American Lenin

In "honour" of Lincoln's Birthday, an article by L. Neil Smith on the tyrant.

It's harder and harder these days to tell a liberal from a conservative -- given the former category's increasingly blatant hostility toward the First Amendment, and the latter's prissy new disdain for the Second Amendment -- but it's still easy to tell a liberal from a libertarian.

Just ask about either Amendment.

If what you get back is a spirited defense of the ideas of this country's Founding Fathers, what you've got is a libertarian. By shameful default, libertarians have become America's last and only reliable stewards of the Bill of Rights.

But if -- and this usually seems a bit more difficult to most people -- you'd like to know whether an individual is a libertarian or a conservative, ask about Abraham Lincoln.

Suppose a woman -- with plenty of personal faults herself, let that be stipulated -- desired to leave her husband: partly because he made a regular practice, in order to go out and get drunk, of stealing money she had earned herself by raising chickens or taking in laundry; and partly because he'd already demonstrated a proclivity for domestic violence the first time she'd complained about his stealing.

Now, when he stood in the doorway and beat her to a bloody pulp to keep her home, would we memorialize him as a hero? Or would we treat him like a dangerous lunatic who should be locked up, if for no other reason, then for trying to maintain the appearance of a relationship where there wasn't a relationship any more? What value, we would ask, does he find in continuing to possess her in an involuntary association, when her heart and mind had left him long ago?

History tells us that Lincoln was a politically ambitious lawyer who eagerly prostituted himself to northern industrialists who were unwilling to pay world prices for their raw materials and who, rather than practice real capitalism, enlisted brute government force -- "sell to us at our price or pay a fine that'll put you out of business" -- for dealing with uncooperative southern suppliers. That's what a tariff's all about. In support of this "noble principle", when southerners demonstrated what amounted to no more than token resistance, Lincoln permitted an internal war to begin that butchered more Americans than all of this country's foreign wars -- before or afterward -- rolled into one.

Lincoln saw the introduction of total war on the American continent -- indiscriminate mass slaughter and destruction without regard to age, gender, or combat status of the victims -- and oversaw the systematic shelling and burning of entire cities for strategic and tactical purposes. For the same purposes, Lincoln declared, rather late in the war, that black slaves were now free in the south -- where he had no effective jurisdiction -- while declaring at the same time, somewhat more quietly but for the record nonetheless, that if maintaining slavery could have won his war for him, he'd have done that, instead.

More at the source.

Hopefully, we'll never see his like again.

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Libertarian, Lincoln, Politics

Government Health Care Is Here

Well, the Senate has passed Obama's spending bill, along with the tons of pork. It won't do any good, in the short or long term, but that's seemingly neither here nor there. Hidden amongst the hundreds of unread pages in this disaster is something much worse than all that spending. The politicians and Obama have managed to place a national health care scheme into this bill (.pdf). One in which the government, (not you and your physician) will determine what therapy you should receive. Thousands of people will be sentenced to death by the governments health "care" Tsar and their bureaucracy.

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

The worlds best health care system just became a thing of the past, unless people can somehow persuade their politicians to yank this abomination from the bill, which the Senate and House will have to agree to. Do not expect Indiana's Evan Bayh to object to this, (he voted yes). He's a strong proponent of bigger, more intrusive government, like Mr. Obama. "Universal health care" is here.

Don't get sick in the future. Unless you want some government employee deciding your health care options for you.

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News, Stimulus, Universal Health Care, Obama

Indiana Is A Failure. Thank Goodness!

The Brady Bunch has posted their ratings for 2008 and Indiana is an abysmal failure when it comes to infringing on the rights of the people who live there.


Now if we can only work on getting rid of their partial ratings we'll be a lot better off. I must say that I am rather pleased with the results, although I think Indiana is capable of a great big zero next year if we really try. The state needs to be stripped of the ability to keep records of gun sales and cities and towns need to rescind local ordinances that infringe on the right to carry in many locations.

We also need Vermont or Alaska style carry laws that would do away with the current permit system and return Indiana to a Constitutional position on firearms and self defence. Alaska scored a 4 out of 100, surely the Hoosier state can do better than Alaska? It's certainly something for libertarians to get behind. Let's be the biggest losers in the country next year!

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Guns, News, Gun Control, Libertarian, Indiana

Clear And Present Danger?

So, it appears that our Glorious Leader truly wants his "stimulus package" to go through, no matter how pork laden it is. He's even gone out of his way to address the issue in the Washington Post with an article on it which is filled with scaremongering. That's a big play to make this early in his tenure.

Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.

The only problem is that his bill is laden with pork to the tune of a trillion dollars and more is being added every minute. Millions for the arts, billions for failed education policies and billions for projects that are nothing more than long ignored earmarks. And it will all be for naught as this is highly unlikely to work as he would have it. The only job growth we will see will be in the area of government and socialism, cancerous growths we can do without.

I would say that you should contact your Senators, (as I did) and demand that they vote No on this boondoggle. Unfortunately, it is likely to make no difference in how they will vote. They no longer care what you think and will either vote a party line or vote against what the majority of their constituents demand. Representative government has become a myth, one which we cling to in vain hope.

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Obama, Politics, News, Stimulus