It’s a sad day when the Germans tell us that free market capitalism in the United States is coming to an end. An article in the weekly German magazine Der Spiegel calls attention to the fact that the Republican Party, a party which once stood for uninhibited free markets, has fallen prey to the same government regulation of capitalism that it has so long fought against. The article reads:

The only thing that is certain is that the era of the unbridled free-market economy in the US has passed — at least for now. The near nationalization of AIG, America’s largest insurance company, with an $85 billion cash infusion — a bill footed by taxpayers — was a staggering move. The sum is three times as high as the guarantee provided by the Federal Reserve when Bear Stearns was sold to JPMorgan Chase in March.

The most breathtaking aspect about this week’s crisis, though, is that the life raft — which Washington had only previously used to bail out the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — is being handed out by a government whose party usually fights against any form of government intervention. The policy is anchored in its party platform.

‘I fear the government has passed the point of no return,’ financial historian Ron Chernow told the New York Times. “We have the irony of a free-market administration doing things that the most liberal Democratic administration would never have been doing in its wildest dreams.’

It certainly is the end of an era. The only thing that I want to know is: since I am now involuntarily an investor in AIG, when will I be able to make decisions regarding the insurance corporation’s future? To put it kindly, I’m not holding my breath.

That’s right.  The show, a weekly half-hour public affairs program on PBS where current political issues are discussed in a roundtable format, must’ve sparked the rocker’s creative genius.  For all intensive purposes, the show is pretty dry, yet I tune in every now and then because I enjoy the commentary of Pat Buchanan, who sits as one of the five panelists.  Apparently, Andrew W.K. tunes in as well.  With songs such as “It’s Time to Party,” “Party Hard,” “Party Til You Puke,” and “Long Live the Party,” it seems inconceivable that Andrew W.K. would be awake that early on a Sunday morning.  It seems even more inconceivable that he spends his Sunday mornings watching “The McLaughlin Group.”  Yet, upon watching an exchange that took place between host John McLaughlin and Pat Buchanan, Andrew W.K. was apparently prompted to awaken from his creative slumber and record a song inspired by their mutual dialogue, appropriately titled, “The McLaughlin Groove.”

The exchange that inspired the song is as follows:

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Question: Does Romney’s endorsement seal the deal? Is McCain now the inevitable Republican nominee? I ask you, Pat.

MR. BUCHANAN: John, absent celestial intervention, I think he’s going to get the nomination.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Absent what?

MR. BUCHANAN: Celestial intervention.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, it happens, Pat. May he rest in peace, Paul Wellstone.  John Heinz was killed in an airplane crash.

MR. BUCHANAN: Well, let’s not speculate on it.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Death comes in the night on cats’ paws, Pat. You never know.

MR. BUCHANAN: On little cats’ feet. That’s the fog, John, that comes in on little cats’ feet.

How I missed this, I don’t know.  But it’s good to know that the genius that is Andrew W.K. is still at work…and that, of course, he still rocks.

To hear the song, click here.

The free market is a beautiful entity in that it gives the parties involved the freedom and discretion to enter a contract in self-interest in the hopes of gaining a particular benefit or objective. You have a decision whether or not to enter that contract.  The free market also enables those that do not want to partake in the contract the ability not to do so.  In essence, the free market offers pure, uninhibited choice at the most simplistic level. 

However, when applying roadways to the free market, the product in question is not a good or service that one can willingly choose not to use, largely due to the fact that roads are a necessary public good.   Roads enable our society to properly function.  The development of our cities, infrastructure, and way of life are made possible due to the fact that goods and services are easily transferable through the use of roadways, highways, and interstates that allow for goods to be moved.  Without roadways, our society and our way of life can simply not be.  Suburbs would not exist due to the fact that the majority of jobs are held in large metropolitan areas; our economy could not function.  In short, the people lack the choice not to use the roadways, therefore inhibiting their ability to properly opt-out of the agreement.

If the roadways are in the hands of a private firm and the product is not satisfactory, then there is very little, if anything, that the public can do about it.  Yet, if the roadways remain in the hands of the federal government and the product continues to remain unsatisfactory, the legislators responsible for the poor quality of the roads will be held accountable; their jobs in danger due to the almighty power of democracy.      

I’m not against privatization.  As a matter of fact, I agree with privatizing several areas of government.  Yet, the one thing that the government provides that the private sector does not in terms of necessary public goods is checks and balances.  So when the state and local government willingly relinquish their control of our roadways to the private sector, are we privatizing the roadways or is the government outsourcing their responsibility?  If we begin by privatizing the roadways, then what will we privatize next?  The military?  Waaaaait a minute…

….welcomed genius

“Government should take care of those in America who cannot take care of themselves…I’m for government carrying out those responsibilities that otherwise can’t be exercised by the individuals and the states…that’s the founding principles of our country.”

It seems that Mr. McCain has a very skewed view of the founding principles of our country.  Last time I checked, our government was formed to protect the liberty and security of its citizens, not to “take care of” anybody or anything.  To address the second part of his statement, I can’t think of ONE responsibility that the individual citizens of this country and the states couldn’t handle by themselves outside of natural disaster relief and defending our national borders (which, coincidentally, is an issue that John McCain doesn’t believe in doing even at the federal level).

McCain has never been a limited government conservative, I’m fully aware of that.  Hesitantly, I was able to support him despite his campaign finance reform that trampled our First Amendment rights, his support of giving amnesty to illegal immigrants that break our laws and threaten the very security of our country, and his support of a hegemonic American empire that has jeopardized our foreign integrity and international reputation.

Yet, for some reason, hearing John McCain say those words really did it for me.  I guess you have to draw the line somewhere.

To hear the full interview with John McCain, click here.

Hess’ article is written as a libertarian manifesto of sorts, distinguishing old politics from new by advocating traditional libertarian positions such as a voluntary military draft, opposition to the war on drugs, and a strict defense of pure, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism.  He accurately and wonderfully describes the libertarian movement as a “civil rights movement,” in that it “seeks civil liberties for everyone” and “builds diversified power to be protected against government.”

While Hess is able to clearly espouse his viewpoints by providing compelling arguments, his unwavering libertarian philosophy quickly descends into an idealized form of anarcho-capitalism.

Hess naively discusses the future stability and survival of the nation-state, going so far as to say that liberals and conservatives alike share the common belief that nations “really mean something” and both ascribe to the “magical creation of communities of men that require sovereignty and sanction.”  Furthermore, sounding like an international studies undergraduate at a liberal arts college, Hess claims that neither liberals nor conservatives can bear the thought of “giving up government and going it alone as residents of a planet rather than a country.”  That’s right…break out the Che t-shirts.

Hess goes on to ask the question: “Will men continue to submit to rule by politics, which has always meant the power of some men over other men, or are we ready to go it alone socially, in communities of volunteerism, in a world more economic and cultural than political, just as so many now are prepared to go it alone metaphysically in a world more of reason than religion?” Furthermore, Hess essentially maintains the belief that every community should be “one of volunteerism to the extent that the community lives for and through it’s own people and does not force others to pay its bills.”  In Locke’s “state of nature,” this theory may hold up.  In reality, it is literally impossible for two major reasons:

1.) Government has gotten so big and the American public has become so reliant on its services that limited government advocates can only slow down it’s growth as opposed to actually repealing its meddlesome laws; and
2.) However large or small they shall be, it is the nature of man to form communities.  Within these communities, there naturally tends to arise a leader.

Man can never fully escape at least some form of minimalist governance.  Hess’s ideal community can simply never be.

I do agree with Hess, to a certain extent, that yes, communities should remain ones of volunteerism.  All too often, as a nation, we willingly sacrifice our state sovereignty at the expense of getting things done “faster” and more “efficiently,” preferring instead to confide in an intrusive federal government as opposed to raising the funds through a private charity or local community action.  However, Hess takes his viewpoint to another level, essentially arguing in favor of a collapse of the current system of sovereign states, instead opting for a community of self-sovereignty.  My argument is that self-sovereignty can still be maintained under a citizen-oriented democracy with provisions in place that give its citizens a voice and the ability to reform.

The fact that libertarians maintain a well-deserved skepticism towards government does not mean that government cannot be helpful in our cause for liberty and individual freedom.  The relationship between the citizenry and the government is a social contract in which the federal government is established to protect our liberty, our freedom, and our lives.  If the government is not fulfilling its obligation to it’s citizens (which may be argued is the case today), then the citizen has the choice to either reform their federal government or to opt out of the contract, that is, to emigrate to another country.  Hess takes his viewpoint one-step further in that he advocates leaving the fold altogether.  This is, in relation to the federalist system of the United States, an anti-federalist position in the sense that he is negating the contract between the states (the community) and the federal government.

Perhaps Thomas Paine most accurately describes man’s relationship with his government: “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”  Whether or not you believe government is evil, the unrelenting truth is that we have to work within the system as opposed to outside of it.  As libertarians, classical liberals, paleoconservatives, or whatever we call ourselves these days, we often tend to focus too often on the evil as opposed to the necessary.  To the radicals that Hess so intimately appeals, it is not a concession of beliefs or principles to accept that fact that government is here to stay; it is merely the reality of the situation.

Unfortunately, the overwhelming constituency of young voters that eagerly profess their support for Barack Obama far outweighs that of the young voters that actually take the time to educate themselves.  In an article from the Cato Institute, authors Jagadeesh Gokhale and John Samples discuss Barack Obama’s Social Security policy, which severely impairs the very constituency that Barack Obama proudly claims to fortify:

Barack Obama’s policy would impose a 60-percent increase in lifetime Social Security payroll taxes for some young voters. College-educated workers would lose the most under his plan, since their future earnings are likely to remain above Social Security’s maximum taxable limit for most of their careers.

A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that under Social Security’s current rules, young college graduates will contribute about 5 percent of their lifetime earnings. Under Obama’s proposal, that number would rise to almost 9 percent, taking these individuals’ overall lifetime tax rate from 45 percent to 49 percent. By voting for Obama, a 22-year-old young college graduate earning $40,000 per year today would be opting to surrender an additional 4 percent of his lifetime earnings to the Social Security administration - and may get no benefits in return.

Put another way, Obama is proposing to significantly reduce the economic value of the college degrees his young supporters are struggling to attain and pay for. He is also reducing the incentives of his young supporters to stay in school even after graduating from college. By proposing higher payroll taxes, Obama proposes reducing or eliminating the value of those additional years of education.

It’s pathetic to see a presidential candidate hanging his youthful supporters out to dry at the expense of furthering his own political ambition.  I, for one, am not inspired.

The question is: why isn’t the Republican Party of today talking about truly limiting the size of the federal government?  The reason is that they can’t.  The same substantial limited government platform that helped elect a Republican majority in 1994 has suddenly transformed into indecorous, unsolicited political rhetoric used to help elect Republican majorities for five consecutive election cycles.  And what legislative accomplishments do the Republicans have to show for it?  Should the Republican Party return to a platform of individual liberty and personal responsibility, why should we believe them?

Today, once Republican issues such as personal and fiscal responsibility, states’ rights, and term limits are being substituted with social issues such as abortion rights, homosexual marriage, and an unhealthy infatuation with tax cuts sprinkled about, representing the sole remnants of a Republican Party that once cared about limited government.  But hey, everyone loves tax cuts, right?

In a recent article in The Guardian, Clint Eastwood was quoted saying:

I mean, I’ve always been a libertarian. Leave everybody alone. Let everybody else do what they want. Just stay out of everybody else’s hair. So I believe in that value of smaller government. Give politicians power and all of a sudden they’ll misuse it on ya.

Well said, Mr. Eastwood.

The legacy of Reagan has far surpassed the actual legislative accomplishments of his presidency. Unfortunately for us, legacy often results in inimitable comparison. In an attempt to garner political support, Republican candidates shamelessly profess their Reagan-esque brand of conservatism to susceptible voters, usually resulting in a crowd reaction similar to a small puppy begging for a treat. The biggest offender of “Reagan-name-dropping” is Governor Mitt Romney, whose 2008 presidential stump speech references Ronald Reagan more often than Mr. Spock references logic in a one-hour long episode of Star Trek. Governor Romney was certainly not the only Republican to do so.

While the Ronald Reagan love affair is sure to carry on without contrition, it might be best if Republican candidates focus on their own personal record of public service as opposed to consistently referencing Reagan’s. For the sake of future Republican primaries, it’s time to move on.

H/T: Nicky Cheese