War Gave Us Caesar (a Paleocon Rant)

Ludwig Von Mises Institute ^ | October 12, 2004 | Adam Young

[robowombat]

While this is mostly a paleo temper tantrum it does pose a pertinent question. Under the current order of things is there really any limit to government intervention either domestic or foreign?

[kjvail]

Be careful this is a neo-con board, people have been banned for posting such hereasy.

[mike182d]

Under the current order of things is there really any limit to government intervention either domestic or foreign?

The militas and the right to bear arms. If these go, then we've got an empire on our hands.

[Shryke]

people have been banned for posting such hereasy.

Heresy? More like barking-moon-bat paranoia. Look at this:

Around the world, he bombs innocent people, launches invasions and deploys weapons of mass destruction.

This idiot is attemping to discredit our PRESIDENT. He of course does not realize that he is actually describing Saddam Hussein. Nor, I am certain, did he ever publish such a critique when Saddam was doing exactly what he ascribes to our President. This goes beyond "criticism". It's flat-out seditious propaganda straight from the DNC.

[Servant of the 9]

The President of the United States on his sole decision deploys troops anywhere in the world, blockades and embargoes foreign countries, imposes trade tariffs, and engages in election cycle credit inflation. Around the world, he bombs innocent people, launches invasions and deploys weapons of mass destruction. The President even oversees a global spy network and increasingly a global prison network.

We are the Hegemon. We can do anything we damned well please.

So9

[Valin]

Around the world, he bombs innocent people,

Chapter and verse please.

[pissant]

no one wants to ban this stuff from the site. Rather, it's good to get a chuckle from it. It's a good thing we all care so much what a pantywaist "austro-libertarian" living in the socialist utopia of canada thinks about our president and the US form of government.

[Valin]

By 1939, faced with the obvious failure to cure the effects of the Crash from ten years before, FDR and his minions began stoking the engines of war, looking for any pretext to enter the war against Germany and Japan.[9] When this occurred in 1941, the administration reimposed conscription and the Wilson administration’s total war economy, and bragged about bringing the New Deal to the rest of the world, but only brought the shadow of atomic clouds.

Riiiight.
The problem with the Paleokooks is they want it to be 1934..and it's not.

[wideawake]

Under the current order of things is there really any limit to government intervention either domestic or foreign?

The same limits apply in 2004 as in 1789.

The President has not disbanded Congress.

John Quincy Adams (who famously said that America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy") would often swim naked in the Potomac River in the early morning before breakfast.

JQ Adams was a sissy, a whiner, a nancyboy aristocrat with a mindboggling sense of personal entitlement.

If he were alive today he would be John Kerry.

Had his advice been followed by the US, Texas and California would today be part of a Mexican empire ruled by France.

Candyass.

[Dallas59]

The President of the United States on his sole decision deploys troops anywhere in the world, blockades and embargoes foreign countries, imposes trade tariffs, and engages in election cycle credit inflation. Around the world, he bombs innocent people, launches invasions and deploys weapons of mass destruction. The President even oversees a global spy network and increasingly a global prison network.

All to keep socialist libs safe in their homes and guarantee them the right say what ever comes to them thru crystals, spirits, colors, auras, ghosts, plants animals, weeds, dirt,,,,

[robowombat]

Yes, I think you hit the nail on the head. This is a notion that many (possibly a majority of Americans) cannot or will not accept. After Columbine I had a discussion with our secretary who as a 'mother and a grandmother' felt that guns were horrible and the cause of violence. I spent some time explaining what the phrase 'Guns are the teeth of liberty' meant.and also on the really shocking aspect of Columbine being the terrified passivity of hundreds of people faced by two heavily armed psychos. While she could intellectually understand the arguments she rejected them on the emotional basis that 'violence is evil'and that government was there 'to protect us from violence'. When this mentality becomes the overwhelming majority view we are done as free people. To me this is the true problem with government intervention into the private sphere. As a free people we have to accept some responsibility and take initiative for our own protection and well being. Not government that is'here to help you.'

[mmsturm]

This is total hysterical nonsense. Sorry I could only stand to read but about half of it but to suggest that there is no limit to presidential power is stupid. Does this writer seriously believe that public opinion does not give a president his mandate. When we went into Afghanistan AND Iraq public opinion in this country was completely behind the President(about 85% of the country wanted to take out Saddam). Does he really think President Bush would have gone to War or carried out any policy if those numbers had been reversed. The people of this country are ultimately in charge. We are idiots sometimes/or not but that is what you get with a democratic republic.

[mmsturm]

Anti-American crap. No wonder he lives in Canada

[jordan8]

The Von Mises Institute is a Libertarian organization, dearie.

[wideawake]

Eventually, he came to think that a conspiracy against the "truth" was afoot and it just reinforced his determination to forgo the work of real scholarship.

There are quite a few people out there who think that if an historical account does not read like an exciting pulp novel then it must be wrong.

Every conspiracy theorist I've met can quote Thucydides. But none of them have ever read him.

[dljordan]

Don't worry. George Bush is no Caesar.

[metesky]

It is total hysterical nonsense!

Comparing what was basically a coastal semi-isolated republic of what, six million people to the country we live in today is hysterical in every sense of the word.

My favorite line:

President James Monroe would ride around Washington on horseback.

Presumably written with a straight face, eh? I think Munroe would give his right one for a whirl around D.C. in an armored Ford Expedition.

[wideawake]

This is all the more galling because Ludwig von Mises was a serious scholar - his namesake institute is truly soiling his reoutation by associating him with this half-baked yammering.