GOP, R.I.P?

I don’t usually come to the defense of conservatives, but I am perplexed that they are being attacked because they don’t support John McCain’s presidential bid. Self-anointed Voices of Responsibility are chiding conservative spokesmen and spokeswomen for criticizing McCain on several counts and for going as far as promising to vote for Hillary Clinton if she’s the alternative to the Arizona senator.

Would these conservatives really promote a Democratic victory in November in order to initiate a reform of the Republican Party, the allegedly more mature McCain supporters want to know.

Well, why not? Shouldn’t principle count for something?

The rest of my latest op-ed, "GOP, R.I.P?" is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Stop Them!

Do President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have no idea of what made the founding of this country unique? It was the people’s deeply held belief that arbitrary rule by the state is an evil to be resisted at all costs. Even early America’s conservative elements, who hoped to remain in the British Empire, finally went over to the revolutionists’ side when King George III accelerated his arbitrary decrees governing the American people. Nothing indicts Bush-Cheney as profoundly as their displayed contempt for habeas corpus. I have no doubt that if they thought they could get away with it, they’d suspend it for citizens too.

Note well: the Constitution does not distinguish citizens from noncitizens. If the gang-run-amok in the White House can suspend habeas corpus for aliens, it can do so for the rest of us.

The threat to Americans from terrorism is minuscule compared with the threat from these megalomaniacs.

Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "Stop Them!" at The Future of Freedom website.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

To Them It's Always Worth It

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says Iraq is "worth the investment." That means she's all for having American and Iraqi lives and $8 billion a month blown on George II's harebrained adventure. Here she echoes her predecessor Madeleine Albright, who thought the deaths of hundreds of thousand of Iraq children from economic sanctions was worth "it"-- "it" being regime change. (Whoops! I guess those kids died in vain.) Do these people have no sense of decency?

In other News of the Empire, newly installed Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says "we need to make damned sure that the neighbors understand that we're going to be here a long time -- here being the Persian Gulf." How would George II react if, say, the president of Iran sent ships to the Gulf of Mexico and made the same sort of statement?

Pinochet and Friedman

Brian Doherty of Reason has a thoughtful piece on the "relationship" between the right-wing Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, and Milton Friedman. The typical left and right analyses of Pinochet and the economic policies followed by his regime are inexcusably simplistic. So Doherty's take is a welcome example of care and nuance.

His conclusion:

Undoubtedly, Friedman’s decision to interact with officials of repressive governments creates uncomfortable tensions for his libertarian admirers; I could, and often do, wish he hadn’t done it. But given what it probably meant for economic wealth and liberty in the long term for the people of Chile, that’s a selfish reaction. Pinochet’s economic policies do not ameliorate his crimes, despite what his right-wing admirers say. But Friedman, as an economic advisor to all who’d listen, neither committed his crimes, nor admired the criminal.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

So Rush Limbaugh Really Was a Republican Shill

I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don't think deserve having their water carried.

--Rush Limbaugh, post-election