Correcting Ron Paul on Secession and the American Way

         According to Ron Paul’s latest outburst of silliness, it is the American way to secede.  Of course, it is not.

         The American union to which the states agreed is perpetual.  That union permits no divorce.  It does not permit secession.  When the states signed on, they signed on to a perpetual union.  The states are not free to leave as they wish.  

         But you are.  You can leave when and if you choose.  If, after a cost/benefit analysis, you decide to stay, you are free to stay.  If, after a cost/benefit analysis, you decide to go, you are free to go.  But your state is not.  That is not the statehood to which your state, or any state, consented.  We fought a civil just to clarify the point.  Ron Paul's side lost twice:  at the ratification and at the clarification.

         You can leave and not be part of the union.  You can stay and be a part.

         Make your choice.

         But centuries after the fact, and more than a century after the bloody clarification, you cannot remake at will the conditions of statehood to which your state initially agreed.  That game is over.  That contract is signed.  You can no more stay and be free from the union than you can go to Paris and be free from French law or from the Parisians.  It’s a package deal, and that is the package.  If you want to stay and be part of the American union, you are free to do so.  If you want to leave and be free from the American union, you are free to do so.  But you are not free to stay and be free from the American union.

         And that is the American way.

         Again, make your choice.

The Myth of Solution

         When liberals go wrong, they often do so by falling prey to “the myth of solution.”  They think that, if they just work hard enough and mean well, if they care, they can fix most of what’s wrong with the world.

         The liberal agenda, well intentioned as they say it is, turns out to be supremely naïve.  Liberals forget, assuming they once knew, that most of the ills that plague human existence have no political solution.  None.  No matter how you shuffle the cards, no matter how you redistribute the opportunities or the outcomes, you cannot fix what ails us.  Poverty, disability, disadvantage, ignorance, prejudice, sloth, disease, wickedness, inequality, and death -- in other words, humanity itself -- cannot be fixed, and certainly not by the state.

         Liberals famously have a penchant for redistribution, a penchant they aim also at God, redistributing His omni-competence to the state, as if the state knew all, sees all, and can fix all.  For almost every problem facing us, the liberals’ first recourse for solution is government.  They are confident that government is the place to turn for fixing, or at least ameliorating, our problems.  They have not yet answered the more basic question, “Who fixes government?”

         Perhaps they have not answered that question because in so many, many ways, government cannot be fixed.  It certainly cannot fix itself, even though just as certainly it cries out for fixing, radical fixing.  Government has the opposite of a Midas touch -- everything it touches turns to garbage, not to gold.  But gold, massive amounts of it, is precisely what government says it requires of us to fix the messes it made and that it made worse.  In the endless battle between you and government over who will control your gold, government is winning, and has been since it took us off the gold standard, whether we wanted it or not.

         I am speaking literally:  Far more often than you might imagine, secularists have devolved God into government.  They are fundamentalists of the state.  They do not know their altar belongs to Moloch, in sacrifice to whom they slaughter their children by the millions.  And as they do, they think you are the one without heart, compassion, and conscience.  They think you are the one who does not see the beauty of their solution, even though it be final.      

Why Taxing the Rich Simply Cannot Work

According to the prevailing leftist worldview, in order to cure the nation’s debilitating debt disease, and in order to aid the nation’s poor, we ought to raise taxes on the rich so that they begin to pay their “fair share.”

It’s a futile remedy.

If you took every penny from every person in America who made a million dollars or more last year, you could run the government for only a few weeks.  Taxing millionaires, even at 100%, won’t fix the problem.  Our problem is that we spend more than a trillion dollars every year that we simply do not have.

But when conservatives try to keep an out-of-control government from driving the entire nation over a cliff into the gaping maw of economic destruction, liberals claim conservatives lack compassion.  They do not.  They are trying to avoid scuttling the ship of state.  Avoiding a shipwreck is not lack of compassion because, when the ship sinks, all who are aboard -- the poor and the wealthy alike -- are set adrift in the open sea, a result that benefits no one except the Marxist sharks patrolling the waters of international dissolution.

Think about it:  Even if you tax the wealthy at 100%, not only you will not have enough money to do what liberals want to do via government, but you will have succeeded only in creating many more poor:  Those who once were rich now have nothing.  And once you have taken all their money, and succeeded in running the government for only a few weeks with it, from whom will you get money to run the government when that handful of weeks has passed?

You can’t get it from the poor because they don’t have it.  The only option left is the middle class, who then will be destroyed in short order.  Taxing the rich even at 100% will not work.  Even all their money combined will not solve the problem.  And if you do not tax the rich at 100%, you will have even less money to do what you think ought to be done via government, and that money will run out even quicker.  Once the money of the rich is gone, and you still wish to do what leftists want government to do, you must take the money of the middle class.  At that point, everyone is poor.

In short, you cannot fix what’s wrong by means of tax increases.

It’s simply impossible.
So, why pursue it?  I see no more elevated reason for doing than craven envy and destructive class warfare.  If you can, then let me know.
So as not to be unhelpful, I recommend the following ideas: 
(1) You must lower taxes all around, which leaves more money for investment, invention, and job creation. More workers means more taxpayers, which means more government revenue. In other words, I'm talking about the Laffer Curve, which has been proven correct at least twice.  (2) You must reduce the burden of government mandates, regulations, and red tape, which impose enormous financial burdens on businesses and force investors to withhold, at this, point, several trillion dollars in investment money, which is lying idle because investors don't know what injurious things will emerge from Washington next.  No one wants to lose.  They want to invest wisely, and they can't invest wisely because they can't trust Washington to provide a stable business environment.  No investment, no new jobs.  (3) Reduce spending drastically.  We ought not do nationally what the Constitution does not explicitly permit us to do at that level.  All those things have been reserved for individuals and the states. 

Leftism vs. Reality (round 2)

         Much like it famously failed to do with Chick fil-A, the left now threatens to boycott Papa John's and Applebee's because those two companies are considering either layoffs or a hiring freeze due to the heavy new costs imposed upon businesses by Obamacare.

         Because the left knows nothing about economics, their anger is misdirected:  When the cost of running a business increases significantly -- and under Obamacare it does -- then either the company raises its prices, which makes it less competitive and more likely to fail, thereby costing allits employees their jobs, or else it has to cut operating costs significantly in order to make up for the heavy new health care expenses Obamacare imposes.

         Between those two options, cutting costs is the better choice because it keeps the company in business and saves the most jobs.

         What Papa John's and Applebee's are doing is exactly right. What Obama is doing is not -- not if creating jobs and lowering unemployment matter to you.

         Obamacare or more jobs?  Pick one.

         You cannot have both.  Not even the Democratic messiah can change the laws of economics.  

Politics 101: American Voter, Who art Thou?

         While human beings are capable of reason, they are rarely ever reasonable.

         But if you tell them that, or worse, if you actually prove it to them, they will not thank you for the valuable undeception.  They will get offended, and they will have proved your point, albeit unwittingly.  They do not know that they are wasting time being offended, time they could have spent thinking.  Their over-weaning sense of grievance and offense has been highly refined; their skill at rational analysis has not.

         Reason is but one of the many things that drive human beings, and it is normally not the strongest.  Human beings are also creatures of habit, of appetite, of prejudice, and of passion.  More importantly, they are creatures of incentive.  If you wish to move human beings, and moving human beings is the fundamental political action, then you must place effective incentives before them.  Because human beings are not primarily mind-driven, more often than not that effective incentive won’t be a rational argument or anything like it.

         The American voter is not capable of sustained rational analysis, and doesn’t care to be.  That’s not the lure that draws them.  That’s not the bait that brings them to the hook.  Only a few get reeled into the electoral boat by rational analysis and a recitation of accumulated historical precedent.

         The rest feed on other things.  They are not convinced so much as they are bought.  To win an election, you must promise them what they want and give them a short slogan in which to wrap it.  That slogan doesn’t have to be true, just superficially plausible.  Any half-true truism will do.

         Deeper than that you must not go.

         I’m not saying you shouldn’t make an argument.  Of course you should.  Some folks live at that level and must be reached.  Most do not.  But they think they do.

         You won’t win postmodern elections with esoteric discussions on degrees of constitutionality or on monetary theory, important as those are.  Reality won’t permit it.  The average presidential sound bite in a news cast is about 6.5 seconds.  What can you say in six seconds except “Vote for me.  I care, and I want to give you something?”

         Politics is not the lofty enterprise some think it is.  It’s dirtier and more crass than that.  America is not a nation of unbiased intellectuals seeking for truth, and it doesn’t want to be.  It’s a nation of self-absorbed sinners who crave little more than personal peace and affluence.  They want what they want when they want it.  Then, after you give it to them, they want to be left alone to do as they wish, not as they ought.

         If you don’t know that about American voters, you won’t win elections.  If you don’t know enough to appeal to human sloth and craven self-regard, you don’t know politics because you don’t know people.

         Do not forget that America voters were educated in American public schools, where the Gospel of John is banned and Heather has Two Mommies is required; where sincerity, not achievement, is the measure of success; and where you get trophies just for trying.  Then, after twelve years of this self-indulgent, brain-numbing, soul destroying, secularist propaganda, they go on to state-funded (and therefore state-controlled) universities, where the government decides the guidelines by which students are enrolled, teachers are hired, and classes are taught, universities from which they get advanced degrees in leftist group think and learn falsely to believe they are intellectuals who follows the evidence wherever it leads rather than lemmings marching resolutely to destruction.

         Those are the voters to whom you must appeal or else you will lose.  Your political fate rests with them.  Most of them don’t want to hear your arguments.  They want a Coke in one hand and a candy bar in the other.  Whoever gives them the goodies first and best wins.

         This is what the political application of the Christian doctrine of human depravity looks like.  Don’t forget it.

         Now, about 2014, what’s your plan?          

Richard Ebeling on the Great Divide

 The following analysis comes from my friend and former colleague, economist Dr. Richard Ebeling, to whom many thanks for permission to reprint his ideas.

        The news media -- both the "mainstream" and the "fair and balanced" one -- has made much, since Tuesday's election results, of the ethnic, social, and cultural divide in the country in terms of which groups voted for which of the presidential candidates.  And it is clear that the two leading political parties appealed to different segments of the society.
         But the real divide in the country, may I suggest, is that between those whom John C. Calhoun called the "taxpayers" and the "tax-receivers" in the society.  That is, the divide is between those on opposite sides of the redistributive state.
         But it is not simply between those who, on net, pay the taxes and those who, on net, receive the taxes. (Though as Frederic Bastiat said, in the spider's web of transfers it is often difficult for a person to know if he has, on net, "gained" or "lost".)  It is the political philosophical divide between those who believe in the moral "rightness" of income and wealth redistribution and those who believe that an individual has an inherent right to that which he has honestly earned in the productive market place of trade and exchange.
         This is the real and true battleground of ideas within which the future of the country must and has to be fought out.
In this context it is important for friends of freedom to reach out and persuade people in various groups who have been falsely convinced that the "State" is their "champion."
         The Republicans and conservatives (and libertarians), I believe, have made a serious mistake in not reaching out to many in the Hispanic community who should be and can be receptive to the "freedom philosophy."  They or their parents came to America --like earlier generations of immigrants -- to make a better life for themselves and their children. Many of them are or desire to be self-supporting and hardworking, if only they had a chance to do so in the market. Many are or would like to be small business people, with the hope of being successful and leaving a legacy for their families.  Many are strongly community-oriented with an attitude of mutual self-help in times of personal or family trouble.
         But they have been duped by collectivist and altruistic rhetoric and demagogic politicians, inside and outside their own community, to believe that "capitalism" won't provide them with a "fair chance" and that the "State" is the only avenue for a better life through redistribution, regulation, and special favors to help the "little guy."
         What friends of freedom need to do is to help those duped in this way by the Statists to distinguish between (as Bastiat said) "what is seen and what is not seen," to understand that the siren call of collectivist promises is a road to their perpetual serfdom and not the path to the "American Dream."

Doubling Down on Ignorance and Failure

         You can no more break the laws of economics than you can break the law of gravity.  Try if you must, but the outcome is certain:  Rather than break such laws, you break yourself against them.  And if, against all sense, you try it again, the result will be the same.  Doubling down on ignorance and failure means more ignorance and more failure, not success.

         By re-electing Barack Obama, the American voters have doubled down on ignorance and failure.  They obviously think the boneheaded policies that led to:

(1) higher unemployment,

(2) lower household income,

(3) more jobs going overseas,

(4) the greatest one-term growth in national debt in history,

(5) expanded intergenerational dependency on the state,

(6) trillions of dollars of fiat money flooding the market place, and

(7) millions more persons living in poverty and on food stamps

will magically lead to something completely different in the future.

         It’s not going to happen.

         If you still think that the most partisan president is really the post-partisan president, then don’t be surprised if partisanship flourishes even more in the next term than it did in the last, when the Republicans were literally locked out of health care reform discussions and debates, and when every budget passed by the Republican-led House was killed in the Democrat-led Senate – every one.  If that’s what you think about partisanship, you are not thinking at all.  You are not even paying attention. 

         If you think that the Democrats, who failed to pass even one budget in four years will suddenly start passing them now, much less governing according to those budgets, you are part of the problem, not the solution.

         If you think that the politically motivated failure to protect our own land and personnel overseas against terrorist attacks on the anniversary of 9/11, despite repeated and desperate pleas for help coming from the victims themselves, and that the Obama administration’s craven lies and misdirection that for weeks followed the slaughter will make for a safer America or a safer world, you are the Jihadist’s dream come true.

         If you think that a culture that slaughters its babies for convenience or for money won’t slaughter its elderly for the same reasons, then please don’t be surprised when you, your friends, or your family are eventually disposed of by the very bureaucracy charged, ironically, with national health care.  Your capital offense, the thing that lowers the death sentence upon you:  Getting older and getting expensive.  When the choice is between you and money, and when the government has no money, you die.  Please notice:  the government has no money.    

         If you think that Barack Obama failed so miserably in his first term because he inherited a mess, then how can you expect anything but proportionally greater failure from him when he tries to fix the even greater mess he inherited from himself?

         Or, if you want it in an epigram:  “If you fail to learn the easy way, then you are doomed to learn the hard way, if you learn at all.”