Posted on By: Fred

To Get Ron Paul’s Insanity, You Have To Understand Libertarianism

To “get” Ron Paul you have to understand libertarianism — an ism every bit as delusional as Marxism. The National Libertarian Party, which first ran a presidential candidate in 1972, hasn’t had many wins — electing 4 state legislators in as many decades, as well as a planning commissioner here and an alderman there. Ron Paul is its greatest success.

The Texas congressman is far and away the most prominent proponent of what I like to call rightwing utopianism. Libertarianism is to authentic conservatism what Barack Obama is to 19th century liberalism.

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Posted on By: Fred

Vaclav Havel (1936-2011), RIP

Vaclav Havel, who became the first Czech president after leading the bloodless Velvet Revolution against communist rule, died yesterday aged 75.

The dissident playwright was instrumental in opening the door to democracy in Eastern Europe by loosening the Soviet grip.

Tributes flooded in from world leaders who hailed him as ‘the greatest European of our age’.

Havel was invited by Margaret Thatcher to 10 Downing Street during his first official visit to the UK after the collapse of communism in 1989.

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Posted on By: Fred

They Mean Well. Really?

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why conservative pundits, even such stalwarts as Rush Limbaugh, when discussing the virtually inexhaustible supply of liberal follies and blunders, hasten to express their confidence that the perpetrators are “well-intentioned.” Why do conservatives hew mindlessly to the conventional line that far-left radicals are necessarily high-minded and motivated by the best of intentions?

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Posted on By: Fred

Craving Another Great Depression

Pushing his agenda for higher taxes on “the rich,” President Obama kicked off his December 6 speech in Kansas by saying his Kansas grandparents “shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over the Great Depression.”

In fact, the 1929 stock market crash turned into the long-running Great Depression because the counterproductive soak-the-rich policies of the federal government hadn’t “triumphed” in reversing the downturn.

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Posted on By: Fred

Five Big Lies in Obama’s Economic Fairness Speech

Election ’12: One thing is certainly true about President Obama — no matter how many times people point out the falsehoods in his speeches, he just keeps making them. Case in point: his latest “economic fairness” address.

In that speech Tuesday, Obama once again tried to build a case for his liberal, big-spending, tax-hiking, regulatory agenda. But as with so many of his past appeals, Obama’s argument rests on a pile of untruths. Among the most glaring:

• Tax cuts and deregulation have “never worked” to grow the economy. There’s so much evidence to disprove this claim, it’s hard to know where to start. But let’s begin with the fact that countries with greater economic freedom — lower taxes, less government, sound money, free trade — consistently produce greater overall prosperity

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Posted on By: Fred

Bloomberg’s Broken Windows

In 1982, two social scientists—George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson—published an article in the Atlantic in which they argued that a city window left broken is an invitation to further disorder. Their message was as simple as it was unconventional. Sweat the small stuff (graffiti, aggressive panhandling, petty crime) and you’ll stop problems before they grow bigger.

In the three decades since, mayors and police chiefs across America have transformed their cities by taking the broken-window message to heart, especially in New York. Now Occupy Wall Street has taken a high-profile part of Manhattan and turned it into an anarchist campground worse than the Tompkins Square Park of the 1980s, when it stood for the worst of New York—encampments of the homeless and a haven for drug dealing. The OWS protesters seem to have no fear of Michael Bloomberg: A sign at one entryway warns hizzoner that if he tries to interfere, he will be the one arrested.

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Posted on By: Fred

Cheer-up, America! The Case for American Optimism

Look for moments of maximum pessimism. To the legendary value investor Sir John Templeton, this was the secret to learning how to buy low and sell high.

In recent months, I’ve been feeling the pessimism in a big way. You probably have too. Watching the scroll of headlines on cable news channels this summer, I thought I was in an overdone disaster film. Riots break out across the globe, screamed a Drudge headline. Markets were crashing. An earthquake cracked the Washington Monument. In my hands, Mark Steyn’s new book After America — a rollicking read that makes a strong case that we should prepare for the apocalypse — arrived perfectly timed with the S&P’s downgrade of the United States’ credit rating. The end, surely, seems nigh.

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Posted on By: Fred

Christie gets it wrong on OWS and Tea Party

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s attempt to liken Occupy Wall Street protesters to Tea Party activists demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of both movements.

In a video from a town hall meeting, which my colleague Charlie Spiering posted below, Christie responds to a question on the Wall Street protests by arguing that, “I think if you look at the Occupy Wall Street folks and the Tea Party folks, that they come from the same perspective, they just have different solutions. ”

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