Chickenhawk: chick·en·hawk. n. “A person who strongly supports war or other military action, yet actively avoided military service when of age.”

Chickenhawks are those individuals, particularly in politics, who strongly support or advocate for war and increased military intervention even though they avoided participating in the military when they were of age and could have fought. In other words, chickenhawks are people who are totally comfortable sending today’s kids off to war even though when they themselves were of “military age” they took every step necessary to avoid participating in military conflict.

"Liberty built civilization. It can rebuild civilization." ~ Ron Paul

"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government." ~ Ron Paul

]]> http://davidkretzmann.com/2012/01/ron-paul-ideas-liberty-and-rebuilding-civilization/feed/ 1 http://davidkretzmann.com/2012/01/ron-paul-debunking-neoconservatism/ http://davidkretzmann.com/2012/01/ron-paul-debunking-neoconservatism/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:13:11 +0000 http://davidkretzmann.com/?p=1139

“The neoconservative belief that war is patriotic, beneficial, manly, and necessary for human progress must be debunked.” ~ Ron Paul

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0kkteupFng[/youtube]

“When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we, in essence, accept that the state owns our bodies.” ~ Ron Paul

“True competition in the delivery of medical care is what is needed, not more government meddling.” ~ Ron Paul

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foXQbmZxWYY[/youtube]

“We must change our foreign policy from one of interventionism and confrontation to cooperation and diplomacy.” ~ Ron Paul

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtVmis-2ugM[/youtube]

On October 14, 2011, Abdulrahman Al-awlaki was killed by U.S. airstrikes in Yemen. Al-awlaki was a 16 year old American citizen who was eating dinner with a group of his teenage friends when U.S. airstrikes took their lives. Al-awlaki, born in Denver, Colorado, was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki. Anwar al-Awlaki, of course, was the U.S. citizen suspected (but never prosecuted) of working with Al Qaeda; Awlaki was assassinated by the U.S. on September 30, 2011.

In the days before a CIA drone strike killed al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki last month, his 16-year-old son ran away from the family home in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa to try to find him, relatives say. When he, too, was killed in a U.S. airstrike Friday, the Awlaki family decided to speak out for the first time since the attacks.

“To kill a teenager is just unbelievable, really, and they claim that he is an al-Qaeda militant. It’s nonsense,” said Nasser al-Awlaki, a former Yemeni agriculture minister who was Anwar al-Awlaki’s father and the boy’s grandfather, speaking in a phone interview from Sanaa on Monday. “They want to justify his killing, that’s all.”

Abdulrahman Al-awlaki ran away from home to try to find his dad. That’s it. This is a human tragedy, regardless of whether you think the U.S.’s military efforts in the Middle East are justified or not. A society that disregards human life cannot possibly expect to uphold individual liberty.

Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is drenched in blood. Has Obama so much as issued an apology for killing an innocent American teenager and his friends? Nope. Nada.

This is an American teenage kid that we’re talking about, just three years younger than me. He had a Facebook profile. He listened to Akon, Eminem, 50 Cent, and Snoop Dogg. His favorite books were Harry Potter and Twilight. He loved Spongebob Squarepants, Prison Break, Lost, The Simpsons, and the BBC “Planet Earth” series. His favorite movies were Harry Potter, Braveheart, Troy, and Gladiator. In other words, he was a human being.

Have our minds been so numbed by war that we casually brush off the deaths of innocent lives, even an American teenager, taken by the U.S.? Will people continue to defend these political psychopaths who ignore the destruction of innocent life the U.S. has caused around the world? I pray not.

Abdulrahman Al-awlaki (Assassinated October 14, 2011)

Abdulrahman Al-awlaki's U.S. Birth Certificate

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0kkteupFng[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE30TH6Y7cI[/youtube]

Since the early 20th century it has been the initiative and policy of the federal government to lower the price of housing so every single family could own a home. Other arrangements that would commonly arise in a free market (such as renting) just don’t fit into the government’s version of the “American dream.” One of the first to lobby for governmental support of individual home ownership was President Herbert Hoover. On July 22, 1932 Hoover signed the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, and he explained the purpose of the bill “is to establish a series of discount banks for home mortgages.” In other words, the federal government would help organize the mortgage loan industry and provide cheaper loans for people to obtain, thus increasing home ownership. Hoover went on to explain:

“In the long view we need at all times to encourage homeownership and for such encouragement it must be possible for homeowners to obtain long-term loans payable in installments. These institutions should provide the method for bringing into continuous and steady action the great home loaning associations which is so greatly restricted due to present pressures.” — Herbert Hoover (Emphasis added.)

The “present pressures” of course being the Great Depression, an eensy-weensy economic slump that resulted in banks giving out fewer loans. Still, Hoover thought this was an appropriate time for government to encourage people to buy a house even if the economy was in dire circumstances. So began the history of the federal government’s intervention in the mortgage market, often subsidizing or forcing banks to lower their lending standards and give loans to people regardless of their ability to pay them back.

Taking Hoover’s actions a step further, President Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill that led to the formulation of Fannie Mae 1938. (Fannie Mae was split up into Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae as well under the Johnson Administration.) Interestingly, these government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) were created to help bail out banks who were faced with (wait for it…) a growing number of mortgage defaults.

Essentially the scenario looks like this: First the government organized banks to lower the price of mortgages in 1932; once people bought the loans, however, many were unable to pay them back and forced to default; upon seeing this flow of events, Roosevelt attempted to bail out the industry by creating Fannie Mae in 1938. This was the beginning of the secondary mortgage market, the practice where the GSEs (using taxpayer dollars) purchase mortgages from banks, thereby freeing up money for the banks to provide more mortgages.

“The GSEs are companies created by Congress to bring liquidity, stability, and affordability to the nation’s residential mortgage markets. Traditionally, we’ve fulfilled this role by purchasing mortgages in the secondary market and bundling them into mortgage-related securities that can be sold to investors or held in our portfolio.” — Ed Haldeman, Freddie Mac CEO

This new setup encouraged banks to offer loans to riskier clients who in an actual market scenario would not be eligible to purchase a mortgage. Because of government’s creation of the secondary mortgage market banks found themselves with extra liquidity, which was used to offer loans to financially-insecure individuals. It’s not tough to do the math: riskier customers lead to a higher likelihood of default. These policies have the least desirable impact on the poor people they are intended to help. In reality,  it is much more economically feasible and sensible for a poor person/family to rent a house or apartment than to buy a house. However, artificially low mortgage rates lure poor people into an investment they won’t possibly be able to pay back. Government’s intervention creates a market imbalance that pushes the poor into buying a house when it is almost certainly not in their long-term interest to do so.

The painful effects of foreclosure we see today are the inevitable consequence of ongoing government meddling in the mortgage market. Government either subsidized or forced banks to offer risky loans to risky customers, but when the entire scheme begins to collapse we’re told it is a failure of the free market. (As if Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Administration, and other such entities were created through free, voluntary exchange and not by politicians and bureaucrats.)

Before someone blames the current economic mess on “deregulation” and injustices of the free market, consider this action undertaken by the Clinton Administration, as explained by the New York Times:

“In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.”

…

“In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980′s.” — New York Times; September 30, 1999

Historical evidence clearly shows that government has led the endorsement of subprime mortgages and lower lending standards, with complete disregard for the economic misery that erupts out of such policies and programs. Increasing bailouts will merely delay and worsen the inevitable collapse of the modern mortgage industry that government has played a major role in creating and sustaining.

Even so, you might say, on September 24, 2008, John McCain suspended his presidential campaign with the selfless objective to pass emergency legislation to “protect taxpayers and homeowners,” so the government must know what it’s doing, right? What America got in September 2008 were the TARP bailouts which, given the situation of the mortgage market today, haven’t done squat to “protect homeowners.” Given the government’s miserable record of attempting to provide affordable housing, who in the world expects more government intervention to save homeowners this time around? You can’t save a drowning person by throwing more water on him, nor can you save a government-manipulated economy with more government intervention.

The free market is the best tool to save the housing market and actually provide affordable housing for those who need it. Allowing liquidation of the housing market is necessary and would bring a short-term correction, but it would end the ongoing misery homeowners are experiencing due to government manipulation in the first place. Housing prices would drop to levels most potential homeowners could actually afford, and it wouldn’t require one dollar of government intervention.

For a true recovery to take place you don’t need increased government spending, intervention, or control; all that’s needed is a return to the free market, where individuals will manage their lives and economic decisions far better than any politician or bureaucrat in Washington D.C. The free market is the only option for a sustainable, lasting, and prosperous recovery.

Profit represents the reward for taking a risk. You wouldn’t start a business if you knew you weren’t going to make more than you would spend creating that business, would you? However, if you can increase your income more than your expenditures through that business, you’ll feel much more inclined to continue with the operation. Obviously, people cannot survive operating a business at a loss.

Profits do not come without work and risk. It is only possible to make a profit if you can offer a product or a service, that people want, in an efficient manner. No matter how greedy you may be, in a free market you cannot survive without efficiently producing a product that has market demand. You cannot force people to work for you, you cannot force people to invest in your business, and you cannot force people to purchase your product. Your greed is limited to free and voluntary exchange.

Profits have been especially dissed when it comes to health care. It is easy to blame the insurance corporations and many missteps that the current system carries, but people fail to realize that it has been government intervention into the market that has increased prices and decreased accessibility. The more that government regulates, controls, and manipulates health care, the less access individuals will have to health care because of the higher costs.

The Kefauver Harris Amendment of 1962 was added on to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, providing the FDA with greatly expanded regulatory powers, including the ability to deny approval of drugs that they felt weren’t fully effective. The FDA’s regulatory process to bring new drugs into the market is very costly in terms of money and time, making it exceedingly difficult for businesses other than large pharmaceutical corporations to survive in the drug market. Dr. Mary J. Ruwart estimates that no less than 50% of new drugs have been blocked from the market due to this process.

Because of the 1962 amendments, the FDA can determine and change the requirements to bring new drugs from the laboratory and into the marketplace. In 1962, the development phase of drugs took approximately 4.5 years. A good amount of time for a business to invest money in a product that might never get the chance to sell on the market, right? Today the development time is 15 years. With such brutal development and marketing procedures for drugs, it should be no surprise that drug prices are rising. These regulatory proceedings limit the supply of new drugs, raise the price of existing drugs, and limit patient access overall to drugs. In other words, the demand for these drugs does not disappear, but the supply is often heavily limited. Thus, prices go up.

With the drug market essentially limited to the few businesses who can afford to comply with the expensive FDA regulations, competition has taken a beating. Drugs often represent a more affordable method for prevention, treatment, and a general tool to lower medical costs. However, the FDA has so greatly limited potentially life-saving drugs that medical costs continue to rapidly expand.

If it was the patients, not central bureaucrats, who worked with their doctors to decide whether or not certain drugs were logical for their own situation, competition in the drug industry would flourish, prices would fall, and accessibility would increase. We need to understand that government intervention comes with a price by benefiting larger corporations and limiting the competitive ability of smaller businesses.

I am not discounting the effects of greed and the want/need for profits that is inherent in some individuals. But the answer to these problems is not more government intervention or centralization of the markets. The trouble that we face in health care and many other industries is precisely too little competition, a trend that government has consistently worsened. Just look at the drug market: it has become such a bureaucratized process that it ends up helping the larger corporations, hurting small businesses, and pinching the consumer in terms of choice and cost.

The power of the individual is the power of choice: the ability to choose your own insurance plan (without being forced into an employer or government option), and to choose which drugs and medical treatment make sense to you, not to federal bureaucrats. The more power that you transfer from the individual to the government, the more you will see lobbyist activity, corporatism, and inefficiency increase. We are constantly trying to force a one-size-fits-all system on the country (whether it be HMOs or “public options”), neglecting the fact that we are all very unique as individuals and might have better ideas for ourselves, even if politicians turn “bipartisan” to force legislation on the people.

The key point is that demonizing profits in support of a government plan completely misses the underlying problem: limited competition. You do not need government to encourage competition, you need freedom of the individual, freedom of choice, and freedom of competition to create a prosperous, healthy, and accessible market.

It is amusing that so many people are hopping on the bandwagon that government operating at a loss is somehow more noble than for-profit businesses. The whole reason that government can operate at a loss is because it borrows from foreign nations, prints and devalues the currency, and forcefully taxes private productivity. As much as people would like to believe it, government cannot defy the laws of economics and common sense over the long run. They may be able to operate Medicare, Medicaid, and countless other programs with trillion dollar deficits for a time, but it will come crashing down just as it would for any irresponsible business that chooses to spend more money on unprofitable activities.

We need not look any further than the drug industry to see how disastrous a powerful, unelected, and centralized bureaucracy can be. The FDA has powers intended to help the people, but its very policies to help people have likely caused far more deaths and suffering by preventing and limiting new drugs, raising the price of current drugs, and decreasing accessibility to drugs because of the higher prices.

True, revolutionary, and sustainable change can only come through the individual. Profits themselves are not the problem; discouraging competition for those profits is the problem. Government provides a de facto monopoly to large corporations when it gets as involved as the FDA in private affairs, laying the foundation for a system that can never fully serve the individual. For full individual service, the individual must be in full control.

GM has not done a thing to deserve special treatment. Mr. Henderson admits and suggests that the company needs to restructure, but would prefer it to be done without the usual bankruptcy protection. If the Big Three made bad decisions, paid unions an unsustainable amount, and can’t compete with foreign automakers, then bankruptcy should be encouraged. Smarter, smaller, and more sustainable businesses would emerge in the long run, and have a much better chance at competing with Toyota and Honda.

With the auto bailouts and interventions, the government is greatly strengthening its regulatory power over the consumers. In 1980, roughly 75% of all automobiles bought in the U.S. were built by Detroit. Last year, Detroit’s share fell to 48%. Consumers saw how lackluster Detroit’s vehicles were and decided to purchase better models made primarily by Toyota and Honda. Why does the government not like these decisions?

An often forgotten fact is that Toyota uses more American parts in its vehicles than GM, Ford, or Chrysler. Many of the Big Three use approximately 65% or less American components in their vehicles, while Toyota has models that are made up of 90% American parts. Detroit is no longer the “American auto industry” that many politicians use as an excuse for bailouts. Not only do Toyota and Honda make better cars, they manage to make them with more American components than Detroit could dream of.

What end result is the government hoping for? Are they saying that consumers are wrong in their decisions, and should be buying vehicles from Detroit? Are they saying that despite Detroit’s products being more inefficient, unreliable, and expensive than American-made vehicles from Toyota and Honda, that they still deserve unearned taxpayer dollars?

It should be remembered that new vehicles are not necessity items. People have several automakers to choose from for buying a new vehicle, but there is also the used market that presents a less expensive option. Were Detroit forced to restructure under bankruptcy like any other business, it would not be a disaster. People might buy more American vehicles from Toyota and Honda, they might save more money by purchasing a used vehicle, and they might realize that there are much better options, in terms of pricing and reliability, than Detroit has been able to provide.

Politicians go on and on about saving American jobs, but if they force unproductive, unreliable, mismanaged companies to stay in existence, is that really going to provide long-term stability for workers? Bailouts in the 1980s evidently didn’t solve the problems then and they certainly won’t today.

Most disturbing is the lack of legal grounds of the federal government’s intrusion. Where in the Constitution does it give the government authority to allocate “emergency” funds to the private sector? Where in the Constitution does government have any authority to allocate any amount of funds to the private sector, individuals, or groups? Where in the Constitution does it give authority to the government to fire and replace a CEO of a private business?

The regulation made by consumers through supply and demand will far outlast a government intervention, program, or agency. Consumers clearly showed that they didn’t believe their dollars were best spent buying a vehicle made in Detroit. But because the government can’t resist coming to the rescue, their forcefully extracted taxpayer dollars are being used to give special treatment to corporations who manage to have greater lobbying power than smaller businesses.

It’s as simple as that. Consumers showed that Detroit, AIG, Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, hundreds of banks, and much of the financial establishment were not doing business with the individual in mind. Yet the government will not allow the businesses that were overcome with greed and stupidity in high places to come crashing down as the market consistently urges. Instead, politicians somehow see logic in condemning all the various corporations while funneling billions and trillions of dollars to those same corporations.

Supply and demand, put in the hands of free individuals, is what a strong economy and society is built upon. Government cannot change the course of an economy for good by taxing some and giving to others, attempting to spend, borrow, and print the economy out of a recession, or by assuming that it knows the solutions to the problems of individuals and the economy. This statement from George Washington ought to serve as an example of the best government can be in these matters:

“Our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing.”

Impartial Hand. Natural course of things. Forcing nothing. Does this resemble our government’s role in the economy today? Amazingly, some people think it does.

Washington, and many of the Founding Fathers, envisioned a government that largely stayed out of the affairs of the people and economy, and maintained a neutral balance. This neutrality and resistance to intervention is what strengthens the choices of the free men and women of this country; government intervention destroys that balance and ignores the long-term consequences of short-term actions.

The business of bailouts, intervention into private affairs of the economy, and special treatment for a select few do not come close to representing the impartial hand that Washington spoke about.

A truly impartial government, focused on providing equal justice for all individuals, gives greater ability for the laws of supply and demand to chisel at the risks, mistakes, successes, and opportunities created by a free people, economy, and society.