Libertarian Commentary on the News, #15-03C: The “elite”

Posted on 2015-01-22 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Good morning!  Aren’t the elites wonderful?  Don’t they love us and keep us safe and happy and watch out for our future?  That is why we have news stories like these.

The huge Davos, Switzerland meeting of the elite (the “World Economic Forum) to “solve” global warming has an interesting side effect: 1700 private jets will fly in to bring their illustrious chairwarmers to press the flesh and moan about how carbon (and other) emissions are destroying the world as we know it.  Right. I love what the commentator at Front Page Magazine had to say: “I’m sure these will be non-polluting private jets powered by carbon offsets and unicorn magic. They will not in any way add to the heat death of the earth. Unlike you, toting your groceries home in a plastic bag in the back on an SUV.” Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, #15-03B: This and that

Posted on 2015-01-21 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Good morning: a short workweek for some people, but not us – holidays used to be much more important, when they meant something worth celebrating.

For anyone who is interested, I treated myself by NOT listening to the “State of the Union” advert for the Fuehrer’s next year squatting in the White House.  I did note that his “success rating” of 40% is better only than Gerald Ford’s in the past fifty years.  So it probably isn’t going to matter much anyway – and that is a good thing.  I expect to enjoy the political cartoons about this “grand event” today, though.

Speaking of cartoons, the Israeli and Brit governments are both upset with a political cartoon in the London Sunday Times, and while Israel is only demanding an apology, someone in Whitehall is seeking “retaliation,” as apparently free speech is only a very limited right.  While not as gross or poorly drawn as the typical Charlie Hebdo cartoon, it is still pretty bad.  I’d be embarrassed to admit I drew OR read the thing, if I were in office.  But (of course) once more, hypocrisy rules. Continue reading →

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When Civics isn’t Civil

Posted on 2015-01-20 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Arizona and North Dakota just passed laws requiring that candidates for high school diplomas pass a “civics” examination based on the citizenship test required of immigrants seeking to become US citizens.  These laws are being pushed in at least fifteen other states, mostly by an affiliate of the Joe Foss Institute, called the Civics Education Initiative, which has the citizenship test (or some version of it) on its website.

The purpose of the test is ” to ensure all students are taught basic civics about how our government works, and who we are as a nation…things every student must learn to be ready for active, engaged citizenship.” It is a noble purpose, if you assume that despite its failures, government is necessary or at least inevitable. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, #15-03A: More hypocrisy

Posted on 2015-01-20 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

It is probably fitting to talk more about hypocrisy in government and public life on “Martin Luther King, Jr.” Memorial Day.  Only in America could we celebrate the life of a Communist and call him a peace-loving man, a man whose entire public life was built on racism who passed as a non-racist and is admired for it, a man who claimed to be a man of God and could not keep his pants zipped up.  National Hypocrites’ Day, anyone?

On to news related to hypocrisy: Continue reading →

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Duke University and the New Normal – Action and Reaction

Posted on 2015-01-19 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

Huh?

Duke University will broadcast Muslim call to prayer across campus. That was Thursday’s headline, but Friday’s was different: Duke drops Chapel Muslim call to prayer. What does NOT make sense is the Daily Beast’s claim that Franklin Graham’s tweet (actually a Facebook posting) was “hateful.”  Read it and decide for yourself: ““As Christianity is being excluded from the public square and followers of Islam are raping, butchering and beheading Christians, Jews and anyone who doesn’t submit to their Sharia Islamic law, Duke is promoting this in the name of religious pluralism.”  If the truth is “hateful,” then I guess he’s being hateful.

What ALSO doesn’t make sense is that Duke explained their reason for dropping the plan was “credible concerns about safety and security…”  They didn’t explain, but we can look at several possibilities: Continue reading →

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Don’t Sit There Complaining… Do Something!

Posted on 2015-01-17 by MamaLiberty

By MamaLiberty

I have a headache… Reading about the gun grabbers, their collaborators and apologists in Washington State last week, and in Texas – not to mention Colorado, Nevada and California over the last few months. Compromise artists like Alan Gottlieb, occasional outbursts of marginally useful to downright nutty OC demonstrations, and the ongoing push/pull of public opinion, usually without much clear reasoning or understanding of the facts… The gun grabber biased media is the Chinese water torture of the decade.

Personally, I consider attempts to deal with this via politics, demonstrations, letters to the editor and so forth to be a waste of time, even if not directly counterproductive. Each person has to do what they think is best, obviously, but if you are not inclined to political games like that, don’t let anyone tell you that you those are the only things you can do to promote or protect your rights.  Nothing could be farther from the truth. Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, #15-02F: Strange goings on

Posted on 2015-01-17 by TPOL Nathan

Good morning!

Just a short discussion of a few news stories for this weekend.  Some strange things are happening.

Economic chaos? On Thursday, the Swiss bankers stopped trying to keep a cap on the value of the Swiss Franc, relative to the Euro, and the value of the Franc soared against the euro (and the dollar), triggering a major economic blow to the Swiss economy but benefiting hundreds of thousands of Swiss people who live at home but work in other countries, and ending the hemorrhaging of Swiss banks only to the detriment of Swiss industry and trade.  I think this may be a consequence (one of several) of the Swiss election several weeks ago, in which they decided NOT to require that banks return to the old system of a gold-backed Franc and increase their gold reserves.  It could trigger much greater damage to the economy of the EuroZone, and is already pushing the dollar to new highs against the Euro.  I don’t think anyone can really predict the impact over the next several months.  I do note that Swiss interest rates are officially “insane” – you must pay 0.75 percent for the “privilege” of storing your money in a Swiss bank now! Continue reading →

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, #15-02E: Fear

Posted on 2015-01-16 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

A lot of fear floating around these days.  A lot of stories relate to that common problem.  We all have fears, and there is nothing wrong with that: it is when we let our fears drive our actions, when we lack the courage to deal with our fear and overcome it, that there is a problem, and that seems the situation in most of these stories.

Is the blue flu over? The NYPD says arrests, tickets picking up again after slowdown.  Mama Liberty: It will be interesting to see if the folks in NYC even notice… or what they do about it if so. Sadly, I fear that the people of the City have not enjoyed their relative freedom long enough to get too upset about again losing it… and their fears will rule them. Continue reading →

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The evils of natural gas

Posted on 2015-01-16 by TPOL Nathan

By Nathan Barton

You have a nice warm house.  That is a luxury that very few people had for millennia, at least if they didn’t live in the tropics or have servants. Used to be that people EXPECTED the interior of their houses to be at or below freezing on a winter morning. Older children often had the horrible chore of getting the fire started, putting on the wood or the coal or – nasty: the buffalo chips – in the stove or the fireplace to warm the place up.  Then they invented the automatic-feeding (supposedly) coal furnace, which could still be a VERY unpleasant thing to keep running (few people today in the Fifty States have ever had to deal with one of those awful things).

But then, like with air conditioning (at the other end of the human temperature scale), along came natural gas and its sister propane, and cousin fuel oil. Life changed, for the better, in a LOT of ways. Continue reading →

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Black is White (Was: Libertarian Commentary on the News, #15-02D)

Posted on 2015-01-15 by TPOL Nathan

by Nathan Barton

In a separate commentary, I wrote about the exposure of hypocrisy made possible by the Paris Massacre and its aftermath.  But I see that I was premature in understanding just HOW disgusting the aftermath can get.  On Monday the 12th, the White House Press Secretary had the unmitigated gall to stand up and proclaim that black is white, evil is good, and right is wrong.  Let me quote from the Daily Caller, which in turn quotes this Goebbels of the 21st Century speaking for the Fuehrer.  “ President Barack Obama has a moral responsibility to push back on the nation’s journalism community when it is planning to publish anti-jihadi articles that might cause a jihadi attack against the nation’s defense forces, the White House’s press secretary said Jan. 12. “The president … will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform” whenever journalists’ work may provoke jihadist attacks, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at the White House’s daily briefing.” Continue reading →

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