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From the comments section:
“First, Browne is wrong about the Founders’ intent—read my July 4 entry to cover that. Second, he demonstrates the truly intellectually bankrupt nature of libertarianism by totally missing the point of the pledge, which isn’t a pledge to the government, but a pledge to the nation as a whole. The nation is what we make it, and I’m pretty happy with it worts and all. Yeah, the government could be smaller, but do I want to strip it down to libertarian nakedness? I don’t think so, and I don’t think the Founders would either. I think they would applaud a government of the United States that had grown wealthy enough to provide universal education, and though they were averse to standing armies, I think they would applaud a nation industrious enough to build an army of such disciplined training and high-tech weapons that civilian casualties are relatively rare, and that the military, because of its commitment to the very ideals they enshrined is not a threat to domestic tranquility, as they feared, but a positive protection of the civilian government, both protecting it and serving it. I could go on, but I think you get my drift.
This paragraph has a lot to chew on, and a lot to tear apart. GNW is a great well written site, but this is well written tosh. I have been contemplating replying to this all day. It is difficult, since the time I tried to counter this sort of tripe, it resulted in Statism Sucks!. The bloated centralised megalith that is the US government is nothing like envisioned by the Founding Fathers. I am willing to bet they would be appalled that the government runs a virtual monopoly on education and a bad education at that. Never mind the fact the Founding Fathers rebelled against taxes which were significantly lower (percentage-wise) than taxes in the US in 2002.
As far as the cheap shots about liberterianism, it is what one has come to expect from paleo-conservative statists. By “libertarian nakedness” I trust he means the oft-repeated implication that all libertarians are basically anarchists by another name. This tired accusation ignores the fact that it is impossible to have a free society without the sanctity of property rights. They must be defended; however in the current climate, property rights are continually being underminded the government set up to defend them, whether it be criminally high taxes or limiting the right to self-medicate and self-defense.
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The stink about the No-Euro campaign continues; thus we find Jenny McCartney whining about it. The normally sensible Sunday Telegraph writer fails to see the humour or the basis for the Hitler skit in the advert. She thinks sex & rape are equivalent terms for the EU now & Hitler’s Europe.
“It does not compare with the proposed euro-zone of today, because Hitler’s fantasy Europe was conceived in coercion, and coercion changes everything: it is the difference between sex and rape, between pleasant evenings spent at home and house arrest.”
I always thought if you lied (and misrepresented yourself) to get someone into bed with you it could be considered rape (esp. date rape). The technocrats and organisers of the EEC/EC/EU have continously lied to their citizens of Europe about their real intentions. The aim of the EU is a single unitary state run from Brussels; it was and always has been. Even that loathsome toad Ted Heath now admits this. The technocrats running the project think that a single unitary state called Europe is the best thing for all the people of Europe. During the ‘72 referendum the British people were told repeatedly that joining up would not require the “surrender of sovereigty.” Can anyone tell me with a straight face that was not a lie? Even Heath admits he “mislead” the public during the referendum, for their own good, of course.
She goes onto to say that airing the advert now might have been premature, which is a valid point. However, at least the row over the content (oddly mirroring the new George Michael video row) is an important lesson in how the referendum campaign, should it come to pass, will play out. There has been an interesting discussion going on in the comments section of this post on AirstripOne about how the two sides are behaving.
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