Liberals Want Return to Middle Ages

Liberalism wants to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear, the Middle Ages.  Of course, as the wisest people around, liberals get to be the lords of the manor and the rest of us get to be serfs.  We need to serve the liberal leviathan state with ever increasing taxes.  Regulation serves as the forced labor serfs owe their betters, forcing uncompensated expense on serfs to benefit the liberal state.  And the liberal aristocracy has to look out for their poor serfs, who wouldn't know how to take care of themselves without guidance from their lords and masters.  The liberals and their allies in the guilds, aka unions, will decide what prices are fair.  The serfs can use pre-industrial energy technology in order to keep the environment clean for their liberal overlords.   

Taking the analogy further, environmental regulation is a modern version of the medieval forest laws of England. Serfs were not allowed to hunt game or take wood in the forest or clear the land to cultivate it or graze domestic animals in it. The forest was reserved strictly for the king and the nobles he allowed to use it. It was considered part of the Norman Yoke imposed on the people after 1066. Penalties for forest law violations were severe. For example, poachers either had their hands cut off or were blinded. Today, liberals just confiscate your land or imprison you for environmental violations.

Read the book.  It's called the "Road to Serfdom," by F. A. Hayek.

Recent Article on this topic:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/360583/medieval-liberals-victor-davis-hanson

Information on Royal Forrest Laws
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_forest

Liberals Buy Votes, Not Defense

Liberals almost always under fund all aspects of national defense.  They also do everything possible to argue that defense spending is wasted.  The reason for this is that liberals always need more money to fund their "investment" in domestic spending.  They don't want defense spending to crowd out domestic spending.  The efficacy of the domestic spending is not an issue for them.   Liberals need ever larger domestic spending simply because that's how they buy their votes.  

US Air Traffic Control:: Total Managerial Incompetence

I want to privatize US air traffic control.  That would be truly less government.  The Canadians have privatized air traffic control.  You know how liberals love to talk about how Canada does things.  The air traffic control fiasco is just another example of total managerial incompetence in government.  This incompetence is a direct result of the incentives that face government employees who make managerial decisions.  The bigger the government, the more secure your job is.  When faced with cuts, the government typically cuts the most visible services in order to get their budget restored.  This strategy is so common it has its own Wikipedia entry.  However, the FAA has a long history of such managerial incompetence.  In a recent example, the FAA did not managed to modernize US air traffic control, while wasting billions of dollars trying.  Government employees want to maximize their budget, so cost overruns are good for them. This administration's political reaction to budget cuts should make everyone think twice about allowing big government to run anything economically important, especially air traffic control.  

Description of Canadian Air Traffic Control

http://www.navcanada.ca/NavCanada.asp?Language=en&Content=ContentDefinitionFiles%5CNewsroom%5CBackgrounders%5Cairtrafficservices.xml

Article on FAA History of Waste

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/346688/extravagance-faa

Cuts Politically Motivated

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/the-faa-fiasco-90603.html

Wikipedia Entry for Washington Monument Syndrome

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument_Syndrome

Arms Race: Missile Defenses v Rogue State Nukes

The Iranians are threatening Israel with annihilation, not the other way around.  Iranian demonstrators have been encouraged by their government for years to chant “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”  ever since 1979.  The ayatollahs say they will wipe Israel off the map.   My guess, based on the Israeli view of the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust, is that Israel will use their nukes if they have to, especially when the Iranians explicitly threaten them.  The fact is that Israel has nuclear capable ballistic missiles that can reach Iran.  My guess, based on their view of the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust, is that Israel will use their nukes if they have to.   Israel also has a formidable air force.  However, it's likely that only the US, and not Israel, has the capability to significantly damage Iran's nuclear program with conventional weapons.  If the US does not take care of the Iran threat, then we may force the Israelis to use their missiles with nuclear warheads to preclude an Iranian nuclear breakout.  The only thing that could stop Israel from attacking is a significant missile defense capability.  So as it stands now, it’s a race between Israeli missile defense and Iranian nuclear weapon development.  The president says that all options are on the table.  However, he seems to be signaling, with all of his diplomacy, that the US will sit this one out militarily.  Does that seem like a smart thing to do?  

The US needs robust missile defenses as well.  Missile defenses make a small number of ICBM's less valuable.  They would tend to discourage North Korea from trying to build enough ICBM's to be effective as a credible threat to the US, because the cost would be prohibitive for them.  The argument that US missile defenses might offend the Russians and Chinese is appeasement pure and simple.  The liberal line on these issues is always in favor of spending less on defending ourselves, so we can spend more on domestic "investment," like Solyndra and Fisker.  It's how liberals buy their votes, but  it is not a rational approach to defending ourselves.

Article on need for missile defenses

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/346579/our-much-needed-missile-defense

Description of Israeli Ballistic Missile Capability

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ICBMs