Ryan McMaken – Page 2 – The Libertarian Standard

The myth of high Muslim fertility rates, and the threat they pose

By Ryan McMaken / April 2, 2012 / 1 Comment / 3 minutes of reading

Important to the anti-Muslim narrative is the idea that Muslims reproduce at prodigious rates, and that this poses an existential threat to the West. Specifically, Muslims are reproducing so quickly, that within a generation or two, they will overwhelm the entire Western world.

These predictions are usually muttered by brooding prophets of doom who predict the near-impossibility of Western civilization over triumphing over the implacable foe. This is a common theme at various “race realist” (i.e. racist) web sites and other nationalist web sites that forever repeat myths about American exceptionalism and the U.S. state’s duty to defeat the global threat of the foreign races.

Rick Santorum has more or less built his entire career on the idea that Muslims are the great threat of our age and that all of Western society must be reformed into militant soldiers against Islam. We must “wake up” to the threat, Santorum believes. Watching the anti-Muslim crowd alternate between violent screeching for Holy War and sombre brooding over the grave threat, it is difficult to not think of the anti-communists of the days of yore, like Whittaker Chambers and Frank Meyer, who, being ex-communists, were absolutely convinced that the world was but in the midst of a losing rear-guard action against the superhuman army of Stalinist Soldiers of the Millennium.

It turned out, however, that the communist ubermensch was more interested in blue jeans and Coca Cola than in immanentizing the eschaton.

What sort of apparel and soft drinks motivate Muslims, I can’t say, but it does seem they now have at least one more thing in common with the Westerners: collapsing birth rates. Notes one researcher:

“Of the three major monotheistic religions, all of which encourage fertility, Islam is the one that encourages procreation the least,” he explains. The factor that explains different fertility rates around the world continues to be, not religion, but education levels. In addition, there are other political and sociological factors that differ from country to country, and which the examples below illustrate.
In short, a demographic Homo Islamicus does not exist. And instead of clashing civilizations, the world is headed towards demographic convergence.

Meanwhile, according to John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter, the Catholic population in Africa has increased 6,700 percent over the past century. Globally, there are not many more Muslims than the 1.1 billion Catholics, and when we add in other Christians, there are nearly twice as many Christians as Muslims.

But the the purveyors the Holy War will never be satisfied, and just as the anti-communists beat the drum for more and more government, more war, and more police statism, just as William F. Buckley called for a totalitarian bureaucracy in America to defeat communism, so it is for the anti-Muslims. Rick Santorum will not rest until the last American freedom has been extinguished in the name of killing a few more Muslims, but even if he fails, it seems likely that debt, bankruptcy, war, tyranny and societal dysfunction here at home are much bigger threats than a bunch of supposedly hyper-fertile Muslims.

The myth of high Muslim fertility rates, and the threat they pose Read Post »

It’s Rothbard contra the conservatives this summer in Denver

(Austrian) Economics, Education, Libertarian Theory, The Right

By Ryan McMaken / March 27, 2012 / 1 minute of reading

If you happen to be a University of Colorado student, or if you’d like to shell out lots of bucks as a non-degree student, join me this summer at the Denver campus for an upper-division, 3-credit-hour undergraduate seminar on the Conservative-Libertarian debate on the American right. We’ll consider the usual texts, but also the history of the movement through the writings of Murray Rothbard and Justin Raimondo.

See the class web site here.

It’s Rothbard contra the conservatives this summer in Denver Read Post »

Speak English or Else

Anti-Statism, History

By Ryan McMaken / March 14, 2012 / 1 Comment / 4 minutes of reading

In spite of global economic woes and sovereign debt crises and the run up to World War III in southwest Asia, there are some who still manage to find the time to call for English-only laws in communities across America. Most recently, areas of Minnesota and Maryland have been banging the drum to make English the only official language. The adoption of such measures, in these two places, as in most places in America, is meaningless in the practical sense because most local governments already do business in English only. But, such measures are symbolic measures designed to send a message to undesirables who are insufficiently nationalistic in their choice of language.

An obsession with forcing the citizenry to speak one government-approved language has long been central to the plans of nationalists everywhere. Nationalism, that ideology that one’s country is better than everyone else’s, and that every foreigner is just slightly less human that you, has long thrived on the completely false and unproven notion that multi-lingual societies always sit perched on the precipice of chaos. We hear this often from red-faced nationalist paranoiacs who claim that “balkanization,” which they define as the unspeakable horror of allowing people to speak languages other than the one preferred by the majority, is a road to destruction. This contention is easily proven false within seconds by simply providing counter examples. After all, we all know what war-torn hellholes Switzerland, Belgium and Canada are. The multi-lingual Austrian Empire, one of the richest and most prosperous societies in Europe for centuries, somehow survived centuries of the citizenry speaking German, Hungarian, and various Slavic languages. Unfortunately, it couldn’t survive Woodrow Wilson’s utopian meddling at Versailles.

But one doesn’t have to read tomes on European history to know what obvious nonsense is the claim that multi-lingual countries are unfeasible. Arguably, they’re much freer, because free countries allow variety that nationalist control-freak societies do not.In The Rise and Decline of the State, Martin Van Creveld notes that the idea of linguistic unity began to gain real currency toward the end of the 19th century. At that time, the ideology of the French Revolution, the idea that people in certain geographic areas should be forcibly unified under a strong state and coerced into adopting a single culture, gained a lasting foothold in Europe.

Certainly this idea was not totally new. English nationalism has been around since at least the 16th century. Thomas More found out what happens to those who insist on a more internationalist view, as did others, but it was in the 19th century that states really began to insist on cultural conformity from their own citizens and the citizens of those living in their colonies and conquered territories.

After 1870, the Italians simply made up a language based on a Tuscan variety. The French began demanding that all citizens speak the version of French spoken in Paris. Down the memory hold went languages like Piedmontese, Occitan, Mozarabic, and others.

Since the time of Queen Isabella and the reconquista, the rulers of unified Spain had been shoving Castilian down the throats of all Spaniards, and everyone in their colonies. They saw Castilian as a tool to hold the Empire together. Practically speaking, it was a good theory.

Back when the United States was a free country, it was multi-lingual, and even a cursory look at 19th-century America reveals just how pervasive was the reality of a multi-lingual society:

Louisiana was largely a French-speaking state (General Beauregard, Union Officer and later Confederate General, for example, didn’t speak English until he was 11 years old); German was widely spoken, and until World War I, and the anti-German bigotry that came with it, German-language private schools were common throughout the United States; New Mexico did not have an English-speaking majority until the 20th century; The Amish spoke the Pennsylvania German language; Many Americans of the Maine and Vermont borderlands were French-speakers only.

The reality of a multi-lingual society has been written into state constitutions as well. The original Colorado Constitution of 1876, for example, specifically mandates that laws shall be reproduced in three languages:

“Article XVIII, sec 8 (1876):

“The general assembly shall provide for publication of the laws passed at each session thereof; and until the year 1900, they shall cause to be published in Spanish and German a sufficient number of copies of said laws to supply that portion of the inhabitants of the State who speak those languages and who may be unable to read and understand the English language.”

We can also note that the rules of naturalization were a bit looser. Note the requirements for becoming a voter:

Article VII section 1 (1876)

“[The voter] shall be a citizen of the United States, or not being a citizen of the United States, he shall have declared his intention, according to law, to become such citizen, not less than four months before he offers to vote.”

One can only imagine and hackles raised by right-wing populists if a state today tried to adopt an amendment calling for all laws to be published in three languages.

Speak English or Else Read Post »

Many Americans don’t pay income tax. Is this a bad thing?

(Austrian) Economics, Democracy, Taxation, The Right

By Ryan McMaken / February 24, 2012 / 4 Comments / 5 minutes of reading

Last week, the Heritage Foundation published commentary on the number of Americans who pay income tax, and decried the fact that 49.5 percent of Americans are “not represented on a taxable return.” The Daily Mail then picked up the statistics and announced that “HALF of Americans don’t pay income tax despite crippling government debt.”

To its credit, the body of the Heritage post began with a reference to the “the sharp increase of Americans who rely on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid or other assistance.” The emphasis of the piece, however, and thus, the emphasis of the other news outlets and pundits who have picked up on the statistic, is that too few people pay taxes.

The increase in reliance on government assistance is the problem here, not a lack of people who pay income tax.

Yet, it has become something of a right-wing talking point to claim that a declining number of taxpayers among some income groups is a nefarious development in American history.

The emphasis on the lack of taxpayers is getting the whole issue backward. The problem is the increase of income from government transfer payments. There is nothing bad whatsoever about fewer people paying income taxes.

The Conservative obsession with getting people to pay more in taxes comes from a preoccupation with class warfare in which it is assumed that if middle-class and wealthy people are paying too much in taxes (which they are), then the solution is to punish low-income people by making them pay more in taxes. It’s allegedly not “fair” if everyone is not being extorted by the state in a similar fashion.

The just solution, however, is to greatly decrease the tax burden of those paying taxes now. In a recent NPR interview, Ron Paul nicely summed up what is actually “fair”:

MR. SIEGEL: This week’s release of Mitt Romney’s taxes and President Obama’s advocacy of a millionaire’s tax raise questions about fairness in funding the government. The first question: Do you believe that income derived from dividends interest or capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate than income earned from a salary or commissions?

REP. PAUL: Well, I’d like to have everybody taxed at the same rate, and of course, my goal is to get as close to zero as possible, because there was a time in our history when we didn’t have income taxes. But when government takes it upon themselves to do so much, you have to have a tax code. But if you’re going to be the policemen of the world and run all these wars, you have to have a tax code. But as far as what the rates should be, I think it should be as low as possible for – for everybody.

It’s a safe bet that Siegel’s underlying assumption behind the question is that in order to make taxes fair, then anyone who is paying a tax bill that is too “low” should therefore have his taxes raised.

The opposite is true, as noted by Paul.

So, when Conservatives get bent out of shape about some people not paying tax, the response should be to demand lower taxes for everyone, not to complain that people aren’t paying their “fair share,” which seems to be the Conservative sentiment.

We might also note that this statistic apparently only applies to income taxes. It says nothing about payroll taxes, which for many middle-class people is by far the largest part of one’s monthly tax bill. Any teenager with his first job notices just how much those payroll taxes take out of one’s paycheck. So, to claim that people aren’t paying taxes simply because they’re not paying income tax is rather disingenuous. Since there’s no such thing as a Social Security or Medicare trust fund, payroll taxes are really just income taxes under another name.

Also, any demand for more taxation is really just a demand for increased government revenue. It’s a call for more money so government can bomb more people, bail out more banks and spread around more largesse to politically well-connected friends.

So, the focus on whether or not “enough” people are paying taxes completely misses the point. The larger point is that far too many Americans receive government benefits. Indeed, recent increases in income as measured by the BLS, reflect increases in government transfer payments, as I’ve shown here.

Ludwig von Mises wrote in Bureaucracy that a system in which a majority of the population is dependent on the government dole leads to an unstable political and economic situation, since a majority of the population then has a vested interest in increasing the power of government to redistribute wealth. While the Heritage article makes some comments in this vein, it nevertheless makes the claim that “The rapid growth of Americans who don’t pay income taxes is particularly alarming for the fate of the American form of government.” Really? By that logic, “the American form of government” would be in danger if the income tax were abolished. Oh, how did America ever survive prior to the 16th Amendment?

There is no doubt that the growth in dependency on government largesse is a serious problem, but that doesn’t mean that any American pays too little in taxes. It simply means that the government spends too much money.

The Conservative reaction to this statistic, however, seem to be: “Hey, those guys aren’t being taxed! Tax them!” This is hardly a phrase that should be uttered by anyone who claims to be for limited government.

Many Americans don’t pay income tax. Is this a bad thing? Read Post »

Newt has raised Cold War-style paranoia to an art form

Uncategorized

By Ryan McMaken / December 15, 2011 / 2 minutes of reading

Here’s a somewhat funny article from Gizmodo that points out Newt’s misplaced fear of a EMP attack from Iran, North Korea or some other member of the Axis of Evil. (Saudi Arabia, the brutal Islamist dictatorship, which recently began talking about getting nukes, doesn’t count since the dictators are BFFs with the Bush family.)

The theoretical possibility of an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) attack will be familiar to people who keep a 1955 Chevy and a Faraday cage in the back yard “just in case”, although few people sit up nights about it since the actual threat is virtually non-existent. Except in the mind of Newt Gingrich.

Newt’s paranoia reminds me of a portion of Errol Flynn’s interview with Robert McNamara in The Fog of War. McNamara points out that the US in the early 1960s began to call for nuclear arms limitation deals. The US had a huge advantage in nuclear arms at the time (and still does), and the US figured it could keep that advantage by putting in place a limit or ban on the testing of nuclear arms. McNamara noted that the hawks in the administration were dead-set against any limitations because the Soviets would cheat by secretly testing nuclear bombs. Hiding nuclear explosions is somewhat difficult to do, so the hawks were asked just exactly HOW the Soviets would cheat.

Their response: “They’ll test nukes behind the moon.”

Even the warmonger McNamara found such a contention to be beyond the pale of Cutis LeMay-style nuclear paranoia. Newt, on the other hand, makes people like McNamara seem reasonable.

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