Friday night Ry posted:

My position is that the formation of the Libertarian Party did more to destroy freedom in the United States (and therefore, the world) than any event since.

He and I talked about it at time lunch on Friday. I find it hard to disagree with his reasoning. But it’s a little hard to know for certain because you can’t rerun the experiment to see how it would have turned out had the Libertarian Party not been formed.

The only reasonable argument I can make against his position is that the L-Party has articulated and presented a viewpoint that perhaps would have been even more muddled and lost than it is now.

In any case it’s sobering to think about and it causes me to wonder about other applications of the same thinking. What of Gun Owners of America, The Second Amendment Foundation, Citizens Committee for the Right To Keep and Bear Arms, and JPFO? There I think the case is less clear. One can be a member of not just one but any and all of the organizations. With a political party your candidate either wins or loses. There is no middle ground or somewhat diminished influence when your most favored candidate looses a battle for political office.

The main thrust of this article is something completely different but what really caught my eye was this:

Russia loses around 700,000 people each year – about 0.5 per cent of its total population – to emigration, disease and alcoholism.

It would appear that the “benefits” of socialism last for quite some time after the system has collapsed. One would hope that people not try another “experiment” such as that ever again. What is it? Something like 100 million dead in the last century that can be attributed to socialism and communism? And if the above numbers are correct and characteristic of what happens when socialism collapses one may even make a prediction.  And that prediction would be that the implementation of a “workers paradise” means the complete death of that society. It may be that the only escape from the death throes of that type of disaster is for some other culture to salvage the remnants and rebuild it in a completely different image.

But one could always hope people could learn from the failure of others. But that hope would only reveal that I’m an optimist even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. I do have irrefutable evidence that people don’t learn from the failures of others–there are still people that vote for the Socialists Democrats in our country.

Interesting point of view. He (or she) says the Democrats are too moderate. The Democrats have abandoned the left.

A truly left party would call for universal health care. It’s criminal to live in the richest country in the world and have 46 million people – 15 percent of the population – without health care. The last time Democrats controlled the executive branch, the Welfare to Work program passed. This bill created a slave class, eliminated union jobs and didn’t help anyone get off welfare.

…

Democrats merely represent a different sector of the elite. Most people are oblivious because elections focus on marginal issues. It’s no wonder that rich people have seen their wealth explode while working peoples’ wages have stagnated. What’s the moral? Don’t get involved in petty democratic politics. Forget the Young Democrats. Get involved in activism that matters, which is mostly activism that works outside the system. Remember, rights are not given; they are taken.

So what rights do they suggest should be taken? A “right” to health care? A “right” to a job? And what activism “outside the system” do they endorse? It’s interesting to speculate. Whatever the answers are I’m certain the “rights” and activism they support are not the same as mine.

I used a statement from security researcher Christopher Soghoian for the quote of the day a couple days ago. He said airport security was really “security theater”. Even before I had made that post the FBI had raided his home:

Soghoian … came home Saturday morning to find his door forced open, “a rather ransacked home, a search warrant taped to my kitchen table, a total absence of computers — and various other important things.”

It’s not that he’s trying to compromise airport security. It’s that he’s pointing out that airport security already is compromised, or, as his site used to read, “The TSA Emperor Has No Clothes.”

They should have arrested whoever came up with the stupid “security” procedures at the airports for wasting taxpayer money. But that’s not the way it works. I’m reminded of something $g(Joe Waldron) told me a long time ago about dealing with the police:

Once they have decided they want to talk to you the worst offense you can commit is “contempt of cop”.