Huckabee, The Kid, and Principles of Freedom

What do Mike Huckabee and a 13-year old conservative prodigy have in common? The kid's name is Jonathan Khron, he is the author of the book "Define Conservatism," and I will let him speak first.

Quite the "wunderkind," isn't he? Did you catch his "Four Principles of Conservatism"?

1. Respect for the Constitution
2. Respect for life
3. Less government
4. Personal responsibility

"Conservatism," he said, is the principle of protecting peoples' rights.

Now what did former Arkansas Governer Mike Huckabee say? He said (on Fox and Friends, 2/28/09) that capitalism is "better" in the marketplace with its "free hand" versus the government with its "heavy hand."

Where is the similarity? Both of them think conservatism is about principle, when in fact it is not about principle; it is about "preserving" the status quo from the liberals attempts to rip apart conservative values any further than they already have. Conservative values are not based on objectivity, but rather on the subjectivity that the free market is the best; not that it is right.

Neither of them mentioned the principle of the free market as the right of men with individual sovereignty. What is individual sovereignty? In a civilization it must be defined as the most freedom available while living under the rule of law.

"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.

Man is born with absolute individual sovereignty, because where no government ruled him, and where no men enslaved him, all the unalienable rights given him by nature would remain with him. In a civilization of laws, some of those rights are alienated in order to secure the rule of law, but in return the individual actually gains.

He gains the freedom of having to police other men to secure the natural rights he is left with. He is free of having to enact individual justice when he has been wronged.

Because he is free to be himself without worry that others will--metaphorically or actually--put their fist, or a gun, in his face, he is free to use his energy in the pursuit of happiness.

The principle of "respect for life" means the respect for individual sovereignty. This does not mean the sovereignty of the people in the aggregate when defined as "the greatest good for the greatest number."

Huckabee meant just this very thing when he said capitalism was "better."

The problem with conservatives is they don't understand that capitalism is not "better." It is man's right by nature, by his nature as a free sovereign, and as the "rational animal."

Krohn said "respect for the Constitution" was a principle. Well, under the Tenth Amendment whereby the States have all the power not specifically given to the Federal government nor denied to the States themselves, the people have all other powers.

There is not one word in the Constitution that allows for the men operation of free men in a free market with the "heavy hand" of the government when it has a gun it that hand.

"Less government" means nothing except as a comparison. In the 21st century we need a government that is immensely larger than what was required in Jefferson's time. "Less" is not a standard. It may be a goal compared to what we currently have.

But the goal is a government that rules free men, not a "smaller" government. We can create a smaller government tomorrow and yet not get rid of the collectivism that the gun in the hand of government has pointed at our heads.

Capitalism is not a "better" system; it is the only system commensurate with free men operating in a free market under the rule of law that protects individual sovereignty.

The Republicans lost the last presidential election and the previous Congressional elections because they don't know what a principle is. They compete for the minds and hearts of the American people by offering them bromides about freedom while chosing an economic system based not on the freedom offered by that system, but on the fuzzy idea that it is a "better" system.

And they don't understand why it's better.

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Laissez-faire At War Against Socialism

Try acting as a laissez-faire capitalist. It will get you a prison sentence for ignoring all the laws that prevent it.

On the subject of the economy, VP-Elect Biden is reported to have said, "We’re at war.” Biden told this to congressional leaders of both parties during their sit-down with Barack Obama in the Capitol, according to two sources familiar with the exchange.

Gene Healy at Cato at Liberty, writes "Libertarians and conservatives who fear that Obama’s inauguration heralds the coming of a new New Deal have new cause for discomfort, then. FDR’s embrace of the war metaphor was central to building support for the New Deal..."

I hardly think the "embrace of the war metaphor" is the heralding of the new New Deal--but it is most certainly coming, and it is going to hit American's swiftly. Obama already has asked for the $350 billion not yet spent so he has it on his first day in office. Thank that God, in whom we supposedly "trust", to have put some severe reservations about that money in the heads of even the liberal Democrats. They want it properly accounted for.

But there is no doubt it is coming. Obama has trumpeted loudly how about approximatly how much it is going to cost the taxpayer to pay for public works projects which will "pay off" quickly in the form of jobs created, in cash flow, and in such things as alternative energy, which of course the consumer will wind up paying twice for: once in the debt created by the loan, and once in the purchase of the product created.

And our children and grandchildren will pay off the loans that do not create direct profits, as a wind farm or some other means of production might. Someone will have to pay for the infrastructure rebuilding of roads and bridges, which, let's face it, really do need rebuilding.

But the Governors and the Mayors of America have been asked for their wish lists. Obama has already said many things will not be financed from this economic "stimulus" package.

But the fact that it already has a name--"stimulus package"--means the new administration won't have to give it a formal name, like the "New Deal."

Even the New Deal didn't spend as much of the GDP as a percentage, as did Eisenhower's interstate freeway system, which took 35 years to complete. When it was complete, Congress approved funding to go to work building a few more freeways, and upgrading the old ones.

"Roosevelt’s first inaugural address tends to be remembered as an attempt to calm the public, a warning against “fear itself.” The martial metaphors that appear throughout the speech make clear, though, that F.D.R. wanted fear replaced by collectivist ardor," Healy writes.

And what is it that Obama has already been saying? "The US economy will become 'dramatically worse', wrecking the dreams of a generation of Americans, if Congress does not act quickly to drive through huge fiscal stimulus plans, as fresh data showed deepening recession. He said the unemployment rate was at risk of reaching double digits and recession "could linger for years".

While very probably true, it is the rhetoric used in politics about such subjects that, Cato says, is good for nothing but "centralizing power."

How much centralization can a supposedly capitalist economy take, before it breaks down as the forces of collectivist policies clash like butting-heads against the free market ideas so well established and so taken to heart by the very people and corporations who actually make the economy profitable?

It does appear that the big corporations who are reaping billions of dollars are beginning to allow "czarism" to dictate how they operate. There will be a "car czar," for example. Of course, the CEOs and all those in the upper eschelons of the banking and mortgage systems have had to be rightly criticized for doling out hundreds of millions of that money in golden parachutes and bonuses.

But what about the bedrock of capitalism, the entrepreneur, the mom-and-pop operation, the proprietor? Will they be so willing to allow centralization to push them this way and that, when they all know for certain, knowledge gained by experience and from historical perspectives, that decentralization is responsible for profit-making and for profit-motivation.

No one can be too motivated when a czar is looking over your shoulder, and you and I know that such a czar and his/her soldiers can look over the shoulders of small businesses much easier than over the shoulders of the likes of GM and "banks that are too big to be allowed to fail."

Big business and our leaders, both left and right, including the avowed whom Socialist Obama hired who does not need Senate confirmation, are selling the small business owner and the Average Joe down the river.

I hope the Average Joe knows how to quit before he gets behind. He is already saving whatever money he can, rather than spending it. New savings accounts in banks jumped several-hundred percent over the last six months.

But the next thing you know, our New Socialist government will be taxing our savings to pay for the loans they are making because we are not spending our savings. Obama said to Katie Couric just yesterday, "Failure is not an option, not in America."

As far as his Marxist "spread the wealth" attitude goes, I think he intends to use every means at his disposal to spread the misery. He is a Constitutional Law professor, and a brilliant man. I have no doubt that America is going to see him use tricks of law we have not seen before. After all, he has not been sworn in yet, but plans to get his hands on the $350 billion one way or another. He has told Congress he will use his first veto on his first day in office--to get that money. Congress will cave, one way or another.

We should all buy gold, because our paper and coins will soon be worth nothing, comparatively. From 2000 to yesterday, the price of gold rose more than $549 from $280.10, to $829.57, or nearly 350%. Relative to the GDP deflator, the dollar only rose 19.82%.

What will the dollar be worth when Obama gets done manipulating it? The free market, left alone, tells the truth. When manipulated by government economic engineering, it always lies, relative to the free market.

We are at war, but it is the honest capitalist at war against the dishonest, and against the illegal usurping of his powers in the market place by government rules he cannot conform to without become a socialist himself.

Try acting as a laissez-faire capitalist. It will get you a prison sentence for ignoring all the laws that prevent it.

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Capitalism in Political Space

Why is Capitalism "Natural"?

"You can't have capitalism without a PROPER government," wrote someone in a comment to Gus Van Horn's blog.

"That is a crucial point," continued the writer. "I like to make that point by explaining to people that free market capitalism is not a 'system', it is a space -- a legal space established and maintained by a government in a given geographical area.

"The defining attribute of this particular space (as distinguished from those found in the various non-free societies) is the ban on the initiation of physical force. All the things that we normally mean by 'capitalism', from stock markets and corporations to competition, were freely created by people within this space -- not imposed from the top down by government, as with all other political ideologies which ARE systems in that sense of the word." [italics added] http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2008/11/wisdom-of-crowd.html

Now, I must be honest here: I never thought of capitalism existing in a space, yet it clearly is a political space. First, it is located within politically geographical boundaries. Second, it is a metaphoric "space" because we can put it anywhere--in a brick-front store; on the internet; in our pockets; in a briefcase, or in a box of Girl Scout cookies carried door to door throughout neighborhoods.

Admittedly, capitalism is more than a simple and literal space. But without that economic space, created by political means and ends, the other elements of capitalism could not exist.

The political means are not what is important, so long as they are not coercive means. Every so-called capitalist nation has its own rules governing the space. The important element is the ends, the purpose, the motive, the desire--for an economy that offers the freedom of individual sovereignty over the property rights of money.

"Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned," wrote Ayn Rand. http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/capitalism.html

To say the same thing differently: "The legal conception of property is that of a bundle of rights over resources that the owner is free to exercise and whose exercise is protected from interference from others." Cooter and Ulen [1986, p.91]. " The listed control rights are exclusively considered from the owners' point of view. The listing of rights is by no means exhaustive. It is only meant to be illustrative." http://www.encycogov.com/A1DecisionSystems/Table1OwnerRights.asp

How is capital created? By labor upon things. John Locke posited the idea that land and other natural resources are there for the taking, until taken by someone else first. Let us say a man takes newly fallen tree branches. He removes the bark and places it in the sun, in pieces, to dry. He then takes the branches and tying them together at one end, he stands them up, covers them with animal pelts, and in the process has created a portable home.

But it is summer and he prefers sleeping under the sun. Along comes a man with a small flock of sheep. Originally he had only two, but he mated them several times and now has more than two. He does not like sleeping under the moon. He has capital in the form of property--the sheep he raised with his labor.

The first man has capital in the form of a home he created with his labor. He wants sheep to mate with the one he already owns, so he trades his home for two from the shepherd.

The trade is equitable; in other words, each man has agreed that what he has gotten in return for his capital is equal in value to the capital itself.

Along comes another man who is a fisherman. He trades several preserved catches for the dried bark because that species of tree makes a flavorful smoke in his smokehouse.

Capital, therefore, is the valuation of a thing after labor has been applied to it. This is natural.

What is not natural is the power of another human used in force against the three men, in an effort to extract from them their capital, to be used in acts of charity deemed by the tyrant to be worthy of othe men's property.

What is natural is the three men forming a government to protect themselves from coercion and tyrany, by providing the political space in which to work with wood, to herd sheep, and to catch and smoke fish.

Take the Capitalism Tour

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Al Gore and Coercion in the Free Market

Al Gore co-authored this with David Blood in The Wall Street Journal

"When greeting old friends after a period of absence, Ralph Waldo Emerson used to ask: 'What has become clear to you since we last met?'

"What is clear to us and many others is that market capitalism has arrived at a critical juncture. Even beyond the bailouts and recent volatility, the challenges of the climate crisis, water scarcity, income disparity, extreme poverty and disease must command our urgent attention.

"The financial crisis has reinforced our view that sustainable development will be the primary driver of economic and industrial change over the next 25 years. As a result, old patterns and assumptions are now being re-examined in an effort to find new ways to use the strengths of capitalism to address this reality. Indeed, at the Harvard Business School Centennial Global Business Summit held earlier this month, the future of market capitalism was one of the principal themes discussed."

What is very clear in Al Gore's mind is that market capitalism is engineered capitalism and has nothing to do with profit capitalists providing what the market--consumers--want. Rather, it has to do with what political engineers want. It is also very clear that the political engineering comes from the economic engineers who don't know laissez faire from socialism, men such as Henry Paulson and Allen Greenspan.

What form of oligarchy is this? It isn't the form of a democratic-republic, as our Founders invisioned, not when the majority of Americans demand that no bailout be contrived for the mortage industry yet our republic ignores the democratic wishes of free people who wish to remain free and contrive the bailout, anyway.

What form of psychological spin is Gore putting into our heads? Since when did capitalism need to be called market capitalism, and what other form is there, except the managed, mixed-economy we are now prisoners of?

Well, if by market capitalism Gore mean a market economy, he is way off base. A market economy cannot be politically engineered. It is "engineered" by the offerings of the producers in a relationship with consumers, who decide which produced offerings they will give their money to.

"A socialist economy, in contrast [to a market economy], is characterized by [ ] central planning. [G]overnment often is asked to intervene in the economy to correct situations in which the price system does not work. It regulates 'natural monopolies,' for example, and it uses antitrust laws to control or break up other business combinations..." [emphasis added] About.Com

"A 'natural monopoly' is defined in economics as an industry where the fixed cost of the capital goods is so high that it is not profitable for a second firm to enter and compete. There is a 'natural' reason for this industry being a monopoly, namely that the economies of scale require one, rather than several, firms. Small-scale ownership would be less efficient." http://www.progress.org/fold74.htm

"The great evil in economics is not communism, not socialism, not capitalism, not landlords or bosses, not unions, not feudalism or industrialization or automation, not progress or lack of it, and not any scarcity of natural resources. No, the great evil in economics is coercive monopoly." Fred E. Foldvary

But natural monopolies are not coercive. Communism and socialism and feudalism are coercive, and Gore's "market" capitalism is not capitalism because capitalism demands the admission that capital is property of its owner, not of the state. Only capitalists can create capital; government cannot. Gore and Obama treat capital as if it was a coercive monopoly, when in fact anyone can be a capitalist, and three quarters of all the business in this country is conducted by small business, not by natural monopolies nor by coercive monopolies such as first class mail deliverable only by the United States Postal Service.

Once again Gore gets it wrong when he may have valuable contributions to make. He does make people think, and that is a contribution; but he makes them think using the wrong terminology.

On National Public Radio International, I heard an "environmental artist" say--correctly--that we don't have global warming, that, instead, some places are warming, some are getting colder. Some places are getting hotter, and some are becoming wetter, some dryer. The Arctic may be melting, but Antarctica has 17 inches more ice than at any time since that continent's discovery, and from China to Colorado the winter of '07-'08 was the hardest on record. Lower temperatures had never been recorded in China; snow was still on the mountain peaks of Colorado in June. Fires in California, at an all-time high, are fanned by hurricane-strength Santa Anna winds.

The weather is changing, but you wouldn't get that simple message from Gore. And from his lips, and Obama's, to yours ears, you will never get the message that government intervention creates coercive markets, weighting down one part of it so that another must be offset by "redistributive" taxes, which then creates another anomoly in what ought to be a self-correcting market economy, but which has instead become a government-managed capitalism, masked by the word "market."

Government-managed capitalism is a contradiction of terms of the highest order; but to the degree that Marxists and other collectivists can get away with it, they can convince the economically illiterate that government controls are necessary.

And keeping people economically--and politically--illiterate is what the Fairness doctrine is all about, limiting free speech made by opponents of the left. Every Rush Limbaugh would necessarily, by law, be required to be followed by a Gore or an Allen Colmes.

And that would not be natural.

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Rand, von Mises, Leiter, Dworkin, Wilkinson

Dworkin, Leiter, and Wilkinson are All Off the Mark;

"Blame It On Ayn Rand"

First, from today's NY Times, Jerry Dworkin (UC Davis) writes:

"For more than a decade, the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has fiercely objected whenever derivatives have come under scrutiny in Congress or on Wall Street. [ ] An examination of more than two decades of Mr. Greenspan’s recordon financial regulation and derivatives in particular reveals the degree to which he tethered the health of the nation’s economy to that faith. [ ] Time and again, Mr. Greenspan — a revered figure affectionately nicknamed the Oracle — proclaimed that risks could be handled by the markets themselves. [ ]

"Put this together with Keynes:
” . . . the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." and we get Ayn Rand as an important cause of the catastrophe we are in."

As it turns out, Brian Leiter of the Leiter Reports http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2008/10/jerry-dworkin-1.html quoted Dworkin, after which Will Wilkinson http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/10/10/blame-it-on-ayn-rand/ criticizes blaming it on Ayn Rand as the recipient of Keynes' "wisdom," claiming, "Surely the problem is that we didn’t Keynes it up enough! But Ayn Rand… Now there’s the intellectual force behind the status quo structure of American monetary and regulatory policy!"

Wilkinson was poo-pooing the ability of Ayn Rand to be behind anything, when, by calling her "the intellectual force behind" it all, is dismissive of Rand's intellectual ability to be of any force behind anyone or anything that matters. The problem was, he improperly attributed all of this to Leiter instead of to Dworkin.

So then, Leiter had to write: "Will Wilkinson, a former philosophy graduate student and libertarian zealot, has ripped into Jerry Dworkin's attributing Greenspan's disastrous economic policies to the influence of the pseudo-philosopher Ayn Rand as mere "hackery" (though Wilkinson attributes the offending view and the "hackery", oddly, to me, a "professional philosopher").

"Some philosophers may know Mr. Wilkinson from his all-too-frequent appearances on Blogging-Heads TV. I think BHTV is great, but they really need to have better interlocutors for the philosophers on the show. And I certainly think Jerry Dworkin's point in the original post was apt."

So then, Wilkinson went back to his posting and crossed off "Leiter" replacing it with "Dworkin," after which he created a new posting which he titled: "Blame It on Gerald Dworkin for Blaming It on Ayn Rand."

In the second posting Wilkinson writes: "Both Dworkin and Leiter are very interested in the fact that I left grad school in philosophy, but neither has anything intelligent to say in defense of Dworkin’s risible claim about the roots of the financial crisis — a causal claim that has nothing much to do with philosophy. Leiter adds with his typical threatening charm that I am incompetent to interview philosophers on Bloggingheads TV. It’s interesting that none of the philosophers I have interviewed have given any indication of my incompetence, and clearly that can’t be because philosophers are especially gracious as a class. If either Dworkin or Leiter would like to appear on Free Will and discuss Ayn Rand, the causes of the collapse of the financial system, or any other topic, I would be delighted to have them on. If I fail to keep up competently with either of these genuinely accomplished scholars, they will be able to expose my failings in real time. I really mean this. Here is the invitation… Prof. Leiter, Prof. Dworkin: I would very much like to have a civil discussion with each of you on a set of topics of your choosing. But I would especially like to explore your thoughts on the role of ideology as a cause of the financial crisis."

But as you will notice, Wilkinson had nothing "intelligent to say [about] Dworkin’s risible claim about the roots of the financial crisis." What Wilkinson had to say the first time around was not intelligent. Whether the reader cares for Rand or not, she has influenced more economists, philosophers, and world leaders than can be named. Alan Greenspan was one of them.

I cannot speak to whether or not Greenspan's "faith" in the free market had anything to do with the impending fall of Wall Street and the irresponsible actions of Freddie and Fannie. I heard credible reports that ACORN [see Obama, Character, and American Exceptionalism] had much to do with forcing Freddie and Fannie to act in the irresponsible manner they did, by using their well-known tactics of harrassment to get mortgages for low-income people who should not have been able to otherwise buy homes.

The fact is, as a Randian myself, as on Objectivist, I do not see the objectibility in Objectivism's principles to tell business to "put its money where its mouth is," meaning, that accounting practices and owning enough capital in one form or another to back up the business dealings that businesses make with each other and for the benefit of stockholders.

In fact, Rand wrote: [see continuation Blame It On Ayn Rand ]

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC


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