"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
How I Came to Reject the Welfare State
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This is really an excellent article!
It is a good article. For Bumper.
Hornberger is one of those "libertarians" who has remained ...well, statist. Not real statist, mind you. Ministatist.
Bumper clings to the belief that that pack of psychopaths we call "government" could and might serve a socially useful purpose -- if "we" could just elect a tamer and "gooder" bunch of lunatics.
But he does come out with good stuff. One does not need to be an anarchist to write good libertarian essays.
Sam
I must agree, Sam; Bumper is less than 100% anarchist. But when he is good, he is very good indeed.
This one is superb, for it ridicules the notion that a border has any moral signiicance. Logically that means that nations have no moral significance, and that very nearly (though not quite, on its own) means that government has no moral right to exist. It's a powerful piece.
In contrast stands Ron Paul, who is also a mixed bag and very good on some issues; his stand on borders and immigration is dreadful, as I showed here.
Seemed like he was slow to get to the point . More like he was interested in his own narrative. Is there any value in providing assistance to the poor and homeless. Part of me asks "How much money does one man need?", then I think a man should be able to make whatever he is capable of making and he gets to decide how he will use his money." Then I wonder about the phrase "The poor will always be with us. What does that really mean and imply? We will always have the poor and shouldn't expect to do anything about it because it is a fact you cannot change. I have had the experience of being around people who have no interest in working, but rather manipulating a deriving a source of income from others (cheating others). They find places to sleep, manage to get food in some fashion, manage to achieve a destination.
Another question which comes to mind which is more important and animal or a human being. I see commercials advertising for donations to help poor, abused animals, but I see nothing about poor, abused humans, or even human slave trade. Do Libertarians have solutions for this? I have no idea.
Happy to see you are still around Sam.