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The Alamo

Wendy D. Stolyarov

Issue CCVI - September 11, 2009

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NOTE: Left-click on the image to see a larger version of the artwork.

The Rational Argumentator is pleased to feature another work from Wendy Stolyarov, whose art works exhibit a remarkable originality, skill, and stylistic variety.

Comments by the artist: “Watercolor pencil and Pitt artist pens on watercolor paper. Original is approximately 120 x 240 mm.”

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Wendy D. Stolyarov is an accomplished writer, thinker, artist, and graphic designer, who brings her immense talent and capacity for innovation to The Rational Argumentator and the wider movement for the advancement of Reason, Rights, and Progress. Mrs. Stolyarov uses computer technology masterfully to produce precise, realistic, life-affirming art. She has also contributed multiple essays to TRA and designed many of the magazine’s newer logos, including its banner and the New Renaissance top hat. Mrs. Stolyarov is married to G. Stolyarov II, the Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator and The Progress of Liberty.

E-mail Mrs. Stolyarov to order prints of her art.

See the main page featuring Wendy D. Stolyarov’s art works.

See Wendy D. Stolyarov’s art portfolio.

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An alarming number of theists argue that it was atheism that led to the genocides of Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot during the 20^th century – notwithstanding that atheism is not a positive doctrine and it was rather the dogma of communism that motivated these genocides. However, theists who argue this way often challenge non-believers to give instances where slaughters on such a grand scale were motivated by religious considerations. In fact, there happens to be such an instance, the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) in China, where about 25 million people – mostly civilians – were killed in the course of an uprising orchestrated by the Christian convert and religious fanatic Hong Xiuquan. Hong’s regime was not only Christian, it was communistic – abolishing private property and mandating communal living and strict separation of the sexes.

By contrast, estimates of the death toll inflicted by Pol Pot only go as high as 2.3 million. This is still horrific, of course, and inexcusable. However, it is for this reason that I advise theists not to play the death toll card anymore. Rather, it is important to recognize the dangers of all sorts of fanaticism and dogma, irrespective of their underlying metaphysics. Any set of ideas which does not incorporate a considerable degree of tolerance for opposing views is highly dangerous and likely to lead to horrendous destruction of lives and property.

Sincerely,

Gennady Stolyarov II

In an excellent short essay, Dr. Burton Folsom – a renowned historian and economic thinker with whom I am personally acquainted – explains the reasons for the failure of the National Road, one of the first major federal public works projects in United States history, which was virtually defunct by the 1850s. The road’s construction and maintenance were plagued with inefficiency, as decisions about how to build it were made out of political, not technical, considerations. Even the Jefferson administration – which enacted the construction of the road – was not immune from the influence of pressure groups, each trying to get the road to go its own district. Ultimately, the National Road ended up not contributing substantively to westward expansion and settlement, as private roads and railroads were preferred for personal and business travel.  

Sincerely,

Gennady Stolyarov II

It is not commonly mentioned, but rather interesting, that Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), the great Austrian economist and champion of free markets, spent much of his life employed in a government position. From 1907 to 1908 and again from 1918 to 1938, Mises had a position with the Kammer für Handel, Gewerbe und Industrie, the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, where he acted as an advisor to the Austrian government on economic matters. (You can read more about this in the biography of Mises on the Ludwig von Mises Institute page.)  Mises always gave honest, well-informed, principled advice and several times prevented Austria’s slide into complete socialism. He even convinced the socialist Otto Bauer not to institute a complete command economy!

Mises was benefited by his position in that it enabled him to earn a living despite the frequent attacks he and his ideas encountered in Austria. As a man of Jewish descent, of laissez-faire ideals, and of a highly principled, uncompromising disposition, Mises was often not given the treatment he deserved in academia. He was only able to get an unpaid Privatdozent position at the University of Vienna, despite his extensive record of world-class economic writings. But he could conduct his free private seminars without care for how financially profitable they were or how well-received they were by the academic establishment. By having a position outside of the academic system – and the Viennese society which often misunderstood him – Mises could have a degree of free rein that enabled him to create some of his greatest works.

This can be a lesson to many free-market advocates. Working for the government may be a good career choice – provided that one remains true to one’s principles and does one’s job in a way that constitutes a marginal improvement compared to what would have occurred had someone else (say, a new Eliot Spitzer) held that job. It can also buy one the time and flexibility to develop ideas and products that advance free markets outside one’s day job.

Sincerely,

Gennady Stolyarov II

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Constitutional Neglect and Government Precipitation of Economic Crises

G. Stolyarov II

Issue CLXXXVIII - March 4, 2009

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This is the transcript of a speech that won $2000 at the 2009 Edward Everett Oratory Competition at Hillsdale College.

            The year is 1887, and multiple major droughts have struck Texas. Congress passes a bill giving $10,000 in federal aid to Texas farmers to enable them to buy seeds. But upon reaching President Grover Cleveland, the bill is vetoed – on principle.[1] Cleveland writes to Congress, “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit…  Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government… while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthen the bond of a common brotherhood.”[2]

            Now fast-forward to 2008. The U. S. Treasury and Federal Reserve are spending trillions to bail out banks, homeowners who lived beyond their means, automobile companies, and anything that makes sufficient political donations. According to Barry Ritholtz, author of the book Bailout Nation, the cost of the 2008 bailouts is already over 4.6 trillion dollars – exceeding the combined costs of the Louisiana Purchase, the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq Wars, the 1989 Savings and Loan Bailout, and NASA’s all-time budget.[3] The bailouts received unreserved support from both Barack Obama and John McCain, showing just how little constitutional adherence remains in our most prominent politicians. Grover Cleveland, who refused to spend $10,000 of taxpayer money to relieve a dire crisis for farmers, would have been outraged. Clearly, if the Constitution did not authorize a comparatively tiny appropriation, it cannot justify one of unprecedented enormity. It is unambiguously unconstitutional for the U. S. government to attempt to remedy economic crises. Moreover, the American Founders overwhelmingly opposed such intervention. Indeed, government meddling is the cause of virtually all economic crises, and politicians can only exacerbate the present crisis by offering more of the same.

             The Constitution nowhere authorizes any federal intervention aimed at resolving economic crises or propping up failing institutions. Article I, Section VIII, enumerates Congress’s powers. Conspicuously absent is any clause stating that “Congress shall have power to distribute taxpayer funds to individuals and firms that made reckless investments, mortgages, or production decisions.” Even the dangerously open-ended Interstate Commerce Clause cannot justify bailouts by the most elaborate rhetorical gymnastics. If giving the savings of prudent, industrious individuals to financial institutions that have squandered trillions is regulation of interstate commerce, then a plain robber’s redistribution of your hard-earned money to himself is just his way of regulating inter-house commerce. Nor are bailouts and the onerous controls accompanying them a “necessary and proper” means to any of Congress’s enumerated powers. It is not even in the “general welfare” for the savings of most to be wiped out by rampant forthcoming inflation in order to pad the wallets of failed bankers and hedge fund managers. Moreover, the executive and judicial branches of government are nowhere authorized to engage in such unabashed redistribution of wealth. The crucial but neglected Tenth Amendment states in no uncertain terms that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Or in terms our esteemed politicians might be more intellectually suited to understand, “If it’s not stated in the Constitution, you can’t do it!”

             The American Founders would have seen the recent bailouts as a near-fatal blow to the United States’ integrity as a country with any semblance of individual rights, rule of law, and limited government. Benjamin Franklin warned that “[w]hen the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”[4] We are witnessing the spectacle of people who imprudently took out variable-rate subprime mortgages pressuring their representatives to give them money earned by the rest of us. Thomas Jefferson, in his First Inaugural Address, staunchly opposed any government intervention for the purpose of economic stabilization. He asked: “what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? …a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”[5]

Today, the opposite of Jefferson’s vision prevails: a government that inserts itself into virtually all economic and non-economic areas, whose accelerating debt exceeds 10 trillion dollars, and whose 2006 spending was a colossal 36.1 percent of the Gross Domestic Product.[6] In his “Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank,” Jefferson argued that “[t]o take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of  Congress [by the Tenth Amendment], is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition.”[7] James Madison likewise warned that “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.”[8] Today, we see the culmination of the dangerous trend that Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison fought. The constitutionally unauthorized First Bank of the United States set the first of many precedents for the 1913 formation of the Federal Reserve. Since then, the dollar lost over 95 percent of its value and continues to be debased by enormous money supply augmentations.[9] Meanwhile, the Fed and a myriad of costly, wasteful government subsidies, prohibitions, and controls precipitated eight recessions and one depression.[10]

Indeed, illustrious economists have shown that government intervention is the cause, not the cure, of economic crises. In a free market, there will always be some businesses that flourish and others that fail. This is the natural dynamic of competition, by which competent firms that serve consumers most effectively gain an increased share of resources, while incompetent firms lose market share and must reform or perish. But the systemic booms and busts of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries – where virtually all businesses either prosper or suffer in unison – were due to government meddling. In the 1930s, economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek formulated the Austrian Business Cycle Theory, which explains how artificial credit expansion by government central banks results in an unsustainable boom due to capital malinvestment.[11]

To illustrate this insight, Mises used the analogy of a master builder, who has a stock of bricks at his disposal. However, false signals lead the master builder to believe that he has more bricks than actually exist. In real economies, the central bank sends such false signals by artificially lowering the rate of interest below what it would have been on the free market – as Alan Greenspan did prior to the high-tech bubble of the 1990s and the housing bubble of the 2000s, and as Ben Bernanke is doing today.[12]

So what will our master builder do? He will try to construct a much larger and more ambitious building than his resources allow. The sooner he discovers the misinformation, the more effectively he can revise his plans and correct his errors. This is the function of a recession. Far from an evil, recessions are highly desirable corrections of a systemic depletion and misallocation of the economy’s capital stock. But in staving off the recession through even more easy credit, the central bank perpetuates the illusion that materials exist for many more projects than are sustainable, while fueling increasingly rampant inflation. Eventually, the master builder simply runs out of bricks, and one cannot construct a building from paper. Then we pay a severe price for delaying the inevitable; all the bailouts, credit expansions, and government interventions pave the way for economic collapse of unprecedented proportions.

The Founders and Grover Cleveland were right to counsel the U. S. government to stay strictly within the letter of the Constitution. The Constitution, they understood, is no mere set of arbitrary constraints. Absolute, immutable economic law – subject to no whims of politicians or majorities – justifies these constraints, as the later work of the Austrian economists confirms. The Constitution should be followed because, under a strict interpretation, it enables tremendous, uninterrupted liberty, prosperity, and progress. Today, the recommendation of the Constitution, the Founders, and sound economics cannot be clearer; it is laissez-faire. Enough of bailouts, redistribution, inflation, and onerous economic controls! To paraphrase Jefferson, “Let no more be heard of confidence in [Paulson, Geithner, and Bernanke], but bind [them] down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution!”[13]

References Used

“Government Spending.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending. Accessed 28 December 2008.

“Grover Cleveland.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Cleveland. Accessed 28 December 2008.

Cleveland, Grover. (1887). “Veto Message.” Available at  http://governmentprinciples.wordpress.com/grover-cleveland-veto-message/. Accessed 28 December 2008.

“First Bank of the United States.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_bank_of_the_united_states. Accessed 28 December 2008.

Jefferson, Thomas. (1791). “Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank.” Available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bank-tj.asp. Accessed 28 December 2008.

Jefferson, Thomas. (1798). “Draft of the Kentucky Resolutions.” Available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffken.asp. Accessed 28 December 2008. 

Jefferson, Thomas. (1801). “First Inaugural Address.” Available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jefinau1.asp. Accessed 28 December 2008.  

“List of Recessions in the United States.” (2008). Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions. Accessed 28 December 2008.

Madison, James. (1792). Letter to Edmund Pendleton. Available at http://www.familytales.org/dbDisplay.php?id=ltr_mad1713. Accessed 28 December 2008.

Meredith, Wade.  (2008). “The 2008 Bailout vs. Other Large Government Projects.” VoltageCreative.com. Available at http://voltagecreative.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/bailout-pie.png. Accessed 28 December 2008.

Mises, Ludwig von. (1949). Human Action. Chapter XX. Available at http://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/HmA/msHmA20.html. Accessed 28 December 2008.

Murphy, Robert P. (2008). “Did the Fed Cause the Housing Bubble?” The Ludwig von Mises Institute. Available at http://mises.org/story/2936. Accessed 28 December 2008.

Petrie, John. “The Greatest Benjamin Franklin Quotes.” Available at http://jpetrie.myweb.uga.edu/poor_richard.html. Accessed 28 December 2008.

Ritholz, Barry. (2008). Cited in “Bailout costs more than Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, moonshot, S&L bailout, Korean War, New Deal, Iraq war, Vietnam war, and NASA’s lifetime budget — *combined*!” by Cory Doctorow. Available at http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/25/bailout-costs-more-t.html. Accessed 28 December 2008.

“The Shrinking Value of the Dollar.” (2008). Information Please Database. Available at http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001519.html. Accessed 28 December 2008.

[2] Cleveland 1887

[3] Ritholz 2008

[4] Petrie, John. “The Greatest Benjamin Franklin Quotes.”

[5] Jefferson 1801.

[6] “Government Spending.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

[7] Jefferson 1791.

[8] Madison 1792.

[9] “The Shrinking Value of the Dollar.” 2008. Information Please Database.

[10] “List of Recessions in the United States.” 2008. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

[11] Mises 1949, Chapter XX.

[12] Murphy 2008.

[13] Jefferson 1798.

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Darwin at 200: A Liberator

Edward Hudgins

Issue CLXXXVII - February 20, 2009

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Of the two famous men born on February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln is the one commonly known as a political liberator.

But the other man, Charles Darwin, also deserves recognition on the bicentennial of his birth for his own form of Emancipation Proclamation.

Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859 and set forth the thesis that the various kinds of living organisms were not fixed and eternal but, rather, evolved from other, often less complex organisms over millions of years. In the century and a half that followed, this discovery has had a truly liberating effect on humanity.

We Want to Know

Understanding evolution has helped us satisfy that quintessential human longing expressed by Aristotle: “All men, by nature, desire to know.” As self-conscious beings, we have a thirst to know the deepest truths about the world around us, its origin and ours, and our place in it. We are pattern-seeking animals who delight in discovery. Such understanding and, indeed, our very survival require us to exercise our rational capacity, the attribute that most distinguishes us from the lower life forms from which we evolved.

Observations, conceptual thinking, and critical analysis have, over the centuries, allowed us to replace primitive superstitions with knowledge of objective reality. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein have helped us understand the physical realm: that it operates with regularity in accordance with causal laws; that it is composed of infinitesimal atoms; that it is vast and includes planets, stars and galaxies; that it is billions of years old. And, of course, knowledge gained through this rational approach allows us to create all of the technologies needed for our survival and flourishing.

Darwin helped us understand the biological realm. He showed how small variations that naturally occur in living species plus the laws of natural selection in changing environments over long periods of time have produced the diverse plethora of living creatures on this planet. His discoveries explained the fossils of extinct life forms and of the ancestors of creatures living today, including humans, that are found in the strata of rocks dating back millions of years. Darwin’s discoveries were yet another demonstration of the power of the human mind, discoveries that were subsequently confirmed by findings in many other scientific disciplines.

The knowledge of our evolutionary origins helps us to understand how we might act better for our own survival and well-being. For example, scientists in evolutionary biology and psychology today are exploring the nature of our brains: how they came about; how our form of cognition emerged in them; how they operate; how we might better treat brain-based physical and mental impairments; and how we might better exercise the self-control needed for our flourishing.

Understanding our evolutionary origins does not diminish us. Rather, it enables us to marvel at the fact that our minds emerged from nature and then to turn our minds back on nature in order to understand just how our minds emerged.

Shunning Our Higher Nature

Sadly, in the United States the facts of evolution have been politically and culturally contentious because of the disastrous religious beliefs that today go under the names “Creationism” and “Intelligent Design.” Individuals, mostly on the conservative side of the political spectrum, often twist their own minds in tortuous ways unworthy of intelligent creatures in order to reject discoveries built up through rigorous observation and critical examination in favor of a Biblical fiction they just can’t seem to give up.

Many of these “true believers” have created a cottage industry to promote the culture of ignorance necessary to support their cult beliefs. Witness their terrible waste of time, energy and, yes, human intelligence, over the past century. In the 1925 Scopes Trial these believers sought to uphold a ban on teaching evolution in schools. Today these believers try to force schools to teach Creationism and Intelligent Design as if they were approaches to understanding human origins that are just as valid as a critical, scientific approach. Observe the pointless passions in favor of the false. And consider the corrosive effects of such campaigns against modernity in a culture in desperate need of clear thinking.

Politically conservative Creationists often denounce those on the political left who reject evidence and blind themselves to the consequences of many of their statist policies. Yet such conservatives are guilty of the same willful epistemological crime in their own corner of the culture.

Darwin and a Free Society

There’s an irony here because of a growing recognition today that Darwin’s understanding of the mechanism of evolution supports many of the views of political conservatives who often reject evolution.

Darwin and his successors showed how order and complexity in biology do not require a grand designer. Genetic changes in organisms and natural selection are all that’s necessary. Similarly, free-market economists like F.A. Hayek, building on insights of conservative political thinkers like Edmund Burke, have shown how order and complexity in the economy and society do not require a grand government designer. With minimalist laws protecting life, liberty and property, individuals pursuing their own self-interest will also produce peace and unprecedented prosperity. By contrast, government direction produces conflict and hampers the creation of wealth.

Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine and author of The Mind of the Market, rightly tells free-market conservatives that they should appreciate how understanding evolution boosts their case for liberty: Darwin is truly a liberator! And Shermer tells those on the political left who usually embrace discoveries of science such as evolution that they need to appreciate the implications of evolution for their own pet theories about government-run economies.

Morality from Human Nature

Some individuals still reject the facts about evolution out of an unanalyzed fear that, if they could articulate it, would amount to “How can humans have a morality if we evolved from lower animals? Doesn’t this fact mean that anything goes?”

A fear, of course, can’t negate facts. But in any case, the fear is unfounded. Just as an explanation of our biological origins does not need to rely on myths and alleged divine revelations, neither does morality. Indeed, the origins of morality are found in our nature as rational creatures with free choice who must understand the world around us and within us and develop principles to guide our conduct – morality – in order to survive and flourish.

Darwin was one of the most revolutionary and right thinkers in human history, up there with Newton and Einstein in terms of the implications of his discoveries. When we say that he has liberated us from the slavery of ignorance and freed us to see the truth, we speak by analogy but no less truthfully. So let us celebrate the birth two hundred years ago of a liberator who did so much for humanity.

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Hudgins is director of advocacy and a senior scholar at The Atlas Society.

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Abraham Lincoln’s America

Chuck Baldwin

Issue CLXXXVI - February 19, 2009

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America just celebrated Presidents Day this past Monday. What first began as an observance for President George Washington has (since the 1980s) morphed into the generic “Presidents Day,” which is a politically correct celebration of mediocrity that forces our nation’s greatest President to be lumped together with incompetents such as Ulysses S. Grant, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter.

On the occasion of Presidents Day, a USA Today/Gallup poll asked the American people to select the greatest President. The top five Presidents, according to the Gallup poll, are (in order): Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and George Washington.

Can you believe it? George Washington was rated fifth. Fifth. With a vote total of only 9 percent, no less.

George Washington is positively the greatest American to ever live–bar none! It is no hyperbole to say that without Washington, there would be no United States of America. George Washington almost single-handedly kept a struggling colonial army (along with a fledgling nation, for that matter) together. Take away George Washington and there are no stories of Valley Forge, the crossing of the Delaware River, or Yorktown. Take away George Washington and there is no office of President of the United States. A lesser man (which would include almost everyone else in his generation) would doubtless have succumbed to the call of the multitude to institute a monarchy in America. A lesser man could not have delivered the greatest-of-all-Presidential-addresses that we find in his “Farewell Address.”

Washington’s Farewell Address became the guiding light and compass for American policy and philosophy for many generations. In fact, it is the abandonment of the principles of that address that is systematically destroying this country. Therefore, a return to the wisdom of that address would doubtless return our country to its former greatness.

There is only one “Father of His Country,” and it is George Washington. Yet, in the minds of today’s Americans, Washington is inferior to the likes of F.D.R. and Abraham Lincoln. Furthermore, the Gallup survey concludes that both Democrats and Republicans (and conservatives and liberals) share special infatuation with Lincoln.

I have witnessed the veracity of Gallup’s findings. Go to just about any private Christian school and one will find Abraham Lincoln idolized almost to the point of deification. The same is also true in state schools, of course.

Now, virtually everyone is saying that the election of Barack Obama is the fulfillment of Lincoln’s vision. They might be right. But just exactly what does that mean?

According to the current edition of Newsweek magazine, “We are all socialists now.” The article states, “The U.S. government has already–under a conservative Republican administration–effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries.” It continued, “Whether we want to admit it or not . . . the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.”

Again quoting Newsweek, “The architect of this new era of big government? History has a sense of humor, for the man who laid the foundations for the world Obama now rules is George W. Bush, who moved to bail out the financial sector last autumn with $700 billion.

“Bush brought the Age of Reagan to a close; now Obama has gone further, reversing Bill Clinton’s end of big government.”

Unfortunately, Newsweek is dead right.

By the end of two G.W. Bush terms and one Obama term, the United States will resemble socialist France far more than the independent nation envisioned–and created–by George Washington. Yes, in a very real and practical sense, this really is Abraham Lincoln’s America.

More than any other single person, Abraham Lincoln shaped and formed modern America. It was Abraham Lincoln who was the first President to flagrantly and deliberately violate his oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. His disregard and contempt for the Constitution cannot be overstated.

In order to “preserve the Union,” Lincoln destroyed the very principles upon which the Union was created. His audacity is without equal. For example, to prevent a possible vote of secession by the Maryland legislature, Lincoln ordered federal troops to seize and arrest the Maryland congressional delegation. And of course, he was more than willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of America’s finest and best to destroy Jefferson’s declaration that the states of our Union are “Free and Independent States.”

I invite all those pro-Lincoln apologists out there to seriously answer this question: Does an abusive husband who beats and batters his wife have the right to force her (at the point of gun) to remain married to him? (Even the God of the Bible, Who cast marriage in the most sacred terms, recognizes the right of lawful separation.) If you answer no, how can you continue to justify Abraham Lincoln’s actions? In a political and governmental sense, that is exactly what Lincoln did. Forced union, of any kind, is slavery. In the name of emancipating slaves, Lincoln enslaved an entire nation.

It was Abraham Lincoln who, for all intents and purposes, destroyed federalism and limited government in America. In fact, on December 15, 1866, renowned British historian, Lord Acton, wrote a letter to General Robert E. Lee. In the letter, Acton said, “I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.”

It was Abraham Lincoln who first established the Nanny State, Big Government, Big Brother, etc. Everything that Big-Government Presidents such as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama learned, they learned from Abraham Lincoln. That is why these men love to quote Lincoln so much.

What is appalling is the manner in which the American people (including professed conservatives and Christians) have allowed the politically correct propaganda machine to brainwash their reasoning. Conservatives and liberals, and Democrats and Republicans, now embrace Abraham Lincoln’s America. As Newsweek said, “We are all socialists now.”

On what could prove to be a very interesting and even promising note, however, is the fact that more than twenty states have recently proposed (or are in the process of drafting) resolutions advancing their individual state sovereignty. What do these states see coming? Do they see Socialism’s twin sister, Oppression, lurking around the corner? Are these states looking into the future and preparing to take a stand for freedom and independence? What an exciting prospect! Perhaps the great country that George Washington birthed is not dead after all.

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Dr. Chuck Baldwin’s radio talk show, “Chuck Baldwin Live,” is heard 36 times a week on 5 different radio stations in the Pensacola, Florida area.

Dr. Baldwin was also the Constitution Party’s 2008 Presidential candidate.

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Somalia Under Statelessness – Video

Stefan Molyneux

Issue CLXXXVI - February 12, 2009

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In this video, philosopher Stefan Molyneux discusses how the stateless situation in Somalia from 1991 to 2006 compared to the preceding oppressive, murderous dictatorship of Barre. Both compared to its days with a government and compared with many of its neighbors, Somalia has been doing better without a state – despite the fact that Somalia is far from an enlightened, anarcho-capitalist society. This video provides serious evidence for the case against the structure of governments as they currently exist and have historically existed. If the complete absence of government based on the contemporary model can result in improvements in human well-being, then this calls into question the view that governments are essential to progress, peace, and prosperity.

Please help promote this video by going to this page and giving it a rating of five stars, as well as embedding it on your websites and sharing it with others.

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Stefan Molyneux is a former software entrepreneur and holds a Master’s Degree from the University of Toronto, where he studied philosophy, economics, history, and other subjects. He also studied at the National Theatre School of Canada, as well as at York and McGill universities. Mr. Molyneux has lived in Ireland, England, Africa and Canada and is now a full-time Internet philosopher. His program, Freedomain Radio is the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web, and was a Top 10 Finalist in the 2007 & 2008 Podcast Awards.

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What do you do if you are a thirteenth-century monk who needs paper to write a prayer book? Why, you take the writings of one of the greatest mathematical thinkers who ever lived, try to erase them, and write your petty incantations in their stead! This is what a French monk some 800 years ago did to a book by the ancient Greek genius Archimedes. An article by Julie Rehmeyer in Science News discusses this travesty, which led some of Archimedes’ greatest insights to be lost to humanity for seven centuries, until x-ray fluorescence imaging techniques could reveal the text underneath.

The fascinating part of this discovery is that Archimedes was beginning to arrive at the principles of calculus – two millennia before Newton or Leibniz.

The tremendously saddening part of it all is that Newton and Leibniz might have had a much easier time discovering the calculus – or it might already have been discovered before them – were it not for a backward monk who would use anything and everything for his prayer book. In this case, religious zealotry possibly set back the progress of human civilization by centuries. This is, of course, not to mention all those great mathematical works of antiquity that have been irretrievably lost because the monks who erased them were not so sloppy.

When will superstition and fanaticism cease setting back the progress of mankind? When will the savage disrespect for knowledge of some cease robbing the rest of us of opportunities?

Sincerely,

Gennady Stolyarov II

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Rethinking the Middle East

Alan Caruba

Issue CLXXX - December 16, 2008

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After 9/11 much of my thinking reflected the general view that Al Qaeda had to be found and destroyed. I thought, too, that Saddam Hussein had to be removed as an obstacle to stability in the Middle East given his invasion of Kuwait and general belligerence.

Since those days I have had plenty of time to reassess my views of U.S. policies and to educate myself regarding the Middle East. A lot of my thinking had been based on the inescapable fact that the U.S. and the West needs access to Middle Eastern oil.

U.S. policy since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been support for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, providing protection of the sea lanes that transport oil and, in the case of Iraq, protecting the Saudi kingdom against attack. This was the reason for the original U.S. effort to remove Saddam’s Iraq from Kuwait and the subsequent invasion that was based on less than accurate intelligence reports of an Iraqi buildup of weapons of mass destruction.

For a long time, there has been a general consensus that a “clash of civilizations” between the West and Islam was inevitable, but it is more of a clash between civilization and nihilism. The global war on terror influenced U.S. actions as the rationale for the second invasion of Iraq was, in part, to introduce democracy to the Middle East.

There have been two factors that have complicated U.S. policy toward the Middle East. One was the establishment in 1948 of the state of Israel, a response to the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust that combined with the Zionist movement that began in the late 1800s as a response to the anti-Semitism of Europe and Russia. It received support from the newly-established United Nations, but nations in the Middle East reacted unanimously against the return of Jews to their former, ancient homeland. No surprise here; the Koran demonizes both Jews and Christians.

The other factor was the Islamic Revolution that erupted in Iran in 1979, a defeat of the American influence in that nation’s affairs linked in no small measure to its oil. The later defeat of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led many in the Middle East to believe that Islam could defeat Western efforts to control the region. Western hegemony in the region had begun in earnest following World War I and the end of the Ottoman Empire.

The weapon of choice of the new Islamic Revolution was terror and, if invaded, a slow, grinding insurgency. This is why Iraq and future theatres of war will take a long time to play out.

What most policy makers in the U.S. and the West tend to ignore is the fact that the nations of the Middle East differ considerably in they way they are governed and, most importantly, in the near total lack of cohesion or cooperation among them.

In a recent commentary from the Middle East Forum, Michael Rubin noted that, “For more than a millennium, Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo have competed for leadership of the Arab world.” The establishment of Israel “became a useful template around which they could posture and against whom they could act as each sought to outdo its rivals in a claim to Arab leadership.”

Following World War II, a number of Middle East nations adopted the worst of Western concepts of governance, namely fascism and socialism. Baathism rose in Syria and Iraq, but only served to increase their rivalry. As Rubin points out, “Unity is not an Arab virtue,” adding that Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus “will never coexist as partners.”

This is not unique to the region because anyone paying any attention knows that all nations act in what they perceive as their own best interests. Some that share common historical and cultural views are more prone toward cooperation while others such as Russia measure their success against U.S. and European strength or weakness. In the Middle East, however, its culture prevents any useful, long term cooperation.

In an excellent analysis published in the November edition of Energy Tribune, Leon Hadar, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, demolishes many of the “intellectual constructs that reflect the imaginations of their promoters, not necessarily reality,” adding that “reality tends to bite.” The neocons of the outgoing Bush administration and the Republican Party learned this to their regret.

“The time has come,” wrote Hadar, “to challenge the grand idea that the Muslim world (or the Middle East, or the Arab world—terms that seem interchangeable in the American media) has a unique and monolithic political and economic culture that makes it resistant to the West’s modernizing effects.”  The analysis can be read in full at http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=1009

If Middle Eastern Arabs decide to become “more like us”, it will be at a time of their own choosing. Iranians, being Persian, share Islam, but have their own agenda in the region, giving rise to Arab fears concerning their apparent intent to achieve hegemony there. If and when Iran gets nuclear weapons and starts throwing its weight around, a lot of Arabs are going to begin to think of America as their best friend in the whole world.

It should be obvious, too, that the deep schisms within Islam, Shiite and Sunni, will continue to divide the region between the majority Sunnis and what is widely perceived within Islam as a breakaway sect of Shiites who are a majority only in Iraq and Iran. Hadar correctly points out that the Middle East “is a mosaic of nation-states, ethnic groups, religious sects, and tribal groups, and a mishmash of political ideologies, economic systems, and cultural orientations.”

All of which suggests to me that the same policy of “containment” that worked for nearly forty-five years regarding the former Soviet communist regime would be a wiser approach to the Middle East than an endless number of military engagements that even our European allies are reluctant to pursue.

After World War II, the U.S. occupied the defeated nations of Germany and Japan for about seven years to ensure they would create their own democratic governments and economic systems. After that, the U.S. extended its military protection to them and everywhere else Soviet ambitions threatened.

The result was a stalemate in Korea that yielded a successful South Korean state, and a defeat in Vietnam that continues to influence American policy. We still do not recognize communist Cuba, but we have entered into an economic co-dependence with Red China. Go figure?

Just as the declining price of oil and gas brought down a Soviet government dependent on these exports, the Russian Federation will face the same contingency. Meanwhile, a decline in the price of a barrel of oil and the price of natural gas may, if long term, require Middle Eastern nations to review their policies as well.

The best thing America can do right now is to open up its own vast reserves of oil and natural gas that remain unexplored and untapped off of 85% of our continental shelf and to do the same in ANWR. We need to stop demonizing coal, and we need to build more nuclear plants.

These actions would put the U.S. back in a position to improve our economy and protect us against pressures from the Middle East, Russia, and elsewhere. I have serious doubts the Obama administration will do this.

Things change. U.S. policies will change. Not every policy, but gradually events, some of which we have set in motion in Iraq as part of the global war on terror, will bring about change if we are smart enough, strong enough, and patient enough to watch and wait.

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Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. Every week, he posts a column on the website of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.

© Alan Caruba, December 2008

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