What candidates in need of credibility shouldn't do...

...is endorse anything remotely associated with unpopular conspiracy theories. I know my tendency to think that parties should actually care what people think has been healthily excoriated in the past, but why must Michael Badnarik make so public his undying love for a film which is generally regarded as conspiracy-theorist nutjobbery outside libertarian circles?

I haven't seen America: from Freedom to Fascism, and I sure agree with its title, but sometimes it really is a good idea to think of what other people will think when you're running for office.

(As a side note, trying to put me as a "purist" or a "pragmatists" as if they're mutually exclusive is impossible. Don't bother.)

Why hello there!

Yeah, I've been gone for awhile. I've been here, which is awesome, but the Internet connection there is awful and I haven't been able to post, and I've really been kind of afraid to check up on the news. I'm going back there on Friday, but I'm at my aunt's in Boston now, and imagine my horror to find that the Middle East is flipping out again.

So what should we do about it? The Bush administration's position appears to be to crisply waffle, instead of doing what they should do - get all American troops out of there, get all American government money out of there, and allow for true self-determination of nations, even if it is sometimes ugly.

Fun with cops!

I thought my post today would be about a chat that the Dallas Morning News held at 10 AM this morning with Governor Rick Perry, but it was set up so that he didn't have to answer questions he didn't want to, meaning that none of my questions were answered.

Thankfully, the Highland Park Police Department came to the rescue by pulling me over for an expired inspection sticker. I'm not quite sure how that protected the people, but it did give me an opportunity to use the lessons of this video, courtesy of the ACLU and the Flex Your Rights foundation. Yes, it's 45 minutes, but it's quite useful.

(Note: I had nothing to hide, in case you're wondering.)

Whoa, backtrack.

My post from yesterday about the Libertarian Party of Kansas being prevented from holdling a fundraiser at a nudist colony generated a few C130s of furor at Hammer of Truth, so taking a second look at what I wrote, here's a better way to state it:

Some libertarian group should be fighting the blatant disrespect of property rights in Kansas. However, the job of the LPKS is to elect people to change it, not to fight it in court and especially not to attempt to break the law and end up with headlines like "Kansas Libertarians stopped from holding event at nudist camp".

Even Dennis Kucinich isn't out there shouting at the headquarters of big corporations. Not that I'd pay attention if he was.

That better, y'all?

Why taxation really is theft.

I often tell people that "taxation is theft". They give me horrified looks.

But, assuming you'll agree with me and the 56 million people killed by their own governments in the 20th century, it's fairly easy to arrive at that conclusion. Firstly, it must be recognized that government has no inherent moral authority. Examples abound of why this was true: our own government supported and condoned racism and slavery up to the 1960s, at least, for example.

If government has no inherent moral authority, it is therefore not qualified to make an infallible judgement as to what is right and what is wrong. Since government does not use its own property to accomplish its ends and thus cannot be permitted to have free will (hence voting), it cannot be permitted to use other people's property in a way which is not infallibly correct. Since this will never happen, government should not use other people's property, and taxation is wrong, and a form of theft.

OK?

Nice bad publicity. Good job, LPKS!

I have a "Libertarian" section on my Google News homepage. "Kansas Libertarians stopped from holding event at nudist camp" is the last thing I want to see there.

Now, from the article, it appears that the Libertarian Party of Kansas was in the right - nanny-statist county officials had a court order on the property forbidding assemblies from being held there, essentially - there are battles worth fighting, and this wasn't one of them. 2006 is a great opportunity to elect Libertarians, and holding an event at a nudist colony can only push the door shut.

Update: At Hammer of Truth, Rob Hodgkinson, the LPKS chair, said the following:

Nigel, I understand your point - I gave it a lot of thought about even holding the event due to the Edun connection.

The reality is this area gives search warrants to dog catchers - I am not kidding.

We are going to continue this battle - the events Friday were simply the start of the positive press we will continue to get fighting a corrupt government. We taped the entire thing and every TV station in town was there.

I have been contacted by bible thumpers (Topeka is in the middle of the bible belt) who don’t agree with the naturist activity - but are scared to death about where type of action this could continue to lead. The response so far has been very good! They understand this is a property rights issue.

If this is part of a larger campaign, then it makes perfect sense. An isolated standoff at a nudist colony, however, is more absurd than it is useful.

DeLay sounding like he'll appear on ballot

When it seemed like the race for Tom DeLay's House seat was going to be between a Libertarian and a Democrat (in a very, very, very, red district), things were looking up for Bob Smither, the LP candidate. Now, however, DeLay is saying that he'll run if the judge doesn't allow the GOP to substitute another candidate. That would return the spotlight for winning a Congressional seat to Michael Badnarik in TX10, where I think it belongs. (Smither still has a relatively good chance, but less of one.)

Scientology: The most statist religion of them all.

Most religions seem to have at least one branch that is highly statist in nature. But the "religion" of Scientology seems to only be able to exist because of the state. Whenever somebody posts information about its disturbing characteristics - the amazing number of weird deaths associated with it, etc. - Scientology tells the host of the website to remove it or face a copyright lawsuit. Oddly enough, nobody at the hosting company seems to check up on the site, and the sites are removed unthinkingly. An annoying legal process is required to get the host to post the site again.

(And yes, Google and you Scientology nuts, if you try and take this down, I will fight you.)

This blog has been slow lately because I've been trying to launch a new site, Freelancify.com.

Mexico to Chavez lapdog: Stop yapping.

Though I have no idea what kind of leader Felipe Calderón will be, it would appear that he has won the Mexican presidential race by a slim margin over Hugo Chavez lapdog Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Unfortunately (and oddly reminiscent of Gore in 2000), Obrador says that he has different numbers than the Mexican government and Calderón, and will challenge the election results - which is frightening, considering how muh the sitution degraded in the United States with its 224 years of elections in 2000, since Mexico has nowhere close to that long a tradition of electoral government and Venezuela's powerful enough that it could exert some force on Mexico. (Even if that does happen, the United States still shouldn't get involved.)

Tellingly, Mexico's stock exchange rose 4.8 percent on the news. Chavez-style neocommunism has been a disaster for Venezuela, and it would have been a disaster for Mexico too.

There seem to be rumors abounding that categorical opposition to the War on Drugs has been deleted from the LP platform. That's a little ridiculous, considering that that has been one of our signature issues. But will it really affect what the party means?

Any libertarian, if presentd the opportunity, would stop the War on Drugs. Any elected Libertarian would vote for bills that diminish it, and vote against those that augment or maintain it. Most would be willing to sponsor bills eliminating it, and most would work to pardon those convicted of drug-war crimes.

Eliminating any specific platform plank won't change the goals of libertarians, nor will it change what we actually do when we get power, which is to shrink that power. It's chilling to know that there are people who believe the election hopes of the Libertarian Party lie in hiding its principles, but we'll survive.

Maybe we don't need to wait for LibertyMix.

George Phillies, one of the LP's 2008 presidential contenders, just launched a "libertarian community site", LibertyForAmerica.net. It does a lot of what LibertyMix was supposed to do, and it's actually here. So, I'll be double-posting things here and on LFA for the forseeable future.

Hugo Chavez: Classy like a trailer park.

Calling the United States "Count Dracula" and saying that low royalty payments by oil companies are "robbery" isn't just offensive, it's simply astounding. Hugo Chavez and Iran's President Ahmadinejad were in Banjul, Gambia at the African Union summit to try and forge a southern anti-American alliance. Chavez's attacks on capitalism are tired and stupid, so I'll ignore them. But actively trying to hurt the United States is pretty scary.

Of course, had Roosevelt never whipped out his big stick, this wouldn't be a problem. The United States would have remained like Washington wanted it to - its only foreign relations being trade - and everyone would be better off. But it hasn't, and we're faced with a problem: what do we do with those that hate America now?

Radical Islamic terrorists are one thing - get the government out of the Middle East, and they will calm down fairly soon. But those that wish to wage economic war - Venezuela, Iran, and, apparently, Africa - will have a hard time for a while distinguishing between American government and American traders. During that time, more anti-American sentiment will arise, and these countries will work harder to destroy our economy.

Part of their goal is the removal of the dollar as a universal currency. The United States needs to get off of fiat money anyways, and if the government can be reduced enough that our debt can be paid off, currency will not be a method of hurting the economy. But for that to happen, Libertarians need to be elected.

Taxing our natural resource development companies is another big part of their arsenal. That's something which is entirely within the bounds of foreign governments to do, though if I were a citizen of those governments I would oppose it. Even if they completely forbid American companies from doing business there, however, they will only hurt themselves in the long run, and the sooner they hit rock bottom with nationalization, the sooner those markets will open back up. To allow them to hit bottom quickly (it's something that will happen regardless), they need America to stop interfering in their domestic policy. And only by electing Libertarians can we get there.