wes.whitman's blog

Robert Mercer, a man nigh infinitely more wealthy than Donald Trump, spent millions on Breitbart in order to spread Alt-Right anti-immigration propaganda. He also spent millions helping get Donald Trump elected. When Trump was elected, he appointed Robert Mercer's daughter (Rebekah Mercer) and Mercer's people (like Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway) to top positions within his Administration. Trump, propelled by the Alt-Right anti-immigrant agenda of Bannon, cracked down on illegal immigration and has been spreading anti-immigrant propaganda and lies.

Murray Rothbard and Russell Kirk were brilliant intellectuals of the right, but they were also highly problematic. They were both walking encyclopedias. Rothbard gave us the "non-aggression principle" as a libertarian axiom. Kirk warns against insurrection and revolution. They both defend the natural law tradition. Rothbard is the founder of modern American libertarianism. Kirk founded modern American conservatism. But they also bear some guilt for Trumpism and fascism.

This latest Trump admin attack on trans people is fascist, stupid, irresponsible, and anti-scientific. The proposed Trump admin policy would make "genetic testing" necessary to prove the sex of an individual if they wanted to change their gender from that assigned at birth. The policy proposal is a trans-erasure measure, meant to erase trans people and force them to out themselves on every occasion. No trans individual would ever be able to have their sex changed on any government document because it would be impossible for any of them to pass the required test.

What distinguishes my model of libertarian social democracy from conventional social democracy is that it is neither capitalist nor socialist but geo-distributist. It uses land value tax to fund a citizen's dividend (or basic income) that makes all people co-owners of land and natural resources.

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."—Emma Goldman

The intersection of prison abolition, social democracy, and libertarianism:

If you are libertarian, you have to be a prison abolitionist. The prison system is modern day slavery, the antithesis of liberty. 1 out of every 110 adults in America is incarcerated. Many of them are enslaved for having committed non-violent and victimless "crimes."

If we want the republic, our representative democracy, to survive and thrive, education reform is most essential. If the ruler of any society is a moron, then that society is doomed. In a democracy, the people are the rulers. In times past, they trained their princes in philosophy, ethics, and science, so that they could be decent rulers. In modern times, the people are supposed to be the rulers. Mandatory public education is the corollary of republicanism. If we want a decent republic, we need high quality education.

Georgia's Secretary of State, who is in charge of voter registrations and overseeing elections, is running for governor against a black woman. They've purged voter registrations and are refusing to let tens of thousands of black people re-register. They aren't letting black people vote. This is what the Republican Party stands for. This is not a conservative party. This is a racist party and a fascist party.

If there's any true conservatives in America, they'll be voting Democrat for the foreseeable future. The Trumpist Republican Party is the party of fascism, chaos, and political instability—the harbingers of right-wing anarchy and revolution. Trump, Kavanaugh, and Ryan are molotov cocktails thrown by an angry, short-sighted, and ignorant mob to burn down the system—a wrench thrown into the gears of government to sabotage the republic. Trump's right-hand man Bannon can call himself a Leninist, because the elite clique, vanguard party, and one-party fascist State is his vision for America.

I think the most hurtful thing imaginable is knowing that otherwise decent people, people we may even care about and love, are either so ignorant or so filled with hate that they can honestly support people like Trump, Pence, Graham, and Kavanaugh. It shows that they don't really care about human rights or common human decency.