The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune: Among all of our other newly born "rights," what happened to our right to life that implies a right to voluntary death?
read more | digg story
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
Patrick J. Buchanan: Another Neocon in Political Office
Buchanan, a name I use to fear but am now beginning to like.
Pat Buchanan is able to thicken the division line between conservatives and neocons (like Randy Scheunemann).
read more | digg story
Pat Buchanan is able to thicken the division line between conservatives and neocons (like Randy Scheunemann).
read more | digg story
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Why (do) we hate us(?)
In response to the author, Dick Meyer, of Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium:
The root cause of mass discontentment in modern society is the Centralization (or de-localization) of political power. As the Federal Government grows, the political leverage of the individual decreases. This is obvious proportionally (individual:state vs. individual:nation). The individual has less political power in a larger population. The ideal, then, is complete localization (however impossible this may be).
As Aristotle recognized in the fourth century BC, Athens was too large to be a socially stable polis.
The root cause of mass discontentment in modern society is the Centralization (or de-localization) of political power. As the Federal Government grows, the political leverage of the individual decreases. This is obvious proportionally (individual:state vs. individual:nation). The individual has less political power in a larger population. The ideal, then, is complete localization (however impossible this may be).
As Aristotle recognized in the fourth century BC, Athens was too large to be a socially stable polis.
What is Property?
Property is simply a socially-assured directive that designates the ownership of something by an individual (i.e. a contract or patent).
For example, nothing physical happens to a car when you stop calling it yours, and I start calling it mine; only on the social level does the ownership of the car change from you to me.
For example, nothing physical happens to a car when you stop calling it yours, and I start calling it mine; only on the social level does the ownership of the car change from you to me.
Reason Magazine on Bob Barr's Historic Nomination
With Bob Barr's nomination, the Libertarian Party is threatening to achieve historical relevance. A third party president would further threaten the Republican-Democrat duopoly on government and would render the duopoly's barriers to entry nigh useless.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Mark Twain Speaks for the Future
Mark Twain on Imperialism:
I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific ...Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? ... I said to myself, Here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American Constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves. But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.
— Mark Twain, New York Herald [1900]
I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific ...Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? ... I said to myself, Here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American Constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves. But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.
— Mark Twain, New York Herald [1900]
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Sheldon Richman: Condemn All Governments
Just to make it clear, civilized people should condemn all governments involved in the Georgia-Russia-South Ossetia conflict, and that includes the U.S. government. Innocent people have been victimized by barbarism on all sides. Without these governments, the people themselves are likely to work things out peacefully to mutual advantage. The state apparatus permits decision-makers to socialize the costs of violence through taxation and conscription. So we get more of it.
~
War in Georgia Shows U.S. Foreign Policy Is a Bust
by Sheldon Richman, August 15, 2006
The tragic events in the nation of Georgia show that U.S. foreign policy is a bust. In particular, NATO must go. This may seem counterintuitive, but this relic of the Cold War has nothing to contribute to peace. On the contrary, it is a destabilizing tool of America’s provocative imperial foreign policy.
Let us stipulate that the Russian government would undoubtedly be interested in having Georgia in its camp even if NATO did not exist. The Russian elite has always seen itself destined for a major role in world events, and that dream of course included a large sphere of influence where friendly regimes saw things the Russian way.
Nevertheless, NATO — and the U.S. empire for which it stands — is a major aggravating factor in the tensions between Russia and its neighbors. Not long after the Soviet Union imploded and the Cold War ended, the U.S. foreign-policy elite began talking about expanding NATO to include former Soviet Satellites and republics. Considering that NATO was ostensibly created to counter the Soviet Union in Europe, how could expanding the organization up to the Russian border not be provocative? What was the point, except to show the Russians who’s boss?
Georgia has been angling for membership in NATO for years. President Mikheil Saakashvili’s Russian policy was nothing short of a pro-American in-your-face policy strategy. The Bush administration encouraged it by training and equipping the Georgian military. All of this stirred Russian suspicions about U.S. objectives in its “backyard.” In return, Georgia sent troops to assist in America’s misguided mission in Iraq.
The U.S. policy toward Georgia is part of a pattern that, naturally, is justified in the name of the “war on terror” and the spreading of democracy, although some of the Central Asia republics have odious authoritarian governments. But the Russians, hearing talk of anti-missile systems in the new NATO countries, don’t see the strategy as benign. They see encirclement. Who can blame them?
The immediate cause of the recent clash was Georgia’s violent move to put down separatist activity in South Ossetia, one of two break-away areas with sympathies toward Russia. Russia undoubtedly has helped advance secessionist sentiments there and in Abkhazia. Its brutal bombing inside Georgia is to be condemned, but that does not mean that Saakashvili’s government is blameless.
Did the Georgian president get a green light from the Bush administration? We may never know. But the question is not essential. What we do know is that U.S. policy created a moral-hazard problem. In other words, the Bush administration’s words and deeds almost certainly emboldened the Georgian government with respect to South Ossetia and Russia, encouraging it to take measures it probably would not have taken otherwise.
As we saw, it was a major miscalculation. Saakashvili may have been counting on U.S. support, but what could he possibly have hoped for? The U.S. military, spread thin already in Iraq and Afghanistan, has no forces to spare. But even if that were not the case, did Saakashvili really think the United States and Europe would go to war against Russia? Memories of the bloody 20th century are too fresh in Europe to make that a realistic expectation. It is one thing to invade and occupy Iraq, quite another to take on Russia. It was out of the question.
The Bush administration, then, made implicit — and perhaps explicit — guarantees to the Georgian government it was in no position to back up. Thus the American imperium is revealed as a costly, provocative, but in essential ways impotent force in the world. For this the taxpayers are coughing up hundreds of billion dollars a year. And people are dying.
The message of Georgia is clear. We need a top-to-bottom rethinking of American foreign policy. The American people’s interest lies in peace and free trade. Let others work out their own problems. Most of all, let’s keep the U.S. government from making the world’s problems worse than they already are.
(Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine. Visit his blog “Free Association” at www.sheldonrichman.com.)
~
War in Georgia Shows U.S. Foreign Policy Is a Bust
by Sheldon Richman, August 15, 2006
The tragic events in the nation of Georgia show that U.S. foreign policy is a bust. In particular, NATO must go. This may seem counterintuitive, but this relic of the Cold War has nothing to contribute to peace. On the contrary, it is a destabilizing tool of America’s provocative imperial foreign policy.
Let us stipulate that the Russian government would undoubtedly be interested in having Georgia in its camp even if NATO did not exist. The Russian elite has always seen itself destined for a major role in world events, and that dream of course included a large sphere of influence where friendly regimes saw things the Russian way.
Nevertheless, NATO — and the U.S. empire for which it stands — is a major aggravating factor in the tensions between Russia and its neighbors. Not long after the Soviet Union imploded and the Cold War ended, the U.S. foreign-policy elite began talking about expanding NATO to include former Soviet Satellites and republics. Considering that NATO was ostensibly created to counter the Soviet Union in Europe, how could expanding the organization up to the Russian border not be provocative? What was the point, except to show the Russians who’s boss?
Georgia has been angling for membership in NATO for years. President Mikheil Saakashvili’s Russian policy was nothing short of a pro-American in-your-face policy strategy. The Bush administration encouraged it by training and equipping the Georgian military. All of this stirred Russian suspicions about U.S. objectives in its “backyard.” In return, Georgia sent troops to assist in America’s misguided mission in Iraq.
The U.S. policy toward Georgia is part of a pattern that, naturally, is justified in the name of the “war on terror” and the spreading of democracy, although some of the Central Asia republics have odious authoritarian governments. But the Russians, hearing talk of anti-missile systems in the new NATO countries, don’t see the strategy as benign. They see encirclement. Who can blame them?
The immediate cause of the recent clash was Georgia’s violent move to put down separatist activity in South Ossetia, one of two break-away areas with sympathies toward Russia. Russia undoubtedly has helped advance secessionist sentiments there and in Abkhazia. Its brutal bombing inside Georgia is to be condemned, but that does not mean that Saakashvili’s government is blameless.
Did the Georgian president get a green light from the Bush administration? We may never know. But the question is not essential. What we do know is that U.S. policy created a moral-hazard problem. In other words, the Bush administration’s words and deeds almost certainly emboldened the Georgian government with respect to South Ossetia and Russia, encouraging it to take measures it probably would not have taken otherwise.
As we saw, it was a major miscalculation. Saakashvili may have been counting on U.S. support, but what could he possibly have hoped for? The U.S. military, spread thin already in Iraq and Afghanistan, has no forces to spare. But even if that were not the case, did Saakashvili really think the United States and Europe would go to war against Russia? Memories of the bloody 20th century are too fresh in Europe to make that a realistic expectation. It is one thing to invade and occupy Iraq, quite another to take on Russia. It was out of the question.
The Bush administration, then, made implicit — and perhaps explicit — guarantees to the Georgian government it was in no position to back up. Thus the American imperium is revealed as a costly, provocative, but in essential ways impotent force in the world. For this the taxpayers are coughing up hundreds of billion dollars a year. And people are dying.
The message of Georgia is clear. We need a top-to-bottom rethinking of American foreign policy. The American people’s interest lies in peace and free trade. Let others work out their own problems. Most of all, let’s keep the U.S. government from making the world’s problems worse than they already are.
(Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine. Visit his blog “Free Association” at www.sheldonrichman.com.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)