USA: A Subsidiary of Communist China

Can anyone doubt that the blind lawyer and dissident Chen Guangcheng, who apparently says that he feels a "little" lied to by American embassy officials in Beijing, was, more or less, hustled out and dumped into a hospital before he could further disrupt Chinese-American relations, especially with high-level meetings coming up between Hillary Clinton, Timothy Geithner and their Chinese counterparts? (National Interest)

It makes me sick, not figuratively but literally, giving me a disgusting, nauseous knot in my stomach to see how our liberty-hating president and secretary of state have handled the Chen Guangcheng affair. The blind dissident heroically makes his way to the US Embassy, a place he mistakenly thought represented freedom, and our embassy gave him the bum’s rush, turning him over to his totalitarian jailers. If you’re not disgusted, you’re not paying attention.

"I would like to say to President Obama: please do everything you can to get our family out," Chen told CNN, according to a translation of his quote.

Chen's comments came hours after US-based rights group China Aid said the dissident had "reluctantly" left the embassy and that it had been told by "reliable sources" that Beijing had made threats against his relatives. (Yahoo)

We are all Neo-Kissengerians Now

China demanded an apology, and instead of standing up as proud Americans and shining our beacon of freedom on the plight of its dissidents, we cowered and pissed down our leg…

Despite Wednesday's agreement, Beijing demanded that the United States apologise for what it called "interference" in its affairs. 

"China is very unhappy over this. The US action is an interference in China's internal affairs and China cannot accept it," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu said. (Yahoo)

A servile US official obsequiously assured our red overlords that “there would be no repeat of the incident.”

We no longer stand for freedom in the world

At the embassy, Chen said he came under tremendous pressure from American officials—“not those from the embassy but others “—to leave the diplomatic facility as quickly as possible. (Melinda Liu) 

This calls to mind Bill Clinton returning young Elian Gonzalez to Castro’s prison island after his mother gave her life bringing him to the safety and freedom of the United States. 

 Janet Reno, fresh from burning up all those religious nuts in Waco, had her stormtroopers raid his relatives’ house in Florida at Castro’s behest.

Chen’s pleas fall on deaf ears…

“Please try to contact the embassy to send someone over here. I need your help, I’m absolutely, absolutely ready to fly out on Hillary Clinton’s plane. Please tell the embassy what I’m saying, Meiyuan,” he pleaded from his hospital room, using my Chinese name. “I don’t know why the Americans didn’t answer my phone calls.” (Melinda Liu)

Sorry Chen! The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave is now the Land of the sheep and home of the bankrupt cowards.

Economist - Chen, China and America
CBS News – US Weighs Options

* - Update:  A Breakthrough?

Natural Rights and our Constitution

We've had some spirited conversations here over Church and State this past week.  I am thankful for all of you who visit here and contribute to the conversation.

I am writing this not so much to preach to the progressives, but to establish what I believe and why I believe it.  It scares me when I encounter people, especially conservatives, who believe our rights come from the constitution.  They do not.  I also want to say that I get wound up sometimes, but I genuinely respect the views of all my interlocutors and I greatly appreciate that you take the time to come here and debate.

A Living Document or Carved in Stone?

Progressivism depends upon a "living document" constitution, malleable and subject to modern reinterpretations, while strict constructionists insist the only valid manner of "reinterpretation" is to go through the amendment process.  I am a strict constructionist, but I can see the other side's point.

But anyway, here is my argument...

Natural Rights:  The Philosophical Foundation of our Constitutional Republic

Our founding fathers were born in the age of the divine right of kings.  The ruler was the lawgiver.  Some were tyrants about it, others were merely capricious, while some were downright enlightened in their rule. England's Glorious Revolution restored some power to the people, but Parliament came to be seen as capricious, issuing commands that violated personal sovereignty instead of discovering and enshrining broadly applicable principles as they existed among the people.

The founders based their political philosophy upon concepts explained in Locke's Second Treatise. All people possess the natural rights of life, liberty and property. Man exists in a state of nature, but as Hobbes observed, life there is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,"  so people gather in clans and communities where mores and societal norms spring forth and evolve.

Further, societies make rules to guarantee the rights of all. As such, Enlightenment minds considered "lawmaking" an abomination. "Law discovery" is a concept more fitted to a free people, for it presupposes that laws naturally exist by history and custom of a people. Lawmakers and judges merely discover and enunciate them as the need arises. A radical concept, but our founders were radical men.

Our Constitution Binds the Government, Not the People

They wrote the constitution to charge the federal government with specific responsibilites like national defense and regulating certain activities among the states. It was written to regulate the behavior of government, not that of the citizens. It was also written with man's natural rights in mind, which is why it is short on strictures on human behavior.

In the founders' minds, there were two spheres, the public and the private. Man is the sovereign of his personal sphere and government may not intrude upon it so long as a man does not intrude upon the personal sphere of another. Government may not compel a man to surrender property to another man, or press him into involuntary service unless it is specifically stated in the constitution, such as military service.

It is significant that the only positive rights mentioned in the constitution are legal rights that protect the citizen from the state, such as habeas corpus, representation, speedy trial, etc. All other rights mentioned are negative ones, essentially the right to conduct your own affairs as you see fit so long as you allow others to do the same.

There are no rights to food, or shelter or other material things. Indeed Hamilton and others argued against a Bill of Rights because they feared craven officials would use such a list to claim that other rights were excluded since they were not mentioned, or that listing them would give a pretext for government to claim to be the source of them and therefor subject to the whims of presidents and legislators.

We have no positive rights granting us the property of others

There is no right to health care, and there is no right to have others pay for it. It doesn't exist. To those who insist it does, I ask you then why you are not vociferously arguing against any religious exemption, especially the one that exempts churches from providing these services to employees? If it is a right, it may not be violated.

Does the federal government have the authority to tell a business to give things away?  That's what Obama's tissue-thin fig leaf of a compromise does.  It commands insurance companies to give stuff away.  If the government can do this, why not command grocery stores to give food away?  Better yet, solve the birth control issue by decreeing that all birth control products are free.  All someone has to do is walk in and take them.

This is the lala land we find ourselves in when government intrudes upon our personal sphere.  It has no business there, it violates the constitution, and leads to much illogic.  If goverment can tell you what kind of insurance you must provide your employees, why can't it tell you what kind of food to eat?

The reason it cannot is because nothing in the constitution authorizes it to invade the private realm of the individual.  To say otherwise is to expose us all to the whims of our elected officials and their army of bureaucrats.  It is tyranny.

Links:
Second Treatise of Civil Government - John Locke
US Constitution
Federalist Papers
See also Chapters 11, 12, and 14 of Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty (Sorry, no linky love!)

Obama Declares Jihad on the Catholic Church

Obama Cult "O Loko Haram"

Obama’s Holy War

Two years ago when Obamacare ordered the Catholic Church to include birth control and abortions in its health care plans, the nation’s Catholic Bishops threatened to shut down or sell off all hospitals, and it appeared that the threat had staved off our imperial government.

Catholic hospitals are an important component of our nation’s health care system, providing the only source of medical care in some areas, and only a fool would want to see them shut down.  That was the prevailing wisdom at the time.

Now, I believe that thinking was wrong, and it appears that the Obamistas do want them shut down, provoking a crisis and providing a pretext for more government intervention.  This is about the state breaking one more private institution to its will.  Progressivism is an inexorable march to absolute state control, and this is just the next step.

What’s Obama’s end game?

Employers that furnish health insurance have to cover it. But employers don't have to furnish health insurance -- and some of those with a religious mission may decide not to. When the District of Columbia passed a law that forced Catholic Charities to provide medical insurance to the same-sex partners of its employees, the agency elected to simply drop coverage for spouses.

Anyone left without health insurance under the administration's rule can go to new state-run health insurance exchanges to buy individual policies. But here again, the administration rejects freedom of conscience. The only policies available will include coverage for contraceptives -- including those the church regards as "abortion drugs" -- and sterilization. (Steve Chapman)

The end game is to herd more human cattle and sheeple into the Obamacare box canyon, while trampling our old fashioned morals and ushering in a new era of progressive utilitarianism, freed from fusty shibboleths like human dignity and sanctity of life.

And the Catholic Church, which snuggles up to big government at every opportunity instead of preaching the Catholic doctrine of Subsidiarity, should learn a lesson from all of this:

Get in bed with Uncle Sam and don't be surprised if you get more than a good night's sleep  -- Ronald Reagan

Contraception Mandate Outrages Religious Groups

Hayek’s Revenge

The European ruling elites are struggling to hold the whole project together...

But the real problems emerge from the technocratic mind-set, from the arrogant gray men who believe they can engineer society, oblivious to history, language, culture, values and place. (NY Times - Brooks)

Nobody has all the answers. And no single person or body needs all the answers. That’s the fallacy: That government must be omnipotent and omniscient. It is neither, and vesting it with power and control as if it were is crazy.

The more concentrated power and decision-making becomes, the more information is needed to feed into the power center. Free markets make decisions and evolve solutions organically; static control centers cannot.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Also, as you make one-size-fits-all decisions for larger and larger groups of people, discontent can only grow among those you are trying to help.  We argue over everything because government has pushed everything in to the collective, making your rights negotiable and subject to snotty bickering.

For example, imagine a Friday night alone. You’re going to settle in for a night of movie watching and you decide to order pizza. Easy. Now imagine you’re snuggled in with your loved one. The decision on movie-night fare is now a shared one. Take it a step further and imagine a houseful of people. They cannot decide on the toppings, or even which takeout place to order from. Worse, some are on a gluten-free diet and want BBQ, while other clamor for Chinese food. The bigger the crowd, the harder it is to reach a decision.

So we are better off making our individual decisions for ourselves and allowing the spontaneous economy to bloom. It works. Don’t believe me? There are literally billions of people in this world who know nothing of growing crops or killing animals, yet they do not want for food.

People and nations can capitalize on specialization, making things that others want, while not worrying about making necessities they know they can buy from others.  And governments' involvement is limited to providing some infrastructure and mediating trade agreements.

How We Got Here

Every emergency has been used by the federal government as an opportunity to take another bite out of our liberties, with expediency as the excuse.  As Hayek predicted, "our freedom" has been "destroyed by piecemeal encroachments."

Hayek was a big proponent of governing from broad principles where possible rather than from narrow, specific laws.

"The argument for liberty, in the last resort, is indeed an argument for principles and against expediency in collective action..."

He foresaw the "fatal weakness" of government leaving free people alone with their liberties:  Uncertain outcomes and glaring inequalities would scare us off our freedoms and into the arms of big daddy government.  Liberty cannot compare to concrete promises and "definite gifts offered to particular individuals" in exchange for some "curtailment of freedom."

That is the fatal seduction.  Not treating freedom as the "supreme principle..."

"...would inevitably prove a fatal weakness and lead to its slow erosion." 

Meanwhile, here in America, where Obama ignored the rule of law and saved GM from a richly-deserved bankruptcy...

The Treasury Department yesterday revised its loss estimate for the Government Motors bailout from $14.33 billion to $23.6 billion, thanks to the company’s sinking stock price.

 Add in the special tax breaks, and...

This means that the total hit to taxpayers, who still own about a quarter of the company, could add up to $38.6 billion. (Reason)

Europe is playing a shell game, and they're running out of suckers.  Here in the US, we're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The elites have stolen our freedoms in the name of expediency and progress, but their promises of equality and prosperity are just chaff in the wind.  They've led us to the brink of collapse.  As Peter, Paul and Mary used to sing, "When will they ever learn?  When will they ever learn?"

Or, to Paraphrase Ben Franklin, "Those who trade liberty for security end up with neither."

Quotes Taken from Hayek's "The Constitution of Liberty," pp 129-130.

Progressivism vs. Individual Liberty

Progressives do not believe in natural rights as understood by our founders, and they also take a dim view of individual liberty

George Will clarifies...

Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose judicial restraint often expressed his dogmatic majoritarianism, defended “the right of a majority to embody their opinions in law.” He said liberty should not be construed “to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion.”

Holmes' constitution-be-damned judicial philosophy nurtured the fledgling progressivism of the early 20th century, enabling it to grow into the morbidly obese statist monster of the 21st century. His was the opposite of judicial activism. He refused to stand athwart the stampeding statists and shout "stop!" Preferring instead to see individual rights trampled in the name of social hygiene and "progress."

Progressives celebrated Holmes’s gift to government of almost untrammeled police powers. He said courts should defer to economic regulations because the Constitution does not “embody a particular economic theory.”

Princeton’s president, Woodrow Wilson, agreed, dismissing “the inalienable rights of the individual” as “nonsense” inimical to government’s ability to efficiently work its progressive will. So much for the idea that one of the Constitution’s primary purposes is the protection of individual rights against majority tyranny.

See how this encroachment works?  You continue growing government until a citizen cannot turn around without rubbing up against some government project or other.  For the good of greater society, the state must restrict that citizen's action.  They've boxed us in. 

It's the Quacking Marxism, Stupid!

I bring all this up as prelude. I am genuinely thankful for Jersey, Ducky, Jez, Bd, Shaw and other progressives who show up at this blog. Their defense of all that I detest makes us all a little smarter and less sloppy with our arguments. I also believe that our liberal friends genuinely believe they are doing good and bettering the country, attacking the evil rich and fighting against inequality.

Ducky is easier to comprehend once you understand that he is a Marxist. I don't use that term as a pejorative. He himself cops to being a fan of Das Kapital, and I use the term not to associate him with communist regimes, but rather to say he ascribes to Karl Marx's theory of capital, which is inimical to free market capitalism.

Until I realized this, I never knew how to take him. He may not have consciously tried to mask his Marxist beliefs, but they nonetheless remained hidden behind other arguments that never quite rang right, and now I know why. Sources and motives illuminate a debate and bring clarity to it. I am a Dennis Prager fan, and as Dennis says, "Clarity over agreement."

This exchange from last week is telling...

Bastiatarian said...

Jersey and Ducky and Bd, why are you afraid of liberty and people determining themselves what to do with their own property?

Don't be so insecure.

Ducky's here said...

Because "liberty" is a cheap cop-out used by the fringe right to mask their shallowness and irrational support of a kapitalist power structure that is not compatible with democracy.

Because the distribution of wealth under the current system is so inequitable that it will generate social instability and a weakened nation.

Because people who "know what to do with their property" generally only know what temporary itch they want scratched and will go into unsustainable debt to scratch it and ignore the future.

Because it freaking pisses me off that some little right wing snot thinks he has standing to tell me what freedom means to me when there is no reason to believe the right wing slug has ever experienced it.

And that is the crux of the leftist argument, plainly stated by one of the nation's few honest liberals. Progressivism is, at its core, not liberal at all. It is a moralistic crusade on a Quixotic mission to right all wrongs.

I bring this up not to berate Ducky or to make some cheap call for other right-thinkers to attack him (as if any of our attacks could even put the tiniest dent in his impregnable carapace...). No, I congratulate Ducky for plainly stating what he believes and identifying his philosophical sources. If everyone on the left could come clean as Ducky has done, our national debate would gain much clarity.

My response to Ducky

Yes, it's hell allowing those damned, contemptible people to enjoy their liberty and to dispose of their lives and their property as they see fit!

Dammit to hell! How dare we grubby proles presume to chart the course of our own lives while turning a deaf ear to our progressive overlords???!!!

"Distribution of wealth?" That cracks me up.

Who distributes it? Who owns it? Who's entitled to it? How much? How do you divide it? Who decides?

Where is this socialist utopia you dream of, and what would it look like?

Rational Self Interest, Morality & Liberty

How do we reconcile public morality and personal liberty?

“poverty does not create our social problems; our social problems create our poverty.” – Marco Rubio, US Senator-Florida

In a post last week, I observed that the British looters were acting in their rational self-interest, and Bastiatarian took me to task, albeit in a polite and friendly way…

Bastiatarian:
I don't really think the looters are acting in their rational self-interest, though. I believe that they think they are, but it's a very short-sighted self-interest. At the very least, they don't take into consideration the deep and lasting damage done to their characters by such behavior.

So true.  I could not agree more, and I appreciate Bastiatarian's professorial mien.

What I meant was that those lost souls (on both sides of the Atlantic) live in their own narrow world of the id-driven here and now.  Cash, a flat screen and new sneakers are everything, and a little smashy-smashy to get them is just payback to the store owner for being rich.  That is the incentive system the social engineers have put in place.  Get it all while you can, and getting it at someone else's expense makes it all the better, be it free electronics, housing, money or sex. 

We've imprisoned them...
... with shoddy schools and no expectations.  They cannot see over the horizon; there is no future.  We could preach morality, but we have that embarrassing little issue of the DC-NY bandits in suits looting trillions with impunity.


So here we are in the creeping jungle, staring helplessly as it reclaims the space that Western Civilization had cleared

Anyone who has ever raised children or trained animals (remarkably similar activities!), knows that morals are the foundation of individual and societal success.  It doesn't have to be a religious thing.  Simply teaching people age-old virtues that predate Christianity and holding them up as the ideal would get us most of the way there. 

Trestin:
The truth is society needs a combination of the morality championed by social conservatives and the individual liberty championed by libertarians. Freedom does not work without morality, and morality can not exist without freedom.

Bastiatarian:
Exactly right. Without agency (freedom), there is no ability to choose between right, wrong, or anything else. Regardless of the specific system, morality implies that there is also immorality, and vice versa. One requires the opposing other. Otherwise, it would merely be one big clump that is neither morality nor immorality […]

If I have no choice, my actions are neither good nor evil, neither moral nor immoral. They may be beneficial or damaging for somebody, but those actions do not make me moral or immoral.

What about liberty?

Bastiatarian:
Authority without accountability is tyranny.
Accountability without authority is slavery.
Only when authority and accountability are combined can liberty exist.

If the Marco Rubio quote is too high minded for you, here's one from British writer James Delingpole.  He applies it to his home country, but it fits here almost as well:

For those of us who never got to experience the Second World War, this is the beginning of the most dramatic, turbulent and terrifying era of our lifetime. The rules have changed; the old keep-whistling-cheerfully-and-pretend-it’s-all-going-to-go-away political bullshit is no longer valid currency. (Delingpole - What are the Police Good For?)

For an even more provocative take, see conservative David French's short article, The Sources of Poverty.  Be sure to read the comments as well.  Lots of liberal dissenters showed up and made some valid points to the contrary.

For a concise and entertaining treatise on rational self-interest, see:  UNC - Economicae:  Rational Self-Interest 

Progressivism is Collapsing in on Itself, and it ain't Pretty

Why the irresponsible, angry and hateful rhetoric from the left? Because we are winning! 

Why is the poisonous progressive vituperation aimed primarily at the tea party? Because it is The Threat, the biggest gun in the pro-liberty arsenal, steadily pounding away at the walls of the statist citadels.

Gallup confirms that conservatives are consolidating gains, with an incredible 41% of Americans now self-identifying as conservative, and even greater number than the 36% who call themselves moderate. The ragged, saggy ranks of liberals continues to droop, now at 21%.

We're Killing The Beast

I still can’t believe it, but I think we are actually killing the progressive beast. It’s a long way from its final death throes, but we are slowly choking it, and it is now writhing violently, horned head, spiky tail and taloned limbs flailing mindlessly, lashing out at its tormenters. A wounded animal is dangerous. These are perilous times.

The Washington Examiner reports that as a result of the debt ceiling deal, real discretionary spending will decrease for the first time since the Korean War:

There are many reasons for conservatives to be unhappy with the increase in the debt ceiling, but they ought not overlook the very real possibility that it is a milestone in the recognition of the liberal welfare state's unsustainability. (Washington Examiner)

The editors go on to point out that entitlement programs are the real problem, and more and more Americans are waking up to the fact:

The American people understand that these welfare programs are unaffordable. According to Gallup, two out of three Americans believe Social Security and Medicare costs are either already creating a crisis for the federal government (34 percent) or will do so within 10 years (33 percent) (Washington Examiner)

Liberal Blogger Kevin Drum laments that progressive are losing, badly:

But no matter how many times we try to kid ourselves with one poll result or another, liberals just don't have that advantage.

The public is mostly in favor of raising taxes on the rich — though I suspect its support is pretty soft — but on the bigger issues they mostly aren't on our side. They think deficits are bad, they don't trust Keynesian economics, they don't want a higher IRS bill (who does, after all?), and they believe the federal government is spending too much on stuff they don't really understand.

Conservatives have just flat out won this debate in recent decades, and until that changes we're not going to be able to make much progress. (Kevin Drum – Mother Jones)

Liberal WaPo columnist Greg Sargent agrees, and provides as evidence this polling factoid about the agreed-upon cuts in the debt ceiling deal:

only 15 percent think the cuts go too far. (Greg Sargent-The Plumb Line)

He goes on to cite a fellow liberal blogger:

“We will only find success when a majority of Americans agrees with us that government is something worth fighting for,” wrote Jared Bernstein.

These smart and honest liberals have identified the crux of the progressives' problem:

A majority of Americans now agree that government is Not something worth fighting for, but rather something worth fighting Against. 

Keynesian welfare states worldwide are now exposed as wealth-sucking failures teetering on the brink of collapse. We’re not going to support more debt to pay for them. Instead we demand a move away from the dark clouds of soviet-style centrally-planned economies, and towards the light of personal liberty and free market capitalism. Here’s a crumb for the anti-war left: We’re done funding costly wars and global community organizing as well.