Letter to a nose-holding Republican

Since you're "holding your nose" on McCain, I thought I'd send you this info for you to consider as Barr is new to you. I'm a Barr proponent just in case you hadn't noticed. :-)

Even though Barr is not a conservative, neither is McCain.

[Note to reader - Barr is only a conservative if you define it as a label for someone who's serious about respecting the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, in which case it's equivalent to a classical liberal, or a libertarian. James Buchanan, in his book, Why I, Too, am Not a Conservative: The Normative Vision of Classical Liberalism describes masterfully the important difference, reiterating and amplifying Hayek's point.]

To conservatives in general, I'd argue that Barr is more conservative than McCain on many important issues, such as government spending. If you disagree, I'd be interested in hearing about your perspective. What defines your conservatism?

Here he was on Glen Beck on Friday -



- (Part 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mbi3JVaTdw
- (Part 2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHoF6lYtnRo
- (Part 3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1yuJboCpo8
- (Part 4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI-TrTXS8io
- (Part 5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBMirWOR3JY
- (Part 6) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VETUXKhzwjU

Barr has also written a book The Meaning of Is (2004), which I've read. Barr describes his experience and disappointment with the Republican Party. For example, he recounts how Newt Gingrich caved on the Clinton budget in 1995, doing a mysterious, sudden 180 degree turn, telling Republicans that "he was going to keep a list of every member who did not vote to cave on the Clinton spending package and that the list would later be used to punish us." Barr continues,

One of the things that always set Newt apart from his Democrat predecessors was that he had—prior to that point—always urged us to vote our consciences and our districts. I knew something major had broken inside our party leadership during the shutdown, and I doubted things would ever be the same again. I was not wrong. For the first time in my congressional service, I found myself questioning my presence in Washington. If I was merely going to be asked to be a rubber stamp for this kind of nonsense, I was not sure I wanted any part of the system.... By the end of the Clinton administration, the Republican Party—with a handful of exceptions—was just as unprincipled as Bill Clinton. We had absorbed his political tactics so completely that we did not even seem to remember a time when we had acted any differently. (pp. 223, 228)

Barr writes,

As America burned, the Republican Party was fiddling away. (p. 114)

Again, I'd be interested in hearing what positions you view as conservative and important in this election, and how you view McCain and Barr on these issues if you have the time to share that with me. I myself fear we're going gangbusters down the road to serfdom with either major candidate, so I'm trying to better understand what attracts or repels people from different perspectives. If Barr is to win, he'll need support from both Republicans and Democrats. David Walker, the comptroller general, has made me feel that addressing these issues is urgent. Walker argues that we have about four or five years now to get serious. Here he is on Glenn Beck in January, 2008 -



Here he is on 60 Minutes -



Here's a video interview of David Walker on BBC in 2006 - http://tinyurl.com/e6wam

Debates at John Adams Society

The chairman of the John Adams Society, who is also the state coordinator for the Ron Paul campaign here in Minnesota, where I met her, invited me to join in a debate this evening on immigration. I've debated twice at the John Adams Society before.

While Jesse Ventura served as governor of Minnesota, he pushed for a unicameral state legislature. I opposed this strongly, so strongly I had to say something, and the John Adams Society provided an opportunity on Sep. 15, 1999, for me to say what I had to say. In my argument, I reminded the audience of the theory of "the one, the few, and the many", which goes back to James Harrington in the 1600s and to Aristotle's Politics, and which was much discussed by the founders and in the debates at the time of the American Revolution and Constitutional Convention. John Adams himself brought such issues to the fore, reminding people of the world history that lay behind our constitutional arts, in his important work, Defence of the Constitutions of the Government of the United States of America. I understand from one of the other attendees, whom I saw again last month, that this debate was written up at the time in the local newspaper.

I returned for another debate at JAS last month, this time on the Fed. I argued in favor of Hayek's Denationalisation of Money. I did not reveal much of the argument, only one ancillary point with regard to how much less brittle a decentralized system would be, in a way the conservatives there might understand and appreciate given their intellectual context, mentioning names such as Friedman, Hayek, and James Buchanan, with whom they seemed to be familiar. To help open minds, I pointed out that Milton Friedman wrote a paper with Anna Schwartz in 1986 "Has Government any Role in Money?", which included a paragraph calling for an intellectual exploration of these ideas.

This month's debate is on immigration, an issue I tend to be relaxed about. The only strong feeling I have is that I do not want to see a fence built. I like what Jesse Ventura has to say on the subject. I also worry about the effect the new crowd of border police will have on North Shore locales such as Grand Marais, a town I considered moving to at one point. I imagine I'll be in the minority at the John Adams Society.

Ron Paul's attack against the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship to babies born here repulsed me, as did the tone of one of his political advertisements against immigrants from Mexico. May no baby born here be left in the cold, outside of all countries, bereft of citizenship. Why couldn't our federal government negotiate with the Mexican government to make sure that the children of Mexican citizens who are here illegally and returned to Mexico obtain Mexican citizenship. If a baby is refused by the Mexican government, we should not refuse him or her here.

On the process of immigration, in principle I'd like a world where borders matter little, where common law has triumphed, guaranteeing natural and procedural rights for all. When Mexico and the US are both free, with power limited constitutionally by presumably mixed, federal, decentralized forms of government, Americans will find jobs in Mexico, and Mexicans here. The flow of labor will go in both directions. It will take some time though before the Mexican government is liberalized, in the classical sense. We Americans have a ways to go ourselves, of course.

Why not let states decide policy on who qualifies as a legal resident of the state? Why not have the Federal government limit itself to naturalization? Such a delegation of roles will afford more flexibility and less corruption in the inevitable flow of people from Mexico to the labor markets here.

Also it is imperative that our governments ensure that conditions of free labor exist for immigrants. After the civil war, the federal government stepped in to ensure that debt peonage in New Mexico would no longer be tolerated by the state. Recently I read the book Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy by John Bowe. Bowe tells three horror stories, where conditions of unfree labor have threatened the liberties of residents in modern-day America.

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