Early this morning I received an email solicitation for one of the most exciting products I have ever seen. I’m going to buy lots of them later today for Christmas presents. I’ll tell you about it now but please wait a day or so before you begin buying yours so that they don’t run out before I put my order in.
What is this exciting product? It’s a 2014 Election Results Poster! The poster shows all the recent election results — on both sides!
Oh, I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking: How are you going to be able to see both sides of the poster once you hang it on your wall. Right?
Well, guess what. They’re offering a “Double Purchase Special” that enables you to buy two copies of the poster for the price of one-and-two-thirds.
Is that awesome, or what?
NOT!
Actually, it would be difficult for me to conceive of a bigger waste of money … except, of course, for all the money that people poured into the recent campaign to get Republicans elected to Congress.
If you’re interested in achieving a further fortification of the welfare-warfare state in American society, that’s one thing. If that’s your goal, then your time and money have been well spent.
But if your goal is the free society, you just have frittered away a lot of money, time, and energy getting your Republicans into Congress.
There is no possibility that the election of Republicans is going to bring us the free society, any more than the election of Democrats will.
After all, let’s face it: Notwithstanding their professed devotion to “free enterprise” and “limited government,” Republicans are as fierce proponents of the welfare state as Democrats. Ask Republicans what they think about repealing (i.e., abolishing, not reforming) such welfare-state programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, welfare, public housing, corporate bailouts, immigration controls, farm subsidies, economic regulations, fiat money, the Federal Reserve, income taxation and the IRS, the minimum wage, and foreign aid, and they will run for the hills, with their knees quivering and quaking.
Republicans are as committed to the welfare-state, regulated-society way of life as Democrats are. They just want to get elected so that they can run this gigantic socialist enterprise.
Ask them about ending the war on drugs. They will assure you that they are much fiercer proponents of the drug war than Democrat and plan on waging it for next 50 years or so.
Ask them about the national-security state. This is where their love of big government will really come through. They will wax eloquent about how important “national security” is to our land and, therefore, how necessary it is for the federal government to continue a policy of imperialism, interventionism, militarism, invasions, coups, wars of aggression, torture, rendition, foreign aid, partnerships with dictatorships, and Gitmo.
They will tell you that the terrorists, the Muslims, the Islamic State, Syria, North Korea, Russia, China, and who knows who else, is coming to get us and, therefore, that it is necessary to continue giving the military and the CIA ever-increasing amounts of U.S. taxpayer money to wage the “war on terrorism,” perpetually.
Given their longtime disdain for civil liberties, Republicans will continue to endorse the due-process-free jailing, torture, and secret surveillance of ever more people, especially Americans, who, they say, are producing an increasing number of “homegrown” terrorists.
While preaching how compassionate they have become, they will continue waging their ruthless war against immigrants who are doing nothing more than exercising the God-given right of pursuing happiness, a right enunciated in the Declaration of Independence.
Republicans will preach “fiscal responsibility” and a “balanced budget” but will vote for a lifting of the debt ceiling to permit more spending and more debt to be piled onto the backs of the American people.
Republicans will continue the income tax, the IRS, and the Federal Reserve.
One thing is certain: Republican congressmen will not embrace libertarianism. At most, they will reform and tinker with the welfare-warfare state. But they will do nothing fundamental in favor of a genuinely free society and will actually take actions that contradict the principles of a free society.
That’s because Republicans are as statist as Democrats on the welfare state and even more statist than Democrats on the warfare state.
There is but one way to achieve the free society — through the dissemination of uncompromising ideas on liberty, with the aim of reaching a critical mass of people in society who are committed to achieving the free society.
Once that critical mass is reached — and we might well be closer to it than we can ever imagine — there will be nothing that either Republicans or Democrats will be able to do to stop a free society from coming into existence. That’s what paradigm shifts in societies are all about!
Alas, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but those who spent their time and money on Republican congressional campaigns in the hopes of achieving the free society really did waste their time and money.
