Chris Benoit and Paris Hilton, oh and Liberty Too

Two celebrity stories now playing themselves out in the news have brought me to the keyboard to deliver a little libertarian commentary.
As a wrestling mark (as true pro wrestling fans call themselves) I’ve been following the tragic demise of the legendary pro wrestling champion Chris Benoit. As anybody who’s turned on TV in the last few days knows Benoit went berserk and killed his wife and son before taking his own life.
There has been speculation that illegal or quasi legal steroids - which virtually all professional athletes use to enhance their muscles - may have induced a condition called Roid Rage in the Canadian Crippler. If this is true (and it’s just media hyped speculation at this point) then Benoit just might have been the victim of drug prohibition.
Benoit, being a working stiff with a wife and kid to support, needed Steroids to do his job (pro wrestling) but he couldn’t buy them legally so he had to go to the black market or the gray market. The purveyors of black market steroids are under no obligation to make sure their product is safe, they can’t be sued. Nor do black market steroid dealers have any commitment to quality, or any interest in improving their product. Why should they? They can peddle fifth rate crap cooked up by some quack for hundreds of dollars an ounce.
Now imagine if steroids had been legal and a pharmacist could sell them to you without worrying about the DEA/FDA gestapo? Benoit could have bought his steroids at his local Wal-Mart while he picked up his cat food and toilet paper. Wal-Mart being afraid of being sued would insist on quality steroids that are undoctored and free of side effects.
If steroids were legal scientists and pharmaceutical companies would have an incentive to improve them. To develop a steroid that increased muscle mass without causing roid rage, but since steroids are banned nobody has an incentive to improve them. I might also add that if steroids were legal legitimate doctors would prescribe them instead of questionable quacks, and Benoit might have gone to a real doctor who might have prescribed him steroids in a safe way.
Of course we’ll never know but there’s a strong possibility that Christ Benoit was the victim of drug prohibition. One of thousands but one who’s name we know.
The other celebrity in the news is Paris Hilton (okay she’s always in the news, I have to wonder is she a mutant who has the publicity gene?) The poor little rich jail recently finished a jail sentence, she served twenty one days in the LA County lockup for being rich and famous nothing else. Had she been a secretary or struggling actress driving home drunk she would have been sent home after paying a fine.
Wealthy Democrats like Warren Buffett will point to Paris Hilton as a reason for inheritance taxes. Taxing the income of people who inherit wealth because they might waste it on something frivolous. But what I wonder is so bad about Paris Hilton? She isn’t that rich and she doesn’t hurt anybody but herself and maybe her little dog.
This isn’t to say there aren’t destructive rich people spending the family fortune in harmful ways I can think of several horrible examples: George W. Bush, his brother Jeb, Ted Kennedy and his late brothers, John Kerry, Al Gore, Dan Quayle, Franklin Roosevelt and a dozen others. Spoiled brats who never having worked for a living, have decided upon careers in public service. Public service being spending the tax money of those who really work for a living on their pet projects while voting themselves and their buddies all sorts of tax breaks.
The kind of people who vote to inflict the Transportation Security Administration on the average airline passenger knowing that they’ll never have to surrender their tooth paste or submit to a strip search from some perverted high school drop out who got kicked out of the Army because they have private jets to fly on. Note to terrorists want to duplicate Sept. 11, forget commercial airlines either charter a plane or just round up Abdul, Akmed and the boys buy some Saturday night specials and rent a SUV then use it to crash into a private airport and swipe some millionaire’s private jet.
This means that Paris Hilton is fairly harmless until she realizes how much money she can make in that politics racket and uses daddy’s money to buy her way in...

Guns

Okay I’m a libertarian (libertarian with a small l I believe in limited government and personal freedom) and I don’t own any guns why?
Why well basically, I don’t believe that possession of firearms by private citizens enhances or ensures our freedom in any way, shape or form. Libertarian mythology (and yes there is such a thing) has it that the ownership of hunting rifles, pistols and other popguns by the general public scares politicians and bureaucrats so much it ensures our freedom.
How does putting a pistol, a revolver, an automatic rifle or a shotgun in the hands of private citizens threaten a government that has tanks, helicopter gunships, heavy artillery, fighter planes and nuclear weapons in its arsenal? Ask David Koresh and Randy Weaver how their guns protected their freedoms? David Koresh can’t answer you he’s dead and Randy Weaver well he’s still alive but his wife is dead, it seems their guns did them absolutely no good when Uncle Sam came after them with all of his agents, guns and armored vehicles.
The idea is that politicians will behave themselves if they think Joe Sixpack is packing heat and might be gunning for them. Can you name a single legislator or President who changed his mind on anything because he or she was afraid of an armed citizenry? Okay here’s a little test for you gun owners take your gun to Washington and try to take it into the Capitol or the White House and draw it on the President or any Congressman or Senator and see how long you can live before the Secret Service or the Capitol Police blow you away?
The truth is the average American is about as likely to get near his or her leaders as the average Russian was about to get near Stalin. Even if you could walk up to one of our leaders with a gun chances are you’d get killed by the bodyguards long before you could get away. Even if you killed the leader there’d be another politician to take that politician’s place and little would change. Lyndon Johnson takes John F. Kennedy’s place did that really change anything? Lee Harvey Oswald of course didn’t live to see it. Note the security around the White House and the Capitol shows us how much faith our political leaders have in gun control if they believed it worked they wouldn’t have a secret service. Also ask gun control believers this, why is there so much security around the Queen and the Prime Minister in Britain (which has the strictest gun control laws on Earth)?
Then there’s the argument well the Nazis and Communists had gun control so they were afraid of guns? Can you tell me that the average Party Member in Stalin’s Russia wasn’t packing heat? My guess is that the vast majority of Communists and Nazis carried loaded pistols with them and a great many average people in Nazi Germany, Communist Russia and Saddam’s Iraq carried guns with them all the time that didn’t make those societies free. On the other hand some countries with strict gun control (on paper in real life on a per capita basis there are as probably as many guns floating around in Stockholm as in New York) like Holland, Canada, Great Britain and Sweden have been very free.
So what is the truth? Well liberty is an idea, an idea that only works when a majority of people in society including the leaders believe in it. If the majority of your citizens and their leaders believe in liberty you’ll have a free society regardless of the number of guns in circulation. If the majority doesn’t such as those in Iraq there will never be freedom.
Does this mean I believe in gun control? Well no, I don’t like the idea of most people carrying loaded guns (which most people don’t Jane and Joe Sixpack it seems are smarter than libertarian intellectuals they know that wasting their money on firearms doesn’t buy freedom) but I don’t think we need special laws or bureaucracy to control gun ownership. Average people going around armed would be a bad thing but a powerful police force bent on gun prohibition would be worse. Gun prohibitionists like drug and alcohol prohibitionists want to control average people’s lifestyles. Ruby Ridge and Waco resulted from hysterical libertarian gun nuts clashing with hysterical government employed gun nuts. Like drug and alcohol prohibitionists gun prohibitionists want to protect us from ourselves and our natures (while they themselves carry guns of course).
Yes, I’m scared of guns but I’m much more afraid of cars they’re much more dangerous than guns and kill a lot more people but they’re politically more popular. So why aren’t gun prohibitionists trying to ban cars or restrict their use? Unlike guns cars are supported by a massive socialist welfare state that deliberately and systematically killed off efficient privately owned rail transport systems while taxing average citizens to build and maintain dubious roads and highways. The silence is deafening.
So what about self defense? Well yes people do have a right to protect themselves, their families and communities from violent attack but at the moment I don’t think that I’m in any danger of violent attack. The average American is just as likely to be struck by lightning as to face a violent home invasion. Even if I was a basic pump shotgun - my great grandfather’s weapon of choice - would suffice for home defense and it’s legal and cheap and I could use it effectively without wasting several hours a month at the pistol range. Or what about hand grenades? They’re cheap, simple and effective ask any surviving member of the greatest generation what his favorite weapon was in WWII?
As for foreign invasion, do you really think an invading army that could overcome America’s military might is going to be afraid of Joe Sixpack with a hunting rifle? Of course not it’s a ludicrous argument and one that insults our armed forces and the brave people who served in them.
So what do I think of guns, here is what I think of guns, guns are useful tools and dangerous weapons but they are not magic wands you can’t guarantee your liberty by waving them. If you think guns are cool toys to own and play with, go ahead and play with them as long as you do it responsibly but don’t expect the firearm in your pocket to guarantee your freedom it won’t. Plenty of Germans found that out at Dachau and plenty of Russians learned that lesson in the Gulag.

The Ward Churchill Show

For the last few years Coloradoans have had a ringside seat for one of the most entertaining sitcoms around: “The Ward Churchill Show.”
The notorious University of Colorado at Boulder professor has been making a mockery of the educational system for years. Churchill who lacks the proper qualifications to hold his position at the university’s department of multicultural studies teaches classes on such weighty subjects as racism in old western movies. Although he’s over sixty Churchill still enjoys playing cowboys and Indians he dresses up as Tonto. He claims to be an Native American when he most certainly is not but has cashed in on that fake heritage by claiming to be a Native American artist.
To add insult to injury Churchill claims to be some sort of radical or revolutionary. That is he wrote a despicable little essay comparing the innocents killed on Sept. 11 to Nazis and praising the terrorists responsible. He has protested a Columbus Day parade held by elderly Italian Americans but no evidence that Churchill has ever engaged in any sort of meaningful political activity. Evidence that Churchill has committed plagiarism has also come to light.
Like any lousy sitcom character Churchill is a bad joke, a sort of Sgt. Bilko of the college set. Churchill claims to be a Native American, a Marxist, a scholar, an artist, an activist and a few other things, when in reality he is a second rate con man who has figured out how to work the academic system and little else. If he weren’t playing professor Churchill would probably be selling used cars somewhere.
So who or what is to blame for Ward Churchill and his antics? The truth is that our whole society is and we deserve Ward Churchill.
We Americans created Ward Churchill and his ilk sometime back in the 1950s when we decided that our universities should be daycare facilities for people in their late teens and early twenties rather than centers of higher education. When we decided that beer drinking, meaningless political protests and football games were more important than education and a college degree merely a badge of social rank we dispensed with the need for learning on college campuses. The way was cleared for classes with no academic merit and professors who teach nothing and do less.
The next step was clear college faculties particularly in the liberal arts that serve as adult daycare facilities for socially-dysfunctional middle aged intellectuals (Ward Churchill being a perfect example). Since the classes they teach are meaningless and the real work is done by teaching assistants there is no reason to hold the professors to any standard of academic truth or socially responsible behavior.
Indeed such buffoonery is now a selling point among such academics, middle class twits can now brag that they are socially and politically enlightened to their friends at the country club because they took some Marxist nerd’s class back in college. College presidents can claim they believe in academic freedom because they sit next to a guy who was blacklisted by David Horowitz at the football games.
Is there any relief in sight from The Ward Churchill Show? I’m afraid not, only when our country no longer has the money and resources to support the bloated luxury known as the university system will we plug on it. Until then we’ll have to put up with the sorry antics of Ward and his friends.

Presidential Television

Although it’s probably too early to make any accurate predictions one thing is clear the 2008 presidential election is shaping up to be an interesting and exciting one.
The biggest change 2008 will present over other elections in living memory is this: it will be the first post television election. That is the first election since 1948 or 1952 in which a majority of the electorate won’t be watching broadcast television on a regular basis. Instead of watching broadcast TV people are watching DVDs, watching cable playing video games, fooling around online using TVO to watch something they’ve prerecorded, watching satellite etc. The number of people who watch broadcast TV shrinks daily.
This means that the billions of dollars politicians spend on TV ads maybe going into the toilet. The people most likely to vote – the educated and affluent - are most likely to be able to afford an alternative to broadcast TV. The people least likely to vote – the uneducated and poor – are more interested in Jerry Springer than the presidential election. Just look around the only thing left on broadcast TV besides network programming in most of the US is talk shows, game shows, local news and infomercials. Anybody with an IQ of more than twelve has tuned out.
The politicians will be able to make up for some of this by advertising on cable TV provided the voters don’t use TVO to tune them out and some through internet advertising. Remember the internet is an interactive medium so the politicians will have to give the voters something interesting or a compelling reason to click on their website. Already there’s a reality show blog featuring Mitch Romney’s sons and an Obama babe expect worse. Prediction Hillary will unveil the first website accusing Barack Obama of being a child molester.
Then they’ll have to result to good old fashioned grassroots politicking, i.e. knocking on doors and kissing babies. Just as consumer goods marketers are now aping old fashioned carnival hucksters by hawking their wares in the aisles of our supermarkets and big box stores. Politicians will have to go out among the public and shill for votes.
Don’t be at all surprised if you run into a presidential candidate or a stand in for one next year at the mall, the theme park, the casino, the NASCAR race, the county fair etc. Also expect lots of media events by presidential candidates of all stripes, trying to attract media attention by doing all sorts of weird stuff. Feeding the homeless, fighting alongside the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, appearing on TV shows, dancing, singing, taking part in pro wrestling matches, appearing on reality TV.
The presidential campaign will be a bad joke the presidential candidates clowns with the moral equivalency of participants on Jack Ass. The presidency will become a complete joke and be totally powerless.
I don’t know if that would be a bad thing or not.

Presidential Politics

Like the vast majority of Americans I think the 2008 presidential race is starting far too early so I’ve held off commenting on it. Still the media is hyping it up so I suppose we have to pay attention to this and comment upon it.
The major issue in the election right now is the American involvement in the Iraq War which will probably be over by election time. This is bad news for the Democrats because the Iraq War is the only popular issue they have. The public hates the war and is angry at President Bush for getting involved in. Take the war off the table and the public has no real reason to hate Bush or the Republicans.
Beyond the war the Democrats have no marketable issue, abortion, gun control, healthcare they’ve tried those they have no real appeal. The Republicans have many popular issues family values, terrorism, and the American people trust them they don’t trust the Democrats.
There are two other big issues that the public cares about but the Democrats won’t raise: Trade and Immigration. Trade and immigration certainly stir the public’s passions on a level rivaling the Iraq War but taking a stand against these issues will offend powerful constituencies.
Any stand against immigration risks angering Hispanic voters and their apologists in the media who will see it as racist. A stand against immigration also risks offending large corporate donors that depend on cheap immigrant labor and upper middle class voters whose lifestyle is based on the services provided by immigrants illegal and legal.
A stand against free trade would be popular with the unions and a large portion of the population especially older voters. Opposition to free trade would not be popular with large corporations or with the upper middle class which profits from the modern economy. There is also a strong possibility of a backlash from the working class which likes all of the cheap goods free trade provides.
The Democrats won’t touch either free trade or immigration with a ten foot pole so all they have is opposition to the war and Bush. This won’t be of much help in the 2008 presidential election because they won’t be running against Bush. The Republican will be free to oppose Bush and the war.
The Democrats only won Congress in 2006 because a large percentage of conservative and moderate red state voters were upset with Bush and the war. An anti war Republican would win those voters back and the White House.
My prediction is this 2008 will be an unstable year that will favor the Republicans the Republicans are better organized than the Democrats and their base is bigger. The Republicans only lack one thing a popular presidential candidate and that isn’t necessarily needed the Democrats lacked one in 1992 and won, the Republicans lacked one in 2000 and won.
The Democrats do have two potentially popular presidential candidates on their side. Hillary Clinton brings the appeal of her sex and her reputation as suffering and dutiful wife and mother as well as her connection to a popular ex president. Barrack Obama brings glamour, novelty, charisma and a sense of optimism reminiscent of Ronald Reagan.
The odds are against both of these candidates both are incumbent US Senators no US Senator has been elected president since Kennedy in 1960 and he barely won. Hillary is from the Northeast and Obama from Illinois (okay Hawaii originally). Every president elected since 1964 has come either from the West or the South.
Both are also very liberal and very much to the left of the majority but they do represent the Democratic Party or at least two stereotypical voters. The Hillary voter is a middle aged working class woman who shops at Wal-Mart and watches Oprah Winfrey. The Obama voter is a middle aged, middle class professional with a college degree who shops at Whole Foods and goes to Michael Moore documentaries.
The Hillary voter is the majority of the Democratic base but the Obama voter is more influential. The Whole Foods constituency is what elected the present Democratic congress and could elect the next Democratic president. The Whole Foods constituency will turn out and vote in the Democratic Primaries, the Wal-Mart constituency doesn’t know what a primary is.
The success of Obama proves that there is a large portion of the Democratic base that is unhappy or at least uncomfortable with Hillary. Mostly it is the hard core leftists who doubt Hillary’s commitment to the cause. A great many of them view Hillary and her husband as corporate shills who are no better than George W. Bush.
Obama appeals to them as that long awaited political savior the Democratic or left wing Reagan. Reagan was that rare political figure the ideologue who could energize and rally the faithful without scaring off the moderate majority. Most ideologues like Newt Gingrich and Howard Dean succeed only in scaring off the average voter. The characteristics that appeal to the ideologically faithful usually succeed in scaring off the average voter.
The question is will Obama like Reagan appeal to the average voter or not. That’s hard to say, he seems aloof and lacks the common touch. Much of Reagan’s appeal was his ability to speak to common people where they live something that George W. Bush and Bill Clinton also seem to do. Hillary also seems to lack the common touch but she does seem able to fake it. Both Obama and Hillary could sabotage their chances with their clumsy and silly efforts to effect the common touch.
The Republicans lack a popular candidate beyond Rudi Gulliani who is too liberal to win the primaries. Their candidates are a collection of has bins and nonentities but there is one intriguing possibility Fred Thompson he’s popular and charming and has the common touch. Still it will be an uphill battle for Thompson is an unknown and his style and manner which will endure him to the American people won’t go over well with the media.
My prediction: the Democrats will probably win the White House next year but they will have a battle to hold onto Congress. In November 2008 we’re liable to wake up with a Republican Congress and a Democratic President. The situation is that unstable and unpredictable neither party has a real majority or popular appeal.
Of course things could change by election time because it’s too far away.

The War On Science

One of the most disturbing developments in our modern world is the war being waged upon science by people of all manner of ideologies, faiths, values, backgrounds and professions.
The assault upon science is coming from all sides from religious believers, political extremists, intellectuals, ideologues, cranks, conmen, charlatans and many others. The war on science is taking place on many fronts in education, politics, the media and elsewhere.
There are many examples of the war on science: Creationism, the rejection of the sound science behind Global Warming by conservative ideologues, the attacks on genetically engineered foods and the rejection of scientifically based scholarship by many intellectuals. All sides seem to be equally guilty in this assault Christians, Moslems, Jews, Conservatives, capitalists, socialists, Marxists, environmentalists.
Yet the attacks all have one thin in common the rejection of science because science’s findings contradict part of their belief systems. Creationists reject evolution and geology because those scientific explanations disprove their mythology. Marxist intellectuals reject scholarly study of cultures because the findings of such study contradict their idiotic belief that all beliefs are equally valid. Conservative ideologues reject the science behind Global Warming because it validates the claims of environmentalists whom they despise.
Sometimes the attacks on science are motivated by fear such as the insane campaign against genetically engineered food in Europe. There is no scientific reason to suggest that the eating of genetically engineered food is dangerous to humans yet the import of such food into Europe has been banned. Science is rejected because it doesn’t validate someone’s fears. In the case of the refusal to examine religions, physical fear maybe the cause Marxist professors maybe afraid of terrorism and thuggery on the part of devout Muslims or Christians who will violently attack anyone who denies the divine origins of their faiths. The professors don’t want to admit they are afraid of thugs so they say they are respecting someone else’s faith.
Of course the rejection of science is very selective, the Creationists who reject evolution and the geologic evidence of the Earth’s age drive cars that run on petroleum based fuels. The oil these fuels are made from is located using geology and is made from the dinosaurs the creationists claim didn’t exist. The environmentalists who refuse to eat genetically engineered food have no problem embracing genetic medicine. The Marxist Professors who reject scientific study of the origin of religions embrace the scientific study of the origins of life and the universe.
The war on science like most crusades is a battle of hypocrisy those who fight against some aspects of science embrace others.
The question we should ask ourselves then is how do we accept all the findings of science those we find useful and those we find disconcerting?