Vivek Ramaswamy has created quite a stir with his comments regarding culture and immigration.  It has sparked a lot of debate within the MAGA movement.

Vivek had a post on “X” (Twitter) explaining why he thinks top tech companies hire foreign-born workers over Americans.  He goes on to state that it has to do with culture.  The American culture celebrates mediocrity over excellence.

https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1872312139945234507?mx=2

He says, “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

Vivek goes on to cite 1990s sit-com television shows as an example.  He states, “A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World’, or Zach and Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell’, or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters’, will not produce the best engineers.”

I completely understand and sympathize with Vivek’s points, although I don’t fully agree with them.  I also disagree with many Trump supporters in what they are saying in response, specifically as it regards immigration.

Intelligence Isn’t Everything

Vivek himself was the valedictorian of his high school graduating class.  I once listened to his speech.  He had rhetorical talent back then.

I didn’t watch much of “Boy Meets World”, so I can’t comment on that example.  But I did watch “Saved by the Bell” and “Family Matters”.  Vivek is celebrating Screech and Steve Urkel.  These characters were apparently book smart but were considered nerdy.

But I think these are the wrong examples.  They weren’t just nerdy.  They were dorky or beyond.  In fact, they were a social nightmare in polite society.  They didn’t know how to behave properly in a social environment.

It is one thing to be book smart, but you aren’t going to have much influence on society if you have no social skills.  Vivek of all people should know.  He is a very smart guy, but he also knows how to talk to people.  He was a salesman for his message all the way back to when he was a teenager.  If Vivek were just book smart with no rhetorical skills, he would barely have any influence on society right now.

It is a good thing to have good rhetorical skills if you are using them for good purposes.  The evil establishment uses propaganda to enhance their own power, but we need rhetoric and salesmanship to sell good ideas.  I want Vivek to be a good salesman when it comes to reducing the size and scope of government.

Vivek is not Screech.  He has some of Zach Morris in him.  This enables him to sell his ideas and have influence on other people.  This is something that Screech could not do effectively because of his lack of social skills.

I also don’t agree that our society completely ignores or makes fun of the so-called nerds.  Maybe valedictorians in high school are not the most popular kids in school, but sometimes they are.  And adults outside of school will often praise the intellectually talented students.

It is also ok to celebrate characters like Zach Morris and A.C. Slater.  Slater was the jock, but being athletic is also a skill and talent.  It may not build bridges or solve math equations, but it is a form of entertainment for people, and it is a skill.  There are kids who work hard at their sport, and it can set good habits for life, and there is nothing wrong with appreciating these skills.

Politics and Intelligence

Something I harped on during COVID hysteria is the idea of intelligence.  Perhaps we should distinguish between intelligent and smart.  There are many highly intelligent people who did very well in school, yet they can’t think straight on basic issues.

It tended to be those considered intelligent and well-educated who were the most authoritarian during COVID.  They are quite good at math and biology when it comes to reciting a textbook, but they were the first ones to follow orders and mask up and “vaccinate”.  They trusted the experts, or at least the experts that were put out by the establishment media.

It is easier to train a smart dog.  That is attributed to Michael Malice.  If you tell a dumb dog to “sit”, he won’t listen.  If you tell a smart dog to “sit”, he will obediently sit down.

For liberty, we don’t necessarily want obedience.  We want peaceful people, but we don’t want obedience when it comes to infringing on people’s liberty.

This is where Vivek needs to be careful.  Immigration is not just about bringing talented people to fill jobs that Americans are supposedly too stupid or lazy to do.  There is also a question of preserving liberty.

Just because someone is a good producer and doesn’t collect welfare, it doesn’t mean they are advocating liberty.  I don’t want an engineer or doctor coming to the United States only to support the next authoritarian for political office.

We hear about the education, the skills, and the work ethic in Asian countries.  Maybe there are certain things to admire or emulate.  Yet, most of these places are poorer than the United States.  The reason highly intelligent Indians want to come to the United States is because they can more easily thrive in the United States as compared to India.  There is a lack of respect for property rights in India.

There is more wealth in the U.S. as compared to China and India because there is a greater respect for free markets in the U.S.  There is a greater respect for property rights and free association.  It is extremely difficult to start a business in India.

Even in Japan, where the people tend to have a strong work ethic, there is a statist mentality that holds back the people and the economy.  They are highly intelligent, but they also tend to be quite obedient, which means falling in line with government authoritarianism.

Singapore is a very rich country with a strong economy.  It isn’t just because the people there work really hard.  It is because there is a relatively free market system that enables business to flourish.

I am not worried about producing the best engineers.  I am worried about having an environment where good engineers can be free to do good work.

MAGA Economics

In general, Trump supporters are not very good on economics.  They understand that outright socialism is bad.  They understand that over regulation can be bad.  Unfortunately, they don’t understand the benefits of the free market when it comes to dealing with other countries.

Some of the people getting upset at Vivek’s comments are disagreeing with him only because it is possibly encouraging immigration that would “steal American jobs”.

First, nobody has a right to any particular job.  It is the employer who owns the job.  It is the employer who is paying out the money to the employee.

Just as many Trump supporters misunderstand the issue of tariffs, they also misunderstand the whole purpose of jobs.  They see jobs as an end result.  They don’t see jobs as being a means to an end.

The purpose of human beings working is to produce goods and services.  This is what enables us to live, and beyond that, to live well.  We either have to grow our own food and hunt for our own food, or we have to have someone else do it for us.  Just about everything we own was produced by someone.  The services we get are produced by someone.

The purpose of a job is to produce.  Sure, those working jobs are producing in order to be able to consume the production of others.  But we all rely on this production to give us wealth.

If we just look at jobs as the end goal, then this is working against the actual goal of producing greater wealth.  If we just focus on the jobs, it will be detrimental to wealth production.  It will make us poorer.

If a peaceful immigrant enters the United States to work (and not collect welfare), then this should not hurt the economy.  (I am not considering the discussion above about possibly changing the politics of the country in the long run.)

A new person entering the country creates his own demand.  He needs to buy food and other things, which means there will be additional work to be performed to satisfy his wants and needs.

Still, let’s even imagine an immigrant who comes to the U.S. to work and consume very little.  He keeps all of his money under a proverbial mattress or he sends it to his home country.  This is actually a benefit to our society.  He is producing wealth while consuming very little.

If an immigrant is willing to move to the United States and work for less money than any American would, then this will actually mean lower costs for the company.  It will ultimately mean lower prices (than otherwise would have been) for certain products and services.

Many Trump supporters cannot understand this or the similar issue when it comes to tariffs.  If you impose taxes on foreign goods, it might mean that there will be more American jobs to produce those particular goods.  It will also mean those Americans can’t do something else.  It will also mean higher prices for American consumers.

If you can prevent immigration to save 1,000 American jobs, is it worth it?  If you can impose tariffs to save 1,000 American jobs in a particular industry, is it worth it?  What if it means paying twice as much for a smartphone?  What if it means that every American buying a new car has to pay $500 more?

At least give me a number on what makes it worth it.  What if every new car in the country would cost $500 more on average but it saved a total of 10 American jobs?  Is that a good policy according to the protectionists?

You would be better off paying those 10 people $10 million per year each and getting the lower price of the cars for millions of Americans.

Libertarianism and Immigration

There are several different issues merging together here.  There is immigration.  There is culture.  There is politics and economics.

It is very hard for libertarians to discuss the issue of immigration because we live in such a statist system.  Immigrants (legal and illegal) get massive government welfare.  Even the ones with work visas get welfare.  It is also an unfair system at times because those that follow the law often have to wait a long time to get approved if they are ever approved, while some people just walk across the border.

I think libertarians can have different points of view on the issue of immigration.  One thing we should all agree on is that there shouldn’t be government welfare, especially for those entering the country (legally or illegally).  If everyone entering the country were doing so for work and opportunity, then it seems to solve a large chunk of the problem.

No matter where you fall on this issue, it is important to emphasize that all government welfare should be eliminated.  That is the culture that really needs changing.

After making some revisions, Congress has passed another monstrosity of a spending bill.  Even though Trump is not yet president, it shows of the battles to come.

Trump is more of a populist than a fiscal conservative.  If it is a conflict between the two, he will pick populism.

There a lot of bad Republicans in Congress.  We already knew that.  Mike Johnson is one of those people.  He is severely compromised.  The only reason he occasionally appears to be on our side is because of public pressure.  He will lie when necessary.

If there are going to be any significant cuts to the federal budget in the years ahead, it is going to come from overwhelming public opinion.

For this week, I encourage people to push politics aside to the degree that they can.  We can wish for peace.

It is a time to reflect and spend time with family.

Merry Christmas to you and your family and loved ones.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) released its latest policy statement to finish out 2024.  The Fed reduced its target federal funds rate by 25 basis points.  It now sits between 4.25 and 4.50 percent.  This move was widely expected.

What wasn’t expected was Jerome Powell saying that inflation is still a challenge and the Fed’s so-called “dot plot” indicating that we should expect fewer rate cuts next year than what was previously anticipated.

This sent markets in a tumble, with the Dow losing over 1,100 points and the Nasdaq down over 700 points on the day.  Gold was also down considerably, as the U.S. dollar rose.  The euro is getting quite close to being on par with the U.S. dollar.

So, even though the Fed cut rates like stock investors wanted, we should now expect two more rate cuts next year instead of four.  What’s to say it can’t go back to four at the next Fed meeting?

A Contradictory Policy

While the Fed continues to cut its target rate, and nearly everyone commenting on it assumes a looser monetary policy, the Fed actually has a tight monetary policy right now.

In the FOMC’s Implementation Note, it clearly states that the Fed will continue to reduce its holdings of Treasury securities by $25 billion per month and mortgage-backed securities by $35 billion per month.  If you look at the Fed’s balance sheet, this is indeed what is happening.  Approximately $60 billion is coming off the balance sheet each month.  This is monetary deflation.

This is the whacky world we have been living in since 2008, where the Fed controls the short-term interest rates by paying banks interest on their reserves.  The interest rate function has become somewhat independent, at least for now, of the money supply.

As the Fed’s right hand is lowering interest rates, the left hand is doing something else.  The left hand is sending us into a recession.

Of course, the recession is baked into the cake because of prior monetary inflation, but the push for deflation now will make a recession more inevitable in the near future.

The Yield Curve

After about two years of inversion, the yield curve is finally returning to “normal”.  It is still very flat, but the long-term rates are now slightly higher than the short-term rates.  The yield on a 30-year bond is about 30 basis points higher than the yield on a 3-month Treasury bill.

The inverted yield curve has been an accurate predictor of recessions.  Yet, every time it happens, we hear that this time is somehow different.

Before you think we have escaped recession, it is important to know that the recession comes after the yield curve has been inverted and then returns to normal.  In other words, the recession should be coming very soon if we aren’t already in it now.

Meanwhile, the Fed is deflating the money supply in the face of this.

The Fed could reverse course quickly, but it would be too late at this point, unless they plan to go wild like 2020.  Even then, it might not be enough to stop the oncoming recession.

Once the recession comes, Jerome Powell’s words from today will be meaningless.  The dot plot will be meaningless.  We could see the equivalent of four rate cuts in one meeting if things get bad enough.

If you think the plunge in stocks was bad on Wednesday, wait until a recession becomes evident.  There are going to be staggering losses.  Depending on how aggressive the Fed’s initial response is, we could see a stock market plunge of 75% in the next few years.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is a cute name.  But let’s hope that the name does not actually reflect the goals of the organization.

DOGE is being set up as part of the new Trump administration.  It will be headed up by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

I believe Musk and Ramaswamy are both sincere in wanting to make America a better place, or I at least have little reason to doubt their sincerity.  They are both rich and don’t need the grief or the hate that is flung at them.

It is music to my ears when Musk suggests that federal spending should be cut by $2 trillion annually.  We don’t need the federal government to help with this or that.  We need less government in every facet of our lives.

Musk and Work at Home

Elon Musk, as a successful businessman, is somewhat old school when it comes to certain things.  He has made it clear that he believes workers should be in the office.  In other words, they should physically be at a workplace and not working remote.

This may be the case for his companies.  It probably is important in a lot of areas that people be together to collaborate.  You can really see where this is probably true when it comes to designing a Tesla or sending a rocket ship to Mars.

Musk has been pointing out that a large portion of federal employees work at home.  He insinuates that they should be reporting to an office.

I strongly disagree with Musk on this.  Working remotely often exposes the good workers and the bad workers.  It is much easier for a micromanager to look over people’s shoulders and make himself look busy while in an office setting.

The more productive people will tend to get even more done at home or in some kind of a remote setting if their job doesn’t involve a lot of collaboration.  They can work more with fewer interruptions.

There is another problem.  Having office space for everyone is more expensive.  If Elon Musk wants to convince Trump that all federal employees need to report to an office, then the government (i.e., the taxpayers) will have to pay for the additional office space.  Many employees will also seek higher compensation because of the time and expense of commuting.

Now, if Musk’s plan is to make life more miserable for federal employees, then maybe there is something to that.  But is that really the way to go about it?  If anything, you will drive away the more productive employees who will seek other work.

And if you are trying to reduce the number of federal employees, it shouldn’t be done on the basis of driving people away who don’t want to work in an office setting.  It should be done on the basis of whether the job should be a function of government.

Government Efficiency vs. Productivity

We shouldn’t confuse efficiency with productivity, especially when it comes to the government.  We also shouldn’t confuse these with competence.  There are probably areas where we really do want competence in government.  We want the person handling the nuclear missiles to be competent, as long as he isn’t evil.  Most people want the government to be competent in issuing passports and sending out Social Security checks.

In many areas, we really don’t want the government to be efficient.  We probably want efficiency in areas where it may actually be a legitimate function of the government, such as defending the nation and the court system.  Even here, we only want efficiency if these functions are there to serve us.

We really don’t want efficiency in most areas of government.  I don’t want a more efficient IRS.  I don’t want a more efficient Drug Enforcement Agency that will knock down even more doors in the middle of the night.  I don’t want an efficient NSA that will spy more effectively on all of us.

The term “efficiency” works for the DOGE acronym, but we really don’t want more government efficiency.  We want less government.

Cutting Budgets in a Non-Libertarian World

We need much less government in our lives.  This means drastically reduced regulations, which will get less pushback from the average American.  Some big companies that are favored by the government will want these regulations to stay, but most Americans can get on board with less government regulation.

We also need drastically reduced spending.  The over $6 trillion spent annually by Washington DC is a major drain on Americans.  Instead of worrying about whether people are working at home, worry about how much you’re paying them.  And you are often paying them to regulate us more and to spend even more money.

I think the only realistic way to make a dent in the annual spending is through attrition and through payoffs.  As people retire or quit, don’t replace them.

For jobs that should be eliminated now (which is many) and that don’t even require any kind of transition or shifting of duties, I think the answer is to pay these people off.  It shouldn’t be with a nice early retirement plan, as that would just burden us more in future.  It should be a payoff now or in the very near future.

For example, you could offer to pay an employee a one-year salary if they leave now.  They could even go find another job (not in the federal government) and get double pay.

I know some people will be mad at this.  Why should they get all of this extra pay if we don’t need their job anymore?  In the private sector, you would just get laid off and might not even get a severance.

The reason to do this is so that it actually happens.  If there are hundreds of thousands of government employees that we don’t need and can be let go, let’s do something about it.  If we just say that they should all be fired immediately with no compensation, then there will be too much resistance.  There will be lawsuits.  People in Congress won’t support it because they will be hearing from constituents.

I understand it is taxpayer money.  It is not a pure libertarian solution because you still have to keep stealing money in the future to pay off these people.  But I believe this is the only way to make it work and have a realistic chance of actually cutting budgets.

Of course, you can cut massive budget cuts outside of government salaries.  There are government contracts everywhere that cost a lot of money.  The military-industrial complex is an obvious one, but it is far from the only one.

I am not naïve in how Washington works.  If the Trump administration can manage to just stop the budget from growing for a few years, this would seem like a victory.  If Elon and Vivek can somehow manage to cut even 10% out of the federal budget, this would practically be a miracle.

We need major cuts in government spending.  We don’t need the government to be more efficient.

It is not a total coincidence that the Nasdaq crossed 20,000 and Bitcoin crossed 100,000 on December 11, 2024.  Bitcoin had briefly touched that mark before that date, but both things crossed their milestones on Wednesday after an inflation report that came in largely as expected.

The CPI report for November showed that prices rose 0.3% for the month.  The year-over-year CPI now stands at 2.7%, which is a tick up from where it had been.

The median CPI was up 0.2% for the month, while the year-over-year median CPI is at 3.9%.  This is down from where it had been.

Correlation and the Everything Bubble

Bitcoin and the Nasdaq are actually highly correlated.  There doesn’t seem to be any reason for them to be correlated.  One is a so-called cryptocurrency.  It is digital code that can be traded, bought, and sold.

The Nasdaq is a stock index.  The stocks in the Nasdaq tend to be for technology-related companies.  If you own Nasdaq shares, you own a tiny piece of these technology companies.  These are real assets that typically produce real revenue and real profits.

But there is one major similarity of Bitcoin and the Nasdaq index.  They are part of the Everything Bubble.  In fact, these two things almost seem like the face of the bubble.

Just as housing and financial stocks were the face of the bubble in 2007/ 2008, the Nasdaq and Bitcoin are the speculative games in town for this one.

When the bubble finally bursts, there will be differences.  As stated above, when you own the Nasdaq, you at least own real assets, even if they are overvalued right now as compared to what they will be.

Who knows with Bitcoin?  It isn’t going to zero because there will always be libertarian-leaning tech nerds who will always insist that Bitcoin is the solution to all of our problems.  But Bitcoin could certainly fall 95% or more without much of a problem.

Ignoring the Fundamentals

I remember commenting on the Nasdaq back in early 2020.  I said that it may hit 10,000 that year and that that was a bubble.  It has now doubled from there.

To be sure, the Fed has done a lot of money creation since that time.  This may justify some of the increases.

With so much politics going on, especially with a new president coming in, it seems that everyone is talking about the good or the bad that will happen with Trump.

But the economy doesn’t really care about Trump.  We shouldn’t get blinded by the politics.

There has been an inverted yield curve for about two years now.  It is now just about flat.  The 30-year yield now sits slightly higher than the short-term yields.  Now that the yield curve is returning to normal, we are ready for a major recession.

It doesn’t matter that the Fed is lowering rates.  It is quite common for the Fed to lower rates ahead of when a recession begins, or at least ahead of when we realize there is a recession.

Plus, while everyone talks about the Fed lowering rates, the Fed is engaging in a seemingly contradictory policy.  It continues to drain its balance sheet.  In other words, the Fed is actually engaging in monetary deflation.

We have a falling balance sheet, a yield that is uninverting after two years, and ridiculous all-time highs in the markets.  It doesn’t matter if Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, or Ron Paul is set to take the White House.  There is a recession ahead.  The Everything Bubble is set to explode.

It appears that the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has fallen.  While the establishment media in the West seem to celebrate this news, it is anything but good news for those who value liberty and human life.

In April 2018, I wrote a post titled “Assad Is Not Crazy, Therefore He Must Go”.  I wrote the following:

Bashar al-Assad is the son of Hafez al-Assad, who was president of Syria from 1971 to 2000.  Bashar al-Assad went to medical school and then went on to specialize in ophthalmology at the Western Eye Hospital in London.  He only was called back to Syria in the mid 1990s to become the heir apparent of his father after Assad’s older brother died in a car accident.

While this does not mean that Assad does not crave political power, it is obvious that his original intentions were not to be an overtly political figure.  Most people seeking political power when they are young do not become an eye doctor.

Assad was mostly praised by the Western media in previous decades.  Diane Sawyer interviewed him and had nice things to say about him.  There are pictures of John Kerry dining with Assad and their respective spouses before Kerry turned on him as part of the Obama administration.

Assad got on the naughty list of the U.S. establishment, and now he is called an animal, a terrorist, and almost everything else nasty that can think of.  Of course, we almost never hear these terms used against U.S. politicians.  If they are used against Trump, it isn’t because he dropped bombs on innocent people.  It is because he sent out a rude tweet.

Syria has been one of the few places in the Middle East where Christianity was allowed to thrive.  Incidentally, Iraq was another place where Christianity thrived up until the U.S. invasion.  Christianity is also tolerated in Iran.  For some reason, the U.S. government, with the support of a majority of self-identified Christian Americans, like to overthrow secular dictators and eliminate the Christian populations in these places.  Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia gets U.S. support.

It really is odd.  It just shows the irrationality that has prevailed with the out-of-control U.S. empire.  It’s bad enough that there is so much U.S. interventionism when it comes to foreign policy.  But the policies themselves are completely irrational.  We don’t even know which side we are on half the time.  Many times, we (meaning the U.S. government) are playing both sides.

I think Assad is probably one of the least bad people when it comes to dictators.  He may be one of the least bad people amongst all political leadership in the world.  He has actually tried to keep Syria together by protecting innocent people who have been terrorized by the thugs that have invaded the country due to the U.S. war in Iraq and the attempted overthrow of the Syrian government by the U.S. establishment.

Any crimes committed by the Assad regime pale in comparison to the crimes of U.S. presidents and those who surround them.

The 2024 Fall

The fall of the Syrian government to terrorists fits in with a lot of events in late 2024.  Russia is tied up in Ukraine.  The Israeli state is attempting to take down anyone it deems as an enemy.  Trump is coming into office with Tulsi Gabbard as an influence.  You can see why the powers-that-be wanted to get this done.

Biden and his handlers are now saying that they will fund the new government.  So, the U.S. taxpayer, 23 years after 9/11, will be funding Al Qaeda.

And of course, the U.S. empire likes to take out secular regimes that don’t obey the orders of the U.S. empire.  The U.S. government tried to take out Syria when Obama (the peace president) was in office.

They relied on a story of Assad using chemical weapons against his own people.  It is “weapons of mass destruction” all over again by the same liars.  In 2019, Wikileaks published an email with concerns by at least one of the investigators of the so-called chemical weapons saying that the report misrepresented the facts.

Of course, the same media that told you about the chemical weapons and that Assad is a really bad guy never go back and correct the record.

We will see what happens in Syria in the coming days and months, but it is not going to be good.  Under Assad, the Syrian government protected Christians.  It wasn’t a libertarian society by any means, just as no country on planet Earth is.  But at least it was largely peaceful before the U.S. started firing missiles and funding terrorist organizations in Syria.

This is why it is critical that Tulsi Gabbard is part of the Trump administration.  She has been called an Assad apologist by many people because she recognized what the U.S. government was doing in Syria and said so.

We can only hope that the truth will come out on this.  Assad was not the problem in Syria, and if he was, that was for the Syrian people to deal with.  The problem is the violence and interventionism of the U.S. government and its allies.

After Joe Biden, his press secretary, and most of the establishment media assured us that Joe Biden would not pardon his son, he has done just that.  The media used this as a talking point against Trump before the election, repeating that Biden is upholding the rule of law and will abide by the jury decision, unlike what Trump does.

I didn’t realize that this was an issue where the talking points went out and the media endlessly repeated them.  It was like the memo that went out to use the word “weird” to refer to J.D. Vance.

There are other more significant pronouncements such as the “safe and effective” vaccines and the “unprovoked” aggression of Putin.  The memo went out on these too, and the media repeated them constantly.

I’m not sure if J.D. Vance is weird because that is very subjective.  I do find Tim Walz, the running mate for Kamala Harris, to be weirder than Vance though.  With all of the pronouncements, it’s like they protest too much.  The vaccines were anything but safe and effective.  The invasion from Putin was anything but unprovoked.

So, when they assured us that Joe Biden wouldn’t pardon his son because Joe Biden believes in the rule of law, we should have assumed the opposite.

To be clear, the president does have the legal power to pardon according to the Constitution, but it doesn’t make all pardons right.  And the media used these lines about upholding the rule of law and jury decisions as a talking point against Trump.

Now that Joe Biden has pardoned Hunter Biden, the media will say a few things about it, but they won’t really revisit their own comments.  While conservatives are somewhat outraged, I don’t think most of them understand the depths of this.

What the Pardon Says

Joe Biden granted a full and unconditional pardon to Hunter Biden.  As a libertarian, I don’t care that he violated a gun regulation, missed some tax payments, or did drugs.  I only care in the sense that it shows the hypocrisy of his father who would gladly throw others in jail for these same offenses.

But this also doesn’t mean that Hunter Biden isn’t a criminal.  And the bigger criminal here is Joe Biden.

The pardon reads in part as follows:

“A Full and Unconditional Pardon – For those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted…”

So, the pardon is for any crimes he may have committed that are “including but not limited to” those he was charged with.  If Hunter Biden committed murder, then he couldn’t be charged at the federal level.  (I know that this should only be a crime at the state level, but this isn’t reality today.)

The other interesting thing about the pardon is the date.  It goes all the way back to January 1, 2014.  This is when Joe Biden was vice president.  It is also just before the U.S.-backed coup that took place in Ukraine.

The Consequences or Lack Of

There are no consequences for the criminal Biden family.  But let’s be clear that this isn’t just about corruption.  For them it was about corruption.  A Ukrainian company hired Hunter Biden as some kind of “consultant”, which was really to just get favor with the U.S. government.  Meanwhile, Hunter Biden paid 10% to “the big guy”, who was Joe Biden.

Ukraine is a giant slush fund for the Biden family.  It is like a large version of the Clinton Foundation.  Taxpayer money flows to Ukraine, while a small percentage (but significant amounts) flow back to the Biden family.

Again, this isn’t just about the corruption and skimming money, even though that is bad enough.  This is a war-ravaged country.

The U.S. helped overthrow the democratically-elected president in Ukraine in 2014 while Biden was VP.  This led to the slaughter of thousands of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

In 2021, Putin wanted assurance of Russia’s safety and requested assurances from the Biden administration.  Biden and his handlers basically gave Putin the middle finger.

There are a lot of things and people to blame for the war in Ukraine, but there is no question that Biden and company played a major role in provoking this whole thing.  There are probably hundreds of thousands of people dead, but at least Joe Biden and Hunter Biden got their checks.

This isn’t about petty crimes committed by Hunter Biden.  This is about the lives of millions of people that were cast aside by a criminal family.

When Trump tried to get dirt on Joe Biden when he was president in his first term, he was on to something.  He talked to the corrupt Zelensky about it, and the Democrats in Congress impeached Trump for his phone call.  Yet, it was actually Trump trying to expose the crimes of the Biden family.  Regardless of Trump’s motives, he was on the right track.

We will see if Joe Biden decides to issue a pardon for himself.  He is the bigger criminal than Hunter Biden who should be locked away for the rest of his life.  His criminality runs deep, but much of it is out in the open now if you just look close enough.

It is a mistake for libertarians and others advocating for more liberty to ignore appealing to people’s morality.  The interesting thing is that the authoritarians do this all the time to advance their own agenda.

“Do it for the children.”

“We need to save the planet from climate change by giving us more power to tax and regulate.”

“We need to save democracy in Ukraine by sending them money and weapons to fight the big, bad Putin.”

The authoritarians prey on the goodness of people and use it to enhance their own power.  Even when they are appealing to people’s own self-interest, they justify it in the name of being fair and just.

Selling the Benefits of Liberty

Libertarians should sell the benefits of liberty by appealing to people’s self-interest.  But this doesn’t mean that we should stop there and not also appeal to their morality.

It is easy to find conservatives and libertarians who argue that we should stop sending money to Ukraine.  The justification is typically that we shouldn’t be sending money to Ukraine while we have so many problems here at home.

This was an effective argument when there was severe flooding from Hurricane Helene.  It is a good question to ask why the government is sending hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine while largely ignoring (or worse) the people who have lost houses and are in desperate need of assistance.

This is appealing to people’s morality too, but they can more easily identify with someone who lives in North Carolina than someone who lives in Ukraine and speaks a different language.

Still, we shouldn’t stop there.  Even if there had been no disaster in North Carolina and other surrounding states, we still shouldn’t be forced to send money to Ukraine.

By sending money and weapons to Ukraine, it empowers the oligarchs in Ukraine while prolonging the war and all of the death and destruction that come with it.  If you care about the lives of innocent Ukrainians, then you should favor a halt of all U.S. taxpayer money going to Ukraine.  Who cares if Russia takes over eastern Ukraine where mostly ethnic Russians live?

If Ukrainians want to fight and die for that cause, we shouldn’t be funding it.  But if U.S. government funding stopped, it would likely lead to some kind of a peace settlement.

Of course, this war never would have happened in the first place if the U.S. government hadn’t assisted in overthrowing the democratically-elected president of Ukraine in 2014.

Incidentally, it was actually Trump who defended his position of wanting to reach a peace settlement by saying that he wants people to stop dying.  We’ll see if he maintains this position when he becomes president.

Effective Morality Plays

Even though the political left has largely advocated for U.S. involvement in Ukraine, there is a small part of the hard left that has protested the actions of Israel, particularly in Gaza.

This has actually been effective, as majorities in many countries throughout the world have agreed with criticisms of the Israeli state for the mass death and destruction it has caused in Gaza.  Even around half of Americans are at least somewhat opposed to the actions of the Israeli state.

You generally don’t hear the left saying that we should stop funding Israel because we could use that money at home to fight climate change and help the poor.

No.  We generally hear opposition to the Israeli state for murdering tens of thousands of innocent people.  And it has worked too.  That’s because most people find it appalling that someone would murder innocent people, even if it is state actors doing it.

You can debate about whether money going to Israel could be better spent at home by the government or by the individuals who actually earned it.  But when you turn it to morality, it becomes harder for the side who doesn’t have morality on their side.

Sure, people will say that Israel was attacked and they have a right to defend themselves.  But this has little to do with self-defense.  You can’t just blow up buildings and shoot children in the head while claiming the moral high ground.

You can always say that it is wrong to knowingly kill little children.  How could little children be guilty of anything?  The supporters of the Israeli state can claim self-defense all day long, but it doesn’t justify what is happening now.  Killing children is never justified.

Are People Good or Bad?

Most people are neither all good nor all bad.  There are maybe a few who are all bad.  Most people do live for their own self-interest, but they also want to generally be seen as good people.  They don’t favor murdering innocent people, and they certainly don’t want to be seen by others as wanting that.

Americans are generally good people.  Many just want to be left alone to live their own life.  They will take advantage of government welfare when it is available because they see it as part of the system, which it is.  Some actually favor it more than others.  There are certainly many people who would like to live at the expense of others.

Still, this doesn’t mean they favor murdering children.  Just because someone advocates for a government program that might favor them doesn’t mean they are completely evil.  There are varying degrees of morality.

So, when it comes to issues of war, the large and overwhelming majority of Americans don’t want to see innocent people murdered.  This is why the state uses propaganda.  They have to sell wars saying it is self-defense, it is to spread democracy, and it is to liberate others.

While economic arguments and appealing to people’s self-interest should not be ignored, liberty advocates should use morality arguments more often.  The idea of being a good person sells.