|
Back to Quack Off
Quack Off
by
Free
Market Duck
GOP “Intellectuals”
Propose Socialist Job Corps Program to Rebuild Iraq
(Updated: Jan 15,
2007)
Washington, DC – As
Ayn Rand stated in her Objectivist writings and we have stated over and over
in the FM Duck Web pages, there’s not a dime’s worth of moral philosophical
difference between America’s left Liberals and the GOP Conservatives.
Listen to
what two GOP political leaders, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and
former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, wrote in a Wall Street Journal Op Ed article
entitled, “Getting Iraq to Work:”
“The
administration should direct a small percent of that amount ($100 billion)
to create an Iraqi Citizen Job Corps, along the lines of FDR’s civilian
conservation corps during the Great Depression. The Job Corps can operate
under the supervision of our military and with its protection. The Army
Corps of Engineers might be particularly helpful in directing this effort.
It will place our military in a constructive relationship with the Iraqis –
both literally and figuratively.”
Are you kidding
me? Giuliani and Gingrich, two supposedly limited government, free market
capitalist thinkers, are proposing the equivalent of economic fascism or
socialism – i.e., the government controlling the means of production –
rather than free market capitalism to rebuild worn-torn Iraq.
After babbling on
for paragraph after paragraph about how socialism or fascism is the best
possible means by which to pull a war-torn economy out of economic hell and
into a prosperous “democracy,” which, by the way, is what Iraq already is,
that is, a tyranny by the religious majority controlling all the Ministries
of everything – as opposed to a limited constitutional government with
separation of church and state, individual rights, a 100% gold-backed
currency, and free market capitalism – Giuliani and Gingrich continue with:
“Subsidizing unemployed Iraqis with a meaningful
wage in exchange for meaningful work rebuilding their society is well within
the means of the U.S. and its allies.” (Really? Whose tax money
are we talking about here? And how is spending billions of U.S. taxpayer
dollars for Iraqis to sweep streets and paint government buildings any
different than the welfare state redistribution of taxpayer money fiascos in the U.S.?)
“The entire effort will help stabilize and grow the Iraqi economy.”
(Really? So now we assume that economic fascism or socialism is a viable
economic methodology to grow economies?) “The
program should be overseen by the U.S. military,” (Oh great.
Proposing an economic military dictatorship?)
“not private contractors, to avoid unnecessary delays in deployment or
accusations of cronyism in the bidding process.” (Like there has
already been no cronyism or waste, fraud and abuse in the previous $500
billion already spent by the U.S. military in Iraq?)
“Our military will still be devoted to its primary role of hunting down
terrorists and patrolling the streets, but administering a jobs program
would be a direct extension of their effort to secure law and order.”
Holy moly, folks, judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one. Once
again, in socio-political-economic terms, this is called a military
dictatorship. Austrian free market economists F.A. Hayek and Mises must be
turning over in their graves.
And finally, the
punch line by Giuliani and Gingrich:
“The creation of an Iraqi Citizen Job Corps will help expedite the
establishment of a more stable civil society and improve the growing Iraqi
economy through the transforming power of an honest day’s work.”
Oh my God, is this straight from Mussolini, or Stalin, or Mao Tse Tung,
or Fidel Castro or Marx & Engel’s Das Capital or Venezuela’s
socialist president Hugo Chavez?
Can you believe
that the above words came out of the mouths of GOP Conservatives? Believe
it because they said it! And the WSJ printed it.
With supposed free
market supporters like Giuliani and Gingrich, who needs socialist enemies?
Apparently, the GOP leadership has already rotted out from within. No need
for the Liberals to attack them. Just let the GOP pseudo-intellectuals open
their mouths and outdo the left Liberal socialists all day long. And, in
the world’s leading supposed free market business newspaper, the Wall Street
Journal. Journalistic etiquette should have prevailed here and the editors
at the WSJ -- whose supposed motto is "principles of free people and free
markets" -- should have exercised their scissors on the chopping room floor.
Not to stifle freedom of speech but rather to save Giuliani and Gingrich
future embarrassment when their children read their stupid article back to
them in the year of our next Great Depression in 2020 right after WW III.
Once again, those who do not understand the relationship between the
epistemological foundation for individual rights and free market capitalism
will inevitably come to wrong conclusions. Philosophy matters. And those who fail to comprehend the
basics are doomed to relive the horrors of statist-collectivist history.
So what is the
proper course of action for the U.S. with regard to Iraq? Let’s
start with the limited reasons for why we should have gone there in the
first place:
- The objective:
remove the threat of WMD to America, which Saddam DID HAVE AND MOVED to Syria
before we got there. I'm tired of continually reading in the major
press that there were no WMDs in Iraq. That's not true. Those
WMDs exist and are now spread out across various nations. Not only
that, many sources report that there are nuclear suitcase bombs hidden
away in major cities in the U.S. and Russia. We have a cold war
stale-mate going on. Read the Dulfar Report. By the way, the
War in Iraq was
not a “pre-emptive” attack by the U.S. It was a legitimate act of “self-defense”
since Saddam and others such as Osama bin Laden created and initiated the use of WMD in the
Middle East and also attacked the U.S. World Trade Centers.
- Remove military
dictator Saddam Hussein. Done. Time to go home but let’s hang out
briefly to EDUCATE the Iraqis. It’s all voluntary. If they don’t want to
listen, that’s their choice. But let them not say that we did not try to
provide individual rights and free market education to them. So, let’s
go to Voluntary Freedom Classes 101A – 101 whatever:
a)
Show the Iraqis a copy of the Declaration of Independence and U.S.
Constitution and Bill of Rights. Europeans fought many battles against the
Divine Right of Kings and discovered the concepts of a priori individual
rights. The Iraqis would do well to think about their major
ideological hang-up: the lack of separation of church and state.
b)
Show the Iraqis how to set up a 100% gold-backed currency.
c)
Show the Iraqis how to privatize their economy by, first selling
their state oil companies to private oil companies for equal shares for all
Iraqis to do with as they please. This is highly dependent upon
understanding the concepts in (a) and (b).
d)
Undo all state-run Ministries, e.g., power, water, etc. Allow free
market capitalism to rebuild Iraq through natural private enterprise
protected by an objective judicial system, including investment capital and
international free trade.
e)
Repeat steps (c) and (d) for all other state-run industries.
f)
Tell anybody who thinks about invading Iraq in the future that if
they do we will return and level the government buildings and the leaders,
but not the people, of Iran, Syria, and North Korea. If you have to ask me
why these particular nations, you are a fool.
g)
Remove U.S. troops and Go home.
The U.S.
should NOT increase the number of troops in Iraq or try to install FDR's
socialist WPA or Job Corps programs down the Iraqis throats via a U.S.
Military Dictatorship. Anybody who has studied America's Great
Depression knows that it was the Federal Reserve's previous inflationary
monetary policy that created the 1930s Recession and FDR's governmental
intervention with his New Deal socialism that shoved the U.S. into a
prolonged Depression. The solution should have been a return to a
non-fractional monetary system backed by gold and free market capitalism.
For the same economic reasons, we should not try to emulate FDR's New Deal
socialism in Iraq. We should only participate as voluntary educators
of individual rights and free market capitalism. If the Iraqis are not
yet ready for these ideas, too bad, so sad, and bye-bye, baby.
Giuliani and
Gingrich, go directly back to Basic Free Market Philosophy and Economics
!01A. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200. And do me a favor.
Take President Bush and the entire U.S. Congress with you since they don't
get it either. – FM Duck
back to top... |