America’s Seven Political Parties: What They Believe in a Nutshell

Osbert and Vlad were planning their political campaign for the school’s upcoming election.

Osbert: What shall we call our party?

Vlad: Do we really need a political party? Couldn’t we just run as ourselves?

Osbert: No, no. You must have a political party or people won’t know who you are.

Vlad: Well, what do these parties want to do?

Osbert: First, they all want to make things better. The Conservatives want to make things better by keeping things exactly as they are.

The moderate Democrats want to make things better by changing things, but not so much that anybody notices.

The Republicans want to make things better by changing things, but not so much that anybody notices, and only if it benefits themselves.

The Progressive Democrats and Socialists want to make things better by taking everything away from everybody who isn’t a Progressive Democrat or a Socialist.

The Fascists and Communists want to make things better by killing everyone but themselves.

The Libertarians want to make things better by letting everyone do whatever they please as long as they do not assault someone else.

Vlad: We’d better not run as Libertarians. They sound dangerous.

— Paul Grad, enviro-vegan libertarian

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Economics, History, and Polly Sigh: The Fatal Non-Conjunction

One of the very important points that Professor Murray Rothbard makes is the fact that few economists are historians, and few historians are deep scholars of economics (and if so, they’ve usually studied Keynesian economics), and so, in looking at history, the average writer and reader is fully unaware of the importance of certain events. The history book mentions that John Williams became Secretary of the Treasury during James Smith’s Presidency, but the historian fails to note that Williams, the son-in-law of the daughter of the sister of the Secretary of the Treasury, had been a corporate lawyer for XYZ Inc. before appointment, and joined the board of ZYX Corp. after leaving office.

Add to this the fact that few economists have studied Political Science, and,for historians, their studies have usually been confined to Rousseau, Hobbes, and Locke. The intimate connection between political Philosophy and Austrian School Free-Market economics, which, face it, was the economics of the first large Capitalists in Renaissance Italy, has been overlooked.

So, to find someone steeped in political philosophy, Classical Liberal Free-Market economics, and American Economic History, like Professor Rothbard, is extremely rare, although it is obviously absolutely essential to any valid analyses of past history and economics.

In “The Ethics of Liberty”, Rothbard lays out the philosophical basis of the American System of Property Rights, which puts the Individual and his Property above any governmental or collective powers. It is a moral doctrine which says that the means must be pure, that the end does not justify the means, and that no one may aggress against anyone else’s property. This philosophical basis for Capitalism seems to me to be sorely lacking in prominent “Libertarian” or “Conservative” commentators.

For example, rarely do two “Libertarian” or Classical Liberals, or Conservatives, start with the Property Rights argument when approaching any problem. I’ve listened to long discussions by Dave Rubin and many of his guests, or free-market conservatives like Ben Shapiro and Dennis Praeger, and not once do they bring up this rock-solid basis of Property Rights in their discussions. And they seem so shocked at the antics of the Left when the Left’s understanding of economics, history, and political philosophy is so puerile, and its’ ignorance of the Libertarian roots of the American Revolution is vast. The Left’s histrionics are completely predictable as the economic situation worsens under socialism.

Likewise with historians like the British historian, Vernon Bogdanor, or even the venerated Arthur M. Schlesinger — a complete non-understanding of economics which makes many of their historical observations invalid.

So without a simple understanding of the interconnection between economics, history, and political science, it is rather futile to read any of these topics in isolation. Libertarianism can only adumbrate certain main routes to Human Liberation in the political realm, but it leaves it up to those who do not understand the interconnections we are discussing to delineate the minor details and combinations of specific political issues with their adversaries, as in the long-suffering Democrat vs Republican football game.

But without also a deep understanding of the three basic principles of Classical Liberalism or Libertarianism — the Non-Aggression Principle, Natural Rights theory, and the idea of Self-ownership —, there can be no laying of the foundation for an orderly, non-violent society.

— Paul Grad, Enviro-Vegan Libertarian

The Yulin Dog Meat Crime: Red China, The Miscreant Nation

The sadism and cruelty of the current Yulin Dog Meat Festival, at which over 10,000 are butchered by being beaten to death with metal rods, blowtorched, or thrown into caldrons of boiling water, is a good example of the brutality and savageness of the Chinese Nation. For a country and people to tolerate such barbaric practices, and let them go on year after year, shows a people corrupt and savage. Yet the rest of the world is also savage in its feckless disregard for, and quietude on, such Immoral Crimes.

Recall that President Bill Clinton gave Red China Most Favored Nation trading status, and that not one Democrat President, Senator or Congressman has ever spoken out and demanded an end to MFN trading status until these Criminals in the Dog Meat Trade, its miscreant patrons, and the Criminals in the Red Government who tolerate this, are brought to task. The Yulin Dog Meat Festival is proof that Commies will do anything for a Yuan, as illustrated by these Dog Meat Traders, who fully deserve Capital Punishment (although I must oppose it in Principle), and the Chinese Government itself.

Let us therefore resolve to boycott all products from Red China until they give up this deeply immoral activity of terrorizing and murdering dogs, which is not far from the mass torture and murder of children. I certainly would not grieve if these creeps were put up against the wall, although I’d prefer that they spend the rest of there days in cages, and at hard labour.

Let us undertake a Gandhian boycott of all Red Chinese products, and initiate non-violent political agitation leading to abandonment by Congress and the President of MFN trading status with these Criminals. Let the Liberal Democrats, for the first time in decades, tell their “Good People” to speak out against the Chinese Miscreants and their barbaric, sadistic “cultural” practices that have no place in the new civilized world.

Let us boycott Red China and give our trade to Taiwan, Free China, which bravely recently outlawed the Dog Meat Trade, showing that the Taiwanese Chinese people as a whole have a qualitative moral superiority to their Mainland neighbors. Repentance and Reform should be rewarded in the wallet, since politically we live in a very materialistic world.

While I think the treatment of factory farm animals in the West is nearly as sadistic and barbarous as the dog meat trade, there is one qualitative difference in the attitudes of the people. I doubt there are many meat eaters in Western countries, like the US and Britain, who would approve or tolerate or not condemn the intentional torture and slaughter of animals by beating them with steel rods, blowtorching them, boiling them alive, skinning them alive, and all the other inventive sadistic techniques the Chinese Dog Meat Criminals have thought up to “improve the flavor” of Fido. People in the West take the anodyne that the animals condemned to a horrific death in their abattoirs are murdered “humanely”, and that myth provides an analgesic to any Moral pain their consciences might feel as they eat their cow, veal, lamb, and rock cornish game hen. But that the animals should be intentionally tortured would be a very rare opinion I would think. However, the callousness the Dog Meat Trade breeds alike in its traders, its customers, and the Chinese nation as a whole, is a form of insanity, and the Dog Meat Traders really should be locked up for life, in mental hospital prisons, for the safety of the remainder of the society.

A society that remains silent in the face of such Crimes destroys itself, and we now have a World Society, thanks to the internet, technology, and fast planes, though we may still live in fictional individual nations. So putting an end to this filthy trade is the responsibility of people of all nations, not just the Red Chinese inhabitants. Every Crime and War going on in the world, whether to animals, or whether by governments, is the responsibility of all human beings. Although obviously there is nothing I can do immediately, right now, to affect the violence in, say, South Sudan, or Yulin, China, other than to write my Congressman, hire a hall and give a speech,demonstrate in front of the Red Chinese Embassy, or write an essay like this.

Finally, we should acknowledge the many Moral People in Red China who oppose the Dog Meat Trade, struggle against it, sabotage it, and undertake civil disobedience against it in the best tradition of Henry David Thoreau, a Great Libertarian. We absolve all those in Red China who oppose and are disgusted with this filthy business, and harbor no animus towards them.

Most likely, a puppy has been blowtorched to death, or thrown into a boiling cauldren, while you read this. Others are waiting terrorized while the mob of sadistic humans surrounds them, waiting for their meals. They’re dying as you read this. More profits for the Trader.

Let us bring Death to the Dog Meat Trade. Let us butcher this vile, heinous business. Let us make the Miscreant Nation of China pay, in lost dollars and yuan, for their toleration, promotion, and protection of this gargantuan Crime.

Let us Boycott Red China until they cease to wallow in the filth of their Moral Turpitude. Let us Boycott Red China until they outlaw the Dog Meat Trade.

Death to the Dog Meat Trade! Make the Sadists pay!

— Paul Grad, Libertarian Party of Oregon Gubernatorial Nominee 2014

Tariffs: Another Word for State Theft

Libertarians and Classical Liberals oppose tariffs as an interference in Free Trade. The British Liberal Party in the 19th Century firmly agitated against tariffs as do modern Libertarians.

But tariffs are actually just plain old theft. And that theft is conducted by “The State”, whatever the name of the country or the ruling party in that country happens to be. In essence it is the State interfering in the Free Market and extorting Capital from Capitalists to enrich the coffers of the State instead of the coffers of the Traders. This is an evil and pernicious activity.

There has always been an opposition between the Free Market Capitalists and the State looters, who extort money from the Capitalists by assaulting them through taxes, tariffs, and excise taxes (although the excise tax, especially on pernicious products like tobacco, is the least immoral of all taxes, and was used to fund the fledgling American Republic prior to the immoral income tax). The justification for tariffs is always to “protect” certain favored home country industries in a process not unlike the Mercantilists of the various European monarchies of the past. Monarchs would sell “monopolies” to favored nobles and bureaucrats who formed themselves into “Companies”. The modern day Statists do the same thing by putting tariffs on products to protect their favored client industries which are akin to those mercantilist companies under the monarchies. As you may recall, the American Colonists had some division of opinion with King George over this matter, which caused quite a ruction.

However, what happens when one country imposes tariffs on trade with the U.S., but the U.S. charges no tariffs on its own products? Is that not one way theft? And if tariffs are sauce for the socialist-country geese, are they not also sauce for the Free Market-country ganders that do not charge tariffs?

It sounds like the retaliatory tariffs that President Trump is throwing at various socialist and totalitarian countries are really a matter of saying, if you’re going to ream us, financially-speaking, we’ll ream you back in like fashion.

However, tariffs, whether they’re put on as mercantilist looting mechanisms for the State and their client industries to legally rob the Consumer, or whether they are put on in response to other countries current tariffs, always hurt the consumer. As Rothbard pointed out, it is the size of bank balances held in a country that is the important item. That is, if I can buy a manhole cover from the U.S. for $125 or a manhole cover from India for $50, it is better for the U.S. nation as a whole if I buy the Indian cover and keep the extra $75 in the bank, where it is loaned out to buy capital equipment that increases productivity, rather than if I pay the $125, have a smaller bank balance, and the extra $75 goes to the wealthy owners of the “protected by tariff” U.S. manhole-cover manufacturers’ cartel.

Tariffs strengthen the Leviathan State and weaken the Consumer and the individual Capitalist. Free Trade Capitalism weakens the Leviathan State and enriches the Consumer and the Free Market Capitalist.

That said, tariffs as a form of punitive punishment for the Crimes of Totalitarian Regimes are, to me, no sin. If a country abuses the inalienable Jeffersonian Rights that are germane to any modern democratic Republic or democracy, then I will not object to tariffs on that country’s products and industries. Fascists should not be tolerated in the modern world. Their regimes should be overthrown and undermined by every non-violent means available.

The ultimate solution is for all nations on Earth to abandon tariffs completely, so that any nation that did try to impose tariffs would be viewed by the rest of the world as a looting moral pariah, little different from a gang of highwaymen.

Our first motto should be, “No democratic-elections Republic or Constitutional Monarchy, no trade.”

Our second, “What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

— Paul Grad, Libertarian Party of Oregon Gubernatorial Nomineee 2014

Senator Rand Paul’s Attacker Gets 30 Days: A Travesty of Justice

A great and heinous travesty of Justice has just taken place in America. The attacker of a US Senator, Rand Paul, who was grievously injured in the assault and sustaining five cracked ribs, pneumonia,and a lot of physical pain,— that attacker was given a slap on the wrist by the “Unjustice System” in the U.S. There was no “with Liberty and Justice for all” for Senator Paul when the court in effect gave a green light to any Democratic nutcase who wants to assault a U.S. Senator who doesn’t agree with their immoral agenda.

In a previous post I stated that the attacker of a U.S. Senator should get 30 years in Federal Prison without Parole as a deterrent to this very serious crime. I’m sure there are a lot of Leftists in America truly disappointed that this assassination attempt on the most (and only) Libertarian member of the Senate did not succeed.

The Congress must immediately pass legislation making it a Federal Felony of the highest order to physically assault a U.S. Senator, Congressman, or member of the Administration Cabinet.

Only then will Justice be done, and those chosen to serve by the free vote of the American public will not have that choice negated by violent political agitators.

Rene Boucher deserved 30 years in the Pen. He got 30 days. When will we have Justice in America?

— Paul Grad, vegan-libertarian

Attempted Judicial Putsch in America: The Persecution of Donald Trump

It is very clear that there is an intensive effort in the United States for the residues of the Obama Administration and the minions of his would-be successor, Ms. Rodham, to affect a judicial Putsch or overthrow of the elected Government by removing its duly-elected titular head, President Donald Trump.

It has been a year since the President was first hounded by a legal prosecution that has not brought to light one crime committed by the President. But it is clear from the constant 24-hour hate-ins that occur on almost every major news media that the so-called Progressives and mainline Democrats are out for the President’s scalp. It reminds one of the hate-ins in Orwell’s 1984 where a mob, in front of a giant movie screen showing Big Brother’s arch enemy, scream out their hatred of the villain in a mass catharsis that resolves into a symphony of loving for Big Brother, or in modern terms, Ms. Rodham.

The hatred for Trump is the only issue the Democrats have. These are the same people who ignored the abuses that took place under the eight years of Obama, and under the liberal West Coast Democratic Party Governors, showing that they are deeply corrupt and immoral.

If the people of the Republic let those elements in the FBI and DOJ, who will not accept the results of a Constitutional election, get away with this attempted judicial Putsch, then it will be as great a crime as the overlooking of the government’s involvement in the murders of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King.

America is no longer the land that it was. Very few in politics are willing to hew to the Constitution or a very high ethical standard. Very few are willing to speak their minds; rather, their statements are hedged about with loaded words which their psychological polls have shown have a positive impact in brainwashing people to their positions.

It’s clear they are out to persecute the President and hound him from office by using every means available. Whether you like the President or not, this assault on the Constitution and our legal electorial process must not succeed, or else you can kiss your Republic good-bye, as Ben Franklin warned.

— Paul Grad, enviro-vegan Libertarian

Trump Wields the Capitalist Weapon: The Iran Deal Decision

President Trump has unleashed the power of the most nuclear weapon against nuclear proliferation known: the power of Capitalism. By threatening to impose sanctions on Iran, which are a Capitalistic weapon no different that the Gandhian non-violent boycott, Trump is using the financial leverage of the (mostly) Capitalist system we have in the U.S., (although it is a system heavily burdened with socialist mandates that keep down the wealth of the People. But it is probably the most Capitalistic place in the world, although perhaps Switzerland or some other small nation excels it.)

I predicted in a blog post about four years back that what America needed was a politician who was a billionaire (so that he was financially dependent on no one), and was neither a Democrat nor Republican. America got exactly that in Trump, and, although I disagree strenuously with many of his positions on the environment and his military spending, he is showing that his native intelligence is cutting through the political and bureaucratic dross that we’ve had to put up with since Kennedy was murdered; Kennedy, the last politician or President I ever heard give an interesting speech on some fundamental principle of the American Republic, like the Freedom of the Press and its responsibilities. His was an intellect far beyond any President since then, but now, in terms of intelligence and simple common sense, he may have met an equal or associate in President Trump.

And that is probably why the established government bureaucracies, in collusion with the Democrats and the media, are attempting a judicial Putsch against the duly-elected President of these United States of America.

I can see Bertrand Russell, who was an ardent Socialist, applauding President Trump from his position in Hell, a position he finds far more interesting than Heaven, because he can continue to smoke his pipe there, and advocate for Free Love. But Lord Russell was an even more ardent opponent of nuclear proliferation, and a hater of organized religion in government, and I’m sure he would say that to give to a religiously-fanatic theocracy the means to initiate nuclear war was utter insanity, and that the petty and sick sychophants of the Democratic Party and the media, and their European Union and UK allies, were nothing but a modern bunch of Neville Chamberlains appeasing a nuclear-weaponized Hitlerian regime that hangs gay teenagers, and stones women to death for adultery, and guns down hundreds of demonstrators against electoral fraud.

The Tyranny will now feel the edge of the Capitalist weapon, the weapon Trump wielded, the sanction or boycott. No Jeffersonian government, no trade: that should be the cry of the modern Classical Liberal or Libertarian, and that is the choice Trump has put to both Iran and North Korea. And the way North Korea has buckled and kissed brass in the face of Trumps threats is because those are Capitalistic threats and Kim obviously doesn’t want to grow thin.

Today’s Iran Deal speech was one of the best, most forceful speeches I can recall, although Trump is not trained as a orator, and is no Churchill or Roosevelt when it comes to  speaking, but he states the facts like laying out the terms of a contract, and it’s all pretty clear.

The American Public has elected a very bright fellow.

— Paul Grad, Libertarian Party of Oregon Gubernatorial Nominee 2014

 

Ron Paul Was The Reason Trump Got Elected

It struck me the other day, with a pellucid clarity, that the real reason Donald Trump got elected was because Ron Paul had laid the groundwork for his victory through the influence on the electorate that his two campaigns for the Republican nomination, in 2008 and 2014, had wrought.

Ron Paul was the psychological nerve-primer that prepared the American body-politic to accept the Trump offer to run the country. Paul’s infusion of Libertarian ideals and ideas  rekindled the romance that was implied in the Jeffersonian Covenant with Mankind. For once the public had a politician who reminded them that the Republic was not about GDP or full employment or security but rather was about Human Adventure, taking the risk, and chasing the girl that was the Statue of Liberty and whose face used to be incused into the Silver Dollar of the United States of America.

That was before not only the womanization of America, but the womanization of politics.

Before that, Man chased the Woman, be it the girl on the other side of the class, or Liberty extended over a 3,000 mile-wide paradise stolen from the Indians. Since the Indians were only 0.5% of the population, and nobody outside of them mentioned the theft or seemed too bothered by it, the theft was institutionalized — after all, there were treaties, the White Man said. Everything was legal. And not even the Indians were calling for the expulsion of the White Man and his deportation back to the countries of his ancestors, which would be the obvious just solution. Libertarian theory requires at the least the restoration of stolen property back to the original owner. The penalty for theft is paying back twice the amount stolen plus something for the amount of fear or endangerment produced (for example, the fear generated by a child shoplifting a candy bar when the owner isn’t looking would call for far less fear-compensation that an armed robber using a gun).

So Ron Paul’s Jeffersonian alarum calls prepared America to hear a modified version of this philosophy coming from Trump. Trump, for example, scoffed at NATO, put down the FED, criticized the Nipponese whale-butchers for not paying their “fair share” while Americans subsidized the national defense of their extremely wealthy nation, and said “Let’s get along with the Russkies”, all positions from the Ron Paul Political Bible.

We even heard Mises member and perennial Libertarian, Llewellyn Rockwell, supporting Trump as a wild card that might be libertarian, as well as Ron Paul fellow economic-traveler David Stockman going over to Trump, and both bypassing the official Libertarian milquetoast candidate, Gary Johnson, as did Ron Paul.

Additionally, Trump was an unapologetic Capitalist, and obviously, with Ron Paul as a pro-free marketeer, and with the other side blatantly pro-socialist and big government, it was inevitable that a large part of the old Ron Paul support would seep into the vote totals of Donald Trump. And it did.

Another factor was that both Ron Paul and Trump were individualists in that they both went their own way and didn’t fret over what other people thought of them. Ron Paul was known as Dr. No when he was in Congress, often casting the lone “No” vote on a bill that he felt was either unConstitutional or anti-Libertarian. Trump, too, obviously didn’t care very much what people thought of his outlandish, boorish behavior, although in courtesy and refinement Ron Paul and Donald Trump couldn’t be more dissimilar. But they both obviously didn’t give a damn about what others thought of their political stances.

So the verisimilitude of Trump’s message and iconoclasm to that of Ron Paul’s was the factor that led many former Ron Paul supporters, frustrated by Johnson’s feeble campaign, to vote for Trump. And those votes, going to Trump instead of Johnson, were the narrow margin that Trump needed to drive a wedge into the cracked stump of the Clinton campaign, and split it into oblivion. Those votes were the razor thin edge that Trump needed to gain the White House, and possibly change the direction of America.

President Trump ought to say a prayer of thanks every day to the man whose philosophy got him elected: Dr. Ron Paul.

— Paul Grad, enviro-Libertarian

 

The U.S. Olympic Participation Enables South Korean Dog-Butchers

By participating in the Winter Olympics in South Korea, the United States is enabling and justifying the heinous and immoral Korean dog-meat trade. This participation recognizes a country that butchers two million dogs a year, or about 6,000 every 24 hours, as a valid country amongst the “civilized” nations, but it is clear that this continued participation in the Great Crime of the dog-meat trade makes South Korean one of the “Miscreant” Nations of the world, Nations so immoral in their conduct that they should be boycotted  by Libertarians and Vegetarians everywhere.

It is imperative that all humane people boycott South Korea, and any other nation in the world that allows the dog-meat trade, and boycott them in a way that ruins their economy.

Avenge the dogs that are being murdered by this callous, sadistic, miscreant nation of South Korea by boycotting it so mercilessly that they are taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget.

The price of immorality must be bankruptcy. Demand the U.S. sever all trade and defense ties with South Korea, let the parasites pay for their own damned defense and stop sucking off the bank accounts of American taxpayers.

Boycott the South Korean dog-butchers into bankruptcy.

— Paul Grad, Libertarian Party of Oregon Gubernatorial Nominee 2014

Thom Paine on the Difference between the Democrats and Libertarians

Thomas Paine, that doughty blowtorch of the American Revolution, summed up succinctly the  difference between the pathetic Democratic Party and the Libertarian philosophy that founded The Republic.

In his third chapter of “The Rights of Man”, Paine states “Government, on the old system, is an assumption of power, for the aggrandizement of itself; on the new, a delegation of power for the common benefit of society. The former supports itself by keeping up a system of war; the latter proposes a system of peace, as the true means of enriching a nation. The one encourages national prejudices; the other promotes universal society, as the means of universal commerce. The one measures its prosperity by the quantity of revenue it extorts; the other proves its excellence by the small quantity of taxes it requires.”

Though Paine lived a quarter of a millennium ago, he must have been reading all the news since Clinton got elected.

I can just hear the Democrats calling him a Fascist.

Paul Grad, enviro-libertarian