“[T]rends of evolution can change, and hitherto they almost always have changed. But they changed only because they met firm opposition. The prevailing trend toward … the servile state will certainly not be reversed if nobody has the courage to attack its underlying dogmas.”
– Ludwig von Mises (see below)
Statism won at the top of the ticket earlier this week–and many places beneath. Limited-government advocates are feeling low and wondering if the dependency vote can be overcome in future elections to turn fiscal crises into new opportunities for economic freedom.
Small consolation: the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson beat the Green Party’s Jill Stein by a landslide. But the small parties combined received less than two million votes. Johnson’s 1.2 million votes–about 1.2 percent in the 48 states where he was on the ballot–compared to 400,000 for Stein. …
The recent election is reason to step back and examine the dangerous institution of politics and why it needs to be a small part of everyday life. Two very wise men said as much long ago. Voltaire (in 1764): “In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.” Bastiat (in 1848): “The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.”
And to the 20th century and H. L. Menken (in 1924) who likened “a good politician, under democracy” to “an honest burglar.”
And now for two 21st century observations, one from on-high and the other from the ground:
…“When government undertakes tasks for which it is ill equipped it squanders the authority necessary for carrying out its core responsibilities.
[Ed. note: Part I on Monday examined the Green Party’s Green New Deal; today’s post examines the rest of the Green Party’s platform with energy and the environment. With Obama’s reelection, it should not be forgotten that the philosophy and positions below–although not feasible for wholesale implementation–remain end-states for John Holdren and other Administration officials].
In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, the Ministry of Truth had three slogans: “WAR IS PEACE,” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,” and “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” Enter the deep-ecology agenda, which is about controlling your resources and your life in the name of freedom for spaceship Earth.
Imagine Green Orwellian Freedom. Some of us would work in the public sector as green planners. More would work for government as enforcers, making sure the private sector is acting “sustainably.”…