Mark Steyn: Statism the only thing being stimulated

Economy • May 2009 • Views: 479

We’re spending trillions we don’t have to create government programs to spend even more trillions we don’t have.

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4 comments

Last Mohican May 23, 2009 • 7:37:12pm

Argh! There’s that word again, “statism.” Now it’s in two of the top ten links at the same time!

The Steyn piece was great, but I really, really wish he wouldn’t use that word “statism.” However Mark Levin meant it in his book, and whatever his interpretation of libertarianism is, to me “statism” will forever be nothing more than an empty epithet that extremely simplistic Paulians use to insult people whom they don’t like.

Mark Levin is certainly not a Paulian. In fact, I just discovered a pro-Ron Paul video, on a lovely little White Power blog called “White Now,” called “Kike Neo-Cohen Straussian Mark Levin on Ron Paul & How Ron Paul Can’t Win.” Nevertheless, that word “statism” gives me the creeps.

Mike P May 23, 2009 • 8:11:00pm

According to dictionary.com, the word “statism” has been around since about 1600. Here’s the definition:

[T]he principle or policy of concentrating extensive economic, political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual liberty.

It should give you the creeps, not because of who used it, but because of what it means.

Ayn Rand, who most certainly did not consider herself a libertarian, had quite a bit to say on the subject. Here are some excerpts.

Last Mohican May 23, 2009 • 8:32:50pm

re: #2 Mike P

Thank you for the background. And for the link to the Ayn Rand lexicon.

I will concede that the word was not invented by Paulian freaks. But that Ayn Rand lexicon site is just creeping me out even more.

A statist system—whether of a communist, fascist, Nazi, socialist or “welfare” type—is based on the … government’s unlimited power, which means: on the rule of brute force… Under statism, the government is not a policeman, but a legalized criminal that holds the power to use physical force in any manner and for any purpose it pleases against legally disarmed, defenseless victims.
Nothing can ever justify so monstrously evil a theory. Nothing can justify the horror, the brutality, the plunder, the destruction, the starvation, the slave-labor camps, the torture chambers, the wholesale slaughter of statist dictatorships.

Doesn’t all that seem a bit extreme?

Mike P May 24, 2009 • 12:05:27pm

re: #3 Last Mohican

It is extreme, but those things actually happened in the 20th century, and continue to happen today (take a look at virtually any headline regarding Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, etc. — invariably reported by the international press, not the press in those countries, which is simply a mouthpiece of the government).

I’m hoping that your unease with an honest description of statism is a rational reaction to events happening here at home (I’m assuming you live in the U.S. or another relatively free country). Rational because you see a pattern of behavior by our government and can use the history of the last century to project where it might lead if left unchecked.

Fortunately, these policies can still be opposed. That’s what Mark Steyn does by writing his op-ed pieces. That’s what I’m doing by posting comments on LGF and anywhere else I think I might persuade at least one other person to do the same thing. Evil ideas are fought with good ideas. Statism is fought by advocating liberty and rational self-interest.

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