Hello, Again!

This is KFell country....NH!

Wanna Get Depressed?

Then watch this movie - CLICK HERE.

It is very, very well done. though.

Marginalizing Vote-Wasters

Did you vote for Romney or Obama today?

Well you WASTED your vote!

See what I did there?

I'm doing this to everyone in person too. I'm preempting their sophistry. I'm throwing it right back at them.

I voted for Gary Johnson today - I think - or whoever it was on the libertarian ballot. Someone I haven't a clue about.

The rest of y'all voted for someone who either admits to wanting to do very bad things or someone who promises to do good things....but most certainly won't get anything meaningful done.

Either way, if you voted for an organized political party again, you WASTED YOUR VOTE. I mean your vote didn't count one iota towards either changing the course of this sinking ship or towards changing the intellectual/moral bankruptcy of your political party.

When Kerry couldn't beat Bush in '04 it (I believe) marked the first time in many, many moons that an incumbent president wasn't ousted during a lethargic economy.

But it looks like Obama (73% odds of winning on those gambling sites at the moment) has a good chance to keep that winning streak going for recession-Presidents. Heck, FDR kept getting reelected during the Great Depression too...

Generally speaking, there are myriad reasons to vote nonetheless.

Though I can't stand these fools that delude themselves about how important their measly vote is. I mean this country is run by 'old coots', lawyers, and thugs for the benefit of 'old coots', lawyers, and thugs and it will be until some once-in-a-generation, sharp-as-hell, tough-as-nails President sneaks in there and starts throwing haymakers at them.

I heard recently something along the lines that *voting was the last/only refuge of the truly powerless*.

Indeed.

And I was reminded of that quote the other day...

While walking up 6th Ave in NYC I came across two obscenely disheveled, obese hippies prattling on and on about the election. I slowed my pace for purposes of self-amusement/eavesdropping and heard the 'old bag' say, "....my biggest fear is that he'll be SELLING Supreme Court judgeships..."

This halted the 'old coot' in his tracks, he grabbed her arm and proceeded to wax hysterical agreement!

I mean they might not have 10 years left between them - and I doubt very much they have kids and grandkids. Trust me - I'm an expert at this type of profiling.

Half the country is going to be crestfallen tomorrow...

Libertarian Party - Winning Debates, Losing Elections

When I first learned about small-l libertarianism....I was struck and overwhelmed by its foundation in pure logic AND its support by empirical, i.e. REAL WORLD, economics.

And right away I was left wondering why such a perspicacious political philosophy had no traction.

Of course that's a deeper question with many explanations.

But ONE biggie, IMO, is *poor marketing*.

I mean look at that *platform* by the big-L Libertarian Party above.

The wars, the Fed, domestic spying, and legalizing drugs???

Those are hardly the BIG ISSUES; they hardly address the most pressing needs and most marketable agenda for a nation being strangled by Big Government.

My libertarian platform would be:

END Government Schools
END Organized Political Parties
HALVE Government
HALVE/END Entitlements
HALVE/END The Income Tax

Now I know someone is going to say, "libertarianism isn't appealing for no other reason than because people in America are Morons..."

But I've aggressively addressed that in MY PLATFORM. See the first item!

The big-L Libertarians have to understand that so long as future voters/citizens are having their brains caponized in the school system....that it won't matter if the CIA stops spying on American soil or if you can buy marijuana in at your local bodega. This country would be doomed to implode nonetheless!

Frontrunner - A Bad Position In A Long Race?

Watch this video - but skip to the 9 minute mark to start.

39% Romney to 23% Ron Paul?

So, after the pretenders drop out, to whom will the other voters shift their support?

AND, to whom will Big Media shift its support?

Will they start propping up Ron Paul to take Mitt down a notch? I hope so!

The thing is, I don't think the *evangelicals* will be too excited about Mitt Romney, a Mormon.

Hopefully their ministers, sometime this year, will start reminding them that *Jesus was a libertarian*.

Parents Versus Big Government

Here is the full story on Dave Parker. I'm really shocked that this happened in Massachusetts. [sarcasm]

Discuss....Amongst Yourselves.

Okay watch this strawmanish video:

Now that dimwitted Harvard professor Greg Mankiw recently posted this clip on his non-blog.

But this is how he titled it - Libertarian Paradise? Discuss.

Discuss???

How the (bleep) can you DISCUSS something when the thin-skinned invertebrate removed all backlinks and all commenting from his pseudo-blog?

Anyways...

Apparently Somalia is actually much better off now than it was pre-1991.

And if this is fair, why can't I hold up Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as exemplars of Big Government, i.e. socialism run amok?

Captious Shrugged

I read the book in 1996 or 1997 when I had just graduated from college and started trading options.

It didn't resonate with me at all - of course fresh off 16 years of *school* I was profoundly ignorant in the ways of the world, the lessons of history, and even the fundamentals of empirical economics.

For sure I'm a libertarian in the sense that I believe Big Government should ideally be halved in size and scope. I just hope this movie doesn't create an unhelpful caricature of me and my ilk.

Here's a *top comment* from YouTube:

If any of you see it please let me know what you think. Thanks.

Big Government = Big Business

Mike Shedlock highlighted a most trenchant comment on his blog today:

Hello Mish

I find it interesting that people who hate big corporations embrace the ever-growing nanny state. The reality is the nanny state is nothing but a gigantic corporation that hires those who would not be hired in the private workforce at prices far more than they are worth.

In many respects, government is no different than big business. Governments, like business want to grow. Bureaucrats always want more employees and bigger budgets.

The difference is the nanny state is run by politics not by profit. It is run for a political agenda.

If you want a perfect example of a corporation too big to succeed, it's the government.

Take a look at those protesting in Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio and elsewhere.

Who is protesting government cuts? Why it's government employees. They protest for their benefit, not the benefit of the public at large and they want government to use even more force to take what it needs.

What does it take to stop the madness?

A Little Fiat Bubble History

Wow - imagine that....the government blows a bubble and encourages the lumpen masses to keep pouring their depreciating paper currency into it!

Can you say *stock market bubble*?

Can you say *housing market bubble*?

Just what exactly do y'all think those tax incentives (401k) and bailouts were enacted for?

France, way back then, thought it was doomed when paper money was levered at 5 times the gold at hand.

Hah! At least gold had value.

Today the large banks, BAC, WFC, JPM, and C not only don't have ANY HARD ASSETS backing up their balance sheet....they only have about 1 PAPER DOLLAR at hand for each 15-25 they claim to hold!!!

Never before in history has it been so clear - that *wealth* is a tenuous political condition.

Libertarians Should Resonate

It's amazing, but NO ONE in New York cares that a librarian gets compensated like a Knick point guard:

Warren Redlich of Libertarian Party said the head of the New York Library makes $689,000 a year. "Now I know it’s a big library, but that’s a little much," he said. "There are 110,000 bureaucrats in New York State who make over $100,000 a year. We can save nearly $3 billion if we cap bureaucrat pay at $100,000 a year and cap pensions at $75,000," Redlich added.

Alas, Mr. Redlich, whom I voted for, only garnered about 46,000 votes in his bid to become governor.

Libertarians are still waiting for their messiah. Ron Paul is okay, but at his age, certainly not the one.

But check out this guy - Andre Marrou. If only we could go back in time, and pull him forward to the present!

As impressive as he is, I had never even heard of him before tonight. Videos and web info on him are almost nonexistent.

That clip I just played....had only 400 hits! And look how bare his Wikipedia link is!

Criminal Fro Trimmers

Clipped from John Stossel.

More Stossel Armor Chinks

Notwithstanding the ill-advised *suicide* example, the 'old coot' Bill O'Reilly owns Stossel here:



Well he won the theatrical argument anyway.

I'm a big fan of John Stossel. The guy does a terrific job articulating libertarian arguments and backing them up with empiricism.

Though he does have his blindspots...

For one thing, I believe he doesn't quite get the foolishness, or should I say, the *impracticality* of legalizing pot that describes much of today's libertarian movement.

I'd be all for it, so long as the welfare state was eliminated, and so long as one could legally put a bullet in a junkie who breaks into their house (kidding here, partially). Just as I'd be FOR *open borders* in an ideal no-free-lunch country.

Look, if there's an unfair caricature out there of libertarians it's one that portrays them as complete *anarchists* - as people who want ZERO government anywhere.

So all establishment politicians, and establishment Big Media, have to do is scoff, "Hey look at that guy, he's advocating for legalizing heroine and crack cocaine...ha ha ha."

Now it was a different issue, but Warren Redlich, a libertarian running for governor of NY, was completely mocked by Carl Paladino in a debate this year. He (Carl) pretty much chose for his *rebuttal* on one segment to be a smirking silence that played well to the room for 30 seconds or whatever.

With a government as large and as invasive as the one we have, there's no need to *shoot for the moon* in terms of political strategery (that's a word, right?). Just start with say reducing government by 25%.

Whatever libertarians do, they ought not to paint the caricature themselves!

Another area that Stossel is weak on is *education*.

Without going into detail here, the sense I get is that he's a gullible advocate of *vouchers*. What's wrong with that? Well, a libertarian staunch enough to legalize drugs ought to even more clearly see the devastation wrought by government *education*. He should see that the only goal of vouchers is to offer (theoretical) competition within the sphere of government schools. EXCEPT, those schools have no Constitutional or logical mandate in the first place! It's a typical half-a$$ed, let's-clear-the-low-hurdle Republican solution.

And today I was displeased to hear John Stossel mocking vaccine critics:

My segment on vaccines last night (it will repeat tonight at 10pm ET and over the weekend) did not go over well with Claire Dwoskin, of the National Vaccine Information Center, a group that criticizes vaccines. She emailed one of my producers:


I just saw the show and am so sorry to hear that other than what Chris had to say, not a word of truth was spoken by Stossel or Offitt. What a travesty – I hope someday he will recognize the error of his ways and realize the fear and damage that he is contributing to by allowing falsehoods to rule the air. At least his daughter is alive, smiling, educated and enjoying life. That cannot be said for the hundreds of thousands of vaccine injured children in the US. What his daughter went through is NOTHING compared to what the families of autistic children go through every day of their lives. No disease can match this record of human devastation. Vaccines are a holocaust of poison on our children’s brains and immune systems. Shame on you all.


A "holocaust of poison"? No good studies show that vaccines cause autism and the National Academy of Sciences has reviewed the evidence and ruled out causal links. Autism is a challenging condition that affects about 300,000 Americans. The holocaust was the systematic massacre of millions based on their ethnicity.

Now I don't have anyone (save Larry Bird) up on a pedestal so Stossel being wrong on this one issue isn't what upsets me. After all, we're all at different points on the learning curve - I was ignorant of many things in the not-so-distant past as well.

Stossel probably just hasn't, for whatever reason, done any real research and thinking on vaccines. What upset me is how weak Stossel's counter-arguments were.

All he puts forth is a study from government funded *scientists* - the same scientists, no doubt, who unanimously think planet Earth has only 10 years left before burning up! - asserting that vaccines are fine.

Furthermore, I have no opinion on the link between autism and vaccines...

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical and deeply cynical about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines OUTSIDE of possibly causing autism.

So in grabbing this woman's argument, Stossel avoided the issue via strawman.

See also:

Armor Chinks

Homeschooling - No Voucher Required

Medical Monopolists

More Stossel!

Stossel - Highly Recommended!

The Exiled John Stossel

Freedom Lovers

I guess the problem with a libertarian dating site like this is, well, it's not necessarily the inherent *commitment* problems of the sub-population...

More importantly, I don't see any chicks!

Although, after some snooping, I did find a real prize in Texas for our own partisan libertarian, Taylor.

Insignificant Libertarians

Nick can only pull this off this *goading* on account of how truly Marginalized libertarians are.

In other words, the mid-upper level clowns he was messing with had absolutely no idea who he is or what he believes in.

The bright side of being insignificant, I guess, is that Nick no doubt had a great time, and cracked himself up royally at this event!

Homeschooling - No Voucher Required!

Self-professed libertarian John Stossel laments - School Vouchers Die Again.

Apparently the state (government) of Illinois just failed to pass some measure that would jump-start the government school voucher program.

Snnnnooooooooooooooozzzzzzze...

One of the small chinks in Stossel's libertarian armor is his ardent support for *vouchers*. He just doesn't quite understand this one. And I do kind of laugh at people who tell me they are libertarians but when I ask them if they homeschool they say *not THAT libertarian*.

Yeah, they're all for the free trading of widgets and marijuana but ignorant on how much the free trading of IDEAS is restricted by age-graded, curriculum-bound, and adulthood-deferring *schooling*. Hint - widgets come from ideas.

Some of these types say they are FOR private schools but the fact remains that most private schools today are, from an organizational standpoint, mere facsimiles of the flawed government school model.

There was one good comment on Stossel's blog by cb750:

Who are gov unions unionizing against? You unionize against an employer who you are adversarial towards. Since their bosses are also gov workers, who are they unionizing against? Its us, the taxpayer.

Indeed!

Now that I'm back in New York I think I'll try to get some tickets to attend one of Stossel's color TV shows.

Plateaued Blogs

One of the older blogs out there is Little Green Footballs. I used to peruse it many years ago. I believe its real coming out party was an exposé it did of the infamous Dan Rather documents - one that just about proved them a forgery.

Recently, when writing Dead Blogs, I decided for the first time in probably 4 years to check out LGF.

I must say I was surprised to see the term *wingnut* used so pervasively. From past, albeit ancient, experience I more expected to see that pejorative's polar opposite - *moonbat* - littering the content.

I also noticed the traffic on that site seemed to be only a little more than I remember it being 4 years ago - though I could be wrong. But I would have expected it to have risen substantially, as *blogs* in general have gained exponentially more traction in that time.

"What was going on here?" I wondered...

I had a notion, but wasn't interested enough to research the matter.

Then just now I saw this post - Charles Johnson: Why I Parted Ways With The Right - over on that coward Barry Ritholtz's site.

(Yeah, BR is a coward for a few reasons. Here, for example, he who claims to be a *both sides basher* is at it again, but only links to the dirty work of others. He outsources his clueless vitriol, like a real man! Also, Barry's a coward for what he did to me a few months ago. See here and here.)

From what I can tell, Charles Johnson has undertaken a personal crusade against *global warming deniers* and *religious* people - which is fine, and totally his perogative.



And it looks like he's taken to deleting unfriendly feedback. Perhaps Charles Johnson should go back and read his own posts on cognitive dissonance!

All this might explain why his site seems to have stagnated. A self-styled libertarian who believes Big Government has a mandate to protect that little, all-encompassing thing called *the environment*???

Well, it's certainly a niche demographic he's targeting! Good luck to him.

It really is a truism that the faster they (civilizatons, countries, companies, celebrities, blogs, etc.) rise, the sooner they fall...

Stossel - Highly Recommended!

I hope y'all have been watching this show I mentioned - Stossel on the still-obscure Fox Business channel.

The program last week, on *Crony Capitalism* was particularly well done:



So far I've also see his admirable treatment of *healthcare*, *global warming*, and *Atlas Shrugged* - each subject of which got its own dedicated hour-long show.

I emailed him to suggest one on *homeschooling*, which is IMO the most important libertarian issue out there. So hopefully one is one tap down the road; and hopefully it is done justice. Though I wouldn't hold my breath.

You see I meet self-described libertarians all the time. Most of them are darn sure they are FOR the free trading of widgets....but yet remain ignorant about the *free trading of ideas* - the mindwork needed to create said widgets!

Stossel is on Thursdays at 10pm; but it is also replayed all the time; and can obviously be found online as well.

See also my prior mention - The Exiled John Stossel.

The Road To Serfdom - Summary

I did finish the book a few weeks ago, but it took me a while to type up all these worthy passages. I have no commentary at the moment but plan on referring back to many of these bang-bang quotes in future posts. The book is certainly a must read for both the intellectually curious AND the closed-minded Moron set.

...the most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people. This is necessarily a slow affair, a process which extends not over a few years but perhaps over one or two generations. The important point is that the political ideals of a people and its attitude toward authority are as much an effect as a cause of the political institutions under which it lives. (p48)

"...after having thus successfully taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrial animals, of which the government is the shepherd. - I have always thought of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom and it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people." (p49, Tocqueville speaking)

"The complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism," writes Peter Drucker, "has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian, purely negative, non-economic society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Stalinist Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany."

No less significant is the intellectual history of many of the Nazi and Fascist leaders. Everyone who has watched the growth of these movements in Italy or in Germany has been struck by the number of leading men, from Mussolini downward (and not excluding Laval and Quisling), who began as socialists and ended as Fascists or Nazis. And what is true of the leaders is even more true of the rank and file of the movement. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was generally known in Germany, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. Many a university teacher during the 1930s has seen English and American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain only that they hated Western liberal civilization.

It is true, of course, that in Germany before 1933, and in Italy before 1922, communists and Nazis or Fascists clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties. They competed for the support of the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. But their practice showed how closely they were related. To both, the real enemy, the man whom they had nothing in common and whom they could not hope to convince, is the liberal of the old type. (p80-81)

While there can thus with be little doubt that the movement toward planning is the result of deliberate action and that there are no external necessities which force us to it, it is worth inquiring why so large a proportion of the technical experts should be found at the front rank of the planners....It is the frustration of his ambitions in his own field which make the specialist revolt against the existing order....Every one of the many things which, considered in isolation, it would be possible to achieve in a planned society creates enthusiasts for planning who feel confident that they will be able to instill into the directors of such a society their sense of value of the particular objective...

The movement for planning owes its present strength largely to the fact that, while planning is in the main still an ambition, it unites almost all of the single-minded idealists, all of the men and women who have devoted their lives to a single task. The hopes they place in planning, however, are the result not of a comprehensive view of society but rather of a very limited view and often the result of a great exaggeration of the importance of the ends they place foremost. This is not to underrate the great pragmatic value of this type of men in a free society such as ours, which makes them the subject of just admiration. But it would the very men who are most anxious to plan society the most dangerous if they were allowed to do so - and the most intolerant of the planning of others. From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step. Though it is the resentment of the frustrated specialist which gives the demand for planning its strongest impetus, there could hardly be a more unbearable - and more irrational - world than one in which the most eminent specialists in each field were allowed to proceed unchecked with the realization of their ideals. (p98-99)

The above describes 99% of the people living in Cambridge, Massachusetts!

The common feature off all collectivist systems may be described, in a phrase ever dear to socialists of all schools, as the deliberate organization of the labors of society for a definite social goal. That our present lacks such a "conscious" direction toward a single aim, that its activities are guided by the whims and fancies of irresponsible individuals, has always been one of the main complaints of its socialist critics.

In many ways this puts the basic issue very clearly. And it directs us at once to the point where the conflict arises between individual freedom and collectivism. The various kinds of collectivism, communism, fascism, etc., differ among themselves in the nature of the goal toward which they want to direct the efforts of society. But they all differ from liberalism and individualism in wanting to organize the whole of society and all its resources for this unitary end and in refusing to recognize autonomous spheres in which the ends of individuals are supreme. In short, they are totalitarian in the true sense of the new word which we have adopted to describe the unexpected but nevertheless inseparable manifestations of what in theory we call collectivism.

The "social goal," or "common purpose," for which society is to be organized is usually vaguely described as the "common good", the "general welfare," or the "general interest." It does not need much reflection to see that these terms have no sufficiently definite meaning to determine a particular course of action. The welfare and happiness of millions cannot be measured on a single scale of less and more....To direct all our activities according to a single plan presupposes that every one of our needs is given its rank in an order of values....It presupposes, in short, the existence of a complete ethical code in which all human values are allotted their due place. (p100-101)

The effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing to the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go: with the result that that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all. That planning creates a situation in which it is necessary for us to agree on a much larger number of topics than we have been used to, and that in a planned system we cannot confine collective action to the tasks on which we can agree but are forced to produce agreement on everything in order that any action can be taken at all, is one of the features which contributes more than most to determining the character of a planned system. (p104)

Yet agreement that planning is necessary; together with the inability of democratic assemblies to produce a plan, will evoke stronger and stronger demands that the government or some single individual should be given powers to act on their own responsibility. The belief is becoming more and more widespread that, if things are to get done, the responsible authorities must be freed from the fetters of democratic procedure. (p108)

The cry for an economic dictator is a characteristic stage in the movement toward planning. (p108)

Would that be a *pay-czar*? Or a *super-regulator*?

It is now often said that democracy will not tolerate "capitalism". If "capitalism" means here a competitive system based on free disposal over private property, it is far more important to realize that only within this system is democracy possible. When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself. (p110)

If, however, the law is to enable authorities to direct economic life, it must give them powers to make and enforce decisions in circumstances which cannot be foreseen and on principles which cannot be stated in generic form. The consequence is that, as planning extends, the delegation of legislative powers to diverse boards and authorities becomes increasingly common. (p120)

Once government has embarked upon planning for the sake of justice, it cannot refuse responsibility for anybody's fate or position. In a planned society we shall all know that we are better or worse off than others, not because of circumstances which nobody controls, and which is impossible to foresee with certainty, but because some authority wills it. And all our efforts directed toward improving our position will have to aim, not a foreseeing and preparing as well as we can for the circumstances over which we have no control, but at influencing in our favor the authority which has all the power. (p138)

It was not the Fascists but the socialists who began to collect children from the tenderest age into political organizations to make sure that they grew up as good proletarians. It was not the Fascists but the socialists who first thought of organizing sports and games, football and hiking, in party clubs where the members would not be infected by other views. It was the socialists who first insisted that the party member should distinguish himself from others by the modes of greeting and the forms of address. It was they who by their organization of "cells" and devices for the permanent supervision of private life created the prototype of the totalitarian party. (p143)

"The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory with equality of work and equality of pay." - Nikolai Lenin (1917)

"In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat." - Leon Trotsky (1937) (p147)

In a society used to freedom it is unlikely that many people would be ready deliberately to purchase security at this price. But the policies which are now followed everywhere, which hand out the privilege of security, now to this group and now to that, are nevertheless rapidly creating conditions in which the striving for security becomes stronger than the love of freedom. The reason for this is that with every grant of complete security to one group the insecurity of the rest necessarily increases. If you guarantee to some a fixed part of a variable cake, the share left to the rest is bound to fluctuate proportionally more than the size of the whole. And the essential element of security which the competitive system offers, the great variety of opportunities, is more and more reduced. (p153)

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin (1755)

It may, indeed, be questioned whether anyone can realistically conceive of a collectivist program other than in the service of a limited group, whether collectivism can exist in any form other than that of some kind of particularism, be it nationalism, racialism, or classism. The belief in the community of aims and interests with fellow-men seems to presuppose a greater degree of similarity of outlook and thought than exists between men merely as human beings. If the other members of one's group cannot all personally be known, they must at least be of the same kind as those around us, think and talk in the same way and about the same kind of things, in order that we may identify ourselves with them. Collectivism on a world scale seems to be unthinkable - except in the service of a small ruling elite. (P161)

Of these, one of the most important is that the desire of the individual to identify himself with a group is very frequently the result of a feeling of inferiority and that therefore his want will be satisfied only if membership of the group confers some superiority over outsiders. Sometimes, it seems, the very fact that these violent instincts which the individual knows he must curb within the group can be given a free range in the collective action toward the outsider, becomes a further inducement for merging personality in that of the group. There is a profound truth expressed in the title of Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man ad Immoral Society - however little we can follow him in the conclusions he draws from his thesis. There is, indeed, as he says elsewhere, "an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups." To act on behalf of a group seems to free people of many of the moral restraints which control their behavior as individuals within the group. (p163)

It is not only, as Russell has so well described, that the desire to organize social life according to a unitary plan itself springs largely from a desire for power. It is even more the outcome of the fact that, in order to achieve their end, collectivists must create power - power over men wielded by other men - of a magnitude never before known, and that their success will depend on the extent to which they achieve such power. (p165)

"It is significant that the nationalization of thought has proceeded everywhere pari passu with the nationalization of industry." - E.H. Carr (p171)

The most effective way of making everybody serve the single system of ends toward which the social plan is directed is to make everybody believe in those ends. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends. It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends. Although the beliefs must be chosen for the people and imposed upon them, they must become their beliefs, a generally accepted creed which makes the individuals as far as possible act spontaneously in the way the planner wants. If the feeling of oppression in totalitarian countries is in general much less acute than most people in liberal countries imagine, this is because totalitarian governments succeed to a high degree in making people think as they want them to. (p171)

If all the sources of current information are effectively under one single control, it is no longer a question of merely persuading the people of this or that. The skillful propagandist then has the power to mold minds in any direction he chooses, and even the most intelligent and independent people cannot entirely escape that influence if they are long isolated from all other sources of information. (p171-172)

The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda which we must now consider are, however, of an even more profound kind. They are destructive of all morals because they undermine one of the foundations of all morals: the sense of and respect for truth. (p172)

The need for such official doctrines as an instrument of directing and rallying the efforts of the people has been clearly foreseen by the various theoreticians of the totalitarian system. Plato's "noble lies" and Sorel's "myths" serve the same purpose as the racial doctrine of the Nazis or the theory of the corporative state of Mussolini. They are all necessarily based on particular views about facts which are then elaborated into scientific theories in order to justify a preconceived opinion.

The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. The people are made to transfer their allegiance from the old gods to the new under the pretense that the new gods are really what their sound instinct had always told them but what before they had only dimly seen. And the most effective technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed.

The worst sufferer in this respect is, of course, the word "liberty." It is a word used as freely in totalitarian regimes as elsewhere....use of the word "freedom" is as misleading as it is in the mouth of totalitarian politicians. Like their freedom, the "collective freedom" he offers us is not the freedom of the members of society, but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society what he pleases. It is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme. (p174-175)

Facts and theories must thus become no less the object of an official doctrine than views about values. And the whole apparatus for spreading knowledge - the schools and the press, radio and motion picture - will be used exclusively to spread those views which, whether true or false, will strengthen the belief in the rightness of the decisions taken by the authority; and all information that might cause doubt or hesitation will be withheld. The probable effect on the people's loyalty to the system becomes the only criterion for deciding whether a particular piece of information is to be published or suppressed. The situation in a totalitarian state is permanently and in all fields the same that it is elsewhere in some fields in wartime. Everything which might cause doubt about the wisdom of the government or create discontent will be kept from the people. The basis of unfavorable comparisons with conditions elsewhere, the knowledge of possible alternatives to the course already taken, information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve conditions - all will be suppressed. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced and uniformity of views no enforced.

This applies even to fields apparently most remote from any political interests and particularly to all the sciences, even the most abstract. That in the disciplines dealing directly with human affairs and therefore more immediately affecting political views, such as history, law, or economics, the disinterested search for truth cannot be allowed in a totalitarian system, and the vindication of the official views becomes the sole object, is easily seen and has been amply confirmed by experience. These disciplines have, indeed, in all totalitarian countries become the most fertile factories of the official myths which the rulers use to guide the minds and wills of their subjects. It is not surprising that in these spheres even the pretense that they search for truth is abandoned and that the authorities decide what doctrines ought to be taught and published. (p176)

It is entirely keeping with the whole spirit of totalitarianism that it condemns any human activity done for its own sake and without ulterior purpose. Science for science's sake, art for art's sake, are equally abhorrent to the Nazi's, our socialist intellectuals, and the communists. EVERY activity must derive its justification from a conscious social purpose. There must be no spontaneous, unguided activity, because it might produce results which cannot be foreseen and for which the plan does not provide. It must produce something new, undreamed of in the philosophy of the planner. The principle extends even to games and amusements. I leave it to the reader to guess whether it was in Germany or Russia that chess-players were officially exhorted that "we must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess. We must condemn once and for all the formula 'chess for the sake of chess' like the formula 'art for art's sake.'" (p177)

The word "truth" itself ceases to have its old meaning. It describes no longer something to be found, with the individual conscience the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or the standing of those proclaiming it) warrants a belief; it becomes something to be laid down by authority, something which has to be believed in the interest of the unity of the organized effort and which may have to be altered as the exigencies of this organized effort require it.

The general intellectual climate which this produces, the spirit of complete cynicism as regards truth which it engenders, the loss of the sense of even the meaning of truth, the disappearance of the spirit of independent inquiry and of the belief in the power of rational conviction, the way in which differences of opinion in every branch of knowledge become political issues to be decided by authority, are all things which one must personally experience - no short description can convey their extent. Perhaps the most alarming fact is that contempt for intellectual liberty is not a thing which arises only once the totalitarian system is established but one which can be found everywhere among intellectuals who have embraced a collectivist faith and who are acclaimed as intellectual leaders even in countries still under a liberal regime. Not only is even the worst oppression condoned if it is committed in the name of socialism, and the creation of a totalitarian system openly advocated by people who pretend to speak for the scientists of liberal countries; intolerance, too, is openly extolled....This view is, of course, practically indistinguishable from the views which led the Nazis to the persecution of men of science, the burning of scientific books, and the systematic eradication of the intelligensia of the subjected people. (p178-179)

"When authority presents itself in the guise of organization, it develops charms fascinating enough to convert communities of free people into totalitarian States." - The Times (London, 1937) (p193)

The way in which, in the end, with few exceptions, her scholars and scientists put themselves readily at the service of the new rulers is one of the most depressing and shameful spectacles in the whole history of the rise of National Socialism. It is well known that particularly the scientists and engineers, who had so loudly claimed to be the leaders on the march to a new and better world, submitted more readily than almost any other class to the new tyranny. (p200-201)

Apart from the intellectual influences which we have illustrated by two instances, the impetus of the movement toward totalitarianism comes mainly from the two great vested interests: organized capital and organized labor. Probably the greatest menace of all is the fact that the policies of these two most powerful groups point in the same direction. (p204)

This movement is, of course, deliberately planned mainly by the capitalist organizers of monopolies, and they are thus one of the main sources of this danger. Their responsibility is not altered by the fact that their aim is not a totalitarian system but rather a sort of corporative society in which the organized industries would appear as semi-independent and self-governing "estates." But they are as shortsighted as were their German colleagues in believing that they will be allowed not only to create but also for any length of time to run such a system. The decisions which the managers of such an organized industry would constantly have to make are not decisions which any society will long leave to private individuals. A state which allows such enormous aggregations of power to grow up cannot afford to let this power rest entirely in private control. (p205)

Very frequently even measures aimed against the monopolists in fact serve only to strengthen the power of monopoly. Every raid on the gains of monopoly, be it in the interest of particular groups or of the state as a whole, tends to create new vested interests which will help to bolster up monopoly. A system in which large privileged groups profit from the gains of monopoly may be politically much more dangerous, and monopoly in such a system certainly is much more powerful, than in one where the profits go to a limited few. (p206)

It should never be forgotten that the one decisive factor in the rise of totalitarianism on the Continent, which is yet absent in England and America, is the existence of a large recently dispossessed middle class. (p215)

As Milton said: "If every action which is good or evil in a man of ripe years were under pittance and prescription and compulsion, what were virtue but a name, what praise should then be due to well-doing, what gramercy to be sober, just, or continent?" (p216)

There is much to suggest that we have in fact become more tolerant toward particular abuses and much more indifferent to inequities in individual cases, since we have fixed our eyes on an entirely different system in which the state will set everything right. It may even be, as has been suggested, that the passion for collective action is a way in which we now without compunction collectively indulge in that selfishness which as individuals we had learned a little to restrain. (p217)

It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now - independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one's own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one's neighbors - are essentially those on which the working of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed them it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to do what is collectively decided to be good. (p217-218)

Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders. It is only where responsibility can be learned and practiced in affairs with which most people are familiar, where it is the awareness of one's neighbor rather than some theoretical knowledge of the needs of other people which guides action, that the ordinary man can take a real part in public affairs because they concern the world he knows. (p234)

And I'm just about done another book - The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes - that dovetails nicely with this one.

Essentially, they both presciently predict the cluster-[bleep] going on today, both politically and economically. The latter takes a more empirical, more historical approach; while The Road to Serfdom was written more philosophically.

Both of these books were birthday gifts from my MIL. I've got to hand it to her - the 'old coot' picked out a couple of real winners!

Though I'm already dreading typing up my notes on The Forgotten Man. They'll probably be twice as long!

Monday Reading

Much thanks to Taylor who recently sent me the following essay by a dude named Allen Thornton. Read, digest, and enjoy:

A Dear Teacher

I remember my grandmother once saying, "Experience is a dear teacher/But the fool will have no other." I don’t know whether she was quoting a poem or a saying. The word dear has the old meaning of expensive. We have had thousands of years of experience with government. I ask, if government protects life and property, why do we have locks? Why, in fact, are there more private guards in America than policemen?

Suppose a man leaves $10,000 in cash on the front seat of his unlocked car in a bad part of town and that his money is stolen. When he reports the crime, he tells the police that the purpose of government is to protect life and property and that the United States spends more than has ever been spent. Therefore, he concludes, he felt safe in leaving his money in an unlocked car. The police would probably send him for psychological evaluation. We have had formal policemen for a century or two and we know that police do not and, in fact, cannot protect life and property. That has been our experience. Anyone who thinks otherwise is viewed as a possible lunatic.

We also have education. Our education tells us that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) protects us from fraud and crazy speculation. It tells us that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) protects our food supply. We have had only a few decades of experience with these institutions and can forgive people for believing these claims.

The poisoned peanut butter case highlights an interesting side effect of regulation. Even though hundreds of products were made by other food producers using Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) products, not one of those manufacturers took the time to verify that the PCA was selling them a safe product. I assume that they believed that the existence of the FDA guaranteed the safety of PCA peanut products. I’m going to guess that someone will sue one of those manufacturers. I’m also going to guess that one of them will be found liable. If that happens, the courts will make it official:

Believing that the FDA actually protects the food supply is gross negligence.

Since I started writing this essay, events have overtaken me. A lady in Vermont lost an arm after an antinausea drug was administered to her in a hospital. She sued the drug manufacturer and won. The case was appealed. The drug company pointed out that the drug was approved by the FDA and that the labeling of the drug had also been approved by the FDA. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court found that the drug company was liable for the lady’s loss. So we now have it on the record from the Supreme Court: Believing that the FDA actually protects the people from drug-related problems is negligence.

I heard a joke in the 1950s. The heroes were Rastus and Remus, two African-Americans. The choice of Blacks was no more important to the joke than the choice of blondes to recent jokes. Please substitute blondes or your own despised minority group or whoever.

Rastus is selling smart pills at a dollar a bottle. Remus buys a bottle and takes a few. After a minute, he says, "You know, Rastus, these smart pills taste a lot like rabbit shit." Rastus quickly responds, "See, you’re getting smarter already."

When I heard that the stimulus bill would quadruple the Department of Education’s budget, I immediately thought, "That should buy a lot of smart pills." Ever since the state and federal governments have concerned themselves with education, we have had a proliferation of smart pills. There was a time in America when education consisted of the illiterately named 3 Rs, but that was a century ago.

Education is a strange process. I belong to a listserve and within the past year I wanted to suggest an idea. I thought I would say that Roosevelt presided over seven years of a depression and that previous depressions had not lasted anywhere near that long. I wanted to say that there was a prima facie case that Roosevelt’s policies had prolonged the depression, that the onus was on his fans to explain those years. However, I knew that American eduction in all its forms declared that Roosevelt had "saved capitalism." Even though the listserve is decidedly conservative, I decided not to suggest my idea because it would make me seem like a flat-earther. Now that Obama and his spending are being opposed by the Republicans, the idea that Roosevelt exacerbated the depression has become part of the political discourse. The point is that political ideas include only what is approved by one of the political parties; saying anything outside the confines of the two-party debate is like speaking Greek.

Recent events should convince everyone that the SEC does not protect investors against fraud. On a more subtle level, the SEC gives people the erroneous idea that their investments are relatively safe if they are not in the hands of criminals. SEC regulations have obviously failed in that aim, too. Partisans have claimed that Bush’s "deregulation" caused the problems. Other partisans cite the efforts of Democrats to force lowered standards for home-ownership. I believe that the cause of the recent recession is the action of the Federal Reserve in keeping interest rates low so that the economy could continue to grow despite the spending on war and new entitlement programs. Cheap money creates risky investments. However, almost everyone in power agrees that new regulations are needed. When I think about regulations, I divide them into two kinds:

1. The U.S. tells GM that a certain class of car must achieve 28 miles/gallon. This kind of regulation doesn't care what the customer wants or what the consequences to the business are. The U.S. has other aims.

2. The U.S. tells a bank that it can only leverage its money at 10 to 1. In this instance, the U.S. is telling the company how to run its business for the benefit of the company. The second sort of regulation is what is being proposed by the administration. What we have is an administration setting the details of running a business.

As a general principle, I would say that you get the sort of regulation that you pay for. If you want the government to regulate companies (for free), you should probably expect the sort of protection of life and property that they provide for free. I ask again, if the government protects life and property, why do we have locks?

Suppose, though, that the regulations had been sufficient to prevent too much speculation. They would have been so drastic that institutions would have left the United States. People think that there can be a “correct” level of government regulation but that goal is the same as saying that politicians know the best way to invest money, when not even the professional investors know the best way to invest money. The population will ultimately learn about the SEC what we know about the police force: It is unable to achieve its stated goal. Even if regulations could produce perfect results, they would amount to nothing less than welfare for investors. In truth, that is what investors actually want even though they put it in different words.

Now we have a call for international regulation. I am reminded of a joke about international socialism, told by Russians in the 1970s. A commissar tells an American that soon the whole world will be communist except Australia. The American asks why not Australia. The commissar replies, "So we can find out what things ought to cost." International regulation would produce the opposite result: We would never know what a free system would produce. Of course, that is the idea. No country wants all its capital fleeing to X-Country because only X-Country allows its investors to do what they want to.

When corrupt lawsuits extracted billions from "big tobacco," I thought that a great opportunity had been created for anyone who wanted to manufacture cigarettes. I looked up the requirement for starting a cigarette factory and was confronted with a 60 page document. The details were appalling. Most interesting was the necessity for obtaining a "reference" from a member of Congress. Anyone who looks into the matter will quickly conclude the government does not want to punish big tobacco: Just the opposite, it wants to protect those giant companies so that they can efficiently collect taxes from the "addicts." If nicotine is a drug, the U.S. government is the biggest drug dealer in the world. The only difference is that drug dealers don’t lecture you about the dangers and wrongness of the drugs they are selling you. Regulation is often a means for keeping the have-nots from competing against the haves.

Here’s the only other Rastus and Remus joke I remember. Let’s make it a Pat and Mike joke. Pat and Mike are out fishing. A rattlesnake jumps up and bites Mike’s penis. Pat runs to the doctor and says, "Mike has been bitten by a rattlesnake. What should I do?" The doctor explains, "Make an incision at the site of the bite and suck out as much venom as you can." Pat runs back to Mike. Mike asks, "What did the doctor say?" Pat replies, "You gonna die."

Paulson tells President Bush that "credit has frozen up." Bush goes to a libertarian economist, who says, "Keep the dollar strong. Let those who must fail, fail. Remove (as much as you can) the restrictions, the licensing, and the regulations on lending. Everything will be OK soon." Bush rushes back to the American people and says, "You gonna have a depression."

The problem with Presidents Bush and Obama is that they are, to construct a Bushism, misovereducated. For a politician to give up control would be the same as admitting that his whole life was a huge mistake. We believe a simple idea: The use of violence (governmental or otherwise) in the economic system is counterproductive. I think that we are as far from turning this idea into reality as the people in Watt Tyler’s rebellion (1381) were from a working democracy. Resistance to our state is futile. Voting (along with democracy) has become a joke. All we can do is put forward a message. It’s a simple one:

"Your private life experience has shown that violence doesn’t work and when it seems to work, it only works for a while. You want to pretend that when the government takes money and tells people what to do with threats of violence, it benefits them. You are wrong. You are beginning to see it. You may have been on the winning side for a while but times change. The answer is not better government; we’ve tried that for centuries. The answer is to move away from the state and its use of force."

It may be enough to ask a very general question: What is good government? If we believe that government is created for the happiness of people, then a good government is one that most of the people are happy with. Because perfection is impossible, let’s say a good government is one that 90% of the population approve of and 10% do not chafe under unduly. In modern American democracy we have half the people set against the other half. But in fact, public opinion polls indicate that only 20% or 30% of the people actually approve of the government they have. The reason that such a bad form of government can continue to exist is that large portions of the population hate and fear other large portions of the population so much that they are content to elect members of their own party if only to keep their opponents out of office.

We challenge the utopianists in a very simple way: What form of government can satisfy 90% of the people without overly offending the other 10%? What form of government can achieve these ends over a long period of time? The intellectuals of the government simply cannot achieve such a state without declaring what will make people happy. They always declare what should make people happy; they never look at the people themselves. Of course, they believe in their own objective standards for the population’s happiness but fair-minded thinkers see through their arrogance. I cannot think of anything but radical decentralization of government power, perhaps even physical separation, in order to create a "good" government. One more condition: The utopianist isn’t allowed to kill 20% or 30% of the population when he starts. That has been the common practice but the "good" government has not been achieved.

I’m an anarchist and advocate no particular form of government. One of the reasons I feel this way is that I do not presume to tell the population what they should do. If the sort of good government I described, one that satisfies the vast majority without victimizing the rest, came into existence, I would not oppose it, but I’ve never seen such a system or heard of it.

Pretty good, huh?

Click here to get to Allen Thornton's antiquated homepage. There's plenty more there worth reading.