the forgotten man.

climategate

I haven't read Crisis and Leviathan by Robert Higgs, but I feel like he could issue an updated edition with at least a few pages on Climategate.  To recap: hackers released data from a major climate research center that show that scientists have been somewhat less than forthright with climate change data.  It appears that data that didn't fit the climate change story was massaged, and research that challenged the status quo was silenced.  More analysis is here, including the following:

The damage here goes far beyond the loss of a few billions of taxpayer dollars on bogus scientific research. The real cost of this fraud is the trillions of dollars of wealth that will be destroyed if a fraudulent theory is used to justify legislation that starves the global economy of its cheapest and most abundant sources of energy.

It always seems to work that way, doesn't it?  Climatologists, conservationists, sociologists, physicians, economists... some group of "experts" scream that the sky is falling; statists listen, get excited, send taxpayer dollars their way, and introduce some new freedom-restricting laws; and we, the forgotten men, pay for it.  Stricter emissions standards mean more expensive and less reliable cars.  Nature reserves prevent use of natural resources like timber and oil.  Subsidies for ethanol production simultaneously increase the deficit (and thus taxes) and the cost of food.  Bailouts reward risky business practices and lobbying efforts while punishing fiscal discipline and accurate forecasting.  

Then—surprise, surprise—we learn that the "experts" were less than completely honest!  No one (except a few "crazies" who had to be silenced for the sake of "progress") could have imagined that ANWR is covered in ice, corn doesn't make an efficient fuel, bailouts don't cause net job growth, and man-made global warming is a hoax.  History suggests that the chances of this latest debacle being enough to stop Cap and Trade are slim.  But no matter: even if the do-gooders fail today, they'll be back in a few years with a different set of "experts" proclaiming a different crisis—to which the only solution, they will assure us, will be to regulate us to death.

off to a great start...

On August 28, 2010, I ask you, your family and neighbors to join me at the feet of Abraham Lincoln on the National Mall for the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.

A libertarian Glenn Beck certainly isn't.  Restoring our great country at the foot of one of its most committed enemies?  Someone needs to get that man a copy of The Real Lincoln or Lincoln Unmasked.  And an appreciation for states' rights, for pity's sake.

the right to be unhappy

You know it's a popular dystopian novel, up there with 1984 and Fahrenheit 451.  You may have skimmed it in high school, but have you actually read and digested Huxley's Brave New World?   Huxley wrote it in response to H. G. Wells's absurdly utopian Men Like Gods, and shows the emptiness of entertainment and the "perfect" life.  It's a fairly quick read, and definitely worth it:

"I like the inconveniences."

"We don't," said the Controller.  "We prefer to do things comfortably."

"But I don't want comfort.  I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness.  I want sin."

"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."

"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."

There was a long silence.

"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.

Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders.  "You're welcome," he said.

So how much actual difference is there between the vision of today's statists and Huxley's society?