Ron Paul was just as right in 2007 as he was in 2012....only, Team Red cannot stand to hear criticism of its own.

  5. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by cajuncocoa View Post
    Great examples of Team Blue vs. Team Red thinking. As long as Team Red's guy was sitting in the Oval Office, no one wanted to hear the criticisms that Ron Paul was offering. Once Obama settled in, everything Bush was already doing, they were ready to blame on Obama.

    Ron Paul was just as right in 2007 as he was in 2012....only, Team Red cannot stand to hear criticism of its own.
    So? Why does this even matter?

    What does matter is right now, "Team Red" are on our side on several foreign policy and national security issues and are therefore political allies. This will be a huge advantage to Rand in 2016.

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by compromise View Post
    So? Why does this even matter?

    What does matter is right now, "Team Red" are on our side on several foreign policy and national security issues and are therefore political allies. This will be a huge advantage to Rand in 2016.
    It matters because now is the time for Rand to pounce on the issues (such as what lead to the Iraq war) that Republicans won't address when an (R) is POTUS.
    Few men have virtue enough to withstand the highest bidder. ~GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter, Aug. 17, 1779

    Quit yer b*tching and whining and GET INVOLVED!!

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by compromise View Post
    "Team Red" are on our side
    NO.. They are not.
    A few give lip service to "our side",, and one or two have been elected.. (too few to matter).

    And If Rand is serious about Liberty,, he will by no means be allowed to be elected..
    Only if he is compromised,, and under control would he ever be allowed.

    This was why Ron was blacked out by the media and the GOP pulled out all the dirty tricks to stop him.

    They will do the same to Rand or anyone else that is not firmly under control.
    Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
    Ron Paul 2004

    Registered Ron Paul supporter # 2202
    It's all about Freedom

  8. #7
    Tuesday, April 8, 2014

    <META content=648884752216444797 abp="1102" itemprop="blogId"><META content=2449153627918899231 abp="1103" itemprop="postId">Defining “Libertarian” Out of Existence

    The hits just keep on coming.

    I am losing track of the number of articles that have come out recently that have attempted to define “libertarian” out of existence; that have worked to ensure as few people as possible would have any interest in joining the club.

    Thick, thin; humanitarian, brutalist; holist, solipsist. Authors and web sites galore. And these are just the ones I have seen and (as regular readers know) upon which I have commented.

    Well, here is one more, from David Boaz, entitled “The Libertarian Surge.” I will only take time to make two points; first the definition of libertarianism as given in the opening sentence:

    Libertarianism — the political philosophy that says limited government is the best kind of government — is having its moment.

    I could write about three hundred words on this; I won’t. Just three: non-aggression principle.

    Second, Boaz goes through extensive efforts to demonstrate that Rand Paul is Ron Paul. Now, I must say, I was prepared to read this commentary by Boaz without a single mention of Ron. Boy was I fooled – Ron is plastered all over it. Because Rand must be sold as Ron. I guess it is OK to ignore Ron unless one wants to co-opt his legacy.

    I could write about three hundred words on this as well, but I won’t. Just one. Principled.

    There is a reason for all of these attacks on libertarianism – on the non-aggression principle at its root. Today is an example of tying libertarianism to limited government (can Boaz spend his time to objectively define this term, and quit wasting time bastardizing the term “libertarian”?), and tying Rand to his father’s legacy.

    http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2...existence.html


    The Road to Thick Libertarianism

    Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

    It’s paved with these intentions, points out Bionic Mosquito. See also his Defining Libertarianism Out of Existence. As he notes, regimists love to talk about “limited government,” since it sounds like it means something but doesn’t, while rejecting the non-aggression principle.

    8:56 am on April 8, 2014

    Email Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

    The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/...ibertarianism/

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by compromise View Post
    "Team Red" are on our side
    LOL



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  11. #9
    On the Meaning of Libertarianism

    Scott Lazarowitz

    I don’t know why all this “meaning of libertarianism” stuff has been the talk of the town so much lately. In response to Laurence Vance and Thomas DiLorenzo in their critiques of David Boaz’s defining libertarianism as “the political philosophy that says limited government is the best kind of government,” I would say that under libertarianism the best kind of government is self-government. Duh.

    When David Boaz writes “limited government,” I don’t think he means “limited self-government,” but a limited State. But I have pointed out recently that libertarianism has no role for the State. (And I see that Christopher Cantwell agrees, I hope more people will also.) Libertarianism includes self-ownership and non-aggression. Let me live my life and you go live yours, but leave me alone. Why is that so anguishing to so many people?

    But the State inherently can’t do that. It can’t leave others alone, because the apparatus of the State is a territorial monopoly ruler whose agents are empowered in a contract-less involuntarily-agreed-to arrangement that is enforced through coercion and threats. Is that any kind of “live and let live” society? And how is that a “limited” apparatus?

    So, “limited government” meaning “limited State”? Impossible, says Hans-Hermann Hoppe. So real honest-to-God libertarianism has no role whatsoever for the State, in my view.

    Dump the State!

    11:57 am on April 9, 2014

    The Best of Scott Lazarowitz

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/...ibertarianism/

  12. #10
    I thought it was a decent article. I have no real complaint about it.

  13. #11
    Wednesday, April 9, 2014

    Libertarians Aren't Trying to Win Elections, They Are Trying to End Them

    By Christopher Cantwell

    Any libertarian who tells you he is trying to win an election is either lying to you about trying to win the election, lying to us about being a libertarian, or terribly misinformed. As far as we’re concerned, elections are a bad thing. We’re trying to end them, not win them.

    The nature of the State is to make false promises to bait support from the people it victimizes. They promise to protect you from boogeymen, they promise to solve your economic problems, they promise to carry out the will of your deity. We see this as completely ridiculous, we know it will fail, and we know that most people are stupid enough to swallow it hook line and sinker, so we can’t compete with it in a popular vote.

    Libertarians are anarchists, whether they realize it or not. Even the ones who are delusional enough to think that they are going to get elected and restore the bloody republic, are little more than useful idiots who are repeating anarchist propaganda for us through channels normally reserved for government.

    The goal is not to win...elections, the goal is to turn a large enough minority against the legitimacy of the State as to make its continued function impossible...You’re right when you say “No candidate is good enough” for us, no matter who runs for office we will tear him down because nobody has the right to be our ruler.


    The above originally appeared at ChristopherCantewell.com.
    http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com...ng-to-win.html

  14. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by cajuncocoa View Post
    LOL
    Now you're deliberately conflating the national party itself with the Republicans Boaz was referring to in the article, the average Republican voter, whom I am also referring to. There's a huge difference between the Wayne Allyn Root, Robert Sarvis and Gary Johnson "Team Yellow" and the pseudo-intellectuals, anarchists, conspiracy theorists, libertines and radicals in the "Team Yellow" grassroots whom you consider to be allies.

    The party establishment in DC makes up a tiny portion of the party. Polls have shown a plurality of Republicans agree with Rand on key issues like NSA surveillance and Syria. You still don't seem to be able to admit that this is highly beneficial for Rand and if it is beneficial for Rand it is de facto beneficial for the liberty movement as a whole.



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