Jacobin to the Core

by Paul Craig Roberts (He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury)

After listening to his inaugural speech, anyone who thinks President Bush and his handlers are sane needs to visit a psychiatrist. The hubris-filled megalomaniac in the Oval Office has promised the world war without end.

Bush's crazy talk has even upset rah-rah Republicans. One Republican called Bush's speech "God-drenched." It has begun to dawn on the formerly Grand Old Party that a bloodless coup has occurred and Republicans have lost their party to Jacobins, who cloak themselves under the term "neoconservatives."

What is a Jacobin? Jacobins ushered in the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The Jacobins saw themselves as virtuous champions of universalist principles that required them to impose "liberty, equality, fraternity" not merely on France by a reign of terror, but also on the rest of Europe by force of arms.

Unlike America's Founding Fathers, who exhorted their countrymen to cultivate their own garden, Jacobins were not content with revolutionizing France. They were driven to revolutionize the world.

President Bush's second inaugural speech is Jacobin to the core. It stands outside the American tradition. Declaring American values to be universalist principles, Bush promised to use American power to spread democracy and to end tyranny everywhere on earth. As one of Bush's neocon puppetmasters, Robert Kagan, approvingly wrote in the Washington Post on Jan. 23, "The goal of American foreign policy is now to spread democracy, for its own sake, for reasons that transcend specific threats. In short, Bush has unmoored his foreign policy from the war on terrorism."

Michael Gerson, the Jacobin White House speechwriter who wrote Bush's infamous "God-drenched speech," defensively insists that Bush's wars will only last "a generation." We can take comfort in that. According to the dictionary, a generation is "about 30 years," so it is only our children and grandchildren who will have to be sacrificed for "Bush's historic mission." Along about 2035 things should be calming down. Whoever remains can begin to attack the $50 trillion national war debt.

Kagan calls America's moral crusade against the world "the higher realism that Bush now proclaims." Gerson declares that Bush's "methods are deeply realistic."

What is realistic about declaring weapons of mass destruction to exist where they do not exist?
What is realistic about assigning blame for Sept. 11 where it does not belong?
What is realistic about destroying a secular state and creating a vast breeding ground for terrorists?
What is realistic about making Osama bin Laden an Islamic hero and shaking the foundations of America's reigning puppets in the Middle East?
What is realistic about declaring a world crusade in the face of evidence that the U.S. cannot successfully occupy Baghdad, a city of only 6 million people, much less Iraq, a country of only 25 million people?

There is nothing realistic about Bush or any of his advisers. The world has not seen such delusion since the Children's Crusade led by a visionary French peasant, Stephen of Cloyes, marched off to free the Holy Land from the Muslims in the year 1212. The children were captured and sold into slavery.

Bush and the Republican Party have morphed into a Jacobin Party. They sincerely believe that they have a monopoly on virtue and the obligation to impose U.S. virtue on the rest of the world. This Jacobin program requires the supremacy of executive power and is dependent on an unwarranted belief in the efficacy of force.

There is nothing American or democratic about this program. Bush speaks as Robespierre when he invokes "a fire in the minds of men" that "warms those who feel its power." Bush possesses Robespierre's "pure conscience" as he destroys Iraq's infrastructure and the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, levels cities, and practices torture. American casualties (dead and wounded) have reached 10 percent of the U.S. occupation force and are but the "realistic methods" Bush uses to achieve his "deeply idealistic" goals.

At home, the casualties are the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Republicans explode in anger when a liberal judge creates a constitutional right. But they sit in silence when the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) creates the right for Bush to decide who has constitutional protections and who does not.

Like Robespierre, Bush justifies the state of terror that he has brought to Iraq by his noble aspirations. The effect is to destroy idealism with hypocrisy about violence. When the neoconservatives succeed in draining idealism of its power, will they then declare violence alone to be their goal?

Led by Bush, the Republican Party now stands for detainment without trial and war without end. It is a party destructive of all virtue and a great threat to life and liberty on earth.

Re: VATICANO CONTRA FREE TRADE

O Vaticano não é mais contra o "Free Trade" do que os próprios acordos de "Free Trade" o são - documentos condicionadores dos termos em que o "Trade" é feito. Porque, em verdade vos digo, o "Free Trade" não carece de acordo algum.

O Imposto progressivo da Segurança Social

Todos pagamos cerca de 1/3 do nossos rendimentos para a Segurança Social (e depois ainda temos o IRS, IVA, IRC e os restantes impostos especiais e taxas diversas, etc)

mas

1) O Subsidio de Desemprego tem um tecto de 3 salários minimos

...o que significa que quem aufere mais de 3 salários minimos, recebe menos(e cada vez menos quanto maior é o rendimento) do que aquilo que paga proporcionalmente pelo "serviço" de seguro de desemprego. É como se existisse um tecto para as indeminizações de acidentes de viação (embora o prémio obrigatório pago por um carro de 35 000 Euros seja naturalmente mais caro que de um de 15 000 Euros), mas ficando o segurado desprotegido (e a pagar a suas expensas, embora tenha pago o prémio correspondente) acima desse tecto.

Se existe um tecto no subsidio de desemprego tem de existir um tecto contributivo.

2) o PS vem agora propôr um tecto na Pensão de Reforma acima dos 6 000 Euros.

...o que significa que qualquer rendimento superior, mais uma vez não irá recebe o retorno do "serviço" (de poupança forçada) pago através do imposto da segurança social.

E o pior é que rápidamente vão gostar da ideia: baixar o tecto do que se recebe e manter a contribuição proporcional.

Conclusão:

O sistema da segurança social tenderá a cada vez ser mais progressivo porque será sempre politicamente fácil defender a "moralidade" dos tectos das despesas mantendo sem tectos a contribuição. A moralidade da extorsão é sempre fácil de apregoar enquanto é uma maioria que se ilude que beneficia com tal.

No IRS, 66% da colecta é pago pelos rendimentos anuais acima dos 30 000 Euros e 80% pelos acima dos 22 500 Euros. Mas como é suspeito que paguem menos do que devem, a devassa e o totalitarismo igualitarista prepara-se para assegurar que essa fatia ainda seja maior, custe o que custar (não se aceitam prisioneiros na guerra total).

Na Segurança Social, com tectos no que se recebe e sem tectos no que se paga (e com toda a certeza, para serem diminuidos a prazo até ao ponto em que eleitoralmente isso náo prejudique o "status quo") agrava-se ainda mais a extorsão da minoria pela maioria a que chamam de progressividade.

O que fazer:

1. Exigir que a segurança social (nas componentes de subsidio de desemprego e pensão de reforma) seja dirigida para os escalão de baixo rendimento, ou seja, um salário minimo (ou quanto muito, dois).

2. Exigir os tectos de contribuição correspondentes, o que significaria um choque fiscal imediato e o fim do problema da "sustentabilidade".

Need, greed and compassion

"Joseph Sobran recently wrote that, in the current lexicon, "need" is the desire of people to loot the wealth of others; "greed" is the desire of those others to keep the money they have earned; and "compassion" is the function of those who negotiate the transfer.

The ruling elite may be considered the "professional compassionate" class. It is easy, of course, to be conspicuously "compassionate" if others are being forced to pay the cost." Egalitarianism and the Elites, Murray N. Rothbard

W and Dostoevsky

"Midway through his inaugural address, when the president proclaimed "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," I wondered if Bush or his speechwriters knew or cared how alien this ultra-revolutionary rhetoric would seem to conservatives of the old school – and soon had my answer:

"Because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts we have lit a fire as well, a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power; it burns those who fight its progress. And one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world."

A fire in the mind – surely, I thought, Bush's speechwriters can't have inserted this phrase without knowing its literary origin. It is taken from Dostoevsky's novel, The Possessed, a story set in pre-revolutionary Russia in which the author chronicles the intrigues of the emerging revolutionary movement: one of the main characters is based on the infamous nihilist Sergei Nechaev, whose aim is to make a revolution of such destructive power that bourgeois society will be completely destroyed. Their strategy is to provoke a violent crackdown on all dissent – which will then spark an explosion of revolutionary violence. To this purpose the nihilist Peter Verkhovensky worms his way into the confidence of Lembke, a provincial governor, convincing him of the need to crush rebellious workers who are distributing revolutionary leaflets and generally agitating against the government. The result is an uprising of murderous anger, a volcanic eruption of nihilistic violence that consumes the provincial capital in a great fire." Justin Raimondo

Confrangedor

WP:

"All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors," Bush told tens of thousands of onlookers from the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in a 21-minute address in which he used the words "free," "freedom" or "liberty" 49 times.

The president also appealed to young Americans to consider enlisting in the military or to find other ways of joining his mission. "You have seen that life is fragile and evil is real and courage triumphs," he said. "Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself."

A última vez que um Presidente Americano se empenhou pela guerra na liberdade dos outros e os direitos dos outros povos, o mundo obteve o fim do padrão ouro e do liberalismo clássico, o inicio do comunismo e fascismo e uma segunda guerra pior que a primeira. E na altura o Congresso opunha-se ou equilibrava as visões do Presidente Wilson (recusou duas vezes o tratado de Versailles e a entrada na Liga das Nações).

EUobserver.com

EUobserver.com

Contra a Poupança forçada (ou nem isso)

Porque aceitamos nós que nos seja imposto um serviço de poupança forçada que ainda por cima, para nos ser devolvida, está dependente da boa vontade das gerações futuras e do pressuposto que o Estado Social ainda exista daqui a 3 décadas?

E se "tem" de existir para alguns, com o argumento redistributivo e do patamar mínimo de subsistência, porque não limitar o imposto pago para a segurança social (nesta componente) para um tecto que apenas "assegure" uma pensão de reforma de 1 ou 2 salários minimos?

Agora falam em aumentar a idade de reforma, depois em novas formas de cálculo, outros ainda falam da "privatização", mas o problema está na TIRANIA da poupança compulsória (ou nem isso, porque é uma mera transferência).

Temos de exigir um tecto para as pensões de reforma e um tecto para o imposto pago para esse efeito, e assim obteremos quer um choque fiscal quer o aumento significativo da nossa liberdade ou seja, soberania sobre a nossa propriedade.

War and Revolution

"Many of the basic values of war and revolution are identical. In each there is legitimization of violence in the name of some moral or social end that transcends violence. The appeal in each is overwhelmingly to youth – its unique energies, strengths, and also values, the latter so often subordinated in peacetime to the values of the older and established members of the social order. In both war and revolution there is an emphasis upon loyalty, honor, and cause that is all too often difficult to find in ordinary political and economic society." Robert Nisbett

"A que nós nos persuadimos que saberemos responder é à apreciação falsa do destinos e da influência do absolutismo estabelecido na Europa sobre as ruinas da liberdade da Idade Média."

Alexandre Herculano

Re: INQUALIFICÁVEL

A Igreja pode apelar a que os advogados se recusem a tratar de processos de divórcios (gostaria ainda assim de saber em que termos exactos o terá feito) como pode apelar a uma série de outras atitudes a serem tomadas voluntáriamente no dominio civil.

O Estado é que não devia vir a poder (como o vai, mais tarde ou mais cedo fazer) obrigar os Católicos (que não o queiram fazer por escolha moral) a financiar compulsóriamente (e em último caso, sob ameaça de arresto de bens e prisão) o aborto e até provavelmente a perseguir os médicos que o recusem a fazer.

No entanto, os primeiros se calhar são os "fanáticos" e os segundos os moderados bafejados por esse bem supremo que é a modernidade.

Alexandre Herculano

"(...) os que entre nós sonham a fusão ibérica, cremos que de boa fé, só desejam, sem o saberem, uma Irlanda para a Península. Não se incomodem. Para se remediar, Castela já tem a Galiza."

Europa das regiões II

JMF no Publico: "...porque não referendar o "Plano Ibarretxe" (o nome do lehendakari, o presidente do Governo autónomo)? Não seria uma lição de democracia? Não seria a forma de permitir aos bascos escolherem o seu futuro? A resposta, por paradoxal que tal pareça, é "não".

Quer isto dizer que, não fora o Estado espanhol e a prevalência do seu Estado de direito, todos os não-nacionalistas do País Basco estariam não apenas ameaçados como desprotegidos.

...A primeira é que esse referendo não tem condições para decorrer de forma justa, leal e democrática.

...A segunda razão crucial é que uma definição liberal de democracia coloca o ênfase no direito dos indivíduos e não no "direito dos povos", um tipo de "direito" em nome do qual a Humanidade - e a Europa - conheceu as maiores tragédias. "

Até sou capaz de concordar que qualquer intenção de Secessão levanta questões complexas (sobretudo quando movimentos migratórios modificam ao longo de gerações a identificação étnica de uma Nação...porque depois é posta em causa com facilidade), mas porque não achar que a construção da Europa ou qualquer outro processo de integração politica levanta exactamente o mesmo problema de forma inversa?

A origem problemática dos "direitos dos povos" iniciou-se com a sua proclamação por um progressista Woodrow Wilson justificando assim a entrada (essa sim trágica) dos EUA na Grande Guerra, levando ao fim dos impérios e monarquias continentais (reforçando temporáriamente o francês e inglês) e conduzindo a Europa directamente para a Segunda Guerra.

Todos os Estados existem assentes num qualquer Status Quo, que a cada momento, tentam que seja o definitivo, mas que a história teima mais tarde ou mais cedo de pôr em causa. Por exemplo, os EUA nascem da revolta dos colonos contra o bom Império Britânico e um inofensivo King George por causa de um misero imposto sobre o chá.

Mais tarde Lincoln vai declarar ilegal a secessão dos Estados Sulistas (a China está a dizer o mesmo em relação a "Taiwain"). Não é um precedente histórico muito favorável à criação de uma Federação Europeia, de que se diz, os Estados vão poder retirar-se. Mas não irá nessa altura alguém afirmar que o desejo de "sair" está a ser forçado por "nacionalistas étnicos" que falam do povo português (essa "noção artificial"...) e que estão a pôr em causa os direitos daqueles que querem continuar na "Federação"? Aposto que nessa altura já existirá um Exército Federal pronto a defender os direito desses "Europeus".

Quando diz: "a noção de "povo basco", além de artificial - tão artificial que os radicais se reivindicam o direito de definir quem é ou não basco -, resulta de um nacionalismo étnico que remete, na sua fundamentação ideológica, para imaginários que, no limite, são semelhantes aos fanatismos em que se baseiam as noções de superioridade racial...ao subtrair o País Basco ao Estado de direito espanhol, criando uma judicatura própria, atenta contra os direitos fundamentais dos que, vivendo nessa região, se sentem bascos e espanhóis, ou mesmo só espanhóis, ou até apenas cidadãos da Europa."

...as suas objecções ao "nacionalismo étnico"" e "direitos dos povos" não se aplicam a Israel?Porque não cidadãos do Médio Oriente? Já sabemos que o que faz um povo querer e conseguir governar-se a si próprio é apenas a sua capacidade de impor o seu "Status Quo". A Irlanda conseguiu mas ainda subsistem dificuldades precisamente porque é dificil duas comunidades sentirem-se apenas "cidadãos" quando uma delas começou por dominar e subjugar a outra. Tal como o "Ocidental" teria dificuldades em sentir-se um "cidadão do mundo" numa federação mundial de maioria indo-chinesa-muçulmana.

A melhor receita contra independentismo é o federalismo interno (no caso específico da Europa, muitas regiões podem vir a quer ser europeias, sim, mas como meio de ultrapassarem o seu próprio Estado). Quando não é possível, a negociação pacífica e o recurso a referendos parece inevitável. A antiga Checo-Eslováquia mostrou tal é possível. Muitos conflitos no mundo, tal como em África e noutros pontos, podem ser mais facilmente resolvidos se a Secessão for encarada com tranquilidade. Provavelmente no Iraque, a pressa pela sua democratização, poderá conduzir a uma guerra civil que acabará por desaguar na perda da unidade.

A origem dos conflitos internacionais que já marcaram a história não está no "direito dos povos" por si (embora tudo aconselhe a que só as partes em causa "discutam" entre si qualquer mudança de status quo, coisa que Wilson não fez, libertando com isso o génio do mal). É o intervencionismo económico. E este tanto pode existir nas pequenas unidades políticas como nas grandes. Mas as pequenas pagam o devido preço de forma abrupta. As grandes unidades políticas têm muita mais capacidade de se fecharem e de imporem as suas regras, enquanto proclamam as maravilhas do seu mercado interno.

Charadas geo-estratégicas

US fury over EU weapons for China

"America is waging an intense behind-the-scenes battle to stop the European Union lifting its 15-year-old arms embargo against China, warning Britain that it will not tolerate the prospect of European military technology being used to threaten its soldiers in the Far East. As Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, prepares to travel to Beijing next week to discuss ending the arms ban, The Telegraph has learnt that the Bush administration is alarmed by Tony Blair's "cave-in" to French and German pressure. Japan has also expressed dismay over the EU's move dramatically to upgrade relations with Beijing.(...)

The US sees China as its main long-term rival for global dominance and is worried about possible military conflict over China's declared desire to re-assert control over Taiwan, which America has vowed to defend. US officials argue that any easing of European arms control exports poses a threat to its soldiers. But EU officials point out that Israel, one of America's closest allies, sells large amounts of weaponry to China."

Syrian Missile Deal Puts New Strain on Israel's Relationship With Moscow

Crisis Over Israeli Funding of Yushchenko [na Ucrania]

Israel Briefed US on Crisis With Russia...

...so US Demands Russia Cancel Proposed Missile Sale to Syria...

...but Russia Plays Down Crisis

HispaLibertas

Novo link: HispaLibertas

Southern Sudanese to seek independence in referendum

RUMBEK, Sudan: Southern Sudanese will finally get a chance to decide in a referendum to be held in six years if they want to remain part of Sudan or secede, and there is little doubt which way they will vote.

Unify Europe: a subversion of our deepest heritage

"(...) in western societies free-market relations don’t exist because of the State, but in spite of it. Classical liberals and libertarians are aware that the roots of our history of freedom are in the Middle Ages and in its institutional pluralism. As Boudewijn Bouckaert wrote, “polycentric extended orders, such as Medieval Peace of God (1100-1500), do not conform with the Hobbesian intuition about power and order.

(…) The Medieval order was an order without a sovereign power in the ‘modern’ sense of the word, i.e. a central power disposing of a monopoly of a coercive power enabling it to rule a whole nation and to act as a conflict-solver of the last resort.

We can find the same observations in Robert Nisbet: “medieval society, from the point of view of formal authority, was one of the most loosely organized societies in history. Despite the occasional pretensions of centralizing popes, emperors, and kings, the authority that stretched theoretically from each of them was constantly hampered by the existence of jealously guarded ‘liberties’ of town, gild, monastery, and village”

(...) one of the most important elements of this European identity is history. And history has not always been the Nation-State’s dominion. In fact, pluralism has been the key of our historical success, and such pluralism was the absence (at the end of Middle Ages) of a powerful center of political decisions.

We had Church, Empire, a number of Kings and Princes, a multitude of feudal relationships and – in some regions – independent Cities, but we never had a small group of rulers able to organize economic life and civil society. As Jean Baechler noticed in his important study about the origins of capitalism and about the role of medieval anarchy in this extraordinary history “the dark centuries have undeniably diffused a spiritual order, but also a deep disorder in politics and the economy”.

This manageable chaos was the explanation of our success.

The will to unify Europe shows a misunderstanding of what the European identity is all about and a subversion of our deepest heritage."

"European Unification as the New Frontier of Collectivist Redistribution The case for Competitive Federalism and a Free-market Economy" Carlo Lottieri, University of Siena

Noticias de Secessão

Sudan Sunday's deal ends Africa's longest-running civil war

"[On Sunday], one of the most important moments of African history of the last 50 years came to pass when the Sudan government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement signed a final peace accord ... ending nearly 25 years of civil war...

One of the elements of the settlement is that the south can exercise the option to secede in six years. This is the first time in Africa that a peace settlement has recognised the right to secession ..."

Charadas democraticas

Publico:

"Zapatero pediu que os bascos não cumpram a ameaça de convocar um referendo sobre a questão se a vontade do Parlamento espanhol for o veto do plano. O "Plano Ibarretxe", adoptado no dia 30 de Dezembro pelo Parlamento basco, visa conceder ao País Basco espanhol competências autónomas em matéria de segurança social, fiscalidade e justiça. O documento será votado no Parlamento espanhol, onde a maioria dos deputados já se manifestaram contra. Contra estão também 68,8 por cento dos espanhóis, segundo uma sondagem Sigma Dos publicada no dia 9 pelo jornal "El Mundo". Outra sondagem, da Euskobarometro (basca), publicada no fim de Dezembro pela Universidade do País Basco, revela que 36 por cento dos bascos consideram que Ibarretxe deve levar o seu plano em frente, 34 por cento pedem que negoceie com Madrid e 18 por cento querem que o plano seja retirado."

Nota: É uma ilusão pensar que (via Blasfémias) que:"os dois maiores partidos espanhóis acreditam que a aprovação da Constituição Europeia é a melhor tábua de salvação contra os planos independentistas bascos, a que se podem seguir os de outras regiões."

É apenas mais um argumento falacioso a favor do caminho Federal porque com a integração politica acelerada:

(1) A coesão nacional tende a diminuir

(2) As regiões vão poder jogar com o trunfo autonómico-independentista, argumentando que querem permanecer na UE/Federação (o que pode ser ou não verdade no longo prazo).

DOES DEMOCRACY PROMOTE PEACE?

James Ostrowski1(pdf):

"(...)My contention is that my imagined opponents are confusing a dispute over
definition with a dispute over values. That is, when some would carve out of the
definition of peace an exception for democratic, majoritarian, law-making, what they are
really saying is, they value democratic decision-making more highly than the avoidance
of violence or the threat of violence against persons on the wrong end of that decisionmaking.
After all, as a purely empirical matter, the physical actions and mental states
involved with criminal extortion—“Give me a thousand dollars or I will kidnap you
tomorrow.”--are identical to democratic fund-raising—“Give me a thousand dollars or I
will put you in jail tomorrow.” Both, in a strictly factual sense, are breaches of the peace.
It is just that the democrat values democracy more than he values peace!

Similarly, when someone argues, “Yes, violence, etc. is a breach of the peace, but
so is poverty.”, a word game is being played. The disputant is being intellectually
dishonest. He is trying to use a definitional dispute to disguise a value judgment. He is
trying to smuggle welfare rights into the prestigious concept of peace. Let’s just be
honest about it. What you are really saying is, “Sure, I like peace, but I am willing be
unpeaceable to achieve welfare rights because I value them more than I value peace.”

(...) Needless to say, the world has yet to stumble upon peace. My suspicion is, even if the
world pondered the question and was inexorably drawn to the rather common sensical
definition of peace proffered herein--the absence of violence or the palpable threat of violence against persons and their property—most people and most politicians and most intellectuals would recoil in horror at the prospect of such a world.

It’s not that these people don’t like peace in general terms; it’s just that there are
many things they value more highly. Many of these things can only be achieved by the
use of democratic violence or the palpable threat of democratic violence against persons
and their property. That is why we live in such a violent world. We are lying in the bed
we have made. Most people don’t want peace, not really. If they did, it could be
achieved without enormous difficulty since “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.”

Morto e enterrado

Search for WMD in Iraq ended

"(...) The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

Antes e agora

"The very word 'guerrilla' acquired its present meaning from the ferocious insurgency of the illiterate Spanish poor against their would-be liberators under the leadership of their traditional oppressors.

On July 6, 1808, King Joseph of Spain presented a draft constitution that for the first time in Spain's history offered an independent judiciary, freedom of the press, and the abolition of the remaining feudal privileges of the aristocracy and the church. … Yet the Spanish peasantry did not rise up to demand the immediate implementation of the constitution. Instead, they obeyed the priests, who summoned them to fight against the ungodly innovations of the foreign invader – for Joseph was the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte and had been placed on the Spanish throne by French troops a month earlier. That was all that mattered for most Spaniards – not what was proposed, but who proposed it."

The same thing happened in Naples, where a "Holy Faith" militia organized by Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo rose up against the Napoleonic "liberators" and paved the way for the British massacre of local French-supported liberals. It didn't matter to the insurgents that the Roman Catholic faith was enshrined in the Napoleonic constitution – the illiterate peasants who resisted "liberation" couldn't know that and wouldn't have cared if they did. As Luttwak says, what mattered was "not what was proposed, but who proposed it."

Like the Spanish and Italian peasants who were urged to resist Napoleon's occupation by their priests, the Iraqi people are listening to their clerics, who are telling them that foreigners are crusading against their religion, stealing their resources, and violating their women. In Germany and Japan, the elites collaborated with the Allies to effect a transformation of the political structure, and the people, with a long (if not entirely untroubled) history of parliamentary government behind them, were not in irreconcilable opposition. The situation is quite different in Iraq. In short, there can be no Iraqi democracy in any recognizably Western sense of the term due to the acute shortage of democrats."

The Capitalist Response

John Clark, no Seattle Catholic - A Journal of Catholic News and Views:

(...) As a matter of historical fact, capitalism almost literally began in the backyard of the Vatican. As Raymond De Roover explains in The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank: 1397-1494: "Modern capitalism based on private ownership has its roots in Italy during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance."

Even the premiere economic historian Joseph Schumpeter admits that:

"by the end of the fifteenth century most of the phenomena that we are in the habit of with that vague word Capitalism had put in their appearance, including big business, stock and commodity speculation and 'high finance'..."

Simply put, the Bellocian thesis that capitalism has Protestant origins must be summarily rejected. It is significant that modern capitalism found its origin in Catholic countries at the height of the glory of Christendom, when faith still mattered. It is also significant that the Medici Bank, which existed as both the figurative and literal center of the capitalist world, had one customer that did business with it more than any other: the offices of the Catholic Church.(...)

After all, there are quite a number of extremely influential Catholic economists from whom he could have chosen. If the reader would please forgive the length of the following, I would suggest that the greatest Catholic thinkers on economic questions would include the following:

St. Bonaventure (the thirteenth century doctor of the Church who laid out an extensive moral application of property rights).

St. Albert the Great (who developed a moral defense of the lawfulness of business as well as establishing the "need theory of value").

Pope Alexander III (who provided an ethical foundation for the formula of a "just price").
Alexander of Hales (thirteenth century Franciscan chairman in theology at the University of Paris who, according to Odd Langholm, produced the "first clear definition and denunciation of monopoly in medieval theological literature").

Henry of Ghent (the thirteenth century master of arts at Paris who provided the moral defense of personal financial investments for future needs).

St. Bernardino of Siena (fifteenth century scholastic whose treatise De Contractibus et Usuris is considered by economists as perhaps the first general survey of the field of economics).

Richard of Middleton (thirteenth century regent master of arts at the University of Paris whose theories on international trade are considered by economists as breakthroughs).

Blessed John Duns Scotus (fourteenth century Franciscan whose commentaries on usury provided a pivotal understanding about the nature of money itself).

Roland of Cremona (thirteenth century regent master of arts at Balogna, who wrote a 1400 page confessional manual addressing questions of wealth and property).

St. Antoninus (archbishop of Florence until 1459, whom Schumpeter describes as "the first man to whom it is possible to ascribe a comprehensive vision of the economic process in all its major aspects").

Pedro Fernandez Navarrete (seventeenth century scholastic canonist who outlined the financial and moral perils of high taxation, whose theories pre-dated "The Laffer Curve" by almost four hundred years).

Cardinal Cajetan (sixteenth century general of the Dominican Order whose theories on the morality of exchange and pricing in De Cambiis provided a major ethical support for free market economic principles).

St. Alphonsus Liguori (eighteenth century doctor of the Church whose theories on the nature of capital would shape economic ethical theory henceforth).

Martin de Azpilcueta Navarrus (sixteenth century Dominican canon lawyer at Salamanca who developed the purchasing power parity theory of exchange rates).

Covarrubias y Leiva (sixteenth century bishop of Segovia who promoted the utility theory of value).

Francisco Suarez (sixteenth century chair of theology at the Jesuit College in Rome, who promoted the natural rights view of private property).

Leonard Lessius (seventeenth century student of Suarez who defended the capitalist principle of the entrepreneur being paid much more highly than other workers).

Laurentius de Ridolfis (fifteenth century canon lawyer who produced the first detailed discussion of foreign exchange).

(...) While Pope Leo XIII was admittedly concerned about the economic environment of his time which followed industrialization, he certainly was no anti-capitalist. On the contrary, he simply condemned the abuses of capitalism, not capitalism itself. That is a rather large distinction. Condemning the abuses of a thing is not the same as condemning the thing. One year prior to Rerum Novarem, Pope Leo XIII, in Sapientiae Christianae, condemned the abuses of the education of children; he did not say that the education of children is an abuse.

Pope John Paul II is really the first modern Pontiff to delve into capitalism proper, and analyze it on its own merits.

In Laborem Exercens, Pope John Paul II writes:

...it should be recognized that the error of early capitalism can be repeated wherever man is in a way treated on the same level as the whole complex of the material means of production, as an instrument and not in accordance with the true dignity of his work — that is to say, where he is not treated as subject and maker, and for this very reason as the true purpose of the whole process of production.

As close as a pope has ever come to fully endorsing a specific economic system occurred in Centissimus Annus. Speaking of capitalism, Pope John Paul II writes:

Certainly the mechanisms of the market offer secure advantages: they help to utilize resources better; they promote the exchange of products; above all they give central place to the person's desires and preferences, which, in a contract, meet the desires and preferences of another person. Nevertheless, these mechanisms carry the risk of an "idolatry" of the market, an idolatry which ignores the existence of goods which by their nature are not and cannot be mere commodities...

Returning now to the initial question: can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? Is this the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress?

The answer is obviously complex. If by "capitalism" is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative...

(...) The position of the greatest scholastic minds of the Church on the subject of trade is this: 1) international trade was ordained by God; 2) it is vital to the survival of the state; and 3) the effort to restrict trade may be a sin against charity.

In De Regno, St. Thomas says that entirely self-sufficient communities are impossible. Thomas writes:

One cannot easily find any place so overflowing with the necessaries as not to need some commodities from other parts. When there is an overabundance of some commodities in one place, these goods would serve no purpose if they could not be carried elsewhere by professional traders. Consequently, the perfect city will make a moderate use of merchants.

The perfect city is one that engages in trade. St. Bonaventure, the great Franciscan Doctor of the Church, argued that international trade must be moral because without trade, "many regions could not exist."

A late scholastic named Vitoria claimed that eternal law, natural law, and positive human law favored international trade. He wrote that to restrict the goods of an area from being supplied to another was not only economically unsound, but actually claimed that it was "iniquitous and against charity." Therefore, one can see that the Church has always been supportive of trade. (...)

Conclusion

As I mentioned in my Latin Mass article, capitalism and each of its component parts has been defended for centuries by the greatest minds of the Church. While capitalism continues to be attacked by the intelligentsia of the world, it has brought prosperity unknown prior to its arrival in countries across the world. Not even Belloc doubted its efficiency. Instead of attacking capitalism, perhaps Catholics should use the monetary tools at their disposal to produce Catholic businesses in an effort to glorify God.

May we all have the faith and courage to do so.

Tem toda a razão

O Parlamento de Lisboa Por VITAL MOREIRA : "Há momentos em que Lisboa descobre de bom grado o resto do país. É quando o seu pessoal político excedentário, que não cabe nas listas eleitorais da capital, invade "a província" à procura de um lugar que lhes garanta uma cadeira em São Bento. Lisboa elege só por si 48 dos 230 deputados da Assembleia da República. No final, provavelmente mais de uma centena dos parlamentares são de Lisboa. TEXTO "

Nota: para além da adopção de circulos uninominais, já agora, podiam transferir o Parlamento, por exemplo, para Coimbra.

Circulos uninominais, deputados independentes

E obrigatoriedade do deputado estar presente e disponivel para a comunidade que o elegeu.

Para quando?

How can we act, and act morally, in a State-controlled and dominated world?

"It seems to me that the most important concern is to avoid the twin, and equally destructive, traps: of ultra-purist sectarianism, where indeed we would not permit ourselves to walk on government-owned streets; and sellout opportunism, in which we could become supervisors of concentration camps while still claiming we were "libertarians" in some far off, ideal world.

Opportunists are people who severely split theory from practice; whose ideals are tucked away in some closet or trophy room and have no bearing on their daily lives. Sectarians, on the other hand, suffer from what the Catholics would call the error of "scrupulosity," and are always in danger of boxing themselves in to become hermits and virtual martyrs."

Living in a State-Run World, by Murray N. Rothbard

Expulsão de condomínio

Público - No CONSULTÓRIO DE JUSTIÇA, 30 de Dezembro de 2004 - 17h11

Pergunta: "Pode-se numa reunião de condóminos de um prédio de habitação fazer-se um abaixo assinado com o intuito de obrigar a expulsão de um residente (e proprietário) por motivos de excesso de ruído e de provocar má vizinhança? Pedro Morais (Lagos)"

Resposta: "O proprietário goza de modo pleno e exclusivo dos direitos de uso, fruição e disposição das coisas que lhe pertencem, dentro dos limites da lei e com observância das restrições por ela impostas” ( artº 1305º do Código Civil).

O condómino é proprietário da fracção que lhe pertence, podendo usá-la como entender ( dentro dos limites da lei). Entre esses limites, inclui-se a obrigação de respeitar o direito ao repouso e tranquilidade dos vizinhos, abstendo-se de praticar actos que perturbem ou incomodem os condóminos. Perante as queixas de excesso de ruído e de má vizinhança, o condómino deverá modificar o seu comportamento, sob pena de se sujeitar às consequências de uma intervenção camarária ( com aplicação de coimas, no caso de violação da Lei do Ruído).

Também o Regulamento de Condomínio poderá prever a aplicação de sanções aos condóminos que violem certas obrigações.Se é possível “castigar” o condómino faltoso, com a aplicação de coimas pela câmara e de sanções pelo condomínio, já se torna problemática a propositura de uma acção em tribunal para o obrigar a mudar de casa.Pode-se recorrer ao tribunal para obter a condenação do condómino no pagamento de indemnizações, com a obrigação de se abster de comportamento ilícitos. Mas obrigá-lo a mudar de casa implicaria privá-lo de um direito fundamental, inerente à propriedade: o direito de usar e fruir o bem.

O Supremo Tribunal de Justiça pronunciou-se, em 1969, sobre a seguinte situação: o proprietário de um prédio mantinha animais incómodos , que afectavam o repouso de tranquilidade dos vizinhos. O Supremo considerou “ o direito à saúde e ao repouso essencial à existência física são direitos de personalidade”, dando razão aos queixosos."

NOTAS:

Parece-me que a expulsão deve ser possivel assim os estatutos do condomínio expressamente e detalhadamente articulem o processo. O que levanta também a aquestão da aceitação de novos proprietários. Podem estes serem vetados? Sim, já referi o caso da Madonna que não foi aceite como condómino.

Democracia e a Europa das regiões

Publico: "O que a sondagem da Sigma Dos, publicada ontem pelo "El Mundo", vem mostrar é que 49,5por cento dos espanhois apoiam a proposta de pacto de regime para derrotar o "Plano" que Rajoy se prepara para apresentar na próxima sexta-feira a Zapatero, e que este já decidiu recusar. Segundo a mesma sondagem, um total de 68,8 por cento dos espanhóis são contra o "Plano Ibarretxe", que pretende fazer do País basco uma região "livremente associada" à Espanha, com competências acrescidas em matéria de segurança social, fiscalidade e justiça. A maioria dos partidos com representação parlamentar em Madrid rejeita a proposta do Governo Basco. "

A angústia democrática reside em saber como prevenir que sub-circulos eleitorais reivindiquem a autonomização da sua própria democracia. Mas uma vez que querem legitimar a federalização supra-nacional (integração) por referendos de maioria simples, a Europa das Regiões pode mesmo vir a transformar-se na "unintended consequence" do federalismo europeu.

Localismo e regulamentação descentralizada

O "Economist" diz acertadamente: "Liberalising drink laws in Britain Getting alcohol licensing right means giving back power to local councils."

E afirma

"AT THE end of last year, the British government banned hunting, announced its intention to ban smoking in public places and raised the possibility of restrictions on companies selling unhealthy food. Next month, it will move toward letting pubs serve alcohol all day and all night (see article). Yet those who smoke, hunt and eat unhealthy food do little harm to anybody except themselves, while alcohol is implicated in 40% of violent crime.… "

Que sentido faz o Estado Central (seja via governo ou parlamento) "disparar" com autorizações ou proibições de escolhas que devem ser decididas localmente? Primeiro proibem a caça depois querem liberalizar totalmente os pubs (quando ainda existem restrições fortes). Que sentido faz esta dança de proibe tudo e em todo o lado para permite tudo e em todo o lado?

Assuntos como:

- Licenciamento de lugares nocturnos (se, como, onde, e que preço pelo licenciamento)

- Droga e Prostituição (para mim, seria inaceitável que um dia, o governo central ou o Parlamento, se lembrasse de impor a total "liberalização" da droga/prostituição, impedindo a comunidade local de regular estas actividades.

A forma mais o eficaz de o implementar seria serem possíveis mecanismos ageis de decisão colectiva pelas Juntas de Freguesia (em nome dos proprietários e residentes que a compõem) e inseridas numa politica geral da Município.

Existem assuntos que eu consideraria nos Municípios e JF:

- Quando finalmente conseguirem o "livre aborto", deixarem que cada Município possa impedir, por regulação , que este seja praticado na sua comunidade.

- Os projectos urbanisticos devem ser passiveis de mecanismos de veto e negociação pelas JF (obrigando quer o "construtor" quer o Município a negociarem com a comunidade local - uma forma de equilibrar os interesses/corrupção municipal nesta área).

É um pressuposto do que aqui está escrito, que o mecanismo de decisão colectivo ao nível da Junta de Frequesia seja equiparável ao de um Macro-Condominio, com Assembleias ordinárias e extraordinárias, certos poderes de gestão corrente delegados ao Presidente/Administração, etc.

Domingo Liberal

Sai amanhã, dia 9 de Janeiro, o primeiro número do Domingo Liberal, o novo jornal dirigido por Jorge Pereira da Silva. Uma aposta de risco (como o são todos os novos projectos nesta área) a que desejo as maiores felicidades.

Novos links

@tlanty§
A Destreza das Dúvidas
Dextera Voz

Taxas Únicas

Em Espanha, pensa-se numa Taxa Única para IRS, eu tenho defendido um Taxa Única de Impostos (ou Taxa Única Máxima de Impostos) para o IRS, IVA e IRC de 20%, e um "pacto de regime" para que as diferentes propostas eleitorais disputem, no que diz repeito a estas três impostos, apenas o valor desta Taxa em vez do habitual jogo de mentiras (baixa um, sobre outro).

Adicionalmente, a reforma da segurança social (e a sua insustentabilidade) deve passar por aplicar o principio de subsidariedade ao subsidio de desemprego e pensão de reforma, estabelecendo-se um tecto para ambos, por exemplo, ao nivel de 2 salarios minimos (mas mantendo-se todas as obrigações assumidas , ou seja, as contribuições passadas à data da reforma adicionam a esse tecto na medida em que excedam o necessário para o Tecto entretanto fixado).

Via Diario Economico: Especialistas do Governo defendem “taxa única”

Os especialistas contratados pelo Governo espanhol para estudarem a reforma do imposto sobre o rendimento das pessoas singulares – IRFP, equivalente ao IRS em Portugal – defendem que o sistema caminhe para um imposto ‘linear’, uma espécie de imposto proporcional.

Jorge Martínez-Vàzquez e José Felix Sanz Sanz foram repescados pelo Governo de Zapatero, depois de terem colaborado com Aznar na definição da reforma do imposto sobre o rendimento das pessoas singulares. No artigo de opinião que publicam, os dois especialistas preconizam a aplicação de um imposto linear sobre o rendimento. Este imposto caracteriza-se pela aplicação de uma taxa única sobre todas as famílias, e sobre qualquer tipo de rendimento, a partir de um determinado patamar de rendimento.

Em contrapartida, não se admitem excepções à base tributável, cortando-se com a generalidade dos abatimentos, deduções e benefícios fiscais.Os dois especialistas defendem que, apesar de este sistema poder colocar reservas no plano da equidade, ele acabaria por ser socialmente mais justo que o modelo actual, dadas as distorções que a generalidade dos benefícios fiscais introduzem, e dado o tratamento diferenciado que agora é dado conforme os rendimentos sejam oriundos do trabalho ou do capital.

Outro conjunto de argumentos prende-se com a redução dos custos de administração que adviriam de uma simplificação das regras do imposto e com um mais fácil combate à evasão e fraudes contributivas.

Links between Catholicism and liberalism

READINGS ON ETHICS AND CAPITALISM: PART I: CATHOLICISM Memo to the Volker Fund by Murray N. Rothbard Dated: May 1960

"(...) I should like to conclude our investigation of Catholicism and the ethics of capitalism with a discussion of the important article by a French pro-free market Catholic economist, which appeared, translated in Modern Age. The reference is: Daniel Villey, “Catholics and the Market Economy,” Modern Age (Summer and Fall, 1959).

(...) (2) Secondly, the psychological and historical position of the Church must be realized. The Church was deeply shaken by the Reformation, and its Counter-Reformation was a great reaction against it, one which, understandably, went too far. In particular, in closing ranks against the Reformation, the Church tended also to oppose those other modern institutions which grew up along with Protestantism and atheism, e.g.: all the modern institutions going beyond the stationary, feudal society of the Middle Ages. As a result, “The Church is uneasy in the modern world,” and its attitude tends to be one of distrust and hostility.

(...) Having set forth and criticized the various sources of Catholic hostility to liberalism,Villey proceeds to inquire what are the possible links between Catholicism and liberalism. He warns again that he is not trying to make liberalism “the Catholic economic doctrine”or of deriving the market from the Bible.

But are there any links, parallels, etc., between liberalism and Catholicism, common grounds? In the 19th Century, authoritarianism seemed to correspond to the ideas of transcendence and God, while freedom coincided with agnosticism and relativism (which is why Pope Pius IX condemned freedom andliberalism so bitterly in his Syllabus of Errors.)

Nowadays, liberalism is more linked toGod and transcendence, while scientism has been associated with agnosticism (Nazis,Soviets.) In short, liberalism may stem either from skepticism or from faith.

The Christian view is that since God does transcend the world, this means that the world exists apartfrom God, and therefore nature is governed by its own autonomous natural laws. Since only God is unitary and transcendent, the Christian must consider nature as discontinuousand pluralistic, just as liberalism considers it. Therefore:“The Catholic mind is thus prepared to admit the heterogeneity of economic interests, themultiplicity of centers of economic imitative and the autonomy of economics in relation topolitics. This Catholic outlook harmonizes easily with the essentially pluralistic concept ofthe world which is peculiar to liberals. “

(...) Villey then asserts that when Catholic philosophy was being hammered out in the MiddleAges, the market economy did not exist, and the economic thought of modern Catholic corporativism, trade unionism, solidarism, etc. - still bears a medieval flavor.

Yet, there is,particularly in the advanced modern economy, no “middle way” anymore, between themarket [and] the planned economy. One or the other - the market or the government - mus tdecide on the allocation of productive resources. There is now no room for the handicraftor guild way of life, with its direct adjustment of supply to demand. We cannot - without crisis, famine, and retrogression - turn the clock back to handicrafts; we must choose, with no middle way, between the free market economy and the planned economy. There can be part of the economy devoted to the market and part to a plan; but there is no “third” or“middle” system to choose from.

And many Catholics concede that total economic planning requires a totalitarian state, and therefore must be rejected. Once they realize that there is really no “midd1e” or third way out, they will have to choose the market economy. The Encylcicals have been interpreted (by Ropke, Baudin) as compatible with capitalism,and further they certainly both condemned Socialism.

Villey ends his article with a call to Catholics (if not the Church per se) to join the defense of Western ideals: which include the free market, along with human rights, dignity, and democracy.

He calls on them to rehabilitate private property, profit, the market, and even speculation, to abandon nostalgia for the Middle Ages. He ends by noting that he hascalled the stock exchange “the temple of human rights” - a phrase which. has shocked Catholics and others, because they do not understand the central importance of stock speculation in the market economy.- "

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Via MisesBlog

Cicero (January 3, 106 BCE - December 7, 43 BCE) was a Roman Senator, who held every important Roman office at the youngest permissible age. And he left an extensive written record, about which Historian Edward Gibbon said, "I breathed the spirit of freedom."

Particularly influential was Cicero’s idea of natural law, echoed in John Locke and other enlightenment thinkers: Human nature included reason, which could be used to discover justice, which was the basis of law.

Murray Rothbard wrote that he was "the great transmitter of Stoic ideas from Greece to Rome…Stoic natural law doctrines…helped shape the great structures of Roman law which became pervasive in Western civilization." Voltaire said "He taught us how to think."

Cicero stayed loyal to the Roman Republic against Julius Caesar. His defense of that ideal also led to his murder by Antony, who had his head and hands nailed to the Senate speaker's podium as a warning to others.

On Justice

Justice is the crowning glory of the virtues.
Justice consists in doing no injury to men...
Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due.
The foundations of justice are that no one should suffer wrong; then, that the public good be promoted.
...justice must be observed even to the lowest.
Justice does not descend from its pinnacle.
Justice extorts no reward, no kind of price; she is sought...for her own sake.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
If our lives are endangered by plots or violence...any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.

On Law

True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application...
The welfare of the people is the ultimate law.The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due.
According to the law of nature it is only fair that no one should become richer through damages and injuries suffered by another.
The strictest law often causes the most serious wrong.
The more laws, the less justice.
...the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled...
The administration of government, like a guardianship, ought to be directed to the good of those who confer, not of those who receive the trust.
When a government becomes powerful...it is an usurper which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance for votes with which to perpetuate itself.

On Liberty

We are in bondage to the law so that we might be free.
The essence of liberty is to live as you choose.
Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.
Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.
What is so beneficial to the people as liberty...to be preferred to all things.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Freedom suppressed again, and again regained, bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.
Only in states in which the power of the people is supreme has liberty any abode.
Peace is liberty in tranquility. Servitude is the worst of all evils, to be resisted not only by war, but even by death.

Teoria do Condomíno

Noto com prazer o debate no Blasfémias e outros, que contribui para avançar com aquilo que já chamei de Teoria do Condomínio.

Já agora lembrava que um dia a Maddona quis comprar um determinado apartamento em Nova Iorque, mas a sua intenção foi vetada pelo Condomínio do Prédio.

2005 Index of Economic Freedom

"The United States has dropped out of the world's top 10 "freest economies" in a ranking released Tuesday by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The organization, which promotes low taxes and limited government regulation, said the United States was tied for 12th place with Switzerland in the 2005 Index of Economic Freedom.

Hong Kong retained its top ranking in the survey, followed by Singapore, Luxembourg and Estonia. Ireland and New Zealand tied for fifth place, followed by Britain, Denmark, Iceland and Australia in the top 10. Chile ranked 11th. "

Os países pequenos parecem sair-se bem. Hong Kong e Singapura parecem indicar o caminho que a China está a apostada em percorrer.

Boa piada

Jornal de Negócios:

"Governo diz a Bruxelas que todos os serviços vão pagar contribuição patronal à CGA

O Governo pretende alargar a todas as entidades do Estado o pagamento de uma taxa de contribuição patronal idêntica à do regime geral da Segurança Social, revela a actualização do Programa de Estabilidade e Crescimento (PEC) entregue à Comissão Europeia pelo Executivo de gestão."

Nota: antigamente, assumia-se que os funcionários publicos não pagavam impostos. Depois, um ida, lembraram-se de dizer que iam passar também a pagar impostos. Agora querem refinar ainda mais a ilusão de óptica.

Vamos lá ser claros:

A totalidade da massa salarial paga pelo Estado provém exclusivamente dos impostos pagos. A das reformas dos funcionários publicos também.

De referir que parece que a diferença (positiva) de salário médio entre os funcionários públicos portugueses e a do resto da população é uma das maiores da Europa (até creio que é a maior).

E já agora: é na Grande Lisboa que existe maior concentração de massa salarial "pública" e onde o indice de rendimento médio comparado por exemplo com o da região Norte é praticamente o dobro.

A transferência de rendimento do resto país, rendimento realmente produzido (no sentido de que é gerado por venda de produtos/serviços em mercado voluntário), para pagar o nivel de salários públicos (ainda por cima, acima do rendimento médio daquilo que é pago no sector de economia livre) para prestadores de serviços compulsórios tem uma dimensão realmente significativa. Seria interessante estimar
valores concretos.

A luta de classes que existe é: os que pagam em termos liquidos versus os que recebem em termos liquidos. Temos de ter em conta que o sistema se auto-justifica por razões altruistas, mas a pobreza, falta de emprego e inutilidade do sistema educacional continuam a existir.

Noticias de Secessão

1) Trinidad e Tobago

Manning: Secession has no place in Tobago

PNM Political Leader and Prime Minister Patrick Manning Manning told an enthusiastic crowd at Market Square, Scarborough, Tobago, on Sunday night that talk of secession, however attractive it might appear in the short term, had no place in the rhetoric of the people of Tobago and of Trinidad and Tobago.

2) Spanish PM dismisses call for Basque secession talks

Spain's Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has angrily dismissed a proposal by the Basque parliament to negotiate the independence of the region from Spain, condemning the plan as secessionist and unconstitutional.

3) U.S. and China to discuss Taiwan

The State Department said the talks will focus on China's dispute with Taiwan, particularly on Beijing's proposed "anti-secessionist law."

At the State Department, he will meet with Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage Thursday. The anti-secession law would offer legal grounds to resorting to using force from the mainland in case the leaders of Taiwan authorities create "Taiwan independence," according to the People's Daily.

4) DN: Líder do PND foi à Madeira dizer que admite independência da região autónoma

O antigo dirigente do PP esteve na Madeira e, mostrando-se defensor do sistema autonómico, disse que é tempo de colocar os pontos nos ís pois «a Madeira não é um Estado dentro de um Estado». «Não faz sentido que a região usufrua um estatuto de excepção permanente como as incompatibilidades dos titulares dos cargos políticos e como a criação das Sociedades de Desenvolvimento regional, uma forma de driblar o Tribunal de Contas», referiu. «O que eu disse e repito é que ou temos um quadro autonómico que respeita a soberania em todos os seus aspectos e se aplica à Madeira ou, se não quer aplicar as leis nacionais, que seja então independente», reiterou. «Eu não condeno aquilo que faz a liderança política na Madeira. Condeno sim o que os órgãos de soberania nacional permitam que se faça».Monteiro considera que a última revisão constitucional colocou em causa a unidade legislativa do país e que a Madeira, nalguns aspectos, vai muito para além do Estado Federado em termos de competências legislativas.

5) Iraqi Kurds petition UN for independence poll

More than 1.7 million Iraqi Kurds have signed a petition calling for a referendum on independence. A Referendum Movement in Kurdistan spokesman says a delegation from their organisation has travelled to the United Nations headquarters in New York to hand over the petition. "The signatures were collected in towns across Iraqi Kurdistan," spokesman Karwan Abdullah said.

O costume

"O secretário-geral do PS prometeu ontem "mexer" nos impostos - caso, evidentemente, ganhe as eleições - mas escusou-se a revelar como. José Sócrates falava ontem a jornalistas à margem de uma reunião com professores, em Lisboa. "

Baixam um , sobem outro, ou ao contrário, e em média aumenta a colecta fiscal total. Que outra organização humana, vamos dizer, a mais "capitalista selvagem" que nos possamos lembrar, é capaz de aumentar os preços (e impor venda de serviços) com a mesma eficácia?

Em Gestão, na "Teoria de Agência", sabemos como as empresas de grande dimensão correm o risco dos gestores poderem por vezes defender mais os seus próprios interesses que os dos accionistas. É uma situação real que faz com que se introduzam medidas de auto-regulação, incentivos e penalizações que actuem como prevenção.

No domíno do sistema político que suporta todo o aparelho estatal, e o seu monopólio unilateral de impor lei e coerção, serviços e os seus preços, existe um enorme conflito de interesses entre o "sistema" que pode "prometer tudo" à custa sempre de "outros", promessas sem qualquer vinculo contratatual ou penalização civil. Perde-se eleições, rodam-se os partidos e eleitos, mas o aparelho cresce. Até se convencem a si próprios que pagam impostos, quando na verdade vivem exclusivamente deles e com protecção de emprego, salários e reformas e pré-reformas favoráveis.

Depois, tudo o que seja deixar de dominar um parte do bolo recolhido por impostos como acontece na segurança social, é visto como uma ameaça. Nada justifica que seja o Estado a providenciar um serviço de poupança forçada para rendimentos médios e altos. Mas deixar de aceder e esses fluxos monetários é perder poder (claro, que esse poder é reivindicado para praticar o bem. Todo o poder, de uma forma ou outra, o reivindica. É a eterna procura pela substituição de Deus e talvez um complexo de édipo existencial).

Á social-democracia, apenas a descentralização e um carácter de auto-restrição do poder da maioria, a pode salvar de si própria. Na Teoria Constitucional, deviam estar expressos mecanismos de defesa contra o ataque à propriedade e rendimento individual mas o sistema politico irá sempre recusar tal, porque na verdade, quem devia impor isso são os sujeitos e não o sistema politico.

A tendência agora para federalizar a nivel supranacional e nunca propor federalizar internamente prova bem como o sistema se alimenta a si próprio, crescendo até que as escolhas colectivas deixem de ter qualquer escala humana (que significado tem uma escolha "colectiva" europeia, ou digamos mundial, sobre digamos a proibição do aborto, das drogas, do sistema fiscal? Nenhum, apenas coloca o "sistema politico democratico" num status-quo imutável - uma posição de Deus na terra, uma nova Torre de Babel cujo fim é necessáriamente inevitável. Os deficits, a divida publica e privada, a demografia, os movimentos migratórios e de-homogeneização das populações, e um sistema monetário artificial assim o podem ditar.

H.L. Mencken dizia: "They will all know by then, even supposing that some of them don’t know it now, that votes are collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense, and they will apply themselves to the job with a hearty yo-heave-ho. Most of them, before the uproar is over, will actually convince themselves. The winner will be whoever promises the most with the least probability of delivering anything."

HHHoppe: "a prince is restricted in his redistributive desires because all members of society have learned to regard the taking and redistributing of another man’s property as shameful and immoral. Accordingly, they watch a prince’s every action with utmost suspicion. In distinct contrast, by opening entry into government, anyone is permitted to freely express his desire for others’ property. What formerly was regarded as immoral and accordingly was suppressed is now considered a legitimate sentiment. Everyone may openly covet everyone else’s property in the name of democracy; and everyone may act on this desire for another’s property, provided that he finds entrance into government. Hence, under democracy everyone becomes a threat.

Consequently, under democratic conditions the popular though immoral and anti-social desire for another man’s property is systematically strengthened. Every demand is legitimate if it is proclaimed publicly under the special protection of "freedom of speech." Everything can be said and claimed, and everything is up for grabs. Not even the seemingly most secure private property right is exempt from redistributive demands.

Worse, subject to mass elections, those members of society with little or no inhibitions against taking another man’s property, that is, habitual a-moralists who are most talented in assembling majorities from a multitude of morally uninhibited and mutually incompatible popular demands (efficient demagogues) will tend to gain entrance in and rise to the top of government. Hence, a bad situation becomes even worse."

Gulf states fear Shiite victory in Iraq

"DUBAI: The likely prospect of a Shiite victory in this month’s landmark Iraqi elections is making the oil-rich Gulf monarchies apprehensive, fearing Tehran’s growing influence in the region. Concerns were voiced last month by Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who in an interview with the Washington Post accused Iran of trying to influence Iraq’s January 30 vote in a bid to create a "crescent" dominated by Shiites extending from Iraq to Lebanon. The issue is of particular importance to the six Sunni-ruled Gulf states due to their close proximity to Iraq and their indigenous population of around 21 million, 12 per cent of it Shiite.

In Kuwait, which borders Iraq, Shiites form about one-third of the local population. Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed al-Sabah last week spoke of his country’s fears of emerging sectarianism. Asked about statements by Iraqi Shiite leaders on establishing a Shiite zone in the south of the country, Sheikh Mohammed reportedly said all sectarian ideas "concern not only Kuwait but all countries" of the region, and recommended that Iraq avoid going down "this dangerous and detestable road."

PS: Mais uns a perceber o que poderá vir a ser um país dominado democraticamente (e por quanto tempo?) pelos shiitas depois dos sunitas serem "esmagados". E assim se percebe que na guerra de Saddam contra o Irão, todos os países árabes sabiam que tiravam daí alguma partido, porque os iraquianos assumiam o confronto "arabes" (os shiitas iraquianos também são árabes mas em tese mais permeáveis à influência persa) versus shiitas "persas". Guerra que deixa Saddam falido e com o petróleo a 10 Usd, motivo que o levou a invadir o Koweit - uma soberania desde sempre reivindicada pelos iraquianos, além de que é conhecido as alegações que o Koweit furavam amplamente as quotas da OPEP e havia questões sobre a proveniência de uma parte dos "furos" petroliferos. Além disto, nunca foram desmentidas as afirmações do embaixador americano no Koweit:

"I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60’s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction." April Glaspie, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, meeting with Saddam Hussein, July 25, 1990, before Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Nota: Isto não significa qualquer branqueamento do regime de Saddam e ainda menos as suas guerras, apenas serve para fazer notar que no que respeita a relações internacionais é uma pura ilusão procurar princípios morais que não sejam o interesse nacional das partes envolvidas a cada momento. Os idealistas esses, são capazes de provocar os maiores estragos na ordem internacional, sempre convencidos que o fazem para o bem da humanidade. Se durante os próximos anos se tornar inevitável um confronto com o Irão a propósito de algum incidente menor, serão os primeiros a exultar, e aí teremos toda a peninsula árabe e ainda Israel num conflito de mutua destruição com os americanos (e outros) no meio. A China essa, espera para acordar no momento certo.

A purga dos "realistas"

George Bush has purged the last of his father's senior advisers, handing over control to his neocon allies

The transition to President Bush's second term, filled with backstage betrayals, plots and pathologies, would make for an excellent chapter of I, Claudius. To begin with, Bush has unceremoniously and without public acknowledgement dumped Brent Scowcroft, his father's closest associate and friend, as chairman of the foreign intelligence advisory board. The elder Bush's national security adviser was the last remnant of traditional Republican realism permitted to exist within the administration.

At the same time the vice president, Dick Cheney, has imposed his authority over secretary of state designate Condoleezza Rice, in order to blackball Arnold Kanter, former under secretary of state to James Baker and partner in the Scowcroft Group, as a candidate for deputy secretary of state.

"Words like 'incoherent' come to mind," one top state department official told me about Rice's effort to organise her office. She is unable to assert herself against Cheney, her wobbliness a sign that the state department will mostly be sidelined as a power centre for the next four years.

Meanwhile, key senior state department professionals, such as Marc Grossman, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, have abruptly resigned. According to colleagues who have chosen to remain (at least for now), they foresee the damage that will be done as Rice is charged with whipping the state department into line with the White House and Pentagon neocons.

SUSAN SONTAG AND THE EVIL OF BANALITY

Srdja Trifkovic, www.ChroniclesMagazine.org:

Susan Sontag died of leukaemia in New York on December 29 at the age of 71. The obituarists described her as "one of America's most influential intellectuals, internationally renowned for the passionate engagement and breadth of her critical intelligence and her ardent activism in the cause of human rights" (The Financial Times, Dec. 30).

Her essays "expanded the universe of subjects it was 'all right' for intellectuals to take seriously," such as drugs, porn, and pop, ensuring that we'd "get used to these as intellectual topics."

All of which is one way of saying that Ms. Sontag has made a solid contribution to the degrading of our cultural and intellectual standards over the past four decades. But unlike some other purveyors of bad ideas, such as Voltaire, who could present them in eloquent prose, Sontag was unable to write a decent sentence.

Take this gem for style and contents:"The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballet et al., don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history. It is the white race and it alone—its ideologies and inventions—which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself" (Partisan Review, winter 1967, p. 57).

Ms. Sontag's qualities were on full display during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. She supported the Muslim side and was a leading purveyor of the Muslim-fabricated myth of the Serbian "rape camps" where she asserted that "tens of thousands of women" were raped "by military order."

Writing in the Nation on Christmas Day 1995 she likened her trips to Sarajevo—comfortable, safe, and well-publicized—to the struggle of the Lincoln Brigade in Spain. Ms. Sontag's a-priori assumptions, that the Serbs were Fascist monsters, the Muslims innocent victims of a brutal aggression, were beyond dispute. Her smug self-depiction as a brave voice of intellectual and moral integrity in a cynical world was laughable.

Ms. Sontag was an enthusiastic supporter of Clinton's war against the Serbs in 1999. She ridiculed the objection that the war is ("wonderful word") illegal" with the usual reductio ad Hitlerum: "Imagine that Nazi Germany had had no expansionist ambitions but had simply made it a policy in the late 1930's and early 1940's to slaughter all the German Jews. Do we think a government has the right to do whatever it wants on its own territory? Maybe the governments of Europe would have said that 60 years ago. But would we approve now of their decision?"

[Já agora sempre comentava que isso foi precisamente o que aconteceu com Estaline - os seus piores crimes foram cometidos durante os anos 30 - feito aliado contra o regime Nazi que no inicio da Segunda Guerra, não podia ser acusado dos mesmos crimes em massa de Estaline, sendo que este no final foi presenteado com metade da Europa e influência em metade do mundo]

Writing in The New York Times in May 1999 she reasserted the lie of the Kosovo genocide, then repeated the already discredited claim that its prevention was the reason for Clinton's war, and finally dehumanized the victims of that war:"it is grotesque to equate the casualties inflicted by the NATO bombing with the mayhem inflicted on hundreds of thousands of people in the last eight years by the Serb programs of ethnic cleansing. Not all violence is equally reprehensible; not all wars are equally unjust? There is radical evil in the world, which is why there are just wars. And this is a just war? The Milosevic Government has finally brought on Serbia a small portion of the suffering it has inflicted on neighboring peoples."Sontag's view of the Balkans provides an apt summary of her opus.

As The New York Times obituarist has noted, she championed style over content: "She was concerned, in short, with sensation, in both meanings of the term."

In short she was not concerned with the truth. She dabbled in ideas but she could not think. Her lies, dishonesty, absence of moral sense and self-deceptions amounted to a sustained exercise in counter-realism, which is the essence of post-modernism.(...)

But "BHL" is Sontag's twin brother in almost every field imaginable: a media personality, an "intellectual," a hater of Western civilization, a Christophobe, an "essayist," an enthusiastic promoter of homosexuality, an admirer of Sartre, an outspoken advocate of the Muslim side in the Bosnian war and in Kosovo.

In Sontag's and Levy's lunatic account of world affairs the Christians are always at fault and their enemies are always innocent of any wrongdoing. For both of them the "siege" of Sarajevo became a stage for countless self-serving media appearances, as well as the symbol of their decisive move beyond truth and reality and beyond the limits of the aesthetic. "

A Sobran Taxonomy

If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal.
If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative.
If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate.
If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist.

Crichton Creates State of Fear among Global Warming Activists

Via Cato Institute:

In his best-selling new novel, Michael Crichton deplores the myths about global warming and other alleged environmental problems that keep Americans in a "state of fear."

Crichton recommends the work of Cato environmental scholar Pat Michaels, author of Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media, noting that Michaels writes with "a sense of humor and a clear style." The novelist also praises the work of Wilfred Beckerman, author of the Cato book Through Green-Colored Glasses: Environmentalism Reconsidered, saying Beckerman "cares more about the poor of the world than he does the elitist egos of Western environmentalists." Global warming activists seem to fear that Crichton's book could tip the balance in the public debate about climate change.

Prioridades

1. Segurança Social

Um tecto nas pensões de reforma igual ao já existente para o subsidio de desemprego pode desde já diminuir o valor total do imposto pago para a segurança social (actualmente nos 33%).

As obrigações já assumidas seriam cumpridas com base no cálculo (tipo médio ponderada) das contribuições já pagas e contribuições futuras no novo sistema.

Depois, ambos os tectos podem ser diminuidos para tornar visivel o papel de subsidariedade do Estado e não de garante universal de serviços de seguros de desemprego e pensões para a classe média e alta que passam a ser mais livres de decidir sobre a sua poupança.

2. Educação e Saúde

A gestão e financiamento deve passar para as autarquias num modelo progressivo e voluntário. Devem ser os municipios (ou as novas comunidades de municípios) que mostrem a vontade e capacidade de gerir (por exemplo, por um processo de candidatura) que devem receber a legitimidade e os meios necessários.

Quanto aos meios existem dois caminhos possiveis:

(a) o Sistema Fiscal diminui o financiamento centralizado (impostos nacionais) e aumenta a capacidade dos municipios em cobrarem taxas locais.

(b) Os municipios que se candidatarem, passam a ter uma maior transferência com base nas competências acrescidas (ou seja, o custo assumido pelas estruturas de educação e saúde).

Cada município ou comunidade deve então poder decidir sobre o nivel de gratuidade dos serviços prestados e a forma (conservando as estruturas, combinando com um sistema de cheques de ensino e saúde, concessão, etc).

3. Justiça

Os Tribunais Arbitrais e Julgados de Paz devem passar a tomar conta de uma maior fatia do litigio comercial e civil, deixando o Estado essencialmente concentrado no Direito Penal e Administrativo.

4. Impostos

Tendo em conta o proposto, um objectivo genérico a alcançável em 4 anos seria colocar todas as taxas de impostos a 20% - IRS, IRC, IVA e Segurança Social.

Falam em pactos de regime e em preocupações de democratizar as decisões. Um pacto bem útil seria acordar numa Taxa Única de Impostos. Facilitaria muito para comparar objectivamente os programas eleitorais - cuja demagogia habitual em termos de impostos passa sempre por falar em baixo este para depois subir aquele outro (e infelizmente é uma daquelas discussões em que os economistas gostam de perder tempo).

Uma maior descentralização (federalização?) poderia fazer baixa esta Taxa Única ainda mais, deixando-se espaço para a cobrança de taxas locais municipais legitimadas localmente.

5. Sistema Político

a) Parlamento: circulos uninominais e deputados independentes
b) Reforma das Juntas de Frequesia

Capacidade de veto de projectos e de estabelecimentos nocturno (por referendo ou assembleia).

Dar a possibilidade a que seja profissionalizada a gestão de certas funções com a instituição de uma Administração eleita e paga por assembleia de proprietários: segurança, manutenção e rentabilização do espaço comum.

6. Europa

Rejeitar o Federalismo porque caminha para "legitimar" um governo europeu por eleições universais e directas com a consequência de tornar impossivel qualquer reforma minimamente arrojada. O carácter inter-governamental deve ser aumentado e não diminuido.