Blog 98 | The Libertarian Institute

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Blame Mexico? Blame Neocons! Blame Big Pharma! Blame the USA!

by Jeffrey Wernick | Mar 23, 2023 | Blog

ABC News: If fentanyl is so deadly, why do drug dealers use it to lace illicit drugs?

I have an alternative explanation. America has been fighting endless wars almost the entire century. Many have come home from these never-ending wars with injuries and pains. Doctors got them addicted. The prescriptions often expired but not the pain. So the first drug dealers who created the addictions were neoconservatives who have sent so many to wars of choice that never end and it is dubious that we are safer but it is indisputable that we are now burdened by a much heavier debt burden in addition to the ordinary burdens of life. Then doctors in cooperation with big pharma. After having created the need and the addiction, so production increases to meet the soaring demand. Government created the demand. Then withdrew supply. So who really created the problem?

And with respect to Mexico, really, what should we expect? Our demand for drugs in the USA is probably a larger market than the GDP of Mexico. We are both narco-states. We demand. They supply. Global supply chain. And the USA must have extensive distribution networks. We expect Mexico to cut off supply and say they are a corrupt narco-state. Why can’t we choke off distribution? Maybe we are also a corrupt narco-state?

Mexico supplies the fentanyl demanded by Americans. America provides the weapons and ammunition for the Mexican drug cartels.

The money the drug cartels use to buy Mexican politicians, probably USA politicians and American weapons comes from the U.S. dollars they receive selling to Americans.

The answer is not invading Mexico. We need to stop blaming others for our own problems. Stop the endless wars. Legalize drugs. Legalization will alter incentives. Create competition. And producers will, unless government also grants them immunity, will be subject to product liability. So maybe instead of being addictive and deadly it will become addictive and safe or, at least, much safer. And we can add this to the list of the many addictions Americans have.

And maybe, just maybe, if our government changed its messaging from war and fear to hope and peace, Americans would have less addictions. The cause of our national mental health problems is government! And what would best serve Americans is immunity, a vaccine, against government. Government is the disease! Government is the most deadly disease!

This blog was originally featured at KryptoAnarchy.com and is republished with permission.

My Testimony Before the Maine State Senate

by Scott Horton | Mar 20, 2023 | Blog

In support of Ld 1054, Defend the Guard legislation:

Thank you all so much for the opportunity to testify before your committee today.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the beginning of Iraq War II.

The consensus now is that we should not have done it. Iraq was not manufacturing unconventional weapons and was not in league with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda.

Many representatives and senators from that time have excused themselves for voting for this disastrous war by claiming that they did not vote for war at all, but for authorization to let President Bush decide whether to launch one.

This war would not have happened if Congress had insisted on their Constitutional obligation to declare war.

Rep Ron Paul introduced a declaration of war in the foreign affairs committee. He of course voted against it and urged his colleagues too as well. But he was challenging them to take responsibility for their decision instead of delegating it to the president. Chairman Dennis Hastert told him “We don’t go by that part of the Constitution anymore. It’s an anachronism.”

Hastert might have cited the UN Charter there, but it does not supersede the US Constitution and Bush did not get a resolution authorizing the war from the UN Security Council either.

The simple fact is that if Congress had been forced by the people and the states to declare war if they wanted one, Iraq War II would never have happened. That means there would have been no war in Libya, Syria or Yemen either, as they were all consequences of the war in Iraq.

More than two million people have been killed. Ten trillion dollars have been wasted. The conservatives now agree with the progressives: None of it should ever have happened.

If only a few states had had Defend the Guard legislation at the time, it would not have.

By passing this measure now, you can help to stop the next unnecessary war.

This is the patriotic thing to do. That is why, as you heard, the American Legion supports it. Frankly this should not even be controversial at all. The US Constitution is the law. Congress is in defiance of it. They must be made to obey the charter which delegates authority to them in the first place.

The men who have testified before you today have given everything they have, including their best friends, in service to their oath to that Constitution. I know it means everything to them.

Thank you.

These Iraq War Supporters Are Still in Congress

by Hunter DeRensis | Mar 18, 2023 | Blog, Foreign Policy, Politics

On March 19, 2003 the United States began its military invasion of Iraq. The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq passed Congress in October 2002, with 296 congressmen and 77 senators voting in favor of giving President George W. Bush carte blanche authority to decide if and when to go to war.

Twenty years later, this is a list of members of Congress who voted for the AUMF and are still in office.

There are sixteen congressmen, including nine Republicans and seven Democrats.

Ken Calvert (R-CA)
Darrell Issa (R-CA)
Mike Simpson (R-ID)
Hal Rogers (R-KY)
Sam Graves (R-MO)
Chris Smith (R-NJ)
Frank Lucas (R-OK)
Joe Wilson (R-SC)
Kay Granger (R-TX)
Sanford Bishop (D-GA)
Steny Hoyer (D-MD)
Stephen Lynch (D-MA)
Bill Pascrell (D-NJ)
Adam Schiff (D-CA)
Brad Sherman (D-CA)
Adam Smith (D-WA)

There are ten senators, including five Republicans and five Democrats.

Susan Collins (R-ME)
Mike Crapo (R-ID)
Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Tom Carper (D-DE)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
Ed Markey (D-MA)¹

These politicians voted for arguably the most unnecessary foreign policy blunder in United States history and incurred no electoral repercussions.

Laci Green is Wrong: Democratic Competition vs. Free Market Competition

by Keith Knight | Mar 17, 2023 | Blog

In environments where there’s a lot of competition, people tend to lie out their ass and you can apply this to any competitive situation.

Take capitalism. As industrialization took full effect, the Federal Government had to interfere because there was so much false advertising.

– Laci Green

The concept of “unregulated dog-eat-dog competition” is frequently attributed to capitalism even though it applies more so to democracy.

Democracy, also known as Mob Rule by the Ignorant, involves people competing for who gets to coercively rule over everyone else, while the free market competes to better serve customers. Huge companies like Myspace, Sears, and Blockbuster, have gone out of business because consumers voluntarily chose to spend their money elsewhere. Politicians on the other hand can get replaced, but citizens have no legally recognized right to opt out of funding a government which they don’t find value in.

Imagine such a scam in any other scenario: “Amazon get’s to take 35% of your income every year and they can jail you for not obeying their arbitrary rules and regulations. However there is nothing to fear because every four years you get a 1 in 150,000,000 vote in who gets to be the CEO of Amazon!”

In a democracy, voters and politicians are constantly in competition for who gets to sit on the throne. Not only is there competition between Democrats and Republicans, but there is competition within each party for status. Every Congressional and Presidential debate is simply a competition for who can be the best demagogue.

Ms. Green apparently believes people should have the right to vote in elections but should NOT have the right to buy whatever they want because the Federal Government has to first make sure there isn’t “false advertising”. Notice Green says they “had to interfere” as if their hands were tied and they didn’t jump at the chance to control the behavior of others. This is no different than saying “High IQ people have to coercively interfere in the lives of low IQ people to protect them.” Progressivism continues to be nothing more than domestic imperialism.

Politicians, the biggest false advertisers in society, protect us from false advertising. Yes, and OJ Simpson protects us from bad marriages.

Both democracy and the free market involve competition. Market competition is preferable to democratic competition since it allows people to voluntarily opt out of funding things they do not value.

Empower the Workers: Decriminalize Economic Activity Between Consenting Adults

by Keith Knight | Mar 15, 2023 | Blog

The most reliable and effective protection for most workers is provided by the existence of many employers. As we have seen, a person who has only one possible employer has little or no protection. The employers who protect a worker are those who would like to hire him. Their demand for his services makes it in the self-interest of his own employer to pay him the full value of his work. If his own employer doesn’t, someone else may be ready to do so. Competition for his services—that is the worker’s real protection.

– Milton Friedman, Free to Choose

Chris Rock’s New Special Exposes His Political Ignorance

by Keith Knight | Mar 8, 2023 | Blog

A common claim among Democrats is that, “It’s not that people don’t want to be educated, they just haven’t been given the opportunity, thus government spending on education needs to increase.”

If there were ever a group of people capable of “educating” themselves it would be American celebrities.

Yet it seems as though there is a secret contest among them to see who could be the most historically, economically, and philosophically illiterate.

The most recent example comes from Chris Rock’s “Selective Outrage” Netflix special where he says, “It’s the Royal Family…they invented colonialism.”

Here is a brief list of empires who engaged in Colonialism before the Royal Family did:

Marhasi Empire
Islamic Empires
Akkadian Empire
Hittite empire
Assyrian Empire
Roman Empire
Babylonian Empire
Persian Empire
Shang Dynasty
Egyptian Empire
Zhou Dynasty
Macedonian Empire
Qin Dynasty
Han Dynasty
Armenian Empire
Xin Dynasty
Gallic Empire
Hunnic Empire
Latin Empire
Mongol Empire

Other examples from Rock’s “Selective Outrage”:

January 6th

“You see the Capitol riots? White men trying to overthrow the government, that they run!” – Chris Rock

It does not occur to the Social Justice Race Essentialist mind that people who are the same race (and gender) have differing ideas on what is just or unjust. Just because two people are of the same race and gender, it in no way means the person (or group) with power is acting on behalf of those who share their gender or race. It’s akin to saying: “How did a war occur in China between Mao’s Communists and Chiang’s Nationalists? They were all Chinese! How was there a Russian Civil War between Reds and Whites? They were all Russian!”

Ukraine

“America’s in horrible shape. We got it worse, than Ukraine. Yeah I said it…Ukraine is united, and America is clearly divided.” – Chris Rock

I guess after Rock researched the stark contrast between Ukrainian separatists in the Donbas supporting Viktor Yanukovych and those in 2014 supporting Petro Poroshenko leading to an eight-year civil war killing 14,000 people, Rock came to the conclusion that like White men, all Ukrainians are on the same page.

I was not aware that Volodymyr Zelenskyy was on the same page with the people who he enslaved via conscription to fight in his military, the political parties he banned, and the media he nationalized.

Jim Crow

Rock makes a great point at the end about the evils of Jim Crow Laws which forbid Blacks from seeing White dentists. It’s pure evil for a third party to forcibly restrict two consenting parties from engaging in a mutually beneficial voluntary economic exchange. This is the central goal of the Libertarian Institute, and on this issue we stand firmly with Chris Rock!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

War and Delusion: A Critical Examination

by Laurie Calhoun | Mar 7, 2023 | Blog, Foreign Policy

In this episode of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast, Alex Bernardo sits down once again with Laurie Calhoun. Laurie is a philosopher, a cultural critic and an author. She is a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute, where she regularly writes articles analyzing war and the military industrial complex. We discuss her 2013 book War and Delusion, a devastating philosophical and empirical critique of the ‘just war’ theory, which posits that there are conditions under which a war can be justly waged. We explore the inconsistencies of the just war theory, the medieval Christian assumptions that undergird it, the ways in which it has been consistently applied to legitimate American foreign policy, and how it has ultimately led us to war in Ukraine.

Media Referenced:
War and Delusion, Laurie Calhoun

Crime and Poverty

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 2, 2023 | Blog, Criminal Justice

“The theory that crime is caused by poverty is not supported by the known facts. The very poor, in fact, tend to be just as law-abiding as the rich, and perhaps more so. To argue otherwise is to libel multitudes of people who keep to decency under severe difficulties, and in the face of constant temptation.”

—H. L. Mencken, Minority Report: H. L. Mencken’s Notebooks, 1956