Excuse me? He is more than merely “accused” of unlawful sex with a minor. He pled guilty to it. And, moving on the teaser on the right for Patrick Goldstein’s piece, it will not cost the L.A. District Attorney (for whom I work but do not speak) much to “prosecute” Polanski — because we don’t have to “prosecute” him. We need only represent the People at the sentencing for the charge to which Polanski pled guilty.

The online version of the article is here. One can expect the minions of liberal Hollywood types making excuses and apologies for Polanski, as covered by CNN. However, like the L.A. Times, the professional media is also more than happy to gloss over what happened. As the CNN article reported:

The filmmaker pleaded guilty in 1977 to having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor but fled before he could be sentenced. He settled in France, where he holds citizenship. Investigators in the United States say Polanski, then 43, drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl

Glossing over the serious and largely accepted charges of drugging and rape by writing “investigators say” is weak. Really weak.

To me, the Reuters article by Jason Rhodes takes the cake:

ZURICH/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Director Roman Polanski, whose work on films like “Chinatown” has often been overshadowed by his tumultuous life, was arrested in Zurich on a 1978 U.S. warrant for having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Again, the serious implications of the case are glossed over. Only once, and briefly at that, is the drugging issue raised, and the word “rape” does not appear once in the article. Disgusting.

Kate Harding at Salon takes the proper tone (also via the Hot Air post), reminding us that Roman Polanski Raped A Child:

 Roman Polanski raped a child. Let’s just start right there, because that’s the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in “exile” (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never — poor baby — being able to return to the U.S.). Let’s keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she’d rather not see him prosecuted because she can’t stand the media attention.

Harding pretty much sums it up. A certain documentary may have brought some legitimate concerns to light about the original trial, but Polanski didn’t stay to fight. He ran off to Europe, his career in touch. As the Reuters article states, “But after his plea, Polanski fled the United States because he believed a judge might overrule his agreement and put him in jail for years.” He should have been in jail for years. The fact that someone who drugged, raped, and sodomized a 13 year old was free this long is an affront to the victim, society, and the rule of law itself.

TAMPA - As key political factors fall in place, Tampa, Lakeland and Orlando are leading contenders to launch the nation’s first true high-speed rail corridor, with 150 mph trains running by 2014.

On Friday, 40 states will file detailed high-speed rail project applications with the Federal Railroad Administration. In December, President Barack Obama will announce which will get money from the $787 billion federal stimulus plan to generate jobs.

If Florida gets the $2.5 billion it seeks, it will represent a stunning reversal of political fortunes - after 25 years of promise and setbacks - that will provide thousands of new jobs as early as 2011, when construction on the 95-mile Tampa-Orlando segment could begin.

…

Potential drawbacks - including construction and operations costs and how much demand there might be to pay $30 for a 64-minute ride from Tampa to Orlando International Airport - appear to have been relegated to the background.

Why? The prospects of jobs - at a time when it’s common for hundreds of people to vie for a handful of positions.

“High-speed rail will bring an unprecedented number of new jobs to Florida, with the overriding goal of supporting the federal recovery plan,” said U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, who has participated in several White House discussions on the topic this year.

The fact that a government boondoggle may employ people does not necessarily mean that it will “create jobs,” a fact that escapes the Obama Administration, Rep. Castor, and those who would prefer the landscape and transportation options of Floridians be planned by their superiors. How many jobs are lost when the government diverts dollars away from productive business and into things like high speed rail? Many proponents of such largess tout what a great “investment” such projects are, yet are inexplicably quiet when asked why private capital has not swarmed on such opportunities.

But perhaps “investments” and “jobs” are not the motivating factor behind the billions of dollars in subsidized trips to Disney World that are on queue:

Construction could begin as early as 2011, providing the Obama administration with potential political gains in an important presidential election swing state.

The I-4 corridor, as the inter Tampa-Orlando area is known, is the swing area of one of the major electoral swing states. The fact that President Obama will be trying to buy off the votes of Lakeland, Bartow, and Kissimmee should be disquieting. Many in Florida, and especially at the Trib, are more than happy to take billions of dollars in transportation welfare. However, one would wonder if such cheerleaders will be so supportive when Florida is sufficiently bought and paid for by the Democrat party, and Floridians’ tax dollars are sent to bribe some other state.

Apparently, as one of Obama’s 129 czars, this guy whose job it is to redistribute billions of dollars from one group of individuals to another and issue diktats to be followed by private citizens and businesses, is *gasp* a communist.  Well, no sh*t.  All of these various czars have communist roles so why is it surprising Obama might have picked a communist to hold one of them.  The only surprise was that Van Jones was dumb enough to admit it in print rather than hiding it in leftish double-speak like most of the rest of the administration.

Communism in the Obama administration (and the Democrat Party, for that matter) is not a question of presence, but degree.

Regarding Van Jones’ Truther Pledge issue, I think he was screwed no matter what the case actually was. Either he believed George W. Bush was directly responsible for killing thousands of Americans on September 11th, or he doesn’t read what he signs, content that the cause being pushed has something to do with criticizing Republicans. Both are unacceptable.

So many “rights” have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don’t meet the terms of the Geneva Convention, then the Geneva Convention doesn’t protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you.

First of all, let me say that Dr. Sowell is someone who I greatly admire and with whom I agree a great deal. However, the argument above, while in the context of rightly argued condemnation of the release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, is misguided when explaining the nature of rights.

The beauty of the American Revolution and the genius of our founding as a nation was the concept of natural, inalienable rights. These rights exist independent of government and its laws. We institute the government to protect these rights against those who would violate them. Therefore, government exists because of our rights, not the other way around.

To say that rights “derive from explicit laws” is to confirm the worst fears of those who opposed the bill of rights when the ratification of the U.S. Constitution was being debated. Many were worried that if amendments were added guaranteeing our right to free spech or due process, that the bill of rights would be viewed as an exhaustive list, and that rights that were not included on such a list could only be granted at the whim of politicians. To assuage such fears, the 9th Amendment was added, which reads:

 The enumeration in the constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

If we are to concede to the viewpoint that rights can only be valid if endorsed by written laws, then the statists will have the authority to trample individual liberty in countless forms. Constitutions like those of the United States were meant to give explicit rights only to governments; that  is governments may only do what is permitted to them by the constitution written by free individuals. Individuals (and state and local governments) hold all other rights.

My right to freedom of speech and worship does not come from the 1st Amendment - it is only codified by it. Likewise for my right to bear arms. However, if we are to operate on the assumption that my rights are only derived from what is explicitly stated in the constitution or by statute, then where is my right to trade and commerce with my fellow citizens? My right to donate to the charity of my choosing? My right to have children? My right to freedom of association and movement?

Nonsense. My right to these things are inherent by virtue of my existent. They are “self-evident.” No law can erase them.

Battles over the right to bear arms have largely focused on the wording and intent of the 2nd Amendment. This too is misguided. The right to personal protection is a natural right given by our creator, and exists regardless of what some law or circuit court says.

That is not to say that Dr. Sowell is incorrect in his assertion that Megrahi’s release was a gross miscariage of justice and an offense to the innocent. Nor that enemy combatants should  pay, in many cases harshly and swiftly, for their attacks on our country. However, this is because such individuals, like any petty criminal down the street, did indeed have rights, but that by virtue of their actions they lost them. This is the argument conservatives should use that not only keeps Americans safe and our system of justice intact, but preserves our freedom.

If we fall into the trap that the statist has set that government may do whatever it wants, but that the rights of individuals are restricted to what is spelled out by law, then we have already lost the battle against a leviathan government. Where is the explicit right to property? To dissent? There is none. Nor do we need it to know these rights exist.

Crossposted here.

When debating any issue, the biggest weapon available to someone is that of framing the debate. Too often Republicans like John McCain allow themselves to be sucked into a discourse about global warming where the only subject up for debate is how the government can save the planet. Not only is this poor debating and weak politics, but it completely ignores and sidesteps some very important considerations. Its very hard for conservatives to win a debate about global warming in a culture where the inevitability of ecological Armageddon is seen as a foregone conclusion and all who dare question the orthodoxy of Henry Waxman are seen as flat-earthers. A set of rational questions must be asked of the proponents of government solutions to global warming, none of them at all inflammatory or ludicrous. I believe before we can say “Yes” to any climate legislation, we must also answer “Yes” to each of the following five questions:

1. Is the Earth warming?
2. Is this due to human activity?
3. Would global warming, on the whole, be bad?
4. Is prevention a more effective response than adaptation?
5. Should government be the one coordinating humanity’s response?

Make no mistake, I am not a scientist or any kind of climate expert. But I am skeptical by nature, and I find the simplicity in which liberals and environmentalists treat something as complex as the global climate appalling. Here are my thoughts on the five questions above:

1. Is the Earth warming? - Is the average temperature of the globe warming, cooling, or staying about the same? Is the way in which we’re measuring this objective and not subject to geographic-bias, such as in urban areas with a lot of asphalt?
2. Is this due to human activity? - There are far smarter people than I to answer this question. However, it is an important one. Does any warming trend present on Earth coincide with human industrial activity, or is it in line with long term ecological cycles? Have factors like volcanic or other geo-thermal activity been ruled out as a cause? What about solar activity? Is the Earth alone in warming, or are other planets experiencing similar phenomena? Are we confident enough in our knowledge of the global climate and things like the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, the interaction of solar heat and plant life, and the worldwide system of ocean currents to make policy decisions based on such knowledge?
3. Would global warming, on the whole, be bad? - If we are entering a period of global warming, it would not be the first time humanity has been subject to significant climate change. There are marks left  on the Sphinx of heavy rainfall in a place that is now an arid desert. The human race survived then, and in fact flourished. Currently, there are many places on earth too barren or cold to support the agriculture and industry necessary for human survival. Would any negative effects (i.e. loss of land due to rising sea levels) be greater than any positive affects (i.e. more arable land) of an increased global temperature?
4. Is prevention a more effective response than adaptation? - Let us not forget that we already live in a world of severe natural disasters and climate extremes. Yet the chief human response to things like tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes has been not to prevent such things, but to adapt to them. Advances in human knowledge and technology have made buildings more resistant to such events and societies better prepared. Why not apply the same principles to global warming? Is it better to alter the economic and energy policies of the entire earth to combat rising sea levels, or just build a bunch of levees and call it a day? Trade-offs, costs, and benefits must be considerations made when regarding issues so important to the state of humanity.
5. Should government be the one coordinating humanity’s response? - Let us say that we have answered “yes” to the five preceding questions, that yes, the planet is warming, yes, it is due to human activity, yes, it is bad, and yes, it would be better to prevent global warming rather than to simply adapt to yet another climate shift. Is government really the entity that should be in charge of  something so important and threatening? Or should we have a system built on property rights and personal responsibility to mitigate the dangers posed by global warming?

Human beings live on every continent, under the ocean’s depths, and in outer space. We have met extremely arduous challenges over the relatively brief time we have been on this planet, and managed to not only survive, but thrive. To see global warming as any different, as environmentalists seem to, is not looking at the situation rationally or with perspective. But to look at it simplistically is even worse.

Crossposted here.

Part I

I think the most lacking part of political discourse is that people don’t explain what principles they stand for and why. Sure, everybody is more than willing to say what their position is on issue x, y, and z, but they never explain what’s really driving them. It seems that people just assume everybody is affixed a certain viewpoint and political party at birth, and therefore must follow the line for every issue. When this happens, politics just degrades into a screaming match with two competing sides that refuse to be persuaded. All political decisions, including at the ballot box, seem to be riding on who will do the most for me, rather than who is providing the most reasoned, logical arguments.

As you can tell, I am on the conservative side of the spectrum, with a libertarian bent. But I wasn’t always that way. I want to tell the story of how I went from a moderately liberal, fiercely loyal Democrat, to a pro-freedom, pro-limited government conservative.

I was born in New York state, an obviously heavily democratic domain. My parents fit the bill. Both were loyal blue-staters (although my mother would sometimes stray, as she would vote for Jeb Bush for governor in 1998 in Florida). Throughout my upbringing, my parents would have 60 Minutes on and eat up the stories of big business and their evil republican allies. I would pick up on the snippets of politics my parents would drop about the ills of violence and gun ownership, the greed of business, and the need of government to step in to help people. To a child, and even as a young adult, this all seemed hunky dory, and I quickly learned to despise republicans, and to a lesser degree, big businesses. As for the wealthy, I wouldn’t say there was any animosity on my end, but I definitely felt like there were so many people that were simply given a better shake than I. Growing up my family wasn’t poor, but we struggled an awful lot. It was easy for envy to creep in and drive my emotions and the way I viewed the world, especially in high school when my friends had cars that had AC (a must in Florida) and could successfully exceed 50 mph.

Yet for all of my parents’ railing against conservatism and siding with the big-government types, they were, as most democrats are, a walking contradiction. While on one hand my father would not set foot in a Wal-Mart and vote for redistributionist politicians, he was the single hardest-working person I have ever met, encountered, or even heard of. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do or any burden he wouldn’t bear for his family. When he was laid off at the end of the supposedly blessed Bill Clinton era, he took on a paper route to make ends meet, and continued it even when he found work. My father would put in around 80 hours of labor a week  for several years out of his sense of responsibility. To give him help or a handout was an insult. My father also was not fond of the police, and would be the loudest complainer if a government agency were to interfere with his burn pile or building a porch. Helping out with the paper route in middle and high school and working beside my father on our 5 acres would foster my liberal leanings, but it would also instill a strong work-ethic and sense of personal responsibility that I hope is my father’s proudest legacy.

My mother was also an ardent Democrat and went through a signifigant Al Gore phase, where saving the environment and stopping global warming were her missions, and even bought a Honda Civic Hybrid and had a Live Earth house party. She’s politically-correct to a T and is, like my father, an avowed enemy of Wal-Mart. Development, big business, government contractors, war profiteers, and gun owners were the favorite targets of my mother’s politics, and for the most part I carried this over to my own view. Yet my mother, with her Catholic faith grounding her, was rooted in traditional values, honored her marriage vows with utmost seriousness, and was unabashedly pro-life. From her I would impart a sense of compassion and selflessness, respect for family and morality, and a deep suspicion of power.

It was in this environment that my political intellect began to take shape, and I took an early interest into the workings of elections and government. I remember being a kid and being very impressed with an ad from Ross Perot: “I love America, and I love you!” Being proud that a former Buffalo Bills quarterback had been selected as a Vice Presidential running mate, and then being dismayed upon learning that he was one of the evil Republicans. Skipping school the day after the infamous 2000 election watching the news and hoping all the way to December 13th that Gore would pull it out. Trying to “shop responsibly” with envrionmental and nationalist concerns in mind. Watching Farenheit 911 at the only theatre showing it and taking its talking points hook, line, and sinker. Doing a woefully under-researched paper in my first college English class entitled Hurricanes and Global Warming (thank God for liberal educators - thanks for the A+ Mrs G.!). I had proudly registered to vote on my 18th birthday and of course checked the box for Democrat. Yet, little did I know, my journey towards conservatism had already begun.

Part II

I suppose my somewhat conservative leanings had always been there. I was personally conservative and looked down on lying, cheating, sexual promiscuity, drug use, and sloth. I had always been generally pro-life, and initially supported the war in Iraq. Yet I remained antagonistic towards the wealthy and big business. My view of conservatives and Republicans in general was somewhat of a caricature. I suppose the vision in my head was similar to when Tina Fey likened Bush supporters to those who, “believed Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church,” on Weekend Update. I saw those on the right as intolerant, racist, greedy, stupid, war-mongering, religious-fundamentalist, anti-Darwin zealots. Pretty assumptive for a teenager who had never met a real conservative, much less discussed or researched conservative principles. To me, conservatism could be summarized as: “I like money, I like God, I hate lazy people on welfare and I hate fags.” With this kind of skewed mentality, its not hard to see why I was a democrat - who wouldn’t be?

Ironically, my view of liberal Democrats was equally skewed, although in the opposite direction. As I got older, I appreciated capitalism a lot more, and I viewed the Democrat party not as enemies of the free market that they are, but as the guardians of it. Capitalism was great, I reasoned, but its excesses can create problems and inequality, and of course the Democrats could come to the rescue. Global warming was a very real threat, just like Al Gore warned, and I recycled with fervor, regardless of the gas I used to drive our cans and bottles over to the recycling center. I was doing my part. Welfare recipients were simply those who had fallen on hard times, and government programs were just a one-time temporary bridge. The rich were mostly lucky, and used their wealth and power to control the masses with lobbyists and advertising. While the Republicans used every dirty political trick in the book, the heavenly Democrats simply searched for common-sense answers. Every problem had a possible government solution, unless the blood-thirsty republicans tripped it up, of course.

My mindset was obviously a ridiculously unrealistic bubble, and it would pop sooner than I knew. My political path was irrevocably set to the conservative side by, ironically, my father. When I was sixteen years old, he gave a book to me called The Millionaire Next Door. This book literally changed my life. While the book had nothing to do with politics, it totally changed the way I viewed the world, and from where else do our political leanings spring? For those who haven’t read The Millionaire Next Door (you should read ASAP), it chronicled Americans with a net worth of over $1 million, more specifically who they were, how they acquired their wealth, and how they spent it. Instead of reinforcing my popular view of millionaires as lazy robber barons who cashed out when their parents kicked off, the book made the contention (with volumes of statistical backing) that:

“Most of America’s millionaires are first-generation rich.” (p. 15)

Through a steady diet of case studies, statistics, surveys, and simple logic, The Millionaire Next Door showed that wealth (and more generally success and happiness) are more a product of hard work, planning, sacrifice, and personal decisions rather than luck and circumstance. A few more statistics about millionaires from the book:

• More than half never received as much as $1 in inheritance
• 91% never received, as a gift, as much as $1 of the ownership of a family business
• Nearly half never received any college tuition from their parents or other relatives (p. 16)

I became convinced that success in life was formulaic, and that if I made the correct decisions and planned, I could be there too. More consequentially, it was probable that most of the rich had not attained their status through greed and deception, but rather through hard work.

After my misconceptions of personal wealth had buckled, my misgivings of big business were next to go. It became apparent that in a true free market, the only way a business could get rich was to provide the absolute best products for their fellow man. This was true even when it violated my sense of fairness and right and wrong. For instance, I had been brought up to never buy anything you didn’t need, and to only return it if it was defective. Yet, when I began working at a large retailer in college, I saw that they would return nearly any product for nearly any reason, often without a receipt. Many times I saw that even when a “big business” was totally justified to tell a consumer to screw off, they wouldn’t, and in fact would provide whatever they could to the consumer in pursuit of their own self interest. It was clearly apparent to me that capitalism used the only reliable human instinct, self interest, to provide the most goods to the most amount of people in the most efficient manner.

Yet even as my faith in free-market solidified, I remained a Democrat still, as I mentioned above that I saw the party as the guardians of fair capitalism. What really began to erode my trust in the Democrat party was, of all things, the war in Iraq.

Part III

I was still in high school when 9/11 hit, and to say it shaped those in my generation is an understatement. It is very hard for young people to envision a world without a terrorist attack on home soil on our mind. It has shaped a huge portion of our lives. On that fateful Tuesday morning I, like the rest of the country, watched in shock as 19 murderous fanatics executed a coordinated attack on American soil, in the heart of our most prominent cites. With the loss of 3,000 of our brothers and sisters, it was clear that we were at war.

We all know what happened next. Our leaders in Washington pontificate about unity and patriotism. The country briefly bridges the partisan divide as we go into Afghanistan and knock out the Taliban. Next up is Iraq, where we make the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Then, something strange happened.

The problems with the Iraq war are well documented. We went in with half-ass numbers, were not greeted as liberators, didn’t find what we went in for, and the efforts of our troops were tripped up by an incompetent defense secretary and an isolated president. It wouldn’t be until 2007 that things began to break our way. These are all legitimate concerns, and there were voices from the left and right that were against the invasion from the get-go. But as the 2004 presidential election rolled around, the Democrat party saw the political oppurtunity of a lifetime.

Slowly but steadily, voices out of the Democrat party began to denounce the war, and then to say it was all based on a lie. “This whole thing was a fraud,” as Ted Kennedy put it. Immediately the left went into whining mode, and I think for two reasons. One, was that I think a lot of the former hippies saught to relive the Vietnam war and have one last battle before they went out to pasture. Two, without an unjust war brought on by Dubya The Terrible, the party had little issue-wise to go with. Ever since Reagan had taken Mondale to the woodshed in ‘84 (for the record, that’s 49 states to 1, with a 525-13 electoral college), the liberals had looked like the Detroit Lions of the political world. Now Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards and company saw their chance, and said that big bad Bush and Cheney had lied to them, and the public ate it up. In the 2006 and 2008 campaigns, they began calling for an unconditional withdrawl. That’s when this Democrat began to get suspicious.

The Democrats can say what they want about how we never should have invaded Iraq, how it was all a lie, there were no WMD’s. And hey, they may yet be correct. But I would offer the old saying that whenever you point a finger, there are three more pointing right back at you. This was not George W. Bush’s war. This wasn’t even the Republicans’ war. This was a war initiated by a strong coalition of both parties. But don’t take my word for it. Take Bill Clinton’s in 1998:

“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”

Or these folks:

·     “Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.” -Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

·     “There is no doubt that … Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.” Letter to President Bush, Signed by: — Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), and others, Dec 5, 2001

·     “We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.” — Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

·     “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” — Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

·     “I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.” — Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

·     “In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members … It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.” — Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

·     “Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein.” — Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

So when it comes down to it, there were only two ways to expain the inconsistency of the Democrats. One, that those in power commited the resources of the United States and the lives of thousands of Americans in error because of the lies of one man (in which case I guess Dubya is a hell of a lot smarter than we make him out be), or two, that they cast those votes in good conscience and still agree, but seized upon a political strategy to portray Bush as a liar for electoral gain. So either the Democrats were mindless idiots or treasonous panderers. Looking back, both seem so plausible that I have yet to figure out which one it is. And both are reason enough to throw their butts out of office. No, Senator Kennedy, the “fraud” was not the war, it is the way your buddies like to rewrite history. If the Democrats had any dignity, they would put Dennis Kucinich in as house majority leader and run Noam Chomsky in ‘04. But of course they didn’t.

The final straw for me, foreign and defense policy wise, was when the Democrats began calling for unconditional withdrawl from Iraq. Even if the invasion was a mistake, giving up was madness. Just because getting knocked up at prom was a mistake doesn’t justify an abortion at 8 1/2 months. And trust me, with Iran waiting in the wings, leaving Iraq would make Darfur look like a freaking birthday party. And what about our responsibility to the International Community that the Democrats seem so concerned about? What is more of an injustice, removing a tyranical killer who slaughtered his own people, or removing a tyranical killer who slaughtered his own people and leaving the place in chaos before cleaning up the mess? The only one left was Joe Biden, who, in my waning days as a Democrat I supported for president in ‘08. He rightly reasoned that leaving Iraq would be condemning our grandchildren to return. But boy did he ‘change’ his tune when he got put on the Obama Hope-o-rama. I could only laugh when he said John McCain was “not who he remembered.” I guess they injected the botox a little too deep, Joe.

With my trust in the Democrats as a party shattered, I had to cast my eye on their principles. As I said in parts I and II, I had gained a healthy confidence in free-market principles. As I began to consider the ideas of thinkers like Adam Smith, Calvin Coolidge, Barry Goldwater, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and others it became apparent that a free market and an interventionist government were mutually exclusive. That is, one cannot exist with the other. The reason is simple; a dollar left in the free market can literally create another dollar. That’s right, throw the  law of conservation of mass and energy out the window. That’s because someone in the private sector acting in their own self interest will use a dollar to buy some apple seeds and start a fruit stand. Wealth is created. With government, they use that same dollar to buy apples to be eaten by those who can’t or won’t produce, and the money is gone long before the private sector could have multiplied the dollar (and apple supply) many times over. The two cannot coexist becuause the government has to get that dollar from somewhere. The truth that the liberals and Keynsians refuse to see is that every penny spent by the government has to be taken from the private sector where it could have generated a better return. Yes, some will end up with a disproportionate amount of wealth, but if inequality is the price of prosperity, its worth every penny.

But there is a more sinister side to the argument.

While in my liberal intellectual-larva stage, I began dating a wonderful, beautiful, smart, and talented girl (hey folks, she’ll probably read this:) ). There was just one drawback - she was one of the evil conservatives. Not only did she despise welfare and government control, but she came from a family of active Republicans. She had a ‘Viva Bush!’ sticker on her car, and the first time I came to her house, her faithfully Republican mother had none other than FOX News on. What am I getting myself into? I remember thinking. Her mother was a smart-as-a-whip 4′11″ woman who had emigrated from Mexico at age 13. While she never completed high school, she knew more about politics and government than most people know about the alphabet. She would playfully mock Democrats, welfare, and any arguments that I had supporting either. I came to realize that I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. But what stuck with me was a view that I had (embarassingly) never encountered. Looking me in the eyes, she said that welfare was no help to those in need; to the contrary, welfare was no more than a mechanism to force the poor into government dependency and foster political constituencies.

The free market is the best and only weapon ever devised by nature to liberate humanity from poverty. For almost the entire history of our species, in every country, community, and era, people have lived in poverty, sickness, famine, and oppression. And let it be clear, freedom is the exception, not the rule. In the few instances where free markets have been somewhat allowed to reign, that is where systems maintain private property, fair and consitent tort law, limited government and abolition of force, there have been explosions of population and living standards. At times, entire groups of people have gone from near stone age level to full development in a single generation. With advents in communication and information technology, this pace will only quicken. When people are allowed to act in the full measure of their economic self-interest, wealth has been created by entrepreneurs who made higher standards of living accessable to the masses. Everything that you and I own, without a single exception, began as a luxury for the super wealthy, upper crust, top 1%, etc. Through innovation, hard work, decentralized decision making, and unrepentant “greed,” producers slaughtered poverty, crushed infant mortality rates, and empowered millions by bringing luxury to the people. Where people are allowed to innovate, decide for themselves what to buy and sell, and amass personal wealth, there is prosperity. Where the inventive are constrained, where decisions are centralized by the powerful, and where people are not allowed to reap the benefits of their labor, there is misery, death, violence, and oppression. No student of history can deny these facts.

As I had these revalations, I made the decision that I was finally going to leave the Democrat party. They obviosly were interested only in making victims out of people and winning elections. But it was too much for me to swallow to become a Republican or call myself conservative or even libertarian. I was satisfied to remain independent. During this time, I got my hands on a very good book by Neal Boortz entitled Somebody’s Gotta Say It.With example after example, Boortz pounded into my head the fact that not only were the Democrats and statists against the free market, but they saught to destroy the concept of the free individual and control every aspect of our lives. Our country, our freedoms, and our way of life were very much under attack, and to sit idly by was nothing short of betrayal. I realized I could not sit on the sidelines. I had to get involved, speak out, and vote in primaries.

I disagree with Republicans on some issues like the seperation of church and state, gay marriage, and some foreign policy, and sometimes the party is a willing accomplice to the Democrats’ assault on freedom. But in the real world, one side or the other is going to win elections, and Republicans by far stand more for freedom and personal responsiblity than Democrats. I owe it not only to myself but the millions who have not yet escaped despair and poverty to preserve freedom and capitalism. I am proudly an active and vocal conservative Republican. To summarize my journey from Democrat to Republican:

When I thought that welfare and government helped the poor, I was a Democrat.

When I saw that welfare and government did not help the poor, I was an Independent.

When I realized that welfare and government hurt the poor, that was the day I registered as a Republican and vowed to advocate for free minds, free markets, and free souls. Anything I can do, from voting, to becoming active, to getting the word out (such as this blog) will be my charge to continue the revolution began over 200 years ago. For that was when men put their names, lives, and fortunes on the line to declare that people were free, that we exist as sovereign individuals, that our rights are a natural endowment and cannot be divorced from us by force, and that government must be constrained, its poweres ennumerated, and its mandate from consent.

With that, I’d like to announce that starting today, I will be using my RS profile to cross-post all of my blog posts from my main site. I also want to more actively use the RS community to engage in great conservative discussion of the issues. The 2010 mid-term elections are coming up, and it’s now more important than ever for conservatives to engage and unite with each other in our fight for freedom.

Feel free to check out my profile, or my main site Zoominac.com (About section here) to know me a little better. I’ll include a link back to my main post with each diary entry here at RS. If you want to contact me, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email at Matt@zoominac.com. Thanks for checking me out, and keep up the good fight!

-Matt