Destroying the Global Village In Order to Save It?

President Barack Obama is very insistent on the need to “save American jobs.” The spending and the Buy American provisions of his massive stimulus package, approved by Congress in February, were meant to “create or save” millions of U.S. jobs. “Saving jobs” was also the stated goal of his recent pledge to eliminate tax advantages for companies that do business overseas. But instead of saving American jobs, Obama’s new corporate tax is apt to worsen what is already the highest unemployment since 1983 and make America’s companies even less competitive in the global marketplace....Destroying Jobs In Order to Save Them, Veronique de Rugy, Reason, August/September 2009

Reason's writers, such as de Rugy, clearly believe that logical argument makes a difference in the world. And, it does. It would be impossible for a researcher to produce a working vaccine against a virus without following a precise, orderly examination of both the virus and its targets in the human body to see how they interract. Only then could the researcher design a vaccine. It would be impossible for an auto manufacturer to operate in the world without a mix of engineering expertise and execution, a comprehensive understanding of material and labor sourcing, and marketing research to discover if what was to be offered had any likely market.

In looter politics, if I can borrow one of Reason's likely favorite phrases, logic has no place. Reason is what's attacked by the looter as "heartless". We don't need Ayn Rand to tell us, but it bears repeating, because that wasn't a philosophically filtered observation on her part, but a direct observation based on her experience during the Russian revolution and for the first year or two of the Russian civil war. The looters took over, wrecked the old society, and created a 70-year tyranny from which Russia has yet to fully recover.

The only way to counter looter politics is to organize to turn it out of office and drive it from its power centers in bureaucracy and the judiciary. Reason will not help, except for those who are already attuned to what reason has said. You can look to Reason for that, but you'll have to look to presenting the case for ridding our politics of the looting philosophy to get any further, such as candidates, campaigns and office.

Luther