Thursday, April 17, 2008

The Ugly Courtship

As Roe vs Wade is slowly chipped away at by the federal government, I wonder what will happen with abortion is America.

Will the federal government outright ban it? Or will the overturning of Roe vs Wade result in mass outlawing of abortion nationally?

Here's the thing:

I support a woman's right to have an abortion in my state or anywhere else. The thing is, as a practical libertarian I know that many other people vehemently disagree with me, and that they have the right to vote the opposite. Moreover, I also don't believe the federal government should be regulating abortion at all.

Here's why:

Abortion is a complex social issue with a myriad of positions that one could take. A planned society, a society wherein a framework of social uniformity is legislated from the central government, cannot address complex social issues adequately. Anti-abortion agenda finds its way into different states' legislation constantly, the government flip-flops on it (all the while continuing to take our money and use it for its consistent moral changes), and we end up with this ugly courtship.

The United States government has evolved into a massive central power that focuses ever more on the planned society. Things are further exacerbated by the two party system. Whatever social programs the next president begins, or renews, etcetera, are the the whim of the next president, who may be of the other party. This president will let those programs degrade, or he/she may cancel them all together.

Some of us will shake our fists. Others will cheer.

In the end, the status quo will continue, and the change so many of us want to see within our society will never come about. They will only ever be hinted at. If we think local, however, then we can begin to truly help shape our society. In a free society the communities that vote for freedom of minds and bodies, are the ones that flourish.

Is it utopia? There's no such thing. In fact, that word sounds like a turd. I refuse to use it anymore.

It would, however, allow those of who do believe in progress to have more effect on the immediate world around us: our towns, cities, counties and states.

Morality cannot be legislated. Central planning assumes that it can, and will be. When aggression is used, it is resisted.

In short, the federal government does not have the right to regulate abortion. It is too complex of an issue, and the citizens, for better or worse, have to work it out.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

We Don't Need No (more) Regulation.

As the Bush regime stumbles through its death throes, they endeavor to inject ever more regulation into the market (Falk 35).

Now, rather than rant and rave about how the free market needs to be free in order to be, well, a free market, and therefore needs less government meddling, and more of a legal framework that protects competition rather than stifling it, I just want to say this:

Government meddling has got us right where we find ourselves today: broke and stuck in a war, among other horrible things. It's not a matter of some wicked republican doing wicked things at some point, nay, it is statist domestic policy that has granted the central power so much power over the passed 60+ years that they freely manipulate our economy on top of marching into war when it suits them.

These are FACTS.

In order to have a free society with free markets, free minds, and open borders, a nation cannot have an interventionist foreign policy based on nation building and policing the world. If it adopts this sort of policy, one can safely assume that the central power has the same kind of control in it's homeland. In order for a planned, domestic, social framework to exist, the people must give up some freedoms. They start small, and end big. Always. Over time, the people find themselves with ever shrinking civil liberties.

Basically, what I'm trying to say in that empires suck because they try, and fail, to control everything. A free society means a redistribution of power and wealth, and the status quo will always resist such a redistribution.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Mccain all represent this same domestic trend. They will dress it up differently, with different rhetoric, but it is all the same movement: central, absolute, societal planning. They all vie for a global government, which again can only exist by amassing massive amounts of power to a small body who, guaranteed, will abuse it.

Sorry folks, it's in our nature to abuse large amounts of power. That's why it needs to be spread out. It's a lot easier to fight that way.

At the end of the day, it's not just about ever more regulation of the economy. It is about the further regulation, and eventual elimination of, freedom. It is about big business and big government merging together into a one world government. Sounds sci-fi and such, I know, but again, it's the observed trend.

And it stinks like cat's breath.

TL

PS-If further regulation means legalizing and protecting competition thereby fostering fertile soil for a redistribution of wealth through freer access to the marketplace due to the elimination of corporate welfare, well, that's cool with me. Regulate away!

Work Cited:

Falk, William, et al, eds. "The Return of Regulation." The Week. 4 April 2008: 35.