Blog – Politics (The diabolical ramblings of a libertarian in a socialized world…)

1/13/08 10:59 PM

The Cost of War Video on Youtube

The war in Iraq has been estimated at 2.4 trillion dollars. This is an egregious disrespect of hard yet-to-be earned American’s money being spent on an effectively imperialist act of shame. As a fairly strong non-interventionist type, I see no legitimacy in this war nor the empirical nature of our policies and infrastructure across the globe. However, there was a video made about the cost of the Iraq war, here, that ruined a potentially good message with 4 or 5 minutes of sappy socialist brainwashing exercises in creative math – “with 2.4 trillion dollars we could buy enough solar panels to cover Rhode Island…”

( I’m thinking, well gee, just think of how many children you could save with your car payment. You really choose the convenience of driving over the lives hundreds, if not thousands of human beings? I mean, hell, war in Iraq is it least driven by some far fetched idea of survival - but driving? Sorry, but it's a fallacious framework that the majority of the flick uses).

Anyway, so here’s the response I got from pointing this out:

…most on here don't even know what it means to actually live in crushing poverty under the thumb of a tyrannical despot (usually backed and maintained by the U.S. no less...). About 75% of the world does not even have basic telephone service, never mind all the things that Americans usually waste their money and lives on.

How does this make the case the government should force it's citizens to give up their money for its moral ideas of generosity? Humanitarian aid should be given freely by the public, persuaded by these same kinds of videos - with the exception of asking for the money, or other kinds of help, not telling me how the subsequences of robbing my wallet could have been so much better.

Our disagreement is that I don't believe government should fund the things in that video any more than they should fund Iraq - with the exception of police and the sciences. There are things I believe the government should do, and they should do them well - policing and national security are among the most important of those. Taking care of the impoverished is not an appropriate government function.

I don't believe the answer to the world's problems are found in governments, but rather freely organized people that aren't saddled by institutionalized beaurocracies and intransigent constitutions of law. Bill Gates could wire a billion dollars to Darfur tomorrow afternoon - how long do you think it would take to get that transfer going with our government system? Our government is cool, but it's job is clinical, in my humbled opinion.

I view government more like a referee and free society as the players. I don't understand why people automatically think "government" when there is something in the world they don't like or don't agree with, or want to change. The free market is where all the action is supposed to be at, refereed by the rules of the constitution.

But instead of going to the trouble to change the hearts and minds of the masses, they take an easier path and rationalize government interference. So, in my view, obviously most of those comparisons in the video on various ways we can blow everyone's money were invalid and ineffective at proving their point - particularly to a libertarian like me.

I was watching the latest republican debates from Thursday night on Youtube, and became more disturbed than usual about the rhetoric coming out of these salesmen.

(Not to mention the priceless moment I haven't seen anyone write about yet - Huckabee said, to paraphrase, 'We can not only win the White House, but we can keep the country safe too' - as if keeping the country safe is second in priority to winning the White House - did anyone else catch that? Yeah, keep telling me how Ron Paul is the nutcase...)

Romney, particularly, but also Huckabee and Guiliani all seem to be running for president of the world, not America. All of their comments concerning international politics sounded like a game of Risk being played on TV. Romney talking about how we need to "get them" evolved into democratic nations and so forth. They all have their little 'plan' for the middle east and how we need to continue our military presence and augment it with a non-military presence.

And no one in the audience seemed the least bit concerned about this kind of talk. It just gets worse, debate after debate, election after election, we have rationalized becoming an imperial republic.

We have thousands of years of history to review and realize how power corrupts, and we demonize the imperialist heavy hitters in our history books - yet we never seem to realize the dynamics that empowered these leaders. We still seem to think that these people were straight up "evil", easy to pick out - as if their hatred and illegitimacy was as obvious to their people as it is to us now.

Now we have an entire panel of republican imposters using 'promotion of democracy', or 'bringing peace to the region' or appeals to supposed moral obligations to restore liberty throughout the world - all with that televangelist, car salesman smile.

Why do we not see how we're romancing ourselves into the notion of our world police obligation? Why have we allowed ourselves to rationalize American military expansion and control all over the globe? Why have we let our superpower status corrupt us into following the footsteps of empires past - dead empires?

Ron Paul and evolution

Absolutely not. His agenda is theologically neutral and poses no attack on science. He's a religious dude. And, a perfect example of limiting personal beliefs to the person, not to extend his Christianity in legislation. It's about time.

The rest of the presidential crop fail to convince me they'll keep their theological components out of government.

It's annoying to accept his denial, but I hardly think it compares to war in Iraq, the destruction of the dollar, the security of our borders, our high maintenance empirical infrastructure...etc.

I can't imagine how impacting his position on evolution is supposed to be...is there some big multi-billion dollar science bill being drafted right now that hinges on the belief in evolution?