David McElroy

If there’s something wrong in the world, there’s one sure-fire way to make it worse — put the federal government in charge of it. Yet that’s what the White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid want to do to fix Internet security.

The plan from Senate Democrats would give the Department of Homeland Security the power to tell businesses how to run their Internet security. Putting the people behind the TSA in charge of security would be like giving Deputy Barney Fife the power to tell banks how to design security to outwit masterminds.

Computer professionals aren’t happy with the news. According to the writer of CIO.com’s IT Security Hack blog:

“And, as with much legislation, it basically extends government power without actually improving anything. Businesses already know hacking is costing them money – this is really the only incentive needed for them. Fortunately and unsurprisingly, a lot of industry groups are lobbying against this because of the additional costs it would mean. What businesses really want is a law that would give them legal protections so they can share information with authorities without risking antitrust or privacy violations.”

The federal government has been “fixing” health care for the last 50 years or so. Everything it’s done so far has made things even worse, despite the good intentions that are invoked each time the government takes more control over the system. And then when those changes have unintended consequences of making things worse, the “solution” is to demand even more power to fix things. The real solution is to get government out of the way and let the market work. It’s the same way with the Internet.

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The most common email I get lately is about Ron Paul. This is just a small, edited sample. In some cases, expletives have been deleted, too.

Why do you call yourself a Libertarian when you hate Ron Paul and are trying to stop him from winning????!!!!

I’m not a big-L Libertarian — a member of the Libertarian Party — but I’m generally a small-L libertarian. However, I don’t hate Ron Paul. In fact, I like the guy. (He’s my favorite statist.) As I’ve carefully explained, I admire him and I’d be happy if he won. But he can’t win, for reasons that I’ve also outlined. I don’t know how to be more clear than I’ve been.

This is our last chance to take our country back. Ron Paul has to prevail for liberty to win. Even if he doesn’t, we’re educating people and will win another time.

First, your statement presupposes that there was some golden age of freedom until the nasty progressives took over. (Or maybe the social conservatives are your enemy. I don’t know. I’m just guessing.) The truth is that there was more economic freedom a hundred years ago, for the most part, but there was much less freedom in other areas. In terrible fits and stops, there’s been some progress in the area of social freedom, even if I don’t like the methods used to get here at times. (Ask minority groups how much freedom they had in some places 50 years ago.) We weren’t all free in the past. Not 20 years ago. Not 50 years ago. Not a hundred years ago. There’s nothing to “take back.” We’re shooting for something that hasn’t been done before.

Second, there’s no evidence that people are educated in campaigns, at least not in substantial numbers. You can cite your buddy, Steve, or your friend’s sister’s boyfriend, Jim Bob, maybe. (Or maybe even you.) But if you look at the big picture — the number of people who identify with libertarian positions — it’s not really changing. When I got into libertarians politics more than 20 years ago, we were taught that we could educate people and we’d end up with a libertarian world (or at least enough to win elections). It hasn’t happened, and my campaign experience convinces me that it never will happen in enough numbers to matter. Sorry, but I’m being realistic.

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The older man at the next table looked a bit as though he was lost. I wouldn’t say he looked sad. He seemed more like a man who didn’t know where to go or what to do — almost like a little boy who had lost his parents. I had no idea that he had actually just lost his wife.

Jim and I struck up a casual conversation, but he didn’t have a lot of enthusiasm at first. If I hadn’t made a passing reference to his wife, I’m sure we wouldn’t have talked any further and I wouldn’t have learned his story. He had been sitting in a booth staring aimlessly out the window for close to an hour as I ate and wrote. Since I noticed he was wearing a wedding ring, I joked that his wife must have kicked him out of the house and he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

“I buried my wife two weeks ago,” he said softly.

Jim is 72 years old and seemed to be in excellent health. His wife had developed some kind of cancer early last year and it moved into more critical organs as the year went along. He had known for months that she didn’t have much time left. It’s still a shock to have her gone, though. He said he doesn’t quite know what to do.

He had once had his own accounting practice, but he hadn’t really wanted to retire, so he had stuck around working part-time for others ever since he sold his firm. For his entire life, his work and his church activities have taken up the vast majority of his time. He seemed to have done well financially, but he started talking to me about the things that have been on his mind since he lost his wife.

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