“This is Senate
Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.
Earlier this week, President Obama
came to Capitol Hill to speak with
members of my party about his plan for
an economic recovery bill. The
President said that a stimulus package
is needed to revive the nation's
troubled economy, and to help the
millions of Americans who've been
affected by it. And
Republicans in Congress agree.” Ozarks
Virtual Town Hall - The Old Socialism
Begins Anew - January 24, 2009
The traditional "left"-"right" spectrum
of political analysis is utterly defective. At the far left is communism,
a form of totalitarian socialism. At the far right is fascism,
a form of totalitarian socialism. What is the "middle of
the road?" A form of the absence of all government?
No, it's usually implied that Keynesian socialism or Fabian
socialism is "middle of the road." But this is
exactly what our Founding Fathers broke away from now-socialist
Britain to avoid.
The partisan squabbles between "conservatives" and
"liberals," Republicrats and Demoblicans, is part of
what G. Edward Griffin has called
"The Quigley Formula," named after President
Clinton’s mentor when Clinton was a student at Georgetown
University. Griffin explains:
In his book, Tragedy and Hope,
Professor Quigley explained the value of allowing people to
believe that, by choosing between the Democrat and Republican
parties, they are determining their own political destiny. To
a collectivist like Quigley, this is a necessary illusion to
prevent voters from meddling into the important affairs of
state. If you have ever wondered why the two American parties
appear so different at election time but not so different
afterward, listen carefully to Quigley’s approving overview
of American politics:
The National parties and their presidential candidates, with
the Eastern Establishment assiduously fostering the process
behind the scenes, moved closer together and nearly met in
the center with almost identical candidates and platforms,
although the process was concealed as much as possible, by
the revival of obsolescent or meaningless war cries and
slogans (often going back to the Civil War). … The
argument that the two parties should represent opposed
ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the
other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the
doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties
should be almost identical, so that the American people can
“throw the rascals
out” at any election without leading to any
profound or extreme shifts in policy. … Either party in
office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and
vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every
four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be
none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately
the same basic policies. [Carroll Quigley, Tragedy
and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York:
Macmillan, 1966), pp. 1247-1248.]
No conservative should actively
vote for a Democrat. But many
conservatives fear that if they
vote for a true conservative
Libertarian, a Democrat might be
elected as a result.
This unintended result would in
fact be very, very good. This is
actually an important reason why
conservatives should vote for a
Libertarian.
If a
powerful Republican incumbent
were to lose his office because
conservatives voted for a
Libertarian, it would be
well-publicized that the
Libertarian caused the defeat of
the Republican, not that the
Democrat actually won popular
support. (Sure, the Democrats
would try their best to spin the
results, but the election results
math is inflexible.)
A Congressman is only elected for
a two-year term. Then he faces the
voters once again. Conservatives
need to think well beyond the next
two years. The defeat of a
powerful Republican sets in motion
political trends which will last
for more than two years.
If you and your neighbors vote for
a true conservative
Libertarian, the election of a
Democrat and the defeat of a
Republican who is not a true
conservative will be the most
important and promising political
event of this upcoming election.
If you continue to fall for the illusion that the "New
World Order" of the Republicans differs from the New
World Order of the Democrats, and that voting for one party or
the other will significantly change your life, then your
children will live in ignorance under the New World Order, a
very different world than America's Founding Fathers envisioned.
More and more Americans don't feel represented by either
major political party.
A Vote for Kevin Craig is a vote for another Congressman like
Ron Paul.
In his legislative fantasies, the amiable Texas congressman
would do away with the CIA and the Federal Reserve. He'd
reinstate the gold standard. He'd get rid of the Department of
Education and leave the business of schooling to local
governments, because he believes that's what the
Constitution intended. There have been periods in
history when the maverick congressman was not such a rare
breed, but this is not one of those periods. Democrats and
Republicans have been quite disciplined in recent years --
when party leaders say "jump," the savvy congressman
had better inquire how high. Libby Copeland,
"Congressman
Paul's Legislative Strategy? He'd Rather Say Not," Washington
Post, July 9, 2006; D01
Dr. Paul, however, insists on treating his oath to uphold
the Constitution as, well, a solemn promise before God to his
constituents. Which is why he is a living rebuke to the
hypocritical collectivists who infest the Republican Party,
and utterly mystifying to the retread socialists who publish
the Post. William Grigg, "The
Only Reason to Vote Republican," Pro
Libertate, October 15, 2006
Rioters are not "anarchists"; "anarchy"
is usually poly-archy, or multi-archy -- lots of wanna-be
archists imposing their desires by force or threats of violence.
If you want government
to intervene domestically, you're a
"liberal." If
you want government to intervene
overseas, you're a "conservative."
If you want government to intervene
everywhere, you're a "moderate."
If you don't want government to
intervene anywhere, you're an "extremist." ~
Joseph Sobran
What is wrong with Western civilization
is the accepted habit of judging
political parties merely by asking
whether they seem new and radical
enough, not by analyzing whether they
are wise or unwise, or whether they are
apt to achieve their aims. Not
everything that exists today is
reasonable; but this does not mean that
everything that does not exist is
sensible.
The usual terminology of political
language is stupid. What is 'left' and
what is 'right'? Why should Hitler be
'right' and Stalin, his temporary
friend, be 'left'? Who is 'reactionary'
and who is 'progressive'? Reaction
against an unwise policy is not to be
condemned. And progress towards chaos is
not to be commended. Nothing should find
acceptance just because it is new,
radical, and fashionable. 'Orthodoxy' is
not an evil if the doctrine on which the
'orthodox' stand is sound. Who is
anti-labor, those who want to lower
labor to the Russian level, or those who
want for labor the capitalistic standard
of the United States? Who is
'nationalist,' those who want to bring
their nation under the heel of the
Nazis, or those who want to preserve its
independence?
What would have happened to Western
civilization if its peoples had always
shown such liking for the
"new"? Suppose they had
welcomed as "the wave of the
future" Attila and his Huns, the
creed of Mohammed, or the Tartars? They,
too, were totalitarian and had military
successes to their credit which made the
weak hesitate and ready to capitulate.
What mankind needs today is liberation
from the rule of nonsensical slogans and
a return to sound reasoning. ~ Ludwig
von Mises, Interventionism,
An Economic Analysis, 1940
"Need"
now means wanting someone else's money.
"Greed" means
wanting to keep your own. "Compassion"
is when a politician arranges the
transfer. ~ Joseph Sobran
Conservative
politicians sometimes fight to keep
government from growing, but they never
fight to undo the growth caused by the
battles they lost in previous years. As
a result, government moves in only one
direction — to become bigger and
bigger and bigger. Libertarians will
fight to repeal laws, not just to
water down some of the new proposals for
new laws.
Conservative leaders
have been trying to pump some life back
into a conservative movement that has
failed to improve the lives of everyday
Americans in any tangible, substantial
way. But lacking a consistent,
straightforward philosophy that applies
in every case, conservative writers and
politicians have been searching for some
kind of noble mission to champion. They
have succeeded only in turning
conservatism — which once sought to
roll back the tyranny of the New Deal
— into an embarrassing imitation of
liberalism, professing to use the
tyranny of government for
"good" purposes instead of
"bad" ones.
The consistency of
libertarianism is one reason it's in the
ascendancy today, while conservatism is
going the way of liberalism. No matter
how conservative politicians say they
want to make the economy freer, and no
matter how liberal politicians say they
want to guarantee personal freedom,
whenever any of them pass a new law, it
is to make the government bigger.
The Democrats pretend
to be the party of those who want a free
lunch. The Republicans pretend to
represent taxpayers and others who work
for a living. But whichever party is in
power, government just gets bigger and
bigger, the politicians get more and
more powerful, and neither the free-lunchers
nor the taxpayers get what they wanted.
Do you think there's
an important difference between the two
old parties? Consider one example:
Clinton proposed to take a health-care
system made sick by 30 years of
government intervention and make it even
sicker with a massive makeover. The
Republicans fought it, defeated it,
gained control of Congress, and
proceeded to enact the Clinton health
plan piece by piece.
Norman
Thomas (1884-1968) was the
Socialist Party candidate for President
in 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, and
1948. Thomas said this in a 1944 speech:
"The American people will never
knowingly adopt socialism. But, under
the name of 'liberalism,' they will
adopt every fragment of the socialist
program, until one day America will be a
socialist nation, without knowing how it
happened." In 1962 he said,
"The difference between Democrats
and Republicans is: Democrats have
accepted some ideas of Socialism
cheerfully, while Republicans have
accepted them reluctantly."
Why do conservatives seem to have this warm and fuzzy
feeling for George W. Bush? I can only speculate it’s
because Bush liked to talk a lot about freedom and
traditional American values, and did so in such an
ungrammatical way that it made him seem sincere.
The outcome of Republican control has been everything
Democrats were known for, and libertarians profess to abhor:
wasteful government spending, titanic new bureaucracies,
federal intrusion in private matters, elective war and a
metastasizing national security state.
"During President Bush's first five years in office,
the federal government increased by $616 billion,"
Viguerie writes. "That's a mammoth 33 percent jump in
the size of the federal government in just his first five
years! To put this in perspective, this increase of
$616 billion is more than the entire federal budget
in Jimmy Carter's last years in office. And conservatives
were complaining about Big Government back then! How can
Bush, (Dennis) Hastert, (Bill) Frist and company look us in
the eye and tell us they are fiscal conservatives when in
five short years they increased the already-bloated
government by more than the budget for the entire federal
government when Ronald Reagan was assuming office?"
Trading
Places: Jeffrey Frankel[alt]
"The pattern is so well established that the
generalisation can no longer be denied: the Republicans have
become the party of fiscal irresponsibility, trade restriction,
big government and bad microeconomics.
"Surprisingly, Democrat presidents have, relatively
speaking, become the proponents of fiscal responsibility, free
trade, competitive markets and neoclassical microeconomics. This
characterisation sounds implausible. Certainly, it would not be
recognisable from the two parties' rhetoric. But compare the
records of Presidents Carter and Clinton with those of
Presidents Reagan, Bush senior and Bush junior." Jeffrey
Frankel is professor of economics at Harvard University's
Kennedy School of Government
U.S.
will keep oil flowing for now -- The Washington Times Bush
Administration gives your tax dollars to Big Oil, and gives
the oil to North Korea, freeing up funds for Pyongyang to
develop Nuclear Weapons. But at least Al Gore isn't President.
It's obvious
that liberalism is intellectually
bankrupt today. But, unfortunately,
conservatism, as promoted by politicians
and pundits, has nothing more to offer
than watered-down liberalism — making
the government bigger for
"good" purposes instead of
"bad" purposes.
Conservatives say the
government can't end poverty by force,
but they believe it can use force to
make people moral. Liberals say
government can't make people be moral,
but they believe it can end poverty.
Neither group attempts to explain why
government is so clumsy and destructive
in one area but a paragon of efficiency
and benevolence in the other.
Conservative
politicians pat us on the head at
election time and tell us how much worse
it would be if they hadn't been there to
hold back the tide of socialism. But the
fact is that they haven't held
back the tide of socialism. Government
has grown relentlessly. It is time for a
better philosophy and a better strategy.
Conservative
politicians supposedly believe in
economic freedom, but not personal
freedom — and yet they vote to put
poor people out of work by raising the
minimum wage and pass laws to help
subsidize their favorite companies with
our money. Liberal politicians
supposedly believe in personal freedom,
but not economic freedom — and yet
they vote to censor the Internet and
pass laws to take away our right to
defend ourselves.
Conservative leaders
are happy to declare victory whenever
their side wins a minor cut in a
department's budget (even if the overall
budget continues to get larger), or when
a single government function is turned
over to a private contractor (even if
more money is spent on the function), or
when they put through a minor tax cut
(even if the overall cost of government
continues to grow), or when liberal
politicians start talking like
conservatives (even though both sides
continue to vote for ever- larger
government). Libertarians, however,
measure victory only in terms of real
reductions in government and real
expansions of liberty — and
conservatives have produced neither of
those things. When they hold Pyrrhic
victories up to the American people as
achievements they are telling us they
don't really want to make a significant
difference in our lives; they only want
to put a few points on the Scoreboard
and then celebrate.
Harry Browne on the Non-Differences Between the
Two Major Parties:
A close election
might conceivably be decided by one vote in the Electoral
College, or in the Congress. But it will not be decided –
no presidential election has ever been decided, nationally
or even in a single "battleground" state – by a
single popular vote.
Therefore, statistically, your individual vote already
"doesn’t count." If you died on your way to the
polls, it could not possibly affect who gets elected
president. Get over it. And if you don’t live in Ohio or
Florida or Nevada or one of the other dozen or so
"battleground" states, your whole state has
already been "assigned" to the red or blue column,
your entire state doesn’t count – you could
convince a thousand friends to write in Ron Paul or Mahatma
Gandhi; no one would even notice.
Yet people keep telling me that unless they vote for Bush or
Kerry for Tweedle-Dumb or Tweedle-Brie – their "vote
won’t count"? Pretend with me that you’re an old German on your
deathbed today. Would you rather tell your grandchildren,
"I voted for the Nazis because they seemed better than
the Communists and no other party could win"? Wouldn’t
you rather be able to rise up and say,
"I publicly
denounced the Nazis and the Communists. We were a
minority – 1 or 2 percent – but we stood up for the
truth and we were right! We proved not all Germans were
mindless torchbearers for tyranny! We were ridiculed, we
were beaten and jailed, but we saved this nation’s soul.
Now children, go and live your lives in a way to make me
proud"?
Wouldn’t you?
Because I don’t get it: Let’s say you flip a coin and
manage to vote for "the winner," on Nov. 2.
What do you win?
A liberal is someone
who can utter a timeworn cliché as
though he's the first person in the
world ever to say it.
For 45 years the
conservatives were suckered by liberals
into supporting big government as the
way of fighting the Soviet threat. And
conservative leaders and politicians
became so used to the idea of
"saving" the world from
threats that, even with the Soviets
gone, they're happy to continue
tolerating big government — so long as
they can continue to play soldier
against Saddam Hussein and all the other
boogey men of the world.
Is conservatism what
you want? Do you want to conserve a $2
trillion federal budget and a $7
trillion debt? Or do you want to
liberate yourself from these
oppressions?
Liberals and
conservatives accuse libertarians of
being Utopian dreamers. And yet the
liberals and conservatives continually
dream up these fantastic government
programs that somehow are going to work
better than all the failed government
programs of the past.
For years it has been
known that liberal politicians are more
interested in appearance than in
substance. For example, they took pride
in having imposed sanctions on South
Africa — to make a statement of
solidarity with the blacks there, even
though the sanctions took jobs away from
blacks. But conservative politicians are
no better. They take pride in being
tough drug warriors — because of the
moral statement the Drug War makes, even
if it increases drug use, escalates
crime, and innocent people are killed in
drive-by shootings and gang warfare.
To the moralist, other
people's lives are of no consequence.
All that matters is making the
"proper" statement — even if
the statement has no permanent or
practical value, and even if the action
connected to the statement is
destructive of the very goal its
supporters claim to be working for.
Conservatives
sometimes are all for the Constitution
when talking about proposed new laws.
They fight against new proposals —
such as gun-control laws — as being
contrary to the Constitution. But they
never apply the Constitution to existing
laws; they act as though the
existing laws were part of the
Constitution itself.
Conservative and
liberal politicians each like to invoke
the Constitution when it suits them, and
they each like to ignore the
Constitution when it suits them.
No liberal politician says, "I want
to see the federal government manage
health care, but we must pass a
Constitutional amendment first to make
it legal."
And no conservative politician says,
"I favor the War on Drugs, but only
if a Constitutional amendment is passed
to authorize the federal government to
be involved — as was done with alcohol
Prohibition. And I want to attack Iraq,
but only after Congress has passed a
legal declaration of war."
So you can't believe either
conservatives or liberals when they
declare their support for the
Constitution. And if that's the case,
why should you believe anything they
say?
Most conservatives
have been warning us for years about the
dangers of world government. But now
that we have world government,
they seem quite content with it — so
long as a Republican emperor is telling
other countries, "Obey my wishes or
we'll do to you what we did to Panama,
Afghanistan, Grenada, Serbia, and
Iraq."
Is there a difference
between the Republicans and the
Democrats? Of course there is. The
Democrats talk about the children while
they make government bigger, and the
Republicans talk about smaller
government while they make government
bigger.
On issue after issue
— raising the minimum wage, censoring
the Internet, bailing out Mexico, and on
and on — the Republicans and Democrats
argue strenuously and then copy each
other. Republican Congressmen accused
Clinton of stealing their ideas, even as
they plagiarized all the pork-barrel
policies of the Democratic Congress.
With no real
difference between them, the two old
parties taunt each other like children,
probe for weaknesses, and try to catch
each other in contradictions — looking
to put some points on the Scoreboard and
win the next election. Meanwhile
government gets bigger, more expensive,
more intrusive, more destructive, and
more dangerous.
The twin parties have
become so hopelessly corrupted by power
and the perks of governing that our only
hope is a third party still too young,
healthy, and principled to be infected
by their dishonesty and political
extortion.
The Democrats say a
particular crisis is so severe that they
must take another $300 from you. The
Republicans say, "No, it's not that
bad; we need to take only $200." Or
the Republicans say a threat is so great
they must take away three more of your
civil rights. The Democrats counter by
saying, "No, that's too extreme;
destroying two civil rights will be
enough." Whatever the issue, both
sides agree it's a reason for more
government, and that you should pay for
it. And no matter what price or
intrusion they eventually agree upon,
within a few years the cost will always
be far greater than either side had
asked for originally.
No matter which of the
two old parties wins an election, the
government always becomes bigger, the
regulations more onerous. No matter who
wins, you will lose — because both
sides are for more government, no matter
what they say when campaigning. Neither
side will stand up for you — for your
money, for your freedom, for your family
— when the next so-called
"crisis" arises.
In 1996 the Republican
politicians were upset because they
believed President Clinton was stealing
their issues from them. And he was. But
turnabout is fair play: for 60 years the
Republicans have been legislating like
Democrats.
Because neither the
Republicans nor Democrats stand for any
fixed principles, they can't engage in a
real debate. Instead, they play games
— trying to score points off each
other by catching each other in
inconsistencies. Or they argue about the
meaning of statistics — all the while
knowing that neither side has a policy
that differs substantially from the
other, so the statistics are politically
meaningless. They are quibbling while
America burns.
Neither the Democratic
president nor the Republican Congress
has done anything to get government out
of our lives. And since neither party
offers to improve our lives
significantly, we really have no
self-interest in favoring one over the
other. So we choose up sides based on
such things as character and morals —
even though Ronald Reagan, a man of
apparent good character, did no more to
reduce government than Bill Clinton, an
obvious rogue.
The Democrats believe
the government can end poverty, even
though for 30 years the government's
policies have expanded poverty in
America The Republicans believe the
government can end drug use, even though
for 30 years the government's policies
have escalated drug use and crime in
America.
Yes, there's a
difference between the two major
parties. There's always a difference.
But it's a tiny difference. And if you
vote on the basis of that small
difference, the difference will never
become larger — and you'll never get a
more attractive option than what you
have now — and the country will
continue its movement in the same
direction — toward bigger and bigger
government.
A Republican in the
presidency isn't the "lesser of two
evils." He will do practically the
same things a Democrat would do. But
with a Democrat in office, conservative
writers and politicians will denounce
his big-government schemes. They won't
do that with a Republican in office. As
a result, a Republican isn't the lesser
of two evils; he represents the worst of
two evils: big government and no
opposition.
Bush, Obama, or Romney?
Chuck
Baldwin chose the links below. They show that conservatives
must not trust President XXX. Is XXX Bush, Obama, or Romney? Does
it matter?
.
Available from