Sources: www.globalsecurity.org and CIA World Fact Book
I get my daily dose of unhappiness and uneasiness by listening to various neo-conservative talk shows. A local talk radio station in Tallahassee broadcasts neocon propaganda from dawn to dusk. The two hosts that I listen with a certain degree of regularity are Laura Ingraham and Neal Boortz (the self-proclaimed high-priest of the Church of Truth that hurts).
A few days ago, Laura Ingraham had a guest whose name I do not remember really well. The only reason I am still thinking of that segment is because last week Mr. Rockwell wrote about the awful Republicans. Ingraham's guest who claimed to be a conservative tried to convince Laura that Libertarians are actually Republicans' best friends. He went on to say that Libertarians' pro-free-market policies are good for the economy because it is a time-tested wealth creation formula. Laura was not fully convinced by the gentleman's argument. So, she countered by saying that Libertarians are weak on national defense. I am no fortune-teller, but I knew what her guest would say next. Ingraham's guest confirmed my long-held belief by saying: "Libertarians' free-market policies create all this wealth which helps us fight all these wars."
I was not shocked or surprised. I have known it all along that "trigger-happy" governments all over the world realize the fact that in order to have all those guns they need all that green. If you look at the chart given at the beginning of the article you will realize that various countries' defense spending patterns roughly mimic their GDP patterns. If it is to be believed that national defense spending always reflects the national defense needs, then the chart shown above would make us believe that national defense needs are also directly related to national GDP.
The Libertarian policy of supporting free-markets creates wealth for the entire society while it promotes effective means of utilizing scarce resources, If there is someone else out there besides the Libertarians who have figured out this open secret, it is the neocon pundits who as Cindy Sheehan (I am not endorsing her new-found views but just quoting her) once said: "put on headphones and spew hatred." The Global War on Terror (GWOT) needs resources. To maintain the current scale of GWOT, the neocons need the cash. A free-markets driven system where wealth that is created is redistributed by the means of taxation is one way to fund the GWOT besides borrowing from "communist China."
I use the term Republicans and neocons interchangeably because the Republican Party has been the neocon party at least since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. It took me a while to realize the difference between conservatism and neo-conservatism. During my freshman year at college, I joined the ICS (Institute of Conservative Studies). They once hosted Ann Coulter. After she was done spewing hatred and leaving our school poorer by approximately 10,000 dollars, I asked her a simple question: Why does the US support an autocratic regime like the one in Islamabad and like it once did in Baghdad, while we claim to be the cheerleaders of Democracy all along? Her answer was such a BS that I didn't even care to remember. But, it did affect me enough to realize that I did not belong at ICS.
Over the next few years I realized that conservatism has been hijacked by redistributionists who under the garb of conservatism were robbing this society beyond belief and were using the loot money to fund regime changes and invasions in order to create a world that fits their view of global hegemony. The real conservatives have been marginalized throughout this period. The definition of conservatism has been re-written. Any opinion that does not support the maniacal wars and invasions is considered to be left-liberal. Anyone who does not support the leaders in control of the maniacal wars and invasions is discounted as an anti-national unpatriotic lifeless scum.
Of all people, the ones who have been mostly spared from the neo-conservative wrath are the Libertarians. Libertarians' strong support for free enterprise is the last remaining weak-link between them and the neo-conservatives. Without the support of Libertarians on this one last issue, the neo-conservatives will be exposed as the redistributionist-Trotskyites that they are.
Another issue that the neoconservatives claim to champion is the one of illegal-immigration. Who is an illegal immigrant? From my point of view, an illegal immigrant is an individual who does not have the permission from the government to claim employment and give up a portion of his income in taxes at the point of a gun.
Why are the neo-conservatives so mad about illegal immigrants? If you carefully listen to neo-conservative talk radio over a period of time, you will realize that the "hate-masters" have a common gripe about Jose and Eduardo who sneak into the United States and do not pay taxes on their wages while they use tax-funded services like Medicare and free-public education/indoctrination for little Juan and Lupe. Another gripe is that Jose and Eduardo remit most of their savings back to Mexico. Since when did true conservatives start bothering about what individuals' do with their wealth?
While it is true that Jose and Eduardo do not pay taxes and are a burden on tax-funded services, not one neo-conservative has come out and criticized the existence of socialized services in the first place. The neo-conservatives/Trotskyites want to have socialized services and do not want to share them with Jose and Eduardo.
So, what is the solution? From what I can see neo-conservatives are fine with just anyone who has a piece of paper from the government saying that this person is eligible to pay taxes in the United States. All that the neo-conservatives are interested in is more resources to turn their twisted view of the world into reality. When President Bush announced his wishes to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, the cheerleaders for the program suggested the increase in tax revenues if the illegals were legitimized. However, the hate-masters were still not happy with the proposal because they realized that most illegal immigrants were good only for minimum wage jobs which hardly contribute to the tax-pool.
No matter how much the neocons may try to connect to the Libertarians, the reality is that we hardly have anything in common among us. The reason Libertarians promote free-enterprise is because it coincides with the idea of voluntarism which is one of the basic tenets of our guiding philosophy. We do not support free-enterprise so that the wealth created by the society is appropriated by the government in order to boost its firepower and emboss its will on people even beyond its jurisdiction.
When I was a little kid, my grandfather once told me that people judge you by your heroes. If I were to judge the neo-conservatives by their heroes then I would come up with the following names: Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Nixon and Ronald Reagan etc. Even though these individuals come from both sides of the aisle, neo-conservatives fawn over them with hardly any varying degrees of ecstasy. But, a Libertarian would respond to these names by saying: each of these individuals contributed their best at destroying the dream that America was, besides making this world a more dangerous place to live in.
The problem of neo-conservatism isn't restricted just to America anymore. I see this global paranoia for doubling up national defense spending to fight "islamo-facism." I see similar "support the troops" and "lets lynch a Muslim terrorist" fanaticism in India, where I am from. India's defense spending is growing with its' GDP. I do believe that Muslim terrorists are just as twisted as the neo-conservatives. But, they are nowhere close to being as lethal as the neo-conservatives who control nuclear arsenals and well-equipped Armed-Forces that can be deployed in any part of the world within 24 hours.
So what can Libertarians do to respond to this madness? I believe that our movement is doing just fine. The spark that was set by Murray Rothbard has turned into a wildfire that has engulfed the vast jungles of political corruption. Everyday, committed individuals are joining our ranks. Most of us are volunteering our time and resources to spread the gospel of Liberty and social-emancipation. Others are applying the message to their everyday decisions. We are creating awareness about like-minded political potentials like Congressman Ron Paul. Every day that goes by, we take a few baby-steps towards achieving our goal of limiting the influence of government in our lives. The day is not far when the twisted neo-conservative view of the world will be replaced by the hope that Murray Rothbard had for our world. In the mean time, neo-conservatives can continue having dreams about being in bed with the Libertarians.
March 12, 2007
