In a January 18 interview with Glenn Beck Rick Santorum decided to compare his view of the Constitution with that of Ron Paul. His statements can only be described as delusional and totalitarian.

Santorum first claimed to have read an eighteenth-century dictionary that defined happiness as “to do the morally right thing.” This is how the founding fathers defined happiness, he said. This is Santorum’s definition of “happiness,” not the founding fathers. It’s a good bet he is lying when claiming to have read an eighteenth-century dictionary. (But I suppose anything is possible with a man who brought his deceased infant home who died two hours after birth and slept with it after showing it to his children, as Santorum admits to have done).

The freedom to do whatever you want to do – as long as you do not harm anyone else or interfere in their equal freedom – would “lead to libertinism and lead to chaos” said Sanctimonious Santorum, who has also pledged to do what he can to put an end to contraception if elected president. Contraception changes “the way things ought to be,” he says. Santorum is self assured that he, and he alone, understands “the way things ought to be” and pledges to use the powers of the state to forcefully impose his “understanding” on the entire country.

But the founding fathers are known as champions of freedom, are they not? But what kind of freedom? According to Santorum, who apparently fancies himself as an historian, freedom in America means “the freedom to do what you ought to do – what you are properly ordered to do [by a politician like himself] – as someone living a good, decent, and ordered life” (emphasis added). “That’s the differentiation that I believe Ron Paul and I have with respect to what liberty is,” said Santorum. To Rick Santorum, “freedom” means doing what government “properly” orders you to do, as long as government is controlled by good, proper, moral people like himself, the K-Street lobbyist for the Pennsylvania coal mining industry (and anyone else who will pay his huge fees for influence peddling).

This is not the view of the American founding fathers, as Santorum claims. It is more likely to have been the mindset of the founders of the Soviet Union, not the American union. It is the mindset of the neoconservatives whose founding members were, after all, Trotskyite communists. This includes the self-described “godfather” of neoconservatism, the late Irving Kristol, who reveled in talking about his youthful Trotskyite roots.

If Santorum really wanted to know how the founding fathers defined freedom he would not make up imaginary, two-century old dictionary entries but would read what the founders actually said. A good place to start would be Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address where he stated: “[A] wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government . . .” It is hard to imagine that Jefferson, the author of the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom that strongly opposed the governmental imposition of any religious views on anyone while defending religious liberty in general, would have admired an Uber-Catholic Theocrat like Santorum. For government to compel a man to support a religious cause with which he disbelieves, wrote Jefferson, is “sinful and tyrannical.”

When Ron Paul says that such victimless crimes as prostitution or smoking pot should be decriminalized, says Santorum, “that’s not the moral foundation of our country,” once again pretending to be The Expert on the thinking of the founding fathers. There’s one problem with Santorum’s historical revisionism, however. Prostitution was in fact pervasive in Colonial America. Prostitutes traveled with George Washington’s army, serving as nurses and cooks as well as prostitutes. In fact, there were no laws in America banning prostitution until Massachusetts enacted the first one in 1917. (The 1910 “Mann Act,” named after Congressman James Mann, prohibited “white slavery” for the purpose of prostitution). Federal laws against prostitution were first enacted after women got the right to vote and immediately outlawed prostitution in the vicinity of military bases when their husbands and boyfriends were off serving in the military. In other words the founding fathers agreed with Ron Paul, not Rick Santorum, on personal liberty issues.

America is “not just a collection of freedoms,” said the insufferably sanctimonious Santorum. It is, instead, a collection of orders from the state defining what “proper” behavior is. Stalin himself could not have said it better.

January 20, 2012

Source: Lew Rockwell. Written by Thomas J. DiLorenzo.

*Written by Jared Grifoni of the Libertarian Party of Collier County. Who also has his own blog at Self-Govern. Please check out and support Jared’s blog for his collection of other stellar articles.

The other day I was faced with a unique opportunity at the conclusion of a political get together and speaking event. I was approached by a gentleman and he asked me to explain to him what Libertarianism was and given that it was getting late in the evening, to do so in as few words and as quickly as possible as he was walking out the door. It was a unique question in the sense that when I am usually asked to explain something about libertarian politics or philosophy it is generally expected that the answer given will be as full and as enlightening as possible, a difficult balance between enough to satisfy the person seeking the information but making sure not to give too much as to overload the listener so that he tunes out. It was a challenging question in the sense that I needed to make a strong enough intellectual impact for this guy to not forget what I said as soon as he gets in the car and turns on FoxNews radio or NPR.

I had a wonderful opportunity to engage a politically active individual who was genuinely interested in what it meant to be a libertarian and I didn’t want it to go to waste. Maybe the only thing preventing this gentleman from donating to the Libertarian Party, getting involved in libertarianism, or volunteering for a Libertarian’s campaign team was the need for quick reassurance, the need to make a connection with a real person (rather than through a computer screen). I remember what it felt like as I was intellectually working my way into a better and more complete understanding of libertarian thought. Having been a member of a major political party my entire life up to that point while having virtually no knowledge of the vast amount of libertarian literature that was out there, making the switch was not something to be taken lightly. I would imagine that for some there was no such thing as “becoming a libertarian,” perhaps to them libertarian-leanings were as simple and inconsequential as flicking on a light switch. For others though, the switch can represent a sea-change in thinking, analyzing, and viewing the world around them. It extends beyond politics into their daily lives. Libertarianism can be an awakening. Just think of that for a moment. Imagine you’re that person where your whole life you were a Republican or a Democrat, your family was Republican or Democrat, your friends were Republicans or Democrats and now you have just been awakened. You read the Mises blog and subscribe to the Lew Rockwell daily email so you figure there must be others like you out there but for the time being you may be the only one in your day to day life. Perhaps you were lucky enough to stumble across Isaiah’s Job by Albert Jay Nock and you get to Part IV and Nock writes:

What chiefly makes it so, I think, is that in any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those – dead sure, as our phrase is – but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the Remnant means working in impenetrable darkness…“

Right. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Nock’s writings but if this is your first foray in libertarianism you might be worried that the reason libertarians so strongly support individual freedom and sovereignty is because they think they are the only ones out there anyway. Further on in Part IV you get to this passage:

One of the most suggestive episodes recounted in the Bible is that of a prophet’s attempt – the only attempt of the kind on the record, I believe – to count up the Remnant. Elijah had fled from persecution into the desert, where the Lord presently overhauled him and asked what he was doing so far away from his job. He said that he was running away, not because he was a coward, but because all the Remnant had been killed off except himself. He had got away only by the skin of his teeth, and, he being now all the Remnant there was, if he were killed the True Faith would go flat.“

Now you may begin to wonder like Elijah if you are the only member of the Remnant remaining on Earth. How lonely that can feel! Luckily for Elijiah, he didn’t have to continue wondering as he had a pretty good source tell him that he was not alone (“and as for your figures on the Remnant,” He (God) said, “I don’t mind telling you that there are seven thousand of them back there in Israel whom it seems you have not heard of, but you may take My word for it that there they are.”) For the rest of us, we have to continue searching on our own and we learn later on that we are not alone and that there are many of us out there (and that our numbers are growing every day) going about our business and being active in our own ways.

Given the above, as he asked me the question you can imagine my mind starting to race. Do I tell him about our non-interventionist foreign policy? What about our support of free markets? How can I leave out our support for as limited a government as possible or lower taxes and less government spending? Maybe I should tell him about our position on sound money and why I support ending the Federal Reserve? I wonder if this guy is a Republican and I can make the connection easier for him by discussing Ron Paul?

All of those are wonderful ideas and positions to discuss with someone who wants to learn more about libertarianism but how could I possibly explain Austrian economics, the history of the Federal Reserve, or the merits of a non-interventionist foreign policy in such a short period of time as he was readying to walk out the door? I supposed I could have given him one of any number of libertarian leaning websites out there that he would have been able to go home and spend as much time as he needed reading up on it all but making an effective face-to-face case on the benefits of liberty will surely make far more of an impact. Just as we got to the doorway to say our goodbyes it hit me. The four words I was about to give him as an answer to his question encompassed everything we believe as libertarians. These four words explain the reasoning behind free market principles, behind non-interventionism, behind sound money, behind respect for individual freedom and sovereignty…

So, what is libertarianism all about in five seconds or less?

Live and let live.

*Taken from Lew Rockwell. Written by Anthony Gregory.

Leftist criticisms of libertarianism have surged lately, a phenomenon warranting explanation. We libertarians could justifiably find it all quite confusing. For decades we have thought our battle a largely losing one, at least in the short term. We are a tiny, relatively powerless minority. The state has raged on, expanding in virtually every direction, for my entire lifetime and that of my parents. Yet nearly every week our beloved philosophy of non-aggression is subject to some progressive’s relatively widely read hatchet job. On the surface, it appears at least as misdirected as the rightwing hysteria about Marxists during the Cold War. But at least Marxism was the supposed tenet of the Soviet Union, a regime with thousands of nukes ready to launch. Why all this concern about little ol’ us?

We could go through all these critiques line by line and expose the many factual errors and gross misinterpretations, whether disingenuous or unintentional. But it might be more worthwhile to ask, Why all this focus on the supposed demonic threat of libertarianism in the first place?

It was not too long ago that the Slate’s Jacob Weisberg declared the end of libertarianism. Time of death? The financial collapse, which proved our “ideology makes no sense.” Not three years later, the same web publication is exposing “the liberty scam“: “With libertarianism everywhere, it’s hard to remember that as recently as the 1970s, it was nowhere to be found.”

CONTINUED..

Presented by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. at “The Failure of the Keynesian State,” the Mises Circle in Houston, sponsored by Jeremy S. Davis. Recorded Saturday, 23 January 2010. Includes introductory and closing remarks by Mises Institute president Douglas E. French.

*Taken from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Written by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

The worst effect of the state is intellectual. It puts our brains in a prison, simply by defining the terms in which we are permitted to think and speak. The one nonnegotiable point becomes the state itself. You are permitted to argue about what the state’s priorities ought to be (bombs or butter), but not to question the fundamental model of a state-dominated society.

Believers in human liberty have played along with this game for too long. They’ve done this for decades. Sometimes they tack right and sometimes they tack left. What they should be doing is upending the game board itself. They need boldly to make that fundamental claim of the old liberal tradition, that society orders itself without the state. Liberty is the answer in every area of life.

This is precisely what Ron Paul does in his amazing book to be released April 19: Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom. It begins with the big themes about what liberty is and what it is not. It is not, for example, something that is created by “public policy.” It is not a piece of legislation. It does not emerge from the political process. Precisely the opposite: liberty is the absence of all these things. It is what results in the absence of state interference. Liberty’s only fundamental requirement is that the state let society alone to develop, grow, and prosper.

This point of view is hardly heard at all in the political debate today, which is otherwise hamstrung by partisan wrangling of what the state should be doing. By the time you finish the introduction to Ron Paul’s book, you realize that you are going to be treated to a completely new and radical form of thinking about politics, one that reimagines the current world in the same way that Jefferson reimagined his world — and became the real father of this country.

What’s especially brilliant about Ron’s new book is that he doesn’t just deal in abstractions. As the title suggests, he takes on 50 difficult areas of politics today and shines a new light of liberty on each of them. I think I’m correct in anticipating most readers’ reaction: there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. But the end effect will be that beautiful thing: enlightenment.

The book is arranged alphabetically, which makes the subject of abortion the very first entry. Where do you suppose Ron Paul stands on this issue? Let’s just say that if you think you have followed the conventional debate, you are in for something completely different.

Ron is a vehement opponent of abortion, and he explains why in ways that will bring readers around to his perspective (which is that of a man who has delivered thousands of babies). Then he moves to the entirely different area of public policy, pointing out that a centralized edict on this subject runs contrary to every moral and practical dictate of human liberty. A centralized pro-life policy is as wrong as a centralized mandatory-legalization policy. He wants a repeal of Roe. He doesn’t want state funding. But if a community wants to permit the practice, while he would certainly oppose that at the local level, his view is that the federal government should have nothing to say about it either way.

His position is shocking and out of the mainstream, to be sure, but it is also supremely practical. In innumerable communities around the country today, abortion clinics compete with alternative women’s clinics to provide for those in need of pregnancy services. In fact, if you want to look where the pro-life movement has seen gains, it is not in the area of political organization but in providing a market service for those who are seeking an alternative to abortion. This is a case in point of how liberty serves to work out our core disagreements.

Now, this is only the first issue and there are 49 others that he deals with, and each with a perspective that is surprising, practical, moral, and balanced in a fascinating way. Unless you are seriously schooled in libertarian theory, you might find it difficult to anticipate what he will say. Even if you get the libertarian point of view, Ron’s argument and evidence will surprise you.

Consider his writings on privacy, for example. He argues that it is a violation of human rights for the state to invade our privacy. At the same time, he argues that it is contrary to liberty for the state to restrict the right of private businesses to use cameras, websites to collect information on us, or businesses to investigate credit histories of their employees. As one application, he favors total drug legalization but defends the rights of business to drug test.

If anyone else in public life has taken this position — which Ron, as always, makes very persuasive and compelling in his narrative — I’m not aware of it.

So on it goes through so many issues. He opposes war with the passion of the Old Left. But he sounds like the Old Right on issues of taxes and regulations. His writings on terrorism mark him out as a real radical against the state’s stupid policies (he says that terrorism is a result of US foreign policy). At the same time, he has no problem with private discrimination on any grounds: sex, race, disability, or whatever. On marriage, he upholds the traditional definition (man and woman before God) but favors free association: “Why not tolerate everybody’s definition as long as neither side uses force to impose its views?”

He gets into sticky areas like the history of Zionism, and here again, I can promise you that you have never heard this point of view (he celebrates the original cultural movement but condemns the manner in which later political ambitions corrupted a great cause). On trade, he is at once a radical proponent of universal commercial rights and an opponent of legislated treaties like NAFTA. On gun control, he favors it for the government and opposes it for the individual.

Driving this book forward on page after page are the relentless surprises, the truth-telling logic, and the speak-from-the heart tone of the prose. You might agree with all, half, or none. But there is no way you will think about any of these issues in the same way after being schooled in the Paulian point of view.

This much is clear: there has never been a book like this to appear from any US political figure. It contains not a hint of political posturing or pandering. Its purpose is not to vault Ron to the top of a presidential ticket. The ambition of the book can be modestly described as educational, but the effect could be much more. This is the book we’ve needed to blow up the rhetorical structure of generations of political activism and replace it with a completely new vision of liberty.

This is why the book is called Liberty Defined. When you are lost and confused about a subject, the right way forward is to begin by defining your terms. At last, one man has done just this. He has defined liberty. And then he has done more: he has shown us that liberty is right, liberty works, liberty is the only way forward.

With this marvelous and passionate book, Ron Paul has really made a mark in the literary history of our times. It is a book of courage, intelligence, and vision. It should become our credo. Ron could be the founding father of a new and free America and world.