A month ago I shared my result of “The Political Objectives Test” by Hello Quizzy. I was branded an “anarchist” with the summary beginning with this very true statement, “Liberty is so overwhelmingly important to you that you wish to eliminate anything that can interfere with it.” I found the test to be rather helpful in contrasting my views with others on the various topics it questioned me about. For that I wanted to present the questions here with emphasis (underlined) on the statements I selected, followed by some commentary and resources.
Tag: military
Trump, Carrier, and the Corporate State
Should free-market advocates applaud the deal Donald Trump brokered to keep some Carrier jobs from being transferred to Mexico? I believe the right answer is no.
Thank You, Donald Trump
We advocates of liberty owe Donald Trump a great debt of gratitude. Thanks to Trump it is clearer than ever that most people who call themselves conservatives, and not just those who have lined up with Trump, are no cousins of ours. Freedom is not on their list of priorities. Neither is free enterprise. Nor civil liberties. And I need not mention war, peace, and empire.
Debunking Common Government Claims
It’s very rare to have parking bureaucrats respond to our defense with anything other than a curt, “DENIED”. So when I got the following from a friend I was really surprised. Not surprised at the content, just because there was a detailed response at all. Since it’s full of fallacies, and short of evidence, I thought it worthwhile to debunk.
Words Poorly Used #72: Oligarchy
I got in trouble last month for using the term “oligarchy” in, admittedly, a pejorative sense. Here’s what I wrote on Facebook: “No matter how one votes tomorrow, the winner will be oligarchy A or oligarchy B (where A = B).” Very good friends called me to task for this logic fallacy, justifiably so since I had committed several logic fallacies, the worst of which was the fallacy of begging the question. My premises assumed their own truth without establishment. Is the USA really run by an oligarchy?
Disaster By Design
Much research of human beings tends to focus on aggregates and averages. But humans come in various shapes and sizes; they have various skills and weaknesses; they do not all travel the same road at the same pace at the same age. One would not issue the same size of clothing to every first-grader; it could come up short on some, and sag on others. Why, then, must they read from the same page of the same primers? Why do the same single-digit addition, from the same page of the same textbook?
Arguing for Voluntary Slavery
The libertarian view of “voluntary slavery” or “slave contracts” is mixed. There seems to be a great divide among the academics, such as Walter Block on one side and Murray Rothbard, et al. on the other.
Who Benefits From Upper Class Wealth?
Many a social democrat and left anarchist decry the existence of wealth inequality, considering it evidence that a crime somewhere, some time has been committed, and that justice must be made through violent confiscatory and re-distributive government programs. To them such is perfectly just because it is the righting of a wrong. The state is a tool that may used in this way, just as for small government libertarians it may be used in self-defense. This is a type of self-defense by the have-nots against the haves. It make me wonder, however, just how beneficial wealth is to the haves, and even to the have-notes? Let us count the ways.
The State Has Too Much Power
The state has too much power. I know this is an oft stated platitude spewed out by both the Left and the Right whenever it suits their ends, but it’s true. And this election proves it.
Why Would Anyone Want a President?
Apart from employees of the executive branch, or active-duty members of the military who have been called into service by Congress, no American really has a “president.” The office was intended to be peripheral to the daily concerns of Americans, rather than the central focus of their existence. What a wonderful thing it would be if Americans of all persuasions adopted the motto “Not My President” – and then learned to regard the state itself with the proper mixture of hostility and contempt.