In the comments section of the blog post about the Rahn Curve, I essentially ‘promised’ a video response. The argument below may be a bit more precise, but I did in fact prepare a video in which I opine extemporaneously upon the same subject discussed in this post. For those who would rather watch and listen than read, I include that video response below:

There should be little argument that the Center’s video is being presented by an organization that wants the world to view it as advocating individual freedom. Were that not the case, I sincerely doubt that the “Center for Freedom and Prosperity” would bother mentioning freedom, and would instead call itself something like “The Centre for National Prosperity” (a name that would be more fitting). In the video, the Center’s spokesperson is Dan Mitchell, a libertarian economist who is both a founder of the Center, and is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute. The Cato Institute takes its name from Cato’s Letters, which the Institute describes as “…a series of libertarian pamphlets that helped lay the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution.” The Cato Institute states that its mission is: “…to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace.” In short, the video is presented by entities that wish to be regarded as advocates of individual freedom.

The purpose of the video is informed by the fact that those providing the video wish to be regarded, in doing so, as advocates of individual freedom. Accordingly, the arguments set out in the video purport to be arguments in defence of individual freedom (hence, of capitalism). So let us turn to the content of the video for the purposes of determining whether the video’s message strengthens or undermines the case for individual freedom.

The video gets off to a bad start. The “Rahn Curve” graph does not disclose what, exactly, is being plotted. The X axis is labeled ambiguously as “Economic Performance”, and the Y axis is labeled just as ambiguously: “Size of Government”. That ambiguous labeling, together with such narrative as “But you the viewer only need to understand one thing”, suggests that the producers of the video are not very concerned with having viewers actually understand the curve, so long as viewers accept the curve as economic proof that government is currently too big. With not too much googling, one can find for oneself the units that the Center thought should be replaced with ambiguous terms. Values on the X axis (which the Center labels “Economic Performance”) are actually: Percentages of Annual Growth in GDP. Values on the Y axis are (which the Center calls “Size of Government”) are: Percentages of Annual GDP that is Spent by Government”.

Mitchell tells the viewer that “economic performance” is maximized when government spending (a.k.a., the “size of government”) is somewhere in the range of 15% to 25% of GDP. He goes on to deliver the video’s take-home message: because U.S. government spending is in the 35% to 40% range, the Rahn curve demonstrates “…that government is too big, and this is reducing prosperity”.

As an aside, I should add that, given that that which is spent by government must first also be taxed by government, it should not be surprising that the Rahn Curve has the same shape as the Laffer Curve. Yet the Rahn Curve is presented to the viewer as though it is a second piece of evidence that there is a right size for government.

There are numerous problems with the Center’s use of the Rahn Curve as a basis for advocating individual freedom. First, consider the implications of an alleged freedom advocate advocating the maximization of annual growth in GDP. GDP growth is not a measure of the increase of any particular individual’s productivity, but of the increase of the productivity of a collective entity: the country, or nation. Because the Center is advocating the maximization of GDP growth as a desired goal, it is implicitly advocating for the interests of a collective (the country, the nation), whether or not such a goal is in the interest of a particular individual. In other words, the Center is necessarily advocating in favour of what utilitarians and other collectivists are prone to calling “the greater good” (“greater”, as in: “of greater importance than the good of any one individual”).

One cannot seriously expect to found the advocacy of individual freedom upon maximization of something that designed to serve “the greater good”; the good of the collective. When one uses the economic benefit of the greater good as the basis for arguing that individual freedom is desirable, one instantly undermines the cause of individual freedom. Every instance of individual freedom that leads to an economic result in which the collective does less well than it otherwise would have done but for the individual freedom serves as an argument against individual freedom. Does the use of marijuana, or alcohol, or opiates decrease growth in the collective productivity of the country? If so, then the result of alleged individual freedom advocates holding up collective productivity growth as a desired goal implies that some of the revenue spent by government should be used to force individuals not to use such substances. The violation of liberty is thereby held up as somehow being consistent with, or even necessary for, the defence of individual freedom.

Second, the assertion that there is an ideal size of government, together with the assumption that the size of government is properly measured by spending as a percentage of GDP, implies that it is ideal for the government to grow – more precisely, that it is ideal for government spending to grow — as GDP grows. The Center for Freedom and Prosperity having as one of its aims greater productivity, the Center is, ironically, advocating the continuous growth of government (assuming the economy continues to grow). So, if one starts with the libertarian notion that “the best government is the government that governs least” (i.e., that smaller government is necessarily more compatible with individual freedom than is bigger government), one is left with the self-defeating spectacle of libertarians implicitly arguing for ever-growing government; a growth allegedly serving “the greater good”.

Worse, the Center provides us with not even an attempt to explain why productivity growth leads to a situation in which government needs more money. If one individual’s efforts increase the productivity of the country, it does not follow that that productivity increase causes a state of affairs in which defending life, liberty, and property becomes more expensive. The notion that government spending should increase as a percentage of GDP is a welfare statist conception, founded upon the notion that so long as the percentage of wealth stolen from the public does not change, there is no harm done: the amount of wealth transferred from the increasingly productive to the under-productive or non-productive can increase as the economy grows. Such wealth redistribution, being accomplished by a gun pointed by government at the head of every producer, is neither an incentive for production nor consistent with the role of government in a free society: defending every individual’s life, liberty, and property.

Third, government spending is, itself, an ambiguous concept. There is simply no way that “government spending” per se, is necessarily good or necessarily bad for productivity growth. Law enforcement is not, per se, good or bad for productivity. For example, the supposedly ideal 20% recommended in the video could be spent on defending every individual’s life, liberty and property. Trade requires that a person’s property not be obtained without his consent so, clearly, if government pays officers to ensure that nobody obtains another person’s property by such means as theft or fraud, productivity will be higher than were government to allow thefts and frauds to occur. But productivity will be undermined if government uses exactly the same amount of money to pay officers to force stores or factories to close on Sundays or religious holidays, or to seize the property of milk farmers who sell milk directly to consumers instead of complying with a law requiring them to buy quotas and sell their milk only to a milk marketing board.

As another example, the government can spend $1.8M Canadian tax dollars to pay a year’s salary to approximately 6 Canadian judges who will try and convict murderers, rapists, and thieves. Alternatively, the government can spend that $1.8M Canadian tax dollars to buy a painting comprised of three vertical stripes (“Voice of Fire“). The arrest and conviction of criminals will facilitate productivity and trade, but the purchase — by a non-productive entity such as government – of three lines on a canvas, will not increase productivity. To the contrary, the government’s purchase of the painting may well reduce productivity by taking money out of the hands of producers (i.e., taxpayers) who would have used the money as capital with which to facilitate more valuable production.

Fourth, in a political context, individual freedom means: not having ones life, liberty, or property taken without ones consent. Individual freedom is not a reference to government using force (i.e., laws, backed by guns) in an attempt to maximize the increase of the collective productivity of the country’s inhabitants. Individual freedom is not a reference to government using force to increase tax revenues and government spending when the country’s productivity increases. Individual freedom does not refer to government using force to redistribute wealth from those who produce it to those who do not. All such uses of force in the economy are instances of the very coercion from which the government is supposed to be protecting individuals. They are instances of the very crimes for which the government rightly arrests and imprisons people. They are evidence that the government now regards itself as being above the law.

The whole notion of “smaller government”, similarly, has nothing per se to do with individual freedom. Individual freedom depends upon the quality of government, not the quantity of it. Individual freedom is not a function of how big or small a government is, per se, but of how effective government is in defending every individual’s life, liberty or property; how effective it is in ensuring that no person is deprived of his life, liberty or property without his consent. A small government that does not defend life, liberty and property is less desirable than a big government that limits itself to doing so. Therefore it makes no sense to assert that there is a given percentage of GDP that the government should take and spend (i.e., it makes no sense to advocate that there is a right size for government based upon economic figures). A government’s expenditures will properly depend upon such things as how much crime there is; how many thieves, rapists, and murderers there are, et cetera. A largely moral and peaceful society with a given GDP will be much less expensive to govern than a largely immoral and violent one with the same GDP.

Now, if neither the alleged size of government nor the quantitative arguments of economics has anything to do with individual freedom, why do many libertarians spend so much time calling for “less government”? Why do libertarians base so many of their arguments upon the attainment of economic goals? The answer to both questions is rooted in the fact that economics deals not with the qualities of things, but with the quantities of things; it deals explicitly not with right and wrong, but with more and less. And, because economics deals with quantities instead of with qualities, an economic argument gives libertarians a rallying cry to attract individuals whose qualitative opinions about government differ greatly, or are even in opposition.

For example, quantitative economic arguments in support of “small government” allow libertarians to attract religious anti-abortionists who want to take away government’s ability to fund abortions, while also attracting anti-religious pro-choicers who want government to stop funding (or to stop providing tax breaks for) religions that oppose a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. The result is a libertarian group that claims to advocate individual freedom though its members cannot agree about whether doctors who provide abortion services should be protected from those who bomb abortion clinics, or whether such doctors ought to be given the death penalty.

The libertarian’s conscious or unconscious attraction to economics is founded upon the hope that if you give people common quantitative conclusions with which they can agree, they will voluntarily stick their heads in the sand, or keep their mouths shut, with respect to the qualitative commitments that make their fellow libertarians their political enemies. And so we have libertarians who rally behind the anti-abortion Ron Paul, a proponent of Austrian economics, joining with libertarians who rallied behind – and continue to praise – pro-choice libertarians like Murray Rothbard who, similarly, was a proponent of Austrian economics.

In discussing libertarians, I do not imply that I restrict my criticism – concerning the use of economics to justify individual freedom, or to bring people together despite their substantive opposition – to libertarians or members of Libertarian parties. The same misguided attraction to economics imperils other political parties. For example, in a recent interview of blogger Andrew Lawton by Libertas Post, Lawton took the libertarian position that health care should be entirely privatized. Lawton is anti-abortion and he considers himself a “social conservative”. Yet he told Libertas Post that “at the end of the day, I think the most important issues that we have to work on as conservatives are the issues that we agree on, which are economic issues”. Like the big L libertarians, the big C conservatives attempt to use economics as a no-conflict zone between warring factions who somehow think it desirable, for electoral ends, to work together though their desired governmental ends are mutually exclusive.

However, unlike libertarians and Libertarians, conservatives and Conservatives do not seek to be seen as advocates for individual freedom, and generally do not hold themselves out to be such. Accordingly, trying to unite people with economics does little to undermine the case for individual freedom when it is conservatives who engage in such folly. If anything, it undermines conservatism.

In contrast, when libertarians – holding themselves out to be proponents of individual freedom — use economic arguments to bring together individuals who oppose one another on qualitative matters (e.g., anti-abortion vs. pro-choice), each instance of disagreement on such fundamental qualitative matters — among alleged advocates of individual freedom — serves to convince the public that “individual freedom” itself is itself an ambiguous concept; individual freedom itself is undermined.

The prospects for individual freedom would be undermined even more were libertarians — having been drawn together by economic arguments — somehow to win the reigns of governmental power. Returning to the abortion example, when conservatives disagree about abortion, and decide upon a “compromise” law in which women are free to have abortions in the first five months of pregnancy, but in which abortions conducted thereafter are punishable by imprisonment, the wisdom or insanity of the law is attributed to conservativism or to a Conservative party.

In contrast, were a governing libertarian party — a governing party that claims to be comprised of proponents of individual freedom — to adopt the same 5-month law for abortions in order to accomplish the same comprise between its anti-abortionist and pro-choice membership, what would that tell the onlooking public? It would tell the public a range of falsehoods: that “individual freedom is not absolute”; that compromise is, per se, a virtue, and is necessary; that “individual freedom is good in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice”; that, ultimately, any argument in favour of individual freedom is flawed; that advocates of individual freedom are “naive” and should be ignored. In short, even were it possible to use economic arguments to unite de facto political opponents to win an election, the winning of the electoral battle would only serve to undermine the cause of individual freedom.

Nothing I have said about economics should be interpreted as a condemnation of economics itself. To the contrary, economics explains a great deal that should be known and that can help producers and consumers make wise choices. However, in a free society, economic choices are made by producers, who trade their respective values consensually. If the economic aim of a government is a free market, the government can ignore economic arguments altogether, and simply ensure that all trades a mutually consensual. Any other economic aim pursued by government (e.g., increasing government revenues and expenditures as the economy grows so as to maximize the productivity growth of the country), with or without economic knowledge, necessarily will involve using force to coerce individuals to part with their values non-consensually.

Accordingly, in a free society, economic arguments are of no use to government except for the identifying instances where an individual’s life, liberty or property is being taken without his consent (e.g., arguments about the nature and effect of fractional reserve banking, monetary inflation, the use of gold as money, et cetera). Any economic argument in favour of government having an economic aim other than a free market serves not to defend individual freedom, but to undermine it.

The men are not in an Arabic country. They are not in a European city. They are in Dearborn, Michigan, USA, and the police arresting them are bound by the provisions of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Readers of this blog will know that I do not believe in anything for which there is no physical evidence. There is no evidence supporting the existence of an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient being. A belief in such a being is a matter not of rationality, but of faith.

So, in what I consider to be an ideal free society – in a society the laws of which are wholly consistent with reality, reason, and rational self-interest – is the conduct of the Dearborn police a proper response to the conduct of the four men? My answer is an unequivocal “No”. This case provides a brilliant example of why governance must be strictly rational; why a government must entirely ignore claims based upon faith if those who have faith are to be free; why “freedom of religion” requires secular governance.

In the absence of people willing to provide for his needs, a man’s survival requires that he choose to think, and that he thinks logically about the evidence provided to his senses about the nature of reality. If he lands on a desert island, he must locate water and make it drinkable; he must locate food and obtain it; etc. If he is to survive, he must not be deprived of the values (e.g., the food and water) that he has created or obtained by means of his rational thought and action. He must hold his own life – not his death – as his highest value; his own happiness – not his misery, suffering, and poverty – as his highest purpose; and rationality – not wishing and praying – as his only effective means of achieving his purpose. And, if a man is to survive amongst others, he must not be deprived of his control over his values: nobody must be permitted to take his life, to restrict his liberty, or to take his property, without his consent. Accordingly, to ensure that he is not so deprived of his life, liberty, and property, he chooses others to defend his life, liberty and property from others who would take such things without his consent.

The result is not that he necessarily thinks rationally, survives or achieves happiness. The result is that he is free to think and act rationally so that he can maximize his chances of surviving and achieving his own happiness.

It is not the government’s role to force him to think rationally, to ensure that he survives, or to ensure that he achieves his own happiness. It is not the government’s role to force him to abandon reason and simply believe in and obey – as a matter of faith – the alleged word of an alleged god; or to require him to sacrifice himself for others. In a free society, governed rationally, every man is free to live a life according to the beliefs he holds as a matter of faith so long as he does not deprive another person of the person’s life, liberty, or property without the person’s consent. And, so long as the man of faith does not end another person’s life, restrict another person’s liberty, or take another person’s property without the person’s consent, he is free to profess his faith, and to persuade others to discover and share it.

Should the police have attended where the four men were distributing the Gospel of John? Possibly, in defence of the four men: if anyone was preventing those four men from offering their booklets peacefully to oncoming individuals – and I do not know of any evidence that the men were being so prevented – then most certainly. And, in such a case, the proper response of the police would be to use force to prevent everyone from attempting forcibly to prevent the men from doing so…whether or not the wrongdoers were yelling “Allahu Akbar”. Otherwise, the appropriate decision of the police would have been to do nothing at all.

Rahim Jaffer, abortion, the Toronto Gay Pride parade – these three issues have recently involved the Conservative government in heated debate. There is a common thread to these seemingly unrelated issues. They all illustrate what happens to a conservative government when it increases, rather than decreases, the size of the state.

I agree with Flanagan’s if-thens (i.e., ‘if they hadn’t been funding such things, this scandal would never have arisen’), but Flanagan errs in identifying the “size” of government as the problem. That argument is essentially the libertarian one, derived from anarchist Henry David Thoreau:

I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto, — “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — “That government is best which governs not at all” (from “Civil Disobedience”)

There are all sorts of people, with conflicting philosophies, who call themselves “libertarian” and who band together with others who call themselves “libertarian”. What they all have in common, to one extent or another, in certain ways or in others, is a desire for “less government”. Yet, though many libertarians gleefully chant that “That government is best which governs least”, many intentionally stop short, and blank out with the rest of what Thoreau said: “it finally amounts to this” – no government at all. Thoreau was correct: if less government is better, that necessarily implies that anarchy is best.

Tom Flanagan is no anarchist. Like other libertarians, he has mis-identified the essential issue. Ask yourself whether you would say one gram is “too much” or “too little” when it comes to “the stuff in your bowl”. If it is a gram of stew, most hungry people (who like stew) will say one gram is “too little”. If it is rat poison, all but the suicidal will say one gram is “too much”. The essential issue is not how much is in the bowl, but what is in the bowl.

If government is properly defined (e.g., loosely: a group of citizens authorized by the governed to use force and the threat of force to prevent persons from taking any other person’s life, liberty or property without the latter’s consent) then one can start talking about how much government is too much government. However, if “government” means nothing more than: “a group of citizens authorized by the governed to use force and the threat of force to ensure compliance with laws made in a duly elected legislature”, then talk of “too much” or “too little” government is meaningless.

The Conservatives’ problem is not a matter of quantity, but of quality. Like all Canadian ‘governments’ before them, the Conservatives fancy it to be the role of government to use force to prevent individuals from making ‘bad’ decisions – or to force them to make ‘good’ decisions – even when those decisions do not involve the violation of anyone’s life, liberty, or property (e.g., merely self-destructive acts, like using drugs to avoid facing and dealing with ones own responsibilities or problems). In other words: the Conservatives have assumed a parenting role, instead of assuming the peace and order role that they ought to be assuming: defending every adult individual’s freedom to make, for themselves, both good and bad choices that do not involve non-consensual conduct.

In the cases of Jaffer, Abortion, and Pride, the Harper Conservatives took property from those who earned it – without the consent of those who earned it – and gave or loaned the money to those who did not earn it. That is the very sort of conduct for which a government imprisons people. The gang we have now – like all of the gangs we have gotten since 1867 – masquerading as a government, in reality fancies government itself to be above the law.

In the end, the issue isn’t “less government” or “more government”. As always, the political issue is consent. Specifically, the Conservatives are taking money from people who earn it, and without the consent of those who earn it, and handing the money to those who did not earn it: they are stepping outside the role of government, and into the role of organized criminals. Accordingly, the Conservatives’ more fundamental error is one of identification: a failure to identify the nature of a “government”, and to distinguish it from the nature of “elected criminal organization”

McKeever opposes Emery’s extradition, and says extraditing Emery would be a violation of Canada’s Extradition Act. “Anyone who watches Part 2 of The Principle of Pot will clearly understand that the USA is seeking Emery’s extradition because of the political nature of his cannabis seed campaign”, says McKeever. “In my view, even if someone were somehow to doubt that the USA seeks to imprison Emery because of his political influence, Emery’s political beliefs and conduct would at the very least result in him being prejudiced in any American court. In either case, the Extradition Act prohibits the Justice Minister from extraditing Emery, and I explain that more fully in The Principle of Pot (Part 2).”

Emery’s opponents, and the U.S. authorities who demanded his arrest in Halifax, have attempted to portray Emery as a profit-motivated drug dealer. “The Principle of Pot” demonstrates that Marc Emery was at all times carrying out political campaigns. Part 1 of McKeever’s documentary demonstrated that Emery was an individual freedom activist long before getting involved in the marijuana legalization issue. Part 2 goes deep into Emery’s marijuana-related activism, explains the surprising origins of his involvement in the marijuana legalization issue, uncovers Emery’s widely misunderstood goal, and a gives a rare and revealing look at his behind-the-scenes master strategy and tactics.

McKeever commenced production of the two-part documentary in November of 2008. Being the result of countless hours of research, interviews, writing and editing, the video includes audio, video and textual information that has never been seen in any profile of Emery. Much of the audio and video having been drawn from the archives of Freedom Party of Ontario (with which Emery was active until 1990), it has never before been seen by the general public or media.

Part 2 has a run time of approximately 157 minutes. It has been broken into 6 parts for easier online watching. To watch all six consecutively, viewers should use the following URL:

The six parts can be viewed consecutively by going to the following Autoplay URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zVmU_BGs9U&feature=PlayList&p=28E1BAEA38B29924&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1

Links to all six parts can be found at the following Playlist URL: http://www.youtube.com/user/PaulMcKeever#grid/user/28E1BAEA38B29924

Paul McKeever’s Youtube Channel URL is: http://www.youtube.com/paulmckeever

Part 2-1: “The Emperor Wears No Clothes”; marijuana book censorship; The 2 Live Crew (cont’d); why marijuana was made illegal; a failed strategy; Sunday shopping success; good bye London, hello India; from civil disobedience to civil rights movement; millions of law-breakers: the oppression of the marijuana people; morality and heroism: Roark versus Jesus; the Howard Roark of Cannabis?; facts versus warmth and sensitivity; “seething hatred for the state”; Jesus of Nazareth.

Part 2-2: 1994-2001 – Emery’s Plan; Hemp BC; Cannabis Canada; U.S. interference; Cannabis Culture; raids on Hemp BC; Marc Emery Direct seeds; Pot TV; Cannabis Culture; Marijuana Party of Canada; BC Marijuana Party; Vansterdam.

Part 2-3: Iboga Therapy House; 2002 Vancouver Mayoral election; 2002 Canadian Senate Report on Marijuana; Emery visits the U.S Drug Czar; 2003: the summer of legalization and the winter of our discontent; the hand-off.

Part 2-4: from abstract principles to concrete allegations of fact; a liar with guns; the NDP, socialism, and libertarianism; 90 days imprisonment for passing a joint; the bible, the Christians, and the marijuana people; prophesy and destiny.

Part 2-5: 2005 raid on Marc Emery’s Cannabis Culture HQ; arrest of Marc Emery, Michelle Rainey, and Greg Williams; U.S. DEA Extradition request; plea deals; North Fraser Pre-Trial; 2010 Olympics; Scott Reid, Libby Davies, and Ujjal Dosanjh petitions in the House of Commons / Parliament; Stephen Harper on YouTube; marijuana legalization; death of Jack Herer.

Part 2-6: the issues facing Canada’s Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson, as he makes his decision about whether or not to extradite Marc Emery to the United States of America; analysis of Emery’s 20 year strategy, including its philosophical and practical implications.

***Media Advisory***

Attention: News/Assignment Editors, Reporters

Marc Emery / Prince of Pot – Extradition

International Release of “THE PRINCIPLE OF POT” Documentary
To Precede Extradition Decision by Canadian Justice Minister

Movie to be released on YouTube.com at
12:01 AM (EST) on Monday, January 18, 2010

Just after midnight tonight, Ontario lawyer Paul McKeever will release Part 1 of “The Principle of Pot”, his new two-part documentary about the nature and motives of Marc Emery, the media-dubbed Prince of Pot. Part 1 runs 1 hour and 39 minutes. Part 2 will be released at a later date.

The launch is timed to precede a decision by Canada’s federal justice minister, Rob Nicholson, about whether or not to approve the extradition of Emery to the United States, where he faces years of imprisonment for having sold cannabis seeds, in Vancouver, Canada, via mail order. The Minister’s decision is expected within the next 81 days.

Emery’s opponents, and the U.S. authorities who demanded his arrest in Halifax, have attempted to portray Emery as a profit-motivated drug dealer. Part 1 of McKeever’s documentary will cover the period up to 1990; a period during which Emery was equally active as an advocate of individual freedom, but whose advocacy of individual freedom did not include campaigns concerning the issue of cannabis prohibition.

Being the result of countless hours of research, interviews, writing and editing, the video includes audio, video and textual information that has never been seen in any profile of Emery. Much of the audio and video having been drawn from the archives of Freedom Party of Ontario (with which Emery was active until 1990), it has never before been seen by the general public or media.

What: “The Principle of Pot” (Part 1) – divided into four segments (a playlist will be available)

When: approximately 12:01 AM (EST), Monday, January 18, 2010 (i.e., just after midnight on Sunday)

Where: http://www.youtube.com/paulmckeever (a playlist URL will be made available, and can be embedded on any web site without seeking permission from Paul McKeever to do so)

For further information, contact:

Paul McKeever

Confidential Cell Phone: ***-***-****
e-mail: pm@paulmckeever.ca

Part 1-1: Emery’s birth; early political activity; Ayn Rand and Howard Roark (1979); the Libertarian Party (1980); three publications (1980-1983); Unparty (1981-83); the birth of Freedom Party (1984).

Part 1-2: The No Tax for Pan Am Games campaign (1984); the London garbage strike (1987).

Part 1-3: The campaign against the ban on Sunday retailing 1986-1990); jail (1988).

Part 1-4: The Calendars for Individual Freedom (1987-1989); no to elections / yes to erections (anti-censorship campaigns 1984 and 1989-90); leaving Freedom Party (1990); a new strategy (1990).

This media advisory is being copied to Canada’s government, including Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, to Canada’s Members of Parliament
and to other governmental and non-governmental organizations interested in the matter of Marc Emery, and his possible extradition.

Prompted by an AFP report about American conservatives criticizing a speech that Barack Obama will be giving to school children, McParland today writes that, if conservatives can condemn Obama’s remarks as socialism, it is no wonder they cannot embrace socialist health care. The essence of McParland’s submission is that Obama’s speech just tells kids to work hard and do well in school, so conservatives who criticize the speech are holding back things like socialist health care because they see practically anything as a socialist plot.

From the outset, let me respond to McParland by stating the obvious: socialist health care is…socialist. Saying so is not an admission of paranoia on the part of conservatives, but denying so is certainly an admission that one is detached from the facts of reality.

Turning now to what I can only wish was equally obvious: clouding the issue of how to judge McParland’s condemnation of the conservatives is the fact that the conservatives quoted in the AFP article are as off-base as McParland. The conservatives are right to condemn Obama’s speech, but their rationale makes them worthy of condemnation. There are indeed at least two major problems with Obama’s speech, but neither of them were identified by the conservatives quoted in the AFP piece.

First: the President of the United States is the chief law enforcer. He is not principally a legislator (those folks are found in the House of Representatives and in the Senate), but the head of the Executive branch of government. Psychologically, to children, he is akin to a pope, a dictator, or a parent. Obama knows it, which is why he plans to say the following sorts of things with a straight face:

They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.
[...]
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

In a country where individuals are free, what the president expects or wants from a child, in terms of taking “responsibility for their education” or in terms of the goals they set for themselves, is completely irrelevant. In such a country, a president focuses on ensuring that no person obtains any other person’s values without consent. He keeps the peace. He plays not the role of parent, or religious leader, or dictator, but of referee or cop. In a country populated by free individuals, the president – as president – has no authority to concern himself, officially, with whether you become extremely well-educated, or remain an illiterate; with whether you become a billionaire or a person earning minimum wage; with whether you choose to live or to die. The president’s only role, in telling you what he expects or wants, is to tell you what rational (hence moral) laws expect of the governed: that you must not obtain anything from another human being without the consent of that human being and that, if you try to obtain something from a human being without their consent, the result will be the unyielding use of force, against you, by the state.

In other words, the president is not daddy. He is aimer-in-chief of a loaded gun. And, in his official capacity as president of the United States of America, Obama should limit the expression of his expectations and wants to those which tell the governed (a) how to ensure that one does not find oneself on the receiving end of that gun, and (b) that the gun will be used to defend their lives, liberty, and property.

Obama’s speech implicitly tells the children to whom he is speaking (i.e., ultimately, all children in the USA) the opposite: that he is not merely a cop in their service, but a daddy who has personal expectations and wants – about things having nothing to do with rational governance – and to whom the children owe a duty of respect and obedience in respect of the satisfaction of those presidential expectations and wants. Whether he is trying to create a culture of children that want and expect a dictator is known only to him, but the effect of his words is to tell children, implicitly, that they should aim to honour and obey the expectations and wants of the president, whether or not they relate to legitimate functions of president in a country of free individuals.

Second: A country (or, to use the implicitly racist collectivist term “nation”) is, in essence, nothing more than a legal jurisdiction. A country, in any intellectually honest sense of the term, is not a collective entity comprised of individuals and/or the things they produce; it is not Leviathan. It is owed nothing, and it has nothing of its own to offer.

The money that makes governance possible is not the result of any collective effort; it is not the result of a government producing any wealth at all. The money that makes governance (and government) possible is the result of individuals producing wealth. And, when a government spends money, the only beneficiaries are: individuals (whether those individuals be producers, looters, or moochers). What, then, is the meaning of a statement such as the following?:

What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

Answer: This statement implies that (a) a country is a thing capable of having challenges, and (b) that the listener should regard it as a personal responsibility to ensure that this challenge-facing thingy can meet its challenges. However, with respect to (a), countries do not face challenges: individual human beings do. That means that, with respect to (b), Obama really is just referring to false concepts instead of coming straight out and saying: “It’s your responsibility to make sure that your neighbour can meet his greatest challenges” or: “You are your brother’s keeper”.

Additional examples of Obama’s weasel-speak in that regard include:

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
[...]
…when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.
[...]
The story of America [is] about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.
[...]
So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? …What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?
[...]
So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud.

There is no country to quit on: there is only the possibility of quitting on the Obama-imposed duty to carry your neighbour’s load for him.

A country being nothing but a legal jurisdiction, the only way to give up on a country is by emigrating from it. The decision to be an uneducated, mooching drifter is not giving up on ones country. Being a well educated, productive and moral individual is not a commitment to ones country. Unless you are violating another person’s life, liberty or property, “giving up on oneself”, or not doing so, is an entirely personal matter.

The story of America is not about people who “loved their country too much to do anything less than their best”. That’s just a lie, as anyone who has read and understood the Declaration of Independence could tell you. Rather, America is the story of individuals who loved themselves – each individual loving his own life – and who knew that the successful pursuit of their own, personal happiness required each individual to do his best. America has not a heritage of “rugged collectivism” but of “rugged individualism”.

One does not make a “contribution to ones country”: again, such weasel speak is an obfuscatory way of saying “contribution of your effort, or of what you produce, to individuals other than yourself”. In the context in which Obama uses the word, “contribution” necessarily implies collectivism; it implies that one has a duty to be ones brother’s keeper by pitching something into a common pot of gruel stirred by none other than the president, who will then ration its out according to the president’s whim. And, in a country inhabited by free individuals: nobody gives a flying fig what some elected neighbour of theirs will say about them 25 years hence. That elected neighbour will know his place, and will offer no response when the governed tell him: “Shut up and defend my life, my liberty, and my property, as I’m paying you to do, servant”.

And, with respect to letting down ones country, you might glean my response from the above. There is no country to let down. There are only individuals who live within the same legal jurisdiction. And, if the individuals who live in the country are free, those individuals have no right to be expecting you – or any of the impressionable young children that Obama is attempting to brainwash – to hold them up in the first place.

Finally, a few words with respect to the conservatives, whose misguided criticism of Obama’s abusive speech undermines freedom even more than does Obama’s speech itself. AFP quotes Michael Leahy – who is said to be a spokesperson for a “Nationwide Tea Party Coalition” – as follows:

That’s Obama-centric. It’s not focused on education but on the worship of Barack Obama…This is indoctrination, pure and simple, into the cult of Barack Obama, and we are opposed to that

With respect to another conservative, AFP reports:

Jim Greer, chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, raged that “Pied Piper Obama” was going “into the American classroom” to spread socialist ideology.

The conservatives are missing the point (again, and as usual). Obama’s words would be wrong if they were said by George Bush, or even by a school-teacher. There being an eight year term limit for Obama, and the children being years away from voting age, there would be no point in trying to draw them into a cult of Obama.

Rather, the issue is that Obama is preaching a fundamentally evil and anti-American philosophy. Metaphysically, he is teaching American children that they do not exist independently of others, but are part of a greater whole called a “country” or a “nation”. Epistemologically, the fact that he is strutting in and giving his list of expectations and wants in his capacity as president tells students that, to obtain knowledge of ethics and to live an ethical life, they must simply hear, accept and obey as dogma whatever list of expectations or wants some other person – especially a person elected by a majority of their needy neighbours – communicates to them. Ethically, he is teaching them that the satisfaction of ones neighbour’s needs and wants takes priority over the pursuit of ones own personal happiness. Politically, he is teaching them that the role of government – e.g., of the president – is to enforce that altruistic ethical code with express or implied threats of fines, imprisonment or death. And, psychologically, he is setting them up to feel paralysing guilt whenever they dare to believe that they exist independently of others, that they should think for themselves, that they should make the rational pursuit of their own happiness their highest purpose, or that it is not the role of government to use force to cause people to act altruistically.

By suggesting that the problem with Obama’s speech (or other elements of his education program) are wrong because they are designed to build support for the Obama cult, or for “liberalism”, the best that conservatives can hope to achieve is a rejection of Obama. The cost of their efforts, however, will be that – by failing to condemn the philosophy that Obama is preaching – they will have implied there is nothing wrong with it. The conservatives’ silence implies that – just as Obama says – we are all indeed part of a collective, that the president can know things that one cannot know for oneself, that one is – first and foremost – ones brother’s keeper, and that the purpose of government is to force everyone to sacrifice for one another, at the expense of personal happiness.

In short, Mr. McParland, it is not the case that the conservative is delusional or paranoid for believing that there is a red under his bed. There is. The real problem is that there is also a red sleeping on top of it.

“When I was in high school, I asked a local politician what I should study in order to be a politician. He said: “Study whatever you want”. At the time, I thought he was just being rude; just saying “get out of the way kid, you’re bothering me”. However, I now know that he was right, at least in the sense that he would have defined “politician”.

If you merely want to get elected, it really doesn’t matter what you study. Electoral politics is 99% who you know, and 1% what you know (which is why everything is so screwed up). However, if you want to be a Prime Minister/Premier, history suggests that parties elect lawyers to be party leaders such that, when the party wins the greatest number of seats, the party leader (in our system) becomes the Prime Minister/Premier. A law degree would certainly be an asset: not because of what you learn in law school (you can learn all of that by just reading law texts), but because a degree tells others that an institution trusted by many (i.e., a university) thinks you know a fair bit about the law.

Indeed, all university degrees are just that: credentials. Credentials are just pieces of paper issued by trusted people or institutions that vouch for you in terms of what you allegedly know. What you, in reality, know, may be something very different (something less or something more; something better or something worse). Apart from a law degree, I cannot think of any credentials that are any better than any others for the purposes of getting elected.

Now, if you want to actually achieve something good once elected, that has nothing to do with universities or degrees. It has only to do with what you actually know. And, by far, the most important topic of study, if you want to do something good while in office, is philosophy…in particular, Ayn Rand’s philosophy (Objectivism), but you should learn the tricks used by other philosophies to ’sound’ rational and ‘feel’ good. You should learn those other philosophies so that you can soundly defeat the arguments of those whose claims or decisions are implicitly or explicitly guided by those other, irrational, philosophies.

Of secondary importance, for a politician who wants to do good while in office, is law. A legislator is a law maker. When I buy a house, I want it to be assembled by carpenters, bricklayers, electricians etc. I do not want a house built by a lawyer who has no house-building skills. One would think – I think rightly – that to know what one is doing when drafting or supporting a piece of legislation, it is indispensable to have a firm grasp of the law (starting with constitutional law and the common law of contracts and torts). The laws of a jurisdiction are like the parts in a watch: filing a tooth off of one sprocket (or what have you), or changing a gear ratio here or there may cause the entire watch to tell time wrongly or not to tell time at all. Every change – if made responsibly – requires the legislator to keep in mind the full context of the law and the effect on that body of law of the one change he/she is making.

I hesitate to add one more: economics. Libertarians (Objectivists are not libertarians) implicitly or explicitly go around quoting economists in support of individualism. This is like using land surveyors as an authority for whether an area of land should slope downward. Surveyors describe, they do not justify, and so it is with economists. Economics describes how things do work (or how things would work, were the facts different), but it is not ethics. Ethics, not economics, deals with the issue of what ought to be…it even plays the key role in answering the question “Should that area of land slope down?”.

More importantly, capitalism – the only social system compatible with man’s nature – is the separation of economics and government. Therefore, President Bill Clinton’s famous desktop sign “It’s the economy stupid” is 100% wrong. If you’re a law maker or governor, it’s NEVER the economy, stupid. Government ensures that no person obtains values from others without the consent of those from whom the values are obtained. Government – not a gang, but a government – never involves itself in “stimulating” the economy, or bailing out failing businesses, etc.. It is an asset to know what you are talking about when it comes to economics but – as a politician – only so that you can (a) identify and end current interventions by government, and (b) be sure that the laws and decisions you impose are not ones that intervene in the economy.

Finally, if you are going to read about economics, start with Ludwig von Mises…not Hayek, not Friedman, nor any of the host of other “libertarian” economists. And, if you are reading Mises, ignore his ethics: stick to the economics in his works.

I hope that helps.

Regards,

PM”

“Freedom of speech has limits”, some say, just before, reflexively, they trot out the inevitable “for example, you can’t yell fire in a crowded movie theatre”. I always imagine them silent, feeling legally bound not to tell anyone in the theatre that the snack bar is on fire. Mostly, such folks make such assertions baldly, having little logical argument to back up their conclusions. This allows them to sneak in an unprincipled regulation of “hate speech” here, and an unprincipled regulation against the importation of lesbian books there. Still, in implying that the government should regulate some speech, such people are closer to a correct and correctly-worded argument than those who assert that no speech should ever be regulated: that the government must be prohibited from regulating speech, full stop.

“Freedom of speech is absolute” these purported advocates of freedom say. Seeing themselves as brave, clear-thinking political philosophers who despise compromise and trace every argument to its ultimate logical conclusion, such people often proceed to explain that there should be no laws against defamation. Usually, their argument, boiled to its essentials, goes something like this:

“Physical force should only ever be used in response to the initiation of coercive physical force. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you. Therefore, it is wrong for anyone, including government, to regulate speech.

Sure, if I defame you, you might lose customers. But you do not own your reputation. You don’t have a right to your reputation. Your reputation is just the beliefs in other peoples’ heads, and you have no right to dictate what they think about you. The real problem – and it is a widespread problem – is that people fail to treat everyone’s claims as false-until-proven-true. Nobody should ever base their decision upon some claim that someone has made. Doing so is irrational.”

Though well-intentioned in some cases, such people are defending not reason but anti-rationality. Wittingly or unwittingly, they are making arguments that implicitly oppose laws against some instances of murder, slavery, and theft. Intentionally or unintentionally, they are opposing freedom, not advocating it.

Freedom is control. Specifically, it is control over ones own liberty and property; over the pursuit of ones own survival and happiness. The role of government is to ensure that no other person causes you to lose that control; that no other person deprives you of your freedom.

A person can use physical force to cause you to lose control over your own life, liberty or property: he can use a gun to murder you, enslave you, or rob you of your cash. However, physical coercion is not the only method for denying you control over your life, liberty or property. It can be done with “speech”; with words.

By selling you a can of highly corrosive acid labeled “Soda Pop”, a person can deprive you of your life. By framing you for a crime you did not commit, or by bearing false witness against you, you can be deprived of your liberty. By selling you an ineffective substance as “a new, 100% effective cure for strep throat”, you can be deprived of your property (i.e., the money you paid for the substance). Common to each example is the making of false or arbitrary assertions upon which you or others found decisions concerning your life, liberty, or property.

Such losses do not require that the recipient of false or arbitrary claims be irrational. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, another person can be regarded, quite rationally, as being innocent and honest. It is not irrational to believe that a can labeled “Soda Pop”, purchased at your local variety store, actually contains soda pop, unless you have evidence that the claim is false or that someone responsible for making that can available to you for purchase is dishonest about the nature of the product. It is not irrational to believe an eye-witness’ testimony that he saw Mr. Bloggs stab Mrs. Bloggs, unless you have evidence that the claim is false or that the eye-witness is not honest. It is not irrational to believe a claim that a given substance is “a new, 100% effective cure for strep throat” in the absence of evidence that the claim is false or that person making the claim is dishonest. Yes, over time, evidence to the contrary of such claims – or that support the conclusion that such claims are arbitrary – might eventually be found: someone else may die after drinking the “Soda Pop”; the person who framed you might confess; your friend might try the strep-throat substance and discover it is not effective. However, before there is evidence that a claim is false or arbitrary, or that the claimant is dishonest, it is not irrational to believe such claims.

Rationality does not imply infallibility or omniscience. Even a perfectly rational person can be deprived of control over his life, liberty or property as a result of decisions – his own decisions or decisions made by others – that are founded upon a false or arbitrary claim. A rational person might die from drinking the corrosive substance labeled “Soda Pop”; he might be sent to prison for a crime he did not commit as a result of a purported eye-witness bearing false witness against him; he might spend money on a substance that does not fulfill its vendor’s promise to cure his strep throat. A false or arbitrary claim can cause even a rational person to err, and that is precisely why the making of such claims can result in you losing control of your own life, liberty, or property.

When used to deprive someone of control over his life, liberty, or property, the role of physical force is to render the victim’s mind irrelevant. Coercive physical force targets the mind.

When used to deprive someone of control over his life, liberty, or property, the role of false or arbitrary claims is to cause even the most rational mind to err. False and arbitrary claims target the facts of reality.

Control necessarily implies consent. Agreement procured with false or arbitrary claims is essentially equivalent to agreement procured at the point of a gun: agreement, in such cases, is not consent. In respect of attempts to deprive someone of control over his life, liberty or property, the effect of false or arbitrary claims is the same as the effect of coercive physical force: to obviate consent.

It is for this reason that government rightly imposes and enforces laws against fraud. The defrauder falsely claims to have control over a value that, in reality, he lacks; he misrepresents the facts of reality so that his victim will draw an erroneous conclusion that would not, otherwise, have been drawn. He thereby causes his victim to agree to transfer control of something (typically property) to the fraudster without ever receiving control of the promised value in exchange. The law rightly responds to the making of such false claims by forcing the fraudster to compensate his victim or otherwise pay for the loss his false claims allowed him to cause.

For the same reason, government rightly imposes and enforces laws against defamation. The defamer falsely claims another person to lack a value (e.g., skill in his trade), or to have a disvalue (e.g., an history of criminal conduct); he misrepresents the facts of reality so that others will draw an erroneous conclusion about his intended victim. He thereby may deprive the victim of those values – whether material (e.g., lucrative contracts from clients) or spiritual (e.g., the admiration of another person) – that the victim has or would otherwise have obtained. When such losses occur as a result of a defamation, the law rightly punishes the making of such false claims by forcing the defamer to compensate his victim or otherwise pay for the loss his words allowed him to cause.

“Freedom of speech” – a law prohibiting government from punishing the expression of ideas, beliefs, etc. – would be an oxymoron were it to imply that government cannot outlaw speech calculated to obviate consent and thereby to deprive a person of control over their own life, liberty or property. Ask yourself: how would “freedom of speech” be the result of a “freedom of speech” law preventing the government from taking any action against a person who, by means of fraud, obtains copyright in an author’s work so as to prevent the printing and distribution of the work; so as to prevent the author’s words from reaching any audience?

Individual freedom – control over ones own life, liberty and property – is the very thing that constitutional laws guaranteeing freedom of speech are intended to defend. It is the only thing a law guaranteeing free speech logically can defend. That redundancy is why, in the final analysis of the concept “freedom of speech”, the words “of speech” are non-essential and, ultimately, dispensable.

Freedom of speech laws rightly prevent governments from outlawing speech that does not deprive an individual of control over his own life, liberty or property; that does not deny anyone his freedom. If interpreted to prevent governments from outlawing speech that does deny other individuals their freedom, “freedom of speech” laws would facilitate and legalize many instances of murder, slavery and theft. And, for that reason, those who say government should make no law that punishes any kind of speech at all are, or are assisting, the enemies of freedom.

Political philosophy draws a distinction between liberty and property. I submit the distinction is best drawn as follows:

• Liberty is control over ones self.
• Property is control over something other than oneself.

For the concept of “self-ownership” to have a logical meaning, it has to be assumedmake any sense, it is necessary to imply that you are made up of not one piece but two: you are made up of the “self” and something else that owns the self. That part – that mysterious owner – is not the body and it’s not any part of the body. Nobody considers a dead man’s brain to be the owner of his body, any more than they consider his liver to be the owner of his body. In practice, those who speak of “self-ownership” consciously or subconsciously assume that the owner is the mind; that the mind owns the body, or that which occurs in the material realm. Therefore, if one considers the concept “self-ownership” to be a valid concept; if one considers one to own ones self; it is necessarily the case that, consciously or subconsciously, one is drawing a dichotomy between the mind and the body.

To the person who believes that the mind and the body are separable, liberty becomes nothing more than a special case, or a synonym for, property – a special kind of property: property in ones self. Alternatively, if liberty is not a kind of property then it means that ones mind controls ones mind controls ones mind, etc., recursively, ad infinitum: a ridiculous, recursive meaning of the word “liberty”.

Now, consider the position of the person who does not draw a dichotomy between mind and body; between spirit and body; between soul and body. For such people, liberty refers to control over ones body, whereas property refers to control over things other than ones body.

To the person who regards mind and body as inseparable, it is “self-ownership” – not liberty – that has the ridiculous and infinitely recursive meaning: that the self owns the self owns the self etc.

Who, then, finds it necessary to use this concept of “self-ownership” in defence of freedom? Who is it that uses “self-ownership” as the reason to oppose laws against abortion, laws against the use of drugs, laws requiring organ donation? The answer is: those who, consciously or subconsciously, assume that the mind, the soul, and the spiritual are separate from the brain, the body, and the material.

“Self-ownership” is a concept compatible not with rational philosophy, but with any number of irrational ones. It serves not those who believe freedom is the logical consequence of a commitment to reality and reason, and a necessary condition for the prevalence of reality and reason, but those who want to treat freedom as somehow axiomatically virtuous; who want to render all metaphysical, epistemological and ethical arguments unnecessary and redundant, or interchangeable; who want to base freedom upon any number of different and conflicting metaphysical, epistemological or ethical beliefs; who want to believe that freedom can be the result of numerous different philosophies, whether rational or irrational; whether committed to reality, reason and self, or whether committed to god, obedience, and etc.

In practice, most succinctly, “self-ownership” is a concept used by conservatives and libertarians who are afraid of being divisive on the issues that are most fundamentally at the base of freedom – the justification of freedom: metaphysical beliefs, epistemological beliefs, and ethical beliefs. They want to side-track all of those aspects of philosophy. All of the under-pinning of political philosophy they want to shunt to the side, and instead replace them with these floating abstractions like “self-ownership” (a concept actually borrowed not even from politics but from law: something subsequent to political philosophy). All in an effort not to have to deal with, or to try to deny, or to try to pretend, that reality, reason and ethics have no important role – are not indispensable – in justifying freedom.

I will just conclude that, in the rational person’s lexicon, the term “self-ownership” really should not exist. In its place should be a single word: liberty.

Note: the above text is a transcript of Paul McKeever’s video of the same name

An Explanation

When I visited the home page of the National Post post today, I saw this:

…and, just to see what new sort of Jonah Goldbergesque happy-facism (mis-spelling intentional) one could expect to see at David Suzuki’s www.powerwise.ca website, I clicked on the powerwise banner ad. Here’s what I saw:

The colour-coded squares are, I discovered, “tips” submitted by people who visit the site and register with it. I noticed that one of the Green “conservation” tips was labelled “The only real solution”. Given the bold nature of the claim, I thought I’d have a look. Here’s what I found:

In case you cannot read the tip from the image, here’s what it says:

The only real solution

Suggested by growth_smarts

Given that any conservation efforts are futile in the face of growing population

1. One child per family incentives now, and remove incentives for more than that.

2. On average, immigrants greatly magnify their ecological footprint when they move to North America. The last thing this planet needs is more Canadians. Stop all immigration now.

3. Face the reality that indefinite growth, whether economic or population, is a radical and dangerous concept on a finite planet.

4. Give up our addiction to shiny toys.

5. And always keep in mind that there are liars, damned liars, and economists.

Please note that this anti-immigrant “tip” was made possible because of the kind contributions of powerwise’s tax-funded sponsors, including: Enersource Corporation (Hydro Mississauga), Horizon Utilities (Hamilton), Hydro Ottawa, Power Stream (Vaughan and Markham), Toronto Hydro, and Veridian Corporation (a number of municipalities east of Toronto). In other words: taxes are being used to fund and promote anti-immigrant, paranoid, anti-industrial Völkisch rubbish.

Now, with the owners of so many web sites being charged with violations of section 13.1 of the Canada Human Rights Act because of content added by registered visitors, it would be remiss of me not to put this Völkisch, anti-capitalist, anti-industrialist, anti-happiness, anti-individualist, anti-reason powerwise.ca (to sum up: leftist) website content into its proper context for your consideration. Under section 13.1 of the Canada Human Rights Act:

“It is a discriminatory practice for a person or a group of persons acting in concert to communicate telephonically or to cause to be so communicated, repeatedly, in whole or in part by means of the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking within the legislative authority of Parliament, any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination”.

And, under the Act, prohibited grounds of discrimination include:

“…race, national or ethnic origin, colour…”.

Given the various human rights complaints launched by people who claim that a web site’s content may expose them to hatred or contempt, I ask you: if posting a silly cartoon of Muhammed may expose Muslims to hate, is it not equally valid to conclude that the Völkisch trash above may expose immigrants to hatred or contempt?

As an advocate of reason – hence a person who regards racism as immoral and who opposes censorship – I’ll certainly not be filing a human rights complaint about the powerwise.ca site. And could you blame me for laughing at anyone who would hold their breath, waiting for the left’s human rights opportunists to file a complaint about the powerwise.ca “hate site”?