Category: Uncategorized

“Do not save what is left after spending; instead spend what is left after saving.” Warren Buffett.

According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), in a recent study by its Investor Education Foundation, only about 34% of US adults surveyed could answer basic questions about finance; compare that to most European countries at 65%. This helps to explain why so many Americans make such poor decisions undermining the stability of their own lives, that of their families and society in general. Prior similar US studies had better results, which means that financial illiteracy is getting worse; this has become so alarming that the US Treasury recommended that Congress consider making financial literacy courses mandatory at the college level. Besides the fact that both Congress and the US Treasury are not exactly stellar examples of financial stability, such courses should have better results at the high school level; in fact, it’s very encouraging that 35 states starting this year require in their curriculum personal finance courses for a high school diploma.

Warren Buffet’s missive about saving and spending is a good place to start in teaching children the basics about finance, especially when we see such ridiculous phenomenon among the younger generations like “Doom Spending”; the rational for such behavior is depression about the future. Also disturbing is the attitude among some of the older generations that such education is too little, too late; that only back feeds such irrational behavior by writing the younger generations off. Compounding all of this is the grossly irresponsible behavior and cronyism of financial institutions and government. It’s understandable that without financial literacy and basic economic knowledge, such a situation can lead to depression.

The average US personal savings rate in the US has declined steadily over the years to the current 4.8% (except for the Covid period of 20%). There are countries with much higher rates, but some like Argentina are due to interest rates at 113% to counter hyperinflation; contrarily Norway, with many of its fiscal and monetary reforms, balanced budgets, low debt and low inflation has a savings rate over 60%. Clearly there’s a correlation if not causation between financial literacy, savings and stable economic conditions.

There is another underlying societal issue at play besides the lack of financial literacy, and that is a self-centered sense of entitlement that somehow society owes you stuff, whether we call it the “American Dream”, or some imagined claimed rights to things you haven’t earned; pandering to such irrational behavior only serves to perpetuate the ignorance of financial illiteracy, and that is not limited to just our youth. When politicians claim as a right the transfer of the cost of education, medical services, home ownership, etc. from some to others, it creates distorted perceptions that underwrite this ignorance.

Financial operations are the mechanics of an economy; if such operations fail or become distorted and corrupted, they will in turn destabilize an economy. It’s odd that some economists and the government use Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to evaluate how the economy is doing; it’s actually a measure of consumption and not production because it’s a metric of consumer spending. The reason why the US became the largest economy in the world was its productive capacity, which was fueled by its ability to accumulate capital that feed this capacity, and that in turn came from savings, the ability of people to defer consumption for future benefits.

The word “future” is so essential to understand when looking at finance and how it functions to the benefit of an economy. Thinking about the future is also essential to a healthy psychology; when people don’t see the point in doing so, it leads to depression and all sorts of bad behavior can come from that. What we need to do as a society is focus on education that gives our children the tools they will need in the future to make decisions that in turn benefit their futures; what we don’t need is to rely on a government that creates trillions of dollars of debt that will burden their ability to do so.

There are many financial instruments available for people that represent savings such as CDs, stocks, bonds, etc.; what they all represent is a financial means to contribute to wealth, which is something that is more complex than just money, but a good place to start. One thing that children need to understand very early in life is what money actually is; given that all “money” in the world today is fiat currency, that can be very confusing, so for children, keep it simple and just say it’s a means to purchase what you need.  For adults, they need to understand that all currencies today are simply debt instruments; take out any US currency and look at the top of the portrait side that reads “Federal Reserve Note”.  A note is a debt security obligating repayment of a loan, at a predetermined interest rate; try telling that to the Federal Reserve.

It’s not difficult to understand the motivation of politicians like Wilson, Roosevelt and Nixon to divorce the US dollar from a commodity base such as gold because that provided Americans the means to be free from government control of their money; fiat currency provides government the freedom to tax without legislation through inflation, and we’ve seen where that leads. However, while an essential part of financial literacy and economic intelligence, the subject of sound money is addressed in prior posts (Gold Myths 07.12.19) and will be revisited in future ones.

For this post, the message is that if we want to help our children learn what it takes to make a good life, in addition of course to integrity, good work ethic, healthy diet, etc., then get involved with their education and that must include financial literacy and economic intelligence.

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Benjamin Franklin

“There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.” Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville was a classical liberal in the tradition of the Enlightenment and a student of natural law, although at times he is difficult to categorize in the chaotic French politics of his time; he wrote “Democracy in America”, his most famous work of sociology and political science based on his 1831-1835 travels in the US commissioned by the French government. It is a work that illustrated his keen sense of observation and methodical analytical style based on first principles; in regard to political parties, he understood correctly what they seldom if ever are.

It was Aristotle who first proposed the original concept of first principles, an analytical method of breaking something down until it can’t be dissected any further in order to understand it correctly. This method of analyzing something has been used by many in both the arts and sciences in successful problem solving because the essence of whatever the problem is can be exposed; it’s useful in both invention and discovery by avoiding going off in the wrong direction leading to erroneous conclusions.

We can use this concept of first principles to see through the confusion created by all the chaos around us today, and better understand what is going on, rather than passively accepting the narratives bombarding us. Most of these narratives are little more than extremely partisan rhetoric filled with defamation, and stoking fear of whoever is the target; when examining any of these narratives, first look for the idea behind the message. If it’s why you should not support whoever is the target, then you need to understand what those reasons are. 

Once those reasons are identified, you then proceed to find out if there is any substance to those reasons; often we find that the substance is a chain of other narratives in support of a conclusion expressed in the initial narrative by using analogies such as whoever supports “X” is like someone who another narrative says is bad. If that happens, then what you have discovered is that the initial narrative lacked principles itself and is just part of the political echo chamber, i.e., it is not meant to inform, but to deflect away from civil discourse by redirecting the debate to better serve the narrative. Denouncing someone with name calling for having a position contrary to your own without addressing what is wrong with their position is an indication of fear coupled with a lack of intelligence.

Using first principles also provides insights about the sources of such narratives; if the substance of the narrative is not about the issues at hand but a denunciation of someone, the source itself is lacking in principles representing a resolution to those issues and instead creates narratives filled with divisiveness. When we dig deeper into divisive narratives we will discover that the consequence, intended or not, moves people away from civil discourse to the tribalism of them versus us; what we can also discover is that shrill and abusive rhetoric in the narrative lacks a rational foundation or perhaps even conviction for the opinion expressed.

There are also narratives that politicians create about policies that, when you drill down on them, you are left with little substance but many meaningless platitudes; this too you will discover is meant to deflect your attention away from a resolution of issues, if not from the issues themselves. Often such policies represent more of a way to focus blame and increase power than solve problems. Politicians often use such narratives to avoid speaking about issues that may expose either their ignorance about them, or their flawed policies to address them. Consuming such narratives is like eating processed foods that fill you up but provide little nourishment.

The first principles concept also provides what we should do about such narratives, and that is to ignore them; the resulting tribalism of those echo chambers only serves to stoke fear which creates an environment counterproductive to rational thought. While fear is a survival instinct we all have, it is one we need to control for the sake of rational thinking; divisive narratives are used to create the herd instinct, a collective and corrosive fear intended to drive people into divisions based on ignorance, which in turn is often the source of fear itself.

Like all principles, Aristotle’s concept of how to correctly understand things is not subject to moderation because that undermines its very purpose; in applying it to political narratives we can avoid the fear intended in the messaging, some subtle, some obviously playing on the very prejudices in their content. The practice of first principles means you never stop questioning so that regardless of what something may appear to be, you come to know the reality it is.

“The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.” Ron Paul

The US funding of the proxy war in Ukraine is another example of an historically proven failed policy; it’s also a principal contributor to the national debt, now greater than our GDP. The irrational nature of such policies inevitably leads to abdication of support, or direct involvement as the proxy war fails. The result of abdication is very Viet Nam and Afghanistan like as the US loses even more credibility, whereas the options of direct involvement are either as combatant or enforcer of a peace agreement; these two options are more of a distinction than a difference.

The current administration insists that only Ukraine can decide to negotiate with Russia; this does not make sense when the US and EU are practically Ukraine’s sole means of support, a position that gives them the ability to effect an armistice and peace talks, and one that has bipartisan support in Congress. The US and EU are funding a proxy war against Russia without a legitimate treaty as Ukraine is not a NATO member; European nations had rejected Ukraine’s applications to join the EU until 2022 when they granted it candidate status. This is actually a war between NATO and Russia similar to the past, except this is not a Cold War; this time it’s very much a hot war in a recycled old feud.

The Russo-Ukrainian War has been dragging on since 2014 and so far resulted in Russia annexing Crimea and most of Donbas. For whatever reason, many in mass media refer to the February 2022 Russian invasion as the beginning of this war, even though Ukraine lost a large amount of its territory to Russia early on in what is now a decade’s long conflict. Most military experts assess Ukraine’s ability to win this war as little to none, even with an astronomical amount of US and EU aid; the main reason for this pessimism is the corruption endemic to the Ukrainian regime as made apparent with the various times the security and military leaders in Zelensky’s government have had to be replaced. The US and EU are aware of the NAZI backgrounds of the oligarchs that engineered Zelensky’s election; since then, they have declared that only their party is legitimate, which now controls all mass media and press.

Despite the fact that both the US and EU know the sordid reality about the Ukrainian administration, they both backed Zelensky to be considered a candidate for the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize; while bookies and the media predicted he would win, fortunately for what’s left of the organization’s reputation the winner was an Iranian human-rights activist, Narges Mohammadi. While the US and EU have presented Zelensky as a democratic leader, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee found a legitimate and far more worthy candidate.

A reasonable question is why would the US and EU continue with the same failed policy time after time, but expect a different result; is it just an example of Einstein’s definition of insanity, or is there something else in play? What is it about this perpetually corrupt former province of Russia that motivates so much support from US and EU leaders? Why are the political and media narratives about Ukrainian democracy and not tyrannical oligarchs? Why does the Biden administration persevere in this policy when the July 2022 CNN poll clearly showed that most Americans were against further funding? Politics is a transactional affair, and Ukraine is a very resource rich area; the answers to these questions can be found in those realities.   

“What if the American people woke up and understood that the official reasons for going to war are almost always based on lies and promoted by war propaganda in order to serve special interests?” Ron Paul

“Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and everyone knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.” H. L. Mencken

Menken got it right in the first part of his quote above, but not so much the second; most Americans today likely do not give this any thought at all as they live in the illusion that these two things are the same. The word liberty is seldom even used by politicians or the media; instead, what we hear from Democrats, Republicans and the media is how everything they don’t like puts “…democracy at risk…” or is a “…threat to democracy…”. For politicians, everything they don’t like is a threat to their power, and what they really don’t like is when they’re called out on that; this is the “trigger” for their most vicious rants.

Democracy blurs the differences between the state and the people, between government and society; its goal is to somehow make everyone equal, not in opportunity, but in outcome. If an individual loses the focus on that goal in any way, on any subject, and speaks or writes something contrarian, they are spreading misinformation, hate or fake news; consequently, free speech becomes a problem for the state because it allows the expression of ideas that pose a threat to that goal.

Recently, Bill Gates supported the idea of a global digital ID system to track behavior and facilitate identification of those creating misinformation; he lamented the fact that “The U.S. is a tough one because we have the notion of the First Amendment.” Apparently, Bill Gates does not value liberty as rights are now just a notion, no longer an essential element of humanism or the Constitution; elitism is inevitable in a democracy contrary to its professed goal of equality because it is a government ruled by the mob, which is represented by political parties that in turn are ruled by those who control them, such as Bill Gates.

Politicians pay homage to democracy to facilitate state power and not because they value liberty; they use the ballot box as a tool to create the illusion of legitimacy for an increase in state power mandated by the people. The consequence of the democratic process is an unrelenting evolution to collectivism; it’s easier to wield power over the many if they become one. The US population is approximately 346M people; that includes a federal government, civilian and military, of approximately 5.75M people. It takes a huge bureaucracy to manage such a large democracy; perhaps it’s not so much that liberty is a threat to democracy as it is a threat to bureaucracy. A managed democracy benefits the managers who, in the name of democracy, decide who the beneficiaries are.

If politicians tell us that saving democracy means voting for only their party, but also that democracy is for all the people, then there is a contradiction in their narrative; it is a useful narrative if the intent is to vilify all those who don’t agree with them, and successful for convincing the ignorant they’re right. The political science synonym for democracy and oligarchy is ochlocracy, literally mob rule; as noted above, democracies inevitably create an oligarchy, popularly called the elites. The elites arise in power the more that the people decline in their understanding of the difference between liberty and democracy; it is an inverse ratio as a result of an anti-intellectualism fostered by an ever increasing reliance on information technology – why think when someone can do that for you?

This phenomenon is most apparent in two areas, economics and foreign affairs; in both cases democracy is corrosive to liberty as it undermines rights in order to project power over people it falsely claims to represent. The simplest and most concise definition of economics is the study of humans making choices about what they produce, consume and trade; when government intervenes in those choices, you get socialism, and when they don’t, you get free markets – it’s not complicated as even Karl Marx recognized that “Democracy is the road to socialism.” In foreign affairs, a free society doesn’t impose its will on other societies, whereas a democracy seeks to remake other societies in its own image and likeness through interventionism, creating conflict for a regime change. In both cases democracy professes the moral imperative of the greater good.

Both progressivism and conservatism use racism and classism to promote their narratives about democracy; this creates a divisiveness which leads to chaos, an environment that best serves whichever mob is in power. It is liberty that provides the rights and mutual respect for all individuals in a society without imposing whatever the majority believes is the greater good; the politics of democracy have no such tolerance.

“Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” John Adams

“If you are guided by opinion polls, you are not practicing leadership, you are practicing followership.” Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was first called “The Iron Lady” in a Russian newspaper; initially thought to be derogatory, she and her supporters embraced the title as a compliment to her principled and uncompromising style. She became Great Britain’s first female prime minister after first securing leadership of her party, and contrary to what the polls had forecast. The same happened in Thatcher’s re-election bids, sometimes winning in a landslide. She became the longest serving prime minister in Great Britain’s history since Robert Walpole more than two centuries ago.

Polls are curious things as they attempt to forecast the most unpredictable thing on earth known as human behavior. Most pollsters use similar methods for surveying public opinion; the most common are sampling by zip codes, computer-generated lists of phone numbers, or email addresses for online polling. The problem that arises is twofold, one being population density and the other composition of the questions. There’s actually another issue that is often ignored as there are still many Americans, especially senior citizens, who either disdain technology or have no access to it, effectively isolated from polling; maybe they’re the lucky ones.

For example, PEW uses zip codes, randomly taking an address from each to harvest a pool of about 10K potential respondents; the problem is there are over 41K zip codes in the US and the distribution is by population density, not geography. Consequently, you get far more zip codes in urban areas that are predominantly Democratic than rural areas that are predominantly Republican; this skews your data field despite being chosen randomly.

The composition of polling questions can be influenced by whomever is in charge of doing so. Richard Wike is director of global attitudes research at Pew Research Center; previously, he was senior associate for international and corporate clients at GQR Research, a Democratic polling firm established by Stanley Greenberg in 1980. It is fair to be concerned that the composition of PEW’s survey questions will be structured for answers compatible with those of the pollster.

The Heritage Foundation is a conservative organization often in support of the RNC; they conduct polling using RMG Research, founded by Scott Rasmussen in 2003. While promoted as being non-partisan, they are Republican aligned. They use some novel methods like video and audio polling, but their respondent base is not clear. They call their work “Counter Polling” but that’s not clearly defined. For example, RMG conducted a poll regarding the support for additional funding for Ukraine and found the vague result of wanning interest in doing so; questions were prefaced by Ukraine not being a member of NATO and not having any treaty with the US. While this is factually true, its inclusion as a preface to the question shades it reflectively and provides the respondent with a qualified context in which to answer.

The above does not mean all pollsters are inherently biased, but it does question the value and the accuracy that any poll can provide depending on who the pollsters and respondents are, and the composition of the questions asked. Many pollsters mail, email or text surveys with questions that are to be answered as multiple-choice, single-choice, or with options like yes-or-no, or true-or-false; this is efficient but the responses to this format depend as much on the composition of questions as on the viewpoints of respondents. This becomes especially relevant with the American electorate evenly split between Democrats and Republicans at about 30% each, with the largest segment being independents at about 40%.

According to most pollsters themselves, polls have been about 60% accurate historically. That should not be surprising when we consider that polls reflect mostly the population of their polling base more than the predictable results from voters; random sampling by computer programming does not assure accuracy of results, especially given political demographics that are so skewed geographically, which is becoming even more fluid with the increase of US migrations.

Curiously, most polls do not focus on third-party candidates. The third largest national political party is the Libertarian Party; both then incumbent presidential candidate Biden and former President Trump made overtures to the party for support, but few pollsters ever bothered to find out where Libertarians stand with either candidate. Most pollsters have made the mistake in the past, and apparently again now, that Libertarians would vote for the party’s candidate, Chase Oliver; this ignores the fact that many Libertarians vote for Democratic and Republican candidates. The Libertarian Party presidential candidate on average gets only 3% of the vote, while Libertarians overall represent about 19% of the total electorate; the same crossover occurs among other third parties, but most polls do not account for this.

Another aspect that often skews poll results relative to outcomes is the effect that principles versus affiliations have on a respondent’s answers; people who evaluate a candidate by their own principles, even when they bother to respond to pollsters at all, may answer a question by its context implying affiliation, when that’s not their intent. Given the large composition of the electorate as independent, this adds another complexity to polling that can’t be mathematically resolved.

In economics it is human action that accounts for outcomes; the same is true in all human activities, and the larger the society, the more unpredictable the outcome. Taking a sampling of any society in an effort to accurately predict an outcome like an election is extremely difficult; in that context, having a 60% success rate is not all that bad. In baseball, the highest batting average recorded to date is .466, a statistic based on outcomes, not forecasts; relying on polls to know who might win an election is to rely on the opinions of others, fair in marketing the candidate, marginally successful in predicting results.

In the 2024 presidential election, the polls rate the race as a dead heat with an estimated margin of error somewhere around 3%, which may be very generous if not wishful thinking; realistically, it should be more like 5% given the biases and variables in polling. Both major candidates carry a lot of negative baggage which may also contribute to the complexities in current polling. Chase Oliver as mentioned above humorously summed up his advantages as a candidate prior to Biden’s withdrawal with “I’m under the age of 80, I speak in complete sentences, I’m not a convicted felon; it’s a very low bar, but I’ve managed to clear that.”

This is not just an issue for polls in the US when we look at Argentina last December where now President Javier Milei was tied in the polls but wound up getting the highest number of votes in Argentina’s history. Then consider the Israeli polls where Benjamin Netanyahu often trails, but as he repeatedly says “I always lose the election in the polls, and I always win it on election day.” Americans would be better off ignoring polls and really listen to what a candidate says, or fails to say, and think about what value they would bring to their lives so they can better judge who to vote for. Warren Buffet is one of the most successful investors of our time by making value the ultimate goal, and knowing that “A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” H. L. Mencken

Mencken was a very astute observer of politics, especially of what many Americans refer to as the democratic process; his cleareyed analyses of its failures to preserve liberty and devolve into the extreme partisanship that leads to tyranny has proven prescient considering the state of American politics. Mencken was also a very outspoken critic of censorship, which was almost as rampant as it is today.

Speaking of today, it’s 9/11, yet in last night’s presidential debate, we never got any discussion about that. What the media said we were supposed to finally learn is what Harris’ policies actually are given her denial of what they were as VP of the current administration and earlier in her career; we didn’t get that either. We were supposed to hear Trump stick to policy points; we got little of that.  What we got out of this debate is that we have two candidates with childish ambitions and a startling amount of incompetence; in other words, we learned nothing new. We also learned nothing about how either candidate intends to address the $35T debt.

What we already knew and heard more of is that both will be raising taxes, Harris with higher rates to fund spending and Trump with tariffs to create jobs; both will contribute to inflation, the most insidious of all taxes. Neither candidate understands that the reason for America’s involvement in endless wars is a result of the failed policy of US interventionism. Neither candidate expressed a concern for the constitutional mandate of a separation of powers as they spoke of executive action regarding health care, abortion, the economy or foreign policy.

Both candidates lied a lot, but it was not the job of the sponsoring network or its moderators to fact check either one; the purpose of a debate is for the electorate to judge the candidates, not for the sponsor or moderators to do so. The fact that ABC did so exposes the outcome to partisan prejudice; the performance and credibility of the candidates as judged by the voters is the purpose of the debate. The sponsor and its moderators should abstain from any and all commentary in order to project objectivity and leave it for other members of the press to opine to the public.

A critical issue that was completely ignored in the debate was free speech, especially if we consider that Elon Musk endorses Trump, yet Trump never brought up the horrors exposed in the Twitter Files and Zuckerberg’s recent testimony regarding the same malpractice with Facebook that would indict the current administration’s attempts at proxy censorship; maybe that was intentional given both the media and the candidates’ tendencies to exaggerate, deceive or just outright lie. It should be apparent to us that we are being played for fools by both candidates, but unfortunately Mark Twain was right when he said that “It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.”

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” George Orwell

On 09/03/24 the US Department of Justice indicted leaders of Hamas on terrorism charges. The following day Reuters reported that the Biden administration announced they were close to making yet another new proposal for a Gaza ceasefire and release of hostages; this is eerily like Orwell’s “Doublethink”. To indict these terrorists would be a welcome moral statement, but to do so nearly a year after their heinous massacres appears not only belated, but cynically opportunistic as it comes so close to an election. For the US to be simultaneously indicting and negotiating with those same terrorists demonstrates a conflicted, if not hypocritical policy.

Politicians have used doublethink to deceive people many times throughout history, but this is a particularly heinous example because it demonstrates both an illusion of moral righteousness while betraying its principles. There will never be an arraignment to follow-up the indictment, and the administration knows that, despite the fact that once a UN member nation issues an indictment, all other member nations are obligated to arrest and extradite those indicted; does anyone expect Qatar, where the leaders of Hamas reside, to do so?

This administration has one consistent policy regarding the current war between terrorists and Israel, and that is to avoid having one; issuing indictments is not a policy, nor is it an effective response to the murders of Americans. Waving legal documents in the face of thugs like Hamas does nothing but make them emboldened to continue playing the game that so far has hamstrung Israel in its fight for its very existence. The objective and thinking American should question the ethics or the intelligence, if not both, of its government.

It’s one thing for the administration to create such a contradiction, but it’s another to maintain the obvious error as a policy that is devoid of any sense of reality; it’s like thinking that a wolf is deterred from attack by the bleating of sheep. When Americans are faced with a situation where our government acts in such an egregious contradiction that potentially puts us in harms way, we have the cruel choice of either losing our own moral compass or our respect for the administration.

While they profess support for Israel, the Biden administration has consistently been inconsistent in acting accordingly. While I do not support interventionism, either in foreign affairs or economics, the US is where it is in accordance with its policy and numerous treaties as an ally of Israel. Further, it has always been an American policy to never negotiate with terrorists, especially those guilty of the murder of Americans. Issuing indictments is fine, but until you bring those indicted to justice, they are nothing more than the bleating of sheep.

“God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of.” Bruce Springsteen

In his song Brilliant Disguise, this icon of Rock expresses a common affliction of humanity, specifically, a loss of identity. It is a great song that evokes the human need to know better our fellow man, and more importantly, ourselves. I love this song for its lyrical quality and musicality. In Verse 33 of Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu says, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.” This book is dated around two and a half millennia ago; apparently this very human need is not new.

What we should ask the two leading presidential candidates is to honestly tell us who they are by telling us their values and principles and what they would do to translate them into coherent policies; doing so would inform us which candidate best represents our values. We should beware of altruistic expressions by either candidate as they’re nothing more than self-righteous virtue signaling; what we need from them is not cliches but clear answers. Expressions of altruism signal a self-deception of proposing a greater good while the underlying motivation is power, the root of all evil; it inevitably leads to political action for coercive compliance to their world vision.

With Trump, we know what we’re getting because he’s all too willing to tell us that, so transparency is not an issue for him; besides claiming that his presidency and administration was the best in the history of the US, his policies of high tariffs, restrictive civil rights and dangerous interventionism in foreign affairs are a curious mix of traditional Democratic platforms and Neocon tendencies. It’s therefore not surprising that RFK Jr would endorse Trump, although it’s also apparent that revenge motivation was involved given the DNC’s Soviet like active measures against him.

With Harris, what we are getting is an obvious opportunist without the intelligence of the chameleon she is likened to. While she is part of the current administration, she has attempted, with the help of a compliant press, to rewrite her history. Not only has she denied the values, principles and policies she has espoused over her career, she has taken on some of those of her opponent; it takes an amazing lack of respect of the electorate for her to think that such a strategy would get her their respect. As the famous Roman historian Livy observed, “A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.”

With the American electorate, it would take an amazing lack of self-esteem to want either of these narcissistic clowns in the Oval Office; while it is inevitable that one of them will be there, we should be infuriated that we are again expected to choose the lesser of two evils, and this time between two that are morphing into each other. If we realize that in the end we would still get evil, what then should we do?

When we are left with such a choice, it’s called a dilemma; what we should want to know to solve the problem is to understand how we got to this dilemma to begin with. That would require asking ourselves who we are that we should find ourselves in this situation. It is clear that we are so divided because we have lost our identity as a nation, but then we have to define the identity that was lost; is it something we now doubt that once we were sure of? We are told by politicians, the press and the pundits that this coming election is all about saving democracy, and therein we find the fallacy attempting to define who we are.

The fact is the US is not a democracy, but a republic. In our republic we have a fundamental law called the Constitution; it is not something that governs us, but what governs those who would govern us. Our Constitution prohibits the government from violating our inalienable rights, even if that government was elected by a majority of the people. In a democracy, the voting majority has almost limitless power over the minority; it is synonymous with mob rule, which is all about power as whoever has it rules.

There was a time when children were taught basic facts about the American republic called Civics; it is not part of the curriculum in modern education. Consequently, younger generations are deprived of a fundamental understanding of their nation’s form of governance like the separation and balance of powers, the sovereignty of the individual and protection of liberty. What they get instead is an indoctrination of social justice, best described by the economist Hayek as, “The idea of social justice is that the state should treat different people unequally in order to make them equal.”

When people are treated unequally, they become resentful and tend to gravitate toward whomever they perceive best advocates their grievances; this invites opportunistic politicians like Trump and Harris to prey on a disaffected populace, creating partisan politics not conducive to civil discourse. Such an environment creates doubt regarding the nature of the country and what it stands for that its people thought they were sure of, and that leads to a loss of identity.

So who are you? Do you know the difference between compassion and compulsion? Do you understand the concepts of free trade, free speech and free choice? Do you know what civil discourse means? Do you know the difference between opportunity and outcome? Do you understand the evils of interventionism in foreign affairs and economics? Do you understand the natural laws of life, liberty, and property? Do you know what sound money means? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you have the basics to not doubt what you are sure of. If the answer is no, learn so you can understand, or rely on God to help you because neither of these two candidates will.

“You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” Ayn Rand

That the old phrase “come back to haunt you” played out yesterday in NYC at a Harris campaign rally as Hamas supporters rioted. Kamala Harris has expressed sympathy with the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters who she says are “…showing exactly what the human emotion should be.” Rioting is no more a part of a peaceful protest than war is a humanitarian effort, regardless of what emotions are involved. For a presidential candidate to sympathize with the supporters of terrorism ignores reality, and Harris should take responsibility for the consequences of ignoring that reality.

Trump says that he will impose punitive tariffs on China and other countries to the benefit of Americans; however, tariffs are taxes imposed on imported goods paid by consumers. Further, it would likely result in a trade war as China would retaliate with their own tariffs on American imports; historically, trade wars often lead to violent confrontations. These realities about tariffs are not addressed because to do so would expose their use as irresponsible political propaganda to attract votes from a financially stressed and poorly informed electorate.

Likewise, we have Harris finally talking about issues, in this case, the economy. Ahead of her planned speech tomorrow on her economic agenda, her campaign managers have announced her plan for a federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries; even Nixon was more honest when he imposed price controls by calling it what it is, which has in all cases throughout history resulted in economic disasters. Rather than address inflation, which is the root cause of high prices, Harris irresponsibly deflects blame to businesses for the high cost of food.

Trump is promising that if elected he will again suck-up to the military/industrial complex with increases in the defense budget; at the same time, he continues to avoid discussions on the debt, likely because his own record as president was hardly a beacon of fiscal responsibility. When you combine Trump’s militaristic tendencies with his trade policies, we have the risk of another Bush era of dangerous interventionism, something that was so irresponsible as it resulted in a painful series of forever wars for the American people, not to mention the embarrassment of military and policy failures.

Harris was assigned the task as the “Border Czar” by Joe Biden soon after his inauguration. While that title was first coined by Obama in 2009 when he appointed Alan Bersin, the media picked up on that for everyone who was put in charge of the border since, so regardless of what the media says now, that’s what they called her. There’s something curious and confusing about that title as the Secretary of Homeland Security already has that responsibility, and the use of the word Czar implies a higher command; what we have here is a way to pass the buck, but where to, and what does this make Joe Biden? The reality is that the border failure and the resulting immigration crisis are consequences Mayorkas, Harris and Biden choose to ignore or deny responsibility for.

Trump made an audacious but absurd appearance at the Libertarian Convention last May; to think that he expected anything but the raucous rejection of his overture was delusional, but then again we’re talking about Trump. He later went on to ridicule the candidate, Charles Oliver, including oblique references to the fact that Oliver is gay. Trump’s campaign managers have advised him to avoid his addiction to demeaning those he disagrees with and focus on policies; while he has made many policy statements, he irresponsibly continues with his addiction.

As a libertarian, I am often advised by friends that I should be more “realistic” and vote for whom I consider to be the lesser of two evils, meaning either a Democrat or a Republican. This advice assumes that voting for the same failed policies over and over again, and expecting a different result is realistic; besides, what you get with the lesser of two evils is still evil. I am very objective about the reality in which we find ourselves, and well know that it’s unlikely that a libertarian will be in the oval office anytime soon. The fact that Javier Milei won the presidency of Argentina in 2023 as a libertarian is encouraging, especially as it was up against a powerful Peronist regime with a strong political organization; unfortunately, it took a devastating 143% inflation rate to mobilize Argentines to end a centuries long history of socialist policies; it only took one year for Milei’s free market policies to reduce that to 4%.

I long ago faced the reality that Americans would have to radically change their political and economic values in order to reverse the self-destructive trend toward socialism; as the most recognized leader of American libertarianism, Murray Rothbard advised libertarians that the only way to do so is to live your life based on your principles. For all those that advise choosing between the lesser of two evils, the reality is that it can only lead to evil, even if you ignore that reality.

“Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions and will receive praise or blame for them. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.” Friedrich Hayek