A More Perfect Union

The problem with compulsory unionization is simple enough: it is incompatible with a commitment to equal rights.  Each of us has the right to form a union and bargain collectively; and each of us has the equal right to work union-free.  The Constitution does not select one over the other.  

The absurdity of the unionists’ demand for compulsory and collective workplace privilege becomes obvious when it is extended to any other third party:  Should only members of the KKK hold government jobs?  Should only Lutherans be permitted to teach your children? Should you be forced to join the NRA to keep your job and should your employer be forced to collect your membership dues?   Should we have a federal agency devoted to increasing membership in the Crips?    Should NOW membership be imposed in your workplace without a vote through Card Check?  Should your wages be confiscated to fund the political campaigns of Freemasons?

There is only one way to guarantee the equal protection of the Constitution for everyone in the workplace - Right To Work.    

In the 22 states that have already enacted RTW protections for their citizens, workers are free to join or not join a union as they see fit, and employers are not obligated to confiscate union dues from worker's pay.  Worker Choice is not merely an economic policy; it is a matter of fundamental liberty that requires no defense.  Humans must produce to live; the right to work is inseparable from the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.       

Opponents of Right To Work must defend the indefensible proposition that you do not have the right to work.  They must convince you that they have the right to prevent you from working; that they can force you to join their organization against your will, and dictate the terms of your employment. They must insist that they are entitled to force your employer to collect their dues without compensation for the service, and to discipline insurgent members on their behalf. 

They believe their right of coercion is superior to your right not to be coerced.  Where do they discover this right to coerce your fellow citizens?  Show it to me.  Is it found in the Constitution, the Bible, Koran, in the teachings of any prophet, or in the writings of any great philosopher?  No, it is not.

What is their objection to open-shop rules, where employees are free to bargain collectively or not in their work place?  If the union adds value, as it claims, employees will see this first hand and readily join.  If union labor is superior, as it claims, employers will gladly choose to employ more of it.  If unionism were in everyone’s best interest, as it claims, then everyone will choose it enthusiastically.

In fact, if unions would guarantee the quality, safety, and availability of their workforce, employers would have a powerful incentive to choose union labor exclusively.  The more perfect union is the one which individuals are free to choose, not forced to join.  If liberty offends, then let the unionists be offended.

But open-shop will never be acceptable to the unions, or their wholly owned subsidiary, the Democrat Party.  Voluntary unionism is rejected by unionists for the same reason Muslim fundamentalists reject voluntary marriage - both the unionist and the lousy husband know that they could never win affection in competition, so they force subjugation instead.  The suffering of others is of no concern to those lack empathy.  Mob rule makes perfect sense to the mob.  

Unions are acutely aware that their survival is completely dependent on State enforcement of their workplace monopoly.  And like any monopoly, decades of insulation from choice and competition has produced institutional pathologies that have corrupted unionism from a once-worthy cause into a destructive force in the workplace.  Where unions thrive, jobs die.

The deadly combination of unsustainable compensation growth and work-rule rigidity has destroyed whole industries in America - shipbuilding, textiles, appliances, furniture, electronics, steel, mining, automobiles, railroads, foundry, shoes, leather goods, airlines, and musical instruments come immediately to mind. Rejected by over 90% of workers in the private sector, unions have turned to organizing government and education – bankrupting the former and debasing the latter.   

By contrast, the most vibrant economic sector over the past three decades – the tech sector – is the least unionized, the least regulated, the least bound by licensure, the least impacted by government meddling, the least subsidized, the least protected and the least bound by traditional labor relations tenets.  This is no accident.

Prosperity is the gift of individual liberty, and bankruptcy is the reward for collective mediocrity; this is the lesson of economic history.  

While prosperity cannot be legislated, the conditions that bring it about most certainly can be.  Here in Wisconsin, the control of state government was taken away from liberal Democrats and given over to conservative Republicans this past November.  The liberty coalition that flipped this state did not do so to win a sporting contest for a political party.  We did so to change our economic trajectory and reaffirm our commitment to equal rights.   

Do the Republicans understand why they were given back the reins of government across the industrial heartland?  They can show us by enacting Right To Work – and not a moment too soon when they do.         

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”  

Who Owns You?

The libertarian philosophy can be condensed to its essence: we are all obligated to live honestly, without initiating force or fraud upon another human being.  And that is my Christmas wish for all who follow Dr. Tim’s Moment Of Clarity – an honest life free from force or fraud.  

The libertarian’s political ambition is to impose the smallest government footprint capable of enforcing this obligation upon all who operate within its domain.  Government, by its nature, is organized force; everything a government does is achieved through coercion.  Laws compel individuals to obey; failure to comply results in deprivation of economic liberty (fines, confiscation) or personal liberty (prison).  Fraud – falsifying, misleading, and materially misrepresenting for gain – is the modus operandi of the partisan politicians who control government and determine the purposes to which its force will be applied. 

The State is both the government (force) and the partisans (fraud) who control it. Libertarians view the State as the enemy of liberty; it is a verdict directed by history.  And we, quite proudly, are enemies of the State. Libertarians oppose any political philosophy, party, person, or initiative that seeks to expand the power of the State at the expense of individual liberty.  We stand with all who will defend individual rights, and we stand against any who seek to impose collective privilege.     

However, libertarians are not anarchists, and we recognize that a certain amount of liberty must be ceded to government to protect our remaining liberties from the aggression of others.  We do not advocate abolition of courts, defensive armed forces, law enforcement agencies, legislatures, and the whole of the bureaucracy; our non-negotiable demand is merely that they abide by the constraints of the Constitution from which their authority is derived.  We do not advocate lawlessness; we advocate less laws.

Economic liberty and personal liberty are two sides of the same coin.  You cannot pretend to give away the heads and keep the tails. Each dollar confiscated by the State is one dollar that you are not free to use according to your own conscience and beliefs.  It is one unit of your labor - your person – that has become the property of someone else.  You are not property.  You are not chattel to be looted by the State on behalf of a temporary electoral majority; you are a self-sovereign person, a child of God. 

Principled conservatives and libertarians are natural allies in matters of economic liberty – taxes, trade, fiscal discipline, monetary policy, property rights, regulation, employment, market independence, etc.  Principled liberals and libertarians are natural allies in matters of personal liberty – crime and punishment, lifestyle choices, equal rights, first amendment protections, religious tolerance, anti-discrimination, immigration, censorship, military conscription, and the like.

But socialists and libertarians have no mutual interests, and no principles to share; we are natural adversaries. Whether the socialists are right-wing or left-wing, or operate under the Democrat or Republican brands is immaterial. Libertarians do not accept the Statists’ partisan notion of “public good” that justifies any and all use of force to expand the State at the expense of individual liberty.  Collectivism is incompatible with full and equal personhood.   

Who owns you?  This is the fundamental question that libertarians challenge you to answer for yourself – the one that separates the collectivist from the individualist.

We believe that each of us completely owns our person, the fruits of our labors, and the consequences of our actions.  The libertarian notion of volition is the secular understanding of the religious concept of free will.  You and you alone are entitled to your life, liberty, and property; no one else on this earth has a superior claim on it, as it was gifted to you by a Higher Power.  You are not obligated to sacrifice yourself on demand of another.  Greed does not attach to those who refuse to be sacrificed; rather it is the defining characteristic of those who demand sacrifice from others.        

Libertarians are non-interventionists at home and abroad. We believe that undeclared wars are unjust, and that world government is unjustifiable. We believe that voluntary exchange – free market capitalism – is the only moral basis for economic transactions between equal and self-sovereign people.  Government is an at-will employee of its citizens - subordinate and contingent, and subject to nullification when it refuses to abide by its lawful constraints.

Our duty to each other is simply not to aggress; to live in peace and to respect the right of every other person to do the same.  But if force or fraud is perpetrated against us, it is our duty to defend ourselves and the inalienable rights which were endowed to us by our Creator.  Failing to do so would devalue the gift, dishonor the Giver, and disinherit generations to whom we owe the passing of liberty’s fullness.  Charity born of volition blesses the giver; conscription is the preening of a tyrant.    

Liberty is the absence of government in choice, government is the absence of liberty in choice, and tyranny is the absence of choice in government.  Once the unifying principles upon which this nation was founded, these tenets are now considered radical – that is how far down F.A. Hayek’s Road To Serfdom the socialists have marched us over the past century.  Radical it is, then.  We libertarians refuse to complete the journey; we choose to turn back and walk to the light of liberty, and we hope you will choose to follow.   

Merry Christmas from Dr. Tim.  Thanks for reading my posts, buying the book, and coming to hear me speak.  And thanks for everything you do to advance the cause of liberty.  Now enjoy the holidays with your families and friends and give all this political fussing a rest for a few days.  That’s what I’m going to do.  

    

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”  

Trainiacs

When I was nine years old and didn’t get the train I wanted for Christmas, I pouted for half a day.  Here in Wisconsin, it has been six weeks since the November election that killed high speed rail, and our trainiacs are still pouting. 

For the benefit of readers around the world, our former (and very unpopular) Governor skirted the law and bought some train cars over in Spain; then he fetched some federal stimulus money to run a high-speed rail line between our two biggest cities, Madison and Milwaukee, a distance of 72 miles.  The $850 million project became a central campaign issue in the gubernatorial race this year, and anti-train Republican candidate Scott Walker won.    

The politics of high speed rail is predictable: liberals and Democrats love public transportation, conservatives and Republicans don’t.  Libertarians never get past the “public” part to even get to the thing that other two are fussing about – transportation, housing, education, television, fill-in-the-blank.  In November, Wisconsin flipped from blue to red everywhere - Governor, Senator, both houses of the state legislature, and our D.C. Congressional delegation.  Hello Governor Walker, goodbye train.

And the trainiacs went berserk. Then Walker asked DOT to use the money that would have been spent on HSR to repair their crumbling roads and bridges in our state.  And the trainiacs went berserk. When the Obama administration said no, the anti-trainiacs went berserk.  The feds said they would build the train here whether Wisconsin wanted it or not, and the anti-trainiacs went berserk.  The Berserk bowl was all tied up at 2 goals each.  Walker said no, actually, you won’t, and the trainiacs went berserk.  Obama took back the stimulus money from Wisconsin and gave it to California, and trainiacs went into a permanent state of berserkitude. Some day, when a Wisconsin bridge collapses on top of a bus full of special needs children, I would like all my liberal and trainiac friends to remember who killed those kids.  

But the inconsolable and still berserk trainiacs are not thinking about special needs children right now.  I feel for them; I was crushed too when I didn’t get my train for Christmas.  But if it’s any consolation, here is the proof that this rail project was a horrible idea: California jumped at it. Kind of like worrying if you did the right thing breaking up with your hot-but-possibly-crazy girlfriend until you read that she is now living with Charlie Sheen. We dodged a bullet not marrying high speed rail; let Charlie have her. 

The real issue was never the train; we all like trains, especially fast ones.  It was – and is - all about who pays to ride it.  The proposed fare for a one-way ticket was $32; but that is only what the rider would pay.  The non-riding taxpayer would pick up the other $68 of the $100 actual cost per trip. High speed rail is the literal incarnation of the metaphorical free ride - the fraud upon which modern liberalism is based. The more obvious fraud of this HSR project is the “high speed” part; our train was going to trundle along at only 57 mph.  

But “who pays” should be the start and the end of the legitimate debate over Wisconsin’s HSR. If a Milwaukee lawyer wants to read Investor’s Business Daily and drink a Chivas on his way to lobby Madison lawmakers for a tax loophole on behalf of a client, fine; but why should a waitress in Woodruff be forced to buy his ticket?  Should we also stick her with 2/3 of his cab fare to get from the train station to the lobby of the hotel where he will drop off the campaign cash and grab a room for the afternoon?  Why not make her pay for all of his rides?      

Train mania began in the 1960’s and 70’s when American hippies traveled around Europe to find themselves – and girls and dope – and discovered the EuroRail Pass with its flat-fee unlimited ridership. For the past 40 years, trainiacs and pandering politicians have been pushing high-speed and light rail projects in the U.S. and for 40 years they all come up a cropper, as they just did in Wisconsin. The emergency stop cord always gets yanked at the ballot box – thankfully, there are more waitresses who don’t want to pay someone else’s fare than there are lawyers who think the world owes them a free ride.  My libertarian solution for Wisconsin’s pouting trainiacs is to buck up and build the blasted thing themselves.   

1,004,257 Wisconsinites voted against Mr. Walker and his promise to cancel the HSR project.  If each of them would invest just $847 in The People’s Train they could have the object of their desire - at least that is what the DOT said the thing would cost to build.  Entrepreneurs invest their whole life savings into the things they care passionately about, so it is not unreasonable to ask trainiacs to come up with $847.

And they would not just have a train; they would own the train.  They can run it however they see fit.  They can set their own fares – progressive fares based on income, one would hope.  They can add solar panels and windmills, pour ethanol and bio-fuel into the diesel tanks, install fluorescent dairy queen bulbs everywhere, and get rid of that nasty carbon-emitting air-conditioning and heating of the cabins. 

They can make everyone go through the security porno scanner and feel you up before you get on their train.  Hope and Change, Grope and Trains, whatever.  They could pay those sky-high corporate tax rates they like so much, donate profits to NPR instead of receiving dividends, and hire all the nation’s unemployed railroad workers whether they need them or not.  They can ban smoking, e-smoking, talking about smoking, thinking about smoking, texting, guns, raw milk, happy meals, SUV’s, weber grills, home-grown foods, facebook, and Rush Limbaugh on their trains.   

They can set racial quotas and diversity-train (no pun intended) people for hours a day; they can make their employees join not just one union but two or three, each of which pays all of their insurance and gives them a fabulous pension after 10 years of working.  Hell, let’s make the riders join a union, too; and make them all wear helmets while we are at it. Install airbags in every seat and a video screen with Janet Napolitano begging you to snitch on fellow passengers over and over again for the whole duration of the trip – especially the folks with Ron Paul stickers or a Gadsden flag hat.    

And when the project cost comes in $200-400 million higher than DOT said it would (which is what independent estimates predict), the owners would naturally have to pick up that tab.  And owners pay for the tens of millions in operating losses each year that the train will generate at its predicted 25% occupancy.  And owners would settle the lawsuits over disturbing the pond scum near the tracks if someone finds an endangered beetle in it.  And owners pay for the work comp claims, unemployment claims, fees and licenses, discrimination claims, and all the slip-n-trip lawsuits, like when our drunken lawyer friend passes out and clunks his head. And when the EPA doubles energy costs, owners can eat it instead of passing it on to their customers like the bad capitalists’ corporations do.  And owners can sell their $847 shares of People’s Rail Incorporated any time at market price, which would be zero within a few minutes of its creation.  Owners can lose everything.  

So, what do you say, trainiacs?   Doesn’t this sound like a fabulous investment opportunity to you?  Wouldn’t you gladly pay $847 to own it, thousands more each year to operate it, and $200 for each round trip fare when you ride it, watching the $35 fare buses and $12 of gasoline cars go speeding by you on the interstate, and watching your investment go up in smoke?        

I didn’t think so. And neither would the taxpayers of Wisconsin; that is why you aren’t getting your train for Christmas.  So quit pouting and enjoy the holidays.

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.” 

Math Whiz

This week we learned that American teens have fallen to the #24 rank in national math proficiency; or maybe it was #25, counting that high is, like, way hard. The good news here is that our shortage of math whizzes assures us an ample supply of potential Fed Chairmen and Senators from Massachusetts.

Appearing on NBC Meet The Press recently to argue for raising taxes and extending unemployment benefits, Sen. John Kerry explained that every dollar spent on unemployment benefits generated $1.60 of economic growth.  I thought maybe he misspoke, but he said it twice more. And he said it with a straight face, as certain about his economic calculations as the day he proposed to the Ketchup lady. 

Have you ever heard anything less believable from a grown-up person who is not drunk and begging an ex-spouse to take them back?  Where does that other 60¢ come from, your Heinz-ness?   Do we put our unemployment dollar under the pillow and wait for the Tooth Fairy to apply her Keynesian multiplier?  Do you deliver it to us personally in your tax-evading, registered-in-Connecticut yacht?  Humiliation enough that you lost to George W. Bush; you don’t need to keep reminding us why.

Try Kerry’s whacky economic theory out for yourself at the Wal-Mart - buy something priced at $1.59 and give the clerk a one-dollar bill.  When she gives you that are-you-high-or-just-slow look, just tell her it’s ok, this dollar is special – it came from unemployment. When she asks where on earth you got such a stupid idea, point to that new Big Sis Janet Napolitano video and say, “her guy said so; and hey - why are you being so suspicious about economics, anyway?  You some kind of jee-had?  Manager! Manager!”  That should knock the boring off a Saturday night.

Senator Kerry was on a roll last Sunday; he went on to further enlighten us that if we keep our money, that same dollar will only generate 30¢ of economic growth; that’s why they have to tax it, you see. Really?  And where, pray tell, does the other 70¢ go off to?  Does it evaporate? Spontaneous combustion?  And does this mean they have to give us 70¢ change now at the Dollar Store?  Because I use my own money there.  And answer me this, Senator: how come when the Fed turns a dollar into 30¢ you call it Quantitative Easing, but if we do it somehow by keeping what we earned (humor me, people) you call it greed?    

According to Senator Kerry, if we increase taxes and we extend unemployment benefits, then we will be $1.30 to the good, collecting both the 60 and the 70 cents. Obama, Pelosi, Klugman, Reid, and the whole socialist cast of DC’s Dancing With The Dolts think this way.  By the way, Senator Kerry is not just any Senator; he is Chairman of the Senate Small Business Committee, which explains why small businesses keep getting kicked in the groin every time a bill passes in Washington.

Where the 60¢ came from and where the 70¢ went to would both have been really good questions for MTP host David Gregory to ask; but he just sat there panting and wagging his tail and waiting for a Greenie. I would have asked Mr. Kerry the more obvious question: “Isn’t hard to drive with your head up there?”  Wouldn’t you just love to guest host one of those Sunday shows for an episode?  Republican or Democrat, I don’t care, just send over one of those blow-dried peacocks and let me sweat ‘em for an hour strapped to a polygraph.  Emmy.   

And where was the senior Senator from Massachusetts all the while that loopy deficit commission was sucking up our tax dollars on $40 Waldorf salads at the Ritz? Who knew it could be this easy: just pay $10 trillion in unemployment benefits and that Kerry multiplier magically creates another $6 trillion to pay down the debt. What the hell, let’s go $20 trillion and be debt-free for Christmas; nobody works and we all have plenty of time to enjoy the holidays with our families.    

And that, apparently, is no problem, because our other resident math whiz, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, assured us that same Sunday evening on CBS 60 Minutes that it does not inflate the money supply when he adds $600 billion to it out of thin air.  Really?  Hot damn – then just print up $32 trillion more, buy $20 trillion of T-bills so Kerry can pay us all not to work, and then use the other $12 trillion (the 1.60 force multiplier) to pay off the national debt.  Kerry and Bernanke on the same Sunday – thank God neither of them was scoring the Packer game we would never know who won.  Probably Manchester United.    

I had the good fortune not long ago to spend a couple of days with Dr. Arthur Laffer, the internationally acclaimed economist, and one of the smartest people I have ever met. I asked him his opinion of the Keynesian multiplier theory (like Kerry’s $1.60). He replied that it is arithmetic, not economics.  Now there is an insight that explains a lot.  

Senator Kerry made his money the old fashioned way; he married it, in the person of heiress Teresa Heinz.  Unfortunately, the supply of rich widows and widowers of pre-maturely deceased capitalists is limited, as is the number of “heiress” positions available, so nearly all of those 15 year-olds who just tested so poorly in math, reading, and science are going to have to survive on their own poorly educated wits while competing head-on against the gonzo-capitalist math-monsters from Shanghai. 

They like President Obama in Shanghai, because, as one student explained to me recently, “his policies are good for China”.  She was the same girl who wished she could live in America, where “you can become rich because you are free”.  Our kids aren’t learning that, either, which makes them less likely to be either rich or free.  Pity.

Is there a better poster boy for liberal hypocrisy than Senator Kerry? According to Wikipedia, the Kerrys’ combined net worth is estimated to be $1.2 billion.  They own 5 homes valued at more than $5 million each. Senator Kerry moors his yacht in Connecticut to avoid paying Massachusetts taxes on it. And according to their most recently released income tax data, the Kerrys’ paid an effective federal income tax rate of only 12%. Isn’t that precious – 12 whole percentage points.  

These are the people who think you don’t pay enough taxes.  These are the people who call you greedy for wanting keeping your top marginal rate at 35%, while they pay 12%.  They call you unpatriotic for wanting to pass your estate on to your children, while they live large off of tax-sheltered family trusts for generations.  Trusts that have been replenished by the trillions of dollars Ben Bernanke and the Fed continue to pump into their too-connected-to-fail member banks.  They don’t mind raising tax rates, because they have no intention of ever paying them.

I’m no math whiz either, but I can count to two, and the second word is “off”.  Here’s my idea for a compromise on tax rates this year: nobody gets a tax increase until every single one of these a-hole Congressmen and Senators actually pays the top marginal rate they piss-and-moan about incessantly.   

January can’t come too soon.  

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”  

Quit Suffering

A bright young man noticed my Libertarian Party lapel pin and posed this gotcha question to impress his friends: “so what is your answer to current suffering?”  My response: “quit suffering”.   His friend’s analysis of the exchange: “schooled”.

“Schooled” may be a bit harsh, but “quit suffering” was certainly not the answer that the first fellow expected.  The modern-day debate about poverty has always revolved around what the government should do about it.  Government spending on poverty programs is the liberal’s unit of measure for public morality.  But the truth of the matter is that there is very little the government can do about poverty, except create more of the stuff with bone-headed monetary and fiscal policies.    

Fortunately we live in America, where most poverty is avoidable. If we graduate from high school, don’t do drugs, don’t do crime, get married and stay married, have children (after we are married), and get a job, 99.4% of us will avoid chronic poverty on our own, without any government assistance.  That is what the Census Bureau’s poverty statistics tell us.   

However, if we drop out of high school, we are 3 times as likely to be poor than if we graduate.  If we are unmarried with kids, we are 4 times as likely to be poor than if we are married with kids. If we are unemployed, we are 10 times as likely to be poor than if we work.  The unemployment rate for felons is over 70%, and it is 100% for burned-out drug zombies.  

Which is not to say that you don’t have an absolute right to quit school, have kids out of wedlock, get divorced, quit your job, blow your mind, or commit a victimless “crime”.  You do, you do, you most certainly do.  You just have no right to pass the consequences of your own actions off to your neighbors. And we are not obligated to pick up your tab.  Freedom is a Dutch Treat lifestyle. 

People don’t do all those things because they are poor; people are poor because they do all those things.  In the main, poverty is a choice.  Ok, rich liberals, feel free to go berserk now if it will make you feel better about yourselves. But this isn’t about you; it is about helping people actually get out of poverty.  There is no reason for able people to be “trapped” in perpetual poverty, as some basic math will illustrate:

According to the Labor Department, the poverty threshold for a family of four (two adults, two children) is $21,756. If mom and dad work even minimum wage jobs, household income will be $30,160 or 138% of the poverty threshold. And dad can work another part time job (I’m old fashioned that way), raising the family income to $37,700 at minimum wage.  Get OJT, take continuing education courses, get promoted, and wages will increase in proportion to the value added - at just $10/hr family income is $52,000 when both parents work a combined 2.5 jobs.    

Don’t tell me it can’t be done.  I did it. And I did it because it sucked to be poor, not because a liberal cared about me.  Millions of Americans fall down and get back up again each year without waiting for the government to fix our problems at someone else’s expense.  Poverty statistics show that up until 2008, most poverty was episodic – i.e. lasting a couple months – typically caused by a job loss, domestic breakup, catastrophic medical event, or similar visitation of bad times.       

Yes, it is hard work to quit suffering; and so what - life is hard for everybody.  Two income families are the norm nowadays.  Millions of small business owners would love to only work 60 hours. Most people have worked two or three jobs when we had to, and went back to school so we would not have to do that forever.  Many of us work at jobs we don’t like. Staying married is hard work, too, and so is taking a pass on the bong so we can pass our drug tests. Intemperance is a lot easier and a whole lot more fun than restraint, but restraint is what keeps us out of jail, on the job, and out of poverty.

The young man should have asked himself: what is the government’s answer to current suffering? Answer: more suffering.  Five decades and a few trillion dollars into the war on poverty, poverty is winning; the current poverty rate is higher than when we gave the socialists their head in 1965. As long as there are government poverty programs, there will be sufficient numbers of poor people to justify them; recipients are a necessary ingredient of the welfare state.   

This week’s tax compromise extends “temporary” unemployment insurance benefits out to three years.  Three years!  In any of the five previous recessions going back to 1970, the median length of unemployment did not reach three months.  When State unemployment insurance premiums go through the roof next year, it will be fun to watch the President try to figure out whose butt to kick. 

Government does not own the franchise on morality.  Politicians do not help poor people when they blame their plight on others. Government schools create poverty by leaving students unprepared for the world of work and unacquainted with free markets.  Welfare encourages chronic poverty, except for the government workers it overpays to fill out useless forms for each other to file. Our drug laws create legions of felons unnecessarily.  A century of collectivist social engineering has decimated the nuclear family and desecrated the ideal of self-reliance. The government’s track record is deplorable - the more it spends, the more it harms.    

It doesn’t take a village to raise a child; it takes a mom and a dad and a church of your choice.  The anecdote for poverty is liberty, not government; liberty is the absence of government in choice.  Poverty is not overcome by social consciousness; it is only defeated by individual responsibility.  Our young people need to learn that poverty is avoidable and need to be taught how to avoid it:  graduate, get a job, get married and stay married, have kids, don’t do drugs, don’t do crimes, and don’t look to government to solve your problems.   

Quit suffering.  It is a choice, not a life sentence.

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website http://www.timnerenz.com/ to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”

Conspiracy Theory

What a disappointment.  Nearly half a million top-secret stolen messages released by WikiLeaks this year and not one smoking gun for the Bindenburg, Illuminati, NWO, Tri-lateral commission, CFR, 9/11 truth, birth certificate, or freemason theorists.

With no disrespect to those who hold to such views, I’m sticking with my original conspiracy theory - government incompetence. The ineptitude, arrogance, and ideological zealotry of the political class are sufficient to explain nearly every insult and injury visited upon mankind by any government entity.  The fools who are running us amok are plainly visible, so let’s not make this harder than it has to be.

Private actors would have no need for secrecy or collusion to defeat a framework of order and control constructed by idiots – witness the damage George Soros has done on his own - and if the documents just released by WikiLeaks reveal nothing else, they remind us that world leaders are, for the most part, nimrods.

Conspiracy theorists have always had two fundamental problems with their assertion that the world is run by secret societies – the secret part, and the society part.  Here is my problem with the “secret” part: we can name them. And even open-minded skeptics like me find it inconceivable that operations of the size and scope of, say, an inside-job 9/11 could be kept secret for over a decade when hundreds of thousands of people would have to be involved logistically to pull it off.  That would be hundreds of thousands of low-paid government workers who hate George W. Bush and would be instantly rich and famous if they spilled the beans.  I just can’t get there.

What did we just witness this week?  The world’s most secure and most secret communications – diplomatic cables – were stolen by a private-first-class and published by a broke Austrian nerd on the lamb.  And the Illuminati could not stop these two?  This little Assange fellow would give a kidney to publish the smoking gun for a 9/11 false flag operation, yet not one email, not one cable, not one dollar of hush money, not one private-first-class or one rent-a-jihad turns up in his motherlode of post-Bush gossip-mongering.  Nothing - just like WMD in Iraq.  

“Might have” is not “did”. Questions are not answers, and the WikiLeaks dump provided no answers – not to 9/11, or Kenyan birth certificates, or any other subject of amped-up speculation that is so tempting to accept, if for no other reason that to provide an alternative to the unsatisfying explanation that crazy stuff happens.   

But let’s recall that a sitting President was nearly brought down because just two people – one whose Presidency depended on it, and the other whose life depended on it – could not keep a secret of the most intimate sort. A ruthless global cabal capable of collapsing the world’s financial system could not manage to snuff out one chubby intern?  Was there kryptonite in those knee pads?  Some EMI jammers in the thong that foiled the black helicopters and ninja assassins’ GPS?  The living Monica proves Vince Foster’s suicide, as much as I would like to doubt it.

And here is the problem with the “society” part: megalomaniacs do not play nice with the other children.  WikiLeaks confirms.  With all the troubles in the world, Hillary Clinton is radar-locked on digging dirt on her colleagues; ordering career diplomats to dumpster-dive and get credit card numbers to see if some U.N. Ambassador from whatsit-stan is buying toys from Adam and Eve.

She wants to know if Evo Morales likes her, what medicine Argentina’s President is taking for anxiety, whether Karzai uses Grecian formula, who’s got girlfriends, and who has boyfriends.  What is this – the eighth grade? Supposedly, these folks are on the same team – infiltrators inserted by the puppet masters, recall - and yet their only team accomplishment is mutual trash-talk behind each others’ backs.  

If this is diplomacy – the second to last resort - it is no wonder that we keep stumbling headlong into the last resort – war. While the latest pile of poo dumped into the ether by WikiLeaks provides no evidence of any New World Order, it adds a mountain of new evidence that the incompetent political class - the Old World Order – remains firmly entrenched from Buenos Aires to Beijing, from Mumbai to Moscow.       

Personally, I am conflicted about the whole WikiLeaks phenomenon – in a world where diplomats can not speak in confidence, guns will do the talking.  On the other hand, we will never know how much we are being lied to if we take the liars’ word for it.   The hero or villain of the WkiLeaks disclosures, depending on your point of view, is a self-promoting jerk and sport rapist; even Oliver Stone won’t make us like this guy when the inevitable movie comes out.  Whatever you think of the whole deal, I wouldn’t argue; this sort of ambivalence is thankfully rare.    

In the end, I have concluded WikiLeaks is just clutter, enough low-grade ammo to get both the neo-cons and takes-a-village socialists all sweaty playing gotcha for the next few weeks on Fox and NPR, respectively.  Did you learn anything you didn’t already know or suspect?  Me neither.  Politicians scheme and lie; no Pulitzer there.

And while we were diverted by the big yawn, BernankeLeaks fessed up to giving $9 trillion to his bankster buddies, and GeithnerLeaks let on that he will back the Euro-doof’s bond bailout with our tax dollars.  Thankfully, someone already invented the word that fits between “un” and “believable” or we would have to come up with one now under duress.  Back to my point; there is no need to theorize complex hidden conspiracies when the d-bags are screwing us out in the open and right before our very eyes.      

So my libertarian told-you-so takeaway from Cable-Gate is this: Don’t let these people run anything.   

When the founding fathers warned against interventions abroad, this is exactly the kind of trouble they meant for us to avoid.  We are now up to our necks in military, political, and financial relationships we can’t manage, can’t control, and can’t afford. We are now joined into complex alliances with bastards we wouldn’t let anywhere near our children.  WikiLeaks confirms that the leaders of the “international community” could pass for the cast of Celebrity Rehab – a bunch of seriously messed up narcissists whose long-range goal is the next minute of attention they crave.   

Don’t give it to them.  Don’t give them war.  Don’t give them diplomacy.  Don’t give them climate change.  Don’t give them trade.  Don’t give them health care.  Don’t give them the currency.  Don’t give them the food supply.  Don’t give them the energy supply.  Don’t give them your job. Don’t give them your money.  Don’t give them your guns.  Don’t give them your Constitution.  Don’t give them anything important to do.

They can’t handle it.  They just got their asses handed to them by a guy named Julian…with a notebook computer…from Sweden.  Fail.    

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website http://www.timnerenz.com/ to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”