First Comes Love...

Helen Shibut

            As we move closer to another election, President Obama must try to defend his opposition to marriage equality.  Vice President Biden’s supportive comments about gay marriage this week only highlight the president’s failure to support same-sex marriage, though he does support civil unions and rightly worked to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  Very often, opposition to same-sex marriage comes from the religious right.  Obama’s hesitancy to support marriage equality even as it becomes more politically popular seems to indicate similarly grounded objections.  Given the trends in popular opinion and politicians’ tendency to shift with it, it’s surprising that Ron Paul is the only Republican or Democratic presidential candidate who says marriage should be legal for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation. 

            Libertarians like Paul offer a fresh perspective by asking the same question they always do:  Wait, why is the government involved in this at all?  As religious objectors to gay marriage always remind us, our founders emphasized separation of Church and State.  Throughout most of history, people saw marriage as a religious institution, and because their religious leaders and texts opposed homosexuality, gay marriage usually wasn’t even up for debate.  And that’s exactly why Americans deserve marriage equality now.  Our country has grown, not just in size, but also in religious diversity.  Today we have plenty of religious groups that want to marry gays, and they should be allowed to.  The institution of marriage is not trademarked by one or two major religions, or even by Religion in general—after all, no one opposes atheists getting married. 

            Civil unions would remedy some of the prejudice in the system, like the tax benefit inequality, but they wouldn’t take care of underlying issue.  For many of us, “the pursuit of happiness” involves love and marriage.  Civil unions aren’t good enough, because the government shouldn’t get to decide when you’re happy enough. 

An Interesting Alternative

 Helen Shibut

           The federal government really loves money.  It borrows money.  It prints money.  And it taxes its people to get their money.  The government has a lot of experience taxing people, and it knows that people don’t generally like paying higher taxes.  The government makes taxation such a difficult process to understand that many people just don’t have the energy to look into it and do something about it.

            Government legislators haggle over taxes all the time.  They give tax breaks to some people and businesses but not to others, and oftentimes politicians will create tax loopholes for their supporters.  This isn’t fair to people who don’t have the money to contribute to politicians in high places who can influence tax legislation.  But I don’t believe wealthy Americans should not be “rewarded” with high taxes for creating strong businesses or advancing their careers.  Is there a good solution?

            No solution is perfect, but I think Americans should take a closer look at the FairTax plan (H.R.25/ S.13).  Instituting the FairTax would eliminate the need for the Internal Revenue Service and would make it more difficult for the government to increase taxes without opposition from regular Americans.  Under the FairTax, everyone would get to keep his or her entire salary—only consumption would be taxed. 

            The FairTax plan doesn’t take care of the main problem, which is that Americans are taxed too highly in order to support an inefficient and corrupt government.  But it would bring some much needed transparency to the system while eliminating the IRS, getting rid of thousands of pages of incomprehensible legislation, and making tax evasion much more difficult.  And that's a step in the right direction.  

Climate Change Deniers Need Treatment, Claims Professor

Helen Shibut

Apparently, climate change is such an enormous problem that the only rational solution is to “treat” scientific dissidents as if they suffer from some bizarre and serious mental illness.  At least that’s what Professor Kari Norgaard of the University of Oregon argued at the Planet Under Pressure Conference this week.  Norgaard argues that people are too comfortable with their own beliefs about climate change, and that “this habituation must be recognized and simultaneously addressed at the individual, cultural and societal level.”  No doubt it is the state that must lead the charge against individuals who disagree with Norgaard, and in fact, her paper, co-authored by Robert Brulle and Randolph Haluza-Delay, complains about the lack of Congressional focus on climate change. 

            Norgaard’s reasoning is dangerous as well as flawed in the practical sense.  From a civil liberties standpoint, the state obviously should not be in the business of forcing people to believe in climate change or to spend their money, in the form of taxes, on anything else they oppose.  Whether climate change is real or not has nothing to do with the fact that people have the right to their own beliefs.  The government does not have the authority to punish people for being atheists or Christians, though obviously both positions cannot be equally true.  As far as I know, neither of those groups has demanded a state-sponsored conversion effort to rid the nation of dangerous misconceptions.

            Furthermore, if Norgaard really wants to see something done about global climate change, she should not look to the federal government, whose Department of Defense is the world’s largest polluter.   The federal government is known for its tendency to consider itself above its own rules, and carbon emissions standards are no exception.  If she wants to see any real movement in the direction she wants, Norgaard should convince (not coerce!) those in the private sector of the merits of her ideas.  She might make better headway if she stopped equating those who disagree with her radical ideas with racists. 

           

http://uonews.uoregon.edu/archive/news-release/2012/3/simultaneous-action-needed-break-cultural-inertia-climate-change-respons

http://www.infowars.com/climate-change-skepticism-a-sickness-that-must-be-treated-says-professor/

http://www.planetunderpressure2012.net/pup_session.asp?19170

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-us-department-of-defense-is-the-worst-polluter-on-the-planet/

Interview with Congressional Candidate Karen Kwiatkowski

Helen Shibut


If you're registered to vote in Harrisonburg (or anywhere else in Virginia's 6th district), then you will have the opportunity to vote in the Republican primary on June 12th for who should be the Republican candidate for Congress.  Karen Kwiatkowski is challenging ten-time incumbent Bob Goodlatte for the nomination.  (Madison Liberty does not endorse any candidate, and I will request an interview with Bob Goodlatte as well.)


You can listen to the interview here (it's about half an hour).  I'm having technical difficulties getting the blue quicktime symbols off of this post-- hopefully you can ignore them.  If you can't see the audio player, just click around symbols, and they should move out of the way.  I'm working on it.

Government-Sponsored Values

Helen Shibut

Libertarians are often criticized for our position on public education—we’re not fans of it!  This isn’t because we don’t support educating children.  We believe that public schools don’t give children the right kind of education.  I recently attended a talk by Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute called “Government Schooling for a Free Society?  It Sounds Wrong Because It Is Wrong.”  He stressed that while government-provided schooling is not in the best interests of the children at the schools, it is in the best interest of the government, and that’s why the government continues to fund even poorly performing schools that everyone can agree are not doing much educating.  By controlling how people are educated, the government can teach the values that it wants to and leave out the things it does not like.  Though I do not believe the average teacher is out to indoctrinate students with government propaganda, it is true that they are provided with most of their material by the state.  Some material is pretty uncontroversial—think algebra.  But we’ve also seen lists of banned books, other books taught that parents disapproved of, evolution banned and then required, creationism required and then banned… decisions like these should be made by parents, not politicians.  And through not everyone agrees about which contraceptive methods should be taught or if anyone should have to read Catcher In The Rye (but why wouldn’t they?), everyone who pays taxes continues to support the system, like it or not. In contrast, in a free society parents could choose for themselves which schools deserve their money. 

Any form of education, especially for children, is going to involve some instilling of values.  Choosing which values are “best” is not a job for the government, which has problems practicing even the values it professes to approve of (Honesty? Responsibility?).  Therefore, parents should have the right to support only the schools they want to, as long as they allow others to do the same.  In this kind of system, there would be a wide variety of schools for parents to choose from, and schools would have to produce good results or risk losing their students and financial support.  It’s true that parents don’t always make the right choices—but we can usually rely on the government making the wrong ones.  

Why is a free society the best kind of society?

Helen Shibut

            Seven members of Madison Liberty attended the International Students for Liberty conference in Washington DC this past weekend.  It was so inspiring to see such a huge group of liberty-minded college students gather to listen to speakers on a wide range of libertarian issues, from Austrian economics to civil liberties to non-interventionist foreign policy.

            Nigel Ashford, from the Institute for Humane Studies, gave a very interesting lecture on the different kinds of libertarianism.  While libertarians generally agree that the state should have minimal power over the individual, they have different opinions about why this is true.  For example, some libertarians believe that people are endowed with natural rights at birth (Rand, Nozick), while others argue that freedom, especially economic freedom, is important simply because the individual can make better decisions for himself than the state can (Hayek). 

            To convey libertarian ideas to other people, we have to know why we believe in a minimal state and free markets.  Though some libertarians feel that we should focus on only our common goals in order to work towards producing the kind of free society we want to live in, I think it is important to know both the practical and the philosophical reasoning behind libertarianism.  

Women's Issues Debate

Helen Shibut

Last week, the JMU Democrats hosted a debate between themselves, the College Republicans, Madison Liberty, and Shout Out (a group of JMU feminist bloggers).  The debate focused on women's issues. Here are the positions Luke and I advocated as the representatives for Madison Liberty.

On equal pay legislation:
This kind of legislation hurts the ability of women to compete for jobs.  Equal pay legislation makes it impossible for businesses to adjust pay rates solely on the basis of merit-- businesses must ensure that both genders are paid equally regardless of performance.  But without equal pay legislation, sexist employers must pay for their prejudices because the supply of potential male workers is much lower than the supply of potential workers overall.  If a female applicant is willing to accept a lower rate than a male applicant, a sexist employer must take a financial hit in order to hire the man. 

Though sexism continues to have an influence in the workplace, that effect is decreasing as women dominate college graduation rates.  The collapse of the pay gap will happen as a result of social change-- more government regulation is not the answer.

On sex education in public schools:
Given the differences in people's beliefs about what constitutes appropriate material to be taught in schools, no sex-ed program can satisfy even the majority of taxpayers (the people who ultimately fund the schools).  Therefore, the government ought to remove itself entirely from sex education, and stop functioning as a convenient way for parents to avoid their responsibilities to their children. 

On Roe v. Wade:
The practical issues that would brought up by criminalizing abortion cause us to oppose the government abolishing or regulation abortion.  Anti-abortion laws would be difficult to enact, and would certainly require gross invasions of personal privacy.  Though libertarians hold differing opinions on the ethics of abortion, Madison Liberty does not see government intervention as the answer.

Ron Paul Wins JMU Straw Poll

Helen Shibut

Ron Paul – 45 votes (46.3%)

Barack Obama – 39 votes (40.2%)

Mitt Romney – 5 votes (5.2%)

Rick Santorum – 4 votes (4.1%)

Others – 1 vote (Newt Gingrich, Gary Johnson, Stephen Colbert, Michelle Bachmann) (1 % each)

Thursday’s 2012 presidential straw poll, narrowly won by Republican Ron Paul, indicates a small surge in students’ interest in national politics.  Paul’s supporters have often complained that the media ignores him, but he has nonetheless retained widespread support, especially amongst younger voters who see him as an alternative to extreme social conservatives like Rick Santorum.

As we face an unprecedented level of national debt, younger voters are starting to realize the implications of the government’s problems on their own lives.  Students tend to overwhelmingly oppose the wars in the Middle East and support legalization of marijuana, as does Ron Paul.  The government spends enormous amounts of money fighting ambiguous wars abroad and tracking down drug users, exacerbating the debt problem.

Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum all did very poorly in the poll, indicating that young conservative-leaning voters are frustrated with establishment Republicans and their divisive politics. 

In light of the tremendous support Obama generated at JMU during his visit in 2008, his loss points to a sense of disillusionment amongst his supporters.  The close polling of Paul and Obama demonstrates both frustration and optimism amongst JMU students at the beginning of what will surely be an exciting and polarizing election year.  

A Step in the Wrong Direction

by Helen Shibut

President Obama recently signed the National Defense Authorization Act which gives the president the power to detain American citizens indefinitely without a trial if they are accused of terrorism.  Clearly, this is in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment right to “a speedy and public trial.” But as we know, this is hardly the first time our government has passed laws that undermine our freedom.  Jonathan Turley’s recent article “10 reasons the U.S. is longer the land of the free” describes other legislation and compares it to that of other countries (you can find it at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-united-states-still-the-land-of-the-free/2012/01/04/gIQAvcD1wP_story.html). 

Politicians justify laws like the National Defense Authorization Act by saying that they are in place to protect Americans.  It is likely that these laws do indeed make some citizens feel marginally safer—for a time.  But ultimately these laws just make it more difficult for Americans to defend themselves against government overreach.  Benjamin Franklin wrote “they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” I believe we do deserve liberty and safety, so I hope that our politicians soon repeal this law and others that present such clear threats to American liberty.  

Markets Don't Just Help Rich People

http://studentsforliberty.org/blog/monteverdi-music-and-markets-bravo-2/

Libertarians are often accused of not caring about poor people, or culture, or any good thing that more than just we as individuals can benefit from.  Capitalism and free markets are attacked for only helping selfish rich people.  This article from Students For Liberty gives an example how free markets can benefit everyone.

Economic freedom connecting to all sorts of good things

By Helen Shibut

Tonight, in lieu of a regular Madison Liberty meeting, we hosted John Hardin, a program manager from the Charles Koch Foundation.  He gave a presentation on prosperity and economic freedom.  I’m not usually a graph person, but he had a powerpoint and a short video from the Koch Foundation that had some really interesting graphs showing the relationship between economic freedom and things like average income per capita, happiness index, and life expectancy.  The graphs showed a strong correlation between economic freedom and things most people would consider elements of a prosperous society—not a big shock.  The lack of exceptions to the correlations was what really surprised me.  No countries without at least a midrange level of economic freedom had high average income or long life expectancy.  All the countries with a low economic freedom ranking had high percentages of infant mortality and child labor. 

It was scary to see what happens in countries with less economic freedom, especially since our own economic freedom is under attack every day.  Hopefully groups like the Koch Foundation (and Madison Liberty) can make a difference by spreading the word about the benefits of economic freedom and the risks of big government and loads of regulation.