that elephant in the room smells rotten

When I speak of elephants, I'm actually referring to Republicans. I can't possibly express how sick I am of the various myths portraying the Republican Party as being in favor of things that only libertarians believe in. The two big things to come to mind are free enterprise and reducing the size of government. The Busheviks have done a thorough job trashing such myths over the past few years, but it's of course not acknowledged by those who voted for or otherwise supported them, not to mention those who oppose the current regime but still view free enterprise and reducing government as being conservative goals. (note: they're not!)

I know of a few people who lean to the right who generally haven't followed political issues since the Clinton years except for news concerning terrorism, and they continue to give lip service to the myth of Republicans as being "a lesser of two evils" or "sound on fiscal issues". It's all complete balderdash, but some people simply refuse to have certain illusions challenged for fear of being thrust into some sort of limbo or (gasp) have to consider non-mainstream alternatives.

Over on the other end of the narrow mainstream spectrum, people still buy the typical Reaganisms hook, line and sinker, as if Reagan and his GOP successors all view free enterprise and limited government as being the hallmarks of conservative ideology. I was rudely smacked by this tiresome BS yet again recently while reading the latest by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut may be a great writer and overall nice and intelligent guy, but it's safe to say that he doesn't exactly have the right wing accurately pegged, let alone does he even know what free enterprise is.

Now, with all this said, I of course must state that I also think that the jackass party smells, but the odor is somewhat different. For one thing, if you want to find people in the mainstream who are actually criticizing foreign policy and recent attacks on our liberty, you won't find them amongst the elephant herd. Amongst the actual cretins serving in the House, Logan Ferree has recently shown that most elephants are flat out authoritarian (some seem to be on par with Hitler and Stalin), while Democrats seem to vary. In fact, the libertarian portion of the Nolan chart he presents has only one red dot (Ron Paul), while there are ten blue dots.

Another thing to consider in regards to my occasional targeting of Republicans is that I used to belong to the statist "progressive" left politically and I've always loathed the Republican party. Add to that the fact that Republicans have done more to tarnish noble ideals such as free enterprise and distrust of big government, and you can see why I have an especially high level of contempt for them. The Republican party and it's supporters are enemies of free enterprise and enemies of liberty in general.

It is thus with great pleasure that I present a link to Anthony Gregory's latest column, titled "The Republican Ideology of the Total State". Here's an excerpt:

The Republicans have lost even the thinnest pretense of being a party for smaller government. They might prefer deficit spending to taxing people up front. They might understand economics well enough to know that some overbearing regulations favored by Democrats will kill the host on which their parasitic operations depend. They are lower-tax imperialists, perhaps. But they do believe, when push comes to shove, that the president should have unchecked power to spy, detain, torture and wage war. Perhaps the only Constitutional provision worth observing is the guarantee of a Republican form of government – that is, a government of, by, and for the Republicans.

Wait, there's more! On the subject of Ronald Reagan in particular, here are a couple of other things to check out. While perusing Roderick Long's excellent blog and jumping from link to link within it earlier today, I came across this 2004 post where he posts a letter to the editor that he submitted to the Opelika-Auburn News (but not published) where he reveals Reagan as being a wolf in sheep's clothing:

To the Editor:

Ronald Reagan spoke with such apparent sincerity about free enterprise, free trade, deregulation, cutting taxes, and downsizing government that he somehow managed to convince both his supporters and his opponents that his administration had actually enacted some of those policies.

In reality, the Reagan presidency’s actions were diametrically opposed to its rhetoric.

Reagan’s 1981 “tax cut” was offset by higher Social Security taxes, resulting in a net tax increase for most taxpayers. He then followed it up with the 1982 TEFRA Act, the largest tax increase in American history. The federal government’s tax intake was $252 billion higher in 1986 than in 1980.

The Reagan administration increased federal spending from $591 billion to $990 billion, the deficit from $74 billion to $200 billion, and the federal debt from $900 billion to $2.7 trillion. Entitlement spending soared from $197 billion in 1981 to $477 billion in 1987.

Despite paying lip service to free trade, Reagan pursued a far more aggressively protectionist policy than his predecessors. He did continue the Carter administration’s deregulation initiatives, but launched no new ones, and reneged on his pledge to rein in the federal bureaucracy. The number of civilian government workers rose by 230,000 during the course of his presidency.

The real Reagan legacy is that, thanks to Reagan’s pro-market rhetoric, the free market unfairly gets the blame for the harmful results of his anti-market policies. In that sense, Reagan perhaps did more harm to the cause of genuine free enterprise than any President in American history.

Roderick T. Long

The other thing concerning Reagan that I'd like to share is this classic 2004 Russmo cartoon:


*Addendum: I just thought of something else that I'd like to add to this post. Another link I came across while perusing Roderick Long's blog today went to Arthur Silber's epic essay titled "I Accuse: To Those Who Pave the Way for the New Fascism". Since the series of entries that comprise that essay were on Silber's old blog that no longer exists, the link doesn't work. Thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine, however, I was able to find the hidden nook within the interweb where the essay can still be found. The entire thing can be found here.