United Liberty

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States

The famous line, uttered by our nation’s only Catholic president on a cold January day in 1961, is often used by liberals and conservatives alike as rallying cry for public service…and larger government. Citizens should sacrifice, it is said, for the greater welfare of their nation and fellow countrymen, and the government should be there as a parent to watch over us. The great Milton Friedman wrote in the introduction to his 1962 edition of Capitalism and Freedom (h/t Michael Cannon of Cato):

After being out of the race for the Republican nomination for a few weeks, Rick Santorum, who came out of nowhere as the “conservative” alternative, has finally decided to endorse Mitt Romney — or at least defeating Barack Obama:

Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum endorsed his one-time fierce rival Mitt Romney on Monday, a move that may help the party’s presumptive White House nominee win over religious conservatives.

Santorum said in an unusual late-night statement that the two have differences, but that he came away from a meeting with the ex-Massachusetts governor impressed with Romney’s “deep understanding” of economic and family issues central to the campaign.

“Above all else, we both agree that President (Barack) Obama must be defeated. The task will not be easy. It will require all hands on deck if our nominee is to be victorious,” Santorum said.

“Governor Romney will be that nominee and he has my endorsement and support to win this the most critical election of our lifetime,” he said in the statement, which was emailed to supporters.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be news, but Santorum remained silent for so long that some observers were questioning his intentions. In the weeks before his exit from the race, Santorum was looked at as the frontunner for the nomination in 2016, that’s assuming Romney doesn’t defeat Obama. And while he may still be formidable, many Republicans are still bothered by the fact that it took him so long to read the writing on the wall.

Traditionally Conservative institutions like the New Republic, Fox News, Cato Institute, American Interest, and many more are being subsumed by the leftist creep of socialism. This is more, than just mere observation. Main editors at the New Republic are openly ‘Obama for America’ contributors and backers on their Facebook subscription sites.

Fox News has gotten monetary contributions, and is; heavily backed by billionaire investor George Soros (who also supports Occupy Wall Street movements throughout the US).

Stalwart think-tanks like the Cato Institute are changing hands, covertly, because main-stream establishment parties like the GOP, DNC are not content with ‘national’ philosophic currents. Even the beatdown ultra conservative American Interest magazine, is starting to run articles by Harvard liberal pundits like Fareed Zakaria, among others.

To me, these development are frightening. Pres. Obama was no joke when he announced in 2008 during his Chicago platform, that he wanted “to fundamentally transform America.”

Capitalism is not failing, never has, never will. But somehow, these fringe liberals, European socialists and ‘intellectuals’ are coming around on some shape of footing: I dare claim, that they are actually finding their warstance against the United States.

Make no mistake, while transformations are taking place; they are always hardest to pin-point, to frame. But they are happening. Like a plains-storm gathering.

What the left actually do, and what they are planning; go together symbiotically.

Americans are to be supplanted as guarantors of freedom around the world; and be replaced with ‘multilateral’ bodies, assemblies and parliamentary bodies, that can then be filled with all sorts of non-American interests: the UN, NATO, ASEAN, the EU, Sahel Zone, inmates, criminals for a puppet-Global Government.

Have you ever wondered why other people don’t  have the same burning desire within that you have to want to be FREE? I know I have. Its because : FREEDOM IS A LOT LIKE BROCCOLI. (Not just because George W Bush hated them both )

Broccoli is awesome and so is Freedom. Broccoli contains all kinds of great stuff including iron, potassium, magnesium, tons of vitamin C and cancer fighting compounds. Freedom is also great for people. In the last two hundred years or so, more people have enjoyed more wealth and health than all the other people who have ever lived , and its all because of Freedom.

But unfortunately most people will today choose to eat junk food, like doughnuts over eating broccoli; and will vote for Collectivism instead of Freedom.

Why do seemingly rational human beings who know broccoli is good for them choose to eat junk food like doughnuts? The reason why seemingly rational individuals choose junk food is the same reason human beings voluntarily choose to live under ever-increasing amounts of Collectivism.

It all has to do with Time Preference. Every human being on Earth factors in Time Preference when they make a decision, whether its voting for a Collectivist Candidate versus a Freedom Candidate or eating a stalk of broccoli over a box of doughnuts. Time Preference dictates that humans instinctively favor the immediate satisfaction of a need in the now versus the satisfaction of a need in the future.

Bloomberg News tends to be a slightly more left-leaning economic news source. They often mix ‘green energy’, ‘poverty reduction’ and aid for the ‘third world’ into their news pieces. Normally I do not listen too closely, to these liberal Wall Street syndicate news-sayers. Although they have a neat free radio show in the morning, they do not interview enough American investors for my taste. But this last Monday, I was surprised that good news was again being shown.

A roughly half-hour clip, had Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul squaring economic knowledge against a New York Times columnist: big government Kaynesian, Paul Krugman. The moderator left the debate open to its flow, did not meddle with too many specifics and let the Texan politician play with ‘Krusty Krug’ like a voodoo doll. Paul Krugman seemed ill at ease, and frightfully underprepared. Over and again, Krugman tried to drown Paul in bombast, but his facts and claims lacked historical accuracy.

Contender Ron Paul looked sprightly, fresh and well-off to making his best talking points, Krugman couldn’t make him vascillate. One thing that liberals like to do, when talking about economic issues, especially spending and taxation; is set their own agenda. They do this by single-mindedly picking vantage points from the historical record. Revising history and economics for us all, as though what happened before WW2 carries no meaning. Only those out of touch with reality, make the mistake of thinking they could ‘regulate’ the economy, the world, society or anything else.

On this day in 1899, Friedrich August (F.A.) Hayek was born in Vienna, Austria. Over the course of his long life, Hayek, along with others, brought a new way of thinking to economics, challenging statists that sought more debt and spending.

Hayek laid down his economic beliefs in his book, The Road to Serfdom (1944), explaining that the predominant views of the day were essentially fascism. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1974 and was awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.

He went head-to-head against John Maynard Keynes, whose economic theories were anathema to the free market. And while both economists have been gone for some time, we’re are still waging war over their views today. This battle was the focus of two videos put out by Econstories; the first being “Fear the Boom and Bust”:

And the latter being “Fight of the Century,” which focused on the after-effects and failures of economic stimulus and bailouts:

One of the races you should be watching closely this year is the Indiana Senate race. Longtime Senator Dick Lugar is finally getting what appears to be a worthy challenger in a primary election this time around. Lugar has been despised by conservatives for some time, despite the “R” behind his name.

Among other things, Lugar voted to confirm Sotomayor and Kagan to the Supreme Court, has a history of voting to raise the debt ceiling, and voted in favor of the NDAA (indefinite detention of Americans). He was suspected to be supporting SOPA/PIPA (the Internet censorship bills), but he never committed one way or the other. Lack of a spine on that issue didn’t sit well with conservatives, either.

So now he’s in a primary, and it’s a primary he could very well lose. Some recent polling shows challenger Richard Mourdock is in a statistical tie with Lugar while other polling shows Mourdock has a good lead over Lugar. Mourdock wasn’t favored to beat Lugar, but he’s got some things going in his favor in this election.

Anti-Incumbent Sentiment. People still don’t like incumbents, and for the most part, I don’t blame them. Lugar doesn’t have a good history when it comes to his voting record, and Mourdock isn’t shy about pointing that out.

Support from conservative interest groups. The conservative groups see Lugar as being vulnerable this time around, and they’ve put their support behind Mourdock. FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth are two of the big conservative interest groups in Mourdock’s camp.

Gary Johnson has won the Libertarian Party’s nomination for President:

For the second consecutive election cycle the Libertarian Party has nominated a prominent ex-Republican politician as their presidential nominee. Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, won the party’s nomination on the first ballot. Johnson’s opponents, including his debate partner Lee Wrights, trailed far behind.

Johnson is the first former state executive to run for president on the Libertarian line and, arguably, provides the LP with their highest profile candidate since Ron Paul in 1988.

Johnson, you may recall, originally ran for the Republican Party’s nomination but dropped out of that race and left the Republican Party in December after recieving little traction or media coverage, and after being invited to only one of the many debates that were held between May and December of last year. Since then, he has been travellng the country meeting with Libertarian Party state organizations, members, and national officials in pursuit of the LP nomination.

Judging from the first ballot results, it would appear that his efforts were quite successful:

If America truly had a religion, I would argue it would be sports, not Christianity. Collectively, baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and NASCAR command our society’s attention like no other thing in our country. It is also a very unifying force. Sure, we disagree about which team or player is the best, or which sport has the most excitement, but ultimately, at the end of the day, everyone comes back home, has a few drinks, and laughs any serious disagreement off. They don’t let team loyalties determine their friendships.

In that sense, sports may be the polar opposite of politics (and thus, one could argue, our nation’s salvation.) Nearly every blog I see that is oriented exclusively to politics makes an exception for sports, most famously Outside the Beltway, where our own Doug Mataconis writes. Why? Because it is an escape valve, a chance for us to talk about a subject other than the madness that occurs inside the beltway. Just as we need our alone time away from our friends, relatives, even spouses (maybe especially spouses), politicos need something else to talk about, or else the battle for Capitol Hill and the White House will turn into an actual battle, with sabers, rifles, and maybe even some good old fashioned fisticuffs.

For me, as a young twentysomething nerd who plays more Dungeons & Dragons than Madden, it’s a bit odd for me, but I understand it. (And personally, I do very much enjoy short track dirt racing, though it’s hard to find in the DC metro area.) I totally get that people need to tune in to something that involves jerseys that aren’t uniformly red and blue to prevent their noggins from turning into scrambled eggs. It makes perfect sense, even if I’m questioning their choice of sports.

But unfortunately, it appears that may be over.