Friday, October 31, 2008
Drug-War Violence Is Spreading to Texas
by Jacob G. Hornberger
According to the Associated Press, South Texans might soon be experiencing the same type of drug-war violence that people on the Mexican side of the border have been experiencing. As most everyone knows, the drug war has produced unbelievable violence in Mexico, especially along the border. Murder, kidnapping, beheading, and torture have become routine. Friends in my hometown of Laredo, Texas, tell me that they don’t dare cross the border into Nuevo Laredo anymore, for fear of being kidnapped or killed or caught in the crossfire of drug gangs fighting for turf.
The Associated Press is reporting that the Mexican drug gangs are stockpiling weapons and recruiting gang members in preparation for violent confrontations with law enforcement on the South Texas side of the border. The equipment includes assault rifles, bulletproof vests, and even grenades.
For their part, U.S. law enforcement agents are saying that they’re not about to be intimidated by the drug cartels. They’re getting ready for confrontation. The sheriff of Hidalgo County, Texas, recently issued his deputies high-powered rifles and authorized them to return fire.
If the drug gangsters begin committing the same acts of violence against state and federal government officials on the U.S. side of the border that they’ve been committing on the Mexican side of the border, everyone should be prepared for the same types of bromides that are used to justify the war on terrorism. “The violence has nothing to do with drug prohibition.” “The drug dealers hate us for our freedom and values.” “We can’t surrender to the drug dealers.” “Mexico is the central front in the war on drugs.” “The Mexicans are a dangerous people.” “The Mexicans are trying to recapture lands that the U.S. government stole from them in the Mexican War.” “Don’t blame America for drug-war violence.”
For years, drug warriors have argued that if only the government would finally crack down in the war on drugs, it would be “won.” Well, the Mexican government, including its military, has cracked down viciously in the war on drugs, and things have only gotten worse. And now it seems that the results of the drug-war crackdown in Mexico are about to spill over into South Texas.
There is one and only one solution to all this. It’s the same solution that was used to get rid of the booze-related violence during Prohibition. Legalize, legalize, legalize. The legalization of drugs — the end of the drug war — would bring an immediate end to drug-war violence because it would put the drug gangs out of business immediately. That’s what the legalization of alcohol accomplished — the end of Prohibition-related violence.
The problem is that ending the drug war would also mean that drug law-enforcement agents would no longer be needed, just as booze agents like Eliot Ness were no longer needed after Prohibition was ended.
Perhaps that’s the reason that both drug gangs and drug law-enforcement agents are among the two foremost opponents of ending the war on drugs.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
No Habeas Corpus in Iraq
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The U.S. government’s incarceration of 17,000 Iraqis without charges confirms why the Framers included the guarantee of habeas corpus within the Constitution.
While the Framers used the Constitution to call the federal government into existence, they recognized an important fact — that the greatest threat to the rights and freedoms of the American people was the very federal government the Constitution was calling into existence.
In their urge to look upon the federal government as their savior, protector, and benefactor, all too many modern-day Americans fail to realize that important point — that the biggest threat to our rights and freedoms is not terrorists, communists, illegal aliens, Muslims, and financial crises but rather the federal government itself, including the U.S. military, the CIA, and the NSA.
Chief among the threats that the Framers were concerned about was that federal officials would arrest and jail Americans indefinitely without filing any criminal charges against them. To guard against this threat, the Framers made sure that the Constitution guaranteed the American people the right of habeas corpus.
Without habeas corpus, there is nothing a person can do to challenge his imprisonment. He must simply languish in jail until government officials decide to release him. If they decide never to release him, there is nothing he can do about it, not even if he is being mistreated, abused, or tortured. Demands for a court hearing, a trial, or for an attorney will fall upon deaf ears. No matter how innocent he might be, the prisoner must simply resign himself to remaining in jail for as long as his captors wish him to remain in jail, possibly for the rest of his life.
With the right of habeas corpus, a person can file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus with a federal judge. The judge orders the government to produce the person and show cause as to why he is being held. If the government cannot justify the detention with competent evidence, the judge orders his release. The government must comply with the order, on pain of contempt for refusing to do so. (If the government ignores the contempt order, that signals the complete breakdown of constitutional order, the arrival of complete dictatorship, and the possibility of revolution.)
Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, federal officials have arrested and incarcerated some 100,000 people, most of them without any criminal charges. Over the years, officials have released some and continued to detain others. The decision to release or detain has been based entirely on the discretion of federal officials.
Since the Iraqis have no right of habeas corpus, they have no ability to challenge their detention. Every Iraqi is subject to being arrested at any time for whatever reason or for no reason at all. The reason is irrelevant. All that matters is that the power to arrest and incarcerate people is total, and there is absolutely nothing any prisoner can do about it. He cannot go to court to seek his release, even if he has done absolutely nothing wrong. He must simply languish in jail indefinitely and hope that U.S. officials ultimately decide to release him. His life and liberty are totally subject to the whims and discretion of U.S. officials.
The U.S. government’s arrest and indefinite incarceration of tens of thousands of Iraqis shows why the Framers included the right of habeas corpus in the Constitution — because of their belief that in the absence of constitutional restraints, including habeas corpus, federal officials would be doing to Americans what they’re doing to Iraqis.
In an era in which U.S. officials are increasingly ignoring constitutional constraints, including the declaration of war requirement, the due process of law guarantee, the protection from warrantless searches and seizures, and the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, Americans would be wise to ponder why the Framers used the Constitution, including habeas corpus, to protect them from the enormous threat to their rights and freedoms posed by the federal government.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The Market Redistributes Wealth
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Given all the political talk about socialism and the redistribution of wealth, we would be remiss if we didn’t notice how effective the market process is in redistributing wealth.
The rationale for the progressive income tax and the estate tax is that such taxes provide the federal government with the means to redistribute wealth. The notion is that in capitalism, the rich only get richer while the poor get poorer. The idea behind antitrust laws is the same — big businesses only get bigger and they have “monopoly” power over consumers.
I’ll bet you’d have a difficult time convincing executives in Merrill Lynch, Wachovia, Citicorp, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, General Motors, and Chrysler of the validity of those principles.
Let’s go back, say, five years. Wouldn’t your standard socialist have claimed that those companies were so big and powerful that they could never go under?
Yet, look at the situation today. Those big, powerful companies have either gone under or are in danger of going under. Some of them are even looking to the federal government to extricate them from their financial difficulties. If they were so big and powerful — so monopolistic — how come they’re not still big and powerful today?
The fact is that the market process is an extremely effective redistributionist force. No matter how big and successful a company becomes, if it makes the wrong investment decisions or it fails to satisfy consumers, it is in danger of going out of business. Each firm, no matter how much market share it has been able to capture, must constantly be on its toes. One big mistake or several small mistakes can cause massive losses. Or just a simple shift of consumer tastes can cause a big company to become a little company in a very short period of time.
Here are the Top 10 Companies in the Fortune 500 in 1960:
1. General Motors
2. Exxon Mobil
3. Ford Motor
4. General Electric
5. U.S. Steel
6. Mobil
7. Gulf Oil
8. Texaco
9. Chrysler
10. Esmark
In 1960, those companies would have been considered by many to be “monopolies” or “oligopolies” or at least big, powerful companies that were immune from market forces.
Yet, take a guess at how many of those companies are in the 2008 Top 10. Only three of them: Exxon Mobil, General Motors, and General Electric. If the other ones were immune from market forces, how come they’re not still in the Top 10?
Also, consider those situations where a tremendously successful businessman dies and leaves his wealth to his children. If the children do not possess the same business acumen as their father, it is quite possible that they will lose the wealth that has been passed onto them. Even if they are able to hold onto the wealth, the same principle applies to the grandchildren. There’s an old saying: “From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.”
Americans have been sold a bill of goods with respect to the income tax and the estate tax. Socialists convinced them that such taxes were necessary to redistribute the wealth from rich to poor. Setting aside the moral implications involved in taking money from one person in order to give it to another person, all that such taxes have accomplished is to centralize power in Washington, D.C., by enabling the political class to put their hands on massive amounts of privately produced wealth to dole out to friends, supporters, and cronies.
Americans don’t need income taxes and estate taxes to redistribute wealth. The market process, which is based on the moral principle of leaving people free to accumulate wealth, redistributes such wealth quite effectively.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
What About Syria’s and Pakistan’s Sovereignty?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
President Bush has been making a big hullabaloo over the fact that the Iraqi regime has not signed on to an agreement that would authorize U.S. forces to remain in Iraq after December 31. Bush says that if an agreement is not signed between him and the Iraqi government, he will cease military operations in Iraq, keeping his military forces inside U.S. bases within Iraq. Bush says that “the law” and “Iraqi sovereignty” would require him to do this, even though he has yet to clarify how “the law” and “Iraqi sovereignty” permit him to keep any forces in Iraq, whether inside U.S. bases or not, if there is no agreement signed extending Bush’s occupation of the country.
In any event, apparently “the law” and the concept of “sovereignty” don’t apply to Syria and Pakistan. Those are two independent countries that Bush’s military forces have recently attacked, killing scores of Pakistanis and Syrians.
Bush says that “the law of self-defense” authorizes his military attacks against these two sovereign and independent countries. He says that people who are trying to evict Bush’s forces from Iraq are using these two countries as bases of operations.
There is at least one big problem, however, with Bush’s interpretation of “the law”: In Iraq Bush is the aggressor — the attacker — not the defender. Iraq is the defender. Therefore, as the attacker Bush is precluded from claiming self-defense when the defender attempts to defend itself.
Assume that an armed robber shoots at you. You have the right of self-defense. You have the right to fire back at the robber. When you fire back, the law does not entitle the robber to claim “self-defense” when he fires at you again. Since he was the one who initiated the attack, only his victim has the right of self-defense.
The principle is no different with respect to nations. Neither the Iraqi government nor the Iraqi people ever attacked the United States. Instead, Bush and his army attacked Iraq. That makes the U.S. the attacker, the aggressor. Iraq is the defender.
Was Bush’s attack legal? Of course not. For one thing, wars of aggression were punished as war crimes at Nuremberg. Second, Bush never secured a congressional declaration of war, which the U.S. Constitution requires. That makes Bush’s war on Iraq illegal under our form of government. Third, the UN Charter, to which the U.S. is a signatory, makes attacks on other countries illegal.
Thus, since Bush attacked Iraq, only Iraq can claim self-defense, not Bush. Moreover, the principle is the same with respect to Bush’s recent attacks on Syria and Pakistan. Not only is Bush’s violation of the sovereignty of those nations as illegal as when he violated Iraqi sovereignty with his initial invasion, Bush’s self-defense justification is as faulty and fallacious as an armed robber’s claim that he was defending himself from his victim’s attempt to defend himself.
The fact is that the Bush regime is going to do whatever it wants to do. In Bush’s mind, whatever he does is legal and moral because it’s all for “freedom” or in accordance with some plan of God. Thus, all the hullabaloo about the necessity for the Iraqis to sign an agreement extending Bush’s occupation of the country is just smokescreen. Bush obviously wants a cover for his continued occupation of the country. But if the Iraqi regime fails to sign an agreement by the December 31 deadline, that’s not going to stop Bush from employing his army any way he wants. That’s what he’s doing with Syria and Pakistan, and that’s what he will continue doing with Iraq. And it will all be legal, agreement or no agreement, because in Bush’s mind whatever the U.S. government does is automatically legal.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Interventionism, Not Muslims, Is the Problem
by Jacob G. Hornberger
One of the popular post-9/11 sentiments has been the one that holds that Muslims are bent on conquering the world. The notion is that Muslims hate Christianity and Western freedom and values and that such hatred is rooted in the Koran and stretches back centuries. Thus, the United States has been drawn, reluctantly, into a war against Muslims. That’s why U.S. forces are in Iraq and Afghanistan, the argument goes — to defend our freedoms by killing Muslims over there before they get over here and kill us.
I sometimes wonder whether the people who have this mindset have reflected on the ramifications of their belief.
For example, if Muslims in general are at war with the United States, then why shouldn’t Americans be out killing Muslims here in the United States? After all, when a nation is at war, isn’t it permissible to kill the enemy? Isn’t that what war is all about?
The reason that proponents of this view don’t start killing Muslims here in the United States is very simple: Deep down, they know that the killers will be indicted by their very own government for murder. They will then be prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to serve time in a federal penitentiary for murder.
Let’s carry the ramifications overseas.
If the United States is at war against Muslims, then why not start with ousting the Muslim regime in Iraq and installing a Christian or Jewish regime in its place? Yes, I said Iraq. Believe it or not, the U.S. invasion of that country succeeded in installing an Islamic regime, a regime which, by the way, has closely aligned itself with the radical Islamic regime in Iran.
A second-choice candidate for invasion, occupation, and regime change would be Kuwait, another country run by an Islamic regime. Since Saddam Hussein’s forces were easily able to conquer the country, it should be a piece of cake for U.S. forces.
A problem arises however. Once the United States effects regime change in Iraq and Kuwait, installing Christian or Jewish regimes, what about the millions of Muslims in those two countries? Sure, their governments would no longer be Islamic but what about the millions of people living there? Wouldn’t they still be the enemy to Christians and the West? Wouldn’t they still be bent on world conquest? What should be done with them? Perpetual incarceration in concentration camps? Mass executions of all Muslims?
And what about Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and all the other countries in which people are predominantly Muslim. You know — the Islamic countries that are the recipients of billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid. Does the U.S. government invade those countries too, effect regime change, and incarcerate or execute the millions of Muslims living there?
During the Cold War, people used to say the same thing about the communists that we’re now hearing about the Muslims. The communists were coming to get us, and some Americans were even looking under their beds for communists. In fact, 58,000 American men were sacrificed in Southeast Asia because U.S. officials claimed that Vietnam was the central front in the war on communism. With a military loss in Vietnam, the dominoes would start falling, they told us, with the final domino being the United States.
Yet, the U.S. did lose in Vietnam, and yet the dominoes didn’t fall. It turned out that those 58,000 American men died for nothing. Today, U.S. officials even travel to Vietnam as tourists. Americans are freely trading with the people who were supposedly going to invade the United States and take over the IRS and the public schools.
Ironically, throughout the Cold War there was nary a mention of the Islamic threat to the West, even though proponents of that view today claim that the Muslim threat stretches back many centuries. In fact, the irony of ironies is that during the Cold War the U.S. government even entered into partnerships with Muslims, including Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and various Islamic regimes in the Middle East. No one accused U.S. officials of treason for entering into agreements with the enemy.
It’s true that Muslims have fundamental differences with Christians and the West, and vice versa. But those types of differences ordinarily do not cause people to kill people who have different values. Most Muslims are no different from Americans in the sense that they simply wish to live their lives in peace, practice their faith, raise their families, and be left alone. They don’t like it when some foreign government tries to interfere with their way of life, just as Americans don’t like it when some foreign government does that to them.
What all too many Americans, unfortunately, will not permit themselves to see is that that is precisely what the U.S. government did in the Middle East, especially when the Soviet communist bugaboo evaporated in 1989. As a result of U.S. interventionism in the Middle East, especially the interventionism that resulted in large number of deaths (e.g., the sanctions and the no-fly zones), what began as differences in values rose to the level of anger and rage that induced some people to seek vengeance through violence.
Thus, rather than ceasing its policy of interventionism after 9/11, which is what the U.S. government should have done even while pursuing the perpetrators through criminal-justice means, it did the very worst thing possible — it continued and even expanded its policy of interventionism in the hope of killing those whose differences with America’s values had risen to the level of rage as a result of U.S. interventionism. Not surprisingly, that only fueled more anger and rage.
So, what should the U.S. government do now? It should do what it should have done after 9/11: Exit Afghanistan and Iraq and the entire Middle East. Bring all the troops home.
Would this quell the anger and rage against the United States? Not all of it but certainly much of it. As I said above, most people simply want to live their lives in peace.
After all, look at Vietnam, where the U.S. government killed more than a million people. Once U.S. forces exited the country, the Vietnamese left the United States alone.
While there is the ever-present risk that there will still be some people who will still want vengeance, their numbers will be relatively small. While they will constitute an ever-present threat of terrorism, that’s the price that must be paid for past interventions. What’s important to note is that continued interventionism can never solve that problem — it can only make it worse.
When governments go awry, it is up to the citizenry to straighten out their course. The problem is not Muslims or Islam. The problem is the U.S. government and, specifically, its foreign policy of interventionism. Bringing an end to that policy will restore a sense of peace and harmony not only to the American people but also the people of the world.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, October 24, 2008
The Pentagon’s Bizarre “Judicial” System
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Pentagon’s legal response to Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld’s crisis of conscience shows, once again, what a farce the “judicial proceeding” is that it has established at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Vandeveld, a military prosecutor and a devout Catholic, came to the realization that he could no longer participate in the Pentagon’s system, partly because the military was violating longstanding ethical rules that require the prosecution to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense.
In response to Vandeveld’s charges, the Pentagon decided to dismiss the charges against the defendants. Ordinarily one might think that the defendants would consider a dismissal of charges against them to be a good thing, Not so in the bizarre land of Guantanamo Bay. The dismissal of the charges only serves to continue the indefinite confinement of the defendants.
Let’s compare two systems: the American judicial system and the Pentagon’s “judicial” system in Cuba.
In the U.S. system, the Bill of Rights guarantees the accused a speedy trial. The reason that the American people required that the speedy-trial guarantee be included in the Bill of Rights was to prevent the federal government from doing precisely what the Pentagon is doing to people in Cuba — imprisoning them indefinitely. Without such a guarantee, the government could arrest, incarcerate, and charge people with crimes but then never bring the case to trial, leaving them to languish indefinitely in jail.
In the American system, the prosecution cannot dismiss an indictment without the permission of the presiding federal judge, whose lifetime appointment makes him independent of executive-branch control. The judge can refuse to grant the government’s motion to dismiss or he can grant it “with prejudice,” which means that the government is prohibited from ever charging the defendant with those particular crimes again.
Consider, for example, the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a so-called enemy combatant who is being held in the same dungeon in South Carolina that Americans Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi were also imprisoned as “enemy combatants.” Al-Marri began as an ordinary criminal defendant in federal district court. On the eve of trial, the Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the charges so that they could turn him over to the Pentagon for treatment as an “enemy combatant. The judge granted the motion but “with prejudice,” meaning that if the Supreme Court were to reject the “enemy combatant” doctrine, the government would be precluded from re-filing the original criminal charges against al-Marri. With his dismissal “with prejudice,” the presiding judge was protecting al-Marri’s right to a speedy trial by effectively saying to the prosecutors, “Try him now or never try him again.”
In the Pentagon’s system at Guantanamo, everyone is considered an “enemy combatant” and a criminal defendant at the same time. As criminals they are subjected to one of the most bizarre “judicial” systems that have ever been invented, one whose principles, ironically, are exactly opposite to those in the American system.
The prisoners, for example, are incarcerated indefinitely, with no guarantee of a speedy trial or any trial at all. That’s not to say that there isn’t a trapping of a “judicial” system. Defendants are charged with crimes, for example, mostly crimes pertaining to terrorism, but there’s no requirement that the trial ever be held. Even when a trial is scheduled, on the eve of trial the prosecutors can simply have the charges dismissed, with the intent of re-filing them at some indefinite time in the future. Since the judges are military personnel answerable to their superiors in the Pentagon, they generally go along with what the prosecutors want, including granting their motions to dismiss “without prejudice” to their filing them sometime in the future.
Perhaps most bizarrely, even if the accused is acquitted, which is an unlikely prospect given that the jurors are also military personnel, the Pentagon still doesn’t have to release him, unlike the American system where an acquittal results in the immediate release of the defendant. Under the Pentagon’s bizarre “judicial” system, the acquittal of an accused only affects his status as a “criminal defendant,” not his status as an “enemy combatant.”
We should never forget why the Pentagon established its prison camp in Cuba — for the precise purpose of avoiding the principles of the American judicial system, including the Constitution, and for the express purpose of establishing its own independent “judicial” system. While all the people at the Guantanamo prison camp are foreigners, the Pentagon now wields the post-9/11 power to sweep all American citizens into its bizarre system, as we have learned in the cases of Padilla and Hamdi. What a shame that the American people have permitted the Pentagon to hijack the greatest judicial system in history and subject people to one of the most bizarre “judicial” systems in history.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Becoming Desperate in Iraq
by Jacob G. Hornberger
It seems that President Bush’s wish to enter into an agreement with Iraqi officials to extend the U.S. occupation of Iraq is reaching a point of desperation.
After all, for years Bush has steadfastly opposed a fixed timetable for Iraq. Yet, in his quest to achieve an occupation agreement with Iraq, guess what he has done. Bush has agreed that U.S. forces would exit Iraq in 2011. That’s a fixed timetable for withdrawal.
Moreover, Bush has always stood resolutely against the Iraqi government’s having jurisdiction over crimes committed by U.S. forces and contractors. Yet, that’s exactly what he’s done in the proposed agreement, at least for crimes committed outside military operations and off U.S. military bases.
Once Bush caved in on those terms, he thought he had reached a deal with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. But there was one obstacle. While Bush takes the position that he doesn’t need congressional approval, despite the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that the U.S. Senate ratify all treaties, Maliki takes the opposite position with respect to the Iraqi parliament.
It seems that such approval is not a foregone conclusion. Apparently there are many Iraqi legislators who take the issue of sovereignty seriously. They know that the proposed agreement violates Iraqi sovereignty and they don’t like it.
The Iraqi foot-dragging has been met with an icy response from the Bush regime. In fact, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says that if the agreement is not signed by December 31, all U.S. forces in Iraq will simply remain in their bases and not come out. Gates says that “the law” would require this.
Now, that’s an interesting position. After all, how much concern was there for “the law” when Bush and the Pentagon invaded Iraq, a country that had never attacked the United States? What law empowered them to do that? What law empowered them to kill, maim, and torture countless Iraqis in the name of WMDs, democracy-spreading, or making Iraq the “central front” in the war on terrorism?
Let’s also not forget that Bush never secured a congressional declaration of war before he invaded Iraq. That’s what the law required. It’s in the Constitution, the higher law that we the people have imposed on Bush and all other presidents.
Let’s also not forget that Bush never secured the approval of the UN before invading and occupying Iraq. Therefore, his claim that he was enforcing UN resolutions requiring Saddam Hussein to disarm was bogus. Only the UN, not the U.S., has the authority to enforce its own resolutions. Bush’s invasion of Iraq violated the UN charter, which prohibits countries from attacking, invading, and occupying other countries
Moreover, hasn’t Bush been telling us for years that Iraq is the “central front” in the war on terrorism? Hasn’t he been telling us that killing people in Iraq is necessary to protect Americans from the terrorists who otherwise would be boarding ships and planes to attack, invade, and occupy the United States? Hasn’t he said that such killings are necessary for the “national security” of the United States?
Well, isn’t that interesting? Because it now seems that unless Bush gets his agreement by December 31, U.S. forces are going to remain inside the Iraqi bases playing pinochle while the terrorists implement their plans to take over America, the IRS, and the public schools. And all because U.S. officials have suddenly decided that it’s important that they begin complying with “the law.”
The ideal, both from the standpoint of the American people and the Iraqi people, would be if the Iraqis voted that all U.S. forces immediately vacate their country and if Bush complied with that directive.
The second-best outcome would be if the Iraqis fail to enter into an agreement with Bush, who then follows through with his threat to keep U.S. forces in Iraq inside their bases. At least they would no longer be killing, maiming, and torturing Iraqis. Moreover, Americans would be able to see that Bush’s claim that the occupation of Iraq was necessary to the national security of the United States has always been as bogus as all the other rationales for invading and occupying the country.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
What about the Sanctity of Mortgage Contracts?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Among the solutions for dealing with the mortgage crisis is a government-imposed moratorium on foreclosures. Lost in all the discussion is the principle of sanctity of contracts.
When two sides voluntarily enter into a contract for a loan, then they should be expected to comply with its terms. That’s what a contract is all about. In loan contracts, the lender lends money to the borrower to assist him in buying his house. To secure payment of the loan, the lender takes collateral, which in most cases is the house that is being purchased. The loan agreement expressly gives the lender the right to a non-judicial foreclosure proceeding in which he can force a public sale of the house to get back the money he has loaned the borrower. Both sides agree in the contract that if the sale brings in less money than is owed, the borrower will be responsible for the deficiency.
Given that the borrower has voluntarily agreed to the terms of the contract, why should the government have the authority to interfere with enforcement of the contract? Why shouldn’t the lender have the right to enforce the contract pursuant to its terms?
Advocates of government intervention argue that it’s unfair, unjust, or inequitable for a person to be evicted from his home. But the fact is that he agreed to the terms of the contract when he signed it. What’s unfair, unjust, or inequitable about enforcing the terms of a contract that a person has voluntarily signed?
In fact, what’s noteworthy about those who call for intervention is that they always advocate government force to help the borrower. There is another alternative. The interventionists could use their own money or money raised from others to pay off the mortgage of people who have defaulted on their loans.
Of course, that would entail taking personal responsibility for one’s beliefs by using one’s own money to solve the problem. It’s far easier simply to run to the government and use force to interfere with the terms of a contract voluntarily entered into by the lender and borrower.
The Framers of the Constitution were not unaware of the propensity of people to use government force to interfere with the sanctity of contracts. That’s why they imposed an express restriction on the power of the states to interfere with contracts: “No State shall … pass any … Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts….” It’s also why they failed to delegate any power to impair contracts to the federal government.
Our ancestors understood the justice of enforcing contracts. They also understood the concept of responsibility. When people know that their contracts are going to be enforced, they tend to read them and make themselves aware of the risks involved in signing them. When people think that government will relieve them of the obligations set forth in contracts, they tend toward behaving foolishly and irresponsibly.
During the Great Depression, the state of Minnesota enacted a Mortgage Moratorium Law. The law was upheld by the Supreme Court in the case of Home Building & Loan Assn. v. Blaisdell, but the four dissenters had the better of the argument. The dissenters were the “Four Horsemen,” the four Supreme Court justices who were declaring much of Roosevelt’s New Deal in violation of the Constitution. Writing for the dissent and having pointed out that an emergency does not give rise to governmental powers that don’t exist, Justice Sutherland put it succinctly:
“I quite agree with the opinion of the court that whether the legislation under review is wise or unwise is a matter with which we have nothing to do. Whether it is likely to work well or work ill presents a question entirely irrelevant to the issue. The only legitimate inquiry we can make is whether it is constitutional. If it is not, its virtues, if it have any, cannot save it; if it is, its faults cannot be invoked to accomplish its destruction. If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch, as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned. Being unable to reach any other conclusion than that the Minnesota statute infringes the constitutional restriction under review, I have no choice but to say so.”
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Socialists and Fascists in America
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Amidst all the gloom and doom of the financial crisis, the presidential race is providing a bit of hilarity. Conservatives John McCain and Sarah Palin are calling liberal Barack Obama a socialist because he believes in using the federal government to redistribute wealth. Obama’s reaction is just as funny — he’s shocked — yes, shocked — that anyone would actually consider him a socialist!
Pardon me, but isn’t Sen. McCain one of those who just voted for the bailout of Wall Street cronies and bankers? Doesn’t the bailout entail the federal government’s taking money from one group of people — the poor and middle class — in order to redistribute it to the rich and privileged? Isn’t coercive redistribution of wealth what socialism is all about?
Or consider the fact that the federal government has now become a part owner of several U.S. banks, after forcing bank executives to sell the government ownership rights in the banks. How much more socialistic can one get than public (i.e., government) ownership of the means of production? Isn’t that one of core elements of socialism?
In fact, wasn’t “centralization of credit” one of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto?
In attacking Obama’s wish to “redistribute the wealth,” Sarah Palin declared, “Now is not the time to experiment with socialism.”
What planet has Palin been living on? Has she never heard of public (i.e., government) schooling, which is an absolutely perfect model of socialism and which, by the way, is another plank of the Communist Manifesto? Doesn’t it depend on the coercive redistribution of wealth from people who don’t have children in school to those who do? Wouldn’t the same principle apply to state-supported colleges and universities? How about Social Security, an old-age retirement system that originated with German socialists and that depends on coercively redistributing wealth from young to old? How about government-provided healthcare, a socialist program that just happens to be the pride and joy of socialist par excellent Fidel Castro?
While we’re on the subject of socialism, perhaps we should mention the word fascism. I’ll bet that both conservatives and liberals would be shocked — yes, shocked — at being called fascists. Yet, isn’t that exactly what they are? Doesn’t fascism entail leaving ownership in private hands but placing it under government control and regulation? Doesn’t it also entail government-business partnerships? Aren’t those principles core elements of the conservative and liberal philosophy?
In fact, one noted conservative, Jonah Goldberg, got sick and tired of being called a fascist by liberals and so he published a book showing that it’s actually the liberals, given their devotion to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal philosophy and programs, who are the fascists. The title of his book is: Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.
Goldberg is right! The New Deal was fascist, and it was socialist too. Take a look at a great book entitled Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939 by Wolfgang Schivelbusch. That scholarly book documents what conservatives and liberals have long been afraid to confront: that FDR’s New Deal was rooted in both fascism and socialism. While Roosevelt and his cohorts were more inspired by the ideas of fascist Benito Mussolini and socialist Joseph Stalin, the words of praise that Hitler, a National Socialist, had for FDR’s policies, which Schivelbusch documents in excruciating detail, are also quite revealing.
For some 80 years, conservatives and liberals have lived the life of the lie and the life of unreality. Having rejected and abandoned the libertarian principles of economic liberty and free markets on which our nation was founded in favor of socialism and fascism, they convinced themselves that they really hadn’t done that. They convinced themselves that what they had done instead was simply “save free enterprise.” They convinced themselves that their socialist and fascist economic system was “free market.” And they used the public schools — that is, their socialist education system — to reinforce that lie and unreality to generation after generation of American students, who grew up believing the lies and unreality.
The late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck once wrote, “Mental health is a commitment to reality at all costs.” Perhaps the discussion of socialism in the presidential race will help conservatives and liberals to begin traveling down that road.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, October 20, 2008
American Dictatorship and Iraq
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Thousands of Iraqis marched in Baghdad on Saturday to protest the draft agreement between President Bush and the Iraqi government that provides for the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq and the ultimate withdrawal of U.S. forces. The protestors were calling for the Iraqi parliament to reject the proposed agreement, arguing that U.S. forces should be thrown out of the country now.
Don’t count on seeing similar protests here in the United States. Unlike Iraq, where the constitution requires the consent of the parliament, here in our country the only thing that’s needed is the approval of the ruler.
Of course, it wasn’t always that way. Under the Constitution, congressional consent was required for all treaties. Thus, even if the president had negotiated an agreement with a foreign power, the law required congressional approval before the agreement could take effect.
The principle of congressional approval as a prerequisite for presidential action was once the same with respect to the waging of war. While the Constitution delegates the power to wage war to the president, it delegates the power to declare war to Congress. That means that before the president can legally wage war, the law requires that he first secure a declaration of war from Congress.
President Bush leveled a military attack on a country that had never attacked the United States. Yet, he failed and refused to secure the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war before waging his war on Iraq.
Some people have argued that the congressional vote to authorize the president to use force against Iraq was equivalent to a congressional declaration of war, but they couldn’t be more wrong. The resolution didn’t declare war on Iraq, it instead authorized the president to make that determination. Yet, the Constitution does not permit Congress to abrogate and delegate its power to declare war to the president. The Constitution requires that Congress make the grave determination as to whether the nation is going to war against another nation.
If the president had followed the law by seeking a congressional declaration of war on Iraq, he would have had to make the case for doing so. Some astute congressmen could have then challenged the president’s implication that Saddam Hussein was preparing to unleash weapons of mass destruction, including mushroom clouds, on America. By showing that the president’s WMD claim was defective and bogus, it is entirely possible that Congress would not have supported going to war based on the president’s alternative rationale of democracy-spreading.
The president’s war has killed and maimed countless Iraqis and thousands of Americans, exiled millions of Iraqis to other countries, left museums in shambles, and destroyed the entire country. It has also unleashed the perpetual threat of terrorist blowback against the American people. The hundreds of billions of dollars in federal expenditures to finance the war and occupation are contributing to the bankruptcy of our nation.
The proposed agreement calls for U.S. troops to remain in Iraq until 2011, when they will be entirely withdrawn from the country. The agreement also calls for the Iraqi government having jurisdiction over certain crimes committed by U.S. forces and U.S. contractors.
Thus, President Bush is now entering into an agreement with Iraq that has very serious long-term consequences not only for U.S. troops, not only for the newly elected president, but also for the entire nation. Yet, unlike the Iraqi president, who is seeking the approval of his legislature, as the Iraqi constitution requires, the president is refusing to seek the approval of Congress, as the U.S. Constitution requires.
The president’s invasion of Iraq, without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war, and his proposed agreement with the Iraqi regime, without the constitutionally required congressional approval, demonstrate the extent to which the U.S. president has assumed dictatorial powers. Perhaps that’s why conservatives are becoming increasingly agitated over the possibility that Barrack Obama might soon be elected president.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Tatum O’Neal: Another Drug War Triumph
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The war on drugs can claim three more major victories. No, I’m not referring to how U.S. officials have busted another drug lord or made another record drug bust. We’re all accustomed to those types of “triumphs” after 35 years of drug warfare.
I’m referring to the drug busts of the O’Neal family. The actor Ryan O’Neal, his son Redmond, and his daughter Tatum have all been busted for illegal possession of drugs during the past several months.
Don’t you feel safer already? Don’t you feel like celebrating this giant victory in the war on drugs? Given this monumental triumph, I wonder if the drug war can now be ended.
One cannot help but feel sorry for this family, not only because of their drug problems but also because of their drug-war problems.
At the age of 10, Tatum O’Neal won an Oscar for her performance in Paper Moon. She later became addicted to cocaine and heroin and has struggled with her addiction ever since. In a memoir written in 2004, she described how she had triumphed over her drug addiction. Yet, last summer she was caught by New York cops with two bags of cocaine in her possession.
Last month, Los Angeles cops arrested and charged Ryan and Redmond with illegal possession of methamphetamine. Both have been charged with felony possession, which carries a possible sentence of three years in prison.
The O’Neal arrests should cause every American to confront two central points in the war on drugs.
The first point: The O’Neals’ drug problems are none of the government’s business. It’s their business and their business alone.
Sure, if Tatum had gone out and shot someone, or killed someone while driving while intoxicated, or robbed someone, the state would have a legitimate cause for arresting and prosecuting her.
But all she did was purchase some cocaine with the intent to ingest it. Why isn’t that her personal business? Why is that the business of politicians and bureaucrats?
The second point: While drugs have destroyed lots of lives, so has the drug war, with no collateral benefits. This destructive war has been going on for more than 30 years. All that it has to show for itself is ever-increasing violence, corruption, government spending, and infringements on privacy and liberty. And there’s no end in sight. The drug war just keeps going and going and going.
And all for what? Just to engage in an endless series of drug busts, prosecutions, and punishments whose claim to fame is the ruination of people’s lives. The drug war is nothing but a total waste of time, resources, and energy.
Tatum O’Neal is lucky. She was allowed to plead out to “disorderly conduct” and allowed to return to rehabilitation. The plea agreement is an implicit acknowledgement that she didn’t deserve to be punished for her possession of drugs. It’s unlikely that her father and brother will serve any time either.
There are thousands of less fortunate people, especially blacks, who are not accorded the same nice treatment when they’re caught with drugs. They’re sitting in penitentiaries all across the land.
Hasn’t drug-war interventionism gone on long enough? Hasn’t it done enough damage? Must we really permit this government program to go on forever no matter how much it fails and no matter how much damage it causes?
It’s time for the state to get out of the drug-enforcement business. It’s time for the state to leave the O’Neal family and everyone else who’s ingesting drugs alone. It’s time for the American people to demand an end to this immoral and destructive government failure.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Why Not Full Federal Ownership of Everything?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
I’ve got a fantastic idea! It will almost certainly appeal to two large segments of American society — those who thirst for security and those who thirst for political control. My hunch is that both John McCain and Barack Obama and their supporters will immediately embrace my idea as soon as they hear about it.
Here’s my idea. Instead of partially nationalizing the banks, let’s have the federal government do a complete nationalization. Yes, that’s right — let’s have the federal government take over and own all the banks and investment houses.
Now, you’re probably thinking: Hey, that would be great because the federal government would now be the owner of all the bank’s loans and mortgages, which would mean no more foreclosures. After all, unlike private bankers federal officials love people. The last thing they’re going to do is repossess people’s cars or foreclose on their homes, especially given that congressional elections are every two years.
But my idea involves something much bigger and grander! How about having the federal government take ownership of everyone’s homes too — and then simply let people stay in the homes for free? Just think — no more mortgage payments and no more rent! Is that an awesome idea or what?
In fact, why limit federal ownership to banks and homes? Why not go all the way and have the government take over everyone’s businesses? Just think — no more worrying about making a profit, pleasing those nasty consumers, or being exploited by employers. Everyone would be working for the federal government, which is devoted to serving the people. No more wasteful middlemen, speculators, price-gougers, and profiteers.
Just think of the benefits my idea would bring to healthcare. As the nation’s sole owner and employer, the federal government would own all the hospitals and clinics, and all the doctors would be working for the government, just like everyone else. Healthcare would be made free for everyone.
The federal government would take over all the schools, both public and private. Just think — no more multitudes of local school districts with their own separate taxes, textbooks, and curricula. Instead, one big federal school district with uniform standards and even uniforms. Think how much money could be saved! And education would be free for everyone, including college students. Don’t forget: All the teachers, like everyone else, would now be federal employees.
The anti-immigration crowd should be ecstatic over my idea, especially those who argue that America is one giant national home with a door that federal officials can legitimately lock to keep out foreigners.
Oh, did I mention that people’s income would finally be equalized, since everyone would be working for the same employer? Just think — no more exorbitant pay for CEOs, no more excess profits (corporations, including oil companies, will be owned by the federal government too), and no more obscene severance packages.
In fact, no more taxes with my idea because everyone will be working for the government, with salaries set by the government. I’ll bet the anti-tax crowd will come aboard when they hear that!
No more wild swings in the stock market because they’ll only be one owner of all the stock — the federal government. No more greed and no more waste. No more losses and no more profits.
Admission to movies, museums, opera houses, amusement parks, concerts, and other recreational activities would be free.
Everyone would be guaranteed a pension for life along with free medical care. People would be free to retire at 50.
Just think: My idea would finally bring peace, security, harmony, and happiness to the American people. No more worries, no more concerns. We would finally be a national family — with one owner and one employer, with our federal officials constantly watching over us and taking care of us.
Now, I’m sure that there will be some naysayers out there, especially those kooky libertarians who will raise their silly notions about freedom. But hey, what greater freedom than freedom from want, from worry, and from stress. And keep in mind that everyone will be able to access unlimited goods and services for free. What greater freedom than that?
The skeptics will undoubtedly say that I’m too idealistic and that it’s not possible to create this heaven on earth. But they’re wrong. My idea is possible to achieve. Just ask the people of Cuba, North Korea, and China.
Let’s get moving!
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
They Are All Socialists Now
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Great Immigration Debate between Peter Brimelow and me that was held at the Heartland Institute’s recent anniversary dinner has now been posted on Heartland’s website. It is here. The theme of the debate was: “Immigration Policy for a Free Society: Open Borders vs. Controlled Borders.”
The video contains the entire evening’s activities, and the debate starts about 30 minutes into the program. I’d recommend viewing the entire video though, including libertarian comedian Tim Slagel’s hilarious routine, especially his explanation as to how Halloween can be used to teach children about taxation.
The primary argument I made in the debate was that the immigration crisis is actually nothing more than the failure of socialist central planning and interventionism. I presented this argument in my article “Borders, Socialism, and the Free Market” in the July 2008 issue of Freedom Daily.
Long ago, U.S. politicians and bureaucrats came up with a plan to limit the number of people who could legally enter the United States. Under the plan, each country would be allocated a certain number of approved immigrants. The central planners wanted nothing to do with “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” or “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore” or “your homeless, tempest-tossed,” who had previously been free to come to America. Instead, the planners wanted the well-to-do, the educated, people with money, the highly skilled, the well-dressed, and those who could speak English.
The only problem was that the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and the wretched refuse of those teeming shores, and the homeless, tempest-tossed didn’t give a hoot for that socialist central plan. They believed that their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, being inherent in all men and preexisting government, trumped the planners’ central plan. So, they came anyway … and they continued coming despite an ever-increasing array of severe and oppressive immigration interventions, decade after decade.
Today virtually all conservatives and liberals, and, alas, even some libertarians, remain ardent advocates of immigration central planning and ever-increasing immigration interventionism.
Of course, the central-planning and interventionist mindset is no different in the field of money and banking, as everyone is now being reminded. Liberals are gleeful over the socialist bailout of financial firms and the partial nationalization of banks. But it’s really funny to see how much more gleeful they are over the fact that conservatives are leading the charge toward more central planning and interventionism.
According to AFP, Cuba’s foreign minister just announced that Cuba’s President Raul Castro will never renounce socialism, an announcement that will surely warm the heart of every American liberal.
Unfortunately for the American people, however, it seems American conservatives and liberals are still not ready to renounce socialism either, even as their socialist policies continue to lead our nation in same destructive direction as Castro’s socialist policies have led Cuba.
Conservatives don’t even seem embarrassed over the fact that noted Latin American socialists like Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva, and Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega are now referring to President Bush as “Comrade Bush” and calling him a “fellow traveler.”
President Nixon famously said, “We are all Keynesians now.” President Bush should one-up him by going down in history with an apt description of American conservatives and liberals, “We are all socialists now.”
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Interventionism Destroys Freedom
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In his book The Crisis of Interventionism, Ludwig von Mises pointed out that one government intervention will inevitably lead to more interventions. Why? The initial intervention will inevitably produce a crisis that public officials will say needs to be addressed with new interventions. Ultimately, the continuous series of interventions leads to a totally controlled economy and a loss of economic freedom for the citizenry.
It would be difficult to find a better example of Mises’s dictum than the U.S. financial and banking industry. The roots of the crisis were sown in 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve System, which was supposed to stabilize the monetary system. That intervention led to the Great Depression, which led to decades of welfare-statism, unrestrained federal spending, banking regulation, financial regulation, paper money, dollar depreciation, FDIC, the SEC, the confiscation of gold, abandoning the gold standard, the savings and loan debacle, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the home-mortgage crisis, and the recent bailout of investment firms, to mention just a few of the many interventions during the past several decades.
This morning, Americans have learned that the federal government plans to use some of its investment bailout money to force American banks to sell some of their stock to the federal government. In Latin America and other third-world countries, this is a process known as nationalization. It’s reminiscent of the 1930s when U.S. officials nationalized gold by forcing Americans to turn in their privately owned holdings of gold to the federal government, on pain of a felony conviction for failure to comply, at a price set by U.S. officials.
Americans also learned today that the federal government is now insuring all small-business bank deposits, even those that exceed the new FDIC coverage of $250,000, a limit that was recently raised from $100,000.
Why is all this happening? Wasn’t the whole point of having a central bank and a regulated economy supposed to be that financial and banking crises could be avoided? What good is central planning and interventionism except to provide the crises that call for new interventions? Why wouldn’t we better off with a totally free market — that is, a market totally free of a central bank and government control and regulation? Sure, life would be insecure, but isn’t life insecure with government control? Aren’t people who are free and insecure better off than people who are not free and insecure?
As Mises pointed out, the end of the interventionist road is omnipotent government and a total loss of economic freedom. This is the centrally planned economy, one which characterized the Soviet Union and that still characterizes the Chinese, Cuban, and North Korean economies.
In the midst of all the economic chaos and crises, it’s important that we not lose sight of the fact that we’re also experiencing the effects of interventionism in foreign affairs. U.S. interventionism in the Middle East led to terrorist blowback on 9/11, which led to a series of interventions involving torture and sex abuse, warrantless searches and seizures, spying on Americans, telecom immunity, murder, kidnapping, renditions, Guantanamo, military tribunals, denial of due process, denial of speedy trial, denial of trial by jury, denial of right to counsel, cancelation of habeas corpus, and more.
Let’s also not forget the three decades of continuous interventions in the drug war, a war that is now being integrated with the so-called war on terrorism and the occupation of Afghanistan.
Thus, Americans are in the unfortunate position of being squeezed by both sides of the welfare-warfare vise. On the domestic side, interventionism is leading to the loss of economic liberty. On the foreign side, interventionism is leading to the loss of civil liberties. It’s a lose-lose situation.
It might be tempting to become depressed and despondent over this state of affairs. On the contrary! It shows that God has created a consistent universe, one in which a bad system produces bad results. What would be depressing is if central planning, interventionism, and regulatory schemes produced good results.
What would also be depressing is if there wasn’t an alternative to the socialism, interventionism, and imperialism that holds our nation in their grip. The good news is that there is an alternative — libertarianism — namely a system based on individual freedom, free markets, private property, and limited government. In other words, a system entailing the absence of central planning, interventionism, and regulatory schemes.
The free market system is the one our nation was founded. It produced the freest, wealthiest, and most prosperous, peaceful, harmonious, and charitable society in history. Too bad 20th-century Americans abandoned it. It’s not too late for 21st-century Americans to restore it.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Real Change and Libertarianism
by Jacob G. Hornberger
I find it fascinating that so many people devote so much of their time and energy to getting McCain or Obama elected to office. If there were differences in philosophy between McCain or Obama, it might make some sense. But given that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them, I just can’t see why people waste so much of their lives and resources in this endeavor.
All too many people honestly believe that because they are two separate political parties, there must be differences between the parties. What they fail to consider is that it’s possible to have one political party that is divided into two wings, much as the NFL is one league that is divided into two conferences.
Look at the government programs that McCain and Obama agree are important to American society: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, public schooling, income taxation, a central bank, paper money, occupational licensure, economic regulations, trade restrictions, immigration controls, gun control, the occupation of Afghanistan, the drug war, foreign aid, FDIC, infringements on privacy and civil liberties, and financial bailouts. They both believe in such departments and agencies as the IRS, the Departments of Labor, Agriculture, Energy, Commerce, Homeland Security, SEC, DEA, and all the rest.
Why do they share a common commitment to such programs? Because they both share the same philosophical worldview as to the proper role of government in society. They both believe that the primary purposes of government are to (1) to take money from some people and distribute it to others; (2) to take care of people in a paternalistic way with welfare and drug laws; (3) to intervene in people’s economic affairs; (4) to run the economy; (5) to interfere with the internal affairs of other countries; and (6) to attack countries that haven’t attacked the United States.
In other words, both McCain and Obama share a common commitment to socialism, interventionism, and imperialism. That’s the philosophical framework under which they operate. The same applies to most Republicans and Democrats.
So, what difference does it make whether McCain or Obama is elected president? None. The federal government will continue to confiscate wealth and redistribute it, interfere with economic activity, meddle overseas, and attack and bomb countries that lack the military means to defend themselves.
Of course, neither McCain nor Obama would ever describe himself as socialist, interventionist, or imperialist. Instead, they would describe themselves as believers in freedom and free enterprise. Ever since the New Deal, both liberals and conservatives have simply redefined those terms to mean the socialist, interventionist, and imperial polices that the United States has adopted.
Libertarians operate with a complete different worldview. We oppose all those government programs, departments, and agencies and, thus, we favor a society in which they are absent. We believe that the proper role of government is simply to punish people who initiate force against others (e.g., murderers, robbers, etc.), to provide a judicial system, and to defend against the unlikely event of a foreign invasion of America.
Thus, while we believe in freedom and free enterprise, as McCain and Obama purport to do, our definition of those term is the original one employed by the Founding Fathers and the Framers — activity and economic enterprise that is free of government control, regulation, or interference. Thus, we necessarily view a genuinely free society as one in which there is an absence (not a reform) of the drug war, trade restrictions, economic regulations, income taxation, foreign wars, infringements on privacy and civil liberties, immigration controls, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, and gun control.
We believe that people should be free to live their own lives without government control, regulation, or interference, so long as they don’t violate the rights of others with acts of violence, such as murder, theft, rape, and burglary. We believe that people to have the right to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth and decide for themselves what to do with it. We believe that the federal government should be prohibited from policing the world. That’s what individual freedom, free enterprise, and limited government mean to us.
People can spend all their time and energy getting McCain or Obama elected, but all they are accomplishing is electing their favorite candidate to be their despot — a different face to plunder, loot, control, interdict, bomb, and kill other people. People just need to recognize that nothing fundamental will change with the election of their favorite candidate. The socialism, interventionism, and imperialism will continue, along with all their bitter fruits — impoverishment, death, destruction, and loss of liberty.
In order to achieve meaningful and positive change, it is necessary for the American people to raise their visions to a higher level — toward a change from the current system of socialism, interventionism, and imperialism to a system of genuine individual liberty, free markets, private property, and a constitutionally limited government. In a word, toward a system of libertarianism, one in which it wouldn’t matter who was elected president because the federal government would be wielding such little power over the lives, activities, and fortunes of the people.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Isn’t It Time to Listen to Libertarians?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Amidst massive financial losses being suffered by the American people in the current financial crisis, at least they can take solace in one comforting point — that the U.S. government is rebuilding Iraq. While people are seeing their savings frittered away, having trouble making ends meet, and finding it difficult to pay their children’s education, shouldn’t they at least be patting themselves on the back over the fact that the U.S. government is spending billions of IRS-collected tax dollars to rebuild the nation that the U.S. government destroyed with its invasion?
How’s that for some consolation? And if that’s not good enough, then perhaps people will find it comforting to know that the Pentagon and its thousands of contractors aren’t suffering at all. In inflation-adjusted dollars, their budget is the largest since the end of World War II.
But, heck, the U.S. government is rich, right? It’s got the money to do whatever it wants, right? Last night, I couldn’t help but be amused by a financial commentator on CNBC who went overboard to assure people that the U.S. government has tremendous resources still at its disposal to fix the economy.
I wish that commentator had told us what those resources are. After all, for years the U.S. government has been spending much more than it has been collecting in taxes. Nonetheless, U.S. officials just keeps spending more and more and more. Iraq. Afghanistan. Social Security. Medicare. AIG. Bailouts. FDIC. It seems as though there are no limits on what the U.S. government can fund. It just keeps spending and spending and spending.
But where are those resources to which that commentator referred, when the government is spending much more than what it is bringing in?
Americans can’t deny that they’ve blithely gone along with all this. The federal government is not a magician. What people have steadfastly blocked out of their minds is that there are only three ways for the federal government to get the money to pay for its ever-growing expenditures: taxes, borrowing, and printing the money.
Despite ever-growing federal expenditures, U.S. officials, led by President Bush, repeatedly assured people that taxes would not be raised. So, Americans just innocently assumed that massive federal borrowing, to fund overseas military adventures and ever-growing domestic welfare, would have no adverse effect on them. And since most Americans are consciously ignorant of how inflation works, they couldn’t care less when the Fed Reserve cranks up the printing presses to pay the bills.
As I have been repeatedly pointing out for the past few years, no longer do conservatives remind people of how Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviet Union — by making the Soviet government spend the nation into bankruptcy. Can you guess why they no longer make that point?
Last January, I wrote an article entitled “Brace Yourselves,” in which I stated:
“My advice? Given that the American people and their federal officials are not yet ready to give up on either their welfare state or the warfare state — and the massive expenditures that are needed to fund them, my advice would be the same I’d give to people on a ship heading directly toward an iceberg: Brace yourselves.”
Alas, the American people are a stubborn people. Despite the massive chaos in the economy and the marketplace, they simply cannot yet bring themselves to accept that the responsibility lies with the welfare-warfare state way of life to which they unfortunately remain so wedded. Instead, all too many of them continue to maintain that it’s all the fault of greed, laissez faire, unfettered capitalism, and not enough regulation.
And they continue to look to their federal officials to pull a rabbit out of the hat and show them that their socialist, interventionist, and imperialist system, along with the out-of-control federal spending that comes with it, will bring them peace, prosperity, and harmony.
Meanwhile, we libertarians must simply continue speaking our truth and confronting people with the reality that they do not want to face — that the only way out of the chaos and crises lies with the libertarian paradigm, which entails a dismantling, not a reform, of both the foreign warfare empire and the domestic welfare empire. The only way out of the morass lies with a restoration of the principles of economic liberty, free markets, and a constitutional republic on which our nation was founded.
As reality continues to mug Americans in the face, we can only hope that they will finally stop listening to the charlatans and begin listening to us libertarians.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Tortured by the Federal Savior
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Americans who have suffered harm during the current financial crisis should be counting their lucky stars. At least U.S. officials haven’t taken them into custody as enemy combatants and tortured them, as U.S. officials have done to two American citizens, Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla. They, along with a foreigner named Ali al Marri, were held in isolation for years in a Pentagon military dungeon in South Carolina, where they were mentally tortured by U.S. military officials.
While Pentagon officials have long maintained that the two Americans were treated humanely in military custody, it turns out that that just one more big lie on top of all the others that have emanated from the Pentagon for the last several years (e.g., Jessica Lynch, Abu Ghraib, Pat Tillman, etc.).
According to the Associated Press previously secret documents now reveal that U.S. military officials knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately employed many of the interrogation techniques at Guantanamo on Hamdi and Padilla. These included sleep and sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation, and threats of death. According to the documents, the U.S. military was ordered to treat the Americans the same way that Gitmo prisoners were being treated.
The documents have come to light as a result of a Freedom of Information request filed by two attorneys for Padilla.
Let’s not forget the famous photo of Padilla wearing military-installed goggles, obviously to ensure that the psychological torture would not be disturbed on his way to receive dental treatment.
As Alfred McCoy, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has pointed out, U.S. officials love to use sensory deprivation and isolation as a torture technique because such techniques are able to cause mental damage to the victim without leaving any physical torture marks. In that way, the torturers can say, “What? Us? We didn’t do anything. We never laid a hand on him. He’s just a crazy person. Aren’t all terrorists crazy? We’ve treated him fine.”
For a good account of how U.S. officials employ this form of mental torture, see “The CIA’s Favorite Form of Torture” by Mark Benjamin, which appeared in the June 7, 2007, issue of Salon.
One unidentified naval brig officer warned about the mental damage that was being inflicted on Hamdi: “I will continue to do what I can to help this individual maintain his sanity, but in my opinion we’re working with borrowed time.”
What that brig officer might not have realized — or maybe he did and was trying to cover his back — was that mental damage was exactly what the Pentagon’s treatment of Hamdi and Padilla was intended to produce.
Now, I know what the fear-crowd will say: “But they’re terrorists! They’re coming to take us away! What’s wrong with treating them like we treat the terrorists at Gitmo?”
Well, for one because they hadn’t been convicted of terrorism when they were tortured. Second, even if they had been convicted, cruel and unusual punishments are legally prohibited, thanks to the Framers and the Constitution. Third, terrorism is a federal crime and, therefore, these people should never have been turned over to military officials in the first place. Forth, the U.S. government shouldn’t have been torturing foreigners at Gitmo either.
What’s important to note in all this, however, is that owing to the U.S. government’s “war on terrorism,” military officials now wield the power to do to every American what they have done to Hamdi and Padilla and the prisoners at Gitmo — arrest them, throw them into a military dungeon, and intentionally cause them mental damage with psychological torture.
But hey, what American wants to think about that? After all, the federal government is our financial savior, right? It’s now saving us from financial catastrophe, right? Surely our federal savior would never arbitrarily arrest, confine, and torture even more Americans, especially in the midst of another big terrorist crisis, right? And surely our federal savior would never cause the very crises that enable it to do bad things to us and good things for us, right?
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Pete Boettke Kicks Off Economic Liberty Lecture Series
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The inaugural session of the Economic Liberty Lecture Series, which FFF and the George Mason University Econ Society, a student-run group, hosted was a great success. The event took place on Monday evening and attracted about 70 people, most of whom were students and some of whom were FFF supporters from the area.
After a pizza dinner, Econ Society president Kevin Hilferty and FFF program director Bart Frazier welcomed the crowd, and Bart then introduced the speaker, GMU economics professor Peter Boettke. There is no university in the nation that has a higher concentration of free-market and Austrian economics professors than GMU, and Pete is one of the country’s most renowned Austrian economics scholars. Pete’s style of speaking is captivating because he has the unique ability to address both academics and non-academics in the same talk.
Pete delivered a great talk about the financial bailout, applying Austrian economic principles to the debacle. He showed what other libertarians and Austrian scholars have been arguing — that the financial crisis is not the failure of free enterprise, as so many mainstream pundits continue to maintain, but rather the failure of interventionism.
The event was held in a cinema auditorium at GMU. After the talk, the audience was treated to the movie V for Vendetta. At the conclusion of this great movie, the audience broke out in spontaneous applause!
Speaking of the bailout, have you noticed that there seems to be continued chaos in the financial markets despite the passage of the bailout? It was a big con from the beginning. All the bailout accomplished was to ensure that Wall Street cronies would not have to share the financial pain that the American people are suffering and will continue to suffer.
With the crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, the war on terrorism, the drug war, banking, immigration, the dollar, the financial industry, healthcare, Social Security, and just about everything else the federal government has touched, maybe — just maybe — the American people will stop viewing the federal government as their savior and will instead start viewing it for what it is — the cause of their woes. Maybe — just maybe — they’ll finally start listening to us libertarians. Pete Boettke’s lecture, which we will be posting on our Internet Classroom Website, would be a great place for people to start.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
What about Savings?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
One of the things the mainstream pundits have failed to understand in the current financial crisis is the important role that savings play in a society. They keep talking incessantly about the “credit squeeze” but hardly ever mention the “savings squeeze.”
One of the keys to rising standards of living is an increase in productive capital. Consider this simple example. Suppose a farmer, with the assistance of workers using hoes, has planted and harvested $10,000 of wheat on his farm. Assume that he pays his workers $5,000 and that all other expenses total $4,000. He pockets $1,000 in profit.
Suppose that in the following year the workers demand an increase of pay to $7,000. Obviously, the farmer cannot pay the increase because it wipes out his profit from the preceding year and his anticipated profit for the coming year. If the workers stand by their demand, the farmer will go out of business and the workers will find themselves without jobs. Even if the workers demand an increase to $6,000, the farmer will most likely close down anyway owing to the loss of his anticipated profit.
Thus, assuming annual production remains the same year after year, there is no way that the workers can secure a pay increase from the farmer.
Suppose, however, that the farmer uses his $1,000 profit to make a down payment on the purchase of a $5,000 tractor. The bank loans him $4,000 to make the purchase. The tractor enables the farmer and the workers to increase production to, say, $15,000.
Now the farmer has more money to pay the workers. The reason for this is the increase in production resulting from the purchase of the tractor. The increase in capital has helped both the farmer and the worker.
How can the workers be certain that the farmer will increase wages? Must they rely solely on his benevolence? No. Other farmers — as well as other businesses — are presumably also increasing production through the use of capital. Out of self-interest, businesses begin competing for the workers with their additional funds. If the farmer wants to keep his workers, he must match or exceed what others are offering them.
The important thing to keep in mind in all this is that it is only through the increase of productive capital that rises in people’s standards of living can take place.
Where does the bank get the $4,000 to lend to the farmer? That money doesn’t just appear in a bank by magic. Instead, that money — financial capital — comes from the savings of all the farmers and the workers. Each payday, as they save a bit of their income, they deposit those savings in a bank. Those savings provide the capital that enables the bank to loan money to the farmer to buy equipment capital — the tractor.
What happens if everyone fails to save any money? Obviously there is going to be a scarcity of capital. As much as everyone would like to believe that the federal government is a god or a magician, the truth is that government officials cannot produce savings or capital. In fact, the government, through its spending, taxation, and inflation of the currency, is the great destroyer of savings and capital. When government taxes more and inflates more, people have less to save. Conversely, when taxes are low and money is sound, people save more.
For the past several decades, the American people have been taught that the key to rising standards of living is consumption. Every time there is a “slowdown” in the economy, what counsel do federal politicians and bureaucrats give to the American people? Spend! Go the mall! Go on vacation! Just spend, spend, spend!
Despite the massive assault on savings that U.S. officials have engaged in with taxes and inflation ever since the New Deal, lots of Americans, especially the wealthy, continued saving. But ever since 9/11, it has become increasingly difficult for ordinary Americans to keep up. Income taxes, combined with rising prices, have made it almost impossible for Americans to save any portion of their income.
As the financial crisis grows deeper with each passing day, editorial boards across the nation are desperately calling on John McCain and Barack Obama to announce their plans to “fix the economy.” What they fail to understand is that there is no way to fix a system that is inherently defective — that is, one that confiscates capital and discourages savings. All that politicians can do is fight for control of the system in the attempt to put their hands on some of the remaining loot, much as vultures do to carcasses on the side of the highway.
The only real answer to this mess — the answer that, alas, the mainstream pundits still do not want to consider — is a restoration of libertarian principles to our land. That means a completely different economic paradigm, one based on the principles of economic liberty and limited government that once guided our nation. That means: no more income tax, no more capital gains tax, no more inheritance tax, no more Federal Reserve, no more paper money, no more welfare system, no more overseas empire, no more drug war, and no more interventionism. Herein lies the key to the accumulation of capital, along with rising wage rates and rising standards of living.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Monday, October 6, 2008
The Heartland Immigration Debate
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Last Thursday I debated Peter Brimelow at the Heartland Institute’s annual dinner in a beautiful ballroom at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago. What a fantastic evening! Since Heartland has been such an enormously positive force for liberty, especially at the state level, it was a tremendous honor for me to be included in its annual affair. Moreover, Peter and I have been talking about debating each other for about 10 years and Heartland succeeded in finally making it happen.
There were 500 people in attendance, which is even more impressive when one considers the admission price for the evening was $160. The evening began with a cocktail hour, followed by a great comedy routine by libertarian comedian Tim Slagle.
Then, the debate got going. The theme: “Immigration Policy for a Free Society: Open Borders vs. Controlled Borders.” Of course, I took the open-borders position and Peter took the opposite position. The format was interesting. Peter spoke for 12 minutes and then I spoke for 12 minutes. Then, Peter had an 8-minute rebuttal, followed by an 8-minute rebuttal by me. Then, we each had a 4 minute rebuttal. Then 20 minutes of questions submitted by the audience that Peter and I both had a chance to address. There was also some spontaneous one-on-one between Peter and me.
Since Heartland is going to be posting a video of the debate on its website, I won’t go into the substantive arguments each of us made. Suffice it to say that it was a passionate but civil intellectual affair.
At the conclusion of the debate, Heartland’s president, Joe Bast, called for a show of hands from the audience as to who they felt won the debate. Slightly more hands were raised for the open-borders position, a result that surprised even me!
Once Heartland posts the debate on its website, we’ll link to it in our FFF Email Update. I am sure you will enjoy it.
After the debate, Joe presented the 2008 Heartland Liberty Prize to two outspoken skeptics of global warming, Fred Singer and Dennis Avery.
A special thanks to Joe Bast and his fine staff for a wonderful evening and for inviting me to be a part of it.
I thought I would also share with you what happened on the flight to Chicago. I had a window seat and the seat next to me was empty. About 30 minutes before landing, a man about 30 years old who was sitting in the seat across the aisle said to me, “Is that a commentary on Galatians you’re reading?” I said yes. He noticed that it was a Catholic commentary and he told me that he was Lutheran. He had steeped himself in the Bible for the past several years and so we had a nice discussion about religion.
Then, he asked me about the other book I was reading. I said that it was a book on immigration. He said, “Well, that certainly is a controversial subject. What’s your take on it?” I said, “I favor open borders.” Well, you could easily tell that that not only got his attention but also everyone else’s within listening range. He responded, “But what about the drugs that are coming in from Mexico?” I said, “Oh, I’m against the drug war too.”
To which he responded, “You sound like Milton Friedman.” I said, “How do you know about Friedman?” He said, “From a website at George Mason University by an economist named Walter Williams. In fact, the book I’m carrying right now in my bag is The Road to Serfdom, which I learned about on his website.”
I said, “I’m familiar with that book — it’s fantastic. Are you familiar with any books by Ludwig von Mises?” He said, “No, actually I’m just learning about this entire area but I have visited a website called Mises.org. Which of his books would you recommend?”
I said, “Read Mises’s book Economic Policy plus Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. Then, go to our website at fff.org and check out the libertarian organizations we link to.”
By this time, we had landed and disembarked. We shook hands and went our separate ways. The Lord sometimes works in mysterious ways!
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Conservative, Liberal, and Libertarian Calls for Open Borders
by Jacob G. Hornberger
I’m on my way to Chicago to debate Peter Brimelow at the Heartland Institute’s annual dinner. Heartland is one of the nation’s finest free-market think tanks that address state public-policy issues. Peter is the author of Alien Nation.
The theme of the debate is “Immigration Policy for a Free Society.” Or “Open Borders vs. Controlled Borders.”
Longtime supporters of FFF know that ever since our inception, we have called for open borders. One of our books is entitled The Case for Free Trade and Open Immigration.
Among the things I will be discussing at the debate is two new books that call for open borders, one written by a conservative and the other written by a liberal.
One book is entitled Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders by Jason Riley, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. The other is Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them by Phillipe Legrain.
These two books are remarkable in two ways. First, they do not simply show how immigrants are a boon to society. They also make the case for a totally free market in immigration.
The two books also, chapter by chapter, demolish every single one of the many canards employed by those who favor controlled or sealed borders.
These two books are absolutely great. I can’t recommend them highly enough, along with FFF’s book
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Never Trade Liberty for Safety
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Generally speaking, people can be divided into 3 groups: (1) Those who thirst for power; (2) Those who thirst for freedom; and (3) Those who are fairly indifferent to both power and liberty.
The real battle that is taking place with respect to the future of direction of our nation is between Groups 1 and 2 — those who thirst for power and those who thirst for liberty. As part of that battle, those in Groups 1 and 2 try to influence those in Group 3 to support their cause.
One of the most effective tools employed by those in Group 1 is crises. After all, it’s normally a tough sell to convince people that they should sacrifice freedom so that others can quench their thirst for power. Those in Group 1 know, however, that if people in Group 3 can be made to feel fearful or insecure, there is a much greater chance to convince them to surrender freedom for the sake of safety or security.
That, of course, was how they got the Patriot Act passed. Long before 9/11, federal officials had thirsted for the powers granted by that law but they knew that people would oppose such an extensive grant of power. The 9/11 crisis, however, gave them the opportunity they needed. The 9/11 attacks engendered tremendous fear and anxiety within the American people. That enabled U.S. officials to convince them that the terrorists were on their way to conquer the United States with WMDs, take over the IRS and the public schools, and barge into people’s homes and cart them away. Seizing upon that crisis-driven fear and anxiety, U.S. officials were easily able to attain the powers they had long sought through the passage of the Patriot Act. In fact, in the midst of the terrorist crisis, the people’s elected representatives in Congress didn’t even bother to read the Patriot Act before voting to approve it. The idea was, “Just trust us. Give us these powers. We will take care of you and keep you safe.”
Thus, crises are the best friend of those in Group 1 because in the absence of crises, it is difficult for those in Group 1 to convince those in Group 3 to support their cause. Crises engender fear and anxiety among the citizenry, which then causes the citizenry to support the assumption of massive power and the surrender of their own freedom.
That’s what the current financial crisis is all about. The idea is to scare the people to death so that they will turn to those in Group 1 to save them from the coming catastrophe, chaos, great depression, and, possibly, the end of the world.
Another important point is that while the crisis doesn’t have to be government-produced, oftentimes government policies do produce the very crises that engender the fear that then motivates people to surrender their liberties in exchange for the promise of security.
One example of the latter phenomenon, of course, was the 9/11 attacks, where U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, including the brutal sanctions against the Iraqi people, produced the deeply seated anger and rage that culminated in both the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center and the 9/11 attacks.
Another example is the current financial crisis, where U.S. domestic policy in the housing industry, including the government-created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, produced the financial crisis.
Of course, not surprisingly, those in Group 1 blame the 9/11 crisis not on foreign policy but on “hatred for America’s freedom and values” and the current financial crisis not on domestic policy but on “greed, unfettered capitalism, and deregulation.”
One of the greatest books on the subject of crisis, power, and liberty is Crisis and Leviathan by Robert Higgs. If you have never read it, you owe it to yourself to do so. It carefully explains how crises are the fertile soil in which tyranny grows.
Of course, because those of us in Group 2 understand the nature of government power and the motivations of those who thirst for it. Thus, we don’t fall for the fear-mongering and crises-laden environments in which those in Group 1 induce people to surrender their liberties.
In the battle between those who thirst for power and those who thirst for liberty, our job remains to expose the shams and charades of those in Group 1 to those in Group 3. Our aim remains to convince those in Group 3 that freedom is too important to surrender for any reason. Moreover, we must continue showing them that those who trade liberty for the promise of safety end up with neither.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
