Michael E. Newton's Blog, page 17

Most popular quotes from The Path to Tyranny

Amazon's Kindle has a cool feature that enables readers to highlight passages. Amazon is then able to record this and show the most popular passages from the book. Here are most popular highlights from the Kindle version of The Path to Tyranny:

Aristotle calls democracy a perversion of constitutional government in the interest of the needy.

In 1914, John Basil Barnhill said in a debate about socialism, "Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty."[†]

politicians promise the right to high quality education, the right to free or affordable health care and housing, and many more so-called rights. These are not genuine rights. They are benefits at the expense of others. The rights to private property, free speech, and freedom of religion are true rights because they have no cost.

Choosing an absolute ruler and the organizational skills of a large government is often advantageous in a time of crisis, but the difficult part is rolling back the large government and tyranny after the emergency has ended, which Athens was unable to do.

Therefore, the best way to prevent invasion and coup is to maintain a small and decentralized government with a strong defense, a well-armed population, and the courage to defend one's rights and liberty.

More than two thousand years ago, the Greek historian Polybius warned that "democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence" as the people grow more "accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others."[14]

A drawback of large government with control over people's lives is that it attracts ruthless men of ambition who wish to use the power of government for their own benefit.

Nevertheless, this use of government power to direct or coordinate society is a form of tyranny, because there can be no greater tyranny than an individual or group controlling the lives of an entire population, even if popularly elected.

The senators had hoped that killing Caesar would solve Rome's problems, but the problem was not just Caesar the dictator, it was also the people's desire to use government as a tool to redistribute land and wealth.

The tyrant also builds grand public works, acting as if he is helping the people, but his real goal is to impoverish them and keep them occupied.

 

Good news: "Home prices fall for seventh month in February"

Marketwatch reports:

Home prices fell for a seventh straight month in February as a wave of distressed properties continued to wash over the U.S. market, real-estate data company CoreLogic Inc. said Thursday.

CoreLogic's national home price index dropped 6.7% in February, versus the same month a year earlier. The decline was bigger than the January index reading, which was 5.5% lower than a year ago.

Excluding distressed sales, CoreLogic said home prices fell 0.1% in February, compared to a year earlier.

I love this line:

"When you remove distressed properties from the equation, we're seeing a significantly reduced pace of depreciation and greater stability in many markets," Fleming said in a statement.

In other words, when you exclude the bad news, the news is good!

Lord of the Rings meets the American Revolution

So here I am writing about George Washington's military strategy and campaign in the American Revolution and I'm reminded of two quotes from Lord of the Rings.

"The quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail. But hope remains, if friends stay true." ~ Galadriel

"There never was much hope. Just a fool's hope." ~ Gandalf

Paul Ryan's plan doesn't go far enough

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Paul Ryan explains his budget proposal and includes this great chart:

Part of Ryan's plan is to reduce government spending to the "long-term average" of about 19-20 percent of GDP. By what twisted logic does it make sense to leave government spending at 19-20 percent of GDP? Even Bill Clinton spent less than that.

Spending at these "average" levels is what got us into this mess. We should return to the level of federal government spending that existed prior to the progressive takeover of government, when the federal government spent about 2 to 4 percent of GDP during peacetime, more during depressions and wars. Maybe 2 to 4 percent is too low in these "modern" times. Personally, I think the federal government should spend about 5 percent of GDP. Three percent of which would be for defense and two percent for all other functions of the federal government, which are not that many according to the Constitution.

Taxing the rich to death hurts everybody involved

Robert Price writes in The Wall Street Journal about The Price of Taxing the Rich:

Nearly half of California's income taxes before the recession came from the top 1% of earners: households that took in more than $490,000 a year. High earners, it turns out, have especially volatile incomes—their earnings fell by more than twice as much as the rest of the population's during the recession. When they crashed, they took California's finances down with them.

Maybe, instead of villainizing the rich, the people should pray for their success. And instead of taxing them to death, the government should enable and encourage them to prosper.

Census data favors liberty, capitalism, and small government

Michael Barone's analysis of the 2010 census data is worth reading. His conclusion:

The states, said Justice Brandeis, are laboratories of reform. The 2010 Census tells us whose experiment worked best. It's the state with the same name as the county that's the center of the nation's population: Texas.

But it's not just Texas:

The eight states with no state income tax grew 18 percent in the last decade. The other states (including the District of Columbia) grew just 8 percent.
The 22 states with right-to-work laws grew 15 percent in the last decade. The other states grew just 6 percent.
The 16 states where collective bargaining with public employees is not required grew 15 percent in the last decade. The other states grew 7 percent.

People naturally move to states where the economies are good, jobs are plentiful, and the cost of living tends to be lower. States with low taxes and workers rights (the opposite of union rights) provide the environment people want. If states like New York, California, and Illinois want to balance their budget and avoid bankruptcy, raising taxes only drives people away and makes the situation worse. It's time for states and the federal government to open their eyes.

Learning from history quotes

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." ~ Ecclesiastes 1:9

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." ~ George Santayana

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." ~ Attributed to Mark Twain

"Nowhere does history indulge in repetitions so often or so uniformly as in Wall Street. When you read contemporary accounts of booms or panics the one thing that strikes you most forcibly is how little either stock speculation or stock speculators to-day differ from yesterday. The game does not change and neither does human nature." ~ Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Humanitarian imperialism and Barack 'Pericles' Obama?

Mickey Kaus writes about Obama's "Humanitarian imperialism" over at The Daily Caller:

"Humanitarian imperialism." I think that label will stick. And in a true empire–in this case, the empire of UN approved human rights enforcement–war never really ends. Always someone to protect somewhere. Imagine living in imperial Britain in the mid-19th century. There would almost always be a war or police action–actual shooting and killing–going on.** For a true empire to work– even, or perhaps especially, a humanitarian empire–war has to be routinized.

So, is Barack Obama a modern-day Pericles? According to Thucydides, Pericles said:

In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring not by receiving favors. Yet, of course, the doer of the favor is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift. And it is only the Athenians who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality. [Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 2.40.4-5.]

Pericles's "generosity" led Athens into the Peloponnesian Wars that lasted from 460 to 445 BC and from 431 to 404. Will Obama's humanitarianism force the United States into countless "UN approved human rights enforcements? The Obama Doctrine of internationally-approved atrocity prevention would indeed have us involved in each and every civil war and rebellion across the globe.

Have we learned nothing from history?

Anarchists take over London. Democratic-socialism is the goal. Plato warned us about this.

London is literally aflame, or parts of it are, as the 'anarchists' run amok.

200 arrested as hardcore anarchists fight police long into night in Battle of Trafalgar Square after 500,000 march against the cut
Up to 500,000 protestors attend anti-cuts demo
Anti-cuts march draws hundreds of thousands as police battle rioters

I put 'anarchists' in quotes because they are not really anarchists. They are socialists who are using Great Britain's democratic system in an attempt to impose their undemocratic ideology (i.e. higher taxes and more government spending) upon the rest of the country.

Which reminds me of how Plato described democracy:

"A delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!" [Plato, Republic 558c.]

The Political Economy of the Purim story (according to the Book of Esther)

When reading the Book of Esther on the holiday of Purim, it is Jewish custom to make noise and boo when hearing the name of the evil Haman. I silently boo in one other place. Chapter 10 Verse 1 states, "King Xerxes demanded taxes everywhere…" Upon hearing the word taxes, I commit my silent act of protest.

But why did Achashverosh (many translation and commentaries say this is Xerxes though other disagree) need to raise taxes now? Didn't Persia already have taxes?

Money is first mentioned in the Book of Esther in Chapter 3 Verses 8 – 9:

Then Haman said to King Xerxes, "There is a certain group of people scattered among the other people in all the states of your kingdom. Their customs are different from those of all the other people, and they do not obey the king's laws. It is not right for you to allow them to continue living in your kingdom. If it pleases the king, let an order be given to destroy those people. Then I will pay seven hundred fifty thousand pounds of silver to those who do the king's business, and they will put it into the royal treasury."

With this money, the government could offer new benefits to its people or the king could simply spend the money on himself and his friends. But that money eventually runs out and, with the people accustomed to the public welfare or the king to more extravagant living, the government needs new ways to raise revenue. Thus the new tax.

The Book of Esther demonstrates an even more destructive force within Persia. Chapter 3 Verse 13:

Letters were sent by messengers to all the king's empire ordering them to destroy, kill, and completely wipe out all the Jewish people. That meant young and old, women and little children, too. It was to happen on a single day—the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which was Adar. And they could take everything the Jewish people owned.

That last phrase, "they could take everything the Jewish people owned," seems unnecessary. Why would Jews care what happened to their possessions after the Persians were to "destroy, kill, and completely wipe out all the Jewish people?" For the Persians, "taking everything the Jewish people owned" was not just an afterthought, but was one of the causes of their hatred of Jews. Persia was a plunder economy. To maintain the king's and the court's extravagance and the benefits distributed to the Persians, the plunder needed to continue. However, Persia was running out of places to loot. According to the Book of Esther, Persia was already a huge empire, stretching from India to Cush (Ethiopia). And according to the dating by most historians, the Persian Empire had already begun to shrink in size by the time of the Purim story after the Greeks defeated King Xerxes at the famous Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. The Persians, now even more desperate for people to plunder, turned to the local population, most notably the Jews.

Thus, the Book of Esther and the Purim story is more than just a religious tale of God's hidden intervention in world events to save the Jewish people. It is also the story of a political and economic system that was desperately seeking new ways to maintain itself.