Angelo M. Codevilla wrote an article, America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution, that received quite a bit of positive attention. For example Robert Higgs, Charles Burris, and Gary North all wrote glowing reviews of Mr. Codevilla’s essay.

Mr. Codevilla’s piece basically says that the progressive movement has become the ruling class in the United States. I responded to Mr. Codevilla’s article in A Conservative View of the Ruling Class. While I agreed with Mr. Codevilla about the sins of the progressives, my main complaint was that Mr. Codevilla ignored certain aspects of the state, such as the military, when he wrote about the American ruling class.

Mr. Codevilla appeared on John Stossel’s television program that aired October 21st, 2010. Mr. Codevilla’s appearance did much to clear up why his view of the American ruling class is biased. What was implicit in Mr. Codevilla’s essay became explicit.

The subject under discussion was cutting government spending. Someone asked Mr. Codevilla whether he was in favor of cutting military spending. Mr. Codevilla replied that he preferred to look in other areas of the budget. In defense of his stance, he said that the defense budget was a relatively small part of the total federal budget. Mr. Codevilla also said that he was in favor of cutting waste in the intelligence budget.

Mr. Codevilla’s background explains much. From Mr. Codevilla’s biography in the American Spectator, “Angelo M. Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University, a fellow of the Claremont Institute, and a senior editor of The American Spectator, was a Foreign Service officer and served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee between 1977 and 1985″.

Mr. Codevilla made his career as a part of the defense establishment. Would you really expect that someone with such a background would want to cut the military? Imagine asking a functionary in the the Social Securities Administration(SSA) whether government spending on federal social programs should be reduced. That functionary might support cutting waste, but he would be highly unlikely to support a fundamental change in policy that attacked federal spending on social programs. In the case of the SSA functionary, Mr. Codevilla would recognize that the bureaucrat was part of the ruling class. The same insight escapes Mr. Codevilla with regard to matters military.

As for Mr. Codevilla’s contention that the military budget is a small part of total federal spending, the facts speak otherwise. Robert Higgs in Defense Spending Is Much Greater than You Think, comes up with a figure of 1,027.5 billion dollars for total defense expenditures in fiscal year 2009. The United States federal budget lists total expenditures of 3,518 billion dollars for fiscal year 2009. Thus, 29.2 percent of the federal budget is devoted to defense. Maybe I am old fashioned, but both in absolute and relative terms, a trillion dollars a year seems like a lot of money.

Mr. Codevilla says he wants to cut waste in the intelligence budget, but an endless series of commissions have been formed over the years to cut waste in various aspects of the government. You would be hard pressed to find a politician who fails to promise to cut waste while campaigning. Nothing has come from all the studies, and all the promises, except that federal spending keeps going up. You have no hope of reducing spending unless you change the policies.

The trillion dollars a year in defense spending buys armies of bureaucrats, military personnel, and defense contractors. Ever since the 1940′s, when the United States established an empire, defense outlays have fed a permanent establishment. Journalist and academics provide justifications for defense outlays, and help shape public opinion to accept the security state. So, how can some bureaucrat in the Social Securities Administration be a member of the ruling class while Mr. Codevilla fails to achieve that honor?

For a trillion dollars a year, America gets a lot of dead foreigners, some dictators propped up, and quite a few dead Americans. The ruling class, including Mr. Codevilla, profit quite handsomely from defense outlays, while most Americans get a host of foreign enemies, and the bill.

As the United States government slides toward financial ruin, about the only way that the defense establishment can be preserved is if non-defense expenditures are drastically cut. There are plenty of good reasons to cut non-defense related expenditures, but saving the defense establishment is not one of them.

H.L. Mencken On The Morality Of Voting

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

Emma Goldman On The Practicality Of Voting

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”

A Campaign Sign Inspired By Art Hoppe

       Vote for Nobody
   Nobody Will Stop the Wars
  Nobody Will Eliminate Taxes
Nobody Will Respect Your Rights
       Vote for Nobody!

Lew Rockell Tells Us Why He Does Not Vote

John Pugsley Weighs In On The Electoral Process

I tended to dismiss Joe Sobran because of his National Review connection. Just by happenstance, the day before Sobran died, I listened to an audio of an interview Sobran did with Scott Horton. Joe Sobran had come a long way from his unthinking National Review conservatism. The following is from my ever fallible memory:

“If you advocate violence against Americans, you are a liberal. If you advocate violence against foreigners, you are a conservative. If you advocate violence against both Americans and foreigners, you are a moderate. If you advocate violence against nobody, you are a radical.”

Paul Craig Roberts announces that the US is a police state. Mr. Roberts points out that the recent raids on anti-war activists portend future prosecutions for anyone who opposes the empire. Mr. Roberts stance is well justified.

Picking out communists, and other politically unpopular targets, is standard operating procedure. If you can establish that the politically unpopular may be attacked, then attacking other dissidents becomes much easier.

The federal material support for terrorist laws are vague and flexible enough to serve as a vehicle for all sorts of mischief. The law criminalizes speech furthering lawful activities. If you can criminalize speech furthering lawful activities, why even bother to pretend that you have a First Amendment?

One of the pernicious aspects of the current raids is that the government has seized records from a large number of people. Anything the FBI found, whether it pertains to a material support charge, or any other federal law, can be used as a basis for bringing charges.

Given the number of laws at the disposal of prosecutors, virtually anyone can be convicted at any time. There are an enormous number of vague and elastic federal laws armed with draconian punishments. Hence, federal prosecutors can almost invariably get a defendant to plea bargain rather than fight. The principle was eloquently expounded by Jay Leno in the documentary A/k/a Tommy Chong.

In the past, wars have been the locus for repression. Lincoln jailed political opponents during the Civil War, as did Wilson during the first World War. Other examples abound. In the past, the repression has ceased with the war. Now, the wars are expected to last forever no matter who is in power. The question now is whether the storm will ever abate, or will arbitrary power be granted to the government endlessly.

As Orwell said, “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

Calls for a military draft in the United States continue.

* Congressman Charlie Rangel has been pushing a bill for years that would re-institute a draft. Congressman Rangel thinks that the Iraq war would have never happened if there had been a draft at the time.

* Peace activist Cindy Sheehan has proposed a draft for presidents, Congress critters, and Federal Reserve CEOs. The draft would also apply to CEOs of companies that profit from the war, as well as anyone who favors the war. Finally, the draft would apply all of the age appropriate dependents of the foregoing. Cindy Sheehan acknowledges that her proposal has no chance being instituted.

* Former CIA agent Philip Giraldi proposes a constitutional amendment that mandates a popular vote before going to war. Voting would be mandatory and open. Those voting for the war, and their families, would be subject to a draft, plus taxation to pay for the war. Philip Giraldi acknowledges that his proposed amendment has no chance of passing.

* Constitutional attorney Bruce Fein has called for a return of the draft.

Note that in terms of what is often laughingly referred to as the political spectrum, Rangel and Sheehan are thought of as leftists, while Giraldi and Fein are thought of as men of the right. Despite the differences in their political viewpoints, all of these folks call for a draft in order to put restraints on the ability of the government to wage war.

First, calling for a draft is calling for a return of slavery. You can put all kinds of pretty words around it, but slavery in service of the government differs from chattel slavery only in that the term of service may be shorter. In addition, military conscription amounts to taking young people and feeding them into a meat grinder.

At least in the case of Sheehan and Giraldi, the call for a draft is rhetorical. Sheehan and Giraldi attempt to direct penalties toward those that are responsible for the war. However, both of them extend the penalties toward family members. Extending penalties to family members would have great utility as a deterrent, but the notion raises both moral and constitutional questions.

There is no immediate prospect of a draft. If a draft comes, it will not be passed in order to limit war powers. If Congress wanted to limit wars, it could do so via the purse strings. So, why would Congress pass draft legislation in order to raise opposition to wars?

If a draft comes, it will be imposed as a means of continuing the imperial project. Currently, there is enough money, and enough willing canon fodder, to provide the mercenaries that work for the public and private entities that support the empire. However, given the Federal deficits and the debasement of the currency, someday the money will effectively run out. At that point, the government will be faced with a choice between drawing down the empire and imposing a draft.

Given a convenient scare, a draft will be imposed. You can be sure that the draft will not be directed toward the ruling class. On the contrary, the draft will be directed toward the plebeians, while the children of the ruling class will find ready escape holes. As the republic becomes a distant memory, only the dimmest of the ruling class will allow their spawn to come into the line of fire.

John Stossel, in his program broadcast 9/2/2010 on the Fox Business Channel, covered the issue Good Intentions Gone Wrong on the Americans with Disabilities Act(ADA).

As usual, Mr. Stossel does a good job explicating the unfortunate effects of a government program, the ADA. As is typical of Mr. Stossel, he makes the assumption Congress passed the ADA with good intentions. However, what reason is there to believe that the Congress passing the ADA was the result of good intentions?

To determine whether the ADA was a result of good intentions, you first have to have a definition of good intentions in the context of the actions of a member of Congress. First, each member of Congress has sworn to uphold the constitution. Whatever the liabilities of the constitution, Congress has sworn to uphold the agreement. The evidence that Congress has considered the strictures of the constitution when passing the ADA, or anything else, is pretty thin. To regulate the height of bathroom mirrors in restaurants based on the interstate commerce clause is equivalent to saying that there is no constitution.

Considerations of the constitution aside, each member of Congress is generally expected to pursue the interests of his constituents. Herein lies one of the problems. There is nothing that Congress can do that will benefit some group without applying a disability to someone else. The ADA is a good example. Even if the ADA benefited people with disabilities, an assumption challenged in the program, the ADA would impose manifest disabilities on the rest of the population. So, what balance of interests constitutes good intentions?

Consider the interests of Congress. Each member of Congress has an interest in increasing his own power and financial standing. In other words, each member of Congress naturally wants to, at the very least, win the next election. If the politician can achieve higher office, so much the better. So, the politician is motivated to do whatever will insure success in the next election. Insuring success in the next election has little or nothing to do with following the constitution, or adhering to any notions of liberty or justice.

While the politician is in office, and after the politician has left office, increasing his wealth is an obvious goal. In fact, members of Congress live very well on the public teat while in office, and often live even better after they leave office. If you can pass legislation favorable to particular industries, you can be cut in on all sorts of business deals.

So, why should anyone believe that Congress has good intentions? If you could read minds, you might be able to determine the intentions of Congress. Since you cannot read minds, you can only judge by the actions of Congress. Those actions hardly warrant the assumption of good intentions.

Last year, independent truckers were protesting plans by the Port of Los Angeles that would put them out of business due to the high costs of complying with pollution abatement.

The latest news, reported here and here, has about 12 thousand of the 19 thousand truckers out of business. Another 3 thousand support jobs have been lost. According to reports, pollution is greatly reduced.

The Port of Los Angeles and the Teamsters Union are not satisfied with putting most of the independent truckers out of business. The Teamsters Union drew up a plan that would bar all owner operated trucks from accessing the port. The Port of Los Angeles accepted the plan. The Teamsters Union says that union drivers would get higher wages, and benefits. The legality of the plan is being fought out in federal courts. The Port of Los Angeles has won round one.

If the plan is implemented, the winners will be the Teamsters Union, which will get more members and more dues. The union members will get more renumeration. Large trucking companies will also be winners here because they will not have to compete with the low cost independent truckers. The politicians will presumably be paid off by the union and the trucking firms.

The losers will be the independent truckers, especially those who have just made a major investment in upgrading their equipment to satisfy pollution control regulations. The general public will also lose because shipping rates will go up for goods passing through the Port of Los Angeles. Thus, the costs of all those good will go up. Note that other ports around the country are carefully watching what is happening in Los Angeles before deciding whether to follow suit with similar plans.

Where ever you have a political authority controlling a major transportation facility, you have cartelization of access to the facility. Airports always have taxi service cartelized via permits and licenses.

Bruce Schneier writes about how people are wrongfully convicted in Misidentification and the Court System. The Slate article that Mr. Schneier references is well worth reading.

The article describes how about half of the district attorneys and detectives that are presented with incontrovertible evidence of the innocence of someone they have convicted will stoutly defend the verdict. There are many possible reasons why government officials react to evidence with denials. However, positions of authority attract authoritarian personalities. Nobody likes to have their mistakes pointed out, but authoritarians really don’t like to have their mistakes pointed out.

Another interesting question is why do those responsible for prosecutions make so many mistakes in the first place? One factor is that government officials do not generally pay for their mistakes even when those mistakes are uncovered. When someone wins a suit for wrongful conviction, the taxpayer ends up paying. The officials involved may be embarrassed, but they suffer no real penalty. Such a system constitutes a license for abuse.

In the article In the Tea Party Era, Which Way Should Libertarians Lean?, three writers provide advice to libertarians. The article is a summary and discussion of the views presented in the Reason article, Where Do Libertarians Belong?.

The discussion has a number of comical elements. The idea that libertarians need to lean in any particular direction is one of the comical elements. The makeup of the panel of debaters provides other reasons for mirth. The three participants were:

* Brink Lindsey, who I have written about before, at least concentrates on a number of libertarian issues. However, Mr. Lindsey also spends considerable time criticizing the right for social conservative tendencies, and other troglodyte transgressions. If these were the only problems with the right, libertarians would be much more comfortable with the right. It is in areas of war and civil liberties, and the conservatives penchant for pressing their desires via political means, that libertarians have significant differences with the right. In any event, Mr. Lindsey, who in the past has espoused liberaltarianism(i.e., using libertarianism to further liberal goals), wants libertarians to align with the middle, and employ liberal language in doing so. Note that Mr. Lindsey supported the invasion of Iraq.

* Jonah Goldberg, neoconservative writer for National Review, wants the libertarians to align with the conservatives mostly based on economic issues. Mr. Goldberg defends the conservatives as being no worse than the centralists on civil liberties issues. Mr. Goldberg lauds the conservative for their decentralism. Mr. Goldberg somewhat disingenuously mostly sidesteps issues of war. The question of how you can have a libertarian society while supporting ongoing wars all over the world is not something within the neoconservative purview.

* Matt Kibbe wants the libertarians to align with the Tea Party movement. Mr. Kibbe emphasizes the issues where libertarians agree with the Tea Party movement: TARP, Obamacare, and some economic issues. Mr. Kibbe, like Mr. Goldberg, carefully skirts issues of war and peace. Mr. Kibbe also does not address civil liberties. Mr. Kibbe does not seem to often publicly express opinions on anything except Austrian economics, and a rather narrow range of topics favored by the Tea Party. Nothing wrong with that, but it does not provide a very good idea of Mr. Kibbe’s overall ideology.

These three gentlemen have dubious credentials as libertarians. At least two of the three supported the Iraq war. Consequently, they end up trying to sell libertarians whatever horse they are currently riding. If they can rope in a few voters, and a few dollars, so much to the good. The question is, what would the libertarians get out of aligning with any of these groups?

In basketball, a defender will sometimes employ the pull the chair trick on an offensive player that leans too much. If the defender pulls back rapidly, the offensive player may fall on the floor. A similar thing will happen to libertarians that lean too much on political groups. When the chair gets pulled, the libertarians will end up being blamed for the sins of the group they have advocated. Politicians are masters at the pull the chair trick.

It is much better to concentrate on issues than it is to worry about broad political groups. If someone commits some outrage against liberty, criticize them. If someone defends liberty, defend that person in turn. The more specific the issue and the individual, the more efficacious it is to get involved.

In the Cato Unbound article Surveillance of Our Enemies During Wartime? I’m Shocked!, John Eastman responds to an article, The Digital Surveillance State: Vast, Secret, and Dangerous, by Glenn Greenwald.

Eastman provides all sorts of historical and legal precedents for surveillance. Eastman accuses Greenwald of ignoring the fact that “we are at war”. In his response, Eastman ignores the fact that Congress has not bothered to declare war. So, even if you accept the authority of the government, are we really at war?

Eastman also ignores the fact that even the proponents of the war on terror don’t expect the war to end in our life time, the life time of our children, or the life time of our grand children. Consequently, Eastman wants to provide the government with a license to spy on everyone forever.

That Eastman’s brand of drivelling sophistry got published is hardly surprising. There are plenty of neoconservative journals that specialize in publishing such fear mongering tripe. What is surprising is that Eastman’s article got published by an adjunct of the reputedly libertarian Cato Institute. Publishing a wide range of view points is good policy, but in this instance Cato was a little too unbound.

The editor of Cato Unbound at the time that Eastman’s article was published, Brink Lindsey, has apparently been made redundant. If publishing Eastman’s article is an example of Lindsey’s editorial judgement, Mr. Lindsay’s departure will likely bring an improvement to Cato Unbound.