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ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers

The Gray Fox

Clint Eastwood, crazy? Like a fox.

Last Thursday, at the Republican Party Convention in Tampa, he spoke to a primetime television audience of millions in the type of direct language politicians never utter. The movie star’s message was simple, but his presentation was more acting routine than speech, using an empty chair as a prop and pretending President Obama was sitting next to him. His delivery came in stops and starts, seemingly ad-libbed with the 82-year old no quicker or more nimble of thought and word than other octogenarians I know.

Much of the mainstream media pounced, diagnosed Eastwood as nearly insane, and noted that the actor’s 12-minute talk upstaged presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Funny, I think Eastwood’s words touched many regular folks — and perhaps a raw nerve for those favoring the president.

While celebrities have every right to speak, I’m tired of the usual sophomoric spewing of famously uninformed opinion — “hot-dogging it,” as Eastwood put it. But we didn’t watch movie star Clint Eastwood last week; we saw businessman Clint Eastwood.

In 1967, early in his Hollywood career, Eastwood created his own production company, Malpaso, which has handled virtually all of his American films. Eastwood knows firsthand the demands of running a business. In fact, he enjoys a reputation for finishing his films on time and on budget and making profits.

When someone doesn’t do the job, Eastwood signs the proverbial pink slip. He thinks voters should do likewise. After all, “we own this country,” Eastwood reminded us. “Politicians are employees of ours.

“When somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Yves Guyot, 1910

Proudhon was nothing but a “petit bourgeois” as Karl Marx said. There is but one true socialism, the socialism of Germany, whose formula was propounded by Karl Marx and Engels in the “Communistic Manifesto” of 1848.

They chose “communism” because the word “socialism” had been too much discredited at the time, but they subsequently resumed it, for the logical conclusion of all socialism is communism. The word “collectivism,” says Paul Lafargue, was only invented in order to spare the susceptibilities of some of the more timorous. It is synonymous with the word “communism.” Every socialistic programme, be it the programme of St. Mandé, published in 1896 by M. Millerand, which lays down that “collectivism is the secretion of the capitalist régime,” or that of the Havre Congress, drawn up by Karl Marx, and carried on the motion of Jules Guesde, concludes with “the political and economic expropriation of the capitalist class and the return to collective ownership of all the means of production.”

But is this conclusion really so very different from that of their predecessors whom they treat with such scorn?

Categories
video

Video: The Simulacrum of Democracy

How the Ron Paul delegates at the Big Show, er, Republican National Convention, were routed.

Go to 1:21 on this and watch to the end. The teleprompter tells the speaker how the RNC delegates are “going to vote” on changing the rules to knock out the Ron Paul delegates. Something ain’t quite kosher about this.
 

Categories
Thought

Ludwig von Mises, 1947

Whatever people do in the market economy, is the execution of their own plans. In this sense every human action means planning. What those calling themselves planners advocate is not the substitution of planned action for letting things go. It is the substitution of the planner’s own plan for the plans of his fellow-men. The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans. He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute pre-eminence of his own plan.

Categories
Thought

Ludwig von Mises, 1947

When people were committed to the idea that in the field of religion only one plan must be adopted, bloody wars resulted. With the acknowledgment of the principle of religious freedom these wars ceased. The market economy safeguards peaceful economic co-operation because it does not use force upon the economic plans of the citizens. If one master plan is to be substituted for the plans of each citizen, endless fighting must emerge. Those who disagree with the dictator’s plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.

Categories
term limits

Putin, Unlimited

There once seemed to be no hope for Russia, formerly the core of a group of oppressed countries called the Soviet Union.

In the post-Stalin decades, opposing the totalitarian regime often meant a one-way ticket to Siberia. Dissidents weren’t cut down en masse the way they were in the early years of the Soviet Union. But protesting the government was a very lonely and costly enterprise.

These days, it’s less lonely. In recent months, tens of thousands of Russians have filled the streets of Moscow to protest the electorally suspect return to power of Vladimir Putin, constitutionally debarred from the presidency after two terms in office. But Russians knew that Putin’s successor, Dmitry Medvedev, was just a placeholder until Putin could regain the presidency in name as well as fact. Russia’s presidential term limits are thus more sham than surety of rotation in office.

Opposing the regime can still be costly. Fees for attending an illegal anti-Putin demonstration (they’re all illegal) have been jacked up by a docile parliament. Stand out from the crowd in your political resistance and you may end up incarcerated.

Three members of the radical Russian punk group/political performance artists Pussy Riot have been sentenced to two years in prison for what is being called “hooliganism.” That’s the crime of making a music video entitled “Holy Mother, Chase Putin Away!” It seemed worth a try. Fake term limits hadn’t done the job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Ludwig von Mises, 1962

It is a double-edged makeshift to entrust an individual or a group of individuals with the authority to resort to violence. The enticement implied is too tempting for a human being. The men who are to protect the community against violent aggression easily turn into the most dangerous aggressors. They transgress their mandate. They misuse their power for the oppression of those whom they were expected to defend against oppression. The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Do-Gooders Do Bad

“Democracy should be for everyone,” says Michelle Romero of the Greenlining Institute. That sounds right.

She also argues that “California speaks 200 languages, but our initiative petitions speak only one. We can bring millions of voters fully into our democratic process, and it will only cost about a penny per person.”

Romero is talking about Senate Bill 1233, authored by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), which mandates that the California Attorney General translate every citizen initiative or referendum or recall petition into nine languages: Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese.

More people able to get involved politically? I like that.

Still, it was strange to see California legislators, who regularly scheme to wreck the initiative process, passing legislation to enable more participation. Well, it was strange, until I learned that SB 1233 doesn’t simply provide citizens with petitions in various languages, as an option. No, this legislation would force citizens to carry petitions not only in English, but also in those other languages.

Accordingly, SB 1233 forces initiative proponents to spend the money to print their petition in ten languages. Of course, for well-heeled political groups that’s a minuscule cost, but it makes it that much more difficult for less well-financed grassroots groups to participate.

Cesar Diaz, Legislative and Political Director of the State Building and Construction Trades Council, said, “It’s just common sense to give all voters an equal say in deciding what goes on the ballot.”

Forcing cumbersome requirements onto citizens petitioning their government won’t give voters a say. It’s just another sneaky measure devised by political insiders to make sure citizens have less input, not more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture

Ends, Means, Evils

Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who used bombs and guns in a terrifying killing spree a little over a year ago, got what he wanted: He was judged as a political terrorist and not insane, sentenced to prison for ten to 21 years, Norway’s unbelievably minimum “maximum” — with the state’s option of keeping him confined indefinitely if judged too dangerous for release.

Which sounds rather “clinical” to me. Even without a ruling of insanity, Norway appears to treat its murderers as madmen.

But as one survivor of the Utoya massacre explained, “I believe [Breivik] is mad, but it is political madness and not psychiatric madness.” Exactly.

“Madness” is some sort of loss of self-control, a dangerous instability; “insanity” legally defines that subset of madmen who cannot distinguish between right and wrong. It is pretty obvious that though Breivik is deeply off his rocker, his condition is the result chiefly of bad ideas channeling base impulses.

And yet . . .

Breivik’s terrorism — like all others — justifies killing innocent people to serve a political goal. In doing so, the terrorist’s ideology becomes de facto insanity, rendering the terrorist incapable of recognizing his own evil.

In this case, his ideology also kept the terrorist from seeing the actual consequences of his horrifying violence. Breivik’s politics is of an extreme anti-Muslim nature. It has surely been fed by the rise of radical Islamic terrorism. But killing 77 people, including scores of non-Muslim teenagers, doesn’t exactly serve to rally European “militant nationalists” to an anti-Muslim pogrom. Mad. Wanton. Feckless.

But just “evil” will do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Ludwig von Mises, 1949

Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. Neither is value in words and doctrines, it is reflected in human conduct. It is not what a man or groups of men say about value that counts, but how they act.