Author Archives: Kevin Boyd

Nationalism Vs Patriotism

Tomorrow is Independence Day in the United States. Americans will celebrate declaring their independence from the British Crown in 1776. Hopefully many will take time to reflect on what their country stands for and what makes it unique in the world.

I recommend reflecting on the idea of patriotism itself. What makes patriotism, a generally good thing, different from nationalism, which usually leads to many terrible things? There is definitely a fine line between the two concepts. Nationalism vs patriotism is one of the oldest arguments in history.

What is a patriotism? Lawrence Reed at the Foundation for Economic Education has an excellent definition.

I subscribe to a patriotism rooted in ideas that in turn gave birth to a country, but it’s the ideas that I think of when I’m feeling patriotic. I’m a patriotic American because I revere the ideas that motivated the Founders and compelled them, in many instances, to put their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on the line.

 

What ideas? Read the Declaration of Independence again. Or, if you’re like most Americans these days, read it for the very first time. It’s all there. All men are created equal. They are endowed not by government but by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Premier among those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Government must be limited to protecting the peace and preserving our liberties, and doing so through the consent of the governed. It’s the right of a free people to rid themselves of a government that becomes destructive of those ends, as our Founders did in a supreme act of courage and defiance more than two hundred years ago.

 

Call it freedom. Call it liberty. Call it whatever you want, but it’s the bedrock on which this nation was founded and from which we stray at our peril. It’s what has defined us as Americans. It’s what almost everyone who has ever lived on this planet has yearned for. It makes life worth living, which means it’s worth fighting and dying for.

Or as Benjamin Franklin said, ““Where liberty dwells, there is my country.”

America is more than just a place, it’s an ideal. It’s a land where people are free to say what they want, believe what they want, and do what they want as long as they don’t hurt others or destroy their stuff. It’s a land where everyone has the opportunity to make the most of their life. It’s a land where people govern themselves and no government can exist without the consent of the governed.

We believe all men are created equal and are always equal in the eyes of their Creator.

A patriot believes in an ideal, not in a particular place. There is nothing exceptional about a country that has no ideals.

Nationalism on the other hand is all about flag-waving, a particular place, or even a particular ethnic group or religion. It is a mentality of “my country, right or wrong” instead of being an honest critic where necessary of one’s government. It often includes hatred of those who are different.

What worries me is that for far too many Americans this country is becoming less about ideals and more about a place on the map. The second we stray from our ideals is the second America is no longer worth celebrating.

Be a patriot, not a mindless nationalist.

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.

It’s Time To Double Tap The Republican Party And Build Its Replacement

The Republican Party primary voters did it. They nominated Donald Trump as their presidential nominee.

I predicted as far back as August 2015 that Donald Trump would destroy the Republican Party and it appears he has. Trump is the choice of it seems Republican voters. His numerous racist and xenophobic statements and positions and his hostility to the Constitutional limits of his power weren’t a problem in the end.

There is no home in a Republican Party ruled by Donald Trump for those who hold classical liberal views and/or traditional conservative values. Those libertarians, conservatives, conservatarians, Constitutionalists, classical liberals, and the rest who believe in the principles of the American founding are now politically homeless. The day after Trump knocked Ted Cruz out of the race, I left the Republican Party.

The Republican Party is a dead political party. It’s a zombie just shuffling forward in search of human flesh. The #NeverTrump movement should double tap the Republican Party. It is little more than a Grand Zombie Party now and start building its replacement.

The #NeverTrump movement is beginning to realize that the Republican Party is beyond saving. A couple of Iowans, Joel Kurtinitis at The Blaze and Steve Deace at Conservative Review, want the movement to think bigger than just defeating Donald Trump. They’re both on board the “we need a new party train.” I completely agree with both men.

We need a party that argues in favor of the classical liberal principles of America’s founding. We need a party that recognizes that populism is just another form of statism.

Why Not The Libertarian Party?

The Libertarian Party is America’s third largest political party. It will likely have ballot access in alll 50 states plus the District of Columbia this year. It is running some pretty good candidates for president. I hope they get the 5% of the vote necessary to receive Federal campaign matching funds. This would be good for American politics.

However, as a long-term solution, the LP is not what I’m looking for. The Libertarian Party’s primary purpose is an educational tool for libertarian ideas and that’s great. But a new home is needed for the broad classical liberal spectrum for winning and governing.

What Should This New Party Look Like?

Some thoughtful pieces have come out recently about the direction this new party would take. The first one is a two-part series run on The Federalist by Paul D. Miller about bringing back The Federalist Party. The second part outlined a platform suggestion.

Decentralizing power is the best way—perhaps the only way—for an increasingly pluralistic people to govern themselves: a pluralistic people calls for plural governments. Americans are increasingly divided not merely by race, class, and gender—which has always been true—but by differing sets of values, by religious and sectarian identities, by basic understandings of justice and democracy that have drifted apart in recent generations.

The progressive left and quasi-fascist right believe the increasing fragmentation of American life is a malady which must be cured by the strong hand of government. In fact, those very movements are both cause and consequence of the fragmentation of American society, and their agendas can never create the imagined unity of the romantic past or utopian future.

The Federalist accepts the pluralism of American life as a reality to be accommodated, not a disease to be cured. The way to safeguard human dignity and self-government in a culturally pluralistic nation is to revive the institutions of plural government; that is, to devolve power to the several governments closer to the people they govern.

A more decentralized Federal government must be a major part of the platform. After all, we are a nation of 50 different states, each with their unique values and cultures. A “one-size fits all” approach to government fails. But decentralization alone is not enough. The Federal government has some roles.

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom had some thoughts of his own on a possible new party platform. I recommend reading the entire piece but I wanted to highlight his 6 main planks.

1) Individual liberty
2) Federalism and representative republicanism
3) Constitutionalism
4) Judicial originalism
5) National sovereignty
6) Free-market capitalism

These are a good start. The only minor quibble I would have is I’m more of a Randy Barnett “judicial engagement” type than a judicial originalist. I can get on board with the rest easily though.

I think we need to add a few planks though and call the whole thing “Nine For Freedom” or something. Here are my suggestions:

7) Growth and opportunity: The old economy is dead. The idea of having a job right out of college and staying with the same company until you retire doesn’t happen anymore. We’re shifting towards a “gig economy” where many people are freelancers. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Fiverr, Ebay, and many other innovations make it easy for almost anyone to be in business for themselves. The economy itself has an anemic growth rate that shows signs of getting worse. We need to unleash the American people by getting government out of the way. We need to lower the world’s highest corporate tax rate, reduce regulations, and attack crony capitalism that delivers privileges to a well connected few. We need to reform our outdated Industrial Era education system, promote school choice, and fix higher education so that you don’t have to have a bachelor’s degree to wait tables. Finally, we need to have a free market approach to fix or replace Obamacare.

8) Welfare and Entitlement Reform: We have a major problem with our welfare state. It still traps people in dependence and discourages work. Social Security Disability fraud is bleeding the system dry. We can’t have this as a nation. At the same time, we shouldn’t hold people who do need a temporary hand up in disdain. Most people don’t make welfare a lifestyle. You can hit this many ways. The guys over at the Foundation for Government Accountability have great ideas to reform welfare. If we want to go bolder, we may want to consider scrapping the alphabet soup of welfare programs and replace it with some kind of basic income program. If you want to undermine the sources of support for the Trumpist right and the progressive left, you have to attack the welfare state.

9) A Strong, Secure, And Free America: We will aggressively confront the enemies of this country. We will stand for liberty and freedom allaround the world. We will have a military and intelligence capability that is second to none. However, we will not engage in military crusades for democracy, seek dragons to slay, and engage in dubious neocon nation building schemes. We believe in the power of diplomacy and we believe in free trade. America will be involved in the world but we will not police the world alone. We will ask our allies to do more to protect themselves not because they’re not important but because we cannot and will not do it alone. Finally, while we will be vigilant about detectingthreats from abroad, we will not listen to your phone calls, read your emails, track your online browsing, or otherwise spy on you without a warrant. America should not throw away its founding principles even in wartime.

We have an opportunity to reshape the political landscape. The Republican Party is little more than a home for racists, kooks, reactionary populists, demagogues, con artists, and political opportunists. It no longer serves the purposes of liberty.

Let’s build something that does.

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.

What Is The Best Way To Advance Liberty?

In the wake of Rand Paul’s departure from the presidential race, the question being asked is what is the best path to advance liberty? Should libertarians work within GOP, the Libertarian Party, or even the Democratic Party? Should libertarians be anti-establishment or should they try to become the mainstream? Should libertarians focus on politics, policy, or reject both altogether in favor of free market solutions?

The answer is all of the above. There is no one path to advance the ideas of liberty. Nor will there ever be a utopian society that is 100% libertarian, nor should there be in a pluralistic society. Liberal ideas and ideals advance and change over time.

There are some ideas we need to dismiss off hand.

  1. Building a libertarian safe space. Congratulations to the Free State Project on getting enough people willing to move to New Hampshire to trigger the move. However, I still question its usefulness. What is the point of trying to move libertarians into a state and take it over as a utopian example to the rest of the world? Wouldn’t it best to have libertarians spread out all over to try and influence change everywhere? Besides, isn’t a mass migration to take over an argument against open borders?
  2. Reject coalition building. Libertarians need to build coalitions with everyone. There are libertarian conservatives, libertarian centrists, libertarian progressives, and classical liberals (such as myself). Many Americans and others around the world have some kind of libertarian leanings and there are very, very few actual libertarians. Unless libertarians just want to yell in the wilderness, you have to work with others.
  3. Lose the savior complex. The United States, or any country for that matter, will likely never elect a libertarian president, ever. The majority of voters are not libertarians and never will be. That’s fine, in a free and pluralistic society we need voters with all sorts of views. That’s what debate is for. Even if a libertarian did get elected president, libertarians would be disappointed because a president is not all powerful. Process matters as much as results do.

The prospects for liberty are great, regardless of the struggles of one particular presidential candidate. In fact, liberty means many things to many people and that’s good. While authoritarianism is rearing its ugly head in both political parties this year, I’m confident we can defeat it.

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.

Happy 10 Year Anniversary To Us! Here Are Our Ten Best Posts

We’ve been around for 10 years now. We’ve gone through quite a few changes since that time period. It was hard to grade which of the many posts that have been published as the ten best posts.

The contributors were asked to rate what they thought were the ten best posts published on the site. Some kind of approval voting method was used. I didn’t conduct the election, so I don’t have a clue how the votes were counted.

It wound up breaking down to 9 second place posts and 1 clear winner. We’ll start with the nine runners up in no particular order.

T-2Humans Are Pack Animals Who Pretend To Reason” by Brad Warbany. Published on April 22, 2015.

We think we’re soooo smart.

Humans. We think we come up with our political positions through reasoned analysis, and then join the political party that’s aligned to our beliefs. We’re ideologically honest and consistent. We’re dispassionate referees looking at evidence and argument and making informed choices.

And we’ve always been at war with Eastasia, right?

The truth is that this is all a bunch of bull. We’re pack animals. Human reason has done amazing things for us as a species, but we’re still pack animals imbued with an “us vs them” mentality, and that continually trumps the weak “reason” we rely upon.

T-2The Politics Of Liberty” by Chris Byrne. Published on December 2, 2005.

I want to talk about what I believe in.

I’m a small “l” libertarian, but a lot of people don’t know what that means. I used to describe myself as a “disgruntled constructive anarchist”. I thought it might be an opportune time to explain what I mean by that.

T-2Sorry To Disappoint, But Getting Government Out Of Marriage Is A Fantasy” by Kevin Boyd. Published on June 30, 2015.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision making gay marriage legal in all 50 states, the rally cry of many libertarians and conservatives is to get government out of marriage. Presidential candidate and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul wrote an op-ed suggesting just that. While that’s a tempting proposition, it’s probably not possible without a major overhaul of everything from government benefits to nearly the entire civil and family legal code.

T-2Sympathy For Paranoia” by Stephen Littau. Published February 23, 2015.

The moon landing was faked by the U.S. government for propaganda purposes to win the Cold War. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 was actually an inside job as a pretext to go to war. Space aliens landed in Roswell, NM but the government has been covering it up. The Sandy Hook massacre was faked to increase support for new gun control laws; the “victims” were actually actors who are all alive and well today. The Illuminati is the secret entity which actually governs the whole world…

T-2The Case Against An Article V Convention” by Doug Mataconis. Published on April 1, 2010.

We were also lucky in 1787 because of the men who gathered to write the Constitution. The values they shared were values of individual liberty and small government. Does anyone truly believe that we’d be lucky enough to have delegates to a 2013 Convention, say, that were anywhere near the intellectual and moral calibre of Madison, or Mason, or Franklin ? Yea, I didn’t think so.

T-2The Sovereign Individual” by Eric. Published on November 25, 2005.

As usual, I appear to find myself in the smallest minority, the one that understands that rights and responsibility are inherent. They aren’t things that one can, or cannot, “take”. They are part of the state of being. And they are not affected by what sort of community one lives within, or government that one is subject to. Indeed, the core understanding of my principles is that the individual is sovereign. Ayn Rand once said “The smallest minority on earth is the individual.

T-2The Minimum Wage Lie” by Chris Byrne. Published on January 3, 2015.

When “progressives” say “the minimum wage hasn’t kept up with inflation”, they’re lying.

Not shading, the truth, exaggerating, or interpreting things differently… they are flat out lying.

… And what’s more, the ones who made up the lie in the first place, know they’re lying (the rest mostly just parrot what they’ve been told).

T-2The Problem With Today’s ‘Conservatives’: They’re Not Really Conservative” by Kevin Boyd. Published on January 7, 2015.

The biggest problem however, is that the Tea Party, and many of the self identified “conservatives” aren’t really conservatives at all. They’re really populists, ideologues, and radicals, that have abandoned traditional conservatism.

Ultimately, this is bad for the entirety of what could be called the “center-right”, because these people frankly make us look insane. When you try to build a movement purely on rhetoric and rabble rousing, without a solid foundation, history has shown that bad things happen.

T-2Bullshit Laws, Fiscal Irresponsibility, and the Inevitability of Police Abuse” by Sarah Baker. Published on August 11, 2015.

Every day fleets of law enforcement officers, from the DEA on down to the local police department, head out onto the streets armed with guns and hair-trigger fears for their own safety.

If they were going to fight the good fight against violence and theft, we could be unreservedly grateful. All too often these armed ingenues, represented by unions, covered by workers comp, and unwilling to tolerate any degree of risk to their person, instead spend their time enforcing petty, bullshit laws that accomplish nothing more than mindless bureaucratic authoritarianism—and revenue for overspent budgets.

The first place post was a clear winner. It was by one of our newer contributors, Albert Northrup.

1Why Conservatives and Libertarians Should Oppose The Death Penalty” by Albert Northrup. January 8, 2015.

Are you pro-life? Opposed to big government? Do you believe in reducing government spending? Do you support the death penalty? If you answered yes to all of these questions, then you may want to re-think your position on the death penalty. As supporters of life, liberty, property, and limited government, I believe that all conservatives and libertarians should oppose the death penalty.

Of course these 10 posts are just a small sample of what’s been published so far. Please read them, tweet them out, post them on social media, and more importantly stay tuned for what else we have coming over the next 10 years.

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.

Revisiting Rand Paul’s Campaign Again

Friday, I wrote a piece about Rand Paul’s presidential campaign and why it is failing. Some people disagreed with it saying I left out a few things. Some of the things they I said I left out was the poor polling numbers of guys like Rick Santorum this time in 2011. Another thing, they said I left out was the fact the campaign was “turning things around.” Finally, some people said I left out a recent poll that showed Paul at 7% nationally.

Guess what, these people were right. I didn’t have all of my facts lined up for that post. I did my readers a disservice. I’m sorry. I’m going to try to make it right by looking at those facts.

The Santorum 2011 comparisons

One of the things some critics said was that I wasn’t looking at the big picture. After all, it is early October. Here’s where the race stood nationally four years ago today.

RCP1

Ignore the top numbers and look at the numbers highlighted on the chart. Perry was beginning his decline after his awful debates. Romney was holding steady as he had all year. Gingrich more or less held steady as did Paul. Bachmann was heading towards her collapse after the victory at the Ames Straw Poll. Finally, Santorum was at the bottom at 3%.

Where Santorum ultimately shined was in Iowa. Here’s what polling looked like 4 years ago today:

RCP2

Again, Perry on top with Bachmann in 2nd. Cain was about to begin his surge which ended after sexual harrassment allegations surfaced. Santorum was at 4.3% and second to last. The top 3 in Iowa wound up being Romney (who was 3rd in this poll), Santorum, and then Paul (who was 4th). To add insult to injury, Santorum only raised a little over $682,000 in the previous quarter.

Here’s how Santorum turned it around, he made this a one-state race for him. He visited every county in Iowa and he tapped his base of evangelicals. He was also helped by Perry’s poor debate performances, the collapse of Herman Cain, and Michele Bachmann’s collapse over her anti-vaxxer comments.

Here’s where the Santorum comparison fails, it’s a much more crowded field than 2011-12. Paul is currently tied for 8th in Iowa. Plus, Paul has a negative X-factor in play, the indictments of his political allies related to the Kent Sorenson vote bying scandal. Caucus states though are a pain in the ass to poll because of the limited number of people who actually attend them.

Is the campaigning turning things around?

That’s a line I keep getting from Paul supporters. The best example of this thinking is an article on Buzzfeed from Friday.

Here’s the thing, they may be doing it. However, there is no way we can know if this is true until a few weeks from now. If the polls start moving upwards, more money starts coming in, and the campaign settles on a strategy; they can say he’s turning things around. This one is wait and see.

What about that new Reuters poll?

I was too dismissive of a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos that came out on Friday. It showed Paul at 6.2% which is an increase from 2.6% from last week. Before I wrote the first piece, I did not know about it. I was initially dismissive of it because it was a poll of all adults. However, Reuters/Ipsos lets you put filters on the poll by limiting it to likely Republican voters. With that filter, Paul’s numbers are 5.6% which is an increase from 2.5%.

I dismissed the poll too rashly. However, the polls from Pew, Gravis, and IBD/Tipp all continue to show Paul in the 2-3% range.

Long story short, I messed up in the first post because I was too dismissive of evidence from the other side. Part of that is due to my own personal prejudice against hardcore Paul supporters from my many online battles with them since 2007. That is 100% on me and I owe my readers an apology.

Now is Rand Paul going to drop out of the race? He has $2 million left, he has no need to at least before the next debate on October 28th. He has plenty of time to turn his campaign around. Whether or not he does is another matter entirely.

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.
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