Comments (0) “Just as war is the natural consequence of monopoly, peace is the natural consequence of liberty.” -Gustave de Molinari
March 17, 2010
Regular blog posts are below the cartoon.
Lazarowitz on Government Medicine vs. Inalienable Rights, Compulsory Medical Monopoly, Conservatives’ Military Socialism, The Inalienable Right to Secede
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What the drooling communist Barack Obama really craves is a totally government-controlled health care system, like in the former Soviet Union, in Cuba, North Korea, and other communist and socialist countries.
From WSJ Archives: Childbirth in Soviet Union and North Korea Hospitals
From FEE: Comparing the Consumer-Oriented Medical Care of Old Russia to the Bolshevik’s Socialized Medicine
Suprynowicz: Soviet Medical Care A “Murderous System”
Maltsev: What Soviet Medicine teaches Us
Nordlinger: The Myth of Cuban Health Care
Guardian: British “Health Tourists”
On the Lew Rockwell Blog Saturday, Michael Rozeff started the discussion of who owns people by bringing up U.S. Supreme Court decision Nebbia v. New York, and Justice James McReynolds’s dissent, with McReynolds favoring the right of contract and viewing so-called price regulations as “management, control, and dictation.” Butler Shaffer responded to that in the context of “state ownership of human beings,” and concluded with
…efforts by the state to preserve and promote our health serve the same purpose as a rancher’s interests in caring for his cattle prior to their shipment to the slaughterhouse!
Christopher Manion responded by referring to the subject of state ownership of children, as beginning in America in the 1860s with the start of the mainly anti-Catholic public school movement.
The “civil religion” taught in government schools was designed to neutralize the papist heresies taught in the parochial schools. For the Know-Nothings, Catholic families were not only the competition: they were the enemy.
This reminded me of a post I did in September, regarding the abortion issue, asking the question, “When does self-ownership begin?” which was a response to a Mises Blog post by Skip Oliva, in which he noted,
Let’s say that, in fact, creation is a source of property rights. Does that mean parents have intellectual property rights in their children? After all, they created them.
In my post, I wrote,
Parents can’t own their offspring, regardless of their labor they exerted and “tools” they used, because their “product” happens to be another separate, individual human being.
Human beings inherently have natural, inalienable rights, among them the rights to life and liberty. Part of the right to life and liberty is the right of an individual to self-ownership. The right to self-ownership begins when the human being begins. But when does the human being’s life actually begin?
At the time of the Roe v. Wade decision, the concept of “personhood” was brought up by Justice Harry Blackmun:
“(If the) suggestion of personhood [of the preborn] is established, the [abortion rights] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.”
I’ve seen references to “personhood,” “viability,” “sentience,” and “consciousness, “ and I have some questions.
What is the viability of a born baby? If baby is left alone for a particular amount of time, one cannot survive for very long, because at that early stage of development one is dependent on one’s caretakers for feeding. The same can be said of a 2-year-old, maybe even older children, although the older the child, the more able one is to go out and seek food, unless one is locked inside and can’t get out. Is there a difference between the viability of a born individual and an unborn individual (at whatever stage of development)?
What about “sentience” and “consciousness?” How do we know whether or not a two-month-old “fetus” or a 2-day-old “fetus” can have any physical sensation or conscious awareness? If it is important whether or not that individual has sentience or consciousness in considering whether that individual has any right to life and liberty, and self-ownership, then, what about a born human being or a grown adult who has a neurological disorder and has no “sentience” or who is in a “persistent vegetative state” and has no consciousness, but is still “alive” (or can be kept alive via artificial means)?
However, more recently I’ve seen in Murray Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty, his comments on the abortion issue. Rothbard asks this question:
….when, or in what way, does a growing child acquire his natural right to liberty and self-ownership?
If one has a natural right to liberty and self-ownership, and “natural rights,” as far as I know, means “inherent” in us as human beings (i.e. from conception onward, or just a part of the human being’s “nature”), then how can you “acquire” a natural right to liberty and self-ownership?
James Lewis has an article today at American Thinker regarding the National Geographic’s suggesting that liberals and atheists are more evolved and smarter than conservatives. However, Lewis asks,
Why does (the Left’s) blind “idealism” and its unquenchable power-craving lead to such disastrous results, over and over again? Why does the British medical system have patients parked on gurneys in dirty hallways? Why are their waiting times for life-saving operations so much longer than ours? Why does Prime Minister Gordon Brown advocate using your organs after you die without your permission?
Lewis notes that plenty of people with high IQ can still be dummies, fixed on bad ideas that are impractical (like President Obomber and Nancy Smelgrosi).
In my opinion, the Left has hardly shown any evidence of “evolution” in intelligence when they continue to push for government policies that do nothing but cause destruction and havoc. And how is “adopting nontraditional social values and preferences,” as the Geographic article suggests, an example of intelligence, or being evolved? Just look at the Left’s continued advocacy of drug use and promiscuous sex. In fact, I would argue that promoting drugs, a behavior of self-destruction, especially among today’s youth, is regressive and goes against evolving. And irresponsible, promiscuous sex is in the category of short-term, immediate gratification, as well as possibly dangerous, and reinforces one’s more immature and regressive impulses. One could argue, contrary to the Left’s assertion that “going with your urges” is a defeat of “repression,” etc., that such behaviors that go against self-control actually work towards repressing emotions and intellectually evolutionary activity. It is the self-control that exemplifies a more evolved human being.
However, regarding Lewis’s reference to the Left’s idealism that leads to failed and counter-productive policies, I must say that such characteristics are among some conservatives as well, particularly “neoconservatives.” I think the real point is that neither “liberalism” in the modern sense nor neoconservatism is more or less “evolved.” Rather, it is statism that is at the root of devolution. And the conservatives’ counter-productive war policies over the last 20 years are my evidence of the devolution from the Right.
The Left’s compulsion to use the State—government—as the means to carry out desired ends is a problem among the Right. The best examples of that are the neoconservatives’ compulsion to depend on the national government and military to protect America’s safety and security, and the conservatives’ sheepish, naive following of immoral policies such as the “Bush Doctrine” and foreign military expansionism. Philip Giraldi at Antiwar.com catches the essence of that in his article this week, The Rogue Nation, discussing the use by the U.S. Military of the unmanned drones killing unarmed, innocent, non-combatant civilians in the Middle-East,
….If Iran were operating the drones and bumping off its enemies in places like Dubai you can be sure the reaction would be quite different….
and the idea of our federal government having the power to seize and even kill Americans without trial and without any questioning of evidence against the suspects.
…The death list involves a due process of sorts in that a government official makes the decision who shall be on it based on guidelines but it does not allow the accused to challenge or dispute evidence….
Now, I’m with the conservatives on traditional, conservative family values. Smarter people aren’t necessarily more “evolved.” Plenty of statists and barbarians have been smart people. In my opinion, however, the moral relativism of the Right is just as bad as that of the Left, and what connects the two sides is their dehumanizing of others and their love of The State.
Yesterday on his radio show, Glenn Beck was talking about Ted Turner’s ownership of massive amounts of land, much of it in Montana, and having put it in a “trust” that, after his last child dies, will then be in the hands of government. One of his radio show cohorts made the point that people should do whatever they want with their own private property. But in this report by LandReport.com,
Turner’s ultimate plan? According to published reports, after his death the properties will go into a trust, which his five children will manage until the last one passes away. At that point, the trust will revert to the Turner Foundation, an Atlanta-based charitable organization that Turner founded in 1990 to preserve the environment.
This suggests that all that land won’t end up in government’s control. However, Beck seemed to be referring to Turner’s involvement in the Environmentalism Movement, and that Turner may have ulterior motives. This FOXNews report notes,
Mike Phillips, executive director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund, a Turner offshoot, insisted his boss is just a “doggone serious rancher,” though one dedicated to preserving the environment.
But Phillips’ very presence is making people wonder. He once worked with The Wildlands Project, an environmental group that wants to create a continent-wide network of nature preserves to save endangered species. The Turner Foundation, the charity arm of Turner’s empire, has contributed money to it and gives millions to dozens of other environmental groups.
Turner’s organizations also have been in discussions with the World Wildlife Fund and the World Conservation Union about conserving bison. The groups have expressed interest in developing a huge park where bison could once again roam the Great Plains.
The FOXNews report also noted that one “conspiracy theory” is that Turner is trying to get control over “the world’s largest underground water system,” known as the Ogallala Aquifer.
Hmmm. He must be really thirsty.
If there really is the possibility that the federal government might end up “owning” even more land than it already illegitimately owns, what does that mean? That means that there would be even more land under the control of even more government bureaucrats, politicians and special interest groups, none of whom had participated in any purchases of any lands and therefore have no legal or moral right to control any such land.
Who knows what any possible future government ownership and control of all that Turner land might include. Could those government officials use such land for future “terrorist detention facilities (and torture chambers)”? Like a “Montana Gitmo”? And, if so, how do we know if a future Marxist Administration, much like the Marxists in the White House now, won’t be designating Tea Party protesters and otherwise “anti-government” types as “enemy combatants” and “terrorists”?
This is one of the many problems we face with the compulsory territorial monopoly of government whose rule over all others is always by temporary caretakers. If only we could get ownership of all property out of the hands of illegitimately formed, monopolistic institutions such as government, and keep the ownership and transfer of property only among private individuals.
So, while the crooks and fascists in Washington are scheming and conniving to ram a fascist-communist takeover of the medical system down our throats, it appears that, as noted here yesterday, the ignoramuses and nincompoops want to bring back the illegal immigration issue. It’s time for Obamnesty (again!). I don’t know what Ed Schultz (“Schuuuuuultz!!”) and Janeane Garoofaball think about that (as well as Harry Reek and Nancy Smelgrosi), but as Col. Klink would say to all of them: “Dis……missed!!”
This threat of medical fascism and gross invasion of liberty is what’s been on my mind, not immigration. However, if we must deal with that immigration issue, then here are my initial thoughts on that. Given that the federal government’s existence is illegitimate (The Anti-Federalists were right!), the only way to save America, at the very least, is decentralization. And with that, I say let the individual states handle the immigration issue (legal or illegal), and let the people of each state decide what’s best for their individual state, and get the federal government out of it.
Perhaps we should view this issue, as Stephan Kinsella has, as a matter of private property rights and public use rules of public property. Or, Hans-Hermann Hoppe has compared the migration situations in a monarchy versus that of a democracy. Unlike in a society under monarchical rule, in which the king owns all the territory and therefore has a personal interest in the country’s long-term capital value, in a democracy such as ours, in which the territory is government- and publicly-owned, the “temporary” rulers have no personal interest in the country’s long-term capital value but do have short-term interest in getting votes in the next election:
What will a king’s typical immigration and emigration policy be? Because he owns the entire country’s capital value, he will, assuming no more than his self-interest, tend to choose migration policies that preserve or enhance rather than diminish the value of his kingdom.
As far as emigration is concerned, a king will want to prevent the emigration of productive subjects, in particular of his best and most productive subjects, because losing them would lower the value of the kingdom…..On the other hand, a king will want to expel his non-productive and destructive subjects (criminals, bums, beggars, gypsies, vagabonds, etc.), for their removal from his territory would increase the value of his realm…. On the other hand, as far as immigration policy is concerned, a king would want to keep the mob, as well as all people of inferior productive capabilities, out….
….in accordance with democracy’s inherent egalitarianism of one-man-one-vote, (temporary rulers) tend to pursue a distinctly egalitarian – non-discriminatory – emigration and immigration policy…. As far as emigration policy is concerned, this implies that for a democratic ruler it makes little, if any, difference whether productive or unproductive people, geniuses or bums leave the country. They have all one equal vote. In fact, democratic rulers might well be more concerned about the loss of a bum than that of a productive genius. While the loss of the latter would obviously lower the capital value of the country and loss of the former might actually increase it, a democratic ruler does not own the country. In the short run, which most interests a democratic ruler, the bum, voting most likely in favor of egalitarian measures, might be more valuable than the productive genius who, as egalitarianism’s prime victim, will more likely vote against the democratic ruler……In fact, such negative externalities – unproductive parasites, bums, and criminals – are likely to be his most reliable supporters…..
Hoppe also suggests a decentralizing of immigration decisions:
….The authority to admit or exclude should be stripped from the hands of the central government and re-assigned to the states, provinces, cities, towns, villages, residential districts, and ultimately to private property owners and their voluntary associations….
But Hoppe recognizes the improbability of such decentralizing, and notes:
…The best one may hope for, even if it goes against the “nature” of a democracy and thus is not very likely to happen, is that the democratic rulers act as if they were the personal owners of the country and as if they had to decide who to include and who to exclude from their own personal property (into their very own houses). This means following a policy of utmost discrimination: of strict discrimination in favor of the human qualities of skill, character, and cultural compatibility….
I can’t disagree with any of that, although I’m sure that Ed Schultz (“I know nothing—nnnnnnothing!!”) and Janeane Garoofaball probably do. However, I am a little pessimistic, and fear that the Obomber-Reid-Smelgrosi Regime will stick it to us again, with Obamnesty, fascist Hitlerian government medicine, and all the rest. We need more Tea Parties!
Here is a dramatization of how Bush, Obomber and Congress have been destroying our country:
And while Bush didn’t do this, unfortunately, here is what Obomber really ought to do:
This new proposal by Charles Schemer and Lindsey Scam for a “worker ID card” brings us closer to the communist paradise Barack Obomber dreams about.
There can be no doubt that giving government that kind of power will further diminish our liberty, and individuals’ private information and security will be compromised and violated by government officials. As U.S. Rep. Ron Paul has observed,
A national ID card will have the same effect as gun control laws: criminals will ignore it, while law abiding people lose freedom. A national ID card offers us nothing more than a false sense of security, while moving us ever closer to a police state.
If there must be “worker ID cards,” then with such things, the only way to protect our liberty, security and privacy is to have competing ID card production and distribution agencies handle those services.
The Mises Institute posted a 1992 article by the late Murray Rothbard, A Strategy for the Right, this week. It is quite a lengthy, somewhat informal article—part political analysis, part diary—summarizing how Rothbard had seen “the Right” develop throughout the 20th Century. He discussed conservatives and neoconservatives, but doesn’t really say much about the Republican Party, although he does do that in this other article he wrote two years later regarding the 1994 “Republican Revolution.” Had he lived another 15 years, Rothbard would have seen how conservatives lost their adherence to conservatism, and instead made the Republican Party their priority, as conservatives have done nothing but support Big Government, supposedly in the name of fighting terrorism. However, in the 1992 article, he does provide some insight from his own experiences with the Republicans:
One of the leaders was my friend Howard Buffett, Congressman from Omaha, who was a pure libertarian and was Senator Taft’s Midwestern campaign manager at the monstrous Republican convention of 1952, when the Eisenhower-Wall Street cabal stole the election from Robert Taft. After that, I left the Republican Party, only to return this year for the Buchanan campaign. During the 1950s, I joined every right-wing third party I could find, most of which collapsed after the first meeting. I supported the last presidential thrust of the Old Right, the Andrews-Werdel ticket in 1956, but unfortunately, they never made it up to New York City.
In my opinion, things haven’t changed much these last 50 or 60 years with conservatives and Republicans. They still support government-business mergers and protectionism, and Big Government in the name of this or that.
Thanks to the two Bush presidents, conservatives have been as responsible for the expansion of government and decline of our liberty as have the leftists. When rationalizing their end-justifies-the-means philosophy, the conservatives claim that “Times are different now—the Founders who wrote and approved the Declaration of Independence didn’t have to deal with Islamic terrorism, etc.” This is an example of the conservatives’ own moral relativism, that the Constitution is a “living, breathing document.”
In the 1950s, National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr. had abandoned what had been the conservatives’ mantra of limited government and national sovereignty in favor of Big Government with the powers to aggressively expand government’s military reach into foreign territories and surveillance of one’s own fellow citizens in the name of fighting communism. And in supporting those government intrusions and expansions, Buckley and his ilk became the communists they supposedly feared and detested.
And as the Buckley conservatives crusaded against communism, the modern Bush conservatives went on a jihad against Islamic terrorism, engaging in fear mongering as justification for more egregiously expanded governmental powers and intrusions. The terrorized pro-war electorate responded to the state-issued rhetoric like the Muslim radicals responding to their leaders’ anti-American chants. At least, that’s how I see that.
Today’s conservatives are not “conservative.” Their priority is not conserving the traditional values and morality of our Founding Fathers. Otherwise, they would not have been following the path of socialism and government expansionism led by the two Bush presidents over these past 20 years.
Russell D. Longcore: The Secret Government That YOU Maintain
….The government rules over a man without his consent, therefore making him a slave. But the government occasionally allows the slaves to choose their masters by a majority vote. A man is no less a slave just because he is allowed to vote on his master every certain number of years. Men are slaves because they are state property, and their lives are controlled by other men whose power over them is absolute and without responsibility….
…States that contemplate secession should NOT use the Constitution as a template, but as the founding document NOT to use to create a “new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”….
Butler Shaffer: Running on Empty
…For various reasons that go beyond a principled criticism of our centrally-directed, vertically-structured society, the institutional order is in a state of turbulence. Political, corporate, and educational systems are increasingly unable to meet even the most meager of popular expectations. Our world is becoming more and more decentralized, with vertical systems being challenged – and even replaced – by horizontal networks governed by autonomous and spontaneous human activity. In the face of such changes, the establishment has become desperate to reinforce its crumbling walls. Because the state is defined in terms of its monopoly on the use of violence, it is not surprising to see it escalating the use of brute force in an effort to maintain its position…..
Kelley Vlahos: Liz Cheney Wants to Keep America Safe
….Sadly, her recent transformation from unremarkable State Department political appointee to emboldened jihad hunter and curiously aggressive television pundit, has that cynical whiff of someone trying to position herself for political office. “It’s time for us to stand up and take this country back!” she declared, echoing, almost flatly, the same sentiments from eager pols Marco Rubio and Rep. Jim DeMint earlier that morning…..
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