The race for Jon Kyl’s US Senate seat in Arizona just got a lot more interesting when Richard Carmona, the Democrat candidate, staged an event in front of a statue of Senator Barry Goldwater and touted the endorsements of two members of Senator Goldwater’s family, daughter Joanne Goldwater and granddaughter “CC” Goldwater. Mr Carmona’s nose must have been growing when he attempted to paint himself as “Mr Goldwater” because Carmona is running against Jeff Flake, one of the most conservative members of Congress and a former Executive Director of the Goldwater Institute.
Senator Goldwater is fortunate to have had many relatives but, unfortunately, only a few of them shared the senator’s strong limited government philosophy. (His son Barry Goldwater Jr is one who does and he is supporting Republican Jeff Flake.) Some of the senator’s relatives, such as Joanne and CC, supported his more libertarian views, such as those on abortion and gay marriage, but those positions represent a very small part of Senator Goldwater’s overall views. The majority of Senator Goldwater’s views are the ones held by Republican Jeff Flake, not his Democrat opponent.
As one of the original founders of the Goldwater Institute I can attest to the difficulty of keeping track of the various opinions of Goldwater family members. The differences in some cases were extreme. When Senator Goldwater died his widow actually tried to take the Goldwater name away from the Goldwater Institute because of her views which differed greatly from the understanding that I and the other founders had regarding where the senator stood.
I believe Senator Goldwater was essentially a libertarian, but not just on the two social issues mentioned above. He believed in limiting government powers across the board. So does the Goldwater Institute.
Governments have only one legitimate function and that is to protect individual liberty. And if governments restricted their activities to this role no one would care about national sovereignty. If you owned a piece of property why would you care which government protected your property rights? Would there be a dispute if the country next to you said they wanted to protect your property rights? If you entered into a contract would you care who assisted you in enforcing the contract? Similarly, would you care which government protected you against theft or protected your life. No
The only time that citizens care about which government is exercising its authority is when those governments are exceeding their proper role and exercising authority that they should not have, such as to steal from you (even if it is via the ballot box and even if they sanitize the theft by calling it taxation), or regulating your peaceful activities, or forcibly redistributing your wealth. When government engages in these activities we all must be concerned and involved and fight to make sure that government doesn’t steal too much from us and that, if it does, we get a large portion of the stolen property back in form of payments and benefits.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where the majority of what government does falls into the second category, stealing our money, regulating our behavior, and redistributing our wealth. Imagine a world where governments only performed their proper role; nothing to kill or die for. It’s easy if you try.
Congressman Jeff Flake has recently been taking flak over a comment he made at a political event. Flake confessed that he thought the drafters of the constitution might have been right to provide for selection of US Senators by the individual state legislatures rather than by popular elections. He is, of course, absolutely correct. Our founding founders knew this was one key way of maintaining our federal system and respecting the power of the states. However, in our politically correct world of today, where populism rules, any action that appears to take away someone’s vote is to be scorned and ridiculed. Pundits should take a course in the constitution and rethink this criticism. Flake deserves no flak over this.
How should people get stuff? Some of us can still remember times when the way to get stuff was to work for it. Now it seems that the way to get stuff is to vote for it. This is basically the difference between the way of production and the way of theft. Isn’t it amazing that so many people increasingly seem to accept the second approach?
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been heard criticizing the selection of Sarah Palin as the Vice President to run with John McCain. But I would contend that a much bigger mistake was the selection of Mr Cheney to run as George Bush’s Vice President. It was Mr Cheney who, along with his friends Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, brought us the neo-con philosophical approach to foreign policy. This was essentially the idea that we could police the world. This philosophy fomented several disastrous decisions, the worst of which was the decision to invade Iraq, a decision which resulted in the loss of thousands of American soldiers, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, and hundreds of billions of dollars of wasted American assets.
If only Mr Bush could have selected a more reasonable person to run as Vice President, I believe this terrible carnage could have been avoided. Is it possible that Sarah Palin could have done this much damage? I doubt it.
Retired Army General Stanley McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan who was relieved from that command by President Obama, is now calling for reinstitution of the military draft. I would suggest that General McChrystal’s record demonstrates that he is not someone we should look to for guidance on this issue or on any policy matter having to do with the military. Besides being relieved of his command for insubordination, General McChrystal was also the person who was most complicit in the cover-up of the friendly fire killing of Corporal Pat Tillman. General McChrystal was so eager to cover up this killing and to maintain the value of Corporal Tillman as a recruiting hero, that McChrystal approved the award of a Silver Star, one of our nation’s highest military decorations, just to make it look like Tillman was killed in heroic action by enemy fire.
A senior military officer who is willing to commit such acts of dishonor does not deserve our respect.
We frequently hear and see the term “developing countries.” It is the politically correct term for countries that used to be called third world or fourth world countries. For the most part, I contend that the term “developing countries” is actually being applied to those countries that are not developing. This is done to encourage “developed countries” to help them. But the reason that some countries are not developing is that they are mostly socialist or totalitarian, that is, they lack essential ingredients for long term development, such as the rule of law, protection of private property rights, protection of contracts, protection of individual rights, and free markets.
In the mainstream media today there is a kind of warm and fuzzy notion about what constitutes “developing countries.” We have visions of hard working people who are headed in the right direction but simply need more in the way of help from the developed countries, such as loans, foreign aid, Peace Corps volunteers, etc. It is instructive to remember that the United States did not prosper because it had foreign aid or international welfare from the “more developed” countries. Neither will any other country prosper in the long run with this strategy. The United States prospered because it had freedom.
Why is this so difficult to see? If we have learned anything from history it is that freedom works and big government doesn’t. One need only compare North Korea and South Korea, East Germany and West Germany, Cuba and Florida, plus countless other examples, for evidence of this historical fact.
In spite of this historical lesson there are only a few places in the world where the people are restraining the growth of government through such ideas as privatization and lower taxes. And, for every one of these positive examples, there is a Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or a Vladimir Putin in Russia taking the opposite approach by increasing the size and scope of government.
For developing countries to become developed countries they simply need a large dose of liberty. The United States should show them the way. We were once a wonderful example to the rest of the world of how freedom works but, as we have allowed our government to grow at home and to build an empire abroad, we have lost the moral high ground. We need to get it back.
Penn State Coach Sandusky’s conviction on child molestation charges is certainly a relief to the families of those involved but it reflects only a small part of the tragedy of this incident. The much more serious issue is how this could have gone on for so many years and involved so many children. One must conclude that there were many people who knew of Sandusky’s misdeeds or had serious suspicions but did nothing. The one’s who did know something covered for him by lying about it instead of confronting him or reporting him to authorities.
Nearly every misdeed involves lying, either at the beginning by the perpetrator or afterwards in the cover-up by those who were aware of the misdeeds. There should be a serious analysis of the climate surrounding Sandusky and especially why these people did nothing to expose him.
In his ”Essay on Man” Alexander Pope said “Vice is a monster of such frightful mien that to be hated, needs but to be seen, yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
Here is one suggestion: A strictly enforced honor code at Penn State might help end the “embrace” that Mr Pope refers to and prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.
In a recent editorial, Corporation Commissioner Paul Newman echoes the nauseatingly typical cry for a “bipartisan effort” with respect to subsidies for solar. For those who do not spend their lives in political activities, you need to know that those who call for a “bipartisan effort” always do so in the name of more government spending or some new government program. Neanderthal conservatives like me are admonished to get in line and authorize more spending of other people’s money. In Newman’s case he is decrying the reduction in spending for the solar rebate program.
Solar subsidies are one of the biggest boondoggles in government today. The waste of taxpayer money is never ending. In my Air Force career we used to say that you could make anything fly, including a brick, if you gave it enough thrust. Similarly, you can make any product “viable” with enough government subsidies.
Liberals like Newman think that they are smarter than the market and smarter than any consumer or any business owner and that taxpayer money (actually ratepayer money, but it’s the same thing in a government granted monopoly power company) should be used to encourage solar development because Newman and his liberal friends know it is better for us, even if the free market continues to signal us that it is more expensive.
Thankfully, a couple of the corporation commissioners have seen through this boondoggle and decided that there, at least, must be some limit. Commissioners should extend this logic and abolish all the subsidies and let market forces decide which type of fuel is used to produce electric power. Saving the taxpayers money really is a worthy bipartisan goal.
One way to solve our persistent unemployment problem is not difficult to see. Government must stop destroying jobs. As can be seen from this video http://ij.org/licensetoworkvideo the Institute for Justice did a study of restrictions on people who simply want to work and, unfortunately, Arizona is the worst state on the list. How can this be in the state of Barry Goldwater and, supposedly, one of the most pro-business legislatures ever? This will tarnish us as a state that supposedly favors free enterprise and the right to start a business.
Let’s fix it.
roymilleraz 