False Prophets

Last night I watched Fritz Lang's 1927 classic "Metropolis". Made in Germany shortly before the Great Depression, and anticipating the ascendency of the National Socialists, the film painted a stark picture of a dehumanized working class being manipulated and exploited by wealthy industrialists. This, of course, was a common theme presented by progressives over the decades preceeding the film's release.


Fast forward 22 years to the release of Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four". In this classic novel, published following the close of the Second World War and anticipating the Cold War, the dehumanized working class are manipulated and exploited by intellectual elites. Orwell's work, like other fiction and scholarly works of the time, was in response to the rise of such repressive socialist regimes as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.


I mention these two works to illustrate how similar are the tactics used by those who would seek to control us. In each case, individuals advance to positions of power behind claims of intellectual and moral superiority. Though they are ultimately indistinguishible from one another, each group rails against the excesses of the other. Each marches behind false prophets claiming to know more than we do about how we must live our lives. Each gathers the forces of media to ensure a clear, united message assuring us that our obedience is a small price to pay for their magnanimity.


While it's easy for us, today, to identify the forces of progressivism which threaten our freedom, we must not allow the opposite forces to gain the same power we've ceded to those currently in power. If we do, we can be sure that the outcome will be the same: the loss of liberty.

Tempered Honesty

I would like to take this opportunity to applaud Andrew Alexander, Ombudsman of the Washington Post, for his attempt to chastise his own paper over its continued selective hearing: Why the silence from The Post on Black Panther Party story?. While he skirts the issue of his paper's tendency to support a progressive agenda, he does point out their lack of coverage on a significant issue.

For those not aware: the Justice Department has all but dropped a case involving members of the New Black Panther Party and voter intimidation in Philadelphia. As we all know, had the defendants belonged to the Klan, or any number of other equally offensive groups espousing violence against minorities, both the Justice Department and the Washington Post would have ridden the case into the next decade. The views expressed by members of the New Black Panther Party are no less violent or incendiary than their better known counterparts. The difference, it has been posited, is in historical perspective. I for one find little solace in the argument that a group can threaten violence against any other group or individual simply because they have a historical basis for their anger. Laws, and the application thereof, must be blind to color, status, agenda, and any other differentiating characteristic.

As for Mr. Alexander: his effort, while significant, suffers slightly from his willingness to dismiss his paper's oversight as the result of staff limitations. It is common knowledge that media outlets, both progressive and conservative, practice editorial reporting. His just got caught being obvious about it.

An Unusual Source

Yes, this appeared in the Huffington Post, normally a bastion of progressive presbyopia:

"At a time when the country was experiencing the worst economic downturn in generations and the government was asking its taxpayers to support a $787 billion stimulus package designed primarily to preserve jobs, Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses and thereby potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls -- all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions' broader economic impact," the report states.

I found it entertaining that the last line included the phrase “all based on a theory”. This is the fantasy world in which progressives live, where theories and ideology replace reasoned assessment. I’m sure the report will be dismissed by the typical progressive as mere partisan politics, but that’s only because those of us who can see beyond our noses raised concerns about it at the outset.

Recently been messing around on this site: Funnytimes.

Perpetuating Fallacies

This article includes a telling example of how most of our elected officials see the money collected as taxes: Philadelphia threatens jail for tax deadbeats. In the article, the Mayor of Philadelphia states “We want our damn money, you owe it, we want it, and I plan to collect it.” Other examples of this mentality can be found when bureaucrats make statements like this (from here):

In the near term, Steny Hoyer, House majority leader, raised the possibility that Congress will only temporarily extend middle-class tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year. He pointedly suggested that making them permanent would be too costly.

Not only does Mr. Hoyer ignore the fact that the Bush tax cuts dramatically increased tax revenue, he also implies that there will be a cost to the government of allowing people to continue to retain the money they have earned. Statements such as these prove that our elected officials believe that government actually generates money independent of the taxes it forcefully acquires and that this money then belongs to them. Neither of these beliefs is true. However, as long as we continue to allow these people to either labor under or perpetuate these fallacies, we will be destined to suffer under their oppressive and destructive control.

Something Stinks...

One would think that being a libertarian for as long as I have, there might be more similarities between my position and other libertarians. That's the beauty of the cause: freedom doesn't require any conformity. Take illegal aliens, for example. I join with most libertarians when I say that people wishing to enter this country should do so legally. We are, after all, a nation of laws. However, I find myself parting company with many libertarians on the issue of what is to be done with those that have already entered illegally.

I recently listened to a podcast where an argument was presented that we needed to allow these people to remain in this country so that many low paying jobs could be filled. This argument is not dissimilar to those presented by Bush the Duller, predecessor to our current Big Brother. While I agree that we need to implement some improved immigration solutions, including a more accessible work program, I don't condone excusing illegal aliens from their past transgressions for any reason.

What confuses me about these arguments is that they come from people supposedly versed in the machinations of a free market. If there are indeed jobs to be filled, the market will fill them. If they are to be filled using labor rates too low for Americans to accept, the market will drive the value of these jobs higher, thereby creating an incentive for Americans to fill the positions. To use this supposed need of cheap labor to justify circumvention of existing law is indefensible and stinks of social engineering (yes, Barack, that smell was aimed at you).

That Ain't Right

I wish I had been surprised by this article: Fast Internet access becomes a legal right in Finland. Having grown up in a time before the PC, I marvel at even the idea of making high speed internet access a “right”. Of course, the people of Finland are free to pass any legislation they deem appropriate. This is, however, a prime example of the direction many governments, including in the U.S., have been moving: declare something a right and then force the citizens to fund it.

Where does this end? Well, if you agree with Hayek as I do, it ends in totalitarian regimes forcing individuals to labor, at the regime’s direction and discretion, to fund the ever growing cost of all the discovered “rights”. After all, There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. This is why it remains vital that we stand up to such activities wherever free people wish to remain so.