The Middle Class Are The Burgeousie

There is alot of talk in our political media about the middle class, and many on the left champion themselves as being all about raising the well-being of the middle class. There is also a rather prevailant adoption of the Marxian concept of the burgeousie. According to the Marxian class analysis, there are two classes: the proletarien (the workers and poverty-striken) and the burgeosie (the employers and assorted evil rich people who exploit the proletarien). But, according to further Marxian views, any amount of money or property that one obtains that is above mere substinance is inherently achieved through "exploitation". In short, anyone who accumulates capital and savings, who possesses more than they technically naturally "need" to survive (I.E. any kind of "luxury"), must be an "exploitive" capitalist under this view. If this were actually the case, then this implicates the vast majority of people, including the entire working class and middle class as being exploiters.

Therefore, it is very clear that what Marx means by the elimination of capital is just that - the eliminating of both the middle class and rich alike, or even "poor" people who are considered above a certain substinance level. Afterall, "the middle class" consists of people who have managed to maintain a level of income and luxury beyond mere substinance on the basis of their productive abilities and cooperative action, a "savings" (surplus/profit) of some kind. "Capital", the very thing which Marx seeks to eliminate, is what the middle class relies on to maintain their living standard. Marx proposes the ridiculous utopia of a completely classless society. It so happens that his proposed method of making us classless is to make us all equally devoid of any "luxury" beyond substinance (or indeed, devoid of full or adequate substinance!).

The communist view of an ideal society is one in which noone is allowed to make use of their ability to rise above a particular substinance level (which is subjectively pre-determined by the central planning board, of course). As a logical consequence, communism creates a "bar" that noone is allowed to pass, pushing everyone to the level of a lowest common denominator. 100% equality in wealth lowers the amount available to each individual so much as to make everyone equally poor and starving. The more people there are under such 100% economic equality, the lower this lowest common denimonator of a non-living standard becomes. A quick glance at the history of communism should reveal this as rather obvious. The most "purist" communist view would contend that everyone should have 100% of their income taxed and 100% of their property owned "publically" (A.K.A. by the state), and then everyone is "equally" given "free" rationed services in exchange for this total confiscation of all private property. This ideal is absurd and dangerous. A communist society repeatedly sends the so-called "proletarien" this contradictary message: work, work, work, but you're not allowed to surpass anyone else by your abilities.

The practise of wealth equalization over time does nothing but diminish overall prosperity. It lowers the threshold for everyone. In capitalism, each individual is free to improve their own economic conditions without harming others. This may result in an unstatic and unequal distribution of wealth, but it is voluntary and peaceful, and it is not a pure pyramidical heirarchy, it is more random and sporatic. It is also liable to change over time (with some people at the bottom rising upwards, and some people at the top shifting back down). When this private accumulation and unstatic movement of capital is disrupted through forced equalization of such economic conditions, all that happens is that more people get less in the long-run. Equalization must inherently push down anyone who managed to achieve better economic conditions than others through their own abilities.

If the policy simultanously seeks to prop up those who's economic conditions are the lowest, this becomes negated by the lowering of the bar. Once they are propped up to a certain point, they are stuck, and thus have been assigned with a "fixed class" in reality. The poor are not given the oppurtunity to raise themselves up under such a policy, but rather their economic conditions are fixed in place, as to not go below or above "the bar". Under pure economic equality, there is no such thing as economic mobility (I.E. the prospect of people to raise themselves up or take cut-backs - any change in economic status over time) - people's incomes are simply "fixed" in a pre-determined place. Instead of getting rid of class, this creates a trend of fixing everyone into one "proletarien" class (while mysteriously exempting the government and special allies from this fixed caste; therefore the government is functioning as the exploitation class in reality here, not workers, employers, investors or savers).

One of the central truths of capitalism is that production alone is what creates wealth, a "standard of living" for the masses. Any policy that seeks to reduce everyone to substinance (I.E. eliminate all "capital", which is merely any property/wealth above substinance) is only crushing the middle class and increasing poverty. If you decrease capital, you are decreasing wages and increasing prices. To go after the one thing that actually produces "wealth" in the first place (production and the ensueing voluntary accumulation of capital) is counterproductive. Any policy that seeks to decrease the production of any group or individual will only decrease the overall standard of living, regaurdless of wether the targeted individuals are rich, poor or middle-class.

The market is simply voluntary mass-production of goods and services and voluntary exchange of those goods and services. It's that simple. It is not inherently "exploitation". When you go buy candy bar at the store, this isn't "exploitation". When you voluntary work based on a contract you initially agreed to, this isn't "exploitation", it's called a modern voluntary work force (as opposed to conscription or syndicalism). A surplus (I.E. profit) is not a robbery from people, it is the surplus revenue created by the process of voluntary cooperation under the division of labor. Yet the socialists would have us believe that profit and private buisiness in general is inherently "theft".

Without the profit mechanism, and it's often forgotten counterpart of loss, there would be nowhere near enough production to provide mere substinance for most Americans. Like it or not, we rely on capitalist production to feed, cloth and shelter the masses. Most people would simply slowly starve to death without it. Without any profit and loss, it is impossible to invest properly as to increase productivity - economic calculation is completely impossible. An increase in the supply of goods and services and hence an increase in productivity is the only way to genuinely increase the standard of living (in the form of real wages, lower prices and hence more available goods and services) for the masses at large. Attempts to hamper the market are only decreasing productivity, and hence decreasing the standard of living.

The profit and loss mechanism is speculative and uncertain, since it deals with factors that change over time. If a buisiness produces in exess of demand, it starts to take losses (for every produced item not sold) and will eventually go bankrupt if it continues with such a method of production. Thus, in such a situation, the buisiness must change its mode of production (a simple example for this scenario would be to produce less or to change the quality of the product or service as to stimulate more purchases). If a buisiness does not produce enough to appease demand, it starts to take losses (since barely anyone is buying their good or service) and will eventually go bankrupt if it continues with such a method of production. Thus, in such a situation, the buisiness must change its mode of production (a simple example for this scenario would be to produce more or change the quality of the product or service as to better square with demand).

It must be kept in mind that all of this is rather speculative on the part of the enterpreneur. The capitalist can never be certian because demand may easily change, and thus they may have to adjust their methods of production further. The capitalist has to constantly adapt in order to maintain a profit. The method of government protectionism is what grants various buisinesses the privilege to circumvent this market process by being gauranteed bail-outs, blatant give-aways and the crippling of their competitors. On the market itself, free from any government intervention or special protection, it is impossible for a capitalist to maintain a policy of arbitrarily raising their prices irrespective of the demand curve or supply or method of production. They will always come to a point where they have to change their methods of production or face losses. Thus, the common picture of the greedy capitalist's arbitrary greed being the reason for price hikes, and as someone who does nothing but hike prices, is nonsense.

The workers in a relatively unhampered market are not slaves. They are beneficiaries (of their own abilities), and their production is part of a network of cooperation that results to the benefit of others (the people who consume and depend on what they produce, and their employer, who then can use extra capital to invest in capital goods that increase productivity, and hence this increased productivity increases wages for employees), and the masses in general when accumulated and viewed on a macro (and time-dimensional) scale. The free worker can voluntarily agree to a job contract and voluntary quit that job whenever they please. The free worker also is more or less the burgeoisie to the extent that their wages supply them with any amount of income above what is necessary to maintain basic substinance - every "non-essential" to basic survival that they consume (such as computers, cellphones, televisions, cars, stereos, CDS, books, etc. - in short, material possessions that justabout everyone in the "middle class", and even poor, has) reflects the extent of their "burgeoisieness". Their unhampered wages tend towards the marginal revenue created by their productivity as individuals (the cumulative value of what they produce in a given hour). For example, if Jones must produce widgets, with each widget being worth 50 cents, and he produces 20 widgets in an hour, then his marginal revenue product is 10 dollars in one hour. Ideally, his wage should therefore be 10 dollars an hour.

Now, due to time-dimensionality and change, one's wage may not always precisely equal the margin revenue product, because supply and demand changes over time (and therefore the revenue of the product is prone to change). This is also true because a worker can vary in their enthusiasm: they can work really hard on a particular day, thus producing more, or they can slack on a particular day, thus producing less. However, the "equilibrium tendency" that results from a voluntary job tends towards the direction of the marginal revenue product over time (and the best way to do this is to develope an analysis of the "median" productivity of a worker over a given period of time, and thus the average is the MRP). The capitalist who best calculates the marginal revenue product both makes the most profit and gives the most fair wage to the employee. If a wage is above the marginal revenue product, then the employer starts to take losses. For example, if the government were to pass a wage law making the employer pay Jones 20 dollars an hour for producing a marginal revenue product of 10 dollars in an hour, the employer would be taking a loss of 10 dollars for every hour Jones works, or a loss of 25 cents per widget produced.

What kind of buisiness would want to function at a loss? As a consequence, there will be an incentive for the employer to simply fire Jones. Thus, the more jobs there are that pay higher than the marginal revenue product of labor, the quicker those same jobs become emptied out, and hence there is unemployment in those areas. By the very least, since the employer is taking losses for every worker, they will seek to substitute more jobs at other wage rates than the ones at the artificially inflated wage rate, as to minimize the losses. For every new worker that is added on onto the payroll at the inflated wage, the employer will lose more and more. The people who are at that margin are simply barred from employment due to the legal hike in wages. All of the Jones's in society have an increased unemployment rate. Employers would rather pay people the same or a generally higher wage who's marginal revenue product actually equals the wage. Thus, the security of higher-income people is secured while the people with lower productively levels are slowly disemployed altogether. Further, this unemployment bars low-skilled workers (which largely consists of teenagers and young adults) from the experience that would lead them to increase their productivity and mature, and hence achieve higher-paying jobs in the future.

Let us suppose another scenario. If the wage is below the marginal revenue product, how can this reach towards equilibrium? Let's actually assume that the employer wants to exploit the workers (a questionable premise, but granted for this example). Suppose our employer, capitalist pig A, pays Jones only one dollar an hour instead of the 10 dollars of his marginal revenue product. Here we get into some competition. What do you think the incentive of capitalist pig B is? He may very well pat capitalist pig A on the back and support exploiting workers too, but he wants more workers for himself. Therefore, what kind of offer can capitalist pig B make to potential workers? He could make an offer of a wage of 1.01 or 2 dollars an hour. What do you think capitalist pig C's incentive is? 1.03 o 3 dollars an hour. Capitalist pig D? 1.04 or 4 dollars an hour. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Of course, this isn't an exact illustration of how it happens over time (it obviously wouldn't be in completely even intervals), but nonetheless demonstrates that the equilibrium tendency kicks in, and thus employees essentially hike wages up towards the direction of the marginal revenue product. If this process continues, we will pretty much reach the MRP. It is simply unprofitable to have unenthusiastic workers, and there is no better way to encourage worker enthusiasm than to offer a higher wage. If employers continue try to get away with such exploitation over time, they will simply run out of willing workers, and hence go out of buisiness. Thus, the works themselves also can initiate the process. For example, if Jones is working for 1/10th of his margin revenue product (1 dollar an hour), and he finds out that his friend is making 5 dollars an hour over at such and such a place, then he has an incentive to quit and seek such better jobs. The capitalist who truly tries the most to exploit the workers in the way being described here is doomed to eventually drive away all of their employees.

All of the countries with the heaviest economic intervention (often in the name of equalty) have the lowest living standards. A simple analysis of East and West germany before the wall came down, or North and South Korea today, demonstrates this plainly using people of the exactly same culture, nation, language and ethnicity under two considerably different economic systems. The differences between the two are extraordinary. If you look at Korea from a map/telescope looking towards earth from space, you see darkness in the commie section, and lights in the non-commie section. That says it all. Communism is a system that simply eats up everyone's wealth and property. The soviet union had no real middle class - it had a slave class (former burgeousie turned proletarien) and a ruling class (the government and elites who allied with it).

A common juxtoposition that is used by opponents of capitalism is the use of example of governmental actions and allyships with buisiness as arguements against the market. But all of this is a government intervention in the economy! Capitalism is the lack of government intervention in the economy! To continually point to situations in which the government is intervening in the economy as an arguement against capitalism is nonsensical. The laizze-faire position is that if a firm incurs losses, it must adjust its methods or it will slip out of buisiness - it must pay its debts or go bankrupt. The laizze-faire capitalist actually maintains that it is an unjust government intervention in the economy to bail out banks or buisinesses when they go bankrupt. Indeed, inefficient firms and banks SHOULD go bankrupt. This is precisely why the market works - it weeds out inefficiency. To bail out firms incurring losses and debt is simply protectionism. Laizze-faire is the polar opposite of protectionism.

It is quite clear that the bulk of arguements against capitalism not only consist of total fallacies, but are in actual fact pitted against the common, working man. They seek to replace a diversity in luxury with no luxury at all, and in practise merely reduces everyone to an unsustainable substinance level (and hence the path of starvation and eventual death). It is not an agenda geared towards increasing the well-being of everyone, but rather decreasing the well-being of everyone in order to stop anyone from becoming any more happy, substinant or rich than anyone else. It uses the method of crippling man in his abilities while simultaneously claiming to make everyone into super-men. The people who actually constitute the burgeosie that this political tyranny cripples are just about everyone, and the majority of everyone constitute "the middle class". Therefore, the middle class are the burgeosie. The burgeosie isn't some evil cabal of rugged individualists who exploit everyone, the burgeosie is anyone who isn't suffering from utter poverty (the majority of whom is the "common man", the middle class workers and buisiness-owners), and thus it is an admirable and good thing. Most everyone in the world are capitalists by the mere fact that they have any property or wealth at all.

Citezens or Subjects? Interventionism

One might ask the question: what is the differance between a citezen and a subject? My definition of a citezen is the legal recognition of the sovereignty of the individual, and my definition of a subject is the lack of this recognition. Citezenship is not determined by voting or mere governmental decree of a title. A voter can be treated as a subject as much as a non-voter can, and a title in itself does not bestow sovereignty. If a government does not legally recognize the sovereignty of the individual, then it has no citezens, only subjects at the mercy of the arbitrary whims of those who constitute the ruling apparatus. It doesn't matter if it's a monarchy, democracy, republic or parlaiment.

What exactly is the sovereignty of the individual? In it's purest and most axoimatic form, the definition is as follows: each individual has a right to do as pleases so long as they do not initiate aggression against the person or property of others (which, in a sense, is the exact same moral precept as the biblical phrase "do unto others as you would have them do to you") . It logically follows that each individual has a right to not have aggression used against their person or property. Any action that initiates aggression against others is defacto in violation of individual sovereignty. This idea is essentially morality 101, and it requires no religion or special knowledge to understand and adopt. It is a self-evident and instinctive law, a logical and naturally arising axoim.

Based on such criterion, we may explore wether governments are citezen-rearing or subject-rearing. It first must be established that the very nature of any government inherently makes the prospect of 100% individual sovereignty impossible. This is because a government inherently requires a number of violations of it in order to exist and maintain its existance in the first place. It must recieve revenue from somewhere, and thus it must use the taxing power to coercively conscript money from the populace, under the threat of the use of violence (some minarchist libertarians contend that a government can use voluntary "user fees" or "donations" instead of taxes to get around this problem, but I have not looked into the matter enough to come to a fully informed conclusion on the question). Another fundamental problem is that any government must constitute a "ruling class" in comparison to the populace, which invitably encroaches on individual sovereignty. Further, this ruling class inherently constitutes a monopoly of power and force, of ultimate decision making within a given territory, which inevitably is going to violate the individual's sovereignty in some way or another.

The determining factor is the degree to which individual sovereignty exists in a society in all of its individual facets and counterparts. Each individual aspect of the population's life needs to be independantly analized as to how much individual sovereignty pervades. The cumulative result of all of analizing these individual aspects of life can give us an insight into the overall degee of individual sovereignty that exists under the rule of a given government. Obviously, a serious study encompassing every individual in this way is completely impossible. But general deductions can easily be made about the general population based on many governmental actions that more or less apply to everyone.

While we have conceded that a government must inherently violate individual sovereignty in some way, the ideal government (assuming that we want to have one) under our criterion would be one in which individual sovereignty exists as much as possible, in which it is maximized to the extent that the government barely exists. The most common manifestation of this is principle that the government should limit itself completely (or close to it) to defense, enforcement of criminal law against acts of violence and fraud, and access to a fair and impartial legal system. The ideal citezenship is thus a situation in which the government's only legitimate legal function is to protect the people from aggression against their person and property. Consequentially, the people under a government are subjects to the extent that this function is abandoned and replaced with other functions.

What kind of picture can we deduce of the degree of individual sovereignty in the United States? Are we citezens or subjects? Well, it really depends on which aspect of life and government we are dealing with. Let's start with different aspects of economics. In terms of tax rates, we have increasingly raised the tax burden by quite large amounts, yet despite this we still have relatively low taxes in comparison to many other countries. In terms of redisribution, America has had an ever-expanding welfare state ever since the progressive era, and ironically this welfare state has been shifting the direction of favoring buisinesses and the rich. However, America's welfare state still pales in comparison to the record of communist countries. In terms of private ownership of the means of production, somewhere around 90 percent of the means of production in America is still private, although this has been nibbled at slowly by the practise of government contracting buisinesses (which is the model of economic fascism or "corporatism", and replaces genuine private ownership with neo-feudalism or neo-mercantalism).

Despite the fact that the means of production are still largely private in America, it's genuine nature is eroded through heavy regulation - private property in America, while it still in large part exists, is simply over-regulated. In terms of government spending and inflation, the American budget and money supply has done almost nothing but baloon into the heavens since WWI and WWII, which has more or less lead to a perpetual "hyper-inflation" cycle (I.E. there is a recession while the money supply is continueing to increase) in the present. America has adopted a policy of borrowing huge sums of money from nations abroad, and hence has created a dangerously monstrous debt. While America has persued free trade more in comparison to many nations, it nonetheless suffers from growing protectionism that is selective in nature. Unionism has managed to bestow us with the virus of domestic protectionism, although it is heartening to see that some people, even on the left, are starting to become very critical of unions.

What about personal liberties? In terms of prohibition, America is largely free of prohibition in the realm of most material necessities and wants, while simultanously it has drug prohibition, medicine prohibition, prostitution prohibition, smoking prohibition, suicide prohibition, "assisted suicide" (I.E. people who are dieing or are in a catatonic state who have willed themselves to be "unplugged" by a doctor) prohibition and now there is even a call for sweeping food prohibition by radical environmentalists (of course all we are doing here is literally illegalizing productive jobs, voluntary exchange between individuals and actions of dealing with what to put into one's own body). Fortunately, governmentally enforced racism is over at least on the national level, although it can easily be detected in certain places on the local level.

In terms of law enforcement, we don't yet have a police state but the current laws on the books declare them to be the legal precedent of the federal government and various state governments. Americans are simply lucky that many of these laws haven't been fully applied or enforced yet (political interprations of such legislation by politicians and bereaucrats in future inevitably opens up a pandora's box for "civil liberties" violations). Further, the American legal system for the most part fails to adequately compensate victims, while simultanously spending more time criminalizing innocent people than going after real criminals. Half, if not more, of the people in American prisons are innocent, non-violent individuals - mostly victims of the drug war or defectors from the military. There has been a growing danger in the judicial system of allowing judges to act as ex post facto legislators.

While there are some instances of ridiculous political correctness in the media and government, America still largely retains a free press (particularly on the internet) in comparison to many other countries, although this has been encroached upon slowly through censorship and corporate-government relationships (I.E. economic fascism). For the most part, Americans are free to practise or not practise religion, however, to a limited extent the "religious right" groups have gotten the government to subsidize religious institutions (which is harmful both to the tax-payer who has no connection to or care for those institutions and the religious institutions themselves, since such institutions are now bound by political considerations). Executive powers in America have done nothing but centralize and increase. The American government has been almost in a perpetual state of war since after WWII, and has thus been responsible for the deaths of unimaginable numbers of both soldiers and foreign peoples. The American government selectively props up foreign dictatorships while selectively being economically "isolationist" with certain nations.

America is currently entering the latter/advanced stages of "interventionism", a "mixed system", which when continued over enough time gives way to either the German/Italian socialist pattern (otherwise known as fascism) or the Russian/Marxist-Stalinist socialist pattern (otherwise known as communism). The system has been starting to tip the scale in favor of statism for quite some time, but still has some forces retaining a shallow "middle ground". In some respects, Americans are incredibly lucky, and in other aspects they are profusely plundered. In certain limited areas, America is still the freest country in the world, yet this claim does not really apply when we exit those limited areas. America still retains some limited degree of its capitalist and classical liberal "roots", while completely abandoning it in individual areas. The process of interventionism is one in which these "caviats" increase in virtual direct proportion to the new or worsened problems created by the interventions. And thus, interventionism inherently leads towards some form of statism.

It is notable that the current U.S. government actually rears the least individual sovereignty with regaurd to how it treats people abroad with its foreign policy (with all of its wars, sanctions, blockades and foreign aid). Its foreign policy expenditures are considerably larger than its domestic expenditures (despite the balooning of domestic social spending that has taken place) because it has adopted a pattern of foreign interventionism. Americans are both citezens and subjects, depending on what area we are dealing with. There is an inescapable danger of allowing this interventionist system to progress into a pattern of socialism, and in particular we are tipping in the direction of right-wing socialism. America hs been moving in the direction of the fascist pattern. It should be emphasized that this trend did not initially start any time recently, the seeds were planted long ago in sucessive steps and are still being planted by people of power. This trend can and should be reversed. The state should be forced into a position where it confines itself to the defense of person and property. Any step beyond this will lead to interventionist, and eventually totalitarian, patterns.

Hard Truths About Culture War

By: Robert Bork

Moral liberalism and the decadence of culture.

What began to concern me more and more were the clear signs of rot and decadence germinating within American society-a rot and decadence that was no longer the consequence of liberalism but was the actual agenda of contemporary liberalism. . . . Sector after sector of American life has been ruthlessly corrupted by the liberal ethos. It is an ethos that aims simultaneously at political and social collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the other. -Irving Kristol, "My Cold War"

Equivocation has never been Irving Kristol's long suit. About the fact of rot and decadence there can be no dispute, except from those who deny that such terms have meaning, and who are, for that reason, major contributors to rot and decadence. We are accustomed to lamentations about American crime rates, the devastation wrought by drugs, rising illegitimacy, the decline of civility, and the increasing vulgarity of popular entertainment. But the manifestations of American cultural decline are even more widespread, ranging across virtually the entire society, from the violent underclass of the inner cities to our cultural and political elites, from rap music to literary studies, from pornography to law, from journalism to scholarship, from union halls to universities. Wherever one looks, the traditional virtues of this culture are being lost, its vices multiplied, its values degraded-in short, the culture itself is unraveling.

These can hardly be random or isolated developments. A degeneration so universal, afflicting so many seemingly disparate areas, must proceed from common causes. That supposition is strengthened by the observation that similar trends seem to be occurring in nearly all Western industrialized democracies. The main features of these trends are vulgarity and a persistent left-wing bias, the latter being particularly evident among the semi-skilled intellectuals-academics, bureaucrats, and the like-that Kristol calls the New Class.

But why should this be happening? The short answer is the one Kristol gives: the rise of modern liberalism. (The extent to which he would agree with the following argument about the sources and future of modern liberalism, I do not know.) Modern liberalism grew out of classical liberalism by expanding its central ideals-liberty and equality-while progressively jettisoning the restraints of religion, morality, and law even as technology lowered the constraint of hard work imposed by economic necessity. Those ideals, along with the right to pursue happiness, are what we said we were about at the beginning, in the Declaration of Independence. Stirring as rallying cries for rebellion, less useful, because indeterminate, for the purpose of arranging political and cultural matters, they become positively dangerous when taken, without very serious qualifications, as social ideals.

The qualifications assumed by the founders' generation, but unexpressed in the Declaration (it would rather have spoiled the rhetoric to have added "up to a point"), have gradually been peeled away so that today liberalism has reached an extreme, though not one fears its ultimate, stage. "Equality" has become radical egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than of opportunities), and "liberty" takes the form of radical individualism (a refusal to admit limits to the gratifications of the self). In these extreme forms, they are partly produced by, and partly produce, the shattering of fraternity (or community) that modern liberals simultaneously long for and destroy.

Individualism and egalitarianism may seem an odd pair, since liberty in any degree produces inequality, while equality of outcomes requires coercion that destroys liberty. If they are to operate simultaneously, radical egalitarianism and radical individualism, where they do not complement one another, must operate in different areas of life, and that is precisely what we see in today's culture. Radical egalitarianism advances, on the one hand, in areas of life and society where superior achievement is possible and would be rewarded but for coerced equality: quotas, affirmative action, income redistribution through progressive taxation for some, entitlement programs for others, and the tyranny of political correctness spreading through universities, primary and secondary schools, government, and even the private sector. Radical individualism, on the other hand, is demanded when there is no danger that achievement will produce inequality and people wish to be unhindered in the pursuit of pleasure. This finds expression particularly in the areas of sexuality and violence, and their vicarious enjoyment in popular entertainment.

Individualism and egalitarianism do not always divide the labor of producing cultural decay. Often enough they collaborate. When egalitarianism reinforces individualism, denying the possibility that one culture or moral view can be superior to another, the result is cultural and moral relativism, whose end products include multiculturalism, sexual license, obscenity in the popular arts, an unwillingness to punish crime adequately and, sometimes, even to convict the obviously guilty. Both the individualist and the egalitarian (usually in the same skin) are antagonistic to society's traditional hierarchies or lines of authority-the one because his pleasures can be maximized only by freedom from authority, the other because he resents any distinction among people or forms of behavior that suggests superiority in one or the other.

The universality of these forces is indicated by the fact that they are prominent features of two institutions at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum: the Supreme Court of the United States and rock music.

The Court reflects modern cultural trends most obviously when it invents new rights of the individual against the decisions of the political community, but it also does so in the expansion of rights expressed in the Constitution beyond anything the drafters and ratifiers could have intended. Radical individualism surfaced when the Court created a right of privacy, supposedly about the sanctity of the marital bedchamber, which soon explicitly became a right of individual autonomy unconnected to privacy. Four justices subsequently pronounced it a "moral fact that a person belongs to himself and not others nor to society as a whole"-a "fact" which means that a person has no obligations outside his own skin. The same tendency is seen in the Court's drive to privatize religion, as when a girl is held to have a First Amendment right not to have to sit at graduation through a short prayer because it might offend her sensibilities. The list could be extended almost indefinitely. The autonomy the Court requires, of course, is necessarily selective, almost invariably consisting of the freedoms preferred by modern liberalism.

The Court's commitment to egalitarianism is so strong that it overrode the explicit language and legislative history of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to allow preferences for blacks and women. The Court usually argued that the preferences were for prior discrimination, discrimination not against the individuals now benefited but against other members of their race or sex in the past. Even that requirement was dropped when the Court allowed preferences for minorities in the grant of station licenses by the Federal Communications Commission, despite the lack of any evidence that such grants had ever been tainted by discrimination. In these ways the Court reflects, and hence illegitimately legitimates, the thrusts of modern liberal culture.

To point the parallel: in a book appropriately titled The Triumph of Vulgarity, Robert Pattison points out that rock music celebrates the unconstrained self: "The extrovert, the madman, the criminal, the suicide, or the exhibitionist can rise to heroic stature in rock for the same reasons that Byron or Raskolnikov became romantic heroes-profligacy and murder are expressions of an emotional intensity that defies the limits imposed by nature and society." Rock culture teaches egalitarianism as well, not only in its frequent advocacy of revolution, but in its refusal to make distinctions about morality or aesthetics based upon any transcendent principle. There is no such principle, only sensation, energy, the pleasure of the moment, and the expansion of the self.

Vulgarity and obscenity are, of course, rife in popular culture. Rock is followed by rap; television situation comedies and magazine advertising increasingly rely on explicit sex; such cultural icons as Roseanne Barr and Michael Jackson can be seen on family-oriented television clutching their crotches. The prospect is for more and worse. Companies are now doing billions of dollars' worth of business in pornographic videos, and volume is increasing rapidly. They are acquiring inventories of the videos for cable television; and a nationwide chain of pornographic video and retail stores is in the works. One pay-per-view network operator says, "This thing is a freight train."

It is likely to become a rocket ship soon if, as George Gilder predicts, computers replace television, allowing viewers to call up digital films and files of news, art, and multimedia from around the world. He dismisses conservatives' fears that "the boob tube will give way to what H. L. Mencken might have termed a new Boobissimus, as the liberated children rush away from the network nurse, chasing Pied Piper pederasts, snuff-film sadists, and other trolls of cyberspace." Gilder concedes, "Under the sway of television, democratic capitalism enshrines a Gresham's law; bad culture drives out good, and ultimately porn and prurience, violence and blasphemy prevail everywhere from the dimwitted 'news' shows to the lugubrious movies." But he blames that on the nature of broadcast technology, which requires central control and reduces the audience to its lowest common denominator of tastes and responses.

But the computer will give everyone his own channel: "The creator of a program on a specialized subject-from Canaletto's art to chaos theory, from GM car transmission repair to cowboy poetry, from Szechuan restaurant finance to C++ computer codes-will be able to reach everyone in the industrialized world who shares the interest."

Perhaps. But there seems little reason to think there will not also be an enormous increase in obscene and violent programs. Many places already have fifty or more cable channels, including some very good educational channels, but there are still MTV's music videos, and the porn channels are coming on line. The more private viewing becomes, the more likely that salacious and perverted tastes will be indulged. That is suggested by the explosion of pornographic film titles and profits when videocassettes enabled customers to avoid going to "adult" theaters. Another boom should occur when those customers don't even have to ask for the cassettes in a store. The new technology, while it may bring the wonders Gilder predicts, will almost certainly make our culture more vulgar and violent.

The leader of the revolution in pornographic video, referred to admiringly by a competitor as the Ted Turner of the business, offers the usual defenses of decadence: "Adults have a right to see [pornography] if they want to. If it offends you, don't buy it." Modern liberalism employs the rhetoric of "rights" incessantly to delegitimize restraints on individuals by communities. It is a pernicious rhetoric because it asserts a right without giving reasons. If there is to be anything that can be called a community, the case for previously unrecognized individual freedoms must be thought through, and "rights" cannot win every time.

The second notion-"If it offends you, don't buy it"-is both lulling and destructive. Whether you buy it or not, you will be greatly affected by those who do. The aesthetic and moral environment in which you and your family live will be coarsened and brutalized. There are economists who confuse the idea that markets should be free with the idea that everything should be on the market. The first idea rests on the efficiency of the free market in satisfying wants; the second raises the question of which wants it is moral to satisfy. The latter question brings up the topic of externalities: you are free not to make steel, but you will be affected by the air pollution of those who do make it. To complaints about pornography and violence on television, libertarians reply, "All you have to do is hit the remote control and change channels." But, like the person who chooses not to make steel, you and your family will be affected by the people who do not change the channel. As Michael Medved puts it, "To say that if you don't like the popular culture then turn it off, is like saying, if you don't like the smog, stop breathing. . . . There are Amish kids in Pennsylvania who know about Madonna." And their parents can do nothing about that.

Can there be any doubt that as pornography and violence become increasingly popular and accessible entertainment, attitudes about marriage, fidelity, divorce, obligations to children, the use of force, and permissible public behavior and language will change, and with the change of attitudes will come changes in conduct, both public and private? The contrary view must assume that people are unaffected by what they see and hear. Advertisers bet billions the other way. Advocates of liberal arts education assure us those studies improve character; it is not very likely that only uplifting culture affects attitudes and behavior. "Don't buy it" and "Change the channel" are simply advice to accept a degenerating culture and its consequences.

Modern liberalism also presses our politics to the left because egalitarianism is hostile to the authorities and hierarchies-moral, religious, social, economic, and intellectual-that are characteristic of a bourgeois or traditional culture and a capitalist economy. Yet modern liberalism is not hostile to hierarchy as such. Egalitarianism requires hierarchy because equality of condition cannot be achieved or approximated without coercion. The coercers will be bureaucrats and politicians who will, and already do, form a new elite class. Political and governmental authority replace the authorities of family, church, profession, and business. The project is to sap the strength of these latter institutions so that individuals stand bare before the state, which, liberals assume with considerable justification, they will administer. We will be coerced into virtue, as modern liberals define virtue: a ruthlessly egalitarian society. This agenda is, of course, already well advanced.

Both diminished performance and personal injustice are accomplished through radically egalitarian measures. Quotas and affirmative action, for example, are common and increasing not only in the workplace but in university admissions, faculty hiring, and promotion. The excuse is past discrimination, but the result is that individuals who have never been discriminated against are preferred to individuals who have never discriminated, regardless of their respective achievements. Predictably, the result is anger on both sides and an increasingly polarized society. After years of struggle to emplace the principle of reward according to achievement, the achievement principle is being jettisoned for one of reward according to birth once more.

Remarkably little thought attends this process. The demand is always for more equality, but no egalitarian ever specifies how much equality will be enough. And so the leveling process grinds insensately on. The Wall Street Journal recently reprinted a Kurt Vonnegut story, which the paper retitled "It Seemed Like Fiction" because it was written "in 1961, before the passage of the Equal Pay Act (1963), the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (1967), the Equal Employment Opportunity Act (1972), the Rehabilitation Act (1973), the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), the Older Workers' Benefit Protection Act (1990), and the Civil Rights Act (1991)." At the time of reprinting, Congress was preparing hearings on "The Employment Nondiscrimination Act of 1994" and was considering additional amendments to the Civil Rights Act. Even before all this, Vonnegut saw the trend and envisioned the day when Americans would achieve perfect equality: persons of superior intelligence required to wear mental handicap radios that emit a sharp noise every twenty seconds to keep them from taking unfair advantage of their brains, persons of superior strength or grace burdened with weights, those of uncommon beauty forced to wear masks. Why not?

Modern liberalism is most particularly a disease of our cultural elites, the people who control the institutions that manufacture or disseminate ideas, attitudes, and symbols-universities, some churches, Hollywood, the national press (print and electronic), much of the congressional Democratic party and some of the congressional Republicans as well, large sections of the judiciary, foundation staffs, and almost all the "public interest" organizations that exercise a profound if largely unseen effect on public policy. So pervasive is the influence of those who occupy the commanding heights of our culture that it is not entirely accurate to call the United States a majoritarian democracy. The elites of modern liberalism do not win all the battles, but despite their relatively small numbers, they win more than their share and move the culture always in one direction.

This is not a conspiracy but a syndrome. These are people who view the world from a common perspective, a perspective to the left of the attitudes of the general public. Two explanations for this phenomenon have been advanced. Both seem accurate. One is a heretical version of Marxism, a theory of class warfare; the other might be called a heretical version of religion, a theory of the hunger for spirituality, for a meaning to life.

Joseph Schumpeter first articulated the idea that capitalism requires and hence produces a large intellectual class. The members of that class are not necessarily very good at intellectual work; they are merely people who work with or transmit ideas at wholesale or retail, the folks collectively referred to above as the New Class (also known as the "knowledge class," the "class of semiskilled intellectuals," or the "chattering class").

Why should the New Class be hostile to traditional or bourgeois society? The answer, according to the class warfare theory, is that capitalism bestows its favors, money, and prestige on the business class. The New Class, filled with resentment and envy, seeks to enhance its own power and prestige by attacking capitalism, its institutions, and its morality. It is necessary to attack from the left because America has never had an aristocratic ethos and because the weapons at hand are by their nature suited to the left. The ideas are held not for their merit but because they are weapons.

There is probably a good deal to this, but it seems not quite sufficient. For one thing, it does not account for the Hollywood left. These are folks with no need whatever to envy the CEO of General Motors his prestige or financial rewards. And no one, to my knowledge, has ever classified Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda, Ed Asner, and Norman Lear as intellectuals.

There is, however, an additional theory. Max Weber noted the predicament of intellectuals in a world from which "ultimate and sublime values" have been withdrawn: "The salvation sought by an intellectual is always based on inner need. . . . The intellectual seeks in various ways, the casuistry of which extends to infinity, to endow his life with a pervasive meaning." The subsidence of religion leaves a void that must be filled. Richard Grenier observes that among those intellectuals "most subject to longings for meaning, Max Weber listed, prophetically: university professors, clergymen, government officials . . . 'coupon clippers' . . . journalists, school teachers, 'wandering poets.'" By "coupon clippers," I take it, Weber meant the generations that inherit the wealth of the men who made it, which would explain why so many foundations created by wealthy conservatives become liberal when the children or grandchildren take over. And for "wandering poets," read the likes of Robert Redford and Warren Beatty. The epitome of Weber's university professors is John Rawls, whose egalitarian theory of justice swept the academy. Among other odd notions, Rawls laid it down that no inequalities are just unless they benefit the most disadvantaged members of society. There is, of course, no good reason for such a rule, and it is a prescription for permanent hostility to actual societies, and most particularly that of the United States, which can never operate in that fashion. No vital society could.

What we are seeing in modern liberalism is the ultimate triumph of the New Left of the 1960s-the New Left that collapsed as a unified political movement and splintered into a multitude of intense, single-issue groups. We now have, to name but a few, radical feminists, black extremists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, activist homosexual groups, multiculturalists, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many more. In a real sense, however, the New Left did not collapse. Each of its splinters pursues a leftist agenda, but there is no publicly announced overarching philosophy that enables people to see easily that the separate groups and causes add up to a general radical left philosophy. The groups support one another and come together easily on many issues. In that sense, the splintering of the New Left made it less visible and therefore more powerful, its goals more attainable, than ever before.

In their final stages, radical egalitarianism becomes tyranny and radical individualism descends into hedonism. These translate as bread and circuses. Government grows larger and more intrusive in order to direct the distribution of goods and services in an ever more equal fashion, while people are diverted, led to believe that their freedoms are increasing, by a great variety of entertainments featuring violence and sex. David Frum argues that the root of our trouble is big government, but the root of big government is the egalitarian passion, which intimidates even many conservatives. So long as that passion persists, government is likely only to get bigger and more intrusive.

We sometimes console ourselves with the thought that our current moral anarchy and statism are merely one phase of a pendulum's swing, that in time the pendulum will swing the other way. No doubt such movements and countermovements are often observable, but it is entirely possible that they are merely ephiphenomena that do not affect the larger movement of the culture. After each swing the bottom of the pendulum's arc is always further to the cultural and political left. Certainly, in the United States, we have never experienced a period of cultural depravity and governmental intrusiveness to rival today's condition.

The prospects look bleak, moreover, if we reflect on the sources of modern liberalism's components. The root of egalitarianism lies in envy and insecurity, which are in turn products of self-pity, arguably the most pervasive and powerful emotion known to mankind. The root of individualism lies in self-interest, not always expressed as a desire for money but also for power, celebrity, pleasures, and titillations of all varieties. Western civilization, of course, has been uniquely individualistic. Envy and self-interest often have socially beneficial results, but when fully unleashed, freed of constraints, their consequences are rot, decadence, and statism.

Because they arise out of fundamental human emotions, it is obvious that individualism and egalitarianism were not invented in the 1960s. They have been working inexorably through Western civilization for centuries, perhaps for millennia, but they have only recently overcome almost all obstacles to their full realization. These forces were beneficent for most of their careers; they produced the glories of our civilization and, freed of the restraints of the past, became malignant only in this century. We are delighted that the restraints that afflicted men in the classical world, in the Middle Ages, even in the last century and much of this have been weakened or removed. Our names for particular events and eras celebrate that movement: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, our own Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, the Civil Rights Movement. Though they had other complex effects, all involved the loosening of restraints: religious, legal, and moral. But any progression can at last go too far.

The constraints that made individualism and egalitarianism beneficial included economic necessity, which channeled individualism into productive work, and religion (with its corollaries of morality and law), which tempered self-interest and envy. It is only in this century, and particularly in the years since World War II, that Americans have known an affluence that frees many of us from absorption with making a living, and it is in that same period that the decline in religion, which began centuries ago, reached its low point. Religious belief remains strong but seems to have a diminishing effect on behavior. And only lately have we developed the technologies that not only make work easier but also make the opportunities for sensation almost boundless. We have always known that unfettered human nature does not present an attractive face, but it is that face that is coming into view as modern liberalism progresses. It is difficult to imagine the constraints that could now be put in place to do the work that economic necessity and religion once did.

If the drive of modern liberalism cannot be blunted and then reversed, we are also likely to see an increasingly inefficient economy. The hedonism of radical individualism is not consistent with the habits of work and saving that are essential to a vigorous economy. The quotas and affirmative action that are growing in our educational institutions and in our corporations, the dilution of the achievement principle, coupled with the government's determination to intervene in the economy through manifold regulations, mandates, and taxes, will place additional burdens on productivity. Despite all we have learned from watching other economies, perhaps we are fated to repeat the socialist mistakes and suffer the inevitable consequences.

This is a picture of a bleak landscape, and there are many who disagree. Optimists point out, for example, that American culture is complex and resilient, that it contains much that is good and healthy, that many families continue to raise children with strong moral values. All that is true. I have been describing trends, not the overall condition of the culture, but the trends have been running the wrong way, dramatically so in the past thirty years. It would be difficult to contend that, the end of racial segregation aside, American culture today is superior to, or even on a par with, the culture of the 1950s.

Others might argue that the elections of 1994 are an indication that a cultural swing is taking place, that Americans have rejected huge, regulation-happy government. That may be so, but I remember thinking the same thing in November 1980 when the electorate chose Ronald Reagan and defeated a clutch of the most liberal Senators. But little long-term improvement occurred. Government now regulates more than it did then. It was fifteen years between Reagan's first inauguration and the Republican domination of Congress. We will know that a sea change has happened if, fifteen years from now, government is smaller, less expensive, and less intrusive.

Modern liberalism, moreover, maintains its hold on the institutions that shape values and manipulate symbols. Hollywood and the network evening news will not change their ways because of Republican majorities. Political correctness and multiculturalism will not be ejected from the universities by Newt Gingrich. If the reaction of the left to Reagan's elections is any guide, modern liberalism will become more aggressive and intolerant. In any event, even a persistently conservative government can do little to deal with social deterioration other than stop subsidizing it through welfare, and it remains to be seen whether Republicans have the will to overcome the constituencies that want welfare. Moral decay is evident, moreover, among people who are not on welfare and never will be.

No one can be certain of the future, of course. Cultures in decline have, unpredictably, turned themselves around before. Perhaps ours will too. Perhaps, ultimately, we will become so sick of the moral and aesthetic environment that is growing in America that stricter standards will be imposed democratically or by moral disapproval. Perhaps we will reject a government that is controlling more and more of our lives. A hopeful sign is the degree to which modern liberalism and its works-political correctness, affirmative action, multiculturalism, and the like-is coming under intellectual attack, not merely from conservative but also from liberal intellectuals. If its intellectual and moral bankruptcy is repeatedly exposed, perhaps modern liberalism will die of shame.

But then again, perhaps not. Country singer and social philosopher Merle Haggard, whose perspective is like Irving Kristol's, says that the decade of the 1960s "was just the evening of it all. I think we're into the dead of night now." Chances are, that is too optimistic and the dead of night still lies ahead. For the immediate future, in any event, what we probably face is an increasingly vulgar, violent, chaotic, and politicized culture and, unless the conservative resurgence of 1994 is both long-lasting and effective, an increasingly incompetent, bureaucratic, and despotic government. Kristol refers to himself as a cheerful pessimist. If the argument here is even close to the mark, and if the counterattack falls short, we had all better start working on the cheerful part.

Copyright (c) 1995 First Things 54 (June/July 1995): 18-23.

Political Power and the Rule of Law

Political Power and the Rule of Law
by Ron Paul

With the elections over and the 110th Congress settling in, the media have been reporting ad nauseam about who has assumed new political power in Washington. We're subjected to breathless reports about emerging power brokers in Congress; how so-and-so is now the powerful chair of an important committee; how certain candidates are amassing power for the 2008 elections, and so on. Nobody questions this use of the word "power," or considers its connotations. It's simply assumed, in Washington and the mainstream media, that political power is proper and inevitable.

The problem is that politicians are not supposed to have power over us – we're supposed to be free. We seem to have forgotten that freedom means the absence of government coercion. So when politicians and the media celebrate political power, they really are celebrating the power of certain individuals to use coercive state force.

Remember that one's relationship with the state is never voluntary. Every government edict, policy, regulation, court decision, and law ultimately is backed up by force, in the form of police, guns, and jails. That is why political power must be fiercely constrained by the American people.
The desire for power over other human beings is not something to celebrate, but something to condemn! The 20th century's worst tyrants were political figures, men who fanatically sought power over others through the apparatus of the state. They wielded that power absolutely, without regard for the rule of law.

Our constitutional system, by contrast, was designed to restrain political power and place limits on the size and scope of government. It is this system, the rule of law, which we should celebrate – not political victories.

Political power is not like the power possessed by those who otherwise obtain fame and fortune. After all, even the wealthiest individual cannot force anyone to buy a particular good or service; even the most famous celebrities cannot force anyone to pay attention to them. It is only when elites become politically connected that they begin to impose their views on all of us.

In a free society, government is restrained – and therefore political power is less important. I believe the proper role for government in America is to provide national defense, a court system for civil disputes, a criminal justice system for acts of force and fraud, and little else. In other words, the state as referee rather than an active participant in our society.

Those who hold political power, however, would lose their status in a society with truly limited government. It simply would not matter much who occupied various political posts, since their ability to tax, spend, and regulate would be severely curtailed. This is why champions of political power promote an activist government that involves itself in every area of our lives from cradle to grave. They gain popular support by promising voters that government will take care of everyone, while the media shower them with praise for their bold vision.

Political power is inherently dangerous in a free society: it threatens the rule of law, and thus threatens our fundamental freedoms. Those who understand this should object whenever political power is glorified.

Why Democracy?

I wish to discuss a rather controversial topic.

Privilege and Power

The initial premise of democracy is that by expanding access to the governmental apparatus to everyone, wether that be through voting or through eligibility for holding political office, we will get rid of exploitation of men by men. The idea is that this will get rid of the special privileges in society, converting everyone into more or less a state of "equality under the law". This premise of democracy is practically universally accepted, especially in west. It is simply assumed that democracy is the best form of government.

But these premises are simply wrong. The only remotely good thing that democracy does as a system is get rid of the monarchal king. But this move in itself becomes meaningless and negated by the proceeding steps in the transformation towards democracy. Democracy may indeed get rid of the king, but it replaces the king with a plurality of rulers (which for all intents and purposes can now function as multiple kings). But think about what this actually does. We have gotten rid of the special privilege of the king, and replaced it with a special privilege to an even larger band of men.

Democracy does not get rid of privileged rulers. It replaces a system in which one person is at the top of the heirarchy with one in which multiple people are at the top of the heirarchy. Indeed, democracy does not get rid of heirarchy. A government (no matter what form), by its very nature, is heirarchal, and a government inherently creates a class division between itself and the populace. The political class is those who constitute the government and the individuals who ally with them for privileges (the tax-consumers), and the subject class is those who are ruled by the political class (the tax-payers). What democracy does is allow more people to become part of the political class, and hence it actually expands special privileges.

Voting and Representation

What, one may ask, about voting? Does voting not imply consent on the part of the population? It first must be established that the casting of a vote in itself need not be one of enthusiasm, but can be one of resignation or as a protective mechanism against encroachment by interests that the individual dislikes or opposes. Indeed, the only reason that I personally voted in the recent Ohio elections was as a protective mechanism against measures of the government that I thought would be harmful to my well-being as an individual and that of society. Further, the idea that voting necessarily implies any consent at all is questionable.

It also must be established that the mere act of voting is not truly binding on any politician. For all intents and purposes, a politician can run on a platform of X, and then do Y once in office (for example, see George W. Bush preaching about the virtues of non-intervention with foreign nations in the 90's and compare it to his actions in the present). One may counter that in four years or so they can get voted out of office, but (1) this is less likely than one may think due to the gullability of the voting populace (2) it does nothing to negate the damage already done in the time that the person does hold office and (3) it does nothing to truly legally prosecute politicians who break their oaths and contracts.

The demographic reality tells us that large chunks of many country's populations simply don't vote. It would follow that these people cannot be said to be "responsible" for things that came about as a result of voting that they did not take part in. One cannot reasonably argue that someone who has never cast a vote can truly be adequately represented. This rather large group of people, the non-voters, are technically pure subjects. But so are most of the people who do vote, because their votes do nothing but bind them. The non-voter is binded all the same, even without having voted, for they are still subject to whatever the government decides. The typical voter has simply been given the illusion that they are in a better position than the non-voter. This is not the case - both are subject to the government's decrees agaisnt their will all the same.

We are almost never dealing with true majorities in a democracy. We are dealing with "numerical majorities". The idea that, say, Texas is a "red state" is absurd in the sense that the actual statistics show us something very close to the following: say, 35% of the elible Texas population voted, and out of that 35% of the eligible Texas population 2% voted for 3rd parties, 15% voted for Democrats and 18% voted for Republicans.Thus, by literally considering Texas to be a "red state", we are projecting a rather small statistic (18% of eligible voters, which is probably less than 10% of the Texas population) into a generalization encompassing the entire population of the state. The real percentages get even smaller when we realize that our analysis is leaving out all the people who are not eligible to vote as well, which includes teenagers and perhaps some immigrants. But this demonstrates a vital point for us: "the majority" or "the state of texas" is not being "represented", but we are dealing with a small fraction of it's population.

What democracy functions to do is to dupe the population into believing that "we are the government", that they are on equal footing with the political class and indeed are one and the same. In a monarchy, the people are very aware of the separation between them and the government because it is made obvious to them. The government's exploitation is simply made less obvious in a democracy. In a democracy, this difference still exists, but it is blurred by the false idea that voting gaurantees representation and that "we are the government". It simply must be pointed out that the pure ideal of democracy, a situation in which each individual has complete equal say in government, is a utopian impossibility. It must be emphasized that the idea that "we are the government" functions as a way for rulers to "justify" themselves by providing a false cloak.

Majoritarianism

Another tenet of democracy that presents us with an inevitable ethical problem is the doctrine of the supremacy of the majority. As we have established, we rarely are dealing with real majorities. However, let's function under the premise that we are. How do numbers make anything legitimate? The ethically and logically consistant position would be that if it is wrong for an individual to do X (such as murder), then it is wrong for a group to do X. There is no situation in which it is moral for a group to do that which is immoral for an individual to do. If a group bands together and votes to enslave, plunder or murder a smaller group, the amount of people involved is entirely irrelevant. Adding more people to an activity does not increase its morality. Fifty people stealing from one person is not any better than one person stealing from fifty people from the perspective of pure right and wrong. Lastly, from the perspective of an individualist, the masses are pretty intellectually dull and easily driven by raw emotion. Why would we want to always rely on the lowest common denominator?

It must be realized that the doctrine of the supremacy of the majority is entirely contrary to the doctrine of preserving the rights of the individual and minority. It is inevitable that if the majority always rules, situations will arise in which the (usually numerical) majority bands together to violate the rights of a minority group or individual. There indeed are times when "the mob" wreaks havoc on individuals and minorities, and the ideal of pure democracy is a situation in which the mob always gets what they want. Thus, the role of the democratic politician is to make promises to appease the demands of the masses; to demagogue them. This is the democratic polician's method of gaining and keeping power.

The divine, mystical nature attributed to government power has always existed. In short, there has always been government propaganda designed to make the government seem legitimate in the eyes of the populace. In the earliest of times, the idea was that the ruler literally was a god (such as the Early Egyptian pharohs). When this had worn threadbare, it transformed into another idea: "the divine right of the king", I.E. the idea that the king was a quasi-divine figure chosen by god. This was watered down further with the addition of parlaiments. When the divine right idea had worn threadbare, we have been left ever since with a secular version of the same thing. The democratic doctrine for legitimizing the state simply cuts to the chase and assigns either the state itself with divine-like authority or puts forth the idea that "the people" or "the voters" or "the majority" are the divine justification.

Economics and Property

Insight into the economics of democracy has been expanded upon by professor Hans Herman Hoppe. What Hoppe has demonstrated is a wide difference in the incentive structures of democracy vs. monarchy. In a monarchy, the king has a natural incentive to preserve the value of his capital stock and tend to his property. In a democracy, the politician is only a temporary stewart with no real incentive to preserve the capital stock or property. If a democratic politician causes losses, they are not personally affected by it. If a king incurs such losses, they are personally affected by it and hence they have an incentive to avoid such losses.

Of course, a king can very well "loot the treasury", so to speak, but nowhere near to the extent that a democratic politician can. A king has an incentive to not loot the treasury too much because he is literally responsible for debt and losses. If he loots the treasury too much, he will pay for it personally. A democratic politician can loot the treasury as he pleases without being held personally responsible for paying off debt. The costs are simply passed onto to future generations and other politicians.

There is thus a vast difference in time-preferance as well between a monarchy and democracy. A democracy is present-oriented. It is all about appeasing the demands of the present (particularly by pandering to the masses) at the expense of the future. A monarchy is considerably more future-oriented, more prone to making sure that its short-term decisions do not cause effects that will be harmful in the future. A monarchy has an incentive to make sure that it doesn't diminish the source of its supply, lest the ruling class incur bad consequences directly as individuals. A democratic short-term steward is much more liberal in its diminishing of supply because they are not directly responsible for it.

As a consequence of the above, democracies will inherently have a higher tax burden, more inflation, more debt and more spending than a monarchy. Since the democratic politician is not personally affected by these things, they will be considerably prone to continue and expand them.

Conclusion

So, we have to conclude that democracy is not the best form of government, let alone a good one, and may very well be even worse than a monarchy in many respects. To find a truly superior form of government, we need to find ways to avoid the problems of both Democracy and Monarchy. This was once attempted by some wise men who formed a country called America. Their vision was never fully put into practise, and has been deteriorated by the vision of others since. It is the duty of not only Americans, but everyone, to pick up where they left off and expand on (and hence improve) their vision and put it into action.

The American Conservative: A response

Ever since the study of modern political behavior, it has become apparent the many contradictions that the American public holds regarding a vast arsenal of issues.

"The democratic citizen is expected to be well informed about political
affairs. He is supposed to know what the issues are, what their history
is, what the relevant facts are, what alternatives are proposed, what the
party stands for, what the likely consequences are. By such standards
the voter falls short."

An excerpt from the classic work "The American Voter" (by Campbell et. al 1960). What this tells us is that the American voter is neither informed nor does he understand the "relevant" facts. The modern American is a creature of simple ideas and slogans. He is a collective personality, and generally hails from working and middle class origins. He was educated publicly, which means that his grasp on past events is highly questionable and he lives within his time, unable to reference and compare conflicting historical theories. Yet, he has a "belief system" but it is mainly based on vague feelings of morality or a deontological structure (mainly based on a more professionally based ethical code). His biggest problem is largely a function of the level of information that he possesses; both simple facts and the “contextual knowledge” or essential relationships between those facts. Overall he depends on external influence when he makes choices, defaulting to the collective forces (popular culture, family, religion, social institutions, etc.).
My main point in this illustration was to show that conservative or liberal, most Americans show similar levels of both political expertise and sophistication. If we look at the problem in another way we may come to the conclusion that our society has reached a point of stability that mass participation is perhaps, unnecessary? The truth is that it never was. Our constitution was a document that’s purpose was to create an oligarchic minority, a “political class” if you will. Most of us are not part of that governing class and never will be. We choose to serve the state machine in other ways, either providing a service or manufacturing a product/ raw materials. Conservative or Liberal, the division of labor is what causes all these misanthropes between the political elite and the mass population.

Conservative voters and there counterparts essentially just fool themselves. There is very little difference anymore in the modern sense, between the two ideologies. Most of the political elites, running as conservatives are really just playing lip service to the tenets of paleo-conservatism. No true conservative would have approved of—I would go as far to say—85% of the commercial legislation that has been pushed through the legislator in the past 20 years. Moreover, a true Jeffersonian would not have approved of the entanglements of the conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan, South America, or any of the international bodies we have become part of in this past century.

I would say that the last true conservative in office is bygone since the dismantling of the Bretton-Woods system. Nixon who was put up as the demagogue of conservatism was essentially responsible for the end of what I would call classical money management. So the 1970s mark the end of the life span of true economic and social conservatism in the US.

RIP--

Modern American Conservative

You make statements such as "I support the president and everything he does" while simultanously characterizing your political opponents as favoring too much government. You sneer at the idea of giving handouts to secular institutions, immigrants and racial minorities while you simultanously encourage giving handouts to buisinesses, churches and agriculture. At the prospect of the government spying on its own citezens, you presume that your own innocence as an individual would stop government from abusing such powers. When people legally protest and express civil disobedience, your reaction is to call for the cops to smite them. You hold yourself up as a model of fiscal responsibility while rubber stamping large federal spending increases funded by borrowing and money supply increases (monetary inflation).

You think that those who question foreign intervention are "appeasers to the enemy". You sincerely believe that America faces the threat of being invaded and taken over by Muslim fanatics who want to force their way of life on us, so you decide that it is our moral obligation to invade them and take them over to force our way of life on them. You support the idea of using military force to speady democracy around the world, and simultanously you are enraged when democratic processes lead to questionable groups such as Hamas. You unquestioningly support the Israeli government and U.S. hegemony with it, and accuse anyone who doesn't of being an "isolationist" or "anti-semite". You think that men in green constumes shooting people half-way across the world is actually a defense of our freedom. You buy into the notion that sometimes we have to give up some of our freedom in order to protect our freedom.

You claim to support a strict construction of the constitution while argueing that the government has the legitimate authority to ignore sections of the constitution in the name of "law and order". You claim to stand for state's rights while supporting federal intervention with regaurd to abortion, sex, marriage, assisted suicide, drugs and religion. You think that America was founded as a Christian nation. You complain about political correctness in the media and larger culture while calling for bans and censorship on things that you do not like, and you believed Bill O'Rielly that there was a "War on Christmas". Your idea of a patriot is someone who unquestioningly supports executive authority when a Republican is in the White House. Ronald Reagan's "teflon charisma" made you squeal with extacy.You lecture people on the virtues of free enterprise while supporting extensive government contracting of buisiness, trade blockades with central/south American and Asian countries, subsidization of the farming industry, steel tariffs and "sin taxes". You complain about taxes while simultanously spending loads of tax dollars on guns and butter.

You seek to protect "traditional" institutions through the use of government force. In the attempt to preserve your "traditions", you have destroyed whatever value they may have originally had. You are a pessemist about the future and an unyielding optimist about the fleeting present moment. You are pessemist about the future because you think that either (1) we are doomed to a grim fate by the communist conspiracy or (2) we are doomed to a grim fate by the terrorist conspiracy or (3) we are doomed to a grim fate by the secular conspiracy. If you are a dispensationalist conservative, then you literally think that we are living in the end times. Since you assume that there is always a "conspiracy" of social change of some sort, this leads you to call for massive "wars" with such things in the present (even wars on inanimate objects such as terrorism, christmas, etc.), hence your short-term present-oriented optimism. When you are not declaring a war on something, you are holding yourself up as a victim of an imaginary war on yourself. You adopt an apriori assumption that social change is impossible, while simultanously calling for rigid reactionary resistance when social changes do occur in society. You think that anyone who disagrees with you must be either (1) a liberal or (2) a communist. You should have listened to the warnings of Murray Rothbard.

You are a modern American conservative. In your head, you imagine yourself to be a principled proponent of individual liberty, free market capitalism and meaningfully decentralized and limited government. You might even imagine yourself to be a Jeffersonian Republican in the classical meaning of the term. In actual fact, you are far from it. Even assuming that you started with those premises and principles, it would be quite apparent that you sacrificed them in the short-term attempt to save us from a bunch of boogeymen, both real and imagined (but mostly imagined). In the WWI era, the boogeymen was any non-democratic government. In the prohibition era, the boogeymen were the drinkers and speakeasy folk. In the cold war era, the boogeymen were the communists and hippies. Towards the end of this era, the boogeymen shifted to the terrorists and seculars. The boogeymen of immigrants has been ever-present, changing from the Irish to the Italians to the Mexicans. But this is only the beginning of your historical list of boogeymen.

The model of modern American conservatism (and modern American government in general, for that matter) is, in a sense, the exact inverse of the classical "liberal republican" model. It is the "conservative democrat" model in the classical sense of the term. A classical liberal republican supports a limited and decentralized republic and is naturally inclined towards opposing the old ruling classes. A conservative democrat supports a centralized democracy that cements the old ruling classes into power. This model is a democracy (which can be dictatorial in nature) that panders to people's socially conservative impulses and creates the effect of an imposed heirarchy. The model of the Jeffersonian liberal republican is practically the polar opposite of this. When one uses the original meanings of the terms, it becomes apparent that there is no republican party at all in the modern United states. There are two democratic ones run by a slightly different set of special interests. The idea that conservatives or the republican party are the more restrained of these two groups in terms of how much government interferance they will tolerate is simply an illusion.

The Troubling Worldview of the "Rapture-Ready" Christian

The Troubling Worldview of the 'Rapture-Ready' Christian
by Bill Barnwell

When the subject of the "end-times" comes up, many Christians and non-Christians don’t want to talk about it. Some Christians, annoyed with all the competing theories and terminology just say, "What difference does it make? Jesus is coming back and I just need to be ready." Non-Christians just assume that since Christianity isn’t true, then the whole issue doesn’t matter. Well, actually, it does matter. I will submit that the popular doctrines of the Left Behind series pose very real threats not only to Christianity, but also to the wider culture.

Probably most conservative Protestants (though not all of us) believe that humanity is certainly in the final generation of life on earth as we currently know it. Not that we "could be," but that "we must be." That’s a big distinction. They believe this because of their views on a couple key Biblical texts. The first is the Olivet Discourse. This discourse by Jesus about the "end of the age" can be found in Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21. Dispensationalists – a group that believes God has two separate prophetic programs for Israel and the Church and generally believes that Christians will be removed from the earth before a final tribulation – see all of the events or signs spoken of by Jesus as referring to events that are happening now or going to happen very soon. Never mind that Jesus was first and foremost referring to events that would occur within his own disciples’ lifetime (Matthew 24:34). They believe that nothing past chapter 3 in the book of Revelation has occurred yet. It is all in the future, and all relates to the tribulation period, which true Christians will avoid.

Another key text is Daniel 9:27. It is from this verse alone that we get the idea of a "seven-year tribulation" during the end times. But the New Testament says nothing about a seven-year tribulation. The book of Revelation refers to a 3.5–year period – five different times. They are most likely referring to the same time period. Dispensationalists believe by prophetic necessity a number of things. First, they assume that the world must get worse in just about all ways. Second, they assume that Daniel 9:27 calls for the rebuilding of a Third Jewish Temple at the site of the Dome of the Rock. Therefore, prophetic necessity demands that the current Islamic al-Aqsa mosque must be torn down to build this new Jewish Temple. Halfway through the tribulation period, the antichrist will come and exalt himself in the new Jewish Temple, stop sacrifices in the Temple, break a peace treaty he had earlier made with Israel, and proclaim himself to be God. They get all this from cutting and pasting Daniel 9:27, Matthew 24:15, 2 Thessalonians 2:4 together and then associating those passages with everything that will be going on in Revelation 4–19.

There are all sorts of problems with these interpretations. First of all, the New Testament says nothing about a "pretribulational rapture." To see how bankrupt that position is, read my offering on the subject here. The evidence for a "pre-trib" rapture is not just weak, it is non-existent. Regarding the key verse of Daniel 9:27, see my refutation of the dispensationalist position here. Read those, especially if you are a dispensationalist who already presupposes that I’m wrong.

Once you begin thinking of the implications involved, you begin to see why this doctrine is so dangerous to everybody. Dispensationalists seem to have a preoccupation with war. In fact, right now, dispensationalist mega-church pastor John Hagee is preaching that a war with Iran is not only the right thing to do, but is prophetically inevitable. Apparently, Bible prophecy demands a showdown with Iran. You see, if you aren’t on the side of war, then you aren’t on the side of God. Talk of peace now becomes irrelevant. It’s God’s will that we be militarists. In fairness, not all dispensationalists are militarists. Our own Laurence Vance is an example. But they are in a definite minority. The prevailing worldview of dispensationalism glorifies war, militarism, and the State.

The dispensationalist view of Daniel 9:27 provides some troubling implications as well. They don’t care that tearing down the al-Aqsa mosque would result in a regional war and cause all sorts of global distress. This would not be a bad thing in their minds. They believe that it was all foreordained and is a sign that the end of the world would be soon upon us.

Also, if you buy into these interpretations, talks of peace in the Middle East are futile. Jews and Muslims must continue killing each other at high rates. And who will be the one bringing peace to the Middle East in this popular end-time paradigm? Not Jesus, but the Antichrist. Therefore, talk of Middle East peace during this current "dispensation" is not from Jesus, but the Antichrist. When dispensationalists hear talk of peace summits or treaties in the Middle East, they assume it must have evil origins and be antichristic. If that’s the cause, why bother trying to make the world a better place? All we need to do is be good Christians and wait for our ticket out of this earth and make way for the Antichrist.

Dispensationalists are numerous and popular. Well-connected preachers like Hagee have political connections. Dispensational preachers and lobbyists have the ear of the White House and are directly trying to influence foreign policy based on their very questionable theological views, which, by the way, are less than 200 years old. This is more than just a quirky theology that doesn’t affect those who do not hold it. Dispensationalists want to bring about world events that would have catastrophic implications for other Christians and for non-Christians.

If they are correct, why should any of us bother trying to make the world a better place? Dispensationalists get very annoyed at this question. They say, "Final peace on earth will only come through Christ!" They basically insist Christians trying to do good in the world should only focus on "spiritual things." Trying to change social institutions for the better is futile and presumptuous. Apparently the only two options are handing the world over to Satan or believing that humans can do everything in their own strength. Not much room for nuance here.

Ironically, many dispensationalists are involved in the Religious Right movement and want to stem abortions, ban gay marriage and make America more Christian. But at the same time they believe in a theology that says the world can only get worse, that there’s nothing any of us can do about it, and that it’s about to get so bad Christians are going to be taken off of the earth. If the ship is irreversibly sinking, why try and patch up the leaks?

If you need more proof that many dispensationalists hold troubling worldviews, just take a visit over to the Rapture Ready message board. The main site is one of the bigger dispensationalist/pretribulational sites on the web. You can read for yourselves how they view the world, how they can’t wait to escape it, and their obsession with war.

One angry pre-tribber wrote me a few weeks back. He had this to say:

When the RAPTURE of the CHURCH takes place, and mark my words it will, maybe them you will see the light! After you have been left behind you are going to look back on all the people that you deceived, who will probably be in your face at that time, and hopefully repent of the false gospel that you were teaching! It's not to late to be saved during the 7 year tribulation period but it will be harder when you hear that Christians, who become Christians after the Rapture of the Church, are being beheaded for the witness of Jesus! Hopefully you and those who partake of your beliefs will see the light before Christ comes for the Church!

Notice in his mind I’m not even a real Christian. The reason? Because I happen to have a different position than he does on the issue of the "rapture." I’ll also apparently be too much of a coward to "convert" during the "7 year tribulation" because other people who become Christians after the pre-tribulational rapture are being beheaded. Ever notice with people who so strongly believe this doctrine that they assume everyone who will be "left behind" is going to be absolutely clueless? Maybe I too will just assume aliens came and abducted the "true Christians." Apparently I’d be too scared to be beheaded, even though I’d find myself instantly in heaven along with all the real Christians who were taken up in the rapture.

Finally notice the great confidence of this guy. He is so convinced of his position that only an idiot or heretic would disagree. Well, I challenge people like this, and the crew over at Rapture Ready to actually put their interpretations up against the Scriptures and think about the logic and implications of their beliefs.

The logic and implications are clear. Society is going to hades in a handbasket. There’s little we can do to stem the tide of evil. The Middle East must further deteriorate. Anyone who disagrees with Israel’s foreign policy is opposing God. The third most important site to Muslims must be crushed to make way for a new Jewish Temple. Good Christians should support the building of a new temple with new animal sacrifices taking place inside of it (compare Hebrews 10 to the theology of Darby and Hal Lindsey). And in a strange sense, war is kinda good and peace is kinda bad – since war is a sign that the end is near and peace on earth is a sign of the Antichrist. Any Christian who doesn’t agree with all this is deceived at best and a heretic at worst.

When you understand that millions of Christians believe this way, and that some of them are actually fairly influential on the political scene, you begin to see why this theology needs to be refuted. By refuting it, dispensationalists think you’re trying to refute God. I would argue that you’re being more faithful to God and the very Scriptures themselves. This is not just an in-house debate that only affects myself and other Christians. Dispensationalists have a vision for the world and it is bad news for everybody. Therefore, it would do you all good to spend some time in the Bible and see what exactly the Scriptures have to say on this subject.

Do We Exploit Cheap Immigrant Labor?

Do We Exploit Cheap Immigrant Labor?
By Ryan McMaken

Capitalists have never been very popular among anti-immigration activists. It is not at all uncommon to come across anti-immigration pundits like Lou Dobbs discussing the evils of "corporate America" and its efforts to "exploit cheap labor" at the expense of the American worker.

The use of such rhetoric is time-honored among the foes of free markets. To their enemies, business owners are not persons with rights, but are instead part of a faceless entity known as "corporate America." And their businesses do not hire people to perform productive work. Instead, they "exploit" cheap foreign labor.

Such charges are to be expected. Many within the anti-immigration movement, most famously Dobbs and Patrick Buchanan, tend to be fundamentally opposed to free markets and free trade. As a political movement, the anti-immigration lobby — whatever the merits of some of their particular arguments — largely depends on populist arguments holding up the American wage-earner as a victim of capitalist greed.

The capitalists, the argument goes, systematically victimize American workers through support of both free trade and open borders. The free trade robs American wage-earners of manufacturing jobs that move overseas, while the open borders bring in immigrants who steal the few remaining jobs from the native population.

While there are indeed free market opponents of large-scale immigration, the practical results of the anti-immigration movement have been anything but friendly to free markets. In fact, recent anti-immigration legislation has evolved into some of the most crippling and heavy-handed regulation ever placed upon American businessmen and women. The impact on individual freedoms and on the health of the marketplace continues to grow in the name of stopping immigrants at all costs.

This is not to say that immigration is an unmitigated blessing. There is much that should be changed about immigration policy in the United States. Immigrants, illegal and otherwise, should be denied access to welfare benefits of all types. This includes not just traditional "welfare" like TANF and Medicaid, but also public schooling, public higher education, public housing, and other taxpayer-supported amenities. Indeed, such policies should be extended to the entire population, but failing that (as is likely to be the case), immigrants would be a good place to start.

And secondly, birthright citizenship should be abolished immediately. Since, in the modern world, the extension of citizenship is essentially an extension of the welfare state, the numbers of people to whom such status can be extended must be greatly restricted. This would also greatly diminish the numbers of immigrants eligible to vote, thus cutting off the use of immigration as a political tool. Likewise, the amount of time one must reside in the United States before full citizenship is possible should be extended substantially.

These two types of policy changes would undoubtedly do much to reduce immigration without harassing private citizens or requiring surveillance of the general population. Yet, since many within the anti-immigration movement regard these policies as politically difficult or as undesirable in other ways, they immediately turn to immigration policies that crush the liberties of native citizens and add even more to the heavy burden of government regulation and compliance. The result nationwide has been new laws designed to punish private businessmen and women for doing business with people who are not government approved.

At federal, state, and local levels, governments have been targeting property owners and employers as part of a crackdown on illegal immigration. Central to this crackdown have been efforts to force employers and landlords to track the citizenship status of employees and tenants.

The state begins with a presumption of guilt (against all parties), and then stipulates that owners of rental properties will be made to perform detective work and enforce immigration laws at their own expense. They'll be required to spy on their residents and inform on them to government officials. Should landlords be found to be lacking in due diligence, they are liable for fines and other harassment from government authorities.

Like the landlords, employers will also be required to enforce laws at their own expense and to waste untold hours checking the validity of social security numbers (a government invention) and other documentation offered by prospective employees. Should government agents perceive a lack of enthusiasm in digging up dirt on employees, such employers will be subject to fines.

Government schemes to have people spy on neighbors, customers, and business associates are alarming for a variety of reasons, but recent efforts to make every employer and every landlord a spy for the state are particularly insidious in the way that they cripple business and drive a wedge between business owners, their customers, and their workers. While the relationships between apartment owners and residents should be one of mutual benefit between a service provider and his customer, government meddling has instead made that relationship one of distrust and suspicion.

The new bureaucratic regulations against businesses cropping up across the nation look simple enough. Businesses must follow the law or be fined. What this means in practical terms, though, is that employers and owners of rental properties will have to endure an even greater regulatory burden than they do now. Once again, peaceful, voluntary agreements between private individuals and their residents and employees have become the government's business. And, as usual, small businesses will be punished most since small property owners and small business owners often lack the capital and legal resources that large enterprises can access.
Last month, a group of landlords in Texas sued the local municipal government over a new law that mandates fines for landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. In an Atlanta suburb, new laws have been passed requiring that landlords provide immigration records on any and all residents to county officials on demand. Landlords who do not comply may have business licenses revoked and will be prohibited from collecting any rent from immigrants who cannot provide sufficient documentation to please government officials. Guilt is always assumed.

As with all regulations, these draconian measures will not only cut into the razor-thin profit margins already endured by most in the multifamily housing industry, but property owners will inevitably have to pass on at least some of the added cost in legal fees and staff time to residents. The end result will be less affordable housing for all residents, legal or illegal.

While the anti-immigration lobby is busy bringing higher rents to America's apartment dwellers, they are also hard at work raising the prices of a wide variety of other goods and services.
During the last harvesting season in Colorado, small farmers reported being unable to find sufficient labor to harvest crops, even at wages well above the minimum wage. The farmers, who are indeed heavily reliant on migrant labor, blame harsh new anti-immigration laws that "scare off" migrant workers, both legal and illegal. Their interpretation may or may not be totally accurate, but the new laws to which the farmers refer are notable for the alarmingly high fines imposed on employers for hiring non-government-approved labor (illegal aliens).

According to the new laws, the state may perform random audits and non-complying employers may be fined $5,000 for the first offense and $25,000 for each additional offense. As if such employers don't already waste enough time filling out mountains of paperwork for government agencies, employers will be on the hook for verifying all social security numbers submitted by potential employees. If an error is made, or if the employer's techniques are not sufficiently effective at uncovering fraud, the employer could find himself writing a check to the government for $25,000. The added cost in staff time, legal fees, and crop spoilage to farmers will be driving up the cost of food while making American farmers less competitive in the international marketplace.

The anti-immigration lobby would have us believe that legions of unemployed software engineers would love to pick strawberries for six dollars an hour. Yet, as experience has shown time and time again, reliable labor is actually quite difficult to come by. Finding employees who can pass drug tests and criminal background tests is a strenuous exercise in itself. Finding workers who are willing to work night and weekend shifts is still more difficult. Finding workers to bend over and pick fruit for hours in the hot sun is harrowing indeed. As one farmer noted with despair about the native local workforce: "I don't care if you paid $40 (an hour), they'd do it about three hours and say, 'That's not for me.'"

The farmer in this case is surely exaggerating, but those of us who have owned businesses know that a good man or woman is truly hard to find. If an employee is willing to show up, work hard, and not cause trouble, business owners have better things to do than spend hours playing gumshoe.

To justify their drive to prop up wages via immigration laws, the anti-immigration lobby often points to a variety of real crimes (such as murder, trespassing, and fraud) that may be committed by some engaged in the non-crime of working for pay. They then suggest massive regulation that does not target real criminals, but only ensures that no one can work without government permission.

Cracking down on peaceful activity because it may decrease undesirable activity is the philosophy of the prohibitionists: Drinking might cause bar fights and wife-beating. Therefore drinking must be outlawed. Or perhaps a person who buys a gun might shoot his wife or his neighbor at some future date. Therefore, gun purchases must be watched and controlled by the state.

Of course, the only actual crimes here are the actual crimes. A twenty-year-old purchasing a beer or an individual purchasing a gun is no more a crime than is a peaceful immigrant who contracts for work without government approval. Yet, the prohibitionists would have us believe that since someone who drinks or purchases a gun might commit a crime at some point in the future, liberty must be cast aside.

To illustrate further, we might note that the same arguments are now being applied to mortgage lending. Thanks to high national foreclosure rates, governments are cracking down on mortgage brokers who are allegedly making fraudulent loans. Fraud is certainly a real crime. Yet the response of most governments has not been to prosecute those who commit fraud. No, the response has been to create a host of new "crimes" such as working as a broker without a government license.

Since some real criminals might be found among immigrants, and some frauds might be found among mortgage brokers, the unfortunate response of some is to therefore advocate monitoring, licensing, and controlling everyone who wants to refinance a loan or pick a head of lettuce. As Kerry Howley has pointed out, many opponents of immigration want nothing less than a national database to provide control over who has government permission to work and when. The only moral solution, though, is to prosecute real criminals for real crimes (deport them if necessary) and to leave the rest of us alone.

Those within the anti-immigration lobby who support these endless controls and regulations on America's business class labor under the same faulty ideas that gave us Prohibition, the war on drugs, and an increasingly inhospitable business climate that directly produces the flight of capital that the populists think is a capitalist plot. It is no coincidence that many who oppose immigration also oppose free trade, support the war on drugs, and repeatedly suggest as remedies for every social ill more prisons, more regulations, more prosecutions, more fines, and more government.

As with Prohibition, gun control, and the war on drugs, this anti-business war against immigration will fail to achieve its stated goals. But it will certainly produce a much bigger government in the process.