Tag Archives: liberty

The “Great Reset” is about Expanding Government Power

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World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab has proposed using the overreaction to coronavirus to launch a worldwide “Great Reset.” This Great Reset is about expanding government power and suppressing liberty worldwide.

Schwab envisions an authoritarian system where big business acts as a partner with government. Big business would exercise its government-granted monopoly powers to maximize value for “stakeholders,” instead of shareholders. Stakeholders include the government, international organizations, the business itself, and “civil society.”

Of course, government bureaucrats and politicians, together with powerful special interests, will decide who are, and are not, stakeholders, what is in stakeholders’ interest, and what steps corporations must take to maximize stakeholder value. People’s own wishes are not the priority.

The Great Reset will dramatically expand the surveillance state via real-time tracking. It will also mandate that people receive digital certificates in order to travel and even technology implanted in their bodies to monitor them.

Included in Schwab’s proposal for surveillance is his idea to use brain scans and nanotechnology to predict, and if necessary, prevent, individuals’ future behavior. This means that anyone whose brain is “scanned” could have his Second Amendment and other rights violated because a government bureaucrat determines the individual is going to commit a crime. The system of tracking and monitoring could be used to silence those expressing “dangerous” political views, such as that the Great Reset violates our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Great Reset involves a huge expansion of the welfare state via a universal basic income program. This can help ensure compliance with the Great Reset’s authoritarian measures. It will also be very expensive. The resulting increase in government debt will not be seen as a problem by people who believe in modern monetary theory. This is the latest version of the fairy tale that deficits don’t matter as long as the Federal Reserve monetizes the debt.

The Great Reset ultimately will fail for the same reason all other attempts by government to control the market fail. As Ludwig von Mises showed, government interference in the marketplace distorts the price system. Prices are how information about the value of goods and services related to other goods and services is conveyed to market actors. Government interference in the marketplace disturbs the signals sent by prices, leading to an oversupply of certain goods and services and an undersupply of others.

The lockdowns show the dangers of government control over the economy and our personal lives. Lockdowns have increased unemployment, caused many small businesses to close, and led to more substance abuse, domestic violence, and suicide. We are told the lockdowns are ordered because of a virus that poses no great danger to a very large percentage of the American public. Yet, instead of adopting a different approach, politicians are doubling down on the failed policies of masks and lockdowns. Meanwhile, big tech companies, which are already often acting as partners of government, silence anyone who questions the official line regarding the threat of coronavirus or the effectiveness of lockdowns, masks, and vaccines.

The disastrous response to Covid is just the latest example of how those who give up liberty for safety or health will end up unfree, unsafe, and unhealthy. Instead of a Great Reset of authoritarianism, we need a great rebirth of liberty!

Ron Paul

RINOs & Leftists All Want to Be President. President of WHAT?

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All these Democrats and RINOs want to be President. It’s all they care about. But President of WHAT? The only reason the presidency holds any honor: It was once an office that presided over protection of the rights of man. This fraudulent election, along with so much else before it, gravely reduced the value of the office. And now, on the verge of permanent one-party rule, these anti-freedom statists are licking their chops.

But liberty, individual rights and FREEDOM are what made the office of the President as meaningful and powerful as it was. Once we have lived a few years under one-party rule, under socialism; under fascist lockdowns; forced vaccinations; tiny stipends to replace the hollowed-out middle class and the decimated small businesses; the erosion and eventual elimination of our currency’s value due to hyperinflationary spending; all the Green New Deal horrors and giveaways to Iran and China they have in store for us; and God-knows-what-else…Once we are JUST ANOTHER DICTATORSHIP, the office that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Truman, Reagan and, yes ,Trump, breathed life into–all that will be gone, and meaningless.

Put simply: If Joe Biden can become the President, even in a stolen election, then literally ANYONE can claim the office. And at that point, the office will be forever meaningless. So take note, Kamala and you other freaks: Your power game will mean nothing in a country with no value–and with only its shining past, its lost prosperity and lost liberty, to dignify it.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

What is the Meaning of New Year’s ?

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The meaning of most holidays is clear: Valentine’s Day celebrates romance; July Fourth, independence; Thanksgiving, productivity; Christmas, good will toward men. The meaning of New Year’s Day–the world’s most celebrated holiday–is not so clear. On this day, many people remember last year’s achievements and failures and look forward to the promise of a new year, of a new beginning. But this celebration and reflection is the result of more than an accident of the calendar. New Year’s has a deeper significance. What is it?

On New Year’s Day, when the singing, fireworks and champagne toasts are over, many of us become more serious about life. We take stock and plan new courses of action to better our lives. This is best seen in one of the most popular customs and the key to the meaning of New Year’s: making resolutions.

On average each American makes 1.8 New Year’s resolutions. When the rest of the world is taken into account, the number of people making resolutions skyrockets to hundreds of millions. From New York to Paris to Sydney, interesting similarities arise as shown in two very common resolutions: people wanting to be more attractive by losing weight, and to be healthier by exercising more and smoking less. They want to do things better, become better people.

New Year’s Day is the most active-minded holiday, because it is the one where people evaluate their lives and plan and resolve to take action. One dramatic example of taking resolutions seriously is the old European custom of: “What one does on this day one will do for the rest of the year.” What unites this custom and the more common type of resolutions is that on the first day of the year people take their values more seriously.

Values are not only physical and external. They also can be psychological. Many New Year’s resolutions reveal that people want to better themselves by improving psychologically. For example, look at your own resolutions over the years. Haven’t they included such vows as: be more patient with your children, improve your self-esteem, be more emotionally open with your wife? Such resolutions express the moral ambitiousness of a person wanting to improve his self and life.

What then is the philosophic meaning of New Year’s resolutions? Every resolution you make on this day implies that you are in control of your self, that you are not a victim fated by circumstance, controlled by stars, owned by luck, but that you are an individual who can make choices to change your life. You can learn statistics, ask for that promotion, fight your shyness, search for that marriage partner. Your life is in your own hands.

But what is the purpose of making such goals and resolutions? Why bother? Making New Year’s resolutions (and doing so even after failing last year’s) stresses that people want to be happy. On New Year’s Day many people accept, often more implicitly than explicitly, that happiness comes from the achievement of values. That is why you resolve to be healthier, more ambitious, more confident. You want to enjoy that sense of purpose, accomplishment and pleasure that one feels when achieving values. It is happiness that is the motor and purpose of one’s life. It is New Year’s, more than any other day, that makes the attainment of happiness more real and possible. This is the meaning of New Year’s Day and why it is so psychologically important and significant to people throughout the world.

If people were to apply the value-achievement meaning of New Year’s Day explicitly and consistently 365 days each year, they would be happier.

So every day, fill your champagne glass of life to the brim with values–and drink deep to your life and the joy that it can and should be.

Happy New Year. Happy life.

Scott McConnell, Capitalism Magazine

The Freedom to Pursue Happiness

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The governors of all 50 states, and the mayors of many large cities, have assumed unto themselves the powers to restrict private personal choices and lawful public behavior in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.

They have done so not by enforcing previously existing legislation but by crafting their own executive orders, styling those orders as if they were laws, using state and local police to enforce those so-called laws and — presumably when life returns to normal and the courts reopen — prosecuting the alleged offenders in court.

It is hard to believe that any judge in America would permit a criminal trial of any person for violating a standard of behavior that has not been enacted into law by a legislature. We know this because under our system of representative government, separated powers and guaranteed liberties, only the legislative branch can craft laws and assign punishments for noncompliance. This is Constitutional Law 101. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has written that the executive branch cannot enforce a law that it has written. If it does, we will have approached tyranny.

Have we approached tyranny already?

During the past eight weeks, governors and mayors have closed most businesses, public venues and houses of worship, prohibited public assembly and restricted travel — all of which they have unilaterally decreed to be nonessential.

In his terrifying novel “1984” — which posits a future of total control of all persons by the government and total control of the government by one political party — George Orwell argued that he who controls the meaning of words controls the laws as well.

That Orwellian truism has been manifested like never before here in America, where executive branch officeholders have used state and local police to restrain people from engaging in private and public behavior which they concede was lawful two months ago because today it is not deemed “essential.”

Frankly, I am surprised at the ferocity of police enforcement and the lameness of police compliance. The police have taken the same oaths to uphold the same Bill of Rights — it’s not the Bill of Safety; it’s the Bill of Rights — as have all other officeholders. The police also know that it is unlawful for them to obey an unlawful order, particularly when they use force.

The lockdown orders are all unlawful because none of them — none — has been enacted by a legislature, and all of them — all — interfere with fundamental liberties, each of which is guaranteed — guaranteed — by the Constitution.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I recognize the scientific value of personal efforts to control contagion. But under the Constitution, these social-distancing, wear-your-mask, shut-your-business, stay-at-home edicts constitute mere recommendations that should induce rational voluntary compliance, because the government in America is without lawful power to compel compliance.

The governors complain about resistance. They need to know that Americans will resist efforts to interfere in behavior that remains as moral, natural, lawful and constitutional as it was 60 days ago.

Last week, President Donald Trump, sounding fed up with gubernatorial lockdown orders, declared that religious worship is essential — meaning, in his opinion, all houses of worship should be opened — and he offered that he was prepared to “override” any governors who disagreed with him.

When he realized that he lacked any authority to override even unlawful gubernatorial decrees, he dispatched the Department of Justice to begin filing challenges to governors in federal courts and to argue that constitutional freedoms are being impaired by the states.

I applaud this, but it is too little, too late. Where was the DOJ when Catholic priests were threatened with arrest for saying Mass or distributing palms and when Jewish rabbis were put in COVID-19-infested jails for holding funerals? At all these religious events, folks freely chose to exercise their freedom to worship; and to take their chances.

These DOJ interventions provoked the question: Who should decide what goods, services or venues are essential — the states or the federal government? The question is Orwellian, as the answer is: neither of them. The government in America — state or federal — has no power and no right to determine what goods, services and venues are essential.

Those determinations have been for individuals to make since 1776, and those individual choices have been constitutionally protected from the feds since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791 and from the states since the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868.

What is essential to the laborer or student or housewife may not be essential to the former Goldman Sachs partner who was elected governor of New Jersey, and who decreed last week, “It shall be the duty of every person or entity in this State… to cooperate fully” with his orders, or essential to the ideologue who is mayor of the Big Apple and who, for all his professed liberality, threatened to close permanently — permanently — businesses and houses of worship that flaunt his guidelines

A duty is undertaken voluntarily or by nature, not by executive command, Governor Murphy. And the government cannot take property away from its owners except for a legitimate public use and only for just compensation, Mayor de Blasio.

Governors and mayors can make all the dictatorial pronouncements and threats that they wish. But they cannot use public assets to enforce them. And when they seek to use force, those from whom they seek it should decline the offer.

In America, we decide for ourselves what produces happiness. We have never delegated to the government — ever — the power to make personal choices for us.

And some of us are willing to take chances and even do “nonessential” things. The essence of the freedoms for which we have fought since 1776 is the liberty to be ourselves.

Andrew Napolitano

“The Land of the Free” No More

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America is the “land of the free”? What a sick joke. Most of us are living under “emergency orders”. What is an “emergency”? An emergency refers to a TEMPORARY, brief state. An emergency is outside of the norm, i.e., the rarity, the unfortunate, the painful but brief. We have been living under “emergency” orders for going on a year now. And they’re even telling us the worst is yet to come, and we can expect at least many more months of even worse restrictions to come. For details, look at Britain, our Mother Country where it’s now proposed to restrict the contact among family members WITHIN A HOUSEHOLD. Neither the Nazis nor Orwell ever dreamed of totalitarianism on this scale.

The tyrants don’t believe in their own vaccine, something they WILL impose on us without any liability whatsoever for the vaccine-makers; yet they will also continue to impose controls as if the vaccine doesn’t even exist. The “stimulus” debate over whether we get $600 or $2000 is a metaphor for how it will be once nobody has any income or money, except for the elite. For details, check out Venezuela or North Korea.

Anyone who actually believes these “emergency” orders won’t continue indefinitely if not permanently into the future, under some other rationalization when the media tires of the COVID hysteria — well, anyone who actually believes that will gladly do the 21st century equivalent of hopping on the cattle cars and going to the concentration camps, once the Governor’s directives arrive. You think I’m exaggerating. Have you learned nothing from 2020? And under a one-party (Communist Socialist Democratic) rule with no possibility of losing power in any future sham elections, you can be sure something along those lines will be coming. Going forward, it will either be fight, or die.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The Optimism Americans Forgot (Rush Limbaugh)

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“[I]f I were president-elect of the country, it’s the last thing I would say. Even if I believed it, I doubt that I would put it this way. But I don’t believe this anyway. Our darkest days are ahead of us? What a bleak way of looking at things. … We Americans have adapted to our problems. … Our freedom has allowed our adaptability. If disaster is coming our way, we don’t just sit there and endure it. We come up with ways to avoid it, to beat it back, to overcome it, but we don’t just sit there and accept it. And, as such, we don’t just resign ourselves to the fact that they’re living in the darkest days because we, at least to this point, still have the greatest degree of freedom of any people on earth. Now, it’s under assault and under attack and we all know this. But I don’t believe our darkest days are ahead of us. I never have. People have been asking, “You’ve always told us you’d tell us when it’s time to panic. Is it time?” It’s never time to panic, folks. It’s never, ever gonna be time to give up on our country. It will never be time to give up on the United States. It will never be time to give up on yourself. Trust me.”
–Rush Limbaugh, 12/23/20

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Walter Williams: Suffer No Fools – Full Video

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Professor Walter E. Williams passed away some two weeks ago. Among other things, he was called “The People’s Economist.” He spent his life trying to enlighten us on our Founding principles, individualism, and the morality of free-market capitalism. One of his last contributions to liberty is the attached YouTube video “Suffer No Fools.”

Its message is universal and transcendent.

The Artful Dilettante

America: An Appreciation

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America, know there are countless people in the world who would gladly trade places with you.”

“I chose to be an American. What did you ever do, except for having been born?” —Ayn Rand

I was born under the flag of the People’s Republic of China, a country that remains under the absolute rule of the Chinese Communist Party to this day. I have very few memories of my early childhood in mainland China, save for a visit to the Forbidden City—a brief tourist stop when my family traveled to the American consulate in Beijing to apply for a visa.

While Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms eliminated the worst economic collectivization from the Mao era and gradually opened China to the outside world, political and social freedom were never fully embraced. Nevertheless, the limited opening allowed my family the opportunity to explore options for a better life. In 1993, under the kind sponsorship of an American physician, my mother left for a research position in the United States with less than $200 in her pockets. My father and I followed her a few months later, and, from the moment we landed on American soil, we put down our roots in our new adopted country.

Like the countless waves of other immigrants who came before us, my family and I arrived as strangers in a new land, found freedom and opportunity, gradually assimilated into our adopted country, and eventually worked ourselves into the upper middle class. In a time when vast swaths of the population are losing faith if not outright rejecting American founding principles, history, and institutions, I wish to provide a counternarrative for my fellow citizens and international allies who still believe in the fundamental goodness of this country and its people. Let my family history and personal experiences living in America be that story.

As long as I can remember, I despised those who sought to dominate and coerce others, whether they be the playground bully, a frenzied mob, or a tyrannical government.

My childhood growing up in Ohio was relatively carefree (as long as I met the demanding academic standards set by my parents), and I learned as much as I could about American life. Star Wars: A New Hope was the first movie I can remember watching in English. It left me completely mesmerized with ideals of heroism, adventure, and epic battles between good and evil. As a total bookworm, I made the local library my second home and frequently maxed out the limit of books a kid’s library card could check out. Although I read widely across genres, I especially enjoyed reading about the accomplishments of great individuals. Whether they were mythical heroes of ancient Greece and Rome, the American Founding Fathers, brilliant scientists, trailblazing entrepreneurs, intrepid explorers, or our modern astronauts, I was awestruck by those who left their mark in history. If there was one common theme I learned from my reading, it is that anything is possible for free peoples with free minds and the courage to use their freedom.

There was never a single political awakening moment for me. A nerd at heart, I saw myself in the spirit of freethinking scientists like Richard Feynman, Charles Darwin, and Carl Sagan, all of whom pushed the boundaries of human knowledge, refuted superstition, displaced ignorance, and carried the beacon of the Enlightenment. Long before I ever learned the intricacies of the First Amendment, I treasured the values of free speech, open debate, and unfettered inquiry. (Becoming exposed to South Park in elementary school probably helped. My culturally-ignorant immigrant parents remained blissfully unaware.) I grew up in a world where all ideas—good, bad, and ugly—were freely available (my friends quickly introduced me to those ideas the adults wanted to censor or hide) and where everything was shared nonstop. It was an eye-opening experience for this young Chinese-American boy.

As long as I can remember, I despised those who sought to dominate and coerce others, whether they be the playground bully, a frenzied mob, or a tyrannical government. I knew from the examples of my early heroes that these were the enemies they fought. Even if I had never read a single page of F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, and gained a deeper understanding and appreciation for free market economics and conservative–libertarian philosophy, as I did later in life, nothing could have stopped me from becoming a civil libertarian in the mold of Christopher Hitchens, Ira Glasser, and the old-guard ACLU.

As I grew up, my parents gradually revealed more details of their former destitute life in Maoist China, which made me grateful that I never had any experience remotely comparable here in the United States. For my parents—after starting life anew in a foreign country, establishing themselves as respected medical professionals, working their way into the upper middle-class, becoming naturalized citizens, and raising two healthy, successful children (my sister and me)—the American Dream was real as it can be.

My story is an extension of theirs. Many children of first-generation immigrants struggle with reconciling parallel lives in two worlds: the traditions and values from their ancestral homelands versus the liberal culture of America. It was not always easy, but I would like to think I have found the balance over the years. I accepted that my Chinese heritage and upbringing is a fundamental part of who I am, but I also fully embraced my identity as a full-blooded American and the limitless opportunities of this country.

This background, I believe, has provided me a unique perspective on the American political scene.

Although I hesitate to embrace political labels, I consider myself a classical liberal or libertarian and, above all, an individualist. Throughout my life, I never felt that I truly belonged to a single social clique, tribe, or political party. In the words of Rudyard Kipling, “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you’ll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

Kipling was right. Being one’s own man is a very difficult path to walk, but I am proud to say that I have kept my intellectual independence and integrity and still found acceptance and success in my professional and personal life. And this was only possible in the United States of America.

But this kind of freethinking and independence is being threatened by a new form of collectivism represented by social justice ideology, intersectionality, identity politics, critical theory, and postmodernism. Many excellent commentaries have already identified the roots and core beliefs of these ideologies and movements. Their central tenets can be summarized as follows:

  • There is no “you” as an individual. Your identity is constructed by race, gender, and class.
  • You exist only as part of a collective group. These groups are in zero-sum conflict with each other.
  • There is no objective truth, only subjective interpretations and narratives. “Truth” is only a cover that allows dominant groups to exercise power over others.
  • Scientific knowledge and even science itself is a social construct.

In sum, this new collectivism rejects the foundational principles of the Enlightenment. It is not surprising, then, that most social justice activists are hostile towards free speech, due process, and the very concept of individual rights—exemplified in our current “cancel culture.”

There is a difference between “cancel culture” and honest criticism. Jonathan Rauch prepared a thoughtful guide distinguishing the two. The latter is about finding truth, moral persuasion, and, most importantly, an attitude of good faith. The former is distinguished by punitiveness and the goal to “make the errant suffer”:

“Canceling…seeks to organize and manipulate the social or media environment in order to isolate, deplatform or intimidate ideological opponents. It is about shaping the information battlefield, not seeking truth; and its intent—or at least its predictable outcome—is to coerce conformity and reduce the scope for forms of criticism that are not sanctioned by the prevailing consensus of some local majority.”

As early as 2015, when I first encountered social justice ideology for the first time, I was unnerved by its authoritarian undertones. Knowing the history of modern China and my family’s experiences, it was not the first time I saw the dangers and potential for tyranny when self-righteous egalitarian activists tear down institutions and run roughshod over individuals in the name of the greater good. More often than not, they proved themselves to be nothing more than humanitarians with guillotines. I cannot help but suspect people who cloak their lust for power and domination using the same rhetoric and rationales.

And I am not alone in this. As social justice ideology and its offshoots continue their long march into schools, universities (even STEM fields), corporations, professional societies, and now mainstream American life, I cannot help but notice that people who push back against groupthink and mob rule tend to be first-generation immigrants from former or current communist countries who are familiar with the collectivist tactics and propaganda from their native homelands.

Mobs invaded private neighborhoods and demanded home owners take down their American flags.

While most of this summer’s racial justice protests were peaceful, there were notable cases where activists went too far. Mobs invaded private neighborhoods and demanded home owners take down their American flags. In another high-profile incident, mobs surrounded innocent restaurant patrons and tried to force them to raise their hands in solidarity. However, what disturbed me the most were the ritual self-flagellations. Appalling videos showed white people kneeling to black organizers, confessing to racism, begging for forgiveness, and, in some cases, even washing  their feet. Similar behavior was observed in Democratic politicians—despite their actual records—who profess to be sympathetic to racial justice.

Knowing the sorry tales from my own family history, these degrading acts were eerily reminiscent of the struggle sessions from China’s Cultural Revolution. During that decade of nonstop chaos, ideologically-possessed mobs would surround victims and then verbally and physically abuse them (if not killing them outright) until they completely broke down and confessed to imaginary crimes.

These acts to coerce free human beings—to make them believe, say, and do things against their sincere conscience—crossed the line for me. Whether they take place in the United States, China, or any other country, these exercises of raw political power on the unwilling are flat-out wrong, no matter the cause or pretext.

Take it from a first-generation immigrant from a current communist regime: Forcing people to live a lie is a hallmark of tyranny. As a public service to our fellow citizens, immigrants like me have no choice but to speak out when we see the parallels. Free Americans and any self-respecting human being should resist participating in the Great Lie.  

Let me be clear: I am not blind or deaf to injustice, which existed historically and continues to exist in this country. There are deep, serious flaws with the American criminal justice system. For far too long, African Americans and other minorities have been denied the full freedoms and privileges that most white Americans enjoy and take for granted. Clark Neily at the Cato Institute had nothing but the harshest words for our present reality:

The United States’ criminal justice system is fundamentally rotten, but the effects of its dysfunction are not felt equally by all Americans. Instead, it is the marginalized and politically disenfranchised who bear the brunt of that injustice, including particularly communities of color. Although both the root causes and the significance of racial disparities in our criminal justice system are debatable, the existence of those disparities is not. And when people perceive—correctly in my judgment—that some lives are counted by the system as less sacred than others, they are going to be angry about it. And they damn well should be.

The killings of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, and too many other black Americans were heinous crimes. I supported (as did the vast majority of Americans across ethnic groups and the political spectrum) the initial protests for accountability and justice.

In the case of George Floyd’s killing, all four officers responsible were quickly fired and charged. Public outcry made an impact and the world witnessed in America that no one was above the law. Under the American political system, We the People are the true sovereigns and can ultimately force the government to deliver accountability and respect and to expand our rights, or dissolve outright. Our track record of success is undeniable.

In a real authoritarian country, none of that would have happened. In China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Cuba, and other tyrannical regimes, agents of the state routinely murder, torture, rape, imprison, and violate human rights with impunity on a mass scale, and there is absolutely no recourse.

That is why comparing America’s ills to any of these is grotesque and factually wrong. For all its flaws, the United States remains a beacon of freedom and hope to the world’s oppressed peoples.

It does not stand for racism and bigotry. And this adopted son of liberty will not give it up to those who do.

We can empathize with those who suffer without being bullied into accepting the sins of others. We can stand against injustice without forsaking independent thinking and personal dignity. We can include historically-marginalized perspectives into curriculums without throwing out the best of Western canon. We can have a nuanced look into our past without being ashamed of our history.

Contrary to the claims of the 1619 Project and other revisionists, the United States was founded in 1776 on individual liberty and unalienable rights, not slavery. The American flag stands for the proposition “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It does not stand for racism and bigotry. And this adopted son of liberty will not give it up to those who do.

The fundamental principles of America—embodied in the Declaration of Independence and secured in the Constitution—belong to everyone. The promise and limitless potential of this country also belong to everyone. We will always struggle to live up to our highest ideals as long as flawed human beings continue to exist.

Americans will continue to have heated debates on the continued relevance of those principles, where we fall short, and just about every other issue one can imagine.

But to me, actions speak louder than words. When immigrants risk everything to come to the United States, they do so under the sincere belief that its ideals and promises are real. For my family and me, the American Dream is real. And I know many others share (and will share) this sentiment.

The American Dream will endure as long as we keep alive its fundamental principles and resist the current climate of entitlement, victimhood, and collectivism.

If I could offer some advice to future immigrants and to my fellow American citizens: Remember the country owes you nothing but a chance to be free. Use that freedom wisely.

No matter how frustrated or aggrieved you may be with your current life in America, know there are countless people in the world who would gladly trade places with you.

Take advantage of the myriad opportunities that are part of America’s core social fabric and run with them. Do not capitulate to bitterness and pessimism when you encounter setbacks and failure. This country offers unlimited chances to reinvent yourself.

Speak out against injustice. But do not succumb to hate and envy. Regardless of their intentions, do not let anyone exercise arbitrary power. And remember: Despite all the attempts to pigeonhole people into identity groups, in the end, there are only individual human beings.

Do not be afraid to be an individualist.

The world you desire can be won. It exists. It is real. It is possible. It is yours.

Aaron Tao, The Atlas Society

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Public School Enrollments Down as Parents Start Noticing Liberal Propaganda

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In the age of COVID, parents are taking a stand against public school identity politics and indoctrination by removing their kids.

December 19, 2020 (FRC Action) — With school shutdowns, logistical complexities with online classes, and rampant uncertainty due to the coronavirus, it’s been a monumentally difficult year for students, their parents, and teachers. But there has been a silver lining in all of this: more and more parents are having their eyes opened to the leftist agenda that has embedded itself in many of our nation’s public schools.

Just last week, a school board in Fairfax County in northern Virginia unanimously decided to remove the names of Thomas Jefferson and George Mason from the city’s elementary and high schools, despite the fact that the local community is strongly in favor of keeping the names.

Now, parents are taking a stand against public school identity politics and indoctrination by removing their kids and finding better alternatives like private schools and homeschooling. In fact, over the past year, the Fairfax County school system has seen a 5 percent drop in enrollment, which means that nearly 9,000 students will no longer be exposed to the leftist propaganda and sexualization that has run rampant.

Yesterday, Maria Keffler, Co-founder of the Arlington Parent Coalition and Partner and Media Representative at Partners for Ethical Care joined Tony on “Washington Watch” to discuss the growing dissatisfaction among parents with educational establishments that are failing to educate and striving to indoctrinate.

“I think more parents are starting to wake up to it and see what’s going on,” she said. “Arlington Public Schools is down about 3,000 students from what was expected this year. I think that is one of the silver linings of the coronavirus — that parents are seeing what’s going on and they’re not happy about it and they shouldn’t be.”

The question is, will public schools begin to listen to the concerns of parents when their tax revenue falls due to declining enrollment? The answer appears to be “no.”

“The school boards are simply not concerned,” Keffler observed. “They’re simply not concerned with the student’s needs. They’re not concerned with the parents’ concerns. In Fairfax County, in 2018, they voted to add the LGBTQ curriculum to the Fairfax County Family Life Education Curriculum. They received 941 emails against approving that curriculum, only 192 for. And they just went right ahead and did it. They’re not listening to parents.”

Not only are public schools not listening to the concerns of parents, they are also failing in their primary duty: education. “Students are falling off the radar,” Keffler pointed out. “Students are falling behind … As long ago as 2015, Pew Research said among developed nations, the U.S. ranks 24th on science and reading and 39th in math. But it’s not new that the public schools are failing — [they’ve] been failing for a while.”

And when taxpayer dollars are being ineffectively used, it’s time to redirect the money elsewhere. “I think we do need school choice,” Keffler said. “I think parents need to have the money that the federal government gives to public schools to go with the child. If the parents take the child to a private school, to homeschool, to a military school — that money needs to go with the students.”

Keffler also underscored another enormously concerning trend in public schools: the violation of the First Amendment free speech rights of students and teachers. “I just received from [an] Arlington County teacher the new guidelines for transgender students. And what really disturbed me is a clause in there that says that students or teachers who refuse to comply [with] policies such as enforced pronouns and deceiving parents about their own children’s sexuality and their gender ID will be disciplined.”

But despite all of these disturbing trends and coronavirus shutdowns, parents should take heart. The multitude of educational choices and resources that are available continue to expand and grow. “Homeschooling has had a big boom this year,” Keffler noted. “The HSLDA, the Home School Legal Defense Association, has written and talked about the thousands and thousands of parents who’ve been calling them for assistance.” She went on to describe the success she has had in homeschooling her own three children.

Clearly, it’s time to rethink public education. “[The public school system is] a monopoly,” Keffler said. “Parents don’t have another choice and you don’t negotiate with a monopoly. You have to break a monopoly. And the only way we’re going to break the public school monopoly is by taking away their students.”

Confusing Free Market Capitalism with the Corrupt Interventionist State

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It is difficult to see the difference between an actual free market and the interventionist system under which we live because so many across the political spectrum refer to ours as a “capitalist” society. 

When most people put on their “reality” hats about politics, there are few among them who do not cynically see the power-lusting, the corruption, and the hypocrisy in most of what is said and done by those running for or sitting in political office. A constant point of dispute and disagreement is over how and why it is that governments have this seemingly inescapable tendency. The all too frequent answer in modern democratic societies is the claimed nefarious influences of businessmen to use government at the expense of most others everywhere around the world.

The latter is a near permanent theme in literature, movies, and the mass media. Widely used political and ideological rhetoric is portrayed as a false cover for what is really an often-successful attempt to dupe most people into thinking that what is “good for business is good for America.” Far too many politicians are the partners and accomplices to these private sector abusers of the public trust, it is said, since government is supposed to assure fairness and “social justice” for the many rather than privileges and favors for the capitalist few.

While mostly left unstated in any explicit or direct manner in movies and on television, the implicit message is that businessmen are inherently exploiting oppressors and abusers of their workers, their customers, and “the earth” due to their physical harms to the planet that threaten environmental sustainability. “Business” has to be heavily regulated and restricted if public harm is not to be done. Or . . . maybe there are just some if not many sectors of everyday life that must be placed outside of private reach through government production and provision of publicly necessary and needed goods and services. Otherwise, not just public harm, but human death and destruction will come in the wake of allowed private enterprise.

“Roadkill’s” Twisted Conception of a Libertarian

One example of these views may be seen in the recently aired four-part Season One of “Roadkill,” broadcast as part of Masterpiece Theater on PBS, starring Hugh Laurie (known to many American television viewers for his role as the medical doctor, “House,” which ran from 2004 to 2012). In this latest outing, Laurie plays Peter Laurence, a British Conservative Party cabinet member who serves, at first, as Minister of Transportation.

He is “hip” and “progressive,” saying that in his personal life and in his politics, he always looks at what’s ahead, and not at what has happened or what might otherwise tie you to the past. He regularly appears on a radio talk show with glib remarks outside of the seeming mainstream of even his own party’s politics. The first episode opens with him having won a libel case in which a newspaper reporter had accused him of corruption and bribery in the service of a consortium of businessmen wanting to make the world safer for their ill-gotten profits.

It seems that our Minister of Transportation may have been in cahoots with American medical companies who want to “privatize” parts of the British National Health Service (NHS). What could be more damning than the idea of replacing socialized medicine with private enterprise health care and service? Oh, the horror!

At one point when he is challenged about whether he is really innocent of the accusation, he insists that the charge was absurd, since, after all, what he is all about is personal freedom and choice. He declares, how could he be guilty, why, he views himself as a “libertarian.” When he is mildly injured in a car accident with a deer, he praises the heroes of Britain’s NHS as he leaves the hospital where he has been treated. Clearly, there are limits to his public libertarianism.

Personal and Political Corruption Envelops the Main Character

In his personal life, he cheats on his wife, lies to his two daughters, views his mistress as a convenience rather than a commitment, and faces a new potential scandal just as he is made Minister of Justice in a cabinet reshuffle, when he discovers that he has a previously unknown daughter from an illicit relationship with a black woman 20 years earlier, a daughter who is in prison for major bank fraud. But don’t worry, he gets ahead of it by going public on television saying he is pleased to find out about this daughter and hoping to get to know her better; after the show, Peter Laurence tells his personal assistant that that should get his public support up a bit.

But things are not all blue skies for our main character. The news reporter who brought the corruption charges against him won’t give up; she finds a witness who can confirm that Laurence was where he said he wasn’t, working for an Anglo-American lobbying group and earning a $500,000 “speaker’s fee” for an hour’s presentation; but the witness mysteriously dies. However, the news reporter doggedly heads over to Washington, D.C. to still get the goods on Laurence; alas, she is killed in a hit-and-run on the streets of the U.S. capital.

Not that Peter Laurence is, himself, behind the murder of the young reporter. Oh, no, that has been taken care of by an arms consortium and others, because they have bigger plans for our Minister of Justice. When it turns out that weapons used by the Saudi Arabian government that have killed three British NGO representatives in war-torn Yemen were sold by those U.K. armament manufacturers to the Riyadh government, the Conservative Party Prime Minister orders a temporary arms sale embargo to calm public outrage.

British Prime Ministers may come and go, but the pursuit of private profits never comes to an end, even if it kills innocent fellow citizens doing humanitarian work in a faraway country. The armament consortium engineers a vote of no confidence in the British Parliament to oust the current Conservative Prime Minister from 10 Downing Street.

Your Political Friends Can Get You to 10 Downing Street

Peter Laurence meets with the head of the British Conservative Party and one of the leading U.K. armaments manufacturers; he is reminded about how the three of them have been such good friends for, oh, so long a time. Yes, what a tragedy about the unfortunate death of that British reporter while she was over in the States. But, well, that just means one less thing for everyone to worry about. They just need to remember that without the tourist trade and the armaments industry there is no British economy, so what’s good for armament manufacturers is good for Great Britain. They just know they can count on Laurence not forgetting that.

The final episode of Season One ends with our “hero” stepping into 10 Downing Street as the newly elected Prime Minister of Great Britain. What could go wrong? The betrayed wife is beside him as they enter their new residence, many in the public look on him as that “progressive” forward-looking Conservative Party leader, and, clearly, his “friends” in British industry have shown their appreciation for his right-thinking by helping his arrival at that lofty political position of power and privilege.

But shadows of his personal and professional past that he says he always tries to put behind him are still looming just ahead. So how and what will bring about the downfall of Peter Laurence, or the misstep from his past that he says might make him the next “roadkill” in the processes of political power-lusting, corruption, and abuses of positions in high governmental authority?

The answers await Season Two, if there is one, because the show’s producers have not yet announced whether it will be back next year.

All the Marxian Messaging About “Capitalism” is There

All the elements of the standard anti-capitalist tale are here, with its subliminal Marxian presumptions. Public statements of believing in personal choice and individual liberty, and a claimed “public good” arising from profit-pursuing private enterprise are all part of the rhetorical “false conscience”-creating manipulators of public opinion. It is all a smokescreen to hide the “real” power relationships of greedy businessmen using politicians and government organs of power to acquire their ill-gotten gains by wanting to undermine national health care and make millions by manufacturing the means by which innocent people are killed in various conflicts around the world.

Self-labelling libertarians like Peter Laurence in “Roadkill” are corrupt and manipulative people using the rhetoric of freedom to live their own comfortable lives in government positions that are theirs only because they serve and work with the “real” power behind “the system,” that being evil, murdering businessmen. The honest people, like that truth-seeking reporter, end up dead as their reward for trying to unmask the powers-that-be. Governments are put in place and torn down by capitalist wire pullers behind the curtain.

It is of note that far less frequently in such movies and on television is corruption and abuse of power shown to be in socialist or left-of-center governments in office. Rarely if ever is their rhetoric portrayed as the cover to advance the special interests of labor unions wanting closed shops, or leftist-friendly businesses wanting subsidies to cover their unprofitable enterprises, or socialist ideologues hungry for power to coercively socially engineer the lives of tens or hundreds of millions of ordinary people.

The heroic person in almost all movies and television shows with some political message imbedded in it is the lone person trying to stand in the way of lumber companies destroying the rainforests, or oil companies poisoning the land, sea and air, or businessmen willing to murder their own grannie for an extra buck. If there is a “good” businessman, he is always someone who in some way sacrifices his profits for a higher and more socially just cause. But even one of these is few and far between. Or if there is a good businessman, he is the small underdog enterpriser who, also, is a victim, just like the other “little people” against “big” business.

The Free Market and Its Institutional Premises

What all such films and shows are portraying are the intrigues and workings of the Interventionist State, not the nature and reality of a functioning free market economy in which governments actually are limited to the few functions of securing and protecting the individual rights of each person to their life, liberty and honestly acquired property. And a system of an impartial rule of law, under which there are the same equal individual rights for all, but privileges and favors for none.

Under such a true political-economic system of classical liberalism, politicians like Peter Laurence in “Roadkill” have no role to play because there are no special favors to give or take away. A way to see the difference, perhaps, is by laying out an eight-point contrast between the liberal free market economy and the interventionist state. The institutional presumptions and premises of a liberal market economy are:

  1. All means of production are privately owned.
  2. The use of the means of production is under the control of private owners, who may be individuals or corporate entities.
  3. Consumer demands determine how the means of production will be used.
  4. Competitive market forces of supply and demand determine the prices for consumer goods and the various factors of production (including labor).
  5. The success or failure of individual and corporate enterprises is determined by the profits or losses these enterprises earn, based on their greater or lesser ability to satisfy consumer demand in competition with their rivals in the marketplace.
  6. The market is not confined to domestic transactions and includes freedom of international trade.
  7. The monetary system is based on a market-determined commodity (for example, gold or silver), and the banking system is private and competitive (neither controlled nor regulated by government).
  8. Government is limited in its activities to the enforcement and protection of each individual’s life, liberty and honestly acquired property under impartial rule of law.

Under such a system there are no possibilities for corrupt acts by politicians to bestow special privileges and favors on some at others’ expense, since by definition and institutional constraint there is nothing to politically buy or sell from the government, for as long as these “rules of the game” are recognized, abided by, and enforced.

The Interventionist State and Its Institutional Premises

Contrast this with the institutional presumptions and premises of the interventionist state that more closely resembles the type of world with its personalities and incentives as represented in Masterpiece Theater’s “Roadkill.” In the interventionist state:

  1. The private ownership of the means of production is restricted and abridged.
  2. The use of the means of production by private owners is prohibited, limited or regulated.
  3. The users of the means of production are prevented from being guided solely by consumer demands.
  4. Government influences or controls the formation of prices for consumer goods and/or the factors of production (including labor).
  5. Government reduces the impact of market supply and demand on the success or failure of various enterprises, while increasing its own influence and control over market outcomes and earned incomes through such artificial means as pricing and production regulations, limits on freedom of entry into segments of the market, and direct or indirect subsidies, and compulsory redistribution.
  6. Free entry into the domestic market by potential foreign rivals is discouraged, restricted, or prohibited through import bans, quotas, or tariffs, and other means.
  7. The monetary system is regulated by government for the purpose of influencing what is used as money, the value of money, and the rate at which the quantity of money is increased or decreased. These, and other policy instruments, are used for affecting employment, output, and growth in the economy.
  8. Government’s role is not limited to the protection of life, liberty, and property.

Here, in the political arena, is a potential cesspool of corruption and abuse. With the government’s hand increasingly in more and more aspects of everyday economic life, the future of every enterpriser’s business now depends on what, how, and for whom the political interventions are introduced and secured. Politics rather than markets more and more determines the fortunes and fate of any private enterprise. Businessmen find it necessary to cultivate the qualities of political entrepreneurship, rather than simply that of a market-oriented entrepreneur.

Ludwig von Mises on the Workings of the Interventionist State

This was explained nearly 90 years ago by Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), at the twilight of the interventionist and corrupt Weimar Republic in Germany, shortly before the coming to power of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi) Party. In 1932, during the Great Depression and amid a wide belief that the prolonged and severe economic downturn was “proof” of the failure of a capitalist economy, Mises explained the institutional nature and behavioral characteristics of those attempting to get ahead in the interventionist state:

“In the interventionist state it is no longer of crucial importance for the success of an enterprise that the business should be managed in a way that it satisfies the demands of consumers in the best and least costly manner. It is far more important that one has ‘good relationships’ with the political authorities so that the interventions work to the advantage and not the disadvantage of the enterprise.

“A few marks’ more tariff protection for the products of the enterprise and a few marks’ less tariff for the raw materials used in the manufacturing process can be of far more benefit to the enterprise than the greatest care in managing the business. No matter how well an enterprise may be managed, it will fail if it does not know how to protect its interests in the drawing up of the customs rates, in the negotiations before arbitration boards, and with the cartel authorities. To have ‘connections’ becomes more important than to produce well and cheaply.

“So the leadership positions within enterprises are no longer achieved by men who understand how to organize companies and to direct production in the way the market situation demands, but by men who are well thought of ‘above’ and ‘below,’ men who understand how to get along well with the press and all the political parties, especially with the radicals, so that they and their company give no offence. It is that class of general directors that negotiate far more often with state functionaries and party leaders than with those from whom they buy or to whom they sell.

“Since it is a question of obtaining political favors for these enterprises, their directors must repay politicians with favors. In recent years, there have been relatively few large enterprises that have not had to spend very considerable sums for various undertakings in spite of it being clear from the start they would yield no profit. But in spite of the expected loss it had to be done for political reasons. Let us not even mention contributions for purposes unrelated to business – for campaign funds, public welfare organizations, and the like.” (Ludwig von Mises, “The Myth of the Failure of Capitalism” [1932] in Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises, Vol. 2 [2000], pp. 188-189)

Ayn Rand and the Mindset of the Politically Privileged and Powerful

The psychological atmosphere of the interventionist state and its users and abusers was also captured in Ayn Rand’s famous novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957), when a group of the business plunder participants meet for a drink to discuss how they cannot be held responsible for the bad times through which the country is passing. That their failing businesses and falling profits, their inabilities to meet contractual obligations and commitments, are not the fault of the poor management of their enterprises.

No, it’s “the system,” it’s the unreliability of others, it is due to business rivals not willing to sacrifice for the “common good” and contribute a “fair share” to others in the industry, with, instead, those “selfish” rivals attempting to compete more effectively for consumer business that leaves these others financially less well off. “The only justification of private property,” one of them says, “is public service.” Another insists that, “After all, private property is a trusteeship held for the benefit of society as a whole.” One other points to “the blight of unbridled competition,” while still another argues, “It seems to me that the national policy ought to be aimed at the objective of giving everybody a chance at his fair share . . .” (pp. 49-50)

Represented here are the politically oriented businessmen about whom Mises was referring. People not focused on making better and less expensive goods, or whose attention is directed at meeting consumer demands, and at those from whom they buy and to whom they sell as the basis upon which any profits may be earned. No, their interest is in gaming the interventionist state to hinder their competitors, gain subsidies and protections through government regulations, and to weaken respect for and belief in private property rights by insisting that coerced sharing and service to a “common good,” as the ideological means of rationalizing the political interventions to win those privileges and favors that without the government would never be theirs on an open and free market.

Confusing Free Market Capitalism with the Corrupt Interventionist State

This points to one of the most commonly made and dangerous confusions in modern society, that being the assumption that the economic system under which we have been and currently are living, represents and reflects a liberal free market economy. It is difficult for many people to see the difference between an actual free market and the interventionist system under which we live because so many across the political spectrum refer to ours as a “capitalist” society.

If we use as a benchmark the institutional characteristics defined, above, as the meaning of a free market economy, the U.S. is very far from that conceptual idea and ideal. Our system possesses and operates in the context of all the institutional characteristics outlined as defining the interventionist state.

Is there favoritism and privilege? Is the “system” manipulated by those who know how to “play the game” of political entrepreneurship at the expense of consumers and competitors? Do politicians rise to and retain power and position in government through political pandering and offer plunder to those special interests who can get them elected? Are false promises, often outright lies, and frequent appeals to irrational emotionalism and primal envy frequently the avenues to political success?

Yes, to each and every one of these. The events of the last year under the coronavirus crisis have only reinforced and intensified this trend down the interventionist road. No corner of society or the economy has been free of a hyper-politicization in which governments have determined who may work and under what conditions, what goods may be manufactured and sold and at what prices, and who may stay open for business and with what restrictions on how they may operate their enterprise.

This is the breeding ground for even more of the political hypocrisy and corrupt privilege and favoritism portrayed in programs like “Roadkill.” How can it be otherwise when everyone’s life and fate are in the hands of politicians like that fictional Peter Laurance, and the ideological and special interest groups that want to use government to get what might never be theirs under a real system of free market capitalism?

The important task for those who value personal freedom, economic liberty and the free market economy is to disabuse our fellow citizens from thinking that what we have is a fully capitalist system, and to appreciate that what critics of capitalism call for and want in the form of even more and bigger government would only magnify the corrosive trends already in play in the modern world.

Richard Ebeling, Capitalism Magazine