RedStateEclectic

Ron Paul on CSPAN

Speaking to the American Conservative Defense Alliance (part of the speech):

 

More Voices from the 19th Century

My electronic diary reminds me: in an on-line discussion about "the birth of capitalism", quite some time ago, I had these ideas to offer. As for voices from the 19th century, go to the bottom of the post.

There has never been anything like a big bang creating capitalism. Capitalist structures have been around for thousands of years and proved resilient enough to survive even in severely anti-capitalist environments - such as the Soviet Union (SU), whose survival critically hinged on the disproportionate contributions made by "capitalists" - consider the private provision of food in the SU, for instance [Which makes it hard for a contemporary of any given time to understand just how much wealth he is forced to forego in the absence of freedom.]

On the level of society, taxis [an order intended and brought about by man] is always embedded in cosmos [a self-generating order, partly influenced by human action but not the result of human design] - and the question is: how do we make sure that taxis is not a destructive influence on cosmos - as when, for example, a central plan stifles spontaneous forces, creating unintended consequences (by definition on the level of cosmos) of the most detrimental kind (SU = Burkina Faso + atom bomb). How the prevalent political system in the West causes incongruence between taxis and cosmos, I shall explain in another entry.

The circumstances which led to capitalism's historical break-through, in the sense that thanks to larger markets and a more comprehensive adoption of practices and institutions favourable to it (see North/Thomas "The Rise of the West") men were able - for the first time in history - to achieve sustainable growth (population growth + productivity growth = rising welfare for all) are too many faceted to be dealt with here - but they certainly represent a complicated and protracted evolutionary pattern (an intricate process of trial and error, in which those prevailed that followed superior practices, without necessarily understanding that these should turn out superior), rather than a single ignition event, let alone a premeditated conspiracy of capitalists (the latter notion being another example of primitive anthropomorphic thinking). Yes, capitalism created the proletariat - for without capitalism these workers would not have been able to survive or be born, in the first place.

As for the atrocious conditions supposedly brought about by capitalism, let me quote from a letter written about 1843 by a London lady, who refers to a man, who refused to visit Lancashire because: "...it was a horrid place - factories all over. [The man claiming] that the people, from starvation, oppression, and over-work, had almost lost the form of humanity...[On asking him in what part he had seen such misery:] He replied, that "he had never seen it, but had been told that it existed...This gentlemen was one of the very numerous body of people who spread reports without ever taking the trouble of inquiring if they be true or false. [The lady reports from her visit to the "atrocious"place]: "Now that I have seen the factory people at their work, in their cottages and in their schools, I am totally at a loss to account for the outcry that has been made against them. They are better clothed, better fed, and better conducted than many other classes of working people." (Capitalism and the Historians, Chicago 1963, p. 20 f)

Sensationalist propaganda lies from the 19th century (easier to grasp than the roundabout process of wealth-creation) continue to befuddle people today, who think their kind disposition and powerful minds can understand and direct adequately the station in society of hundreds of millions.

       

Saddened by Fairness

It is saddening that in order to exercise fairness, one must - and has nothing better to offer than to - defend John McCain by insisting that his competitors, Clinton and Obama, are at least as contemptible, and that the enormous popularity of the latter is solely due to the public not having caught up with the newcomer's "shortcomings".

A Voice from the 19th Century

The sad truth is that our present political convictions are entirely based on the perpetuation of socialist lies made popular in the 19th century. And here you have the essence of that monstrous misconception:

Yet while elevation, mental and physical, of the masses is going on far more rapidly than ever before—while the lowering of the death-rate proves that the average life is less trying, there swells louder and louder the cry that the evils are so great that nothing short of a social revolution can cure them. In presence of obvious improvements, joined with that increase of longevity which even alone yields conclusive proof of general amelioration, it is proclaimed, with increasing vehemence, that things are so bad that society must be pulled to pieces and re-organised on another plan. In this case, then, as in the previous cases instanced, in proportion as the evil decreases the denunciation of it increases; and as fast as natural causes are shown to be powerful there grows up the belief that they are powerless.

The source.

Is This Even a Little Funny?

John McCain on Saturday Night Live last night.

Wild Pigs: A Parable

A friend forwarded this e-mail--I thought it worth passing on to you:

Subject: The parable of how to catch wild pigs----An important lesson for us all 

There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab, the prof noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist regime.

In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked: 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line.

The young man said that it was no joke. 'You catch wild pig by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence they get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their fate: Captivity.'

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in America . The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time.

One should always remember two truths: There is no such thing as a free lunch and you can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.  If you see that all of this wonderful government 'help' is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America , you might want to send this on to your friends.  If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life, then you will probably delete this email. But God help you when the gate slams shut!

Don't be a pig!

LLE

Whose Promises Are These?

“To defeat al Qaeda, I will build a twenty-first-century military and twenty-first-century partnerships as strong as the anticommunist alliance that won the Cold War to stay on the offense everywhere from Djibouti to Kandahar.”

“This century’s threats are at least as dangerous as and in some ways more complex than those we have confronted in the past. They come from weapons that can kill on a mass scale and from global terrorists who respond to alienation or perceived injustice with murderous nihilism. They come from rogue states allied to terrorists and from rising powers that could challenge both America and the international foundation of liberal democracy. They come from weak states that cannot control their territory or provide for their people. And they come from a warming planet that will spur new diseases, spawn more devastating natural disasters, and catalyze deadly conflicts.”

“We should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines.” He/she restates the doctrine of using the military for nation-building: “We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability -- to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities.” And he/she restates Bush’s doctrine of pre-emption, as in the case of Iran if it becomes necessary because “It is far too dangerous to have nuclear weapons in the hands of a radical theocracy” [...]

“[W]e must also become better prepared to put boots on the ground in order to take on foes that fight asymmetrical and highly adaptive campaigns on a global scale.”

The above statements are from July/August 2007.

I shall reveal the source, once you have done some pensive guessing.

They Just Don't Get It

My on-line pal, PTG over at the Plains Feeder suggest that we all let the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee know what we think about the future of the Republican Party.  There are some very interesting comments over there.  Be sure to take a look at the photo on PTG's site, as well.  The NRCCC doesn't seem to understand that we're not very happy out here.

LLE

Goldwater, Reagan and Paul: Traditional Conservatives

The black and white clips of Reagan in the bottom left, in the first half or so, come from "the speech" that Reagan wrote and gave on Barry Goldwater's behalf in 1964--the speech which launched his political career.

Ted Kennedy Rushed to Hospital

CNN and MSNBC are both reporting (as a banner, developing story), that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) has been rushed (one report says airlifted) to a hospital.  The Page says that he was showing symptoms of a stroke.

One Day, We Will Be Ready

I'm not a great appreciator of poetry, but I was taken by this one, written by J.L. Bryan over at Lew Rockwell, and dedicated to "Dr. Ron Paul and R3volutionaries Everywhere."  Here's a piece:

 

The heart knows the truth,
Though it roils the mind.
Now that we have heard, how could we forget?
How could we accept the old familiar lies?

He awoke a hunger
No illusion can quench.
He did not need us,
But we needed him.

Be sure to go read the whole thing.

LLE

Reagan=Obama=Chamberlain: Appeasers All?

I don't agree with Barack Obama on many things, although I do think that his views on talking to the Iranians (and others) makes some sense.  He has been called by several, of late, an appeaser in the mode of Neville Chamberlain in the late 30s.  Glenn Greenwald's column today makes an interesting point:

One of the most significant political developments over the last decade or so is that the defining views of what was once the extremist right-wing fringe have become mainstream. Few things illustrate that development more than this week's branding by George Bush, John McCain and Bill Kristol of Barack Obama (and anyone who prefers negotiations to knee-jerk wars with Israel's enemies as the optimal method for conflict resolution) as a Neville Chamberlain-like "appeaser."

This is the same exact insult, grounded in the same war-cheerleading mentality, that was hurled by the extreme Far Right at Ronald Reagan in the 1980s because he sought to negotiate with that decade's Evil Empire. Conservative Caucus Chair Howard Phillips, for instance, "scorned President Reagan as 'a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda,'" and published ads which, according to a January 20, 1988 UPI article (via LEXIS):

likens Reagan's signing of the INF Treaty to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's signing of an accord with Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler in 1938. The ad, with the headline, "Appeasement Is As Unwise In 1988 As In 1938," shows pictures of Chamberlain, Hitler, Reagan and Gorbachev overhung by an umbrella. Chamberlain carried an umbrella and it became a World War II symbol for appeasement.

According to the January 19, 1988 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, when Pat Robertson was campaigning for President in Missouri in 1988, he "suggested that President Ronald Reagan could be compared to Neville Chamberlain . . . by agreeing to a medium-range nuclear arms agreement with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev." The Orange Country Register editorialized in September, 1988 that "Ronald Reagan has become the Neville Chamberlain of the 1980s. The apparent peace of 1988 may be followed by the new wars of 1989 or 1990."

If you listened to Ron Paul NPR interview I linked to here, you heard him say that on matters of foreign policy, he kind of liked Barack Obama (or at least was closer to liking him than McCain, I guess). 

Greenwald's point--that the views of the extreme right of the 80s have become mainstream--is one worth considering.  Certainly it appears that the views of many of the opinion makers or leaders have become much more in tune with what we would have considered "fringe right" back in the early 80s.  Whether that carries over into the greater public (especially, I guess, the Republican Party), is the question.  I suspect that it has some--at least among the less sophisticated public, who look to those opinion leaders for clues to what they should believe.  My hope, though, is that there is an untold "silent majority" of Republicans out there--ready to move toward a more principled and rationale view of life--just waiting for someone to lead them out of the wilderness. 

LLE

GOPocalypse Now?

Daniel Larison at Eunomia adds to the discussion that some of us have been having the last few days (see Georg's recent post here, along with the links contained within it).  Larison quotes from some great sources and has some nice commentary of his own. One comment that I found to the post, though, I thought was particularly telling (and largely representative of my own views):

John, on May 16th, 2008 at 11:47 am Said:

It might just be that old habits die hard, but I continue to put more faith in the possibility of a reformed GOP than the rise of the conservative Democrats. (There’s got to be a reason why Ron Paul hasn’t just jumped ship!) I do think, though, that Republicans will always govern - or rather, keep Democrats from governing - most effectively when they’re in the position of the embattled and embittered minority; in other circumstances, the allure of power just becomes too great to stand.

The greatest problem with all of this, of course, is that the militarism - which is the greatest threat of all to limited and decentralized government - seems unlikely to go away any time soon. Unpopular as the current misadventure may be among the nation as a whole, the GOP knows that they can still whip a sizable portion of the country into a veritable frenzy by bashing our “enemies” and pledging to flex their muscles - and if that’s the coalition that’s going to keep them present on the national scene, then so be it. It’s hard to imagine the party leadership telling the Lovers of Foreign Wars to shove off, though I suspect that if they did, then a good number of those people would change their tune and fall back into line pretty quickly.

Sigh. Ultimately, as you’ve said many times over, conservatives need to be focusing their attention on empowering and revitalizing local governments and institutions, rather than reforming the national ones - a thousand points of light, and all that. Washington be damned, I’m going in for urban gardening.

I've talked to a couple of people lately on this whole matter of being an "embattled and embittered minority."  In many ways, the best days of the Republican Party have been when there have been strong, reasonably principled presidents (I'm thinking Reagan, specifically, in the last 40 years), and a minority strong enough to be have some hope of building a coalitional majority on certain issues, as with the "Southern Democrats."  Since 1994, and especially in the Republican majority days of the Bush Administration, Republicans have shown themselves to  be utterly without principle as a party.  Relegation to a significant minority may reawaken the need for principle--hopefully it's not too late.

Be sure to take a look at that commenter's blog, by the way--Upturned Earth.  It loks to be even more eclectic than we are!

LLE

Leader of the Free World

There's a nice interview on NPR today (get there from here) with Dr. Paul.  I was also reading the story that went with it, and clicked over on some of the comments.  I was struck by this comment:

why is it that libertarians and thier ilk plan for the us to stop being the leader of the free world? I think That our way of life is worth defending and helping those that look to us as a goal for for thier country. if we dont lead then what is the alternative for the world?

I wonder what this commenter is thinking?  Leadership, I believe, is different than force.  I'm not sure that I agree with the notion that libertarians want us to stop being the "leader of the free world."  The question is, "are we the leader of the free world?" 

I grew up believing in leadership by example and inspiration.  I watched parents and grandparents who were leaders in their community--not because they were wealthy, and not because they were convinced that they were better than everyone else, but because they simply did the work.  They were good people, committed to teaching and working with the generations behind them.  They were willing to get outside of their comfort zone, and try something different.  They were willing to get their hands dirty.

My grandmothers were leaders of their family, and at different times, leaders of womens' community organizations (they were of the "Greatest Generation" of women, who sacrificed during WWII, and then primarily returned to raising families and providing support for husbands' careers afterwards).  Both of my grandfathers were church leaders, as well as community leaders.  My maternal grandfather was a small businessman who grew a business from a small grocery family run grocery store into a significant meat processing business in our community.  He served for a while on our City Council.

My paternal grandfather, in addition to church service, was, over the course of 40 or 50 years, a member of the local school board, a member of the City Council, Mayor of our town--as well as serving as County Republican Party Chair and--perhaps most significantly--as the Scoutmaster for a troop of Boy Scouts for around 20 years (keeping in mind that my father, his only son, would have only been in that troop for only 8 or 9 of those years at the most).  When he died last year, grown men--men in their 50s and 60s--returned for his funeral--many of them shedding tears, and many of them signed themselves in with their name, and "Eagle Scout" or "Troop 302", because of the impact that he had on their lives.  And for those who stayed in our hometown, after they grew up, he remained something of a father figure to them--someone they'd stop by his veterinary office to see from time to time--and some of those men carried him to his final resting place.

That's kind of a circuitous way of saying, I guess, that I think maybe real leadership--whether in our individual lives or in our national life--is more about what we do, than what we say; it's more about leading by example--about being a good person, about not merely talking about the importance of things like civic involvement or promoting liberty, but about really being involved.

The problem is that when you have a view of leadership that requires your good example, not everyone follows it.  My grandfather would have been able to tell you about the Scouts who didn't turn out so well, too.  But he never would have forced anyone to follow his way, because that would have been an exercise in futility.  If you can't inspire people to follow your example--your leadership--and the only way that you can get them to follow you is by force, then you're not leading, you're demanding.  And those demands are only fulfilled as long as you are willing to continue to exercise force.

Get someone to follow your example--someone who is inspired by you, though--and you've truly led.  And those will be the friends you can count on for life.

America isn't really leading the free world.  The effective end of a bi-polar world with the fall of the Soviet Union has resulted in the U.S., for all practical purposes, taking on the arrogant attitude that everyone must follow us--and if they don't we'll make them. 

The United States--in some ways--is no longer the "shining city on a hill" that Ronald Reagan spoke of.  While we were heavily extended overseas during the Cold War, and while there were military interventions that were probably not necessary, we might at least argue that those were different times, and the nature of "the enemy" was far different than it is today. 

It's time to be real leaders again.  It's time to show the world what liberty is about.  It's time to resist the temptations of empire, and be friends to all, and to follow the rule of law (our Constitution).  If we did that, I suspect that we'd have far more countries following us, rather than trying to get away, and we could once again honestly claim the mantel of "leader of the free world."

LLE

Jackie and Dunlap on CNN!

Heh!

If You've Never Failed....

Saw this at The Daily Dish--struck me as something to keep in mind:

 

Ron Paul in Christian Science Monitor

What's next for the Ron Paul revolution?  That's the question posed in a nice article in the Christian Science Monitor today.  A lot of good stuff, this caught my eye, especially:

David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, says of Paul: "I was very distressed, frankly, with the way he [Paul] was sort of dismissed [by other GOP candidates]…. He was speaking to values that they should respect." He says: "Ron Paul is talking to people who are thirsting for the real thing. And he's hitting the same chords that Goldwater hit and that Reagan hit in the early days…. He's a very healthy phenomenon."

So far, Paul has about 42 delegates. There is hope that with enough delegates, he will win the right to address the convention.

Big media still ignores him. But his followers are determined to push the government closer to the Founding Fathers' vision.

It's a long shot. But so was the American Revolution.

Unfortunately, the beltway conservatives--for the most part--failed to express their "distress" about the way Paul was treated until it was a little too late for the campaign.  But the Revolution lives!

LLE

...This Soldier Will Not Be Deploying to Iraq

Twenty-four-year-old Afghanistan war vet Matthis Chiroux bravely refuses to deploy to Iraq.

"I stand before you today with the strength and clarity and resolve to declare to the military, my government and the world that this soldier will not be deploying to Iraq," Chiroux said in the sun-filled rotunda of a congressional building in Washington.

"My decision is based on my desire to no longer continue violating my core values to support an illegal and unconstitutional occupation... I refuse to participate in the Iraq occupation," he said, as a dozen veterans of the five-year-old Iraq war looked on.

The source.

See also my posts: I Will Support and Defend the Constitution of the United States, and (the links contained in) A Distaste for the Constitution.

Inflation - Core or Headline

"The U.S. Federal Reserve is wrong to focus on core measures of inflation that exclude energy prices, Charles Bean, chief economist at the Bank of England, has suggested.

It should focus instead on headline inflation, which is much higher, he argued. Including energy and food costs, U.S. consumer price inflation is running at an annual rate of 4.1 per cent, against 2.7 for core inflation."

Financial Times of London, 8/28/06, pg. 4

The real U.S. Economy, which is the Economy adjusted for all the inflation in prices produced by the vast tidal wave of paper dollars printed by the Fed over the past six years and more, has been declining for a great many months now. The Fed and other government agencies lie about this by not counting the explosion in house prices, education costs, retirement, health and medical care, insurance, energy, and food in their official measure of inflation. The Consumer Price Index does not include house prices at all and this has been the most soaring inflation in the U.S. for about five years now, though the price increases are now down to almost zero because the Housing Bubble is breaking. Education and retirement costs (including the vast abandonment of retirement money owed by Corps. and so on) are grossly undercounted. The same is true of medical and health costs and insurance, which cover fewer of the full services they used to cover. The CPI does include the soaring costs of energy and food, so the Fed and the Big Media have cut them out by referring to the "Core CPI Inflation," which is a totally ad hoc number they get by cutting out energy and food costs. But have you ever met an American, or any human being, who could live without food or energy? The Fed pretends it is cutting out the heart and core of inflation by cutting out food and energy because these are "variable." But, of course,   all prices are variable and this variability is the very reason one wants to keep measuring them: if they were not variable, it would be absurd to measure them more than one time.

The entire article.

Crackdown on Good Samaritans

MIAMI GARDENS, FL.--A man who said he thought he was just helping a woman in need is accused of running an illegal taxi service and Miami-Dade County's Consumer Services Department has slapped him with $2,000 worth of fines.

The 78-year-old said he was walking into a Winn-Dixie to get some groceries when he was approached by a woman who said she needed a ride. Rosco O'Neil told the woman if she was still there when he finished his shopping, he would give her a ride. She was, so he did. As it turned out, the woman was an undercover agent with the consumer services department targeting people providing illegal taxi services.

MP: Taxi Cartel membership has its privileges, doesn't it? See a related post here "Government Crackdown on Good Samaritans."

The source.

$4 a Gallon

From the Washington Post:

Like a lot of small-scale entrepreneurs, Cathy Osborne worries that she'll go out of business if fuel prices rise above $4 a gallon. Not because she won't be able to buy gas at that price, but because she won't be able to sell it.

The old mechanical gas pumps with scrolling dials at her country store in Fauquier County lack the gears to go beyond $3.99 a gallon...."I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't have $30,000 to invest in new pumps."

The Saintly and the Crook

"Ordinary Joe" can make a big difference. A lorry driver from the UK went to court to protect his child from being force-fed in school the patent lies of a man, who likes to introduce himself with the words: "I used to be the next President of the United States." As a result, “An Inconvenient Truth” can only be shown in English schools if it carries a warning label.

And here is the inconspicuous, little old lady, who last year was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, eventually won by Al Gore. 

In his Telegraph blog, Daniel Hannan reminds us:

I am ashamed to admit that I had never heard of Irena Sendler, whose obituary appeared in this morning’s paper. Hers is an awesomely humbling story, even by the standards of her heroic generation.

A Polish Catholic, she spirited some 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto, displaying casual and extraordinary courage. She kept a list of the children she had saved, hoping one day to reunite them with their parents – although, in the event, almost all lost their families in Treblinka. In 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo and tortured. Her legs and feet were broken, but she refused to give up her list. She was sentenced to death, but rescued, whereupon – almost unbelievably – she went back to work.

Here, though, is the sentence that leapt off the page at me: “Last year she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, eventually won by Al Gore.” Al Gore! I mean, nothing against the old lardbutt – it’s nice to see ex-politicians doing something they believe in rather than giving themselves over wholly to the getting of personal wealth – but making a film is not the same thing as donning a yellow star and smuggling babies past enemy soldiers.

Our generation, as Danny Kruger put it in the best tract of 2007, is moralistic rather than moral. We are better at holding opinions about what governments or multi-nationals should do than we are at doing the right thing by our neighbours. Having formed our opinions, we become self-righteous in a way that the Irena Sendlers of the world couldn’t understand.

“We who were rescuing children are not some kind of heroes”, she said towards the end of her life. “That term irritates me greatly. The opposite is true – I continue to have qualms of conscience that I did so little. I could have done more. This regret will follow me to my death.” There is a haunting sincerity to that statement. You can’t imagine Al Gore saying any such thing, can you?

       

Summer Vacation

Posting from my end may be a little hit and miss for the next few days.  Today is the first full day out of school for my kids, and we're all adjusting to the change in routine. I've also got a couple of other projects brewing which promise to keep me occupied a bit.  The next 3-4 weeks will be the worst, then we'll be able to settle in a bit more.  I won't be totally absent, but perhaps not quite so engaged on a regular basis.

LLE