Editorial

A Note to Our Readers

Here at the Oregon Commentator, we tend to stray away from opining on national and international issues. We recognize that if you want to read a commentary on the President's musings, it's probably best to turn to everyone's friend, George Will. Even we, in all of our provocative, journalistic brilliance, realize that in some cases at least, Mr. Will is better than us.

Unlike the Oregon Daily Emerald or the dreaded Insurgent, youUll never see an OC headline along the lines of "Provisional Burmese Military Dictatorship Violates Human Rights," or even a more eloquent one like "Radical Socialist Movement Liberates Womens' Needs For Twenty-First Century." We don't often hazard to print their conservative counterparts. Rather, we leave those tasks to our older colleagues on the national level, for as a dead politician once said: "All politics is local" - and we know best what we have here. We are the isolated enlightened on this forsaken campus.

Yet, as the leftist tendencies of the University nab at us day in and day out, like that relentless neighborhood lapdog that you kick daily on your way home but which never learns the message behind the crude words "leave me alone, you stupid bitch," our frustration builds to a climax of monumental ejaculation, spewing forth truth to this community on the broadest of levels. This, humble readers, is what we are doing here - espousing the essence of conservative philosophy: leaving us alone.

Granted, the shallow retort by our leftist friends will be that troubling question of abortion - with all its shopworn rhetoric and endlessly harrowing moral arguments ("how can you advocate being left alone when you won't allow women to choose?") But the question of whether nascent life holds the right to be left alone is a bit more complicated than our critics have it. Recognizing that any article here will have little impact on the already-closed minds of the student body (on both sides of the issue), we here decide to leave this question alone for now.

But leave us alone. In economics parlance, that means giving us back the right to our incomes. Americans (we hope this comes as no surprise) have no primary right to their earnings. We abdicated it in 1912, when a strange bedfellow alliance of leftists, farmers, and protected industrialists convinced the naive democracy, through sophisticated arguments, that a Constitutional Amendment (the 16th) allowing federal income taxation was necessary to maintain stability. Indeed, our incomes are now nationalized like Cuban sugar, and we keep only as much as the state allows. The power was instantaneously abused, and taxes rose from 5% early on to over 90% by the 1950s (forget the taxing petty tyrants who ran the state governments). If our professors correctly define socialism as "government control over the means of production," (means of production being capital and labor), although our American State may not own the factories, it sure as hell owns our labor. The income of millions of people is taxed at over 50% before they even get their hands on it. Maybe Marx was right - reading this back to ourselves now, we're all feeling a bit alienated.

Leave us alone. That means freedom to spend one's money as one sees fit - whether that be on cigarettes, bacon, guns, tofu, or mutual funds. Our coercive Social(ist) (in)Security system nabs another 15% of our cash before we ever see it, to pay us a 0% return at some point in the future. But thatUs only if we're lucky enough to live beyond the retirement age, whereupon it disappears into the abyss of a government far bigger than should ever have been allowed to carve out its own depths.

Yet imagine two minimum-wage earners making $13,000/year each, who invest that 15% ($3900) in a safe, 10% yielding bond fund over their working years. Done consistently, they'd be close to millionaires by retirement Q wealth they could pass to future generations. Compare that to the $1200/month check they'll receive from the government at age 65. And that's if the government doesn't raise that age to 70 to cut costs, as is often proposed. Ahhh, the benefits to living in the statist system.

Leave us alone. The environmentalists are squirming on this point. "How could you empower corporations that seek profits by drilling holes in (insert: arctic wastelands, oceans, deserts, etc.)?" Yet, on virtually every occasion, the worst environmental tragedies occur as the result of a statist system. Remember that awful oil disaster in the Russian Arctic in the early 90s? The result of the Soviet oil monopoly. The rainforest catastrophe? Brazil's government leasing lands to raise money for its social programs. Ad infinitum. Even Canada has a worse environmental record than the U.S.. However, when private property is the rule, citizens can sue for damages to their holdings, which theyUd be hard-pressed to destroy - after all, it's their wealth. Would the State ever sue itself for damages? Or in a mixed system, can an individual ever beat the State in a State court? A likely story. Leave us alone. One of the greatest sources of power in a totalitarian system is the power to educate its youth. Public education serves for little else than the perpetuation of the state. Citizens, coerced into paying outrageous taxes to fund schools, obsequiously enroll their children, for the state has a virtual monopoly on education and curriculum. We may not see its abuses now (though the effects of monopoly are certainly manifesting themselves in terms of low test scores), but the only way to prevent political agendas in the classroom is to diffuse that power by giving parents the power to choose Q with vouchers, grants, whatever - where and what their children learn. Opposing such reform are those with so much invested in that power: the teachers unions, state employees Q those who seek to perpetuate the State and its power.

Leave us alone. The Left's oft-proclaimed "suspicion" of concentrated political power is nothing more than a specious facade. It is the Left who seeks, every breathing minute, to lend more and more private power unto the State. Al Gore can reinvent government all he wants. John McCain can erect as many campaign finance regulations as our constitutional edifice may sustain. But the trillions of budget dollars and billions of pages of potential regulations will always be a magnet to the iron souls of the unscrupulous. Corrupt souls forever gravitate toward the lot of power, just as mosquitoes descend upon a filthy swamp. And the lot of power will always corrupt the sincerest of hearts. The only way to regain freedom and end corruption is not to pitch some flimsy bug netting in the name of campaign reform or "reinventing government," but to drain the swamp itself - erasing a tax code longer than the Bible, privatizing our retirements, and allowing small businesses to compete without having to consider the cost of government intrusion.

It's just a way of saying: "Look here, you arrogant politicians and bureaucrats who want to control the way I live my life. Do you really think your limited minds can allocate resources better than the spontaneous actions of millions and consumers and sellers? Hell no! So keep your hands out of my wallet. Get your boots off of my property. Stay out of my gun safe. Get your hands out of my savings account. Let me choose my child's school and its curriculum.

In conclusion, leave us alone. And we just may return the favor.