These are some thoughts I jotted down in the process of responding to a private message. Since I had written a bit, and thought my points worth sharing, I decided to post here...
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The best, most inspirational, definition I've heard for "Conservative" is "Someone who practices Conservation - someone who makes frugal use of fungible or toxic resources ...money, natural resources, government power, etc.
Squandering things, as a matter of general policy, is simply stupid. Why use things inefficiently or overuse them and risk poisoning and other side effects of unbalanced living? I believe very much in Conserving the natural world and leaving plenty of oil, etc. for future generations. I think closed input (sustainable) agriculture should be (and would be, if not for government screwing up the marketplace) the most profitable approach; in the long run it is the ONLY net profitable approach.
Most of all, though, I believe "that government governs best which governs least." I believe that both based on personal experience and because I recognize that the PREMISE of ALL government is inherently "evil": brute force against those who do not comply. The sanest government, then, is one which strictly limits the terms to which a citizen MUST comply. Few people bother to consider the PREMISE of government. The talk of “social contract” is nonsense – I didn't freely contract with this government; did you? GOVERNMENT IS TWO OR MORE PEOPLE IN A ROOM WITH A GUN.
Anyway, from what I've heard, Dr. Paul is a complete Conservative. It would be nice if we knew a little more about his personal practices, but I don't need that to know that free market approaches to resource use, pollution, etc. are what he favors, what I favor, what would work best ... and WHAT WASHINGTON D.C. WON'T ALLOW US TO TRY. Rothbard wrote considerably on how full enforcement of private property rights needs to include prohibition of externalizing pollution and other waste. That has been substantially missing from our society from the beginning.
A LOT of our current problems have occurred because we let Corporations gain more rights than human citizens. Ted Nace explains how this evolved, how it was insinuated in our culture, in Gangs of America – The rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy. The most significant event in the rise of Corporatism was the perversion of the14th Amendment to grant Corporations equal rights under the law – something they purposely were not given at the time the country was founded and something they should never have been allowed to obtain. Corporations, as currently constituted, encourage reckless risk - because the worst downsides are always externalized (dropped back on society) when a bet goes bad and a C corp folds...or more often, threatens to declare bankruptcy ... or some other sleazy maneuver. What sort of behavior would you expect when downside risk is strictly limited but upside profits are unbounded? How sane IS that? How predictable is the outcome?
The BIG threat to mankind is absolutely NOT "Global Warming" nor “peak oil”, nor terrorism, nor biotechnology, nor any of the other popular concerns.
Mankind is NOW at a crossroads that few are even considering:
Unrestrained/centralized/"global" government + High technology = Enslavement of all human kind, possibly until the end of time.
You think we're having a challenging time offering the alternative of Ron Paul and personal power now? Just you wait until the government issues RealID and and proceeds to track your every movement 24/7. The horror of George Orwell's 1984 was still restricted by limitations in technology; he didn't allow for things like “google”, computer monitored surveillance cameras recording everything everywhere...forever, and RealID/RFID National ID cards (version 2 would certainly be implantable) to track your every transaction and every movement.
We can survive the planet getting a few degrees hotter. We can survive a peaking in oil consumption (it might even be good for us). We won't survive world government + technology - or, at least, what survives won't be recognizably human after a thousand years of such crushing totalitarianism.
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The best, most inspirational, definition I've heard for "Conservative" is "Someone who practices Conservation - someone who makes frugal use of fungible or toxic resources ...money, natural resources, government power, etc.
Squandering things, as a matter of general policy, is simply stupid. Why use things inefficiently or overuse them and risk poisoning and other side effects of unbalanced living? I believe very much in Conserving the natural world and leaving plenty of oil, etc. for future generations. I think closed input (sustainable) agriculture should be (and would be, if not for government screwing up the marketplace) the most profitable approach; in the long run it is the ONLY net profitable approach.
Most of all, though, I believe "that government governs best which governs least." I believe that both based on personal experience and because I recognize that the PREMISE of ALL government is inherently "evil": brute force against those who do not comply. The sanest government, then, is one which strictly limits the terms to which a citizen MUST comply. Few people bother to consider the PREMISE of government. The talk of “social contract” is nonsense – I didn't freely contract with this government; did you? GOVERNMENT IS TWO OR MORE PEOPLE IN A ROOM WITH A GUN.
Anyway, from what I've heard, Dr. Paul is a complete Conservative. It would be nice if we knew a little more about his personal practices, but I don't need that to know that free market approaches to resource use, pollution, etc. are what he favors, what I favor, what would work best ... and WHAT WASHINGTON D.C. WON'T ALLOW US TO TRY. Rothbard wrote considerably on how full enforcement of private property rights needs to include prohibition of externalizing pollution and other waste. That has been substantially missing from our society from the beginning.
A LOT of our current problems have occurred because we let Corporations gain more rights than human citizens. Ted Nace explains how this evolved, how it was insinuated in our culture, in Gangs of America – The rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy. The most significant event in the rise of Corporatism was the perversion of the14th Amendment to grant Corporations equal rights under the law – something they purposely were not given at the time the country was founded and something they should never have been allowed to obtain. Corporations, as currently constituted, encourage reckless risk - because the worst downsides are always externalized (dropped back on society) when a bet goes bad and a C corp folds...or more often, threatens to declare bankruptcy ... or some other sleazy maneuver. What sort of behavior would you expect when downside risk is strictly limited but upside profits are unbounded? How sane IS that? How predictable is the outcome?
The BIG threat to mankind is absolutely NOT "Global Warming" nor “peak oil”, nor terrorism, nor biotechnology, nor any of the other popular concerns.
Mankind is NOW at a crossroads that few are even considering:
Unrestrained/centralized/"global" government + High technology = Enslavement of all human kind, possibly until the end of time.
You think we're having a challenging time offering the alternative of Ron Paul and personal power now? Just you wait until the government issues RealID and and proceeds to track your every movement 24/7. The horror of George Orwell's 1984 was still restricted by limitations in technology; he didn't allow for things like “google”, computer monitored surveillance cameras recording everything everywhere...forever, and RealID/RFID National ID cards (version 2 would certainly be implantable) to track your every transaction and every movement.
We can survive the planet getting a few degrees hotter. We can survive a peaking in oil consumption (it might even be good for us). We won't survive world government + technology - or, at least, what survives won't be recognizably human after a thousand years of such crushing totalitarianism.
