For best viewing, re-open your browser and link to this graphic so you can view it side-by-side with my commentary.
The above graphic leaves every American with much to think about.
If we are to view the world of political thought AS LEFT/ PROGRESSIVE/ LIBERAL vs. RIGHT/ CONSERVATIVE/ TRADITIONALIST, where do we fit in the above chart? More so, writing for a libertarian website as I do, where does libertarianism fit into the American political spectrum? Did you consciously choose which faction you belong to?
Standing on two sides of the fence
Libertarians aren’t described in the above chart per se, though many libertarian attributes are listed. And what may come as a surprise, wherever an American sees themselves on the above chart, in practice they may mentally embrace one faction in the liberal-conservative spectrum but in practice stand on the other side on many issues.
Do libertarian viewpoints have anything to offer in the back-and-forth political theater between so-called liberals that act like conservatives and conservatives that act like liberals? The answer is yes, but more so by not being on the above chart, by not acquiescing to big government, by wisely not filling a void, by intentional inaction. The freedom to choose is the libertarian call.
For example, political representatives vote for a COVID-19 stimulus bill, arguing over the amount, not whether it is destructive to make the unemployed population more dependent upon government welfare to the point they won’t return to their lower-paying jobs, and in turn to the destruction of American business enterprises. Which may have been the objective all along.
Libertarians may have addressed the problem by delegating it to the States, by recognizing the lockdown was worse than the infectious disease, by literally ignoring the problem which was the historical approach in prior infectious disease outbreaks that produced no more laboratory-confirmed deaths than the current over-hyped COVID-19 pandemic.
The God of big government is worshipped daily in America
One issue that the above chart appears to presume is that everyone in the political spectrum embraces big government as final arbiter, provider and governor of our lives. This was not quite what was outlined in the US Constitution — checks and balances, local (State) rule, etc. For most clueless Americans, the State is now their God and the US dollar is their faith proposition. Modern Americans have never lived under the limited government spelled out in the Constitution.
War vs no more war
True libertarians are staunchly anti-war and that is why a libertarian like Ron Paul could win a seat in Congress in Texas because his constituency did not identify as libertarian per se, but abhorred war. Contrarily, libertarians are not both anti-war and passivist. The idea of a strong military defense is embraced in libertarian texts.
Protecting fiat money means an aggressive expansionist military
In regard to expansionist versus “defend borders” military, where the rubber meets the road is the US has eleven aircraft carriers basically to protect its hegemony over other countries and to intimidate (block trade, etc.) with any country that threatens to create currency that is backed by an asset, like gold or silver. Any asset-backed currency would undo the prevailing fiat paper money system that is not backed by any asset.
Countries that think of introducing gold-backed money to compete against the US paper dollar get two US aircraft carriers off their coastline. The fiat paper money system must be protected. Otherwise, everyone will be buying gold-backed money and the value of the dollar would crash. So, the US must be militarily aggressive, not passive.
The US is also covertly (CIA) bent on blocking any other country rising up against it, economically or militarily.
The US has ~800 overseas military bases. The US says this is to enforce protective treaties.
Kids in the US grow up and never learn any of this. The US represents the “good guys,” and the rest of the countries are filled with “the bad guys.”
Maintaining the value of money; supply and demand
In 1775 the Continental Congress printed paper currency called Continentals which were not backed by gold or silver and quickly lost value because too many were printed. “Not worth a Continental” became a catchphrase as little gold or silver was on hand to pay the troops at the time and cleverly produced counterfeits by the British ruined the value of these certificates. From that day forward, America has yet to learn its monetary lesson.
As the value of the Continentals dropped, Congress had to print more of them — and as more money flooded the countryside, its value dropped even more rapidly. In November of 1776, $19 million had been issued and one could still buy$1.00 worth of goods for $1.00 in paper. By November of 1778, $31 million had been issued, and it took $6.00 in paper to buy the same amount. By November, 1779 $226 million was in circulation and it took $40.00 in paper to buy $1.00 in goods. After that, it was all downhill. In April 1779, George Washington complained, “A wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon load of provisions.”
Government covertly steals your money by inflation
Today the counterfeit money comes from the Federal Reserve Bank itself. Neither the LEFT or RIGHT has the willpower to stop bankers from the continued erosion of American paper money. According to ShadowStats.com $1000 in 1930 requires $15,081.71 in 2020 to equal the same purchasing power.
Few understand that government cannot afford to live up to all its political promises and must rely on inflation (erosion of the value of the dollar) in their social contract with the American people. Americans put good money into the Social Security Trust Fund during their working years and get back inflated (diminished value) money in their retirement checks.
The average Social Security check was ~$321/month in 1980 and today is around $1543/month, but should have been $7491.71 if properly corrected for inflation (calculation ShadowStats.com). Government must conduct this theft because it is running a Ponzi scheme.
The artificially propped American dollar and military expansion
Americans don’t realize the American dollar is the world’s predominant reserve currency. This creates an artificial demand for US dollars that other foreign currencies don’t have. So, on a demand basis, this reserve status props the value of the dollar in international trade.
US paper money is called fiat money (something never taught in school). It has no asset backing. Most Americans could not tell you what fiat money is.
Why Americans make lots of money
It is fortunate you are an American. After WWII the world was set up so Americans would make good money ($5-15 an hour) and the rest of the world would make $5/day and produce cheap products to sell to the U.S. The US is the consumer economy of the world. Just jump over the US/Mexican border and you make $5/day. A waitress job in nearby San Diego earns $5+ an hour.
Stimulus money failed to increase the velocity of money
When American consumers aren’t buying stuff, money isn’t being spread around and the velocity of money comes to a halt. That is the current situation.
Stimulus money has largely been used to pay down credit card debts or put into savings. Therefore, it did little to stimulate the consumer economy which represents ~70% of the nation’s economic output. Much of the stimulus money, in the trillions of dollars, went right into the hands of bankers who now use it as reserves.
Both conservatives and liberals applied for the government dole. Churches and whore houses, liberal and conservative business entities, applied for the Payroll Protection Plan, in compensation for the destructive State-government-mandated COVID-19 lockdown.
Individuality
The big divide between LEFT AND RIGHT is INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY versus the STATE IS RESPONSIBLE and even to blame for individual success or failure.
Under Society & Culture on the chart, the LEFT is inclusive, the RIGHT is exclusive. The LEFT is portrayed as organizing itself on societal ETHICS while the RIGHT is organized around personal MORALS. On the LEFT, society is to blame for failure and crime; on the RIGHT a person is encouraged to have integrity and personal morals.
When did any American ever make a big decision on their own?
In pondering the LEFT/RIGHT chart, few if any Americans really consciously think of where they are in the spectrum of political opinions and practices. Extended families as a block often decide together to be LEFT or RIGHT leaning. It usually isn’t a conscious choice.
In most elections citizens vote AGAINST THE OPPOSING PARTY rather than FOR ANY CANDIDATE OF THEIR OWN (example: anti-Trump campaign; left with mentally impaired President and goofy obviously-on-pot female Vice President). Nobody in their right mind voted for them, they voted against the incumbent candidate of the other party they abhorred more (if you can imagine).
Making independent decisions
One of the experiences of growing up in America is the reliance people have on others making decisions for them. People don’t just study for months and then end up being leftists, or conservatives, or even libertarians.
Regardless of political persuasion, most big decisions in American life are made by others, except maybe for a life mate. In other countries, your marriage partner is often determined by family. Maybe there is some wisdom in that, but would never be accepted by independent-minded females in the US.
Here, in America the in-practice selection of a marriage partner is who made the best pre-marriage bed partner and who is the best friend, not who can be a good provider or who is the best prospective wife/mother or husband/father as in other countries. Because of their nurturing instincts modern American women often tend to pick losers as life partners. This habit is dumbing down the population.
Career decisions: follow your heart or go where opportunity prevails
Puzzlingly, upon entry to college, students attempt to pick which vocation they might fare well in without ANY input whatsoever as to what is needed in the job market. While young students entering higher education do have opportunity to make an independent career choice, they usually don’t have enough information to do that successfully. And if Americans can’t figure out what to do in life, they can join the army.
Individualist, self-driven entrepreneurial students predictably have a difficult time achieving success regardless of their political leanings if they don’t understand supply and demand in the job marketplace. Those who intend to be self-employed must also learn about capital requirements to start a business, which isn’t covered in college.
I know of a young woman, an accomplished singer and graduate from a music school, who yearns to be an opera singer. There are only 300 jobs in opera in the US and most are filled by males. There are more graduates in voice from music schools than there are jobs. Not a word is mentioned to these young people that they can follow their heart for career choices, but they won’t likely find employment or be able to pay back their student loans.
American college students are largely clueless. For example, there are ~60,000 job openings for auto mechanics annually and auto makers often pay for schooling. But there is no status in being an auto mechanic or a plumber, which pay what college graduates earn.
Math for progressives doesn’t add up
For grade-school kids, the school system makes decisions about what is taught (the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic), but the LEFT now sees those core subjects as a way to indoctrinate students in its socialist/equity thinking.
For example, there is a battle now in California over teaching math, which is now considered to be racist. Because mathematics is a tool of White oppression, blacks should be held to a different competency level, so the story goes. Mathematical approximations rather than correct answers become the measure of competency. Parents are getting mad. They are, without realizing it, beginning to form another political faction.
Church membership is a hall pass to heaven
The LEFTIST PROGRESSIVES may go to church believing their group membership gets them into heaven, while RIGHT-WING CONSERVATIVES are more likely to believe that PERSONAL SUBMISSION to an all-mighty GOD is the right-of-passage to heaven.
For example, the current President of the United States is Catholic, but embraces abortion, something anathema to Catholic teaching. Like others, the President doesn’t see himself as making a bad moral choice (dead babies) because he still belongs to the group (Catholics) and chooses to help an unmarried woman who can’t afford to care for a baby, with a covert population control agenda behind his actions. Essentially, the President lives on two sides of the political spectrum. He doesn’t see this as being incongruent.
The group that people belong to is all important. The preacher in church appeals for people to let God reform their lives; that there is a God who wants them to lead a holy life and they need to repent of their errant ways and follow God. But for someone whose family is, for example, Catholic, or Lutheran, or Jewish, their family affiliation (where they go to church) is what puts them in favor with God, not their personal decision to follow God or the Bible. Many US citizens believe they are going to go to heaven because they grew up in a Christian country. It has been said, walking into church doesn’t make you into a Christian any more than walking into a garage makes you a car.
Health freedom
When it comes to healthcare, doctors make most decisions for Americans in need of healthcare. The older generation relies on their doctors to make them well, with little sense of responsibility to care for their own health. Eat a typical unhealthy American diet and take government-paid for pills to erase the problem.
In an era of accessibility to online information about health problems and solutions, self-care has yet to take hold.
With no approved vaccines at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, initially Americans opted for immune-boosting nutraceuticals and 99.7% of infected individuals got well on their own, mostly taking zinc lozenges and vitamins C and D. Cases of the flu also vanished and heart attacks drastically declined. Was this due to unsupervised vitamin regimens? If so, modern medicine is not letting on.
Government pays for needless care because it is good for the economy
Most Americans are clueless to the unnecessary care that is being delivered. Root canals, thyroidectomies, cardiac stents, vaccinations, statin drugs are overprescribed. Government sees this as helping the economy, producing jobs. The more autistic kids, the more therapists that are needed. Healthcare is the leading category for job growth. To keep every worker employed, a certain level of disease is needed. Why prevent disease which doesn’t create jobs. This is how government sees things.
The coming financial collapse of Medicare will certainly force many to re-think how they choose to maintain their health without doctoring. With millions of unemployed Americans who aren’t having FICA deductions withdrawn from their pay checks for future medical care and pensions, Medicare and Social Security are doomed. Americans don’t realize there will be no returning to normal. America can’t live up to its social contract with its citizens.
Suspicion mounts
This is when suspicion arises that government is using the COVID-19 vaccination program to cull the population, to reduce its financial obligations, to usher in the Great Reset, which is lowering the bankers and government’s obligations to provide for retirees. The movie Soylent Green was prescient.
Given most of Medicare money is spent caring for people in the last six months of their life, suddenly an engineered virus spreads and experimental vaccines are rushed to market that target nursing home populations; 99% of the COVID-19 related deaths were in nursing homes. The very people who cost government the most money, were eradicated.
Just get your shots and don’t ask questions.
Vaccine compliance in general does not run along political party lines. With an over-95% vaccination rate among school children, essentially there is no effective anti-vax movement in practice in America.
Acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccines does run along political party lines. Conservatives are more likely to hesitate or indefinitely delay vaccination. Many conservatives see the roll out of experimental vaccines as a covert population control strategy.
But how can we explain the aggressive vaccination schedule for school children which parallels an otherwise unexplained rise in autism? More than 1 in 4 school-aged children now have a chronic disease. Vaccinated children have more developmental delays, asthma and ear infections. Vaccinated children have a 6.6-fold increase in neuro-developmental disorders compared to unvaccinated children. Yet parents mindlessly have their children vaccinated.
Mothers: a new political force
Is it un-American not to have your children vaccinated and rely on natural immunity? Mothers of American children, regardless of political affiliation, have now banded together to oppose face masks, social distancing and vaccination. This is a growing unaffiliated political faction.
A new ad-hoc political party has arisen – The American Mothers Party that crosses all political, religious and income factors, that is pretty fed up with what is going on with their school children. It is leaderless, but not directionless. It is to be determined just how politicians will begin to deal with this loosely networked political group that now seeks to ouster many politicians.
Group-think
In reality, most Americans make very few independent decisions. Group-think prevails. Propaganda on television is what unites most Americans in a common experience (think Super Bowl Sunday).
Social tactics used to urge Americans to be immunized against COVID-19 include isolation, ostracism, ridicule, social pressure, and even financial incentives. If vaccine compliance numbers are correct, ~7 in 10 Americans intend to yield to social pressure tactics and elect to take experimental vaccines without proven long-term safety data and with side effect ratios far higher than prior licensed vaccines.
Self-reliance is an oxymoron
There are only 9 million Americans who are self-employed out of a work force of 150+ million. The American way of private enterprise, entrepreneurship, etc. is not cultivated. Most American workers end up being slaves to an employer and credit cards. Financial risk taking is frightening for the masses. However, gambling is part of American life, the rich playing the stock market and the poor buying lottery tickets.
For the LEFT, there must be EQUITY… everyone gets rewarded with the same basic pay regardless of talent or skill. With so many Americans out of work, guaranteed income is now the narrative. Americans have no clue their country is handing them stimulus checks on borrowed money. Nobody knows or cares where the money is coming from. Politicians are temporarily buying off the masses.
Soon you won’t have to ever sign a mortgage
One of the biggest decisions people may make in their lifetime is to buy a house. For that, the wife takes precedence. It’s her dream home with affordability in mind. The house-deprived female will indebt a husband who is attempting to please his wife. Now they will have their own home. But home ownership is an illusion. In reality, it belongs to the bank.
The first 15-years of a home mortgage the lender is getting all their principal back. “Homeowners” aren’t gaining much equity till then. A large number of homes sell within 7 years of purchase and little equity is ever built up in the home unless home values are rising.
Signing a mortgage document is something most Americans do blindly. They have no idea they will be paying 3 times more for the house over the life of the mortgage than its selling price. New home buyers have no idea that all of the home repairs are being made for the bank. It would be better to rent. Much of the economy spins on home sales.
The fallacy is that a couple might as well buy than rent, that way they have some ownership. But that only appears to be wise on a monthly basis. Renting will cost 1/3rd of what it costs to buy over the life of a 30-year mortgage and the owner pays for home maintenance, not the renter.
Regardless of these facts, the idea of having your own home predominates, particularly among females. It is the single biggest mistake young couples make financially.
Just how American women are going to handle the new globalist idea that people will own nothing, not a car nor a home, is something that will have to be reckoned with in future political fights as the globalists proceed to take over the country.
So where did you place your marker on the chart?
Well, if you are libertarian, you don’t know where to place your personal marker on the political spectrum graphic. Liberal and conservative perspectives are often the same. They are authoritarian viewpoints.
The libertarian view does not mesh with LEFT or RIGHT viewpoints.
Remember, I told you Americans are indecisive. They would rather others make decisions for them.
Libertarians have “a lot of respect for individual decisions,” says one professor. For example, a true libertarian would be tolerant of, though not necessarily embrace, abortion or gay marriage. Maybe these practices are immoral, but that is the job of the church, not government.
However, in the name of independent thinking, a libertarian may establish their own set of rights and wrongs rather than adhere to a standard of behavior set by a higher authority (example: the TEN COMMANDMENTS).
Lew Rockwell describes libertarianism as follows:
Every defining libertarian principle: self-ownership, the meaning of property titles, and nonaggression. It is much more difficult – thankless, even – to defend the rights of those whom society despises.
Let me repeat: the only “privilege” that matters to a libertarian qua libertarian is the kind that comes from the barrel of the state’s gun. Disagree with this statement if you like, but in that case, you will have to substitute some word other than libertarian to describe your philosophy.
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 “liberty is the highest political end” – not necessarily the highest end on everyone’s personal scale of values.
Libertarians are unsuited to the thought-control business.
Rockwell: “Our position is not merely that the state is a moral evil, but that human liberty is a tremendous moral good.”
If you want to hear Lew Rockwell talk about what libertarianism is, you might want to listen to an interview he did online.
The most accurate definition of libertarianism is explained by what it isn’t. It isn’t about authoritarianism; it isn’t about being unarmed; it isn’t about war; it isn’t about trust in phony paper money. It isn’t about being moral per se, it is about the freedom to make a moral choice rather than forced into one.
What America has become: who is to blame?
It is shocking for many Americans who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s what our country has become. But who is to blame? Lew Rockwell:
“Well, every government requires at least the tacit consent of the governed. It’s true of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, Obama, and it’s why, by the way, they can actually be battled. If people would withdraw their consent—if they don’t give their consent, as difficult as it may be to believe, they can’t actually do things.”
About defunding the police: libertarian view
While we live in a confusing time when mayors are asking to defund the police over accusations of racism, this is what Rockwell surprisingly said:
I remember when I lived in Oklahoma City in the early 1970s, and it was I think the last time a major city had a police strike. So, all the police went on strike. And the governor, I remember, sent 50 state troopers to patrol Oklahoma City, which is a huge city, and what happened was the crime rate plummeted. And I think, in part, this is because it was Oklahoma, as in every other free area, everybody’s armed. So, my guess is, any criminal thought, if I go in that house, they’re going to be ready to shoot me. When the strike was over, the crime rate went back up.
I think partly that’s true because I think the police are criminals. I think police commit crimes, and it’s true that they’re lazy and sleeping and don’t want to work, and that sort of thing—so they don’t have an incentive to do their actual job. But do they have an incentive to take advantage of people if they see a chance to commit a crime and get away with it, or so they think?
Should you consider transitioning from REPUBLICAN/DEMOCRAT to LIBERTARIAN, you may want to learn more about what you are getting into first.
There is a 1-minute quiz to help you determine where you stand politically.
Tom Woods posts THE MAKING OF AN ANTI-WAR LIBERTARIAN, the transformation of a pro-war Republican, at MISES INSTITUTE.
Or just dig into Lew Rockwell’s audio library of contrarian/libertarian thought.
