Ordo ab Chao

Well I guess it’s been two years since we organized the Republican Liberty Caucus here in Utah. After the Republican primaries in 2008 I lost interest in the Republican party for a while (since they didn’t really have a Presidential candidate that I could support). But here we are again. Political season is getting into full swing and we are having another RLC convention.

This year I think there are a few Senate candidates that I can support (Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater both seem palatable, though I prefer Lee.) I think that situation will help people stay more interested in the RLC-Utah, and the organization will hopefully see some gains in support. Who knows… now that I’m done with school I may decide to be more involved myself, possibly even volunteer for an RLC position.

…Mike Lee for the Utah Senate race in 2010, that is.

Principled. I believe that Mike Lee will make principled decisions as a Senator. I think that our nation has been led into a horrible situation, primarily by people doing what they thought was right, or by doing what they thought was necessary. I don’t believe that Mike will be guided by these unprincipled concepts, but will let his decisions be guided by what the Constitution says and means. I trust that a representative who follows the Constitution (as the Founders understood it, not as it is misinterpreted by the three branches of our government today) will make correct decisions for me and my life. For the most part, this will lead them to decisions where they stay out of my life, providing only those minimal functions that government can actually accomplish where (arguably) individuals may not be able to.

New Blood. I believe that Washington has a profoundly corrupting influence on almost anyone who works there. Utah’s current Senators have been under this influence for many years, and have been changed by it. I’m sure they don’t think so, but I believe that if you examine their voting records, campaign contributions, and whom they spend their time with, it becomes apparent. Mike has enough experience with Washington (clerking for Judge Alito) to be somewhat prepared, but not so much experience that he has been corrupted. I think that having a representative who is recently from among the general Utah population is vital to them understanding and representing our needs and desires.

Hope. This is a buzzword from recent elections, but I don’t use it in quite the same sense. I think that Mike Lee believes that he can make changes in Washington. I don’t know for sure whether it is possible to change much, at least in the short term. But I need to have a representative who believes he can make a change so that he will try. Representatives who have been in the Washington scene for a long time have a tendency to have bought into the system. They talk about changing things tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. I believe that Mike will try to change things now.

One of the most important developments in the history of political thought is the idea called the “rule of law.” Essentially what this means is that the law applies to everyone, and that the law rules in place of any individual whim. When applied to Constitutional systems, the rule of law also implies that the Constitutional law rules all. It is more important than individual wishes, majority wishes, or even other laws. I think that Mike Lee is the ONLY candidate running in the Utah Republican Senate race who understands this and believes it. In my mind that makes him the only candidate worth voting for.

Tomorrow I will attend the Utah County Republican Convention as a Precinct Vice-Chair and County Delegate. This year there has been a lot of e-mails flying around about the State House race between Craig Frank (incumbent) and John Glen Stevens. I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails with personal statements of support for Stevens, and I wanted to respond publicly with my reasons for supporting Frank. These are my opinions and impressions of Craig Frank, and have not been approved or examined by him, although I hope he would not object.

Craig believes in small government. This is such a critical issue to me, and I know Craig really gets it. Craig doesn’t believe in government giving handouts or incentives to companies for good behavior. The free market does a great job of that already and it should be allowed to operate without the corrupting influence of government. I don’t want my government involved in my business. I especially don’t want my state government involved in my city business! Craig doesn’t think that the state government should get involved in the city or county government. If they ask for help, through lobbying or personal requests, I know Craig is happy to help, but he’s not the kind who wants to use his State Legislator influence to try to change things on the local level.

Craig is very available to constituents. I have seen some complaints in the aforementioned e-mails that Craig didn’t come and visit this or that city official. My experience has been exactly the opposite. Craig has gone out of his way to speak to me when I wanted it; he has answered every e-mail I have sent him quickly and helpfully; he has proactively communicated the things he is working on at the state level. I would guess that anyone who thinks Craig is less than accessible hasn’t really tried to contact him.

Craig has a proven record of making the right choices and the correct votes. I can’t say that I know and agree with every single vote choice that Craig has made, because I honestly don’t know every vote or every issue well enough to judge. I CAN say that on every major issue that I have been interested in, Craig votes the right way. He has demonstrated through actions his conservative values and beliefs, and I trust that he will continue to do so. I’m not willing to vote for someone who says he will vote the right way over someone who has proven that he will vote the right way.

I read something interesting today on the LewRockwell.com blog that I thought I would comment on. It was a brief listing of various types of conservatives that found both entertaining and enlightening. I will list and describe them here (my own description, not necessarily what was intended by the original author). I would be interested to hear of any new types of conservatives that people can think of.

Libertarians. These are the so-called small-”l” libertarians. They believe that there is a role in society for government, but that it should be limited to functions explicitly given to it by the Constitution or by some other concept of the social contract. They believe in small government that limits each individual’s rights only when they start to conflict with another’s rights. Think Ron Paul for a good example.

Neo-cons. Everybody has heard of these guys, they are the guys to claim to want smaller government while pushing to enlarge it at every turn. They want preemptive wars with other countries, military bases around the world, government surveillance powers such as those granted by the PATRIOT Act, etc. Think Dick Cheney on this one.

Theo-cons. This is the one that I found to be pretty entertaining because of the clever name. These are the conservatives who believe in a smaller government which is used to enforce their own religious beliefs on others. They believe in small government, but still want to outlaw any recreational drug use, pornography, gambling, equal homosexual rights, etc. I’m not entirely sure whom I should choose as a poster-boy for this one… maybe Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee?

Now I feel that I should point out that these groups rarely self-identify what they actually believe. The neo-cons and theo-cons are far more likely to claim to be small-government people who believe in limited government power. But they seem to believe that it is “necessary” for the government to do more because of all the bad stuff out there (drugs, porn, Iraqis, terrorists, lazy people, etc.). The libertarians, on the other hand, don’t like to use that word because it’s the name of a political party that they don’t want to be associated with.

I would welcome your thoughts on other classifications here. Please try to make them at least as entertaining as “theo-cons”, just to help brighten my day.

Today I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in National Slavery Day (or the day taxes are due for the unawakened). I submitted my taxes electronically and said a prayer of thanks for free enterprise companies like Turbo Tax who make the process palatable. (Although I do realize that if the tax code were simple, or even non-existent, then there would be no need for such companies.) Unfortunately, I still had to go to the Post Office today to mail a different bill.

Once upon a time I could walk into my Post Office and commune with a vending machine that would happily take my money and spit me out a stamp. Apparently all this efficiency wasn’t good for the USPS and they decided to remove said machine. So today I got to wait in line for 45 minutes to buy a single stamp (I never buy more than one because I usually only mail something once a year). The line was backed out the front door, and yet there were only two employees working at the desk.

Any normal company would be forced to recognize (by simple economic facts) that they need to improve efficiencies, cut costs, and make their customers happy. The USPS is not a normal company! They have the luxury of being able to obtain subsidization from the Federal Government to make up for their incompetency.

This is a perfect example of what happens when the government provides assistance to a company with the excuse that the company is too important to be allowed to fail. The end result is that resources (manpower, property, money, etc.) remain invested in a very inefficient way, preventing those resources from being used to their fullest potential. If the USPS were allowed to fail, they would either improve their business practices so they wouldn’t fail, or they would fail and the resources would be reallocated to something more useful. If there were still a need for the USPS functionality, it would be met by another company or through other means.

So I was just driving back home from getting some lunch and the Hannity show happened to be on the radio. He was talking to a “liberal” about the health care reform issues. The caller was pointing out that the U.S. ranks #38 in the world in life expectancy. (According to the CIA World Factbook 2009, the U.S. actually ranks #50 in the world for life expectancy at birth.) The caller was trying to make the point that maybe our health care system isn’t that great.

Hannity’s response was that the numbers were skewed by the fact that the U.S. has so many soldiers dying around the world to protect the freedom of all those other countries (and ourselves). So it got me thinking about the numbers on the way home, and when I got back I decided to do a little math.

According to the CIA Factbook the 2009 population of the U.S. is 307,212,123. The life expectancy at birth is 78.11. So if you take away 10,000 of that population and replace them with 10,000 people who die at age 19, guess what the average life expectancy becomes… that’s right. 78.11. Exactly the same.

The reality is that we would have to have around 325,000 of our soldiers die at age 19 in order to move our placement at 50th into 51st (behind Albania). So what can we learn from this lesson… Hannity is FULL OF S**T.

Note that this exercise doesn’t say anything about the health care reform. Hannity’s lack of math skills don’t imply that we need a public option, single payer, etc. I think that there are small, much less costly ways to improve our health care system, and we should explore those LONG before we create another Medicare to bankrupt us.

I would imagine that anyone who reads my blog is probably already aware of some of the controversy surrounding the Federal Reserve Bank. But just in case, I wanted to make a quick post and encourage everyone to look into H.R. 1207 “Audit the Federal Reserve Bank”. Give your representative a call today and encourage them to support this resolution or thank them for their support. (Almost 100 representatives have already co-sponsored this resolution.)

The Federal Bank is basically in charge of massive portions of our financial system. They control the money supply, borrow money from other countries, lend money to financial institutions, etc. And the truly scary part about this is that NOBODY OVERSEES WHAT THEY DO. They report whatever numbers they feel like, and in recent years have stopped publishing data about the money supply. Even the Congress does not hold them accountable or exercise any oversight on their actions.

The problem is, that the Constitution gives CONGRESS many these financial powers: “to borrow money on the credit of the United States . . . to coin money, regulate the value thereof.” These are powers, than even when exercised, should NOT be turned over to a third party with complete autonomy. Congress has the responsibility to make sure that these powers are used correctly and responsibly, and WE should hold THEM accountable to do so.

This semester in school, I have been taking a course titled “Foundations of American Constitutionalism.” It has been a brutal course simply because of the amount of work required, but it has also been one of the best courses I have ever taken. I have learned more about the Constitution, and the thousands of years of change that let to its creation, than I was aware even existed.

Last night we had our last lecture, and as I was leaving class I was thinking about everything we had covered. I started thinking about another student who I know is an active member of a certain political party and appears to support anything they do. Which party isn’t important since what I was wondering applies equally to both.

Does somebody who studies the Constitution and what the Founders thought was good and right ever question their own modern beliefs and party actions? If you’re a good little party Democrat, do you ever stop and realize that the Founders didn’t think government should be limited to protecting the basic natural rights such as life, liberty and property. If you’re a good little Republican, do you ever stop and think that the Founders would be disgusted by all we do in the name of “national security” today?

Or do you somehow compartmentalize so that you can simultaneously believe two things that are completely incompatible? Have we come to the point where George Orwell’s 1984 is true? Are many modern American’s so adept at “doublethink”?

Although I chose not to put a little red sticker on my chest, I indeed voted today on the way to work. There was only about a half-hour wait to get to the front of the line, and the electronic voting machine seemed to work fine. (I double checked every item on the paper ballot against the selections I made electronically.)

Ah, but who did I vote for, you ask? Well I’m sure you faithful readers will all know that I cast a vote for Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate for President. I also voted Libertarian for a few state positions (excepting governor) where the party had a candidate. I voted for Jim Noorlander for the congressional seat. For most of the rest of the seats, I voted “NO CONFIDENCE” as there was no candidate that I felt could represent me. I don’t think that Utah will allow that vote to even be counted, but who knows?

So this past weekend I read Bastiat’s “The Law,” which I thought was a most excellent, well-reasoned, and well-written (or maybe well-translated) piece of work. There was a lot of ground covered in the work, much which I am still digesting, but there was one section that really struck me as particularly interesting.

Bastiat points out a vital contradiction in the doctrine of democracy, particularly in how it is practiced in a representative democracy. One of the key assumptions of such a system of government is that the people MUST be ruled. They cannot be trusted to govern themselves, but rather require someone over them to create rules and laws that will help the people reach their potential.

But in direct contradiction to that idea, when it is time for the people to vote, they speak with perfect authority. They are incapable to making a mistake, and whomever they select to lead them has a clear mandate from a rational people who are perfectly capable of making such a selection.

Ah, but now that the election is over the people have apparently lost this wonderful ability to make decisions. They must once again return to their natural place as sheep following their virtuous leaders who will force them to greatness.

Which is it? Can individuals make correct choices, or can they not? If not, perhaps we should return to monarchy, theocracy, or some other form of (hopefully) benevolent leadership. If we can, in fact, make good decisions, perhaps we should do away with our current form of government, or at the very least reduce in vastly in scope.

We could do so if the law were kept in it’s proper place, which is really what Bastiat’s work is about. I will leave further discussion of that full topic until later. But if you have any inclination, I highly recommend reading “The Law.” It is a quick read and offers some enlightenment to the dedicated seeker.