LewRockwell » Johnny Kramer

Tom Woods vs. the Fed

Johnny Kramer — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:00:00 +0000

There are three good rules-of-thumb to remember when following current events or studying history:

1. No one in government ever takes responsibility for anything.

When has a politician or bureaucrat, except for Ron Paul, indicted some past governmental measure as causing or exacerbating a problem, and propose addressing that problem by calling for that measure’s repeal?

The answer, of course, is virtually never; to the political class, every problem in society is caused by insufficient governmental oversight: if government can be blamed for anything, it can only be that it didn’t take away more of people’s freedom sooner. As Mises wrote, all governmental measures carry within them the seeds of future measures that will be "needed" to "fix" the problems the earlier measures caused or exacerbated.

(This is not to say that people in the voluntary, peaceful sector of society known as the market don’t make mistakes; of course they do. The difference is, on the market, people can only make mistakes with their own money or the money that others voluntarily give to them; and if they make too many mistakes, they go bankrupt, and their assets are sold to others who can put them to profitable use.)

We have seen this occur with the current financial crisis, which the political class and the mainstream media have repeatedly blamed largely on "deregulation" (despite the fact that the financial industry is saddled with tens of thousands of regulations that no one person could possibly even read — much less comprehend — in one lifetime, and despite the fact that the sort of "deregulation" to which critics refer did not entail moving toward a free market, but rather entailed encouraging — or even requiring, such as with the Community Reinvestment Act — banks to engage in unsound business practices which they would be unlikely to undertake on their own, especially without further government distortions, such as the Fed acting as a lender of last resort); "greed" (which is always and everywhere a universal human trait, and which the market tends to direct into the source of virtually all human progress, and which couldn’t have contributed the current downturn without the government’s involvement); "corruption" (which the market punishes automatically, and which also couldn’t exist as it did in the present downturn without the government); etc.

In that vein, President Obama proposed last month to avert future crises by massively increasing the power of the Federal Reserve, the very existence of which is the root cause of the current crisis.

And, while Obama’s action is a great example of our first rule-of-thumb, it also brings us to our second:

2. Fundamental questions about the legitimacy of governmental measures are not allowed in mainstream political discourse.

Regarding the financial crisis, the legitimacy of the very existence of the Fed is off the table; few in the Establishment indict it at all, while those that do question only whether trivial changes should be made to its operations.

Meltdown

Dr. Thomas Woods uses these rules-of-thumb to expose the emptiness of statists blaming the "free market" for the downturn in his latest book, Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Crashed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse, which spent 10 weeks on the New York Times Best-Seller List earlier this year.

End the Fed

As Dr. Woods eloquently explains, the root cause of the economic downturn is the very existence of the Federal Reserve and its ability to create money and credit out of thin air, create false booms that should inevitably lead to busts — and then prolonging a crisis by trying to stop the necessary busts from occurring, encourage unsound banking practices, and set interest rates lower than they would evolve through voluntary exchange on the market.

Even leaving aside the obvious question of why more "regulation" would prevent future crises when the innumerable "regulations" we already have failed to stop this one, calls for more "regulation" completely miss the Fed as the root cause of the downturn, and are like the joke about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; the underlying system is fundamentally unsound, and piling all the "regulation" in the world on top of it won’t change that.

A "free market?"

More importantly, Dr. Woods also explains that blaming the crisis on the "free market" is absurd because our market is about as far from "free" as one could get, because an institution like the Federal Reserve wouldn’t even exist in a free market.

Nor, as Dr. Woods also explains, would other culprits of the onset or perpetuation of the downturn, like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or FDIC insurance of bank deposits exist in a free market.

In short, as Jeff Tucker commented earlier this year, when you “take a market and beat it, tax it, regulate it, subsidize it, flood it with fake money, punish its performers and reward its losers, hobble its capital sector, strangle consumers, nationalize stuff at will, and erect every possible barrier to trade and cooperation,” that can barely even be referred to accurately as a "market" — and it certainly isn’t a “free” one; it is, by definition, severely hampered.

It’s always fraudulent credit expansion

But, critics retort, didn’t the United States suffer economic downturns in the 19th Century, before the existence of the Fed?

Yes. But every significant pre-Fed downturn was the result, as Austrian Business Cycle Theory teaches, of massive, artificial credit expansion, followed by a bust. "The pattern is so pervasive," Dr. Woods asserts, "that only with serious effort could one fail to see it."

The Panic of 1819 followed the boom after the War of 1812, which was financed by massive inflation (printing of paper money beyond the specie held in reserve) and credit expansion (loaning more money than the specie held in reserve). The Second Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816 to soften the inevitable bust by issuing paper money 100% redeemable in specie (precious metal coins of intrinsic value); instead, it became an instrument of further inflation and credit expansion in its own right, extending the untenable boom and increasing the severity of the inevitable bust. (This illustrates the point that, while real crimes such as fraud occur on the market, they would occur on their own on a much smaller scale; government tends to institutionalize such behavior and turn its ill effects into national calamities.)

The Panic of 1857 was followed by a five-year boom based on substantial credit expansion, during which state governments had also backed railroad bonds, promising to make good on them if the railroad companies did not.

The Panic of 1873 followed railroad overexpansion, financed by credit expansion and government subsidies made possible by the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864.

(The Panic of 1907, which Dr. Woods doesn’t discuss in Meltdown, was largely manufactured by the nation’s more powerful bankers to whip up public support for a new central bank, leading to the creation of the Fed in 1913. Despite propaganda to the contrary, the Fed wasn’t created by wise bureaucrats and politicians to "stabilize" the economy from the problems caused by the market; it was designed, like most government regulations, by the ruling elite to give themselves power, profit levels, and competitive advantages they would be unable to attain on the market, through voluntary exchange — specifically, in the case of the creation of the Fed, to forcibly cartelize the banking industry, fund government expansion without overt increases in taxation, and to fraudulently inflate currency and credit without suffering the natural consequences that would arise on the market from such activity, like bank runs and failures. As Murray Rothbard explained, lack of bank runs and failures should be cause for grave concern, not for celebration; banks should be no less prone to failure than any other business.)

The 1920s

There are numerous myths about the boom of the 1920s and the ensuing Great Depression that refuse to die.

First, it’s important to know that Warren Harding inherited a more severe recession in 1921 than did FDR in 1933. But most people haven’t heard of this recession because Harding followed the opposite of the Keynesian prescription: he cut spending and taxes dramatically, and allowed the correction to run its course. In short order, prosperity was restored.

Second, that prosperity, which included genuine increases in production in the private sector, was also fueled by the Fed increasing the money supply by 55% — largely through loans to businesses, rather than through currency expansion — from 1921—1929. With drastically increased production, consumer prices should have been falling; the fact that they were constant throughout the decade was evidence at the time of the Fed’s manipulation.

Austrian theory holds that such a false, inflationary boom will artificially stimulate capital-goods industries like real-estate; and, since a company’s stock price represents the perceived value of its capital, it will also create a stock market bubble.

But that was lost on (or lied about by) Establishment economists like Irving Fisher, who is still well regarded in the mainstream today, who said in Sept. 1929 — less than two months before the stock market crash — that, "There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash. This is not due to receding prices for stocks, and will not be hastened by any anticipated crash, the possibility of which I fail to see."

In Oct. 1929 — days before the crash — Fisher said that stocks had reached a "permanently high plateau," and that he expected to see the stock market "a good deal higher than it is today within a few months."

In contrast, Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises said at the time of the situation in the United States, "It is clear that the crisis must come sooner or later . . . The only way to do away with, or even to alleviate, the periodic return of the trade cycle — with its denouncement, the crisis — is to reject the fallacy that prosperity can be produced by using banking procedures to make credit cheap."

Third, contrary to popular myth, Hoover did not let the market correct itself, which statists describe as sitting back and doing nothing while the Great Depression ravaged the country. If only he had. Instead, Hoover intervened in the economy to an extent that no previous peacetime president ever had, explicitly denouncing laissez-faire as a thing of the past and launching public works projects, raising taxes, extending emergency loans to failing companies, impeding international trade, lending money to states for relief programs, and attempting to prop up wages when consumer prices were falling. Shockingly, the downturn dragged on.

Sound familiar?

And he certainly didn’t heed Mises’ wise counsel and identify the Fed as the culprit of the crisis and agitate for its abolition.

In the 1932 presidential campaign, Franklin Roosevelt denounced Hoover for having presided over "the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history," and for believing "that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible."

In the same campaign, FDR’s running-mate, John Nance Garner, said that Hoover was "leading the country down the path to socialism"

As everyone knows, FDR won the election, and his actions in office belied his words during the campaign. But most people don’t know that, as we’ve seen, his policies weren’t a departure from those of Hoover; they were an extension of them.

FDR mistakenly thought falling prices were a cause, rather than a symptom, of the depression. So he attempted to restore prosperity by keeping prices high. At a time when people were going hungry, he had existing crops destroyed and imposed acreage reduction requirements on farmers. He encouraged certain industries to organize themselves into cartels that could impose restrictions on free economic activity. He raised taxes still more, expanded public works spending, and established federal welfare programs.

The effect of these policies was to prevent the necessary correction, prop up unsound businesses, divert capital from the private sector into uneconomic public works projects, and prevent resources from being reallocated to reflect consumer desires through the free movement of prices and wages.

Some Keynesians argue that the depression was so severe because the money supply was too low. But, as Dr. Woods explains, the money supply decreased in roughly the same proportions in the downturn of 1839—1843 as they did in 1929—1933. But, in the former case, the government allowed prices to fall freely, and consumption increased by 21% and the real GNP grew by 16% during those years (investment fell by 23%, but it should be expected to fall during a correction). By contrast, the latter period saw declines of 19% in consumption, 30% in GNP, and 91% in investment.

More often, Keynesians and other statists invoke our second rule-of-thumb, to this day explaining away FDR’s failures as the fault of too little public spending: if only more resources had been seized from the productive economy and diverted into uneconomic public works projects, prosperity could have been restored.

Along that line, such people also say to this day that the Great Depression was ended by the massive public works project known as WWII. It’s true that about 30% of the pre-war labor force was drafted into the military, but that’s like "curing" unemployment by lining up unemployed people in front of a firing squad. And roughly 40% of the national output was diverted to the war machine, with much of the rest under various controls that also had ripple effects throughout the rest of the economy; those lucky enough to avoid conscription had their consumer choices severely limited, and the products that were available were under heavy rationing. No one with any sense could think this describes a period of prosperity, although fishy government statistics supposedly show otherwise — they also show that there was an economic downturn in 1946.

Kreskin They Ain’t

So if this is all true, then why are so many Establishment politicians, bureaucrats, intellectuals and media people calling for the idiocy of the Great Depression to be repeated, that we need a "new New Deal?"

More importantly, why does the media give so much attention to such cranks who advocate repeating policies that history demonstrably shows to be disastrous — and who have personally been demonstrably wrong in the past, like Paul Krugman (who, among other things, called in 2001 for the government to create a housing bubble to help the economy "recover" from the recently busted dot-com bubble), Barney Frank (who said in 2003 that Fannie and Freddie were "not facing any kind of financial crisis . . . The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing,") and Henry Paulson (who warned of an imminent second Great Depression if Congress didn’t pass the $700 billion "rescue plan" last year, and who said it would be used to buy bad assets from banks, but then abandoned the plan once the bill was passed — and admitted that he knew from the beginning that it wasn’t the right thing to do, and then said that consumer credit needing propping up, as if people living beyond their means — which the market was trying to stop — was the basis for a sound economy, or was tenable long term)?

And why does the media tend to ignore the work of Austrian school economists like Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek (who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974 for explaining how governments create the boom-and-bust cycle by attempting to create shortcuts to prosperity through their central banks) and Murray Rothbard, who predicted busts like this, or its proponents, like Ron Paul, who specifically predicted this bust years ago?

The answer brings us to our third rule-of-thumb, which is an extension of the second:

3. People generally rise to — and maintain — high places in politics, academia, and the media by dutifully perpetuating the power elite’s system.

Government regulations and agencies are generally created to give the power elite benefits that they would be unable to attain on the market, through voluntary exchange — like higher income and profit levels, monopolies, cartels, and other protections from free competition. But most people wouldn’t support that system if they understood its real purpose — to erode their standard of living for the benefit of their masters — which is why they’re brainwashed through twelve years of government schooling to believe that the system is for their protection.

But that brainwashing needs constant reinforcement, so opinion makers in the media and academia are needed to espouse the glories of the elite’s system, and to dismiss as crackpots anyone who questions it (although, in fairness, most are probably also government school graduates, so many of them may not be consciously aware of what they’re doing, and the sharp ones who fall through the cracks quickly learn not to cause trouble and ask the wrong questions, especially if they’re ambitious). Politicians and bureaucrats toe the line not only for career advancement, but also because to do otherwise would totally undermine the justification of the coercive power they presume to hold over others.

This all means that with any news about government that comes from anyone in government, from TV news, major newspapers, "respectable" websites, etc, it’s generally safe to assume that it’s the opposite of the truth.

The Solution

In conclusion, a free market wouldn’t be perfect, because people aren’t perfect; the world isn’t perfect: businesspeople sometimes make honest mistakes, and they sometimes commit deliberate fraud.

But a free market would solve all problems, including economic crises, as well as they can be solved in an imperfect world. Liquidation of business mistakes would be allowed to occur; this would entail unpleasant downturns — but they would be brief, and they would tend to be company-specific, industry-specific, and local. And sometimes individual banks would engage in fraudulent currency or credit expansion beyond specie. But free competition in banking would discourage such practices — including the fear that exposure of the fraud would cause a bank run, meaning losing customers to more honest and prudent banks, and the fraudulent bank going out of business — as it should. And, without a false security blanket from the government, people would tend to mitigate the threat by spreading their assets among numerous banks.

Instead, the government has "protected" us from the ravages of the free market by deepening and perpetuating necessary economic downturns, forcing us all at gunpoint to perpetually have our standard of living eroded by inflation, and turning both phenomena into national calamities.

To understand all of this in more depth, read Meltdown. Then you’ll have all of the intellectual ammunition you’ll need to explain why the current economic crisis is not the fault of the "free market."

Johnny Kramer [send him mail] holds a BA in journalism from Wichita State University. He is one of the authors and editors of the first-ever biography of Ron Paul, Ron Paul: a Life of Ideas. For more information on his work, or to hire him as a writer, editor, or to speak at your next event, please visit his website.

The Best of Johnny Kramer

Ten Ways to Survive the Depression in 2009

Johnny Kramer — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0000

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"It’s better to have what you don’t need than to need what you don’t have."

~ Numerous

The economic downturn continues to dominate the news as we enter the new year. And, since the new year is also bringing a new president, worries about the economy are compounded by worries over whether Obama will prove to be even more statist than Bush, and whether he will continue — or even accelerate — the current course to repeat the disastrous policies of Hoover and FDR.

The horrifying tragedy at a Long Island Wal-Mart on Black Friday, in which a 34-year-old employee of Wal-Mart was trampled to death by 2,000 people pouring into the store when it opened at 5 a.m. to take advantage of sales, offers a glimpse of what could be coming if the depression turns out to be worse than most expect; if some people will act like savages in response to sales on non-essentials, how might such people act if they were literally starving?

Living in an uncertain world

First, Harry Browne had two rules-of-thumb about life which are always wise to remember, but especially at a time like this, if you’re finding yourself greatly upset about any predictions you’re seeing:

Anything can happen.
Nothing has to happen.

No one is perfect; no matter how educated someone is, no matter how convincing his arguments, and no matter what his track record, anyone can be wrong. Neither is anyone omniscient; it’s not possible to see all of the factors that could affect one’s predictions, especially about something as complex as the economy. For a deeper understanding of this, read Butler Shaffer’s articles about Chaos Theory or his excellent book, Calculated Chaos. Several of the people predicting an imminent second Great Depression have made the same, equally-convincing predictions in previous decades — and have been wrong. Things may not turn out as bad as some are predicting.

Then again, they may turn out worse, which brings us to our second point: if you’re worried, don’t live with a vague sense of dread; identify specifically what you’re afraid of happening to you and your loved ones if things totally collapse. Are you afraid of not being able to pay your mortgage, car payment, etc? Your life savings being destroyed by runaway inflation? Stores running out of food? Riots? Next, identify the specific reasons for your fears. Where are you vulnerable? Finally, identify specifically what you can reasonably do to remove your vulnerabilities to the greatest possible extent.

What follows is a minimum checklist to get you started; we’ll address how to stock your home with provisions and secure them, as well as making plans for leaving your home due to civil unrest, and for leaving the country due to tyranny. I haven’t made all of these provisions yet myself because I don’t have the money to accomplish them all at once, and you probably don’t either. Everyone’s situation is different; more than anything, this list is intended to stimulate your thinking about what the minimum is you need to acquire to attain peace of mind.

But understand that I’m not an attorney, and I’m not advising anyone to break any law. If you have any legal questions about firearms, foreign bank accounts, or anything else pertaining to your particular situation, please consult an attorney.

Hopefully you’ll never have to use these crisis provisions. You also hope you’ll never need fire insurance — but that doesn’t stop you from buying it.

Anything can happen

1. Read Harry Browne’s book Fail-Safe Investing.

Before you do anything else, it’s a good idea to inventory and divide your assets. Fail-Safe Investing is a good start for managing your money. In the book, Harry explains his permanent portfolio, which is predicated on the fact that the future is uncertain; the portfolio divides savings into four equal parts, so they’re weighed against each other: stocks, bonds, gold, and cash. The only maintenance that’s needed is to readjust the proportions once per year. From 1970 to 2003, the portfolio only had four losing years, which were more than offset by gains in other years; the worst single year loss was 6.2%. The purpose isn’t aggressive growth, but keeping what you already have. (If you want to speculate, Harry advises only doing so with money you can afford to lose; he calls those funds the Variable Portfolio, which is separate.)

Now, where do you physically put those four equal parts, and what else do you need to do?

BEST-CASE SCENARIO: YOU’RE ABLE TO REMAIN IN YOUR HOME

Nothing has to happen

2. Have enough cash in your home, or somewhere else outside the banking system, to pay all of your expenses — including pocket money — for at least one month.

Prepare for the worst, and don’t make any assumptions. Don’t keep all of your cash in a bank; don’t assume there won’t be a forced bank holiday like there was in 1933; don’t assume that, if there is a forced bank holiday, it will be over quickly; and don’t assume that the entire banking system can’t collapse. Fractional-reserve banking is inherently fraudulent, and the FDIC’s alleged deposit insurance is nothing but sticker insurance: people believe their bank accounts are insured by the government up to $100,000 because a sticker tells them so. The FDIC doesn’t have enough funds to bail out even a small fraction of all deposits up to $100,000; a panic causing widespread bank runs would quickly destroy any illusions to the contrary. Holding several weeks worth of cash outside the banking system means you’re not immediately vulnerable to bank runs or forced bank holidays.

Your first instinct to protect yourself from theft may be to hide all of your cash. But, in the April 2008 issue of his excellent newsletter, Global Changes and Opportunities Report, Jim Powell suggested leaving a relatively small amount of cash in an obvious place to deter further ransacking or discovery of your real stash.

What constitutes a small amount is relative, but it has to be an amount large enough for a thief to be satisfied with it and leave immediately; $300—500 is probably a good range. Burglarizing a house is dangerous, and the legal penalties are severe; if someone breaks into a house and almost immediately finds $500 in cash, the odds are he’ll very happily take that and leave.

The desire to not lose anything is understandable, but once someone has successfully made it into your home, that option no longer exists; the thief is unlikely to leave with nothing. If you have several thousand dollars hidden elsewhere in the house, you should be relieved to only lose $500.

Publicly giving specific advice for hiding the real stash would defeat the purpose of even addressing it, so use your imagination; think along the lines of really hiding it, such as by hollowing out walls or removing floorboards. If you have a lot of cash stored, it’s a good idea to break it up into several different places. Also consider getting a fire safe for each stash to address risks other than theft, such as natural disasters.

Anything can happen

3. Have enough silver and/or gold coins to pay your bills for at least one year.

Forced bank holidays that keep you from your cash for a while aren’t the only danger, nor is a collapse of the entire banking system; we could suffer a runaway inflation that would make everyone’s cash worthless. In the event of a currency destruction, gold coins are for more long-term wealth storage; with a one-ounce coin currently selling for about $850, a great deal of wealth can be stored in a small space; silver coins are for daily expenses.

Coins can be stored with your cash or separately; some or all of them can also be stored at your retreat (more on that later) if your emotional make-up is such that you can relax with them stored far away, because you’ll need the retreat in the same situation where you’ll need the coins.

Reputable companies that sell coins can be found by doing a Google search.

Nothing has to happen

4. Have at least a one-year supply of storable food for each member of your family, along with water filters and/or a year’s worth of purification tablets.

Don’t assume that supermarket shelves will always be full. Many websites sell freeze-dried food that’s storable for many years; do a Google search for storable food.

It’s impractical to store a year’s worth of bottled water; even if it weren’t, that wouldn’t address other water needs, such as bathing. Search Google for water filters and water purification tablets.

Anything can happen

5. Have enough firearms to protect yourself, your family and your property — and know how to use them competently and confidently.

LRC columnist Greg Perry knows far more about this than I do; reading his archived articles about guns will give you a good start.

Nothing has to happen

6. Secure your home to whatever extent you feel is necessary to give you peace of mind.

Once you have the minimum provisions in place at home, you must consider how to protect them — including your guns, since a theft could occur when no one is home. Look into obtaining better locks, timers for interior lights, more or better exterior lights, a security system, a dog, or whatever else you need to relax.

WORST-CASE SCENARIO: YOU MUST ABANDON YOUR HOME

But what if things get so bad that you no longer feel it’s safe to remain in your home due to things like riots and looting? Or if the government crosses whatever line you feel makes it no longer safe to even remain in the country?

Anything can happen

7. If you live in or near a city, consider getting a rural retreat, or at least have a getaway plan.

If things get so bad that you no longer feel safe in your home under any circumstances due to actions of fellow citizens — like chaos and riots in response to runaway inflation — it’d be nice to have somewhere else inside the country to go, somewhere that’s relatively isolated. Just like diversifying your savings, it’s also a good idea to diversify your locales.

In his 1974 #1 New York Times Best-Seller, You Can Profit From a Monetary Crisis, Harry Browne wrote, “If the currency is destroyed through a runaway inflation, you may not want to stay where you are now. A modern community without a currency could be a dangerous place to be. Without means of paying wages, with no welfare checks, without the normal necessities of life coming into the city, the possibilities are pretty grim.

“I certainly hope this never happens. Much of what I’ve come to enjoy in life would be unavailable to me. However, if it should happen, I’m sure that I’d feel that life is still worth living — and worth living in safety.

“In addition to the runaway inflation possibilities, mob violence has already become a reality in the past few years. And I suspect that, as it becomes more difficult for most people to maintain their accustomed standards of living, such violence will increase.

“So you may consider it important to have a plan in mind for withdrawing from a vulnerable area if any type of civil crisis should occur. Such a plan is generally called a retreat.

“A retreat can be a specific place that’s been previously prepared as a place to live for a while. Or it may be only a well-stocked camper that represents mobility to you. Or it might be a boat that can take you to wherever safety is.

“Once you start thinking about the subject, you may come up with an endless number of questions and requirements. There’s no way I can answer all those questions for you; it’s the kind of program each person must think out for himself and prepare for himself. But there are a few general guidelines that can get you started. If the retreat is to be a safe place to go where you can remain for several months, or even years, here are some suggestions:

“1. It should be in an area only a few hours from where you live.

“2. It should be relatively inaccessible to others. Obviously, if you can get there, others can too. But you can pick a place, away from highways and normal streets, where no one is likely to come who isn’t looking for you.

“3. You should try to find an area in which any other nearby residents are relatively self-sufficient. It would be nice to live near people who would have little reason to turn to looting.

“4. You shouldn’t pick an area that requires that you live in a way you’re not sure you could manage. For example, don’t select a spot where the temperature is 30-degrees-below during the winter — unless you know you can handle such conditions.

“5. Within the area you choose, try to find a place that’s relatively unnoticeable, even to those living in the area.

“6. The residence should be stocked, in advance, with sufficient food to see you through at least a year (in the case of a currency destruction). In addition, the area should provide the means to survive beyond a year — the ability to hunt, fish, and/or grow food.

“7. In addition to food, the residence should be stocked with items essential to your survival: medicines, vitamins, winter clothing, provisions for heating (without normal gas and electricity service), cooking facilities, etc.

“8. You should store, in advance, at least part of your coin hoard — for that’s where you’ll probably need it most.

“9. If you can, stock the retreat with items you can trade to others for things you need. Pick manufactured items that are likely to be unavailable to others: extra canned foods, salt, sugar, aspirin, cigarettes, liquor, medicines, gasoline, tools. Choose items that aren’t likely to be readily available in that area, and are relatively easy for you to obtain now, and that will be easy to store.

“10. And, lastly, you must consider how you’ll defend yourself if it should become necessary. To me, the best defense is to create a situation that avoids all possible confrontations. But no matter how carefully you plan, you may be faced with the need to defend what’s yours.

"These are the basic requirements. Beyond that, there’s much that can be done to make the retreat more livable. Prepare it in such a way that you can enjoy it for vacations; that way you won’t need a disaster to amortize the cost.

"Once you have a structure stocked with food and other vital necessities, you can relax — assured that your minimum requirements have been satisfied. Then you can add to the retreat as you think of things and as money becomes available to spend on it.

"If it seems too ambitious a job to find and stock a hideaway, consider getting a camper or a microbus. Pack a trunk that will have the essential supplies you would need for a quick getaway. Then you can leave at a moment’s notice and you’ll at least have mobility.

"If that’s still too much to tackle, at least have a prearranged plan for getting away if it ever becomes necessary — and an area in mind to which you’ll go."

Nothing has to happen

8. Learn how to hunt, fish, or garden.

What if the crisis lasts long enough for your long-term food stores to run out? These skills would help keep you in your retreat as long as necessary, and keep you from starving while you’re there.

Anything can happen

9. Open a foreign bank account.

Just like it’s wise to keep some wealth out of the banking system, it’s wise to keep some outside your home country.

In Harry Browne’s Complete Guide to Swiss Banks, Harry wrote, "By 1934, Hans Lubich, a prosperous German businessman, understood what kind of future the Nazi government was preparing for him.

"He decided to take his family to Switzerland for a u2018vacation.’ But before leaving, he converted some of his savings into the largest banknotes available. Since Hans was a shoemaker, he hid the banknotes in the soles of his family’s shoes.

"So, despite the severe penalties for taking money out of the country, he smuggled $20,000 German marks (roughly equivalent of $126,000 in 2007) into Switzerland.

"After they arrived in Switzerland, Hans’ children went skiing while Hans went to a bank.

"The Lubich family returned to Germany after the vacation, but the oppression of Jews continued to worsen. When Hans was given the opportunity to leave the country again, he took it — but he was not allowed to take any property out of Germany with him. He booked himself and his family aboard a cruise ship to Hong Kong — buying first-class passage and every available extra, using up as much money from his German bank account as possible.

"Hans and his family made it to Hong Kong, and, eventually, to the United States. After he arrived in the U.S., he cabled his Swiss bank, instructing it to send his money to America. The money enabled him to buy a business and to begin his new life without financial hardship. Within a few years, his family was living as prosperously as it had been prior to the Nazi regime in Germany."

That’s a true story, and it illustrates the value of having assets outside one’s home country. Make no assumptions about what can or can’t happen here. As Robert Higgs thoroughly documented in his book Crisis and Leviathan, governments often exploit crises to expand their powers. None of us have ever seen as pervasive a crisis as runaway inflation, which was exactly what preceded Hitler’s rise to power; if we have such a crisis here, you can bet our government will grant itself sweeping new powers, the extent of which we can’t foresee — and you can also bet that many people will be cheering to be "saved" by tyranny.

Nothing has to happen

10. Get a passport.

Like Hans Lubich, if that tyranny comes, you may decide that it’s time to leave the country. That would be a last resort for me, but it can’t be repeated too often that anything can happen. I’d like to think, for example, that if I had lived in Germany in 1933, I also would have had the foresight to see the Nazis for what they were, and to get out of the country while I still could — and I’m not even Jewish. And, much like the Nazis exploited the fear and anger over the burning of the Reichstag to seize dictatorial powers, our federal government has given itself tyrannical new powers since 9/11. In a story that should have been covered ad nauseum by the mainstream media, but instead was barely covered at all, according to Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), Congress was told that President Bush would declare martial law if they didn’t pass the bank bailout package.

U.S. passports can be obtained at some — if not all — Post Office locations. To obtain a passport, you basically just need to submit a form, pay a $100 fee, and provide your birth certificate and two identical color, two inch square headshot photos of yourself taken in the last six months (many photographers offer passport photos). Google U.S. passport for more information.

Anything can happen; nothing has to happen

This advice is nothing but good, common sense. If any of it seems ridiculous, it’s as ridiculous as buying insurance. The nice thing about this list is some of them require little money, and the ones that do won’t be wasted if they’re never needed for a crisis: the storable food can still be eaten, the cash can still be spent or saved if its value isn’t destroyed; the gold and silver will still be valuable, and can continue to be saved, or can be spent or traded for paper dollars; the retreat can be used for vacations or sold; the firearms will still provide protection in an uncertain world, and the skill to use them will remain valuable; and the skill to hunt, fish, or grow food will remain valuable; and all of these preparations should provide some peace of mind and confidence — even if the original reasons for learning them never materialize.

As Harry Browne wrote in his all-time classic, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, "Insecurity comes from vulnerability. The insecure person relies upon protectors — institutions and people who will guarantee results for him. Because he knows intuitively that his interests can’t possibly be the paramount interests in someone else’s life, he’s vulnerable and he knows it.

"He depends on his u2018rights’ to protect him, he hopes for safety and durability from his ability to make others understand him, he clings to situations that are no longer right for him, and the constant frustrations of these situations only heighten his insecurity. He has good reason to be afraid of the world.

"Security comes from your ability to deal with the world, not from a guarantee by someone else. When you know that you’re capable of dealing with whatever comes, you have the only security the world has to offer."

Johnny Kramer Archives

The Beam in the State’s Eye

Johnny Kramer — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:00:00 +0000

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A good — and succinct — definition of "liberty" is "being legally free to do as you please, so long as you do not tangibly infringe on anyone else’s body or property."

So, in a free society, there should be only two criteria for criminality:

Someone’s body or property has been tangibly infringed upon.
That person (the victim), or that person’s beneficiaries in the case of a murder, has filed criminal charges, seeking restitution and/or damages.

No victim? No crime.

Criminal courts should exist only to settle charges brought by victims, with the purposes of finding the truth and, in the case of a conviction, having the defendant pay the plaintiff for the damage his actions caused. Sentences would be given in units of money to be paid to the victim, rather than units of time in a cage.

The court would receive a fee for arbitrating the dispute, to be paid by the person who lost the case — which would discourage frivolous or fraudulent charges from plaintiffs, because such charges would likely result in nothing for them, as the losers of the case, but a bill from the court, plus further fees from retaliatory wrongful accusation charges from the defendant. Like any other business, courts would compete for customers in the marketplace, likely on factors such as price and the speed and fairness of their services.

Prisons, if they would exist at all, would be only for serial violent offenders who are unfit to live among civilized people, and possibly also for one-time offenders who refused to pay for their damages. Or the market might come up with something better than prisons; it’s impossible to say.

In our society, this is somewhat of a description of how civil courts work.

Criminal "justice"

By contrast, criminal courts largely exist not to make restitution for victims, but to avenge the State, to punish people for breaking the State’s laws. Many criminal cases involve crimes with no victim, while others proceed against the victim’s wishes.

Not to mention that, when a real crime occurs, it means, by definition, that the police force for which the victim was coercively forced to pay through taxes failed to prevent the crime. And, despite the fact that the victim failed to get the "protection" he was supposed to receive for his money, he certainly has no recourse in seeking a refund. What would happen to the business of a private security firm that failed in such a way?

And, if the perpetrator of a real crime is convicted, he will ridiculously be sentenced not to make restitution to the victim, but to spend a prescribed amount of time in a cage.

This asinine system exists not to compensate the victim, but to make work for the parasitical criminal "justice" system’s judges, prosecutors, public defenders, parole and probation officers, wardens, prison guards, social workers, and other employees, who otherwise would have to go into the market and do productive work.

Even in cases of real crimes, this scam not only doesn’t exist to make restitution for the victim, but upon the perpetrator’s conviction, the victim will be further robbed through taxation to pay for it all!

O.J. Simpson

For an example of this ridiculous and criminal system, look no further than last week’s sentencing of O.J. Simpson.

Like Plaxico Burress, Simpson did a dumb thing. But, as his attorneys contended, stupidity does not equal criminality. Over one incident that lasted less than five minutes, in which no one was injured or killed, Simpson has been sentenced a minimum of nine years in a cage. How does that return the property involved in the incident to its rightful owners, or compensate the two alleged victims for the trauma of the incident? It doesn’t; it makes work for the parasites in Nevada’s criminal "justice" system.

In fact, Las Vegas’ CBS affiliate reported that one of the alleged victims, Alfred Beardsley, didn’t want Simpson charged with anything, and was testifying as a "reluctant" witness, which means the State was using the same force against Beardsley to make him testify as it was accusing Simpson of using against him.

And, during coverage of the sentencing, a number of mainstream legal analysts, including former judge Andrew Napolitano, said that in some states (but apparently not in Nevada, even without guns), the incident wouldn’t have even been illegal had no guns been used.

In her sentencing statement, Judge Jackie Glass said to Simpson, "Now there’s still questions about whose stuff it is. I think that’s still in dispute. You thought it was yours. Your counsel said that over and over again to me during the trial, and now during the sentencing, as well as you."

But that’s what this whole case should be about: determining whose property this is and returning it to the rightful owner(s) — who might be the Goldmans if some or all of it was Simpson’s and it fell within the guidelines of the civil judgment they won against him — and possibly requiring Simpson to pay damages to the two victims for the trauma of the event, because the way he went about recovering the property was wrong, even if it was his.

And even that should only happen if the victims press charges. (If not, the Goldmans could bring their own charges, attempting to seize the property under the stipulations of their civil victory over Simpson. But that’s a separate matter.) As we’ve seen, one of the victims was against the whole thing, which means he’s being victimized again by the State, but it claims the moral authority to charge Simpson.

It’s understandable that many — including the Goldmans — feel that Simpson is a murderer who is finally getting his due.

But that should have no bearing on this case; while Judge Glass made a point of saying the same thing, it’s obvious that such is not the case across this entire proceeding; legal analysts also asserted that the kidnapping charge, which carried the harshest sentence of all of the charges, and which stemmed only from Simpson demanding — which was heard on tape — that no one leave the room, likely would not have been pressed if this incident had involved Joe Blow instead of O.J. Simpson.

That fact is further evidenced by the plea deal the prosecutors offered to Simpson’s co-conspirators (Simpson reportedly declined an undisclosed plea offer of his own, but it sounds like his offer was less generous than what the others received), four of whom accepted and received only probation from Judge Glass.

The Beam in the State’s Eye

The hypocrisy of government is unbelievable.

The State murders many thousands of people — at least — through things like wars, drug prohibition, and the medical- and pharmaceutical-industrial complexes, then claims the moral authority to prosecute citizens for individual murders.

It steals trillions of dollars per year from the productive economy through things like taxes, inflation, subsidies, and bail-outs, then claims the moral authority to prosecute citizens for thefts of a few hundred dollars.

It has kidnapped thousands in the past through conscription and arrest, and has imprisoned for years, through its prison-industrial complex, thousands of people who hurt no one, then claims the moral authority to lock up O.J. Simpson for years because he attempted to stop a couple of people from leaving a hotel room for a couple of minutes.

It routinely clears police of any wrongdoing in cases where they’ve deliberately, criminally used guns or tasers on innocent citizens, then admonishes citizens like Plaxico Burress or Simpson for gun accidents that could have occurred — but didn’t: Burress’ gun could have shot someone else when it fell out of his pants; someone could have been shot in an adjacent room or the hallway during Simpson’s hotel room incident. But criminal law should only deal with tangible damage to person or property after the fact; "woulda, shoulda, coulda" should be left to the insurance industry.

(This is nowhere near a complete list, but you get the idea.)

Such hypocrisy was also evidenced in Judge Glass’ statement to Simpson: "You went to the room, and you took guns — meaning you and the group. You used force. You took property, whether it was yours or somebody else’s. And in this state, that amounts to robbery, with use of a deadly weapon. Whether it’s you having the gun, or Mr. McClinton having the gun, or Mr. Alexander having the gun."

The only exception to her words is when the State has the gun: then, using force to take property isn’t called robbery; it’s called taxation. That point is likely lost on Judge Glass, as is the fact that the very use of force and guns to take property for which she condemned Simpson was exactly what paid for the building they were in and everything in it, down to the chair she was sitting on and the robe she was wearing. Maybe she should worry about the beam in her employer’s eye before concerning herself about the splinter in the eye of a comparatively petty criminal like Simpson.

Johnny Kramer Archives

The Persecution of Plaxico Burress

Johnny Kramer — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:00:00 +0000

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Plaxico Burress, the New York Giants wide receiver responsible for catching the game-winning touchdown in this year’s Super Bowl, accidentally shot himself in the leg with a gun he had in his pants last week in a New York City nightclub.

Since Burress’ pistol was unregistered in New York, he has been charged with two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon in what prosecutors call "a strong case." If he’s convicted, Burress — who apparently has never been in any significant legal trouble before — will face a mandatory minimum of 3 years in state prison for each count, with a potential maximum of 15 years for each count.

And, while New York doesn’t recognize registrations from other states anyway, Burress’ gun was also unregistered in New Jersey, where he lives, so it’s possible that he could face further charges there over the incident.

Burress appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday, showing no limp or other signs of the injury. He didn’t enter a plea, was released on $100,000 bond, and was ordered to return to court on March 31.

The "crime"

According to The New York Times, "Burress arrived at the Latin Quarter nightclub in Manhattan at 1:20 a.m. Saturday morning, with four others, including two teammates.

"The criminal complaint, released by prosecutors Monday, said that an onlooker then saw Burress near the V.I.P. area of the club holding a drink in his left hand and fidgeting his right hand in the area of the waistline of his pants. The witness then heard a single ‘pop’ sound before hearing Burress say, ‘Take me to the hospital.’

"Burress was on the ground, with his legs shaking, when a bloody gun — a .40-caliber Glock pistol — fell out of his pant leg and onto the floor, the onlooker said. The bullet, which broke through the skin of Burress’s right thigh and pierced muscle tissue, traveled through the leg before lodging itself somewhere in the club.

"Burress left the club by 1:50 a.m., the police said, and arrived at the hospital at 2:04 a.m., according to surveillance cameras at the hospital."

The parasites must have smelled Burress’ blood

Burress was driven to the hospital by teammate Antonio Pierce. According to The San Francisco Chronicle, "The cover-up, police sources said, began almost immediately. The .40-caliber Glock was placed in the glove compartment of Pierce’s Escalade and the teammates drove off, with a number of phone calls made before Burress arrived at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center at 2:04 a.m., the sources said. Burress gave an alias, sources said, and the hospital did not call police, though it was required by law to do so.

"Burress left the hospital at 1 p.m. Saturday, and when police called a short time later — alerted to the shooting by a television news report — an administrator claimed confidentiality laws prohibited her from discussing patients.

"Later, a high-ranking police official called the administrator and told her she was wrong, at which point the administrator acknowledged Burress had been admitted, sources said.

"The hospital said it is cooperating with police and is doing its own investigation."

Now, the Chronicle story reported, Pierce and some of the hospital staff who treated Burress may also face charges.

"’We are investigating both the hospital’s failure to report the shooting and Antonio Pierce’s role that evening,’ Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, the NYPD’s top spokesman, said after Burress surrendered and was charged with gun possession for accidentally shooting himself at Manhattan’s Latin Quarter nightclub.

"Pierce, meanwhile, seemed confident he did nothing wrong. ‘I don’t see myself getting arrested,’ he said Monday in an interview on WFAN Radio.

"Police said neither the NFL nor the Giants are fully cooperating.

"The NFL, Browne said, reneged on its promise to make Pierce available Monday and a similar promise to produce two Giants trainers went unfulfilled.

"The trainers, police sources said, might have been among those contacted by Burress and others to discuss treating him without police knowing.

"By late Monday, one member of the Giants’ medical staff did talk to detectives, as did a players’ union official.

"’You have a series of events, and there is a universe of silence after this shooting,’ Browne said.

"Previous reports described Burress as alerting club security to his gun and accidentally firing it as he tried to hand it to a security member. Police, however, said that was not the case."

New York News Day reported that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg "blasted Giants receiver Plaxico Burress yesterday, calling for him to be prosecuted ‘to the fullest extent of the law’ for accidentally shooting himself in the right thigh with an illegal handgun — particularly because as a sports hero, he is both a public figure and a role model.

“‘If we don’t prosecute [him] to the fullest extent of the law, I don’t know who on Earth we would,’ Bloomberg said. ‘It makes a sham, a mockery of the law. And it’s pretty hard to argue the guy didn’t have a gun and that it wasn’t loaded. You’ve got bullet holes in and out to show that it was there.’

"Burress’ attorney, Benjamin Brafman, asked people not to prejudge the case.

"’I think the mayor can at times influence pending legal proceedings,’ he said. ‘I am just asking the mayor and everyone else to take a deep breath … [and not prejudge].’

"Bloomberg has made his war on illegal guns a signature issue. He also had harsh words for the hospital where Burress was treated, New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. He said hospital management should be charged for failing to report the incident, and that the hospital workers involved should be fired.

"’It is just an outrage that the hospital didn’t do what they are legally required to do,’ he said. ‘It’s a lame excuse that they didn’t know — this is a world-class hospital in a city where we all know what goes on in the streets of our city, and we all should be working together to get guns off the streets.’

The statement "we all should be working together to get guns off the streets" is shockingly immoral and fascist — and laughably impossible, even if it were a lofty goal.

The News Day story continued, "Police didn’t learn what had happened until they saw it on the television news Saturday afternoon, several hours after the shooting occurred at a Manhattan nightclub, Bloomberg and police officials said. The mayor also blamed Giants management for failing to notify authorities.

"’The Giants should have picked up the phone right away, as good corporate citizens,’ he said.

Quick, somebody add "good corporate citizens" to the list of creepy fascist terms before we forget it.

In rebuttal to Bloomberg’s charges, News Day concluded, "Pat Hanlon, a spokesman for the Giants, disputed this. ‘In the early hours of Saturday morning, as we started to get a sense of what we were dealing with, we did, in fact, notify NFL security, which then contacted the police,’ Hanlon said in an e-mailed statement."

It’s understandable that any one person or organization doesn’t want to further provoke the State. But wouldn’t it be great, just once, for a large organization in a situation like this — like the NFL — rather than bowing and scraping before their masters and timidly pledging their "full cooperation" (with the State’s attempts to gather evidence to shake them down for money or even to lock them in cages for non-crimes), to tell the State — as the average 18th- or 19th-Century American likely would have — to f**k off?

Who’s the victim?

To summarize, Burress is being prosecuted not for damaging another person’s body or property, for which that person has filed a complaint, seeking restitution and/or damages; he’s being prosecuted for not having a permission slip from the State to carry his own property. And the people who helped him get medical treatment are being threatened for not turning Burress in to the State for not having a permission slip and because the piece of his property, for which he didn’t have a permission slip, involved in the victimless incident happened to be a gun; and for not cooperating with the State, once the non-crime came to its attention, in helping it gather evidence to prosecute Burress for the non-crime, and possibly to prosecute them for their involvement in the non-crime too.

The despicable treatment by the State of Burress, and the equally despicable threatening of those who went out of their way to help him with his accidental injury, is another example of the State’s hegemonic relationship with the people it "serves," as Butler Shaffer has quipped, "the way a cannibal ‘serves’ his neighbor."

In a free society, Burress would be responsible for paying his hospital bill and for any damage to the nightclub, after which he could put the whole unpleasant accident behind him and get on with his life.

Instead, the State is going to ruin Burress’ career and life, and cause unspeakable anguish for his loved ones, by locking him in a cage inside a socialist hellhole for a "crime" that hurt no one except for himself — and even that, just barely. The only victim in this "crime" is Burress.

State "justice"

The State is not what keeps the amorphous, ill-defined entity it calls "society" from descending into "chaos."

And its criminal "justice" system does not exist to make victims whole again; rather, it’s a giant make-work scam for parasitical "law enforcement" officials, politicians, and court employees. As the sickening Burress case shows, much of the State’s "law enforcement" consists of work that wouldn’t exist in a free society, prosecuting victimless crimes and trying to outlaw peaceful, voluntary behavior.

And much of the real crime that occurs (like murders and robberies) wouldn’t happen if the State weren’t creating black markets in commodities like narcotics; forcibly preventing people from defending themselves and their property through things like gun control laws; and socializing property like streets so that there’s no owner who has to be concerned about the safety of his paying customers.

And when one of those real crimes occurs, thanks to the wonders of socialism, the victim not only has to pay with his taxes for the police force that failed to protect him or his property (and may also fail to catch a suspect), but if someone is charged, the victim will suffer the further indignity of paying for the trial, and further still of paying for the perpetrator’s incarceration if he’s convicted.

There’s nothing the State can do that the market can’t do better, faster, cheaper, and fairer. If the persecution of Plaxico Burress is an example of the State’s "justice," how could free market courts be any worse?

Johnny Kramer Archives

John Jackson vs. Jack Johnson

Johnny Kramer — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:00:00 +0000

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Today, millions of Americans will validate their faith in the secular religion of democracy by going to the polls, as they do every four years, to choose between two basically interchangeable candidates, both of whom were, as always, hand-picked by the power elite because they can be trusted to dutifully perpetuate their system.

The False Choice

This fact is evidenced not only by the similarity of the presidential candidates every four years, but also by the shallowness of mainstream political discourse, where fundamental questions about the power elite’s system are not allowed; rather, acceptable debate is limited to the minutiae of micromanaging the system, to fairly trivial distractions that wouldn’t even be contentious issues in a free society — like gay marriage and stem cell research, and to the personal character of the candidates.

For example, the moral legitimacy of the income tax, or of the federal government extracting about $3 trillion per year from the productive economy, is not discussed; instead, the "debate" is on whether at what income levels to place the tax code’s gradations, whether to slightly raise or lower any of the gradation’s tax rates, or whether this or that expense should qualify for a deduction.

Nor are the moral legitimacy, constitutionality, or the results of the Drug War discussed; instead, the "debate" is limited to whether a certain substance should be a Schedule I or Schedule II drug, whether marijuana should be allowed for patients with certain medical conditions under certain, rigidly stipulated circumstances, or whether the penalties for a certain drug offense should be raised, or remain the same.

Nor are such questions allowed about the "War on Terror," the military-industrial complex, and the medical- and pharmaceutical-industrial complexes, the Federal Reserve, or any other part of the system.

Any major-party presidential candidate who raises such fundamental questions, such as Ron Paul, is ridiculed by "mainstream" (system-perpetuating) politicians and journalists, and is continually dismissed in a self-fulfilling prophecy as a "fringe" candidate with no chance to win.

And third-party candidates, who almost always raise such questions, are crippled by law from raising money or getting ballot access, and are excluded from debates with the major candidates, even if only one or two of them meet some reasonable criteria for inclusion.

The Establishment

The regimented discourse is due to the fact that there’s a small elite who really run the country — and they run it for their own purposes. They have a system in place — which consists of things like the income tax, the Federal Reserve System, the medical- and pharmaceutical-industrial complexes, other regulation of business, the military-industrial complex, and drug prohibition — by which they attain levels of income and power that they could not attain on the market, through voluntary exchange.

But that system harms the standard of living of the average person, which is why the elite would not be able to maintain it — and their status as (unnatural) elites — through voluntary exchange. But, thanks in no small part to the 12 years of forced government brainwashing of compulsory public schools that are also an important part of the power elite’s system, most people believe the system is there for their benefit and protection.

And, when the system causes problems, the elite distract the average person with the sideshow of politics and the illusion of two competing parties. As Murray Rothbard explained in one of his last essays, discussing the 1994 Republican Revolution, if the elite made it overtly obvious that there’s only one party, any problems would be an indictment of the entire system, which would then become widely despised and likely to be overthrown. Instead, people are distracted by the illusion of competing parties, which are really part of the same system.

Vote early, and vote often

We can see how effective this distraction is by how many people get caught up in the irrelevance of politics. Though it’s mostly not their fault, but is the result of conditioning, when the government’s actions cause problems, rarely is the average person sophisticated enough to indict the fundamental system. Instead, if the Republicans are in power and he’s a Democrat, he indicts the Republicans, and focuses on electing more Democrats; if he’s a Republican, he indicts the Democrats, or "liberals," for somehow corrupting Republican principles, or he claims that many of the elected Republicans aren’t "real" Republicans. And vice-versa.

Thus he reveals a deep psychological need to convince himself that the problems caused by the system are not inherent in government, but are the result of the "wrong" people being in charge, that if he can somehow get "them" out and "us" in, all will be well again. To believe otherwise would cause him to question his ideas about government and democracy — which, due to his years of conditioning, are among his most fundamental beliefs. Only when he somehow becomes consciously aware of fundamental questions about the system’s legitimacy (and maybe not even then) will he begin to go against his conditioning.

Writing last year about our farcical presidential elections, I expanded on Dr. Rothbard’s essay when I pointed out that there’s no reason to believe that America would be measurably freer if anyone who lost any of the last generation’s presidential elections had won.

McBama vs. O’Bain

This year is no different; while there may be some fairly trivial differences between them, in the grand scheme of things, it makes no fundamental difference whether McCain or Obama is elected — the underlying system will continue under either of them.

For anyone who doubts this, let’s look at Obama’s and McCain’s stated positions, and see if we can figure out what everyone is so worked up about.

Position

Obama

McCain

Maintain the Federal Reserve and its power to ruin the economy and erode citizens’ standard of living with inflation, making credit too easily available, and inflicting the boom-and-bust cycle

Maintain the income tax and the commensurate level of federal spending

Prolong the recession by trying to forcibly prevent normal market corrections, such as falling prices, failures of unsound businesses, and liquidation of bad debt

Maintain the FDA and the government’s medical- and pharmaceutical-industrial complexes

Maintain — and expand — the government’s ruinous healthcare policies and programs, which, along with the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, are the root causes of healthcare being so expensive

Continue the Drug War, which has accomplished nothing in decades but wasting billions of dollars, fostering black markets and all of their inherent problems, and giving the U.S. the highest number of imprisoned people in the world — both in absolute terms and as a percentage of its population

Maintain U.S. troop presence in Iraq indefinitely

Perpetuate the rest of the military-industrial complex, including permanent U.S. troop presence and bases in more than half of the world’s countries and foreign "aid"

Continue — if not expand — the bogus "War on Terror"

Perpetuate — if not expand — post-9/11 agencies’ and programs’ assaults on civil liberties

Continue untenable entitlement programs like Social Security

Perpetuate government schools from the federal level

Continue dismantling property rights (which are the only possible source of real environmental protection), eroding human living standards, decrying prosperity and plenty, and subsidizing "green" industries that can’t survive in the market, all under the guise of "protecting the environment" and battling the meaningless catch-all term, "climate change"

Looking at this table, it’s easy to see why the mainstream media insists that this is "the most important election in our lifetimes!" Which they also said in 2004. And 2000. And 1996 . . .

Johnny Kramer Archives

Want Gasoline When You Need It?

Johnny Kramer — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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Hurricanes Gustav and Ike have caused severe gasoline shortages throughout the southeastern U.S., especially in Georgia and the Carolinas. The hurricanes disrupted the two major pipelines feeding the southeast from the Gulf of Mexico, Colonial and Plantation, temporarily knocking out up to 60% of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil production.

The southeast is still — two weeks after Ike made landfall, and about a month after the arrival of Gustav — facing rampant gasoline shortages, which analysts expect to last at least another couple of weeks.

According to the Washington Post, half of the gas stations in Atlanta were closed last week; most that were open had hour-long lines of about 60 cars waiting for fuel. Typical of government, the Atlanta city government barred the public from two stations, to ensure that city vehicles would have plenty of fuel.

The Post story also reports that drivers in Charlotte faced similar conditions, with numerous closed stations and hour-long lines of about 60 cars at each of those still open.

Numerous anecdotal stories have also surfaced in the past week of people being stranded in their cars after running out of gas while waiting in line to refuel, and of others being forced to leave their cars at home, to instead take public transportation, walk, or ride a bike due to the fuel shortage.

Predictably, the parasites have responded to the crisis by denouncing the market function they refer to as "price gouging."

An MNSBC story about the aftermath of Ike reported that President Bush "said the hurricane’s toll on refineries and pipelines is creating u2018an upward pressure on price’ for people at the gas pump.

"The president also said, though, that people should not be subjected to price gouging. The federal government is working with state leaders to monitor whether consumers are being charged unfairly high prices during the disruption in the energy supply."

Likewise, North Carolina governor Mike Easley released the following statement:

"As a result of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, oil refineries in Texas and Louisiana have temporarily interrupted some gasoline supplies to the pipelines that serve North Carolina. Therefore, there may be temporary limitations on our gas supply. However, wholesale gas prices are up less than 20 cents a gallon over the last few days. Therefore, consumers should not see prices rise substantially more than this rise in the wholesale price.

"Today I have declared a state of abnormal market disruption under North Carolina law and charged the Attorney General with enforcing the price gouging statute. This statute prohibits the charging of prices that are unreasonably excessive under the circumstances.

"We know that there will be some supply disruption, but we do not yet know the extent. Past events of this kind have lasted only a short time. I urge motorists to reasonably conserve gasoline until the situation is clearer. "

North Carolina’s NBC affiliate, WITN, reported, along with providing the text of the "North Carolina Price Gouging Statute" and a link to a "price gouging complaint form" so viewers can report to the state the identity of anyone they catch trying to alleviate the shortage by raising their prices, "The North Carolina Attorney General’s office says they are getting complaints of gasoline price gouging.

"But the state’s price gouging law doesn’t become effective until the governor declares a state of emergency, which has not happened.

"Attorney General Roy Cooper today urged the governor to make that happen. u2018People are understandably frustrated that already high gas prices are rising so quickly. I urge the governor to trigger the price gouging law and we stand ready to take consumer complaints. I encourage gas stations to avoid panic price increases and consumers to avoid panic fill-ups.’"

Not to be outdone, Georgia governor Sonny Purdue invoked his state’s price gouging statute; Atlanta’s WSB-TV reported him as saying, "’The threat of Hurricane Ike has disrupted the production of distribution of gasoline, which will have an effect on prices.

"’However, we expect the prices that Georgians pay at the pump to be in line with the prices retailers are paying. We will not tolerate retailers taking advantage of Georgians during a time of emergency,’ he added."

Then the story continues, without the slightest acknowledgment of even the possibility of a causal relationship, "Consumers told WSB-TV Saturday that many convenience store chains are running out of all or some gas grades.

"Georgia’s price gouging statute prevents retailers from selling goods or services at an unreasonable or egregious price."

Elsewhere, in a testament to the success of public schooling in America, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, "More than 1,400 drivers have complained to the state about gas gouging in the past two weeks, and the state has subpoenaed sales records from 130 stations to determine if they illegally jacked up prices.

"It will take several weeks to determine whether stations were illegally gouging consumers.

"u2018We have enough questions about this — 130 — that we’re asking them for information,’ said Bill Cloud of the Office of Consumer Affairs. u2018When they send us that data, we may say, u2018Well that’s not price gouging,’ and that would be the end of that.

"u2018But if we look at some of the data and it looks a little hinky to us, we’re obviously going to pursue it as a case.’

"While gas stations are allowed to raise their prices as the price of gasoline goes up, they have to keep the same profit margin they had when the governor activated the law, Cloud said.

"The state had one report Tuesday that an Acworth station was charging $8.82 a gallon, but that report hasn’t been verified, Cloud said.

"However, state officials are getting fewer complaints about gas gouging than they did after Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

"u2018I think part of that may well be that the stations are much more attuned to the price gouging laws than they were before Katrina,’ Cloud said. u2018It sunk in with enough people that we don’t go away on this.’"

According to the story, the state government of Georgia shook down gas stations and hotels for $180,000 in the wake of Katrina; as we can see, they’re looking to do it again.

And, in an op-ed for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution by Chris Clark, Executive Director of the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority, and Carol Crouch, Director of the Environmental Protection Division at the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the pair praised the Georgia state government’s response, including that "Gov. Perdue activated Georgia’s price-gouging statute to protect consumers from unlawful increases in gas prices and other products."

Then, after lauding the government for forcibly stopping the market from producing the one thing — pricing information — that would have caused most people to voluntarily conserve gasoline during the shortage, they concluded their editorial — without the faintest hint of irony — by writing, "Until the refineries and pipelines that Georgia relies on for fuel return to normal operations, we ask Georgians to continue to do their part to conserve fuel by reducing unnecessary travel, carpooling and using mass transit, telecommuting, driving a little slower, and refueling only when low on gas."

The Invisible Hand

The irony is that so-called "price gouging" is nothing but the market at work. When supply falls relative to demand, the price of that good or service climbs as a signal to consumers about the new reality. If there’s a panic among buyers, causing demand to rise as supply falls, then the price rises still further. On the whole, those higher prices cause people to voluntarily ration their consumption, because they can’t afford to use as much as they did before. The higher prices also alert businesspeople to the shortage, which signals producers to produce more, and retailers who already have more than enough supply in their region to send some of it into the shortage region, so they can earn higher profits than they could at home by helping to relieve the shortage elsewhere.

The Visible Glove

But when prices are forced to remain at pre-crisis levels, it produces the perverse incentive for the first people in line to take more than they would if the prices were higher, leaving less for the next people. Equally perversely, such measures also eliminate the incentive for businesses from outside the crisis area with surplus supplies to come in to alleviate the shortage, because there are no extra profits to be earned for doing so.

We’re seeing exactly this scenario play out now in the southeast. There could be plenty of gasoline available for $5, $7, $10, or whatever price per gallon would create equilibrium between present supply and demand. If that natural market process were allowed to occur, consumers could choose to do without gas for a while if they felt the price wasn’t worth it to them — or they could choose to still buy all they want — if they’re willing to pay the higher prices. Instead, the government has kept prices at unrealistic, pre-crisis levels, and the result is that consumers are forced to do without gas because there’s none to buy at the artificially low prices.

Further, price controls are also an affront to property rights, which are the foundation of civilization. Any property owner has every right — if not every obligation — to attain the best possible price for his property. By what right does an unaffected third party presume to forcibly interfere?

Further still, notice the inherent arbitrariness in the wording of these statutes, using terms like "unfair," "unreasonable," and "excessive." Charges on such vague terms are probably difficult to disprove, which must make it easy for governments to shake down businesses for "price gouging" fines — which is likely no small part of why such statutes were enacted in the first place.

Ignorance or Malice?

It’s possible that some of these politicians and bureaucrats mean well, and really are so ignorant that they truly think anti-"gouging" laws really help regular people. If so, this is another argument against political power, because such people should not be able to force the consequences of their economic ignorance at gunpoint onto thousands or millions of people. Contrast this situation with the market, where people generally aren’t hired for influential positions for which they’re unqualified; when they are, neither they, nor their employers, can force anyone to associate with them; and companies that make a habit of hiring such people usually go bankrupt.

But a cynic can’t help but wonder if most of these people really are that ignorant, or if they’re conscious of the fact that their policies are hurting average people, but proceed anyway for some self-interested reason. Maybe they’re what Butler Shaffer describes as "people pushers," people who have totalitarian, control freak personalities they desire to indulge at the expense of others. Or maybe they’re somehow gaining financially or advancing their careers by such actions. Or, again, maybe they just found another easy way to raise money, by fining businesses for invented crimes.

If nothing else, anyone in government who understands the real function and value of "gouging" certainly has no incentive to admit it; if they acknowledge that the voluntary exchanges of individuals known as the market rations scarce resources as well as possible, and alleviates shortages as quickly and easily as possible, and that people don’t need to be "protected" from high prices, because they can decide perfectly well on their own whether to buy something — and, if so, how much, then how do the parasites justify their jobs, salaries, and the coercive power they presume to hold over others?

They can’t, and therein lies a message for members of the parasitical political class regarding anti-"gouging" laws, no matter their motivation behind enacting such impediments to trade.

For the well-meaning: blocking pricing information from adjusting to fluctuations in supply and demand will accomplish the opposite of what you’re trying to do; rather than preventing people from being "exploited" and "gouged," you’re exacerbating shortages and extending them for the longest possible period, ensuring that people can’t find for any price the things they need to endure a crisis.

For the sociopaths: there’s a growing remnant who are wise to your "public servant" charade, and we don’t appreciate having our standard of living eroded so that you can play petty dictator, enrich yourself, pay off political debts, or chase whatever other self-interested motivation you’re trying to catch.

Legalize Freedom

Regardless of the motivations behind such laws, the only way to ensure that people can get what they need before, during, and immediately after a crisis is simple and clear: repeal them all. Legalize price gouging!

Johnny Kramer Archives

Real Courage

Johnny Kramer — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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"Not long ago, we were a country of hat wearers. Hats were tipped, raised, handed, tossed, snapped, passed, checked, waved, and eaten (metaphorically, at least). Many believe the end of this way of life was precipitated by the presidential inauguration of a bareheaded John F. Kennedy; suddenly desperate American hatters were convinced that persuading the young, charismatic new leader to wear a hat would save their declining business."

So writes Neil Steinberg in his fascinating account of the decline of the hat, Hatless Jack: The President, the Fedora, and the History of American Style.

Anyone who’s old enough to remember — and those of us who aren’t who have seen old movies, photos, or newsreel footage — know that a tremendous change occurred in the early-mid-60s, where men’s hats abruptly went from ubiquitous to rare.

Did Kennedy Kill the Hat?

There is a long-running myth that John F. Kennedy broke with tradition and appeared at his 1961 inauguration bareheaded, after which millions of American men followed his lead and ditched their hats.

But, according to Mr. Steinberg’s account, "Inauguration morning at 8:55, John F. Kennedy walked out of his brick Georgetown home on his way to attend mass at Holy Trinity Church, two and a half blocks down N Street. He was wearing a light gray suit with a dark blue overcoat.

"Kennedy spied a cluster of waiting newsmen, attired in their Sunday best, some wearing homburgs.

"’Didn’t you get the word?’ Kennedy teased, as if he were back at Harvard. ‘It’s top hat time.’"

Indeed it was, so let’s retire this myth and absolve President Kennedy: While it is true that he didn’t like hats and often carried one, rather than wearing it (numerous photos exist of him as a senator, carrying his homburg), he did wear a silk top hat to his inauguration, continuing a nearly-unbroken tradition that Andrew Jackson began with his inauguration in 1829: see the Snopes account, which includes numerous photos.

But Kennedy was the last president-elect to wear one to his inauguration; LBJ broke with tradition in 1965 not only by not wearing a hat, but by mandating semi-formal black tie — instead of full-formal white tie — at his inaugural galas, which helped to kill off white tie — but, like Kennedy isn’t responsible for killing hats, and wouldn’t be even if the myth of his appearing hatless at his inaugural were true, Johnson didn’t kill white tie; he just solidified a decades-long trend; Carter broke further with tradition in 1977 by being the first president-elect to wear an everyday business suit, rather than a formal morning suit; Reagan didn’t bring back formal morning full-dress in 1981, but he did at least wear a semi-formal stroller instead of a business suit; to the best of my knowledge, that was the last time the stroller made a significant public appearance in the United States. Reagan had the style and the look of the old Hollywood star that he was to have convincingly worn a top hat if he had wanted to, but he didn’t. Like Carter in 1977, Reagan just wore a business suit in 1985, and that’s all anyone has worn since.

Neither Kennedy — nor any one man — is responsible for the death of the top hat, or of hats in general. As Mr. Steinberg meticulously documents, top hats, which had debuted in the late-1700s, hadn’t been everyday wear for anyone since the early-1900s, and had been on a decline even for highly formal functions since the 1930s. And sales of all men’s hats peaked in the U.S. in the 1920s; it just took a couple of generations for the gradual decline to reach the tipping-point where non-hat wearers became the majority.

If Not Kennedy, Then Who — or What?

The most likely culprit for the death of hats was advancing technology. As Bernard Roetzel points out in his gorgeous book, Gentleman: A Timeless Fashion, virtually everything a person wears — and this is even more true for men than for women — is utilitarian first, decorative second: we wear clothes for modesty and to keep ourselves warm in winter or the sun off of our skin in summer; we wear shoes to protect our feet from the ground; etc.

Exceptions for men — like ties, pocket squares, or lapel pins — usually involve relatively inexpensive items that are worn on the body, and can be forgotten once in place.

For everything else, if the utilitarian need is made obsolete because of advancing technology and the item becomes merely decorative, it usually dies.

The automobile was probably the single biggest culprit: not only did it eventually render the utility of the hat nearly obsolete, but the social norms associated with hats, like tipping them as a greeting, are impossible to perform while driving a car.

A hat is a practical thing to wear for protection from the elements: a great deal of heat his lost from the body through the top of the head, so a felt hat helps keep the wearer warm in winter, and a straw hat helps keep the sun off of the face and neck in summer.

One-hundred years ago, a car was basically a motorized, open horse carriage on wheels, and a man traveled either by riding in one of those miserable things or by walking — either to a train station or all the way to his destination. Further, there was no television, radio, Internet, or video games, so for entertainment, a man might walk his dog in the park, or walk to a newsstand. And there was little indoor plumbing, so it was inconvenient (and unsafe in winter) to wash one’s hair often, so there was a need to protect one’s hair from dirt and dust. There was also no central heating or air-conditioning, so being inside wasn’t even very comfortable.

So it’s not hard to understand why almost everyone living in those conditions wore a hat.

Contrast that with today: unless you work outside — in which case you wouldn’t wear a dress hat because it’s impractical — the only time you have to spend time in pouring rain, scorching heat, or bitter cold is walking for a few seconds between your home, car, place of employment, etc. — all of which are heated, air-conditioned, and insulated.

Under those conditions, hats are more trouble than they’re worth in terms of utility. Even the cheapest ones are somewhat expensive. They have to be cleaned. They take up space in the house. When you take one off in public, you have to either carry it around with you or find someplace to put it — in which case you have to remember to go back and get it, and you have to worry that someone may steal it or (hopefully accidentally) smash it. Let’s face it: hats are a nuisance.

But comfort is the enemy of elegance, and hats are still as useful aesthetically as they ever were. So, if you’re a man looking to start wearing real hats, here’s a guide to the types of dress hats and when to wear them:

Types

There are two basic types of hats: winter hats, which are made of felt, and summer hats, which are made of straw.

During the hat era, many parts of the country used to observe the official change between straw and felt season on Apr. 15 and Sept. 15. Today, those seasons basically coincide with clothing seasons; you’ll often hear the beginning date pegged as Easter, and the end as Labor Day. Memorial Day and Labor Day are good rough guides, but the beginning or end can be expanded by 2-3 weeks on a year-by-year basis, depending on that year’s climate.

Winter hats are made of either fur felt or wool felt; fur felt is warmer, more durable, and more expensive, but wool felt is perfectly fine. Either felt comes in different weights, and there are lightweight, transitional felts for times when straw is out of season, but it’s still too warm for a winter-weight hat.

Here are the types of men’s dress hats and when to wear each:

WINTER HATS

Top Hat

The aforementioned top hat is the most formal hat; a black one is worn with white tie (evening formal wear) or black tie (evening semi-formal wear), and a gray or black one is worn with daytime full-dress (daytime formal wear) or with a stroller (daytime semi-formal wear). The collapsible silk top hat, also known as the opera hat, may be the most elegant hat ever made, but most top hats made today don’t collapse.

You’re unlikely to ever get the chance to wear a top hat outside of a wedding; if you go to formal events — like the opera — in a large city and see anyone else wearing one, by all means follow suit the next time you go, if you want.

If I ever get the chance in winter to wear white tie, I intend to go all the way with it and not only wear a top hat, but also get an opera cape — which is also one of the most elegant garments ever created — and a cane.

Here is Fred Astaire wearing his signature top hat.

Homburg

The homburg is the second-most formal hat; it’s worn with black tie or a business suit (it’s too informal for white tie and too formal for anything less than a suit). It has a center dent like a fedora, but with a stiff, pencil-curled brim trimmed in silk or grosgrain. It usually doesn’t have side dents, but it can, which give it a more casual appearance.

The homburg has seen somewhat of resurgence in the past 10 years or so, due to its popularity with entertainers and athletes. It’s sometimes called a "Godfather," probably because Al Pacino wore one in the first Godfather movie.

A homburg should make you look like a banker, not like a pimp; to achieve a conservative look, choose a homburg with a narrower, flat brim like this, rather than one with a wider brim that’s turned up on the sides.

Lord’s Hat

A lord’s hat is identical to a homburg, except it has an unbound brim. It’s appropriate with anything up to a suit in formality, but you’re unlikely to find one, unless it’s vintage or you have one custom-made.

Here is a lord’s hat.

Fedora

This was probably the most popular hat when they died. Many associate it with their fathers or grandfathers; my grandfather retired in the early-80s, after which he quit wearing a suit, tie, and hat every day — but, for the rest of his life, when he put a suit and tie on for church every Sunday, he never left without also donning one of his fedoras.

This is a soft hat, with center and side dents; it’s often called a "snap-brim," because the brim is also soft and flexible: it’s usually worn up in the back and down in the front, but it can be worn all down or all up, which always reminds me of Archie Bunker. (Never wear it down in the back and up in the front, or people will think you have it on backward.) It can be worn with anything up to a business suit in formality.

Fortunately, this hat isn’t yet so unusual that it elicits any special notice; when I wear a hat, this is usually the style I wear — felts in the winter and straws in the summer — and receive nothing but compliments, especially from women.

Here is Cary Grant carrying a fedora.

Bowler / Derby

Bowlers and derbies are two names the same hat: the round, "bowl"-shaped hat with the narrow, stiff brim. Many associate it with the British, probably because it originated in England. Some historians have contended that it was more prevalent in 1800s America than the cowboy hat, and thus was the "real" western hat. Like the fedora, it’s appropriate with anything up to a suit in formality.

Here is a bowler or derby.

Porkpie

The pork pie is a soft hat, similar to a fedora except with a round, flat crown. It’s appropriate in the same situations as a fedora. Like the homburg, it has seen a mild resurgence lately, largely due to its popularity with jazz musicians.

Here is Fred Astaire wearing a porkpie.

Trilby

The trilby is another soft hat, also similar to a fedora except that it has a narrower brim and is sometimes made of tweed. A felt trilby is appropriate in the same situations as a fedora; a tweed trilby is too casual to wear with a suit, unless the suit is also tweed.

Here is Frank Sinatra in a wool trilby; here is a tweed one.

SUMMER HATS

Boater / Skimmer / Sennit

The boater, also known as the skimmer or sennit (because it’s made from sennit straw), may be the most beautiful hat ever created.

It was wildly popular 100 years ago, but hasn’t been seen much in about 50 years; today, it’s most often seen in Styrofoam at political conventions. A real one is made of rough, amber-colored straw, and is stiff, with a flat top and a stiff, flat brim either two- or three-inches wide.

It’s the most formal straw hat and is similar in formality to a homburg, appropriate only with business suits or black tie. It usually has a red-and-white striped band that looks great with a business suit, but a black band looks better with a tuxedo

I’ve always wanted one, but new ones are expensive and I don’t know that I would have the courage to wear one.

Here is Fred Astaire wearing a boater.

Panama

Many connote all white straw hats with black bands, often in fedora shapes, as "Panamas," but a real Panama is soft, has no dents in the crown, and has a crease down the center of the crown, because it can be rolled up and stored in a tube. A Panama is appropriate for anything in formality up to a suit.

Here is a Panama with its storage tube.

Straw Fedoras

This hat is a straw fedora; it’s the same style as a felt one, and is what is often erroneously referred to as a "Panama." Like the Panama for which it’s often mistaken, it’s appropriate for anything in formality up to a suit.

Colors

Unless you want to look like a pimp, the only acceptable felt colors are gray, tan, black, brown, or navy; straw hats should generally be either white or tan.

The band for dress felts should be grosgrain, usually the same color as the felt, and either the same shade of that color, or darker (a lighter band than the felt will usually make you look like a mobster; it’s the equivalent of wearing a black shirt with a white tie). I like a wider band, but that’s a matter of preference.

Sources

A Google search for "men’s hats" will reveal numerous sources; most operate only online, while others are brick-and-mortar stores that ship merchandise.

If you have a real hat store in your city, which is unlikely, start there; an experienced hatter will help you choose a hat appropriate for where you intend to wear it and with a crown height, brim width, and color that suits your features. A real hatter will also be able to "block" the hat to make slight changes to the hat’s shape; change the hatband; or add, remove, or change the hat’s feather, all to suit your personal tastes and features.

Basic straw hats in a real hat store usually start at about $35; wool felts usually start at about $70. And, like anything else, they can often be had cheaper at end-of-season clearance sales. This should be a great time to pick up a straw hat to save for next spring.

I’m fortunate to be near a real hat store, Hatman Jack’s. Owner Jack Kellogg is very knowledgeable and personable. He has sold hats to the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Harry Connick, Jr., Mickey Mantle, Charlie Daniels, and B.B. King, and I’ve been buying hats from him for 15 years. You can reach him at 316-264-4881.

Bare-headedness and baseball caps are old-hat

The next time you feel the need to wear something on your head, try a real hat, which is much more attractive — and usually more practical — than a baseball cap. You might find that you like it!

Johnny Kramer Archives

What Libertarianism Is Not

Johnny Kramer — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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My recent piece on the death of neckties generated far more critical mail than anything else I have written for LRC. Most of the mail contained one of two common threads: some wrote that I was "unlibertarian" for expressing a fondness for ties; while the others complained that an expectation for someone to wear a tie (presumably, by anyone in any situation) is a suppression of "individual liberty."

Since it appears that some may have misconceptions about what libertarianism is — and what it is not, let’s examine these two fundamental misunderstandings in more detail.

1. Libertarianism is not necessarily a moral endorsement for all voluntary behavior.

Libertarianism is only a political philosophy; it has nothing to do with religion, other types of philosophy, morality outside of politics, etc. It seeks only to address the question of when it is permissible for one person to initiate force against another — and the conclusion it draws is "never." This conclusion is based mostly on the rationale that everyone is born, by virtue of being a human being, with a natural right to control their own lives, bodies, and property, so long as they are not infringing on anyone else’s body or property. But it’s also based, to a lesser extent, on the pragmatic fact that force is the least efficient way of accomplishing anything, and it produces all kinds of unintended, adverse consequences (like black markets).

So, while they may disagree on the details of how best to bring it about (no government, one kind of government vs. another, etc.), all libertarians, by definition, believe in liberty, which is a condition where everyone is legally free to do as they please, so long as they are not committing tangible damage to anyone’s body or property.

As Murray Rothbard wrote in his essay, Six Myths About Libertarianism, "The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral, or aesthetic theory; it is only a political theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life. Political theory deals with what is proper or improper for government to do, and government is distinguished from every other group in society as being the institution of organized violence. Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal. Libertarianism, therefore, is a theory which states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should he free to do as he sees fit except invade the person or property of another. What a person does with his or her life is vital and important, but is simply irrelevant to libertarianism.

"It should not be surprising, therefore, that there are libertarians who are indeed hedonists and devotees of alternative life-styles, and that there are also libertarians who are firm adherents of u2018bourgeois’ conventional or religious morality. There are libertarian libertines and there are libertarians who cleave firmly to the disciplines of natural or religious law. There are other libertarians who have no moral theory at all apart from the imperative of non-violation of rights. That is because libertarianism per se has no general or personal moral theory. Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that u2018liberty is the highest political end’ — not necessarily the highest end on everyone’s personal scale of values."

There are numerous behaviors that libertarians believe should be legal — such as prostitution, recreational drug use, smoking, gambling, eating an unhealthy diet, drinking alcohol excessively, etc. — that they may also regard variously as unwise, self-destructive, immoral, unethical, gross, etc. It’s ludicrous to assert that, if you’re a libertarian, you can’t have any opinions, preferences, likes, dislikes, etc. about any of the peaceful, voluntary behavior you believe should be legal, and with which you have no desire to forcibly interfere.

Using ties as an example, it would be unlibertarian of me to wish for the government to force men to wear ties, or not wear them (except for government employees, which would be the government’s implied prerogative under a voluntary, employer-employee contract). Of course, I do not advocate any such thing, nor did I even hint at it in my article. By contrast, it is in no way unlibertarian for me to wish that more men chose to wear ties; to bemoan the erosion of standards of proper attire in society; or even to wish that voluntary establishments on the market, like employers and restaurants, would institute stricter dress codes on their property.

2. Libertarianism is not an exaltation of individual liberty above all — especially not above property rights. Indeed, it could not be, because individual liberty and property rights are indistinguishable.

Again, libertarianism is only a political philosophy, so it advocates individual liberty as it relates to the State. (Anyone outside of the political system who initiates force against others is, by definition, a criminal.) Libertarianism has nothing to do with individual liberty outside of politics.

Further, individual liberty is not only compatible with property rights; it is wedded indivisibly to it. One person’s unfettered individual liberty ends where another person’s property begins.

In Chapter 15 of The Ethics of Liberty, Murray Rothbard wrote, "Liberals generally wish to preserve the concept of u2018rights’ for such u2018human’ rights as freedom of speech, while denying the concept to private property. And yet, on the contrary the concept of u2018rights’ only makes sense as property rights. For not only are there no human rights which are not also property rights, but the former rights lose their absoluteness and clarity and become fuzzy and vulnerable when property rights are not used as the standard."

As an example of this, if an employer required his employees to wear any clothes during their working hours, would any sane person assert that the employer is infringing on an employee’s "individual liberty" to walk around naked anywhere he wants? Obviously not, because the employee has no such "right" on someone else’s property; the best he can have is the privilege, given by the property owner.

Likewise, how can an employer be said to infringe on an employee’s "individual liberty" by requiring a certain kind of clothing, such as a necktie, during working hours on the employer’s property, in the context of a voluntary relationship?

He cannot; under the libertarian concept of property rights, an employee has as much "individual liberty" to flout his employer’s dress code on his employer’s property as he has to punch his employer in the face for no reason.

But, if the employee doesn’t like his employer’s rules, he still has all the individual liberty in the world in such a situation — to exit the employer’s property and find another job.

Conclusion

Libertarianism is not a philosophy of morality or a guide to proper behavior. It is simply a political philosophy that holds that everyone should be legally free (in other words, free from coercion) to do as they please, so long as they don’t violate anyone’s body or property (in other words, so long as they don’t initiate coercion against anyone else); and that the State, if it should exist, should be bound by the same rules as the rest of society.

And that philosophy of liberty is grounded in property rights — not in unfettered individual liberty, regardless of the property owner’s wishes.

Johnny Kramer [send him mail] holds a BA in journalism from Wichita State University. He is one of the authors of the first-ever biography of Ron Paul, Ron Paul: A Better Way, which will be released in Fall 2008 by Variant Press. For more information on his work, or to hire him as a writer, editor, or to speak at your next event, please visit his website.

Johnny Kramer Archives

Bring Back Men’s Ties

Johnny Kramer — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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“A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life”
~ Oscar Wilde

The June 4 Wall Street Journal carried a story on the front page by Ray A. Smith that seems to indicate impending doom for the men’s necktie. In the article, which is about the closing of the American Dress Furnishings Association, a trade group that represents American tie makers, Mr. Smith reports that sales of neckties in the U.S. have fallen by about 50% since 1995, and that a recent Gallup poll found that the number of men in the U.S. who reported wearing ties to work every day reached a record low of 6% last year, down from 10% in 2002 — a 40% drop in just five years. If that trend continues, ties may join the frock coat and spats in the dustbin of history within another generation.

Younger readers may not understand why this is literally front-page news. But, in the grand scheme of things, this a startling, sudden change; ties were ubiquitous in the business world just one generation ago, and ubiquitous in all of society just two generations ago.

To better understand how important ties once were, consider the anecdote from John T. Molloy’s 1975 book, Dress for Success, in which a man showed up for a job interview without a tie, and the interviewer was so bothered by it that he gave the man $6.50 (about $27 in 2007) out of his own pocket and told him to go buy a tie, after which they would continue the interview. Do I need to tell you that he didn’t get the job?

This decline of ties is unfortunate, because they’re attractive: they add a layer of visual interest to an outfit, give a sense of added height by enhancing the verticality of the body, hide the shirt’s buttons and placket, and fill the "dead" space between the jacket’s lapels.

The History of the Necktie

The history of the necktie is difficult to discern, which may be partially due to the fact that it hinges on how one defines "necktie." The earliest historical example of anything resembling a tie is from ancient Egypt, where men would tie rectangular cloths around their necks to show social status. Art from the Roman Empire also depicts men wearing neck scarves similar to the modern necktie. Most seem to agree that the modern necktie dates directly to 1660, where it was popularized by Louis XIV. Its popularity quickly spread throughout bourgeoisie society in France, then through all of Europe, then to America; soon, no man could consider himself well-dressed without a band of silk around his neck. (A look through the photos of past presidents shows how the tie evolved from the late-1700s to the early-1900s.)

The modern necktie originated in 1924, when New York tie maker Jesse Langsdorf discovered that cutting the tie at a 45-degree angle, on the bias (against the weave’s grain) caused the tie to hang in a straight line from the knot, rather than twist, as ties of the time were prone to do. He further discovered that sewing a tie from three pieces, rather than two, made a more resilient tie that more easily returned to its original shape. He patented this method of construction, and it has remained the basic formula for manufacturers worldwide ever since.

Ties fell from widespread use in American society during the social upheaval of the mid-late ’60s, and their popularity in the business world declined during the "business-casual" craze in the mid-late ’90s.

The Freedom to Conform

It’s ironic that, when tie wearing first declined in the ’60s, the argument was that they’re oppressive — an argument that persists today. The truth is the opposite: they’re not only expressive, they’re probably the most expressive things a man can wear that still fall within the bounds of good taste (in other words, not counting loud, ugly, and often vulgar t-shirts).

In fact, there are probably thousands of ways to personalize the "oppressive," classic male outfit of suit and tie, even allowing for the fact that suits generally must be navy blue or medium-to-dark gray to be tasteful (there are exceptions to almost everything, and brown or black may be appropriate in some situations, and tan or even white may work in the summer, but navy or gray are always right): a suit can be single-breasted (with two or three buttons) or double-breasted (with a six-to-one, four-to-one, or six-to-two button stance); solid or with a pattern like stripes of various kinds, plaid, or checks; a shirt can be French- or barrel-cuffed and can have a straight, spread, club, tab, or button-down collar; some collar styles can be worn pinned, or not; and shirts can be solid, striped, have a bolder pattern like tattersall, or even have a collar and cuffs that contrast the rest of the shirt. Add the possibilities for tie, pocket-square, and suspender colors and designs, not to mention patterned sport jackets for more casual wear, and the possibilities are mind-boggling.

Thankfully, white-collar men have been freed from the shackles of this (elegant) "oppression," and are now free, as GQ columnist Glenn O’Brien wrote in the Sept. 2002 issue, "to go to work expressing the full range of their individuality in khakis and polo shirts." In other words, men have exchanged their obligation to look like everyone else for an obligation to look like everyone else, only the new standard outfit is not only far less elegant, but also offers far less room for customization. Contrast the list of options in the previous paragraph with the one for business-casual, which basically consists of changing the color of the polo shirt and changing the chinos to a slightly darker or lighter shade of khaki.

This erosion of standards in the business world parallels the similar erosion in clothing standards in the rest of life; many men today seem to connote "formal" with a business suit, "dressed up" with any non-denim trousers and any collared shirt, and "casual" with everything else, which may include gym attire or even pajamas.

Uncomfortable?

Another argument against ties is that they’re uncomfortable, but that’s ridiculous. As Jeff Tucker wrote in his 2003 LRC article, Dress Like a Man, if it chokes you to wear a tie, it has nothing to do with your tie; it means your shirt collars are too small. A good rule-of-thumb is that you should be able to comfortably fit two fingers into your shirt collar. To know what size shirt to buy, measure your neck with a tape-measure, then add one inch to allow for extra room and shrinkage.

A Return to Elegance?

On a recent Lew Rockwell Show, Lew and Mark Thornton speculated that the economic downturn we’re suffering may have a reversing effect on some trends in society, especially regarding people’s appearances — against things like tattoos, body piercings, and casual dress, as people look for ways to look more professional than others in an effort to either keep their jobs or find better jobs. That would definitely be a silver lining to the recession, and it looks like it couldn’t come at a better time for the necktie.

If you’d like to start wearing ties, but don’t know where to start — or if you think a tie is a tie, here are some guidelines:

Bow Ties

This guide will focus on long, "four-in-hand" neckties, but here’s a word on bow ties: if you like them, feel free to wear them whenever they’re appropriate to your particular situation. But, in my view, they look best with three-piece suits or with sweater-vests, because on their own they leave too much "dead" space at the front of the shirt.

But never wear a clip-on or strap-on bow tie; learn to tie a real one — with practice, tying a bow tie is no more difficult than tying your shoes.

Why bother? Because it’s one of the little touches that defines a well-dressed man, and it’s impossible to tie the types of perfect little bows seen on pre-tied bow ties; bow ties are supposed to be a little asymmetrical and askew, and anyone who knows what a real bow tie knot looks like can spot a pre-tied bow tie from 10 feet away. (If anyone makes a pre-tied bow tie that looks like a real, askew knot, you should still wear a real one, if for no other reason than the satisfaction from knowing you’re one of the few who wears a real bow tie.)

These long ties that have become popular with tuxedos are abominations. So, even if you don’t care for bow ties with suits, you should still learn to tie a bow tie for black tie events. Colored bow ties with tuxedos are also abominable, so buy a black one to wear with a tuxedo — the outfit is called "black tie" for a reason.

Colors, Patterns, and Materials

Ties should be made of natural materials, usually 100% silk (wool ties for winter, and cotton ties for summer, are appropriate in more casual situations).

Ideally, patterns should be woven, rather than printed. Patterns other than stripes should also be small.

This number can be adjusted for one’s personal needs, but consider purchasing the following ties for a basic collection: solid navy; solid burgundy; solid red; navy with white pin-dots; burgundy with white pin-dots; and about 20 more in repps (diagonal stripes; stripes of equal widths are called block stripes, while stripes of varying widths are known as ribbon stripes) and foulards (small, repeating pattern of diamonds, flowers, etc.), all in some two-color combination of navy, red, burgundy, or white; maybe with a couple of paisleys. Assuming you wear a tie six days a week, this would give you enough ties to go a month without wearing the same one twice. And, if you’re a man who doesn’t like to think much about clothes, and you have just the usual assortment of suits in navy or gray and shirts in white or light blue, this selection of colors will allow you to randomly grab any tie from your closet without thinking about it.

But a wardrobe is a journey, not a destination. So, if you’re a man who does like to think about clothes, once you have this foundation in place, now the fun begins. Add some club ties to your collection (a club tie has a small, repeating pattern, often with a sporting theme, like fish, boats, anchors, shields, golf clubs, etc.). The Mises Institute tie is a great start; it’s a beautiful addition that also supports a worthy cause. Then you can branch out into black, gray, brown, yellow, lighter shades of blue, and even pink ties. You can also add more than one solid tie in the same color, because they can have different textural patterns; one could theoretically have 50 solid ties, all in the same color, but all different. Grenadine is an especially beautiful solid weave, but it can be hard to find. Ties in colors that might be inappropriate for most days can work for holidays, like orange for Halloween or green for Christmas. Holiday-themed club ties are also fun. Generally, you should avoid any "loud" tie but a paisley — anything with odd patterns and/or harsh, bright colors. If this needs to be explained further, do a Google image search for Rush Limbaugh ties; his contribution to haberdashery is similar to his contribution to political thought.

Also avoid ties with designer logos on the bottom; fortunately, this will be easy since few brands have them. The brand Countess Mara may be the worst offender; they make beautiful ties, including some of the most beautiful repps available, and the brand is often easy to find in thrift stores (more on that later). Unfortunately, many of them are almost ruined by a garish logo in contrasting-colored thread at the bottom; the ones I’ve purchased have the logo in the same color thread as the background so that the logo is hardly noticeable, but it’d still be better if it weren’t there at all.

Length and Width

Tie widths should be determined by the rules of proportionality, not by the whims of fashion designers; any tie that’s between three and four inches at the widest point will always be in style.

The bottom of your tie should fall somewhere on your waistband, ideally in the middle (or around the middle of your belt buckle, although you shouldn’t wear belts with suits as they draw attention to your waist and destroy the line of the suit, cutting your body in half visually). Most standard ties are around 56-inches; while I could be wrong, this length will probably suit most men, although the number of times you have to "wrap" the tie as your knotting it will vary with your height, as it will with the thickness of the tie’s outer material and lining. Very short men may have to have their ties cut, which a seamstress could probably do for a small charge; very tall men may have to buy extra-long ties, which are easy to find at big and tall stores, but may be difficult to find elsewhere.

Knots

Evidently there are 85 ways to tie a tie, according to the book by that name. But probably the three best-known are the four-in-hand, the half-Windsor, and the full-Windsor; diagrams of how to tie each are easily found online. The four-in-hand is probably the most popular of these, and is the knot I’ve been wearing since I started wearing real ties, when I was 12. In my experience, it’s more difficult to make a neat knot with the half-Windsor, which also makes a bigger knot than the four-in-hand. The full-Windsor makes a still-bigger knot, and looks best with spread-collar shirts, which have the widest space between collar points. (For a look at this knot, look at Pat Buchanan on MSNBC, because it has to be the one he wears; his knots are as big as his fist, but they suit him.)

Whichever knot you choose, pull it tightly; nothing looks worse than a knot that is too loose.

Ideally, a dimple should be centered under the knot. To make one, after making the knot — but before making the final pull to make it tight, place your thumb and index fingers on the sides of your tie (with your thumbs on the bottom of the wide blade and your index fingers on the top), turn both sides toward the center horizontally, then pull vertically.

Buying a Tie

I have a confession: I have an addiction to thrift-store ties, and my collection of probably 300 ties indicates that, if "addiction" is an exaggeration, it’s not by much (although, in my defense, it has taken me about 15 years to amass this many). Thrift stores are great places to build a tie collection; like-new ties can often be found for 50 cents—$2 each, so a man could spend a day going to all of the thrift stores in his city and probably find 20 ties for the price of one new one in a department store. As with any second-hand merchandise, you’ll have to wade through a lot of junk, but the advice in this article should help you find the good ones. Basically, avoid synthetics, anything dirty, and anything outside of 3—4 inches in width. Unfortunately, it will be difficult to build your foundation at thrift stores, so they’re more for expanding your collection once your foundation is in place.

To build your basic collection, look to discount stores like Stein Mart and T.J. Maxx and to eBay, which is probably the best source if you don’t have to have any one tie immediately. If you live near a large city, you may also have outlet stores near you. Good quality ties can usually be found from any of these sources for about $10 each.

There are many excellent brands, but three that should be easy to find from any of these sources (including thrift stores) are Polo Ralph Lauren, Brooks Brothers, and Robert Talbott.

But, to support the necktie industry, also treat yourself to a tie in a retail shop at least a couple of times per year. Unfortunately, finding tasteful ties in more inexpensive stores can be difficult. But, for one inexpensive source, Ralph Lauren recently introduced a line of products, including ties, for JC Penney called American Living. The line’s ties that I’ve seen are quite tasteful, and include many of the ties suggested for my basic tie wardrobe. They retail for $38, but are frequently on sale (I don’t follow JC Penney that closely, but it looks like their pricing may be like that of Jos. A. Bank, where the merchandise is literally always on sale, so the sale prices are the real retail prices.)

And, if you acquire a taste for ties and really want to treat yourself, consider a custom-made tie from a firm like Sam Hober. At about $80 each, they’re expensive for ties, but cheap by the standards of bespoke clothing.

Wearing a Tie

Again, the bottom of the front, wide blade of the tie should fall somewhere on the waistband of the trousers. Hopefully no one needs to be told this, but the narrow, back blade must be shorter than the front blade so that it doesn’t stick out underneath it. It should also be long enough to tuck into the keeper tab on the back of the tie’s wide blade. So the back blade should fall somewhere between these points. Virtually any tie can be tied to achieve this; eventually, you’ll be able to tell by instinct where to place the blades before beginning your knot and how many times to "wrap" the knot, and you’ll almost always get it right the first time. If not, just try again.

One should generally avoid wearing a tie loosened, with an unbuttoned collar.

Never, ever wear a tie without a sport or suit jacket. (It may be fine to remove the jacket later, depending on the situation, but you shouldn’t leave the house wearing a tie with no jacket, unless it’s part of your required work uniform. Ties go with jackets. Period. A cardigan sweater might be an acceptable substitute for a jacket in a few casual situations, but a pull-over sweater with a tie would still require a jacket. No other jacket is an acceptable substitute.)

Tie Accessories

Various implements exist to keep a tie in place; I’m not that big on them, maybe because they indicate an obsession with perfect neatness that can only exist on mannequins, not on real people wearing real clothes and living life. I especially find tie chains to be ostentatious. But it’s a matter of personal preference; tie bars or tacks are fine, but they should be as small and plain as possible. Don’t worry about the holes a tie tack makes in your ties; they should close as soon as the tack is removed.

I highly recommend the occasional use of collar pins, which are basically safety pins worn to pin the two halves of a straight collar or Eton collar (collar with rounded points) together underneath the tie’s knot. Some shirts come with permanent holes in the collar; they’re fine, but they leave no option but to always wear a pin with that shirt. In any case, avoid the kinds of clip-on pins usually sold in department stores; in my experience, they never stay in place, and sometimes one side will even come completely unclipped from the collar. After your first experience wearing a clip-on pin, you’ll find yourself constantly feeling your collar or looking for a reflective surface to check it. But, if you buy one that pins through the collar, you’ll put it in place and forget about it.

Caring for Your Ties

I’ve long heard that you should untie your tie by reversing the steps of tying the knot, rather than by just pulling the back blade through the knot. But I’ve never done that and I’ve never had a problem with it damaging any of my ties. The most important thing is to build a big enough collection to ensure a sufficient rotation; that way, any one tie won’t get worn that often, so it’ll wear out much slower than it would otherwise, even if you don’t take perfect care of it. In any event, never leave a tie knotted after you take it off, because that may permanently crease it.

Speaking of creases, ties should never be ironed because doing so can permanently flatten the tie’s rolled edges, giving it an unattractive, one-dimensional appearance. To remove wrinkles, steam it with a steamer, with the steam function on an iron, or by hanging it in the bathroom before showering.

Any tie can be stored either by hanging it on a tie rack or by rolling it up and placing it in a drawer; the one exception is knit ties, which should never be hung because, like hanging a sweater, hanging them will stretch them out of shape.

Stains are one hazard that tie wearers must face, and this is one area where bow tie fans have a big advantage. Stains usually occur when eating; other than just generally being careful, tucking a cloth napkin in your collar or slinging your tie over your shoulder may help, although I can’t recall ever doing either of those things, and I don’t know whether either of them would be considered good manners. I do know that once a tie is stained, it’s usually ruined; dry cleaners are notorious for destroying ties, even if they manage to remove the stain. There’s a company called Tie Crafters that will attempt to clean a tie for $10.50, but there’s a four-tie minimum, plus about $9.00 shipping, depending on the shipping method you choose. So getting a tie cleaned by people who know what they’re doing will cost about $50; unless the tie was extraordinarily expensive or has special sentimental value, it’s probably not worth it. Just approach tie wearing with the mentality that any tie that gets stained is ruined.

Tie One On

Now you’re ready to start wearing ties, to strike a blow for aesthetics, elegance, and professionalism and against slovenliness. Help save the venerable necktie from extinction!

Johnny Kramer Archives

Tim Russert Attacked Harry Browne Too

Johnny Kramer — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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Like everyone else, I was shocked and saddened by the sudden, unexpected death of Tim Russert, moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press program since 1991, last Friday at the too-young age of 58. Meet the Press is television’s longest-running show, having debuted in 1947, and Russert was its longest-serving host.

He was cut down far too soon by the same insidious, previously-asymptomatic, sudden cardiac death that was at least similar to what also claimed, among others, Bing Crosby in 1977; our own Murray Rothbard in 1995; and John Ritter in 2003. According to coverage of Russert’s passing, three-hundred thousand Americans suffer sudden cardiac death each year, taken from their loved ones with no warning and no previous signs or symptoms.

While it’s a terrible shock for the family and friends, apparently it’s an ideal way to go for the person who dies. On the June 16 episode of CNN’s Larry King Live, Dr. Mehmet Oz, New York cardiac thoracic surgeon, responded to the question of whether Russert suffered with, "I suspect he did not have much pain because as soon as you develop fibrillation, within seconds you pass out. From that perspective, it’s the way I’d like to pass away, but I would rather do it when I’m 90."

Symbiosis

Predictably, Russert was lauded by the entire political and media establishment for his career: for being an icon; for being impartial; for not being afraid to ask tough questions.

In my last column, I wrote that politics at high levels of government basically consists of a symbiotic relationship between politicians, bureaucrats, and journalists and the ruling elite, where the politicians, bureaucrats, and journalists earn higher incomes than they could elsewhere on the market through voluntary trade (and receive other perks which, depending on what they’re after, include things like celebrity; prestige; influence; and indulging their control-freak personalities by forcibly running others’ lives), in exchange for perpetuating the system (such as the military-industrial complex, the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, and the Federal Reserve) by which the elite profit at the expense of the average person.

Perhaps nobody profited from that relationship more than Tim Russert. The very fact that the establishment media is praising him — and that he reigned over a mainstream, influential program like Meet the Press for 17 years, is proof that the praise of what a great journalist he was is false. As Lew Rockwell quipped, rather than asking tough questions of politicians, Russert acted more like their butler or valet.

Any LRC reader who’s been around since last year remembers how Russert treated Ron Paul last Dec., when he had him as a guest, after ignoring him all year, only when Ron’s popularity grew to the point that he could no longer be ignored. Instead of mixing in the usual softball questions, he pelted Ron with rapid-fire questions for 30 straight minutes, sometimes not even letting Ron finish answering one question before interrupting him with the next. He rarely (if ever) looked Ron in the eye. He cast Ron’s advocacy for amending the constitution as being inconsistent for a constitutionalist. When Ron called the so-called Civil War unnecessary, Russert claimed we’d still have slavery without it. In short, Ron was treated quite differently than most of Russert’s guests.

What some newer LRC readers may not know is that something like that happened before.

"I resent the question."

Harry Browne, nominee of the Libertarian Party in 2000, was (also reluctantly) invited by Russert to be on Meet the Press that year — which, to the best of my knowledge, is the first time, before or since, that the LP candidate has appeared on the program.

With all of this talk about Russert the past few days, I couldn’t resist digging up my tape and revisiting what happened.

First, the background information: Russert gave third-party candidates Ralph Nader of the Green Party and Pat Buchanan of the Reform Party each an entire half-hour segment on Meet the Press earlier in 2000.

Like Ron Paul in 2007—2008, Harry had received literally 1—2% as much mainstream media coverage in 1999—2000 as the major candidates, and Lexxus-Nexxus reported at one point late in 2000 that Buchanan had received 60 times more coverage than Browne that year, and Nader had received 80 times more. Browne also had about $2 million to spend, while Buchanan had $12 million — partially because Buchanan accepted the federal matching funds the party had earned from Perot’s 1996 showing, while Browne refused what he had earned from 1996, although it was significantly less than Buchanan’s amount.

Despite all of those disadvantages, Harry was the most popular candidate on the Internet that year (which admittedly meant less in 2000 than it does now) and — more importantly — was tied or above Buchanan (who always polled lower than Nader) in almost every major poll all year. By Sept., Harry was not only at least tied with Buchanan nationwide (depending on the poll), but he was out-polling both Nader and Buchanan in several states, and was also polling higher than the margin of error between Bush and Gore in several states.

During an Oct. edition of Meet the Press, Russert announced that he was holding a third-party debate on the program the following Sunday between Nader and Buchanan.

Given his accomplishments that year, Harry set out to discover why he hadn’t been invited too, which he described thusly in his campaign journal, which was sent regularly throughout the year to about 30,000 subscribers, "This morning the campaign released an email on LibertyWire, telling supporters that we’ve been rebuffed by Meet the Press. The program has scheduled a debate for this Sunday between Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan, and didn’t include me. When Jim Babka, our very able press secretary, called Meet the Press to plead our case, he was rebuffed by the show’s producer — who said it just wasn’t u2018in the cards’ that I would ever be on the show, even though I’m running even with Buchanan in the polls. When Jim asked what we had to do to qualify to be on the show, she said she resented the question.

"Our email message asked people to blitz the show with emails and phone calls, requesting my presence. The first day at least 600 emails reached the show, and the phone calls overloaded the voice mail system.

“On top of that, a week ago Tim Russert was on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. During the show, Brian Lamb mentioned that C-SPAN had received over 150 emails from viewers wanting to ask Tim Russert why he didn’t have me on his show. He gave the usual lame explanation that they couldn’t have all 255 registered presidential candidates on, and so they focused on the two with the most support. Then a caller pointed out that only seven candidates were on enough state ballots to win, and that I had as much support as Buchanan does.”

That was a shockingly dishonest answer by Russert, and no one in his position could possibly be that stupid: Yes, there were about 250 presidential candidates officially recognized by the FEC in 2000, which meant only that they had filed the necessary paperwork. But only 15 of those were on the ballot in even one state; only five besides Bush and Gore were on enough ballots to mathematically be able to win the Electoral College; and Browne was on 49 state ballots — more than any other third-party candidate.

Harry continued, “Apparently, the powers-that-be decided to throw in the towel — sort of. Two days later, the producer called Jim Babka and invited me on the show. But instead of having a half-hour to myself, as Nader and Buchanan have each had during the campaign, and instead of being on with Nader and/or Buchanan, I would be on with Howard Phillips and John Hagelin. This allows Meet the Press to say they’ve given me a platform, while at the same time making the point that I’m in the bottom tier of candidates — making their decision to have Buchanan and Nader on alone seem justified.

“So here I am. Although I’ve done two debates with Hagelin and Phillips this year, this is the first show that’s treated me as one of three lower-level candidates — something that happened regularly in 1996.”

Harry didn’t mention that Hagelin and Phillips, with whom he was forced to share his time, were each polling at 0.1—0.2%, while, again, he was polling 1—2% nationally — at least tied with Buchanan, and 3—5% — in third place behind Bush and Gore, in some individual states. (I’m not arguing against Russert having Hagelin and Phillips as guests; in fact, as presidential candidates who were on enough state ballots to mathematically be able to win the Electoral College, he should have. The point is that Browne clearly had much more support than them, and if he was going to be lumped together with anyone, it should’ve been with Nader and Buchanan.)

What follows is a transcript of Harry’s appearance on Meet the Press on Oct. 22, 2000. While not all of Russert’s questions were hostile or misleading, some of the questions show how misleading he could be, and I’ve included them all for completeness and because Harry was so magnificent. The segment was 19 minutes; as with Ron Paul last year, there were no commercials. I didn’t watch it with a stopwatch, but it seemed like the time was roughly divided equally between the three candidates. If that’s accurate, then Harry got less than seven minutes — about one-third of what Buchanan and Nader got if their segments had commercials and less than one-fourth if theirs didn’t (which is more likely).

RUSSERT: “This is from your party brochure: ‘ . . . widespread gun ownership will make neighborhoods safer.’

‘It’s time to re-legalize drugs and let people take responsibility for themselves.’

“Some Americans watching that will step back and say, ‘Is he really for gun-toting people roaming the streets providing free drugs for everyone?’ “

BROWNE: “Well, we have gun-toting people roaming the streets; they’re called criminals. They have no regard for gun laws whatsoever. They don’t buy their guns in ways that involve background checks, or registration, or licensing, or any of these things. Those gun laws apply only to you, and me, and to other innocent citizens. I want to live in a neighborhood where a criminal has to fear that somebody in the neighborhood owns a gun when he starts deciding which house he’s going to break into.

“As far as the drug laws are concerned, before we had drug laws in America, we didn’t have the widespread drug problems we have today, because the pharmaceutical companies ran the drug business — not criminal gangs in the inner cities. All the Drug War has brought us is widespread drug use, with gangs preying upon children at schools; all the Drug War has brought us is a hundred or two-hundred thousand innocent people in prison who have no business there, making it impossible to keep the murders, rapists and child-molesters in prison, so they get out on early release and plea-bargains.”

RUSSERT (interrupting): “So if anybody wanted heroin, or speed, or marijuana, they could have it?”

BROWNE: “When it was perfectly legal for a child to walk into a store and buy heroin, children didn’t walk into stores and buy heroin, because number one: it wasn’t forbidden fruit; and number two: nobody was preying upon them in schools; they no interest in it whatsoever. Bayer sold heroin in this country as a pain-reliever and sedative. It was perfectly safe. But once it was turned over to criminals, it became a very dangerous drug — just as bathtub gin was a very dangerous drug in the 1920s, when gin was illegal. Prohibition doesn’t work, it has never worked; all it does is tear our country apart, and we have got to end it. If I’m elected president somehow, on my first day in office, I will pardon unconditionally everyone who’s in federal prison on a non-violent drug offense.”

RUSSERT: “The defense budget is about $290 billion a year. How much would you spend?”

BROWNE: “About $50 billion a year could defend this country better than it does now. But we would not have the gigantic national offense. We would not have the ability to annihilate other countries. We would not have the ability to meddle in other countries’ affairs, and we would not be putting your children at risk of fighting and dying in a foreign war, or terrorists attacking your city. We would be the beacon of liberty for the entire world, and not the world’s policeman.”

“We have a $1.8 trillion government. Government at all levels is taking nearly half the national income. It’s meddling in your bank account. It’s monitoring your e-mail. And the question people need to ask is, ‘Do you want smaller government?’ And if you want smaller government, all of these grand proposals to reform our schools, to reform our healthcare system, are not going to work, and you know they’re not going to work. And you know that we’re not going to be able to close the borders, that people are going to get into this country no matter what the government does; the government hasn’t kept drugs out, it hasn’t stamped out poverty — “

RUSSERT (interrupting): "So open up the borders to immigration completely?”

BROWNE: “The borders are open! Why is it so hard for people to understand that anyone who wants to get into this country today gets into this country?”

RUSSERT (interrupting again): “And anyone who is here illegally you would make a citizen?”

BROWNE: “I don’t care whether or not they’re citizens; what I care about is that, if we do have programs to close the borders, once again it will affect you more than it will affect the immigrants. They will make you carry an identity card. You will be stopped by policemen and asked to prove that you are a citizen. Your employer will be sanctioned for inadvertently letting an illegal immigrant go to work in your company. It will not keep the immigrants out, but it will be one more nail in the coffin of freedom in the United States for American citizens.”

“The answer is to shut down the welfare state. Shut down the welfare state, and people will filter themselves out. They will only come here for the land of opportunity. If we leave the welfare state intact but close the borders, then we’re going to have less freedoms in the United States, and we’re still going to have a welfare state, and we’re still going to have big government, and were still going to have government prying into every aspect of our lives, as we do now. The answer is to reduce government. We never solve problems through government. We haven’t solved the education problem. We haven’t solved the healthcare problem. We haven’t solved the drug problem. We haven’t solved the poverty problem. We haven’t solved any of these problems. What makes anybody think that now we’re going to close the borders and we’re going to solve the immigration problem?”

RUSSERT: “Mr. Browne, abortion?"

BROWNE: "I want to abide by the constitution. The federal government has no business legislating on common crimes of any kind; there should be no federal laws against murder, rape, hate crimes, discrimination, any of these things, because law enforcement was meant to be a state and local function. And what we need to do is to get the federal government completely out of this question; it should not subsidize abortions; it should not outlaw abortions; this should be left to the states, and people can gravitate to the states that they find most compatible."

RUSSERT (addressing the wasted vote question): "Mr. Browne, would it make a difference to a libertarian if either George Bush or Al Gore was president?"

BROWNE: "No. You know, I know, everybody watching this show knows that four years from today, whichever of them is elected, government will be bigger, more expensive, more obtrusive, and more oppressive. If you vote Republican or Democrat, you are giving up. You’re saying u2018I’m never going to be free. America will never be a free country again. I will never get smaller government. So I’m just going to vote for the one I think will take me to hell at the slowest-possible rate.’"

It’s perfectly legitimate for Russert to challenge anyone, including Harry, on his views — although, had Harry been on for 30 minutes, Russert would’ve had time to engage in more of a conversation and make sure none of his questions sounded too hostile or one-sided — had Russert wanted to do that.

But to be the great journalist his memorials purport him to be, he would’ve had to similarly play Devil’s Advocate with all of his guests. When does anyone remember Russert ever challenging a statist, establishment politician not on their personal inconsistencies; nor with trivial, contradictory evidence to their views; but with fundamental questions about their support for, and the legitimacy of, things like the Drug War; the income tax (or having a federal government the size it was at the time he was conducting the interview, regardless of how it was funded); Social Security; the military-industrial complex; the pharmaceutical-industrial complex; the Federal Reserve; etc.? To ask the question is to answer it.

The assertions about Russert doing thorough homework on each guest, looking for inconsistencies; and about him not appearing partisan in favor of either Republicans or Democrats, are true to the best of my knowledge. But they’re also not very important; the appearance of two parties is an illusion, and grilling a certain candidate or politician on previous inconsistencies may call into question the integrity or consistency of that particular person, but it doesn’t raise fundamental questions about the system. That allowed Russert to maintain the illusion of being a "tough interviewer" while no more fundamentally challenging the system, which his career was built on perpetuating, than any other journalist.

Harry wrote about his appearance in his campaign journal, "When the show ends, for some reason all four of us remain seated at the table on the set. A waiter brings in orange juice and several selections of food. Russert starts eating and there’s some small talk. I decide to light into Russert, asking him u2018So why didn’t you have me on with Nader and Buchanan — knowing that I had as much support as Buchanan?’

"In the give and take that follows, I get the expected responses from Russert: u2018You’re here now, aren’t you?’ u2018We can’t have five guests on at once.’ (Courtesy restrains me from saying that he knows and I know that Phillips and Hagelin don’t count.) u2018I’m the only Sunday host who’s given any attention to third parties.’ And so on.

"I say he’s overlooking the one authentic man-bites-dog story of this campaign. A celebrity candidate, Pat Buchanan, has received $16 million in taxpayer money and wide press coverage, while a complete unknown who turned down federal money and has about 1/50 the press coverage is running even with him in the polls. Isn’t that news? Russert says it is, and that’s why I’m here. (It isn’t why I’m here; if it were, he would have said something about it on the air.)

"Finally, I ask him why he doesn’t point out publicly that the only reason America seems to be a two-party country is because the two parties in power have maintained that power by using the force of government to impose ballot-access laws, limit campaign donations, raid the government treasury to run their campaigns, and exempt the Debate Commission from campaign and income-tax laws so it can promote the politics of the two main parties. Russert agrees whole-heartedly but doesn’t answer my question as to why he never points this out on the air.

"I tell him that I bear no hard feelings but that I’m baffled as to how Meet the Press makes its decisions regarding what is news."

I’m not: Harry Browne raised fundamental questions about the system. Russert’s job as an establishment gatekeeper was to distract people with trivialities; personal foibles of individual candidates; and the phony right-left, Republican-Democrat paradigm; and to make sure that views like Browne’s never got a mainstream hearing. When, as happened with Ron Paul last year, Harry proved to have enough support to cajole Russert into having him as a guest, Russert’s job then was to give him as little time as possible, make him seem as fringe as possible, and make him and his views seem as nutty and disreputable as possible.

Tim Russert: 1950—2008

Personally, Tim Russert seemed like a genuinely good guy. Numerous anecdotes poured in about how often he would call or send a card to someone he barely knew, just because he heard they were having problems. He undoubtedly did much good in his personal life, and he sounds like the kind of person I would’ve liked to have as a friend. He seemed to care a lot about his family, and especially seemed to watch closely day-to-day over his elderly father, "Big Russ," of whom he wrote and spoke frequently and fondly. My heart aches for his friends, co-workers, and especially his family, who had their loved one snatched from them with no warning, far too young, and without a chance to say goodbye.

But professionally, he was not a "great journalist," because a great journalist searches for the truth and asks fundamental questions about the status-quo. He was successful at rebuilding Meet the Press into the highest-rated Sunday morning news program. He was successful at becoming a celebrity and making a lot of money. In short, he was a successful media animal. But his very tenure at an establishment mouthpiece like Meet the Press is de facto evidence of his real professional legacy, of which this article’s transcript, and the gushing tributes this week from establishment politicians and journalists, are further proof: Tim Russert was a shill for the state and the power elite who control it.

Even so, all condolences to everyone who knew and cared about him, and may his soul rest in peace.

Johnny Kramer Archives

The Revolution, Phase II

Johnny Kramer — Thu, 29 May 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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This is an era when the following problems, among others, confront the United States:

Americans spend more money per year on taxes than they do on food, clothing and shelter combined — and receive virtually nothing of value in return. Even worse, governments use citizens’ own money against them to further erode their standard of living and persecute them for peaceful, voluntary behavior.

As Lysander Spooner wrote in No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, ". . . whoever desires liberty, should understand these vital facts, viz.: 1. That every man who puts money into the hands of a ‘government’ (so called), puts into its hands a sword which will be used against him, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will. 2. That those who will take his money, without his consent, in the first place, will use it for his further robbery and enslavement, if he presumes to resist their demands in the future."

Prior to the Iraq War, the Bush administration balked at estimates that it could cost even $100—200 billion. To date, it has cost over $500 billion. The most conservative estimates are that 655,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed; 3.4 million Iraqis have fled their homes; as of May 14, 4,079 U.S. service people have been killed, and another 30,004 have been wounded. Every rationale for the war has been proven false. And there is no end in sight.
The neocons are agitating to start a similar debacle in Iran, another comparatively poor country (and another former U.S. ally) with a military budget about 1% of the size of that of the United States.
The federal government is about $9 trillion in debt.
The president now has the authority to detain anyone — even American citizens — indefinitely, without charges.
The United States has the highest number of people in prison of any country on earth, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of its population, and over 50% of them are incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses.
According to David Walker, the Comptroller General of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, if present trends continue, by 2040, 100% of the federal budget will be consumed just by Social Security and Medicare, and even that will require annual confiscation of 40% of the private sector’s output. At that point, the government’s only option for balancing the budget would be cutting the federal budget by 60% (and defaulting on the Social Security and Medicare promises) or doubling federal taxes — meaning the government would be confiscating 80% of the private sector’s output just to fund Social Security and Medicare. And the economy would have to grow by double-digits every year until then to grow its way out of this outcome. When was the last time we had double-digit growth for even one year?
In addition to gasoline prices (which are rising due to various distortions in the economy imposed by government, including inflation and regulations that prevent sellers from increasing production to lower prices), the media has reported the following snapshots of inflation during the past week, courtesy of the Associated Press, since they pertained to people’s Memorial Day plans: since last Memorial Day, the average price of hot dogs is up 7%; a bag of chips and a two-liter of soda are each up 10%; and hamburger buns are up 17%. (Unfortunately — but not surprisingly — none of the reports I saw went on to explain that rising prices are a symptom of inflation, not inflation itself; and that inflation results from the government printing money out of thin air — which is called counterfeiting when a citizen does it; and that its main purpose is to transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the power elite. Then again, I don’t blame the reporters, because I doubt many of them even know this, and it’s even more doubtful that their bosses would let them report it if they did.)

Despite these facts, the following are questions one is likely to hear currently from the mainstream media:

Why doesn’t Obama wear a U.S. flag pin on his lapel all of the time?
Who will be McCain’s running-mate?
Who will be the Democratic nominee, Obama or Hillary?
Michelle Obama said that she only recently became proud of America for the first time. Does that mean she hates America?
Who leads in the popular vote, Obama or Hillary?
Does Obama endorse the views of Jeremiah Wright since he attended Wright’s church for years?
Is Obama an elitist, or a Regular Joe?
Who leads in pledged delegates, Obama or Hillary?
Does John McCain endorse the views of preachers who endorsed him, like John Hagee and Rod Parsley?
How many delegates are at stake in the remaining Democratic contests?
How many Super Delegates does Obama have? How about Hillary? How many are undecided? What are the chances any of those who are decided will switch sides?
Will Obama and Hillary run on the same ticket?
Who would fare better against McCain, Obama or Hillary?
If Hillary loses and isn’t chosen as Obama’s running-mate, will she run for president again?

The False Choice

Wise up: There is only one political party in America: The Government Party. The phony left-right paradigm is a shell game perpetrated by the ruling elite to distract people from that fact, because if it were overt that there’s only one party, the entire political system would quickly become widely despised, and the people would be more likely to overthrow it.

And elections — especially presidential elections — are basically scams where the elite field two basically interchangeable candidates — both of whom are acceptable to them and are in their pockets — to con the rubes into thinking that they are running the government.

Politics at high levels of government basically consists of a symbiotic relationship where politicians and bureaucrats earn higher incomes than they could earn on the market in exchange for perpetrating the structures (like the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, the military-industrial complex, and the Federal Reserve System) from which the power elite profit at the expense of the average person.

Ron Paul summarized the political shell game on The Alex Jones Show on May 20, when he said about Clinton, Obama, and McCain, “There really is no choice there; they all belong to the same group, they are beholden to the military industrial complex and the medical industry, the media industry, the whole works, the banking industry. The rhetoric is different but they’re all after power, and there is not going to be a lot of difference.”

Exactly. No matter how many rally signs and banners he has made with the word "change" on them, the very fact that Obama is being promoted incessantly by the mainstream media as a legitimate candidate is de facto evidence that he isn’t going to fundamentally change anything.

Journalists are also a part of this symbiotic relationship with the power elite, and they don’t dwell on trivialities because they’re stupid; quite the opposite, they do it because they’re savvy enough to understand that making it to high levels in journalism also provides a high income and a level of fame, and the best way make it to that level is to help perpetuate the system, rather than harp on fundamental questions about the system’s legitimacy. And a reputation for asking fundamental questions that put politicians on the spot and make them look bad would make it hard for journalists to get them as guests/interview subjects — or to even get anonymous quotes from people in government, which is a major source of information.

Another part of advancing in journalism involves attacking anyone who threatens the system. Ron Paul epitomizes such a threat, and he has obviously been in the crosshairs of the elite since his popularity took off last year.

An example of such an attack can be seen in a story in the May 27 mouthpiece of the federal government, The Washington Post, which reports that Ron’s presidential campaign relied heavily on work from family members; the implication is nepotism and unethically funneling campaign donations to the family.

The blatant intellectual dishonesty is revealed in the first paragraph, which reads that Ron Paul "has built a national following largely by preaching an isolationist foreign policy. Stick with your own kind, says the maverick presidential candidate." Yes, Ron’s message of peace, free trade, friendship, diplomacy, international neutrality and non-interventionism equates to "stick with your own kind." Since the story includes a photo of Ron, why don’t they just Photoshop a Klan hood onto his head while they’re at it?

The Revolution: A Manifesto

It is with decrying such false choices, trivial questions and intellectual dishonesty that Ron Paul opens his new book, The Revolution: A Manifesto.

Ron writes, "Every election cycle, we are treated to candidates who promise us ‘change,’ and 2008 has been no different. But in the American political lexicon, ‘change’ always means more of the same: more Government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.

"Every election season, America is presented with a series of false choices. Should we launch preemptive war against this country or that one? Should every American neighborhood live under this social policy or that one? Should a third of our income be taken by an income tax or a national sales tax?

"The supposedly conservative candidate tells us about ‘waste’ in government, and ticks off $10 million in frivolous pork-barrel projects that outrage him — the inevitable bridge-to-nowhere project, or a study on the effects of celery consumption on the effects of memory loss — in order to elicit laughter and applause from partisan audiences. All right, so that’s 0.00045 percent of the federal budget dealt with; what does he propose to do with the other 99.99955 percent, in order to return our country to living within its means? Not a word.

"I am also unimpressed by the liberal Left. Although they posture as critical thinkers, their confidence in government is inexcusably nave, based as it is on civics-textbook platitudes that bear absolutely zero resemblance to reality. Not even their position on unnecessary war is consistent."

When was the last time you saw such clear-headed, consistent, principled, specific points even being mentioned, much less discussed thoroughly, in mainstream political discourse?

Ron continues, "No wonder frustrated Americans have begun referring to our two parties as the Republicrats. And no wonder the news networks would rather focus on $400 haircuts than matters of substance."

A Best-Seller

The Revolution has been in the Top Ten on The New York Times Best-Seller List, which is widely considered to be the most prestigious list of best-selling books in the United States, every week since its release last month; it reached #1 for the week of May 18 and is #5 on the latest list, for the week of June 1.

To understand the significance of that accomplishment, here’s the least of what it means: while it appears that different lists use different criteria (which they don’t disclose), and "best-seller" is probably determined relative to other books in its category — rather than on a fixed number of sales, Publisher’s Weekly estimates that 200,000 new books are published in the U.S. every year, and less than 1% become best-sellers by any criteria.

I have no idea what the sales figures are for every libertarian book ever published; I do know off-hand that some books by libertarians with "how-to" themes, which gave the books obvious popular appeal, were best-sellers: Harry Browne and Doug Casey both had investment books in the ’70s that included anarcho-capitalist treatments of subjects like inflation and government distortions in the economy, and Harry and Robert Ringer both had best-selling self-help books in the ’70s that helped people apply libertarian ideals to their personal lives.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if The Revolution is the first libertarian book that’s entirely a political treatise to become a best-seller, and it almost certainly is the best-selling libertarian book of any kind to be published for the first time in this generation. And it must already be one of the best-selling political treatises ever, of any type — libertarian or otherwise.

Given its sales, someday we’ll probably look back on this book as being of incalculable value in spreading libertarian ideals.

That value comes not just from the fact that it’s a best-seller or that it exposes the false choice in American politics; it comes from the fact that it not only raises those forbidden questions, but provides libertarian answers to all of them — all in a small, simple, easy-to-read, inexpensive book of about 170 pages.

Demolishing the Straw Man . . .

Regardless of whether it’s intentional or due to honest misunderstandings of libertarian positions, critics of libertarianism almost always seem to resort to straw man arguments, rather than presenting libertarian ideas correctly and then thoroughly refuting evidence that contradicts their arguments.

(Some don’t even bother with straw man arguments, and instead resort to nothing but ad hominem attacks.)

While there isn’t necessarily one libertarian position on every issue, no position is libertarian unless it abhors coercion, except possibly as defense from, or retribution for, coercion. So, while Ron Paul doesn’t necessarily speak for all libertarians, nor are all libertarians necessarily fans of Ron Paul, the beauty of The Revolution is it presents the plumb-line libertarian view on so many vital issues so clearly and simply — and refutes so many common, ignorant objections to such views equally clearly and simply — that it makes it impossible for any intellectually-honest critic to resort to such straw man arguments in critiquing the book; anyone who does so is either dishonest, not very bright, or hasn’t really read it.

. . . And Refuting the Myths

Here are some of the major misconceptions about libertarianism that Ron Paul demolishes in The Revolution (I’ll be quoting Ron heavily, because he states things so succinctly and clearly that it’s difficult for me to improve upon his words. And, yes, these issues should be subject to more debate than what will be presented here. But addressing all of their objections would turn this article into a book, and the point is the types of viewpoints and fundamental questions raised in The Revolution are usually not even allowed in mainstream political discourse so that they even can be debated further.):

Libertarians care nothing about the poor.

In a 2006 Mises.org story, economist Mark Brandley reported that the median family income in the U.S. in 2005 was estimated to be $44,389, or $28,853 after taxes, then he went on to explain that if one assumes that taxes and regulations reduce GDP by only 1%, adding 1% to the GDP just since 1959 would make the median income $68,800 — with the worker keeping all of it. So the most conservative estimate is that the average person would be twice as wealthy today without government. If taxes and regulations reduce GDP by 2%, which is still a modest assumption, adding 2% just since 1959 would make the average income in the U.S. $108,000 in 2005, again with the worker keeping all of it, which would make the average person about three-and-a-half times wealthier than he is.

Of course, taxes and regulations have been reducing economic output for a lot longer than just since 1959. What about adding 1—2% to the GDP since 1913? It’s not unreasonable to think if we still had government at all levels combined taking about 5% of the national income, as they did 100 years ago, the average income in the United States today might be several hundred thousand dollars.

But a further point can be made regarding Bastiat’s lesson about the seen and the unseen: the standard of living of everyone — including the poor — would undoubtedly be higher still than a doubling or tripling of their incomes would provide, because surely numerous products and services, of which we can’t even conceive, would’ve been created were it not for various government-imposed distortions in the economy.

Further still, people’s savings and purchasing power wouldn’t be eroded by inflation in such an environment.

Good thing the government is there to help the poor.

Leftists never seem to learn that there is not a fixed amount of wealth available in the world, and that poverty is not caused by certain people having unequal shares of that fixed amount. As Mises wrote, the standard of living of the poor is directly correlated to the number of wealthy people in society, because people only become wealthy through voluntary exchange on the market by first improving the standard of living of others.

Ron writes, "Americans have been given the impression that ‘regulation’ is always a good thing, and that anyone who speaks of lessening the regulatory burden is an antisocial ogre who would sacrifice human well-being for the sake of economic efficiency. If so much as one of the tens of thousands of pages in the Federal Register, which lists all federal regulations, were to be eliminated, we would all die instantly.

"The real history of regulation is not so straightforward. Businesses have often called for regulation themselves, hopeful that their smaller competitors will have a more difficult time meeting regulatory demands.

"It is not unusual for American students to find their textbooks telling them that injustice was everywhere before the federal government, motivated by nothing but a deep commitment to the public good, intervened to save them from the wickedness of the free market. Alleged ‘monopolies’ dictated prices to hapless consumers. Laborers were forced to accept ever-lower wages. And thanks to their superior economic position, giant corporations effortlessly parried the attempts of anyone foolish enough to try to compete with them.

"Every single aspect of this story is false, though of course this version of our history continues to be peddled and believed. I don’t blame people for believing it — it’s the only rendition of events they’re ever told, unless by some fluke they have learned where to look for the truth. But there is an agenda behind this silly comic-book version of history: to make people terrified of the ‘unfettered’ free market, and to condition them to accept the ever-growing burdens that the political class imposes on the private sector as an unchangeable aspect of life that exists for their own good.

"An argument we hear even now is that a hundred years ago, when the federal government was far smaller than it is today, people were much poorer and worked in much less desirable conditions, while today, with a much larger federal government and far more regulations in place, people are much more prosperous. This is a classic case of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. This fallacy is committed whenever we carelessly assume that because outcome B occurred after A, then B was caused by A. If people are more prosperous today, that must be because the government saved them from the ravages of the free market.

"But that is nonsense. Of course people were less prosperous a hundred years ago, but not for the reason fashionable opinion assumes. Compared to today, the American economy was starved for capital. The economy’s productive capacity was minuscule by today’s standards, and therefore very few goods per capita could be produced. The vast bulk of the population had to make do with much less than we take for granted today because so little could be produced. All the laws and regulations in the world cannot overcome restraints imposed by reality itself. No matter how much we tax the rich to redistribute wealth, in a capital-starved economy there is an extremely limited amount of wealth to redistribute.

"The only way to increase everyone’s standard of living is by increasing the amount of capital per worker. Additional capital makes workers more productive, which means they can produce more goods than before. When our economy becomes physically capable of producing vastly more goods, their abundance makes them more affordable in terms of dollars (if the Federal Reserve isn’t inflating the money supply). Soaking the rich works for only so long: the rich eventually wise up and decide to hide their income, move away, or stop working so much. But investing in capital makes everyone better off. It is the only way we can all become wealthier. We are wealthier today because our economy is physically capable of producing so much more at far lower costs. And that’s why, just from a practical point of view, it is foolish to levy taxes along any step of this process, because doing so sabotages the only way wealth can be created for everyone."

Libertarians are "isolationists."

The kind of dishonesty seen in the aforementioned Washington Post story is rampant.

But, as an anonymous message board user wrote last year, "Calling Ron Paul an ‘isolationist’ is like calling your best neighbor a ‘hermit’ because he doesn’t do donuts on your front lawn and throw bricks through your windows."

What a great analogy; no intellectually-honest person could say Ron Paul wants to "isolate" America from the world, considering that he has consistently called for diplomacy and a complete, immediate removal of all embargoes and sanctions on all foreign countries.

In the bizarro neocon world, peace, diplomacy and totally unfettered trade isolates America from the world, while attacking foreign countries with no provocation, killing civilians, blowing their limbs off and otherwise maiming them for life, rendering children into orphans and adults into widows and widowers, and destroying billions of dollars worth of property and infrastructure, constitutes spreading love and goodwill.

Ron writes, "Anyone who advocates the non-interventionist foreign policy of the Founding Fathers can expect to be derided as an isolationist. I myself have never been an isolationist. I favor the very opposite of isolation: diplomacy, free trade, and freedom of travel. The real isolationists are those who impose sanctions and embargoes on countries and peoples across the globe because they disagree with the internal and foreign policies of their leaders. The real isolationists are those who choose to use force overseas to promote democracy, rather than seeking change through diplomacy, engagement, and by setting a positive example. The real isolationists are those who isolate their country in the court of world opinion by pursuing needless belligerence and war that have nothing to do with legitimate national security concerns."

Libertarians are anti-Semitic / anti-Israel.

This is an off-shoot of the "isolationist" smear, and it’s similar to the racism charge, where people equate neutrality in the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and no foreign aid for Israel (nor for any of its enemies), as lack of support for Israel, and such "lack of support" is another forbidden view in mainstream political discourse.

Ron writes, "I see no reason that our friendship with Israel cannot continue. I favor extending to Israel the same friendship that Jefferson and the Founding Fathers urged us to offer to all nations. But that also means no special privileges like foreign aid — a position I maintain vis–vis all other countries as well. That means I also favor discontinuing foreign aid to governments that are actual or potential enemies of Israel, which taken together receive much more American aid than Israel does."

Without government, the poor wouldn’t have health care.

Ron writes, "It’s easy to forget that for decades the United States had a health care system that was the envy of the world. We had the finest doctors and hospitals, patients received high-quality, affordable medical care, and thousands of privately-funded charities provided health services for the poor. I worked in an emergency room where nobody was turned away for lack of funds. People had insurance policies for serious health problems but paid cash for routine doctor visits. That makes sense: insurance is intended to protect against unforeseen and catastrophic events like fire, floods, or grave illness. It has nothing to do with that now.

Ron goes on to explain how Medicare, Medicaid, the HMO Act, and regulation upon regulation on the insurance industry has gotten us into the mess we’re in now, when prior to that a one-week stay in a hospital for routine surgery cost about $1,000 in today’s dollars — and that was the total bill, before insurance paid anything.

As good as this section is, Ron should’ve expanded it to discuss other government distortions, like the FDA (Dr. Mary Ruwart, who worked in the pharmaceutical industry for many years, has offered detailed analyses that conclude that it’s conservative to say that drugs in a free market would cost 15% of what they do today) and medical licensure, which was implemented in the late-1800s to increase the incomes of medical professionals by artificially restricting the supply, and had nothing to do with protecting the public.

Of course, these are still more examples of viewpoints forbidden in mainstream political discussions, which isn’t hard to understand since they call into question the pharmaceutical-industrial complex.

Regarding "universal" health care, Ron writes, ". . . those who favor national health care schemes should take a good, hard look at our veterans’ hospitals. There is your national health care. These institutions are a national disgrace. If this is the care the government dispenses to those it honors as its most heroic and admirable citizens, why should anyone else expect to be treated any better?"

Libertarians care nothing about the environment.

Ron writes, "Some people falsely believe that advocates of the free market must be opponents of the environment. We care only about economic efficiency, the argument goes, and have no regard for the consequences of pollution and other examples of environmental degradation. But a true supporter of private property and personal responsibility cannot be indifferent to environmental damage, and should view it as a form of unjustified aggression that must be punished or enjoined, or dealt with in some other way that is mutually satisfactory to both parties. Private business should not have the right to socialize its costs by burdening other people with the by-products of its operations."

Ron further explains that pollution is largely another government-imposed distortion on the economy, since in the 1800s, the courts began rendering decisions calling pollution acceptable since it benefitted "the greater good." Applying Bastiat’s lesson about the unseen, Ron speculates that, without such court decisions, non-pollution-intensive technologies probably would’ve been invented by now, because the polluters would have to bear the costs of the by-products of the previous technologies themselves.

No one, libertarian or otherwise, wants to breathe polluted air or drink polluted water. But the only way the environment can be protected is through strong private property rights. That, and increasing technologies brought about by a free market that make older, more-polluting technologies obsolete, is the answer to environmental concerns — not more government.

The government has unlimited resources.

It’s amazing how many people think that government is not subject to the same laws of economics as everyone and everything else, that it can wave a magic wand and create resources out of thin air, in order to give everyone something like "universal" health care or to run an empire, with no consequences. Governments don’t create anything; they only have what they take by force from the private sector.

As Ron explains devastatingly in The Revolution, the question of whether the government "should" run an empire or continue the entitlement system is moot, because the government is going bankrupt.

In addition to the aforementioned statistic about present trends leading to just Social Security and Medicare consuming 100% of the federal budget by 2040, Ron asks about military expenditures, which now total $1 trillion per year, "With a $9 trillion debt, perhaps $50 trillion in entitlement liabilities, and the dollar in a free fall, how much longer can we afford this unnecessary and counterproductive extravagance?

"Our present course, in short, is not sustainable. Our spendthrift ways are going to come to an end one way or another. Politicians won’t even mention the issue, much less face up to it, since the collapse is likely to occur sometime beyond their typical two-to-four-year time horizon. They hope and believe that the American people are too foolish, uninformed, and shortsighted to be concerned, and that they can be soothed with pleasant slogans and empty promises of more and more loot."

Libertarians are pro-drugs.

This is an example of people conflating libertarian with libertine, and Ron also deals with this devastatingly in The Revolution.

Ron explains that the first federal drug law, The Harrison Tax Act of 1914, came in an era where constitutional restraints were still recognized. So, rather than banning anything, it merely levied prohibitively-high taxes on certain drugs; when someone was found possessing any of those drugs, they were charged not with possession — which wasn’t illegal — but with tax evasion. This is an example of how the government will always find ways around any supposed constitutional restraints.

But the evidence Ron presents on the origins of federal drug prohibition, The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, is especially damning. Ron reveals that the move toward prohibition resulted from a contempt for Mexicans, with whom the drug was widely associated at the time, when he writes, "On the floor of the Texas Senate, one senator declared, ‘All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy.’ . . . Harry Anslinger, who headed the government’s Bureau of Narcotics, said that, ‘The primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.’

"The resulting Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 — yes, federal prohibition is really just seven decades old — had little do to with science or medicine, and a lot to do with petty ethnic grudges, careerism in the Bureau of Narcotics, and disinformation and propaganda in the popular press, where yellow journalism still lived."

Ron further reveals that the entire hearing on federal marijuana prohibition lasted just two hours. Only two people testified: one for the legislation, and one against; the alleged expert in favor was obviously an insane quack (who was rewarded afterward for his support by being named the government’s "Official Expert" on marijuana at the Bureau of Narcotics); the expert against was from the AMA, who testified, "The American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug," to which one Congressman replied, "Doctor, if you can’t say anything good about what we’re trying to do, why don’t you go home?"

The debate among the legislators that followed lasted a minute and a half, and the Speaker of the House lied during it, telling Congressman, who weren’t at the hearing, of the AMA, "They support this bill 100 percent."

One shudders to think how many people’s lives have been ruined because some lazy legislators were probably in a hurry to go home that day.

Ron also deals with the economics of black markets, the impossibility of prohibition, and the complete failure of the War on Drugs, which is evidenced by the fact that drugs are widely available to anyone who wants them — including people in federal prisons who are literally under lock-and-key 24 hours a day. Why in the world would anyone believe the government can create a "Drug-Free America," assuming that were even desirable, when it can’t even keep drugs out of its own prisons? They might as well pledge to create a "Gravity-Free America" or a "Sun-Free America."

Earlier this year, Ron’s neocon opponent gave an excellent example of this type of idiotic propaganda when he wrote on his campaign site that Ron Paul (a man who has been married to the same woman for 51 years and has five children, 18 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild) "Opposes Traditional Family Values," in part because "He supports the legalization of drugs that harm our children and ruin our families."

Prior to 1914, there were no federal drug laws — not even prescription laws. The pharmaceutical companies manufactured heroin and cocaine as pain relievers, and a child could walk into a drug store and buy them, yet back then drugs caused no significant harm to children or ruin to families. But it’s the drugs, not the black markets caused by prohibition, which are the danger.

Ron further explains that the "War on Drugs" is nothing but a scam to make work for police, court officers, prison contractors, etc., and enriching the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, by ruining the lives of innocent people.

And he addresses the fact that there’s no constitutional authority for federal prohibition, and that it’s a violation of states’ rights.

Now, given this information (not to mention the basic human right of self-ownership), should medical marijuana by allowed in certain, tightly-regulated conditions, or not? Should the penalties involving a certain drug be increased, or remain the same? Should a given drug remain on Schedule I, or be removed to Schedule II . . .

Libertarians don’t support the War on Terror / they care more about civil liberties than saving American lives / they "blame America" for 9/11.

In his cell at the Nuremberg trials, Hermann Goering, the second-in-command in Nazi Germany, said during an interview with prison psychologist and U.S. Army Captain Gustave M. Gilbert, “Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood.

"But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Libertarians don’t support the "War on Terror," because there is not — and can never be — a "War on Terror," because "terror" is a tactic, an abstraction; "terror" or "terrorism" is not a concrete entity, like a person, or an organization or nation-state with a leader, who can surrender. The very concept of a "War on Terror" makes no more sense than a "War on Air Strikes" or a "War on Wind." Like Goering said, the government has exploited fear and anger over 9/11 to convince people to give up their liberties and to siphon money to the military-industrial complex and to government bureaucracies.

Ron cites experts like Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden Unit, and Philip Giraldi, former counterterrorism expert with the CIA, and even Paul Wolfowitz, who say, as Ron does, that 9/11 was blowback for decades of U.S. meddling in the Middle-East

But looking for explanations or motives for 9/11 doesn’t entail excusing it, and Ron voted after the tragedy to go after al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And looking for motives in order to prevent further atrocities like 9/11 doesn’t constitute "blaming America," an idiotic, meaningless red herring intended to keep people from questioning the foreign policy that benefits the power elites. America is not a monolith, and the idea that the citizens and the government are the same is a statist notion of the highest order.

Ron further decries other examples of Goering’s comments, like the PATRIOT Act that gives the government the power to spy on American citizens without a warrant or probable cause; and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which gives the president the authority to detain anyone — even American citizens — indefinitely, without charges.

But the government must take away our freedoms in order to preserve those freedoms; otherwise, we’re all going to die.

Constitutionalists deify the Founders and worship the Constitution, and ignore the fact that the world is different than it was in 1787.

The argument that constitutional restraints on state power are pretty much worthless is a strong one, given that words — no matter how apparently objective — must be subjectively interpreted: consider, for example, the debate over the word "no" in the First Amendment, which has been raging since the ink in the constitution was dry. Better yet, consider the fact that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments make virtually everything the federal government does today illegal, given that there have been no constitutional amendments to allow for the FBI, BATF, DEA, FDA, CIA, War on Drugs, federal involvement in education, health care, welfare, etc. But that doesn’t stop it, does it?

But that’s another subject for another time, and one that Ron doesn’t address in the book. If one presumes a state, then the saying is probably true that a constitutional republic is the worst form of government — except for all of the others. Here, let’s examine the arguments against the constitution that Ron does address, the ones that come from the other, statist direction.

First, I know of no libertarian, including Ron Paul, who worships the Founding Fathers or who regards them as infallible. Even those Founders who were the strongest advocates of liberty were human and all had personal foibles (yes, including the typical leftist check-mate that’s usually irrelevant to the point at-hand: they owned slaves!).

What is as unchanging and as true always and everywhere as the law of gravity are the principles of the American Revolution, the truths about liberty and the state: all coercive encroachments on peaceful, voluntary behavior are both immoral and inefficient; and that political power, to the extent that it exists, should be as fractured, local and decentralized as possible.

Second, even if one rejects that view, the constitution is supposed to be amended for federal powers to be expanded: the constitution is basically a list of what the federal government is allowed to do; the Ninth and Tenth Amendments prohibit the federal government from doing anything not explicitly authorized on the list; and the list specifies the specific procedure, called a constitutional amendment, for adding, deleting, or changing things on the list.

Arguments about a "living" constitution or a "changing world" are red herrings; if the federal government can just do anything it wants (citing the "general welfare" clause or any other rationale other than a proper amendment), then why even have a constitution? (Why, indeed: except for the parts defining the basic branches of the federal government, the constitution has been dead at least since the 1930s. But, again, that’s another discussion for another time.)

For example, when it became obvious in 2002 that the federal government was going to war with Iraq, Ron Paul introduced a bill for Congress to formally declare war on Iraq, as the constitution requires, even though he was opposed to the war and intended to vote against his own bill (the distinction is that resolutions like the 2002 one for Iraq transfer war-making power unconstitutionally from Congress to the president). But he has stated repeatedly that, although he would’ve still been against the war had it been declared that way, at least he would have admitted that it was properly authorized.

As Ron writes in The Revolution, "A ‘living’ Constitution is just the thing any government would be delighted to have, for whenever the people complain that their Constitution has been violated, the government can trot out its judges to inform the people that they’ve simply misunderstood: the Constitution, you see, has merely evolved with the times.

"To be sure, the Constitution is not perfect. Few human contrivances are. But it’s a pretty good one, I think, and it defines and limits the scope of government. When we get into the habit of disregarding it or — what is the same thing — interpreting certain key phrases so broadly as to allow the federal government to do whatever it wants, we do so at our own peril."

Libertarians are pro-abortion.

A government is not the arbiter of morality or God’s agent on earth; it’s nothing but a group of people who grant themselves a legal monopoly on the use of force and threats of force within a certain geographical area (in other words, the legal right to act in ways that would be illegal, and would be universally regarded as criminal and immoral, if perpetrated by anyone within that geographical area who is acting with no political power). But just because one thinks something should be legal doesn’t necessarily mean that one condones it.

Nor does asserting that the federal government has no constitutional authority to legislate on abortion, and that it should be up to states and localities to make their own laws, make one pro-abortion (and the assertion that Ron, an ob-gyn who has delivered over 4,000 babies and who holds this view, is pro-abortion based on this view, is especially ludicrous).

But even if you don’t accept that position, the question of whether government "should" ban abortion is like asking whether government "should" repeal the law of gravity. Or, as Harry Browne used to say, looking at the results of the government’s War on Drugs, its War on Poverty, its War on Illiteracy, etc., if the government declared a War on Abortion, within five years men would be having abortions. Any attempt to ban abortion would result in nothing but black markets in abortion; further erosion of civil liberties for everyone; and lots of money poured down the toilet, with little or no reduction in abortions to show for it. So, if libertarians want to see abortions reduced to the minimum (but not to zero, which is impossible), the last place they should look is the state.

Ron writes, "The law isn’t what allowed abortion; abortions were already being done in the 1960s against the law. Ultimately, law or no law, it is going to be up to us as parents, as clergy, and as citizens — in the way we raise our children, how we interact and talk with our friends and neighbors, and the good example we give — to bring about changes in our culture toward greater respect for life."

Ron also explains that Article III, Section 2 of the constitution gives Congress the power to strip federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction over broad categories of cases, such as abortion, with a vote of a simple majority.

Looking from the pro-life perspective (since abortion is legal now, and they’re the side lobbying for change), even if one takes the position that the Supreme Court should legislate to the entire country, Congress could make such a move as a temporary measure, which would at least provide some improvements at the state and local level, then reinstate federal jurisdiction once they got enough Justices to dictate federal law their way. And the Republicans got right on that when they took over Congress in 1995, didn’t they? Right — and neither did the Democrats prior to Roe v. Wade, when they controlled Congress. This illustrates that much of the talk by politicians, either for or against abortion, is typical, empty posturing, intended to raise money and earn votes.

Conclusion

Late last year, it appeared that Ron Paul’s presidential campaign was growing into an unstoppable movement that might really earn him the presidency in 2008, due to the virtually-uncontrollable Internet destroying the elite’s ability to manipulate reality and public opinion through the increasingly-irrelevant mainstream media. That notion was probably just premature, rather than wrong; I still think the horizontally-structured Internet will eventually overcome the vertically-structured Old Media in influence, although I don’t know exactly when it will happen; how — or even whether — we’ll be able to tell right when it happens; or what all of the ramifications will be — although I expect most of them to be for the good.

But I do know that the Ron Paul Revolution has grown far beyond a presidential campaign, and that it will live on long past 2008, and even long past Ron Paul’s life. The Revolution is the perfect punctuation mark on the end of the campaign, as well as on the beginning of the post-campaign movement.

When I first heard that this book was coming, I cringed that Ron had chosen words like "Revolution" and "Manifesto" for the title, given the way the mainstream media often portrays him and the liberty movement. But I see now that it’s a perfect title, because that’s exactly what the book is: a manifesto for continuing the freedom revolution past 2008.

Please read it, and then use it to help spread the ideals of liberty.

Johnny Kramer Archives

The Retirement of Ric Flair

Johnny Kramer — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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I admit it: I cried on March 29, watching Ric Flair’s speech for his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame.

Then I watched his match the next night at WrestleMania 24 with the sinking feeling that it might be my last chance to see him perform in a new match. When he burst into tears in the ring after losing, I started crying too.

And I cried during his retirement ceremony the next night on WWE Monday Night Raw.

I’m not usually an emotional person; the last time I remember crying about anything but a death or something involving someone I personally know was when Johnny Carson retired. And just as it seemed like Johnny would always be there every night, so it seemed that Ric Flair would always be an active wrestler.

When Murray Rothbard died, a reporter asked Lew Rockwell for a short description of Murray’s thought and contributions. Lew’s response was to ask how one sums up Beethoven’s music or Dante’s poetry.

Indeed. And how does one sum up the contributions of Ric Flair to his niche of pro wrestling? How does one summarize a spectacular, unparalleled 35-year career that includes 16 world championships (officially; the real number is probably higher), numerous tag-team championships, the Intercontinental championship, several U.S. Title reigns, and more, including about a dozen Wrestler of the Year awards? (Yes, wrestling is fixed, but titles are given to people who will draw crowds; they’re not given to just anybody, and that was even more true in the past, during most of Flair’s career.)

"I’m the best wrestler in the world today."

For anyone who doesn’t know how pro wrestling works, it’s an exhibition, rather than a competition. That means the outcomes are predetermined, and the wrestlers aren’t really wrestling against each other; they’re working with each other to make the match exciting. But it’s still a sport, and it’s still dangerous. Every NFL player I’ve ever heard of who has tried pro wrestling has said it’s more difficult and more dangerous than football. And the injury rate is probably higher in pro wrestling than in any other sport.

Competitive wrestling may be the world’s oldest sport.

It appears that pro wrestling emerged as an organized event in the U.S. in the carnivals that emerged after the so-called Civil War. Skilled grapplers would often con carnival-goers out of money by taking on challengers from the crowd. The first challenger or two was a "plant" who was in on the con. They would choreograph a match, which the plant would win or barely lose. Thinking they could beat a wrestler who lost so easily, others in the crowd would take the bet, only to have the wrestler man-handle them and take their money. Of course, that situation was dangerous and unpredictable, and sometimes a carnival-goer would win.

Wrestling evolved into an arena event around the late-1800s. Some matches well into the 1900s were "shoots" (real competitions) and lasted several hours. The problem is real, competitive wrestling tends to be boring unless you’re a hardcore student of wrestling strategy or you personally know someone you’re rooting for, and who wants to watch one match for several hours — especially if it’s boring, with little action? So wrestling promoters began staging "worked" (choreographed and fixed) wrestling matches because they were more exciting to watch, while still portraying them as legitimate competitions.

Wrestling evolved again into regional territories in the late-40s, due to TV; again into national companies in the mid-80s, due to cable; and yet again in the mid-90s, partially by admitting what wrestling is, which was probably due in part to the Internet making it impossible to keep it a secret.

Even if pro wrestling isn’t your cup of tea, all libertarians should have some degree of respect for anyone who makes others happy by giving them an honest product or service through voluntary exchange on the market. Ric Flair, the greatest pro wrestler who ever lived, is just such a man; he undoubtedly brought more joy to his fans during his 35-year career than every politician and bureaucrat who ever lived — combined.

"Stylin’ and profilin’!"

Depending on the document, Ric Flair was born either Fred Phillips, Fred Demaree or Fred Stewart in Memphis, Tenn. on Feb. 25, 1949. Various documents show his birth mother to be Olive Phillips, Demaree or Stewart, and his biological father to be Luther Phillips.

The details of what happened next are unknown; Ric guesses his mother was told by hospital officials, who were in collusion with a crooked judge and the equally-crooked Tennessee Children’s Home Society, that he was still-born, and all she had to do to put it all behind her was to sign a few papers, which were really adoption papers. This scam was often pulled at the time on young, scared, unmarried (which carried even more of a stigma then than it does now) and often poor girls, many of whom were also uneducated and even under sedation when presented with the paperwork.

Over 5,000 babies were adopted by the Society, including by Joan Crawford, June Allyson, and Dick Powell, before the governor of Tennessee called for an investigation in 1950; years later, 60 Minutes would do an expos on the Society, and Mary Tyler Moore would win an Emmy for her performance in the TV-movie about the scandal, Stolen Babies.

However it happened, Fred was placed with the Society for adoption as an "abandoned child" on March 12, 1949, about two weeks after his birth.

On March 19, he was adopted by Dr. Richard Reid Fliehr, an ob-gyn with one of the biggest practices in Minneapolis-St. Paul, who was also an amateur actor, president of the American Community Theater Organization, and who also held PhDs in theater and English; and Kathleen Fliehr, a Twin Cities socialite who was involved with Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater, where she introduced Ric as a boy to the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Jessica Tandy, and Henry Fonda.

Upon adoption, they changed Fred’s name to Richard Morgan Fliehr.

In his 2004 autobiography, To Be The Man, Ric wrote, "Believe it or not, I never bothered looking at my adoption papers until I began researching this book. The documents were sitting in a safe in my house, and I didn’t even know my birth name. I was never curious. I’m still not. I’m an only child and, as far as I’m concerned, my parents have always been my mom and dad.

"They never kept my adoption a secret from me; in fact, they described it as one of the happiest events of their lives. I’d have a birthday party and then, every March 18, my parents and I would go to an Italian restaurant (I always liked Italian food) by ourselves to celebrate my ‘anniversary.’ "

Ric was a good kid, but a poor student with a short attention span and boundless energy; like many kids, he had a hard time sitting still in the typical government school setting.

He became wilder as a teenager, so his concerned parents sent him away to high school, to the prestigious and strict Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. He was still a poor student who had a penchant for getting into trouble, but he was a good enough athlete to get a football scholarship to the University of Minnesota.

In college, he made the acquaintance of another member of the football team: Greg Gagne, son of Minneapolis pro wrestling promoter Verne Gagne, who had been on the 1948 U.S. Olympic wrestling team. But that was the best thing he got out of college; predictably, he was more interested in partying than studying, and dropped out after his freshman year, when he became academically ineligible to play football. One of his coaches recalled years later that Flair was a good enough player to make it to the NFL, if he had also been a good student.

After college, he knocked around for about a year, selling insurance and bouncing at George’s in the Park, an upscale dinner and dance club in Minneapolis. There, he met frequent patron Ken Patera, an NCAA champion powerlifter who had been to the 1972 Olympics. Patera was about to enter Verne Gagne’s wrestling camp. Ric was a big wrestling fan who was still interested in playing sports, so he asked Patera and Greg Gagne to help him get into Verne’s camp, which was very selective. But since Verne’s son and Patera vouched for him, Verne gave him a shot.

"Diamonds are forever, and so is Ric Flair."

The training was on Verne’s Minnesota farm and began in the winter in sub-zero weather; it was so cold that the trainees literally had to wear three sweatsuits. But that provided motivation to keep training, because the only way to keep warm was to keep moving. The grueling training lasted six to eight hours per day; it started with running about two miles around a frozen lake, slipping and sliding, followed by 500 free-squats, 200 push-ups, 200 sit-ups, and numerous other calisthenics, like jumping-jacks.

Then they’d train in a broken-down ring inside of Verne’s horse barn, with horses wandering around the ring area and chickens roosting in the rafters, with their waste constantly falling into the ring. The barn wasn’t heated and was lit by one dangling light bulb. The wooden slats that made up the walls of the barn were about an inch apart, so there would often be snowdrifts in the ring as bad as if it were set up outdoors. In those conditions, they’d do everything in the ring in sets of 50: 50 front-rolls, followed by 50 back-rolls, then 50 turnbuckle reversals, 50 shoulder-tackles, 50 flying mares, 50 back-drops, 50 suplexes, etc.

One old-time wrestler who stopped by one day to watch the training remarked that the trainees were probably taking more "bumps" (falls) during the duration of the camp than he had in his 25-year career.

Rick Steamboat, who attended the camp a couple of years later, recalled that one activity they did during his training was to go into the stairwell of a high-rise building, where one trainee would put another in a fireman’s carry, then run up the stairs to the top of the building and back down with the other man across his shoulders, after which they’d switch places and do it again.

As almost anyone would, Ric quit.

In his autobiography, he recalled, "I must have been at camp for two days when I quit. I called up Greg and said, ‘I’m done.’ I was dead. Mentally, I couldn’t take it.

"Greg told his dad, so Verne came over to my house, grabbed me by the shirt and threw me out on the front lawn. ‘It took you five years to graduate high school,’ he screamed. ‘You quit college. Well, you’re not quitting this. I didn’t sign you up to be a quitter.’"

So he went back.

Then, after seeing another trainee get injured a day or two later, Flair quit again.

"I thought I was next, so I ended up quitting camp one more time," Flair remembered. "So I told Greg, don’t tell your dad I’m not coming back.

"Greg said, ‘Okay,’ and walked away. Of course, the second he saw his father, he told him.

"This time Verne didn’t bother going to my house. He just called me on the phone and said, ‘I hope I don’t have to come back there to get you.’

"That was all I needed to hear. I returned the next day like nothing was wrong."

Verne was reputed to pride himself on how difficult his camp was to complete. That difficulty put his graduates in an elite group; but the training was excellent for those who stuck with it, and many of his graduates went on to become superstars. So the fact that he went out of his way to not allow Flair to quit indicates that he saw great potential in Flair, even then.

In those days, pro wrestling presented itself to the public as a legitimate competition, rather than as a fixed exhibition, and trainees weren’t exposed to the secret until the last minute; some even had their first match having never been told in so many words what pro wrestling is, and had to go by intuition in the ring. Flair was "smartened up" literally right before he walked through the curtain for his first match, when Verne told him that he and his opponent were going to "go through," which meant, as he then had to explain to Flair, that they were going to a time-limit draw.

That debut match was against veteran George "Scrap Iron" Gadaski in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, on Dec. 10, 1972.

Over the next 18 months, Flair learned his craft, working matches low on the card for Gagne’s promotion, the American Wrestling Association, or AWA.

Ed "Wahoo" McDaniel came to the AWA during that time, and he and Flair became friends. When McDaniel left to work in promoter Jim Crockett’s Charlotte, North Carolina-based territory, Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling, he promised to put in a word for Flair. He did, Flair was hired, and Flair has lived in Charlotte ever since.

"Wooooo!"

It was in Charlotte that Flair began to take on the persona for which he’s known.

Just before leaving Minnesota, he bleached his hair blond and began growing it out.

Soon after arriving, he began making good money for the first time, so he began buying his custom, signature $5,000 long, velvet and sequin robes; they were made by Olivia Walker, who made costumes for other wrestlers and celebrities, including Dolly Parton, Porter Wagoner, and Charo.

He changed the spelling of his name from "Rick" to "Ric," which he felt was catchier and less common.

On his way to the TV studio to record some of his first-ever promos, Jerry Lee Lewis’ song "Great Balls of Fire" came on the radio in Flair’s car. Lewis’ "Wooooo!" from the song was stuck in Flair’s head, and he shouted "Wooooo!" at the end of his interview, on a whim. He didn’t necessarily expect to do it again until the first time he wrestled after that show aired, when numerous people in the crowd were shouting "Wooooo!" at him as he walked to the ring. He saw that it was catching on, and it has remained the punctuation mark at the end of his interviews to this day.

It was also around this time that Mid-Atlantic booker (the person who writes storylines and books matches) George Scott gave Flair the moniker "Nature Boy," because Flair reminded him of wrestling’s first "Nature Boy," Buddy Rogers, who had taken the name from the Nat King Cole song of the same name that was popular when Rogers entered wrestling in 1948.

Flair won his first tag-team title in 1974 and his first singles title in 1975. He was clearly a rising star, and promoters were already looking at him as a possible future world champion.

Then it all almost came to an end.

"I’m a kiss-stealin’, wheelin’-dealin’, limousine-ridin’, jet-flyin’ son of a gun."

The Mid-Atlantic territory had a lot of 300-plus mile drives between cities. One night in a bar, Ric met 28-year-old Mike Farkas, who said he was a pilot. Farkas told Flair that he could fly them between cities for about $500 per trip, which meant if Flair could get five or six guys to go, it would cost them each $100 or less to make a 45-minute plane ride instead of a five-hour car ride. For whatever reason, nobody bothered to check out Farkas’ qualifications, and he soon became the official pilot of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling.

On the afternoon of Oct. 4, 1975, Flair and wrestlers Johnny Valentine, Bob Bruggers, and Tim Woods, and promoter David Crockett, piled into a yellow and white Cessna 310, which was a small, light, twin-engine plane.

Farkas saw that the plane was 1,400 pounds over gross, and he didn’t know how to distribute the weight properly. So, unbeknownst to anyone else, he dumped some fuel out of the tank.

During the flight from Charlotte to Wilmington, North Carolina, they ran out of fuel and had none in the reserve tank. The plane dropped into some treetops and the right wing hit a utility pole, then it nose-dived into the ground and slid 100-mph into a railroad embankment.

Woods suffered some cracked and bruised ribs, and Crockett suffered a concussion. They were lucky. Bruggers suffered a broken back; he recovered, but not well enough to wrestle again. Valentine suffered a broken back that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Flair’s back was broken in three places. Farkas spent a year in a coma, then died. It was all in the dumb luck of where they were sitting on the plane and how their bodies landed in the crash.

Flair didn’t need surgery; all he could do was wait to heal. Some doctors told him he would never wrestle again, while the most optimistic ones said it’d be two years, minimum, before he could return to the ring. But, luckily for him, he was a fast healer, and he resumed his career in Mid-Atlantic about six months later, right where he left off.

"I’m the dirtiest player in the game."

At this time, all U.S. wrestling was regional, divided into about 28 "territories," and each territory’s television show was local, just going to cities in that territory (cable television made this business model unworkable, which was one of the reasons the territories died in the ’80s). Each territory was owned by a separate promoter. Most territories were loosely associated into a cartel called the National Wrestling Alliance. Each territory had its own champion, which was usually named as a state or regional championship — although some called their top title the United States or North American Championship. And most territories ran their main cities weekly.

One of the benefits of the NWA system was that there was one NWA World Champion, who was chosen by a vote of all NWA promoters. The champion would go into each territory for a few days every month or two and face one of the territory’s top contenders, often its champion. That gave each territory a way to increase business every month or two, when the world champion was in town.

Usually, the champion was booked to barely escape with his title, either by going to a draw or defeating the local champion just before time ran out. Then the fans would buy tickets for the rematch, because the local favorite was going to win the world title next time for sure. But the champion would squeak by again. This process would repeat every time the world champion came to town until attendance for that main event started falling off; then the champion would win more decisively, then come back next time to face a different challenger — who would win the world title for sure.

Of course, the title was booked to change hands from time to time, so sometimes the local challenger really did win.

"To be the man, you’ve gotta beat the man!"

In the late-70s, Jim Crockett began lobbying for Flair, who was his territory’s biggest star, to be the next NWA World Champion. He got Ric booked in the Atlanta territory, because their TV show on Ted Turner’s WTCG Channel 17 (now SuperStation TBS) was now being beamed by satellite nationwide, which meant national exposure for Flair. He also got Ric booked in St. Louis, which was the headquarters of the NWA.

The lobbying and Flair’s hard work paid off: he won the NWA World Championship for the first time on Sept. 17, 1981.

Flair quickly proved himself to be more than worthy of his new position; whether he wrestled in a small town in front of 150 people, or a major city in front of 15,000, he always worked as hard as possible to give the fans their money’s worth. And, whether he was wrestling an equal or someone totally inept, he made the fans eager to see the rematch by making his opponent look so good that the fans left convinced that Flair barely left town with the title.

In those days, TV wrestling basically served as an infomercial for the promotion’s live arena shows, which were wrestling’s main revenue stream. The mentality was to rarely have evenly-matched bouts between two headliners on TV, and to rarely have the world champion wrestle on TV at all, because people wouldn’t buy tickets to live shows if they could see those matches, or the world champion, on free TV. So TV matches were mostly "squashes," where a headliner dominated a match against a mismatched "jobber," whose role was to "do the job," meaning lose, and TV matches tended to be worked as being one-sided, with the outcome never in question

But not when Flair wrestled; another thing that made him great was that he was unselfish, even with jobbers. There are reasons to make a match one-sided, such as if you’re pushing a certain wrestler as an unstoppable monster. But generally, matches that are too one-sided are no good; Flair understood this, and on the rare occasion that he wrestled on TV when he was NWA champion, he was a master of painting a picture for the fans watching at home that lightning was about to strike and that pale, scrawny Joe Blow was actually going to beat the world champion. A wrestler only looks as good as his opponent allows him to look, and Flair always went out of his way to make anyone he worked with look like a million dollars.

Flair summarized his philosophy in his autobiography when he wrote, "It’s not about you; it’s about you and your opponent having a great match. You both have to look good, because if you’re the only one who looks good, no one cares."

In his early years as NWA champion, Flair often wrestled more than 365 times per year, because he would often work double-shots on the weekends in two different towns, and sometimes he was gone from home for up to 30 days at a time. He worked every NWA territory: the roughly 28 in the U.S., plus in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Japan and more. Years later, in 1995, he even wrestled in North Korea; his account of that trip in his autobiography is terrifying, like it’s straight out of Orwell’s 1984.

"I’m the world champion. That’s why my sport coat cost $800, and that cost $200. And I don’t know what that cost; I’d be ashamed to wear it."

In addition to his tremendous performances in the ring and maintaining a grueling schedule for years, another component of Flair’s greatness was his incredible gift of gab and charisma when doing interviews. It was impossible to watch his interviews and not love him, not feel in some way like you were living vicariously through him, not to laugh or get excited.

While certain aspects of the character he portrayed aren’t especially virtuous traits that anyone would really want to emulate, overall he was the epitome of cool.

I first got hooked on wrestling in 1986, at nine years old, when Flair was in his prime. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of being glued to the floor in front of my parent’s Curits-Mathes console TV every Saturday afternoon, watching NWA World Championship Wrestling; I vividly remember sitting through the last few minutes of Roland Martin’s mind-numbingly boring fishing show on WTBS, waiting for wrestling to come on at 5:05.

At some point during the show, out would stroll Ric Flair wearing a perfectly-tailored suit, always with a pocket square — one of the marks of a well-dressed man, with his long, flowing blond hair, aviator sunglasses, with his world championship belt under one arm, and often with a beautiful woman on the other.

Unlike most wrestlers, who would talk about how tough they were, whom they were going to defeat, or what title they were going to win, Flair would talk about being "custom-made from head-to-toe" and would show off his custom-made suit, expensive tie, alligator shoes, and Rolex watch, talking about how much they all cost. He would also talk about things like riding in limousines and living in the biggest house on the biggest hill in Charlotte. If he was a bad guy at the time, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell the announcer that his shoes cost more than the announcer’s car, or to tell the fans that his watch cost more than their house; as he left the set, he would often pull out a roll of cash, peel off a few c-notes, and stuff them in the announcer’s empty breast pocket where his pocket square should be, and ask the announcer to buy a nicer jacket before next week, because he wasn’t well-dressed enough to share the stage with the world champion.

He wasn’t just trying to come across as cool and successful (although, yes, admittedly shallow if it were real life and one analyzes it too closely); he would often build anticipation for a big match by explaining that the nice things he had were some of the perks of being the world champion; it made the championship seem even more important, because the fans could see the belt through the challenger’s eyes as the ticket to fame and fortune.

Most great wrestling personas aren’t entirely fictional; they’re more like the real person with the volume turned up. Flair has a reputation for being very polite and soft-spoken in real life, and the one time I had the honor of meeting him, I found that to be true. And he certainly doesn’t go around in real life making others feel bad about having less money than him.

But the image he portrayed as a big spender was true. In his autobiography, he recalled spending every last cent of his first big income in Charlotte in 1974 on a used black Cadillac, then wrote, "That’s the way my wrestling career went for the next 15 years — if I made $3,000, I spent $4,000. If I made $5,000, I spent $10,000. The image people would later have of Ric Flair throwing around money was absolutely true. The difference was that in the real world, there wasn’t always more where that came from."

It’s none of my business, but as much as Flair loves wrestling, I wouldn’t be surprised if his past spending is another reason he’s stayed around so long. If so, maybe we’re lucky in a perverse way that he was such a big spender.

"Wooooo!"

Flair was the last real, touring NWA World Champion. By around 1987, wrestling’s old territory system was almost dead, due largely to old promoters being unable to adapt to the new reality of cable television. By then, Flair’s home territory, Jim Crockett Promotions, was just about the only NWA territory left, and Flair was really just the Crockett Promotions company champion, although the title was still called the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.

The Atlanta territory had gone under in 1985, and Crockett signed a deal that year with Ted Turner to provide all of the wrestling programming for WTBS.

By 1988, largely due to overspending and poor booking leading to declining revenues, Crockett Promotions was on the verge of bankruptcy. Wrestling had been a staple on Atlanta’s Channel 17 since 1971, and Ted Turner always credited it and Andy Griffith reruns as saving his station from bankruptcy in its early years, which left him with a soft spot in his heart for wrestling. That, combined with his desire to keep the highly-rated wrestling shows on TBS, led to him purchasing Crockett Promotions in 1988. By 1990, it would be known as World Championship Wrestling, or WCW.

Ric Flair turned 40 shortly after Turner Broadcasting bought the company. At an age when most athletes are either retired or long past their primes, Flair had perhaps the best year of his career, wrestling a classic series with Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, losing the NWA title to him and then winning it back, followed by a memorable series of matches with former NWA champion Terry Funk. Flair’s matches with Steamboat are arguably the best ever performed in North America; anyone who doesn’t "get" pro wrestling, but wants to try to understand, should see their best two of three falls match from New Orleans from April 2, 1989; the match went just under an hour and is my favorite match from 22 years as a fan. It can be seen on WWE’s Ultimate Ric Flair Collection DVD set (WWE’s Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen DVD set is also excellent, and they’re coming out with a new Flair collection in July).

Despite coming off such an excellent year, WCW Executive Vice-President Jim Herd, whom Turner Broadcasting had hired to run WCW even though he was totally unqualified, decided in 1990 that Flair was too old to be champion any longer, so he put the belt on a younger, bigger (but much less talented) wrestler named Steve Borden, who wrestled as Sting. But in Jan. 1991, after Sting failed to draw acceptable crowds, Flair was made champion again.

Flair’s relationship with Herd continued to deteriorate during the following months, and Herd decided in June 1991 to try another bigger, younger (and much less talented) wrestler named Lex Luger as champion. Flair’s contract was about to expire; he agreed to lose the championship to Luger on the condition that he receive a new contract first, because he would have little leverage after he lost the title. They failed to agree to terms, and Herd wound up firing Flair a few days before his scheduled pay-per-view match with Luger.

The WCW title was declared vacant and the excellent Barry Windham was made a substitute opponent in Flair’s place; embarrassingly for the company, the entire live crowd chanted "We want Flair!" literally throughout the entire three-hour pay-per-view. WCW realized they had made a huge mistake and tried to lure Flair back on almost any terms he wanted, but he had already signed with what was by then the only other major wrestling company left, Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation, or WWF.

Losing Flair, and especially deliberately causing him to leave while still champion, combined with the fact that the company had lost money during all three years that he ran the company, led to Herd being fired about six months later.

"Space Mountain may be the oldest ride in the park, but it still has the longest line!"

Flair debuted in the WWF in Sept. 1991 with his championship belt, billing himself as the "Real World Champion."

Then he won the WWF World Title in Jan. 1992 at the company’s Royal Rumble pay-per-view, defeating 29 other wrestlers in a classic match that lasted about an hour.

Flair wound up having a great 16-month tenure in the WWF that included two stints as world champion, after which WWF owner Vince McMahon decided that Flair was getting too old, despite his excellent work, and wanted to demote him to a mid-card attraction. WCW was under new management and wanted Flair back as a headliner, so he and McMahon parted amicably, and Flair wrestled his last WWF match in Jan. 1993, returning to WCW a month later.

"Whether you like it, or you don’t like it, learn to love it, because it’s the best thing going today!"

Different people with political power in WCW came and went during the 1990s. But, despite numerous attempts by numerous people to keep Flair down for political reasons, and despite often being treated very shabbily behind the scenes by people in power, he remained one of WCW’s biggest stars and headliners and one of its most popular wrestlers for the rest of the decade, and had several more runs as world champion.

WCW held its biggest show of the year, Starrcade, on Dec. 27 for several years, which is also my birthday. Some of my favorite birthday/Starrcade memories include Ric Flair winning the WCW World Title from Vader in 1993 and from Randy Savage in 1995, after it seemed that he had been permanently moved down the roster; and becoming the storyline WCW President in 1998.

Ric won his final WCW World Title in June 2000, at age 51.

WCW had some profitable years, and even overtook the WWF in popularity around 1996—97. But by 1999, largely due to the same overspending and ego-driven booking that destroyed its predecessor, Crockett Promotions, a decade earlier, WCW’s business was collapsing. In 2000, the company lost about $60 million — about the same amount as its profit just two years earlier.

Time Warner had purchased Turner Broadcasting in 1996, and now had an impending merger with AOL. Ted Turner had no power in the new company, so his loyalty to wrestling couldn’t save WCW. In an attempt to get WCW off the books before the merger, Time Warner sold it for a pittance (reportedly about $5 million) in a fire sale to Vince McMahon in March 2001.

Ric Flair lost the last-ever WCW match to Sting on March 29, 2001 in a live broadcast on Turner network TNT.

"Wooooo!"

McMahon didn’t buy WCW’s outstanding contracts, so AOL-TW was obliged to continue paying them until they expired, even though WCW no longer existed.

But McMahon did buy out some contracts later; he knew that Flair still had a lot left to contribute, so in Nov. 2001 he paid off Flair’s WCW contract and brought him back to WWE, at age 53.

Flair went on to have six more good years in the business; while he wasn’t generally used as a main eventer and never held the world title again, he did headline several pay-per-views and have stints as Intercontinental and tag-team champion.

I’m not sure whose call it was for Flair to retire — Flair’s or McMahon’s. As good as Flair still is, he is 59, and he can’t keep going forever. But Flair not only cried during his WWE Hall of Fame induction speech; word is whenever anyone tried to go over his match with him backstage the next day at WrestleMania, he broke down in tears, and some were worried if he’d be able to make it through the match. He did make it through and did a great job, but just before the match’s "finish" (the last move before the end of the match), Flair broke into tears in the ring, and cried afterward as he walked back to the dressing room. That makes me wonder if Flair was nudged into retirement sooner than he was ready. But maybe it was his decision, and his emotions are having a hard time conforming to what his intellect believes: that it’s time to quit.

In the week leading to what most knew would be his retirement match, he received numerous tributes in mainstream media outlets — which is rare for a pro wrestler, and even received the key to the city in Columbia, South Carolina, a town he wrestled in weekly during the territorial days.

I can’t think of one wrestler who retired for any reason other than a career-ending injury who didn’t come back, and I’d be lying if I said I don’t hope Flair returns — at least occasionally, if not as a regular performer. He obviously loves the spotlight, and I’ll be surprised if he can stay away for long.

Understandably, even some of Flair’s biggest fans have been calling for him to retire for some time, because they feel he’s tarnishing his legacy by hanging on so far past his prime. But, with all do respect to Mr. Flair, that ship sailed at least 10 years ago. One could’ve made the argument 10 — or especially 15 — years ago that Flair should bow out gracefully while he’s still on top, when he can never be remembered as anything but what he was in his prime. But that’s already long gone now.

And, in a way, Flair has added to his legacy by showing that he can still be one of — but, admittedly, no longer the — best performers in wrestling at nearly 60 years old. At this point, as long as he still enjoys it, the fans still love him, and Vince McMahon still wants him in the ring, he might as well wrestle until he’s 70 if he wants to.

So what made Ric Flair the best, especially when lots of wrestlers were great and had various attributes similar to Flair’s? There were lots of guys who were taller than Flair, more handsome than Flair, or who had better physiques than Flair. There were others who worked just as hard as Flair, and who were just as unselfish in the ring. There were some who were as good as Flair in the ring, but who had little charisma and were as plain as dry toast on interviews. There were guys who were great talkers, but weren’t as good as Flair in the ring. Some drew more money than Flair. There were probably even a small few who were as all-around good as Flair, but who had much shorter careers.

What made Flair the best was that no one else was ever as good at so many things for so long. It’s beyond my comprehension how he has managed to take the physical abuse he has for so many years and still be healthy, especially when so many of his peers — and even people younger than him — have had to retire after much shorter careers due to bad necks or bad backs. There was no one else whom virtually everyone agreed was one of the very best for about 25 years — and most of those would say was the best during that period, much less who had a spectacular 35-year career and who — even now, at age 59 — is still at least among the best on interviews, and still better in the ring than many of his peers, many of whom are less than half his age.

If he doesn’t come back, his career will have ended perfectly; the retirement ceremony on WWE Monday Night Raw the night after WrestleMania was something I’ve never seen in 22 years as a fan: After Flair gave a tearful goodbye speech, it appeared that every wrestler and office employee in the building, as well as some of his retired colleagues from the past, came out and all gave him a standing ovation, and most of them were also crying. And the many thousands of fans in the arena, many of whom were also crying, were chanting, "Thank you, Ric!" Thank you, Ric! Thank you, Ric!"

We should all be so lucky to find something to do for a living that we love so much that the very thought of retiring makes us sob like babies. And we should also be so lucky that, when we do retire, our peers and customers give us a sustained, genuine, teary-eyed, standing ovation in honor of our accomplishments.

As Flair wrote in the 2003 WWE behind-the-scenes book, Unscripted, "When I first started, I had no idea that I could ever be where I am today. Nobody could dream that, because the business didn’t have the money in it that it has now.

"I just knew that I liked it a lot, and I knew that I got along with the guys, and I knew that I had found a niche in life. I’ve got a tremendous gift that someone’s given me. I’ve been very, very lucky. I’ve gotten a lot more than I could’ve asked for. There’s nothing left for me to do; I’ve done it all.

"It’s not like my wife and I are going to retire and travel around the world; we’ve done that. There’s nothing left for us to do, except be comfortable. We’ve been to every country 10 times, from Japan to Singapore, from Europe to Honolulu. And we did it when we were healthy and could have a good time, and they’re great memories.

"My mom and dad saved a lot of money, and now they’ve lost a lot of it because of the stock market. I just wish they had lived it. My mom is sick now, and my dad has passed away. They were so worried about having money at the end. I’d rather say I did it all, and downsize at the end."

Thanks for the memories, Mr. Flair. There will never be another like you.

Johnny Kramer Archives

Harry Browne Lives!

Johnny Kramer — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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March 1 was the second anniversary of the day the world lost one of the greatest-ever champions of liberty, one of the most brilliant and underrated intellectuals of all-time (it’s a little-known fact, probably because he wasn’t the type to brag about such things, that he had a 160 genius-level I.Q.), and I lost the greatest man I’ve ever known: Harry Browne.

Harry’s work will undoubtedly continue to touch the lives of many people for many years to come, especially thanks to the Internet. But, two years after his passing, previously-unpublished work of his is emerging to touch still more people — including those of us already familiar with his work.

The Art of Profitable Living

In 1967, Harry gave an eight-week course in Hollywood and Long Beach, California, called The Art of Profitable Living. The course was intended to help people examine their lives, starting from zero (a concept we’ll examine later); to shake them awake from blindly following others, and to get them to think for themselves; and to show them how to take responsibility for their own lives and make their lives into whatever they want them to be.

The ultimate goal of all of this, of course, was to teach people how to maximize their personal happiness by helping them construct their own code of conduct based on consciously examining all major aspects of life.

Harry intended for his students to leave the course knowing their answers to all of life’s major questions — regardless of whether their answers agreed with his.

Harry wrote in original advertisements for the course, "I put your principles on the block to see if they hold up on the foundation on which they’re based. I pin your beliefs against the wall, invade your mind, and disturb your views of religion, freedom, marriage, etc.

"I examine why these principles are true, make applications, and then see how they work in areas of decision making, religion, love, marriage, sex, working for freedom, parent/child relationships, unraveling complicated decisions, etc."

Fortunately for us, Harry had those lectures recorded when he gave them in 1967, and he saved the reel-to-reel tapes for the rest of his life.

His widow, Pamela, found the tapes last year, and had them digitally remastered onto CDs, which she released in December, 2007, as a 20-CD course called Rule Your World! Finding Freedom and Living Profitably.

This is a review of the CD course, which you can order at the end of the article.

Harry’s Acknowledgments

Harry’s position near the top of the all-time intellectual giants is further solidified not only by this course, but by the fact that he began developing its deep, profound insights in 1953, when he was only 19—20 years old.

However, we all constantly learn things from others, and Harry acknowledged that some of the course’s content was undoubtedly not his original thoughts, but was picked up here and there, from sources he could no longer remember.

And he specifically acknowledged receiving direct input from Mildred Krogar, Ayn Rand, LRC columnist Alvin Lowi, and Marian Landers; and being indirectly influenced by Tom Sanders, Joan Hall, Andrew Galambos, and David Curry.

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

Harry’s obviously drew on the material he presented in this course when he wrote his classic self-help book, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, seven years later.

But, if you’ve read that book, please don’t think you have nothing to gain from this course; I’ve read the book so many times that I literally almost have it memorized, and I would put my knowledge of it up against anyone’s, yet I learned a great deal of new information and insights from the course. Harry obviously cut a lot of this course’s material when he wrote the book, probably due to space limitations.

Besides, he was a natural teacher and it’s fun listening to him discuss these ideas.

And each session includes his post-lecture question-and-answer session with the audience, which are also fun to hear.

Hearing the Course

Listening to the course, numerous times my eyes filled with tears and I was overwhelmed by a feeling of weightless euphoria at Harry’s breathtakingly brilliant insights on life.

In preparation for this article, I made notes as I went through the course. The course is so full of profound observations that I finished it having made 56 pages of single-spaced notes; that’s enough for a book, so it’s too bad for me that this isn’t my material!

But I doubt anyone wants to read a book-length article, and I know Pamela Browne doesn’t want me to give everything away and remove most of the incentive for people to buy the course. So today, on the second anniversary of his untimely passing, we’ll briefly examine some of the course’s main points and some of Harry’s most insightful comments.

However, this is also my review of the course. So, to avoid confusion, unless I specifically attribute something to Harry, you should assume the statement is my take on the course material.

Some of the points in this article will seem redundant because, as Harry said, the course represents an integrated philosophy that’s a whole concept, so there are common threads that run through the entire course. But this is a case where redundancy is good, because it shows how many different areas of your life can be improved by any one of Harry’s basic principles.

And, for the record, I don’t receive a penny for promoting the course.

Let’s look at some of the course’s main concepts.

The Silver Rule

Nearly everyone is familiar with The Golden Rule, also known as the Ethic of Reciprocity: Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You; in other words, treat others as you would like to be treated. This lesson is present in ancient Greek philosophy and in all major religions, and it’s also regarded as a fundamental tenet of morality and human rights. Probably most people — including me — like to think they live by this credo. In my experience, it’s the foundation of empathy; and following it as closely as possible will allow you to avoid most of life’s problems.

However, The Golden Rule is one of those vague notions that can be difficult to define precisely. What exactly does it mean to treat others as you would like to be treated? And why should you? Because it’s "right" or "moral?" Who says? And why is that person an authority — especially for the whole world? How do you know? How can you tell whether someone is living by The Golden Rule? Maybe someone who treats others shabbily thinks he is living by The Golden Rule; maybe he’s a sadist because he’s also a masochist.

Besides being hard to define precisely, The Golden Rule also starts to break down when examined closely.

For example, I’d like strangers to walk up to me and hand me money for no reason. (So feel free to send a PayPal donation to my email address if that sounds like a good idea to you too.) By the logic of The Golden Rule, that means I should go around giving strangers my money for no reason. If I did that, I’d be bankrupt in no time, and it would be unrealistic for me to expect those funds to be replenished by someone treating me the same way.

This example is absurd in order to make the point, but one could easily think of 10 real-life, much more subtle examples. If a moral principle isn’t true 100% of the time, then how do you know when to follow it and when not to? And how can you expect someone to follow it in the same situations in which you would? If it’s okay for you to break the rule when you deem it’s necessary, why isn’t it okay for others to do so when they deem it necessary?

Harry rejected The Golden Rule as an unrealistic, trite platitude. Here are the three basic justifications for following it that Harry saw, followed by his responses:

It inspires you to treat others better.
No, it causes you to waste resources trying to change people’s fixed natures, either by persuasion or force, instead of figuring out how to deal with others as they are.
You’re creating a better world.
What does that mean? How do you know? Even if you’re right, the population of the earth is about six billion (adjusted to 2008), so my share of that "better world" is one/six-billionth, which is not a worthwhile return on my investment. And I’m not here to create a better world; I’m here to make the most of my own life.
It’s "right," so you "should."
Harry never heard a deeper reasoning than this; it begs the questions I asked earlier.

So Harry created what he called The Silver Rule. In my view, it’s not a rejection of The Golden Rule as much as an improvement, to make it and the reasoning behind it much more precise. The rule is this: be the kind of person with whom you wish to associate, because that’s how you attract those types of people into your life.

As an example, if you want to associate with — and don’t want to repel — honest people who don’t steal, and you don’t want to associate with — and do want to repel — thieves, then you should refrain from stealing and let others know, when it comes up, that you don’t steal and won’t associate with those who do.

This is much more precise reasoning than vague philosophical terms like "right" and "wrong," which nearly everyone agrees on, but with few can precisely define.

It’s also more precise than "because you wouldn’t want someone to do that to you," because that answer isn’t necessarily as self-evident as it seems. But even a sociopath can see the value to himself in the reasoning behind Harry’s Silver Rule.

This creates a clear, subjective view of "right" and "wrong:" what kind of people are you looking to attract?

And that subjective definition clearly answers many questions that would otherwise be subject to lengthy philosophical discussions and disagreements over vague terms like "right" and "wrong." For example, the question of whether it would be "right" to shoot a trespasser (for simplicity, let’s assume trespassing is all he’s doing) is answered by whether you would want to associate with someone who overreacts in such a way to such a minor problem. If you wouldn’t, then it would be wrong by your standards to shoot him.

You don’t have to reject the concept of objective morality to live by and apply the Silver Rule; Harry believed that there might be an objective morality, but he also believed that it doesn’t matter if there is, because everyone perceives everything — even the objective — subjectively.

Regarding this, Harry said, "At the very least, understanding the subjective nature of perception will spare you a lot of effort and despair. There’s no reason to ever lose your temper, because you won’t expect from others what they don’t have to give, or to be frustrated because you expected someone to react from your standards or knowledge. This fact about other people is a facet of reality, whether you like it or choose to accept it. If you fight it or deny it, it’ll cause problems for you."

And the beauty of the Silver Rule is it applies to virtually everyone, regardless of their beliefs.

For example, if you’re a Christian, you’re unlikely to convince an atheist not to steal because God commanded it, and He will punish people who disobey; even if you’re right, the atheist doesn’t believe it. You have about as much chance of convincing him not to steal based on God’s commandments as he would have trying to convince you not to steal based on his belief of there not being a God.

But no one — regardless of their religion or lack thereof, age, race, background, belief in subjective or objective morality, etc. — wants anyone to steal from them, so everyone can see the sense in not stealing in order to attract into their lives people who don’t steal, and to repel thieves, whom they want nothing to do with.

Harry advised following the Silver Rule at all times, because you never know when someone might be watching you.

That includes not compromising your standards because of your environment, unless it’s to avoid worse consequences (for example, you might steal or trespass if you were in a situation where you truly feared you might die otherwise, but you would still expect to suffer the consequences of your actions — including the damage to your reputation). So don’t justify your conduct to someone as being due to your environment at the time, such as being swayed by peer pressure. How does the other person know what you’d be like in another environment? Why are you even in that environment at all if it doesn’t suit you?

No One Owes You Anything

Understanding this lesson so deeply that your emotions conform to it in almost all situations is one of the marks of a mature person, and understanding it to that depth will save you an indescribable amount of grief in life. You don’t control others; you can only control yourself and your reactions to what they do.

Harry discussed this idea in his syndicated newspaper column around the time he gave the course. The article, A Gift For My Daughter, ran on Christmas Day, 1966, and was dedicated to his then-nine-year-old daughter. Harry resurrected the article in 2002, on my suggestion. He also read and discussed it on his last radio show before Christmas in 2002 and 2003.

No one "has" to give you anything — including love, friendship, courtesy, common sense, good judgment, empathy, intelligence, or anything else — just because you want it or because you think they "should." Some people don’t even have those things to give, even if they wanted to. Maybe you’re right that the other person "should," but if the other disagrees, what good is your claim?

Even if you can manage to somehow cajole or guilt people into doing what you want, they’ll only do so reluctantly, so you’ll get nothing but a hollow victory — not the full value you’d get from someone enthusiastically doing what you want because they truly want to.

Harry said, "No one owes you anything, because no one is living for your happiness; he is living for his own purposes. This means that individuals are going to act in some pretty strange ways — as far as your standards are concerned. No one owes you moral conduct, friendship, respect, intelligence, anything.

"What you think is ‘moral conduct’ is just some strange, mystical philosophy to that other fellow, and he has no more reason to act upon your morality than you do to adopt his code of conduct. If you recognize this clearly, you’ll be far better equipped to deal with his so-called ‘immoral’ behavior. He will act as he does because he is acting in a way that he believes will bring him happiness. He doesn’t have to live by your standards, because he doesn’t owe you anything.

"When you judge him, realize that you are simply saying, ‘Now, if he were I, he would act differently.’

"But he isn’t you! He is himself, acting from his own standards, so quit expecting him to be you; he never will be you, and he will never act upon the knowledge that you have.

"Neither does he owe you his friendship. No matter how likable you have made yourself, no one has to like you. You will be liked only if he sees you as an instrument to his happiness. He will decide for himself, and his standards may be totally foreign to yours.

"So why be upset if he decides to dislike you, after all you have done for him?

"And no one has to respect you, either. A man may treat you contemptuously, may bump into you disrespectively on the street. He’s doing what’s meaningful to him, and although you don’t like it and you consider it ‘wrong’ — to you, the answer is not to decide that he ‘owes’ you respect, not to consider that he ‘ought’ to act from your premises, but rather to take this into consideration as it is, and deal with the reality as it is. Act accordingly, recognizing that he is not going to respect you, that there is no basis upon which you can make him respect you.

"I will not be able to deal properly with others until I realize that no one owes me anything. This is true by the very nature of life itself, so I am only deceiving myself if I try to live in a dreamworld of rights and expectations. Each person has only one obligation: to live his life in such a way as to bring maximum happiness to himself.

"I’m not saying that that’s the way it should be, or that that’s the way I want to make the world; that is the way it is, and until I recognize that, I will not be capable of dealing with it.

"Now, if this appears to make you helpless among all of these greedy and grasping creatures, don’t let it bother you; we’ll get into some highly sophisticated concepts regarding mutually profitable exchanges next week.

"But lets carry this a step further right now.

"You can say, as you view the apparently irrational acts of others, ‘But that individual would be happier if he would act in the way that I tell him to. He’s only hurting himself, making himself unhappy, by doing the things that he does. I’m only asking him to do what is ultimately in his own self-interest.’ In other words, you’re saying that he should act more intelligently.

"But the fact of the matter, which you must realize, is that he doesn’t owe it to you to act intelligently either. It’s his life, and as long as he’s got it, the plain fact of the matter is he can be just as stupid with it as his knowledge and standards lead him to be. Not just that he can — he will."

Harry summarized this idea beautifully with this sentence: No one owes you anything, because you have no way to make him pay it.

You Can’t Control Other People

Harry advised accepting others as they are and concerning yourself with how to deal with them on that basis. If you don’t like how someone is, arrange your own association with him so that his drawbacks don’t affect you. If that’s not possible, or if you feel the drawbacks of knowing him outweigh the benefits, then don’t associate with him at all. But don’t waste time and energy complaining about how he is or trying to change him; if you do, you’re virtually guaranteed to accomplish nothing but to frustrate yourself.

People can change, but they usually do so when they decide that their previous ways aren’t bringing them the kinds of results they want in life, not because someone else tries to coerce them into it.

Harry believed that the nature of others is deeply embedded. Yes, everyone makes mistakes that are out of character for them. But if you see something in someone — either good or bad — enough to see a pattern (generally, at least three times), you should assume such behavior is in the person’s nature; you should expect him to continue behaving in such a way in the future, and decide how or whether to deal with him in the future by considering that aspect of his nature.

Harry said, "Don’t forget how deeply embedded the nature of others is; he will rebel against your attempts to change him. It may appear superficially that people make sudden, drastic changes in their lives, but that’s not so. There’s a thread that runs through a person’s life that begins early and carries through all aspects of life.

"Look back over your life. You’ve had changes, but you were rebelling against things you were brought up in that didn’t suit you, etc. You changed when you became aware of a better alternative, and you were probably waiting unconsciously all along for it to arrive. Changes in your life don’t mean your nature has changed. The nature of others is fixed and deeply embedded."

It’s difficult to describe the euphoric sense of weightlessness that comes from accepting this idea so deeply that your emotions automatically conform to it almost all of the time. But it’s well worth working to attain such a mentality. In my experience, doing so only requires repetition until it becomes a reflex, like anything else.

The first step in making this mentality reflexive is becoming consciously aware of this idea and of the fact that it makes sense to you.

Once that happens, every time someone hurts you, disappoints you, or otherwise acts in a way contrary to what you want, make the conscious effort to remind yourself that you can’t control others; if you want something from someone, you have to make it worth their while to give it to you; and you do control yourself, so if you’re going to get mad at anyone, it should be at yourself for making yourself vulnerable to someone else in such a way.

If you still feel that the person is worth associating with, then accept the fact that you’re paying a necessary price for the benefits you get from knowing that person, and stop complaining about his drawbacks, which you can’t change or control.

When you consciously and repetitiously think of such things in this way, the mentality will eventually become automatic and ingrained in your subconscious, at which point your emotions should conform to it too — not 100% of the time, because you’re not perfect; but every step closer you get to 100% is an improvement.

As Harry said, "”What do you have to fear from people who would turn your friends against you by making unproven accusations? Do your friends act upon unproven statements? If they do, why do you refer to them as your ‘friends?’ Why do you try to hang on to someone who would respond to an unproven accusation against you?”

“What kind of people is it you want to deal with? If some people seem to respond to a so-called unscrupulous competitor, are those really the people you wanted to deal with? If others turn against you because of rumors that are uttered behind your back, what have you lost? If your wife suddenly becomes infatuated with a gigolo, are you sure this is the woman you wanted to be your wife?”

Accept others for what they are, because you have no control over it; concern yourself with what you do control, which is how to deal with it.

Making Decisions

The point of any decision is to attain ultimate well-being for yourself. Harry offers his brilliant, elaborate method for making important decisions; his method involves identifying the six components of any decision, the three areas of any decision, and the 10 ways a decision can be perverted, plus three bonus perversions.

As an example of the insights in this portion of the course, one of the ten ways Harry believed a decision could be perverted was to decide a certain way because you’re trying to prove something to someone else; acts have natural, automatic consequences, so you don’t need to waste your limited resources trying to "prove" to people that the things they’re doing are wrong.

If someone asks your opinion, you can tell him what you really think. But don’t waste time or energy telling people who didn’t ask you that what they’re doing is wrong.

Besides, when people ask for "advice," they usually do so only to have their decisions or beliefs enforced, so don’t expect them to listen to you — and don’t get upset when they don’t.

For example, if you think someone is stupid, don’t waste time and energy trying to convince him of it. He’ll run up against the negative consequences of his stupidity eventually, regardless of what you do — and, if you care about him, this is the best thing for him, because it’s the only way he’ll learn (although he may still not, but that’s his problem).

The obvious objection is: What if he doesn’t suffer any negative consequences for his acts? Harry’s response to this question is one of the most brilliant and insightful observations about life that I’ve ever heard, and they’re the reason I chose this example to share:

First you don’t know that he’s not suffering any negative consequences, because you don’t see everything that happens to him; even if it’s your spouse, you’re not with that person 24 hours a day. And even if he brags that he suffers no consequences, he may be lying or may not be bright enough to connect the bad things happening in his life — which you may not know about — with his acts.

Second, if he really isn’t experiencing any negative consequences from his actions, then on what basis could you possibly even hope to convince him that what he’s doing is wrong — even if you’re correct?

Besides, if he’s so stupid, why are you involved with him at all? Why do you make yourself vulnerable to his stupidity, or even put yourself in a position where you have to see it?

This is another part of the course that made me feel emotionally weightless and almost made me cry with joy; for some reason, on the rare occasion that someone manages to upset me and I strongly feel that I’ve been wronged, I often have an irrational desire to "prove" it to him and to get him to admit that he was wrong — and it never gets me anywhere. Hopefully Harry’s brilliant, joyous advice will help me get over this. What an insight!

As Harry said, "I have all I can do just trying to take care of myself; I don’t have time to waste precious resources trying to prove anything to anyone else. And, because I control only myself, I have no assurance that my efforts to prove something to someone would even succeed. Besides, even if they did, what good would it do me? If anything, I know relatively certainly that the effort of trying to prove it would be uncomfortable to me."

Another aspect of this section of the course deals with the aftermath of decisions; once you make a decision and you’re convinced that you chose correctly, Harry advises not reopening the decision unless new information becomes available that would change the risk or reward of the decision substantially enough to make it worth reconsidering, and unless the decision is still revocable.

But one piece of new information that’s irrelevant to reconsidering your decision is the reactions of other people, because you should’ve taken into consideration when you made the decision that one unknown was what others would think of it or how they would react to it. We’ll examine dealing with unknowns later.

If you apply the Silver Rule to the dilemma of whether to change your decisions due to the reactions of others, you’ll see that it’s usually no dilemma: if others react in a hostile manner to a decision you know is right for you, it’s an indication that those aren’t the kinds of people with whom you want to associate, not that you should change your course of action to suit them.

Natural Justice

Harry believed, as many people do, that acts have automatic consequences. Some call this God’s will or karma; Harry called it natural justice.

If you believe in this, then you don’t have to worry about anyone getting away with anything — even if you don’t see, or even hear about, their comeuppance; all you have to do is to worry about yourself and those you care about, to arrange your own affairs to make yourself as invulnerable as possible to people harming you. Beyond that, you can rest assured that people who harm others will get what’s coming to them, without you doing anything — and even if you don’t see it.

More importantly, when someone harms you, understanding the lesson of natural justice deeply enough will allow you to focus on what you control, which is to learn a lesson from it to reduce your vulnerability to such a thing happening to you again, rather than trying to circumvent natural justice by seeking revenge on the person yourself — which may bring bad consequences to you.

Harry said, "What about your life? Is it so arranged that you are vulnerable to, or dependent upon, people you consider to be evil, stupid, malicious, careless, or in any way harmful to you? If it is, then it’s your vulnerability to these people that must be changed, not the people involved. This applies in your job, your family, your personal relationships, your property.

"If it seems too hopeless a task to unravel these areas of vulnerability and dissatisfaction, if you feel that some areas of your life are just so far gone that you’re going to have to tolerate a disagreeable situation, then please sit tight for the next eight weeks as we go into ways of putting one’s life in order.

"There’s no value in cursing someone’s actions after the fact, because that accomplishes nothing for you.

"To have to avoid bad is not an inconvenience, because you have no claim on anyone else. Put yourself in a position where bad things can’t happen to you. Once you avoid bad people, you don’t have to know who all of them are. Once you decide that someone can’t contribute anything positive to your life, accept him for what he is and avoid him. It also does nothing for you to point out badness to others, unless they ask your advice, because everyone has to decide for himself.

"If you won’t be satisfied until you know justice has triumphed, understand justice: certain acts produce certain consequences, and nature punishes people who go against reality

"Realize that everyone is subject to the same cause-and-effect relationships that you are, and you can’t see everything that happens to others. What more concern about justice can there be?

"Justice isn’t something you invent; it’s the natural, inevitable consequence that follows every act. People who go against reality will face consequences, regardless of whether you ever see it happen. This is mightily important. You can make substantial changes in your own life if you stop worrying that others are getting away with something.

"If someone steals from you, for example, he’ll face consequences, regardless of what you do. Worry about your own mistake, which was to make yourself vulnerable to it, and to learn a lesson to make it less likely to happen again.

"Leave justice to nature; it’s in the business."

Government

If you accept Harry’s sensible premise that there is a natural justice in the world, which is the automatic consequences of acts, then man-made justice ("government") is, by definition, either redundant or an attempt to circumvent natural justice. Either possibility renders government unnecessary. This is borne out by the fact that most government "law enforcement" consists of either persecuting people for victimless crimes against the State, or for real crimes motivated by government-imposed distortions in the economy, like black markets.

In the course, Harry describes in depth what he saw as the three evils of the man-made justice system.

But the fact is, necessary or not, governments exist, and the individual has to find ways of dealing with them — which Harry also addresses in depth in the course.

Harry said, "On your level, your daily life would be the same under a free society or under a government — you have to take measures on your own to protect yourself, your property, deal with honest people in business, etc.

"A ‘free society’ is another form of government, because agencies more powerful than you, with the ability to coerce you, will always arise.

"You are all alone in this world, so you better face it. You’re going to have to be responsible for your own happiness, protection, income, etc. No one can construct a society where you would be freed from such responsibilities.

"A ‘free society’ isn’t possible; all that’s possible is individual freedom. Freedom is the opportunity to act on one’s own morality.

"The freedom others want for themselves may be different than the freedom you want for yourself.

"You can’t say others can only have the freedom to act as you want; if others are to be free, then they must be totally unrestricted to do as they please and experience the natural consequences of their own acts. That doesn’t mean you have to be vulnerable to their actions, but your concern should be with insulating yourself from it, not with exercising prior restraint on others.

"If someone objects that this is license rather than freedom, it’s a semantic argument; this person defines freedom incorrectly as ‘the freedom of others to act as I think best.’ Freedom and license are the same thing.

"The concept of ‘freedom with responsibility’ is meaningless, because of questions like: whose responsibility, who decides, how it is enforced, etc.

"You can’t create a world where things like thieves and murderers don’t exist. Someone else may even decide that you’re a thief or a murder by their standard, and a system you helped erect to punish people you thought were thieves and murderers may turn against you someday.

"In the real world, you have to protect yourself, and it’s your individual, personal responsibility, just like you have to eat, sleep, breathe, etc.

"Some people feel they have to coerce to get what they want, and you have to deal with that as part of reality.

"Should you coerce? According to The Silver Rule, not unless you want to attract into your life people who will coerce you. But the only relevant question is: should I coerce? The question: should others coerce? is irrelevant, because you don’t control others.

"The conduct of others is the result of their happiness-seeking natures, and no one owes you anything. Others live for themselves and from their own knowledge and standards. Accept that people do what they want, including coerce, and concentrate on what you control, which is to insulate yourself from it.

"Should you deal with the government? You can’t always see all consequences ahead of time, but you can have a general idea of what consequences probably are.

"If you live, you will have to deal with the government in some ways, but that doesn’t mean you have to deal with it in many ways or all ways. You can choose to drive on roads, but that doesn’t mean you have to sue someone, etc. Don’t try to flout natural justice through a man-made system.

"The Oliver Wendell Holmes quote is true, but not as people who agree with it think it is: You have to pay taxes if you want to live in civilization. Period. It doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong or even if government is destroying civilization. The tax system still exists.

"It’s not that life wouldn’t be better without government; it’s that some problems in life are inherent — even some attributed to government. And, even if life would be better without government, you have no power to make it disappear."

Honesty

Harry advised total honesty with everyone at all times.

I agree, except I would allow exceptions in cases where you believe the consequences to you of telling the truth are worse than the consequences of lying . But, in such cases, you should still expect to suffer the automatic, negative consequences that come from lying; when they appear, know that you’re paying the necessary price to avoid the worse consequences of telling the truth.

In my experience, you will reduce the price required to fix a problem or a mistake to the minimum possible 99% of the time if you’re totally honest with everyone all of the time. The other 1% consists of situations where the consequences of telling the truth are worse than the consequences of lying, such as lying to save your life — but again, in such cases, you should still expect to suffer the bad consequences that automatically come from lying.

But liars don’t see it this way. They think that by lying, they can get away with something, reduce the consequences of a mistake to zero. But they’re just making the problem worse, by adding the additional consequences of lying — which are often worse than the consequences of the original act, especially if it was an honest mistake — to the consequences of the original act. Eventually the problem will become so large that it has to be dealt with — and the price required to fix it then will be much, much higher than the price for just the original act, had it been dealt with swiftly and honestly. And by the time the problem grows so large that it can no longer be ignored, it may no longer be fixable — which itself is a very heavy price.

You should also be honest with others about who you are. If you lie to others about what you really are, you’re probably doing so to be like everyone else — in which case you’re robbing yourself of being liked for what you really are by someone with whom you’re truly compatible, and you’re making almost everyone else your competitor for the attention of others. But if you’re honest with everyone, you’ll have the market for your real traits cornered, and some day, someone is going to respond enthusiastically and gratefully at finding a kindred soul.

And you can’t be honest with others if you don’t know yourself well enough to know what the truth about yourself is. So before you can be honest with others, you must be honest with yourself.

Harry said, "’Honesty is the best policy’ is a meaningless cliché. Being honest starts with being honest with yourself; you can’t be honest with others until you know what you believe. Once you’ve recognized what you are, be what you are. Be totally honest with others at all times. Decide that you’d rather face the consequences of being blunt than face the consequences of lying. Then you can work on being more diplomatic, if you want. This all gets back again to the Silver Rule."

Harry saw two main negative consequences from lying:

Lying solidifies imperfection.

Harry said, "How can a problem improve if you won’t acknowledge it — to yourself or others?

"If you’re concerned that truth will hurt him, consider that he will be hurt by many things, and it’s not your responsibility to make sure he’s never hurt by anything in life."

You destroy your own credibility by lying.

Harry said, "There are always consequences from lying. Don’t put yourself in the position that you feel so vulnerable that you have to protect something by lying."

This adds another dimension to my earlier statement that, in my view, it’s okay to lie in (the hopefully very limited) situations where you’ve analyzed a situation and decided that the consequences to you of telling the truth are worse than the consequences to you of lying. But regardless of whether you agree with me, as Harry said, it’s best to avoid getting into such situations in the first place.

Starting From Zero

This is another concept, like the Silver Rule, that permeates the course. Harry believed one of the most valuable techniques for improving your life is what he called Starting From Zero. It involves reversing the usual method for making decisions, which is to figure our what you want to change, starting where you are now; Harry’s method is to forget everything in your present life and think only about what you want from life and how you can get it, without taking into consideration anything about your present life, including your present obligations and commitments.

Harry discusses this concept in depth in this area of the course, and applies it in many other areas of the course.

As an example from his own life of how powerful the method is: at the time he gave the course, he and a couple of others owned a small business with several employees that sold features to newspapers across the United States.

After owning the business for a couple of years, he had several full-time employees, needed 200 man-hours a week to run it — including 80 hours a week from himself, and the business was in the red. Starting from where he was then, it seemed like everything about his present situation was vital to running the business, so he was considering closing it since it was losing money and it seemed that no significant expenses could be cut.

But, starting from zero, he was able to make the business profitable with only 25 man-hours, including cutting his own work-week from 80 hours to 15; and was able to eliminate all of his employees but one, who came in just one day a week, and use the eliminated employees as independent contractors, which also freed him from other burdens, like payroll taxes. It turned out that hardly anything he thought was necessary for operating the business really was, but he couldn’t see that until he cleared his mind of all of his preconceptions.

If you want to improve your life, don’t start mentally from where you are now; your present mentality is how you originally got into whatever mess you’re in now. So instead, start mentally only with what you want, then only consider what you have to do to get it.

Dealing with Unknowns

Unknowns are present in virtually every decision. Harry discusses at length how to deal with this aspect of reality, including identifying the most common mistakes people make when confronting unknowns.

One aspect of unknowns is that you can’t always identify every unknown ahead of time; as a quick way to make a decision and deal with this, Harry advised not trying to imagine every possible thing that could happen with each option, but instead evaluating your vulnerability to the worst possible thing you could imagine happening with each course of action.

Here’s an example Harry gave: Imagine that you’re running late and you realize you might run out of gas before you get to your destination.

So the decision you’re faced with is whether to stop for gas and make yourself a little later for sure; or to keep going, in which case you might make it and not be as late as if you’d stopped, but you also risk running out of gas and making yourself much later than if you’d stopped.

First, realize that you made yourself vulnerable to this; if you had budgeted your time better or not let your tank run so low, you wouldn’t be in this situation. So you should learn a lesson for the future to prevent this from happening again.

But you are in this situation now, so you have to deal with it.

Here are the obvious unknowns:

Exactly how much gas is left in the tank?
Even if you knew that, how far would that take you? And exactly how far is it to your destination?

Now identify what you do know:

If you stop for gas when you didn’t have to, let’s say you figure it will cost you up to 15 minutes.
But if you don’t stop and run out of gas, let’s say it’ll cost you up to 30 minutes to walk to gas station, back to car, etc.

Now use what you do know to determine your vulnerability to the worst thing you think could happen with each decision:

Let’s say being even five minutes late in this situation would ruin the appointment — maybe you’re meeting someone whom you know well enough that you know even being five minutes late would anger him so much that the appointment would be ruined, or maybe you’re on your way to a show and they don’t seat people after a certain time. In these examples, being five minutes late is the same as being an hour late, so you’d risk it and drive through, unless you think the burden of walking for gas is worse than missing the appointment.

But if you decide that it’s better to be five minutes late than 30 minutes late, you’d probably stop and get gas.

So consider everything you know, and every unknown you can think of, and pick what seems to offer the best consequences to you.

Paying Prices

There are all kinds of prices to be paid in life; money is just one. Like with lying, avoiding a problem — meaning avoiding paying the necessary price to fix a problem in your life — just compounds the problem in the long-run, making the price necessary to fix it, which you can avoid paying forever, much larger than if you had faced the problem immediately.

Harry deals with identifying and paying prices in detail in the course, but he summed it up when he said, “Every mistake you make will be paid for ultimately, but the price of that mistake will depend upon your attitude toward it. If you face it squarely and quickly, the price can be relatively cheap. But if you try to cover it up, you are simply making mistake number two, and then number three, and on and on and on. And all of those mistakes will have to be paid for eventually. And the price can get to be pretty tremendous. And that to me is the meaning in the old saw, ‘the mistakes we make two-by-two are paid for one-by-one,’ because you will have to pay for them one at a time. But it’s very easy to arrange them or to pile them up two at a time, simply by one covering up the other.

"Once again, mental well-being, not the hiding of your mistakes, is the goal.

"If you’re willing to pay a price, there’s nothing you can’t earn."

Now How Much Would You Pay? Don’t Answer Yet; There’s Still More!

No, the course doesn’t come with a set of Ginsu knives that can slice through a shoe and still slice a tomato razor-thin, nor does it come with a miraculously-absorbent shammy that can soak up five gallons of water in 8.2 seconds.

But you will also receive Harry’s in-depth analysis of other major life issues, including: morality; attaining personal freedom, which is different than freedom from government; accepting your own nature, rather than trying to fight it; economics; Harry believed that preoccupation with irrelevancies was one of the major obstacles to personal achievement and happiness, so he describes in detail how to determine what is and isn’t relevant in your life; romantic love, including how to distinguish real, durable romantic love from mere physical attraction or temporary infatuation; marriage, including suggestions for arranging the details of your living situation with your spouse to avoid conflicts to the greatest degree possible, and how to end the marriage as amicably as possible, if it becomes necessary; the decision of whether to have children, and, if so, how to raise them successfully, so that you can have a mutual, honest, value-for-value relationship with your children, and how to raise them successfully to become independent adults; religion; prayer; determining the existence of God; certainty; plus much more.

The Individualist

Successfully implementing all of the course’s concepts will start you on your way to becoming a true individualist. The following is Harry’s description of such a person; the quote is lengthy, but it’s beautiful.

Harry said, “To me, the individualist is one who has had the courage to respect his own mind, to determine for himself the nature of life. He has determined for himself the premises upon which he will construct his philosophy of life and his code of conduct.

"But he also recognizes that everyone else in this world is going to do exactly the same thing, no matter how sloppily or thoughtlessly they may go about it. But that means he expects others to go their own ways in seeking happiness. He expects others to act from different premises. He expects others to have their own moralities. And he makes no attempt to condemn them as being unfit, because he realizes that he is not condemning them from their own standards by which they’ve been acting. The individualist accepts all of this and expects nothing else, because he knows nothing else would be realistic.

"He knows that no one owes him anything because he can’t make anybody pay it. He is starting out all alone in this world, and he knows it. He doesn’t kid himself into thinking that someone else is living for his happiness. Rather, he makes it his business to arrange the kind of relationships wherein it will be profitable to others to help him get his happiness.

"And so he’s a rare individual who can enter a personal relationship on a truly realistic basis. He recognizes the true sovereignty of the other person involved, and he doesn’t enter the relationship with the idea in mind that he’s going to mold that other person to suit his wishes.

"And he knows that the other person is judging him from the other person’s standards, and will find it profitable or not continue."

"The individualist, then, doesn’t look down on others or look up at others. He recognizes them for what they are — individuals, each of whom is a world unto himself, and the highest authority in that world. So he knows that any shortcoming that another individual may have by his standards is undoubtedly accompanied by a shortcoming in him, according to the other person’s standards.

"He doesn’t expect people to buy from him unless he is offering those people something they want, no matter how much he thinks he knows what is good for them.

"He doesn’t expect his spouse to love him, without earning that love — by her standards, not his.

"He doesn’t expect anyone to respect him unless he is contributing something positive to the happiness they seek in their lives — by their concept of what will bring them happiness.

"He does not have to enter any of these relationships, but he knows that they won’t exist unless the other participants are satisfied too. So what is the point of ever ignoring their profit motives? In fact, he would actually be embarrassed if he caught himself condemning someone else for not acting by his standards, since he knows that those standards only apply to himself.

"He doesn’t lose his balance, because he is not counting on what cannot be. He has no temper tantrums because there just isn’t anyone who’s a proper target for his anger, and he knows it.

"He is not racked with uncertainty or quiet doubts that eat silently away at his constitution, because he has faced reality as it is and incorporated it into his decisions, and acted upon what he wants and knows he can realistically have.

"He suffers no overwhelming disappointments because he knows what will remain unknown to him, and adds up his vulnerabilities instead of just hoping that everything will go away.

"He is not besieged by the three evils that Ayn Rand identified as pain, fear and guilt.

"What is there to be pained about? He has arranged his life realistically, so that his small mistakes are not going to compound themselves into gigantic consequences. And he pays prices for the small mistakes, knowing what he’s paying for. And so, even when he must suffer in a small way, he knows why, and he is willing to do it for the greater happiness it will ultimately bring him, rather than compounding the suffering by trying to ignore it. In this way, he actually steps outside of the suffering, treats it impersonally and prevents it from throwing him for a loss.

"What is there to be afraid of? Life is an adventure. No one owes the individualist anything, so he doesn’t have to be scared to death that they aren’t going to pay it.

"What is there to be guilty of? He is responsible to no one but himself. No one’s acts but his own could make him feel guilty. He is not going to chastise himself for someone else’s actions, for someone else’s unhappiness — even if those actions appear to be reactions to his. And even his own mistakes are only a part of the history upon which he has to build at any given moment. So he always starts from where he is right now, learning from the past, but living in the present and the future.

"The individualist doesn’t build societal structures; he builds himself. Society depends upon too many other individuals acting in just the right way to make it work — and he doesn’t control others; he controls only himself.

"He doesn’t try to change others; he protects himself from those who would harm him. He knows that even the thief is acting from his own limited knowledge of what will bring him happiness — the same basis from which the individualist is acting. It is only that the individualist feels that he has found a better way of obtaining happiness. But he knows that there is no way he can compel the thief to go his way, to give up his code and adopt the individualist’s. And so he really believes that others have the right to determine their own lives for themselves, whereas many just talk about it.

"He doesn’t have to wonder about the nature of evil, or fear it or dissect it. He can be totally preoccupied with building his own happiness with his limited resources. And because he knows his resources are limited, he has no time for crusades or movements or maybes or ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we all did this?’, or anything of the sort. He is not all, and he knows it; he is only one, but he is going to make the most of that one life.

"Most of all, the individualist can say ‘I.’ He has recognized that no one can think for him but himself, and that he will have to experience the consequences for everything that that ‘I’ does. And so he is the one individual who can say ‘I think’ or ‘I believe’ or ‘I want,’ and know that it will stick, because he really means what he says because he has discovered the nature of himself. He has discovered who the ‘I’ is, and so he can use the word properly. When he says ‘I love you,’ he knows that he means it, and he doesn’t have to worry whether he will love this person the next day or the next week.

"He has taken the trouble to think for himself. He has stood his mental ground against the most overbearing intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals, and had the courage to say, ‘I’m not comfortable with your logic; I think I’ll find the answer for myself.’ And, having found the answers for himself, he can then say ‘I.’ He can speak authoritatively because he is speaking for someone with whom he is now acquainted, someone he really knows.

"All of these ramifications of the individualist flow from one central view of life that he has. To me, the individualist is unique because he has caught sight of something very significant that escapes most people: An individualist, to me, is someone who recognizes the subjective nature of perception, knowledge and morality. And if there is one thing that sets him apart from others, it is this: He knows that, despite the fact that there is apparently a fixed nature to reality, there is no one individual who can claim to read it for anyone else.

"And this central realization has a multitude of ramifications. He is capable of being himself because he realizes that only he can discover that self. And he is capable of comprehending the individuality of every other human being, which is an awfully hard thing to do at first, to actually comprehend the individuality of others. There really aren’t many people that I’ve run into in this world that can do that, who can actually stand back and look at another individual and recognize the subjective nature of that other individual, the fact that that person is in a completely different world and is acting from different knowledge, and therefore has come to a different view of perception, and therefore is acting from a different code of conduct.

"But because he is capable of doing this, he gets far better results than most people. And when you talk about things like empathy, for instance, I believe that only an individualist, by this definition, can really have empathy. For anyone else, it’s nothing but a bunch of crocodile tears. The individualist is capable of having the empathy, capable of recognizing the position from which the other person is standing, and identifying with that position to a certain extent — never completely, of course, but at least to a certain extent. The person who doesn’t recognize this subjective nature cannot have empathy, because all he will do is transform or transpose his own ideas, his own framework, onto the other person, and think that he is having some identification with that other person, think that he is feeling something like what the other is feeling and putting himself somewhat in their place. But he’s not capable of doing so until he recognizes that the other person is really someone apart from himself."

Ordering the Course & Supporting LRC

Rule Your World! Finding Freedom and Living Profitably is available here (LRC AUDIO STORE LINK) for only $159.99, which includes free shipping in the U.S. Through a special arrangement between Pamela Browne and Lew Rockwell, ordering from this link will earn LewRockwell.com a commission from the sale. So, in addition to receiving life-changing information and supporting Harry Browne’s work, you’ll also be supporting LewRockwell.com.

You’ll receive 20 one-hour CDs, each embossed with the name of the course and disc number, in a handsome, compact, dust-proof case with the name of the course and two beautiful photos of Harry, one from 1967 and the other from 1995, on the cover.

You’ll also receive a 12-page syllabus, largely written by Harry, in a spiral binder. The booklet includes Harry’s advice for implementing the course’s material in your own life and Harry’s glossary, defining many of the terms he uses in the course.

Despite being taken from 40-year-old reel-to-reel tapes, the audio is crisp, loud, and of superb quality.

Is $159.99 too much to pay to learn insights that have the potential to massively improve your life, as well as to support HarryBrowne.org and LewRockwell.com? If it seems so, consider this final piece of advice from Harry: "Don’t you think it’s a small investment for what is at stake — which, of course, is your life and your happiness?"

P.S.: "The Economics of Success and Freedom" course

Harry gave another course in the ’60s called "The Economics of Success and Freedom." Pamela Browne also has reel-to-reel audio tapes of that course, and she’d like to release that course on CDs too. But she won’t bother if the demand isn’t great enough — and she’s gauging the demand by how well this course sells. So if this Rule Your World course sounds appealing, the existence of another course is another reason not to procrastinate in buying this one.

Thanks to Pamela Browne for her valuable input for this article.

Johnny Kramer [send him mail] holds a BA in journalism from Wichita State University and is available for hire as a writer and copyeditor. See his website.

Lessons From Eliot Spitzer

Johnny Kramer — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:00:00 +0000

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In many ways, it’s difficult to feel sorry for Eliot Spitzer, who built his career on ruining the lives of innocent people who were guilty of crimes against the State — much as the State has now ruined Spitzer’s career, and possibly his life, for his crimes against the State.

In a free society, there should be two standards for criminal or civil action:

Someone’s body or property has been violated.
There’s a victim, or the victim’s beneficiaries in the case of a murder, filing a complaint.

Private Courts

With a system of competing, private courts, this would almost certainly be the system that would emerge.

Yes, there will always be people who think that peaceful, consensual behavior should be outlawed according to their arbitrary personal beliefs; some of these people would undoubtedly end up owning private courts, and would gladly host cases dealing with non-violent vices.

But, with such a system, these people would have to spend their own money going after people who had never harmed them — and, in many cases, whom they had never even met.

For example, a Jerry Falwell-type would have to spend many thousands of dollars of his own money randomly going after a homosexual here or there who had never laid a finger on him or his property. And, even if he was successful in getting a conviction from a court that took such cases, he would’ve only punished one out of many millions of homosexuals.

How likely is it that he would even bother, especially when he could spend the same money reaching thousands or millions of homosexuals through various advertising methods, trying to convince them to voluntarily renounce their homosexuality? Not very.

Libertarian is not synonymous with libertine, but libertarianism is only a political philosophy. The proper libertarian view is that the legal system should concern itself only with defending property rights; that religions and philosophies only have value when they’re followed voluntarily, out of genuine conviction; and, for religious libertarians, that sins are between the sinner and God; and, if even if there’s a victim, it’s no business of the State’s unless the victim files a complaint, seeking restitution.

State Courts

Compare that system to our statist one, where opportunistic, sociopathic politicians, lawyers and bureaucrats can use other people’s own money against them (through collecting taxes and then using them and inflation to fund prosecutions), even if those people have hurt no one, in order to enrich themselves.

Most of the State’s "law enforcement" consists of futile attempts to stop peaceful, consensual behavior, while much of the real crime that occurs in society is due to the perverse incentives the State creates by fostering black markets.

This is, at best, a giant make-work scam for people too inept or lazy to do honest work, serving people on a voluntary basis on the market; the more acts that are illegal and the stiffer the punishments, the more police, lawyers, judges, court employees, prison guards, parole and probation officers, social workers, etc., are needed. And the more money people can make selling police supplies and weapons, building prisons, etc.

This has nothing to do with compensating someone whose property rights were violated and everything to do with enriching those who work for, or with, the State.

Eliot Spitzer

Few exploited this evil system for their own benefit better than Eliot Spitzer. His moral posturing and anti-business crusades earned him the nickname "Mr. Clean" with some — and the nickname "Mr. Evil" with many libertarians.

Here’s a list of some of Spitzer’s accomplishments during two terms as NY Attorney General:

He shook down Samsung Electronics Co., Elpida Memory Inc., Infineon Technologies AG and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. for $730 million in fines for "price fixing"; the fifth company he was investigating, Micron Technology, Inc., was granted immunity for cooperating.
He shook down 10 firms, Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Salomon Smith Barney, and UBS Warburg for $1.4 billion in fines for allegedly using affiliated brokerage firms to give biased investment advice to artificially inflate their stock prices. Under the settlement, the firms were required to transfer millions of dollars to nominally "independent" competitors.

To their credit, many Wall Street analysts accused Spitzer of inventing non-existent fraud, and sensationalizing minor violations, in order to further his political ambitions.

Fraud is a real concern, but the market punishes it, and would more so without various distortions in the economy produced by government. The market doesn’t need a self-righteous politician like Spitzer opportunistically exploiting investor ignorance and blaming the dot-com bust, which was brought about by the Fed’s boom-and-bust cycle, on business in order to further his career.

Government regulation has always been about certain businesses using their money and political connections to crush their competitors and obtain advantages and profit levels they wouldn’t be able to obtain on the market, through voluntary exchange, and Spitzer’s crony capitalism crusades were no exceptions.

And no business has ever wrought the fraud and destruction that the government does through inflation and fiat money, so who are they to criticize? What was the fraud of Enron, for example, compared to the fraud of Social Security? And again, the market punishes fraud; Enron went bankrupt.

As it pertains to this scandal, as attorney general, Spitzer also prosecuted at least two prostitution rings as head of the state’s Organized Crime Task Force.

In one such case in 2004, Spitzer was reported to speak with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island. "This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure," Spitzer said then. "It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring."

Spitzer’s political posturing paid off for him: he was elected Governor of New York in 2006; he was likely a candidate to be Obama’s or Clinton’s running-mate this year, or his or her attorney general; and he undoubtedly had eyes on running for president at some point.

What Goes Around . . .

Then, barely a year into his governorship, it all came crashing down.

Supposedly, the federal government’s investigation into Spitzer began when Spitzer’s bank, the North Fork Bank, contacted the IRS about "suspicious transactions," as required by the Orwellian-named Bank Secrecy Act.

Spitzer’s "suspicious transactions" involved removing $5,000 from his bank account on three separate occasions, and the IRS notification was due to part of the Bank Secrecy Act that requires banks to notify the IRS anytime an account holder withdraws or transfers more than $10,000, or a total of more than $10,000 in smaller increments in order to avoid detection, which itself is an illegal activity known as "structuring"

Once contacted, the IRS referred the case to its Criminal Investigations Division, supposedly because they feared that Spitzer was the victim of extortion or identity theft.

Then the IRS notified the FBI, which began its own investigation into political corruption; the investigation eventually linked the bank transfers to an escort service called The Emperor’s Club, and the four owners of the business were arrested a week before the revelations of Spitzer’s involvement, under the Mann Act, which made interstate transport of females for "immoral purposes" illegal.

Further investigation revealed that Spitzer paid a 22-year-old escort $4,300 in cash to travel from New York City to meet him at a Washington, D.C. hotel on Feb. 13. In addition to prostitution and the various banking violations, the interstate transport also implicated Spitzer under the Mann Act.

The New York Times broke the scandal on March 10, which prompted Spitzer to announce on March 12, amid threats of impeachment, that he was resigning, effective March 17.

The State’s raison d’tre

This chain of events reveals the State’s disgusting web of victimless crime law after victimless crime law.

As an aside, let’s look at the major laws that the State — probably Spitzer’s enemies — used to ruin his career.

The Mann Act of 1910

Congress exploited its authority to regulate interstate commerce to make it a federal crime to transport females across state lines for "immoral purposes," and to prevent "white slavery," which meant prostitution. Note that this law pertains to voluntary movement across state lines, not to kidnapping. In 1917, the Act was expanded to include non-commercial "immoral" acts.

Congressman James Mann, for whom the Act was named, was also responsible for the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970

This Orwellian-named set of laws removed any secrecy or privacy citizens had about their bank accounts from the prying eyes of the State. Originally enacted to combat the non-crime of "money laundering," which is an attempt to evade taxes — which wouldn’t occur if the federal government didn’t have the power to tax income, or an attempt to conceal the source of funds earned on the black market — which wouldn’t occur if the federal government hadn’t made such otherwise peaceful, consensual acts illegal, driving them underground.

Essentially, the Act requires financial institutions to file a report to the IRS the name, address and Social Security Number of anyone making any cash transaction of more than $10,000, or anyone making any other "suspicious" transaction that indicates illegal activity, like money laundering or tax evasion. Financial institutions are barred from notifying customers that such a report has been filed on them, and such information was specifically exempted from the Freedom of Information Act.

"Structuring" and "Money Laundering"

Whenever you forcibly change people’s circumstances, they don’t continue acting as they did before. So it didn’t take too much imagination for those engaged in illegal activities to figure out to break their transactions of more than $10,000, which were reportable, into smaller amounts, which weren’t.

So that gave rise to the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986, which enhanced the Bank Secrecy Act to make "money laundering" itself a federal crime, and also to make "structuring" of transactions of more than $10,000 in smaller increments a federal crime. In other words, trying to keep one’s financial affairs private was itself made illegal, even if the funds weren’t being used for anything illegal.

The penalty for "money laundering," failure to file the required reports, or "structuring," is forfeiture of the involved funds or a fine of up to $500,000 — whichever is greater, and up to 20 years in federal prison.

The PATRIOT Act

The monstrous, also Orwellian-named PATRIOT Act further enhanced the Bank Secrecy Act and the Money Laundering Control Act. Among its provisions, it increased the reporting requirements of financial institutions to attempt to expand the $10,000 reporting laws, anti-"structuring" laws, and anti-"money laundering" laws worldwide.

Naturally, another way people adapted to the previous Acts was to avoid financial institutions altogether and deal in cash. So the PATRIOT Act also made it illegal to carry more than $10,000 in cash; the penalty is forfeiture of the cash and up to five years in federal prison.

As Harry Browne wrote in Why Government Doesn’t Work, all government programs or laws carry within them the seeds of future programs or laws that will be "needed" to fix the problems the earlier program or law caused or exacerbated.

Of course, the PATRIOT Act is only used against "terrorists," just like the previous Acts would only be used against organized crime and drug kingpins; the Pure Food and Drug Act would never ban anything, but would only require labels showing ingredients, which set the precedent for the FDA, Prohibition, the DEA, and the Drug War; the Income Tax would only apply to the richest 1% of the population and their maximum tax rate would never rise above 6%; the Social Security tax would only be 2% and the funds would always be invested . . .

As a Start, Repeal Every Federal Law Since 1910

Which of these Acts consist of protecting property rights? Not one.

Which of them is authorized by the constitution? Not one.

But, as bad as they are — and the fact that agencies like the IRS and FBI not only shouldn’t have the type of power they used against Spitzer, but that these agencies shouldn’t even exist, are a spit in the ocean in relation to the incomprehensible labyrinth of laws, regulations and agencies of the federal government. The Federal Register increases, on average, 200—600 pages per DAY, or 6.75% per year.

In 2006, Susan E. Dudley, Director of the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, wrote, “The Code of Federal Regulations now occupies over 20 feet of shelf space. And it is growing. In 2004, the federal government printed 78,851 pages of new rules and announcements in the daily Federal Register. At 4 minutes per page that would require 2.5 people reading 8 hours per day for a year, just to keep up with the new rules and pronouncements (to say nothing of actually complying with them).”

What’s Going on Here?

Now let’s get back to the current target of these laws, Eliot Spitzer:

Virtually all crimes are selectively and arbitrarily prosecuted, but prostitution especially is something that is generally tolerated, except when it’s done flagrantly, in the open, like with street-walkers.

The government’s explanation of how it found out about Spitzer’s involvement in the prostitution ring, even if it’s true, doesn’t explain the scandal: after the original suspicions of embezzlement or identity fraud had been proven incorrect, and it was proven to be prostitution instead, the investigation could’ve been stopped; someone made the call to continue the investigation, blow up the scandal in the media, and bring Spitzer down.

Writing on the LRC Blog, Lew Rockwell speculated that the government is lying (which is always a safe bet): that it wasn’t an investigation of a prostitution ring that just happened to implicate Spitzer, or an investigation of Spitzer on the honest fear that he was the victim of embezzlement or identity fraud; but that Spitzer was target for destruction by someone in the Bush administration, and the investigation finally revealed something with which to ruin Spitzer’s career.

But why now? The media reported that Spitzer had been patronizing the Emperor’s Club for about six months. But, oddly, it seemed that few addressed the question of whether Spitzer had seen prostitutes prior to this, although ABC reported that a different escort claimed to have seen Spitzer two years ago, when he was attorney general. That’s easy to believe, because it’s unlikely that someone suddenly decides to start seeing prostitutes for the first time in his late-40s. Given this scandal, there were probably other scandals to be found in Spitzer’s past, so why did someone either just start looking now or just decide to reveal something damning now?

Writing to Lew Rockwell, Bill Sardi pointed out that Spitzer was a possible running-mate for either Hillary or Obama this year — and a near-certain presidential candidate sometime in the future, and he speculated that someone in the Bush administration decided to remove Spitzer before Spitzer gained any more power.

That’s possible, but Spitzer has always been politically ambitious. So why now? Spitzer has undoubtedly made enemies; maybe some of them are now in the federal government, and decided to destroy him out of spite or — more likely — out of fear over what he might do to them if he ever became president.

But Spitzer wouldn’t have been president for at least eight years, unless he was chosen for vice-president, where he wouldn’t have much power, and then Obama or Hillary resigned or died before the end of his or her tenure. And even if McCain wins, which seems unlikely now, Spitzer still wouldn’t have a shot at being president for four more years.

So why now? What was the hurry to bring Spitzer down?

My guess is people in the Bush administration had good reason to believe that Spitzer might be tapped for U.S. Attorney General in the Clinton or Obama administration, and he was removed for fear of whom he might go after from the Bush administration. This could be considered The Golden Rule of Politics: Do unto others before they can do unto you.

The Old Media

It was somewhat surprising how forcefully the statist media pounced on Spitzer’s blatant hypocrisy.

But most of the coverage took the morally-backward view:

The overall tone of the coverage was not that Spitzer was evil for ruining innocent people’s lives over peaceful, voluntary behavior, and that he was even more evil for doing so while hypocritically engaging in the same behavior himself; and that, regardless of how evil or hypocritical Spitzer is, the federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in things like this; and that, while what Spitzer did was immoral according to the presumed vows of his marriage, it was a private matter between him and his family that had nothing to do with his job.

Instead, they took the view that of course the government has the right to ban peaceful, consensual behavior like prostitution; it’s just that Spitzer was wrong for not following the State’s laws and was a hypocrite for breaking laws himself, not for prosecuting others for the same.

The media was also quick to inform us that the FBI and U.S. Attorneys don’t do political prosecutions. But, as Lew also commented, they not only do political prosecutions; that’s virtually all they do.

And the incessant coverage of a politician’s promiscuity provided another way for the mainstream media to distract people from issues that actually affect their lives, like the unending Iraq debacle, the government’s continuing assault on civil liberties, or the Fed tanking the dollar.

So Many Victims

While it’s hard to feel sorry for Spitzer, it’s not hard to feel sorry for his family, although his wife chose to marry him.

The escort wronged Spitzer’s wife if the wife didn’t know about, and condone, his behavior. But that’s between them; the escort still didn’t deserve to be outed in the media. But that was a risk she should’ve known she was taking by seeing such a famous, powerful client; it was the risk that went with the financial reward.

This scandal has claimed many other victims who have violated no one’s property rights; for another, the lady who handled the Emperor Club’s money was arrested, is out on bail and presumably facing prison time, and is being shaken down for $50,000 by the feds.

Conclusion

Predictably, in tendering his resignation, Spitzer tried to cut a deal with the State to try and avoid prosecution. In other words, he’s fighting for the mercy for himself that he denied to so many others when he was on the other side of the table.

It’s unclear whether Spitzer’s pleas will work; if the media’s coverage is accurate, a conviction for at least violating the Mann Act and the prohibition of "structuring" under the Money Laundering Control Act should be a slam-dunk. If he’s not prosecuted, it probably means he was targeted just for political destruction for some reason, and not due to someone’s personal vendetta against him.

Of course, none of the "crimes" Spitzer committed should even be illegal, and he shouldn’t be prosecuted — regardless of the fact that he did exactly that to so many others.

Like many prosecutors, Spitzer is probably a sociopath and narcissist who is, at best, oblivious to the suffering he causes others — or, at worst, is someone who gets off on it. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if he’s oblivious to the fact that what’s happening to him is still far less than the suffering he caused others; I’m sure any of the innocent people he prosecuted would’ve been thrilled to only lose their jobs.

And, given the fact that Spitzer had $80,000 to blow on hookers, destroying people’s lives and damaging business for not having the right political connections was obviously very lucrative for him (although he did come from a wealthy family); despite losing his job, I doubt he’ll be losing any sleep over where his next meal is coming from.

And, unlike his victims — but like many others who would’ve been universally regarded as criminals had they committed acts similar to Spitzer’s prosecutorial abuses on their own, rather than using the power of the State, Spitzer is likely to make millions more in the future, writing books, giving speeches, and working in the media.

A great way for Spitzer to show that this experience had given him empathy, and for him to atone for his sins and hypocrisy, would’ve been for him, as his last act as governor, to pardon everyone convicted on local or state prostitution charges in New York. Good thing I didn’t hold my breath.

Johnny Kramer [send him mail] holds a BA in journalism from Wichita State University and is available for hire as a writer and copyeditor. See his website.

ImPeden Reality

Johnny Kramer — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

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If anyone doesn’t know, Ron Paul crushed the challenger for his Congressional seat, neocon Chris Peden, with a 70% landslide victory in Tuesday’s Republican primary.

Ron faces no Democratic opponent in the November general election, so he has effectively been returned to Congress.

Chris Peden

Tom Woods exposed Peden, who’s a 43-year-old CPA and Friendswod, Texas city councilman.

As Tom documented, Peden told The Galveston Daily News in January 2007, “I have an immense amount of respect for Ron Paul. Politics has a way of forcing people to go against their core principles for political gain. That has never been the case for Ron Paul.”

Then, in May, Peden announced that he was challenging for Ron’s Congressional seat.

It’s possible to admire a person for sticking to their principles even when you disagree with those principles. So there’s nothing inherently wrong with Peden running against Ron over honest disagreements, as long as he presents Ron’s positions accurately.

But, as Tom also documented, that’s not how Peden ran his campaign; instead, he deliberately distorted Ron’s views using typical, shallow neocon rhetoric, like saying Ron "blames America" for 9/11 and that Ron is a "liberal." No master of subtlety, Peden also hilariously used a professional, smiling portrait of himself when comparing his positions to Ron’s on his campaign site; the link on the homepage showed Ron making an out-of-context silly face, while the linked page listing Ron’s (distorted) positions showed Ron with an out-of-context sneer.

The way Peden suddenly decided to run against Ron only after Ron’s presidential campaign looked like it might succeed — meaning that Ron’s focus wasn’t as much on defending his House seat as it would otherwise be, and that he would abandon the seat if he managed to win the nomination; and the way Peden flip-flopped from praising Ron to viciously attacking him — indicates that Peden is a typical opportunistic politician who will say whatever he has to say, and betray whomever he has to betray, to attain power.

And his verbatim spouting of empty neocon talking points indicates that he was probably drafted into the race by the GOP Establishment to try to get rid of Ron.

Even his Paulian rhetoric of belief in "free markets, smaller government, and individual responsibility" was self-evidently false, just based on the fact that he was trying to depose the man who has possibly the best record on those issues of any politician in American history.

The Old Media

As usual, the media attempted to carry out their (dying) role as opinion makers by informing the public that Peden was not only the better choice, but was a serious threat to Ron. This method, which is often used by the media, is known in marketing as perception precedes reality; to spot it, look for statements that are misleading but technically not lies, or for impressive-sounding statements that are vague and unprovable.

Here’s a random sampling of some Establishment media stories that attempted to give readers the mental image of Ron working at his desk with Chris Peden standing behind him, measuring for drapes.

Writing in November in The Hill, a prominent Congressional newspaper, Texas-based GOP pollster David Hill wrote, "Recent polling by another Texas Republican pollster confirms that Paul’s electorate doesn’t appreciate the increasingly leftish libertarian bent of Paul’s voting record. In the eyes of voters, Paul is now also wrong to oppose the Patriot Act, off base on energy policy that affects Texas enormously, and to be faulted for knee-jerk opposition to the fight against terror in the Middle East.
"The difference this time is that Paul’s critics have a bona fide challenger lined up: Chris Peden, a mainline social conservative who has distinguished himself opposing the tax hijinks of local elected officials. If Paul files to run for both Congress and the presidency by the Jan. 2 deadline, he’ll likely lose to Peden on March 4. That’ll be OK, though. Dr. Paul can just move to New Hampshire where the libertarian Free State Project might try and elect him their first governor, leveraging the boost in name ID and image that his presidential bid will have wrought. Good riddance."

Mistaken predictions can be forgiven; I wrote in December that Ron was likely to be the next president, and I couldn’t have been more wrong.

But my prediction was an honest assessment of how I saw the situation at the time, mainly based on the fact that Ron was raising as much money online as the Establishment front-runners were raising through various methods, despite a media blackout of his campaign, and that there were logical reasons to think that the polls weren’t accurately measuring Ron’s support due to their antiquated polling methods.

In contrast, David Hill’s prediction was a distortion of reality based solely on the convoluted logic — which itself was based solely on undocumented, anecdotal evidence — that many people in Ron’s district — where Ron has been reelected six consecutive times — suddenly don’t like Ron’s positions — positions which hadn’t changed. His prediction also ignored the fact that Peden finished the third quarter of 2007 with $400 on-hand; and that, barring a Ted Stevens-like scandal, the reelection rate for Congresspersons and Senators is more than 90%.

Roll Call, another prominent newspaper covering Capitol Hill, ran a one-sided news article in December titled "Ron Paul in Peril?"; it offered no evidence that Peden had a chance to unseat Paul.
An ABC News story the day of the primary, similarly titled "Paul in Peril," described Ron as "fighting for his day job" and "fighting for his political life," but also offered no evidence that Peden had the slightest chance to win.
Neocon news magazine The Weekly Standard ran an article asserting that Peden was a "serious threat," that Ron’s "political career might suffer a fatal blow," and "Unless the Ronulans are willing to move to Texas en masse, he’s probably in serious trouble."
An article last month in The American Spectator contended that "Paul may genuinely be in trouble," that he "isn’t acting like an incumbent who is taking his congressional primary for granted," that "Paul has faced long odds before," implying that he faced long odds in this race too, and "It is nevertheless jarring to see Paul go so quickly from a presidential candidate whose campaign was giving likely GOP nominee John McCain the willies to a congressional incumbent looking over his shoulder at a little-known local pol. Is a revolutionary without honor in his own House district?"

The common thread through all of these articles was the undocumented "evidence" that Ron was in danger of losing due to his seat due to his presidential campaign publicizing his views — which haven’t changed, and which he has always been up-front about — to his constituents for the first time; and that, to a lesser extent, he had neglected his district by spending too much time running for president.

Predictably, The Victoria Advocate and The Galveston Daily News — two newspapers in the district — endorsed Peden.

From the perspective of voters, I’ve never been able to understand the point of political endorsements, because the only way an endorsement could be effective is to tip the scale in favor of two virtually interchangeable candidates, either of whom any one voter would’ve supported anyway; an endorsement can’t convince anyone who’s not a mindless sheep to vote for someone just based on the endorsement.

For example, I have confidence in Ron Paul’s knowledge and judgment. If he and I were involved in the LP, and I couldn’t decide at the convention between two presidential candidates who each seemed about as good as the other, Ron’s endorsement of one over the other might sway me to his choice if the reasoning behind it was convincing to me. But if Ron dropped out of the GOP race and endorsed McCain, it wouldn’t make me support McCain; it would make me wonder if Ron had suffered a stroke.

So hardly any Paul supporters would even consider Peden, and vice-versa.

But the pièce de résistance was a recent (New Media, but neocon) Pajamas Media story by Roger L. Simon, claiming that (phantom) "internal polling" by both campaigns showed Peden with a "double-digit" lead over Ron. This sort of thing is done frequently in politics, and it’s another perception precedes reality scam.
Even in reporting Ron’s win, Roll Call continued to claim that he had been "endangered" and "vulnerable."

The media’s influence is dying

The media constantly try to distort reality. Sometimes they succeed; sometimes they fail. But, thanks to the Internet, the trend is more and more toward failure.

Their blackout of Ron’s presidential campaign was effective at removing any chance he had to be president. But Ron accomplished a lot in the past year, all due to the Internet, and it all would’ve been impossible just 16 years ago.

And the technology will continue to advance (for example, it’s mind-boggling to think that video sites like YouTube didn’t exist in 2004), young people who never knew the world without it will continue to be born and grow up, and old people who don’t use it will continue to pass away

So the day is likely coming when such a media blackout won’t succeed.

Fortunately, even now it’s much more difficult for the media to smear someone who’s already well-known and well-liked than it is for them to ruin an unknown’s campaign by ignoring him, so those who tried to cost Ron his Congressional seat failed.

So be grateful: although Congressman Paul isn’t as good as President Paul, it’s a heck of a lot better than Congressman Peden.

Johnny Kramer [send him mail] holds a BA in journalism from Wichita State University and is available for hire as a writer and copyeditor. See his website.

How To Become a Better Writer

Johnny Kramer — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 06:00:00 +0000

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I occasionally receive emails from LRC readers, asking for advice on becoming better writers and on getting published.

Here is some general advice; I may not always follow all of it because I’m not perfect, and because writing is an art and there are exceptions to everything. But the advice is still solid.

Avoid common mistakes.

By far the most common mistake I see on the Internet is using "your" instead of "you’re" (I almost phrased this as "confusing ‘your’ and ‘you’re,’" but that’s inaccurate, because most people clearly don’t even know there is such a thing as "you’re.") "Your" is a possessive pronoun, such as: "Kramer, your article was 10 minutes of my life I’ll never get back." "You’re" is a contraction of "you are," such as: "Kramer, you’re a mediocre writer who’s better suited for picking up trash in the park."

Other typical errors are confusing "whose" and "who’s"; "its" and "it’s"; "then" and "than," etc.

Cultivate good headlines/titles.

This is an area I struggle with; I seem to have little imagination for clever titles, and I marvel at some titles I see, and especially at people who are able to think of numerous clever possibilities for one article almost instantly. The main reason this is important is the more people you can "grab" with your title, the more people will read your article.

As an example, probably the best title I’ve seen in the past year was for a December article on Politico.com by Jeremy Lott and W. James Antle III, which was about Ron Paul’s amazing ability to raise money and recruit supporters — despite the fact that he’s not only offering them no government hand-outs, but is specifically telling them that they won’t get any if he can help it (but in exchange, of course, they’ll get their freedom). The article was titled The Audacity of Nope, which was a play on the title of Barack Obama’s New York Times Best-seller, The Audacity of Hope.

Write "tight."

Probably the quickest way someone can look like an amateur writer is by cluttering his prose with unnecessary or redundant words.

An example of a cluttered sentence is: "In my opinion, I truly think that LewRockwell.com is one of the very best news sites on the Internet." A tighter version is: "In my opinion, LewRockwell.com is one of the best news sites on the Internet." But you generally don’t need to label obvious opinions as such, so an even tighter version is: "LewRockwell.com is one of the best news sites on the Internet." Even a stronger statement, such as: "LewRockwell.com is the best news site on the Internet," is still obviously an opinion and doesn’t need to be labeled as such.

Once you learn to look for unnecessary words, you’ll be amazed at how many you’ll find. Another example, which is subtler than the previous one, is: "I used to have a red bicycle," which can be tightened to: "I had a red bicycle."

A common type of clutter, which is sometimes seen even in prolific, professional writers, is the use of "intensifiers," which are usually unnecessary and/or redundant.

As an example, in his book on the American class structure, Class, English professor Paul Fussell described author John T. Molloy’s research into the class implications of men’s clothing as "really quite impressive research." This conveys no more information than just "impressive research."

Other examples are phrases like "most favorite" or "very best," because such things have no degree: something is either the best according to some criterion, or it’s not; something is either your favorite, or it’s not. For example, instead of writing: "My favorite types of ice cream are vanilla and strawberry, but my most favorite is chocolate," write: "I like vanilla and strawberry ice cream, but my favorite is chocolate."

An example of a different type of redundancy can unfortunately be found in my last article, where I let the phrase "unforeseen beforehand" slip by me. Non-redundant versions are: "unforeseen" or "unseen beforehand."

Write clearly.

This could be seen as the opposite of being redundant, because sometimes it’s necessary to add words to clarify something.

When you reread something you’ve written, ask yourself if there’s anything that could possibly be misunderstood. If so, rewrite it until it’s clear. For an example from elsewhere in this article, about my writing style: "My style has been influenced by Harry Browne more than by anyone else." There’s no room for doubt that I’m stating that Harry Browne influenced my writing style more than anyone else has. But if I had written: "My style has been influenced by Harry Browne more than anyone else," do I mean that Harry Browne influenced me more than anyone else influenced me, or that he influenced me more than he influenced anyone else?

One could argue that the meaning is obvious, because if Harry influenced me more than he influenced anyone else, there’s no way I could know that. That’s true — with this example. But why leave any doubt, especially when adding one more word can clarify the statement?

Don’t "back into" a sentence.

This should generally be avoided; even so, it’s common among professional writers, although I don’t know why, especially since people rarely talk this way.

An example is: "When I was a kid, I had a red bicycle." This could be changed to: "I had a red bicycle when I was a kid," which also tightens and simplifies the sentence by removing the comma.

Avoid clichés.

Using clichés, which is another sign of an amateur writer, should generally be avoided; there’s always an original way to make the same point. Clichés without quotation marks are even worse, because then it seems like the writer is trying to pass off the cliché as his own words.

Make smooth transitions.

Use transitions from one subject to the next. When you reread something, look for any changes from one paragraph to the next that seem too abrupt. When you find one, insert a transition so that your writing flows. An easy way is to start a transition sentence is with a word like "and" or "but"; while this may be grammatically incorrect, and may even produce sentence fragments, it makes for a smooth transition.

Make complicated things simple, rather than simple things complicated.

The saying is true that brilliance is not making simple things complicated; it’s making complicated things simple. Have you ever read something written in such convoluted English that you had to reread the sentence several times to understand it? That doesn’t mean you’re stupid; it means the sentence was poorly written.

As a writer, strive to use the most appropriate word to convey your message. As Mark Twain wrote, "The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter — it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." But the right word isn’t always the fanciest one; choose the best word to convey your message, not the best word to show off your vocabulary or to prove to your readers how much you know or how smart you are. Usually, the shortest, simplest word is the best choice.

Don’t procrastinate.

My LRC archive shows that I struggle with this, but the advice is still sound, regardless of whether I always have the self-discipline to follow it: Don’t wait to become motivated to write. You don’t wait to become motivated to go to your job or to do your work once you get there — at least not if you want to keep your job. If you wish to someday make writing your profession, force yourself to write; as with anything, the hardest part is usually getting started.

Don’t think you have to be perfect.

I’m a perfectionist, so I understand the idea, as irrational as it is, of putting something off indefinitely until you think you’re better prepared. Stop it. Don’t use fear of failure as an excuse not to even try; if you wait until you’re perfect, or until you know for certain beforehand that you won’t fail or won’t embarrass yourself, you’ll be waiting forever. You’re a human being, and you can’t do anything perfectly — and neither can anyone else. The way to get over this is to just get to work; once you make mistakes and see that the world didn’t end, this concern should dissipate.

Find a writer to emulate.

This was the advice Murray Rothbard used to give to people to improve their writing; he recommended reading H.L. Mencken.

In my experience, if you read someone’s work because you enjoy reading their substance, but you also admire their style, you will learn a similar style almost by osmosis, with no conscious effort.

My style has been influenced by Harry Browne more than by anyone else; when he first introduced me to libertarianism, I began devouring all of his work that I could find. I had no aspirations to become a writer at the time, but his knack for writing in short sentences and short paragraphs and for explaining complex subjects in simple terms seems to have seeped into my subconscious over the years, and I hope it shows.

Develop your own style.

It’s difficult to give specific advise on this point, because it’s something that should come automatically, the more you write. But generally, while you should find writers to emulate, you shouldn’t necessarily try to copy them exactly. If you receive the same complaint about your style — which would usually result from it being unclear — from several different people, then you should probably consider making some changes. But, if writing in a certain style brings success and makes you proud of your work, you probably shouldn’t listen to occasional, random people who tell you it’s wrong.

For example, I can think of one prolific, successful writer who almost never writes in compound sentences, so I find his style too "choppy." He also uses parenthesis frequently and unnecessarily, when he could’ve incorporated that side-note into the sentence. Whenever I read his work, I think of how I would rewrite much of it. But he’s had a great career, so why should he change just because he doesn’t write things the way I would?

Learn all you can.

This point is the easiest and most fun, because if you choose to write about something, it’s probably something you like, so you already know a lot about it and you enjoy learning more.

If you’re interested in writing about current events, philosophy, history, politics, economics, etc. for a site like LRC, start with the usual suspects: Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, Hazlitt, Nock, etc. Mises.org is probably the best source of free material on the Internet. In addition to the excellent articles, they also have media files (which include audio books) and entire books. (And please consider making a donation if you find the site valuable.)

Write things down when they’re fresh in your mind.

Comedians and writers, especially of fiction, are notorious for carrying a little notepad and pen with them everywhere. Any aspiring writer would do well to do the same; great ideas that occur in the moment are often lost forever if they’re not immediately recorded. I’ve occasionally thought of an idea and lost it in the minute or two it took me to find a way to write it down, especially if I was doing something else at the same time.

Write in short sentences and short paragraphs.

Notice that professional journalists usually write in short paragraphs. Sometimes they even write in sentence fragments; while grammatically incorrect, fragments are easy to read and are sometimes the bluntest way to make a point.

Have you ever looked at a block of text that was half of a page, or even an entire page, and felt a sinking feeling in your stomach at the prospect of reading it? And, while reading such a paragraph, have you ever lost your concentration due to eye fatigue? That happens because the human eye can only move side-to-side so many times before it needs the rest of going to the next paragraph. You probably found that it was also difficult to find your spot again after such a break.

Don’t do that to your readers. Using simple words in short sentences and short paragraphs isn’t about dumbing anything down; it’s about using a style that helps clearly convey your message, rather than distracting from it.

Avoid making absolute predictions.

Harry Browne had two rules-of-thumb that are excellent to remember; he applied them to investment markets, but they pertain to most everything in life:

Anything can happen.
Nothing has to happen.

If you’re considering making educated predictions about things like political races or the economy, remember that you’re not infallible, nor are you omniscient; no matter how much you know, you can’t see everything that could affect the veracity of your predictions.

One writer, who may be the most astute observer of society and popular culture I’ve seen, has been making a living for 30 years predicting an imminent second Great Depression. The fundamentals behind his logic seem sound, but he’s always been wrong. His predictions may turn out to have been premature rather than wrong, but the fact remains that, as of today, his predictions have been wrong for 30 straight years. That doesn’t seem to have hampered his career, but why take a chance? And why would you want that reputation?

My article The Coming Market Triumph was a rare deviation for me. I still stand by it, especially since the predictions were based on extrapolating trends in technology for just one more generation, rather than on human action; and because I was mostly reporting the predictions of others, who are credible experts with good track records. Even so, looking back on it, I wish I had tempered my language a little more, because unforeseen factors could always change things.

I also wrote in September that McCain was finished, and was just hanging on until January, when he could collect his matching funds to pay off his campaign debts. We can all see now how accurate that was.

So choose your words carefully; instead of stating that something will happen, state that it’s likely to happen. You may be concerned about coming across as wishy-washy or as less of an authority, but wise readers will respect your humility and realism.

Save frequently.

Going to file, save is fine. But it’s better to make it a habit when you’re typing to hit Ctrl, S, which does the same thing, after every sentence or two. It’ll eventually become so automatic that you’ll do it without even thinking about it. That way, if something happens, like a computer crash or a power outage, the most you’ll lose is a couple of sentences. Word processing software usually saves such files automatically, and gives you the chance to recover it after such occurrences. But why take a chance?

This advice goes beyond avoiding the work of retyping; it pertains to the earlier point about recording ideas when they’re fresh. If you lose most of an article, you will never be able to recreate it exactly; again, great ideas that occur in the moment are often lost if you don’t immediately record them.

Understand that ideas generally don’t go out of style.

Robert Ringer has an excellent course on writing and self-publishing, which is available here under the title Self-Publishing Audio Series. Ringer’s tips on keyboard shortcuts alone are worth the price of the course, but the most astute advice he offers, especially for novices, is that ideas basically don’t go out of style.

Ringer cites the current popularity of American Idol as an example. People act like whoever came up with that invented chocolate, but have you ever heard of The Gong Show or Ed McMahon’s Star Search, to name two? The details of how the show works may be new, but the basic idea is as old as TV.

As another example, remember how big Who Wants to Be A Millionaire was a few years ago? Prime time quiz shows were among the first hits on TV 50 years earlier, and they’ve been popular daytime TV fixtures ever since.

And basic fiction plots are recycled all the time. For example, the beginning framework for Dallas, one of the most successful TV shows of all time, was just Romeo and Juliet, slightly retooled.

Ringer was highly influenced, as I was, by Harry Browne’s book, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. A few years later, that book inspired him to write a similar book explaining to people, as Harry’s did, how to take responsibility for their own lives. He was open in the book about how Harry’s work influenced his. That book, Looking Out for Number One, reached number one on the New York Times Best-Seller List. All Ringer did to make basic, unoriginal concepts his was to give his own take on them and relate them to his own experiences.

There’s no one else like you, who has exactly your outlook or experiences. That, not reinventing the wheel, is what’s important. New ideas are great, but don’t let someone tell you a fresh take on age-old concepts can’t succeed.

Probably the best examples of this principle are stand-up comedians. How many have been successful talking about the same things as other comics? Does one comic decide that he can’t talk about basic, near-universal concepts like personal insecurities, work, love, etc., because another comic already does jokes about the same subject? Does Leno decide he can’t make a joke about a current event because Letterman already joked about it last night? Of course not!

With creative pursuits, the key is to give your own, unique take on basic concepts. If those concepts are already popular, that shows how much demand there could be for your ideas.

Hold your article for a day.

As an example for those who haven’t written since school, do you recall spending several consecutive hours writing a term paper, then rereading it the next day with a rested pair of eyes and finding numerous errors that you couldn’t see the day before? When you stare at something too long, it gets to where you can’t see the forest for the trees; the next day, you may find numerous punctuation, spelling and grammar errors, and even missing words. Always run the spelling and grammar checks, but don’t rely on them to catch everything. Most of the "errors" you find the next day will be minor stylistic changes that probably no one but you will notice. But if you can make those changes the next day, why not wait? Unless you’re on a deadline and you have no other choice, save any article you write — no matter how certain you are until it’s finished — until you’ve reread it the next day. You’ll be glad you did.

Don’t rewrite to death.

You could spend the rest of your life rewriting just one sentence; at some point, you have to accept that it’s good enough. While you should proofread and edit your writing, and check it again the next day, once you’ve fixed all errors and made sure everything is clear, you should generally stop and consider it finished.

Understand that you’ll always think of additions to your article after it’s published.

In my experience, you will always think of additional points you should’ve made in an article, whether a week later or a month later. It’s unavoidable. Rather than feeling bad about it, use the new ideas for additional articles.

Develop a thick skin.

Face it: you’re going to be criticized when your work is public.

In my experience, at least 95% of the feedback you’ll receive will be positive, while almost all of the rest will be polite, helpful, constructive criticism, pointing out (hopefully minor) errors and challenging your assumptions.

But you will get mail from the occasional idiot who has nothing better to do than to send rude messages. Such people rarely offer any kind of specific, relevant critique; they usually send nothing but ad hominem attacks, like "you’re (usually misspelled ‘your’) an idiot," or vague, pointless criticism, like "that was stupid" — and that will be the entire message. If the message is longer, expect it to be rambling and semi-literate, with numerous misspellings.

My favorite was the guy who wrote to tell me what a waste of his time an article of mine was. So he decided to waste more of his time writing me a letter. But what else should I expect from someone who wasn’t bright enough to figure out before he got to the end of a lengthy article that he thought it held no value for him?

As Gary North has commented, such people assume that your time is free, and they just want someone to pay attention to them. Don’t give them the satisfaction.

You’ll also be criticized in public, especially on message boards. It goes with the territory.

Conclusion

Both improving your writing skills and getting published are largely common sense: practice, work hard, be honest, don’t procrastinate, try to make contacts, etc.

Maybe this article will help ensure that I’ll be reading one of yours someday!

Johnny Kramer [send him mail] holds a BA in journalism from Wichita State University and is available for hire as a writer and copyeditor. See his website.

No 3rd-Party Candidate Can Win the Presidency

Johnny Kramer — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:00:00 +0000

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Speculation
has been rampant for months that, if someone other than Ron Paul
secures the GOP nomination by the end of the primary season, Ron
may continue his presidential campaign as an Independent or third-party candidate.

This seems
to be mostly due to his refusal to deny such a possibility in so
many words, despite the fact that he always states, with his refusal
to deny, that also he has no plans to do that. I believe he’s sincere,
and is weighing his words carefully only because a wise person tries
not to make absolute guarantees about the future — no matter how
certain he is at the time — because the future is unknowable and
things can always change in ways that one can’t foresee beforehand.

However, cynics
— and passionate supporters who don’t want the dream of a President
Paul to die — remain convinced that Ron has already decided to continue
his campaign, and he’s denying it just to not hurt his chances at
the GOP nomination.

The GOP
Race

Ron has stated
that, when people close to him in late-2006 noticed that a "perfect
storm" seemed to be brewing for him to possibly be elected
— because of such things as growing voter discontent over the Iraq
War, the neocons’ belligerent foreign policy and the erosion of
civil liberties since 9/11; and the fact that there was no GOP candidate
even spouting phony libertarian-sounding rhetoric — and he reluctantly
agreed to explore the possibility of running, he intended only to
run if he felt that it was within the realm of reality that he could
get elected.

He had no
interest in running a campaign just to educate people or to make
a point, as he did well in 1988 as the Libertarian Party’s candidate.
He had even stated repeatedly since that campaign that he had no
intention of ever running for president again (see — unforeseen
circumstances can cause sincere people to change their minds), and
he had refused repeated attempts over the past 20 years to draft
him for another run, either as a third-party candidate or as a Republican.

Ron’s
latest message should put to rest once and for all any thoughts
of him running as a third-party candidate. His message verified
much of my speculation in my
previous article: Ron believes that there will be a brokered
convention, and he clearly has an elaborate strategy in place to
accumulate enough delegates to wage a real fight for the nomination
at the convention.

One point
I forgot in my previous article is that, with all of the attention
focused on Super Tuesday, people forget that about half of the states
still have contests after that day. If we leave Super Tuesday
without a nominee, and especially if we leave without even one front-runner
— which seems likely – that point becomes extremely important,
because it means the race is still wide open. We’re likely to be
down to Romney, McCain and Paul immediately after that day; in that
case, Ron will face about half of the state contests with only two
opponents — and McCain may not have the money to advertise much
in any of those states. It’s even possible Romney or McCain could
also quit next week if one pulls significantly ahead of the other,
leaving Ron with only one opponent.

Another important
point is many states aren’t winner-take-all; runners-up still accumulate
delegates. And, with only one or two opponents on the ballot, how
badly can Ron do in the post–Super Tuesday states?

Yet another
point, which Ron addressed in his latest message, is that many candidates
who had accumulated delegates will have dropped out by the convention,
which means those delegates can decide at the convention whom to
support instead.

But let’s
assume that all of this is wrong, and we have a nominee by the end
of the primaries — and it’s not Ron Paul. If that happens, speculation
about a third-party run will accelerate.

A Third
Party Run

If Ron loses
the GOP nomination, and the events of the past year have caused
him to change his mind and run as an Independent or third-party
candidate — which will mean he’s changed his mind about only running
to win, that’s his business, and I will still be proud to support
him and to vote for him in November.

But, if that
happens, understand that the Paul campaign will have shifted from
a campaign to spread libertarian ideals in an effort to win the
presidency in 2008, to a campaign to spread libertarian ideals to
attain various goals, some of which will be ill-defined, and which
may or may not be achieved at some indeterminate point in the future.

Not that there’s
anything wrong with that.

I was introduced
to libertarianism, as many were, by Harry Browne’s 1996 Libertarian
presidential campaign. Since then, literally every area of my life
has been massively improved by Harry’s work, and it will forever
be one of the greatest honors and joys of my life that I got to
know him and have contact with him as much as I did. I will love
that man until the day I die.

If it weren’t
for that campaign, I also wouldn’t know many of the other people
I’ve met in the movement, nor would I have been exposed to the work
of so many others who have taught me and improved my life — including
that I wouldn’t have the honor of knowing Lew Rockwell or of writing
this article and seeing it published.

Many others,
including Ron 20 years ago, have run third-party presidential campaigns
that were futile in terms of their chances for electoral victory,
but which touched the lives of thousands of people — and undoubtedly
gave the candidate various personal benefits as well, such as bolstered
celebrity and future income, and a warm feeling of personal achievement.

That’s all
well and good. This article isn’t meant to discourage Ron from running
as an Independent or third-party candidate if he chooses to; I certainly
don’t have to explain to him what his chances of being elected are
in that situation. Nor is it intended to discourage anyone from
supporting him in such a run. My intent is to explain to any nave,
but well-meaning, people that no one is going to be elected president
as a third-party candidate in the foreseeable future — and probably
ever.

A Third
Party Candidate Can’t Win the Presidency

If Ron chooses
to run, here are the main reasons that everyone needs to understand,
as Ron does, that a third-party candidate is not going to be elected
president. If he chooses to run anyway and you understand what he’s
trying to accomplish, you won’t be disappointed when he loses.

1. The mainstream
media blackout

There’s no
question in my mind that, based on what Ron has been able to accomplish
in spite of the mainstream media blackout, if he had received as
much coverage as the Establishment’s anointed candidates, he would
be far and away the front-runner now.

Here are the
figures for last week from media tracking firm VMS. Bear in mind
that these numbers reflect a time when Ron was a sitting Congressman
running for a major-party nomination, that he raised significantly
more money last quarter than any of his opponents — including setting
an all-time one-day fundraising record, and had crushed former anointed
front-runner Rudy Giuliani — whom the media still insists is a viable
candidate — in nearly every state so far: Yet last week, the mainstream
media:

Gave John
McCain 85 times more coverage than Ron Paul
Gave Rudy
Giuliani 69 times more coverage than Ron Paul
Gave Mitt
Romney 59 times more coverage than Ron Paul
Gave Mike
Huckabee 32 times more coverage than Ron Paul
Gave Fred
Thompson 25 times more coverage than Ron Paul
Gave Barack
Obama 207 times more coverage than Ron Paul
Gave Hillary
Clinton 202 times more coverage than Ron Paul

And Ron got
more attention in the fourth quarter, after he raised $5 million
in the third quarter, than he had previously — and the attention
accelerated after his two huge fundraising days later in the fourth
quarter. That means last week’s figures, as bad as they are, represent
an increase over the amount of coverage he received earlier
last year.

And the extra
coverage he’s received in the past three months is probably more
than every Libertarian Party candidate for president in history
— combined (which isn’t a knock on any of those candidates, because
it wasn’t their fault; it’s just the way the system is).

But, as you
can see from the numbers, even his increased coverage is still appallingly
abysmal.

And, as a
sitting Congressman, he has been in every debate and has had memorable
exchanges with all of the Establishment front-runners — despite
being the victim of mini-blackouts during the debates, being asked
by far the fewest questions, being given by far the least amount
of time to speak, and often being treated rudely and being subjected
to deliberate, repeated attempts in each debate to make him look
bad.

With bias
like this, it’s a miracle that Ron has even accomplished what he
has. It’s also a testament to him, and even more so to the power
of the liberty message and to the power of the Internet to change
the world.

These facts
beg the following question about the idea of him winning the presidency
as a third-party candidate: if those hurdles prove insurmountable
for the GOP race, then what makes you think he can win the presidency
as a third-party candidate? The media pays almost no attention to
him now; they’ll have every reason to pay even less attention
to him as a third-party candidate. Most third-party candidates don’t
get much more than one obligatory interview per media outlet — even
if they’re minor celebrities.

2. A candidate
must be at an average of 15% in selected national polls to get into
the debates.

Again, his
treatment by the media, as bad as it has been, has still been far
better than what he’ll get for a third-party run.

And, despite
that comparatively good treatment, he so far has never polled at
15% nationally, nor has he received 15% of the vote in any state
but Louisiana. He’s likely to do better in future states as the
field narrows, but if he doesn’t and he loses the nomination, what
makes you think he can get to 15% in the polls as a third-party
candidate and get into the debates, which is a necessary precondition
to winning (and even then he’ll almost certainly still lose)?

Yes, his message
will resonate more with Democrats, Independents, third-party members,
apathetics and apoliticals than with the hardcore GOP base that
still supports Bush, so that could theoretically help his poll standing
for the general election, compared to how he fared with the hardcore
GOP base for the primaries. But it won’t matter if those people
don’t hear it because the media doesn’t cover him.

And yes, the
Internet will help significantly to spread the message, but it won’t
be enough if it also wasn’t enough to overcome a less severe mainstream
media blackout in the GOP race.

3. The ballot
access laws are biased against third parties.

Third-party
candidates have to spend a significant portion of the money they
raise collecting signatures to get their names on state ballots.
Plus they have to spend what’s left buying almost all of their exposure
through advertising, while the major-party candidates receive an
incalculable amount of free advertising from the media — this means
that, while all candidates are subject to the same fundraising restrictions,
it doesn’t affect the major candidates in the same way. As Harry
Browne commented about his two campaigns, the campaign finance laws
make building support for third parties, almost all of which has
to be bought through advertising, like trying to fill a swimming
pool with a teaspoon.

Conclusion

Let
me reiterate that I’m not discouraging Ron from running as a third-party or Independent candidate; if he chooses to, that’s his business.
I’ll still support him — but with the understanding that, barring
some incredible miracle, he can’t win that way. If you also choose
to support him in such a run, you need to understand that too; otherwise,
you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment and disillusionment.

So be grateful
that the GOP race is still wide open.

January
30, 2008

Johnny Kramer
[send him mail]
holds a BA in journalism from Wichita State University and is available
for hire as a writer and copyeditor. See his
website.

Johnny
Kramer Archives

The Ron Paul Rope-a-Dope

Johnny Kramer — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 06:00:00 +0000

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There’s no
question that things so far haven’t gone the way we had hoped: Ron
came in 5th in Iowa with 10%; 4th in New Hampshire with 8%; 4th
in Michigan with 6%; and just finished 5th in South Carolina with
4% and 2nd in Nevada with 13%. He may have won the recent Louisiana
Caucuses, but the victory may have been stolen from him by various
shenanigans. I’ve seen no mention of this by the mainstream media.

As usual,
the blackout and transparent bias was present at the recent MSNBC
debate in Florida, where Ron was given by far the least amount of
time to speak — which, amazingly, was
admitted by MSNBC:

Candidate

Total
Speaking Time

Number
of Questions

Romney