Archive for the 'Freedom, Liberty, and Justice' Category

Ron Paul, Grass Farming, and Global Warming (and Organic Farming Too!)

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Jeremy Clifton
on December 29, 2007
in Freedom, Liberty, and Justice and Ron Paul
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I just read a thoroughly fascinating letter (”Ron Paul, Grass Farming, and Global Warming: An Open Letter to Those Concerned With Global Warming” by Chris Masterjohn) posted on Lew Rockwell’s web site.

Like everybody else who has even remotely paid attention the last few years, I’ve heard about global warming, and while I’m skeptical of the claims that are made, I try to keep an open mind since it stands to reason that pollution caused by industrial processes would have some sort of effect on the environment as a whole, so a gradual increase in average temperatures is not out of the question.

As a result, the following few paragraphs really caught my attention:

Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide can be reduced in two ways: the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere can be reduced, and the amount of carbon dioxide sequestered from the atmosphere in oceans, soils, plant and animal life, and other “carbon sinks” can be increased. Reducing carbon emissions only slows the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 while increasing carbon sequestration causes reductions in atmospheric CO2 that take effect immediately.

According to the organization Carbon Farmers of America (CFA), the most promising method of carbon sequestration and thus the most immediate and effective solution to global warming is to increase topsoil formation with pasture-based farming.

According to CFA, the amount of topsoil lost in the Great Plains over the last 150 years can sequester the same amount of carbon that has been released into the atmosphere by human industry since the Industrial Revolution. By restoring the same amount of topsoil, we could reduce atmospheric CO2 to pre-industrial levels. On a global scale, we could achieve the same result by merely increasing the level of topsoil by 1.6%!

This is very interesting … we hear a lot about the supposed ill effects of pollution on the environment, and people make a lot of noise about extinction of species and reduction of the native habitats of species, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard anybody discuss the effects of the loss of topsoil on the environment.

And, if that wasn’t enough, the whole idea dovetails with the consumption of organically-raised foods … an idea that just seems to make sense. After all, as we in the computer world say, “Garbage In - Garbage Out” … so why should it surprise us that foods enhanced or fed with all sorts of strange artificial chemicals and hormones might not be so healthy for humans.

So … now that this whole concept has been brought to my attention, I have two plans of action. First, I’m going to support CFA monetarily. Second, I will continue to work towards my dream of having a farm of some variety. Yes, friends and family … on those days when I tell you that I wish I was farming and never had to see a computer again … I’m serious. :-)

Ron Paul on Glenn Beck

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Jeremy Clifton
on December 19, 2007
in Freedom, Liberty, and Justice, Politics & Other Objectionable Subjects and Ron Paul
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I catch Glenn Beck on the local talk show in town (WGOW 102.3 FM) every now and then when I’m out and about in the evening. I find myself disagreeing with him more often that I agree (probably because foreign policy has been the topic so often recently). Still, the Ron Paul interview on tonight’s show is, I think, the best interview with Dr. Paul I’ve seen yet. He got plenty of time to clearly state his positions, and I think that anybody that watches will, agree or disagree, understand where he stands.

I think one of the best parts of the interview is when Dr. Paul essentially states that there is no divide between personal liberty and economic liberty.

That and “I think the Constitution is very libertarian, so if you’re a Constitutionalist, you’re a Libertarian, which means you want a lot less government. The Constitution was written to restrain the government, not restrain the people.”

Lew Rockwell on Sound Money

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Jeremy Clifton
on December 18, 2007
in Economics and Freedom, Liberty, and Justice
. 2 Comments
What is the strongest case for gold? That it would end inflation and the business cycle? Those are benefits but not the main one. The gold standard would dramatically restrain the state, which is the essence of freedom. It would force the political class to come to us and ask for tax increases whenever it wanted to expand, and thereupon the population would likely say no. This is the reason politicians hate gold.

– Lew Rockwell in “Easy Money, Easy Lies“

This is exactly the case. Allowing the Federal Fraudulent Reserve to print and coin money at will in order to “jump start” the economy ends up costing the average US citizen money and wealth at the expense of whatever group happens to get the newly printed money first. Think about it this way … in January, the price of gold was roughly $600/ounce. Now it is roughly $800/ounce. The truth of the matter (as a friend of mine who deals rare coins in Wake Forest, NC once explained to me) isn’t that the price of gold has gone up, it’s that the purchasing price of the US dollar has decreased. How many of you have gotten a 33% raise in your salary to compensate for dramatic loss of purchasing power of the dollar? I’d wager not many. So, the Federal Government has taken money from you … in essence, a hidden tax.

As I said to a friend earlier today … it doesn’t take a genius to realize that an economic policy that jump-starts the economy by keeping interest rates artificially low and printing money willy-nilly to try to encourage people to keep spending and borrowing (”business as usual!”) is nothing more than a house of cards built on the beach in the face of an approaching hurricane. There is no way that we collectively can ever pay off the debt load our nation has without a massive increase in dollars and an corresponding drop in their purchasing price.

Take heed, people, because a serious economic collapse is inevitable. The question is whether we as a nation are bright enough to buckle down and take sound money seriously, and mitigate the effects of the crack-up, bad as they will be … or if we’re going to keep our head in the sand and continue encouraging people to borrow money as if nothing was wrong, until enough people get wise to the charade and start bank runs. When the government steps in and allows the banks to refuse to allow people to withdraw their deposits as they first did during the war of 1812 (and they government has show again and again that they’ll do whatever they can to prevent the banks from failing as a result of their reckless business practices), then the real breakdown will have started.

And that, my friends, is why “mountebanks” is an especially apt term for the folks in charge of our economic policy.

Anthony Gregory on Ron Paul: “Mr. Speaker, Peace is Always Preferable to War”

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Jeremy Clifton
on December 17, 2007
in Freedom, Liberty, and Justice, Misc. Notes, Politics & Other Objectionable Subjects and Ron Paul
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Once again, someone puts the pieces together better than I can. This article (”Mr. Speaker, Peace is Always Preferable to War“, by Anthony Gregory) is an excellent compilation of Ron Paul’s warnings concerning our foreign policy, starting during the early years of the Reagan administration.

On Government Intervention

Published
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Jeremy Clifton
on December 17, 2007
in Economics, Freedom, Liberty, and Justice and Politics & Other Objectionable Subjects
. 1 Comment

Thus saith Benjamin Constant:

Every time collective power wishes to meddle with private speculations, it harasses the speculators. Every time governments pretend to do our own business, they do it more incompetently and expensively than we would.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The Washington Post Admits Ron Paul is a Front-Runner

Published
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Jeremy Clifton
on December 17, 2007
in Freedom, Liberty, and Justice, Misc. Notes, Politics & Other Objectionable Subjects and Ron Paul
. 0 Comments

The Washington Post has more or less admitted that Ron Paul is a front-runner … they’ve posted “The Libertarian Surprise: Ron Paul” in the “The Front-Runners: Understanding the Leading Presidential Candidates” section on their web site (though it is, humorously to me, filed under “Giuliani”!).

Andrew Sullivan Gets The Ron Paul Revolution

Published
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Jeremy Clifton
on December 17, 2007
in Freedom, Liberty, and Justice, Politics & Other Objectionable Subjects and Ron Paul
. 2 Comments

In “Ron Paul For The Republican Nomination” Andrew Sullivan explains with clarity exactly why Ron Paul is the best choice on the Republican field this election cycle. Although I disagree with him on some points (specifically, I think his comment that “McCain, along with Lieberman, still seems to believe that expending even more billions of dollars to prop up and enable a fast-devolving, ethnically toxic, religiously nutty region is somehow in American interests.” misjudges he totality of Islam, though it is spot-on with regards to at least a portion), by and large, he’s got it!

But the deeper reason to support Ron Paul is a simple one. The great forgotten principles of the current Republican party are freedom and toleration. Paul’s federalism, his deep suspicion of Washington power, his resistance to government spending, debt and inflation, his ability to grasp that not all human problems are soluble, least of all by government: these are principles that made me a conservative in the first place. No one in the current field articulates them as clearly and understands them as deeply as Paul.