Real Liberalism Resurging in UK? Britain's Liberal Dems rediscover their roots ?

Britain's Liberal Dems rediscover their roots ? (Reason.com)

Under Kennedy's watch, a Liberal Democrat party that positions itself as the lone defenders of English civil liberty and peace, while unabashedly embracing a market economy, has scored phenomenal by-election upsets, snatching away safe Labour-held seats once thought to be impregnable. He sounds like a sincere convert.

In a Guardian profile, Kennedy summons language to explicate his party's core values that would stir any Classical Liberal heart: "The first guiding principle is a mindset, I think—a gut philosophical instinct—to see society in terms of the individual, first and foremost, rather than the interests of the state."

Dinheiro

Dinheiro é apenas um expediente para transacções. De força de trabalho por produtos. Produtos por produtos. Etc. Dinheiro não é capital. Dinheiro não circula, reside sempre em saldos de pessoas concretas (propriedade concreta de alguém a cada momento).

Não existe qualquer benefício social no aumento da quantidade de dinheiro e na verdade o Ouro foi escolhido livremente por todas as civilizações porque a sua produção é apenas de 2% a 3% do total de stock existente a cada momento.

Qualquer quantidade de "dinheiro" é suficiente para a função que cumpre. Até podia ser fixo. Nenhuma riqueza ou produtividade adicional ou o que quer que seja é gerada porque se aumenta a quantidade de dinheiro por inflação monetária.

O actual sistema monetário apenas interessa aos Estados para financiarem os deficits sem recorrer a impostos adicionais e ao Sistema Bancário que passa a ser protegido por um emissor monopolista e que lhe permite conceder crédito sem a captação de poupança e o socorre sempre que aparecem problemas.

A inflação que o sistema produz representa sim que a cada momento, que quer os Estados, quer os Bancos e os seus principais clientes, concedem/conseguem crédito pela desvalorização continua do valor da moeda. Existe assim um redistribuição de riqueza porque as quantidades adicionais de dinheiro beneficiam os que primeiro o usam .

O efeito mais grave são as crises financeiras e os ciclos económicos. O efeito da produção de moeda para financiar a economia, provoca a acumulação de erros na relação entre investimento e a poupança real.

Num ciclo ascendente, a inflação monetária dá a sensação que todo o investimento é rentável e financiável no longo prazo, acumulando-se um erro economico generalizado, até ao momento em que a "economia" percebe que não existe poupança real disponivel para suportar os prazos de investimento nem consumidores suficientes, começando então um processo de liquidação de activos e diminuição do crédito instalado (falências, baixa da bolsa, sistema financeiro a tremer, etc). E é nesta altura, que o Estado (que vive e se justifica nas crises que ele próprio provoca) arranja ainda mais motivos adicionais para crescer e intervir e se mostrar como inevitável e essencial à civilização.

Assim começam as crises a que chamam de "crise do capitalismo", mas na verdade são do socialismo e as suas ilusões de "planeamento" e "gestão" implicito no actual sistema monetário compulsivo. Nada me parece mais estranho que a fixação de taxas de juro a nivel mundial por duas ou três entidades burocráticas.

MONEY AND ITS PURCHASING POWER (M. Rothbard): "We are now on the threshold of a great economic law, a truth that can hardly be overemphasized, considering the harm its neglect has caused throughout history. (...) An increase in the supply of a consumers’ good (when there has been no decrease in the supply of another good) is demonstrably a clear social benefit; for someone’s “real income” has increased and no one’s has decreased.[6]

Money, on the contrary, is solely useful for exchange purposes. Money, per se, cannot be consumed and cannot be used directly as a producers’ good in the productive process. Money per se is therefore unproductive; it is dead stock and produces nothing. Land or capital is always in the form of some specific good, some specific productive instrument. Money always remains in some­one’s cash balance.

Goods are useful and scarce, and any increment in goods is a social benefit. But money is useful not directly, but only in exchanges.(...)

We con­clude that there is no such thing as “too little” or “too much” money, that, whatever the social money stock, the benefits of money are always utilized to the maximum extent. An increase in the supply of money confers no social benefit whatever; it simply benefits some at the expense of others.(...)

One of the most important economic laws, therefore, is: Every supply of money is always utilized to its maximum extent, and hence no social utility can be conferred by increasing the supply of money."

Leituras Recomendadas - Reminder

Relembro todos os interessados que amanhã sai a 2ª edição das "Leituras Recomendadas". Caso pretendam começar a recebê-las inscrevam-se na lista da Causa Liberal (canto superior direito desta página).

How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

E mais um livro de Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

"(...) It is all very well to point out that important scientists, like Louis Pasteur, have been Catholic. More revealing is how many priests have distinguished themselves in the sciences. It turns out, for instance, that the first person to measure the rate of acceleration of a freely falling body was Fr. Giambattista Riccioli. The man who has been called the father of Egyptology was Fr. Athanasius Kircher (also called "master of a hundred arts" for the breadth of his knowledge). Fr. Roger Boscovich, who has been described as "the greatest genius that Yugoslavia ever produced," has often been called the father of modern atomic theory.
In the sciences it was the Jesuits in particular who distinguished themselves; some 35 craters on the moon, in fact, are named after Jesuit scientists and mathematicians.

By the eighteenth century, the Jesuits

had contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter’s surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn’s rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon effected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light. Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics – all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents [Jonathan Wright, The Jesuits, 2004, p. 189].

Seismology, the study of earthquakes, has been so dominated by Jesuits that it has become known as "the Jesuit science."(...)

The Galileo case is often cited as evidence of Catholic hostility toward science, and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization accordingly takes a closer look at the Galileo matter. For now, just one little-known fact: Catholic cathedrals in Bologna, Florence, Paris, and Rome were constructed to function as solar observatories. No more precise instruments for observing the sun’s apparent motion could be found anywhere in the world. When Johannes Kepler posited that planetary orbits were elliptical rather than circular, Catholic astronomer Giovanni Cassini verified Kepler’s position through observations he made in the Basilica of San Petronio in the heart of the Papal States. Cassini, incidentally, was a student of Fr. Riccioli and Fr. Francesco Grimaldi, the great astronomer who also discovered the diffraction of light, and even gave the phenomenon its name.(...)

The Church also played an indispensable role in another essential development in Western civilization: the creation of the university. The university was an utterly new phenomenon in European history. Nothing like it had existed in ancient Greece or Rome. The institution that we recognize today, with its faculties, courses of study, examinations, and degrees, as well as the familiar distinction between undergraduate and graduate study, come to us directly from the medieval world.(...)

Contrary to the grossly inaccurate picture of the Middle Ages that passes for common knowledge today, medieval intellectual life made indispensable contributions to Western civilization. In The Beginnings of Western Science (1992), David Lindberg writes:

[I]t must be emphatically stated that within this educational system the medieval master had a great deal of freedom. The stereotype of the Middle Ages pictures the professor as spineless and subservient, a slavish follower of Aristotle and the Church fathers (exactly how one could be a slavish follower of both, the stereotype does not explain), fearful of departing one iota from the demands of authority. There were broad theological limits, of course, but within those limits the medieval master had remarkable freedom of thought and expression; there was almost no doctrine, philosophical or theological, that was not submitted to minute scrutiny and criticism by scholars in the medieval university.

"[S]cholars of the later Middle Ages," concludes Lindberg, "created a broad intellectual tradition, in the absence of which subsequent progress in natural philosophy would have been inconceivable."(...)"

Yalta

1) "(...) At the Crimea conference of the big three in Yalta, Churchill recalled why his country had marched against Hitler. "Great Britain entered the war to defend Poland against German aggression. We stand beside Poland because it is a question of honour. Great Britain will never accept a decision which does not give Poland the security of ruling on its own territory."

Stalin, whose forces had now been in Polish territory for three weeks, responded that he understood Churchill's code of honour. "For Russians, however, the Polish question is not only one of honour, but also of security."

Russia had previously sinned against Poland, he said, and the Soviet government was keen to make good. "But the core of the problem lies significantly deeper. In the course of the last 30 years, the Germans have marched twice through Poland to attack our country. Why could the enemy march so easily through Poland until now? Above all because Poland was weak." Stalin had by then installed his own followers to form a government that would make the Polish strong, free and independent."

The British government", said Churchill, "believes that this government does not represent even one third of Polish people."

Stalin responded that he would like to speak in his capacity as a military man. "As a soldier, what do I demand from the government of a country liberated by the Red Army? I demand that this government guarantee peace and order in the hinterland of the Red Army, prevent a civil war behind our front, and not stab us in the back."

In his view, neither the men of the government who had fled to London in 1939 nor their underground fighters had done that. They had attacked Russian weapons depots, had already murdered 212 Red Army soldiers, and violated his orders concerning the operation of radio broadcasts. When they are arrested, they complain. "If these forces continue attacking our soldiers, we will shoot them." Because these forces were already acquainted with Stalin when he and his partner Hitler divided Poland and liquidated its officer corps, they blamed the Russians for the annexation of their territory in 1939. East Poland had now been re-conquered; it was and remained White Russia.

Stalin did not want his current partners to steal from him what Hitler had given him in the past. He offered the Poles one third of Germany as compensation. To keep this territory in the long run, they should get used to being protected by him.

"The Polish question has given the world headaches for five hundred years," sighed Roosevelt. In Churchill's view, it was necessary to ensure this would not continue. "Absolutely!" agreed Stalin. His headaches had diminished somewhat. All the ground in the East and South-East that Hitler had once subjugated was under Soviet control within a short period of time." The Mongol devastations, By Jörg Friedrich

PS: Churchill acabou por perder a Polónia (e todo o leste da Europa) e o Império Britânico (sobre o qual afirmou ainda antes da sua queda, que não tinha feito a(s) guerra(s) para ver o Império desaparecer), e o comunismo que conseguiu fazer a revolução por causa da Primeira Guerra, acaba consagrado territorialmente e intelectualmente na Segunda - isto depois do "aliado" Estaline ter praticado os seus maiores crimes (bem maiores que os Nazis até 1939) durante a década dos anos 30. Porque se chama vitória a um resultado destes é tipico da coisa "política".

2) Audio: Do presidente da Foundation For Economic Education (FEE): Dr. Richard EbelingDancing with the Devil: FDR, Stalin, and the Lasting Legacy of the Yalta Conference

Pope Benedict XVI (6)

A lecture given to the Reinhold-Schneider-Gesellschaft, printed in Church, Ecumenism and Politics, by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (NY, Crossroads, 1987), pp. 165–79.:

"In his Conversations with Hitler Hermann Rauschning, president of the senate of the Free City of Danzig (Gdansk) in 1933 and 1934, reports the dictator saying the following to him: "I liberate man from the constraint of a spirit become an end in itself; from the filthy and degrading torments inflicted on himself by a chimera called conscience and morality, and from the claims of a freedom and personal autonomy that only very few can ever be up to." [1]

For this man conscience was a chimera from which man must be liberated; the freedom he promised would be freedom from conscience. It fits in with this that Goering told the same author: "I have no conscience. My conscience is called Adolf Hitler." [2]

The destruction of the conscience is the real precondition for totalitarian obedience and totalitarian domination. Where conscience prevails there is a barrier against the domination of human orders and human whim, something sacred that must remain inviolable and that in an ultimate sovereignty evades control not only by oneself but by every external agency. Only the absoluteness of conscience is the complete antithesis to tyranny; only the recognition of its inviolability protects human beings from each other and from themselves; only its rule guarantees freedom."

PS: O apelo à sobrevivência e prevalência da "consciência" sobre qualquer fonte de poder humano que cai ha tentação da "hubris" (a anulação do individuo e da comunidade perante comandos politicos e não civis - contratuais) está também ou deve estar no cerne do "ethos" liberal.

Leituras recomendadas

Na prossecução dos seus objectivos de estudo, debate e divulgação do Liberalismo Clássico, a Causa Liberal começará a sugerir, aos subscritores do seu newsgroup, algumas leituras nesse âmbito .Os artigos serão provenientes de webzines, blogs e outras publicações disponíveis na internet. Estas sugestões serão, salvo situações excepcionais, feitas com uma periodicidade semanal.

Caso pretendam começar a receber as "Leituras Recomendadas" inscrevam-se na lista da Causa Liberal (canto superior direito desta página).

Notas
(1) Os textos serão maioritariamente em português, inglês ou espanhol;
(2) Para aceder aos artigos poderá, eventualmente, ser necessário um registo gratuito.

Pérolas de Rothbard

* THE MULTIPLIER

Using the exact same logic as the Keynesians, one could “prove” that the way to boost GDP by $100,000 is to give the reader an extra dollar bill."

* Balances of Payments

An individual’s “balance of payments” must always be in balance, so long as cash balances and credit transactions are included. In general an individual will always have huge “trade deficits” with the owners of retail shops and huge “trade surpluses” with his employer. The balance of payments for an entire nation is simply the aggregation of all the individual citizens’ balances of payments.

* DEMAND FOR MONEY UNLIMITED?

Some reject the notion of a demand for money, because “people always want more money.” Yet this is true for all producer and consumer goods! It is simply not true that people always want more money (cash); indeed, anyone who owns any nonmonetary asset demonstrates that he or she does not want “more money.”

* INTEREST AND INVESTMENT

The interest rate has no causal relation to investment; both are determined by time preferences.

* MEASUREMENT

Money is not a measure of value. When someone buys a TV for $50, we cannot conclude that he “values it” at $50; on the contrary we know that he values the TV more than he valued the $50. All price indices are arbitrary.

Pope Benedict XVI (5)

Confirmando Sinais: Pope Benedict XV:

Via LRBlog: It's as if the Pope gave this homily specifically in response to various neoconservative American commentators who denied that his choice of Benedict XVI had anything at all to do with invoking the memory of Benedict XV:

"I chose to call myself Benedict XVI ideally as a link to the venerated Pontiff, Benedict XV, who guided the Church through the turbulent times of the First World War. He was a true and courageous prophet of peace who struggled strenuously and bravely, first to avoid the drama of war and then to limit its terrible consequences. In his footsteps I place my ministry, in the service of reconciliation and harmony between peoples, profoundly convinced that the great good of peace is above all a gift of God, a fragile and precious gift to be invoked, safeguarded and constructed, day after day and with everyone's contribution."

Sobre este assunto trágico para a Europa e o próprio Liberalismo Clássico, ler The Significance of Pope Benedict XV. By Thomas Fleming (the author of The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I.) no History News Network.

I'm puzzled that so little is being said in the media about the historical significance of Cardinal Ratzinger's choice of Benedict XVI as his papal name. As a German, I think we can be fairly sure he is trying to remind the world of the tragic story of his predecessor, and how close he came to bringing World War I to an early conclusion. The story has specical significance for Americans.

In the spring of 1917, Pope Benedict XV called on the warring governments to make a peace of mutual forgiveness and forbearance. As a starting point, the Pontiff proposed the restoration of Belgium, disarmament, arbitration machinery to prevent future wars, and freedom of the seas for all nations. (...)

The Germans and the Austro-Hungarians promptly accepted the Pope's proposal, although Berlin avoided specific commitments. The provisional Russian government also welcomed the papal mediation. The leaders of France and Italy, with largely Catholic, extremely war weary populations, were transfixed with alarm. They wanted a fight to the finish but they hesitated to take issue with the Pope. The English, even more determined to go for what Prime Minister Lloyd George called "a knockout blow," decided to let Wilson answer for all of them.

At first the president was inclined to say nothing. He seemed angry at the Pope's intrusion into the war. However, as the impact of the pontiff's appeal grew larger, Wilson decided he had to reply. The Pope was saying many of the same things Wilson had said before he opted for war. Now, as British ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice wryly pointed out, the president was doing "his utmost to kindle a warlike spirit throughout [the] states and to combat pacifists." No wonder the pope's appeal gave him indigestion.1

Colonel House strongly seconded this presidential decision -- and warned Wilson not to dismiss the Pope's proposals out of hand in his reply. The new Russian ambassador in Washington had informed House that alarming splits were appearing in the revolutionary government, with the call for immediate peace one of the chief issues. A dismissal could lead to the overthrow of Russia's moderate leader, Alexander Kerensky.

House also revealed that the Pope's proposal had evoked a sympathetic response in him. The colonel wondered if it would be a good thing in the long run if "Germany was beaten to her knees." That might leave a vacuum in central Europe which the Russians would be eager to fill. Before the declaration of war, Wilson had agreed with this balance of power viewpoint. It was the idea behind his appeal for a peace without victory.2

Secretary of State Lansing sent Wilson an acrid memorandum, in which he opined that the Pope was working with the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians to create a push for peace while the Allies were winning the war on land and the submarine campaign "appears successful." His Germanophobia becoming more visible with every line, Lansing argued that the Pope's proposals would depend on "the good faith of the powers" who signed such a peace treaty. But there could not be "two opinions" of the good faith of the German government. "The German rulers cannot be trusted." (...)

When it came to demonizing Germany, Wilson the war leader needed no lessons from Wellington House. Ignoring the indubitable fact that the president seemed determined not merely to beat Germany to its knees but to knock it flat, Colonel House told Wilson his artful mixture of hate and idealism was a "charter of democratic liberty." George Foster Peabody, an aide to Secretary of War Baker, said the reply convinced him that God had sent America "the Master Mind of the World in this crisis.(...)"

O desemprego

é uma consequência do socialismo.

Negocios.pt: "Um quinto ganharia mais com subsídio de desemprego do que a trabalhar. Cerca de um quinto dos agregados veriam potencialmente reforçado o seu rendimento familiar caso um dos seus titulares viesse a auferir do subsídio de desemprego em substituição do rendimento de trabalho."

Ainda temos o salário minimo (que impede as pessoas de mais baixa produtividade de comprar o acesso a trabalho e formação), as prestações sociais (que encarecem a oferta de trabalhogenéricamente em 33%), as limitações ao contrato livre (que limitam a procura e aumentam o risco de negócio), os incentivos à doença fisica e psicológica (cada vez mais indisposições de todo o género são reconhecidos), a regulamentação de acesso, etc.

Números (2)

"(...) Our statistical analysis of their coverage, however, showed that there was startling disparity in how deaths were reported, depending on the ethnicity of the victim.

For example, we found that in 2004, at a time when 8 Israeli children and 176 Palestinian children were killed – a ratio of 1 to 22 – Times headlines and lead paragraphs reported on Israeli children’s deaths at a rate almost seven times greater than Palestinian children’s deaths.

A one-month sub-study indicated that this disparity grew even larger when the entire article was analyzed, with Israeli children’s deaths mentioned (through repetitions of deaths reported on previous days) at a rate ten times greater than Palestinian children’s deaths.Times coverage of deaths of all ages, while less dramatically skewed, showed similar distortion.

In the first year of the current Palestinian uprising, which began in fall of 2000, we discovered that the Times reported prominently on 42 percent of Palestinian deaths, and on 119 percent of Israeli deaths (follow-up headline articles, we find, frequently push coverage of Israeli deaths over 100 percent).

In other words, the Times reported Israeli deaths at a rate approximately three times greater than Palestinian deaths.During this period over three times more Palestinians were being killed than Israelis.

Overall, we found that in every single category Times coverage reported Israeli deaths at rates three or more times greater than Palestinian deaths.

Such patterns of distortion gave readers the impression that equal numbers of people on both sides were being killed – or that more Israelis were being killed – when the reality is that Palestinians have always been killed in far greater numbers.

In particular, we found that Times stories so often repeated reports of Israeli children’s deaths that in some periods they were reporting on Israeli deaths at a rate of 400 percent.

In contrast, the majority of Palestinian deaths – particularly children’s deaths – were never reported by the Times at all.According to Israeli human rights groups and others who assiduously gather data on all children killed in the conflict, at least 82 Palestinian children were killed before any Israeli children were killed – and the largest single cause of these Palestinian children’s deaths was “gunfire to the head.”

Yet, almost no one is aware of this, since Times coverage consistently omitted or minimized coverage of these Palestinian deaths.In other words, we found that New York Times coverage of Israel-Palestine exhibited highly disturbing patterns of bias." New York Times Minimizes Palestinian Deaths, The Perversions of Daniel Okrent By ALISON WEIR

Texteis mais baratos 20% a 50%?

Não pode ser. O consumidor tem de ser protegido de si mesmo ("protect me from i want" diz uma música). E o ditador tecnocrata social-democrata, atento às armadilhas da liberdade de escolher, vai proteger as massas. Ainda existem "Muros de Berlim" para deitar abaixo.

PS:

Quando um produto baixa de preço, essa poupança permite:

- consumir outros produtos (produzidos com os recursos libertados)
- investir em aumentos de produtividade adicional (usando os recursos libertados)

E é assim que a economia cresce, porque "production creates its own demand".

A maravilha de tudo isto é pretenderem que a economia cresça ao mesmo tempo que combatem os seus efeitos. E fazer tudo isto sem dar a sensação de esquizofrenia crónica.

PS2: Que 1 bilião de chineses a aumentar o seu nível de vida (e genéricamente da sua liberdade) constituam uma enorme fonte de aumento de consumo de produtos mundiais também parece não contar para nada.

Os liberais face ao "25 de Abril"

O artigo já tem um ano mas mantém plenamente a sua actualidade: Deverá um liberal festejar o "25 de Abril"?, por Luís Aguiar Santos.

Non-Albanians

U.N. team announces discovery of 21 bodies in Western Kosovo mass grave

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) - The United Nations said Saturday that an investigation of a cave in Western Kosovo had uncovered 21 bodies of non-Albanians believed killed during the province's 1998-99 war between ethnic Albanian rebels and Serb forces
(...)
NATO airstrikes pushed the Serb troops out of the province and forced former Serb president Slobodan Milosevic to relinquish control of Kosovo. The province is now run by the United Nations and NATO-led peacekeepers, although it remains part of Serbia-Montenegro, the successor state to Yugoslavia. Negotiations on its final status are expected to begin this year.

PS: "final status" significa independência, claro. As delícias do internacionalismo.

Deus, esse estrangeiro

"A questão aqui mais relevante é a da intervenção externa (e estrangeira) de uma organização que visa contrariar a possibilidade de aplicação de uma lei em matéria que lhe não diz directamente respeito - o que se afigura insuportável juridicamente. " escreve CAA.

Eu diria que sendo o Vaticano um Estado estrangeiro é bem pior do que isso. Pode equivaler a uma Declaração de Guerra. Ainda por cima é um Estado cujo representante é eleito pelos agentes (nomeados directamente pelo Chefe de Estado estrangeiro) a seu soldo presentes em todos os restantes Estados. Humm, organização estranha esta.

Por outro, o Vaticano funcionou como a ONU da civilização durante séculos. Por exemplo, consagrou a legitimidade da Nação Portuguesa e do seu Rei (e com melhores resultados do que a ONU consagrou a existência de Israel).

A conclusão é simples. O Vaticano representa uma dimensão de poder organizado alternativo ao Estado na medida em que evoca uma fonte de direito alternativo. E isso pode ser um problema para um Estado de Direito, porque um Estado de Direito é um espaço onde o Direito é monopólio exclusivo do Estado e que não reconhece (ou residualmente) outras fontes de Direito. Por isso os notários têm uma dimensão "pública" (tradução= só fazem aquilo e na medida do que o Estado concede). O casamento passou a ter uma dimensão "pública" (tradução: passou a ter de ser declarado ao Estado) também (com Napoleão). E agora como o Estado define o que o casamento é ou não é, os notários têm de passar a "casar" homosexuais mesmo que a sua "lei" não o permita.

Os notários católicos podem recusar a fazê-lo? Em primeira ordem, os notários deviam poder "registar" ou deixar de "registar" os actos que entenderem. É um problema semelhante ao da Educação. Não devia ser pública porque depois é preciso decidir que Educação dar ou não dar. Deve ter uma disciplina de Moral? De Religião? Mas de certeza que pode ser "neutra" (tradução: formar cidadãos que obedeçam sempre e não ponham em causa a Lei que emana da Legislação, mesmo que mude em cada Estação do ano).

PS: Os Cristãos da América sem Estado, a dos grandes espaços e da "fronteira", casavam-se assinando a Bíblia de sua casa (ainda hoje esse acto é reconhecido juridicamente). Por exemplo, os homosexuais podem se o quiserem, começar a assinar a Bíblia de sua casa. Ninguém os impede.

Os grandes lideres

Com a projecção do excelente filme "A Queda - Hitler e o Fim do Terceiro Reich" retoma-se o o debate sobre as "causas" ou "como foi possível", mas não cesso de ficar espantado como nunca é referido, nem sequer como enquadramento, a ordem civilizacional europeia que se perdeu na Grande Guerra. No meio da destruição, o que mais se perdeu foi a moral de uma ordem imperfeita (como todas as realidades humandas) mas natural nas instituições que protegiam as mentes das paixões ideológicas e da procura de um lider politico vindo do povo, sem quaisqer traços de aristocracia velha cultura (presente quer no fascismo, no comunismo, mas também na partidocracia dos tempos presentes. Será por acaso que as tentativas feitas contra Hitler na própria Alemanha tenham tido origem na antiga aristocracia germânica?)

Ainda hoje a procura de um lider é o que motiva a política. Em vez da reivindicação de soberania local e individual (e para mais fácilmente, à escala humana, podermos realmente influenciar, em vez do anonimato das macro-democracias) o que se pretende é que um lider seja encontrado e aclamado, que vai pegar no poder central e através dele fazer grandes coisas.

Mas é essa mesma necessidade de procura de um lider que está na origem de todo o totalitarismo (na monarquia não existe a necessidade de um lider que entusiasme as massas, pelo contrário, era uma fonte de poder limitado enquadrada numa ordem espiritual - razão pela qual nunca as monarquias não alcançaram nunca, nem as absolutistas, nem de perto nem de longe o totalitarismo das repúblicas laicas). E o que levantou essa necessidade foi a destruição fisica e moral da Europa na Grande Guerra ("o suicídio da Europa" nas palavras do Papa Bento XV), acabou como Liberalismo Clássico e inaugurou o socialismo não democrático e o democrático.

O actual paradigma da social-democracia, o estatismo, o centralismo democrático, também vive da procura do líder que irá nascer para tomar conta de um centro (o Estado) do qual emanam decisões (choque tecnológico, educação, etc...não sei como é possivel que as pessoas se enganem a si mesmas tantas vezes...mas a psicologia já determinou que esses estados são até muito frequentes e sobrevivem com muita persistência).

A direita ou alguma direita que vê na sobrevivência do Estado, o mais alto designio político, peca por confundir Nação com Estado, o que faz com que estabeleça de forma automática de que o que é bom para o Estado é bom para a Nação. O que reforça a autoridade do Estado é bom para a Nação.

A esquerda que compreendeu que "igualdade" é o que de menos natural existe, precisa de um centro de propaganda para fazer acreditar que compulsório = voluntário, e convencer também que a maioria da população é um ganhador líquido (o que recebe é mais do que paga) e que sem o Estado iria perder o previlégio (o que é absolutamente verdade em relação aos únicos que não pagam impostos: os funcionários públicos).

O Liberalismo tem o dever de combater a partidocracia (seja do partido único ou multipartidário) e o mito do grande lider. Precisamos de menos política e mais representação civil onde os lideres são naturais, enquadrados na adesão voluntária a códigos comuns decididos por residentes e proprietários e não por uma massa anónima de votos que em aparência parece legitimar que o centralismo democrático decida sobre tudo o que ocorre debaixo do sol e da lua.

PS: Vejam a sucessão que deu lugar no BCP. Porventura foi um processo democrático (no sentido político)? Mas podemos afirmar que a designação de um sucessor teve o acordo dos accionistas sem que para isso sequer tenha existido um voto formal no sucessor. Foi um processo "natural". E é assim a democracia civil. Comparem isso com mesmo os bons lideres politicos conseguem fazer:

"Woodrow Wilson's decision to bring the United States into Europe's "Great War" (1914-18) wasn't made in 1917. In fact, his agents had already reached an agreement with the governments of England and France to involve the U.S. in the autumn of 1915. He then spent all of 1916 campaigning for reelection on the slogan, "He kept us out of war." When Wilson, who had already invaded Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, finally got Congress to declare war against the Central Powers on April 8, 1917, based on the ridiculous Zimmerman Telegram, the renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare by the Germans, and trumped up charges of atrocities against the Belgians, he didn't just get more than 100,000 Americans killed, he solidified the last century's turn toward warfare and totalitarianism that eventually killed over two hundred million people. So says Jim Powell, Perhaps he left the Cold War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the wars against terror and Iraq out of the book's title for brevity's sake.

Powell makes a compelling argument that by the time the U.S. got involved, World War I was a stalemate. Peace was sure to break out soon(...) As soon as the U.S. Congress declared war less than a month later, Wilson began applying diplomatic pressure and paid the Russians $325 million to continue the fight. (...) The payoff worked: Russia's provisional prime minister Aleksandr Kerensky kept the Russians involved in the war. Finally, on their fourth try, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his sidekick Leon Trotsky seized power. As Powell says in the book, "If Russia's Provisional Government had quit the war and negotiated peace with Germany in early 1917, we might never had heard of Lenin. (...)"

Without the help of conscripted American soldiers it is much more likely that the Allies would have negotiated sooner and demanded less vengeful terms. And vengeful terms they were: Clause 231 and 232 of the Treaty of Versailles forced the Germans to accept blame for the entire war, and to "make compensation for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allied and Associated Powers and to their property during the period of belligerency of each as an Allied or Associated Power against Germany by such aggression by land, by sea, and from the air, and in general all damage." (...)

If he - Wilson - had had details in mind for just peace terms, it might have been different. Instead he was thoroughly dominated by the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and the British foreign secretary Lord Edward Grey.

One wish of Wilson's was granted: he had demanded that the German Kaiser resign. He would only accept surrender from a "democratic government," presumably meaning one like his. Due to this decision, the German democrats who had opposed the war were discredited for being those responsible for signing the terrible treaty. The opposition took all the heat, rather than the people who got the country into the war in the first place. The series of maneuvers Hitler used to seize power were difficult enough as it was. Without the destruction of the German economy by the demands of massive reparations and the discrediting of the moderate factions, Adolph Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers' Party would never have been able to seize power. Hitler's entire propaganda program was based on the idea of punishing the "traitors of 1918" (those who signed the Versailles treaty), and restoring dignity to a country so humiliated by the aftermath of the first world war.

(...) Wilson's blunder also paved the way for our current conflicts in the Middle East. With the overwhelming victory of the Allies, made possible by US involvement, the British Empire expanded by over a million square miles. The French were able to greatly expand their territories as well. The current nation-states of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen and what was then called Palestine were drawn on a paper napkin by Winston Churchill with no regard for local populations at all. On top of all this, Lord Grey's successor, British foreign secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour, issued his famous "declaration," in the form of a letter to Lord Lionel Rothschild declaring the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people..." This has been, and will continue to be, a cause of major problems for the West, and the United States in particular, to say nothing of the people who live there.(...)" Blame Wilson by Scott Horton

A chantagem do costume pelos federalistas

French referendum 'no' would mean 'fall of Europe': Prodi

If France votes "no" on May 29, he told the Sunday paper Journal du Dimanche, it would be far more than a case of the country being "the black sheep" of Europe, using an expression employed by French President Jacques Chirac. "There will be no more Europe," Prodi, now leader of the Italian centre-left opposition to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, said. "We will go through a great period of crisis. The problem will not only be a catastrophe for France, but the fall of Europe.

Mas a ausência de uma constituição permite que as actuais instituições funcionem e previne avanços para o centralismo democrático supra-nacional que acaba sempre por desaguar no avanço dos poderes executivos, legislativos, e depois até judiciais a nível federal.

Isso quer dizer na prática o quê? Que será mais dificil impôr a uniformidade fiscal, emissão de dívida "federal", ligação dos sistemas de segurança social, impostos federais. etc.

PS: Apesar do que por aí se diz (e por quem se deixa influenciar pelos abusos ou pura ignorância feita pelos neocons àcerca da história...a qual parece ter começado apenas com Chamberlain) foi à França que calhou o ónus de assumir a maior coragem e custos nas guerras continentais (sendo que a excepção de Napoleão foi quem inaugurou a conquista e mudança de regime em busca de uma nova ordem internacional...sem a velha europa monárquica...e uma cultura de serviço ao Estado como garante e emnador dos novos direitos da modernidade...um visionário portanto...): contra Carlos V, Bismarck (1871), Grande Guerra e Segunda Guerra (se se lembrarem de "alguém" que mais prontamente declarou guerra, em cima do opositor e até em desvantagem clara, sem ter sido directamente atacado e mais vidas perdeu teve por favor indiquem-me). A França fazia um favor a si mesma e a todos (mais uma vez) se impedisse também a construção de uma federação europeia.

Pope Benedict XVI (4)

"(...) The secular world, too, hoped the church would alter its doctrines to conform to a moral relativism that teaches there is no law above manmade law, and that what is right and wrong is decided by each generation. The notion that there is a higher law—God’s law, permanent law—to which all manmade law and human conduct must conform is anathema. (...)

What the world wants the church to do is to stop claiming it is the custodian of moral truth. Because the church refuses, it is hated. As an earlier pope would not bless the new marriage of Henry VIII, this pope will not accede to the world’s demands. And so Benedict XVI must and will be relentlessly attacked.

In a sense, there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who create their own moral code to conform to how they wish to live—such as Hugh Hefner, who created his own Playboy philosophy—and those who try to conform their lives to a moral code that exists outside and above themselves, like Benedict XVI.

Completing the episode in the Gospel of St. John, when the other disciples rejected his words and departed, “Jesus said unto twelve: Will you also go away? “Then Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

What Benedict XVI is telling the world and dissident Catholics is: It is not Christ’s church that must change its teaching, it is you who must change your hearts. Like Christ himself, Benedict XVI will be reviled because he has said no to the world, the flesh and the Devil." Behind the Rage at Benedict XVI Patrick J. Buchanan

Taxa Única de Impostos

Tem piada que embora os meus colegas da Causa Liberal e outros sites liberais nuncam tenham comentado as propostas aqui feitas com insistência sobre uma Taxa Única de Impostos (a primeira das quais em artigo de Junho de 2003 - Em Defesa da Taxa Única de Tributação
Por uma aplicação mais justa, transparente e democrática da política fiscal, o que vale é que rejeito o conceito ético de propriedade intelectual...:) a ideia (e o conceito) vem sendo comentada (até porque já foi implementada em países do Leste uns anos atrás) de forma crescente, primeiro por Miguel Frasquilho, agora por Duarte Lima (Via O Insurgente):

"Há uma terceira medida, mais simples e mais eficaz a aprovação de uma reforma fiscal que aponte para o objectivo da introdução de uma taxa única em todos os impostos, nomeadamente IRS, IRC, e IVA, acabando com o princípio da progressividade, e com a generalidade dos benefícios e incentivos fiscais, que são uma fonte de complexidade e de fraude fiscal, para lá de implicarem custos acrescidos no funcionamento da máquina burocrática do Estado que tem a seu cargo a cobrança das receitas.A questão da taxa única - a "flat tax" - está hoje no coração da discussão do debate político na Europa."

N´O Insurgente diz-se que é uma falsa questão. Que o problema está na despesa. Bem, o problema se querem saber mesmo, está na própria existência do Estado (com a capacidade unilateral de decidir despesa e receita compulsória), ou ainda o sistema monetário em que o monopólio do Banco Central emite notas para financiar os déficits públicos (e por isso a solução da despesa passa por defender o regresso ao padrão ouro e a liberdade bancária) mas misturar os problemas para baralhar a tentativa de introduzir algumas condições necessárias a uma discussão objectiva sobre o sistema fiscal nas condições actuais não ajuda.

E pergunta-se ainda:

"Exemplo: IRS progressivo com máximo de 40%, IRC a 25% e IVA a 19% ou, alternativamente, uma taxa única de 30% para todos os impostos (IRS, IRC e IVA). Qual solução preferem?"

1. Para discutirmos o que preferimos seria útil diminuir as combinações possíveis.
2. Também seria útil retirar ao jogo político a capacidade de descer um e subir o outro.
3. A TUI permite distinguir diferentes propostas eleitorais.
4. A TUI, em IRS significa que a progressividade só existe entre o escalão de isenção e o patamar sujeito, o que é mais aceitável do que concluirmos que o sistema democrático é o sistema pelo qual uma classe de rendimentos (em maioria numérica) sujeita outra (e só porque está em minoria) a condições que não impõe a si mesmo.

Pope Benedict XVI (3)

"(...) Michael Novak has rightly recognized that the very emergence of relativism means that "Power trumps."

"The new way [to relativism] – writes Novak – is not toward objectivity, but toward subjectivism; not toward truth as its criterion, but toward power. This, Ratzinger fears, is a move back toward the justification of murder in the name of "tolerance" and subjective choice."

Yet Novak does not go as far as to recognize, given such a context, the dangers entailed in the "divinization" of democratic rule so typical of the contemporary word.

Democracy goes far beyond being a merely procedural rule, and is raised to the status of the main ideological ethos of our time.

Legitimacy comes to be tested not in the light of independent criteria of good and evil – but rather via the mere ratification of a particular act by a parliamentary majority.

In a way, the very idea of the possibility of voting on whatever issue – ranging from killing infants (abortions) and adults (war) to the denial of private property (taxation) and wealth redistribution (subsidies and regulation) – is in essence a form, if not the form, of relativism.

On the other hand, it should be remembered that Truth isn’t enemy to freedom. As Alejandro Chafuen points out, "Cardinal Ratzinger focused on teaching the importance of convictions, rather than force.

On November 6, 1992, at the ceremony where Ratzinger was inducted into the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Institute of France, he explained that a free society can only subsist where people share basic moral convictions and high moral standards. He further argued that these convictions need not be ‘imposed or even arbitrarily defined by external coercion’." (...)

In the 1985 interview-book, Rapporto sulla fede, that Vittorio Messori (later to interview John Paul II in Crossing the Threshold of Hope) authored with the Cardinal, he sharply defined Marxism "not the hope, but the shame of our time."

Indeed very significant is the name that Cardinal Ratzinger chose for himself.

The last Benedict was Benedict XV, who was a strong critic of World War I, which he defined as a "useless massacre" that was leading to the "suicide of Europe." Benedict XV was a Pontiff for peace. He made very clear that the path that Europe was climbing would end in the death of the West. Benedict XVI has the same vision, although today the threat to Europe is much more ideological than before: the smoking gun is not a real gun, as it was the case in 1914–18, but relativism.

Asked by an interviewer to comment on John Paul II’s opposition to the Iraqi war, the then Cardinal Ratzinger explained that he found the Holy Father’s judgment "reasonable also from a rational point of view: there were no sufficient reason to wage war against Iraq."

A Pope for Peace and Reason by Carlo Stagnaro and Alberto Mingardi