Liberal-tarianism

(((originally posted at http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&frien... . another attempt of mine to convince liberal friends to vote for RP)))

Many, perhaps even most, people are driven to do good. Whether this urge is designed or instilled in us by a conscious Creator-God or the product of empathy brought on by the science of limbic resonance and mirror-neurons, it is a very real one. Those of us who feel that urge keenly find ourselves wanting to help our fellow creatures and our society, often at personal cost to ourselves. We want to end violence and war, to promote freedom, to preserve our environs, and to assist those in need of help.

This drive to do good naturally informs our political life--we vote for those politicians and laws we think best serve that drive. We subscribe to the methodology we think best supports it. We do the best we can with the information we have at hand, speaking with friends and family, and from the mass-media. We want to end war, so we vote for the candidate who talks about peace. We want to end violence, so we approve of gun control. We want to help the poor, so we support welfare and government assistance. We want to keep the ecosphere sustainable, so we ask the government to enforce environmental regulation.

The drive makes many of us "Liberals". It makes us vote for Democrats, or Greens. We believe we have found the people, parties, and policies which do the most good, and we entrench ourselves in our allegiance to, and identification with, those things. And we stop asking ourselves fundamental questions about the basic issues that concern us. Upon further examination, however, we may find that our pet positions are not always the most effective.

WAR. To grossly paraphrase Sun Tzu and Joseph Goebbels, wars begin with lies. The US deliberately sent a passenger liner into German waters to create an excuse to enter WW1. Hitler set fire to the Reichstag to start his wars. FDR provoked Japan, using financial pressure, into attacking Pearl Harbor. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was an out-and-out lie. 9-11 had nothing to do with Iraq. Given the historical record, the chances of a politician telling the truth when he tells you that America needs to go overseas to defend itself are infinitessimally small. If we truly condemn war, we as citizens must never allow ourselves to "go" to war. We should take our cue from the Swiss, never keeping or moving our forces abroad... but armed to the teeth if anyone steps across our border with malicious intent.

GUNS. Most of us want to end gun-related violence in the civilian world, but not all of us are aware that the relationship between gun ownership and gun violence is a bell-curve. When gun ownership is close to zero (as in early gun-controlled Australia, which is now deteriorating), gun-crime is low. When gun ownership is very high (Switzerland, parts of Canada), gun-crime is low (or zero, in the case of Kennesaw, GA-US, which requires all households own guns). It is in the middle of the gun-ownership curve where gun-violence is high. So we either want everyone to have guns... or no one. Given that gun-control is a prerequisite for totalitarian control and mass arrests (i.e. Stalin, Hitler, etc.), and that high gun ownership is a deterrent to war (the primary reason Japan did not invade California after Pearl Harbor), high gun ownership is preferable for a free and peaceful society. The compassionate liberal should continue to care for other people and push for a more harmonious society... and consider the purchase of a handgun.

COMMERCE. If commercial re-regulation and a true free market were in the interest of our most monolithic and greedy corporations, Ron Paul would be the most visible candidate in the mass media, and the Libertarian Party would be the most powerful and well-funded political force in America. The fact that neither is true points to a hidden truth of the business world: a free market is the last thing that our modern-day robber-barons want. They profit greatly from government action that stifles their competition in the name of consumer protection and provides corporate welfare in the name of protecting American jobs (which then go offshore anyway). They profit from the conception that government involvement aids the American consumer. Among many examples: the American healthcare industry, which was quite operational before Congress created the HMO system and its (literally) lethal bureaucracy. Now, its rampant government-created dysfunctionality serves as the justification for increased government involvement.

MONEY. Prior to the Congressional grant of the Federal Reserve monopoly in 1913, there was no personal income tax. There was no inflation. The Great Depression would not have been possible without the federally-granted monopoly on money. If the United States were to return to a value-backed money system, it would be possible to obliterate the budget deficit without cutting spending or raising taxes -- or to stop collecting the personal income tax altogether. It is this act of corporate-driven government intervention in the money supply which is destroying the American middle class through taxes and inflation.

SOCIAL PROGRAMS. As individuals of conscience, we "Liberals" feel that the more fortunate among us are responsible for helping the less fortunate. One argument against asking the government to do this for us has to do with the delivery mechanism for goods and services. The great economist Ludwig von Mises demonstrated with great eloquence that central-government distribution of goods to the population is inherently unworkable. China proved this by killing tens of millions of its own citizens through starvation in Mao Tze-Tung's centrally-planned Communist nightmare. The Soviet Union proved this by collapsing on itself. In the US, FEMA has proven it by failing to provide any real assistance to the victims of Hurricane Katrina despite no lack of funds. A second argument against asking the government to handle our charity for us has to do with the freedom to choose where our money goes. The modren Bush Republican doesn't want his paycheck to finance welfare or arts programs. I don't want a cent of my tax dollar to go to faith-based initiatives or Israeli armaments. If we cut the function of the government to its bare minimum, the Bush-Republican will have more money to give to religious education and foreign political causes. I will have more money to give to local charities--which will be all the more effective when divorced from the distant and inefficient workings of government. We can both win.

EARTH. The entrance of Libertarian thinking into the realm of environmental issues is relatively new, but provides great hope for those of us who concern ourselves with the state of the ecosphere. Privatization saved the elephant population of Zimbabwe when the government was powerless to enforce laws against poaching. Large parcels of South American wildlands are untouchable to pollution by commerce and industry--bought up and then left alone by ecologically-minded American millionaires. Through the wider application of Libertarian legal thought, citizens could directly sue polluters for negative impact to the enviroment... for the full cost of repair. On the other hand, the state-managed natural resources of the Soviet Union are all but gutted. These are thoughts which certainly bear serious consideration.

I believe that a deeper analysis of the issues that concern modern "Liberals" will bear out conclusions about solutions which contrast significantly with the proposed solutions by the mainstream "Liberal" establishment. These mainstream approaches to societal problems, it seems, very often contribute to the perpetuation of these problems in themselves. These approaches rely on the concentration of power in government, whether it be the power to wage war, bear arms, assist the needy, or control commerce. They ignore history's continual lesson that the concentration of power nearly always leads to crippling faults in the system, and to great abuse. The few who benefit from this concentration of power wish to see it continue, and thus perpetuate the lie that granting government more power to run our lives will help us in the long run. I have come to believe in recent times that the goals of the "Classical Liberal" or "Libertarian" are essentially the same as those of the modren "Liberal"... with the difference that the Libertarian has more thoroughly assessed social strategies in the context of economics and history, and thus arrived at superior methods for pursuing these same goals.