At Least Dan Maes Answered the Questions

The following article originally was published February 1 by Grand Junction's Free Press.

At least Dan Maes answered the questions

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

Recently the Supreme Court struck down part of the McCain-Feingold censorship law in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The decision is tragic because the Court only partially restored the First Amendment, and apparently four of the justices cannot comprehend the simple phrase, "Congress shall make no law..."

Leftist critics of the ruling argue that, while a lone individual might have some rights to free speech, individuals do not have the right to freely associate to express themselves. Further, these critics claim, you have no firm right to spend your own money on expression.

To grasp the left's hypocrisy on finances, just ask a critic of the ruling whether the right to get an abortion would be preserved if women and clinics were forbidden from spending money on abortions. (Eugene Volokh raised this point.)

Regarding this case the left is perfectly consistent with its Marxist roots. Marx wrote, "The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

In simpler terms, you are just too stupid to independently evaluate a film or ad funded by a corporation. You need the benevolent nannies of the left to help you think straight.

Unfortunately, some people do everything they can to prove Marx right. They thoughtlessly buy junk just because the idiot box or their friends tell them to. They never read great books or otherwise develop their reasoning skills. They vote for candidates based on appearance, smooth talk, and hysterical smear campaigns against the other guy.

However, trying to save people from their own stupidity only entrenches stupidity. People cannot choose wisely if they lack the capacity to choose badly. In terms of free speech, people must be free to say and believe stupid things, if we wish to preserve the right and ability to say and believe profundities.

The law properly guards against fraudulent speech. You can't legally tell someone a used car has only ten thousand miles on it when it actually has a hundred thousand. Nor can you make up lies about a candidate. Established law already addresses such matters.

Aside from libel, however, people should be free to say whatever they want about candidates (using their own resources), whenever they want, and with whomever they want. That is precisely what the First Amendment is all about.

We can't blame bad government on advertisements. After all, smear campaigns work only if voters fail to critically judge them. It is you, the individual voter, who must carefully evaluate claims, do some background research, and seek the broader context. If you fail to do so, censorship laws will not save the republic but will only further erode its foundation.

Let us make 2010 the year when candidates articulate their views on the issues and voters decide accordingly. Let us make this election about ideas, principles, and policies, not hair dye, cowboy hats, and vocal timbre.

It is in this spirit that we introduced our Candidate Survey, found at http://tinyurl.com/cosurvey10. Unfortunately, as of our deadline, we had heard from only two candidates running for governor or U.S. Senate. Dan Maes, the Republican challenger to Scott McInnis, said he'd answer the survey and followed through on his word. We also heard from independent candidate Rich Hand. You can find their responses linked from the original survey.

Though we originally contacted all the major-party candidates (or their representatives) for those offices by January 13, our initial correspondence did not make it to the right parties in the case of McInnis and Democratic top gun John Hickenlooper. While representatives of both candidates have now confirmed receipt of the survey, they have not committed to answering it. We encourage readers to ask these candidates to answer the survey.

Maes is the underdog, and we disagree with a number of his views. Generally, though, we are impressed by his responsiveness, straight talk, sincerity, and hard work.

Maes is a pretty solid fiscal conservative. He thinks the state should cut taxes and permit the traditional energy industry to thrive (thereby also increasing the tax flow from energy). He is too unfriendly to immigrants in our view. Disappointingly, he said campaign censorship laws should be "maintained," and he thinks flag desecration should be Constitutionally outlawed.

Most disturbing is Maes endorsement of the "personhood" measure, which if fully implemented would outlaw nearly all abortions, outlaw common forms of birth control, restrict fertility treatments, and subject women to severe legal interference.

Maes also punted on several questions. For example, we asked, "Should abortion be legal in cases of rape or incest?" Maes answered, "It already is." Cute. Perhaps Maes would care to answer the question next time: what does he think the law should say?

At least Maes answered (most of) the questions. That's a start.

What Are Conservatives Trying to Conserve?

The following article originally was published on January 4 by Grand Junction's Free Press.

What are conservatives trying to conserve?

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

Conservatives are a strange bunch. They support free trade, except when they want to outlaw or restrict select medicinal plants or forcibly stop employers from hiring willing workers of their choice.

Conservatives support freedom of conscience, except when they want to censor what they declare to be obscene works, punish the mishandling of the flag, or force people to fund religious programs with which they disagree.

Conservatives advocate strong national defense, except when they support a war the president declares unwinnable, along with years of "nation building" at the expense of American lives.

Conservatives endorse federalism, except when they want the national government to tell states how to handle marriage.

Conservatives uphold independence, except when they call on politicians to imprison women for getting an abortion.

Conservatives tout the dignity of the individual, unless that individual happens to be gay or a brown-skinned laborer from Mexico.

Conservatives declare to stand for time-honored principles, except when they "compromise" to raise taxes, pass smoking bans in violation of property rights, expand health welfare, endorse corporate welfare, and use the invasive tax code to crack down on the "crime" of productive work.

We have to wonder just what it is that conservatives are trying to conserve. How can we make sense out of the hash of modern conservatism?

A common explanation is that conservatism is a "fusion" of faith-based tradition and libertarian free-market leanings. There's something to that. The problem is that faith often clashes with tradition, while libertarian government-bashing often clashes with individual rights.

The libertarian anti-government strain is a minor part of the conservative movement. Many libertarians join their own party, avoid politics, or loudly distance themselves from conservatives. Down-with-government conservatism, illustrated by Grover Norquist's infamous and unfortunate line about drowning government in a bathtub, alienates the general public and tends toward the reactionary, in the sense of reacting against anything to do with government rather than championing some positive value.

That leaves three major conservative traditions: tradition, faith, and liberty.

Tradition explains why so many conservatives oppose gay marriage and immigration. They want things to stay just the way they are. The problem is knowing which traditions to conserve and which to change. Slavery was a tradition for many centuries, overturned by liberal-minded abolitionists who wanted to fundamentally change society. Rule by king was a tradition.

For too many conservatives, tradition is just a rationalization for advocating policies and cultural trends without the bother of having to justify them on moral grounds. Tradition is the fall-back of the thoughtless.

Sensing the weakness of a strictly traditional approach, many conservatives turn to religious faith. Christians may lay aside Old Testament calls to murder people for homosexuality, witchcraft, adultery, and parent-cursing.

Christians cannot avoid the fact that the New Testament "contains scores of commandments demanding the redistribution of wealth and property from those who created it to those who did not," as Craig Biddle points out in The Objective Standard. The Marxist injunction, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," finds its "origin in the Bible," Biddle notes.

Many Christians openly apply Biblical principles to the welfare state; for example, the Colorado Catholic Conference advocated tax-funded "health care coverage for all people from conception until natural death."

Conservative Christians do a lot of comical dancing trying to pass through the eye of a needle with their riches intact. Yet, in terms of Biblical principles, the best such conservatives can do is say that, yes, people have a moral duty to redistribute their wealth, only they should be free to do it or not. The fact remains that the Bible says precious little in defense of political and economic liberty, individual rights, or the value of economic prosperity.

As Sarah Palin writes in her biography, her brand of conservatism rests on the alleged truth "that man is fallen." The presumption is that people just aren't good enough to live in a socialist order. Instead, such conservatives argue, politics must cope with vicious humanity. Then faith-based conservatives who appeal to our "fallen" nature wonder why they can't capture the moral high ground.

We are conservatives only in the final sense of the term: we want to conserve liberty and indeed radically expand it. We hold that liberty is not a gift from men or the gods, but a necessity for thriving human life. To live successfully, we need the freedom to act on our own judgment regarding ourselves and our property. Government must protect our rights, but it must be restrained by a written constitution that limits political power. Unlike the libertarians, we are not against government; we are for a government that robustly protects individual rights.

The interesting thing about this brand of conservatism is that it sounds a lot like what liberalism was always supposed to be, until its purported defenders twisted that movement to the opposite purpose. The best conservatives, it turns out, are also the only true liberals.

Ralph Carr Shows Politicians Can Stand for Liberty

The following article originally was published December 21 by Grand Junction's Free Press.

Ralph Carr shows politicians can stand for liberty

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

If you still have last-minute Christmas shopping to do, we have a suggestion. Adam Schrager, the thoughtful 9News reporter, wrote a book called The Principled Politician: Governor Ralph Carr and the Fight Against Japanese American Internment. This delightful account of important Colorado history came out in paperback earlier this month.

Carr served as governor from 1939 to 1943, an era spanning parts of two of the nation's greatest challenges: the Great Depression and World War II. Carr responded to both these crises by defending liberty and individual rights.

As Carr entered office, Colorado government faced a $1.8 million deficit. Unlike many of today's politicians, whose answer to deficits is to raise taxes and "fees" or increase government spending, Carr called for fiscal responsibility.

Schrager writes that Carr "announced plans to abolish many of the state bureaus and boards established by the last administration." He also "proposed shifting the net income tax benefiting schools into the state's general fund." During a speech he "told the crowd that anyone who joined the civil service to have an easy job financed by taxpayers... could expect to be fired."

We wish we could hear Carr's common-sense wisdom reflected in today's political debates. (All quotations are from Schrager's book.) "The way to save money is to stop spending it." "Spending and lending is unsound and... thrift and the full payment of debts... is simple and common honesty."

While seconding the nomination of Wendell Willkie, who lost the presidential contest of 1940, Carr said, "If we are ever to save this country, we must first save business. Every one of you is in business -- big business and little business, farmers, stockmen, laboring men, industrialists."

Carr turned down a chance of running with Willkie (a wise move in retrospect) to continue his work in Colorado. Carr said, "What have we done to justify your returning us to office? We have taken the income of the state of Colorado. We have lived within it. We added not a dime of new taxes. We cut the levy for state purposes... and we balanced your blooming budget."

Carr opposed Roosevelt's expansive political controls: "The New Deal has usurped the powers of the state [and] undermined personal liberty."

Carr added, "It is not disloyal to oppose and to question the policy of one who has not yet proved himself omnipotent and to require that he too be limited and circumscribed by those same ideals and standards governing others. We insist that the president recognize and follow the Constitution which created him."

Carr summarized his basic political philosophy with an eloquence rare in politics: "The individual is supreme and government is established only to protect and foster his rights." He later added, "Every time the individual submits to a central government for a solution of another problem of business or life, there is a consequent surrender of individuality, of privilege, of right."

Carr argued that the term "liberal" had been stolen by the left. He said, "The true liberals are those who consistently follow the proposition that liberty means freedom to exercise individual rights unaffected by external restraint or compulsion... The underlying theory of the Constitution is found in the proposition that every man may use the talents which God has given him, may reach any goal toward which he sets his eyes, and may enjoy the fruits of his ambition, his study and his toil, provided only that he does not use his powers to injure his fellows."

The fate of the nation changed on December 7, 1941, when Japanese bombers attacked the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor. Carr rose to the challenge, setting up "an emergency meeting of the Colorado Council of Defense for the next morning," Schrager writes.

While most Coloradans responded to the crisis admirably, some turned to paranoia and racist threats. Some called Japanese Americans "vipers" and "yellow rats." Various politicians and media personalities wanted to put them into concentration camps. The Denver Post wrote, "To hell with the Japs!" Nels Smith, governor of Wyoming, said "there would be Japs hanging from every pine tree" if sent to that state.

Carr rejected racism. He said, "We have among us many of a new generation of Japanese people born in the United States -- sincere, earnest, and loyal." He offered a "hand of friendship" to immigrants. He urged protection of the Bill of Rights and the "security, freedom, and opportunity" it offers.

In a public address, Carr granted the existence of enemy "fifth columnists" and assented to federal relocation policies. Yet he also spoke for "loyal German, Italian, and Japanese citizens who must not suffer for the activities and animosities of others." He warned against "the danger of inflammatory statements and threats against these unwelcome guests" forcibly sent to Colorado.

Though we may not approve every detail of Carr's career, he has richly earned his place in history as a man who defended liberty. We thank Schrager for telling his inspiring story.

People Vote for Freedom with Their Feet and Effort

The following article originally was published November 23 by Grand Junction's Free Press.

People vote for freedom with their feet and effort

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

"Why are they all running to Colorado? What have they got down there that we haven't got?" So asks a villain in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. He complains about Colorado's primitive, lazy government that "does nothing outside of keeping law courts and a police department."

A young worker answers, "Maybe it's something you've got that they haven't got."

High taxes, economic controls, and intrusive politicians and bureaucrats kill production. Unfortunately, fearing Colorado's economic stagnation, the politically connected call not for more economic freedom but for more taxes. They act like doctors who prescribe bloodletting for anemia.

A recent Qwest-funded report from the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation bears the title, "Toward a More Competitive Colorado." But some of the report's recommendations would lead to higher taxes, less competitiveness, and a weaker economy.

The report notes that Colorado ranks well in areas of health, education, and investments. Yet, rather than promote more of the Western liberty that made Colorado prosperous, the report worries that politicians aren't spending enough of other people's money on college, preschool, infrastructure (however that's defined), and welfare.

"A Gordian Knot exists in Colorado's Constitution that makes governing a challenge," the report complains. That seems to be code for "gut the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights."

Though especially concerned about education, the report declines to discuss freeing colleges from state controls, expanding competition for K-12, and cutting taxes so families can better afford college and philanthropists can donate more.

The only constitutional change we need is to repeal Amendment 23, which sets education spending on auto-pilot regardless of economic conditions.

Meanwhile, as the Daily Sentinel reported Nov. 17, the Pew Center declared Colorado in "fiscal peril" because, darn it all, people get to vote on tax hikes.

Either people restrain the politicians or the opposite becomes true. The more the political class oppresses the people, the more people move away or reduce their production.

Rand's novel is about the nation's top producers going on strike against oppressive politics, some moving to Galt's Gulch where they can live in freedom. In Free to Choose, Milton Friedman warns that people vote with their feet, moving where they can enjoy the fruits of their labor.

This is true between states. Regarding last year's U.S. Economic Freedom Index, lead author Lawrence McQuillan summarizes, "People are moving to the freest states and fleeing the least free states."

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal declared New York the "tax capital of the world." The paper noted, "According to Census Bureau data, over the past decade 1.97 million New Yorkers left the state for greener pastures -- the biggest exodus of any state."

The same is true around the world: people tend to leave more repressive countries and move to freer ones. Recently we celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall, built by tyrants to keep an oppressed people from moving away.

Britain suffered a "brain drain" as their doctors sought to escape socialized medicine. When introducing the National Health Service, Aneurin Bevan bought off doctors for their political support, reportedly saying, "I stuffed their mouths with gold." Upon implementing the new system, he declared, "We now have the moral leadership of the world."

Yet many doctors suffered indigestion. Some found that this gold tasted a lot more like thirty pieces of silver. Others rebelled against the new political controls. They wanted no part of the "moral leadership" that put bureaucrats in charge of health. Some of these doctors moved to the United States.

If we go further down England's path, some doctors will move out of our country and cater to medical tourists. Others will retire early.

We've seen examples large and small of people giving up. Higher car fees have convinced some to sell the extra car or put off purchasing a new one. Some work less for taxable income and trade more goods and services (though such exchanges are supposed to be taxed, too).

Chris Edwards recently published disturbing figures at Cato. He writes, "While consumption, exports, and the government sector were up, private investment has fallen through the floor." Fearing more federal political controls, Edwards calls this "the death of private investment in America."

Meanwhile, unemployment nationally has crept over the double-digit marker, despite (or partly because of) President Obama's "shovel ready" stimulus projects. No need to look very far to figure out what it is that Obama is shoveling. An ABC headline illustrates part of the problem: "Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist."

As one of our friends wondered, "You mean taking money out of the private sector, creating money out of thin air, and indebting future generations actually doesn't make us more prosperous?"

If we want to return to prosperity in Colorado and in our nation, we need less political interference and more economic liberty.

Linn Armstrong is a local political activist and firearms instructor with the Grand Valley Training Club. His son, Ari, edits FreeColorado.com from the Denver area.

Restore Free Market to Address Pre-existing Conditions

The following article originally was published September 14 by Grand Junction's Free Press.

Restore free market to address pre-existing conditions

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

Barack Obama's most compelling examples of problems in health care involve insurers dropping coverage of people once they develop health problems. A related issue is the trouble some have in getting new insurance after they develop health conditions.

We agree that these problems of pre-existing conditions are serious and provide a compelling reason to reform health insurance.

However, Obama is totally wrong about the solution. The problem of pre-existing conditions is a consequence of decades of political controls of medicine. The solution is to roll back those controls and restore a free market, not introduce more controls and the worse consequences they will inevitably breed.

Obama and many others like to pretend that today's health insurance operates in a free market. It does not. Federal and state politicians have seriously undermined the competitiveness of insurance through gross violations of the contract rights of insurers and their customers.

Through tax distortions, federal politicians have driven most Americans into expensive, non-portable insurance funded through employers. Lose your job, lose your insurance.

Moreover, employer-paid insurance operates more like pre-paid health care than real insurance, again because of the tax distortion. Such "insurance" tends to cover routine, low-cost care but increasingly falls down when it comes to expensive emergencies.

By contrast, real insurance in a free market would tend to cover unexpected emergencies and leave routine care for direct payment, thereby keeping premiums much lower than what most pay now.

A major consequence of federally promoted, employer-paid insurance is to create problems of pre-existing conditions. If somebody gets sick and can no longer work, the person also loses health insurance and probably can't find another provider.

Politicians continually subject health insurance to changing controls, different from state to state. This effectively prevents insurance companies from offering long-term contracts, because insurers cannot know what political controls they'll have to deal with down the road. It also reduces insurance competitiveness, as a policy issued in one state is not valid in another.

Another way that politicians undermine competitive insurance is to outlaw insurance options that politicians and bureaucrats don't happen to like. In his article "How Freedom to Contract Protects Insurability," Dr. Paul Hsieh points out that political controls effectively prevent organizations such as church ministries from creating insurance.

"The only thing preventing individuals from creating their own contractually binding risk pools today is the government," Hsieh writes.

Yet, ignoring all the ways that politicians harm those with pre-existing conditions, Obama pretends that the fundamental problem is insurance profits.

In a free market, profit means that customers happily pay for some good or service. It is only outside of that market context that profit is bad. For example, a Mafia boss might "profit" by killing people, or a politician might "profit" by doing favors for special interests.

The fundamental issue is not profit versus non-profit, but freedom versus force. The problem with insurance companies is not that they seek to make a profit, but that they must operate as de facto agents of political overseers who call the shots.

On a truly free market, in which insurers and their customers were free from today's political controls, people would tend to buy insurance directly, rather than get stuck with the few non-portable plans their employer chooses for them.

In a free market, insurers would be free to offer more plans to more people, and consumers would be free to shop around, regardless of state boundaries. Politicians would no longer coddle insurers with protectionist controls and tax favoritism.

In a free market, insurers would compete on the basis of quality, security, and transparency of contract. Today, because of political controls, insurance companies face little real competition, and they would face even less under Obama's policies.

In a free market, insurance companies would be able to offer long-term policies that today are politically impossible.

The proper role of government is to protect individual rights, including the right of businesses and their customers to freely contract. The government's role in a free market is to prevent fraud and ensure fulfillment of contract. If government were doing its legitimate job, insurance companies could not arbitrarily drop people.

Almost the entire problem of pre-existing conditions was caused by political controls. Given that politicians have mucked things up so badly, the last thing in the world we need is for Obama to expand political controls of medicine.

We should instead fight for real freedom in medicine and health insurance, in which the problems of pre-existing conditions would be rare and easily handled through voluntary charity.

True, restoring a free market in the future will not solve all the problems of those who now have pre-existing conditions, no insurance, and ongoing, expensive medical care. Therefore, we support, as a transitional measure only, a tax-subsidized high-risk pool, such as Cover Colorado currently provides.

When it comes to problems of pre-existing conditions, the disease is political controls. The cure is more liberty.


Linn Armstrong is a local political activist and firearms instructor with the Grand Valley Training Club. His son, Ari, edits FreeColorado.com from the Denver area.

Debunking Health Care Reform Myths

The following article originally was published by the August 31 edition of Grand Junction's Free Press.

Debunking health reform myths

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

Advocates of Barack Obama's health proposals claim they want to debunk myths surrounding the health reform debate. We're happy to oblige.

Myth #1: Opponents of Obamacare are the ones creating myths.

True, some have made exaggerated claims about "death panels." However, rationing is indisputably part of any political health program. More subsidized health care leads to more indiscriminate use of the health system, which leads to skyrocketing costs. The inevitable "solution" is rationing.

If you think that those running a political, tax-funded health system will never deny treatment to those who claim to need it, then you are either a liar or a fool.

Myth #2: Opponents of Obamacare are "anti-health care reform."

A recent article in the Huffington Post claims that "opponents of Democratic health care legislation" are "anti-health care reform," which is nonsense.

What Obama offers is not "reform," but merely more of the same sorts of political controls that caused existing problems in medicine. Continued tax distortions promoting expensive, non-portable, employer-paid insurance. More political controls that jack up insurance premiums. Probably laws outlawing low-cost, high-deductible policies. More forced wealth transfers.

Real health reform means respecting liberty and individual rights in medicine. It means respecting people's rights to control their own resources and enter into voluntary agreements. Politicians should neither compel interactions, as through insurance mandates, nor forbid them.

The proper role of government is to enforce individual rights, which means to protect people from force and fraud and otherwise leave them free to lead their lives according to their own best judgment.

Real health reform means recognizing the individual's moral right to his or her own life. Obama's fake "reform" means politicians and their appointed bureaucrats telling people what to do.

Advocates of real health reform want expanded Health Savings Accounts with low-cost, high-deductible insurance, rolled back insurance controls, containment of health welfare, and tort reform.

Ironically, Obama lied in the very sentence in which he accused his opponents of lying, when he called for "an honest debate, not one dominated by willful misrepresentations and outright distortions, spread by the very folks who would benefit the most by keeping things exactly as they are."

Don't let Obama get away with his outright distortion that the only alternative to the existing system is a more-politicized one.

Myth #3: Opponents of Obamacare are criminals, thugs, and mobs.

Early on the morning of August 25, two people smashed eleven windows at Democratic Party Headquarters in Denver. The windows were adorned with posters endorsing Obamacare.

Democratic Chair Pat Waak quickly lashed out: "Clearly there's been an effort on the other side to stir up hate. I think this is the consequence of it."

Clearly Waak jumped to conclusions to demonize critics of Obamacare. Unfortunately for Waak, Denver police caught one of the alleged perpetrators.

Police arrested Maurice Schwenkler, a Democratic operative, left-wing radical, and gay-rights activist. During the last election, a Democratic 527 group paid Schwenkler $500 to campaign for a Democratic state-house candidate. Who's "stirring up hate" now, Waak? (See PeoplesPressCollective.org for details about the story.)

It is true that some Obamacare protesters have gotten overly heated at public forums. That happens among the left and right. It is also true that the vast majority of those who oppose Obamacare are thoughtful, peaceable citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

Myth #4: We need Obamacare to give everybody health care.

Most Americans already have great access to the best health care in the world. The biggest problem is that, due to political controls that have squashed competition and jacked up premiums, many cannot afford health insurance.

As Cato's Michael Tanner points out, of the roughly 46 million uninsured, 12 million are eligible for existing health welfare, 10 million are non-citizen immigrants, and "most of the uninsured are young and in good health."

Is it any wonder that some young, healthy people decline to purchase expensive insurance premiums through which politicians force them to subsidize the health care of others?

Americans understandably don't want to let people die in the streets without care. That's why we should expand Health Savings Accounts and roll back insurance controls -- then more people could afford insurance without busting the budget. We wouldn't need nearly as much charity if politicians would stop interfering with people's ability to get health care.

Extensive health welfare programs exist now. Government spends nearly half of all health care dollars, especially through Medicare and Medicaid. Cover Colorado subsidizes high-risk insurance.

Ultimately, we advocate a return to voluntary charity, which remains a strong force in America even though political welfare has largely displaced it. If you think others should donate to a health charity, then persuade them, don't hide behind armed IRS agents and threaten to throw people in prison if they don't pay up.

We want everybody to be able get good health care. We want politicians to respect people's rights. That is why we reject Obama's health reform myths.

[Update: Cato's Michael Tanner debunks a fifth myth, Obama's claim that "If you like your private health insurance plan, you can keep your plan. Period." Among other things, Obamacare would outlaw high-deductible plans.]

That Government Is Best Which Protects Individual Rights

The following article originally was published on August 17, 2009, by Grand Junction's Free Press.

That government is best which protects individual rights

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

You just don't like government. That's what a friend told your elder author Linn following a local political event, during an informal discussion about which candidates are running and who is supporting them.

It's an odd sort of charge, given that Linn once ran for elected office himself and has participated in numerous campaigns and political functions.

The fact is, we love government, if it's the right sort of government. But not all governments are created equal. Who loves the oppressive governments of North Korea or Iran? What about the fallen government of the Soviet Union? There is no greater evil on the face of the earth than a government gone wrong.

The question, then, is what constitutes good government. That depends primarily on what is the proper purpose of government.

We disagree with Henry David Thoreau when he writes, "That government is best which governs not at all." We answer that government is best which protects individual rights.

Fortunately for us, our forefathers created a republican form of government with strictly delimited powers and an explicit recognition of individual rights. The obvious exception, slavery, took another century to expunge, and racist laws took longer to root out, but finally in this respect America lived up to her founding principles.

Nations to the south of us, on the other hand, often took a course other than freedom, and the result has been frequent juntas, bloodshed, and mass poverty.

Governments that try to run the economies of their nations must enforce their policies at the point of a gun. The mass slaughter and mass starvation of 20th Century Communist nations bear this out.

We witness the contrast of free markets every summer in Palisade, when fruit markets spring up along Highway 6 and 24 and growers sell everything from peaches to tomatoes.

Farmers grow and sell fruit under few political controls. What governs transactions instead is voluntary consent in which both parties benefit from the trade. The government's only useful role is to prevent force and fraud. The old marketing phrase, "reach for a peach," is an exhortation, not a command.

Contrast the benevolent exchange of the free market, in which both parties win, with the force and conflict of political intervention. The city of Fruita prepares to break ground for the city government's recreation center, something we argued against.

We witnessed a city with a friendly reputation fall into heated "us versus them" squabbling. Hostilities had barely receded after the first vote before a second was scheduled. While the motive might have been to improve physical health, the means was to force some to pay for the benefits of others, and this fostered distrust among neighbors and undermined the health of the community.

Meanwhile Clifton, a part of the valley often dismissed as a poorer area, recently witnessed the grand opening of a Gold's Gym. We witnessed no community division over this. The gym opened on time and on budget. While the Fruita center benefits from tax subsidies, Gold's Gym must pay taxes. In Fruita, some won at the expense of others. Gold's Gym illustrated the meaning of win-win.

We think people should be able to make their own decisions concerning their resources, from the color of socks they wear to the brand of peach they buy to the health care they purchase. The alternative is to treat people as wards of the state and stooges of political whim.

The economist F. A von Hayek points out that people are so different and complex that politicians cannot hope to successfully plan out our lives, at least if the goal is our well-being. Hayek lived through an era in which the well-being of the citizenry was hardly high on the list of priorities among social "planners," and mass murder was more likely where politicians ruled unchecked.

In a system of economic freedom, in which property rights are protected and people may direct their resources by their own judgment, people interact by mutual agreement.

Milton Friedman explained, "Adam Smith's key insight was that both parties to an exchange can benefit and that, so long as cooperation is strictly voluntary, no exchange will take place unless both parties do benefit. No external force, no coercion, no violation of freedom is necessary to produce cooperation among individuals all of whom can benefit."

Right now many are asking what role we should give to government in our lives. Some, hoping for more political favors and a larger share of other people's money, or simply beholden to the ideology of statism, call for more political control of the economy.

We believe that a government that robs from Peter in order to placate Paul and gain his political support is not a government worthy of the United States.

We advocate individual rights. We therefore advocate government designed to protect our rights.


Linn Armstrong is a local political activist and firearms instructor with the Grand Valley Training Club. His son, Ari, edits FreeColorado.com from the Denver area.

DeMint's Health Handouts Violate Liberty

The following article originally was published in the July 20, 2009, edition of Grand Junction's Free Press.

DeMint's health handouts violate liberty

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

Memo to Republican Senator Jim DeMint: tax-subsidized health welfare is not "free-market reform."

DeMint touts his "Health Care Freedom Plan" as an alternative to President Obama's political takeover of medicine. The plan contains some good ideas. It reduces political controls of insurance by allowing people to buy policies out of state. It limits frivolous lawsuits. And it allows people with Health Savings Accounts to use pre-tax money to purchase insurance.

Part of the plan, however, forces some people to finance other people's health care. That's not freedom, it's a threat to throw people in prison if they don't pay up.

Real freedom in medicine means that patients, doctors, and insurers have the right to voluntarily interact to mutual advantage, free from force, fraud, and political controls. Real freedom means that you may choose to pay for somebody else's health care if you want, but others may not force you to pay for their care.

The problem with American medicine is that over decades politicians have seized control of much of medicine, driven up costs, and largely destroyed the market for real health insurance by tying most people to expensive, non-portable, employer-paid insurance.

In order to "solve" the political failures of the past, today's Democrats want to extend their power over medicine by increasing tax subsidies, forcing people to buy politically-controlled insurance, and subjecting doctors to ever more controls.

Now that Lady Liberty needs her Knight in Shining Armor more than ever, some Republicans have busied themselves instead with stabbing freedom advocates in the back.

It was, after all, Republican Mitt Romney who advanced the political takeover of medicine in Massachusetts. That state forces people to buy insurance -- though many there continue to buy it only when they face expensive medical procedures, as a recent Wall Street Journal editorial points out -- and massively subsidizes health expenses with tax dollars.

Massachusetts suffers from exploding costs and doctor shortages, so naturally Democrats want to duplicate that failed experiment on a national scale.

To his credit, DeMint rejects insurance mandates. Yet a core part of DeMint's plan shares Obama's premises that some must be forced to pay for the medicine of others.

DeMint's bill 1324 creates a "refundable tax credit" for non-employer insurance of $2,000 for individuals and $5,000 for families. That's a great idea for those who would simply get a tax break, as it would offset the tax incentive to get overpriced insurance through employers.

The problem is that those who pay less income tax than that would get a subsidy or voucher, in other words a handout.

DeMint disingenuously claims that his vouchers will generate "no cost," as he would redirect "stimulus" money to fund the vouchers. But this is merely changing the recipients of the forced wealth transfers.

The "stimulus" special-interest spending should be stopped immediately, and the federal government should reduce its spending to match so that the real economy can direct those resources productively.

Given the better points of DeMint's bill, are we overly critical of the handouts? The problem is that, by granting the premise that some people should be forced to fund the health care of others, DeMint ultimately grants the entire case to his opponents.

Individuals have the right to their own labor and income. It is wrong to rob Peter to pay for Paul's health care. Forcing some to finance the health care of others violates the rights of those paying the bills and breeds abusiveness and irresponsibility among recipients. DeMint's handouts ignore those truths.

So long as Republicans play the handout game, they will correctly be seen as "me-tooing" the Democrats, and they will continue to lose, step by step, inch by inch, to those who would subject the entire economy to political controls.

DeMint's handouts also distract attention away from the fundamental problem: health insurance is too expensive because of political controls. You solve that problem by repealing the controls, not by hiding them behind another welfare scheme.

In a Fox interview, DeMint praises the market, says "Americans don't want more government in health care," and lauds competition. But a tax-funded free market is a contradiction in terms. If people buy insurance with tax dollars, politicians will continually seek to expand political control over insurance, rather than roll back those controls. Thus, DeMint's handouts will tend to diminish the free market for insurance, not augment it.

We applaud DeMint for looking seriously at ways to redress the problems of politically-manipulated health care. We especially like his reforms of Health Savings Accounts and lawsuits. We agree with DeMint when he says, "No American should be forced into a government-run system that limits their choices and rations their care."

To successfully restore free markets, though, DeMint needs to do something other than promise more handouts. He needs to unequivocally champion the individual's right to his own life, resources, and property.


Linn Armstrong is a local political activist and firearms instructor with the Grand Valley Training Club. His son, Ari, edits FreeColorado.com from the Denver area.

Reject Political Control of Health Care

The following article originally appeared in the June 24, 2009, edition of Grand Junction's Free Press.

Reject political control of health care

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

Medical decisions can be made by voluntary agreements among patients, doctors, and insurers. Or they can be made by politicians and their appointed bureaucrats. President Obama hopes for more of the latter.

While details remain sketchy, the centerpiece of Obama's plan is a "public" option, meaning that taxpayers would subsidize more health care, probably amounting to well over a trillion dollars over the coming decade.

Calling these forced wealth transfers "public" is misleading. Generally hospitals, doctors' offices, and insurance plans are already open to the public. Any member of the public is welcome to ask for these services and pay for them. But in Obamaland "public" means something different: it means that some members of the public can force other members of the public to help pay for their health care.

Recently Obama said that his "public" plan would "ensure coverage for people where the free market system fails." He said, "We've got to admit that the free market has not worked perfectly when it comes to health care."

The reason that the "free market has not worked perfectly" is that there is no free market in health care, nor has there been one for many decades, Obama's magnificent lie notwithstanding. The problems with American medicine arise from decades of political interference in medicine -- so of course Obama wants to expand such interference.

Between Medicare, Medicaid, and other tax-funded programs, government spends nearly half of all health-care dollars. In addition to driving up federal spending and threatening financial catastrophe in coming years, such programs increase health costs for everyone else by loading down doctors with paperwork and red tape, underpaying doctors, and artificially increasing the services demanded.

The federal government has entrenched employer-paid insurance through tax policy. Lose your job, lose your insurance. This especially screws people who develop medical conditions and then lose their jobs. Because of the tax incentives, such insurance also encourages people to run everything through insurance, which again drives up prices by increasing paperwork and decreasing the incentive to monitor costs. It would be like buying auto insurance that covers oil changes and tire rotations.

Among the many other political controls of medicine, both state and federal governments impose all kinds of insurance mandates, driving up insurance premiums and pricing many out of the market.

So, now that federal politicians have completely screwed up the private insurance market, they want to provide tax-funded insurance. How generous.

But Team Obama is clever. In further destroying the free market in medicine, Obama nevertheless adopts the rhetoric of capitalism. He said, "If the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option, it will keep them honest and it will help keep their prices down."

In the context of a free market, open competition indeed encourages companies to remain innovative and cost-conscious. But we are not talking about a free market here. We are talking about the federal government essentially knee-capping private insurance companies and then forcing people to pay protection money to finance the political plan. It is the "competition" of gangsters.

Obama dismisses as irrational "fear, that somehow once you have a public plan that government will take over the entire health care system."

Really? The logic behind the plan is to punish private insurance providers and tax-subsidize the "competition." Such a plan is just a back-door approach to eventually establishing "single-payer," meaning the federal government assumes responsibility for most medical payments. And he who pays the piper calls the tune. What the federal government finances, the federal government controls.

If you think we're stretching, watch the YouTube video, "The Public Plan Deception -- It's Not About Choice." In the past Obama professed support for single-payer. Earlier this year Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky said she agrees that "the public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer."

We agree that insurance companies play too great a role in our health decisions and fail to offer the best kinds of insurance. Again, this is strictly a result of federal interference in insurance, and the solution is to get politicians out of the insurance industry, not let them take it over completely.

Obama has also been clever in tying the political takeover of health financing to tort reform. Obama told doctors that, if they get on board, he will do something about "excessive defensive medicine," referring to the insane and unjust law suits often brought against doctors that raise costs for the rest of us.

But if the legal system needs reform -- and we agree it does -- that should be done for its own sake, not used as a club to force doctors into compliance.

Political interference in medicine caused the problems. You're crazy if you think more of the same will solve those problems. And you're putting the health, finances, and liberty of the rest of us at grave risk.

Political Controls Provoke Producers to Go On Strike

The following article originally was published March 2, 2009, by the Grand Junction Free Press.

Political controls provoke producers to go on strike

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

The economy has recovered from every recession so far, so it's a good bet that, eventually, the economy will recover from the current recession as well. We can be sure that, so long as the recession lasts, Barack Obama will blame outside forces, and as soon as the recession has ended Obama will take the credit.

Assuming the economy starts growing again, it will do so in spite of, not because of, Obama's new forced wealth transfers and political controls of the economy. The controls of Obama, the Congress, and the state legislature, on top of earlier controls promoted by both political parties, threaten economic prosperity.

Such controls violate the rights of producers -- of doctors, engineers, programmers, builders -- to set their own destiny, control their own business and property, and interact with others on a voluntary basis. Political controls subject producers to the whims of bureaucrats.

Controls also forcibly transfer wealth from some people to others, thereby reducing the incentive to produce wealth. Around 40 percent of each new dollar earned goes to taxes. The deficit spending of Obama and George W. Bush threatens to impose the hidden tax of inflation.

When producers face the twin threat of bureaucratic meddling and confiscation of the fruits of their labor, many throw up their hands and either quit producing or cut back. They go on strike, in part or in full, loudly or quietly.

We have talked with countless friends who have decided to invest less or work less. Many would rather work on the house or the car, where at least their labor is not taxed, than spend more time in their chosen field where they are largely directed by bureaucrats and forced to hand over much of their earnings to others.

We have heard of doctors leaving medicine or certain specialties to avoid the associated bureaucratic nightmares.

We have heard of entrepreneurs who would rather sell their dreams to safe corporations than risk opening a new business under the regulatory nightmare of Sarbanes-Oxley and other controls.

We have heard the outrage of working-class families, who are struggling to make their ends meet even as they are forced to subsidize the irresponsible, such as the woman in California who added octuplets to her six prior children. We hear, "Why am I working so hard?"

This idea of a strike of producers is hardly new. In 1937, Harold Ickes, FDR's Secretary of the Interior, "gave a radio speech assailing America's wealthy, charging that sixty families who ran the nation were on strike against the rest of the country," writes Amity Shlaes in The Forgotten Man.

The next year, Wendell Willkie fired back at a similar claim made by Assistant Attorney General Robert Jackson. Willkie said, "Mr. Jackson has previously spoken of a 'strike of capital' against the government. If there is any strike of capital it comes from these millions of small investors, not from the wealthy few... The main problem is to restore the confidence of investors in American business, and to do this will require more than pleasant speaking on the part of government. For several years the government has taken definite action to show its hostility to business." [See This Is Wendell Willkie (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1940), p. 70.]

Ayn Rand, who lived through both the Russian Revolution and the Great Depression, made the idea of the productive strike the theme of her 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged. For many years the working title was "The Strike." Rand described the theme as "what happens to the world when the Prime Movers go on strike."

Rand wrote of her "fantastic premise," a "hypothetical case" in which the world's top producers disappear, one by one. (Much of the drama takes place in a fictional valley near Ouray.) But the truth behind Rand's literary device remains: political economic controls discourage the producers from creating the wealth necessary for our lives.

Today the fantastic pushes through reality. In a touching YouTube video called "My Strike," a man begins his address by quoting Atlas Shrugged. He explains how friends of his have left their fields. He says, "Now I'm on strike... I woke up one morning and could not think of a single reason to come to work... We live in a time when billions of dollars of market capitalization can be wiped out by a single political speech, statutory command, or regulatory decree. And those politicians consume our lives as much as our dollars."

It's no wonder that sales of Atlas Shrugged have tripled over the same period last year, reports the Ayn Rand Institute.

Perhaps it's time for you to fold up this paper, roll up your sleeves, and get back to work. Because that's what we always do, right? We go back to work, no matter what the politicians do to us or how much they take from us. Until they cross that line and we the producers say, "No more."

Politicians Caused and Worsened the Great Depression

The following article originally was published December 8, 2008, by Grand Junction's Free Press. Links have been added here.

Politicians caused and worsened the Great Depression

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

Do we really want a new New Deal? The answer depends on whether we think Roosevelt's New Deal made things better or worse during the Great Depression.

The Progressives count FDR a national savior and see Barack Obama as the Second Coming. Yet, while the term "progressive" evokes concern for the poor and community spirit, it names the politics of taking people's wealth by force and controlling their lives.

Progressive sophistry extends to the New Deal. For example, in a column for the New York Times, Paul Krugman writes, "Now, there's a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse. So it's important to know that most of what you hear along those lines is based on deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. The New Deal brought real relief to most Americans."

Beyond the fact that left-wing academics and newspaper columnists hardly prove more reliable, a large body of scholarly work shows the destructiveness of the New Deal and earlier policies.

Historians Paul Johnson and Jim Powell take a dim view of FDR, as does Amity Shlaes in her book The Forgotten Man. Shlaes is an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations. In a recent column, George Will cites other scholars critical of the policies of FDR and Hoover. Economists Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway criticize FDR in their book Out of Work. This book was published through the Independent Institute of California, but Krugman might address its arguments rather than smear its authors.

So let us look at some of the relevant facts in the space available. While natural disasters can disrupt the economy, in large, prosperous economies such as ours the most powerful threat to economic health comes from ill-informed and special-interest-serving politicians. Economists who follow von Mises point out that inflationary spending skews the flow of capital, leading to painful readjustment.

Monetary politics played an important role in causing the Great Depression. Especially since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the federal government has largely controlled the banks. In 1927, Benjamin Strong, governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, cut his bank's lending rate to provide what he deemed a shot of whiskey to the stock market. Then, in 1928 and 1929, the Federal Reserve sharply increased rates, sucking the wind out of the economy.

The Federal Reserve also contributed to the easy lending behind the modern mortgage crisis. The government, intent on preventing a deflationary spiral, is keeping lending rates low and spending trillions in new money. However, not only does this prevent healthy economic adjustments, it leads to harmful inflation. Central planners have a hard time maintaining a steady money supply.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that Hoover signed in 1930 devastated international trade. However, Hoover supported the tariff in 1929 before the crash. Amity Shlaes cites a telegram from a General Motors executive: "Passage bill would spell economic isolation United States and most severe depression ever experienced."

Thankfully, today few seem interested in imposing that sort of protectionism. However, Obama wants to restrict trade under the protectionist covers of "strong labor standards and strong environmental standards."

The policies of Hoover and FDR devastated the labor market. Now the unemployment rate in Colorado approaches 6 percent. In 1933 it was 25 percent nationally. After falling, it spiked up to 19 percent by 1938, long after FDR took office in 1933.

The left claims the problem is that FDR didn't spend enough of other people's money in his massive welfare and make-work schemes. But the reality is that Hoover and FDR caused the high unemployment through a series of policies and laws that kept the monetary wages of some artificially high. These wage controls worked in concert with the deflationary monetary policies of the late '20s and mid '30s to keep a huge portion of the population out of work. It is of little consolation that FDR "brought real relief" to those he first helped deprive of employment.

Today the auto industry wants taxpayers to foot the bill for its failure. Notably, this industry remains strangled by the union favoritism started by Hoover and perfected by FDR.

When politicians "stimulate" the economy, they do so by distributing wealth from some to others. So when Obama or Governor Ritter claim to "create" jobs in the "new energy economy" or other sector, remember that they're destroying other jobs and replacing them with politically-correct ones. The proper remedy for government-induced unemployment is not more corporate and personal welfare, but rather a repeal of the policies that damaged the employment market.

Politicians caused the modern mortgage crisis through easy-lending policies (see our November 10 article), and they caused they Great Depression through a series of central controls (only some of which we've reviewed here). Will Americans keep getting suckered by political "solutions" to the economic problems caused by politicians? Or will we finally demand economic liberty?

Make Gun Training a Priority

The following article originally was publshed on November 24, 2008, by Grand Junction's Free Press.

If you buy a gun, make training a priority

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

The media have reported a spike in the sale of firearms. The number of people signing up for classes to qualify for concealed carry also has increased. Firearms instructors have seen more interest since 9/11. Local instructors also have seen the fraction of women in class rise from a quarter to half.

Your elder author Linn serves as an instructor for the National Rifle Association's Basis Pistol and Personal Protection classes. In a recent class, a student asked what the difference is between NRA classes and ones lasting only three or four hours. Linn offered to take up the question at the end of class. We'll start to answer it here.

Before carrying a gun for defensive purposes, one must answer a crucial question: Am I prepared the take the life of another human being to save my own life or the life of a family member? Do my religious and philosophical beliefs allow me to potentially take a life in self defense? Am I prepared to accept or tolerate the judgment of my family, friends, and neighbors if I must defend myself with lethal force?

Barring cases of immediate threats, one should view the carrying of a concealed weapon as a full-time commitment. Chances are that if you carry a gun, you'll never need to pull it from the holster in an emergency. Still, we don't put on the seatbelt every time we get in the car because we expect to get in a crash. There's no need to put on your seatbelt after the crash, and there's no opportunity to go home and retrieve your firearm once you find yourself in a life-or-death situation.

Before Colorado liberalized the concealed carry laws in 2003, some got a permit as the local authorities allowed. Others carried illegally under the notion that it's better to be tried by twelve than buried by six.

The need for a statewide concealed carry law arose from the language of Colorado's constitution, Article II, Section 13, regarding the right to bear arms. The text states, "The right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question; but nothing herein contained shall be construed to justify the practice of carrying concealed weapons."

The common perception at the time, we are told, was that only prostitutes and gamblers carried guns concealed, while real men carried guns openly on their hips. Yet there is an important tactical advantage to carrying a gun concealed. If you are the only one in a group carrying a visible firearm, any criminal intent on committing mayhem will make you his first target.

The Colorado Constitution contains some of the strongest language in the nation for self-defense with a gun, though the last phrase puts concealed carry in the hands of the legislature.

The law offers a remedy for treating somebody as a criminal for putting on a jacket that happens to hide a gun on the hip. True, some counties unnecessarily place CCW holders on the same list as rapists and murderers. An advantage of the Colorado law is that 29 states have adopted similar laws granting reciprocity.

What is training for concealed carry and where does one receive it? The NRA describes training as an activity that produces a change in knowledge, skill, and attitude. Linn encourages instructors to view this concept as a circle: more knowledge encourages one to seek out more skills, which in turn encourage an attitude of seeking out more knowledge.

Grand Valley Training Club has faithfully adhered to the NRA training program for students and instructors. All of the instructors volunteer their time. The fee for the 18-hour-plus course is $75.00. Most equivalent courses in Denver run from $250 to $350 per person.

The fee includes three hours of legal review, usually taught by Palisade Police Chief Carroll Quarles or Sheriff's Investigator Beverly Jarrell. District Attorney Pete Hautzinger and Chief Deputy District Attorney Dan Rubinstein also have conducted this portion of the class. As one student said, "The law portion of the class is well worth the price of the ticket."

One of the volunteer instructors, a retired law enforcement officer and explosives expert, worries that, without adequate training, some with concealed-carry permits may lapse in safe, effective practices.

After the recent class that Linn helped conduct, the student answered his own question: "There is no way a three or four hour class can give what is required."

Alon Stivi, who has conducted advanced training classes in the area for police and civilians (see DirectMeasures.com) states, "Training is not a game! A serious gap exists between the training available on the market and what actually works in the real world. In a world of rising terrorism and violence, there is only one way of being prepared: Being informed."


Linn is a local political activist and firearms instructor with the Grand Valley Training Club. His son Ari edits FreeColorado.com from the Denver area.

Mesa County Candidates Discuss Economics, Self-Defense

The following article originally was published by Grand Junction's Free Press.

Candidates discuss economics, self-defense

September 29, 2008

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

For many of us, the election can't be over soon enough. The same goes for many of our candidates. Those running for office, with rare exception, believe that they are running for the cause of good government. They become emotionally vested in the race and their proposals. They spend a great deal of time and money (sometimes their own) seeking office. It's exhausting.

When candidates attend forums, often only a few voters show up. Candidates have little opportunity to communicate directly with the voters at large. Usually there are two types of people who attend these forums: those looking for handouts or political favors and those trying to keep from suffering more abuse at the hands of politicians. For those looking at the big picture, these forums offer a painful reminder that politicians have pushed government well beyond its proper bounds.

Your senior author recently attended two forums for candidates. The Pro Second Amendment Committee (PSAC) hosted its forum on September 19; the Mises Economics Study Group held its event on September 24.

PSAC has been around since 1989, motivated by the threat of California's so-called assault gun ban. We're pleased to note that, while the federal government imposed a ban on the sale of certain "assault" weapons in 1994, that ban sunset in 2004, thanks in large part to the work of groups like PSAC.

Sandy Caskey, president of the group, did an excellent job of organizing and conducting the forum. All of the candidates running for office in Mesa County attended, except Marcia Neal, a candidate for state school board.

The candidates shared their views on the importance of the Second Amendment. They all strongly support it, of course. Some of us half expected to see Charlton Heston descend from the heavens to shake their hands.

Unfortunately, the next segment could have aired on Saturday Night Live. None of the candidates seemed to know that Colorado is an open-carry state. Most of them thought the question of open carry should be "studied."

Dan Robinson, a candidate for county commissioner, suggested that technology circumscribes our rights. "Plastic guns cannot be identified in metal detectors and should be controlled," he said. Setting aside the fact that no such gun exists, we wonder if Robinson would extend his argument about technology to the First Amendment. Should we restrict freedom of the press because we now have electricity and the internet?

Your senior author asked the candidates if they would use the power and prestige of their office to press for gun safety in the schools. Some candidates dodged the question by assuming this meant mandatory classroom instruction. Janet Rowland, a candidate for county commissioner, said she would promote voluntary gun safety, and for that she earns our high marks (despite our previous differences with her on other matters).

For the Mises group, Don and Sue McFarland opened their home to over 40 guests. Marcia Neal again offered a very persuasive reason for not attending, this time joined by D. D. Lewis, a candidate for county commissioner. Representative Bernie Buescher failed to respond to several requests to attend the forum.

As an aside, this discussion group is important. With various politicians -- including our Republican president -- promoting $700 billion in new corporate welfare, now is a great time for candidates to turn to the wisdom of master economist Ludwig von Mises. Even though we sometimes disagree with the outfit now bearing his name, at least it makes available many of Mises's works at www.mises.org/misesbooks.asp. To take one example, readers who think of themselves as liberals ought to check out Mises's book Liberalism, which promotes the concept at its truest.

The first pitch to the candidates was a hardball: defend the morality of capitalism or socialism. Such fundamental issues rarely concern today's politicians. The good news is that no candidate choose to defend socialism. The bad news is that none seemed to be able to defend capitalism. We were mildly impressed by County Commissioner Craig Meis, who started down the right path.

We suggest candidates read Ayn Rand's book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Then they'll be ready for the question next time. In fact, voters too might ask themselves whether they can outline the differences between these fundamentally opposed economic systems and defend one over the other.

If more people would read Mises and Rand, they would be on the lookout for the sorts of misguided political controls that caused the current financial crisis. Notably, in her book on capitalism Rand notes that economic crises "blamed on businessmen were caused, necessitated, and made possible only by government intervention in business." That perfectly summarizes recent events.

Today's pragmatic political climate turns most candidates into invertebrates. The major political problem is fantasizing about how best to spend other people's money. So we sincerely appreciate those candidates who made an effort to talk about central ideas, if only for an evening.

Linn is a local political activist and firearms instructor with the Grand Valley Training Club. His son Ari edits FreeColorado.com from the Denver area.

Amendment 48 Would Harm Actual People

The following article originally was published August 18, 2008, in Grand Junction's Free Press.

Amendment 48 would harm actual people

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

We used to be on opposite sides of the abortion issue. Linn has long held that it should be legal, while Ari once thought that it should not. Now we agree that Amendment 48, which would define a fertilized egg as a person in the state constitution, is a horrible idea that would result in death, misery, and lost liberty for actual people.

Many years ago, we went to a local event to hear one of the lawyers involved in the Roe v. Wade decision on the legalization side. During the questions, someone in the audience harshly condemned the lawyer for aiding in the murder of babies. The lawyer fired back that science, the Supreme Court, and most people rejected his claim. We left the event where we entered it: on different sides of the issue. This would have been before Norma McCorvey, "Jane Roe," converted to Christianity and opposed abortion.

Around that time, Ari even wrote a letter to a local paper (that we can't find now) pointing out a seeming paradox with the legalization side. As far as we recall, some criminal had harmed a woman, resulting in the death of her fetus. If a fetus is not a person, Ari reasoned, why should we care whether a criminal harms it? It was a pretty good letter. But its premise was wrong.

Now Ari has worked on a paper criticizing Amendment 48 for the Coalition for Secular Government (SecularGovernment.us) that should be available this week. Here we'll review some of the highlights.

The first fact that opponents of abortion must confront is that, if a fertilized egg should have all the same legal rights as a born infant, that implies that criminal penalties should apply for abortion. Notably, current statutes define first-degree murder as killing a person "after deliberation and with the intent to cause the death of a person." Surely that describes abortion, if a fertilized egg is a person.

The penalty? Under current statute, the penalty for first-degree murder is life in prison or the death penalty. One Denver minister has openly advocated the death penalty for women who get abortions. If you oppose abortion, is that really what you want? If not, what sort of criminal penalty do you have in mind?

Many women get abortions for health concerns. For instance, a small percent of fertilized eggs start to grow in the fallopian tubes rather than in the uterus. These ectopic pregnancies can be fatal. If a fertilized egg is a person, then can doctors perform abortions even if the woman's life is at risk? Or would doctors be forced to watch their patients endure hours of agony and operate only at the very last minute? Though most pregnancies don't turn out that way, in some cases Amendment 48 would cause the death of the woman.

But the consequences of Amendment 48 extend far beyond abortion. Many types of birth control would be banned. For example, while the pill usually acts to prevent fertilization, it may also act to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. While the matter would result in lengthy political and legal battles, many opponents of abortion do argue that the pill prevents implantation. Emergency contraception and IUDs also would have to be banned under Amendment 48. The inevitable result would be more unplanned pregnancies.

Fertility clinics also would have to be shut down, because they operate by fertilizing eggs in the lab, then transferring select fertilized eggs into the woman. In 2005, Colorado's seven fertility clinics helped around 820 women deliver babies. According to advocates of Amendment 48, these pregnancies should be forcibly prohibited. In the name of saving fertilized eggs, the measure would prevent the births of hundreds of babies every year.

A fertilized egg clearly is not the biological equivalent of a born infant. A fertilized egg is microscopic, without any organs or awareness. An older fetus too is dramatically different from a born baby. A fetus is totally contained within the woman and totally dependent on her for oxygen and nutrition. A born baby, while still basically helpless, can breath and eat using its own organs. Though the case can be expanded, that's the basic reason why an embryo or fetus should not have the same legal standing as a born infant.

What about the case of the criminal who harms a fetus? A woman who learns that she's pregnant and decides to have the baby is overwhelmingly excited by the pregnancy. She looks forward to delivering a baby and raising a child. The fetus is both a physical and legal extension of the woman. A criminal who harms a woman's fetus deserves harsh criminal penalties.

Amendment 48 would result in needless death, intrusive police actions over our sexual lives, and the banning of fertility treatments. As the title of the new paper summarizes, the measure is anti-life.

Who Is John Galt? Letter Writers Prove Point

In a recent article, my dad and I criticize both McCain and Obama for their assault on individual rights. The article closes:

Ari feels free to mention that he's seriously considering writing in John Galt for president. With so many political "leaders" blaming liberty for the problems caused by political controls, and promising as the answer more severe controls, this election is starting to feel a lot like the world of Atlas Shrugged.

Two letter writers make my point for me.

Jim Ciha replies:

As a forward-thinking progressive not stuck in the capitalistic pro-gun mindset, it's always amusing to read Linn and Ari Armstrong's column. In their latest diatribe, Ari considers voting for Obama because McCain is the worst evil in the race but then he changes his mind (shocking!) and decides not to vote for Obama.

Now, it's pretty laughable to be told that Ari was ever considering voting for Obama when the two Armstrongs spend 13 paragraphs criticizing Obama and only two paragraphs criticizing McCain. The Armstrongs are such teasers. Just when you think they might turn into forward-thinking human beings working for the common good, they go ahead a fall back onto their hysterical Democrats-are-going-to-destroy-our-way-of-life routine. These Armstrongs are such kidders.

What's remarkable about this letter is that it does not contain a single argument. Instead, it accuses me of dishonesty, ignoring the fact that the article explicitly mentions another piece of mine from June 6 in which I lay out my case for voting against McCain by casting my vote with Obama.

Ciha claims that he is "forward-thinking," "progressive," not "stuck" in some mindset presumed (but not shown) to be wrong, and an advocate of "the common good," which of course Ciha doesn't bother to define.

Like I said, "this election is starting to feel a lot like the world of Atlas Shrugged."

In another letter, Robert I. Laitres writes:

The most recent Armstrong column ("How Obama lost another vote") provides us with another example of intellectual myopia and the resultant view of the world.

Some of us do agree that religious organizations have absolutely no business receiving tax dollars. What amazes me in the Armstrong position is that they obviously ignore an even larger group of "pigs at the trough."

We are speaking of industries, financial institutions and agricultural organizations who believe that they are "entitled" to subsidies and "incentives." It would seem that, it being a much larger problem, the Armstrong[s] might rail against those even louder. But they do not. ...

Where do the Armstrongs stand on those issues? Or is their belief in "corporatism" so deep that they cannot bring themselves to condemn the irresponsibility endemic in their philosophy and its consequences?

What of the reported food poisoning of thousands (the real figure is "reported cases" multiplied by 30 to 40) of citizens throughout the United States? Or are the Armstrong going to repeat their standard mantra of "The free market will take care of it?" It may, but after how many people have become sick and/or died?

Theory is fine, but even the Armstrongs will have to admit that people do not live in the theoretical world of John Galt? They live in, and have to deal with, the real one.

Laitress here simply accuses us of something of which are not guilty: accepting or in any way sanctioning "corporatism," understood here as granting select businesses political favors. We have indeed routinely and loudly condemned all forms of corporate welfare and political favoritism. (The fact that we did not do so in the cited column proves only that we can't solve the problems of the world in 800 words.) Yet Laitress tries to smear us with the corporatist position in order to discredit our free-market position, which is diametrically opposed to corporatism.

Laitres does bring up an interesting issue with poisonings; I assume he's referring to the cases of bacterial contamination. In response, I point out that the free market did in fact take care of it. As soon as it becomes known that a certain product is contaminated, stores immediately clear their shelves of the item, and the company responsible takes a huge financial hit. A free market operates under laws protecting individual rights, including torts that protect against harm. Nobody argues that under a free market everyone and every product is perfect. Yet Laitres implicitly condemns us for (non-existent) utopianism.

The part of Laitres's letter that reminds me of Atlas is his insistence that the "theoretical world" is not to be trusted. After completely misrepresenting what our theory actually is, Laitres suggests that theory per se is suspect. And according to what theory does Laitres make his arguments? He doesn't bother to inquire.

It's almost as though Ciha and Laitres were intentionally mimicking the minor villains of Atlas Shrugged.

How Obama Lost Another Vote

The following article originally was published by Grand Junction's Free Press on July 21, 2008.

How Obama lost another vote

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

We write as a father-son team. We almost always agree about fundamental issues, yet sometimes we look askew at each others' strategies.

For example, last month Ari wrote on his blog (FreeColorado.com for June 6), "I deem that McCain is the worst evil in the race, and therefore I've decided to mark my ballot for Obama as the strongest possible vote against McCain." Such a position is sacrilege to much of the family.

What's so bad about McCain? Ari's post reviews three main flaws. McCain snubbed the First Amendment with his campaign censorship law, saying he wants to violate our "quote, First Amendment rights" for his version of "clean government." We wouldn't want politics mucked up with all that liberty.

He pushes for faith-based politics and declares his support for "ending abortion." And he humbly requests that you "sacrifice your life" to the state. (Where this involves military conflict, we're reminded of Patton's advice about which side we should get to sacrifice their lives.)

We agree about McCain's flaws. We may disagree about what to do about them, but we now agree that voting for Obama is not the answer. Why the change? In brief, Obama proposes new political controls over our lives and the economy at an astounding pace.

Obama wants socialized medicine, more wage controls, more corporate and personal welfare, higher taxes, and more energy restrictions, to mention just a few highlights. How does he compare with McCain on the issues of speech, faith-based politics, and sacrifice to the nation?

Obama didn't vote on the McCain-Feingold campaign censorship law, because the law passed in 2002, while Obama didn't take his Senate seat till 2005. We were hopeful about a headline from Broadcasting & Cable claiming that Obama "does not support" the Fairness Doctrine, which is a euphemism for censoring radio.

However, Obama did not take a principled stand for free speech; instead, his spokesperson said that the proposal was a "distraction" from imposing other controls such as "media-ownership caps." In other words, Obama believes the national government should be able to forcibly prohibit some people from owning certain media outlets.

Both McCain and Obama believe that the phrase "Congress shall make no law" actually means "Congress shall make a law" imposing speech controls.

Obama had nothing but praise for President Bush's national faith-based welfare, which forces you to hand over some of your money to religious groups.

Obama promised that "federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs." However, not only is it immoral to force people who disagree with a particular religion to fund practitioners of that religion, but it is impossible for explicitly religious groups to spend tax dollars in a strictly secular way. The national government has no business forcibly redistributing people's money to any religious outfit.

The First Amendment also states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." While faith-based welfare does not sanction a single creed, it forcibly transfers funds to particular religious groups in violation of religious liberty and freedom of conscience.

If you're a Christian, you shouldn't be forced to fund a Muslim organization, and vice versa. If you're an atheist or "other," you shouldn't be forced to fund either. And churches shouldn't bow to Caesar to stick their noses into the government trough.

What about the issue of sacrificial service? When Obama came through Colorado earlier this month, he outlined his plan for forcing students to serve politician-approved goals. The Rocky Mountain News reports that Obama wants to make "federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs." In other words, Obama first wants to take your money by force, then blackmail your local school district with your money to force students to take time away from their studies, work, and other interests to "serve" whatever it is Obama deems appropriate.

And we always thought the Thirteenth Amendment prohibited involuntary servitude. True enough, people can pull their children out of government schools in protest, which means that they merely have to perform involuntary servitude to fund the school they're not using.

McCain and Obama are not merely bad candidates. Their policies are profoundly evil, and they violate the principles of liberty on which this nation was founded. They also violate at least the spirit, and we believe the letter, of the Constitution.

So whom are we voting for this year? We doubt that any of our regular readers need some newspaper columnists to tell them how to vote. We'll probably vote differently, anyway.

However, Ari feels free to mention that he's seriously considering writing in John Galt for president. With so many political "leaders" blaming liberty for the problems caused by political controls, and promising as the answer more severe controls, this election is starting to feel a lot like the world of Atlas Shrugged.

Should Government Own Wilderness?

The following article originally appeared in Grand Junction's Free Press on June 9.

Should the government own, manage wilderness?

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

Just how far do we want to push our free-market agenda? The short answer is all the way. A free market means that people's rights to control their resources and associate with others voluntarily, so long as they don't violate the rights of others, are consistently protected. It means that the initiation of force is outlawed. The alternative is coercion: taking people's resources by force and and threatening them with jail for not doing what you want.

Here's how the argument has developed so far. On April 28, we argued that government (including the town of Fruita) should not forcibly take money from people to subsidize recreation facilities.

On May 12 we replied to Keith J. Pritchard's concern about externalities, in this case a benefit (such as keeping kids off the streets) not funded by the beneficiaries. We argued that, by Pritchard's reasoning, government should seize control of the entire economy. "The system of individual rights provides justice as well as the best framework for solving economic problems," we wrote.

But, Pritchard complained, we did not address one of his points. By our logic, Pritchard wrote, "we should auction off all public parks, BLM land, State Parks, and National Forest to the highest bidder!"

A lot of conservatives would reply to such a challenge by invoking pragmatism: "Of course we don't want to auction off public lands, but we need a balanced approach that lets government subsidize only some things, not others, and take by force only some of our money, not all of it." Regular readers know that's not our answer.

Pritchard's complaint is intended to cut off any principled approach. If we want wilderness areas, then what's wrong with Fruita subsidizing a recreation facility? Surely we have to compromise and agree that government must control some industries, even if there's no clear standard to decide what government should control and what should be left to the voluntarist free market.

We refuse to sanction the mixed economy, the current blend of some liberty and some socialist controls. We advocate liberty, all the time, without exception.

Politically, of course, it's usually easier to stop the government takeover of something new (such as a recreation facility) than to restore a government-controlled entity to the free market. Even though there's no reason whatever for the national government to run trains or deliver the mail, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) and the United States Post Office have resisted market reforms. Trains and mail remain largely socialized industries.

At least government-run businesses should be self-financing. For example, the gasoline tax is a fairly effective fee-for-use that funds government-owned roads. In Denver, though some lines of the RTD receive heavy subsidies, properly the lines should charge enough to cover costs. If people are not willing to pay enough to ride on a line to keep it operational, it should be closed down.

Many government-run wilderness areas require fees. If you head up the road to Vega Reservoir, you'll find that you must purchase a state park's pass. The showers there cost money. The campgrounds and facilities should charge enough to cover all costs, so as not to unfairly compete with the private facilities near the lake. If you go to Rocky Mountain National Park, you'll pay a fee at the gate.

We ask a simple question: why do you think government does a better job managing wilderness areas than individuals and organizations would do on a free market? The pine-beetle infestation is at least partly the result of inept forest management.

Do you think government would do a better job building cars, growing food, erecting houses, and sewing clothes? People tried that in the last century, and it didn't work out so well. Then why do you think government is uniquely qualified to manage wilderness areas?

We do not, as Pritchard claims, think all wilderness areas should be sold to the highest bidder. In some cases, the land should be given or sold to its current users. For example, Powderhorn leases most of its land from the Forest Service, and the company has a vested interest in caring for the land.

It seems that organizations like the Sierra Club complain most loudly about federal wilderness management. Therefore, we suggest simply giving many federal lands to the Sierra Club or similar groups. We're confident they would do a good job managing the land, and they'd be more open to charging fees for use and even drilling to pay for land management. The rest could be transfered to a privatized Forest Service or sold, with the proceeds used to pay down the national debt.

We enjoy wilderness areas as much as the next person. We also enjoy eating. That doesn't mean we want the government to nationalize farms or forests. America is about liberty, and that is the principle to which we should return.

Linn's Trip to Israel, Part I

The Following article originally appeared on the March 3, 2008, in Grand Junction's Free Press, under the title, "Terror from another perspective."

Israel trip offers lessons on countering terror

by Linn and Ari Armstrong

This was not your typical tourist trip; it was called the Ultimate Counter Terrorism Mission. Your elder author joined over twenty other Americans February 3-10 to travel to Israel. The group consisted of law enforcement and trainers, producers of anti-terrorism equipment, and those with a deep interest in counter terrorism. This column, written from Linn's perspective, is the first of several about the trip.

To set the stage we need to go back fifteen years in Grand Junction. I had been training civilians for several years in the NRA basic pistol and personnel protection courses. These are excellent classes and serve the community very well. Not only had thousands of individuals benefited from the training but dozens of instructors came from this pool of people. From this pool of instructors several Training Counselors arose who are able to train instructors.

With so many well-trained people in the area, several began to express the desire for more advanced training. In conducting a lot of research and interviewing a number of instructors with impressive qualifications, one name kept popping up: Alon Stivi. Stivi has since conducted various training exercises in and around the Grand Valley.

Stivi is a leading expert on security, violence prevention, counter-terrorism, and travel safety. He has served as an advisor to federal, state, and local government agencies, including the U.S. military and law enforcement. He is the U.S. Master Instructor of the Hisardut Israeli Survival System. Stivi also contributes to the magazine Counter Terrorism.

It was in this magazine that I saw an advertisement for the Counter Terrorism Mission to Israel. Thus began my quest to learn many of the facets of counter terrorism that Israel has to engage in for its own survival.

Although I have done a fair amount of travel over the years I had never had the opportunity to travel Israeli airlines El Al. This presented an opportunity to see first hand the different philosophy between the U.S. and Israel on terrorism.

Most of us are familiar with the process of checking aboard an airplane. I would like to relate an incident that took place in Denver last year. I carry a first-aid kit in my carry-on bag and have carried the same kit for years around the world. This means that it has been subject to dozens and dozens of security checks.

Before my flight out of Denver my bag was pulled and I was asked to open it. Sure enough, my deadly scissors were discovered. They were slightly over two inches long with rounded tips. The lady at the machine did not have the authority to decide on the deadliness of these instruments of destruction. She had to call her supervisor to help with what was approaching a national security issue. The supervisor had to make this life-or-death decision.

The decision was that the scissors were too dangerous. I was asked if I would like to mail this cheap pair of scissors back home at a cost of seven or eight dollars. I responded, "Let's just throw them away." But I couldn't just throw them away; you have to sign a form to throw them away.

I always carry a rather large, stout, pointy ball-point pen with me when I travel. I took this pen from my pocket with a flourish to sign the form and said, "We can't allow these deadly scissors on board." The security agent threw me an unpleasant glare.

El Al's process is different. The first thing that they do is profile people who are going to board the plane. This profile is based on how you answer a number of questions. The Israelis are trained to note both the physical reactions you exhibit and the accuracy of your answers. You are probably profiled several times. You then take your check-in luggage to a big machine that x-rays and sniffs for bombs. If something suspicious is spotted in your bags, you are asked to open the bag. Assuming the bag checks out, you then pick up your ticket, turn in your checked luggage, and proceed through security. Perhaps the U.S. could pick up a few pointers on this process.

Israel's approach to security is built on the onion model, layer after layer. I was reminded of meeting a young couple a few years ago that had immigrated to the U.S. from Israel a few months before. I found the husband to be very interesting; he was a mathematical genius (as well as a world-champion juggler). Now he works in Silicone Valley as a mathematician. Anyway, I asked his wife about the biggest change she had noticed when coming to the U.S. She replied, "going to a shopping mall and not having my bags and purse searched when I entered."

Fortunately, for us terrorism is usually a long way away. Will we keep it that way?