A shot across the bow of Libertarianism, as such:

The National Board of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)—America’s oldest conservative-libertarian activist group—has, per curium, voted to purge Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) from YAF’s National Advisory Board.

YAF’s concern with Rep. Paul stems from his delusional and disturbing alliance with the fringe Anti-War movement.

“It is a sad day in American history when a one-time conservative-libertarian stalwart has fallen more out of touch with America’s needs for national security than the current feeble and appeasing administration,” said YAF’s Senior National Director Jordan Marks…

As I’ve noted before, Ron Paul’s foreign policy views are just flat wrong – we can’t live in a world without a muscular application of US power at need. The defense of the United States does not just involve the defense of our physical territory but also requires a defense of those forces which are aligned with us. The United States must strike a balance between the need to defend these interests and not getting dragged in to every conflict around the globe – Ron Paul essentially proposes that we stay out of everything. This is done on the absurd theory that the reason we are hated is for what we do, rather than what we are.

To be sure, US actions can cause enmity – or create friends – depending on the nature of the action. But the primary reason we are hated is akin to the reasons for Judaism and Christianity being hated: when you stand for self-evident truth and refuse to be swayed from it, those who live off of lies determine to destroy you. It doesn’t matter what we do, we will be attacked by evil people because evil cannot co-exist in a world with good…it must strike it down, lest good overcome it.

Lately I have had some kind things to say about Ron Paul and I still assert – and will go on asserting – that in his current position as inquisitor of the Federal Reserve, the man and the hour have met. I believe this action by YAF is probably a bit more than was necessary, but I understand why it was taken. It is to be hoped that Ron Paul and the YAF will find a way to reconcile because all of us who are opposed to the left must unite. That said, it must be made clear that the main line of conservative foreign and military policy is a robust defense of US interests around the world.

The peril of viewing the United States as a baleful force in the world is twofold – first off, it allows a person to easily fall for utter nonsense discreditable to conservatism in general. While Ron Paul has not, himself, advocated the idiocies of the “9/11 truthers”, he has failed utterly to condemn them with sufficient force. Secondly, when you take it to heart that the US – rather than America’s enemies – is responsible for the ills of the world, you go in to tacit alliance with the worst of the left. The part of the left which acts the part of traitor in the debates over foreign and defense policy.

Long ago, conservatism purged itself of the poison of the John Birch Society. This was the 1960’s version of the “9/11 truthers” – screwballs who refused to see reality and lived, instead, in a fantasy world of conspiracy theories. Ron Paul is very much old enough to remember this – and his refusal to act in accordance with wisdom has now resulted in this action by the YAF. It is to be hoped that the lesson will be taken to heart – by Ron Paul and all conservatives of a libertarian bent.

Video from C-Span:

Congressman West completely answers the arguments against conservatism – including those made by part of conservatism, Libertarianism, which is imagining a conservative movement which is ok with abortion and gay marriage. The thing won’t work unless we’re defending the Judeo-Christian civilization. If we’re not doing that then whatever else we’re doing, conservatism isn’t it.

I realize that our Libertarian friends are both feeling their oats – having developed this idea that social issues are unimportant or, at least, secondary – and, also, getting downright annoyed with all that muscular Christianity popping up here, there and everywhere. But that is just the nature of a truly conservative movement. There is room for libertarianism – in fact, it is a necessary element in conservatism to prevent Christianity from degenerating in to Puritanism, or Prohibition. But mark this fact and never forget it – libertarianism cannot survive in a non-Christian civilization and Christian civilization will not have – cannot have – gay marriage and abortion (along with a score or so other things, but those two are most important – and abortion vastly most important of all; just not so much emphasized at the moment as the pro-life view is clearly ascendant in the United States today).

We are winning this battle – America, in my view, will be preserved as the political bulwark of civilization just as the Church (in spite of relentless efforts to destroy her) remains as the spiritual bulwark. There is much for all people of good will to do – and there is a lot we can do to accommodate the peculiar notions of some (while we can’t have gay marriage, there can be provisions made for those sincere gay people who do wish to tie their fortunes to another for life). All of those who abhor the Statist left should be united – because the victory of the left is the defeat of conservatism and libertarianism.

Learn this, liberals, please – before more people get killed. From Fox News:

A Salvadoran man who was ordered deported nearly a decade ago but never left has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in a series of shootings and a knife attack in a Virginia suburb of Washington, authorities said Friday…

The laws must be enforced. All of them and all the time. If your reaction to that is “there are too many laws”, then start repealing…but if something is enacted in to law, it must be enforced at all hazard. It us unjust to do otherwise – and deadly, as well.

Our failure to secure our borders first allowed this criminal to come in, then our failure to enforce our laws once we caught him led to the deaths of innocent people. And this is just three; a drop in the bucket of blood our unjust failure at border security has caused. Literal thousands of people have been robbed, raped and murdered over just the last couple years because we don’t secure our border and enforce our laws. This is the price, liberals, of your insistence that enforcing our laws is “racism” against “undocumented workers”. You are enabling the murder of people – most of them the “undocumented workers” you claim to care so much about.

Enforce the law. Secure the border. Ensure that justice is done. That is our primary duty regarding immigration. Once that is done, we can settle down to debate what to do in the future…but first the blood must cease to flow.

Bryan Preston takes Ron Paul to task over Mubarak, Egypt and the general run of US foreign policy since the end of World War II:

During his speech at CPAC Friday, Rep. Ron Paul declared that the US “propped up” Egyptian president Mubarak and, essentially, blamed the United States for his dictatorship. I’d like to put the question to Dr. Paul, what should the United States have done during the Cold War? That is when our alliance with Egypt developed, and it developed largely in response to the threat posed by the USSR…

Preston then goes through the whole litany of a realistic US policy – Egypt controls one of the most strategic points on the globe (the Suez Canal) and was playing both sides of the street; we needed to get her on our side. By playing up to first Sadat and then Mubarak we kept the Soviets out and got an Egypt-Israeli peace treaty. Muabarak’s regime kept a lid on Islamism. All of this has the great benefit of being true – but does that also mean it was good US policy? In the end, after decades of doing this, is the US in a good position now and likely to retain that position for the future? I’d have to say, no.

Yes, dealing with the tyrants kept the USSR out and the Islamists down – but now that the USSR is gone, what advantage accrues to us for having kept it out? And by keeping the Islamists down all these years, what did we get other than the Islamists looking good in Egyptian public opinion simply because (a) they were martyred by the regime and (b) are not responsible either for the regime’s crimes, nor the crimes of other Islamsits around the world? The Islamists are at least unpopular in Iran by now – only ruthless repression keeps them in power there and they may fall at any time…but Egypt has no experience of them. Rather than dealing with communist apparatchiks in a Soviet-dominated Egypt during the Cold War, we might be dealing with an insane, messianic regime of Islamists during the War on Terrorism.

Furthermore, about that peace treaty – what did it really amount to? Egypt started war after unjust war against Israel and got soundly beaten each time. Even in their greatest effort – the Yom Kippur War – where they came within an ace of victory, they still ended up crushed. People who start wars and lose them are supposed to cede territory and pay an indemnity to the victors. Instead, Egypt was given back everything they lost in war and could never regain by fighting and rather than indemnify Israel for the wars, Egypt actually got us handing them about $60 billion over the years. And now if an Islamist regime comes to power in Egypt, we might find the peace treaty denounced and all that “aid” down the toilet. And, of course, the prospect of an actual shooting war with Israel at some point. The problem with peace treaty, ultimately, was that the provisions were dependent upon the regime in Egypt, not the interests of the Egyptian people. No regime, no peace treaty. Perhaps it would have been better if we had let the Israelis capture the whole Suez (they very nearly had at the end of Yom Kippur) and then annex it…without Suez, Egypt is as strategic as a cabbage, and thus of no concern to anyone except Egyptians.

And, finally, by backing Mubarak all these years we have built up a reservoir of distrust, if not hatred, on the part of the Egyptian people for the United States. While they suffered poverty and oppression, they saw American leaders in a steady stream coming to glad hand and speak highly of the man who was their bane. This doesn’t mean we can’t gain the trust of the Egyptian people, but it will be a long, hard road – and a road we would not have to travel if, over the past 30 years, all Egypt’s government got from us was demands for liberty. A realistic foreign policy (so called) has been a complete failure for the United States – what we need, instead, is an American foreign policy.

And this is where Ron Paul actually gets it wrong, as most Libertarians do. The United States cannot retreat from the world – we must be engaged on all levels and everywhere in order to ensure that at least some peace and freedom survive. There is simply no other nation on earth – or even group of nations – which can fill the gap if America withdraws. We must be there with our words and our might in order to provide a balance against those who would disturb the peace. Naturally, some things can be done to modify US policy – we don’t need troops in a lot of places we have them and we must be wary of using our power…but Paul and those like him would surrender the world to barbarism and tyranny and eventually force America, alone and at bay, to face a host of enemies gathered to kill the last bastion of civilization.

A balance must be struck – a balance between the need for engagement and the need to keep America free from entanglements with unsavory regimes. What has been termed a “real” US foreign policy has produced disaster. Time, then, to get a bit “unreal”. As long time readers know, I already have a set of policy proposals in place for this:

1. Freedom Trade – rather than freely trading with everyone, including our most deadly enemies (and thus building them to be ever larger threats), we should only engage in economic relations with other free nations around the world. If you’re living in liberty, you can freely trade with the United States…if you’re living in tyranny, you can’t so much as sell us a button. This will ensure we are never economically tied to enemy States, as well as helping other free people to grow in power and prosperity.

2. Build a Union of Democratic States – ditch the corrupt UN where tyrants are absurdly permitted to rub shoulders with free men, replace it with an organization of free nations who will be bound to come to the defense of any free State attacked by a tyrannical regime.

3. Prohibit the deployment of US ground forces outside the territory of the United States except under a declared state of war. No more setting US troops up as hostages to enemy foreign policy. By keeping our boots off the ground except after a declaration of war, we’ll retain our diplomatic and military freedom of action – only having to engage in a fight (other than smaller scale naval and aerial campaigns, at need) when we really feel it necessary.

A proper US foreign policy must be geared towards the way Americans are, and the ideals Americans hold. That is the reality – and a realistic US policy must be something Americans can understand and fully back regardless of how difficult it is. We are a good people, and deserve a foreign policy which reflects our intense hatred of tyranny and our firm desire for justice for all. Doing anything else just makes a mess – as we now see in Egypt.

Interesting:

…In an interview this past week with Laura Ingraham from Fox News, Trump characterized himself as “pro-life.” In his 2000 book The America We Deserve, Trump wrote, “I support a woman’s right to choose but I am uncomfortable with the procedures.” But, in an apparant reversal, he told the audience at CPAC, “I am pro-life” and pledged to fight for the reversal of Obamacare, which contains abortion funding loopholes…

Political posturing, or just following the general American trend towards the pro-life position? We’d only know for certain if he got in to office and we could see what sort of policies he advanced. But by announcing a pro-life position, Trump would remove a big roadblock to getting social conservative support. This doesn’t mean we’ll be lining up to back him, but it does get him on the playing field.

We’ll see how this plays out – but my view, for now, is that this is a giant head-fake to the GOP; that, in the end, if Trump decides to run, he’ll run as an Independent…but, meanwhile, will have built up some good feelings about his candidacy on the right.

Well, that is what you liberals called it when Bush did it – from McClatchy:

The Obama administration’s Justice Department has asserted that the FBI can obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process or court oversight, according to a document obtained by McClatchy.

That assertion was revealed — perhaps inadvertently — by the department in its response to a McClatchy request for a copy of a secret Justice Department memo…

You liberals will, of course, now demand that Obama be impeached and be hauled up on war crimes charges. Right?

I won’t hold my breath…

Amazing result from Rasmussen:

The debate rages as it has for decades whether there really is a constitutionally mandated separation of church and state, but most Americans don’t seem to mind mixing prayer and public education.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 65% of American Adults favor prayer in public schools. Twenty-four percent (24%) are opposed, while 11% are not sure…

How about that? After decades of relentless and lying propaganda to the effect that religion is bad and that we have separation of Church and State in America, most Americans don’t mind if the kids start the day with a prayer.

This just verifies what I already know – that the American people are morally sensible people. They’ve been beaten down by the liberal fascism which insults and slanders everyone who disagrees with liberalism, but underneath that onslaught, America’s moral center endured. And now it is rising back to the surface and starting to take back its own.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Connecticut and New Jersey residents with a Hamptons summer cottage or a Manhattan pied-a-terre are about to get a nasty surprise: New York state wants more taxes from them.

A New York court ruled last month that all income earned by a New Canaan, Conn., couple is subject to New York state taxes because they own a summer home on Long Island they used only a few times a year. They have been hit with an additional tax bill of $1.06 million…

Boiled down, the tax court ruled that it doesn’t matter if the home owners live in the house – it only matter if they could live in the house. As long as the house you own in New York meets that criteria, then you are liable for the full range of New York State taxation. I really can’t imagine anything more absurd – but bankrupt, liberal States like New York will look for revenues everywhere they can find them. The question is, what do we do about it?

It would stand to reason that as this couple lives in Connecticut that they are registered to vote in that State – meaning they cannot be registered to vote in New York, and thus all taxation imposed by the State of New York is done without the representation of the Connecticut couple to be taxed on activities done outside of New York. This isn’t a matter of property taxes – you buy property, you buy the property taxes the local government has imposed upon it…but if you live elsewhere and earn your income elsewhere, whence comes this power of a government you are not part of to tax you? To me, this is taxation without representation.

Goodness knows I’m a stalwart for State’s rights, but what New York has done here is tyrannical in its entirety. If it requires federal action, then that should be done – you should only be taxed on income earned within the jurisdiction where your income-making activity is located. New York has no right to tax the income of someone who doesn’t earn New York income. Doing so is as silly as the United States taxing the income of a British firm for money they made in India because they also have an office in the United States. This ruling must not be allowed to stand.

Because that is what really happened – the people in the square were there yesterday, as well, when Mubarak said he’d hang tough. More than likely, the regime gave Mubarak one, last chance to try and hang in there – and when it failed, the regime said it was time to go. Now, Mubarak’s hand-picked VP and the army are in charge…hardly a regime-change as it was Mubarak and the army in charge, and Mubarak was Anwar Sadat’s hand-picked successor way back when.

This does not mean that there won’t be some major changes coming up – clearly, the Nasser/Sadat/Mubarak model no longer works. New forces are lose and bottling them up would take more oppression than anyone over there is likely willing to apply. And, so, new men will rise…but, which new men? That is the worry – and why we should still go with “no trade, no aid”. Back off from the whole mess, no more support for Egypt’s army…see how things shake out. If the regime resolves itself in to a quasi-Mubarak type regime, we want no part of it. If the regime resolves itself in to a forcing-ground for Moslem Brotherhood rule, we want no part of it. If, though, a genuine democracy is created, then we step back in with all sorts of aid.

Unfortunately, we have a government with neither the will to intervene nor the will to stay out – we’re dipping our toes in to revolution and angering both the establishment and the rebels. Could be a very long couple of years…

UPDATE: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…

Guess we’re really finding out what’s in it, now – from The Weekly Standard:

Testifying today before the House Budget Committee, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf confirmed that Obamacare is expected to reduce the number of jobs in the labor market by an estimated 800,000…

…Rep. [John] Campbell: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, we’ll — and Dr. Elmendorf — and we’ll continue this conversation right now. First on health care, before I get to — before I get to broader issues, you just mentioned that you believe — or that in your estimate, that the health care law would reduce the labor used in the economy by about 1/2 of 1 percent, given that, I believe you say, there’s 160 million full-time people working in ’20-’21. That means that, in your estimation, the health care law would reduce employment by 800,000 in ’20-’21. Is that correct?

Director Elmendorf: Yes. The way I would put it is that we do estimate, as you said, that…employment will be about 160 million by the end of the decade. Half a percent of that is 800,000.

That is the CBO, liberals – your gold standard of what is going to happen. You’ve been telling us for the past two years that what CBO says, goes…and now the CBO is saying that 800,000 people won’t have jobs once ObamaCare is fully implemented. Have you got an answer for this? Or will you run and hide, and essentially admit that you were just cherry-picking data you liked vis a vis ObamaCare?