A Libertarian Manifesto- part two

Thanks to everyone for part one's great responses! I was having some trouble distinguishing between libertarians and conservatives, so I asked JB if he could clarify a few things:

In the first manifesto, I tried to outline, in very general terms, what the Libertarian Party is all about. As with many articles written in general terms, not all of the philosophical and practical differences with other parties were outlined to any great degree. The owner of this blog, being enlightened, has invited me to elaborate more about the actual differences between the parties. That is a large topic, and so in part two I wish to talk about Republicans. For discussion purposes I will fall back on our earlier precedent of using the neo-conservative tag to distinguish them from earlier types of Republicans.

There is a tendency by the modern conservative movement to try and 'swallow' the Libertarians as being a sort of long-lost cousin to themselves, or maybe just wayward stepchildren. Indeed, the question arose as to whether the Libertarians are just impractical Republicans. In other words, would a Libertarian regime devolve into a neo-con Republican Party once the practicalities of government were fully engaged?

In one sense it is easy to sit back and be an arm-chair quarterback. Because the Libertarians have not had, as yet, anything like a presence of numbers in the legislature or executive branch, we can just sit back and criticize the powers that be and say just about anything we want to say. To have this understanding of Libertarians is to misunderstand them by and large.

To avoid a very lengthy article, I will choose a comparison of platforms based upon the principle key of reducing the Federal Government. One of the ways that neo-cons try and absorb the Libertarians is to say that they, too, also have a platform of making government smaller. Regardless of who is saying that, when Libertarians hear a statement to that effect we would approve. Indeed, smaller government is a great credo. The follow-up to that statement is usually "that sounds great, so why do the Republicans do anything BUT make smaller government?" The simple answer is that they have no intentions of making smaller government. They are in the majority in the legislative branch and hold the executive branch, and the government is growing all the time. So, are they lying, or is it the reality of government that it MUST grow regardless of what your platform is?

I maintain that neither is the case. Neo-cons believe that the average citizen is not intelligent enough to avoid using drugs on their own. Therefore growing the Federal Government to maintain the disastrous War on Drugs is logical. It is not enough that local municipalities and States can maintain their own laws on usage, for all of us poor benighted souls would begin guzzling heroin by the gallon the second that Big Brother turned away his eyes. The Libertarian stance is that the citizen has the right to imbibe whatever he/she chooses as long as others are not harmed. There were not more alcoholics after prohibition was lifted because the number of people with addictive personalities is independent of what the Federal Government wants or does not want. The result is that the understanding of the role of Federal Government by neo-cons is in conflict with their platform of reduced government.

Neo-cons tend to believe that the internet should be heavily regulated to get rid of the scourge of pornography and hate speech. The average citizen is once more accused of being too stupid to control what they are interested in reading or showing their children. Again, growth of Federal power is the result. Libertarians maintain that the demands of the marketplace and the 1st amendment have precedence and that all communication mediums should be free of government regulation and interference. The internet is a dangerous place just like the local magazine stand. Parents should be wary of what they expose their children to, and do not need the Feds to tell them what they can see or say or expose their children to. That is the responsibility of the citizenry. Once again the Republicans are in conflict with their own platform.

The neo-cons are also in the habit of wanting to tell other countries how they should govern themselves and what other countries should believe. The Federal Government tries to bribe the international community with money from American taxpayers and then threaten them with it to get what they want. When that does not work, then they will sometimes try to install a government themselves and tell the rest of the world that they are being liberated. Libertarians maintain that if we were to truly live by the principles of freedom, and trade with all comers, eventually the populaces of other countries would want to emulate us. Revolutions cannot come to a people that do not understand or appreciate the values of representative government or a free marketplace. The business end of a gun will not help their understanding of these principles either. The growth of Government to maintain this methodology of bribery and force is obvious, and the burdens on the populace of the US are equally obvious. Where is the platform of smaller government?

The neo-cons will say "wait! We are against a national health care program!" That is valid and does agree with their platform of smaller government. What that does not address is that there is no national health care program, so there is nothing to reduce, but only avoid. There is an attempt at privatizing a small part of Social Security. That is a far cry from eventually totally phasing out Social Security altogether. We have had the occasional tax cut, but that is different from eliminating the graduated income tax and moving to a national sales tax. Federal control of education is also growing, along with ever increasing federal oversight of interstate trade.

Because representative government is based on compromise between conflicting points of view, it is not realistic to assume that electing Libertarians to office would immediately make all of these changes occur at once. (Unless we were able to suddenly take everything at one time, but I do not foresee that either.) Considering the nature of the current government, that would not even be a wise move. What it does mean is that if we were to have the majority, there would be a great deal of movement towards the ends that I have described above. In what would be a fair and judicious manner, the goal of stripping the Federal Government to at least 50% of its current size would be a key element to a Libertarian government.

A Libertarian Manifesto- part one

In the interest of maintaining a good dialogue, I've decided to ask some guests to post their thoughts. For the first, I have asked JB to provide his take. JB's a Libertarian, and here he explains those ideas:

My good friend Joe has asked me to present, for dialogue purposes, an analysis of Libertarian thought. This is a double edged sword, as I have my own ideas, and those of other LIbertarians are sometimes at odds. The thing about organizing Libertarians is that is much akin to herding cats. How, exactly, does one go about organizing people that are very hard to organize?

That being said, I think that a basic platform is required. The Libertarians are seen as an offshoot of the communist party by the right, and the platform of Attila the Hun by the left. This is probably correct. The Libertarians maintain that the current and popular division of political thought as being left, right or centrist is basically an illusion. If you take a dictator from the far left, like, say, Mao Tse Tung, or one from the fascists, like Mussolini, you still have basically a government controlled economy, political system and public law system. What you have at the end is still a government controlled system that denies the rights and interests of the average individual. The current system wants you to believe that there is such a thing as a liberal party, a non-liberal party and those that wish to seek compromise. According to the National Libertarian Party:

"Libertarians believe the answer to America's political problems is the same commitment to freedom that earned America its greatness: a free-market economy and the abundance and prosperity it brings; a dedication to civil liberties and personal freedom that marks this country above all others; and a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade as prescribed by America's founders."

What does this mean?

*It means that the role of the federal government must be limited to defending the nation, our property and our rights. No more, no less.

*It means that I oppose the war in Iraq. When we began killing people to instill a government there the conflict mutated from a war against people that had attacked the US, and became an effort to force them to live like we do. That makes it a war of intervention. The founders did not think that was a good idea at that time, and I maintain that it is not a good idea now. The continual abridgement of our liberties in the "name of safety" is also a very troubling area. Freedom is dangerous to a certain degree, but it is our birthright and is worth keeping. The very controlled and restricted citizenry of the UK is dealing with the terrorist threat, but their success has been no better than our own. Taking our freedoms does not mean that we are taking the freedoms of those that will act outside the law in any case.

*It means the "war on drugs" is just as bogus as well. Prohibition did not work in the 1920's and will not work now. We have now as many people in jail as China, and most of those are non-violent offenders guilty of what is are "victimless" crimes. Billions upon billions of dollars have been spent building an infrastructure that has not affected the availability of drugs, but instead has made sure that the prices of these substances remain artificially high. As a result, our legal system is ensuring the success of organized crime. In that sense, big government and big crime are interdependent.

*It means that the massive beauracracies in Washington, such as the Department of Education, Treasury Department and others need to be totally eliminated or slashed back to the point that they make sense. Education, for example, has declined rapidly since in this country since the federal government took the place of local and state boards of education. "Leave No Child Behind" (republican) is arguably the greatest debacle to occur in education to date. Our children were well educated before the Dept. of Education was established (by the democrats). The Treasury Dept. has grown to the point that they have their own branch of law enforcement, and the instituted graduated income tax is bleeding our middle classes dry. The federal government is now claiming the power to regulate virtually every business in the United States, while at the same time spending billions of dollars a year bailing out corporations, banks and railroads that have failed on their own accord. We can do better with our money than that.

*It means that we must allow free trade to flourish in every avenue that it can. The best welfare program a country can have is to allow its citizens to make their own money, and then keep their own money. The fewer restrictions placed on an individual in this endeavor the better. This does not imply a lawless society; however, it does imply that most business regulations are imposed by the local citizenry based upon what they know to be their best interests. The federal government should have very little involvement with business and industry. It means that a national sales tax can pay for a government that has restricted itself to the principles listed above, as all industries and individuals would be paying taxes without the benefit of the huge loopholes in a graduated income tax system.

*It means that we empty our prisons of non-violent offenders (6 out of 10 currently) and we actually enforce our prison sentences on those that would take our property and our lives and our right to live without physical harm. We must demand that criminals be responsible for full restitution for their crimes. We must also demand that we concentrate on the rights of the victims of crimes. Prisons are currently colleges graduating full professionals because of a system that concentrates on the rights of the criminal. This also means that citizens have the right to self defense and the ownership of firearms. Violent criminal actions must be dealt with severely and with certainty.

*It means that the individual decides how and where to live with little interference. We oppose the "radical religious right" as much as the "radical non-religious left." Both are ideologies that wish to tell the individual how they should live their lives and what they should believe. For example, the Libertarian platform states: "Individual rights should not be denied or abridged on the basis of sex. Recognizing that abortion is a very sensitive issue and that people, including libertarians, can hold good-faith views on both sides, we believe the government should be kept out of the question."

This is a condensed version of what the Libertarians hold to be the role of the federal government. A truly Libertarian government would be, admittedly, a radical departure from the current model of government held by the two major parties. I am hoping that from this beginning, a discussion can ensue that will pull us away from bombastic rhetoric and really examine how the major parties are both interested in holding and then expanding the power of the federal government, to the detriment of our civil liberties and our financial well being. Dialogue is welcome on these points as well as those that I have overlooked. I want to thank the greatly enlightened host of this blog for my opportunity to write here, and wish him every success.

An Abuse of Power?

While reading The Yellow Line yesterday, I came across an interesting article. To summarize, the author points out that President Bush's appointment of John Bolton is unconstitutional.

The relevant passage from the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, says that "The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session." For all the originalists out there, we know that the framers intended this to solve the problem of a sudden vacancy in those posts that require the approval of the Senate. In those days, the senate met for less than half a year, and travel times were considerably longer. Thus, if an ambassador died, or otherwise left office, calling the Senate into session in order to fill the post was nearly impossible. Instead, the president was granted the power to make temporary appointments, with the understanding that the Senate would take up the matter when it next met.

The operative phrase here is "vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate." The UN Ambassador vacancy did not occur during a recess, most certainly not during the current recess. Therefore, according to an originalist reading of the Constitution, the President was obligated to follow the advice and consent of the Senate in naming his ambassador. He did so, and Bolton's nomination failed. If he were to follow the procedure outlined in Article II, President Bush would be required to make another nomination, and so on until the Senate approved.

Instead, Bush acted as if the vacancy occurred during a recess, when it clearly did not. Thus we may conclude that he acted to circumvent his Constitutional obligations. In other words, the Bolton appointment is unconstitutional, and an abuse of power.

Wrong

Yesterday, President Bush endorsed the teaching of "intelligent design" along with the teaching of evolution. He says he favors teaching intelligent design "so people can understand what the debate is about."

Wrong.

Perhaps next, to bring some balance, we could teach "crystal energy balancing" along with so-called "physics." Because, you know, physics is just a theory.

So Much for Baby Steps

From the New York Times:

"The House voted Thursday to extend permanently virtually all the major antiterrorism provisions of the USA Patriot Act after beating back efforts by Democrats and some Republicans to impose new restrictions on the government's power to eavesdrop, conduct secret searches and demand library records."

Fourteen of the sixteen provisions of the Patriot Act were made permanent, meaning that there would be no need for Congress to reconsider them. The two remaining provisions, allowing the government to demand business and library records and conduct roving wiretaps, would be reconsidered in ten years.

Ten years. Are we to assume, then, that the War on Terrorism (tm) is to become a permanent state of affairs?

And there is not much hope that it will change much as it goes to the Senate next. While the Judiciary Committee wants to impose more restrictions, the Intelligence Committee and the Bush administration want even less:

"[A] competing bill passed last month by the intelligence committee would broaden the government's powers by allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to demand records in terrorism investigations without a judge's order and to have sole discretion in monitoring the mail of some terrorism suspects."

The amendment that limited the seizure of business and library records, which I noted earlier, was blocked in committee by Republican leaders. In its stead, Republicans passed their version of "limits":

"Among them was one requiring the F.B.I. director to personally approve demands for library and business records and another placing more limits on the bureau's use of what are called national security letters to demand records without a judge's approval. Under the amendment, anyone receiving such a letter could consult with a lawyer and seek to have a judge throw out the demand if compliance is deemed 'unnecessary or oppressive'."

In the words of the Fourth Amendment, this provision says that it is up to the FBI director- not a judge- to determine probable cause.

And anyone who receives a "national security letter" must seek to have a judge throw out the demand for records. This clearly places the burden of proof on the individual: so much for "innocent until proven guilty."

O)kay, so the Patriot Act disregards the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments (maybe the Seventh and Eighth, too). And yes, there's a War on Terror (tm) which requires that we take some extreme measures. And there are precedents- the Civil War and WWII come to mind- where civil rights have been infringed in the name of national security.

But, as I mentioned before, is there a need to make these changes permanent? Does the Bush Administration expect that its War on Terror (tm) will become a permanent state of being? It must figure that it will last for at least ten more years.

Of course, someone more cynical than I could see this as Republicans, being the party in power, taking advantage of the situation to grab even more power. Either way, the threat to our basic liberties is great, and begs the question: when, exactly, does the greater threat become our own government?

Not Much to Say About Roberts

In an effort to appease JB, who apparently lives for this sort of thing, here's my somewhat premature take on the Roberts nomination:

First, from what I've read, Judge Roberts appears to be a competent jurist. He's a conservative, but an old-fashioned style conservative, not one of the talk-show conservatives to which JB so loves to listen. He doesn't really have enough of a record to parse, so it's hard to say where his judicial philosophy lies, although he almost certainly has originalist leanings a la Scalia, or Scalia's hand-puppet, Thomas.

The one question that nags me is, why such a lightweight? Of all the names that were floating around, I couldn't find one with less experience on the bench. The one consideration that does shine through Roberts' record is that he is unquestionably loyal, a party man through and through. Of course, his lack of a record may be part of the strategy: with his popularity at an all time low, and a majority of Americans now saying that the President doesn't have their interests at heart, it is doubtful that Bush could win a confirmation fight over someone more controversial. He may be hoping that the Democrats will raise too much of a ruckus.

My guess is that the nomination will go through, unless there is some scandalous revelation or he does himself in like Bork. I imagine he's smarter than that– although he may not have been vetted as thoroughly as the administration would like, given that he was rushed through to take some heat off Rove.

As for what this means for the future of the Court, it's probably anyone's guess. He may, as Bush hopes, be a Republican stalwart like Thomas, or he may be a suprise like Souter.

Hmmm....

Well, there's a nominee. The President appears to have followed the "Ginsburg precedent" and consulted with Senate leaders from both parties. That's a start, at least, although we'll hear very soon how much "consultation" really went on.

I'm still trying to find out more about Judge Roberts, so I don't have much of an opinion for now. One thing does give me concern: he has only two years experience as a judge, which strikes me as not enough. Ginsburg, by comparison, had thirteen years experience when she was nominated. It's like promoting a file clerk to the Board of Directors.

Because Roberts has so little experience as a judge, the Senate will no doubt spend most of its time looking at his record as a lawyer, which does not bode well for the hearings.

It Takes Two Idiots to Mess Up a Child

From The New York Post, an exciting taste of a really scary future:

"Santorum's new book, "It Takes a Family," slams Clinton's earlier tome, "It Takes a Village." He blames the former first lady for supposedly weakening the American family by calling in her book for a community to help raise a child.

"It takes a village, Rick, don't forget that," Clinton called out as the two passed in a narrow hallway. "It takes a family," he countered through a veiled smile.

"Of course, a family is part of a village!" she retorted.

Neither stopped moving their feet and the two senators continued walking in opposite directions."

Oooh, high drama. Two potential presidential candidates arguing about what it takes to raise a child. Which side to take? Hilary- whose idea of a village involves lots of nosey neighbors? Or Rick- who thinks that working moms are just being selfish, and that liberal Boston is to blame for pedophile priests?

Talk about a win-win situation...