A Libertarian's Thoughts on Whatever

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

 
Walter Williams on the need for truthfulness in debates.
I look at a good number of nutty websites, but this one blows them all away.
Who doesn't love David Hasselhoff?
This is a pretty cool ad.
It turns out that the income tax is unconstitutional. I've advocated its repeal for a while now, so I'm happy to hear it in that sense. On the other hand, it disappoints me that the government has gotten away with it for 90 years. I guess that cliche is true, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
I think that at times I have implied that Bush is a fascist and that what is happening in the US today is very similar to what happened in Germany in the 1930's. I want to be clear about this. I don't think Bush is Hitler, I believe his intentions are mostly good, or at least that he thinks they are good. But we can't know for sure what he is trying to do, because we cannot know anybody with total certainty. I hope we can agree that if Bush is dishonest and immoral that the way he has gone about his job is atrocious. But even if he is a righteous individual, his actions are awful. By doing what he has done it becomes much easier for future politicians to grab even more power, and some of them will turn out to be megalomaniacal power-hungry dictator. The more political/coercive power is placed in one office, the more unsavory people will seek it. Hitlers and Stalins don't just appear out of nowhere. Typically first there is an expansion of government power and scope, followed by the sense that there is a need for a strong leader to straighten things out, and a leader is given even more powers to get things done. Either this leader or his successor then turns out to be a tyrant. Thomas Jefferson said something to the effect that jealousy is needed for good government, meaning we should always be suspicious of giving someone else new powers, ie we need to be eternally vigilant to protect our liberty.
Maestro 10:57 PM