The Humble Libertarian original

Early last month, I wrote in critique of the stimulus bill, urging my readers to take action and contact their representatives to oppose its passage. One reason I gave was that it wouldn't actually stimulate the economy : On the surface, it seems to make sense. The economy is doing poorly, so give it a fresh infusion of billions of dollars, and it will start to perk up. But the thing is that it isn't a fresh infusion of billions of dollars. This money won't be coming from some magical government storehouse of wealth to inject the economy with new cash- it will be coming from the economy. All the money the government will be spending to stimulate the economy is in the economy already. If you understand and can share just that one simple principle with others, the public will go a long way towards understanding why the stimulus package won't stimulate the economy. All this package does is move around money that already exists and is already in our economy. A couple weeks...

This Thursday, Bernie Madoff plead "guilty " to 11 counts of fraud for his $65 billion Ponzi scheme: At several points as he told of his deceits, Madoff blinked his eyes rapidly. Later in the hearing, he stood as Chin asked him how he pleaded to each of 11 counts filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. Madoff pressed his thumbs and fists into the defense table as he said “guilty” 11 times. It is truly poetic that a man should be so publicly flogged at this time in history for the crime of scamming people out of billions of dollars of their money. I say so because the United States Congress and the Federal Reserve bank are guilty of perpetuating the exact same kind of fraud, only on a much grander and more destructive scale. In January, I explained what a Ponzi scheme is and how our system of monetary inflation is the biggest Ponzi scam in history: The scam works like this: The first round of investors is convinced to use credit to buy a house they cannot afford...

Photo from WhiteHouse.gov Last month, I marked President Obama's first month in office by listing ten ways that he is similar to his predecessor, George W. Bush . On and off the Internet, the response I have gotten from every partisan Obama supporter has been to shut down, ignore my arguments, refuse to engage them, accuse me of partisan bickering (which is laughable since I'm criticizing a Democrat by saying that he's too much like a Republican), and then blame Bush for everything that's wrong with our government. These folks don't seem earnest at all about finding the right solutions to our nation's problems. They are perfectly willing to vilify one politician while idolizing another who shares most of the same qualities as the first. They are just drinking the Kool Aid . So I was pleased earlier this week to receive a comment that actually addressed each of my arguments. I thanked the commenter for his (or her?) earnestness and promised to answer e...

As a follow up to my article entitled " The American Tea Party 2009: Goals, Objectives, and Principles ," I have authored a guest post over at ReTeaParty.com entitled (you guessed it) " How To Start, Organize, and Promote Your Own Tea Party Protest ." At least one commentator here (wink: TennZen ) expressed interest in starting a local Tea Party, and another (that means you, Dave!) has opined once or twice that there isn't a Tea Party protest within driving distance of him (step it up PA residents... they wrote and adopted the Declaration of Independence in your state!). So I figured it might help to fan the flames of activism for liberty if I wrote a step by step guide to help people know where to get started. There are a lot of resources out there and a lot of people coming together who want you to be successful at protesting our government's abuses (and you can count me among them), so if you decide to get a protest started in your area you are not al...

Photo by Rama I am hesitant to involve myself at all in the partisan shouting match between Rush Limbaugh and his detractors among the Democrats, but I just had to respond to the following example of uncritical thinking on DailyKos and to all the bloggers, diggers, and commentators that have showered their accolades thereupon over the past couple days: I have read your breathless screeds about how President Obama is afraid to debate your Overlord, and how Obama has "painted himself into a corner," and how Jehovah is giving Jesus H. Christ himself the boot and preparing a seat for Overlord at His right hand. Again, thank you. However, I must deliver bad tidings. You will want to sit down for this. The debate already happened. Assuming your discipleship doesn't require you to ingest Oxycontin like Skittles, you may recall an 18-month span of time that included conventions, stump speeches, lots of waving flags, a face-carving hoax, malfunctioning green screens,...

Image by André Karwath ( CC ) I do not presume to be the mouthpiece or leader of the 21st century American Tea Party movement, so the following is a summary of my personal vision for the modern American Tea Party, a list of objectives I believe it should seek to accomplish, and a set of principles I believe it should strive to embody. I am writing this because the Tea Party movement will fail to create real change unless it finds direction in sound principles and takes specific, practical steps to ensure the implementation of those principles in public policy. I. Principles Any political movement is doomed to failure so long as it is merely fighting for a particular, isolated policy preference or even a set of such preferences, absent of any context and underived from or related to a unified framework for viewing reality, humankind's role in reality, and government's role in humanity. The following (originally published in the Dec. 2008 article " Six Reasons Not To Bailo...

Vaclav Havel argues in "Power of the Powerless" that real change in the post-totalitarian Eastern Europe in which he lived and wrote could not happen by traditional political means, but must happen by a ground-up transformation of the people themselves. The people must learn to, as he often puts it, “live within the truth,” refusing to remain under the foot of the ruling regime. He puts it as follows: A genuine, profound, and lasting change for the better . . . can no longer result from the victory (were such a victory possible) of any particular traditional political conception, which can ultimately be only external, that is, a structural or systemic conception. More than ever before, such a change will have to derive from human existence, from the fundamental reconstitution of the position of people in the world, their relationships to themselves and to each other, and to the universe. If a better economic and political model is to be created, then perhaps more than ever be...