New Jersey Libertarian Party

Rahm Emmanuel commented that one should never let a good crisis go to waste.  He’s absolutely right.  Success demands decisive action when opportunities arise..

This is exactly what the Left does after every tragic public shooting incident and what they are doing in the wake of Sandy Hook. 

But the programs that gun control advocates advance do not make us safer; they just make us more vulnerable and more dependent upon government.  However, that is exactly what these programs are really intended to accomplish - to make us ever more dependent upon government.

I was wondering. Should I refer to Ludwig von Mises as “von Mises”, instead of “Mises”? Should I change my name to Smiling von Dave?

We know that Keynes popularized an old blunder [one picked up by the Money Dis. crowd], one that was around for ages, the so called lack of Aggregate Demand. Say wrote his famous law to refute it, and I’m sure a little research will find it mentioned in the Stone Age cave drawings.

We’ve written many times about how wrong it is, in theory and reality. Now it’s time to see how Mises took care of it. Genius that he was, all he needed was one line to expose the key flaw in Keynes’s theory.

Unfortunately, when he wrote the one liner, he didn’t mention Keynes by name. He also wrote it in technical language, because he wasn’t addressing a lay crowd, but experienced economists. This may be why Mises’ argument is not well known. Luckily for our generation, and for mankind in general, Smiling von Dave is here to spell it all out.

Although a great number of libertarians are also secularists, there is still a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned for our cause in the pages of the Judeo-Christian scriptures. Beyond religious content, the Bible provides a timeless perspective on human nature and the human condition, which is unchanging.

Therefore, it seems fitting that, during this Easter and Passover season, we take a fresh look at what the ancient texts have to offer to us friends of limited government and private property.

The first lesson, which is often tough for libertarians to swallow, is that liberty is not necessarily a popular idea.  From time immemorial, a great many people have been willing to trade essential liberty for the illusion of a strong ruler who is both a powerful protector and a benevolent caretaker.

When the Newton School massacre occurred, the bodies of the 26 victims were not even cold when the mainstream press call for and advocated for more laws restricting firearms. To the press, the victims did not matter at all. Their lives did not matter. What mattered to the press was having a story to promote an agenda. I was not in the least bit surprised, considering that 78% of all mainstream journalists favor stricter gun control laws, according to a survey of journalists done by the Los Angeles Times. To the press, the story represented a vehicle to advocate a position.

What the mainstream press chooses to ignore is that the issue is not gun control per se; it is and forever will be about mental illness, and how we as a society deal with individuals who have these afflictions.

The recent stories regarding Anna Gristina and Catherine Scalia have once again brought up the issue of prostitution in the Empire State to the forefront. These women feel that they have done nothing wrong and they also feel that they have a right to engage in this activity, regardless of what others may think. While I personally find the thought of any adult man or woman selling his or her body for the purposes of sex disgusting and abominable, I also feel that these women should not be prosecuted and that the practice of prostitution should be decriminalized.

There was once a time in America when we all praised the open mind. That we praised hearing open, honest and thoughtful debate on all sides of an argument; that we looked at all information, data and evidence; that we listened and read openly what people had said and wrote; that we would test our hypothesis over and over again always with the open mind and the come to our own conclusions.

Since the late 1960s and early 70s, most Americans have abandoned all that considering it all passé. They replaced it with their own prejudices, ideology and their own beliefs. In short, since that time, there has been a deliberate closing of the American mind.

“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the  press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the  Government for a redress of grievances.”

This First Amendment, adopted on Dec. 15, 1791, is the most important part of  the Constitution. With free speech and press, we can be informed when government officials violate other parts of the Constitution. And we can inform others any way we can, and form organizations strong enough to either make them stop – or vote them out of office.

Without the absolute right to freely speak, assemble and organize, a constitution is useless. The Soviet Union under the dictator Stalin had a  constitution that gave its citizens all sorts of rights. But anyone who reported violations of those rights or who tried to organize any opposition to the government was killed or sent to prison.

Last week Norm Cohen, my fellow columnist, wrote that he, and others with him on the left, want to “take the money out of politics.” They include filmmaker Michael Moore and MSNBC commentator Dylan Ratigan.

From our friends at the Mises Institute. This is chapter three of Jeffrey A. Tucker's book It's a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes.