Nothing New Under the Sun

From Howard Hyde's 'President's Address' to the Southern California Republican Women and Men, February 22, 2014:
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We are privileged to have at our meetings several candidates for public office and many concerned citizens promoting initiatives that they consider of great importance. Some of our campaigns are more effective than others, and I'd like to talk today about one aspect which might be helpful to our candidates and activists in helping them achieve greater success.

If your campaign or crusade is not getting gaining the traction you had hoped, it could be that the presentation lacks sparkle or excitement, or that you're not hitting all the emotional touch points. We have talked a lot here about the disadvantages that Republicans face against Madison Avenue- and social media-savvy democrats and their Hollywood friends.
Even so, conservatives have a decisive advantage in facts and logic and rational argumentation which explain the conservative dominance of the nonvisual medium of talk radio, for one, and I want to talk today about reinforcing that great advantage that we do have.

Living in America in 2014 we have a tendency to flatter ourselves into believing that we are so much more sophisticated and intelligent than our forebears because we can download an app to our iPhone, but the truth is that most of our brilliant new original ideas are nothing more than a rehash of things that have been thought of and worked out many times over and in many nations throughout history. For example, preferential policies toward different ethnic groups, whether majorities or minorities, have been practiced around the world, with results ranging from disappointing to catastrophic, for centuries before President Lyndon Baines Johnson announced ‘goals’ and ‘timetables’ for what became known in this country as ‘Affirmative Action’.
So if you really want to be effective, it behooves you to first be sure that you can articulate the fundamental principles and assumptions underlying your program and for minimal credit read the author or philosopher that articulated those principles before you were born. For extra credit, read the author or philosopher who articulated those principles over 100 years ago; for double bonus points cite the person who either proposed them or already debunked them over 1000 years ago. Because trust me, the more or original you think you are, the more likely it is that some Greek or Roman or Midieval thinker already came up with it long ago.
Many of us are familiar with the Laffer Curve, named for our contemporary Arthur Laffer, an economic model that demonstrates that beyond a certain rate, taxes actually reduce revenue to the government, and that at that point tax cuts actually result in increased revenue and therefore don’t have to be ‘paid for’. (Incidentally Laffer has a book out in 2012 titled ‘Eureka! How to Fix California’ that is highly recommended.) But as Ronald Reagan pointed out in one of his radio addresses years before he was elected President, Andrew Mellon, Treasury Secretary to 3 presidents, presented the same concept 90 years ago in his book ‘Taxation: The People’s Business’. In fact, the chinese philosopher Confucius pointed out to his contemporaries that the government would enjoy greater income under lower tax rates because the people would be more productive…2500 years ago. So as the Bible says, there is nothing new under the sun.

I have tried to acknowledge these principles in my own writing including my book ‘Pull the Plug on Obamacare’. Even though it is a short, pamphlet-like publication targeted at the lay reader and focused on contemporary events, I have tried to demonstrate transcendent principles which apply. Because the pretensions of Obamacare were demolished at least 94 years ago.
Ludwig von Mises published his masterwork demolishing the intellectual foundations of socialism in 1920. In summary:
If the state owns or otherwise controls all capital goods, land, natural resources, factories, machinery, services, and labor, then there is
•​no market for these goods
•​no buying and selling,
•​no bargaining and haggling,
•​no competition to compel lower prices, higher quality, better service or the division of labor.
•​no play of Supply and Demand.
•​and ultimately, no prices.
Prices constitute the indispensable information system for signaling the abundances, scarcities and alternatives in an economy. Socialism fails every time it is tried because economic calculation is impossible in the absence of a functioning price system.

As applied to the health care market, these same principles apply. The more the government commands and controls health care services, physicians, insurance, drugs and medical equipment, then … it is very easy to fill in the blanks from Mises’ template.

Beyond convincing my fellow Americans that Obamacare is a bad idea, I hope to get across something more fundamental, based on principles that have been examined very thoroughly well prior to our current political season. I hope this approach can help all of you in your campaigns as well.
Thank you.

Why be a Republican?

This message appeared in the February 2014 edition of the newsletter of the Southern California Republican Women and Men.
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Why Be a Republican?
Many people who see clearly the anti-constitutional and socialist path of destruction that our generation’s Democratic Party is taking us down, nonetheless are often reluctant to identify themselves as Republicans, much less get involved in Republican political organizations. There are many rationalizations. Politics is distasteful and divisive. The GOP is impotent in a one-party (D) state. Or, my favorite: “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties.”
Riddle: What costs more than a dime and was brought to you by one party and one party alone? Answer: Obamacare.
Even so, many would-be allies feel that the Republican party is flawed, ineffectual and/or corrupt; too liberal, too conservative, too corrupted, too libertarian, or not libertarian enough. Whatever way it cuts for you, the bottom line is this:
1) The Democratic Party of today has moved galaxies away from John F. Kennedy’s tax cuts, economic growth and strong anti-communist stance; from Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s authority on family morality and welfare; and from Joe Lieberman’s position on the Middle East in general and Israel in particular. In a word, that party today is hopeless (take it from one who was one for two or three decades).
2) The Republican Party will remain less the way you would like it precisely to the degree that you withhold your participation. In other words, if the Republican Party isn’t strong enough on taxes, join a Republican organization and exercise your influence to strengthen the party on taxes. If the party doesn’t communicate its message effectively, volunteer your outstanding communication skills. If you think the party is full of mean, nasty people, then join it and invite your kind, gentle friends to join with you and purge the mean nasties and change the face of the Party. If your name is Bob, make the Republican party the party of Bob. There is no ‘them’. You, I, we, are it, with the accent on YOU.
I am an ex-Liberal Socialist Progressive Democrat from Berkeley. I changed my mind after experiencing living under socialism abroad for 4 years and studying classical political economy and re-examining all of the presumptions of my ‘default factory setting’ (hat tip Evan Sayet). Even so, I wasn’t terribly interested in becoming a partisan political type. But I went beyond intellectual dabbling to become an activist when I realized just how dangerous our country’s direction had become with the implementation of socialized medicine.
What will it take to get you off the bench and involved, proud of the ‘R’ next to your name? See you at our next meeting.

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College Republicans Speak to Southern California Republican Women and Men

This article appeared in the January 2014 edition of the newsletter of the Southern California Republican Women and Men, introducing the featured panel that was to speak to the club on January 25 at the 94th Aerosquadron restaurant at the Vanuatu Nuys airport.

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Our Academic Panel for the the January Meeting
We have a very special panel of speakers for our January 2014 meeting, consisting of student presidents of Republican clubs at our universities. These courageous young people are taking the fight to perhaps the most hostile territory for conservative and Republican ideas that there is in our society today: the university campus. They deserve our admiration and support.
With the exception of a few institutions like Hillsdale College and George Mason University, the progressive socialist education cartel has a diabolical lock on the minds of our students and by extension our future citizens and voters. Through the union-controlled elementary and secondary schools and like-minded professoriat, they ensure that young people get a steady, life-long diet of leftist socialist progressive thought that puts conservative, libertarian and even constitutional principles beyond the pale.
What should be an environment of open inquiry, free thinking and diversity of viewpoints – a liberal arts education – has become instead a closed club of political correctness and speech codes. By limiting the supply of students even exposed to conservative ideas, the future supply of conservative professors is effectively suppressed.
Not all students fed the liberal socialist diet remain that way forever; many young people, once they get mugged by the reality of work and production, business and family, freedom and responsibility, have a significant change of outlook and philosophy. But unless they act quickly while they are yet young, there will be little opportunity to pursue academic careers and counter the leftist bias on campus. Thus the club is insulated from effective feedback or correction. The most critical element of the scientific method is falsifiability; this element is completely suppressed in the the social sciences at our universities.
The Leadership Institute, Prager University, Ron Paul's education project, David Horrowitz’s Freedom Center, FrontPageMag.com, Breitbart.com, the Tea Party Patriots, AmericanThinker.com, the Cato Institute and other conservative, Tea Party and libertarian organizations are putting in a noble effort. But it is most definitely an uphill battle for the minds of the next generation.

President of Southern California Republican Women and Men

Last November I was elected President of the Southern California Republican Women and Men, an independent club established 1935, for 2014. Below is what I wrote for our January 2014 newsletter:
President’s Message
The 2014 election cycle is upon us, and the stakes are the highest they’ve ever been. From Benghazi to Teheran and from Washington to Cedar Rapids, the Obama-Reid-Pelosi administration has been an unmitigated disaster for America and the free world. We will be living with the consequences for years, perhaps generations.
Obamacare (and/or whatever single-payer or other system the leftists manage to put in place after the collapse) poses a singular threat to our survival as a nation of free and prosperous people living under the Constitution and rule of law.
Socialized medicine cuts to the core of who we are as a people, our national character. When a supermajority of the American citizenry becomes slave-wards to the state, having surrendered all control of the most intimate details of our lives, dependent upon Washington for every band-aid and condom, then there is no way we will be able to lead in a dangerous world requiring sacrificial initiative, creative courage and independent thinking. We will, in the words of Ronald Reagan, be “telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
For these reasons, Republican retention of the House of Representatives and capture of the Senate is critical. We Californians do not have a senator up for re-election, but we can support challengers against vulnerable Democrats in other states. As a matter of strategy, we can identifiy the senators whose constitutuents are polling most opposed to Obamacare, and go on offense in those races. Tea partiers need to get out in front of moderate Republicans and established power brokers who would dilute the campaigns. Above all, complacency is not an option.
In spite of the manifest daily disasters of Obamacare, there will remain many citizens who are not as alarmed as you and I are. On such people we may work three words: Jobs, jobs and jobs. Because of the Obama administration’s open hostility to free markets, capitalism, entrepreneurs, constitutional principles and liberty itself, we have the worst employment environment in over 30 years, with the labor force participation rate the lowest in 35 years, giving the lie to the ‘official’ unemployment rate. Black youth unemployment in particular is, in an ultimate irony, at catastrophic levels. People who are losing their jobs, being cut to part-time or seeing their friends and family suffer the same, are opening up to alternative explanations of what’s going on and why.
We can expect little help from big donors or top-down power brokers. The fate of our country is in the hands of us, the grassroots, talking to our neighbors. Let’s start by showing up!