The American Reformation Has Begun, Ron Paul the Modern Day Martin Luther

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* I wrote this 2-20-2010

On October 31st 1517 Martin Luther trudged up a hill to the Castle Church in Wittenberg and nailed his 95 Theses to the door in the early morning light. The Theses amounted to a moral indictment of the Catholic Church, the controller of this world and gate keeper to the next. It was an act of supreme individual defiance, and an almost suicidal act. Martin Luther likely did not expect to see the sunset that day.

Yet Luther had reached a place in his psyche where he felt he had to say what he believed, that Rome, the Catholic Rome, had become a Babylon that represented all that Christ did not. Luther believed there need not be an arbiter between man and God. Salvation was granted by God alone, and not by some functionary of the “Church,” who was paid for this absolution.

Basically Luther called Rome out as an immoral, indeed anti-Christian, force in the world.

Many others had come to this conclusion in the years before Luther and many of these people had found their fate at the stake. But technology had changed Luther’s world. With the invention of the printing press 65 years before, the mass production of writings had become possible and so ideas were now much more easily spread. Even more vital was that the laity was becoming increasingly literate and so could download Luther’s ideas.

Many of the newly literate class had undoubtedly come to many of the same conclusions as Luther. For those who could read, the Church stood in stark contrast to the words of Jesus which they now had read first hand. The Church was a fist that extracted tribute and furthered corruption. The literate man could see this. Where before the average person had to rely on a priest to read the word of God to him, now he could read Jesus’ words himself. And the thing is Jesus was a revolutionary.

Luther had the guts to put this general inkling of the Christians of Germany onto paper and then to make these observations public. Others reading his analysis then took his work and sent it viral across Europe, thanks in large part to that new technology, the printing press. It was not long before The Reformation, essentially a spiritual, societal, economic, and political transformation was in full swing across Europe.

Flash forward half a

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Ever get the feeling that the government and the media are one and the same? Well, they are. This simple graph shows to what extent.

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This is just the tip of the iceberg. These are just the big names. All of the news outlets are full of people at nearly every level who have spent time government, then gone into the media, then back into government, then back into media, etc. This is why many folks in the news game (and for most of them it is a game) really do think of themselves as “The Fourth Estate.” They consider themselves part of the “government.”

The infographic below sheds a little light on the connection. But trust me, its far worse than this.

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How to Cut $17-$20 Billion from Defense Right Away (For Starters)

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Defense expenditures are double what they were in 2000. We need to find our way back to 2000 levels and then cut beyond that.

I say this as a navy brat with family currently in the military and the defense industry. It is absolutely crazy that we spend what we do on the military. The military is a big part of big government. A huge part.

The military unlike most federal expenditures is specifically outlined as a responsibility of the federal government in the Constitution. However, the expressed responsibility is for the defense of the nation, and I’m pretty sure the founders didn’t mean in the “good offense is the best defense” sense of the word. They envisioned a much more limited roll for our military. They certainly would not have approved of established bases in sub-Saharan Africa or in Australia.

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Francois Hollande Promises “Growth”

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The new president of France campaigned on the theme that France and Europe need less   “austerity” and more “growth.” In the article below, he promises Greece more “growth.”

The problem is that his dichotomy of “austerity” versus “growth” is false. It is false because the policies that Hollande identifies with growth actually created the recession and related “austerity” in the first place. It is all very well to favor “growth,” but to do so one must first have some idea what creates economic growth. And it is certainly not more government deficit spending and government jobs, together with stifling regulation, interference in every conceivable way with the price system, all lubricated with endless money printing. This is a formula for unemployment, not for growth.

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Rhode Island got into the video game business with Curt Schilling. Surprise! The company has defaulted.

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Curt Schilling (yes the Red Sox pitcher) and the state of Rhode Island went into business together making video games a little while ago. The taxpayers of Rhode Island underwrote Mr. Schilling’s venture with a $75 million loan guarantee.

Now 38 Studios is in default and it looks like the taxpayer is on the hook.

Politicians want to play venture capitalist all the time but they just don’t get the whole risk thing. Why? Because the money they put up is not their own.

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Citizens Fix Vital Road by Themselves at Fraction of the Cost, Instead of 2 Years Took 8 Days

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There is nothing more full of cronyism than road repair, with the possible exceptions of trash collection and banking. Often firms with connections to local politicians get sweetheart deals (not always, sometimes there is real bidding for jobs) and nice cushy projects which seem to take forever to get done.

I used to have an office next to a courthouse and I once watched a construction company pull up a brick crosswalk in front of the court, a year old crosswalk mind you, and then take 2 weeks to lay down new brick. I asked one of the public defenders why the project happened at all, seeing as the original crosswalk was nearly brand new. He explained that the walk was not even and so had to be redone.

I walked across that bit of brick every day. The bricks were as even before the project as they were after the project.

Multiply this scenario by 1000 and you have what goes on in Baltimore or Cleveland every day.

No wonder we can’t get anywhere anymore.

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“The fundamental flaw of the welfare state is that you should do good with other people’s money” – Milton Friedman

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Milton Friedman is one of my favorite people in economics. Though I disagree with him on some major points he is such a pleasure to listen to and learn from.

For those who are too young to remember Friedman’s Free to Choose series in the early 80s broadcast on PBS no less, it was ground breaking and represented the best part of the pro-market thinking that was happening in the United States and in Great Britain at the time.

In the below video Friedman discusses the “island of freedom” that was/is the United States and why it is that free societies shackle themselves.

He identifies the welfare state as well intentioned for the most part, but a system which in the end leads to tyranny and misery.

His commentary is as fresh today as it was in 1977.

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