1. He co-sponsored PIPA in the U.S.
2. He is also the primary sponsor of the Johnson-Shelby Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Human Rights Act of 2012, which “Requires the Administration to devise a comprehensive strategy and report to Congress on how best to assist Iran’s citizens in freely and safely accessing the Internet, developing counter-censorship technologies, expanding access to ‘surrogate’ programming including VOA’s Persian News Network, and Radio FARDA inside Iran, and taking other similar measures.”

Interesting how things work out, eh?

[HT: Jason Ditz]

Am I reading the U.S. Constitution wrong??? Doesn’t Article I, Section 6 say that Senators “shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place”.

Any reader of this blog will realize I am not at all a fan of Santorum, Gingrich, or Romney (in other words all the 4 GOP frontrunners besides Ron Paul).

Regarding Rick Santorum…

1. According to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, in 2006 Santorum was one of 3 most corrupt members of the Senate.
2. He violated the Senate Gift rule
3. Over 4 years in the House and 12 years as a senator, Santorum developed a reputation for his immoderate use of earmarks.
4. Believes that it is “the duty of each and every American citizen…to stand up and say ‘I support Israel’”.
5. Opposes withdrawing from Afghanistan, supports foreign aid to Pakistan, and believes that because Pakistan has nuclear weapons it is automatically a friend of the U.S.
6. Is a strong supporter of the Cuban embargo.
7. He voted for the highway bill, subsidies for PA dairy farms, etc.
8. Wants some sort of economic war with China (though denies it is a trade war)
9. Says he is against abortion and is a social and fiscal conservative, but supported the campaign of Arlen Spenser (pro-choice and “Pork Spender of the Year”) over Pat Toomy).
10. Voted YES on the Patriot Act, extending the Patriot Act warrantless wiretap provisions.
11. Voted NO to habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees and having the CIA report on its detainees and interrogations.
12. In a time of near-economic disaster, his budget-cutting zeal does not extend to military spending and defends “robust U.S. military spending”.
13. Shown vast ignorance on foreign policy (in a debate he thought Perez Musharraf was still in power in Pakistan).

Regarding Mitt Romney…

1. Has a particularly strong messianic vision of American Exceptionalism (“The Case For American Greatness”, “America is always known as the hope of the Earth”, etc.)
2. Wishes to increase the size of the military by at least 100,000 troops and an expansion of the Navy that would cost an estimated $40 billion.
3. He said he doesn’t know whether it was necessary for the US Congress to issue a declaration of war before engaging in acts of war and would consult lawyers.
4. Has shown gross misunderstandings in regard to the Iraq situation (ie. he said the war could have been avoided if Hussein allowed the IAEA inspectors
   into the country, when in actuality Hussein did allow the inspectors into the country).
5. Has advocated a “Special Partnership” force in Pakistan, a team of CIA agents and Army special forces to aid in military support, gun supplies, etc
6. Felt Obama took too long to get involved in Libya and criticized Obama for ruling out ground forces in Libya.
7. He is on record saying that “We ought to double” the expensive Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
8. He praised the U.S. military for not allowing prisoners to have judicial review
9. He supports the Patriot Act, believes FBI wiretaps and spying on immigrants is OK, and thinks it is best not to say whether water boarding is torture or not.
10. In January 2008, the National Taxpayer Union determined that Romney’s campaign proposals would increase the federal budget by $19.5 billion.
11. He supported rescuing the auto-industry with government-backed loans and warranty guarantees.
12. Supported the Cuba embargo.

Newt Gingerich…

1. Supports Red Scare type loyalty tests for everyone.
2. Supports an assasination or coup in Iran
3. He believes the “right to be innocent until proven guilty” only applies “if it’s a matter of criminal law”. He rejects applying the same basic standards of Western justice to national security.
4. His consulting company accepted $1.6 million from government-backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac at the height of the real estate boom. Then he said that then-Senator Obama ought to return contributions he had received from Freddie Mac and its sister racket, Fannie Mae. And then Newt brought out a campaign book in which he argued for getting rid of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
5. In 1997 he advocated the death penalty for possesion of a certain quality of marijuana (while he is among 100 million Americans who have smoked marijuana). In 1996, he introduced the “Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996″.
6. His thinking is entrenched in unabashed moral relativism, especially when it comes to his own behavior. In spite of his support for the death penalty for marijuana possession, he had previously smoked marijuana back in the day. He maintains that while marijuana remained illegal the whole time, some time between the sixties and now it transitioned from being moral to immoral–that’s his way of explaining why it was ok back then but not now.
7. A 2006 speech at an awards dinner he gave calls into question his commitment to the First Amendment
8. Believes American Exceptionalism is central to the nation’s survival
9. He believes that a deadline for Iraqi withdrawal is legislating defeat.
10. He believes water boarding is “by every technical rule not torture” even though the U.S. Army Field Manual calls it torture.
11. As Jospeh Knippenberg said “Gingrich has a self-regard so immense that it rivals Obama’s – but, unlike Obama’s, is untamed by self-discipline”.
12. As George Will said “Gingrich’s is an amazingly efficient candidacy in that it embodies everything that is disagreeable about modern Washington. He’s the classic rental politician.”

And people will actually be voting for these guys? I shouldn’t be surprised–but It astounds me.

1. For as much as they denounce each others foreign policy, the mainstream Democrats and the Republicans agree on the main core matters of foreign policy. Their disagreement is often about operational matters and petty details.  It’s absolutely astounding that you could have 9 candidates for President (including Obama) and have so little variation in foreign policy (except for Ron Paul). There is a growing understanding that none of the mainstream candidates are really addressing the core issues of foreign policy, they are all arguing over technicalities while they presume American exceptionalism and that they must wage expensive, bloody, and questionably justified wars. Their critiques of each other boil down to scoring points in political feuds, rather than arriving at a rational, beneficial foreign policy. There is a hunger for a candidate that will truly turn over the tables and scale back the empire. People are starting to see the way foreign policy impacts their children and grandchildren.
2. The political spectrum is far more complicated than the left-right paradigm has lead us to believe. People are beginning to see past the left-right dichotomies and see that public policy is complicated and they are feeling more freedom to follow and advocate what they feel is right rather than just parrot what “their side” tells them. They are feeling more free to explore less mainstream candidates and candidates who are more complex than a left-right label. They respect a man that is willing to stick up against the rest of his contemporaries and his party for a just cause. They’ve realized that new paint jobs on regurgitated strategies just won’t do anymore, so to speak.
3. There is a long history of Republicans who have talked fiscal conservatism, but have not walked it at all. They love spending, they just don’t like the Democrats spending. This years rounds of debates was quite illustrative. Lots of pet programs and lots of defending the very same sort of things that they chastised the Democrats for.  In the debates, the so-called fiscal conservatives became big-government advocates of spending as soon as one would ask whether one might be able to cut a little money to the Department of Defense budget. They are looking for a radical change in economics, and the other candidates just aren’t offering it.
4. People are realizing the importance of the principle of liberty. They don’t believe the propaganda that a free society necessarily leads to anarchism.  Quite frankly, many people have advocated government intervention against the perpetrators of their pet peeves only to find the very momentum that they started being used against them. The emergence of the “Religious Right” gives many case studies in this. Religious people, especially Christians, are increasingly seeing that you reap what you sow, and if you use government to pester other people, that momentum will at some point in time be used against you. People are rapidly seeing the folly of using government coercion to accomplish their means and are seeing the benefit of using non-aggressive persuasion, harkening back to the age old saying “A man persuaded against his will is of the same opinion still”.
5. People are tired of big government, but they are ALSO tired of corporatism (ie. crony capitalism). Many Republicans critique “big government” and praise the “free market” while they wield their government power by corruption, enabling corporations to do things they would never be able to do in a free market. People are hungry for those who will step outside of the old mantras and critique not only socialism, but also “crony capitalism”.
6. People are sick and tired of politicians that put party, re-election, politics, business deals, etc. over principle. They are looking for someone who is going to be bold enough to go against the grain vote 1 to 250, and say something that gets them booed and loses them thousands of votes.  And the sort of person who doesn’t have the aura of having spend days upon days with image consultants and pollsters is very appealing these days. They want the sort of person whose political philosophy is understandable and not a whatever-way-the-wind-blows sort of thing.
7. There is a growing understanding that being pro-liberty and pro-life ought to be compatible and there is a hunger for pro-life candidates who consistently take that basic respect for the life of others and apply it in other areas such as foreign policy, economics, law enforcement, due process, etc. (unfortunately some so-called pro-lifers are drastically inconsistent because they do not have any principle of non-aggression in other areas of policy–the idea of respect for life just magically appears when they start talking about abortion). People want a candidate who sees a rational connection between upholding the life of babies and all the other areas of public policy that deal with respecting life.
8. Seven words: Santorum, Romney, Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, Huntsman, and Obama (the Republican and Democratic parties have a tradition of offering questionable candidates)

I’m quite sure that these trends will outlast Ron Paul.  Ron Paul isn’t perfect, but undoubtedly spot-on in many (if not most) areas and refreshingly different and admirable. There is no reason to believe that the wave that has brought him to become one of the top 3 GOP contenders will be getting any smaller even after he is dead and buried.  It will be interesting to see what directions it takes.

It so turns out that an ethical, effective, and rational public policy is odious to the establishment of both the Democrat and Republican parties.  But I think people are waking up. I expect to see decreasing mainstream Democrat/Republican hedgemony and an increasing desire to work out policy outside of the old, worn out left-right dichotomy.

See the following video:

Today is the birthday of Ludwig Von Mises, an influential economist of the Austrian school and author of Human Action. He was born September 29, 1881 and would have been 130 years now if he were still alive. You can read more about him here.

He was given an honorary doctorate at Grove City College. His work has influenced a diverse group of individuals, including Leonard Read, Henry Hazlitt, Max Eastman, Murray Rothboard, Israel Kirzner, Sylvester J. Petro, and Ayn Rand.

Mises had a broad and impressive knowledge of politics, economics and philosophy married with a keen insight about what was transpiring in practical terms.  He was a man ahead of his time, scorned for things that we now see to be fact. Murray Rothbard observed that “Mises’s warnings of financial collapse and depression were remembered after 1929, although they were generally scorned at the time.” Murray Rothbard once said, “In his critique of logical positivism, Mises saw that a philosophy that treated people as if they were stones and atoms, whose behavior could be predicted and determined according to quantitative laws, was particularly likely to lead to the viewpoint of social engineers, who deal with people as if they were inanimate physical object”

Ralph Raico said of him “For over sixty years he was at war with the spirit of the age, and with every one of the advancing, victorious, or merely modish political schools, left and right….Decade after decade he fought militarism, protectionism, inflationism, every variety of socialism, and every policy of the interventionist state, and through most of that time he stood alone, or close to it…But the lack of recognition seems to have influenced or deflected Mises not in the least.”

Mises discovered the Austrian school of economics through Carl Menger and went on to be one of its leading proponents. I, for one, have found his writings to be very readable, helpful, and simply make a lot of common sense especially when compared with the prevailing misinformation and illogical hogwash that is so commonly labeled “economics”. He also was really good at intellectually demolishing the prevailing pretensions and falsehoods of politics and economics in a very understandable way.

Mises was extremely limited in his teaching post in the University of Vienna, but he ended up lecturing many people, including Friedrich A. Hayek. In the early 1930′s, when people were denying that Nazism could happen in Austria, Mises foresaw what would transpire. In 1940, when the Nazis took over France, Mises and his wife fled to the United States. Mises, lecturing at NYU even up to the age of 87, became the oldest active professor in the U.S.  NYU didn’t pay him, but he was paid through a separate fund, the Volker Fund.

In regard to Ludwig’s marriage with Margrit, Rothbard said that “Margit and Ludwig von Mises were a magnificent team”. Margrit once said that “In the first years of our relationship, Lu[dwig] was almost an enigma to me. I never had seen such modesty in a man before. He knew his value, but he never boasted. … I think it was the extreme honesty in Lu[dwig]‘s feelings that attracted me so strongly to him. These feelings were so overpowering that he, who wrote thousands of pages about economics and money, could not find the words to talk about himself, and explain his feeling.”

Here are a few memorable quotes from Von Mises

• “Depression is the aftermath of credit expansion.” (Planning for Freedom)
• “Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.”
• “Capitalism and socialism are two distinct patterns of social organization. Private control of the means of production and public control are contradictory notions and not merely contrary notions. There is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.” (The Anti Capitalistic Mentality)
• “It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods.” (Omnipotent Government)
• “The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.” (The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science)
• “As a rule, capitalism is blamed for the undesired effects of a policy directed at its elimination” (Interventionism: An Economic Analysis)
• “The usual terminology of political language is stupid. What is ‘left’ and what is ‘right’? Why should Hitler be ‘right’ and Stalin, his temporary friend, be ‘left’? Who is ‘reactionary’ and who is ‘progressive’? Reaction against an unwise policy is not to be condemned. And progress towards chaos is not to be commended. Nothing should find acceptance just because it is new, radical, and fashionable. ‘Orthodoxy’ is not an evil if the doctrine on which the ‘orthodox’ stand is sound. Who is anti-labor, those who want to lower labor to the Russian level, or those who want for labor the capitalistic standard of the United States? Who is ‘nationalist,’ those who want to bring their nation under the heel of the Nazis, or those who want to preserve its independence?” (Interventionism, An Economic Analysis)
• ” It is not because we have distilleries that people drink whiskey; it is because people like to drink whiskey that we have distilleries. One may deplore this. But it is not up to the entrepreneurs to improve mankind morally. And they are not to be blamed if those whose duty this is have failed to do so.”  (Interventionism: An Economic Analysis)
• “If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.” (Planning for Freedom)
• “A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police. ” (Liberalism)
• “Governments which are eager to keep up the outward appearance of freedom even when curtailing freedom disguise their direct interference with consumption under the cloak of interference with business. The aim of American prohibition was to prevent the individual residents of the country from drinking alcoholic beverages. But the law hypocritically did not make drinking as such illegal…It merely prohibited the manufacture, the sale and the transportation of intoxicating liquors, the business transactions which precede the act of drinking. The idea was that people indulge in the vice of drinking only because unscrupulous businessmen prevail upon them. It was, however, manifest that the objective of prohibition was to encroach upon the individuals’ freedom to spend their dollars and to enjoy their lives according to their own fashion.” (Human Actions)
• “But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments. A good case could be made out in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and nicotine. And why limit the government’s benevolent providence to the protection of the individual’s body only? Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious, both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs.” (Human Action)
• “The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by governments.”

• Voted YES on extending the PATRIOT Act’s roving wiretaps. (Feb 2011)
• Voted YES on retroactive immunity for telecoms’ warrantless surveillance. (Jun 2008)
• Voted NO on Veto override: Congressional oversight of CIA interrogations. (Mar 2008)

Mitt Romney

• FBI wiretaps and spying on immigrants OK. (Dec 2006)
• Best to not say whether waterboarding is torture or not. (Jan 2008)
• Supports the Patriot Act (interview 2007)

Rick Santorum

• Voted YES on reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. (Mar 2006)
• Voted NO on requiring CIA reports on detainees & interrogation methods (Sep 2006)
• Voted YES on extending the PATRIOT Act’s wiretap provision. (Dec 2005)
• Voted NO on preserving habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees. (Sep 2006)

Tim Pawlenty

• Torture of terrorists might be ok to obtain info. (May 2010)
• “I support renewing PATRIOT ACT”

Ron Paul

• Opposes Patriot Act (Jan 2007)
• We can’t fight for freedom if we impose Patriot Act. (Sep 2005)
• Voted NO on extending the PATRIOT Act’s roving wiretaps. (Feb 2011)
• Voted NO on allowing electronic surveillance without a warrant. (Sep 2006)
• Habeas corpus always applies, even to Guantanamo. (Dec 2007)
• Violating habeas corpus will be used against us. (Sep 2007)

My Thoughts

• Habeas corpus is an important part of the Western tradition of law. Basically it allows a person who is imprisoned (or someone on his behalf) to request that his imprisonment be justified before the courts. Having its protection is always important, but especially when there is a high probability of confusion or mistakes in apprehending suspects. The “war on terror” is particularly tricky because many enemy combatants are not easily marked out as such and it is very easily for innocent civilians to be locked up indefinitely without a trial.  Without habeas corupus an innocent man who someone betrayed as “terrorist” could be locked up indefinitely on hearsay alone with no recourse. One may say “but they are wrongdoers!”. But, alas, the whole point of habaeus corpus is to protect accused wrongdoers. If U.S. policy is to remain “above reproach” it must extend Habeas corpus even when it doesn’t feel like it.  Otherwise it will always be subject to legitimate objection that it is not committed to giving other people the very same freedoms it is supposing to spread around the world. Will some wrongdoers use this as a loophole? Perhaps.  But, again, that is the nature of Habaeus corpus. You can’t give an avenue of protecting the innocent without the potential protection of some guilty. There is no guarantee it will not be abused. But it is a vital safeguard for the innocent and even if a few wrong doers get off it is worth it!  Imprisoning an innocent man is such a wrong that great pains should be taken to avoiding that. And, it must be said, if an imprisoned man is really a terrorist, shouldn’t there be enough evidence to demonstrate it in the courts? Denying habeas corpus to encourage and spread freedom is sort of like abolishing private property of suspected communists in order to fight communism.
• The PATRIOT Act contains many chilling and dangerous Orwellian provisions. There is evidence that some (if not many) of the politicians who signed it didn’t even read it all (John Kerry being one example). I believe that the PATRIOT Act is vastly unpatriotic (since it is so starkly against the founding values of the nation it is supposing to protect).
• With wiretaps and surveillance, one may say, what have you to hide if you are innocent? Well, that statement implies that we are guilty until proven innocent rather than the other way around.  Also, it ignores recent instances where such power has been widely abused against innocent people. There are two other problems with warrant-less wiretaps–1. By bypassing the requirement to  prove that the surveillance is justified, it encourages preemptive and exploratory surveillance and encourages the surveillance of people that are merely mildly suspicious and have a low probability of guilt. 2. Even if the people doing the surveillance are operating under a righteous cause, it opens a dangerous precedent for subsequent people to use the same action for more devious purposes.
• Torture. It is surprising and astounding that in the 21st century, in a Western nation, with a high percentage of Christian citizens, it is controversial to say that the most powerful country in the world can defend itself without resorting to torture.  It is also surprising to see how hesitant (or outright unwilling) some are to classify water-boarding as torture. That a politician can seriously maintain that the CIA should not have to report on the detainees and the tactics it uses is likewise astounding.
• In short: An attempt to spread civilization, Western ideals, and freedom to the world that hinges on indefinite detention based on an accusation without a trial, warrant-less domestic wiretapping, and torture has zero credibility. Unfortunately, the majority of Republican and Democratic candidates do not have a consistent understanding of this.  It is sad to see that out of all the current GOP candidates, only one (Ron Paul) takes a clear stand on these 4 issues that reflects a basic and consistent respect for law, due process, and liberty.

In must be said that the 1953 CIA-sponsored assassination, the siding with Saddam Hussein against Iran, and the selling of weapons to Iran was creating something. But it wasn’t freedom.

Foreign policy is a tricky topic. Not everyone agrees how to respond. However, it seems clear to me that Sanatorium is espousing a ridiculous/naive reading of history.

“Even those who hate the market, whether they work in it or not, thrive on the wealth it generates. If Marx’s buddy Engels hadn’t been a factory manager, he would have lacked the leisure time needed to help concoct their destructive philosophy.”

Of course, as various communistic histories have shown, once communism destroys its enemies, it becomes very apparent that its enemies were where the freedom and opportunity to bring about change came about in the first place. And so, communist societies self-destruct fairly quickly.  Either they stagnate (because they have eliminated the preconditions to change) or they become  tyrannical (because they’ve lost the preconditions to peace and freedom).

• Around 224 000 – 258 000 lives have been lost (125,000 of which were Iraqi civilians and somewhere between 10,000-13,000 were  Afghan civilians)
• Around 365,000 people have been wounded
• 7,800,000 people have been displaced (the population of Kentucky + Conn.)
• Since the beginning of the “war on terror”, the U.S. has spent somewhere between $2,000,000,000,000-3,000,000,000,000

Various Costs Not Factored In:

• Non-bodily losses (of time, money, energy, stress) of those affected by the war but not counted among the dead or injured.
• Cost of legitimate buildings and other infrastructure destroyed directly or indirectly by the war
• Inevitable rebuilding, peacekeeping, and nation building costs.
• Veteran-related costs (including benefit payments and more intangible costs like the veteran’s quality of life)
• Damage on the perception of the U.S. and the West in general resulting from these actions.
• Strains in the U.S. relationship with other nations (both in the West and the East)
• Damage of stability in these regions for the future.
• Interest Payments paid out on the trillions of dollars spent on the war

Some further thoughts:

• If you took the killed, wounded, and displaced from this era of the “war on terror”, you would have the full population of New York City.
• And if you divided all the money that the U.S.A. has spent on this war on terror and divided it between all the people of New York City each and every individual in New York City would receive $250,000.
• If you take the number of people who died in 9/11 (2,752 by a figure given by NY two years after the fact) and add it to the “USS Cole” fatalities (17) and add to it the Khobar Towers bombing (19) and add to it the US. Embassy bombings of 1998 (23) and add to it the Riyadh Compound Bombings (9) and add them all together, you find that these deaths (some of which were military men) compose 2% of the civilians killed in Iraq alone since 9/11. These are not all of the times in which American lives have been taken at the hands of terrorists, but they are the major ones and the biggest ones.

What result would need to be accomplished to justify this? Has it been accomplished? Will it ever be accomplished? Will this resolve the problem of terrorism? Will it result in more or less stability? At this cost, is it worth it?

Whatever you think about war. one has to stop and wonder.   This seems like a very sad situation from whatever angle I look at it from:

• As a person who wants the best for the U.S. , it is concerning to see them involving themselves in the affairs of other nations in this matter when they stand to gain so many enemies. And it is concerning to me to see them spending so much money when they are in such a financial mess.
• As a Christian, it is concerning to me to see such a little concern for truth, rule of law, and just war theory in the execution of these wars, especially since to much of the world this is a “Christian” war. And it is concerning to see Christians blindly endorsing such things. It’s concerning that we (the royal we, I know) are so slow to pray for the people who are being attacked and so quick to cheer the people are attacking. Though some may believe the “war on terror” will open doors for religious freedom, etc., I tend to see it have more of a negative effect in fomenting extremist reactions, antagonizing populations against anything that smacks of the West to them (ie. Christianity), and generally causing increases in persecution in many cases (as has been the case in this war on terror). I believe in the final balance, war in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to have actually in many ways hindered the cause of Christ in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• As a person who agrees that war can be lawfully waged in various cases, it is very concerning to see it executed in such a disproportional (and often undeclared) fashion.
• As a human being, I hate seeing people, especially non-combatants killed.
• As a person who loves the great themes found in the history and tradition of the United States of America: freedom, liberty, toleration, and a free economy, it is very concerning to see the freedoms (both of citizens at home and of other people abroad) being curtailed in the name of this war
• As a person who cares about the perception the rest of the world has about the “West”, I’m concerned that we are gaining an often well deserved charge of elitism, colonial-mentality, arrogance,cold-blooded murder, disproportion and unreasonableness in our aggression, and a general spirit of “might makes right”, “our side right or wrong”, and “we make the rules”.

I hope, for many reasons, that Western powers will make a swift “cease and desist” on their ambitious projects in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I say “Western Powers” because even though I refer to the U.S. a lot in this post, I’m fully aware that Canada and other nations are involved in some of these efforts.

I will always affirm that the U.S (and the rest of the West) has a right to powerfully and swiftly defend itself.  Given the evidence I’ve seen, there is no way that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as we’ve seen them unfold, fit within that purpose. And even if they did fit into the purpose of self-defense, they are totally disproportionate responses.

The U.S., I believe, can be a safe, free, and prosperous nation. But, it is quite clear to me and many others, that such a course will not be attained by attacking, controlling, or building Afghanistan, Iraq, or Iran.

Here are some of his thoughts on war, imperialism, and patriotism.

“I am opposed to all imperial ambitions, wherever they may be cherished and with whatever veneer of benevolent assimilation they may be disguised.”

“Princeton is a hot-bed of patriotic enthusiasm and military ardor, which makes me feel like a man without a country.”

A man without a country. Sometimes, for various reasons, one sure feels like that!

My reasoning for not going to the voting booth this year, is basically this:

A. No party or candidate in my riding in (my opinion) seems to have a track record which indicates they will protect individual liberty and limit the size and scope of government (which is intimately tied to personal economic liberty).

B.  So, then, if I were to vote, I’d be faced with voting for what, in my mind, is an unworthy party just to try and keep an ostensibly more unworthy party out.

C. Realistically speaking, the impact of my vote is small (actually, to say it is small may be an understatement), even if it were a low turnout in a small, hotly contested riding.

D. But supposing the impact of my vote were significant, I would have to weigh the positive impact of my vote working toward keeping that other party out of office with the negative impact of emboldening the less unworthy party to continue in its unworthiness and not change.

E. Also, supposing the impact of my vote were significant,  I would find voting for a party I don’t really like and can’t really ultimately support on their own merits distasteful.

F. An additional complication to the things I mention is this: In Canada we do not vote directly for our Prime Minister, but rather for parliamentary representatives, the proportions of which determine the Prime Minister. So in addition to the problems outlined in D & E, we also face a potential disconnect between my support of the Prime Ministerial candidate and the other person from his party (the parliamentary rep) that I would need to vote for in order to work toward getting the correct PM into office. So in some situations one might want to vote in support of Joe Smith from the Rhino Party in the race for PM, but not support or condone John Doe (also from the Rhino Party) in his campaign to become parliamentary rep.  And there is no way to separate the two. So the discerning, critical voter is often faced with that dillema.

Ultimately, you may think I’m over thinking this or having too picky of a criteria and therefore excluding everyone. But I don’t think its that. I do want to have realistic expectations of leaders, but on the other hand I believe if voting is important, it would be important to try to be consistent and make a good decision. It is in light of a desire to be consistent and vote according to my conscience that I am not voting.

Does that make one a bad citizen? I don’t think so.   It’s quite ironic the way the romantic and sometimes even messianic themes come up in relation to voting. I see it as a mildly significant thing. I think it is often over inflated. The state is not our salvation. Neither is voting.

It’s quite ironic that a zealous politico could look at a man or woman who loves their spouse, cares for their family, is successful and innovative in business,  faithful to their friends, faithful to their convictions, generous and involved in their church and/or other organizations and yet who doesn’t vote, and declare them as a “bad citizen” and “helping the bad party get in” and “not allowed to complain”.   The thing is, this person who does all those other things and yet doesn’t vote has identified the things that are more effective than voting. They’ve identified other areas to exert their energies  (areas that are far more effective in changing society and having a voice) and have done WAY more to benefit society than someone who merely voted. Voting is a small, easy thing to do and doesn’t require the dedication that these more effective society transforming things require. So why do we attach such high importance to voting often over and against them?

So I just want to stick up for non-voters and say, non-voters have a right to complain (as much as voters do) and can be good citizens (there are good and bad citizens among non-voters just like there are among voters). They have chosen to not get involved in the process for various reasons, and quite frankly, sometimes they can be very valid ones.

“Bush was on national television declaring that the feds would have zero tolerance towards gouging, which is another way of saying zero tolerance toward markets.”

– Lew Rockwell in The Left, the Right, and the State