The discovery of the Times Square SUV bomb by a Muslim street vendor is but the latest civilian thwarting of an attempted act of terrorism. Earlier civilian action foiled attempted plane bombings by the underwear bomber and the shoe bomber, and of course the sole aircraft that failed to hit its intended target on 9/11 was brought down not by the billions of dollars of heavy flying artillery the U.S. military maintains, but by its civilian passengers.

Which begs the question: Why is it that we’re all baa-fully turning one liberty after another over to the Police State—and paying for the privilege, to boot?

Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder rattled sabers in their rounds of the Sunday news shows—adding Pakistan to the long and growing list of terror-breeding enemies to be guarded against, and warning the Pakistan government—previously heralded as an ally—that the U.S. expects “more” from it in fighting terrorism.

With the axis of evil growing ever-larger and more far-flung, Americans can only expect further losses of our rights, privacy, and any remaining, minimal civility from our “public servant” police and security forces.

But why? There’s little evidence the police state that has grown exponentially since 9/11 is producing anything other than more terror. And if the premise that such belligerence is the greatest creator of terrorists, Canada may soon be the latest joining the evil axis, if this treatment of a man and his wife foolish enough to think the U.S. would welcome shoppers to its shores is any indicator:

While luckily (and likely narrowly) escaping arrest so far, I’ve experienced first-hand this kind of belligerent “because I said so” attitude that is very difficult for one raised to view oneself as a free and autonomous adult not to react badly to—as I’ve no doubt most people who travel or otherwise come into contact with the increasingly officious clerk class have as well.

Is it finally time for everyone to yell, “I”m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”? They can’t arrest us all.

Without the EU’s $1 trillion bailout, Greece would surely find its economy in really big trouble, as opposed to the merely big trouble it’s now facing.  The negative economic impact would ripple throughout Europe, and the world.  Stock markets rallied on news of the bailout, showing that the financial community approves of this move to avoid a catastrophe.

At one time, Europeans didn’t think a move like this would be a good idea.  Article 104b(1) of the Treaty Establishing the European Community, ratified in 1992, says, “The Community shall not be liable for or assume the commitments of central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of any Member State…”  Yet that is what Europeans are doing (with help from the International Monetary Fund, and therefore also the US).

Members of the EU agreed to limit their deficits and public debt as a condition of membership, and Greece violated the agreement, which landed them in financial trouble.  One way to look at this bailout is to ask whether, when the rules are violated, the violators should suffer the consequences, or be helped by those who didn’t violate the rules (or didn’t violate them as much).  On that ground, the answer is clear: Greece violated the rules and should not be bailed out.  Furthermore, as cited above, the bailout violates the EU’s own rules saying the Community shall not assume the commitments of central governments.

Another argument is that the euro zone countries are bailing out Greece to protect themselves from the fallout, not just to help the wayward Greeks.  But this argument seems weak on several grounds.  The argument is vague enough that before addressing it one would need to figure out how, exactly, a Greek default would harm the other euro zone countries.

One thing that should be clear is that a Greek default would not weaken the euro.  The euro, as a monetary unit, would be unaffected.  In fact, the bailout is more likely to weaken the euro, because it makes it more likely that the other euro zone countries will tolerate inflation to lessen the real value of the Greek debt they are taking on.  Looking just at the strength of the currency would argue against a bailout, not for it.

A default would hurt European banks that hold Greek debt, so a bailout indirectly supports those banks.  But if that’s the concern, a better policy is for each individual nation to support its own banks.  The easy and direct way would be for the national governments to buy the Greek securities held by their banks.

Everybody knows that Portugal and Spain are teetering on the edge, and could follow Greece into default.  The Greek bailout can help reassure investors to keep interest rates in those countries down, lessening the likelihood that they, too, will require assistance.  But when they do require assistance, the EU may not be willing or able to act.  Would they devote another huge sum of money to Portugal?  And the speculation is that Spain is too big for the EU to offer a bailout similar to the one Greece got.  So, temporarily, Greece has been propped up, but when Spain and Portugal end up in the same position, the bailout mechanism will collapse.

Without a bailout the message would have been sent to Portugal, Spain, and the rest of the EU to shape up fiscally, or they could find themselves in the same trouble as Greece.  With the bailout, the message seems to be that fiscal problems aren’t that urgent, because the more responsible EU countries will step up to rescue the irresponsible.

If Greece hadn’t been bailed out, the effects would have been felt largely by the Greeks, whose irresponsible government put them in this position.  (But, we must also fault the Greek unions and public sector workers who insisted on unsustainable public sector spending.)  The bailout means that the effects will be spread more generally throughout Europe.

Meanwhile, a poor precedent has been established.  Despite the EU’s agreement that some countries would not bail out others, the EU has demonstrated that their agreements have no teeth.

Were the Europeans correct when, in 1992, they agreed they would not bail out members, or are they pursuing the correct policy now, with the bailout?  I think it’s the former.  They knew what the right policy was to begin with, but didn’t have the courage to carry it out.

The Independent Institute’s pathbreaking, new book on modern, secular religions, The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion vs. Environmental Religion in Contemporary America, by Senior Fellow Robert H. Nelson, has just won the 2010 Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize for Best Book.

Published by Pennsylvania State University Press, The New Holy Wars is a project of the Institute’s Center on Culture and Civil Society. The book earlier was named Montaigne Medal Finalist and “Significant University Press Title for Undergraduates” by Choice magazine (American Library Association).

Here also is the original news release on the book and please see the following recent articles by Dr. Nelson based on the book:

“Environmentalism Is the New Secular Religion” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other newspapers)

“A Missed Opportunity on Energy” (Baltimore Sun)

“Have A Little Faith” (Forbes.com)

“Ecological Science as a Creation Story” (The Independent Review)

X :  I will serve the people of this district to the best of my ability.

Y:  I intend to look out for my own interest every step of the way, so unless you’re the highest bidder for my services, you’d better start saying your prayers now.

 *     *     *

X:  The people have spoken, and they have chosen me.

Y:  The rich guys and well-heeled organizations that backed my candidacy picked me to run, and they coughed up enough dough to buy or steal this election for me. I’d be a damned fool to forget who put me in office.

 *     *     *

X:  America needs A, B, and C.

Y:  My critical electoral coalition stands to make a shipload of money off of A, B, and C. If I want to keep my sorry ass in office, I’d better do everything in my power to see that the government carries out A, B, and C.

 *     *     *

X:  I will always level with you.

Y:  Watch my lips. If they’re moving, I’m lying (because I’m not such an idiot that I’d ever own up to the disgraceful way I sell my soul to the devil every day of the week—and that includes Sunday, when I make a show of attending church.

 *     *     *

X:  I only want to do what’s right for America.

Y:  I spend virtually every waking hour raising money for my next campaign. My staffers handle the legislation according to what my biggest contributors tell them they want us to do for them.

 *     *     *

X:  We need to put aside partisan bickering and work on solving the country’s problems.

Y:  Those bastards in the other party had better watch their backs if they know what’s good for them.

 *     *     *

X:  Every country in Europe has Program R, and the American people deserve nothing less.

Y:  If Eurosclerosis is good enough for Europe, Amerosclerosis is good enough for America.

 *     *     *

X:  We simply cannot afford to defer dealing with the deficit any longer.

Y:  Some of you peasants still have money, and we intend to squeeze it out of you and give it to the scoundrels who bankrolled our election (minus a healthy cut for ourselves and the bureaucracy, of course).

 *     *     *

X:  America’s commitment to Israel is ironclad and permanent.

Y:  I can’t possibly get reelected if I buck the Israel lobby, so don’t even bother me with your sob stories about mistreated Palestinians.

 *     *     *

X:  I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Smith.

Y:  Please, God, don’t let the media ever find out the truth about me and Samantha.

 *     *     *

X:  I want to know what’s on your mind.

Y:  I have a computerized setup that will send you an irrelevant, self-serving, boilerplate reply. If you wanted real access to me, why didn’t you make a big contribution to my campaign.

 *     *     *

X:  The committee’s legal staff assures me that the courts will find Program Z to be constitutional.

Y:  Who the hell are these morons who keep asking me about the Constitution? How come security let them into the hall?

 *     *     *

X:  Every American child deserves the best possible education.

Y:  When it comes to providing money and warm bodies for my reelection campaign, the NEA is hard to beat. So what if the brats can’t read and write?

 *     *     *

X:  America must have a defense second to none.

Y:  Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and the rest of those merchants of death know which side my bread is buttered on. It’s all bullshit anyhow, because the USA doesn’t have a credible enemy in sight, but the rednecks are suckers for spending gazillions on this whiz-bang junk.

 *     *     *

X:  Every American has a right to first-rate health care.

Y:  There’s not enough money in heaven and earth to keep this absurd promise, but by the time Granny is dying and declared ineligible for the government-rationed care she needs to keep on living, it will be too late for her to vote for my opponent in the next election.

 *     *     *

X:  Wall Street must be held accountable for plunging the country into a financial and economic disaster.

Y:  Note to self: Have the staff see what can be done to conceal the ungodly amounts of money I’ve received over the years from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and the rest of those malefactors of great wealth.

 *     *     *

X:  The family farmer has always been the backbone of America.

Y:  ADM a family farmer?? Ha ha ha ha—you’re killin’ me, you’re killin’ me!

 *     *     *

X:  Of course, I’m for free trade, but is has to be fair trade, too.

Y:  These U.S. manufacturing dinosaurs may be doomed to extinction, but as long as they are willing to put the big bucks into my campaign coffers, I am willing to screw the American consumer.

 *     *     *

X:  We must protect America’s borders.

Y:  Borders, schmorders—I’d open the gates of hell if I thought there was a vote in it. Right now, though, the crackers are so stirred up about the Mexicans coming in that I’d better play the xenophobe card.

 *     *     *

X:  Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Just let me assure you that I will continue to do my very best to prove that I deserve your continued trust and support.

Y:  Money talks, bullshit walks.

…is either Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society” or Mises’s “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.” Here’s a link to Hayek’s paper, in honor of his birthday (HT: Steve Horwitz).

Audi’s ad agency no doubt thought itself very clever in creating the Green Police “satire” ad that aired during this year’s Super Bowl.

Turns out they were just (slightly) prescient.

Alexandria, VA now has new residential recycling bins with a built-in monitoring device allowing the city to track resident participation in the city’s recycling program

“If you know who’s participating in the programs, you can focus your education and outreach to those who are not participating,” said Stacy Herring, Alexandria’s recycling coordinator.

If you want to see what that [re-]education and outreach might look at, here’s the Audi ad:

HT: David Theroux

If Joe Lieberman’s totalitarian plan to give the State Department authority to strip Americans of their citizenship is implemented, all those protections that citizens enjoy that are currently deprived from non-citizens would be a chimera. Since 9/11, the government has treated citizens and non-citizens differently, brutalizing both groups but being especially despotic toward those deemed non-Americans. In the habeas corpus rulings from the Supreme Court, conservative Antonin Scalia consistently argued that citizens should enjoy far stronger habeas protections than non-citizens—in his dissent for Hamdi (2004), Scalia boldly took the most civil libertarian position on the Court; in Boumediene (2008), his infamous dissent was the most anti-habeas. The grounds for his distinction were largely the issue of citizenship.

Conservatives have long been inconsistent on the concept of natural law. They say our rights come from God or human nature, but then turn around and say non-citizens do not have the same rights citizens have. But in any event, if Lieberman’s horrid idea comes to pass, the existence of citizenship will be contingent upon whether the State Department determines that a person has conspired with terrorist groups.

This is a dangerous proposal for many reasons. First, what constitutes terrorism and being an enemy of the United States has been somewhat up in the air over the last several years. Especially with the new Brown Scare aimed at the populist right, mainstream conservatives, libertarians, militia groups, violent extremists and everyone in between, we see the threat of a left-liberal administration cracking down on dissent with ever more despotic tools at its disposal. Many of us warned conservatives that every precedent against civil liberties established under the Bush years could come back to haunt us under a liberal regime, and here we see it beginning to happen.

Second, if due process is contingent upon citizenship, which can be taken away at the whim of the State Department’s designation of someone as a terrorist ally, then we have a genuine Catch-22. Without due process and habeas, how do we know if someone is a terrorist? If the government is able to eliminate due process because someone is a terrorist, without using due process to determine that he in fact is one, we have here a situation of true Alice-in-Wonderland justice.

Sadly, many left-liberals are jumping on the war on terrorism bandwagon now that a man they love, rather than one they despise, is in charge of the project. Perhaps conservatives will snap out of their love of the national-security state and see that tyranny is indeed most likely to come, as Madison is quoted as saying, in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Conservative Glenn Beck is taking the right position on the due process question as it relates to the alleged Times Square attempted bomber, as leftist Robert Scheer notes. We need all the dissent we can if we are to turn back this most frightening tide of totalitarianism.

Once again leading the way in zany legislation, California’s Santa Clara County became the first locale to ban toy give-aways with meals exceeding the Department of Health and Human Service’s recommended maximums of 485 calories, or with more than 35 percent of their calories from fat or 10 percent from added sweeteners, or that have more than 600 mg of sodium.

All this in the name of the War on Obesity.

Of the many causes for childhood obesity, toys with meals don’t even make it on most lists. In contrast, living in a single parent household—the number of which has exploded as the government has subsidized them—appears to be the number one correlation for childhood obesity.

Unfortunately, ObamaCare will further subsidize obesity, by removing the financial consequences of unhealthy lifestyles from their practitioners. When health insurance is priced according to risk factors—including obesity—rational individuals respond by addressing those risk factors.

As predicted, now that the costs associated with obesity’s attendant health problems are to be borne by “society” rather than the individual, “society”—i.e., the state—will increasingly exercise its “obligation” to dictate the terms of every aspect of what used to be considered our private lives: what we eat, drink, ingest, or inhale are just the earliest and easiest areas to control; and children are an already-accepted dependent class of citizen.

It takes little imagination to see where this is headed; and given the rapid pace from banning smoking to banning trans fats and now banning Happy Meals accelerating so quickly, it is unlikely to be long before this thin edge has expanded to widespread outright prohibition on all sorts of food and drink. And of course, enforcing prohibitions also means a more powerful and intrusive State: how about in-home monitoring and/or random blood or urine tests?

Parents like Chris Mackey may soon find themselves cited by Child Protective Services for child endangerment for daring to believe:

“I don’t need politicians to tell me what I can and can’t buy for my kid … This is a private matter between me and my child.”

Sorry, Chris, but when it takes a village to raise a child, don’t be surprised when the village takes over.

Don’t let my title mislead you: I don’t want to get into the controversial subject of abortion.  I’m talking about a woman’s right to choose how much salt to consume.

Recently, the FDA has proposed limiting the amount of salt in processed foods.  This article notes that two Congressional supporters of the idea, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, and Representative Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut, are urging the FDA to put this on the fast track.

It is interesting to note, however, that both Senator Harkin and Representative DeLauro support a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion.  Representative DeLauro says, about proposed legislation to limit women’s access to abortions, “It invades women’s personal decisions.”

It appears, then, according to these legislators, that choosing whether to have an abortion is a personal decision, but choosing how much salt to eat is not.  Like I said at the outset, I don’t want to discuss the abortion question, but I do support a woman’s right to choose how much salt to consume.

At least since 9/11, the Democrats have, if anything, been even worse than the Republicans in their push for a national ID. I recall the Bush administration, very early on, dismissing this totalitarian idea, although Bush soon enough signed the Real ID Act into law, with the support of hawkish and anti-immigration conservatives. But the establishment left is also a major threat on this front, and Democrats traditionally get a pass on civil liberties issues, whereas under Republicans there is more populist criticism of surveillance, police powers and the like.

Consider the Orwellian program being proposed by the Democratic leadership as part of “immigration reform.” Alexander Bolton writes:

Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation to carry a national identification card with biometric information, such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft of the measure. The proposal is one of the biggest differences between the newest immigration reform proposal and legislation crafted by late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment. It would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases.

Whereas the Kennedy/McCain bill was bad enough, containing both positive elements and nasty ones, this new monstrosity would force leviathan’s way even further into every employment relationship. And this actually speaks to the false dichotomy between civil and economic liberties. Both incorrectly bifurcated forms of freedom are rooted in the same set of property rights, first and foremost in one’s own person and, by extension, in the tangible property one acquires justly through homesteading, gifts and honest market transactions. If Big Brother tries to comprehensively regulate immigration, he can smash economic freedom of association. And if the state has the power to oversee our economic lives, our personal freedom will always suffer in the process.

This also is a good time to question the entire idea of the national government trying to “seal the borders,” pick winners and losers among immigrants, decide who gets all the welfare benefits of being a legal immigrant and who is not even allowed into our golden door. Invariably, when the federal government imposes its way on immigration, we get some immigrants who come in with legal sanction and quickly become dependents of the U.S. government—whereas illegals are probably not net beneficiaries of the welfare state, legal immigrants might very well be. What’s worse, plenty of people are denied peaceful and legal entry when all they want is to enter the job market, improve their situation and that of their families, and join in the American dream. Of course, despite the state’s distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, most illegal aliens are de facto invited by the American people—by those who employ them, rent to them and associate with them as part of the community and in the glorious network of voluntary exchange known as the market economy. Since conservatives often say our rights come not from the government but from God and the nature of man, it is not for the government to decide whether someone should have the right to live here or not—it is up to individuals and communities, which obviously are able to sustain a fair number of illegals. Moreover, constitutionalists in particular should question the very notion that the feds have legal authority to crack down on the border, since immigration is not an Article I, Section 8 authority of Congress. Conservatives especially should follow Reagan’s example and embrace immigration amnesty.

The violence in Arizona is a consequence of too much government meddling—the drug war that causes the inflated profits and black market conditions on which gangsters thrive, as well as the immigration controls that lead to abuse of aliens at the hands of coyotes and others. A heavy-handed government response to it and to the immigration issue generally will inevitably yield disastrous consequences for the economy, the rule of law and, most important, individual liberty. Some folks fear that Obama will be soft on the border—even as they demand that he stop taking over the economy and expanding presidential power, this is one area where they want him to be more active. But no one should fear the Democrats will do nothing about immigration. One should instead fear that they will do all too much and that we will wake up living in a police state, with the walls closing in.

See also: “Will the Democrats Save our Civil Liberties?”

Robert Higgs on the “Your Papers, Please” mentality.

William J. Watkins on the REAL ID Act.

Peter Laufer and Benjamin Powell on open vs. closed borders.