From: AdmrlLocke@aol.com Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2000 4:40 PM To: undisclosed-recipients: ; Subject: LibertyNet: Are You a Socialist? LibertyNet A Drop of Reason in a Sea of Irrationality Issue 7/20/00 Dear Friend of Liberty, The Story With No Truth? ----------------------- In the July 18 issue of LibertyNet I carried a story, purportedly told by conservative radio personality Paul Harvey, in which a man beaten to the point of having no face turns out to be Mel Gibson. An alert LibertyNet subscriber, however, found a web page claiming to debunk the story. At http://www.snopes.com/spoons/glurge/noface.htm, Barbara and David P. Mikkelson argue that movie "The Man Without A Face" comes not from Gibson's life story, but from a 1993 novel by Isabelle Holland. I've included their argument as the first item below. If you read the item online you can find links to a biography of Gibson and information about the novel. This just goes to show that even if it comes from your own mother, you can't accept Internet information at FACE value. Are You a Socialist? ------------------ In the second item below, Charlie Reese asks whether you're a socialist, a capitalist or a fascist. Perhaps unconsciously using Marxian analysis, he defines the three "-ists" with reference to "the means of production:" a capitalist believes in private ownership, a socialist believes in government ownership, and a fascist believes in heavy government regulation. Marxian analysis obsesses over who owns the "means of production," by which it means factories, ignoring completely the provision of services, the means of distribution, and indeed the means of communication. The old Soviet Union demonstrates the foolishness of obsessing over the means of production: at one time, the Soviet Union bragged about producing more steel than all American steel companies combined. Yet the government-owned Soviet steel factories would leave most of their production to rust unused. Why? Because the Soviet Union had no good means of communication by which to let potential users of the steel know the steel had been produced, and no good means of distribution through which to get the steel to potential users. (With no private property to allow producers to benefit from producing, and no free markets to allow producers and potential users to agree on a mutually-beneficial price, producers had no incentive to find users either.) Reese's essay, despite the Marxian analysis imbedded in it, makes a point I've been making since I taught economics at Loretto Heights College in Denver back in the 1980s: traditional liberal Democrats, with their emphasis on government regulation rather than ownership, follow a fascist rather than communist or utopian socialist model. Plenty of moderate Republicans, incidentally, all too happily follow the fascist model themselves. Indeed, Charlotte Twight, an economics professor at Boise State University, has been arguing since at least 1975 that government has been imposing increasing fascism on the US economy. Although Twight's book, America's Emerging Fascist Economy (1975), has gone out of print, her argument continues in such works as Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government, written by her former advisor, Robert Higgs. I used Crisis and Leviathan when I taught a course here at Iowa titled "The Twentieth Century Crisis." Fascists Are National Socialists ----------------------------- While the simple contrast Reese offers between socialism and fascism illustrates a valid point--that government regulation, not just government ownership, attacks freedom--it obscures another important point: fascism is a form of socialism. Fascism grew out of earlier socialist thinking as much as communism did; in fact, fascism shares with most theoretical forms of socialism a preference for government regulation rather than government ownership. Intellectuals on the left--statist-liberals and leftists--have managed to obscure the close relationship between fascism, democratic socialism, and communism, by placing fascism on the right side of the political spectrum along with classical liberalism and conservatism. Fascism in reality, however, belongs over on the left with its fellow forms of socialism. In the third item below, a column of mine from 1993 opposing Cl inton's health care plan, I provide a more accurate definition of fascism, and it link with Progressivism, the origin of current statist-liberalism. Statism By Any Other Name -------------------------- The various forms of socialism--whether current liberalism, fascism, democratic socialism or communism--along with theocracy and militarism, fit under a broader grouping called statism. Statism includes any ideology under which the government uses force and the threat of force to subordinate the individual to some notion of "the collective good." Although some statist ideologies represent graver or more immediate threats to individual liberty than others, all forms threaten it. Rather than try to label one statist policy "democratic socialism" and another "fascism," we oftentimes get further by simply acknowledging that they're all "statism." Speaking of statists, how about those congressional Republicans? Sure, they won control of Congress in 1994 by running on libertarian-sounding rhetoric, but the actual Contract With America called only for limiting the growth of federal spending to the combined rates of inflation and population growth. Not much of a cut, was it? The sad truth, however, is that congressional Republicans, after the 1995 government-shutdown fiasco, haven't even tried to limit the growth of federal spending to the combined rates of inflation and population growth. It's worth remembering what happened back in 1995. Clinton vetoed several of the large appropriations bills with which Congress funds federal "discretionary" (non-entitlement) spending. The bills didn't contain as much spending at Clinton wanted, so he vetoed them--shutting down large swaths of the federal government--and blamed Republicans. Media poll ratings for congressional Republicans quickly sank below those for Clinton, but after a counterattack by Rush Limbaugh and other conservative figures, Clinton's poll numbers fell to the same level. Then Bob Dole stabbed Republicans in the back by publicly attacking congressio nal Republicans and siding with Clinton. Attacked from behind by their own Senate Majority Leader, congressional Republicans surrendered, and the liberal media wrote the story that it was "conservative extremism" rather than Dole which undid the congressional Republicans. Republicans since then have acted timidly, afraid to represent the very conservatism that gained them their congressional majority in the first place. As Stephen Moore of The Cato Institute demonstrates in the fourth item below, in the wake of their 1995 surrender, congressional Republicans have reverted to the old mushy-moderate, Bob Dole tactics of being (barely) cheaper welfare-statists. Bill Clinton has proposed having the federal government spend $10 TRILLION over the next five years. Congressional Republicans have "countered" by proposing $9.95 trillion--99.5% of what Clinton wants! Call 'em fascists, call 'em socialists, but either way, these big spenders are statists--Democrats and Republicans alike. At times like this I'm forcefully reminded why I supported Phil "Across-the-Board Spending Cuts" Gramm for president. Republicans for Liberty --------------------- Don't fear that every Republican, in Congress or beyond, advocates unmitigated statism. I've included a fifth item below which demonstrates otherwise. In the item Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority whip, argues that "unfettered political speech, along with the right to bear arms, is the most certain means we possess of protecting the rest of our freedoms." Friends of liberty just have to love that sort of language. Delay, who may well emerge as congressional Republicans' leading conservative, has begun revealing, this time in a speech before the libertarian Cato Institute, a genuine conservative agenda to put that language into practice in Congress. You'll note that the reporter, from the liberal Washington Post, ends by focusing on negative views of Delay's conservative ideology. What else do we expect from liberals in the media? Don't fear either that Delay is working alone to restore our liberty. You can get involved with pro-liberty Republicans by, for example, joining the Republican Liberty Caucus. You can find the Republican Liberty Caucus, which has chapters all across the country, at www.rlc.org. The Republican Liberty Caucus includes such pro-liberty figures as Chris Cox of California and Ron Paul of Texas. The Republican Liberty Caucus needs your help ensuring that a Republican Congress will also be a pro-liberty Congress. I urge you to get involved today. Sincerely, David B. Levenstam, CPA, MT, MA Bush/Cox in 2000! To subscribe to LibertyNet, email me at AdmrlLocke@aol.com, with a message to the effect that you'd like to subscribe. LibertyNet and GrammNet back issues available at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3390/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Origins:  This is a piece too inane even for glurgemeister Paul Harvey. Suffice it to say that someone has taken the framework of Mel Gibson's biography and built upon it a touching but completely fictitious house of glurge. Mel Gibson's father did move his family from New York to Sydney, Australia, when Mel was 12, but the similarities between this piece and Mel's real life end there. Young Mel wasn't dreaming of "joining the circus as a trapeze artist"; he was a Catholic high school student mulling over the possibilities of becoming a chef or a journalist who ended up enrolling in the University of New South Wales' National Institute of Dramatic Art. Young Mel had a role in the low-budget film Summer City while still a student and then appeared in a number of productions with the State Theatre Company of South Australia before the lucky break that catapulted him to stardom: being chosen for the lead role in George Miller's action film Mad Max. A little bit of truth sneaks into the story at this point. The night before his Mad Max audition, Gibson reportedly came in a poor second in a barroom brawl, ending up with a face "like a busted grapefruit." He then had to audition for the Mad Max role with a bruised, swollen, discolored, and freshly stitched face -- an appearance that, legend has it, helped win over producers who wanted someone weathered and rough-looking to take the part. The beating Gibson received did not, however, leave him with "smashed eye sockets," fracture his "skull, legs, and arms," result in the loss of "all his teeth" or a nose that was "hanging from his face" or a "jaw almost completely torn from his skull." He didn't spend "over a year in the hospital," nor did five years pass with Mel in agony before "plastic surgery restored his looks." His face got smashed up a bit, he required a few stitches to close some open cuts, and a few weeks later he was good as new. Mel Gibson did direct and star in The Man Without a Face, a 1993 film about a man who became a recluse after his face was disfigured in an automobile accident, but the movie was based upon a novel by Isabelle Holland, not Mel Gibson's life. Additional information:       Mel Gibson biography  (Mr. Showbiz) Last updated:  27 June 2000 The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/spoons/glurge/noface.htm Please use this URL in all links or references to this page Click here to e-mail this page to a friend Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2000 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------Are You a Socialist, a Capitalist or a Fascist? Intellivu Presents Commentary by Charley Reese Have you ever thought about whether you are a socialist, a capitalist or a fascist? It's an interesting mental exercise. Don't decide based on your present situation. You can be a capitalist and still suck on the government teat. Most big corporations do. You can be a socialist and yet make a lot of money. Hanoi Jane Fonda is a good example of that. Just to keep it simple, a capitalist believes the means of production should be privately owned; a socialist believes the means of production should be owned by the government; and a fascist believes the means of production should be controlled by the government. It seems to me that folks who favor heavy government regulation are fascists, and most of them don't even know it. Americans have been brainwashed by Hollywood into thinking that fascists wear military uniforms and have funny mustaches. In fact, fascists can look exactly like Bill Clinton or Alan Greenspan. I count myself a capitalist, even though for most of my life I didn't even need to take my shoes off to count my money. Capitalism, however, is the only economic system compatible with individual freedom. You can't separate freedom from economics on account of the fact that we are flesh and need sustenance. In a capitalist society, it is up to us to earn our own sustenance as best we can. If someone else controls our ability to earn our sustenance, then we aren't really free, even if the controller chooses to leave us alone most of the time. In the Soviet Union and other communist countries, the first level of punishment for a dissident was to take away that person's housing (there was no privately owned housing) and job (there was no private employment, either). Thus, a dissident soon found himself homeless and hungry, and soon thereafter discovered that being homeless and hungry was a crime. In a society in which there is no private property, the individual is at the mercy of the government. On the other hand, a person in a capitalist society can voluntarily become a slave simply by going deeply into debt. When all the money you earn is owed somebody else, you don't have a lot of freedom left. You might ask, how is a safety net provided in a free society? Well, by family and church. The large, tightknit families that characterized America of the 18th and 19th centuries were based on a strong element of economics. The family worked together to raise the standard of living of the whole family; when old age or sickness came, the family took care of those who needed help. Before Medicaid and Medicare came along, there were charity hospitals operated by churches and sometimes the local community. While native-born Americans have largely abandoned family for extreme individualism, you still see it working among Asian-Americans and other immigrants. That's why so many of them prosper despite the difficulties of adjusting to a new country and a new language. The most common characteristic of human beings is their adaptability. They can adapt to taking care of themselves and their kin if the environment forces them to do so. They can also adapt to dependency if the government forces that system on them. People often complain that Americans are irresponsible. That attitude has been foisted on the people by the government. Don't worry, the government will feed you, the government will provide you with health care, the government will take care of the old folks, the government will protect you from the bad guys. You just enjoy your self-indulgence and be nothing but a mindless consumer. The hidden price, of course, is freedom. © 2000 by King Features Syndicate --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just Say No to Fascist Health Care By David B. Levenstam You may think fascism was limited to a few countries and destroyed by World War II. Think again. Fascism is the type of socialism, nationalistic in nature, under which the forms of private property are retained, but the substance of property rights is eliminated through government regulation. Since 1900, when American "Progressives" first tried to eliminate competition ("rationalize business") using government coercion, the evil hand of fascism has slowly tightened its lethal grip on the soul of American liberty. And now, even as most socialist countries move toward the liberty of free markets, Americans debate whether to entrust health care to the tender mercies of yet more fascist government policies. Some argue that in a democracy, such governmental infringements on liberty are justified by the will (tyranny) of the majority. But democracy doesn't make fascism any better. Remember that Hitler was elected, becoming dictator constitutionally. Democracy makes fascism worse, in fact, because it cloaks fascist oppression behind a populist facade. And Clinton would saddle us with completely fascist health care. He wants to replace the best medical system in the world with fascist health care, and in the process replace much of our little remaining liberty with more government coercion. At the heart of Clinton's plan are government-sponsored health insurance monopolies, called "regional alliances," combined with price controls, subsidies and taxes. Clinton would force you to get insurance from the "private" monopoly--unless you're a politician, government bureaucrat, or large corporation. Fascism favors government rulers and corporate giants over entrepreneurial and middle-income people. And the inevitable result of price controls is a shortage: if health-care providers are paid less, they offer less care; if government lowers prices, consumers demand more. Supply goes down, demand goes up, and voila ! you have a shortage. Meanwhile, controls eliminate specialists and private miracle-drug research, while subsidies force an increasing share of remaining medical professionals to become government bureaucrats. Bureaucrats respond to the political demands of special interests, not to the needs of consumers. And you won't be able to seek or pay more for better care. Instead of having the world's best care at high prices, you'll have little or none for "free"--ignoring your huge tax increases. You'll be stuck with what government mandates. That's fascism. Democrat leftists prefer a utopian socialist "single-payer plan." They don't want you to have any private property rights in medical care. So why does Clinton want fascism? Because fascism "works better"--produces more goods and services--than other socialisms, by cleverly retaining the forms of property rights, leaving you with some incentive to work and innovate. Fascists therefore justify it in the name of "pragmatism." But the more fascist, the less incentive, as fewer people are fooled by fascism's charade of property rights. Don't be fooled. "Pragmatism" is often used to justify oppression: "Mussolini may be a murdering dictator, but at least he makes the trains run on time." So the oppression resulting from Clinton's fascist health-care plan wouldn't be justified even if it did work better than a utopian socialist single-payer plan. But the real question is whether fascism works better than liberty. The answer is no. Most problems with our health care--the best ever anywhere--derive from government coercions. Current government policies limit the supply (thus raising the price) of doctors, miracle-drugs, health insurance, and even medical knowledge. Government encourages your dependence on large corporations for insurance, creating problems with "pre-existing conditions" and "lack of portability." And it further inflates prices by spending over $200 billion of our money each year on its own health care plans. To "remedy" the ills caused by government regulation, Clinton would seize one-seventh of our economy. That's like killing the patient to fix a misplaced scalpel incision. In making so much of our lives fascist, Clinton wants to coerce us into choosing among only five health care options at most. The market--where we exercise our liberty to buy and sell--offers thousands, even millions of alternative medical plans. With liberty the only limit is human creativity. Under fascist medicine, the limit is bureaucratic convenience. Do you want bureaucrats deciding whether you live or die? If not, just say no to Clinton's fascist health care plan. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey, Big Spenders! “When he was president, Ronald Reagan used to quip that comparing the spending habits of Democrats to drunken sailors is an insult to drunken sailors. For at least a generation now, Republicans have reflexively tarred and feathered the Democrats in Washington as spendaholics. The GOP's two watershed elections of recent times, 1980 and 1994, were won on successful attempts, first by Reagan, then by conservative congressional Republicans and Newt Gingrich as House speaker, to convince voters that the federal government had become too big and too intrusive--and that the fiscally reckless Democrats were to blame. “It's virtually certain that when the campaign season begins in earnest in a few weeks, Republicans will again skewer Democrats as tax-and-spend, nanny-state liberals. But this time, the strategy may fail--miserably. And it's not because Democrats are suddenly turning into a gang of fiscal tightwads. Rather, the problem is that Republicans have become prodigious spenders themselves. “Over the next five years, the Democrats would like to spend $10 trillion, if you consider projections included in President Clinton's final budget, which is generally considered to be a glimpse of Al Gore's first budget. Ten trillion dollars? That's more money in real terms than it cost to fight World Wars I and II, the Vietnam War, the Korean War and the Civil War combined. Congressional Republicans say that's entirely excessive: Their counter-demand is to spend $9.95 trillion. Not much of a difference. Either way, big government wins.” - Columnist Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute and president of the Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee, Washington Post, 7/16/00 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- conservativeinfo - Subscribe to the Conservative Information email list at http://conservativeinfo.listbot.com DeLay to Urge Ending Political Donor Limits By Mike Allen Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, July 20, 2000; Page A08 Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority whip, plans to argue today for the abolition of all limits on campaign contributions, and will urge fellow Republicans to band together to fight any further progress by campaign finance reformers in what he calls the rationing of speech. "Unfettered political speech, along with the right to bear arms, is the most certain means we possess of protecting the rest of our freedoms," DeLay said in remarks prepared for delivery at the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank that promotes free markets and limited government. The speech by DeLay comes just three weeks after Congress voted overwhelmingly to require the disclosure of donor and spending records of a class of political organizations that currently operate in secret and have proliferated this year. The bill, the first change in campaign finance laws in 20 years, was signed by President Clinton two days after it passed. Reform groups have argued that the enactment of that law, along with the popularity of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in this winter's presidential primaries, shows that public opinion has turned in favor of attempts to reduce the role of money in politics. McCain has said that last month's victory opens the door to more fundamental changes in the system. DeLay, who is well-known as an aggressive and prolific fundraiser for Republican and conservative causes, is responding by warning of an "alliance between the left and the media on speech regulation." His views on campaign finance issues are shared by other leading GOP lawmakers, though few express them in such a pointed way. "The innocuously labeled 'campaign finance reform movement' is perhaps the most worrisome and disingenuous special interest of them all," he said. "More precisely described, what we know today as 'campaign finance reform' is simply an effort to have the government regulate and ration political discourse in America." DeLay said in the final draft of his speech that Congress should consider "dramatically increasing the current campaign contribution limits, which have not been adjusted since 1974." In federal races, including those for president and Congress, individuals may give a candidate only $2,000 for each election--$1,000 for the primary and $1,000 for the general election. "I believe we should explore eliminating these limits entirely," DeLay said. "Take it from me, an eight-term member of Congress, that such limits only serve to protect incumbents by preventing challengers from raising the funds they need." DeLay argued that it is hypocritical for newspapers to accept political advertising at the same time their editorial pages fret over the use of private money for campaigns. He said the most ardent advocates of campaign finance limits are "big-government liberals," journalists and "politicians trying to make friends with journalists and big-government liberals." "Talk about distinctions without a difference," he said. DeLay's speech, "Rediscovering Our Political Freedom," is the fourth in a series of five speeches, begun in January, in which he is laying out a conservative agenda on foreign policy, family matters and other issues. DeLay is to speak before a Cato luncheon that officials expect will draw about 90 Capitol Hill staff members and think tank personnel. The announced topic is "The Future of Campaign Finance Reform." Matt Keller, a lawyer for Common Cause, said it is incorrect to equate unlimited political donations with free speech, because courts have consistently found that government has an interest in stemming corruption or the appearance of it. And Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan advocate of campaign finance changes, called DeLay "an adamant defender of a corrupt system" who is "out of touch with the American people, with federal law, with the United States Congress and with the Supreme Court." Jonathan M. Baron, DeLay's communications director, said DeLay expects intense criticism. "Mr. DeLay is prepared for a long, hard battle against those who would restrict free political speech," Baron said. "With heat comes light."