Scott Sumner is simply an ideologue, and a confused one at that, otherwise he wouldn't be as unhappy as he is

In "Libertarians have nowhere to turn" Scott Sumner the market monetarist laments:

'In my view neither major political party has libertarian inclinations. ... I'm slightly more sympathetic to the progressives who insist that I should really be a Democrat. They tell me "After all, you are rational. You believe in evolution and support carbon taxes and redistribution and think money was too tight during the Great Recession. You are pro-immigration and skeptical of the idea that America is an 'exceptional' nation, which must police the world." Those are all good arguments, but then I start obsessing about economics. After all, I am an economist.'

Apart from completely missing that the Democrat Party is the party of social freedom and the Republican Party is the party of economic freedom, it's rather singular for a self-described libertarian to embrace economic redistributionism so openly (not to mention a draconian form of taxation). To do so betrays a feeling for the left, not the right, which, if libertarians were only honest enough to admit it, has always been their inclination.

Sumner might reflect on the fact that we actually live in a perfect storm of libertarianism, in which economic (and social) actors have been unleashed to be all that they can be. The trouble is, only a few "succeed". The fact that income inequality has reasserted itself to a degree not seen since the gilded age is proof of the basic fact that not all men are created equal. The very best at making money have risen to the top and become enormously wealthy in an environment specifically designed to allow it to happen. The end result of economic libertarianism is that the very best will eventually succeed in hoarding all the goodies for themselves while the rest of us are left to serfdom. The end result of libertarianism is freedom for thee, but not for me.

The same can be illustrated on the social side, where some freak flags fly higher than all the rest. They rise to fame and influence beyond all their fellows in "art", "music", "literature" and "society", if you can call violent, vulgar and obscene Hollywood films, rap, "shady" novels and the Kardashians representative of those categories.

Conservatism, primarily rooted in religion, has historically functioned in society to apply the brakes to keep these actors from getting out of control and acquiring undue influence, whether socially or economically. The left only imagines itself capable of replacing religion's heretofore tempering role, which primarily functioned through willful self-restraint. Hence the efforts to reduce income inequality by force through taxation schemes, which obviously aren't working. On the social side the left has had even less success, except by recourse to venomous speech and conduct codes which meet with little assent and not a little fear and loathing among the many.

Freedom, as currently conceived in all its sterility, is quite literally killing America.

Trump understands that JOBS are Americans' main concern

So says John Crudele, here:

'I think Donald Trump — if he can stop himself from saying crazy things about his wealth, immigration and such — will be a very important factor in the 2016 election. Why? Because he understands that the main concern in this country today is the economy — which is another way of saying “jobs.” That was the chief thing on people’s minds in 2012 and during the last congressional election in 2014. It still is today and will be throughout the primaries and right up to the 2016 election. “I will be the greatest job president God ever created,” Trump said last week. People are worried about immigration because the newcomers will take the scant jobs available. China is bothersome because its manufacturing might is sapping jobs from the US. One group in this country doesn’t like another group because we are all fighting for the same jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs!'

Dinesh D'Souza's Mistake Is Failing To Take The Enemy For An Enemy

Conservatism in the United States is fatally flawed because it is incapable of imagining that the opposition is the enemy, even when the enemy openly comes after it. Under the influence of Christian teaching, it turns the other cheek also only to get slapped again, as if naming the enemy were itself a transgression. This makes them no different in spirit from the disarmament crowd, as misguided by utopianism derived from religion as revolutionaries are by ideology.

Conservatism is full of people like Dinesh D'Souza who keep saying "so and so should say this", "so and so should not say that", and "so and so ought to do such and such" or "they shouldn't be doing that" when the facts staring them in the face at every turn demonstrate that the opposition is not behaving in any way like countrymen who act in good faith as the opposition but like foreign agents working in the service of a different loyalty. Continuing to protest that the enemy is not playing according to the rules is not going to stop the enemy.

Seen here:

“I think it is the broader pattern of going after people who are critics,” he continued. “Not just me, but the Hollywood guys, the group Friends of Abe, these are Hollywood guys who are conservatives. So I think there is a sense here that Obama treats his critics not merely as people who disagree, but as enemies.”

When the rubber hits the road, as in the critical period just before an election, as here in October 2010, the president makes it plain how he wants his peeps to view us:

“If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re going to punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s going to be harder and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2.”

Top Comment On Story That A&E Caves To Phil Robertson

Story here.

Reduce Nuclear Weapons. Use Them On Hollywood.

The Model For All American Authoritarians Is Pres. Lincoln

So Ralph Peters, here:

"But no president should murder American citizens. Tell it to Abe Lincoln, Hollywood’s celebrity-president of the season, who invaded the South (which had not even threatened acts of terror). The result? Perhaps 750,000 dead Americans. I believe Lincoln was our greatest president after Washington, but he wasn’t just about emancipation."

Funny how emancipation for 4 million black people required the deaths of 750,000 and the repression of liberties of millions ever after.

Well, at least he's honest about The War of Northern Aggression. And Lincoln was a murderer. I'm glad we cleared that up.

One key to surviving in the future will be making sure we don't all move to the same geographic location. Another is refusing to wear the Star of David. You know a third.

Reed Galen And His Ilk Confuse Television With Reality

Well why not? His parents probably used television as a baby sitter. The video here shows Reed Galen sporting a ginormous wristwatch and more neurotic hand gestures per second than I can count.

Here are his recent remarks about television:

The ABC sitcom “Modern Family” is an excellent reference point for the problems of today’s Republican Party. One of the most popular shows on television, it features, among other things, a Latina immigrant and her son and a gay couple with an adopted daughter.

Those characters are not merely a paean to political correctness: They are the glue of the show. And for Americans under 45, they are not seen as objects of scorn or derision but a reflection -- albeit through Hollywood’s funhouse mirror -- of what the country looks like today.

Someday someone is going to kick Reed Galen's ass but good, or his kids' ass if he actually has any, or something worse, which they'll deserve but won't assimilate because it's already too late for them.

Obviously his baby boomer parents never taught him anything, which is why the country looks like it does today, and deserves everything it's going to get.

Reed Galen formerly served in the losing John McCain for president campaign.

When The Purge Comes, It's Inspiration Will Be Obama's Barbarians In Hollywood

From The UK Daily Telegraph, here, which does a pretty good job of exposing the vulgar and violence-loving friends of Obama in Hollywood who represent the popular face of the global reach of Obama's crony capitalism fascism:

Spider-Man now looks like Bambi when set next to The Dark Knight. Even since 2002, the public's willingness to expose children to previously unthinkable levels of screen violence has soared, and the BBFC finds itself virtually powerless to stop it. ...

Britain appears to be gulping down entertainment values wholesale from a Hollywood intent upon mining the profit margin from barbarism. America, for all its manifold strengths, is still a country in which the population can be roused to a frenzy of condemnation by the sight of Janet Jackson's escaped nipple on the Super Bowl, but views the sight of a bound man being torched to death as all-round family entertainment. ...

Little boys have always played with swords and guns. But they did not always play at beating a prisoner's genitals with a rope, or stitching a live bomb inside a man's stomach. For that innovation we must thank Hollywood, the industrious factory of dreams, now frequently devoted to churning out nightmares.

These evil dreams, repeated often enough to the young, prepare them to commit crimes such as have occurred in the past, for example at the hands of this woman, executed in 1945 at the age of 22 for her crimes at Bergen-Belsen:

She admitted that she regarded the inmates of the concentration camps as "dreck", i.e. subhuman rubbish and like you or I may kill an insect without feeling guilty about it, she saw nothing inherently wrong in what she was doing. At her trial, she denied selecting prisoners for the gas chambers although she did admit she knew of their existence. She did admit to whipping prisoners with the cellophane whip and also to beating them with a walking stick, despite knowing that both practices were contrary to the camp rules.

Hers is a classic case of what happens when an immature person is given total charge of a large number of people who are viewed by those in authority as totally expendable. No one seemed to care how many of the concentration camp inmates were killed or beaten by her even though there were nominal rules against mistreatment of prisoners. So Irma had, effectively, freehand to kill and torture to her heart's content. She clearly felt that she was carrying out Hitler's and Himmler's policies, which in her mind largely exempted her from responsibility for her actions.

It has been said that Nazism replaced this young girl's normal sex life and that her sexuality manifested itself in the brutal and sadistic treatment of her female prisoners. 

Roy Brewer Archives Show Some of Hollywood Ten Really Were Commies

From The LA Times Magazine:

The archives shed light on another mythologized piece of Hollywood history: the hearings held by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. I grew up hearing about the Hollywood Ten—filmmakers railroaded by congressional witch-hunters in 1947, ostensibly because they were liberals.

According to that familiar narrative, they rebuked the committee when subpoenaed. If there’s a “profiles in courage” touchstone in Hollywood, this is it. Those who did testify, such as Brewer and Reagan, are regarded as Judases.

However, a letter from John Huston found in the files says this story is a well-constructed myth. And if anyone would know key facts about those days, it would be Huston, a non-Communist liberal Democrat who opposed the hearings because he believed it was unconstitutional to require a citizen to state his political beliefs.

Writing on the filmmakers who refused to answer questions from congressmen, Huston recounted, “Some of them had already testified in California, and their testimony had been false. They’d said they were not Communists, when in truth they were. To have admitted it now would have been to lay themselves open to charges of perjury.”

Huston said that at the time of the hearings, they convinced him they were standing up for principle—the “freedom of the individual,” as he put it. However, as he later learned (and wrote in the letter), “they were really looking after their own skins. Had I so much as suspected such a thing, I would have washed my hands of them on the spot.”

Don't miss the rest of this riveting account about Ronald Reagan's anti-communism by John Meroney, here.

A book is forthcoming.

The Pig and The Communist

Story here and here.

"You are a pig" . . . "And you are a communist"

Palin Effigy Lynched in West Hollywood in 2008