Friday, February 27, 2009
Legalize Drugs Instead of Banning Guns
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In an editorial this morning sarcastically entitled “The Drug Cartel’s Right to Bear Arms,” the New York Times is climbing aboard the drug-war/gun-control bandwagon.
Here’s how the reasoning goes: The Mexican drug-war cartels are killing people with assault rifles. The weapons are purchased in gun shops in the United States and illegally smuggled into Mexico. Therefore, if we just enact a ban on assault weapons, the violence in Mexico will disappear.
The bandwagon was set into motion by the U.S. Justice Department, which recently pronounced that the Mexican drug cartels are “a threat to national security.” Attorney General Eric Holder immediately jumped on board with his call for a new assault-weapons ban.
Threat to national security? Now, where have we heard that before? You guessed it: The Terrorists! You know, those scary people that the U.S. government is waging war against for the rest of everyone’s lives. You know — the war on terrorism, a war that has military prison camps, enemy combatants, torture and sex abuse, kidnapping and rendition, denial of due process, habeas corpus, and trial by jury, Gitmo, Bagram, military tribunals, sensory deprivation, and isolation.
The Mexicans will tell you that the drug cartels are much scarier than The Terrorists. The drug cartels have been killing law enforcement agents, judges, military personnel, and other public officials. In fact, during the past few years the drug cartels have killed many more people in Mexico than The Terrorists have killed in the United States.
The Times‘ solution to the problem? Here it is: “There should be enormous shame on this side of the border that America’s addiction to drugs is bolstered by its feckless gun controls. Firm federal law is urgently needed if the homicidal cartels are to be seriously challenged as a threat to national security.”
So, there you have it. The violence in Mexico is all the fault of those American drug users and gun purveyors. If only Americans would just stop ingesting drugs and if only the feds would finally clamp down on guns (like they’ve done with drugs), all the problems would just go away.
It’s all a classic example of how hope springs eternal for socialists, regulators, interventionists, and gun grabbers. It doesn’t even enter the minds of these people that a war on guns might well turn out to be a bigger, more violent disaster than the war on drugs.
In fact, it doesn’t even occur to them that there is a much better solution to the drug-war violence than some cockamamie gun-control scheme: Just repeal the laws that criminalize the possession, use, and distribution of drugs. In other words, end the drug war.
That’s it. All that needs to be done to end the Mexican drug-war violence is … legalize drugs. And the beautiful part is that the drug cartels would be put out of business immediately. Yes, that’s right — immediately. The reason is that drug cartels lack the competence to compete in legitimate markets. They are only able to compete in black markets, especially ones that involve violence.
The good news is that in the 20 years of FFF’s existence, I have never seen more articles and op-eds, especially in the mainstream press, calling for an end to the drug war as we are seeing today. Why, just recently the City Council of El Paso unanimously enacted a resolution calling on the federal government to consider drug legalization as the solution to Mexico’s drug-war violence. Even though the resolution was vetoed by the mayor, it is a remarkable thing that more and more mainstream politicians are now recognizing the fallacy, failure, and fraud of the drug war.
Thirty-five years ago, the interventionists were issuing the same pabulums about the drug war that we hear today. Isn’t it time that Americans rejected the drug-war nonsense? Aren’t more than three decades of failure, violence, destruction, and assaults on liberty enough? How can anyone really think that assaulting the Second Amendment is going to make a difference in a 35-year-old failed war?
The time has arrived for the American people to demand the adoption of the only possible solution to the drug war, including the drug-cartel violence in Mexico: legalize drugs.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Interventionism: A Failed and Dangerous Paradigm
by Jacob G. Hornberger
For the last several months, we have witnessed one of the core principles of interventionism in economic affairs — that one government intervention inevitably leads to more interventions to deal with the crises and chaos that the previous intervention produces. What begins as a free-market economy — that is, one that is free of government control — ends up with socialism, where government owns and controls everything and everybody. That, of course, is what nationalization is all about.
But it’s not only in economics that we see this phenomenon. Foreign policy is another good example. The government engages in a pro-empire, pro-interventionist policy that includes killing and humiliating people overseas. For a while, the victims put up with the killing and the humiliation. But finally, anger and rage spill over, with some of the victims retaliating with terrorist attacks. Rather than ending the foreign policy that produced the anger and rage in the first place, federal officials use the terrorist blowback as the justification to do more of what they were doing before, which keeps the whole process going. Equally bad, they use the blowback as the excuse to suspend civil liberties and to increase government spending.
This week, we see another example of interventionism, this time in the areas of the drug war and gun control. Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the Obama administration intends to seek a new assault-weapons ban. Guess what Holder is using as one of his rationales: the heavy violence along the Mexican border arising from the drug war. The idea is that the Mexican drug cartels are getting their weapons from the United States and, therefore, an assault-weapons ban in the United States will supposedly quell violence in Mexico.
What better example of how interventionism works than that? We start out with the fact that some people in society wish to ingest what others consider to be harmful substances. The busybodies in the government decide that people simply do not have the right to do bad things to themselves. Viewing government as a daddy and the citizenry as adult-children, the government intervenes with a law that punishes the possession of illicit drugs.
Alas, however, people don’t voluntarily comply with the dictate, especially since many of them don’t believe that what they ingest is any business of government. That drives the busybodies crazy, which means a series of ever-increasing interventions, such as unreasonable searches and seizures, asset-forfeiture laws, more DEA agents, higher punishments, mandatory-minimum sentences, and so forth.
While the interventions fail to stem the ingesting, they generate an increasingly violent environment. The perfect example is Mexico, where for years U.S. officials have urged Mexican officials to ramp up the drug war. And ramp it up they have, including with the use of the Mexican military. The result? Ever-increasing violence, including gang wars, kidnappings, torture, and killings of government officials, not to mention the tremendous infringement on civil liberties. The harsher the interventions become, the worse the result.
So, Holder proposes what he and Obama feel is the next logical step — gun control.
And it gets worse. Texas Governor Mark Perry, a Republican, is now suggesting that he would welcome the federal government’s sending trained military troops into Texas to deal with the drug-war violence. He says that the violence “could be put to bed quickly” if the U.S. government were to fight the drug war as it’s fought the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So, how about that? A remarkable confluence of interventions — drug war, gun control, and the war on terrorism. Just think: U.S. troops along the U.S. border doing what they’re doing in Iraq and Afghanistan: barging into people’s homes without warrants, indefinite detentions, denial of due process, torture and other cruel and unusual punishments, enemy combatants, military tribunals, and, of course, confiscating people’s guns.
Of course, there is an alternative to all this violence and chaos that is available to the American people: freedom and free markets, which would entail a rejection of the philosophy of interventionism. In the economics sphere, that would entail a repeal of the welfare-state, regulated-economy way of life. In the foreign-policy sphere, it would entail a dismantling of the U.S. government’s overseas military empire. And in the drug-war/gun-control sphere, it would entail the legalization of drugs and respecting people’s fundamental and inherent right to keep and bear arms.
Postscript: Our friends at Bureaucrash recently launched their “Revolution In a Box” to provide intellectual resources to 1,000 freedom-oriented individuals. Get yours at: https://social.bureaucrash.com/forum/topics/revolution-in-a-box. The package includes a copy of our book Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax by Sheldon Richman.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Playing Nice With Our Communist Loan Officers
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Did you ever think you’d see the day when a U.S. Secretary of State would be pleading with a communist regime to continue lending money to the U.S. government? Well, that’s what Hillary Clinton has been doing this week in China. She’s been making the case to the Chinese communists that they would be smart to continue financing the U.S. government’s out-of-control spending. Clinton obsequiously said to her commie hosts, “I certainly do think that the Chinese government and central bank are making a smart decision by continuing to invest in Treasury bonds. It’s a safe investment. The United States has a well-deserved financial reputation.”
Human rights groups are agog that their liberal icon would remain silent about the Chinese regime’s longtime brutal infringement of human rights. Hey, what do they expect? Is it ever considered smart for someone deeply in debt to go and start insulting his lender?
I can’t help recalling when another liberal icon, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, was sacrificing tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers for nothing in Southeast Asia. Oh, back then U.S. officials didn’t say it was for nothing. They said that all those deaths were about “freedom.” Isn’t it always about “freedom”? Aren’t Iraq and Afghanistan about “freedom”? Isn’t the “war on terrorism” about “freedom”?
Back then, the bugaboo to justify ever-increasing federal expenditures wasn’t terrorism, it was communism, including Chinese communism. Keeping the American people on permanent scare status, U.S. officials portrayed the communists as one big monolithic block, one that was even scarier than “the terrorists.” The block consisted of communists everywhere — China, North Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe, Cuba, Chile, the State Department, Hollywood, and the army. Why, Americans were even looking under their beds for communists! And they were all part of that big monolithic block that was going to conquer the United States. If U.S. soldiers weren’t fighting to defend “freedom” in Vietnam, we were told, the dominoes would begin falling to the communists, with the final domino being the United States.
Of course, it was all a lie, just like the intentionally false claim that Johnson and the Pentagon made about the North Vietnamese attack on a U.S. vessel in the Gulf of Tonkin. After the U.S. lost the war, the dominoes did not fall, the Soviet Union ultimately fell of its own dead weight, and the United States is still standing. In fact, after the Vietnam War, a war even broke out between China and Vietnam. So much for that scary monolithic block. Today, the U.S. government has even established trade relationships with Vietnam, even though it still maintains the cruel and harsh embargo against the Cuban people.
Of course, another reason that Hillary was being so nice and submissive to her communist hosts was that she must have felt right at home in China. After all, China is a socialist paradise. Just think how exhilarated she must have been being in a country where there is national healthcare, free public schooling, mandatory national service, welfare, public housing, and, best of all, a well-behaving, conformist, and obedient citizenry. Why, isn’t all that socialism enough to warm any liberal’s heart?
My hunch is that despite their pleas to their Chinese loan officers, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are in for a rude awakening. Ultimately, the Chinese communist regime is going to operate in its own self- interest, not because it wants to help U.S. officials pay for their socialistic stimulus plans, bailouts, payoffs, pork, and welfare.
As most everyone knows, the U.S. government is spending money like it was going out style. There are obviously no limits to the borrowing and the printing of money being used to pay for the massively growing expenditures of the welfare-warfare state. If the Chinese decide that the U.S. debt instruments they are holding are likely to plummet in value as a result of U.S. monetary debasement, they might well decide to rush for the exits and dump their entire holdings of U.S. Treasury instruments in international markets. If that were to happen, the consequences would not pretty. That’s undoubtedly why Obama and Clinton are being so nice to their communist loan officers.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Embargoes Infringe on Our Freedom
by Jacob G. Hornberger
U.S. presidents spend a lot of time obsessing over whether they should talk to foreign regimes that are not-so-friendly to the U.S. government. The issue usually arises in the context of U.S. restrictions on trade that have been imposed on foreign countries with the aim of forcing their governments to comply with U.S. dictates.
Actually, however, there is no valid reason for the president to talk to any foreign leader. Instead, the U.S. government should simply lift all sanctions, embargoes, and restrictions on trade on all foreign regimes and do so unilaterally, without discussions, negotiations, and concessions.
Consider, for example, Cuba. For 50 years, the Cuban people have suffered from a cruel and brutal economic vise in which they’ve been squeezed by Castro’s socialism and the U.S. embargo.
The aim of the embargo has always been regime change. The idea has been to make the Cuban people suffer so much that they finally oust Castro from power and install a ruler who is satisfactory to U.S. officials, at which point the embargo would be lifted.
Yet, it’s obvious that the embargo has been a cruel and brutal failure. Castro is still in power. For fifty years, the Cuban people have been made to suffer needlessly.
Some people suggest that President Obama should talk to Castro to see if the two countries can resolve their differences.
That’s nonsense. What Obama and the U.S. Congress should instead do to is simply lift all restrictions on trade between the two countries. For that matter, they should also remove all restrictions on the freedom of Cubans and Americans to travel back and forth freely between the two countries.
What all too many Americans fail to realize is that embargoes, sanctions, and other restrictions on trade are a direct infringement on the economic liberty of the American people themselves. They prohibit Americans from spending their money the way they want. What could be more fundamental than the right to do what you want with your own money and to travel wherever you want?
Yet, if you trade with Cubans or spend money there, the U.S. government will punish you severely. Ironically, that’s also what the communist regime in Cuba does to people who violate economic regulations there.
What would happen if the U.S. government unilaterally lifted the embargo against Cuba? Immediately, there would be an outburst of economic activity, one in which Americans would be traveling to Cuba for business, personal, or cultural activity.
What better representatives of our country than American businessmen, tourists, and cultural groups? What worse representatives of our country than the Pentagon, CIA, and State Department?
All that interactivity between the American people and Cuban people would tend to introduce ideas on liberty into the Cuban marketplace of ideas and would tend toward building up the economic resources of the Cuban people, both of which tend toward counterbalancing the power of the state.
Equally important, through interaction with Americans, the Cuban people would be able to warn Americans against the socialist road they’re traveling on, including with socialized education, housing, healthcare, bailouts, stimulus plans, a central bank, and paper money, all of which have long been core elements of Cuban socialism.
What if Cuban officials refuse to permit honest elections? What if they continue to embrace socialism? What if they continue to harass critics? What if they impose their own restrictions on trade with Americans?
Why is any of that the business of the U.S. government? Isn’t that the business of the Cuban people? The United States should be leading the world to freedom by example, not by trying to force its principles on others at the point of a gun or with the dropping of bombs.
There are those who argue that Americans shouldn’t trade with communists. But shouldn’t that be an individual choice? If someone doesn’t want to travel to Cuba or buy Cuban cigars, on principle, he doesn’t have to. Consider, for example, communist Vietnam and communist China. The U.S. government doesn’t have embargoes against those countries, and Americans are free to decide whether to travel there or to buy goods and services provided by people in those countries.
The American people would be doing themselves and the world a tremendous favor by forcing the U.S government to lift all restrictions, embargoes, and sanctions against all foreign countries. What better way to lead the world to peace, prosperity, and harmony than by restoring the principles of economic liberty to our land? Freeing the American people doesn’t require the president to talk to any foreign regime.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Mugged by Truth and Reality
by Jacob G. Hornberger
There is one thing that American statists cannot deny: their beloved paternalistic state has failed to protect people and keep them safe and secure. The statists can declaim against deregulation, free enterprise, capitalism, speculators, CEOs, and greed all they want, but the simple fact remains: The paternalistic state has failed in its mission — to keep people safe and secure.
Don’t forget that that’s what Franklin Roosevelt’s economic revolution was all about. That was why Americans were induced to abandon a free-market system for a welfare state and a controlled economy. We will keep you safe and secure, the statists said. All we need is control over your lives and fortunes.
For the last several decades, libertarians have been warning people that this was all a Sirens’ Song. The paternalistic welfare state will not keep you safe and secure, we have repeatedly said. You are losing your economic liberty for nothing. The state will not protect you from the vicissitudes of life and, in fact, will only make life worse for you.
But who wanted to listen to the libertarians? The federal government was viewed as a idol, even by Christians. It would guarantee that nothing bad would happen to us. We wouldn’t lose our savings to charlatans. We’ve got the SEC for that. Everyone would be guaranteed a home, whose value would soar forever. That’s what HUD and Fannie Mae were all about. Lose your job? No problem, that’s what unemployment compensation is all about. Retirement? We have that covered with a Social Security fund. Healthcare? Fear not, Medicare and Medicaid are here. Education? Just look at our list of federal grants. Bank failure? That’s what the FDIC is for.
And the beauty of it was that it was all free. We’ll take care of you, from the cradle to the grave, and all for free.
But they have failed, haven’t they?
Well, not according to the statists. They say that the problem is that despite decades of the socialistic welfare state and the controlled economy, they simply didn’t have enough welfare and enough control.
But the truth is that ever since 1937, they have had full and complete power to establish any and all welfare and regulatory programs they’ve desired. Thus, the problem returns: No matter how they try to rationalize it, the paternalistic welfare state and regulated society have failed to achieve their purported end — to keep people safe and secure.
And so, what do the statists propose? The same sort of socialistic and regulatory junk that they’ve heaped on people since the Roosevelt administration. Isn’t that precisely what George W. Bush and now Barack Obama have been doing? Bailouts, stimulus plans, and other welfare and regulatory programs. It’s the same socialistic and interventionist junk that is at the root of America’s economic woes.
Meanwhile, the American people, the poor, little, innocent hapless souls that they are, continue to place their faith in the federal government. Just give the bailouts and stimulus plans more time to work their magic. Just give the governors and the mayors more money. Just increase the welfare, subsidies, regulations, bureaucrats, departments, and agencies. Everything will work out. The paternalistic state will not let us down. It will yet keep us safe and secure.
Heaven forbid that anyone should suggest that it’s the federal government itself — and, specifically it’s socialistic and interventionist paradigm — that is at the root of America’s economic woes. In a world in which many Americans, including Christians, have elevated the federal government to idol status, doubting the idol is considered to be heresy.
For all too long, Americans have lived the life of the lie and the life of unreality. Living under the purported protection of a paternalistic state, they have convinced themselves that all the welfare and regulations weren’t really socialistic or interventionist but rather all part of “America’s free enterprise system.” No one, except the libertarians, has wanted to admit that Roosevelt didn’t save free enterprise, he rejected and abandoned it.
The problem Americans face today is that truth and reality are mugging them in the face, and they’re having a terrible time trying to figure out what to do. Should they continue following the Sirens or should they instead move toward restoring the genuine principles of economic liberty on which our nation was founded?
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, February 20, 2009
A New Official Enemy along the Border
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Soon after the Pentagon lost its longtime Official Enemy — The Communists — with the fall of the Berlin Wall, all the talk about a “peace dividend” caused Pentagon officials to go into overdrive developing reasons as to why the military budget should not be slashed. Among the things the Pentagon offered to do was to help wage the war on drugs. Of course, that was before The Terrorists had replaced The Communists as the new Official Enemy.
That all changed after more than a decade of intensive U.S. intervention in the Middle East, including the Persian Gulf War, the deadly sanctions against the Iraqi people, the U.S. statement that the deaths of half-a million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it,” the deadly no-fly zones over Iraq, the stationing of U.S. troops on Islamic holy lands, and the continuation of unconditional military and financial aid to the Israeli government. All that interventionism produced the 9/11 blowback, thereby assuring the Pentagon of a new Official Enemy — The Terrorists, and thereby obviating the need to make The Drug Lords the new Official Enemy.
In the event that Americans grow weary of the long occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, however, thereby reducing the possibility of terrorist blowback, fortunate for the Pentagon is that a new Official Enemy is now standing by, the one that the Pentagon contemplated after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
With Mexico’s ratcheting up the drug war for the past several years at the behest of U.S. officials, drug-war violence has soared in Mexico and has now reached the Mexico-U.S. border. Thousands of people, including law-enforcement officials, drug dealers, and innocent bystanders are being killed in the chaos and mayhem. The situation is enough to remind people of what it must have been like to live during Prohibition, the period of time when U.S. officials were ratcheting up the war on booze.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the U.S. military is ready to deal with the problem. According to an article in the New York Times, U.S. officials have developed contingency plans for a “surge” — yes, you read that right — a surge, just like in Iraq! — for the U.S.-Mexican border in the event the drug-war violence spills over into the United States. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff stated, “We completed a contingency plan for border violence, so if we did get a significant spillover, we have a surge — if I may use that word — capability to bring in not only our own assets but even to work with” the Defense Department. The article also stated:
“Officials of the Homeland Security Department said the plan called for aircraft, armored vehicles and special teams to converge on border trouble spots, with the size of the force depending on the scale of the problem. Military forces would be called upon if civilian agencies like the Border Patrol and local law enforcement were overwhelmed, but the officials said military involvement was considered unlikely.”
Don’t count on military involvement being “unlikely.” If federal officials, such as DEA agents, federal prosecutors, and federal judges are being kidnapped, tortured, and assassinated, as the drug cartels are doing to Mexican officials, does anyone really think that President Obama and the Pentagon won’t quickly deploy battle-tested U.S. troops to the Southwest? Why, what could be more dangerous than Drug War Terrorists?
In fact, if things get as nasty as they are in Mexico, I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama and the Pentagon, with the full support of the conservative and neo-con community, extended their enemy-combatant doctrine to the drug war, sending drug-war suspects into prison camps for indefinite detention and trial by military tribunal and also subjecting them to the same torture-sex abuse techniques that are employed against suspected terrorists. After all, why not torture a suspected drug-war terrorist into divulging the location of a ticking time bomb in a federal office building?
One of these days, the American people are bound to figure out how the interventionist, Big Government scam works: The U.S. government’s own policies produce a crisis, which is then used as the excuse for expanded government power over the citizenry.
We’ve seen this with U.S. foreign policy and terrorist blowback. We’ve seen it with U.S. mortgage and housing policies and the bailouts and stimulus plans. We’ve seen it with the drug war and the violence along the border.
With each new crisis, U.S. officials get people all hyped up into supporting Bigger and Bigger Government, including Bigger Budgets, Bigger Bureaucracies, Bigger Inflation, Bigger Taxes, Bigger Borrowing, Bigger Control, Bigger Military, and less freedom and less security.
Once Americans do figure out the scam, a good place to begin bringing it all to an end is with the drug war. Repealing it entirely, as our American ancestors did with Prohibition, would not only bring an immediate end to drug-war violence and drug gangs, it would also point the way to ridding our nation of all the other interventionist policies that are so beneficial to Big Government and so destructive to the freedom and well-being of the American people.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
How to Achieve Socialism
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Have you ever wondered how countries such as Cuba, North Korea, and China became completely socialist? It’s really not a mystery. Government officials, most of whom suffer from an insatiable thirst for power, seize upon some human tragedy or disaster and tell the people, “If you will just give us power over your lives and fortunes, we will take care of you and protect you from harm.” The citizenry, many of whom live lives of fear and insecurity, cannot pass up the bargain. What could be better than to be take care of by a paternalistic state and protected from the bad things that life presents?
Of course, it’s all a scam, one in which people surrender their freedom in the hope of achieving a feeling of safety and security, only to find that they are just as insecure as ever, if not more so, given the brutal methods that government resorts to in order to maintain its control.
As government wields increasing control over the lives and fortunes of the citizenry, the tendency to blame government itself for the problems dissipates. Like children who are scared of antagonizing their parents, who wield life or death power over them, adults in a socialist society are scared to death to upset the entity in charge of taking care of them.
I had a first-hand experience with this phenomenon when I visited Cuba several years ago. A young cab driver and his wife told me why Cubans must be very careful about criticizing the government or its socialist system. It’s not just the nonexistence of civil liberties but also because of Cuba’s socialist economic system.
Keep in mind that in a purely socialist system, the government is the owner of everything. In Cuba, while there were a few small exceptions when I was there, for all practical purposes the state was the sole employer. Let that sink in: Virtually everyone in Cuba works for the state. Thus, if an employee gets fired, he has no other employer with whom to go to work. If the state wants to get nasty by refusing to rehire a person, it can mean death by starvation.
The cab driver told me that the state never uses that power in such a brutal way. Instead, it simply transfers independent-minded employees to divisions of the “company” in other towns and cities. Thus, the cab driver told me that the state could separate him and his wife by transferring him to a city hundreds of miles away while retaining his wife in Havana.
Now, you might say, “But America still has features of a free-market system and so it’s not like in Cuba. Here, private businesses still exist, people are still free to trade, and workers are free to quit their jobs and go to others.”
That’s true but the problem we’re facing is that unless the American people put a stop to it, the inexorable trend is toward a pure socialist system. Ever since the 1920s, each new socialist and interventionist program has brought new crises, which then have been used as the excuse for new socialist and interventionist programs.
Everywhere you look today here in the United States, there is a crisis: Social Security, the drug war, Medicare, Medicaid, the monetary system, the banking system, the financial system, FDIC, welfare, terrorism, immigration. There is obviously a common denominator in all this: the federal government, and specifically its socialist and interventionist (and imperialist) programs.
But we’re not supposed to say that. Instead, we’re expected to repeat the official mantras that everyone is taught in public school and in state-supported universities: The reasons for all these crises and failures is deregulation, insufficient regulation, the wrong people in office, speculators, greed, OPEC, terrorists, Muslims, illegal aliens, or whatever. We’re simply not supposed to even suggest that it’s the system itself that is the problem.
In Cuba, this mindset is manifested by a steadfast insistence that Cuba’s economic misery is due solely to the U.S. embargo, not Cuba’s socialist system. In the United States, it’s manifested by a steadfast insistence that the Great Depression was caused by free enterprise and greed and saved by Roosevelt’s socialist and interventionist programs. For that matter, just pointing out that Roosevelt’s programs were socialistic and fascistic in nature is practically considered an act of heresy, given the idol status that the paternalistic state has achieved for many Americans.
As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, the never-ending series of interventions ultimately leads to a complete nationalization of everything. Thus, it’s no surprise that U.S. statists are now calling for a complete government takeover of the banking industry, just like in the socialist paradise of Cuba. What next — a nationalization of the oil industry, just like in Venezuela and Mexico?
That’s the road America is headed down and has been heading down for several decades—the road to socialism, the road to serfdom. The only issue is whether freedom-loving Americans will put a stop to it before it’s too late.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Liberty, Socialism, and Security
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Let’s assume that there are two banks in society, with Bank A paying an interest rate on deposits of 5 percent and Bank B paying 25 percent. Let’s also assume that there is no FDIC and no banking regulations to protect people from the choice they make on which bank to deposit their money in.
Both banks use the deposits to lend money out to businesses, which is how they aim to profit. Bank A lends its money only to well-established businesses, and its loans are fully collateralized. The loan interest rate charged is 8 percent, giving Bank A a profit of 3 percent.
Bank B plays it differently. Its loans are to speculators who are using the money to invest in the futures market. Those loans, which are unsecured, are made at an interest rate of 50 percent, which provides an anticipated profit of 25 percent.
Both banks disclose all material facts to their customers.
Most people decide to play it safe, putting their money in Bank A. A few people, however, attracted by the 25 percent interest rate, decide to go with Bank B.
One day, big swings in the market cause massive losses for the speculators, causing many of them to go broke, preventing them from repaying their loans to Bank B. Bank B goes bankrupt. The customers lose their entire deposits.
The customers of Bank B are angry and outraged. “It’s not fair!” they cry, forgetting that it was they who made the decision to place their money in the higher-risk bank while most everyone else was playing it safe with Bank A.
Where is the fairness in forcing the customers of Bank A to cover the losses of those in Bank B? Bank A customers chose to play it cautiously, choosing to accept a lower rate of interest in return. Why should they have their money taken away from them and given to the customers of Bank B?
Moreover, what would be wrong with simply letting Bank B go under? Doesn’t propping up Bank B with taxpayer money encourage behavior that might not otherwise take place? Wouldn’t a banking system that refuses to bail out anyone nurture a sense of responsibility and prudence in both customer and bank?
That’s essentially how an unhampered market economy works. It doesn’t guarantee that people won’t make mistakes or make bad investment decisions or even just lose money when markets go against them. Instead, it acknowledges that life entails those types of risks and simply holds that people themselves must bear the consequences of their own decisions.
In most cases, such a system induces people to be more cautious, wiser, and more prudent. In our banking example, it might well cause them to check the financial status of banks more carefully before depositing their money there.
Eighty years ago, statists offered the American people financial security in exchange for giving up their economic freedom. That’s what Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was all about. It consisted of a myriad of socialist and interventionist plans, including the FDIC, that revolutionized America’s economic system.
Roosevelt’s notion was that no longer would people have to suffer the risk of banks going under. There would now be a government welfare program to ensure that people’s deposits were fully protected. Banks would no longer be permitted to go under, with the Federal Reserve arranging buyouts, mergers, and other means to prop up weak banks or banks whose policies were irresponsible, unwise, or imprudent.
When warned about the potential consequences of that fateful decision, Roosevelt and his cohorts told our grandparents and great grandparents not to worry because in the long run they would all be dead. It either didn’t occur to them that their grandchildren and great grandchildren would be alive in the long run or they simply didn’t care.
Thus, today those grandchildren and great grandchildren are witnessing the results of that fateful bargain that our ancestors made some 80 years ago. We now have an entire banking industry that, decade after decade, has been propped up and which is now teetering on collapse. Only massive infusions of taxpayer money or borrowed money can save it, the statists tell us. Never mind that the bailouts, combined with the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on other socialist and interventionist programs (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, the drug war, Afghanistan, Iraq) are setting the stage for another inflationary crisis down the road.
Meanwhile, Americans have lost fortunes in the marketplace and are scared to death at the prospect of an industry-wide banking collapse that the FDIC couldn’t even come close to covering.
That’s security? That’s what our New Deal ancestors traded economic liberty for? Some bargain!
Given the choice between liberty and insecurity, on the one hand, and loss of liberty and insecurity, on the other, why isn’t the former preferable to the latter?
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Chavez Reminds Us that Democracy Is Not Freedom
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has won his quest to abolish the constitutional barrier against his running for reelection when his term expires in 2013. Last Sunday, Venezuelan voters approved the measure, which had gone down to defeat only 14 months earlier.
The irony in all this is that both Republicans and Democrats honestly believe that the election results show that the Venezuelan people are free. They believe that democracy equals freedom. After all, isn’t that the claim they make about Iraq — that by bringing democracy to Iraq, they have brought freedom to the Iraqi people?
The truth, however, is that even though they are free to elect their president, the Venezuelan people are far from being free. One reason for this is that Chavez has embraced a socialist and interventionist economic system for Venezuela.
Suppose you were a slave on a 19th-century plantation in the Old South. The political system is such that all slaves have the right to elect their taskmaster. Thus, every four years there are democratic elections in which various candidates run for plantation taskmaster. Each of them curries favor with the voters and explain why he’ll be the best, fairest, kindest taskmaster ever. They promise the slaves guaranteed job security, free meals and housing, and total equality. On election day, you and the others slaves head to the polls to cast your vote. The winner is announced.
Would you consider yourself free? Of course not. Even though there is a democratic system in which the slaves are free to elect their taskmaster and an economic system in which you are taken care of, you would nonetheless be a slave.
Thus, the real issue is whether a person who lives in a socialist, interventionist economic system can be considered free. The standard U.S. Democrat would agree with Chavez — that the more power the government has over people’s economic activity and resources, the freer they are.
But as any libertarian would tell you, that’s sheer nonsense. When government has the power to determine the size of your earnings, dictate whether you will be able to earn a living, tell you how you’re going to run your business, decide the disposition of your money, there is no way that you can be considered free.
As the Americans who founded this country understood, freedom entails the right to keep everything you earn. That’s why they rejected income taxation.
It entails the right to decide what to do with your own money. That’s why they rejected welfare, including Social Security and Medicare.
It entails the right to engage in any occupation or profession. That’s why they rejected occupational licensure, even for doctors, lawyers, and shoe shiners.
It entails the right to run your business the way you want. That’s why they rejected economic regulations, including minimum-wage laws and prohibitions against hiring foreigners.
It entails sound money. That’s why they rejected a central bank and paper money and embraced a gold standard.
The economic problem that the American people are facing right now is no different, in principle, than that which the Venezuelan people are facing. The only difference is that in Venezuela, there is more socialism and interventionism than there is here in the United States, which is why there is more poverty and misery in Venezuela.
But make no mistake about it: If American socialists continue having their way, the United States will soon be catching up. Look at what they are now proposing — nationalizing the entire banking industry! Wasn’t it just a couple of months ago that they were claiming that their multi-billion socialistic bailout plan would be all that was necessary to save the financial system? Yet, now they’re saying that the solution is to put the banks under the control of the federal government. Pardon me, but isn’t that the same entity that runs the Postal Service, the monopoly enterprise that won’t dare permit competition?
What we are witnessing is what the economist Ludwig von Mises warned us about — that interventionism produces crises, which then serve as the excuse for more interventions, until the point is reached when the government owns and controls everything. Of course, that’s the ultimate dream of every socialist. But as the people of Cuba, North Korea, and China will tell you, for the people living under pure socialism it is an absolute nightmare.
Hugo Chavez’s ability to run for office indefinitely should cause Americans to reflect on the principles of freedom. Democracy provides a means to peacefully change regimes. But it is insufficient, especially when it serves merely as a way to elect one’s dictator. As our American ancestors understood, a free society also entails the rejection of socialism and the embrace of economic liberty.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, February 16, 2009
The Love of Crises vs. the Love of Liberty
by Jacob G. Hornberger
An important principle of power, vis-a-vis liberty, is the following: Crises are the friend of power and the enemy of liberty. It is during crises that government power expands and liberty contracts. Thus, while crises produce a lot of hand-wringing and worried brows among public officials, they also bring a sense of excitement to public officials over the prospect of wielding more power over the lives and fortunes of the citizenry.
A crisis causes people to get scared, sometimes to such a point that they’re practically begging the government to do whatever is necessary to keep them safe and secure. The mindset becomes, “Protect me. Take care of me. I don’t care what you have to do. It doesn’t matter.”
Government officials, ever on the alert for ways to satisfy their insatiable thirst for power, are not about to resist this opportunity for more power. As Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s new chief of staff, succinctly put it, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
Freedom inevitably involves a tension between government and the populace. When the Framers called the federal government into existence, they understood that while government was essential, it also was the greatest threat to people’s freedom. That’s why the Framers used the Constitution to constrain the powers of the federal government. That’s also why our American ancestors insisted on the express restrictions and guarantees in the Bill of Rights. The reason for all this limitation of power and for the express restrictions and guarantees is that people knew that without them, federal officials would run roughshod over the rights and liberties of the people.
While the Constitution and the Bill of Rights do not provide for an expansion of government powers during a crisis, as a practical matter, government officials are able to break free of constitutional constraints during crises. People are scared and government officials know that few people are going to object to the exercise of unconstitutional powers during the crisis.
We saw a good example of this phenomenon after the 9/11 attacks. People were scared. They were convinced that the terrorists were coming to get them. Government officials, not surprisingly, seized on this opportunity and ended up acquiring powers that people might not have been willing to give them in normal times.
We are now witnessing the same phenomenon in the domestic arena, with the economic crisis providing federal officials with the opportunity to expand their powers over the American people. People are scared, and public officials know it. Thus, the crisis provides an opportunity for government officials to enact legislation that in ordinary times might produce an outcry.
Oftentimes the government itself is the cause of crises. The 9/11 attacks are a good example. Decades of U.S. imperialism and intervention in the Middle East ultimately produced terrorist blowback on American soil (e.g., the 1993 and 9/11 attacks on the WTC). Rather than put a stop to the policies that produced the blowback, the U.S. government seized on the crisis to expand its powers over the lives and fortunes of the American people. Even worse, it continued and even expanded the policies that produced the blowback, thereby assuring the continued possibility of more terrorist crises in the future.
It’s no different with the economy. Years of massive federal spending (including for foreign invasions and occupations), regulations (e.g., Fannie Mae), welfare, interventionism (e.g., the drug war), paper money, taxation, inflation, and Federal Reserve manipulations have all contributed to the current economic crisis. Rather than dismantle those programs and thereby slash federal spending, federal officials are doing the exact opposite, thereby assuring a continuation of economic crises into the future.
Ultimately, the solution to America’s woes, both foreign and domestic, does not reside in Washington. People who thirst for power are not likely to acknowledge that they are the problem.
The solution, instead, lies with the American people themselves. Americans must not only reacquaint themselves with the political principles of limited government that guided the Constitution, they must also educate themselves about the principles of a free-market economy, most notably the Austrian school of economics (e.g., Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.).
They must also overcome their fears and insecurities and recognize the important role that crises play in the expansion of government power.
Most important, to get our nation back on the right road — toward peace, prosperity, and harmony — Americans must regain the love of liberty that guided those who founded our nation.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Separating Money and the State
by Jacob G. Hornberger
I highly recommend reading a fantastic article in today’s Wall Street Journal: “Capitalism Needs a Sound-Money Foundation” by Judy Shelton. I also recommend forwarding it to all your friends and acquaintances. It provides the means by which a nation is able to protect itself from the profligacy of its own government, not just with a gold standard but also through a free-market system of competing currencies.
We start with the assumption that excessive federal spending, while good for those in public office, is a very bad thing for the people of a country. More government spending means higher taxes, which leave people poorer. Or it means higher government borrowing, which sucks productive capital out of the marketplace, which depresses real wage rates, which hurts the poor. And it inevitably means resorting to the printing press to print more paper money to finance the excess spending and to pay off the debts. Such inflation of the money supply provides public officials with the means to plunder and loot the citizenry, while making it look like the ever-increasing prices are the fault of speculators, investment houses, bankers, greed, free enterprise, deregulation, OPEC, Big Oil, Big Business, a host of other convenient scapegoats.
When our American ancestors brought the federal government into existence with the Constitution, they adopted a way to protect the nation from inflation: the gold standard. The money that Americans used in their day to day transactions was primarily gold and silver coins. Everybody understood that paper “money” wasn’t really money at all but rather promises by the federal government to pay money — that is, promises to pay gold and silver coins.
The federal government was constrained in its ability to print excessive quantities of bills and notes because it ran the risk of running out of gold if everyone appeared and demanded payment of gold in exchange for their bills and notes.
That sound-money system operated for more than 100 years, and it, along with no income taxation, no welfare, no economic regulation, and no immigration controls, produced one of the most phenomenal periods of increases in people’s standard of living in history.
In her article, Judy Shelton also explores the idea of competing currencies, which entails a free-market system in which government doesn’t establish anything as money, including gold and silver. Instead, people operating in the marketplace would be free to use any currency they wish — gold, silver, paper money, or whatever. This is an idea that the Nobel Prize winning Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek proposed several decades ago. See his excellent essay “The Denationalization of Money.”
Today, as the federal government continues to send our nation down the road to bankruptcy and ruin with its out of control spending on bailouts, foreign wars and occupations, stimulus plans, welfare, the military and military-industrial complex, foreign aid, subsidies, and the like, the American people would be wise to begin reflecting on the same principles, ideas, and philosophy that our American ancestors were thinking about in 1787.
A good place to start would be with the following principle, one that was enshrined in the hearts of virtually every American in 1787: The greatest threat to the freedom and economic well-being of the American people is their very own federal government. A gold standard or, even better, a free market in money, would provide a good start to protect the nation from that threat.
Postscript: I am writing a series of articles entitled “Freedom and Gold,” which will begin appearing in the April issue of our journal Freedom Daily. To subscribe, go here.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Gun Control and Enemy Combatants
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Ever since Barack Obama’s election, gun and ammo sales have skyrocketed. Many online gun stores report “out of stock” for AK47s and AR15s, along with the ammunition for such assault rifles. Demand for these products, it appears, is insatiable.
The reason for this enormous increase in demand seems to be concern that the Obama administration will enact another assault-weapons ban, perhaps even one that is more severe than the assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004. Gun owners seem to understand, as did our American ancestors, that gun ownership is a core feature of a free society.
If I had to guess, I’m say that most of the people who are pro-Second Amendment are conservatives, which is ironic. It’s ironic because it was conservatives who enthusiastically supported President Bush’s assumption of omnipotent powers to wage his “war on terrorism,” powers that now reside in Barack Obama. Such powers include the enemy-combatant doctrine.
How do the war on terrorism and its enemy-combatant doctrine relate to the Second Amendment?
Here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, one of the principles we have long argued, especially with respect to civil liberties is this: Before you vest a public official with omnipotent powers, imagine first that the powers are being exercised by your worst enemy, and then decide whether it is still wise to do so.
But conservatives didn’t listen. All that mattered was, “We can trust President Bush with omnipotent powers in the war on terrorism. He is our friend. He will protect us from the terrorists.”
Then, much to the surprise and dismay of conservatives, Obama was elected president. Notwithstanding his much-vaunted campaign calling for “change,” Obama now wields all the war on terrorism powers that conservatives vested in Bush, including the power to seize any American and haul him way as a terrorist to a military prison camp, denying him due process and a jury trial, and subjecting him to treatment as a terrorist. That’s what the enemy combatant doctrine is all about.
Thus, on the one hand, conservatives are concerned that President Obama is going to take away their guns. Yet, on the other hand, conservatives have vested Obama with the power to label them and everyone else enemy combatants, thereby empowering him (and his troops) to seize them and cart them away to a prison camp.
Thus, conservatives are essentially saying, “We don’t want Obama to have the power to seize our guns but we do want him to have the power to seize us and to send us away to prison camps.”
This week, Harvard Law Dean Elena Kagan, who will be representing the Obama administration before the Supreme Court, emphasized that the Obama administration will continue the Bush’s administration’s enemy-combatant doctrine.
Why should that surprise anyone, even those who were expecting all that much-vaunted “change” that helped Obama get elected? When was the last time you saw any public official voluntarily giving up power?
Given the omnipotent power to seize any American as enemy combatants, why should Obama care whether people still have the right to own guns? Even if Obama fully respects gun rights, what are the chances that he is going to permit enemy combatants to take their guns with them to prison camp? I’d say, not very high.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Cheney’s Fright Mode
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, obviously in perpetual fright mode, is continuing to do his best to frighten the American people. He claims that 61 of the inmates that have been released from Guantanamo have “gone back into the business of being terrorists.” He also predicted a “high probability” of a nuclear or biological terrorist attack on the United States.
Human Rights First and others have debunked Cheney’s Guantanamo statistic, contending that it’s overblown. According to HWF, the numbers are “incoherent and baseless.”
Nonetheless, Cheney’s statistic raises an interesting question: Why did the Pentagon release those prisoners, especially since it obviously contended that they were guilty of acts of terrorism? After all, they’ve got their kangaroo court system all set up. All they had to do was to present their evidence before their military tribunals and the men would have been quickly convicted and sentenced to serve time or be executed.
One possibility that cannot be ruled out is that at least some of the released prisoners who have “gone back into the business of being terrorists” were innocent.
Cheney and other neo-conservatives would respond that the “return” of the “terrorists” to the battlefield would constitute definitive proof that they were terrorists in the first place.
Not necessarily though. After all, what greater incentive for a man to hate the U.S. government than to be forced to give up seven or so years of his life in isolation in a prison faraway from home, where he has been tortured, sexually abused, and humiliated, without any hope of due process and a fair trial that would establish his innocence?
Suppose hundreds of American men were kidnapped by the government of Iran and taken to a secret Iranian prison, where they were treated the same way that the Pentagon has treated the prisoners at Guantanamo — isolation, torture, sex abuse, humiliation, no trial, no hope of release, and indefinite incarceration. Finally, after 7 years of this treatment, the Iranian government suddenly lets the men go.
Now, granted, some of those American men would say, “Forgive and forget. No big deal. The Iranians were waging a war on terrorism. It’s time to move on.”
But isn’t it reasonable to assume that some of those American men would be terribly angry, perhaps even vengeful, over what was done to them? Wouldn’t some of them jump at the chance to wreak vengeance for the seven years that were taken away from them without cause?
Cheney and the neocons might respond, “Well, they don’t have to wreak vengeance with terrorism. If they’ve been wronged, that’s what the courts are for. Let them sue and seek damages.”
Not so. The Bush administration took the position that whenever someone sues for wrongful detention, torture, sex abuse, or whatever under the government’s “war on terror,” the courts should not even consider the lawsuit at all because it would threaten national security. Unfortunately, that “state secrets” doctrine has been upheld by the federal courts.
Those who were hoping that President Obama’s election would bring “change” to such a policy had their hopes dashed this week when a Justice Department attorney told a federal appellate court that it was endorsing the Bush position, which seemed to have surprised even the judges.
Cheney’s fear of a nuclear and biological attack is also interesting. It’s obviously reminiscent of the paranoid mind with which he is afflicted, which everyone experienced during the infamous “mushroom cloud” scare, when Cheney was scaring the American people into believing that Saddam Hussein was about to attack the United States with nuclear and biological weapons.
The problem, however, is that paranoid people are in fact sometimes followed. Given that the U.S. government has continued to engaged in the same types of pro-empire, pro-intervention foreign policy that gave rise to the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the 9/11 attacks, terrorist blowback continues to be a very distinct possibility.
That is, since 9/11 the U.S. government has killed and maimed countless people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it continues to do so. The killing and maiming is not going to cease under Obama, given his steadfast determination to keep the occupations of both countries going for at least another year. There is also the unconditional financial and military aid that the U.S. government continues to furnish the Israeli government.
What better prescription for more terrorist blowback against the United States than that? In principle, the U.S. killing and maiming and U.S. foreign aid have been no different after 9/11 than before 9/11.
Meanwhile, the American people continue to innocently put their trust in their federal government, refusing to recognize that it is the policies of the government that have not only caused the problem but are also exacerbating it.
Of course, the principle is no different on the domestic scene, where Americans are innocently trusting their federal officials to extricate the nation from its economic woes, refusing to recognize that it’s the economic policies of the federal government that caused the problem and that are now exacerbating it.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Tear Down These Walls
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Among the fascinating aspects of the many crises facing America is the refusal of the statists to face an uncomfortable possibility — that it is their beloved welfare state and controlled economy that has failed. Instead, they blame their woes on everything but the welfare state and the controlled economy. Their solution, not surprisingly, is to call for more welfare, more regulations, more borrowing, and more spending.
Suppose a 3-pack-a-day smoker learns that he has lung cancer. He absolutely refuses to accept that his heavy smoking is responsible for his woes. The problem, he says, is the large period of time in which he isn’t sucking on a burning cigarette. His solution: He just needs to smoke more in order to cure his cancer.
That’s what the welfare-and-regulation statists, led by President Obama, are now doing. Refusing to believe that their beloved welfare state and regulated society might finally be reaching a tragic climax, they blame the problem on insufficient welfare, inadequate regulation, or the wrong people at the controls. The last thing they want to accept is that their entire paradigm itself is the problem.
Here’s a way to see the world the way a statist does. Imagine a box that is labeled “Welfare State/Regulated Society.” In that box, the government is empowered to take money from people and give it to other people. It is empowered to regulate the economic activities of the people. The government purports to take care of people, watch over them, and protect them from the vicissitudes of life.
Yet, people within the box get sick from Salmonella poisoning in peanut butter. Other people lose their life’s fortunes to scam artists. Others lose their money in the stock market. Banks and investment houses are going under. Automobile companies are faced with bankruptcy. People are losing their homes. Social Security is bankrupt. Healthcare costs are soaring. Grocery expenses are mounting. Most everyone is having trouble making ends meet.
This is what the statists call watching over people and taking care of them!
So, what do the statists in the welfare-state/regulated-economy box say? They say that all these woes are because they didn’t have enough welfare or enough regulations. Or that the welfare managers and regulators were asleep at the wheel.
Their solution: Reform the welfare state and the regulated economy by increasing the welfare and the regulations and by putting better people in public office. That’s what all the increased borrowing, spending, printing money, expanding credit, bailouts, economic stimuli, and new regulations are all about.
But if insufficient welfare and regulations are really the cause of the problem, doesn’t that nonetheless still reflect a failure of the statist paradigm? After all, they’ve been operating this paradigm for some 75 years. That’s a long time! During that time, they’ve had the power to implement any and all welfare schemes they’ve wanted. They’ve had the power to regulate the most minute economic aspects of people’s lives. They’ve had the power to create departments, agencies, and bureaus and staff them to their hearts’ content with the best and the brightest bureaucrats around.
So, why are all the crises? After some 75 years of welfare-state, regulated-society, weren’t we supposed to have arrived at nanny nirvana by now? Yet, all we see are crises everywhere we turn.
Outside the box is the alternative economic paradigm, the one on which our nation was founded and that provides the true solution — in fact, the only solution — to our nation’s economic woes. That paradigm is the free-market paradigm. The reason that this paradigm is outside the box, rather than in it, is that it does not purport to reform or improve the welfare state or the regulated economy. Instead, contending that the welfare state and the regulated economy are themselves the problem, it aims to dismantle the welfare, the regulations, and all the departments and agencies that administer them, sending all those bureaucrats into the private sector.
The free-market paradigm is one in which economic activity is entirely free of any government control. That’s why it’s called free market. It is a paradigm in which people are free to keep everything they earn to do what they want with their own money. It is a paradigm in which government is prohibited from taking care of people, providing for people, and protecting people from the vicissitudes of life.
Thus, the free-market paradigm has no income taxation, IRS, welfare, Social Security, Medicare, subsidies, grants, SEC, HUD, Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy, and others, DEA, paper money, or Federal Reserve. Under the free-market paradigm, the market (i.e., people) are free from interference by any and all government welfare and regulatory departments and agencies because such departments and agencies simply do not exist.
After 75 years of existing in the welfare-state, regulated-society box, America might finally be facing a perfect storm of crises arising from the nanny state. The question is: How bad do things have to get before Americans say “Enough is enough. Tear down the walls of this box and restore a free market to our land!”
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Immediately Withdraw from Afghanistan Too
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Permit me to make my proposal for Afghanistan: Get out. Now. No handwringing and no delays. President Obama should issue an immediate order that all U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan and return to the United States at once.
Look, they’ve had seven years to kill the terrorists. That’s longer than World War II. Longtime supporters of The Future of Freedom Foundation know that when George W. Bush declared his “war on terrorism” seven years ago, we warned that such a war would prove to be much like the drug war — that is, one that has no end. Who can now doubt that we were right? U.S. officials tell us that the war on terrorism in Afghanistan is just now getting a good start — after seven years of killing the terrorists!
How many terrorists have they killed in Afghanistan since they first invaded the country? How many terrorists did they start with? What percentage have they killed of that total? How many terrorists are left?
My hunch is that no one knows the answers to any of these questions. In fact, from the way they’re making things sound, there are more terrorists than ever in Afghanistan. Why else would President Obama be sending a large number of additional U.S. troops there?
Heck, I’ll bet they can’t even come up with a good definition of a terrorist in Afghanistan! Does it include, for example, people who are angry at the U.S. over the killing of friends and relatives by U.S. bombs dropped on Afghan wedding parties?
“But the terrorists will follow us home!” the neocons cry. Let’s carefully examine that nonsensical bromide.
First, it operates on the assumption that U.S. troops are a magnet and that the terrorists are iron filings. Not so. The terrorists are human beings with the power of exercising choices. If they want to disengage from battles with U.S. troops in Afghanistan and come to the United States to commit terrorist acts, they are fully capable of doing so. The presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan does not prevent the terrorists from making such a choice.
Second, let’s assume that the terrorists decided to “follow us home.” How exactly would they do that? By loading onto terrorist transport ships and terrorist transport planes and following the U.S. transport planes and ships to the United States? That’s ridiculous. The terrorists don’t have transport ships and planes.
The worst that could happen is, say, a couple hundred terrorists making their way into the United States. Sure, they could blow up some buildings but the possibility that there could be a conquest of the United States, with the terrorists taking over the presidency, the Congress, the courts, the IRS, and all the state governments, and overcoming all those millions of Americans who have been buying all those guns and ammo is nonexistent. Again, however, those 200 or so terrorists could come here anyway despite the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Third, by exiting the country, the U.S. military will no longer be dropping bombs on Afghan wedding parties and others, which would immediately reduce the incentive for new recruits to join the terrorists. The reason that the ranks of the terrorists are larger than they were seven years ago is because the U.S. military has killed lots of people who had nothing to do with the terrorists, especially all those people in the wedding parties that have been bombed. That sort of thing tends to make people angry and vengeful. While it’s true that the terrorists could still come to the United States and conduct terrorist attacks after a U.S. withdrawal, at least the ranks of the terrorists will no longer be continuously swelled by the bombing of Afghan wedding parties and others unconnected to the terrorists.
“But the Taliban could regain control of Afghanistan” the neocons cry. But that’s empire talk. Who cares whether a particular regime likes the U.S. government or not? All over the world, there are regimes that hate the U.S. government, some of which are brutal and tyrannical, and that, in turn, are hated by the U.S. government. North Korea. Iran. Venezuela. Cuba. Life goes on, even when the U.S. government is unsuccessful in effecting regime change in such countries and installing a regime that is friendly to the U.S. government.
“But the Taliban could give sanctuary to the terrorists” the neocons cry. Yeah, and so could every other country whose government hates the U.S. government. And don’t forget: the U.S. government never provided even a scintilla of evidence showing complicity between the Taliban government and al Qaeda to commit the 9/11 attacks. In fact, didn’t most of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, whose government is friendly to the U.S. government?
An immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan would limit the U.S. government to dealing with the threat of terrorism here at home and would put a stop to what it has been doing to perpetually fuel the threat of terrorism — e.g., dropping bombs on wedding parties and others unconnected to terrorism in Afghanistan.
Finally, the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan (and Iraq) would have the additional bonus of strengthening the U.S. economy by immediately reducing federal borrowing and expenditures by hundreds of billions of dollars. Given that out-of-control federal spending is threatening our nation with bankruptcy and ruin, a major reduction in federal spending would be a good thing.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Christian Support for Killing Iraqis
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Among the things about the Iraq War that I have never been able to understand is how American Christians have been able, in good conscience, to support this war. After all, no one can deny that neither Iraq nor the Iraqi people ever attacked the United States. That makes the United States the aggressor — the attacker — in this particular conflict. How could American Christians support the killing of Iraqis in such a war of aggression? How could they reconcile this with God’s sacred commandment, Thou shalt not murder.
One possibility is that Americans initially viewed the Iraq War as one of self-defense. Placing their trust in their president and vice-president, they came to the conclusion that Iraq was about to unleash WMDs on American cities. Therefore, they concluded, America had the right to defend itself from this imminent attack, much as an individual has the moral right to use deadly force to defend his life from someone who is trying to murder him.
But once the WMDs failed to materialize, American Christians did not seem to engage in any remorse or regret over all the Iraqis who had been killed in the invasion. It was all marked up as simply an honest mistake. At the same time, hardly anyone called for a formal investigation into whether the president and the vice president had intentionally misled Americans into supporting the war based on bogus exaggerations of the WMD threat.
After the WMDs failed to materialize, American Christians had an option: They could have called for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops. Instead, they did the exact opposite. They supported the continued occupation of Iraq, with full knowledge that U.S. troops would have to continue killing Iraqis in order to solidify the occupation.
That’s when Christians began supporting a new rationale for killing Iraqis: that any Iraqi who resisted the U.S. invasion or occupation was a terrorist and, therefore, okay to kill. Since terrorists were bad people, the argument went, it was okay to support the killing of Iraqis who were resisting the invasion and occupation of their country.
Yet, rarely would any Christian ask himself the important, soul-searching questions: Why didn’t Iraqis have the moral right to resist the invasion and occupation of their country, especially if that invasion and occupation had been based on a bogus principle (i.e., the WMD threat)? Why did their resistance convert them into terrorists? Why did U.S. troops have the moral and religious right to kill people who were defending their country from invasion and occupation?
Instead, people in Christian churches all across the land simply just kept “supporting the troops.” I suspect part of the reasoning has to do with the mindset that is inculcated in public schools all across the land — that in war, it’s “our team” vs. “their team,” and that Americans have a moral duty to support “our team,” regardless of the facts.
Among the most fascinating rationales for supporting the killing of Iraqis that American Christians have relied upon has been the mathematical argument. It goes like this: Saddam Hussein would have killed a larger number of Iraqis than the U.S. government has killed in the invasion and occupation. Therefore, the argument goes, it’s okay to support the invasion and occupation, which have killed countless Iraqis.
But under Christian doctrine, does God really provide for a mathematical exception to his commandment against killing? Let’s see how such reasoning would be applied here at home.
Let’s assume that the D.C. area is besieged by two snipers, who are killing people indiscriminately. Let’s assume that they’re killing people at the rate of 5 per month. That would mean that at the end of the year, they would have killed 60 people.
One day, the cops learn that the two snipers are parked in a highway rest area. There are also 25 other people there, all Americans, men, women, and children, and all innocent.
The Pentagon offers to drop a bomb on the parking lot, which would definitely snuff out the lives of the snipers. The problem is that it would also snuff out the lives of the other 25 people.
Under Christian principles, would it be okay to drop the bomb? I would hope that most Christians would say, No! As Christians, we cannot kill innocent people even if by doing so, we rid the world of those snipers. If we cannot catch the snipers except by dropping the bomb, then we simply have to let them get away. God does not provide a mathematical justification for killing innocent people.
Yet, isn’t that precisely the mathematical analysis that has been used by Christians to justify their support for the killing of Iraqis. What’s the difference?
In their blind support for “our team” and for “supporting the troops” in Iraq, American Christians seem to have forgotten an important point about government and God: When the laws or actions of one’s government’s contradict the laws of God, the Christian has but one proper course of action — to leave behind the laws of man and to follow the laws of God.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Why I Rejected the Welfare State
by Jacob G. Hornberger
One of the justifications that liberals give for their support of the socialistic welfare state is their purported love for the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. Having been raised a Democrat (Republicans were rare in South Texas in the 1950s and 60s), I bought into this rationale. After I returned to my hometown of Laredo, Texas, in 1975 to practice law, I was a devoted liberal and Democrat, even serving on the Legal Aid Board of Trustees and as the ACLU representative in Laredo.
One day, however, a simple but profoundly disturbing question hit me. If Democrats really loved the poor, needy, and disadvantaged as much as they said they did, how could they reconcile that with their mistreatment of Mexican illegal aliens?
After all, it would be virtually impossible to find a better example of the poor than illegal aliens. Their lives in Mexico were mired in poverty, which is the reason that they were coming to the United States. They were looking for work in order to make a bit of money, in most cases to send back to their families to help them survive.
I thought: What better way to help the poor than to let them help themselves with labor and by entering into mutually beneficial relationships with rich Americans? Why are we jailing them? Why are we deporting them? Why are we punishing them?
Don’t forget that from 1960 to 1968, there was a Democratic president in office — John Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson, and a Democratic Congress. Both Kennedy and Johnson portrayed themselves as lovers of the poor. Johnson even declared a “war on poverty,” which he used to greatly expand the welfare state with his Great Society programs.
So, why mistreat genuinely poor people? Why not fight to lift the laws against illegal entry, much as Democrats were fighting to end segregation and Jim Crow? (At that time, hiring illegal aliens had not yet been made illegal.)
The answer finally came to me: The so-called love for the poor that Democrats were using to justify the welfare state was all a crock. A lie. I finally realized that it was actually about the money and the power that came with federal largess. Lots of public officials were making big money off the Great Society federal funds that were pouring into Laredo, which Johnson had named as one of his Model Cities in his war on poverty. And federal funds provided a means to make lots of voters dependent and grateful.
Laredo’s mayor and LBJ were tight with each other. During the 1960 presidential campaign, the mayor had led a local delegation to the LBJ Ranch in Johnson City, Texas, to attend a campaign barbecue. My father was part of the delegation, and he took me along. I shook hands with Johnson and told him I was doing my best to get votes for him and Kennedy in Laredo. My father once told me that sometime after Johnson became president, he telephoned our local mayor to tell him that the federal spigots were now open, especially for Laredo.
Unfortunately, most Americans have bought into the love-the-poor rationale on which the welfare state is based. If only they understood that the welfare state actually constitutes a tremendous attack on the poor owing to its massive assault on capital. It is capital that makes people more productive. It is increases in productivity, not welfare, that bring about raises in wages and increases in standards of living. It is savings that brings into existence capital. With its massive assault on income and its discouragement of savings, the welfare state impedes the growth of productivity and, therefore, the ability of the poor to escape the bonds of poverty.
Moreover, once I came to the realization that the welfare state was based on coercion, I realized that there is no way I could in good conscience support it. This is a point lost on many American Christians. They think that when they support the welfare state, they are supporting God’s love of the poor. Nothing could be further from the truth. Assistance given the poor means nothing when it comes from coercion. It only means something in a spiritual or religious sense when it is voluntary — when it comes from the choice a person is making as part of the exercise of his free will. In fact, the forcible taking of money by Peter to help Paul violates God’s law against stealing.
The welfare state has brought nothing but Big Spending, Big Corruption, Big Hypocrisy, Big Immorality, and even Big Poverty, not to mention Big Government. It deserves to be cast into the dustbin of history. If only Americans would come to their senses and restore the free-market principles on which America was founded.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The Corruption of the Welfare State
by Jacob G. Hornberger
People are shocked — shocked! — over the revelation that Democrats and liberals do their best to keep from paying taxes.
Come on! Give me a break! How long have we libertarians been pointing out that liberals love being good … as long as it’s with money that has been forcibly taken from others rather than with their own money? Hasn’t the core principle of the welfare state always been the forcible taking of money from some people in order to give it to other people and then proclaiming everyone as saints?
Let’s not forget that conservatives aren’t any different. Their love of the welfare state rivals that of the liberals. Isn’t that what George W. Bush’s plan to impose compassionate conservatism was all about before he embraced his much-vaunted war on terrorism as the centerpiece of his presidency?
Through the skillful use of terror and force, the IRS coerces people into sending their hard-earned money to Washington. Then the money is handed over to Congress, which hands it over to the welfare agencies and departments, whose bureaucrats distribute them to the poor. And then everyone is hailed a saint, a lover of the poor, a compassionate, caring, selfless person. The taxpayer. The voter. The bureaucrats. The congressmen. The president. Everyone is a saint in the welfare state because everyone plays a role in helping the poor.
And who are the poor? Well, good examples of the poor include Lehman Brothers, AIG, and all those banks receiving welfare bailout money. Okay, maybe they were once rich, but that was before they made those bad investment decisions. Now they’re poor. How about those auto companies? Aren’t they poor after having failed to build cars that satisfy consumers?
According to the welfare statists, those welfare bailouts had nothing to do with putting hard-earned taxpayer money into the pockets of big-business cronies who make big campaign contributions. They’re all about just helping the poor.
Have you noticed all the shock and outrage over the big bonuses that the bailed-out firms paid to their employees after receiving their bailout money? The welfare statists are crying, “Shame!”
Shame? Are they kidding? These firms — and their lobbyists — have proven to be extremely successful in playing the welfare-state game. When firms in the free market do well by satisfying consumers, they reward themselves with big bonuses. Why would it surprise anyone that firms who do well by satisfying politicians in the plunderbund system would feel the same way?
After all, don’t people hail congressmen who get their hands on more than their fair share of the loot that they bring back to their congressional district? Don’t editorial boards on practically every mainstream newspaper across the land use this as their primary measure of whether a congressman is effective? Don’t congressmen announce their grants with much fanfare and publicity, especially at election time? When was the last time such welfare largess was considered shameful?
And let’s not forget the religious aspects of the welfare state. Every Sunday Americans go to church, where they hear things like the importance of loving one’s neighbor and helping the poor, which they then pervert into a religious devotion to the welfare state.
God’s method is based on free will — that is, the freedom of people to choose, which encompasses the right of people to say no. That’s not good enough for American Christian welfare statists. According to them, God made a mistake in trusting people with that much freedom. Everyone knows, they tell us, that if the welfare state didn’t force people to help others through such welfare programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, subsidies, bailouts, and public schooling, no one would help others. That’s why people need to be forced to do so, or so they tell us.
And heaven forbid that anyone condemns the welfare state idol. In America, that’s considered heresy. For example, while the welfare state is cracking at the seams with ever-increasing crises after seventy years of existence, we’re all supposed to blame it on the profiteers, the speculators, free enterprise, deregulation, big business, big oil, OPEC, the Muslims, the terrorists, the communists, the illegal aliens, or whomever. Why one liberal is even blaming the economic crises on … get this … libertarianism! Hey, it doesn’t matter who the scapegoat is. All that matters is that the responsibility for the crises never be laid at the feet of the welfare-state idol itself.
As we experience the ever-growing financial and economic crises and witness the hypocrisy and seamy side of the welfare state, it might well be that we are witnessing the death throes of socialism in America. This is not something to lament but rather something to celebrate. It would remind us that God has indeed created a consistent universe, one in which evil and immoral means produce bad results, even when done through the idol of the welfare state.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
DiLorenzo’s Great Economic Liberty Lecture
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Last night the speaker at the Economic Liberty Lecture Series, which The Future of Freedom Foundation co-sponsors with the student-run George Mason University Econ Society, was Thomas DiLorenzo, whose most recent book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution—and What It Means for Americans Today, which was the focus of Tom’s talk.
Tom, who teaches economics at Loyola University in Baltimore, is one of the libertarian movement’s most noted economists. He is an adherent of the Austrian school of economic thought and serves as a senior faculty member at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Among his ten other books are The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe, and How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present.
About 85 GMU students and FFF supporters listened to a fascinating presentation, one in which Tom traced the ongoing debate between the advocates of freedom and free markets and the advocates of statism and central planning all the way back to similar debates that were taking during the founding period of the Republic. On the side of economic liberty were people like Thomas Jefferson and on the side of statism and central planning were people like Alexander Hamilton.
As Tom pointed out, and as we all know, the debate goes on today. The statists continue to hurl our nation toward bankruptcy and ruin while we free-market advocates continue doing our best to save our nation from their statism. The big problem libertarians face, as Tom pointed out, is the economic ignorance among regular Americans as well as the blind trust they place in the lovers of power and big government.
Among the many interesting points that Tom made was concerning the year 1913, which was a watershed year in American history. Reflecting the bad direction that America was embarking upon, that was the year that the U.S. ratified the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments and established the Federal Reserve System. Among the interesting statistics Tom pointed out was that today’s U.S. dollar is worth about 3 cents compared to the value of the dollar in 1913, compliments of the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve.
Everyone seemed to have a great time. We served loads of pizza and soft drinks before the talk and lots of delicious cookies following the talk. Then we showed The Americanization of Emily, a great antiwar film from 1964 starring James Garner and Julie Andrews.
We’ll soon be posting a video of Tom’s talk on our Internet Classroom Website. When we do so, there will be a link in our FFF Email Update. I highly recommend watching this great talk. It would be difficult to find a better comparison between the intellectual battle that libertarians are facing today with the battle that our freedom-loving counterparts were waging at the inception of our republic.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Americans’ Faith in Socialism
by Jacob G. Hornberger
One of the distinguishing characteristics of 19th-century Americans and modern-day Americans revolves around the issue of faith. Our ancestors placed their faith in freedom and God. Americans of today place their trust in socialism and the state.
Consider two of the crown jewels of the socialistic welfare state: public schooling and Social Security.
Today’s Americans have grown up under a socialist educational system, that is, one that is controlled by the state. They cannot imagine life without it. The minute you suggest that education should be turned over entirely to the free market, the response is immediate: “The poor would never be educated. Parents don’t care. There would be no standards. Our society would plunge into ignorance.”
Like I say, Americans today trust socialism and the state. They do not trust freedom and the free market. What better proof than their unwavering commitment to public schooling and their steadfast opposition to a free market in education?
Consider Social Security. Having grown up under this socialistic system, Americans cannot fathom life without it. They are absolutely convinced that if Social Security were repealed, the elderly would starve to death. Thus, they continue to place their unwavering faith in the government to continue providing for old people.
It is impossible to overstate how different the political and economic philosophy of our ancestors was compared to that of modern-day Americans. Our ancestors didn’t have public schooling and Social Security, and they didn’t want them. They believed in freedom and hated socialism. They believed that people should be free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth and then decide what to do with it. They felt that no one should be forced to share his wealth with others. They placed their faith in themselves, in freedom, in free markets, and in God. Taking care of themselves and others was considered a purely voluntary matter. Self-reliance, can-do, and voluntary charity were the hallmarks of American society. The thought that the state should force anyone to be educated or to take care of others was anathema to Americans.
How did people get educated? By seeking the truth and educating themselves, each in his own way. Families decided the educational vehicle best suited for each of their children. Our American ancestors would never have permitted the state to force them to send their children into government institutions. Education, like religion, was considered none of the state’s business.
How did old people get by? By saving toward retirement or relying on the beneficence of their children or others. Remember: Unlike today’s Americans, our ancestors didn’t believe in income taxation. They kept everything they earned. Thus, they had more money by which to save for retirement and to help their parents with financial assistance. That’s what family values were all about. Honoring one’s father and mother was considered God’s business, not the business of the state.
Today’s Americans look at things very differently. To them, trusting socialism and the state is considered at least as important as trusting freedom and God, if not more so. That’s why they see nothing wrong with using government force to take money from people to pay for children’s schooling or to fund old people’s retirement. Of course, it never occurs to people that faith in force and the state negates faith in freedom and God.
Every Sunday church-going Americans exhort God to save America from its many woes. Why God should answer such prayers when Americans obstinately continue to put their faith in socialism and the state rather than in freedom and God?
