United Liberty

Scotland holds a very special place in my heart as it always does for anyone who has had the pleasure to travel there.  My wife and I lived in Scotland while I was at the University of Glasgow, and our time spent amongst those charming, funny, witty, spirited people will never be forgotten.  I still enjoy all things Scottish and look forward to my future visits to that amazing country.  It is because of my admiration for both the Scottish people and succession movements in general that I have been closely watching the Scottish independence movement and am eagerly awaiting the upcoming referendum.  I’d love to see a truly free Scotland loosened from the socialist, statist, bureaucratic chains of the United Kingdom.  I get goosebumps at the very thought.

We all know the fighting spirit of William Wallace who proclaimed that the enemies of Scotland may take their lives but never their freedom.  Statism and state-dependency have taken both from today’s Scotland.  As shown on the Drudge Report this week, Mrs. Ruth Davidson of the Tory party recently got into hot water by drawing attention to the fact that nine out of ten Scottish households take more from the government than they pay in.  In her words they are “living off of the patronage of the state.”  This should shame those nine out of ten households, but it won’t.  For the European lefty political class, there is no such thing as shame and they have passed this mentality onto their constituents.

Over the weekend, I wrote a powerful rant on my personal blog about Lew Rockwell and his destructive influence over the liberty movement. I’m not going to lie, it is filled with obscenities and is generally NSFW (though the only image is one of Lew’s face.) I wrote it so…colorfully…because I have been incredibly frustrated with a man who paints himself as the patron saint of libertarianism, the prelate of so-called freedom who is so quick to excommunicate anyone who disagrees with his own idiosyncracies. (I was also inspired by a NFL kicker’s letter to a Maryland state senator over the topic of same-sex marriage…among other things.)

There have been a few who are interested in a less avant-garde takedown of Rockwell, though, one better suited for polite company, and I am only too happy to oblige. I really feel that a man like Rockwell does not deserve such treatment, but I’m in the market of ideas, and I have customers to support.

The item that sent me on a tirade was a blog post on the Lew Rockwell blog calling Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson a “warmonger” because he dared to say thanks to our military. Now you can have legitimate criticisms of the military and their unwavering, blind support from a large number of Americans, but calling Johnson a “warmonger” is too far and uncalled for. But it wasn’t even that; it was that the blog post labeled 9/11 a false flag operation.

In other words, Lew Rockwell’s blog is now the home of 9/11 Truthers. (Or Troofers.)

Yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke held a press conference for financial reporters:

Could more stimulus be on the way?

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke certainly left the option on the table Wednesday, making perfectly clear that he stands ready to do more should the U.S. economy take a turn for the worse.

“In case things get worse, we are prepared to protect the U.S. economy and financial system,” Bernanke told reporters at a press conference.

It was a point he reiterated several times and a sign that many outsiders took to mean the Fed has left the door open on a third round of asset purchases known as quantitative easing, or QE.

“Mr. Bernanke’s press conference surely left few doubts that the Fed will take more aggressive action and renew QE if the economy fails to perform as they expect,” Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics, said in a note to clients.

Meanwhile, University of Pennsylvania Economist Justin Wolfers tweeted: “I read the Fed as saying: One more bad jobs report, and we’ll do more.”

So Ben’s going to go back to the printing press if we have one more disappointing jobs report. He’s going to initiate another round of quantitative easing (QE), which is basically creating money out of thin air. It will be yet another round of quasi-stimulus spending which is basically trying to throw more money at the economy, hoping and praying that it does something. The best name for this kind of economic thinking is “print and pray” economics.

For a group of people who follow the veritable patron saint of Austrian economics on Capitol Hill, the fans of Ron Paul don’t seem to understand the Austrian concept of “malinvestment” very well. Malinvestment, as described by the Mises Wiki, is:

Malinvestment is an investment in wrong lines of production, which inevitably lead to wasted capital and economic losses, subsequently requiring the reallocation of resources to more productive uses. “Wrong” in this sense means “incorrect” or “mistaken” from the point of view of the real long-term needs and demands of the economy, if those needs and demands were expressed with the correct price signals in the free market.

Of course, the concept applies more to commercial dealings than with efforts in the political sphere, but I think it works here too, especially when you regard recent messages from the Ron Paul faithful:

Ok so the Rand endorsement let us all down a lot along with all of the discouraging emails and videos directly from the campaign. I think for the most part we are over the hump if you know what im saying.

Now think… before all of these shenanigans how much did you believe Ron Paul could win! And remember when we realized all the delegates are unbound?! That was amazing and at that point it was the cream of the crop. We were gonna win hands down, romney has no chance in hell.

You remember all those fuzzy feelings right?

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.