“That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it…” ~ Declaration of Independence of the American Colonies, 1776

Dear Federal Government,

Drop dead.

Excuse us. Some may consider such bluntness to be indecorous, but why beat around the bush? In any case, we’ve been around this bush (Bush?) too many times to count already. It’s time to let you know what we really think of you, what we say behind your back, what we whisper to each other when you leave the room.

We hate you. We want you to drop dead. Or, anyway, to go away and never come back. You are not welcome anymore. We have tolerated you — and we emphasize “tolerated” — for a long time, long after whatever romance there may have been was gone. We can pretend no more. You are disgraceful, boorish, nauseating, corrupt, shameful, arrogant, dishonest, self-serving, parasitic, disgusting, hypocritical, and rotten to the core. You have not even one redeeming quality. There is nothing you offer that we want any longer. We’re not even sure what it is we ever saw in you to begin with.

We suppose you can be forgiven if this letter comes as a shock. “Why,” you say, “what do you mean? I still command great respect and inspire widespread adulation. And I still care about you. Isn’t it obvious?”

It’s true that, in public, we often nod our heads and agree with you, even defer or appear to defer to you. But we assure you that this happens not out of respect; rather, it arises merely from the fact that you have a lot of guns and a bad temper. Inside, we are seething and resentful. Inside, we imagine your demise in the most vivid and gratifying of ways. We may fear your irrational and violent behavior, but we manifestly do not respect or agree with you. We don’t love you. We don’t even like you. (See the part about hate, above.)

At any rate, our revulsion toward you has finally come to outweigh any fear we have of you. We refuse to keep our real feelings in for even one more second. We want you gone from our lives. And we mean completely. Vamoose. Go. Die.

Please understand we aren’t here to argue. No special new subsidy, tax break, or privileged “loophole” is going to sway our opinion or make us change our minds about this. We’ve been there, done that, for too many decades to count now. Likewise, your threats are starting to make us yawn and even laugh. You see, we know all your tricks now. We can see through your lies because we’ve heard them all so many times before. We are fully aware of your true nature, and we see that that nature is radioactive evil, wrapped in a tattered blanket of ignorance, foolishness, and stupidity.

Look, we know it’s only a matter of time anyway. Your dimwittedness, greed, fraudulence, and moral bankruptcy are finally starting to catch up to you. Even your former employees admit as much. Do you remember Paul Craig Roberts, one of your past Treasury officials? Today he says of your latest economy-wrecking and warmongering efforts:

“The world has never seen such total mindlessness. Napoleon’s and Hitler’s marches into Russia were rational acts compared to the mindless idiocy of the United States government.”

Mindless idiocy: We could not have said it better ourselves. Wait, yes, we could have, because we would have also mentioned your meanness and malevolence.

Our state governments are starting to feel the same way about you that we do. Many are openly refusing to obey your so-called “REAL ID” attempt at creating a national “your papers, please” regime of Hitlerian proportions. Some are even starting to make noises about the Tenth Amendment, which reiterates that you aren’t allowed to just do anything you feel like doing. (We are not big fans of our state governments either, but at least they don’t start wars, counterfeit our money, and prop up tyrannies across the globe.)

You see? Look in the mirror for once. The emperor not only hasn’t got any clothes, he’s a quadruple amputee demanding that everyone admire his muscular physique. We don’t know whether to laugh at or feel pity for such a pathetic creature.

In conclusion and just so we’re clear: We’re done. Pack up and get out. Better yet, don’t pack — all that stuff belongs to us in the first place. Just get out. And when you finally, mercifully, do kick the bucket, please make sure it is in some place far away from us, where we won’t have to smell the stench of your hideous, rotting corpse.

Signed,

Every Normal Human Being in America and the Rest of the World

David Bardallis [send him mail] hails from the Glorious Sovereign Republic of Michigan (motto: “Never forget we have all the water!”) and blogs at Suds & Soliloquies.

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“Every economist I’ve ever heard of agrees what we need now is significantly more government investment to offset the negative effects of whatever it is that is happening,” Obama said at his Monday press conference. “Accordingly, I and my team of advisors have developed a comprehensive plan that will shore up our financial institutions, put jobless Americans back to work, allow everyone in a house to keep it no matter what, rescue any failing bank or business, provide a hot meal to anyone who is hungry, improve the well being of all citizens, and give a puppy or kitten to every child who wants one.

“But Congress must put ideology aside and act now in a bipartisan manner before some other even worse stuff happens,” he added, wiggling the fingers on both his hands to indicate “scary.”

Details of the plan were presented by Lawrence Summers, Obama’s top economic advisor and one of the plan’s key architects. Using a colorful chart with squiggly lines, Summers estimated that 845 jiggashillion new jobs would be created in the plan’s first year, with another 491 dubbadillion to follow over the next four years.

“Every American will be able to work two, three, four — heck, 10 or 20 jobs if he or she wants to,” said Summers. “And the best part is the income taxes generated from all these new jobs will actually pay for the plan.”

Obama emphasized that not only will all the new spending not impose any additional burdens on the middle class, the plan actually targets tax cuts toward politically favored constituencies and whomever else it seems most expedient to target.

“The American people have spoken,” said Obama. “They demand change, and I promise that I and every one of my former Clinton administration appointees will work hard to deliver that change.” He also said something about hope and sacrifice and believing.

Other highlights of the plan include:

• $43 nurpillion for job training
• $89 bibblydefrillion for community reinvestment
• $505 frappakrillion for infrastructure and public works
• $732 hominavillion for health care and education
• $986 giggitysquillion for Goldman Sachs

Some prominent voices have criticized the plan, however. “It’s a good start, but the president-elect doesn’t go nearly far enough,” Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, Nobel-winning winner of the Nobel Prize in economics wrote today in his New York Times column. “We’re talking about the need for another $344 grillion chillion beebopaloobillion, at the very least, to get this economy moving again. Also, tax cuts for anybody: Ick.”

Congressional reaction was mixed, as House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) vowed to pass the stimulus package “even if I have to go around and push the ‘yes’ button for every member of this chamber myself, and don’t think I won’t” while some senators cautioned that more debate may be needed.

“A schlopparazillion here, a dreedilyhillion there, and pretty soon we’re talking about real money,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

But Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was optimistic about the bill’s passage, noting that the Senate has already adopted legislation increasing the national debt ceiling to $4,000 pigglywigglyjibbityjabbityfrippityfroppitybadaboomillion.

When asked what safeguards would be put in place to ensure that none of the unprecedented $100,000 trazillion gaquillion frijillion was lost to waste, fraud, and abuse, Obama pointed behind the press corps, said “Oh my GOD! LOOK!” then quickly exited the room.

David Bardallis [send him mail] vents his various frustrations on his blog.

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Being a principled nonvoter on Election Day is a little like being a turd in the punchbowl. At least that’s how all the people running around yesterday blissfully participating in the American civic religion of statism viewed it: I’m some sort of a downer, a crank, a loonie, a jerk.

Voting Is Evil

It’s not that I view voting as pointless. Even some active voters admit as much, but they still go through the motions because, “You can’t just do nothing.” (I don’t think not voting is equivalent to doing nothing, but we’ll come back to that.)

No, I don’t vote because I believe voting — and here I am talking particularly about national elections — is a positive evil, a fact that by now should be completely clear but for whatever reason does not seem to be.

Oh, it is possible to get many voters to recognize certain uncomfortable facts about the nature of national politics, such as the often indistinguishable nature of candidates from the major parties (and that there are “major parties”). Some voters seem to understand that large vested interests (Goldman Sachs, for example) play both sides of the fence with political donations, hoping for their state-enabled exploitation to continue uninterrupted, if not to expand. Some voters even get that it’s always the same small club of elites who just swap plum administrative jobs every couple of years, regardless of who wins any particular election. Still others are aware of the stories of vote fraud surrounding the increasingly common Diebold electronic voting gizmos.

To top it all off, everyone at least knows something about the illegal and/or immoral activities of the U.S. government, from systematic kidnapping and torture and unprovoked wars that have slaughtered more than a million people abroad to the establishment of a police state here at home that spies on everyone, suppresses free speech, criminalizes dissent, restricts travel, and bullies and plunders us with abandon.

But even as the proverbial horse is presented directly with the trough, he still usually refuses to drink. In other words, despite knowing all that he knows about the voting process and the nature of what he is supporting, the average voter will not take the next logical step and decline to participate in a game that is not only rigged but that is actively harmful to himself and his fellow human beings. Why?

Voting Is an Exercise in Self-Indulgence and Denial

It’s an interesting question. I can’t read people’s minds nor understand their motives and I don’t pretend to, but one clue is found in the common responses one receives when one insults or impugns the civic religion (sometimes even simply by saying “I don’t vote”):

• “Well, why don’t you go live somewhere else then?”
• “I guess you’d rather we had a dictatorship!”
• “It’s because of people like you that this country is in the mess it is in.”
• “How can you just not care?”
• “Think of all the soldiers who died for your right to vote!”

A careful reading of each of these responses reveals that, whatever its other merits, none has any logical connection to my decision not to vote. This suggests that for many, voting is experienced as an emotional act more than anything else. Their egos are involved at a fundamentally nonrational level. If you mock the civic religion, you are therefore (so he perceives) mocking the voter as a person. For whatever reason, he invests a lot of his own identity in his chosen party or candidate (hence the importance attached to voting for a “winner” and the immediate dismissal of anyone who “doesn’t have a chance”).

But more than that, the emotionally comfortable experience of voting rests on the willful denial of what the U.S. government is and does. Now, it is true there have been and are some governments that are even more hostile to their subjects’ lives and properties than ours is, at present. But this doesn’t change the fact that ours is bad and getting worse, nor that ours presumes to murderously lord it over the entire planet instead of confining itself to one particular region of tyranny.

Many voters will simply consider criticisms of the U.S. government as hyperbole, or as criticisms of the country itself. This is because believing that one can say one is against war, torture, and plunder while voting for all three is much more psychologically reassuring than admitting the inescapable truth, namely, that one’s voluntary assent to a system that promotes institutionalized violence as the way to organizing human affairs is simply shameful.

So I confess to being short with people who presumptuously ask “Did you vote?” or who literally wear their voterdom (“I voted!”) around like a badge of moral superiority. I have trouble hiding my disdain when otherwise intelligent people flaunt their absurd belief that, despite all evidence to the contrary, they have some say in what a government that employs some four million people, 536 of whom are elected every 2-6 years, does.

Is Nonvoting a Form of Surrender?

Some minority of voters are sympathetic to the argument for principled nonvoting, but nevertheless see it as a form of surrender. To answer them, let’s review the (admittedly oversimplified) case for not voting:

Premise 1: The U.S. empire represents a threat to the peace, freedom, security, prosperity, and lives of Americans and of the peoples of the world. (See, e.g.: Iraq War, Afghanistan war, Pakistan war, Democrat and Republican national conventions, Department of Homeland Security, IRS, EPA, FDA, the War on Drugs, etc., etc.)

Premise 2: The people who run the U.S. empire are mainly all the same and have rigged the political game so as to keep their real priorities and policies perpetually out of the hands of voters. (See, e.g.: Wall Street bailout, telecom retroactive immunity to lawsuits, etc.)

Premise 3: Voting not only will not change Premise 1, regardless of who you vote for, but it furnishes the same evil government officials with the legitimacy they need to continue committing their crimes. (See, e.g., such pernicious concepts as “the will of the people,” “the majority,” “popular mandate,” “vox populi, vox Dei,” etc.)

Conclusion: Voting makes you an active accomplice to serious crimes and enables the commission of yet more crimes.

With the argument framed thus, my question is: Is refusing to participate in the violence of the state a form of surrender — or an act of conscience?

Even Nonvoters Can’t Sleep Entirely Soundly at Night

I must note nonvoting is only one step toward obeying the dictates of conscience. I’m not, for example, courageous enough to stop filing my taxes. (At any rate, civil disobedience in the face of state violence is the subject of an entirely different discussion.) Not voting, however, is as of now a perfectly legal and easy way to dissociate oneself from the crimes of the U.S. government. Why would anyone choose otherwise?

Something often said when looking back on how relatively peaceful and open societies collapsed into murderous and repressive dictatorships is, “Why didn’t anyone speak up?” That’s what I’m doing when I don’t vote and when I strongly (if not always patiently and politely) discourage others from doing so.

Voting for evil, supposedly lesser or not, is evil. Don’t ever do it.

David Bardallis [send him mail] vents his various frustrations on his blog.

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Somewhat lost in the U.S. government’s ongoing efforts at playing Whack-A-Mole with the imploding financial system (using the American taxpayer as the mallet, of course) has been Ron Paul’s September 10 press conference at the National Press Club. In it, he not only publicly called out the two major-party candidates for president, he publicly called BS on the two-party political system itself. Giving voice to what is by now a majority of Americans, he echoed George Wallace’s observation that there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. (Adjusted for inflation, today there must be less than a penny’s worth.) Paul was joined by presidential candidates Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party, Ralph Nader of the Independent Party, and Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party. One is tempted to call them third-party candidates, but owing to the theme of the conference, it may be more appropriate to refer to them as second-party candidates. All participants agreed on four areas of focus crucial to the survival of this republic, areas that are, of course, studiously and perpetually ignored by the Republicrat machine:

1. End the Iraq War and cease the belligerence toward the rest of the world.
2. Rein in the dictatorial behavior of the executive branch and repeal its enabling legislation, including the PATRIOT Act, Military Commissions Act, FISA revisions, etc.
3. End government deficit and debt financing.
4. Investigate the Federal Reserve System’s cozy little legal counterfeiting operation.

(For anyone who didn’t see it, a video of the entire press conference is here.) Reactions among Paul’s supporters were mixed at best. Many seemed to hope or expect he would announce the continuation of his bid for the presidency on another ticket, perhaps alongside Libertarian candidate Bob Barr, who reneged on his promise to attend the press conference. Some were even upset with this “wasted opportunity” and Paul’s refusal to endorse a specific candidate. Like the ancient Israelites, some seem to be so focused on finding a political messiah that they miss the forest for the trees.

What do I mean? Just this: Ron Paul’s press conference was an ambitious and shrewd political move, aimed not at winning a particular election but at finally breaking up the closed shop of American politics. In my opinion, actually, it was even more subversive than that if one reads between the lines. More on that in a bit.

First let’s go back and look at what Ron Paul’s presidential run has accomplished:

Freedom is popular. The Good Doctor showed what many longtime libertarians have often doubted: that there are still significant numbers of Americans — from all walks of life — who will embrace the concepts of liberty when they are explained in a simple and sensible way. The media is dishonest and untrustworthy. If there was any doubt that the corporate media act in lockstep to marginalize or exclude any voice outside the narrow consensus of the New York-DC axis of evil, it was dispelled in the minds of millions of Americans who saw the blatant favoritism accorded even to candidates who garnered much less support than Paul (cough, Rudy Giuliani, cough) but who echoed the power elite’s consensus of war, empire, debt, socialism, and lawlessness.

The system is rigged. The Republican Party’s undisguised bending and even breaking of laws and rules in order to disenfranchise Ron Paul delegates throughout the primaries and at the national convention revealed conclusively to all what an empty sham the whole process is.

Freedom is an indivisible whole. Countless Americans accustomed to thinking in terms of economic freedom vs. “personal” freedom learned to think about liberty holistically. After all, what’s more personal than being able to earn a living peacefully and honestly? Likewise, the lightbulb went on in millions of minds when Ron Paul connected the dots between imperialism abroad and encroaching authoritarianism at home: the state always and everywhere threatens the freedom of those it rules over.

These may not seem like major accomplishments to the typical LewRockwell.com reader, who likely has known these things for years, but it must be remembered that these concepts are radical and new to huge numbers of people — and it is no exaggeration to say that Ron Paul reached a huge number of people.

Furthermore, in reaching these huge numbers of people, Ron Paul has forced into the national debate the four key issues discussed at his press conference. Without his efforts, almost no one, let alone Mr. and Mrs. America, would be talking about abolishing the Federal Reserve, ending the overseas empire, dismantling the unconstitutional federal leviathan, and holding the executive branch accountable for its lawlessness.

And that brings us to the press conference itself — and the “L” word. I mean, of course, legitimacy. According to Webster’s, something, i.e., a government, is legitimate when it is “accordant with law or with established legal forms and requirements” or “conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards.”

In the abstract, most Americans agree that the U.S. Constitution is the established law of the land and accept the legal rules and standards it imposes. However, they are unfortunately ignorant of what the constitution actually says. As Ron Paul has pointed out for years, there is no authority in the constitution — the document upon which the U.S. government’s legitimacy supposedly rests — for a central bank; a global empire; presidential warmongering; warrantless surveillance of citizens; standing armies; the so-called “War on Drugs”; a national police force; gun control; or the mind-boggling array of existing departments, agencies, and bureaucracies with which Americans are afflicted.

In a deeper sense, legitimacy is the glue that holds the state’s immoral system of murder and plunder together, the glue that We the People so kindly provide with our opinions and our actions with respect to the government. The next big lesson to be learned by large numbers of Americans, then, is that the regime in Washington is illegitimate. The ramifications of this discovery by a large swath of the public are profound and, I believe, a necessary precursor to any restoration of sanity and liberty to our country.

Which brings me back to Ron Paul’s press conference and why I thought it was brilliant. He signaled that the Republicrat game of bamboozling Americans into supporting the “lesser of two evils” is at long last ending. His forging of an alliance with other candidates shows that the frustration with the closed-shop political system is widespread and cuts across ideological lines. And his reference, in particular, to principled nonvoters and his half-joking proposal for a “League of Nonvoters” acknowledged the reality of the regime’s fraying claims of legitimacy.

In other words, despite the appearance of “working within the system,” Ron Paul’s strategy has ultimately worked to undermine that system by consistently revealing its fundamental fraudulence to any who were just willing to look. And many, many people are looking now.

David Bardallis [send him mail] vents his various frustrations on his blog.

David Bardallis Archives

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Here is my
little confession to the world at large: I'm a Ron Paul supporter.
This might not seem like much in the way of a confession, but for
me it represents something of a coming out. No, I'm not some aging
red-diaper baby who has only now seen the light. It's more like
a reawakening. Let me explain.

In my most
youthful and idealistic years I labored in the vineyards of conservo-libertarian
think-tankdom. They were not necessarily bad years; in fact, I met
lots of dedicated and wonderful people, most all of whom I consider
friends to this day. Together, we toiled tirelessly to produce studies,
reports, commentaries, and policy briefs full of logic and evidence
and reason explaining why this or that political or economic course
of action would yield the most desirable outcome in terms of justice,
prosperity, morality, decency, and simple human dignity.

But eventually,
I grew disenchanted with the whole project. It began to dawn on
me that we could churn out report after report warning of the malevolence
and stupidity of any given government proposal and extolling the
fairness and wisdom of the best alternative policy decisions — and
yet it would never matter. And the reason it would never matter
is because those to whom the studies, reports, commentaries, and
policy briefs were most obviously addressed did not care about things
like logic and evidence and reason. They were corporate media hacks
and politicians, and what they care about most is popularity and
power — things that only the most disordered of personalities place
at the pinnacle of their Maslowian hierarchy of needs.

In the years
since my exodus from "The Movement," as we used to call
it, I've (understandably, I plead) become a bitter, curmudgeonly
cynic on the subject of all things political. I decided my father,
who once told me he hasn't voted in any election since Nixon became
president and who believes all politicians are thieves and parasites,
is absolutely right. Like Dad, I do not suffer fools and their B.S.
gladly, with the result being that I cannot read newspapers or stand
watching even 30 seconds of any TV "news" at the risk
of my boiling blood greatly curtailing my personal longevity. I've
become a principled nonvoter and, in the process, annoyed some of
my friends and utterly baffled my girlfriend.

But I digress.
I met Ron Paul a few years ago, while I was still toiling in those
aforementioned vineyards. He was, just as he appears in his current
campaign, a warm, affable, sincere man who firmly believes that
what he's doing is in the best interests of his fellow Americans.
We spent some time together in a car driving to Hillsdale, Michigan,
where he was to give a speech at the college there, and it was a
wonderfully refreshing drive. In my life in think-tankdom, Dr. Paul
was far from the first or only politician I interacted with. What
he was was a normal human being who happened to hold a seat in the
U.S. House of Representatives. And as far as I know, to this day,
he is the only member of Congress to enjoy this distinction.

So when I say
I'm a Ron Paul supporter, I want it to register with as much impact
as possible. I hate politics and politicians. I hate the stage-managed
presidential dog-and-pony shows. Excluding public hanging, I have
never truly supported any politician for anything, whether Democrat,
Republican, Libertarian, or nebulous independent.

But today,
I sent in a donation to Ron Paul's campaign. Why?

In 2000, I
was convinced that Bush, Jr. vs. Gore might very well be the most
awful presidential election ever conceived. In 2004, I thought Bush
vs. Kerry was the worst "choice" ever. And now here we
are in 2008, and the terrible prospect of Hillary Clinton vs. John
McCain exceeds the capacity of the English language to describe
its truly monumental dreadfulness.

No, I don't
believe in electoral politics, and I'd rather spend my time and
money on more personally gratifying endeavors, like any normal fellow
would, but I think that, after the last eight years of misrule under
the scion of a family of mediocrities, Dr. Paul might be the last
hope for America to recover some sense of itself as something other
than a retarded, belligerent, imperial suicide.

On the day
when I present my papers to the heel-clicking goon in a ski mask
demanding to know why I am leaving the land of the allegedly free
and the home of the selectively brave in favor of some tropical
island that does not have soldiers in more than 130 countries, I
at least want to have the peace of mind knowing that I tried. I
tried as much and as often as my circumstances and temperament allowed.

Ron Paul won't
win the Republican nomination, but I don't care about that. I care
about the message the existence of his candidacy powerfully perpetuates.
And that message is, "Dear Corporate Politico-Media Complex:
I will not be told what to think or who to support, nor will I ever
again appear to approve of your vast criminal enterprise. Kindly
kiss my rear end, now that you've been exposed to the entire world
for the evil phonies that you are."

If for nothing
else, I thank you now for this, Dr. Paul.

February
7, 2008

David
Bardallis [send him mail]
vents his
various frustrations on his blog.

Dave
Barry’s Money Secrets:
Like: Why Is There a Giant Eyeball on the Dollar?

A.D. 2006 is
here, and many of us are already wrestling with our grandiose plans
to lose weight, get organized, and better manage our finances. The
first two items are beyond the scope of this article, but there
is good news on the financial front: A new book, Dave Barry’s
Money Secrets, is hitting the shelves or virtual shelves of
a bookstore or website near you.

You may remember
Mr. Barry from his long-running Miami Herald column and the
many humor books he has written over the years. The guy even co-authored
a sequel to Peter Pan. Now that takes some chutzpah. But
what qualifies him to dispense “expert” financial advice? Why should
you trust him on the important matter of your economic health? I’ll
let Mr. Barry speak for himself:

If
you follow the advice in this book, and you somehow fail to become
wealthy, simply take this book back to the bookstore where you bought
it, explain to the employees what happened, and ask for a full refund.
You have my personal guarantee, right here in writing, that they
will laugh until they blow snot into their lattes.

If that’s not
enough, maybe the fact that the book is chock-full of other useful
information will convince you that you need to buy it now. With
chapters on “Providing for Medical Care (You’ll Need Some Leeches),”
“Starting Your Own Business (Harness the Awesome Power of Human
Stupidity),” and “Income Taxes: Building Blocks of Our Great Nation
and Lifeblood of Our Sacred Democratic Way of Life (How to Avoid
Paying Them),” Mr. Barry offers valuable knowledge that us average,
middle-class Joes and Josephines can put to use as we navigate the
chaos of the modern global economy. Failing that, we can blow snot
into our lattes from laughing so hard at his book.

At any rate,
it’s no secret that money can be a confusing subject. The first
question to ask is, “What is money, anyway?” Luckily, Mr. Barry
provides a chapter on monetary history, tracing its evolution from
seashells in ancient China to livestock in Mesopotamia to precious
metals from the Middle Ages through the early 20th century and,
finally, to the fiat currencies we have today. Of the latter, he
notes:

We
don’t have the gold standard anymore. Nobody does. Over the years,
all the governments in the world, having discovered that gold is,
like, rare, decided it would be more convenient to back their
money with something that is easier to come by, namely: nothing.

That’s why,
continues Mr. Barry, “to this day, if you – an ordinary citizen
– go to Fort Knox and ask to exchange your U.S. dollars for
gold, you will be used as a human chew toy by large federal dogs.”

He also explains
in helpful detail how the U.S. economy works: It involves “the Federal
Reserve Board, a mysterious organization that controls the economy
from its secret Bat-Cave-style headquarters far beneath the surface
of the earth.” From time to time, the Fed chairman climbs up and,
much like the famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, looks around for
his shadow, then “makes an ambiguous remark, and everybody tries
to figure out what it means.”

I don’t know
about you, but I never learned that in economics class. Probably
because I never took an economics class. But if I had, I would have
wanted to hear Keynesianism explained this succinctly:

Remember
the part in Peter Pan where we clap to prove that we believe
in fairies, and we save Tinker Bell? That’s our monetary system!
It’s the Tinker Bell System! We see everybody else running
around after these pieces of paper, and we figure, Hey, these
pieces of paper must be valuable.

But beyond
all the scholarly theory, Mr. Barry’s tome also offers practical
advice on arguing about money with your spouse, tipping, saving
on travel, and even getting rich the Donald Trump way (“Some ideas
are good, and some are not. Know the difference. Donald Trump does!”).
You’d probably have to buy 257 different books by Suze Orman, Jim
Cramer, and that other guy who’s always on TV to get all of the
information contained in this one volume.

So, you’re
asking, am I now personally wealthy as a result of reading Mr. Barry’s
book? Was it worth it? Well, because I work for a major retailer
and received an advance copy of the book from the publisher gratis,
I can honestly tell you that it has already paid for itself.

January
18, 2006

David
Bardallis [send him e-mail]
has given
up trying to maintain a real website and instead posts stuff on
his blog on a fairly
regular basis.

Granted,
it is actually summer and, having recently attained 32 years, I'm
not exactly a lad anymore. But back in May I met a winsome lady
and things between us have been progressing in a most pleasant fashion
ever since.

So
much for the love part, you say, but what are you talking about,
rational ignorance?

Well,
it transpires that my lady friend (whom we will call Babette to
protect the innocent) admitted to not knowing, until relatively
recently, who Dick Cheney was.

Shocking!
But it wasn't Babette's admission that surprised me so much as her
attitude toward her knowledge deficit. She didn't see any reason
why she should have known who Dick Cheney was. Sure, he's
the vice president of the United States, she said, but why should
she care about that?

This
exchange put me in mind of the economic concept of "rational
ignorance." Simply stated, this concept tells us that an individual's
decision to become informed about something is influenced by the
cost – measured in terms of time and effort, not just dollars – of becoming
informed. It is an especially useful concept when one is discussing
politics and, particularly, elections.

Rational
ignorance explains why various special interests wield so much influence
over government officials. Economist Walter Williams uses the example
of the sugar industry, where Congress maintains high tariffs on
imported sugar so that domestic producers can sell their product
to Americans at higher prices. It's worth it to the relatively few
producers to spend their time, money, and energy lobbying Congress
for the tariffs because it means millions of dollars in artificially
increased profits and wages for them. For the much greater mass
of American sugar consumers, however, the tariffs mean around $2
billion more a year in sugar costs, which translates into a couple
bucks more for the average person – hardly worth bothering about on
an individual level.

In
other words, it makes sense for the ordinary American to remain
rationally ignorant about the issue of sugar tariffs because it's
far less of a hassle to pay $5 more a year for sugar than it is
brush up on the relevant legislation and jump a plane to Washington
to personally lobby Congress for lower (or no) sugar tariffs.

For
various reasons, it's not even worth writing a letter or making
a phone call about it. Your Congressman is only one of 435 (535
when you add the Senate) and is most likely not in any position
to do much about the tariffs by himself. And, as Williams points
out, who is he going to listen to, you or the organized sugar lobby,
which is ready, willing, and able to use various carrot-and-stick
pressure tactics, including campaign donations or the withdrawal
thereof, should it become displeased with Rep. Rapscallion's voting
behavior? The answer is obvious.

(Of
course, the cost of sugar tariffs can be measured in more than just
those few extra dollars out of your wallet. For example, I still
mourn the loss of the Coca-Cola I used to enjoy as a boy, when it
was sweetened with real sugar instead of the cheaper but awful-tasting
corn syrup used today. For a more dramatic example, hundreds of
employees at a Michigan plant that makes LifeSavers candies are
losing their jobs this summer as production moves to Canada, which
imports sugar at the much lower, freely traded world price.)

Rational
ignorance lies at the heart of the government racket. Politicians
exploit it to curry favor with a whole host of special interest
groups by voting to give them concentrated financial benefits – while
distributing the costs of those benefits widely over the general
population. Thus is the average American nickel and dimed out of
nearly half of his paycheck by the parasites posturing as our worthy
and true public servants.

Whether
she realized it or not, my lady friend Babette was displaying the
profound wisdom born of common sense and centuries of human experience
when she defended her ignorance of Dick Cheney's identity. She has
probably never heard the term "rational ignorance" before.
But 19th-century author Ambrose Bierce probably didn't
either when he wrote that "an election is nothing more than
an advance auction of stolen goods."

As
for me, since I can't stand to drink Coke anymore, I'll pour myself
a beer – and talk with the charming Babette about matters more interesting
than politics.

July
16, 2003

Michigan
writer David Bardallis [send
him e-mail] maintains
a web site at www.thought-crimes.net.

I
reckon I am in the same boat. I need a new name for myself. For
years, I have argued that government should be limited to only a
few basic functions, most notably the common defense. Now, as the
events of the past year have unfolded, it has become clear that
government is just as incompetent at protecting people as it is
at all the other things it tries to do. The “war on terrorism” predictably
is turning out to be as big a flop as the government “wars” on drugs,
poverty, and racism. And all at the expense of the average American’s
ability to live his life freely and peaceably.

So
what does someone call himself when he has no confidence in the
state, but still cringes at the term “anarchist”? Even if anarchists
are no longer Chesterton or Tolkien’s “whiskered men with bombs,”
are they not often in our day libertines, drug-addled activists,
and other assorted moral misfits? Of course, the truth of a proposition
is not dependent upon the nature of its adherents, so perhaps the
more important question is – can a stateless society work?

The
jury may still be out on that question; however, examples of such
societies apparently do exist. A few years ago, anthropologist Spencer
MacCallum reported on the condition of Somalia following the disastrous
U.S. military invasion. That country, he noted, operates as a “kritarchy”
(or “rule by judges”), with society organized around organically
developed bodies of tribal law called the Xeerada.

“In
essence,” MacCallum noted in a June 1998 article for The Freeman,
“the Xeerada are alike in protecting freedom of movement, free trade,
and other individual freedoms, and forbidding the contrary – including
taxation and legislation.” According to MacCallum, the Somalis have
tried, with some success, to attract people and commerce “by opening
areas within their tribal lands for development, inviting businessmen
and professionals the world over to come take advantage of the absence
of a central government or other coercive authority.

“In
this way,” MacCallum adds, “Somalia’s statelessness might prove
to be a uniquely valuable asset in the modem world.” He concludes
that the Xeerada promise to become “one of the great bodies of customary
law, like Anglo-American common law or Jewish traditional law .
. . . . These legal codes are flexible, responsive, and can be maintained
without a large central state or legislative apparatus.”

Well,
I guess we’ll see. Given the current situation in America, where
state functionaries are daily warning us to be on Double Secret
Alert against more death and destruction of an unspecified nature
while making new enemies for us abroad and abrogating our freedoms
here at home, it certainly seems high time for more of us to consider
alternatives to the state-dominated society.

Meanwhile,
I have more reading to do. Triumph,
Harry Crocker’s recent single-volume history of the Catholic Church,
notes the Church’s 19th-century opposition to the creation of centralized
states in Italy and Germany. No one needs to be reminded of what
those states did in the 20th century, but certainly the fact that
monolithic government is a recent creation – and not the natural
and normal order of things – deserves to be more widely recognized.

Maybe
“anarchist” really isn’t such a terrible label. Mr. Sobran, whose
work I admire, more recently concluded, “The force-system we call
the state is worse than superfluous. It interferes with and frustrates
the natural urge to cooperate; at worst, it embitters human relations.
The paradigm of state-behavior – massive organized force – is war.”

And
if current events don’t validate this conclusion, I don’t know what
ever would.

October
7, 2002

Michigan
writer David Bardallis [send
him e-mail] maintains
a web site at www.thought-crimes.net.

Now Tolkien’s imaginary world is set to hit the silver screen. Will
the movies do as good a job as the books did in transporting young
imaginations to the enchanting land of Middle Earth? They will if
they preserve a key element of the books: a profound and mature
religious worldview.

That worldview is not one I was consciously aware of as a child
reader. But thanks to a recent biography, Tolkien:
Man and Myth by Joseph Pearce, I have come as an adult to
understand the essential role Tolkien’s devout Catholicism played
in making his books as compelling as they are.

Man
and Myth sheds light on the ways Tolkien expressed complex spiritual
truths through the thoughts and actions of his characters –
and through the internal logic of his created world – relying
less on the type of heavy-handed allegory that is the hallmark of
Lewis’s
Narnia books (which Tolkien loathed). Those characters express
the same wondrous religious sensibility of their author, who described
his work as “fundamentally religious and Catholic.”

“For
Tolkien,” writes Pearce, “Catholicism was not an opinion to which
one subscribed but a reality to which one submitted . . . . Tolkien
remained a Catholic for the simple if disarming reason that he believed
Catholicism was true.”

LotR
as a religious work “falls into three distinct but inter-related
areas,” writes Pearce. These areas are “the sacrifice which accompanies
the selfless exercise of free will; the intrinsic conflict between
good and evil; and the perennial question of time and eternity,
particularly in relation to life and death.”

The theme of sacrifice in LotR is pervasive, with protagonist
Frodo freely choosing to carry a “great weight” – the enemy Sauron’s
ring – into the dark realm of Mordor, the center of evil in the world,
where it can be destroyed. Frodo’s undertaking of this quest perilous
forms the nucleus of the story, and the irony is all the greater
that Frodo is a hobbit, a small and weak race, upon whose brave
shoulders the fate of all races rests.

The forces of good in Tolkien’s works are represented as being far
outnumbered and overpowered (at least on the surface) by the minions
of evil. The story is as old as time itself: good vs. evil, with
evil seemingly in control of the whole wide world. But ultimately,
the virtue of the few overcomes the overwhelming numbers of the
evil many, with the mystery of grace guiding the affairs of men – not
to mention those of hobbits.

Like LotR in general, Tolkien’s portrayal of evil is not
explicitly Christian, but its orthodoxy lies in its understanding
that evil is in and of itself a fearsome but ultimately impotent
force. Only good can create, while evil but lends itself to corruption
and destruction. Of the monstrous races that serve evil, Frodo says,
“The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make real new
things of its own. I don’t think it gave life to [them], it only
ruined them and twisted them.” The actual act of positive creation
is reserved for God – but everyone in Middle Earth is, to a greater
or lesser extent, a victim of the Fall.

Pearce also notes the mortality of man and his relation to eternity
as a central theme in Tolkien’s work. “Three Rings for the Elven
Kings under the sky,” begins the Ring Rhyme, which goes on to add,
“Nine for mortal men doomed to die.” In LotR, elves are immortal,
but men are, as they are in reality, “doomed” to depart the earth.
To Tolkien, however, this “doom” is a gift from God, though man’s
understanding of it is warped by his sinful state. Throughout the
entirety of LotR, it becomes clear that the final resting
place of the faithful and valiant is not in the fallow tombs of
Middle Earth, but in the as-yet-unglimpsed fertile lands beyond.
If elves are a sorrowful race, it is the logical result of their
permanent term of exile in a fallen world.

In all, Pearce’s book isn’t as exhaustive as is Humphrey Carpenter’s
biography of Tolkien, but it does provide many interesting insights
into the life and work of a fascinating man. Especially gratifying
to me was the discovery of Tolkien’s apparent political libertarianism.

“My
political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically
understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with
bombs),’” Pearce quotes Tolkien as saying. It is no coincidence
that The Shire is portrayed as an idyllic rural society with little
formal government, while Mordor is quite emphatically an industrial,
collectivistic slave-state.

Tolkien:
Man and Myth is likely to be disappointing to those who want
a play-by-play account of Tolkien’s life. But it is particularly
valuable to those of us who struggled in ignorance for years to
understand just why Middle Earth and its denizens appealed to us
so strongly.

As Pearce quotes poet Charles Coulombe, “In an age which has seen
an almost total rejection of the Faith on the part of the Civilisation
she created, the loss of the Faith on the part of many lay Catholics,
and apparent uncertainty among her hierarchy, Lord of the Rings
assures us, both by its existence and its message, that the darkness
cannot triumph forever.”

And if the filmmakers have done their job right, that message soon
will be experienced by millions of moviegoers, too.

December
12, 2001

Michigan
writer David Bardallis [send
him e-mail] maintains
a web site at www.thought-crimes.net.

LRC

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Most
everyone has heard the old aphorism from Benjamin Franklin that
people who give up liberty for security wind up with neither. Nevertheless,
66 percent of respondents in a Washington Post poll say they are
prepared to sacrifice some freedoms to fight terrorism. Until last
week, I thought that self-professed conservatives and libertarians,
at least, understood Franklin's warning, even if many of our countrymen
did not. Sadly, this has turned out not to be the case. People who
have for years cogently and earnestly argued for a much-needed rollback
of state power have suddenly cast their lot in with Leviathan.

Overnight,
New York-based National Review Online became rife with talk
of massive state empowerment. "Maybe now, in the wake of this
terrible act of war, we can break our great taboo and at least consider
a revival of the draft," wrote contributing editor Stanley
Kurtz less than 24 hours after the attack. "The military's
budget should be Washington's first priority, not its last,"
insisted another writer, Mark Levin. "Bush should demand broad
warmaking authority," cried Washington editors John Miller
and Ramesh Ponnuru.

What's
going on? My libertarian friends, who were always suspicious of
conservatives' commitment to limited government, would normally
snort and ask, "Well, what can you expect from those statists?"
Normally, that is, except that many of those libertarians now are
talking in much the same way as the folks at National Review.

And
Washington is ready to oblige this majority sentiment. The House
of Representatives voted to shovel at least $20 billion more into
a nebulous "war on terrorism" that already employs a thousand
government snoopers. That isn't the half of it. The Federal Reserve
stands ready to increase the hidden tax of inflation by printing
billions more in greenbacks. Air travel, already larded with many
nonsensical security regulations that failed to prevent last week's
catastrophe, will be subject to even greater restrictions. Increased
government meddling in people's financial records, personal communications,
and business affairs cannot be far behind.

Certainly,
the pundits are right that last Tuesday's events change everything.
Never again can Americans assume they are safe in their own cities,
in their homes, or in their jobs. Never again can we believe we
are insulated from the actions of our government overseas, actions
that needlessly make enemies for us in countries around the globe.
And we can be assured that it will become increasingly difficult
for ordinary citzens to opt out of the state's latest "war,"
a war which is sure to provoke even more attacks on Americans.

Which
brings me to my main point, a point that most people, understandably
ready for military retribution, will not want to hear: War is still
the health of the state. And this new "war against terrorism"
is even worse than the state-enhancing wars of previous eras. A
war against whom? For what purpose? The conflict is ill-defined
and open-ended, meaning there is, and can be, no discernible end
to the calls for "sacrifice" and "emergency measures"
that aggrandize government at the expense of the average person's
freedom and ability to lead his life.

There
are those who might call an attitude of continued skepticism toward
the state during this time selfish, callous, unpatriotic, cowardly,
or even worse. But war is nothing if not the biggest, ugliest, costliest,
and most violent government program there is. Why should anyone
expect that the same government that can't properly deliver mail
is suddenly capable of "eradicating terrorism from the planet"?

There
is, of course, an even larger reason to doubt the U.S. government's
efficacy in prosecuting a "war against terrorism." That
reason lies in the nature of what we're calling "terrorism."
Is it really true, as National Review and other media outlets
insist, that "The United States is a target because we are
powerful, rich, and good"? Or is it more likely, as columnist
Sam Francis has it, that "the terrorists attacked us because
they were paying us back for what we started" in Iraq, Sudan,
and other Muslim countries? If the U.S. government doesn't even
understand the motives of its enemies, what hope does it have of
outwitting and defeating them?

Mass
murder is not something that one swallows easily with his morning
coffee. Nevertheless, we must remain committed to a free society
and press for a long-term solution that involves not more government,
but less, both domestically and abroad. No more meddling in other
nations' affairs. No more attacking people who have not done us
any harm. And no more letting the state carry out its belligerent
plans in our name, with the kind of dire consequences we are now
seeing.

These
are truly the times that try men's souls. In this present crisis,
let us acquit ourselves with aplomb and affirm the enduring American
values of peace and liberty that generations of our brethren have
fought and died for – and that tens of thousands of innocents
perished September 11 for want of.

September
18, 2001

Michigan
writer David Bardallis [send
him e-mail] maintains
a web site at www.thought-crimes.net.