Libertarians and Conservatives, Who Understands the US?

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

A friend of mine asked me a couple of days ago: what is the difference between a libertarian and a Republican (or conservative).  I offered him a simple critique: while Republicans may deride big government at home, at least publicly, they applaud military adventurism abroad and reinforcing traditional values at home.  Libertarians on the other hand are consistent in their advocacy of liberty from government intervention in all arenas.

           We were talking about Ron Paul (R-TX) at the time and my friend was very confused (as is Rush Limbaugh) about why Ron Paul would run as a Republican, "He's not going to win" he assured me.  I reminded my friend that I had heard that more than once, but also reminded him that, albeit Ron Paul hasn't come close to winning the presidency, he has greatly influenced American politics.  

          Additionally, Congressman Paul has infused the GOP with a viral dose of libertarianism, which has set brush fires in the minds of millions of young conservatives (and popular progressives) which will no doubt spread in the coming years.  Ron Paul sparked the modern day Tea Party movement (which he receives little credit for) a fact some conservatives would love to bury.  

          He has shattered campaign fundraising records with spontaneously ordered (how wildly appropriate!) moneybombs, the most famous of which occurred on the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party with 58,407 individual donations in one day, which undeniably anticipated the popular movement.  Since 2008 Ron Paul has doubled his political visibility, almost won the '10 Iowa Straw Poll, brought two sons into politics and launched one, Rand Paul (an ostensible libertarian), into a higher office than Ron Paul ever attained!

          While there has been much written on the difference between conservatives and libertarians Ron Paul has exemplified those differences.  He has shown libertarians labor towards a fixed set of philosophical principles while Republicans tend to favor pragmatic principles informed by charismatic leaders and the varying political winds.   

          My friend reminded me of as much: "[Republicans] don't want to hear some of that stuff", referring to Dr. Paul's more controversial positions.  This is because unlike libertarians, Republicans (very much like Democrats) are often swayed by demagoguery, according to Ron Paul in his recent book Liberty Defined:

"...[these] demagogues seek influence and political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, and expectations of the public.  They do not enlighten; they browbeat and play rhetorical games." 

          Paul showed in Monday's CNN/Tea Party debate he wasn't afraid to offend the prejudices of neo-conized Tea Partiers when he claimed 9/11 was in part a likely result of over 900 bases (that we know of) in 130 countries around the world.  He argued that 9/11 was arguably blowback from clandestine operations and overt intervention throughout the Middle East over the last 60+ years not merely because our culture is antithetical to fundamentalist Islam as Rick Santorum suggested - something conservatives in the audience expected to hear.  Dr. Paul even went further, admonishing the crowd, "...if your not annoyed by this there is something wrong!" 

          Libertarians are an international bread, whereas Republicans are found only within the United States.  They believe the Constitution was meant to extend beyond our borders as it defends "persons" not merely "citizens."  Not only can one find libertarian strains within left wing and right wing circles here in the US they are found internationally, albeit mostly in English speaking countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

          A Gallup poll (above) shows to me the most important synthesizing characteristic of the libertarian ideology.  Whereas Republicans and Democrats believe respectively that "big government" or "big business" are the biggest threats to the United States it is the libertarian who understands how the collusion of both these vested interests including, to a much smaller degree "big labor", threatens to our country.  Big government enables big business to buy political favor and cut down competition through regulation, barriers to entry and subsidies, which collectively raise prices, unemployment, profits and impoverishes the middle and lower classes. 

          Similarly, libertarians like Ron Paul understand like political winds the value of goods and services extend from the human mind alone!  Prices aren't set in some ivory tower at Harvard or Stanford and planes, trains, gold, bottled water and iPods don't have an inherent value besides what social needs and circumstance dictate.  Money is (or should be) the viewed the same way.  Why do we allow a few people like Ben Bernanke and a dark consortium of private member mega-banks whom run the Federal Reserve to dictate the worth of the dollars we hold in our hand?  For the same reason we don't allow them to decree what the tomatoes in our garden are worth.  

          It would seem in a democratic society, one that professes to have a free market, that the people should dictate the price of our currency transparently through Congress in accordance with the Constitution!  Never mind the standard on which the money is based (gold, silver, toenail clippings, etc.) libertarians want abolish this financial dictatorship, Republicans are coming around (a little) and 74% of Americans want it audited.  All signs the libertarian drum beat is being heard and felt.   

Image Source: Kevin Middleton at
RedBubble.com

          Lastly, there is something very special about libertarians and Ron Paul that America doesn't fully understand.  Ron Paul wants to put the "States" back into the United States of America!  Ask yourself an honest question: who is my state legislator?  Who is my state senator?  Who cares is probably the next question!  With so many decisions going on in Washington DC all eyes are now refocused on that humid swamp passed on long ago for greener more temperate pastures.  

          Many refer with derision to our 50 states enacting their own laws as a patchwork, a hodgepodge or a mishmash of different laws, but that was the original beauty of America.  In a phrase coined by Lord Bryce and popularized by Justice Louis Brandeis the separate states are seen as "laboratories of democracy" giving the United States a competition not only in the free market, but also in the market of governments, which generated fresh new ideas for public problems and therefore competed for citizens!  After 1913 when states legislators no longer elected Senators to serve as their ambassadors to Washington DC "senators became substantially less responsive to the policy interests of the state legislature."

          Besides the controversial legalization of drugs, dismantling of the FDA, EPA, CIA, FAA, etc. which bog down most debates over the libertarian ideology and Ron Paul's campaign there lies the magic we have lost in this country, respect for reason, life, liberty, property and most all limited government. 

          

Thou Shall Not Steal, Thou Shall Not Covet

Repair_Man_Jack
Red State
6/3/11


"You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour." - Exodus 20:17

Gallup may have identified yet another fault line that divides the American People into two ideological camps. They recently polled as to whether the rich should be heavily taxed to provide more social benefits for the poor.

"Republicans and Democrats have sharply different reactions to the government’s taking such an active role in equalizing economic outcomes. Seven in 10 Democrats believe the government should levy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth, while an equal proportion of Republicans believe it should not. The slight majority of independents oppose this policy."

Although no one would ever call me rich unless they meant it as a sardonic pejorative, my chosen title of this post accurately describes where I come down on this issue. Count me in with the 70% of Republicans and the 49% for reasons both positive and normative.

My positive reasoning is this. The US economy has to stop looking like it does according to what is hyped as “The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever.” The money, resources, and other assets have to be put in the hands of people who are competent. We need people who know their jobs, if we want to create more jobs. Whether you buy into Keynesian Theory for correcting a recession or not, those competent people are not currently running the US Government.

Spreading the wealth, pace Candidate Obama, often puts this money into incapable hands and leads only to lower-order, non-productive consumption. This fails to stimulate the economy beyond a brief burst. People unprepared to handle money properly, often times merely lose it. They then have the same problems they had in the first place. Take the sad example of lottery winner Jack Whittaker.

"Take the case of Jack Whittaker, the lone winner of $314 million. He picked the cash option and took home $114 million after taxes…. Today Whittaker is broke and his claim to fame is the run-ins with the law while having millions of dollars. How someone can go from having over $100 million to being broke is something most of us will never understand but it happens all too often."

If giving people large sums of money insulated them from consequence, Jack Whittaker would probably tootle around town in a brand new Ferrari. Certainly, a few of the retailers, strip clubs and divorce attorneys patronized by Mr. Whittaker got a nice economic sugar high. However, no meaningful, lasting improvement resulted from placing $114 million dollars of hot cash in inexperienced hands. A very similar case can be made about many of the recipients of President Barack Obama’s stimulus funds.

"The Government Accountability Office, in a report being released Tuesday, said at least 3,700 government contractors and nonprofit organizations that received more than $24 billion from the stimulus effort owed $757 million in back taxes as of Sept. 30, 2009, the end of the budget year." - Yahoo News

The examples of the broke lottery winners and the stimulus crooks are excellent counter-examples to the old Keynesian Theoretical argument that you can resuscitate a moribund economy by paying people to bury a collection of objects and then paying more people to dig them back up again. Meaningless government handouts, designed merely to goose the velocity of money, do nothing more than urinate a large collection of funds down the drain.

Then we get to the more moral arguments. How do we justify having the government steal the property of another person on our behalf? And make no mistake about it. When we order the government to go “make the rich pay their fair share,” this is precisely the moral behavior we truly engage in. My position on this is simple. Thou shall not covet. Thou shall not steal.

Let me make this perfectly plain, perfectly simple and perfectly offensive. If you believe the government should tax the rich to make them “pay their fair share,” you are greedy and you are a thief. It is just that simple. Just saying “Barack Obama taxed the rich, not me!” does not absolve that evil. It is a dishonest answer if you voted for the man or morally approve of his “spread the wealth” positions on taxation or regulation.

Any person who voted for Barack Obama for the express purpose of having him utilize the US tax and regulatory apparatus to take money away from the rich and give it to them personally, is the moral equivalent of a bank robber. Neither I, nor any other person alive, is entitled to two red cents out of another person’s stash just because we don’t have as much.

Class envy and class warfare lead not only to bad economic investment, but also a society of blood-sucking amoral cannibals. The current desire to “tax the rich” is born of both petty hatred and cynical hucksterism. For America to fix many of our problems, we need to go back to our historical moral roots. Thou shall not steal. Thou shall not covet.