BPMA--BiPartisanship My A**

The Economist is on sale at the Barnes and Noble on Ulster Avenue in Kingston, NY.  I picked up a copy of the venerable weekly, founded in 1843 by followers of John Cobden and Richard Bright of the Anti-Corn Law League.  From its inception The Economist has been in favor of globalization. Though associated with the Manchester liberals, advocates of laissez faire, the magazine supports Keynesian, big government policies that never work but result in subsidization of a readership mostly comprised of welfare mothers:  investment bankers and their lawyers.  As long as it avoids lobbing bouquets at the Federal Reserve Bank and Bush-Obama's Wall Street bailouts, the magazine is useful.

The Economist notes that the Obama State of the Union speech was tepid and unconvincing. It also mentions that in light of Jared Loughner's shooting of Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), wounding of 13 others and murder of six, the two parties have recently attempted to be bipartisan.

Bipartisanship is a mistake.  In light of the unfortunate violence in Arizona the Tea Party ought to press forward with more specific demands for freedom.  Extremist violence has attended many, if not all, political movements and there is less of it associated with the Tea Party than with the American left.

The American left has a long, persistent history of violence.  The lying in The New Republic and The New York Times about the mass murders in the Soviet Union in the 1930s; Noam Chomsky's ongoing Cambodian holocaust denial; Michael Moore's acclamation of Cuban murderer Fidel Castro (responsible for 100,000 killings); Hollywood's acclamation of serial killer Che Guevara.

Closer to home social democracy is  violent; regulation is violent; forced saving through Social Security is violent; taxation is violent; the suppression of dissent through the Patriot Act is violent.  Dissenters to the income tax are  violently incarcerated, and the Amish, who refused to pay Social Security taxes,  were for a time subjected to violent harassment from the US government. Anyone who doubts that the federal tax system is violent should write a letter to the IRS saying that you are not going to pay your taxes.  See what happens.

For many decades university professors defended the Soviet Union with psychopathic denial about its ongoing violence:  its mass murder of 65 million human beings over 70 years.  Paul Anthony Samuelson's economics textbook crowed about the Soviet Union's success just a few years before the 70-year-old socialist experiment completely collapsed for the reasons that Ludwig von Mises had published in the 1920s. The deprivation, despoliation of the environment, Gulags, forced starvation, torture, and imprisonment of millions were all matters of indifference to the Progressive movement of the 1930s and 1940s and later, which repeatedly lied about it.

The violence extends to institutions that the Progressive movement has imposed. That they were democratically imposed does not change their violent nature.  A plurality of Germans put Hitler in power and likely a majority supported him after he was in power.  Millions of Germans were willing to die on his behalf. So much for the legitimacy of democracy.  As de Tocqueville observed in 1835, the greatest threat to American freedom is tyranny of the majority.  Tyranny of the majority is the promise of Progressivism; the violence of The New Republic.

The violence in the Lockean American revolution was miniscule. People died in the American revolution, but  respect for human dignity is fundamental to American liberalism of which the Tea Party is the chief manifestation today.

In short: BPMA -- bipartisanship my a**.  Let us transform the violent and illegitimate federal government in Washington. Its supporters are thugs.

Open Letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center

Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center

Dear Mr. Dees:

I am a former donor to the Southern Poverty Law Center. During the late 1980s and 1990s I donated for several consecutive years and received an autographed copy of your book as well as a phone call from your wife on one occasion. I am writing now to say that I profoundly disagree with your attacks on the Tea Party and urge you to consider that you have congratulated state violence while attacking those who would defend themselves from it. I now find myself agreeing with a judge years ago who claimed that there is no difference between your organization and the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups. The judge, I recall, was removed from the case he was adjudicating, and now I would like to be removed from your mailing list if I have not been already.

Socialism is inherently violent, as is all government. Government is by definition organized violence. The claim that because government is the most powerful perpetrator of violence its violence is legitimate is nonsensical mysticism. It is not necessarily the case that respect for government minimizes violence. In the case of the Soviet Union, communist China and Cuba, public acceptance and cowardice in the face of state violence permitted the extent of violence to greatly exceed what would have occurred had there been a Lockean revolution that replaced the violent socialist state with a limited state.

The US government has reached the tipping point, and Barack Obama is pushing it there. You may disagree, but your disagreement does not make you non-violent. It simply means that you accept and welcome state violence. It means that you are advocates of violence.

There is more. Barack Obama has associated with violent felons such as William Ayers, who planted a bomb in Chicago. Thus, President Obama himself has associated with violence. This is in contrast to the non-violent Tea Parties. The factual data does not trouble you. You continue to support Barack Obama despite his association with violence, yet you continue to imply on your website that people in the Tea Party are violent. You engage in deception.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is thus a violent organization that serves state violence. It is not enough that the US government dominates the television and print media, to the point where many of us have simply stopped paying attention to its blatant, foolish lies. Your organization, having been effective in reducing the Klan's influence (a result I applaud) now chooses to back state violence.

Please remove my name from your records. Your organization is a disgrace.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.