My Presidential Litmus Test

Anti-Statism
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“Anthony Gregory has a lot of litmus tests.” I believe Scott Horton said that about me on the air. Well, here’s one of my rules of thumb to see if someone is even close to being a real libertarian. It’s a three-part rule. You have to satisfy each condition. Then we can get into other issues—taxes, schools, drugs, etc.

1) Are you anti-Obama? He’s the most powerful man in the world. You have to hate the guy in power. But more important, you have to hate him for the right reasons. Obama being a social democrat and police statist are fine reasons. But first and foremost, you should hate him because he kills innocent people in large numbers.

2) Are you anti-Bush? Lots of people hate Obama, but have a soft spot for George W. Bush. Others hated Bush and like Obama. They are 95% alike. Any libertarian should of course dislike both presidents vehemently, and find them both to be among the worst in modern times. Bush started the worst war since Vietnam. If you are OK with that guy, you’re obviously not any kind of libertarian.

3) Do you hate Harry Truman more than Obama and Bush combined? Even though he’s long been dead, Truman should always be remembered as one of the very worst heads of state in the 20th century and one of the very worst presidents. I’m OK with people who think FDR, Wilson, or Lincoln were worse. We can agree to disagree. But what I don’t like is this idea that Obama or Bush is the “worst president ever.” I got that a lot during Bush—liberals claiming he was the worst president ever—and now I hear conservatives say the same about Obama. It’s not true. Both are awful. But neither compares to Truman.

Truman ended WWII by committing the worst terrorist acts in world history, bombing Tokyo after Nagasaki just for the heck of it, and assisting Stalin in the roundup of refugees to be sent back to the Gulags. After helping Stalin murder tons of people, he used Communism as an excuse to launch the Cold War. He intervened in the Mediterranean and waged an undeclared “police action” in Korea where he used napalm and strategic bombing to kill a million civilians. Even the worst Obama actions concerning the economy were foreshadowed in Truman’s Defense Production Act of 1950.

Caveat: I know principled libertarians who might find a plausible good reason not to hate Truman more than Bush and Obama combined. So this litmus test merely has the rebuttable presumption of soundness. One thing I do know, however, is that anyone who reads this and thinks it’s way out there is probably not a radical libertarian.

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When Will the Voters Learn?

Anti-Statism, Business, Corporatism, Democracy, Education, History, Libertarian Theory, Mercantilism, Nanny Statism, Statism, Taxation, The Left, The Right
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“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” ~ Clay Shirky

You know the slavery Kool-Aid is working well when those who are oppressed petition their oppressors for more of that which helps keep them oppressed.

For instance, public education is a tool that was designed–specifically and directly–as a means of controlling the hoi polloi.  The educational system of compulsory public education championed by Horace Mann, chock-full of multiple-choice testing perfected by Frederick J. Kelly, feeding into statistical models based upon the work of (eugenicist) Sir Francis Galton, was (and is) designed to fulfill the need for employees who are primed and ready to inhabit factories where efficiency can be measured in ways developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor. (The fact that so few of such factories currently exist in America should also be telling, but that’s a different discussion.) Mann believed “universal public education was the best way to turn the nation’s unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens.” The whole thing was designed to produce a seething throng of people ready to take orders, stand in line, ask few questions, and install bumpers all day–accepting the interminable boredom of such a life–while their over-lords made a ton of money.  Free and compulsory public education was never intended to create inquisitive, risk-taking, leaders. Or entrepreneurs and/or business owners.  Or frankly, owners of anything! Yet, people clamor that “education is a right” and “we need more funding for our schools” despite the inescapable fact that these same crap holes are doing their best at producing children incapable of independent thought and unable to read a book (or a blueprint), solve a simple mathematics problem, or devise a new strategy.  It’s damned sad, really.

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Has Romney Been Reading Bastiat?

Anti-Statism, Corporatism, Democracy, Nanny Statism, Police Statism, Taxation, The Left, The Right
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“Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” ~ Frederic Bastiat

No. Not even.

When Romney said “there are 47 percent who are with him [POTUS], who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them” he was roughly half right. Very. Roughly. What he left out is that the “other” 47 percent, those that are with him [Romney] are after the same thing. Admittedly, the number of people who are unrepentant tax feeders, to use Will Grigg’s apt description, is likely (hopefully?) lower than 94 percent. The naive, hopeful dreamer in me would peg it at probably closer to 65–75 percent.  Whatever the exact number is, the simple fact of the matter is that politics — particularly in the U.S., but abroad as well — is dominated by sociopaths with megalomaniacal tendencies who are often attended to and served by sycophants with dependency issues.

The other 25-35 percent and I just wish they’d all leave us the hell alone.

(Cross-Posted at LRCBlog.)

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Audio: The Laissez-Faire Books panel at FreedomFest

Anti-Statism
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This summer I had the honor of speaking on the Laissez-Faire Books panel at FreedomFest, the annual libertarian mega-event put on by Mark Skousen in Las Vegas. Now the audio of the panel — the theme of which was “Live Better, Live Liberty: The Quest to Get Government Out of Our Lives” — is online:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk2Zk3zCpE8

The lineup for the panel includes:

  • Robert Murphy, speaking on alternative educational institutions
  • Wendy McElroy, speaking about her new book, The Art of Being Free
  • Jeffrey Tucker, on “defying the plan through your own digital civilization”
  • Jacob Huebert, on private forms of security and dispute-management,
  • Stefan Molyneux, on “redefining communities of peace and learning,” and
  • Douglas French, as emcee

If you only have time for part of this two-hour event, then at least be sure to listen to Jeffrey Tucker’s talk. I have already heard from people who have said they found this presentation life-changing, and I understand why. Tucker talks about how we can defeat the state by creating better products through the market, rather than by just following the old think-tank model. He’s putting these ideas to work through LFB, but, as he explains, there is so much more to be done by people who aren’t just selling books or ideas.

The other talks were very well-received, too. First, Robert Murphy talks about one of my favorite topics, the importance of education in the advancement of liberty.

Next, Wendy McElroy offers a taste of her latest book, The Art of Being Free, which is available in paperback and as a free e-book for members of the Laissez-Faire Club. (The talk is great, but you may just want to skip directly to the book and start reading, since that’s what you’ll end up doing anyway.)

For my part, I talk about ways that the market already provides security and dispute-resolution through products such as credit cards, smartphones, and Yelp. When people think about how the market would provide these goods in the absence of government, they tend to look back to ancient examples (e.g. Iceland, Ireland) or speculate about insurance companies funding police and armies — but perhaps the most relevant examples already exist today, right in front of our faces (or in our wallets).

Finally, the inimitable Stefan Molyneux offers his usual clarity and enthusiasm in arguing that we must make the moral case for liberty. I don’t agree with his suggestion that we must only make moral arguments — I think consequentialist arguments may often be a good place to start, as I argue in my foreword to LFB’s new edition of Gary Chartier’s Conscience of an Anarchist. Still, Molyneux is compelling and enjoyable, and if you like his approach, there is of course much more at his site, Freedomain Radio, and in his books, two of which are also available from LFB.

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The Indignity of Airport Security: Will It Ever End?

Anti-Statism, Business, Nanny Statism, Totalitarianism
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As I sat on one of those metal benches, retying my shoes after enduring yet another near-cavity search courtesy the TSA, something both rather obvious and rather sad dawned on me. It is, in fact, the answer to the question that heads this post, and that answer, by the way, is “No.” As a matter of fact, “Hell no.” As I sat there, I contemplated how much more intrusive the searches could get before the public rose up and said, “Enough!” Simultaneously, a conversation I had enjoyed with a fellow traveler as we stood in a very long line at the Monroe County (Rochester) International Airport rolled around in my head.

She had quipped, as we inched closer to our turn in the scanner, “I’m just glad that we haven’t had a bra bomber yet.” We laughed, but it was more out of pain than humor. She and I both knew that we were experiencing a real-life reenactment of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and that things would get worse–likely a lot worse–before they got better. (And that’s making the very large assumption, an assumption I might characterize as a pipe dream, that things will ever get better.)

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