http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory42.html
Refuse To Fall for Republican Tricks
by Anthony Gregory
The Republican Party is an institutionalized lie. The Bush
administration is the embodiment of modern political deception.
Unfortunately, some of the people that should know better and should
see through the Republican lie don't. I'm talking about fellow
libertarians who still consider the GOP the lesser of two evils.
Pending a Watergate-type miracle, we have four more years of this
monstrous administration, four more years to test our resolve for the
cause of liberty and to refuse to fall for the Republican deception
ever again.
Throughout junior high and high school, I was a young libertarian
that
often fell for these lies. In 1996 and 2000, I secretly rooted for
Dole and Bush. As a fledgling libertarian I admired Reagan, carried
books by Rush Limbaugh wherever I went, tuned in to listen to Michael
Savage, wished I lived in the "real America" of the red states
instead
of the territory dominated by the clueless socialist blue, told
fellow
students they were unpatriotic for preferring Democrats, cheered on
the Republicans as they impeached Clinton over high sex crimes and
misdemeanors, and dreamt of the day that the Republicans would
dominate all three branches of government and bring us back - however
gradually - to the Constitutional structure forged by America's
Founding Fathers.
I was so much older then. I'm younger than that now.
I don't distrust Republican rule because I'm young, idealistic and
na�ve. If it weren't for all the reading I've done, I would probably
be a Republican now. I would have been a young conservative at
Berkeley, scoffing at the leftist kids with dreadlocks and regarding
the radical anti-capitalist left on campus as the greatest threat to
human liberty imaginable.
That's na�ve. The disorganized campus left may have some sway, here
and there, on the margins of political discourse and maybe even
policy. But we're not going to see a Maoist takeover of America.
We're
not going to see Bibles banned and replaced by Das Kapital. What
we're
more likely to see is a fascist takeover. I never thought I'd think
this, but now I do.
How can the Bush administration - the most anti-liberty,
Constitution-shredding, big-government administration to wield power
at least since the days of LBJ's and Nixon's guns and butter - still
manage to convince libertarians that the current political regime is
the best realistic chance for liberty? How can a party that has a
thirty-five year record of expanding government at a much faster pace
than the other party still be perceived as the smaller- government
party?
The answer, of course, is deception. The Republicans are much
shrewder, much better organized and much more dishonest than the
Democrats. The only reason so many libertarians and free market
conservatives don't think so is because the Republicans are also
master magicians. They conjure up all sorts of illusions and tricks
to
convince freedom's friends that they're basically on the same side in
the cosmic battle against the true enemy - the left.
Illusory Tax Cuts
The Republicans rely on nothing in their bag of tricks more than tax
cuts. Under Reagan and Bush II, we have seen reductions in marginal
tax rates matched with exploding growth in government spending. This
deficit spending allows Republicans to use hidden forms of taxation -
borrowing and inflation - to fund all the militarism, corporatism
and
welfarism they want and buy votes from swing voters, all the while
pretending to stand up for the taxpayer.
The rich are overtaxed. But so are the poor and middle class. Hidden
Republican tax increases end up hurting this last group the most,
while their visible tax cuts do tend to help the rich more. If the
Democrats and the left attack these schemes, or any component in
them,
the Republicans can turn to the libertarians and say: "Look! The
Democrats want to raise your taxes! We understand the importance of
tax relief; we respect the rights of the individual."
Of course, the Democrats do want to raise taxes on the rich. The left
doesn't understand economics enough to know what's going on, and so
the lefties complain only about the visible tax cuts as opposed to
pointing out that the Republicans are in fact raising taxes on all of
us through inflationary spending.
The Republicans get everything they want. They can give tax cuts to
the rich - which is not in itself a bad thing - securing votes among
the affluent as well as the helpless libertarians who prefer some
relief to none. They can incite the left to respond with misguided,
anti-capitalistic criticisms. They can pretend to be the champions of
economic liberty. And they can increase government spending to their
heart's content, sticking us with the bill through the gradual
devaluation of the dollar, all the while blaming deficits on the big-
government Democrats.
Any reduction in taxes is a blessing. But the Republican tax cuts are
not really tax cuts; they are simply illusions - tricks that
substitute one form of wealth extraction with another, even more
destructive one.
Whereas the Democrats are arrogant and ignorant of economics, the
Republicans know exactly what they are doing. Which is more evil?
Another tax fraud the Republicans love is distracting us with
promises of simplifying the tax code or instituting a flat tax or
national sales tax. Our goal should not be replacing one tax with
another. Our goal should be cutting the size of government, which is
the only way to reduce the actual tax burden on the American people.
Privatization Hoaxes
The Republicans also want us to have our own money back, instead of
the evil government, or so they tell us. They want to "privatize"
Social Security, allowing us to invest a small portion of our payroll
taxes into a government-approved private account. They say that full
privatization will come in seventy or so years.
Libertarians need to stop falling for this hoax. We can't trust
Republicans who make seventy-year plans any more than we can trust
Communists that make five-year ones. No Republican Congressman is
going to be alive in seventy years to be held accountable, for one
thing. If a Social Security scheme doesn't immediately set the
country
on a course toward more liberty for the taxpayers, smaller rates,
actual control over private property, and a steady shrinking of the
Social Security system, it isn't a libertarian reform. It's a scam.
The Right to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.by Democrats
But the Democrats want to round up everyone's guns, right? Many of
them do. Here, too, the Republicans never deliver on their promises.
Bob Dole labored hard to push the Brady Bill through Congress. Ronald
Reagan and other Republicans pushed through one of the worst gun laws
in California history, helping to give my state its reputation as a
gun-free zone. George Bush I let his ATF and FBI commit murder at
Ruby
Ridge, which began as a gun control entrapment ploy.
Every time the Republicans are vying for power, they say America
doesn't need any more gun laws; it needs more enforcement of the
current gun laws.
I don't know about you, but I would much rather have ten million gun
laws that never see enforcement at all than one single gun law
stringently enforced by the law-and-order Ashcroft regime.
Bush doesn't care about the Second Amendment. The Assault Weapons Ban
lapsed, but not to his credit; he said he would have signed it if it
passed. Bush stonewalled efforts to arm airline pilots. Bush
rigorously enforces the unconstitutional, immoral gun laws on the
books today. Bush has never proposed to repeal a significant gun
control law.
Disarming a population is a perfect recipe for totalitarianism. But
another good method is keeping the armed population disarmed with lip
service to the Second Amendment, even as you trash the other nine in
the Bill of Rights and do nothing to reverse the violence done by
previous Republicans and Democrats to the right of the people to keep
and bear arms. This is the Republican strategy.
The Republicans don't see the right to bear arms as an inalienable
human right, any more than the Democrats see the Fourth Amendment as
sacred. The Republicans see the Second Amendment as a political
issue,
and would without flinching go door to door in America rounding up
weapons - just as they have in Iraq - if it suited their
authoritarian
purposes.
If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he would not be impressed by
how
much the Republicans respect gun rights. He would be amazed that the
Republicans have gotten away with as much tyranny as they have, in
spite of the armed populace.
Strict Constructionist Judges
Republicans don't have any use for the Constitution, so it's a
wonder why anyone would assume they would appoint judges that do. Our
Supreme Court has seven Republican appointees. The court has upheld
campaign finance censorship and although, thankfully, it ruled
against
Bush's destruction of habeas corpus rights of "enemy combatants," the
Republican hero, Clarence Thomas, was very little help in that brief
moment of sanity.
Republicans don't want judges that rule in favor of federalism,
constitutionalism, or common sense. If they believed in any of these
principles, they wouldn't pass such blatantly atrocious legislation
and wage such horrendously unconstitutional wars. Republicans want
judges that will approve of their despotism. Simple as that.
School Choice
Democrats believe in public schooling, probably more than
Republicans. Republicans, on the other hand, don't believe in public
schooling but they love the power it brings, nevertheless.
Under Republicans, federal education spending has increased about
50%,
and the Department of Education budget has gone up about 70%. I saw a
top Republican on television say that, unlike his party members in
the
1970s and 1980s, the Republicans have now given up on the idea of
ending federal education control. They're willing to admit they lost
that battle, but now they want to use federal education to shape
America according to Republican values. This is what he said.
Again, we see what the Republicans are about. They know that
government education is an attack on liberty and families - they know
it better than the Democrats do. And yet, they have no problem
increasing the scope of and spending on federal education. How could
they do this, knowing the destruction to federalism and the human
spirit caused by such policies?
They do know. That's why they do it.
Protecting Us From "The Liberal Media"
Throughout the nineties, we all heard about the liberal media. They
gave Clinton a pass for everything he did. Meanwhile, the lefties
said
there were no liberal media; the media were corporate-run, so they're
obviously conservative. Many of us libertarians laughed at such a
preposterous notion. Obviously, the media were liberal.
In actuality, both claims are partly right and partly wrong. The
media
aren't "liberal" or "conservative." The press is, overwhelmingly,
pro-government. Sometimes that means liberal, other times that means
conservative.
Many libertarians, however, still believe the lie that the media are
simply liberal. What this means is that when CNN puts the Iraq War
under the most timid of scrutiny, the American Right can scream foul.
The Republicans claim that the media, being liberal and all, are
clearly out to make Bush's "catastrophic success" in Iraq look like
more of a failure than it is.
This is nonsense. The mainstream press has indeed done a terrible job
at reporting the War on Terror, but not for the benefit of Bush's
detractors. The press rarely asks administration officials any tough
questions, the major networks never question the underlying
assumptions of this insane war, and the "embedded" reporters have
become a de-facto tentacle of the White House.
The reason we occasionally see chaos and death in Iraq on CNN and NBC
is because that's what's going on there. In actuality, it's much
worse
than what we see on the nightly news. One hundred thousand Iraqis
have
likely died because of Bush and Cheney's murderous adventure. That
should be on the news every day. The administration has lied
constantly, before and after the invasion, about weapons of mass
destruction and Saddam's contempt of the United Nations and the
nature
of US occupation. The talking heads should be screaming aloud,
calling
for the impeachment and trial of Bush for war crimes.
The "liberal media" probably did want to see Bush lose, but they were
quite poor at teaching Americans the basics about current events.
Forty-two percent of Americans, and probably most Bush voters, still
think Saddam was "directly involved" in 9/11. This can't be blamed on
a "liberal" anything.
The "liberal media" might be the Republicans' best trick of all.
During the Clinton years, they bashed the media as being too easy on
Clinton, and libertarians were forced to agree.
Now the Republicans claim that Bush's reelection is a populist
rejection of the "liberal anti-Bush media" and Hollywood. How
ingenious is that? Whereas in previous centuries - and, according the
Republicans, as recently as the 1990s - the press was there to
protect
the people from the government, now all of a sudden we're supposed to
believe that Americans are rallying around the president to protect
them from the evil press.
Don't fall for it. Just because most news correspondents
are "socially liberal" on certain issues doesn't mean that they are
making Bush look worse than he is. Such a feat is nearly impossible.
Pity the Power Elite
The Republicans want to be victims. They blame the left for
burdening the country with a victim mentality, but listen carefully
to
what they say. Pity the conservative college students, who must put
up
with socialist professors. Pity Big Business - including the
government contractors - for paying all the taxes and being the most
persecuted group in America. Pity the poor president, who has more
political power than has ever been concentrated in one man's hands on
earth, because people like Michael Moore hate him so irrationally.
Pity America the Superpower, which tries hard to run the world and
yet
is despised by those who don't want to be bombed, maimed and invaded.
Republicans like to have in both ways. They pretend to be on the side
of the people, not the government, even as they control the
government
and strip away our liberties. They pretend to be for the free market,
even as they increase spending and enact outdated New Deal schemes.
They pretend to be the party of the Founding Fathers, even though
they
are running a global empire that even the most statist of the
Federalists would have considered the very embodiment of tyranny.
They want us to pity them, the bold protectors of our freedom
against the pathetic and out-of-power left. They want us to fear the
leftism of Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin, who have no power over us
whatsoever, while they run the biggest government in the history of
the world. They want us to think we have something in common with
them
- a love for liberty - even as they rob us blind, pound us into
submission, and use our resources to conduct mass murder on innocent
people thousands of miles away.
They want to be regarded as the underdog when they are the most
powerful and dangerous power elite ever to rule the world.
Tricking Libertarians
The Republican Party, from its beginnings, has never been a party of
small government. And yet, some libertarians are relieved that Bush
has won. More perversely, some are glad he won and that the
Republicans have gained in Congress.
The Democrats are rotten; I've never said otherwise. But the
Republicans, if anything, are worse. Certainly, they're the ones in
power, and so they're the ones to target as the main enemies of
freedom.
The Republicans love to pretend they're on our side when they're not
in power, and when they grab power they keep the illusions going, in
any ways they can, to keep as many lovers of liberty duped into
thinking that this is the best we can do, that the Republicans are
preventing a socialist takeover even as they institute fascism with
every law they pass and war they wage.
Don't be distracted by other enemies from the left, who also target
the Bush regime for their own reasons, some good and some bad. Don't
let the fact that the left thinks No Child Left Behind is "under-
funded" distract you from the truth that the Republicans have
nationalized education in unprecedented ways. Don't let the leftist
attacks on Bush's warfare state make you the least bit sympathetic to
the war.
One of the few reasons many libertarians think the Republicans are
preferable is a matter of aesthetics. The Democrats are simply
shrewder, slimier, and more dishonest.
That's the greatest Republican lie of all. Here is a party that has
enlarged government far more than the opposition, and yet is still
perceived - even by those who should know better - as the party of
smaller government. Here is a party that calls itself pro-life, even
as it federally funds abortions and cherishes war. Here is a party
that lies about weapons of mass destruction and aggressively bombs,
invades and occupies a country that meant us no harm, and gets away
with saying the media are too hard on them and that Clinton was the
real liar. Here is a party that accepts every fundamental premise in
the culture of statism and favors the continuation or amplification
of
every government program under the sun, and yet can get away with
talking about how they take our side, not the side of the government
they control. That's shrewd. That's slimy. That's dishonest.
The Republicans have done too much damage, and no good, to the cause
of liberty. They have made both right and left think that capitalism
is the equivalent of imperialism, guaranteeing we will have neither
true economic liberty nor peace, and marginalizing those of us who
want both. These rabid elephants in sheep's clothing have taken far
too many libertarian lambs to the slaughter, all the while pulling
our
own rhetorical wool over their eyes.
It is not hating capitalism or America to distrust Republican rule.
It
is simply resenting being ruled by people who refuse to admit they
are
despots. Just as the Communists pretended to care for the common man,
even as they slaughtered millions, the Republicans pretend to respect
our freedoms even as they attack them without relent. Just as the
Communists were arguably worse than the fascists, because of their
fa�ade, so too the Republicans are worse than the Democrats, for they
pretend to be something that they most certainly are not.
My hope and dream is that America's true partisans of freedom will
put
aside some of their minor differences, at least for now, and
recognize
that the current regime is not the lesser of two evils, it is not
protecting us from something worse, it is not something to be thanked
for our remaining liberties and puny tax refunds. It is not the
representative of the free world, or the guardian of capitalism, or
the defender of the Constitution. What we see when we look in the
face
of George W. Bush, a man who got more Republican votes than any other
man in history, is the face of tyranny. It is not the face of a
lesser
of two tyrannies; forget about such distracting thoughts. Focus on
the
Republicans who rule America, and realize that these are the greatest
enemies of freedom in our time.
Don't be tricked. Don't be deceived. We have four more years of
these guys, so keep your guards up. Let's never get fooled again.
------- End of forwarded message -------