Tag Archives: election

Another presidential election is upon us and, as usual, there is really no way to avoid it. Less than three weeks from today, either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will begin preparing to assume the most terrifying, destructive power the world has ever known. And regardless of which one wins, the relentless destruction of our lives, liberties, and estates will continue.

The one thing we can look forward to after November 5 will be the temporary cessation of ritual election year slogans blaring at us from every corner of the media sphere. It isn’t merely that these slogans are hysterical and dumb. They are mostly completely wrong.

Let’s take one we hear every presidential election year that no one seems to question: “We need a president who will unite the country.” Heated arguments occur between pundits over which candidate is more “divisive” and even supporters of a candidate will say he is better but reflectively ask, “Can he unite America?”

If anyone has any idea what this means, then please tell me. I have none. It seems to suggest that 330 million people are all supposed to either believe the same thing or pretend they do. It is suggested there is some common thing these 330 million are working on that will benefit them all equally if only the right dear leader would show them the way.

The truth is the whole “unite the country” premise is wrong. It’s the opposite of the truth. A free country is one where people are left alone by their government to pursue their very separate interests. It is that from which all good things come as Adam Smith so astutely observed during the USA’s birth year. The only time the whole country is united behind a president is during a war. And those are all disasters.

A related sophism is the hackneyed refrain about the president “moving us forward.” Every presidential candidate promises this and virtually no one stops to ask what it means. It is just another variation on the theme that “we” are all working on some project vital to each and every one of us. What that project is I have no idea. This one employs fictional start and end points as metaphors for achieving this great work.

Most people, when not under the spell of these incantations, are working on their own lives, taking care of their own families, and at most helping make their own communities a nicer place to live for themselves.

And that’s perfectly ok. That’s what they’re supposed to be doing. History shows that leaving them alone to do precisely that makes the whole world better for everyone.

Mao Zedong had everyone united and working on the same project, whether they liked it or not. About fifty million of them ended up dead. Do you know what his project was called? The Great Leap Forward. I kid you not.

Really, as soon as a politician utters the word “we” or “us,” you should be suspicious. Nothing good ever follows. When you hear the words “move forward,” run like hell. Or prepare to defend yourself.

Then there is the perennial call for a president who can “get things done.”

Read the rest at Tom’s Substack…

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

A Free Thinker’s Guide to Voteball 2020

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2020 election It’s fitting the disastrous but highly entertaining Iowa Caucuses were scheduled one day after the Super Bowl. With the football season over and hockey and basketball far from their own playoff seasons, a large portion of the inhabitants of this continent need something to fill the gap. What could be better than the presidential primaries to take the place of quarterback sacks, slam dunks and breakaways for an entertainment-dependent public?

That was a rhetorical question.

Not all Americans are as fanatical about sports. There is a contingent so uninterested that they playfully chide those who are by referring to all organized athletics, whether amateur or professional, merely as “sportsball.” But that group isn’t nearly as large as the one completely uninterested in politics, regardless of how interested politics is in them.

Almost half the population doesn’t bother to vote in presidential elections. More than half skip Congressional, state and local elections. This august coalition needs its own dismissive, snooty-hip term for all things political. I humbly offer “Voteball.” As the great Nigel Tufnel would say, “It really puts perspective on things, though, doesn’t it.”

Interested or not, Voteball 2020 is upon us and it won’t go away until November 4, when with any luck an 11^th season of the Walking Dead will be there to provide amusement a little more connected to reality. In the meantime, politicians, their surrogates, the media and even many of our neighbors will wage a full-frontal assault on our psyches.

Football, baseball and hockey players all wear helmets for safety. In Voteball, even the spectators need to protect themselves. In lieu of hard plastic headgear, I humbly offer the following safety tips:

First and foremost, remember Horton’s Law: Politicians can be counted on to keep all their bad promises, and abandon all their good ones. And don’t forget Mullen’s Corollary: Any minor good done by the current administration will be undone by the next. This will help prevent irrational exuberance over those occasional good promises made amidst all the bad ones.

Mark Twain once wrote, “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe when the legislature is in session.” Most of the candidates running for president or Congress are already legislators. In President Trump’s case, he signs the bills legislators write, making them laws. So, as bad as the campaigns might be, don’t forget that every minute they spend campaigning is a minute they aren’t doing something worse.

English is not the primary language during Voteball season. From now until November, you’ll have to learn to translate a foreign language I call “Dronespeak.” It is important to avoid inadvertently adopting this language yourself as it can permanently warp your thinking. Here are a few examples of Dronespeak expressions to avoid:

“The Trump economy.” The economy is an incredibly complex combination of billions of individual decisions, partially overridden by thousands of government interventions. How well or poorly it might be doing at any given moment has very little to do with anything the president has done, no matter how much credit he or she tries to take. This isn’t directed at Trump. There was no Obama economy, Bush economy, or Clinton economy either. America prospers despite presidents and governments, not because of them.

“The commander in chief.” Yes, the president is commander in chief of the military and it’s perfectly appropriate to use this term when speaking of a strictly military issue. But it’s becoming more and more common to simply refer to the president this way in any context, as if he were commander in chief of the citizens. What an awful concept.

“Run the country.” Voteball doesn’t determine who will “run the country.” This is closely related to the “commander in chief” meme. The president doesn’t run the country. He or she runs the government, which causes enough problems on its own. Let’s not encourage any ambitions beyond that.

“My president.” “The president” is best; “our president” is questionable. “My president” is terrifying. It sounds a lot like those who say they have a personal relationship with God. Theological debate on that concept is fine, but can we agree applying it to a politician is blasphemy in a supposedly free country?

“We.” If Voteball in general is a war on your soul, presumptive use of the first-person plural pronoun is the enemy machine gun fire. It will be flying at you nonstop from every direction and it only takes one hit to take you out. Anytime anyone begins a sentence with, “We need,” “We must,” “We believe,” or “We all agree,” the proper response is, “Who is we?” Or, you could just refer them to Wemus.

This is by no means exhaustive but hopefully this short guide will not only help keep you safe from the dangers identified above but will give you the tools to identify and mitigate many others. Taking just a few precautions can make all the difference in enjoying a safe and entertaining Voteball season.

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

Election 2012: Was Obama the lesser of two evils?

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TAMPA, November 8, 2012 – “We’re all socialists now.”

If all of the pre-election hype about the presidential election being a choice between socialism and capitalism was true, then that statement must be true.

I doubt most Americans believe it.

In fact, Obama is no more a socialist than Romney is a capitalist. Obama has not called for state ownership of the means of production. Romney has not called for a laissez faire economy. Absent the rhetoric, they would both be most accurately described as European social democrats.

For libertarians, the choice between them was “heads the government wins, tails libertarians lose.” It is generally assumed that libertarians would consider Romney the “lesser of two evils.” I don’t think that’s true.

Romney’s rhetoric employed buzz words that both libertarians and conservatives respond to, like “free markets,” “small government” and “less taxes.” Obama’s rhetoric employed universally recognized code words for wealth redistribution like “fairness,” “fair share” and “investment.”

However, when you strip all of that away, the policy platforms of the two men were virtually identical.

Obama wants to raise taxes on the wealthy to help balance the federal budget. Romney does not disagree. Romney stated – over and over again in the first debate – that his plan to lower the income tax rates while simultaneously “closing loopholes” (translation: eliminate deductions) was aimed at getting the wealthy to pay more while giving small business and the middle class a tax break.

When Obama says it, he’s a socialist. When Romney says it, crickets.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

Obama Romney debate could be a staring contest

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TAMPA, July 16, 2012 – Since this is a presidential election year, everyone is focused on the White House. As usual, this election is being hyped as some sort of crossroads in American history: The American electorate will either choose to make an irreversible turn down the road to socialism or conservatives will save the country by electing a Republican president who will restore the American principles of free enterprise and individual responsibility.

It all makes a pretty good story until one attempts to back it up with tangible evidence: Why is Barack Obama a “socialist?” Why is Mitt Romney different?

The first answer you’d get on Obama from most conservatives is Obamacare. That was virtually the single issue for most Tea Party rallies in 2010. Yet Republicans are going to nominate the former governor who pioneered the same program in Massachusetts. If Obamacare makes the president a socialist, then why doesn’t Romneycare make his opponent one also?

Romney answered that question throughout the Republican nomination debates by taking a states rights position. He had signed a healthcare program into law in Massachusetts that was good for that state, but president Obama had been wrong to impose it upon the whole country.

Why the program is socialist when the federal government imposes it nationally but not when the state government imposes it on its millions of citizens is unclear.

However, that point is moot given other facts that came to light following the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Obamacare. It turns out that despite repeatedly stating that Obama was wrong to impose the healthcare program on the whole nation, Romney actually told Obama to do exactly that just three years ago.

Oops.

Continue at Washington Times Communities…