Monthly Archives: February 2016

And when a country does, no one can seem to get adequate care, after waiting for months.

Will Wilkinson of the Niskansen Center has written two separate posts supposedly proving the famous Barry Goldwater quote false.  That quote goes something like this: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”  It’s become a classic call the “arms” in libertarian circles, and rightly so.  The quote captures the revolutionary spirit of liberty, and the enthusiasm of those who champion a free society.  Wilkinson begs to differ.  In two rather long-winded posts that don’t seem to accomplish anything, Wilkinson lays out his case against the immortal Goldwater quote (written by Karl Hess).  Both posts really seem to be nothing more than an attempt to throw cold water on a cherished, galvanizing sentiment among liberty-lovers.

Before addressing Wilkinson’s objections, I want to consider what the Goldwater quote conjurs up in the hearts and minds of liberty-lovers.  When libertarians hear this, they aren’t usually equating “extremism” with violence.  In Wilkinson’s second post, he uses Timothy McVeigh’s mass murdering act as an example of extremism “in defense of liberty”.  I’m sorry, but I don’t see how the rest of his essay can be taken seriously.  I have never encountered a libertarian who was of the opinion that mass murder against innocents would count as acceptable “extremism in the defense of liberty”.  “Extremism in the defense of liberty”, to every libertarian I’ve met, denotes intransigence, an unwillingness to compromise, to sacrifice principle to expediency.  Violence isn’t on the spectrum between extremism and moderation for almost all libertarians.  If you take violence out of the equation, Wilkinson’s essays become a rambling, nit-picky attempt to

When I think of the difference between extremism and moderation, I think of the difference between a Ron Paul and every other Republican politician.  Ron Paul was of course not violent, but he was considered “extreme” in his political views by the mainstream political Establishment.

The Goldwater quote is a rousing sentiment that stirs up the idealism of libertarians, and the history of liberty is filled with similar quotations.  I suspect that, contra Wilkinson, libertarians are dusting off their Aristotle to glean the exact meaning of “extremism” and “moderation”.

“Moderation” gets us nowhere.  Rand Paul is a prime example of the futility of moderating a defense of liberty.  It loses the idealists, the die-hard supporters, and gains nothing in return.

Andrew Woods writes on “Camp Bucca”, the U.S. detention facility that held Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the architect of ISIS.

Devon Herrick of the National Center for Policy Analysis writes on the Affordable Care Act.  The scam that is the ACA is in a death spiral, with three major insurers, Humana, United Healthcare, and Cigna, having reported huge losses in 2015.  These companies aren’t making enough in profit to pay out claims, and are either requesting premium hikes of 50% or more, or dropping Obamacare altogether.  United Healthcare, in particular, took a $720 million loss while attempting to service the Obamacare exchange, and now wants out.  Obamacare was sold as a way for everyone to have access to affordable health insurance.  In reality, it wrecked the entire industry while making it far more expensive to gain coverage, which is why millions of people are preferring to not buy coverage and pay the penalty.

…we are safer than ever.

That’s just a small portion of the $583 billion “defense” budget for 2017.  Feel safer from all those “threats” now?

…as could Malaria, which kills some one million people annually, while infecting 300-600 million.

MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center are working on a 3-meter diameter ARC fusion reactor, three of which could power Boston.  A working reactor would need 50 megawatts of power to produce 500 megawatts of clean fusion power, the only fuel being hydrogen isotopes, which are in unlimited supply here on earth.

From the RealNewsNetwork.  If certain drugs are criminalized, only criminals will buy and sell those drugs.  As Prohibition is enforced, only the most dangerous of criminal gangs will have the firepower to continue distribution of their product.  This is the chief justification for the American Police State, which needs the black market crime wave to justify police militarization and the crushing of rights.  An interesting though experiment should be this: how much crime would exist were it not for the War on Drugs?

…called a Stingray.  Your phone thinks this device is a cell tower, so it links up with it.  Once linked, the police can intercept your phone’s location, serial number, and other private information you would rather them not have access to.  Oh, and they get this devices from the FBI, who require that the police first sign a non-disclosure agreement about the Stingray’s existence or use.  They can’t even reveal the existence of a Stingray to a judge, without the FBI’s prior permission.  I doubt the cops are complaining too much about that aspect.

This Police State tech was sold as a means of tracking terrorism suspects, but since there’s not much terrorism happening at all in the US, the cops use their Stingray to track ordinary criminals, and possibly non-criminals.

The ACLU has an illuminating graph on the known police departments currently using Stingray tech, but it probably dramatically underrepresents their use, given the secrecy surrounding the acquisition and use by departments of this spy tech.