Here, in his book "By the People," Charles Murray makes a very weak and I think a very tortured "pseudo-Madisonian" case, for the need of a Libertarian revolution?
Early on he quotes his version of the Jeffersonian revoltionary mantra: "It is part of our national catechism that government is instituted to protect our unalienable rights, and that when it becomes destructive of those rights, the reason for our allegiance is gone. At that point, revolution is not treason, but the people's right."
I say he makes a weak pseudo-Madisonian case because in my reading of the Federalist Papers, was it not Madison himself, who launched a cleverly engineered coup against states rights that resulted in the establishment of the federal government in the first place?
And if that is so, how is it that despite this, Libertarians like Murray, still see Madison as the champion of both states rights and small government? Their position defies common sense? It thus seems to me this is a clear purposeful mis-reading of American history.
I doubt very seriously that, to Madison, "Big Government" would be the same root of all the nation's evils as it is made out to be here by Murray and his likeminded ideological cohorts? Nor, do I believe that Madison would see FDR's "New Deal Programs" as being the generator of all the evils of Big Government, as Murray's Libertarians do?
It seems rather self-evident that "Big Government" for these guys is just a convenient ideological canard: bad only when it does not serve the conservative and Libertarian causes, and good otherwise?
Somehow through the twisted contradictory logic of Murray and his likeminded ideological cohorts (Dinesh D'Sousa, and Thomas Sowell, in particular), FDR's New Deal programs are seen as being responsible for all of America's problems.
I think this is true in the eyes of the Libertarians and the rightwing conservatives only because they see those programs as drawing a bright line between what they see as the "common good," and what they see as the "so-called job creators;" between what they imagine to be the "productive citizens" and those they see as unproductive, and always "waiting for a handout;" between the "smart and creative people," and what they see as the "dumb dull and the uncreative perpetual down-and-outs."
Libertarians, who love Ayn Rand and have no moral problems with Gordon Gecko style greed, believe that no such bright line of division is needed because the notion of a "common good" is no longer viable or needed, and thus should be abandoned altogether despite its clear inclusion in the U.S. Constitution on par with "providing for the common defense?"
The U.S. Constitution and "authentic" American History aside, the only meaningful division to Libertarians like Murray is between the "so-called" "job creators" and those who "wait for the job creators to feed them;" or failing that, those who wait for the government to provide them "meals on wheels?"
Do we really need a revolution to reduce the oppression from too many regulations on corporations and too many pages in the tax code?
How about a revolution for evading taxes by sheltering them in illegal off shore accounts? How about a revolution against dismantling American factories and jobs, and then shipping them off to Mexico and China? Wouldn't these be better ways to spend our "dear" national treasure on a revolution? And if this is a serious revolution, why make it a non-violent one?
Did Mr. Murray somehow miss the fact that the Libertarian revolution has already occurred, and has been won? So, why do the Libertarians like Ron Paul and that ilk keep crying foul?
Bush privatized prescription drugs, and now the same drugs cost the American public six to ten times what they cost in Canada?
The prisons have been privatized; and now inner city communities have been further decimated by drug infestation and dumbed-down education, in order to better keep the pipeline of criminals open thereby ensuring that the beds in the pre-planned prisons of the prison-industrial complex, will be filled -- thus allowing them to remain a "going concern?"
We now also have "for profit Colleges." And although no one ever graduates from them, in less than a decade, they alone have succeeded in making student loan debt second only to home mortgage debit?
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