Grizzly Prairie Fire

An Introduction to Libertarianism

Chad Everson is helping me promote my online Mises Academy class on Principles of Economics (which starts September 8!). He asked me to explain how libertarianism fits into the conventional Republican/Democratic political establishment in the United States, because it often seems as if libertarians straddle the fence.

This is a common reaction when people begin encountering libertarian positions on hot-button issues. What I want to argue is that it is the libertarian who offers a consistent worldview, whereas the typical conservative/liberal or right-winger/left-winger or Republican/Democrat (though we can all see there is hardly any difference in this last “spectrum”) often uses arguments that conflict with each other.

Before diving in, let me give the disclaimer that I obviously can’t speak for all self-described libertarians, since they don’t all agree on every issue. There is also the difference between “big-L” Libertarians who are part of an actual third political party, versus “small-l” libertarians who embrace it as a philosophy but don’t focus on the ballot box as the means of achieving freedom.

Libertarians value liberty as the highest political goal, and view it as an end in itself. They think that people should have the legal right to do whatever they want with their own private property, so long as their actions don’t interfere with the ability of other people to use their property.

A common way of summarizing the libertarian position (in the context of American politics) is to say a libertarian is “conservative on economic issues but liberal on social issues.” This is because the libertarian tends to favor tax cuts, government spending cuts, deregulation of business, no minimum wage laws, etc. On the other hand, the libertarian also tends to oppose the drug war, laws against prostitution, the military draft, laws against homosexuality, etc. So generally speaking, the libertarian is allied with right-wing conservatives on fiscal/business policy recommendations, but the libertarian is allied with left-wing liberals on civil liberties issues.

Far from being inconsistent, the libertarian finds these positions to be perfectly straightforward: The libertarian quite consistently champions individuals and their use of private property, and opposes arbitrary government interference with such use. For example, the libertarian opposes the minimum wage because (a) politicians have no right to tell two consenting adults how much one has to pay the other, and (b) free-market economics shows that minimum wage laws actually hurt poor people.

But in a quite analogous fashion, the libertarian opposes laws against prostitution because (a) politicians have no right to tell two consenting adults how much one has to pay the other (for sex–in most places the only officially allowed price is $0), and (b) free-market economics shows that the crackdown on prostitution actually leads to more venereal disease and other social problems.

To the libertarian, it is ironic to hear the Left and Right discuss the US government. Depending on the issue, the government is either an incredibly evil, bumbling, and dangerous institution, OR it is the fount of aid, mercy, and intelligence.

For example, if we’re debating the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, or Guantanamo Bay, the typical left-wing liberal will accuse the US federal government of outright war crimes, and of being like Nazi Germany. In contrast, the typical right-wing conservative will defend the honor of US troops, the competence of intelligence agencies to keep Americans safe, and the motivations of the people who ordered the invasion.

Yet when we switch to socialized health care, all of a sudden the same liberals will wax eloquently about the government’s duty and ability to help the poor, to rationally plan the entire health-care infrastructure, and to make life-and-death decisions about how much care elders will receive. In contrast, all of a sudden the same conservatives will be very suspicious about the motives of the people in DC, and will complain about socialist power grabs, comparing Obama to Hitler.

The libertarian looks at such debates and says, basically, “You’re both right.”

Robert P. Murphy has a PhD in economics from New York University. He is the author of a new textbook, Lessons for the Young Economist, which can be downloaded for free. Starting September 8, he will teach a 10-week online course on the Principles of Economics at the Mises Academy.

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Matthew 15: 10-29-

¹⁰And he called the multitude, and said unto them, Hear, and understand:

 ¹¹Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.

 ¹²Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?

 ¹³But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.

 ¹⁴Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

 ¹⁵Then answered Peter and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable.

 ¹⁶And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding?

 ¹⁷Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?

 ¹⁸But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.

 ¹⁹For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:

 ²⁰These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.

 ²¹Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.

 ²²And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.

 ²³But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.

 ²⁴But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

 ²⁵Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.

 ²⁶But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.

 ²⁷And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.

 ²⁸Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

 ²⁹And Jesus departed from thence, and came nigh unto the sea of Galilee; and went up into a mountain, and sat down there.

 ³⁰And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus’ feet; and he healed them:

 ³¹Insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel.

 ³²Then Jesus called his disciples unto him, and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way.

 ³³And his disciples say unto him, Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great a multitude?

 ³⁴And Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven, and a few little fishes.

 ³⁵And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground.

 ³⁶And he took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.

 ³⁷And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets full.

 ³⁸And they that did eat were four thousand men, beside women and children.

 ³⁹And he sent away the multitude, and took ship, and came into the coasts of Magdala.

~Matthew 15: 10-39

God did not create the universe, says Hawking – Yahoo! News

God did not create Universe: Hawking AFP/File – God no longer has any place in theories on the creation of the Universe due to a series of developments …

By Michael Holden Michael Holden – Thu Sep 2, 9:08 am ET

LONDON (Reuters) – God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In “The Grand Design,” co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” Hawking writes.

“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book “A Brief History of Time,” an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.

Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics — Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.

His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.

He wrote in A Brief History … “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.”

In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.

“That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions — the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings,” he writes.

Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralyzed.

He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world’s leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in “Star Trek” and the cartoons “Futurama” and “The Simpsons.”

Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.

“The Grand Design” is due to go on sale next week.

(Editing by Steve Addison)

Never before has it been so plain to see that those in leadership are as blind as ever.  My Great Grandfather left me with one handwritten quote.  It is all I have.  He wrote this,

“…these imported Scalists (socialists) could come and organize the Farmers and I.W.W.’s to gather and organization that would destroy the Farmers first, and then all other taxpayers, and to this day there is lots of Farmers just as blind as ever.” -E. W. Everson

Maybe it is our humanity that is prone to such folly.  I know our leaders embody the folly.  In a time when leaders are needed, it seems we have none.  Whom among us follows Christ’s calling?  What leader among us that will not fall to humanities folly of blindness?  I am searching and find none.

I am seeking to find leadership that is not blinded or prone to the human folly.  I know they are out there, I just have yet to find.  I have found many that have let me down, over and over again.  Yet I am still hopeful and my eyes see clearly the political landscape, and the calling Christ has blessed me with to this day.

Soon, within the week I will be traveling to the Nations capital, Washington, D.C., for the fourth time in two or so years.  I never thought I would make it to the nations capital once in my lifetime, let alone as many times as I have been gifted to travel there.  The last few times I have went I did not feel the evil I was expecting to encounter there.  I felt the presence of our founders and the love and adoration for Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.  The feeling I was expecting was one of dread and the people in the beltway would reflect that evil mentality.  I just did not encounter that at all. 

In fact it was quite the opposite. I found others that were working if not harder than I, they were working smarter and were finding great success.  Each trip, I find I am more inspired to keep the good fight and this marathon of a good race going strong.  I pray this trip is so blessed. 

Hawking leads science into the ditch, and it really does not surprise me when the “leadership” found in science embrace global warming, that was once global cooling, and now is just obviously Socialism packaged as Scientific agenda driven propaganda.  The Blind leading the Blind.  I hope you can see their folly. 

It really is a shame, all those resources that these leaders have at their fingertips and yet they are so blinded that they turn to evil, instead of creating good with God’s Grace.  Keep in prayer and keep the good fight.

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Rememeber that great line of Norm’s in the hit TV a while back called Cheers?

Cheers-
Sam: How would you guys feel about Rebecca managing this place again?
Norm: Would it raise the price of beer?
Sam: No.
Norm: Then what do we care

Michele Bachman has been fighting for our Country the first time she opened her home to that first foster care child.  She then knew that God was sending her to even more service, she was thrust into the public eye as this Grizzly who would not back down in elected office.  Michele Bachmann is my Congressman and I could not feel more secure with her fighting for my homestead, my wife and I.  Tarryl Clark, is someone who has tried to raise the tax and price on beer and anything else her failed party can get its hands on.  It is time to chase these Socialist Squirrels the hell out of our backyard!

Re-elect Michele Bachmann and never, ever cast a vote for a Socialist Squirrel like Tarryl Clark.  Government is not entertainment.  It is essential, and for those that recognize it is best, small with a small tax burden but Mighty in its military. 

If Tarryl Clark is so fond of raising our taxes, then she should find no problem buying everyone at the MN State Fair a beer.  However, they have laws against that.  I guess we can only put money into these Socialist Squirrel pockets, because you know a vote for Tarryl Clark will cost us all in the end.

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Obama Protestor Assaulted and Arrested by Security at Alaska State Fair……

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The Problem With School Vouchers by Robert P. Murphy

In his laudatory review of Jacob Huebert’s new primer on libertarianism, David Gordon quotes this:

The independent schools would not be killed off by genuine market competition; they would be killed off by government privileges [i.e., approval by the government to receive voucher payments] to some schools — those willing to accept government control — and not others. A program that would do this cannot be called libertarian. (p. 126)

Unfortunately, a lot of “right-wingers” and even self-described libertarians think that the free-market position on government schools is to introduce vouchers. In their rhetoric, they claim that this will end the public school monopoly, return competition to the industry, give parents a choice, etc. And of course, the free-market guru Milton Friedman himself pioneered the idea, so who could doubt its libertarian bona fides?

But hold on a second. Let’s apply the rhetoric to other areas. “Hey, I think we should give real choice to American families! Everybody should get a voucher, paid for by taxpayers, to spend up to $10,000 on a new automobile. This will give poorer families a real choice, and the competition will spur car producers to offer new options in an effort to capture those voucher revenues.”

Obviously no free-market person would support such a plan; it would represent an unjust wealth redistribution among the population, and it would wreck the car industry. The government would have to continually revise its detailed regulations governing eligibility for the program, lest some shady people set up a scam whereby they would sell cardboard “automobiles” to a voucher recipient, and then split the $10,000 afterwards.

The same is true with formal schooling. If we started from an initial, free market in the “school industry”–with no mandatory attendance laws, no government funds, and no government interference with curriculum–then the voucher idea would smack of pseudo-socialism. It would horrify Tea Party people as much as ObamaCare.

Of course, the big problem is that the government ALREADY intervenes so heavily in the area of formal schooling. That’s why the voucher position seems to be a move back towards liberty.

But is it really? As Huebert notes, the widespread introduction of vouchers could very well destroy what’s left of the independent, private schools. The government would have to establish criteria for which schools were eligible for the vouchers, and which weren’t: Taxpayers would be outraged if Joe Blow set up a “school” where he just popped in DVDs all day, and collected checks from the government.

It’s true, the government currently intervenes in numerous ways with what private schools can do. But the government would have far more leverage if it could make its requirements tied to cash disbursements, as opposed to imposing blanket regulations. For example, if the government simply declared, “It is illegal to mention ‘Intelligent Design’ in the classroom,” there would be an outcry in certain areas of the country. But if the government said, “We will not give taxpayer assistance to any schools mentioning Intelligent Design,” then the opposition would not be as strong.

However, as more and more private schools succumbed to the temptation to accept voucher-funded students, the government’s stranglehold on curriculum would expand. In the beginning, there might be temporary improvements in standardized test scores and other criteria, for all the reasons that voucher proponents cite.

But another immediate impact would be a huge increase in the demand for education tax dollars. Parents who currently send their kids to private schools (or homeschool) would apply for the vouchers. Thus the government would be paying for kids in “public” schools, but also in private. Property taxes would have to go up.

In the end, when everything had settled down, the government would extract a lot more out of taxpayers than it does now. And the difference between government and private schools would have been eroded even further. The government would have effectively taken over all formal schooling.

It is understandable that parents in many areas of the country are disgusted with their government-run schools, and look to vouchers as a “free-market” solution. But this is a grave mistake. The only way to truly fix schooling is to get government out of it altogether.

Robert P. Murphy has a PhD in economics from New York University. He has a new book [.pdf] on principles of economics aimed at junior high school students, available for free download. His online course using this book begins September 8.

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Restoring Honor Rally- Dr. Alveda King

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Restoring Honor Through The Eyes Of a Father and Son

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Join Michelle Moore Of Smart Girl Politics, and Emery McClendon, Project 21, The Liberty Coalition, and Smart Girl Politics at The Recycle Government Rally in St. Louis, Mo. on September 12, 2010.

Let us continue the movement to Restore our Republic.

For more information follow this link: http://www.recyclegovernment.org/stlouis/

 

www.tlcontheweb.com

 

http://www.nationalcenter.org/P21Index.html

 

Thank you!

www.armad.net

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Mama Grizzly’s? I know Grizzly and honeys, Your No GRIZZLY!

You can’t dress a bunch of Socialist Squirrels up in bear costumes and call yourself Grizzly! Your all Nuts!

The original Mama  Grizzly:  Betsy Everson wife of “The Grizzly Bear: E.W. Everson who recalled the first Governor in USA history…A socialist squirrel Governor that was in fact a Non Partisan League Socialist Squirrel on the Republican ticket.

Betsy came to this country from Norway.  Rode a pine log wagon to North Dakota, fell in love and married the “Grizzly Bear” E.W. Everson, pioneered, homesteaded bringing up her natural born children and a really special adopted little girl named Helen.  She smoked a corn cob pipe and probably still 6 feet under work circles around you Socialist Squirrel nuts that think that the Federal Government gives you anything.  Betsy, a true Mama Grizzly!  You all are just pathetic Socialist Squirrels that do not even understand you are slaves on the plantations of dependence.

Mama Grizzly’s?  You do not even know what it takes to get Grizzly. 

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