Intellectual Ammo

Classical Liberalism (It's a Good Thing)

2009-12-26T15:29:00.000-08:00

What is Classical Liberalism?

The objective of classical liberals is to free as many people as possible from the tyranny of others. Classical liberals believe this requires replacing public policies that limit individual freedom with policies that respect and expand individual rights and autonomy.

Modern classical liberalism, sometimes called the “freedom philosophy,” was articulated by prominent economists and political philosophers beginning in the 1930s and 1940s. That group included Gary Becker, Aaron Director, Milton Friedman, Baldy Harper, Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Frank Knight, Frank S. Meyer, Ludwig von Mises, Leonard Read, and George Stigler. (Source: Joseph L. Bast, Heartland Institute)

Classical Liberalism vs. Statism

Classical Liberalism is best contrasted with its antithesis: Statism. Statism can take many forms: Democratic, totalitarian, monarchic, left, right, or centrist.

Classical Liberalism is: Free market capitalism vs. crony capitalism; A free people protected by a limited government vs. an unlimited government controlling every aspect of the peoples' lives.

Modern Day Liberals are Not Classical Liberals

There is no one more illiberal than a modern day liberal. Today's liberals are rigid doctrinaires, clinging to Orthodoxy Which Shall Not Be Questioned. There would be nothing wrong with this if they didn't hijack the government to impose this orthodoxy on us all, snuffing our liberty in the process.

Conservatives who want to use the coercive power of government to impose their morality on others make the same mistake. The right answer is to stand for the constitution that protects the rights of all.

You are a True Classical Liberal...

...If you believe in limited government and believe people have the God-given right to liberty and freedom, even freedom to fail.

Further Reading
NCPA - What is Classical Liberalism?
Rockwell - American Classical Liberalism
Google Search: Classical Liberalism

Read These Books Now!

2009-09-11T17:41:00.000-07:00

It's a left-right battle, and information is the ammo!

If you want to arm yourself up for liberal-conservative battle, there are literally hundreds of books you could read. If you're like me, you just don't have that kind of time.

Herewith I humbly commend to you four books that will get you up to speed in the minimum amount of time while giving you the maximum amount of essential history and critical information.

1. The 5000 Year Leap, Cleon Skousen
Absolutely essential, unless you are already a constitutional expert. He breaks down the founders' ideas into 28 easy to understand principles. If you want to understand the constitution and the thinking that went into it, you must read this book. It also has many useful quotes from the founders.

2. Liberty and Tyranny, Mark Levin
If you are a political neophyte, this is a must-read for you. He clearly and concisely explains the great issues facing us today, and applies the timeless principles of our founding fathers to each of them. Levin's gift is to make complex issues understandable and accessible to ordinary people.

If you're already politically well-versed, you may find this book a little pedantic. This is in no way a criticism. He writes like he speaks, and he thoroughly covers all the important issues without going too deep, which is a plus for beginners. If you could only read one book, this should be the one.

3. Hoodwinked, Jack Cashill
A veritable catalog of liberal lies. You will be stunned at what progressives have gotten by with these past 150 years. This is a treasure trove of material to lob back at the smug liberals who think they know it all. It is also useful for disabusing the ignorant who have innocently believed everything professors and news magazines have told them.

It's all there: The scientific frauds in pursuit of proving we all came from Darwin's primordial soup, Planned Parenthood's racist founding, Criminals the left hold up as heroes. As a bonus, Cashill's storytelling style makes this a breezy read that is never dull.

4. Liberal Fascism, Johah Goldberg
This is the mother lode of progressive history in America. It took me some time to read this book because it was so dense with information. I often found myself stopping to ponder some point or flip back to the footnotes because I could not believe what Goldberg was saying. He lays his case out carefully and with copious authoritative references.

This is an immensely interesting book for those who like history, and it is a slow read only because it is so packed with good information. It is well worth the read. You will understand just what fascism is and why the American left can be accused of it when you're done. You will also be able to explain why Mussolini and Hitler were not "right wingers," but rather hard-core socialist demagogues who harnessed commerce and society to the wagon of state.

Extra Credit:

The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes

An economic history of the great depression. Her central thesis is that Roosevelt's Keynesian meddling prolonged the economic woes of the 1930's. This book also gives you a good sense of the roots of progressivism and the urge to believe big government can solve everything.
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President Obama didn't just invent extreme liberalism; it's been around for over 100 years. He is merely using current crises to advance progressivism's Long March. Read these books and you will see the big picture. Never again will you believe, as I once did, that the liberal movers and shakers are merely misguided but sincere.

Progressivism/liberalism has a rich ideological history and a mature doctrine. It is the left's game plan. Time to arm up with knowledge and fight back in the arena of ideas.

Dr. Thomas Sowell

2009-09-10T19:17:00.000-07:00

Dr. Sowell is a brilliant conservative scholar and thinker. I look forward to each new column from him as I would words of wisdom from a wise uncle.

He has also written many well-researched, scholarly books. Most are for the more advanced student, but don't be discouraged! He is an excellent teacher who explains advanced concepts in an understandable way. His books are well worth the effort. If you're still scared of big books, take his wisdom in smaller bites by reading his columns.

Links:

Dr. Sowell's Home Page

Right Wing News - Best Quotes from Vision of the Anointed

Thomas Sowell Columns

Among the many excellent books Dr. Sowell has written, Vision of the Anointed and The Quest For Cosmic Justice explain how liberal intellectual pointy-heads have gotten us to the social and fiscal mess we now find ourselves in. Read these books and you will never again be sucked in by politicians promising "solutions."

In the flaming parks, in the taverns, in the hushed academies, your murmur will applaud the wisdom of a thousand quacks. For theirs is the kingdom.
-- Kenneth Fearing, as quoted by Dr. Sowell at the beginning of Vision of the Anointed

He explains how the "Anointed" foist their dubious schemes upon the "Benighted," completely uninterested in empirical data that shows just how full of it they are.

The anointed believe in grand solutions, magic bullets and in the ability to change human nature. Get enough smart people in the room, the best and brightest, and we can solve anything! They appeal to the benighted with vague, emotional terms like justice and fairness.

I like to think of them as Plato's philosopher kings: If all of us schleps would just get out of their way and let them run everything and tell everybody what to do, it would all be solved.

No Solutions, Only Trade-offs
We ordinary folk are the benighted. We have a tragic vision of life and mankind. Life will never be perfect and mankind is fatally flawed. The religious among us even dare to blame it on original sin. We like our institutions that guard society, we just don't want them getting too big and powerful. We know there is no such thing as a magic bullet or a cost-free solution. There are only trade-offs.

The benighted believe in the collective wisdom of society and free markets; the anointed vest all hope in the brilliance of the "best and brightest," or a wise elite.

Here is the pattern of the anointed (Al Gore and global warming come to mind, and Sowell wrote this back in 1996!):

1. Assert that their is a great danger to all of society

2. Assert an urgent need to action to avert the impending catastrophe

3. Posit the need for government to curtail dangerous behavior of the many, in response to the prescient conclusions of the few.

4. Disdainfully dismiss arguments to the contrary as either uninformed, irresponsible, or motivated by unworthy purposes.

The Anointed hijacked our government and made things worse
He shows: How government dependence has has increased since the war on poverty began; How venereal disease, rape and unwanted pregnancies have exploded since sex education has been foisted upon our schoolchildren; That crime has also exploded since sociologists and liberal judges hijacked the criminal justice system in an attempt to "understand" criminals instead of just jailing or executing them.

More controversially, he punctures the myth of "the legacy of slavery" that is used to explain away all dysfunction that is all too common to our inner cities. He does this by tracking employment, marriage and out of wedlock births from the civil war up to the 1990s. Guess what? The trendlines for African Americans trended upwards after the civil war. When did they start going down? You guessed it. The 1960s!

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
Dr. Sowell shows how one can aggregate or disaggregate sample data to make their point. A good example is pay inequality. Men make more than women. Sounds bad, doesn't it? Well, women take time off to have babies, but put that aside and look at education. Are men more educated? No. Aha! But wait. All college degrees are not deemed equal in the marketplace. Men tend to get the degrees that make money, while women tend more towards liberal arts and social sciences, which do not make as much money.

The Elite arrogantly take a cosmic viewpoint, attempting to take all backgrounds and motives into consideration (Go easy on that murdering thief, he had a disadvantaged childhood). The problem, as Dr. Sowell explains, is that no man is God and no man has a cosmic view of life and mankind. We must deal with life as we find it.

5 Propositions of the Anointed
1. Social problems exist not because of inherent limitations of the human condition, but because other people lack the wisdom of virtue of the anointed

2. Evolved traditions or systemic processes growing out of the experiences of the masses mean nothing. The applied rationality of the anointed is how to solve problems.

3. Social causation is intentional, not systemic. Sloth cannot cause poverty, it must be racism! The poor of any race can't get ahead because the rich are keeping them down.

4. Social and biological dangers can be averted only by imposing the vision of the anointed on the benighted by force of government

5. Opposition to the vision is not due to a different reading of complex and inconclusive evidence. Opposition exists only because opponents are lacking, either inellectually or morally.

"They treat their propositions not as hypotheses to be tested, but as self-evident axioms"

Life is a thinking man's game. Here are some thoughts from Dr. Sowell:

All statements are true if you are free to redefine your terms

For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert. But for every fact, there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact.

Every policy is a success by sufficiently low standards and a failure by sufficiently high standards

The law of diminishing returns means that even the most beneficial principle will become harmful if carried far enough

The same set of statistics can produce opposite conclusions at different levels of aggregation

Improbable events are commonplace in a country with more than a quarter billion people