David McElroy

I don’t watch presidential candidate “debates” anymore, and last night was no exception. You can usually predict the winner by figuring out which candidate has the lowest IQ and is willing to pander the most. That’s a good fit for the average voter. I don’t have a strong enough stomach to watch that.

I have a lot of friends, though, who are getting excited about Ron Paul‘s chances of winning the Republican nomination. His fundraising is kicking into high gear and his message is starting to catch on with younger people. The momentum is building for a grassroots campaign. Oh, wait. That was 2008, wasn’t it?

I’m having deja vu as I observe my excited libertarian (and some conservative) friends throw their efforts into a new Ron Paul campaign, because it really does feel a lot like 2008. I’m hearing the same things from his supporters. I’m hearing the same vague sense of irrational optimism. I’m having trouble figuring out why such bright people — many of whom I love and respect — are being sucked into a campaign that has no chance of winning. I frequently tell people that it would be easier for me to get my dog, Lucy, elected president than Paul — partly because Lucy never ran for president on a party platform that supported illegal drugs. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

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How are folks on the political left reacting to the London riots? Are they horrified to think that this might represent the logical conclusion of teaching people that private property isn’t legitimate? On the contrary, I’d say that the ones I’ve been able to sample are pretty delighted at this “legitimate political act.” They say they want nonviolence, but many of them seem perfectly willing to claim these hooligans as their own.

At the website of the anti-consumerist group, AdBusters, there’s an article right now that’s very clear about where these people stand:

“When we always see looting as nothing but thieving and refuse to grant to it the status of a conscious political act, an outburst of ‘popular justice’ against a corrupt and corrupting capitalist system, we are assuming the point of view of the very forces we are trying to overthrow.”

I want to be equally clear. These aren’t revolutionaries of any political stripe. They’re amoral thugs and looters who want to steal what’s not theirs — simply because they can get away with it. They are the logical consequence of where the welfare state has been gradually leading us for close to a hundred years. It’s going to get worse.

The state does exactly what these looters do. The state has simply learned to do it with bureaucrats and forms in triplicate instead of breaking windows. Despite the nicer face, the state’s demands are always backed with the threat of a gun.

If you need more evidence that people’s lack of ability to reason is part of why majoritarian systems break down, here’s some more evidence.

I’ve written a couple of times recently about the sales tax that my suburb’s City Council is about to shove down our throats, even though 72 percent of voters said “No!” to a property tax increase last year.

One of the popular ways to sell a sales tax increase is to tell people it’s “just a penny.” I mean, nobody worries about a penny here or there, right? Take a look at this comment left by a woman on a local newspaper’s website:

“I don’t have a problem with the increase. IF people could do math…eh hemm..like when tipping at a restaurant…they would realize it’s ONLY 1 cents on a dollar that THEY choose to spend. It’s not like it’s 100s or 1000s of dollars like when they were trying to raise our property tax.”

This woman is apparently too ignorant to realize that pennies add up to millions of dollars. The increase (which is a whopping 50 percent hike from the city’s previous sales tax) is expected to raise about $5 million a year. That’s a lot of pennies.

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