Steven Greenhut, Orange County Register columnist and Friend of Liberty, wrote a column for Independence Day that was less than completely reverential toward our Gargantuan Imperial Military. Chip Hanlon, writing in Red County, took off after Greenhut, viciously smearing him, libertarians in general, and incredibly but oh-so-predictably Ron Paul.
Scores of commenters wrote back defending Greenhut, so my addition was probably piling on, but I really like it as a statement of Liberty;
Does Chip Even Read What He Writes?
What you write, repeatedly, is that libertarians (and by implication, incredibly, Ron Paul) are all kooks, because sometimes they make statements that are at odds with your well-entrenched beliefs. You even pull quotes out of context that seem to support your position, but you have made absolutely NO attempt to understand, much less attempt to honestly and intelligently refute them. Your debate techniques are the same ones used by all but one of the Republican candidates, including the eventual nominee.
You see where that has got us. Ron Paul told us all in the debates that if the Republican Party didn’t get serious about reversing the Bush welfare-warfare-torture- spying state, and cutting back on spending and empire, we were not only going down to defeat in November, but that the party would subsequently self-destruct. You don’t have to be crazy to see and understand that he was 100% right.
Look, I accept that not everyone is ready to keep peeling away at the onion of government. Over my political life’s journey, I have been at first shocked by many principled libertarian positions. Then, after mulling them over, I often come to see that in many instances (e.g., drug prohibition, gay marriage, pre-emptive war, central and fractional reserve banks, taxes, governmment spying), and putting aside my merely personal feelings, I have come to understand that the libertarian position logically and morally flows from the fundamental principle of freedom. The libertarian non-aggression axiom is the purest expression of the ideals, if not always the actions of the founders.
A standing military, particularly one as aggressive and imperial as ours, would absolutely shock and dismay many of them. Steve Greenhut isn’t speaking a Republican heresy, he is simply stating his (in my view correct) opinion that the military establishment is out of political, strategic and financial control, and needs, not to be lauded for its unconstitutional size and scope, but rather reined in, hard. Any honest person, who takes a look at the trail of wreckage left behind by the US military over the past, well, century or two, has to see this.
What we need in this country is a return to the ideals of the founders, minus the bigotry. What we need is a DRASTICALLY smaller government.
What we need is Liberty.
Bill Bonner Throws Out A Shocking Bailout number
From Wednesday’s Daily Reckoning;