Today is Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday, and while conservatives are using the occasion to tout his ostensible greatness, many libertarians are taking the opportunity to point out the many ways in which Reagan was no friend of liberty despite his occasional libertarian rhetoric.
I’ve summed up some of the most damning evidence against Reagan in this excerpt from Libertarianism Today. The classic libertarian anti-Reagan work, though, is Murray Rothbard’s “Ronald Reagan: An Autopsy,” featured today at LewRockwell.com. Also essential is Sheldon Richman’s article on Reagan’s atrocious record on taxes, spending, trade, and regulation. And if that’s not enough to convince you of what Reagan was really about, I also recommend Jeff Riggenbach’s new piece, “The Reagan Fraud — And After.”
On the other hand, to be fair, Daniel McCarthy offers some evidence in mitigation in his article “Revising Ronald Reagan,” focusing particularly on Reagan’s desire to negotiate with rather than annihilate the Soviets despite the wishes of warmongering neocons.
That’s nice, of course, but not being as murderous as you could have been doesn’t get you very far in my book.
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Here in Ohio, all the candidates in the state’s two contested Supreme Court races have taken a “clean campaign” pledge in which they’ve promised to disavow any third-party campaign advertisements that “impugn the integrity of the judicial system or the integrity of a candidate for Supreme Court.”
Of course the bar association folks pat themselves on the back and think they’re great citizens for coming up with this sort of thing, but in fact it’s disgraceful.
What is it, after all, but an effort to chill free speech, particularly speech that’s critical of politicians, government officials, and government institutions?
It’s all the more disturbing that two of the people who signed it are currently sitting on the bench. More disturbing still: their opponents on the ballot signed it, too, so there’s no avoiding being ruled by people who think this sort of thing is acceptable.
As usual, “bi-partisanship” and “non-partisanship” really mean politicians ganging up against you and your liberties.
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What a nice bonus for the victors in McDonald v. Chicago: their defeat of Chicago’s gun ban not only helped protect gun owners’ rights across the country but also, it turns out, served as a parting gift to Mayor Richard M. Daley, who has announced his retirement.
As a former Chicago resident and a big fan of the city (apart from its politicians and tyranny), I couldn’t be more pleased. Well, yes I could: Rahm Emanuel could deny speculation that he’ll take Daley’s place. (Or maybe that would be good, since it would get him out of the federal government.)
I actually kind of liked Daley’s brazen criminality, as when he sent bulldozers to tear up the Meigs Field airport in the middle of the night, putting big X’s right through the runway. I far prefer that sort of thing to politicians who are praised for being squeaky clean while they steal and kill through the usual lawful methods.
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Seated near me in a cafe here in Columbus, Ohio are several political operatives who have come in from out of state to work on one of the two major parties’ political campaigns. Listening to them talk is sickening.
They of course have no interest whatsoever in studying political ideas, and openly admit it, at least here among each other. One of them has just purchased a middlebrow political book, which he half-jokes that he won’t read but will carry around for a while and then put on his coffee table to look impressive. Another says in as many words that she has no interest in policy per se — she only cares about getting her candidate elected.
Yet these people are happy to come into my state and foist a ruler on me whose policies I’ll have no choice but to care about because they’ll affect my money, my property, and my life. These people will feel no consequences, except that if their guy wins, their careers will benefit, and if not, they’ll just move on to the next race in the next state anyway.
Being around political parasites in a state capital is bad enough. I shudder to think about what it must be like to live in Washington, DC where everyone around you is like these creeps, only worse.
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Normally, when one party is in power in Washington, libertarians tend to root for the party out of power. When the Republicans are running things, the Democrats start to seem good, and when the Democrats are running things, the Republicans start to seem good. And of course, when the out-of-power party gets back in power, they disappoint you terribly by pursuing all the things on which they’re bad and forgetting the things on which they’re supposedly somewhat good — and you’re embarrassed that you ever (kind of, grudgingly) rooted for them.
Now, though, the right is making things much easier than usual. The Republicans’ incessant whining about the non-mosque that is not at Ground Zero, their war on immigrants, and their calls for war against Iran make me hate both parties equally — so I won’t have to feel at all bad for temporarily liking one of them (I don’t) or feel betrayed by them (since they never showed any real promise anyway).
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In an earlier post, I mentioned how important it is that we stop treating presidents like gods and recognize they’re just ordinary jerks.
In that spirit, here’s a transcript (and audio) of LBJ ordering some pants, belching, and talking about his “nuts” and “bunghole.”
It’s not as good, though, as the incident Gene Healy recounts in The Cult of the Presidency, in which “asked by a reporter why America was in Vietnam, LBJ unzipped his fly, wagged his member at the audience and exclaimed, ‘this is why!’”
Healy suggests LBJ’s behavior there was the result of being intoxicated by power, but maybe it was just those uncomfortable pants.
In any event, perhaps it says something encouraging about the present times that the press would no longer suppress such a story. (Would they?)
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Last week, Lew Rockwell posted an item about officers “subduing” and arresting two people who had the audacity to stand where President Obama’s motorcade wanted to go.
I recalled this yesterday as I read an October 1900 newspaper article, which reported an indignity that VP candidate Theodore Roosevelt suffered when newsboys threw mud at him “and greeted him with insulting language . . . as he departed from the church at which he had attended.” The story was a small item several pages into the paper and there is no indication that the boys were “subdued” or arrested, or that they got into any trouble at all. Instead, the mud-spattered TR just huffed off on his way.
The story included no quotes from experts on how terrible it is that our youth would show such disrespect for a great political leader and no editorializing.
Today, of course, this would be the top news story for a week, Chris Matthews would rend his garments over the blasphemy against our civic religion, and the kids would likely be tazed or killed, and, if they lived, charged with felonies.
Another newspaper article from the same month mentioned that trick-or-treaters stopped by the White House and were greeted by President and Mrs. McKinley. The kids weren’t participating in a photo op, but were just knocking on the front door as they would at any other house. Because you could do that, because the president was not a god.
For more details of the good old days when people treated presidents like the ordinary jerks they are (and how far we’ve fallen), I highly recommend Gene Healy’s The Cult of the Presidency.
UPDATE: Norman Horn informs me that The Cult of the Presidency is now available online for free in PDF, Kindle, and ebook formats.
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